Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2022 August 22

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August 22

Song lyric: "When darkness creeps over the sea"

Can anybody find the full lyrics and any other info about a song which starts "when darkness creeps over the sea" ? Other lines are "hides all the land from our sight" ... "what will the little ships do" ... "to seek their own way through the night" ... and ends with a refrain "and mark out the way". Tune is slightly hymn-like. Could be an old Sunday school song but not sure if it has religious content. Possibly late 19th century or 1920s/30s. --Mervyn (talk) 09:55, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

It seems to have escaped the internet, as far my Google-fu can tell. Alansplodge (talk) 11:47, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

A slightly similar children's hymn is When lamps are lighted in the town. Alansplodge (talk) 11:50, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

The book of Mark, chapter four, has "little ships" in the King James Version, and I found a bunch of old sermons extrapolating from that phrase, so that's a likely reference point.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:55, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Title of Final Fantasy VII

The video games Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI were retitled in their initial North American releases, having their respective instalment numbers changed to II and III due to the fact that certain previous instalments in the series had not been released in North America. This was not done, however, for Final Fantasy VII, creating an apparent gap in numbering. Has anyone involved in the game's development process ever commented on the reasoning behind this change, or discussed whether a retitling was considered at any stage of development? Also, was the gap in numbering seen as confusing by North American audiences at the time, or were the reasons behind it widely known? 2.248.84.84 (talk) 17:57, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Localization of Square Enix video games discusses this some; when the original FF games were developed, different games were released in different markets at different times, meaning that local harmonization of titles was important, and there was no universal set of games in a series; the FF series in Japan had more games than the US series, as you note. A similar thing happened over at Nintendo with the Super Mario series, where there are actually 2 different Super Mario Brothers 2 games, one for the US market and one for the Japanese market (later released in the US as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels). Basically, Square Enix decided to alter its marketing strategy to establish a single world-wide strategy, and not different local markets; so it became necessary to establish a uniform timeline and titling for its games. It was decided to use the same name for FF7 in all markets, and the most logical way to do that is use the Japanese numbering system. --Jayron32 12:02, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Compare the Monarchy of the United Kingdom where James VI of Scotland in 1603 through inheritance became also James I of England and of Ireland (not to be confused with the Acts of Union 1707 or the Acts of Union 1800), and is often referred to as "James VI and I". Subsequently a policy has been suggested that future British monarchs (if previous monarchs of either monarchy have had the same regnal name) will be numbered as whichever higher number is applicable. {the poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.90.29 (talk) 23:04, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

House of Harkonnen

In the Dune saga, is there any connection between the House of Harkonnen and the Nazis? 2601:646:8A81:6070:895C:CB96:89BE:B464 (talk) 22:18, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

I can't recall any mention of the Nazis at all, though I haven't read anything after around Chapterhouse: Dune. Since World War II was far, far in the past, it seems unlikely. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:49, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

It's not intrinsically ridiculous, since Herbert presumably intended an implied link between House Atreides and the legendary Ancient Greek Atreus and his descendants (which the latest film iteration nods to in the Caladan cemetery scene). However, like you I can't recall noticing any Nazi–Harkonnen connections in the books or films.

The name Harkonnen is actually Finnish, but Herbert didn't know that when he chose it, and the Baron's name Vladimir is suggestive of Russian. In the general "aristocratic bureaucracy" elements of the background he intended a resonance with the USSR (see Dune (novel)#Additional language and historic influences).

According to Dr Willis E McNelly's 1984 The Dune Encyclopedia (sanctioned by Herbert) the Harkonnen claimed descent from the Corrinos in the last ruling house of the Byzantine Empire, and by marriage from a cousin of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.121.96 (talk) 02:21, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Also, given that Dune is set something like 21,000 years in the future, and given that essentially everyone alive today is descended from just about everyone alive only about a millennium ago, (owing to the stipulation that such people's lines didn't die out entirely, etc.) such a claim would be, while true, only trivially so. Functionally everyone alive in the Dune Universe is descended from everyone alive on Earth during the Byzantine empire, and given that the colonization of other planets likely occurred several millennia after the fall of the Russian Empire, that claim is likely just as trivial. As pedigree collapse notes, essentially all humans are related to all other humans within about 50 generations or so. Those numbers are likely to get larger with larger populations, and the ability of humans to colonize far away star systems also complicates the matter, but not for claiming ancestry from people who predate interstellar colonization... --Jayron32 15:45, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

I doubt that most people alive in Europe today are descended from anyone alive a millennium ago in the Americas.  --Lambiam 03:30, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

You'd be surprised: Archival traces reveal that an unknown number [of Native Americans remained in Europe, establishing lives and families.] The first Native American to arrive in Europe may have been a woman brought to Iceland by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago, a study by Spanish and Icelandic researchers suggests. If it happened once, it likely happened more than once. --Jayron32 12:39, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

This article compiles many of the well-known, documented cases (Pocahontas, Wanchese, Squanto, etc.) of Native Americans being in Europe. There are uncountably many more that no one bothered to write about. --Jayron32 12:50, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

But these arrived in Europe less than a millennium ago – even less than half a millenium ago.  --Lambiam 21:58, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

They did, but considering that Dune is set several millenia in the future, there will have been several thousands more years, solving that problem. --Jayron32 12:21, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

True, but such claims were/are/will be matters of cultural identity, politics and propaganda, not science. And long-term aristocratic/ruling houses are (and increasingly will be) in a position to record and preserve (and falsify) lines of (usually paternal-line) descent regardless of how scientifically meaningless they are (and how much the Bene Gesserit are secretly manipulating them by providing anonymised mothers). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.90.29 (talk) 23:19, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

This article by a Jewish journalist, The Hidden Jews of ‘Dune’, discusses various theories about who represents what (it's complicated). Alansplodge (talk) 11:13, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Much of the Dune universe represents a kind of confused syncretism of modern Earth culture; you've got concepts like "Zen Sunnism" and the "Orange Catholic Bible" as just one example. I think Herbert's vision was of a future that had elements familiar to modern Earth, but recombined in ways that he saw as interesting. There is not going to be a clear "one-to-one" perfect analogy between modern Earth culture and Dune universe culture. --Jayron32 11:53, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

And let's not lose sight of the fact that his intended main themes were ecology and the potential dangers of messiahs. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.90.29 (talk) 18:05, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

True, but like his near contemporaries Asimov and Tolkien, Herbert does engage in a considerable amount of worldbuilding for its own sake. Individual works in the Duniverse may have specific themes (such as the ecology and messianism you note in the first novel), but much of Herbert's work is in constructing the setting and history of his world to provide context for his themes. --Jayron32 15:11, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

And to afford himself and his readers fun. As one famous SF writer (possibly one of those named above) once said: (something like) "We SF writers are competing for people's beer money; to succeed, before all other considerations, we have to be entertaining." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.90.29 (talk) 23:19, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

I think I remember from my studies that the association of feudalism with obscure but performing technology was an interpretation of what nazism had been about, in some popular imagery (books sold on the shelves neighbouring that of Erich von Däniken, some episodes of Sally Forth etc.) - at the time when the Dune story was young. --Askedonty (talk) 20:44, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

The Harkonnens are not supposed to be the Nazis. They're something of a composite of the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire. Dune borrows heavily from Lawrence of Arabia and The Sabres of Paradise[1] (see Imam Shamil). The Atreides are based on the British and the Americans. Arrakis - sounds like Iraq right? Andre🚐 03:04, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Certainly, there's some inspiration he's taken from those historical examples, but most of what the Harkonnens are based on is Frank Herbert's imagination. Dune is, ultimately, a work of fiction. It is not a cryptic history, it's some made up stuff that Frank Herbert made up. --Jayron32 12:30, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

That's fair, but he also spent a lot of time researching history to incorporate into Dune, and it draws a lot of inspiration from history and his own experiences. I believe as a journalist he spent a lot of time in the Library of Congress, I think I read that in Dreamer of Dune. He didn't just fabricate all the references to religion and culture from whole cloth. As they say, "you write what you know," Herbert had a lot of experiences that made it into Dune. The famous example is that he was actually researching sand dunes and sand dune ecology. He also had some formative experiences as a young man with Native Americans.[2] Andre🚐 16:27, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

[un-indent] Thanks, everyone! And as far as lineages are concerned, they might be meaningless to scientists, but in this case they are anything but meaningless to me -- I'm a great pop-culture loremaster (though not for the Duniverse specifically, that's why I asked) and a big believer in the concept of a pop-culture multiverse (that is, that a number of various fictional universes are interconnected), and I happen to be researching the early ancestors of both the House of Atreides and the House of Harkonnen, in particular to find out if there's any evidence of a possible 3-way connection between the Duniverse, the Tactile-verse (Lily's Garden, Penny & Flo) and the James Bond-verse -- and based on your answers here, such a connection is indeed possible, but is much less direct than I first thought! 2601:646:8A81:6070:BCD0:F69:53DD:8CB3 (talk) 02:46, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

There is no such Finnish name as Harkonnen. However it sounds similar to Härkönen, which is a real Finnish surname. Herbert probably spelled the name wrong or took artistic liberties with it. JIP | Talk 10:57, 29 August 2022 (UTC)