#[ about: paul ]

[klyceart]

I wanted to understand your face

[lilislegacy]

i feel like percy is the person that people bring with them when they need to go somewhere or do something potentially dangerous. or more realistically, he’s the one who people’s loved ones tell them to take with. it just makes people feel better knowing percy is there. you know what i mean?

sally has a meeting with someone who sounds a bit weird (and paul can’t go)? paul tells her to bring percy.

paul needs to go to a really sketchy part of town? sally asks him to bring percy

piper got a weird anonymous note and needs to go meet them at a location? annabeth tells her to bring percy

leo has to go get some magic machine part from a really shady dealer? piper tells him to bring percy

frank has to go on an unofficial quest to investigate some shady legion history, and hazel has to stay with camp? hazel tells him to bring percy

and it’s NOT because any of these people can’t take care of themselves. they are all strong and brave and badass, and can handle anything. but for one, percy is intimidating as hell. his “wolf stare” sends literal gangs running the other way. you can avoid conflict before it even happens, because no one is messing with percy. and second, percy just makes you feel safe. his presence is comforting. not only has he been through all the demigod-hero-world-saving shit, and is powerful as hell, but he also grew up in new york city. he can handle pretty much any situation. plus he’s super sweet and funny, and you can always count on him to make you laugh and decrease your anxiety. and he’s always got your back. he takes care of the people he loves.

he’s just the best company. for so many reasons.

when in doubt, bring percy

[the-crooked-library]

so within the universe of Dune, gender roles abide by a rigid false dichotomy created by the bene gesserit - men lead the noble houses, while the women may join their order, and the powers of both are kept intentionally separate. at the same time, the plot demonstrates repeatedly that the role of paul atreides as a character is that of the border between the concepts juxtaposed within dichotomies: he is both an outerworlder and fremen, both harkonnen and atreides, both a duke and a disciple of the bene gesserit.

as such, it follows that within the in-universe gender structure, he occupies the roles of both male and female, thus being functionally and societally nonbinary. in this essay, i will -

[awanderingtortoise]

love the bene gesserit. they're out there girlboss gatekeep gaslighting for 90 generations, perfectly and meticulously masterminding every political player of the universe into sexy times to create the Ultimate Manwhore and after ALL OF THAT. ALLLL OF THAT?

Dune timeline hits. we're here! we've done it! Our two greatest prospects!! Kwisatz Haderach! At last! And it's just fucking Kinky and Twinky over here like oh ok nice going I guess

[5ummit]

[demon-of-the-ancient-world]

Hate (affectionate) how it's made so clear from the very beginning of part 1 just how loved Paul is by his family and household. Both his parents, Duncan, Gurney, Thufir, even Dr Yueh all clearly care so deeply for this kid, and we're shown that time and time again.

Cut to the end of part two, and almost every one of those people is gone. The only ones who remain are a weird, came-back-wrong version of Jessica, and Gurney who has gone from mentor to worshipper. Paul goes from someone deeply loved and valued for who he is by a small but caring group of people - to someone followed and worshipped and feared by thousands. They're obsessed with him in a way, as a leader and "messiah", but nobody loves him.

The only one remaining who loves him for who he is is Chani, who leaves him because in the end that love isn't enough to bring who he is back.

[vrailaru]

ok well

[demigods-posts]

growing up is realizing that rachel was exactly who percy needed in that period of his life. because she knew enough about the demigod world that percy could confide in her about the responsibilities as the prophecy kid. but was also separate enough from the demigod world that she never placed him on a pedestal or pitied him for it. she never looked at him like he was a dead man walking. or expected him to become something more than himself to get the job done. say what you want about their relationship. but no one. not sally. not paul. not poseidon. not chiron. not grover. and definitely not annabeth. could have been for percy what rachel was for him.

[phantasmicfish]

So I saw Dune Part 2 yesterday and I was initially super crushed because of the deviation from book canon but the more I think about it the more I sorta like it…

So without further ado here’s a list of stuff I liked about Dune Part 2:

- all the scenes initially of Paul growing closer to the Fremen. You can clearly see that they become friends, accept him as a Feydakin, that they’re laughing, joking, hanging out. (And contrast that to the end of the movie, where Paul has no more Fremen friends, only followers. In the book, this is echoed, where Paul recognizes that he has lost his friends to the Muad’Dib religion. Take book Stilgar, who truly embodies this… by the end of the book, Paul says: “I have seen a friend [Stilgar] become a worshipper.”

- giving Chani explicit rejection of Paul’s messiah status was an interesting choice. Chani’s main thought over part 2 is that they don’t need religion to save them, that through Fremen power and desert power, the Fremen can save themselves. She recognizes that this fanatical worship can be a vehicle to control and enslave her people, and I sorta wish we saw Paul lean into that more… that they found a way to stay together and ‘fight’ the prophecy together based on Chani’s ideals…

- also, I love how engrained this rejection of religion and prophecy is in her character. Book Chani takes no issue with her Fremen name, Sihaya (desert spring), but movie Chani hates it “because it’s part of some prophecy.” Later, we see that despite her rejection of prophecy and religion, that the prophecy does indeed come to pass— the tears of desert spring save Him aka, Chani saving Paul after he drinks The Water of Life. (Interesting how Jessica has to force Chani to save Paul using the Voice… another example of Jessica explicitly forcing Paul to become the messiah).

- adding more depth to Fremen culture— the South being the more religious fundamentalist tribes vs the North being more secular. Early on, the movie paints this immediate divide between the tribes of Fremen who accept Paul and Jessica versus those who treat them as offworlders (who murdered Jamis). In the books everyone accepts Paul and Jessica after Paul bests Jamis and Jessica quotes some scripture, but I think it makes more logical sense that there’d be friction over these two random offworlders coming in

- I love love loved Paul speaking at the meeting of the Fremen tribe leaders in the South. He fully accepts his messiah status, exercises his power of the Voice + his prescience as a way to command all the Fremen under his name

- I’m a big fan of omitting the two-year time skip, so with that I’m glad Leto II was skipped over entirely. I always felt that Leto II was an unnecessary character addition to the book, especially when he just dies and everyone sort of goes “oh well” and moves on, so I’m glad it’s omitted.

- another interesting choice was to paint Jessica as a straight up villain in comparison to the way her book counterpart was not. The movie Jessica we see here is seemingly corrupted by the Water of Life: she walks around talking to herself (Alia) and scheming Paul’s ascent to Lisan-Al Gaib. She knows about the Holy War, which is the very thing Paul is trying to prevent, yet she expresses no concern about bringing it to fruition. (Probably because Jessica knows it’s impossible to prevent, but still.) The very last line of the movie, where Alia asks Jessica what’s going on and Jessica says “The Holy War has begun” is just total villain in my mind— explicit acceptance of the Holy War, like it’s just another stepping stone in her plan. Plus, the fact that Paul has visions of Jessica leading him into this period of great starvation totally cements her as a villian.

- going off of that, I like that we see Jessica undergoing actual agony when she takes The Water of Life. When book Jessica and Paul take The Water of Life they accept it calmly and without obvious pain (book Jessica was sitting with her eyes closed, as if sleeping), so this physical reaction that Jessica has to the poison adds to the idea that The Water of Life did change her in a negative way.

- I feel like so far we’ve been introduced to Alia as just a weird talking fetus who’s been consorting with Jessica, so Paul’s vision where Alia says “I love you” really strikes home, that she really does care for Paul which we might not have understood otherwise

[rysttle]

i havent drawn em before yet so im still figuring out how to but i saw this post from @strivia (hope it's ok to tag) and wanted to do a thing xD

Bonus paerhaps

[eldritch-ace]

The Leading Man

I love how after watching Nightmare Time, TGWDLM implies that all the powerhouses of Hatchetfield were infected before the CCRP crew (also that Pokey plays favorites)

[waywardsoul-s]

Paul Matthews and Emma Perkins are everything to me. They are soulmates and find each other in every universe but they almost never get past the awkwardly flirting stage before the world ends. They are both losers. They find each other every time an apocalypse commences. They are the only normal people in the whole universe. They are doomed by the narrative. They hate musicals. He tips her 5 dollars and she spits on everyones coffee. They are Orpheus and Eurydice coded. They are a spark that never turns into fire. They are intimate but don't like labels. They are the only constant thing in every timeline. They are what it could have been but never meant to be. They meet in that coffee shop again and again forever. He'll order a black coffee and she'll ask him for his name. And the loop will start all over again.

[bivampir]

the sexiest thing a man can do is collapse on the floor coughing blood

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Oh I realized a thing about the Paul/Feyd-Rautha fight. So usually if you have a big fight scene, but especially if you do something like have a character get injured in a way that would definitely be fatal if they weren't cursed with inescapable Main Character Energy, you follow up the fight scene with some moment of comfort or relief or something, which serves to release the tension for the audience and let them know whew, that was scary, but it's okay now. Your character is hurt but they're gonna survive. (Or alternately, if they're dying heroically, it was worth it and what the narrative demanded.)

But here there's nothing. Paul is surrounded by devoted followers; his mother; his lover; one of his oldest teachers and a loyal servant of House Atreides. No one steps forward to offer a shoulder to lean on or help him to his feet. He's left them all behind. He's not a person who got hurt in a fight anymore; he's a myth that people shrink back from. So he pulls the knife out by himself. He stands up by himself. Other than the emperor very begrudgingly touching his hand to kiss the ring, I don't think anyone touches him at all for the rest of the movie. He's completely alone. They never release that tension, because Paul's alive but it is very much not going to be okay.

[cainternn]

LISAN AL GAIB

[automatonwithautonomy]

paul is like - so they're an abombination, right? a monstrosity, imperfect because there is no way lyctorhood can be anything other than a deep perversion. but, they're a success. a big fuck you to john, a unison of two people who only ever wanted to be together anyway and went loud. you can't ever seperate cam and pal now. they're a last-ditch effort, the only available choice to make in a sea of shitty options, the only choice they could ever make, the best and worst thing two people can do, they're a meticulous and thought-out procedure and a mistake and a terrible thing made of love and a perfect person born out of viscera and desperation. they are a contradiction because of fucking course they are. what else could they be?? they are two people so wrapped up in each other they're one and it's - a beautiful tragedy, and a horrible triumph.