#paul chani

[loveakii]

a game of thrones + dune

[lostonmyroad]

jessica really said “god forbid women do anything” and doomed an entire people to war by installing her twink son as a false prophet by stealing her cult’s 10,000 year old breeding program propaganda

[zorosnavigator]

[dxliriumoftheendless]

favourite straight people trope: cool interesting girl falls in love with the Devil. examples:

[murphycooper]

“i want you to know, i will love you as long as i breathe.”

dune part ii / ojibwa / waiting for this story to end before i begin another, jan heller lev

[sebandmia]

can’t stop thinking about that shot where everyone in the room is kneeling and princess irulan, paul, and chani are the only ones standing. paul’s back to chani signifying his betrayal while princess irulan and chani are eye to eye - both heartbroken over what the man between them has done. my chest hurts that was so beautifully executed

[lady-of-the-puddle]

I need everyone to understand about the fremen.

They do not cry. Ever.

To give water to the dead is the most sacred honor that anyone could give but they rarely and never do that because it's ingrained in them to not waste water from birth. A single tear could mean life and death for them. To give water to the living? Unheard of.

Paul crying over killing Jamis in the book was a moment that astonished the fremen around him. Jessica ponders their reactions and knows that this is a holy moment.

Jessica then forcing Chani to cry for Paul(this was not in the book btw but I love it) is the ultimate betrayal of her autonomy. To force her to give what is essentially a piece of her life to him without her consent is sacrilegious and she knows it.

Water of Life indeed.

[thedeadtravelfast]

this is the plot right?

[wendydoodles]

Having completely normal thoughts about Dune Part Two.

[tokoyamisstuff]

[therealelrondhubbard]

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Controversial opinion among Dune book fans maybe, but I loved the changes they made to Chani's character. Making her a fedaykin who is already an experienced fighter before Paul arrives was a brilliant choice. Dune Part Two is a war movie, and this puts her at the center of the action, side by side with Paul, and gives her a much more active role than she has in the book.

We got a hint of where things were going in the beginning of Dune Part One. The first thing we ever know about movie Chani is that she's a fighter. She serves as a voice for the Fremen, telling us the story of their struggle from her point of view. I wrote here about the difference this change makes compared to other adaptations of Dune, what a perspective shift it is to have the world of Arrakis introduced not by an outsider, describing it as a dangerous but valuable colonial prize, but by one of its native inhabitants, who tells us before all else that it's beautiful, her home that she's fighting to liberate. I am so, so glad that the second movie followed up on this characterization.

I never found Chani and Paul's love story in the book particularly convincing, because why would this woman, who already has a prominent and respected place in Fremen society, even give the time of day to her deposed would-be colonizer, let alone fall in love and have children with him? Without a compelling reason for Chani to love Paul, she ends up feeling like a prize to be won, and "indigenous culture personified as a woman to be wooed (or conquered) by the colonizing man" is a trope we've seen and don't need to repeat.

But as soon as you tell me it's a barricade romance I get it. Cool cool cool, I know exactly what this relationship is now and it makes sense. Movie Chani doesn't respect or even particularly like Paul when she first meets him, and she doesn't think he's the fulfillment of any prophecy. She comes to respect him, and eventually love him, through his actions. He's brave--sometimes recklessly so. He fights well. He's willing to stick his neck out on the front lines with the other Fremen fighters. He can (after a little help) hack surviving in the harsh desert environment. He's not too proud to learn from others. He seems to genuinely want to be her equal in a common political struggle. All these qualities make sense as things she values.

Fighting side by side as equals is just about the only way I can see movie Chani falling for Paul. And it fits perfectly with the film's pattern of reversals that Paul's capacity for violence would initially be one of the things Chani likes about him, only for her to be repelled later when she sees what he becomes.

And as for Paul, well, he's had people deferring to him his entire life. Someone who doesn't take any shit from him is probably refreshing. He seems to like people (Duncan, Gurney) who challenge him and engage in a little friendly teasing--and aren't afraid to go a few rounds in the sparring ring.

It's easy to speedrun a romance when you're spending all your time together in mortal danger fighting for a shared political cause. Especially if you then start winning in a war your people have been fighting for decades. Are you kidding me? That is the perfect environment for intense battle camaraderie to turn into romantic love, and lust.

It makes sense that this version of Chani never believes Paul is any kind of messiah. Of course a character like movie Chani wouldn't believe in or trust some outside savior to liberate them. She's been working to liberate her own people for years. The more Paul invokes the messianic myth, the more he starts sounding once again like someone who plans to rule over them, and the more uncomfortable Chani becomes. In this way she becomes a foil to Jessica, the two of them representing the choices Paul is pulled between. It's a great way of externalizing the political and philosophical debates that often happen within characters' heads in the book.

And of course this version of Chani would leave Paul at the end of the film. It's not just the personal, emotional betrayal--although that stings. What common cause does she have with someone who just declared himself emperor and is sending her own people off in a war of conquest against others? Given the important role she plays in Dune Messiah, I am super curious to see how they get her back into the story, but girl was so valid for being willing to just gtfo. Given that she has the last shot of the whole movie, I'm sure she'll be back somehow, and I can't wait to see what they do with her character in any future installments.

[letsduneit]

it's wild to me that people act as if chani's primary reason for leaving paul was bitterness about being a concubine like girl..... i promise that did not even register in her brain compared to the realization that paul had chosen to become her people's oppressor, to become her oppressor, to destroy the equality that was very foundation of their relationship. i promise her agency and her loyalty to her people, things which existed before paul and will exist after him, were more important to her than how "official" her relationship would be considered within a system she did not care about.

[5ummit]

[the-gom-jabbar]

The whole genetics project of the Bene Gesserit may have been dubbed a failure because Paul wasn't a girl but there was nothing stopping Paul and Feyd-Ruatha acting on that sexual tension they had in both book and film.

Paul could have taken Feyd as a third Consort. Just imagine Paul with his Empress Irulan and his wife Chani sitting at his side and Feyd just sprawled on the dais steps just wearing something scandalous like

You were right Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, wasted potential.

[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