#probably for paul

[periprose]

Listen I fucking love dune and I just watched part 2 and I think im having the spice agony lol. I need to write about it now!!! Pls let me know if you'd read it :)

[orsanedraws]

i missed MMs 3 year anniversary...........

here's the spontaneous illustration i did in a couple of sittings cause i wanted to paint a spooky thing with a background lol

[lilislegacy]

percy: *cusses*

sally: perseus jackson! you kiss your girlfriend with that mouth?

*annabeth storms in and starts ranting to percy about something, and letting out the absolute most crude and violent cuss words known to man*

sally: 😳

percy: 🤭

paul: i think she’ll be okay

[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 -

[shebsart]

^redraw of a behind the scenes pic from a bout de souffle

This doesn't happen on page because it's a childrens book but I know in my heart it happened.

and probably some former english major student somewhere recalling howell jenkins, circa 1980:

[800db-cloud]

i like to imagine spy’s old dark grey suit is actually his company mandated uniform :)

[feyyyd]

paul: mansplain, manipulate, manslaughter feyd: hot damn

[cowardlykrow]

Quick, find him the closest meteor-

[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

[theoriginallittledarling]

Throwback to when the John Lennon Instagram account (probably Sean) posted this very obvious series of photos captioned by the lyrics to In My Life, making it very clear who the song is about:

[imagine-too-many-books]

Imagine Annabeth and Percy have a kid early, unplanned and it kinda fucks with their finances so Percy drops out of school to get a job so he can care for the kid and support Annabeth in school. At first he gets a job teaching kids sword fighting but then he hears about underwater welding which pays well because it’s dangerous but Percy is a child of the sea so it’s much less so for him. His boss is even willing to give him flexible hours which means Annabeth doesn’t have to take their kid to class anymore and they can actually afford daycare (why does is it the price of a mortgage nowadays???). A huge financial burden is lifted and Percy doesn’t mind the work so it’s good all the way around.

Fast forward to when Annabeth is done her masters in architecture and lands a job at a top firm. They’ve got savings and have Annabeth’s income to rely on. Percy heads back to school and finishes a degree in marine biology, going on to research some really niche topics like how underwater welding impacts the environment and shifting from there until he’s a well known expert in the field.

Just them finding their way. Supporting each other and landing on their feet no matter what

[space-blue]

My Dune 2 takeaway

[hilacopter]

fuck it I made these when I was bored

[toringo]

I have no excuse

[billyshearsyuri]

the boys got caught or something idk don’t stare

[jewish-elphaba]

I had this dream that I came home after being at sleepaway camp with no access to technology for a whole summer and everyone was singing some nonsensical song all in unison and dancing the same exact dance but not like a flashmob. like. every single person in the world. and when I went back to school everyone in my third grade class was always quoting the nonsensical words and doing the dance in perfect unison and I was so horrified that my third grade teacher kept me in at lunch and recess to teach me the song and dance and the worst part is that it wasn't a dream it was how I learned the whip and nae nae