cover art edited from a panel in Deathstroke: Rebirth (2016)
i made the panel edit after seeing a similar sladick edit on twitter/x and then made a playlist about it. if you could tag playlists on Spotify this would have #enemies to lovers #toxic situationship #i can make him worse etc etc. enjoy you gremlins.
► TRACKS
You Know Me Too Well - Nothing But Thieves // Babylon - SZA ft. Kendrick Lamar // Teacher's Pet - Melanie Martinez // Trouble - Halsey // Francis Forever - Mitski // Your Dog - Soccer Mommy // Magnetic Field - Lights // Transform - Daniel Caesar ft. Charlotte Day Wilson // Open Arms - SZA ft. Travis Scott
remember when Roman Sionis canonically called himself daddy? i stopped taking him seriously after that. anyway, listen to this one for laughs but don't play it in public. that Tommy Genesis track is a whole warning.
► TRACKS
Call Me Daddy - 11:11 // Off To The Races - Lana Del Rey // Primadonna - Marina // Bust Your Knee Caps - Pomplamoose // Daddy Issues - The Neighbourhood // Loft Music - The Weeknd // Daddy - Tommy Genesis // Freak - Doja Cat // Hot Mess - Cobra Starship // How to Be A Heartbreaker - Marina // Diamonds - Megan Thee Stallion ft. Normani // I Come With Knives - IAMX // I Like The Way You Die - Black Honey
But I Know We'll Meet Again | a Protagoneil fanmix
love songs for The Protagonist/Neil from Tenet (2020)
i didn't even know that i'd made this playlist public. i guess i thought i'd keep adding more songs to it. this is as complete as it'll ever be. Playlist title from the Vera Lynn track.
► TRACKS
See You Again - Tyler, the Creator // No One Said This Would Be Easy - The Postmarks // When Time Was On Their Side - Husky Rescue // If I Had A Gun... - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds // Blue - Troye Sivan // Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back - My Chemical Romance // Maybe We're Meant To Be Alone - Bad Suns // Lonely Hunter - Foals // Same Soul - PVRIS // Lovesong - The Cure // Mariners Apartment Complex - Lana Del Rey // We'll Meet Again - Vera Lynn // Historians - Lucy Dacus
I finally put all my songs for FeydPaul (derogatory) onto a playlist. This started out as a shitpost which may explain some of the wack song choices. All bangers though, promise
► TRACKS
01. Gimme What I Want - Miley Cyrus /// 02. SIMP - Full Tac, Lil Mariko & Rico Nasty /// 03. Dictator - REI AMI /// 04. I Can See You - Taylor Swift /// 05. Hardcore Romance - Beach Weather /// 06. Personal Jesus - Depeche Mode /// 07. Burn the Witch - PVRIS, Tommy Genesis & Alice Longyu Gao /// 08. House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls - The Weeknd /// 09. ecstacy - SUICIDAL-IDOL /// 10. Tennessee - Kevin Abstract & Lil Nas X /// 11. Beggin' (cover) - Måneskin /// 12. Kiss With A Fist - Florence + The Machine /// 13. Matador - Luvcat /// 14. I Come With Knives (Acoustic) - IAMX /// 15. Bells in Santa Fe - Halsey /// 16. Blood On Your Hands - 070 Shake /// 17. Blood in the Cut - K.Flay /// 18. Trouble (Stripped) - Halsey /// 19. Ultraviolence - Lana Del Rey.
Tracklist last updated on Apr 2025.
► META
I wasn't going to add a write-up to this one – it was supposed to be an ironic playlist – but then I couldn't resist coming back to add better and better song choices to the tracklist. It deserves a short explanation now, at the very least.
The tl;dr of it is that I was inspired by this fic and this fic and this fic. The different interpretations and dynamics of Feyd/Paul's relationship shown in those fics form the cornerstones for the relationships portrayed in these songs.
Some of these dynamics may seem contradictory to each other. That is by design. Many of the songs in this playlist are meant to go both ways: depending on your interpretation of Feyd's character and your specific flavour of canon divergence (which lbr is where 90% of FeydPaul scenarios play out), you could justifiably swap the dominant / submissive voices in the song lyrics between Feyd and Paul. Take "Dictator" by REI AMI for example:
The front part of the song is dominated by, well, a dominant persona:
I am not your queen, I'm your dictator
Bend the fucking knee, yeah bitch that was an order
Whatcha say to me? Huh? Bitch speak louder
You know I reign supreme, nah, you can't imitate her
The song takes a 180° turn in the back half, switching up the beat, the tempo, the instrumentation, the cadence; going from rap verses to singing; and going from braggadocio to a vulnerable confession in its lyrics. This forms, for all intents and purposes, a second distinct "voice":
You're so mean I'm scared to say "I wanna leave"
Cause every time I try, I get a tighter leash
You never know
Everything I do when I'm feeling low
Always about you, that's the way it goes
The way it goes, just the way it goes
Cold, why you gotta treat me so cold?
You say you love me but I don't know, don't know
The original song intends for both voices to reflect 2 sides of the same speaker, which could also work in the case of Paul (the first voice being the strongman leader he presents himself as in front of his followers, but also the dom persona he takes on to exploit Feyd's vulnerabilities in the bedroom; the second voice being the insecurities he has in his feelings for Feyd, which he can admit only to himself). But these 2 voices also work well as a dialogue between Paul and Feyd: Paul as the dominant voice and Feyd as the submissive, plaintive one, in a Feyd Lives AU / any AU where Paul holds all the bargaining chips; or Feyd as the dominant voice and Paul as the submissive, confessional one, in a Feyd wins the duel / Paul is captured by the Harkonnens AU. Ymmv.
There are a few songs where it only fits a specific interpretation of the dynamic though. The more fics I read, the more I think about the political positioning either of the boys take up in canon, the more obvious it is that any way you slice it, Feyd is at a disadvantage. He doesn't have Paul's prescience or the Voice, among other Bene Gesserit training, to say nothing about his Mentat abilities. (This is excluding the AUs that assume Feyd, being another prospect for the Kwisatz Haderach bloodline, has some level of prescient abilities akin to Paul's.) This is true even before Paul consumed the Water of Life and gained full access to his ancestral memories, and once he unlocked the Other Memory, Feyd is simply no match for him. So tracks like "Matador" and "Bells in Santa Fe" work better if you think of them as speaking from Feyd's POV:
Your cape is crimson
And you're waving it, snarling
The air is full of danger
I only wanted to put on a little skirt, a little show for you
...
I came crawling in on all fours
Knocking at your door, knocking at your door
I don't wanna bleed anymore
I just wanted love, but you wanted gore
You're my matador
While Feyd is the gladiator with a number of wins in the Geidi Prime arena under his belt, Paul is named after his grandfather who fought bulls for fun. Feyd is a Harkonnen, which is etymologically related to the "härka", Finnish for the bull. When they meet each other blade for blade, Paul is the metaphorical matador to Feyd's bull, not the other way around.
I'm also a fan of simp!Feyd, which is how we ended up with Lil Mariko & Rico Nasty on the track list (lol). But on a more serious note, I like my Feyd softer and besotted with Paul, with or without the context of Paul as Emperor ordering Feyd around. In that light, it's obvious who would be the one to come crawling, begging for love from the other man.
Leaving through the door without a word
You won't even notice, little bird
Better off dead so I reckon I'm headed to hell instead
So don't wait for me, don't wait for me, wait
It's not a happy ending
...
But, Jesus, you've got better lips than Judas
I could keep your bed warm, otherwise I'm useless
I don't really mean it, 'cause who the fuck would choose this?
Self loathing hours with Feyd lmao. I don't believe Feyd is capable of shame, but he bested Rabban in currying favours with the Baron and securing the na-Baron title. He must have a mind for politicking, and in a Feyd Lives AU, he would know full well that he is only useful to Paul's empire insofar as he amuses him and keeps his bed warm. It also really only makes sense for Feyd to call Paul "little bird" and not the other way around, seeing as Paul is the one who brings the Atreides hawk symbol to their union.
Speaking of union, I went back and forth on the inclusion of the Lana Del Rey track until I remembered that she wears a wedding dress in the music video. I've never paired "Ultraviolence" with my ships, not even for my most fucked up faves, for mainly 2 reasons: (1) I don't like to romanticise the domestic abuse detailed in the original context of that lyric. I prefer a dynamic where both parties retain a degree of control and reciprocity in the fucked up shit they do to each other. But in the case of FeydPaul the pain kinks just write themselves, and they would be fully reciprocal. I can see Feyd being the masochist to Paul's more violent tendencies as much as I can see Feyd enacting his learned sadism onto Paul. They would both enjoy it. Also, as every shipper knows, in another life these two would've been betrothed to each other according to the Bene Gesserits' breeding programme.
Heaven is on earth
I will do anything for you, babe
Blessed is this union
Crying tears of gold, like lemonade
It's literally a wedding song!
(2) I never included "Ultraviolence" in my ship playlists before because the lyrics are kinda cringe. "tears of gold like lemonade"? really? But then again, FeydPaul is largely a Romeo & Juliet type of pairing - they're star-crossed, they're madly in love, and they're teenagers! They would be the type to make cringey promises to each other.
linger like a sandwalk - a playlist for Dune Part Two
I'm back 💃 after 2 years of not posting new playlists for my fandoms 💃 this new Dune movie is living in my head rent free 😮💨 of course I had to make fanmix for this one to try and consolidate my thoughts.
Tracks ⏏️
Bloodline -- Gabriels // No Church in the Wild -- Jay-Z & Kanye West // Mary Magdalene -- FKA Twigs // Pink Matter -- Frank Ocean // Smother -- Daughter // Say You'll Go -- Janelle Monáe // A Time of Quiet Between Storms (Dune Part Two OST) -- Hans Zimmer // Your Blood -- Nothing But Thieves // The River -- Kero Kero Bonito // Bad Religion -- Frank Ocean // Telekinesis -- Travis Scott ft. SZA & Future // Transform -- Daniel Caesar ft. Charlotte Day Wilson
Meta ⏏️
An explanation of the song choices & related thoughts on the film *
(*) I still have not read the book *lies down* As soon as life slows down I swear I will. The 2 Denis Villeneuve films combined already make for a rich narrative and storyworld however, and this playlist is very much based on that.
▶️ Bloodline -- Gabriels
It's the bloodline
This thing came before you
Bloodline
I wanted to open this playlist on something that gets right at (one of) the core themes of Villeneuve's Dune, and to me that is the idea of bloodlines, legacies and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Birth rights can be stole
Truth is you were always alone
Tears in your hands
Seems you lost before you began
Your ancestors' blood fed the soil and the sand
I think a point that many filmgoers miss - and is also a point I missed on my first viewing of Part Two - is that the Lisan Al Gaib prophecy and Paul's claim to it is wholly manufactured. Upon rewatch, several lines in the 2 films jumped out to me: 'On Arrakis, a path has been laid' (Mother Mohiam in Part One), and first Paul (during his first meal in Sietch Tabr) and then Lady Jessica's declaration that they must persuade the non-believers that he is the Lisan Al Gaib so as to ensure their continued survival among the Fremen. Irulan's later commentary, 'these are our religious patterns', cemented this fact for me. We are reminded that The Bene Gesserit has sent missionaries to the Fremen over decades and centuries, creating the religious circumstances for Paul to consolidate power among the natives. He has as much a claim to the title of the Mahdi / Lisan Al Gaib as any other outerworlder from the Houses of the Imperium - that is to say, he isn't really the Chosen One. 'Birth rights can be stole', and this is a birth right he stole.
Yet, he does undoubtedly hail from his mother's Bene Gesserit lineage and, through consuming the Water of Life, inherit the ancestral memories of both his masculine and feminine forebearers from both the royal bloodlines and the Fremen lineage of Reverend Mothers. (We see this during the montage after he takes the WoL, falling through a super cut of the faces of the Fremen Reverend Mothers who came before him before eventually finding a vision of Alia on the sand dunes.) His 'ancestors' blood fed the soil and the sand' on which he now stands as the (false) prophet that will lead his Fremen tribe to ruin...
It's the bloodline
Don't let it destroy you
Bloodline
... and in ascending to the title of the Mahdi, he will undoubtedly lose everything that made him Paul the individual in the first place. Greater prophecies, plans and conspiracies will eclipse his humanity. This is the real bloodline that drives him to war and genocide. 'Don't let it destroy you' - but maybe it's already too late.
▶️ No Church in the Wild -- Jay-Z & Kanye West
I mean, come on, this song choice is just too obvious isn't it?
Human beings in a mob
What's a mob to a king?
What's a king to a God?
What's a God to a non-believer
who don't believe in anything?
Will he make it out alive?
Alright, alright
No church in the wild
'Mob' = the Fremen and their Fedaykin guerilla troops. 'King' = Rabban, and later Feyd-Rautha, and the Harkonnen regime. 'God' = Paul as Mahdi and Muad'dib, the desert terrorist. 'Non-believer' = Chani and her brethren among the Northern skeptics.
But the sonical landscape of this song also played a huge part in my inclusion of the song on this list. I'm a lover of words before all else, but something about Dune made me want to curate a sonically coherent playlist that accompanies the story in lyrics as much as it does in sound. The grueling, forward momentum of this song's iconic beat lends itself to the raids the Fedaykin warriors launched against the Harkonnen-controlled spice fields.
▶️ Mary Magdalene -- FKA Twigs
In my head I call this the quintessential Bene Gesserit song. Listen, and read the lyrics:
A woman's work
A woman's prerogative
The song makes it clear from the very first lines that it's about the woman's birthright and sovereignty. Most of the Bene Gesserit ladies we see in this film have roots in the royal bloodlines themselves. In that, they have a claim to a particular prerogative. Yet they also actively govern the domain of procreation, descendancy, succession, and survival of royal bloodlines. That is the nature of 'a woman's work' in this storyworld.
A woman's touch, a sacred geometry
I know where you start, where you end
How to please, how to curse
Yes, I learnt you needed me
Yes, I'm here to open you
Yes, I know that your heart is blue
(So cold)
FKA Twigs' darkly seductive vocals paired with this particular verse really evokes that entire Lady Fenring/Feyd-Rautha sequence.
I fear before the fire
True as Mary Magdalene
Creature of desire
Come just a little bit closer to me
Step just a little bit closer to me
The seduction continues here, but there's power inherent in the 'creature of desire' Mary Magdalene represents. Her story and her iconography bears a heavy resemblance to the Bene Gesserit sisters and their relationships with the men of the Imperium and its court.
I can lift you higher
I do it like Mary Magdalene
I want you to say it
Come just a little bit closer 'til we collide
A woman's hands
So dark and provocative
A nurturing breath that could stroke
Your divine confidence
I really fuck with the Mary Magdalene allegory in this song, and the chorus nails the mythos and authority she commands in modern reimaginings of her figure in relation to Jesus' mythos. Yet there's something softer in the latter half of the chorus - the devotion she shows to her partner is on equal footing, less of manipulation and more of the muse she can be for him to realise his full potential. With the arrival of the second verse we truly see how important she is to a man's dominion. 'A nurturing breath that could stroke [His] divine confidence': that is the power of Lady's Jessica's love for and devotion to Leto Atreides.
A woman's war
Unoccupied history
True nature won't search to destroy
If it doesn't make sense
Of course, it would be remiss of me not to point out that certain parts of the Bene Gesserit's characterisation functions as a manifestation and perpetuation of Frank Herbert's very of-its-time misogynistic, gender essentialist ideas of a woman's station and the (only) avenue through which she derives her power in the material world - her womb. (Miss me with that radical feminist bs.) But we also see, in the film, Princess Irulan's character: a female historian whom the film suggests would have been happier free from the trappings of the Bene Gesserit programme and her Imperial lineage. 'A woman's war; unoccupied history': Mary Magdalene is a prime example of how for most of history, women are often anonymous (as that Virginia Woolf saying goes), their histories are often erased and deemed as unimportant; Irulan's inner thoughts and history are also cast aside and given no voice in the Dune narrative, but in an ironic twist, she dedicates her life to documenting the history of others.
▶️ Pink Matter -- Frank Ocean
What do you think my brain is made for?
Is it just a container for the mind?
This great, grey matter
Sensei replied, "What is your woman?
Is she just a container for the child?"
That soft, pink matter
This song provides more of a male - or at least, androgynous - perspective on the question of the Bene Gesserit breeding programme ('Is she just a container for the child?' / 'My God, she's giving me pleasure'). But it gets right at the core of the question of whether the women in this universe, and the avenue through which they gain power, is truly confined to being 'just a container for the child'. I also really liked the direct parallels Frank Ocean's lyrics draw between the womb (pink matter) and the mind (grey matter), as the other main source of power Jessica drives from is through her mind and the prescience becoming the Reverend Mother has afforded her.
▶️ Smother -- Daughter
In my head I call this Lady Jessica's song.
I want all that is not mine
I want him, but we're not right
In the darkness, I will meet my creators
And they will all agree that I'm a suffocator
I think it's more intimate than either of the 2 songs that come before this one, and centres Jessica squarely in her role as a mother before her place as a Bene Gesserit sister. She knows she will meet her creators - the generations of mothers and Bene Gesserit sisters who came before her - and she knows they will disapprove of the path she has manipulated to suit her ends, first for Duke Leto (in bearing him a son) and then for her son's survival (in spreading propaganda of him as the Lisan Al Gaib among the Fremen tribes). Now I know that the films sort of reduce her to a one-dimensional villain in Part Two, but I've heard that she is a lot less gungho about their little homegrown personality cult of Paul as the Lisan Al Gaib / Mahdi in the book. In fact, his accelerated transformation into a religious figurehead and his willingness to exploit the Fremen for that, at the cost of his own humanity, seems to be an unintended outcome that she regrets. She has unwittingly become a 'suffocator', in that regard - a mother killing her own child's humanity in his metaphorical cradle as soon as she exposed him to tales of the prophecy.
Oh love
I'm sorry if I smothered you
I sometimes wish I'd stayed inside
My mother
▶️ Say You'll Go -- Janelle Monáe
Say you'll go to Nirvana
Will you leave Samsara?
Or in the words of Dhammapada,
"Who will lead? Who will follow?"
Our love will sail in this ark
The world could end outside our window
Let's find forever
And write our name in fire on each others' hearts
Something about Janelle's crooning vocals against the symphonic strings and melodies just makes this a timeless love song. I love including it in for my ships 🥺 and I think it rather fits PaulChani, the star-crossed lovers that they are. 'Let's find forever' is my 'I will love you as long as I breathe'.
But of course, the question of whether Paul will go south looms over their heads like the Sword of Damocles. 'Will you leave Samsara? ... Who will lead? Who will follow?'
▶️ A Time of Quiet Between Storms (Dune Part Two OST)
Among the Dune OST, this song holds a higher and special place in my heart because of the way it celebrates their first on-screen kiss, but is also used as a reprise of sorts at the end of the film as Chani walks out on Paul. It's a bittersweet track. And it's lived in my mind rent free much the same way that last shot of Chani, with her quivering lips and angry eyes, has.
This brings me to the name of the playlist: the PaulChani tragedy, and just, the film as a whole, has definitely lingered in my mind. It has dragged against my thoughts gently, but persistently like the rhythm of a sandwalk.
I also chose to place it in the middle of playlist to sever it into 2 parts, much the same way the film is severed into 2 parts: before Paul undergoes the Water of Life ritual, when he is still an idealistic boy who actively rejects the title of the Mahdi for fear of the wartorn future he's foreseen, and afterwards, when he claims the mantle of the Mahdi.
▶️ Your Blood -- Nothing But Thieves
You know it's your blood that I bleed
Tell me that there's some way that I'll get through the night
I carry your moral disease
I don't wanna be something I'm not to stay alive
You guys don't know how long I've wanted to put this song on a fanmix!! I've called this Joey Wilson/Jericho's song from the moment I heard it 😂 but I think the same themes can be found in Paul's story too, specifically his first scene right after recovering from the Water of Life ritual. 'We're Harkonnens.' And his realisation that that's how they'll survive: by becoming Harkonnens. It's the Baron's blood that he bleeds, and conflicted as he is about that, eventually he'll come to realise that he has to 'be something I'm not to stay alive'.
▶️ The River -- Kero Kero Bonito
Holy mother
Receive our hearts in your arms
And let our souls pass
The day the rain returns again
These 4 lines are repeated throughout the song, almost like a prayer. It reminds me of the way Stilgar holds onto those same 4 words, 'As it was written', throughout the film as an affirmation of his religious convictions - the belief that the true Mahdi will bring paradise one day and with it, the rain.
When Earth is submerging
And heaven is open
The river will carry all of us to
Where we belong
...
Then a torrent crashes down
Releasing the jungle swelling in the ground
And as was foretold our time is out
▶️ Bad Religion -- Frank Ocean
If it brings me to my knees
It's a bad religion
This unrequited love
To me, it's nothing but a one-man cult
And cyanide in my styrofoam cup
I can never make him love me
Never make him love me
This song places us in Chani's pov. To her, Paul's meteoric rise of notoriety among the Fremen is 'nohting but a one-man cult'. She loved him as he was - an outsider who stayed humble and learnt her ways, and earned a place among her Fedaykin brethren. But as a power-tripping outerworlder claiming to be the Mahdi - she doesn't recognise him, and she 'can never make him love [her]' again, not as the man he has become.
▶️ Telekinesis -- Travis Scott ft. SZA & Future
I could've took the pain and I could've went out sad
Streets stepped in and raised me, but I ain't have my daddy
So I'm gonna be honest: this is actually the track that started this entire project for me 🙈 But you see it, right? Travis Scott as Paul's voice, and SZA as Chani's...
I can see the future, it's lookin' like we level through the sky
I can't wait to live in glory in eternal lastin' life
The fact that 'I can see the future' is the refrain of this song. In its original context I'm almost certain that Travis meant it less literally, and more in the realm of being able to guess the trajectory of his career as he continues to top the charts as a hip hop superstar. But it lends well to the context of Paul's religious myth-making as well. 'Eternal lasting life' and all that.
How can I sleep when you're out catchin' bodies?
I still wanna be with you, trust me, I know that's insane
...
We both ain't shit and it's workin' for me
Workin' for me, yeah
I can see the future, I can see the future
The thing that breaks my heart about the ending of the film is that you can see Chani still loves Paul, but not who he has become. I also like that the song flips the refrain around and has SZA sing it too. Except when she says, 'I can see the future', she says it self-deprecatingly. It's a future of more heartbreak and betrayal (by way of mutual infidelity) and ruin.
▶️ Transform -- Daniel Caesar ft. Charlotte Day Wilson
If a leopard never changes its spots
How can I change what I've got?
Transform, transform, transform, transform
We don't punish the tiger for catching its prey
So how am I the one to blame?
If it's in my nature
Transform, transform, transform, transform
One thing rewatching these films has made me realise is that Paul's 'sudden flip' to becoming a coloniser exploiting the Fremen's religion for his own gains in Imperial politics after drinking the Water of Life is actually less of a plot twist and more of an inevitability that has been advertised since Part One. Towards the end of the first film, he says to Liet Kynes that he intends to marry one of the Emperor's daughters and make a play for the throne. In Part Two, during his first meal at Sietch Tabr, he says to his mother that he must convince the non-believers that he is the Lisan Al Gaib. He may not have intended to bear the mantle of the Mahdi, perhaps he was foolishly, idealistically looking for a different path towards revenge and the throne, but he has never been above playing the game and utilising court politics to secure his 'victory', so to speak. He was born of royal blood and forged in those politics. It's in his nature.
It's never over until life ends
Lay down beside me, do it again
These 2 lines reminds me again of that promise Paul and Chani exchanged: 'I will love you as long as I breathe'. (And if I remember correctly, Chani said something to the effect of 'I will be here for you as long as you stay who you are' as well.) I didn't want to end this playlist on a downer ending, hence this song choice.
If you've made it this far into my meta-commentary, thank you! Hope you've enjoyed this playlist ♡
