Untitled

Running for mayor of the biggsluke tag

[whatevvvs]

I just drew my favorite boys💫🚀

[feyd-meowtha]

On Feyd Rautha and moral complexity in Dune...

(I will preface this by saying that overall I loved the new film and it is, in many ways, a total masterpiece HOWEVER that doesn't mean I don't have notes)

His origin...

In the first book I think it's only vaguely stated that Feyd is the younger child of the Barons half brother Abulard who renounced the Harkonnen name and fled to Lankiveil (a cold frozen planet covered in ocean). How he came to live with the Baron is vague but it's implied that Rabban killed their parents and then the Baron took him in as a possible protege. What makes this all the sadder is that Feyds parents saw the evil that their house was committing and fled, thinking that in Feyd they might have a child who wouldn't fall to the same greed and cruelty as their older son did. Obviously that didn't come to pass.

This means that at a relatively young age his parents were murdered by the much older brother he hardly knew and he was sent to live on Geidi Prime with an Uncle he had likely never met. He was then raised by the baron (who is a paedophile implied to be at the very least attracted to him) and Piter de Vries, the families twisted mental.

From this point he would have received nothing remotely comparable to the love that Paul got from his family, likely praised only when he showed qualities that the Baron deemed favourable and always aware that his position was in the balance as he competed with Rabban (who he didn't like) to take over as Baron.

So yes, he's a ruthless and cold character but all of that was born out of his traumatic and likely abusive childhood. How else could he have survived in that kind of environment? Who else did he have to learn from?

In many ways this is the inverse of Paul, whose mother had a boy against the orders of the bene Gesserit possibly in the hopes of creating the Kwisatz Haderach (positioning him intentionally right at the centre of universal politics). Feyds parents wanted him to be safe and away from all that and they died for it and left him alone, while Paul's parents wanted him at the centre and (at least for a while in the case of Leto) were there to support him intensely the whole way, loving him and guiding him to be what they thought was an honourable or admirable person.

They're the same at their heart, Paul and Feyd, bred to be that way and in another universe, married to continue a path they were always meant to walk together. They only diverge so wildly because of the vast difference in circumstances and guidance that they received.

Dune is all about the parts that people are forced to play and the way ideology and environment shapes people's philosophies and that is what the Feyd/Paul dichotomy shows. In another life they could have followed one another's paths very easily.

[feyd-meowtha]

Next up: poison and honour...

Poison is a VERY important recurring symbol/idea in Dune. Be that for killing in a world where the slow, subtle attack is the only one that works and assassination is common (the gom jabbar, poison blades, hunter seekers) or for mind altering (a la spice, the water of life, the honoured matres synthetic spice). Poison is hugely important symbol of the deception and underhandedness that rules the great houses and universal politics.

Feyd is shown to use poison 3 times that I recall: his gladiator fight intro, his attempt to kill his uncle and the final fight with Paul.

The first is a direct answer to Paul's fight with Jamis, in which he fights fairly and with honour, not wanting to kill and crying over his victim when it happens. A loss of innocence.

Contrast Feyds scene, in which he poisons the black blade instead of the white in order to cheat but also to show the reader and his citizens that he CANNOT be trusted. They will never know from then on which hand holds the poison. He has no qualms about killing, nor about doing so dishonourably, only about winning, surviving and his own ego. His innocence was lost a long time ago and his ruthlessness is actively encouraged by those around him.

Next is his attempt to kill the baron, framed to be largely motivated by ambition and a dislike for the baron. He implants a poison needle in the thigh of one of the Barons slave boys. He fails and the boy does but this is very telling about Feyds cunning, his understanding of his enemies (the Barons behaviours patterns) and his pragmatism. He feels nothing about sacrificing the slave boy but he does feel pain when his uncle has his harem killed which shows that he does truly care for some people, just not for those he hasn't chosen, after all it doesn't seem that anyone else has ever been kind to him on Geidi Prime.

Lastly is the poison spur on the hip of his fighting outfit, a phallic metaphor and obvious flaunting of moral decency and the rules of such a fight. He wants to win by any means necessary, despite the fact that he is a capable fighter on his own, it doesn't matter, he still doesn't want to take a risk like that. Paul has the choice of using a bene Gesserit code word to paralyse Feyd or to fight him fairly, he chooses the latter, once again taking the opposite path.

What all of this is designed to show is Feyds cold pragmatism, ego and ambition, calculating nature and desire to survive, avoiding risk to himself. Much like Paul, his real strength lies in his charisma, manipulation and planning rather than brute strength. It is just that he is set on selfish ends because he never learned any other way.

Feyd has totally adopted the poisonous ways of his house and the landsraad as exemplified by his fighting style. THIS IS THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF THE BRUTE STRENGTH AND HONOUR THAT THEY CHOSE FOR THE FILM AND IM GOING TO SCREAM.

[feyd-meowtha]

Another round: brutality and sadism...

While Feyd is clearly shown to be callous and indifferent to the suffering of others, even enjoying it from time to time. (Gladiator fight, lines at the end of the book to Paul and chani). He is DISTINCTLY not shown to be a brutal, violent character like his brother. The Baron acknowledges this by saying that after Rabbans misrule on Arrakis, Feyd will take over and look like a saviour. He will appear, is anything, to be the merciful and fair Harkonnen ruler.

Making him a true sadist and capable of casual violence and murder, even having him strongarm his brother, loses this aspect of his character which again echoes Paul's. Neither of them rule by brute strength or pure fear, although that is a part of their method, they are CUNNING above all, they plot and scheme and use others to their advantage. Their behaviour isn't all that dissimilar, their final aims (marrying irulan, taking charge of Arrakis) aren't even very different. This is another important similarity that shows how blurred the lines of morality are in this world, how easy it is to get pushed in one direction or another and how, eventually, very few people have control of their own fate.

It also makes us question Paul, because if his aims are essentially the same as our antagonist and their from the same family, what evidence do we have the our hero is actually the good guy?

Answer: none.

Paul is the worse by far, by the end, than the people who are positioned at the start at the bad guys.

[feyd-meowtha]

In conclusion: the 2024 film version (while more sexualised which is in keeping with the themes surrounding house Harkonnen) flubbed a few pretty major aspects of Feyd as a foil to Paul and overall role in showing the cut throat nature of this universe and fluid nature of morality.

Feyd is in many ways a victim of the Harkonnens just as Paul is, they killed his parents too, he just didn't have any left to stop him from following the only path presented to him.

[feyd-meowtha]

Everytime I see some interview or review about how amazingly 'terrifying' Austin Butler was as Feyd-Rautha I die a bit inside. Like how could they miss the point so entirely?

The baron is terrifying, Rabban is terrifying, Piter is terrifying but Feyd? Yeah sure he'll kill without remorse, he'll plot, he's sneaky and will even enjoy inflicting pain if it strokes his ego or ambition but in the context of his house....... He's the most reasonable one! The charismatic one, the one that the people can love. He's the Harkonnens' best face, their ticket to leading the universe, not by pure violence but by marriage and politics. He's even born of a father who tried to run away from them entirely.

The way that Feyd is supposed to take power is by being MORE MERCIFUL AND MORE REASONABLE than the harkonnens who came before. Even if he's motivated by ambition rather than kindness (so is Paul, in many ways), he's supposed to swoop in and RESCUE the people of Arrakis from the hands of his brute brother. JUST LIKE PAUL HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE SEEN AS A BETTER ALTERNATIVE, if not an outright saviour.

Yes he's cruel and yes he is scheming but the savagely they keep ascribing to him in the movie belongs to Rabban and the true psychopathic sadism to Piter, and then finally obviously the Baron is the worst evil schemer there is. I do not understand why they've given him a bunch of traits that are better exemplified in the other members of his house and gotten rid of the things that made him a unique Harkonnen enemy and an effective mirror to Paul.

Hell in the book he even LOOKS like Paul (curly dark hair) and it's implied that the baron is attracted to both of them, implying he has a certain type.

Sigh.

It just feels so lazy and uninventive, but most of all it's just a shame because it's so much less interesting than it could have been. Compared to that, having him do a batman voice and feed people to his cannibal harem for fun is just so.... lame.

[feyd-meowtha]

Like dune already has villains and they're colonialism, capitalism, propaganda, fascism, indoctrination, biological essentialism, fatalism and the will to power. Very much not 'some scary evil guy who killed his mum and has black teeth ooooh how spooooky''

[allgremlinyaps]

does Gotham High read like someones high school au Wattpad fic?? yes, yes it does (no like the Joker vapes and makes out with Selina more than once its rough guys) but also,,,, the way Bruce is drawn more than makes up for it. look at him. lil guy. 

[theclam-beforethestorm-archive]

Two-Face is probably just so fucking whipped for Bruce. Like he’s spent his entire life feeling like a parasite, being told he’s evil and needs to go, that Harvey cannot heal with him…but then there’s Bruce, who’s just like giving them both equal affection. Calling Two-Face by his name when he’s fronting. Accepting him as a part of Harvey instead of viewing him as something evil that needs to go away. Two-Face falls ass-over-teakettle and straight up tells Harvey, ‘If you don’t make a move then I’m gonna just ask him to marry me.’

[finalgirlabigailhobbs]

I do like characters who do not exhibit any hint of sexuality in any way because they’re too busy being tormented by the narrative. like “yea I might be gay or whatever but the labyrinth is growing so I can’t worry about that shit rn”

[whatevvvs]

After mission cuddle

[whatevvvs]

Shoutout to my fav failed eugenics experiment

[feyd-meowtha]

taps the mic. hilly what are your thoughts on the nature of feydpaul asking for a friend (the friend is me)

No strong feelings really... Pretty impartial ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Unless we're talking about the fact that they're narrative foils, they're star-crossed lovers. They're polar opposites, they're the same person. They were born to either kill one another or give birth to the most important child who ever lived. Neither of them has ever had a real friend their own age and they didn't even know enough about normal childhoods to mourn not having them. I almost never think about the complex elements of gender present in the fated relationship in a boy with the powers of a female witch, who was supposed to be born a girl, and another boy with pouty lips whose favourite weapon is poison (famously a feminine choice) and wears flares and leotards and lives under the thumb of a powerful, abusive older man.

I especially almost never ponder the fact that one of them tried to kill the other in the most Freudian imaginable possible way - cunty secret poison hip knife - because that simply has no strange and interesting implications which I could theorise about for hours over a bottle of japanese whiskey. The symbolism of penetration and killing thing Vs as bringer of new life, especially in the insanely penetration obsessed world of Dune. (Knives and breeding programmes and worms, whole topic in itself for sure)

It also means nothing to me when I think of they ways in which they were so uniquely isolated. Both having members of their families killed and being thrust into positions where ambition and power seem like the only way to keep themselves alive and sane and safe. It means nothing to me when I consider that no-one in Feyd's life ever genuinely loved him, probably not up until his death, not even Frank Herbert who never even bothered to bring him up again after the first book. I never think about the ways both of their families decay and crumble after they're gone, their children either suffering bizarre fates or disappearing. How even their legacies are bloody and stained.

Never before have life and death and fate and trauma and power and hope and destruction (both of the self and the other) been so entwined in characters with less interaction, and as you can see .... I really have no opinions on it one way or another.

Plato said this about them and it makes me feel really normal, actually.

(thank you for asking - as you can see, they make me deeply unwell and I haven't had a full nights sleep since the second movie came out. Living the dream wouldn't change a thing <3)

[circle-around-again]

Feyd-rautha as a near final kwisatz haderach gives me ‘extremely inbred prize chihuahua’ energy

[sleeperagentclone]

NPCS!

Squeem

Aelwyn

Fabian

Gorgug

Kristen pt 2

Fig

Riz

Adaine

[lowlifesymptoms]

You think paul is such a solid fighter because duncan has been training him so he’s essentially been fighting a freight train for like ten years

[fuckyeahisawthat]

(gif source here)

Ok ok but “Paul runs just a little bit faster and ends up on the other side of the door with Duncan” is such rich AU territory because of all the different character threads you can pull out of it, including but not limited to:

- Duncan getting to see Paul fight in a real battle, not the training room, after what, at least ten years of training this kid? That moment of transition when you’re no longer teacher and student but comrades-in-arms fighting side by side to defend each other. Being afraid for Paul, sure, but also maybe not being able to help being so proud when he’s able to hold his own at least enough to not die.

- Duncan having to see Paul fight in a real battle and it’s this one.

- Duncan getting to see Paul fight in a real battle and maybe Paul is a little bit scary actually.

- If Duncan lives (not guaranteed in this AU! if you want to be extra cruel), the emotional whiplash of psychologically preparing yourself to die nobly fighting to protect people you care about, and then…not.

- Duncan processing the fact that Paul ran full tilt toward some of the most dangerous fighters in the universe with no shield and no weapons, because he wanted to protect Duncan, when it’s supposed to be the other way around.

- Paul has no weapons and Duncan has two swords, right? You see where this is going. Something something the intimacy of handing someone your own weapon to fight with.

- Paul realizing that he saw this in a dream but he changed it; not everything has to happen exactly as he dreams it.

- Whatever Jessica does differently when it’s not just Duncan but Duncan and Paul on the other side of the door.

- Paul having his first experience of combat and, probably, his first experience of killing someone and having a trusted friend, mentor and experienced soldier around to talk about it with after.

- Post-battle “oh thank fuck you’re alive”/“why did you do that”/“you think I would just let you–” and all that good stuff.

[tinyneverthelessfierce]

So I just watched Dune for the second time, and need to talk about that duel.

The visions that Paul has before finding the Fremen set Jamis as a friend. His words allow Paul to “let go” and survive the storm, and he says that he’ll teach Paul the ways of the desert. I guess in a way, he did. I didn’t know which actor was playing Jamis when I went into the movie for the first time, so it came as a shock to me when I realized that the person they’d been showing as a future friend and ally was in actuality the first person that Paul would murder. 

The vision that Paul has before the duel shows his death. Paul’s death. A possible future. A choice. The voices overlying the scene became more clear the second time around. Either way, Paul Atreides dies. We see Paul’s death at the hand of Jamis, and then we hear that if Paul kills, he will also be “killing” himself and allow the Kwisatz Haderach to rise. 

Paul dies in that duel. When he stands, when he has that blood on his hands, when he walks away from the corpse on the ground, the expression on his face is one of darkness. The soundtrack in that moment turns menacing, and for a second you wonder why you’ve been rooting for him.

Paul takes the first steps towards evil in that duel. 

[wonderlustxennial]

Which is a big part of the problem I have with people who try to give Paul a free pass for the events that he’s involved in, like he has no agency at all. He does. All of his decisions have consequences, and he has the distinct advantage over ordinary people in largely knowing exactly what they are.

Paul’s largest mistake happens at the start, which is in thinking his good intentions can overcome any possible catastrophic consequences of his choices. He doesn’t factor in the possibility that those choices and their consequences might not only change the future, but HIMSELF. And he does change; so much so that, when Paul realizes he can’t stop the machine he’s set into motion, he’s actually down for it.

Paul is not any kind of hero. In Part 2, this should become more apparent.

[sappsorrow]

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Every time I see one of those Artfully Windswept shots of Paul I just think about how his floppy emo hair is the absolute worst length for the desert and at some point Chani is like look trust me on this, either cut it short or grow it out long enough to pull back; he opts for the latter and that’s how he ends up with a gaggle of sietch children following him around angling for a chance to braid his hair.

[andrew-garfielld]

TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET — Behind The Scenes of DUNE: PART TWO (2024)