Love there that's sleeping

[selenak]

Title: Love there that's sleeping

Pairings: Paul/George as dysfunctional brothers; George/Ringo friendship; John/Paul implied

Rating: PG 13

Warnings: Cursing; events not in linear, chronological order (but as George remembers them)

Summary: George and Paul through the years.

Disclaimer: Everything is fiction and unowned by yours truly. Title

Comments

[dashall]

Okay. Okay. Good god, where do I begin.

This was really, truly amazing. I am so glad you shared this with us, because ... because ... wow. I really like your style and the way you skipped time from pre-Beatles to post-Beatles. Maybe it's just because I heard my own voice in this that I feel so connected and so fucking GLAD I read this, but ... wow.

The How Do You Sleep part made me cry. Fuck you.

I have two quotes from early on, but I think I stopped collecting once I just got really pulled into the story:

"where he hates all the teachers and is convinced they hate him isn’t quite as bad anymore." This seems very very much George to me. A lot of people can't get George's angst right, they make him too angsty or not enough (I confess that I don't make him angsty enough, because I love him and I want him to be happyyy), but you got it JUST RIGHT. Omg, thank you thank you.

"Paul is too young as well, and looks even younger with his baby face, but he’s still confident he’ll bluff his way in, and George doesn’t doubt him, because Paul has a way of getting everywhere he wants to be and then making it feel like he has a perfect right to be there." This is perfect for Paul. You got Paul and all his complexities so spot on-- he's such an asshole and he loves himself and he's good at so many things, but you've still gotta love the guy, because he really does care and he knows what he's doing.

I thought it would end with Paul and George in the hospital together, stroking hands. I wish you'd included that, but, you know, a girl can't ask for too much. THANK YOU FOR THIS. You have no idea. How. Ugh. I love you.

[selenak]

That was amazing feedback, thank you!

re: Paul - either Colin Hanton or Erik Griffiths, one of the Quarrymen anyway is quoted with the "Paul McCartney, so effortlessy good at everything that you wanted to hate him" description, and iny my own take that you quoted I was slightly paraphrasing a description Simon Callow gives of young Orson Welles, saying the most remarkable thing about Welles as a child, teenager and young man wasn't just the fiendish multitalentedness but the utter fearlessness in new company, the way he never seems to have doubted people would like him and he would be doing fine in new situations, just bypassing teenage fearfulness and angst. I think that is true of Paul without qualifications only until and including India in 1968, though. The later 1968 till ca. 1973 (Band on the Run period) time frame is one relentless battery and removal of pretty much everything he used to define himself by, from the band and the partnership with John to approval by critics and public, and I don't think his self confidence ever completely recovered from that. (I also think that if not for Linda, Heather and baby Mary he'd have ended up as another late 60s/early 70s rock star casuality - I don't think he was exaggarating when he said she saved his life. But that's not in this story because it's not how George sees Paul.)

Their final meeting and the hand stroking isn't in the story for two reasons, much as reading about it always makes me cry in a good way: a) it's been written about splendidly in this story, and b) for structural reasons - my story needed to end with George doing something for Paul, since the previous instances were all either Paul doing something to or for George, or George doing something to Paul (the HDYS sequence). Balance, you know?

[dashall]

Oh wow, I can't even... shit, man, you know so much more about the Beatles than I do, I feel like I don't have any right to be reviewing this at all.

Oh, I see why you didn't include the hand stroking bit. I gotcha. Thanks for explaining, man.

[selenak]

Nonsense. Anyone who passionately cares about a subject (which you clearly do re: Beatles) has the right to review texts inspired by it! Also, such great emotional feedback as yours inspires one to write more stories!

And you're welcome.

[dashall]

Oh, man. That actually really means a lot, wow.

Okay, so I've been thinking about this piece for, like, the past couple days since I've read it. I think that's a good sign, lol. Specifically it's these parts:

1. The Taxman bit. How George just fumbles around and CAN'T GET the lead guitar part and everyone around him is trying to be patient. I think it's the whole, like, heroes-showing-weaknesses-make-them-look-more-human thing. Sometimes I forget that the Beatles are not, in fact, gods or characters or legends, so it just made George more REAL, showing that. Also how Paul gives him that this-is-for-your-own-good look is so cunty, but it's so perfectly Paul.

2. The "Am I in the dead mothers club now?" is so so so mean, but it's probably something George did think, the WHOLE TIME he was with John and Paul, you know? I never really thought about that, how George felt about John and Paul having lost their moms. It's another thing that they could share that George couldn't-- well, for a long time, that is.

3. I just really like, "all of whom know the George he wants to be, see the George he wants to be, as opposed to Paul who keeps seeing only the George he used to be." That's just ... that's so good. And it's so true, you know. You got his and Paul's relationship in a single LINE and without that many words. That's so good, man.

Also, I read that fic you linked me. It's really good, it's REALLY good, and I understand how you wouldn't want to touch that bit in Paul/George history because of it, but ... I still think it would have been nice to end it with that, this series of George stories. I understand how you wanted George to do something for Paul, and I like it this way, too (especially because you included the "home" bit, and that's my absolute favorite p/g quote), but maybe it could have ended as them being ... equals? Stroking hands in the hospital? Idk. Just my thoughts. I still like this, though, no doubt.

[selenak]

:) Definitely a good sign.

Re: Taxman - I needed one of those incidents to be representative, and what happened with the Taxman solo just seemed an ideal choice. And yes, the humanity. I think we were all in George's shoes at some point in our lives, flunking something we're actually good at because of high nervousness, because of what it means to us, and oh, the humiliation.

The "Am I in the dead mothers club now?" is so so so mean, but it's probably something George did think, the WHOLE TIME he was with John and Paul, you know? I never really thought about that, how George felt about John and Paul having lost their moms.

poorfrances once wrote a story fragment where George thinks, re: John and Paul after Julia's death, "they belong to dead women". And yes, I think something of the feeling must have lurked in the back of George's mind. It did strike me when I stumbled across the information that George told Paul first about Louise's diagnosis. Not the friends he was on far better terms with and closer to at the time, but Paul (who, granted, had known Louise longer than any of the others), and that need to simultanously lash out against and be comforted by the same person seemed to me very typical for their relationship at that point.

[larainefan]

There's also that example that after Paul, then John, lost their mothers, George for a time followed Louise around everywhere, terrified that something would happen to her next.