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Do you think Ani and Igor would be into video games? If so, what kind of games do you see them playing? I can see the two playing Mortal Kombat, especially since the recent game has Ghostface as a fighter. I can see Igor either buying another controller for Ani or letting her play. It would also be funny if Igor loses on purpose so Anora could win. And this would annoy her because she knows he can do better and could care less about losing. But they would still have fun with it.

Bonus: Ani’s playing as Ghostface but she doesn’t know that her opponent is Ivan and she manages to win and perform one of the fatalities. Igor ends up with the same opponent and wins against him too.

I'm going to defer to your clear expertise on the question of Mortal Kombat, but I think what you've described sounds super cute (especially the idea of Igor losing on purpose so that Ani can win). It might be too much of a coincidence to have them playing with Ivan, but that also sounds really hilarious because he deserves to have his ass beaten twice.

But in a way, it's a little harder for me to see Ani just casually enjoying video games because of what happened with Ivan. There were at least two occasions we saw (and no doubt countless others we didn't) where she just had to cuddle around him as he simultaneously played and ignored her. I can totally see where it would have left a bad taste in her mouth where she wouldn't have even wanted to see a video game controller for a very long time. As for Igor, I'm not sure he would be playing a lot of video games in the Brightwater condo, as he wouldn't have wanted to bother his grandmother with any noise and she's often using the living room TV anyway to watch her shows.

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Anne Michaels, Held

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I just wanted to let you know that I always look forward to your Anora posts throughout the day!! You make my life a little brighter, so thanks for that :)

Aw, thank you, kind anonymous friend — that's very sweet! I mean, I assume at some point I will run out of things to say about this movie (or about what happens to Ani and Igor after the movie), but that day has not yet arrived. It has been such fun to sit around and think (and perhaps overthink? nah) about all these questions and ideas and headcanons you all are sending me, and I'm so glad to know you've been enjoying it all. This is really the best part of fandom — getting to just play around with all these different possibilities with characters that I love so much and having such cool conversations with people who feel the same way — and why it's such fun to be part of!

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I get poet and writer vibes from ani idk why. Like secretly composes poetry that she doesn’t share with anyone else (except Igor one day…)

Oh, so this goes so well with Igor as a secret artist!

We can tell Ani's a bit of a reader: in the scene where Vera comes in her room to ask about the milk, there's a two-tier bookshelf filled with a bunch of different volumes. For a 23-year-old who never finished high school, it seems like a decent collection. So maybe she's got some classics in there (Pride and Prejudice, Anne Rice, Margaret Atwood) and some poetry mixed in, too (Sylvia Plath, Ocean Vuong).

She writes a lot on the subway (going to work, not on the way home, when she's dead tired) and the forty-five minute trip gives her time to jot down words and images she's had floating in her head all day. Sometimes they kind of make sense, sometimes they don't (and sometimes she thinks it's all just fucking trash and she wants to throw her notebook in the nearest dumpster). But she plays around with them and starts putting together lines and stanzas and when one's finished, she moves on to the next. In the year and a half she's been working at HQ, she's filled almost half a notebook with everything she's written — and of course she hasn't shown it to anyone. She hasn't even told anyone, not even Lulu, because what if someone sees it and thinks it's stupid, just the dumb, boring ideas of a high school dropout? (God forbid any of the other girls at HQ, like fucking Diamond of all people, find her notebook, which is why she keeps in her purse the whole time when she's there and never in the dressing room.)

And the thing is, I don't think she ever really intended to share her writing with Igor, not for a long time. (There's stuff in there about her absent father and the death of her grandmother, and even newer poems that are clearly about Igor if you read them well enough.) But one day she forgets to put the notebook away and he finds it on her bedside table, not meaning to snoop or anything, but just curious because he's never seen it in her room before. She comes in and finds him reading it, her first reaction one of panic (plus a touch of righteous anger), but before she can say anything, he looks up in astonishment and asks if it's hers. I do not mean to read something private, but, Ani, this is good. You are a very good writer. Her anger and her fear begin to dissipate as she sits down on the bed next to him and he closes the notebook and hands it back to her. Really? she asks. He nods, and tells her, I am happy to read any more you want to show me. She doesn't answer, but presses her lips together and smiles a little to herself, the small notebook still held tight between her palms.

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okay re: you posting that empire strikes back is igor's favourite movie i've been imagining that maybe he's this like, closet nerd. you wouldn't assume looking at him but he's seen all the star wars stuff, all the star trek, (lord of the rings maybe ?). and ani gets a kick out of this cause yeah he walks around looking like a hoodlum in his hoodie and track suit but he can speak perfect klingon

Okay, that's kind of a hilarious image, Anon, but I don't know that I can fully see him as a closet nerd. (But, for real, you should feel free to headcanon him however you want!) I mean, there is such a thing as a casual Star Wars fan (I say on Tumblr dot com, home to the least casual fans of just about everything), but, yeah, maybe he's just seen the original trilogy and never got around to seeing the prequels, much less the sequels (except maybe like half of The Force Awakens, which was playing in the background at some party he was at back in Moscow). The guy's on Instagram, so he's not a complete cultural naif, but I might peg him as being more into Russian popular culture (which, honestly, I know almost nothing about) rather than American sci-fi franchises.

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It has been two weeks since I watched Anora, and I find myself unable to stop thinking about Ani and Igor. I am thoroughly enjoying following the questions and answers shared here. Today, I found myself reflecting on how Ani might behave if she were to feel jealous of Igor. It seems to me that she had never truly experienced such an emotion before meeting him. In any case, I often find myself deeply immersed in thoughts about them.

So I've talked a little bit about Igor being less prone to jealousy than Ani, and while I can see occasions where Ani might get jealous of him around other women, he really does his best not to give her any cause for concern. I don't know if that would stop it from happening, though, because you can't really control who decides to start flirting with you. So, yeah, maybe they're out to dinner somewhere in Brighton Beach and the waitress (either a Russian expat herself or who still has a lot of family back in Russia) starts chatting him up and asking where he's originally from, and it turns out she knows people from that same town, and maybe he knows them too — and Ani's just sitting there, thinking, What the fuck? So she gets pissy and rude, because obviously this girl doesn't have the fucking braincells to figure out that the guy she's trying to flirt with is having dinner with his girlfriend. So she's all, “So do you mind taking our order? ‘Cause we'd like to eat within the next fuckin’ century.” The waitress flounces off and Igor tries to explain himself, that he was just being polite — plus he's not really used to being the object of such obvious interest — but he can tell Ani's still upset. (And Ani ultimately knows she's being ridiculous, because there's no fucking way Igor would ever step out on her, but she can't help but feel a little threatened by it.) Once they leave the restaurant, he tries to reassure her by wrapping her up in a big hug and calling her all the little pet names in Russian that she says she hates but he knows she actually loves. “Anora... solnyshko...”

And, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the first time she's really experienced jealousy to any real degree. Fundamentally, it comes from a place of irrational fear, that what you have might be taken away by someone else, and before Igor she hadn't had strong enough feelings about any man to really worry about losing him. (I mean, she does ultimately trust Igor, but there's still a part of her that doesn't trust herself and her own reactions to things.)

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this hc might seem inaccurate or even mischaracterizing, but i often think about igor enjoying drawing (not in a professional sense at all, even though he has some skills. just something that he does between his odd jobs and/or before he goes to bed in what i assume is also an odd sleep schedule lol) and post-film, he keeps drawing ani or even things that might remind him of her (the red scarf, pomegranates, the coat, etc) before either of them actually reaches out.

some time after they get together, he shows them to her but doesn't specify when he drew them.

I like this idea a lot, Anon! It totally fits in with the idea of Igor being a close observer of things, who looks and watches and tries to see things as they are. Obviously, he doesn't have any real opportunities to sketch during the course of the movie, as he's so busy with the job, but maybe during the flight back to New York he finds a pencil in the seat pocket and starts drawing in the margin of one of the pages in the in-flight magazine. It's just a little thing, meant to fill the time during the long flight, but he ends up with a profile of her sleeping face, his dark jacket tucked underneath her chin. She wakes up as he's putting the finishing touches on the drawing, so he quickly shuts the magazine and stuffs it back into the seat pocket. And, yeah, after he movie ends, he goes back to his regular life, but he still finds himself making these little sketches in all sorts of places: on napkins and take-out menus and the backs of receipts and even an unused Moleskin notebook he found in the laundry room of his building. He's not even really thinking as he's drawing, just letting his mind wander, but even so it keeps coming back to the same thing, the same profile, the dark hair and the dark sable coat, the tiny butterfly perched on the end of a polished fingernail.

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Pan Haowen by Nick Yang for W China Magazine October 2024

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Okay so my head canon is that the whole touche/touché thing turns into a whole inside joke/bit between them that they reference a lot, much to the confusion of everyone around them (just like with any inside joke)

Okay, I really love this, because it becomes their thing, right? And it doesn't matter if they're in an argument or just talking about their day or making plans, because one of them will say something that the other sees as a good point or observation or idea, acknowledged with either a “Toosh” or “Touché.” Regardless of who's doing the acknowledgement, Igor always says “Toosh” and Ani “Touché” — until one day when they're talking about something a little more serious. Maybe it's about Ani's long-term goals or her idea about going back to school (which she finds slightly daunting) and he tells her that she'll succeed at whatever she puts her mind to, because she's smart and the hardest working person he knows. She doesn't really know what to say, because nobody's ever really expressed confidence in her like that, so she looks at him and in a quiet, hopeful voice says, “Toosh.” And he just smiles, all sweet and boyish: “Touché?”

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I know you wrote a lil smth about ani baking Igor a cake for his bday a while back but I was wondering if you thought she’d do anything else for it? Considering his last birthday was pretty traumatic for her, would she even wanna do smth special ?

So I still really love the idea of Ani trying to make Igor a birthday cake, realizing she doesn't have one of the ingredients, and essentially going “fuck it, we ball,” but I can also see her trying to make the day a little special for him, too. (As for bad memories of his previous birthday, I'm not sure that the negative association would be with his birthday per se, considering that she didn't even know it was his birthday until after the fact, but more with her memories of Ivan and his family, and possibly even Toros and Garnik.)

So aside from the quasi-successful cake, she'd try to plan out something fun, maybe a big night out that he'd really enjoy, complete with the perfect gift. For a while, she racks her brain trying to figure it out, what he would really enjoy, until she realizes that he doesn't really want anything big or flashy or expensive (which she couldn't realistically afford anyway): all he wants is just to spend time with her. So she convinces Jimmy to give her the night off and begs and pleads with Vera to stay over at her boyfriend's so that she and Igor can have the house to themselves. She makes the cake (minus the eggs) and thinks about trying to cook some traditional Russian dish before throwing her hands up and going for her tried-and-tested chicken parmesan instead. They eat in front of the TV watching one of his favorite childhood movies (is it The Empire Strikes Back? of course it is) and then she turns out the lights and brings out the cake, with a ‘3’ and a ‘1’ candle stuck on top for him to blow out. (She does actually get him a present, a phone case — because what kind of asshole doesn't have a phone case? — but rather than getting one with his name on it, she finds one with a cool repeating pattern of chain mail and swords, the kind a warrior might have.) And maybe they don't even get to Han Solo being encased in carbonite before she starts kissing along his jawline, and then who even fucking cares about the movie anymore because she's pushing him back onto the couch cushions and tugging down his waistband and kneeling down in front of him with another, very particular birthday present in mind.

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Hopefully you see this before the story disappears lol but I thought it was cute seeing Mickey filming Yura and the guy that plays Ivan on her phone. Also his reaction to her winning the bafta was cute. Figured they’re good visuals for any future Anora & Igor fics 👍 https://www.instagram.com/stories/anorafilm/3570108201609676766?igsh=MWl5Y3JwNmExb2gwaw==

Thank you so much for the Instagram link, Anon — I did manage to take some screenshots before the story disappeared, so there's that, at least! One of my favorite parts is Mark and Yura waking up just enough to realize they're being filmed by not just Mikey but Darya Ekamasova (who plays Galina Zakharov) as well. I also love that Igor's sweater has elbow patches, which seems very un-henchman-like!

And of course a big congrats to Mikey for winning the BAFTA on Sunday! (With that and the wins at the Critics Choice Awards, Directors Guild Awards, and the Producers Guild Awards, I'm starting to feel even more excited for what might happen at the Oscars!) Yura's reaction was so adorable: an overjoyed screaming half-squat (just to put him eye-to-eye with her) followed by the sweetest hug. She also gave such a nice shout-out to him (and Mark and Sean Baker) in her acceptance speech. It does really seem like all of the cast and crew got along super well and ended up becoming very close, which is so nice!

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This note, filed away in a scrapbook from a member of the Class of 1878, seems to date from ca. 1874:

“My god, Lucille, your left ankle is showing. Rod.”

Scrapbook Collection (AC026), Box 69

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I loved the drunk Igor fic so much, it was hilarious but also sweet to see Ani react to him in that state and be endeared by it. I was wondering if you would ever write a drunk Ani fic ?

Aw, thanks! It was also really fun to write drunk Igor, mostly because his English gets increasingly broken while he gets increasingly handsy. (I love the idea of Igor being a flirty drunk, with some of those natural reserves coming down after a Stoli or four.) And I think that within the chronology of their relationship, that particular story was set after they had started hanging out but before they started sleeping together, so his big hug and the other acts of physical affection would be pushing the boundaries a bit (and something he would not have tried while sober). But it's telling that she doesn't mind all that much, and even lets him keep his head on her shoulder the whole subway ride back to Brighton Beach.

As for drunk Ani, I imagine it would be equally hilarious. Maybe she's out late one night with Lulu and the two of them are just completely hammered. They're stumbling around outside the club, trying to remember how to call an Uber, and Lulu's like, “Oh, you should totally call your boyfriend,” which leads to Ani drunkenly finding his name on her recent calls list. He picks up, still half-asleep, only to be met with a very flirty and provocative and demanding Ani, who starts in with the baby-voiced dirty talk even though, from the sound of it, she seems to be calling him from the middle of a busy street. He's a little worried about the two of them both being drunk in the city this late at night, but then he can hear them laughing as they scramble into a taxi and Ani tells him that she's going to stay over at Lulu's. The whole ride there, though, she's still talking to him, telling him how fucking sexy he is and all the things she's going to let him do to her once they're back in her bed. Igor plays along as best he can, even though the scope of her sexual imagination is clearly much broader than his. After a while her voice starts growing quieter and he can tell she's fading, and by the time they get to Lulu's place in Jackson Heights, he's just happy to hear them walk into the apartment and a door lock behind them. “Spokoynoy nochi, Anora,” he tells her. “Sladkikh snov.”

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