#goodnight paul

[lingeronyourhazeleyes]

duolingo:

my brainrot:

*say goodnight John*

[thewalrusespublicist]

I'm so curious on why you think Get Back would have ruined John's life. Is it because it runs contrary to a lot of the things he believed in his more paranoid, pessimistic moments? Proof that there was something there worth mourning?

(This post is in reference to a tag I put on one of my asks about an alternate world where it was Paul who was killed in 1980.)

Hi anon!

Yeah, you pretty much nailed it!

I mentioned in the tags for that post that Paul said Get Back ‘saved his life’ and it’s easy to see why. It’s not every day one gets a near overdose of validation about one of the most stressful, heartbreaking periods of your life. The fairy godmother that is Peter Jackson came down from on high with a sprinkle of AI fairydust and gave him everything he had ever wanted in a documentary: proof that he was in a tough situation that was near impossible to manage, proof that the Get Back sessions had moments of joy amidst the tension, proof that he was a musical savant and proof that at that stage John still deep down adored him and wanted to fix things. Paul's entire perspective was validated down to even some of his most optimistic recollections. I was talking to @destrokkit about it but I suspect the timing of Paul buying those art and lyric collections and the making of Get Back wasn't coincidental. Get Back gave Paul the gift of absolution in the twilight years of his life an the ability to look back on his life lightened of that burden. And good for him!

In contrast John's perspective in this alternate world would have taken quite the battering. John’s perspective in the depths of his paranoia and defensiveness was based on four key beliefs: 1. Paul was jealous of John and Yoko 2. Paul treated Yoko badly 3. Paul was focused only on making his own music and didn't need/care about anyone else and 4. John didn’t care about the Beatles anymore and only had eyes for Yoko. It's important to remind oneself that these beliefs aren't just to persecute Paul, they function as a self-defense mechanism from hurt, guilt and uncertainty. If we are talking about a situation where Paul died in 1980 instead, it stands to reason that whilst those shields could have shifted somewhat, they would likely still have at least been partially in place to cope with the loss.

Peter Jackson's Get Back, with the edit that went out in our timeline, would have quickly and methodically shattered these conceptions and these protections. Paul’s jealous of John and Yoko and deliberately sabotaging them? Tell that to the man who is defending them out of their earshot. Paul’s treating Yoko badly? Let’s ask Get Back Yoko who happily says that Paul is treating her very well. Paul doesen’t care about John and only cares about music? Explain this please to the teary-eyed man who bounces and beams as soon as he hears that John’s coming in. John only focused on Yoko? Well, John, have fun witnessing past you continue to stare at Paul for long stretches of time and admit you want to resolve things between you to Michael-Lindsey-Hogg. It would be hit after hit after hit against the foundations on which he built his own justifications for not reaching out to Paul more before 1980 and his dramatic tearing apart of the Beatles in the press in the early 70s (and who knows what else post-1980s). I’m not saying that Paul wasn’t jealous (he was) or that he was never snippy with Yoko or not preoccupied with his own songs. It’s just the idea that Paul was intentional or malicious in any of this is not a narrative that Get Back in any way supports.

John would be, as the instigator of a lot of the mess, also in a very different position to Paul. Aside from valid criticism of his treatment of George, audience reaction to Paul in Get Back was very much ‘poor Paul, what a mess he was made to deal with but also what a genius!.’ In contrast, I can’t imagine the general pop who struggle with nuance at the best of times when it comes to mental illness and drug addiction would take too kindly to John showing up late, bringing in his GF for no obvious reason which disrupted the band dynamics and also not producing many songs. Get Back was a massive boost to Paul’s reputation, the opposite would probably have been true of John.

It would be even worse with the very real possibility of he and Yoko not being together anymore. Even if they were together, I can't imagine that dynamic developing into less dysfunction. John would have to contend with either intentionally or unintentionally sacrificing the life and relationships that he in Paul’s case couldn’t ever get back for a relationship that had either failed or likely isn’t working.

Something else to consider is that John's view of Paul from this period was always an inflated titan, a juggernaut whose power he had to get reinforcements for to fight against. Imagine John in his eighties rewatching that footage and seeing that this titan was actually an emotionally exhausted, anxious, giggly, goofy 26-year-old, whose smiles to the camera convey a hint of tearful desperation and who looks at the painfully young version of himself with such love and tenderness that everyone picks up on it. That's a hell of a thing to reckon with. I would argue for a personality like John's that would be too much to reckon with.

Put all of this together and you have a scenario where an eighty-year-old John would be faced with a fresh tidal wave of grief, a diminished view in the eyes of the public, new or renewed blame for the break-up and a horrendous personal reckoning about his own role in the disintegration of his relationship with essentially a soulmate. At eighty years old he would have to face that one of the most influential decisions of his life, the decisions that defined the rest of his days, was based on his own faulty decision making and with no way of fixing it. It makes me panicked just thinking about it.

Now John could easily veto that version of Get Back, try and come up with more defenses about it being biased/Paul playing to the cameras and (if Yoko still is in the picture) insist that his and Yoko’s love story is in it as much as possible (I can’t imagine that would go down great either though). But that footage would still be there. You can’t unsee that shit and knowing John he would watch it over and over and over. I said it in the original post and I repeat it now, it would have absolutely ruined his life.

[bellzslzr]

Aaron paul in (2008) say goodnight trailer👅👅

[monkee-mobile]

ough god, I cried over this

[wassupmygays]

controversially i dont think many of the soc gang actually knew about parry until after it was over. this is obviously all headcanons in my brain but listen. those teenage boys are not that observant. especially bc imo i think paul and darry were The Childhood Friends, obviously their bond has to be Tight for darry to be able to mesh with the rest of the socs. and, paul and darry are a year or two older than the socs (i can get more into how i think of their hs dynamics later).

anyways what im saying is i dont think the socs (minus like. bev) really knew of the extent of paul and darrys relationship until it was over and something in paul changed. he started drinking to cope again like bob. he started picking fights more and more. he had to be pulled off of sodapop curtis one time because he just wouldnt stop punching. he starts letting himself get with all the girls that have been hitting on him since the freshman year. him and bob grew closer, bonding over how they somehow felt so much and so little all at the same time.

paul holden doesnt have the support system or coping skills to deal with the secret, the love, the heartbreak, and the guilt that has been building up his entire life, and it shows. im sorry man </3

[tacccalb]

i think you should draw more tgwdlm for funsies

- simcerely the paratites

before i sleep i went "sure" and spent an hour in the middle of the night

[newesthope]

[beetle-baguette]

Goodnight

[zilabee]

don't get too tired for love don't let it end don't say goodnight tonight

[qprpbj]

something something paul darry going to the drive in with ponyboy and johnny to “supervise” them bc they’re both too young to go alone meanwhile the two of them end up goofing off and throwing popcorn at each other and smoking and generally being dumbasses the whole time and probs just end up kissing in the car bc according to canon, and dan berry himself, neither of them gaf about movies at all. literally don’t care what’s on the screen as long as they’ve got each other to entertain themselves. sigh.

[lingeronyourhazeleyes]

may god bless every Beatles rpf author who makes John and Paul say goodnight to each other in their stories, so I can hear their 'Get Back goodnights' crystal clear in my head when I read it

amen!

[myplasticadversary]

Also because I'm more inclined to believe in Paul withholding information and having distorted memories over outright lying my current theory stands as him sort of having two Johns in his mind: one who's "sweet innocent boy who maybe had feelings for me but never acted on it so who can say" and one who maybe did act on it in certain uninhibited moments but the way it happened Paul doesn't want to think about and maybe John was even more shook up over it than him and so Paul felt fine erasing it for his sake

[azurecanary]

Hot take, but if you're applying social concepts from the past two centuries to an account from people who were alive over two millennia ago, you probably don't know enough of what's being talked about

In this case, calling the Bible/Paul homophobic is very much oversimplifying things when you consider how different the audience of those texts was

Paul wasn't saying "gay marriage is sinful", he was saying, essentially, "don't sexually abuse each other"

[magentagalaxies]

creation of adam but it's this photo of me handing scott the martini before his buddy cole set in the KITH toronto show

[honeysound]

Kill your nostalgia.

The Blade of Nostalgia - Chase Twichell // Goodnight Punpun - Inio Asano // The Opposite of Nostalgia - Eric Gamalinda // Landscape (1907) - Henri Matisse // Happy Days - Closure in Moscow // Nostalgia - Peter Viereck // The Bedroom - Vincent Van Gogh // Nostalgia - Karl J. Shapiro // El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

[dr-j-wilson]

sigh but only because i've passed out already, lmk who wins in boxing

-beatboxers

Goodnight, rest well