You reposted the blueray special idea, and since im doing a reread im taking notes on wjat to ask for those!
Im sure I've told you how much i love girlfriend training, i think it's so crazy and fun and such a specific insight into the music/entertainment industry. My question for Blueray Special is how did you came up with this part? How much of it was re search, general knowledge, or just your idea or interpretation of stuns?
Loving how excited you are to be finishing with rock and roll, genuinely so happy for you, you sound so relieved and i can totally relate, merry Christmas Eve, happy holygays, and most importantly happy writing! 😋
What's up my friend! Yes! I did repost it because I love that level of writer insight, and you all always come out with things I never would've thought of or seen in my own work, or would've given much weight to. I ALWAYS want to hear your thoughts on what you liked and what you want to know more about, that is a big part of the point of sharing!
Girlfriend training in part two was inspired by a whole combination of things. I feel like there's some form of this in a lot of fake dating/rom com movies, but when I started putting theirs together, I thought a lot about dancing and learning to dance. I used the ideas and images and theme of dancing with these two throughout the whole story as a metaphor/nod to canon for fighting. Lexa leans into formal steps and training (warrior since birth) Clarke can bump and grind better than most, and blasts right through Lexa's foxtrot and cha cha with her own moves (bringing a gun to a sword fight).
So for girlfriend training, I wanted it to feel almost like learning choreography, learning how to move together, learning how to know each other, even learning how to dance together, because they needed to learn how to fight together on the same side instead of fighting with each other.
I watch a lot of crime shows/movies, so I wanted it to also feel like preparing undercover work (because it basically is), and that's where a lot of inspo came from. Ali is treating this with the severity of CIA operatives getting burned if they are caught, and to her, it is that severe, and low key it is to Clarke and Lexa, too, and I wanted it to feel that severe in a campy way. A lot of the inspiration for all of the verbal stuff and learning how to hold each other and talk to each other and look natural comes from watching a lot of spy tropes.
Because that's pretty much what's going on. They are playing parts, they need to be believable, all of it is fake, and they needed conditioning to make it look real, even when they weren't paying attention. Undercover/espionage training has a lot of that. You get caught by the little details, when the tiniest things don't match up. The internet was salivating over these two, and some of the most observant sleuths in the world are sitting on the couch watching every single possible piece of content on these two entertainers and hanging on their every move and every word. It all had to match for this to feel real.
I have seen entire essays on Tumblr analyzing one thing one celebrity said one time in passing. There are whole ass YouTube Chanels out there dedicated to just talking about celebrities and theorizing/conspiring about what they say and do. Ali is very keen to this, and she doesn't want these two getting caught, so she trains them like undercover agents so that even those who are obsessed with them and spend too much time paying attention to them wouldn't find a reason to think this love wasn't very real.
I also needed them to be FORCED to trust each other and forced to rely on each other, and for them to very quickly find comfort in the other whether they realized they were feeling that comfort or not, and making the process so severe made them very naturally get used to one another and subconsciously start to appreciate the other. The awful positions they were in against a common enemy forced them to form an alliance, just like the show, and in that alliance they were able to let their guards down and see the other for who they really were with the veil of hating them lifted.
They don't have time for all the stupid shitty quips and annoying behavior they're used to because their futures are on the line if they can't make it look convincing that they're sleeping together, so they both lean full force into the training because they have to. Impossible not to have a few lines blur along the way, even if those lines are just platonically affectionate (they're not).
I did a lot of theater when I was younger and it's borderline impossible not to bond at least a little with someone you're playing opposite of because you have to trust each other, and these two almost never get to turn it off. I wanted the Girlfriend Training to show how severe the process is, how rapid, how dense and intense it is. Almost brainwashing as they create these fake characters and go over and over and over how much those two characters love each other, they start to see the real version of themselves imprinted on their fake selves, and there is some of that as early as that first session when Lexa does the cha cha and Clarke laughs for real, and Clarke is the first to suggest they just get over it, telling Lexa she can do whatever she needs to do.
That Girlfriend Training scene was one of the first scenes to enter my brain when this thing went from a funny gag between me and @cantgetoutofmyheda to "Oh shit, I'm gonna write this, aren't I?" And it all came out on the page pretty quick.
Thank you so much for this! Send as many as you want, any AU, it doesn't just have to be Rock & Role! It's from this DVD Commentary Asks! Thanks so much!
