Hi lovely! I’m just curious, which beatle do you find the easiest and the hardest to write for? (It amazes me that you really capture all the details about them in your fics so i was wondering! I think you’re absolutely wicked!♥️)
hello and thank you!! characterization is absolutely the hardest thing for me to write because it’s easy to just make them what i want them to act like, AKA ooc fantasies. all of the beatles are so nuanced, like any human, so sometimes you just have to make little things up.
Paul is probably the hardest for me to capture. all the other beatles were called “smart,” “quiet,” and “funny” while Paul got the only descriptor which is based on appearance: “cute.” i read an interview where Paul talks about how he doesn’t like being labeled the cute Beatle because it detracts on his other qualities. he says something along the lines of “people don’t like to remember that i wrote helter skelter.” so because so much of paul’s personality has been pigeonholed into “cute,” it’s hard for me to write him. still, i have my own interpretation: i think of Paul to be the pretty face that you’d underestimate. he’s sweet and kind but can be unruly and even cruel--cruel in a more subtle way than john. all of this stems from a sort of Gryffindor self-righteousness. he thrives on paradoxes: order and improvisation, reason and impulse, intimacy and publicity. and while none of this makes sense to other people, it absolutely does to him and he expects the same from them.
post break-up comes the downward spiral, where Paul’s paradoxes are turned on him. he has to find order in domesticity and improvisation in family life on a farm; has to balance reason and impulse when nothing makes sense and he has to sue his best friends; has to learn intimacy with a family of blood, not brothers, while publicity shines a spotlight on his every move. his song, Man We Was Lonely, shows a bit of his mentality at the time:
I used to ride on my fast city line
Singing songs that I thought were mine alone
Now, let me lie with my love for the time
I am home
George isn’t easy to write but he’s the least hard for me, probably because i can find a lot of similarities between us. he’s had to constantly act older than he is, whether that be as a survival tactic in Hamburg or to prove something to Paul and John. Paul has admitted that he looked down and condescended George a lot, seeing him as a little brother. even in the beatles, there’s a sort of pressure to ‘measure up’ to the others; just listen to George’s song Run of the Mill, which is one of my favorites.
Tomorrow when you rise
Another day for you to realize me
Or send me down again
there’s a humbleness to George where he’s emphasized wanting success but not fame. and beyond being the “quiet” beatle, he was most at home in nature, going so far as to talk about feeling like he’s on the “wrong planet” when he steps out of his garden. all in all, i see George as incredibly connected to himself, nature, and others. empathetic. at the same time, he’s quick to point out what he perceives as other people’s faults even if it hurts them. how else can they improve if they’re not made aware of their problems?
again, much of this is my own characterization based on what i’ve read about their lives and what they’ve said! so you can disagree, which is fine because history and literature are subjective. sorry this turned into an absolute rant but i love writing about, well, writing! and i love when y’all ask me about my writing; anybody who writes has loads of nuances and easter eggs that they just love gushing about hehe
