run for yer life - bossymarmalade, glockgal
Ao3 | Livejournal tumblr: @bossymarmalade, @glockgal summary: you don’t get to the toppermost of the poppermost without a little sacrifice.
it’s the beatles story in snapshots, you know. only with a little bit of murder. “beatles serial killer au” should not fucking work. and yet this ‘fic makes it work. more than that, it’s also fucking brilliant and layered and captivating. i think the success is from keeping the killing remarkably restrained and grounded in terms of volume, and by having them still be, well, the beatles. it’s got harmony with the way their teen pop idol image was constructed and then fizzled away. an acknowledgement of the inevitable humanity of those portrayed as larger than life with the seductive edge of transgression. “i can do no wrong even though i’m always doing wrong, i speak in melody and think in song,” that sort of deal. calculating killers they are not; instead, the beatles seem as resigned to and helpless in the face of their own homicidal tendencies as they were to the cage of their own indomitable stardom. the added tension of murder makes their interpersonal relationships even seamier. it is not beatles as a harmonious family, it is beatles dragging each other kicking and screaming because they carry each other’s blood in their veins now and there’s no way to separate it anymore, a four-person soul or at least something that passes for a soul. each one is his own agent with his own directive and yet… and the art is gorgeous. it jumps from mode to mode to fit the way the heart of this ‘fic shifts and metamorphises, and it does it perfectly. this ‘fic is from the livejournal era and i fear it may have been a little lost to time. rest assured, it should not be.