this is SO stupid but i'm just realizing now the significance of emmett singing "what about love?" in the motif elle sings in . it's the same one she sings when he finds her by the bench sobbing over warner .... like i knew it paralleled BUT like that was the moment emmett couldn't yet fully grapple that someone would do so much 'just' for love. zero understanding on the gravity of what love can do. zero understanding on what it meant to elle. at that time it's just this shallow concept that kinda astounds him (alongside of course her neglect on the privilege of being in harvard law), as if it was something he would never understand, as if so sure he wouldn't be so 'naive' to experience it, as if so certain not even love could drift him away from his goals of being an associate, as if he'd never find it anyway
and yet, there he was, singing the same melody, feeling that same, pathetic, shallow, stronger-than-he-thought, rob-him-of-focus love, pleading elle to stay . professing flat out he was in love . admission of being a victim to love . full blown surrender to what he thought wouldn't get him, not away from his dreams or his goals, not now, not then, not ever . but it did, it did, it did