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Why do they look like a jock (wearing their school team's varsity jacket) and a shy nerd, who have a secret crush on each other, that meet during lunch in the cafeteria, and try to make awkwardly nonchalant conversation about the food, but deep down are thrilled to finally be talking to each other??

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It's even weirder that he said it in writing, because verbally it could have been a slip of the tongue due to habit, but in written format, after all the corrections and editing, phrasing it like this seems deliberate, and it's probably to make a point (and telling of a certain chip on shoulder). It's sad how the mere thought of Yoko as John's creative partner still smarts him after all these years, because although he also created a new band with his wive and had many collaborators, in terms of partnerships, he never saw himself as something other than 'Lennon-McCartney', and must have hated it when John acted like he didn't.

such a small syntax thing but paul writing ‘john and i and yoko’ in this bit of the lyrics is soooo telling and crazy. even though grammatically it should be ‘john and yoko and i’ he still can’t bear to separate himself and john/give yoko credit before himself/see john and yoko as an entity. he’s literally putting himself in between the two of them, whether consciously or not.

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Great post OP; you're really spot on how John's first marriage to Cynthia is pushed aside when talking about Paul and his marriage/break-up analogies. I do think John and Cynthia's early years were happy and sort of normal, before things changed. Assuming there were romantic/sexual feelings between John and Paul (I'm a McLennon 'truther', so I do think there was something that went beyond friendship), it's interesting to think why these jealousies and antagonisms weren't so obvious during John's first marriage. And like you said, it's probably because there were other factors at play: Yoko's disruptive presence, John's obsessive behavior, drug addictions, and also, I feel, a growing resentment that bubbled up after their India trip. There were definitely other reasons, which coalesced on top of John and Yoko (and their issues), so maybe Paul finds it easier to focus on them when talking about the break-up, either because he thinks this narrative might make more sense to people, or it's his own actual attempt at reasoning.

Cynthia is such a Rorschach test in this fandom. One's perception of her inadvertently seems to inform people's beliefs about Paul's feelings for John.

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John mentioning Paul in interviews: now that’s a man I would truly be proud to call my ex-wife

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“I dream about him.”

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[Rhink fanvid] On the borderline

A short (and hopefully sweet) fanvid about Rhett and Link, because I find their relationship fascinating.

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Free range yaoi spotted at the train station

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Jim couldn’t land me in a thousand years. But you’re saying there’s a chance.

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"Whenever I was in the band, playing live, I’d be facing out. John was to the left or to the right of me, so I never got to sort of see him perform so much. Except in the film [Get Back]. And there he is in massive closeup. I can study everything about him.” -Paul, 2021 (X)

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The Beatles: Breakup Era memes

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Favourite ship dynamic: no one truly knows what exactly is going on between the two characters, including the characters themselves. But whatever it is, it's written in the fabric of the universe.

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JOHN AND PAUL

‘I am delighted to say that Faber & Faber have commissioned me to write a book about John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Getting paid to write about The Beatles - well, that’s it, I can retire. After I’ve written this book.

The Ruffian played an integral part in the birth of this book. Towards the end of 2020 I wrote a piece called 64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney and published it here. It was the quintessential lockdown project. I’d been making notes towards it for years but never found time to actually write it. I also had low confidence that anyone except superfans would read a 10k essay about Paul McCartney. It didn’t fit any obvious spaces in established media, at least not the way I wanted to do it. But I knew some of you would appreciate it, so once I’d completed it, I dropped it here. Unexpectedly and gloriously it went viral (in a good way).

When I was writing 64 Reasons I found I had to cut a lot of material to do with John and Paul’s relationship, a topic I am obsessed with, just to keep the thing down to its already overgrown length. (In fact I mentioned that in #63 - I was already thinking hey, what if…?). Given the scale and intensity of the response to that piece, I started developing an idea for a book about the two of them.

The conventional narrative about their relationship is deeply flawed. It was set in stone shortly after The Beatles’ breakup and hasn’t been much modified since. Constrained by the myopia and prejudices of the time, it misses out a lot and gets much wrong and consequently we have a very thin and limited view of both men and of what they did together.

Lennon and McCartney were more than just great mates, or fierce competitors, which is how they’ve generally been portrayed. They shared an essentially romantic friendship, a passionate love that ignited mutual creativity. The love (and the insecurity and jealousy that came with it) fed into the music, and vice versa.

I’ll track the relationship from the day they met in 1957 to the day John died in 1980: 23 years. Hence John and Paul: A Love Story in 23 Songs. I’m not just writing this for Beatles fans but for anyone who loves a love story; to me, it’s the greatest romance of the twentieth century.

OK I’ll say no more about it. I need to write the damn thing.’

*blog post from Ian Leslie’s blog The Ruffian (Nov. 13 2021).

It’s interesting that the title is no longer ‘John and Paul: A Love Story in 23 Songs’ and is instead ‘John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs’.

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Thanks to everyone posting scenes from yesterday, I didn't watch the show, but I'm gathering that it must have been An Experience… That moment in the video is absolutely crazy for many reasons, but did anyone else feel bad on Link's behalf? He was really relaxed and in the moment, but when he tried to bring in some more meaningful sentiments to the whole thing (brushing both the puppet and Rhett's hair back to see his face, and saying that he he wouldn't be here without Rhett), Rhett deflected them so obviously, and in my opinion, a bit insensitively as well. Surprisingly, I don't think Link was being sappy because of the intimacy of the moment, but it was actually so that they could feel more comfortable doing this. It might sound weird, but I really think he would feel more comfortable doing something as bold and out there, if Rhett was with him emotionally. And Rhett not only completely left him hanging, but the way he said 'I actually don't want to have sex with you' and what followed afterwards, had such a ring of repulsion and rejection. I think Link (who was in the more vulnerable position, given their stance) backtracked afterwards, and the moment was broken, but how I read it was that he was trying to make it more than the sex, so that it would actually be more familiar territory (hey man, once again we're doing a totally weird thing, but we are in this together, like always), whereas Rhett might have misunderstood things, or thought bringing emotion into it was even worse, and shut him down so uncouthly. I don't know why they commit to doing this content if they actually hate themselves for it, and that was my impression for Rhett, at least from that scene.

the least gay feeling they've ever felt... according to them at least