Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Mira and Rumi are off to the side, with Zoey securely in a harness being lowered into the camera's view. (No, they will not be answering questions on how long it took them to DIY several suspension hooks in the walls to get this harness-pulley-system worked out. Yes, Bobby was crying when he saw the damage.)

The fearless leader taps 'play' on her phone, they recorded the chorus and non-principal verses over the past few weeks. Thank the Honmoon Celine had a recording studio stipulated in their residence renovations. It made inspiration easy and translating from voice memo to production SO much more streamlined. Zoey and Rumi were tied for who got the most use out the soundproof workspace.

Zoey sounds awful. She can't quite breathe and sing while in the harness and while suspended in air. Mira stops recording and they get the maknae situated on the couch properly before the three of them put their heads together to debate next steps.

Their end solution is for Zoey to practice singing while suspended in air, watch her head voice versus her chest voice. Careful to change her breathing patterns, and learning the song in an entirely new way.

At least Rumi and Mira got their arm-workout set out while they supported their youngest member for this number.

It takes them a few days to find just the right angle—and to print some benches and other assorted luggage cases—to show a 'crowd' with Rumi and Zoey and Bobby in frame. Celine opted to simply film her portion at her own apartment, while giving the evil eye to Bobby for engaging in such frivolities.

The cartoon mini-props were all cut from cardstock and it became a matter of figuring out the right hair-dryer speed to get them to whirl just enough without making the end clip too dizzying.

Rumi came up with the ingenious idea of having the props connected at different lengths of transparent fishing wire to wooden rods set in the fore-mid-and-background.

The 'I want' song, the intro number. The audience and future viewer(s) knew of Elphaba, but they didn't know her.

"I can do this." Rumi repeats, for probably the hundredth time. More than that, maybe. "I can do this."

She's still not sure about the green body paint. Allegedly it was safe, but, is this really better than a tacky full-color body-suit listed by a drop-shipper on NAVER?

At least the forest green and sage blended well together, and she did look amazing in black.

"You guys can get closer yanno. The green's not an infection." Mira drawls.

"No, but it's getting in everything—where did you get this paint Zoey?"

"Uhhh, it's food coloring and home-made paste?"

"It's what?!"

One hard-scrub shower later, and a same-day delivery of a body-suit later...

There is a certain je ne sais quois about a middle-aged man wearing a home-made paper maché goat mask, being filmed in front of a green screen. The dead-eyes painted carefully by their beloved maknae over and over again (there's still plenty of badly painted eyeballs randomly secreted here and there by said maknae all over the penthouse). The textured browns, shades of caramel, tan, mud—shockingly, the underlayer of bright daisy and sunshine yellow paint bringing out a liveliness in the mask.

None of the painterly work is picked up by the camera because they filmed at night. The lightning was awful and they learned some good lessons about video editing. And controlling where lighting comes from. And maybe working out a proper production schedule because, they had to do some quality production standards here.

And then filming the transition... There were creative differences.

"Zoey, I swear to god I'm going to chuck you out the window if we do another take."

"Just one more! You have to run into each other, like, the headbump of love?"

"We're different heights, and I'm on a horse." Deadpan monotone. "I'm going to run her over."

"Maybe I could do the singing again, but on the balcony?" Rumi tries to reach a compromise.

"What if you fall over?!"

She blinks. "We've dived out of airplanes before. And the penthouse is tall enough."

"Leader-nim has a point." And that's just what they do, to get that precious love-at-first-sight shot.

It'd taken Mira a full week to work out a choreo that didn't look weird or awful on a vertical shot, while keeping beat to the jaunty tune with depressing lyrics.

Rumi, however, is a more exacting director than Zoey is. And eventually needed to be tickle-veto'd into accepting that they had more than enough reels to choose from.

"What sort of dance did you say that was again?" Mira side-eyes Zoey, who had...a glimmer of deviousness about her.

"The Macarena. We used to dance to it all the time in PE for some reason."

"And this is...better than being Rick Roll'd?"

"Uhm, girls? How long am I supposed to be doing this? I'm getting a little dizzy." Rumi even wobbles a little.

"Okay, you have to get in really close."

"For the shot?"

"Yeah, we have to be close enough that it looks like we're going to kiss."

"In every shot?" Rumi flips through the storyboard thumb-nails that Zoey had doodled. "Isn't that for romantic tension?"

"Oh you sweet summer child Rumi. This is the gayest song next to 'What is this feeling'."

"There's no song here? It's just speaking??"

"Well it's not a sung-through musical."

"Should it be?"

"I mean we just did a Zomi bit, so, I think it's fair to do a Rumira bit."

"What." "What."

"Zo."

"Hold it for a bit longer."

"My legs are cramping."

"And my neck hurts."

"Gaze into each others' eyes more lovingly!"

Rumi inhales sharply she couldn't remember the last time Celine looked at her with that kind of emotion. And Mira's eyes hardened even more somehow.

The note of direction is ultimately, unhelpful.

"Okay Rumi do that look."

"What look?"

"That look when you see me and Mira laughing and you're like a gazillion lightyears away."

She chokes at that. Was it that obvious?

"Zoey...Did you colour my lenses with green marker?"

"Yeah! Give it that home-made flair!"

"These are prescription."

"C'mon, your eyesight isn't that bad—" She pulls them on. And takes them off again.

Rumi winces, but she sits in the silence with the pair.

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah. You are now."

"Zoey. I think I should use AI—"

It takes a week's worth of begging before they resume the project and Bobby warbles through his lines. Trying and artistic expression is the point here!

And what Zoey doesn't know about Mira modulating her voice in post-production to sound more like Bobby's masculine off-key singing is nobody's business but hers. And Rumi's. Because someone else had to distract their maknae while she did that.

"I'm not sure if I can hit this."

"If you can hit an A5 in Golden, you can hit the F5 in this."

"Not while strung up like this!" It's Rumi's turn in the harness and it takes her a few days to learn how to sing through that.

At least they are done, for now.