Why I Won't Say I'm In Love is a Jeremy song: the essay, as requested by one (1) person
Hope you're happy @peanut-butter-and-theatre /lh
In the past I've seen cosplay vids of Michael singing IWSIIL about - you guessed it - Jeremy. But when you look at Meg's backstory in mythology, which is touched on briefly in the movie, Meg's lover before Herc died and she sold her soul to Hades to bring him back. Shortly after he came back, he left her for another woman. With her heart thoroughly shattered, she completely abandons her love of romance and denies any feelings she has for Hercules in an almost three minute song and sings about how shes not going to put herself through that again.
Hmm, where have we heard this before?
Jeremy Heere, a hopeless romantic desperate to get his crush to notice him, sells his free will to a megalomaniacal supercomputer that promises to give him everything he wants and more. When this all starts to blow up in his face (through some fault of his own), he gets rejected by Christine on Halloween and, though she agrees to go to lunch with him at the end of the show, depending on which version you're going off of (I'm going off of two river), it's left open ended as to whether he Gets The Girl or not.
But. For the purposes of IWSIIL, let's say things fall through between them in some form or another.
Without even making some headcanon as to how much of a romantic Jeremy really is or how many unrequited crushes he's had, he clearly has anxiety. And if you go through a Metric Shitload of trouble for a crush only for it all to end up meaning nothing, that's gonna deter you from ever trying again. Ffs Meg brought her boyfriend back from the dead and he just ran off with another chick. It was ancient Greece so everyone was slutty as fuck but the point stands, Meg was rightfully devastated.
ANYWAY if Jeremy starts to realize he's crushing on - oh ya know for the sake of example - Michael, he's gonna slam on the breaks SO FUCKING HARD and say "nope. I'm not doing this shit again. There's too much that can go wrong, too much to lose."
And,, you can make the argument that Michael would have those same thoughts and the song still works for him, but we don't have the same canon knowledge of his experience in relationships. We don't Know if he's had any relationships fall through. We don't even know if he's dated anyone.
The one way I could see you finagle it to make it work would be to say that he's trying not to fall for jer all over again because he's cautious abt messing with their friendship after everything with the squip is all said and done. But simply looking at the history of who IWSIIL was originally written for and seeing how Jeremy's story unfolded, the parallels between Meg and Jeremy fit SO much better.
And just because I'm extra and it's 11pm and I have work tomorrow, heeres some more lyrical comparison yOURE WELCOME.
"If there's a prize for rotten judgement, I guess I've already won that"
Jeremy's full willingness to trust the squip being horribly and embarrassingly wrong in hindsight, leading him to spiral into wishing he'd known better at the time.
"No[body's] worth the aggravation. That's ancient history. Been there, fuck done that"
He doesn't even want to try to date anyone again because things went so Balls To The Wall Batshit that he doesn't wanna risk going through so much trouble just to get his heart broken again.
(Insert the squad as the muses with the "who you think you're kidding? He's the earth and heaven to you, try to keep it hidden. Honey we can see right through you. [Jer] you can't conceal it. We know how you feel and who you're thinking of" and "you swoon, you sigh, why deny it" because the trope of the squad knowing how gay Michael and Jeremy are for each other while they're both neck deep in denial is Too Good)
"It's too cliche, I won't say I'm in love"
Pretty self explanatory. How cliche is friends to lovers??
"I thought my heart had learned its lesson, it feels so good when you start out. My head is screaming 'get a grip, [Jer,] unless you're dying to cry your heart out"
Jeremy would think that after royally screwing up trying to get Christine, he wouldn't be so quick to fall for someone again but lol heere he is, and he's trying so hard to not let his emotions get the better of him when he thinks things can only ever end badly for him.
("You can't deny it, who you are and how you're feeling. [Jeremy], we're not buying. Hon, we saw you hit the ceiling. Face it like a grown-up, when ya gonna own up that you got got got it bad" and "give up or give in, check the grin, you're in love" and "YOURE DOIN FLIPS. READ OUR LIPS. YOURE IN LOVE")
And all. Of Jeremy's. Doubling down.
"No chance. No way. I won't say it. No no"
"This scene won't play, I won't say I'm in love"
"You're way off base, I won't say it"
"Get off my case, I won't say it"
He's trying so hard to deny it. So hard to make the feelings go away because he doesn't wanna put himself through that pain again. Until of course...
"At least out loud, I won't say I'm in love"
He knows his feelings. He knows how much Michael means to him. And just because he doesn't think he can ever admit that to Michael doesn't mean that he can't admit it to himself.
So yeah thank you for coming to my tedtalk go watch the tiktoks I made of Jeremy singing I Won't Say I'm In Love
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