There's little as nauseating as the current "Guru Culture" which always consists of some privileged, very lucky, very rich, not very bright and only moderately talented (if at all) person sitting with a slightly less successful version of themselves, chatting about "Drive" and "Making it" as if it had anything to do with their own half-baked, recently arrived at philosophy and not who their parents knew.
It's really part of the bigger flaw in our culture where everyone equates wealth with genius.
106 notes
·
View notes
For your commentary ask thingy:
"Obi-Wan smiles an impish smile, something Qui-Gon has seen countless times before, but here, in the light of the amber sea, with his world slowly turning upside down, it strikes him right between the ribs, straight through his heart, and he realizes something much, much, more dangerous than that Obi-Wan is beautiful—
Qui-Gon is in love with him.
It is a strange, perilous thing to realize, all the more alluring for the impossibility of his escape. The earth has not shifted beneath his feet, the galaxy does not spin differently— not as it had when Obi-Wan was gone. There is no change except that he knows. And if that is true— if the only change is him— then he has been in love with Obi-Wan for a long, long time."
I love this passage, and it has to be my favourite fic as well!! I love everything about Before I Knew I Had Begun, but I'd love to see your DVD commentary
Also you're not the only one a little tipsy lol I'm waiting to hear back about a scholarship for my PhD 😬😬
okay first off good luck on the scholarship!!!! that's such a nerve-wracking position to be in I hope everything works out for you!! second, thank you! It's VERY weird to hear that people like that fic (though even more welcome than weird) because I really go back and forth on it all the time. It was really only meant to be a fun stress relief fic I could dump some random scene ideas and dynamics into for fun, but I ended up actually working on it in a serious enough way that I started caring genuinely about the quality, and now a year on parts of it make me cringe. It's one of those things that just happens when you grow as a writer, so there is some good in seeing how I'd do it differently now, but I've never been under the impression that it's particularly liked, which makes the experience of keeping it up a bit worse. Hearing that people like it—that there's something really enjoyable about it (even if I can't see it) and that there's a good reason to keep it attached to my account—is really good to hear.
Now on to the commentary:
As I said, this fic was really just meant to be a jumble of scenes I wrote down for fun. The inciting one—or at least the first one I had in my head—was the flashback with the eyeliner, and I'd had it since December of 2020. It was the first one I wrote down, followed shortly by the yelling Obi-Wan does when Qui-Gon comes to find him in the third scene. The yelling is where I finally got an idea of what the overarching conflict could be, and realized I had the basis of a plot. The fragment here is, of course, the climax of that plot, where the second of the two conflicts finally comes to head.
While I was writing it, I was mostly thinking about the way it needed to incorporate the already resolved conflict—the miscommunication about Obi-Wan's place in Qui-Gon's life—into his realization. The fic is about Qui-Gon's assumptions, the way he lets things get by him when he thinks he knows what's going on, so him realizing what he's been missing is supposed to display the growth that's occurred after his discussion with Obi-Wan in the third scene. Qui-Gon here knows that Obi-Wan is important to him. He knows that he wants Obi-Wan in his life. What he's missing is the specific context for that desire—that he wants Obi-Wan in a romantic and sexual capacity as well as in the deeper, more important platonic way.
One of my struggles with this climax was how easy it was, because my instincts were telling me to make it difficult, to make it long and drawn out and hard to work through. But it actually needs to be easy, because Qui-Gon has already done the work—he's just waiting on the context. The first part of that context is the realization that Obi-Wan is beautiful, that he's attracted to Obi-Wan. The snippet you've chosen is the second, logical half of that. Now that he's accepted the attraction, he can accept there's yet another dimension of his desire he's been blind to: romantic love. Like Qui-Gon says: what Obi-Wan is doing is something he's done countless times before. It's just the context of his own knowledge that's different.
The first half of the fic is about Qui-Gon shaping the world around him. The second half is about Qui-Gon understanding the world he's shaped. This here is that resolution—him finally understanding what's been going on for year's, and accepting that's what's happened.
The other big thing in my head while I was writing this bit is that Qui-Gon absolutely Had to figure out he was in love while he was being made fun of, bc that man has the most weirdly developed sense of pride I've ever seen. blame dooku, I guess.
14 notes
·
View notes
jean moreau and icarus
jean sees himself as icarus. convinced that if he flies too close to the sun it will melt his wings and send him crashing into the sea. because he's given in before. twice he has given in to temptation and been burned.
this sun is the brightest one yet. jeremy knox shines so brightly, too brightly, surely he will burn him beyond repair. will burn his wings off his back and send him plummeting.
he couldn't be more wrong.
0 notes