outline for crackfic

[quigonejinn]

- setup
- going to the tournament
- at the tournament
- climactic battle -- fighting Xanatos, who's bearing a shield painted black with a red circle on it.

theme: that what you think is redemption is not, in fact, anything close to it. Qui-Gon thinks that he's going to find redemption with Obi-Wan. Xanatos thinsk that he's going to find redemption with his father. Obi-Wan thinks that he's going to find redemption by becoming Qui-Gon's squire, but the truth is that Qui-Gon is still the terribly messed up person that he's always been and stubborn as a team of jackasses to boot, Xanatos's weaknesses of arrogance remain, and Obi-Wan is still so infatuated with the ideals/rules of being a knight that he's unwilling to examine the reality. They might beat Xanatos, but the next time that they fight a guy in black and red, they're going to lose.

Setup: the old country house where Qui-Gon has his holding. Good defensive posture -- high on a hill, backing into a river, but it's not a fort because it's so far away from any front in battle -- fell out of favor with the powers that be, but still influential enough to get this piece of land with slightly rolling hills, some woodland, and good fertility. Primary crops are grain. Think sort of a Tuscan color scheme. It's like Gladiator, except all the killing is going to be done at home and by good old Russell Crowe himself.

Chapel in the house. Kept up better than the rest of the house because Qui-Gon spends so much time in there. Stone pews. Qui-Gon sitting up there among the saints one spring day, some of the stone chips from the saints that've broken and trying to figure out how to glue them back on. (Possibility? A single glass window set up high up the wall, and it needing to be wrapped up and reinforced against the winter storms ecah year. Image of Xanatos, climbing up to swathe it.)

Qui-Gon's horse. Grand and grey. Dies in the early rounds of the tournament, but the horse he rode on some of his campaigns, and Xanatos disobeying orders and letting Obi-Wan trail after him when he goes to see it. Cranky and stubborn, not particularly bright. Qui-Gon bears a resemblance ot it.

Staff -- the cook, who also oversees the laundry and the cleaning maids, the stableman, the old armsmaster.

Qui-Gon: somewhat literate. Obi-Wan is not particularly. Xanatos, more than them both, although it doesn't really matter because there aren't a lot of books in this house. Image of Xanatos as the bright jewel of the house: Qui-Gon has such immense hope and pride in him. Build the idea that Xanatos is destined for bigger and greater things than this little tiny holding. Not exactly a jewel in the dungheap, but at least a jewel lying in a haystack. Xanatos's room filled with small, natural wonders. Little things that he's built with his hands, and him singing, sometimes, for Qui-Gon in the dusty chapel.

Xanatos doesn't fit that house of dust and quiet. By showing his awesomeness and his coolness, emphasize that and, also, show, by implication, how much Qui-Gon loves him and how much Obi-Wan wishes he could be like Xanatos.

Goals for Setup section: establish character of Obi-Wan, establish desireability/awesome of Xanatos, establish mysterious backdrop of Qui-Gon.

Development/travel to tournament: begin to show some of Xanatos's flaws. Start to draw back the curtain on Qui-Gon's personality and his history. Have Xanatos - Obi-Wan bonding. Xanatos thinking that he's going to be knighted this winter, and teaching Obi-Wan how to play the lute (?) so that he can entertain Qui-Gon when he's gone. Hints of the forthcoming tension, and towards the end of the ttraveling, Xanatos learning that Qui-Gon does not plan to recommend him for knighthood.

Tournament: More of Qui-Gon's past is revealed. Conflict at tournament is made explicit: Qui-Gon as reluctant defender of the old military order. Holds lands under Dooku figure (?), and Qui-Gon sacrifices his lands, becomes relucatant defender of his old allegience against new faction that has the sympathy of his old master. Xanatos leaves Qui-Gon.

Climactic:

- Revelation to Obi-Wan that Qui-Gon had initially thought that he had been sent just to keep tabs on him.

Comments

[a-blue-moon-cat.livejournal.com]

Nah, I don't mind. Pick away. I may have to look stuff up myself, though.
:) And of late, more of my history info comes from the way manors were run in the 18th century (one of my guilty pleasures is reading Regency romance novels, but only well-written ones by authors who have actually studied the period in question).

Yes, if this were a marginal holding, without too much land or too many peasants to farm it, then probably Qui-Gon might not be able to afford to pay a steward. So your idea of having Xanatos do those duties sounds fine. Also, it would give more fuel to the fire of Obi-Wan being jealous of Xan (if that's where you might be heading) since Qui trusts him to run his estate, such as it is, for him. *smiles wickedly*

Oh, I totally understand about only wanting to write the main characters.
:) I must admit though that there is a series by a somewhat famous fantasy writer that I have never read, simply because all my SCA friends were stunned by this woman's lack of knowlegde of social history of the Middle Ages. (The series in question was sort of based on medieval history, and the writer is a main founder of the SCA.) Noblemen just didn't hang around by themselves, it would seem. There were always servants and courtiers about. The idea of privacy is a modern one, I'm told. And this fantasy writer wasn't thinking about that when she had her characters of the king and a friend just ride off to the hunt by themselves, for example.

But this sort of thing could be used to show how strange your Qui-Gon is. No other noblemen hanging aroung, disfavor with the high king and his court because of oddness in social skills and other things like that. *smiles*

Btw, I just realized that I had not friended you. So I did so. *beams* And you're welcome to friend me back. My LJ is FO and is of course these days mostly SW-centered. :)

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Are you an SCA'er?

(And to, uh, prove just how little I know about this entire field, I had to google SCA just now to figure out what it was. XD)

But yeah. I think I'm going to take certain liberties and just AU the thing, period, because there're going to be some weird bits that won't align to any proper socio-historical context that I've been able to find. As things are forming, I think that Qui-Gon is going to be a member of this world's version of the Templars -- militant religious-ish order that went on the Crusades -- but minus the commercial elements. And I want to set up a secular/religious power struggle that I'm not entirely sure would have been appropriate for a medieval time frame.

Re: privacy. That makes an insane amount of sense. I have a vague-ish idea of what life in a manual society is like, and yeah. The notion will definitely, definitely, definitely be that Qui-Gon is an oddball. Self-imposed court exile! Refusal to exploit the resources that are in front of him! Torn loyalties between a secular Dooku and the canon of the Order!

Any particular other stickler bits for you?