"Precious" Disc 2: Special Features (lolz)
I've seen several fic authors do kind of "DVD commentaries" on their fics in which they insert comments about the writing process into the story, and I have done that kind of thing in the past for a couple of my Brokeback Mountain ficlets. But as "Precious" is much too long to actually insert commentary in it, think of this as more of the "making-of featurettes" on the DVD. I want to do this for this fic for a few reasons:
1. Just like the original show, this fanfic has a lot of references to literature and films, so here I'll explain all these references (cause I'm sure lots of people aren't actually familiar with all of them) and why I chose them for the characters to refer to in this kind of story.
2. I like to write a lot in the same way some people can never stop talking, which I'm afraid I subject a lot of people to in my very long-ass comments or replies to comments.
3. I always feel like I learn a thing or two from writing about my writing.
4. I'm a compulsive music-sharer (see the third-to-last feature).
You guys are going to think I'm crazy when you see how much crap is in this post, and if anyone actually reads all of this I'll probably drop dead with shock. I advise everyone to just take any of the song downloads they want because I love you all and then run away as fast as you can.
The Making Writing of "Precious"
This is your cool-looking (or not) animated DVD menu...................select a feature to play it.......................yeah, I'm having too much fun with this.......................
This is what I do in Biology class when I'm supposed to be taking notes :). Look how awful my handwriting is.
The Symbolism of the Scarf: How the idea started
There is obviously already a lot of meaning attached to the silk scarf in the way it is used in the show. In this story I kind of expanded on what I took it to represent and added some of own significance to it as well. What exactly CowLip were thinking themselves when having this same item appear repeatedly in very important scenes is pretty much open to interpretation, but I took my own interpretation of what the scarf represents and intended to kind of make it my own in the way I use it as a symbol in this fanfic.
This whole story started with the idea for the prologue, which I wrote out not knowing exactly where it was going to go, and figuring if I didn't come up with a good place to take the story the prologue could work on its own as just a ficlet, even if a kind of depressing one. This story is essentially about the two different ways people can deal with loss (or almost losing somebody). Obviously there's a thousand different ways different people deal with these things, but on the whole people can either react to it by taking it as a lesson to not take what they have for granted, or completely cutting themselves off from the things that have the potential to hurt them. The latter can happen in an unconscious way like when people have post-traumatic stress disorder as Justin did, or in a more simple way like when people say "love sucks" after they go through a bad break-up. We've seen Brian react to situations like this in both ways throughout the show, but of course his most natural inclination is what he learned from needing love from his parents but never getting it: to not let himself be vulnerable to be hurt by love, whether it's because of death or just rejection. This whole theme is set up in the prologue with all the introspection describing the way Brian distances himself from people ("puts a pane of glass in between them" as it says) because of the possibility of losing them.
So, with that done, I wondered if I could develop this idea into any kind of a story. Even though I didn't want to touch doing a deathfic because it seems most deathfics are just an excuse for a hurt/comfort type thing where there's really no point in killing off a character except to have that angst factor, it seemed pretty clear I needed to kill somebody and have the story be about how Brian reacts to another harsh reminder of mortality this time.
Everything goes back to the scarf, because in the prologue it is described that he was wearing it after Justin got hurt because he could not "let himself forget and could not stop punishing himself," meaning the scarf is his reminder of what happens when he lets himself become vulnerable to getting hurt that way or actually does something to show love to somebody else and make them happy ("I told you, making other people happy can be hazardous to your health" as he says to Michael in 201). At this point, the scarf signifies the fears that have caused him to react negatively to almost losing somebody and distance himself from Justin. Of course, later on he stops doing this and he and Justin actually become closer because of what happened, but Brian still has this negative inclination to "Run from love instead of to it" as Debbie puts it, which is why I decided he still has that scarf, just hidden away in a drawer.
Brian gets a lot of guidance and insight from his friends as he is helping Justin deal with what happened to Molly, and throughout the story he is learning to react in a different way to tragedies like this than he is inclined to. In the last paragraph, the scarf is brought up again as being a "reminder of something," something representing a lesson he learned from a horrible experience that he has internalized so strongly he won't forget it. But it is in a more optimistic way than before because the possibility of loss is instead now reinforcing the idea that he can't take life for granted. And there you have it, happy Brian, not quite happy but working on it Justin, basically happy ending. (Whew, end of long rambling.)
Breakfast at Tiffany's: How Brian is like Holly Golightly
When Brian and Justin are watching Breakfast at Tiffany's at the loft, Justin remarks that Audrey Hepburn's character, Holly Golightly, is kind of like Brian. Holly is a bit of a phony with not much of a grip on reality. She's a very elusive character with a lot of facades who will not let anyone possess her, even though she falls in love with her neighbor, Paul. At the end of the movie, Holly is about to leave town and Paul is trying to convince her to stay, and there's a very powerful scene in which they say this:
PAUL: Holly, I'm in love with you. You belong to me.
HOLLY: No. I don't belong to anyone...
PAUL: You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
Some of the ideas expressed in this scene are what Justin is refering to after Brian says, "If you love something you got to let it go," and he responds, "Weren't you paying attention to the movie last night? Some people want to belong to each other." These ideas are kind of echoed again in parts like when Jennifer says, "You let him go even though you wanted to keep him" and Brian tells Justin, "You are always going to belong to me."
Star Wars: Why Michael's Boba Fett reference is actually not correct
When Michael and Brian are talking about "the suicidal pit of insanity people call love," Michael says, "You never threw yourself in before. You were unwillingly pulled into it screaming like Boba Fett getting dragged into the Sarlacc." I wrote this because I thought it was a funny image, but afterwards remembered this isn't actually how Boba Fett dies in Return of the Jedi; Lando was very close to getting dragged in and that was what I was thinking of, but Boba Fett just gets knocked over and falls in with a dramatic Wilhelm scream. I'm a bad Star Wars dork :( and Michael should know better.
The Sarlacc pit from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Why Steph says the movie adaptation sucks
Brian is only watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof so I'd have a way for Justin to bring up Luke's boyfriend. But incidentally, the play is by a gay writer and involves a married couple who are having problems maybe or maybe not because the husband may or may not be gay. I have not seen the film with Elizabeth Taylor, but I read the play in a Drama class, the teacher of which was gay and was actually the first person from whom I heard the quote "Who I fuck is none of your business unless I'm fucking you" before I had even seen any of QaF. And he basically described to my class how they took all of the homosexual subtext out of it because it was the 50's and all. But without that there are certain aspects of the story that just wouldn't make much sense. :/
Angels In America: What do Louis/Prior have to do with Brian/Justin?
Tony Kushner's "gay fantasia on national themes," Angels In America, is an epic play about the AIDS crisis in the 80's that focuses on several homosexual characters, including Louis (the one Steph played), and his boyfriend Prior. Louis's abandonment of Prior after he finds out he's going to die kind of reminds me of Brian's refusal to go see Justin at the beginning of season 2, which is not out of not caring for him but quite the opposite. Hence why Justin telling Brian about this part of the story makes him a little uncomfortable.
Justin Kirk as Prior and Ben Shenkman as Louis in the
HBO mini-series production of Angels In America
The Scarlet Letter: Why Justin relates it to the scarf
In The Scarlet Letter, a woman who has a child while she is living away from her husband is punished by having to always wear a red letter A for adultery. Ironically, she wears the letter proudly, while the father of the child suffers from tremendous guilt for not having to pay for what he did and punishes himself in many ways, including cutting a letter A into his chest where nobody can see it. I've always seen Brian wearing the scarf all the time after Justin got hurt as his way of kind of punishing himself, so it kind of reminds me of the kind of guilt a scarlet letter represents. This is certainly a kind of unromantic way to explain why he was wearing something with Justin's blood on it all the time, and lots of people might not see it that way. But I personally think that aspect of his behavior in the beginning of season 2 is much more sad than touching and shows how much of a wreck he was underneath his deceptively careless facade.
"Maggie and Milly and Molly and May": Not chosen only because it has the name Molly (but maybe mostly LOL)
I am not a big fan of poetry, to be honest, because I am usually very bad at figuring out what the hell it's about and then I feel stupid (maybe I'm just too lazy to). e.e. cummings, however, I like even if I can't always understand it because his use of words is just pretty in itself even if it's just pretty nonsense to me. "Maggie and Milly and Molly and May" is an unusually simple one for him, though, and I think it's just a poem about self-discovery. The last part ("for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it's always ourselves we find in the sea") makes me think it's about self-discovery through loss, especially since the sea is often a symbol for death in literature.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Not that anybody cares about Luke, but this is who who he looks like
It is mentioned in Part 2 that Justin describes Luke as looking like the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. This is he:
Joseph G. in Mysterious Skin
All the King's Men: Its themes and this story's may really be like apples and oranges
Robert Penn Warren's classic All the King's Men was a little long and painful to work my way through in my junior year of high school but it ended up becoming one of my favorite books. The philosophical ideas it presents about good and evil are something I can just identify with a lot. One of the last paragraphs of the book explains a point of view about how man is born in sin because if humans were made perfect then they would just be an extension of God rather than a separate creation (because only God can be perfect), and therefore the creation of sin is the greatest demonstration of God's power. Excuse me for getting into all this religious shit here, but you can take this to mean that the only perfect creation is one that is not all good and perfect. After all, if all of life was a perfect paradise in which there was never any suffering, would we ever truly feel happiness? Can good even exist without bad?
Are these themes really applicable to what's happening in "Precious"? Debbie, as she impossibly and unrealistically remembers little details about the literature she read as a teenager, thinks so, but I can't say if Robert Penn Warren would have agreed. His brilliant metaphor of everything being made of dirt gave me something interesting to have in the pot-and-macaroni conversation, anyway. And some of the concepts they talk about are alluded to again later. For example, they talk about how you have to make good out of something bad because "there's nothing else to make it out of," and later after Justin describes his and Brian's relationship as one "built entirely out of tragedies," Brian says, "Got to make it out of something." Then, when they reunite at the end, Justin seems to have grasped this kind of idea when he says, "It shouldn't have mattered to me what the reason was that we were able to be that close again," which is related to Debbie saying that even if their relationship started out with a lot of suffering it doesn't make it a bad thing that they met.
Random Facts About This Fic
- I was actually eating tuna and macaroni once while I was working on the chapter with Brian and Debbie getting high. In my family, tuna and macaroni together is a favorite food and kind of an inside joke because the first time my mom and dad had dinner together as a date he made her that and called it "Al's surprise" as if he made up the recipe himself (somehow she was still impressed enough to marry him, LOL). So my family always calls it Al's surprise, and needless to say I was extremely amused to find out in episode 311 that Brian's favorite dish that Debbie makes is a more authentically Italian version of this.
- I took the name Riven (Justin's neighbor) from the character Gale plays in Wake, Kyle Riven. I took the names Black and Morrison (the two "new guys" mentioned at the beginning of Part 3) from the two main characters in Particles of Truth, Morrison Wiley (played by Gale) and Lilli Black. Yeah, just for fun, and for my own amusement if anybody actually noticed.
Gale Harold as Morrison and Jennifer Elster
as Lilli in Particles of Truth
- Coming up with a title for this story was quite a pain. I was getting worried when I couldn't come up with anything I liked, because not even having a title for a story is often a sign you don't "have your shit together" and know what it's really about. I actually went around looking for song lyrics that seemed relevant to the fic from which I could get a title, and did find one with nice lyrics to associate with this story, "Sunny Road" by Emiliana Torrini. But you just don't have the word "sunny" in the title of a deathfic, and although the song makes a good description of the point B/J have come to in their relationship, it doesn't have anything to do with the theme of loss. I even went looking for poems I could use, which was how I found the e.e. cummings one and fell in love with it. Then after I took a break from looking and was updating my LJ, "Precious" just kind of came to me, and I didn't like it much as first (for some reason "precious" is just a word I don't like) but I've since made friends with this title a little.
- The story Justin tells Brian about what Molly did the day his family was at the beach is actually something I did when I was little. It was kind of creepy because as I was writing out some notes for things that I was going to have to write in later chapters, I heard my sister randomly talking about this day with my mom and looked up and said, "I was just thinking about that. What the hell." We're twins so maybe we have some unconscious telepathy thing. :)
- Brian's line about how "life isn't for sissies" was inspired by an interview I read with the producers of Brokeback Mountain who said that in their own words, that was the message of the film. Those words kind of stuck with me because they were such a simple way of describing the tough lesson of that movie: happiness doesn't just happen to people, it takes balls to bravely go after what you want and be content. I thought that was definitely a message that could be related to this story.
The "Precious" Soundtrack EP
1. Sister Ray - The Velvet Underground
"...he and Luke dancing around his tiny apartment to the Velvet Underground or something like that blasting from a cheap stereo..." - Part 2
The Velvet Underground were the first band I thought of for Brian to be able to imagine Justin and Luke listening to in his apartment because I read an interview with Randy in which he mentioned a VU album was the last CD he bought. I don't know that Justin and Randy would listen to the same music, but Luke would definitely like something all art phag like that. Haha.
2. So What - Miles Davis
"...like one afternoon when they were just hanging around with Miles Davis playing on the stereo cooking omelettes..." - Part 5
3. Mohammed - The Dandy Warhols
"I mean...what did you put on there? Beck. The Dandy Warhols. Even...what the fuck? Joy Division? You’re too young to know who Joy Division were." - Brian, Part 8
4. Where It's At - Beck
5. Komakino - Joy Division
I figure if Brian liked the Cure ("You were going to be the next Robert Smith") in his high school days he could have dug other depressed post-punk bands like Joy Division. However, my kind of unintentional joke in having him tell Justin he's too young to know of them is that technically he is, too, unless he was listening to a bunch of rock music by age 10. Although they are often associated with 80's music, Joy Division actually started in the late 70's and the singer killed himself in 1980. The remaining members had a lot of succes in the 80's reformed as New Order (whose song "True Faith" you have heard a remix of at the end of episode 314).
6. The Great Gig in the Sky - Pink Floyd
"I took him to a Pink Floyd light show at the Carnegie-Mellon planetarium last night. He got a little freaked out during 'The Great Gig In the Sky.'" - Brian, Part 5
My own college does a Dark Side of the Moon light show at their planetarium annually. I'm not actually a huge Pink Floyd fan (their Doors show is more for me), but they are a little fun to see even w/o drugs. Haha.
7. Sunny Road - Emiliana Torrini
You know that night / I said I had to go
You said you'd meet me / On the sunny road
This time as one / We'll find which way to go
Now come and meet me / On the sunny road
Parts of the Fic I'm the Least Satisfied With
Now that I look back on the way this story began, I don't like that I didn't explain more of Brian's motivations for suddenly going from hot to cold and putting all this distance between him and Justin again. It's important to know that he has known about Luke for quite a while, but I don't think that's made very clear. Their age difference is, at this point, more of a problem than it's ever been before, because to Brian, New York is just another L.A. (which Justin admitted he didn't even want to leave). The way he sees it, Justin is moving on to bigger and better things at this point in his life and if Brian holds onto him he will just be dragging him behind. He also knows he's probably meeting all kinds of interesting, younger people out there and cannot imagine why Justin would choose to stay with him when there are a thousand Lukes in New York. These thoughts are sort of touched on in his conversation with Michael at the beginning of Part 2, but it still doesn't make sense why he would just suddenly decide this.
Of course, there is the funny kind of irony that Luke already has a boyfriend and doesn't matter at all, but like Debbie says, that doesn't make much difference because what he's afraid of is what Luke represents: the whole age dilemma. Originally I was going to focus a lot more on the age thing and that's how the CD got in there; Brian realizing they actually listen to a lot of the same music from the same generations is a simple way of him realizing that kind of difference between them doesn't matter. That was also partially the reason the memory of him and Justin hanging out at the loft all day and doing stuff like catching popcorn in their mouths was written; he imagines Justin and Luke "having fun the way two people can only if they are both still young," but here is an example of how that obviously isn't an issue with them. But since this doesn't become much of a prominent issue as they are figuring out if they can actually be together or not, I think the mix CD thing just seems randomly thrown in there by the time its purpose in the story is revealed at the end.
Of all the chapters, I am the least happy with Part 7. I think it really drags at the beginning (as I was writing it I thought of everything that happens as "slowly building up to the climax" but when I read over it afterwards I thought No, this is just very dry and unstimulating and...drags but at that point cutting anything out would mess up the whole picture). I expected people to be disappointed and maybe a little confused, because I didn't know if people would get why Justin is kind of avoiding Brian for a while. I was a little bummed that I felt like I hadn't been able to make Part 7 as good as it should have been since that is the most important part and has the climax of the story, but at least the end of it where everything happens seemed to work for everyone.
Parts of the Fic I'm the Most Satisfied With
It's hard to say why, but these are the passages in the story that are my personal favorites:
- After Brian goes up the stairs and reaches the hall on the top floor, the first door he comes to is open, and when he glances inside his stomach feels like it’s falling to the floor for a second and he stops walking as if momentarily paralyzed....But all these things are only the past, not at all what she would have become: advanced microbiology, diamond studs from some nice boyfriend for Valentine’s Day in place of the tacky necklaces, black and white photography of locations in France accompanying the movie posters on the walls. Maybe. They will never know.
- For the first time in what feels like forever, Justin can feel a small smile creeping onto his face as he watches Brian carrying Gus. He forgot how beautiful it was to see them together. He has often wondered if he ever would have fallen so hopelessly in love with Brian if Gus hadn't happened to be born that night they met....And maybe he needed someone to help him realize that himself, tell him the things about himself he was unable to see like “You’re not your father. You love your son.”
- The muted television brings a memory into Brian’s head, for once one that doesn’t have tears or blood. There was one day during the second time he and Justin were living together that they both had absolutely nothing to do, so they slept in until noon and then stayed inside for the entire day until the sun went down.....At one point Justin made a bowl of popcorn and they started trying to throw pieces of popcorn at each other and catch them in their mouths, and Brian didn’t care at all that they were making a mess.
(I just love when you have days like this that just feel perfect and like nothing can bother you, and sharing them with someone you love like a best friend is so...special. Hehe. I know, I'm being a big cheeseball!)
- Because a few years ago it was them in this same bed and it was still very new instead of so familiar, and Brian was still saying "I don't believe in that shit" but already he said different things here with him, his fingers creeping in between Justin's knuckles where his hand grasped the sheets and then slowly interlacing their fingers together as easily as water seeps into cracks, some tongueless voice deep inside his dark and hidden places that even he himself did not hear whispering I love you as naturally and uncontrollably as came the next thrust, another breath.
- Brian thinks then about how a long time ago around the time he and Justin made up the rules of their arrangement, he started to realize how having sex with him was never much of a surprise anymore because they had done it so many times, but he didn’t really mind this as much as he would have expected. He usually thinks it keeps things interesting when he can’t always expect what someone is going to be like in bed. Sometimes it’s like a guessing game, spotting somebody in a crowd when on the hunt and trying to tell, Top or bottom? Wild and loud or more subdued? Dark, cigarette-smoker scent or sweet and soapy-smelling? ....Justin was with Ethan for a while, but Brian has only ever known this with one person in his life.
The whole conversations I think were done the best were the one with Brian and Lindsay in the park (writing them talking together somehow feels especially natural because they are just so close) and the confrontation between Brian and Craig at the funeral reception. I was so worried about how the hell I was going to make the friction between those two kind of blow up at the reception. I had set everything up for something to happen between them, because honestly I felt like I needed to have something like that for there to be some conflict and something more exciting to happen in the middle of the story, but wasn't sure how it was going to play out. It ended up working out more easily than I expected. I randomly had one of us Justin's relatives come up and meet Brian and then realized Hey, she could cause the problem later! Yay!
I think that considering how little of it I had planned out what I started it, the story is pretty well focused and has a good sense of direction; it doesn't just feel like something that's being made up as I go along. Strangely, I don't count this among what I think is the most well-done fan fiction I've ever done, but I still kind of count it among one of my favorites because it's just been a lot of fun doing it. It is the first fic I have posted as an active work-in-progress and actually had people begging me to update soon every time I post a new chapter, and it's kind of exciting working under that kind of pressure. It might have turned out better if I had not been in such a hurry at some points, but if I had not kept applying myself to doing it I might have lost interest in it and abandoned it to work on something else for a while, and maybe never even have ended up finishing it, which has happened a lot with other long writing projects I've started. So I'm kind of proud of it as an accomplishment just because I started a 40,000-word story and continually worked on it for a couple months until it was finished.
1. Just like the original show, this fanfic has a lot of references to literature and films, so here I'll explain all these references (cause I'm sure lots of people aren't actually familiar with all of them) and why I chose them for the characters to refer to in this kind of story.
2. I like to write a lot in the same way some people can never stop talking, which I'm afraid I subject a lot of people to in my very long-ass comments or replies to comments.
3. I always feel like I learn a thing or two from writing about my writing.
4. I'm a compulsive music-sharer (see the third-to-last feature).
You guys are going to think I'm crazy when you see how much crap is in this post, and if anyone actually reads all of this I'll probably drop dead with shock. I advise everyone to just take any of the song downloads they want because I love you all and then run away as fast as you can.
The Making Writing of "Precious"
This is your cool-looking (or not) animated DVD menu...................select a feature to play it.......................yeah, I'm having too much fun with this.......................
This is what I do in Biology class when I'm supposed to be taking notes :). Look how awful my handwriting is.
The Symbolism of the Scarf: How the idea started
There is obviously already a lot of meaning attached to the silk scarf in the way it is used in the show. In this story I kind of expanded on what I took it to represent and added some of own significance to it as well. What exactly CowLip were thinking themselves when having this same item appear repeatedly in very important scenes is pretty much open to interpretation, but I took my own interpretation of what the scarf represents and intended to kind of make it my own in the way I use it as a symbol in this fanfic.
This whole story started with the idea for the prologue, which I wrote out not knowing exactly where it was going to go, and figuring if I didn't come up with a good place to take the story the prologue could work on its own as just a ficlet, even if a kind of depressing one. This story is essentially about the two different ways people can deal with loss (or almost losing somebody). Obviously there's a thousand different ways different people deal with these things, but on the whole people can either react to it by taking it as a lesson to not take what they have for granted, or completely cutting themselves off from the things that have the potential to hurt them. The latter can happen in an unconscious way like when people have post-traumatic stress disorder as Justin did, or in a more simple way like when people say "love sucks" after they go through a bad break-up. We've seen Brian react to situations like this in both ways throughout the show, but of course his most natural inclination is what he learned from needing love from his parents but never getting it: to not let himself be vulnerable to be hurt by love, whether it's because of death or just rejection. This whole theme is set up in the prologue with all the introspection describing the way Brian distances himself from people ("puts a pane of glass in between them" as it says) because of the possibility of losing them.
So, with that done, I wondered if I could develop this idea into any kind of a story. Even though I didn't want to touch doing a deathfic because it seems most deathfics are just an excuse for a hurt/comfort type thing where there's really no point in killing off a character except to have that angst factor, it seemed pretty clear I needed to kill somebody and have the story be about how Brian reacts to another harsh reminder of mortality this time.
Everything goes back to the scarf, because in the prologue it is described that he was wearing it after Justin got hurt because he could not "let himself forget and could not stop punishing himself," meaning the scarf is his reminder of what happens when he lets himself become vulnerable to getting hurt that way or actually does something to show love to somebody else and make them happy ("I told you, making other people happy can be hazardous to your health" as he says to Michael in 201). At this point, the scarf signifies the fears that have caused him to react negatively to almost losing somebody and distance himself from Justin. Of course, later on he stops doing this and he and Justin actually become closer because of what happened, but Brian still has this negative inclination to "Run from love instead of to it" as Debbie puts it, which is why I decided he still has that scarf, just hidden away in a drawer.
Brian gets a lot of guidance and insight from his friends as he is helping Justin deal with what happened to Molly, and throughout the story he is learning to react in a different way to tragedies like this than he is inclined to. In the last paragraph, the scarf is brought up again as being a "reminder of something," something representing a lesson he learned from a horrible experience that he has internalized so strongly he won't forget it. But it is in a more optimistic way than before because the possibility of loss is instead now reinforcing the idea that he can't take life for granted. And there you have it, happy Brian, not quite happy but working on it Justin, basically happy ending. (Whew, end of long rambling.)
Breakfast at Tiffany's: How Brian is like Holly Golightly
When Brian and Justin are watching Breakfast at Tiffany's at the loft, Justin remarks that Audrey Hepburn's character, Holly Golightly, is kind of like Brian. Holly is a bit of a phony with not much of a grip on reality. She's a very elusive character with a lot of facades who will not let anyone possess her, even though she falls in love with her neighbor, Paul. At the end of the movie, Holly is about to leave town and Paul is trying to convince her to stay, and there's a very powerful scene in which they say this:
PAUL: Holly, I'm in love with you. You belong to me.
HOLLY: No. I don't belong to anyone...
PAUL: You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
Some of the ideas expressed in this scene are what Justin is refering to after Brian says, "If you love something you got to let it go," and he responds, "Weren't you paying attention to the movie last night? Some people want to belong to each other." These ideas are kind of echoed again in parts like when Jennifer says, "You let him go even though you wanted to keep him" and Brian tells Justin, "You are always going to belong to me."
Star Wars: Why Michael's Boba Fett reference is actually not correct
When Michael and Brian are talking about "the suicidal pit of insanity people call love," Michael says, "You never threw yourself in before. You were unwillingly pulled into it screaming like Boba Fett getting dragged into the Sarlacc." I wrote this because I thought it was a funny image, but afterwards remembered this isn't actually how Boba Fett dies in Return of the Jedi; Lando was very close to getting dragged in and that was what I was thinking of, but Boba Fett just gets knocked over and falls in with a dramatic Wilhelm scream. I'm a bad Star Wars dork :( and Michael should know better.
The Sarlacc pit from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Why Steph says the movie adaptation sucks
Brian is only watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof so I'd have a way for Justin to bring up Luke's boyfriend. But incidentally, the play is by a gay writer and involves a married couple who are having problems maybe or maybe not because the husband may or may not be gay. I have not seen the film with Elizabeth Taylor, but I read the play in a Drama class, the teacher of which was gay and was actually the first person from whom I heard the quote "Who I fuck is none of your business unless I'm fucking you" before I had even seen any of QaF. And he basically described to my class how they took all of the homosexual subtext out of it because it was the 50's and all. But without that there are certain aspects of the story that just wouldn't make much sense. :/
Angels In America: What do Louis/Prior have to do with Brian/Justin?
Tony Kushner's "gay fantasia on national themes," Angels In America, is an epic play about the AIDS crisis in the 80's that focuses on several homosexual characters, including Louis (the one Steph played), and his boyfriend Prior. Louis's abandonment of Prior after he finds out he's going to die kind of reminds me of Brian's refusal to go see Justin at the beginning of season 2, which is not out of not caring for him but quite the opposite. Hence why Justin telling Brian about this part of the story makes him a little uncomfortable.
Justin Kirk as Prior and Ben Shenkman as Louis in the
HBO mini-series production of Angels In America
The Scarlet Letter: Why Justin relates it to the scarf
In The Scarlet Letter, a woman who has a child while she is living away from her husband is punished by having to always wear a red letter A for adultery. Ironically, she wears the letter proudly, while the father of the child suffers from tremendous guilt for not having to pay for what he did and punishes himself in many ways, including cutting a letter A into his chest where nobody can see it. I've always seen Brian wearing the scarf all the time after Justin got hurt as his way of kind of punishing himself, so it kind of reminds me of the kind of guilt a scarlet letter represents. This is certainly a kind of unromantic way to explain why he was wearing something with Justin's blood on it all the time, and lots of people might not see it that way. But I personally think that aspect of his behavior in the beginning of season 2 is much more sad than touching and shows how much of a wreck he was underneath his deceptively careless facade.
"Maggie and Milly and Molly and May": Not chosen only because it has the name Molly (but maybe mostly LOL)
I am not a big fan of poetry, to be honest, because I am usually very bad at figuring out what the hell it's about and then I feel stupid (maybe I'm just too lazy to). e.e. cummings, however, I like even if I can't always understand it because his use of words is just pretty in itself even if it's just pretty nonsense to me. "Maggie and Milly and Molly and May" is an unusually simple one for him, though, and I think it's just a poem about self-discovery. The last part ("for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it's always ourselves we find in the sea") makes me think it's about self-discovery through loss, especially since the sea is often a symbol for death in literature.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Not that anybody cares about Luke, but this is who who he looks like
It is mentioned in Part 2 that Justin describes Luke as looking like the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. This is he:
Joseph G. in Mysterious Skin
All the King's Men: Its themes and this story's may really be like apples and oranges
Robert Penn Warren's classic All the King's Men was a little long and painful to work my way through in my junior year of high school but it ended up becoming one of my favorite books. The philosophical ideas it presents about good and evil are something I can just identify with a lot. One of the last paragraphs of the book explains a point of view about how man is born in sin because if humans were made perfect then they would just be an extension of God rather than a separate creation (because only God can be perfect), and therefore the creation of sin is the greatest demonstration of God's power. Excuse me for getting into all this religious shit here, but you can take this to mean that the only perfect creation is one that is not all good and perfect. After all, if all of life was a perfect paradise in which there was never any suffering, would we ever truly feel happiness? Can good even exist without bad?
Are these themes really applicable to what's happening in "Precious"? Debbie, as she impossibly and unrealistically remembers little details about the literature she read as a teenager, thinks so, but I can't say if Robert Penn Warren would have agreed. His brilliant metaphor of everything being made of dirt gave me something interesting to have in the pot-and-macaroni conversation, anyway. And some of the concepts they talk about are alluded to again later. For example, they talk about how you have to make good out of something bad because "there's nothing else to make it out of," and later after Justin describes his and Brian's relationship as one "built entirely out of tragedies," Brian says, "Got to make it out of something." Then, when they reunite at the end, Justin seems to have grasped this kind of idea when he says, "It shouldn't have mattered to me what the reason was that we were able to be that close again," which is related to Debbie saying that even if their relationship started out with a lot of suffering it doesn't make it a bad thing that they met.
Random Facts About This Fic
- I was actually eating tuna and macaroni once while I was working on the chapter with Brian and Debbie getting high. In my family, tuna and macaroni together is a favorite food and kind of an inside joke because the first time my mom and dad had dinner together as a date he made her that and called it "Al's surprise" as if he made up the recipe himself (somehow she was still impressed enough to marry him, LOL). So my family always calls it Al's surprise, and needless to say I was extremely amused to find out in episode 311 that Brian's favorite dish that Debbie makes is a more authentically Italian version of this.
- I took the name Riven (Justin's neighbor) from the character Gale plays in Wake, Kyle Riven. I took the names Black and Morrison (the two "new guys" mentioned at the beginning of Part 3) from the two main characters in Particles of Truth, Morrison Wiley (played by Gale) and Lilli Black. Yeah, just for fun, and for my own amusement if anybody actually noticed.
Gale Harold as Morrison and Jennifer Elster
as Lilli in Particles of Truth
- Coming up with a title for this story was quite a pain. I was getting worried when I couldn't come up with anything I liked, because not even having a title for a story is often a sign you don't "have your shit together" and know what it's really about. I actually went around looking for song lyrics that seemed relevant to the fic from which I could get a title, and did find one with nice lyrics to associate with this story, "Sunny Road" by Emiliana Torrini. But you just don't have the word "sunny" in the title of a deathfic, and although the song makes a good description of the point B/J have come to in their relationship, it doesn't have anything to do with the theme of loss. I even went looking for poems I could use, which was how I found the e.e. cummings one and fell in love with it. Then after I took a break from looking and was updating my LJ, "Precious" just kind of came to me, and I didn't like it much as first (for some reason "precious" is just a word I don't like) but I've since made friends with this title a little.
- The story Justin tells Brian about what Molly did the day his family was at the beach is actually something I did when I was little. It was kind of creepy because as I was writing out some notes for things that I was going to have to write in later chapters, I heard my sister randomly talking about this day with my mom and looked up and said, "I was just thinking about that. What the hell." We're twins so maybe we have some unconscious telepathy thing. :)
- Brian's line about how "life isn't for sissies" was inspired by an interview I read with the producers of Brokeback Mountain who said that in their own words, that was the message of the film. Those words kind of stuck with me because they were such a simple way of describing the tough lesson of that movie: happiness doesn't just happen to people, it takes balls to bravely go after what you want and be content. I thought that was definitely a message that could be related to this story.
The "Precious" Soundtrack EP
1. Sister Ray - The Velvet Underground
"...he and Luke dancing around his tiny apartment to the Velvet Underground or something like that blasting from a cheap stereo..." - Part 2
The Velvet Underground were the first band I thought of for Brian to be able to imagine Justin and Luke listening to in his apartment because I read an interview with Randy in which he mentioned a VU album was the last CD he bought. I don't know that Justin and Randy would listen to the same music, but Luke would definitely like something all art phag like that. Haha.
2. So What - Miles Davis
"...like one afternoon when they were just hanging around with Miles Davis playing on the stereo cooking omelettes..." - Part 5
3. Mohammed - The Dandy Warhols
"I mean...what did you put on there? Beck. The Dandy Warhols. Even...what the fuck? Joy Division? You’re too young to know who Joy Division were." - Brian, Part 8
4. Where It's At - Beck
5. Komakino - Joy Division
I figure if Brian liked the Cure ("You were going to be the next Robert Smith") in his high school days he could have dug other depressed post-punk bands like Joy Division. However, my kind of unintentional joke in having him tell Justin he's too young to know of them is that technically he is, too, unless he was listening to a bunch of rock music by age 10. Although they are often associated with 80's music, Joy Division actually started in the late 70's and the singer killed himself in 1980. The remaining members had a lot of succes in the 80's reformed as New Order (whose song "True Faith" you have heard a remix of at the end of episode 314).
6. The Great Gig in the Sky - Pink Floyd
"I took him to a Pink Floyd light show at the Carnegie-Mellon planetarium last night. He got a little freaked out during 'The Great Gig In the Sky.'" - Brian, Part 5
My own college does a Dark Side of the Moon light show at their planetarium annually. I'm not actually a huge Pink Floyd fan (their Doors show is more for me), but they are a little fun to see even w/o drugs. Haha.
7. Sunny Road - Emiliana Torrini
You know that night / I said I had to go
You said you'd meet me / On the sunny road
This time as one / We'll find which way to go
Now come and meet me / On the sunny road
Parts of the Fic I'm the Least Satisfied With
Now that I look back on the way this story began, I don't like that I didn't explain more of Brian's motivations for suddenly going from hot to cold and putting all this distance between him and Justin again. It's important to know that he has known about Luke for quite a while, but I don't think that's made very clear. Their age difference is, at this point, more of a problem than it's ever been before, because to Brian, New York is just another L.A. (which Justin admitted he didn't even want to leave). The way he sees it, Justin is moving on to bigger and better things at this point in his life and if Brian holds onto him he will just be dragging him behind. He also knows he's probably meeting all kinds of interesting, younger people out there and cannot imagine why Justin would choose to stay with him when there are a thousand Lukes in New York. These thoughts are sort of touched on in his conversation with Michael at the beginning of Part 2, but it still doesn't make sense why he would just suddenly decide this.
Of course, there is the funny kind of irony that Luke already has a boyfriend and doesn't matter at all, but like Debbie says, that doesn't make much difference because what he's afraid of is what Luke represents: the whole age dilemma. Originally I was going to focus a lot more on the age thing and that's how the CD got in there; Brian realizing they actually listen to a lot of the same music from the same generations is a simple way of him realizing that kind of difference between them doesn't matter. That was also partially the reason the memory of him and Justin hanging out at the loft all day and doing stuff like catching popcorn in their mouths was written; he imagines Justin and Luke "having fun the way two people can only if they are both still young," but here is an example of how that obviously isn't an issue with them. But since this doesn't become much of a prominent issue as they are figuring out if they can actually be together or not, I think the mix CD thing just seems randomly thrown in there by the time its purpose in the story is revealed at the end.
Of all the chapters, I am the least happy with Part 7. I think it really drags at the beginning (as I was writing it I thought of everything that happens as "slowly building up to the climax" but when I read over it afterwards I thought No, this is just very dry and unstimulating and...drags but at that point cutting anything out would mess up the whole picture). I expected people to be disappointed and maybe a little confused, because I didn't know if people would get why Justin is kind of avoiding Brian for a while. I was a little bummed that I felt like I hadn't been able to make Part 7 as good as it should have been since that is the most important part and has the climax of the story, but at least the end of it where everything happens seemed to work for everyone.
Parts of the Fic I'm the Most Satisfied With
It's hard to say why, but these are the passages in the story that are my personal favorites:
- After Brian goes up the stairs and reaches the hall on the top floor, the first door he comes to is open, and when he glances inside his stomach feels like it’s falling to the floor for a second and he stops walking as if momentarily paralyzed....But all these things are only the past, not at all what she would have become: advanced microbiology, diamond studs from some nice boyfriend for Valentine’s Day in place of the tacky necklaces, black and white photography of locations in France accompanying the movie posters on the walls. Maybe. They will never know.
- For the first time in what feels like forever, Justin can feel a small smile creeping onto his face as he watches Brian carrying Gus. He forgot how beautiful it was to see them together. He has often wondered if he ever would have fallen so hopelessly in love with Brian if Gus hadn't happened to be born that night they met....And maybe he needed someone to help him realize that himself, tell him the things about himself he was unable to see like “You’re not your father. You love your son.”
- The muted television brings a memory into Brian’s head, for once one that doesn’t have tears or blood. There was one day during the second time he and Justin were living together that they both had absolutely nothing to do, so they slept in until noon and then stayed inside for the entire day until the sun went down.....At one point Justin made a bowl of popcorn and they started trying to throw pieces of popcorn at each other and catch them in their mouths, and Brian didn’t care at all that they were making a mess.
(I just love when you have days like this that just feel perfect and like nothing can bother you, and sharing them with someone you love like a best friend is so...special. Hehe. I know, I'm being a big cheeseball!)
- Because a few years ago it was them in this same bed and it was still very new instead of so familiar, and Brian was still saying "I don't believe in that shit" but already he said different things here with him, his fingers creeping in between Justin's knuckles where his hand grasped the sheets and then slowly interlacing their fingers together as easily as water seeps into cracks, some tongueless voice deep inside his dark and hidden places that even he himself did not hear whispering I love you as naturally and uncontrollably as came the next thrust, another breath.
- Brian thinks then about how a long time ago around the time he and Justin made up the rules of their arrangement, he started to realize how having sex with him was never much of a surprise anymore because they had done it so many times, but he didn’t really mind this as much as he would have expected. He usually thinks it keeps things interesting when he can’t always expect what someone is going to be like in bed. Sometimes it’s like a guessing game, spotting somebody in a crowd when on the hunt and trying to tell, Top or bottom? Wild and loud or more subdued? Dark, cigarette-smoker scent or sweet and soapy-smelling? ....Justin was with Ethan for a while, but Brian has only ever known this with one person in his life.
The whole conversations I think were done the best were the one with Brian and Lindsay in the park (writing them talking together somehow feels especially natural because they are just so close) and the confrontation between Brian and Craig at the funeral reception. I was so worried about how the hell I was going to make the friction between those two kind of blow up at the reception. I had set everything up for something to happen between them, because honestly I felt like I needed to have something like that for there to be some conflict and something more exciting to happen in the middle of the story, but wasn't sure how it was going to play out. It ended up working out more easily than I expected. I randomly had one of us Justin's relatives come up and meet Brian and then realized Hey, she could cause the problem later! Yay!
I think that considering how little of it I had planned out what I started it, the story is pretty well focused and has a good sense of direction; it doesn't just feel like something that's being made up as I go along. Strangely, I don't count this among what I think is the most well-done fan fiction I've ever done, but I still kind of count it among one of my favorites because it's just been a lot of fun doing it. It is the first fic I have posted as an active work-in-progress and actually had people begging me to update soon every time I post a new chapter, and it's kind of exciting working under that kind of pressure. It might have turned out better if I had not been in such a hurry at some points, but if I had not kept applying myself to doing it I might have lost interest in it and abandoned it to work on something else for a while, and maybe never even have ended up finishing it, which has happened a lot with other long writing projects I've started. So I'm kind of proud of it as an accomplishment just because I started a 40,000-word story and continually worked on it for a couple months until it was finished.