I've been considering celebrating my birthday for the first time in like 7 years because maybe it'll feel less bad when i don't minimise it away but my anxiety is really giving me great reasons to not do it
When Anakin can't sleep - which is most of the time - he tunes in to the local college radio station, just grateful to have someone else who sounds like they're awake at the same time he is.
His favorite quickly becomes Ben Kenobi, broadcasting his show Guiding Light from the station just a few miles away every Tuesday and Thursday from two to five a.m. Ben's musical tastes are...eclectic, to say the least, but he's funny and knowledgeable and Anakin looks forwarding to listening to him every week.
...and sure, okay, maybe Anakin's got a little bit of a crush on the guy. But it's not like that's ever going to go anywhere. Anakin is busy with his job, and his kids, and Ben is just a voice on the radio. They've never crossed paths. They're never going to cross paths.
That is, at least, until one cold November morning when Ben asks anyone out there who's listening to call into the station.
Anakin can't dial the phone fast enough.
This fic's first fan, way back in 2023 when I first started talking about writing radio DJ Obi-Wan, was @kingdomvel, and thank you, friend, because I know this is late but it likely wouldn't have (ever!) happened without you and your excitement for this concept.
Speaking of starting fics three years ago and not finishing them until now, I'm also grateful to @tideswept and the Order of Overdue Obikin for giving me a community and a deadline to actually sit down and write, and, as always, for @underacalicosky, @palfriendpatine66, and @somethingsteff.
For your help with the section in chapter four where Anakin talks about his favorite video game soundtracks, thank you to @aigoos, @lilredghost, @renlyslittlerose, and @kidrest!
I can't shout out any of them on Tumblr, but my inspiration for this fic took a lot of cues from Wolfman Jack (both the real person and the character of himself he played in American Graffiti), Obi-Wan in Lego Star Wars: Summer Vacation, DJ Matt Pinfield, and Nick Offerman, whose book Good Clean Fun really helped me out when I decided it was a good idea to make Anakin a woodworker despite the fact that I know nothing about woodworking.
Also my dad, who is the only person I know who listens to Mott the Hoople.
-Anakin mentions a song he thinks is called "I Know This Much Is True" by Salacious Crumb, which he gets wrong on all counts: it's "True" by Spandau Ballet
-the first song Anakin hears on Obi-Wan's show (all thirty minutes of it!) is Karn Evil No. 9 by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
-Like Anakin, the first time I heard Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie (on my local public radio station, no less!) it took my breath away. I had to pull over to the side of the road and just sit there until it finished.
-The comedy bit about self-defense against different kids of fruit is a Monty Python sketch, which was originally released on a record album but later used on their TV show
-The audiobook Obi-Wan plays on-air is, in a nod to Ewan McGregor's own filmography, A Gentleman in Moscow (I like to think that Obi-Wan got his copy from the library!)
-Rhapsody in Blue on a banjo is a real thing (and a ton of fun)
-The book Obi-Wan is so into that he can't stop reading long enough to do his radio show is one of my favorites, The Rook by Daniel O'Malley. I highly recommend it and if anyone has read it and wants to talk about it, hit me up!
-and, finally, the entire hour-long broadcast of The War of the Worlds from October 30, 1938
I know I mentioned it earlier in this post, but my visual cues for this chapter (you'll know it when you see it, haha) were:
-the Bruce Springsteen song Obi-Wan quotes from is 'Highway Patrolman'
-Anakin never gets to hear the answer, but the CTA in question is the Chicago Transit Authority, which after their first album (and a few legal accusations, considering there is a very real Chicago Transit Authority that is not a band but the organization that handles buses and trains in the city of Chicago) got shortened to the much more famous band name Chicago (who went on to record, at current count, 37 albums, but I give you permission to stop after Chicago VII)
-In A Gadda Da Vida, all seventeen minutes of it ;)
trying to create a fanart gallery wall for my apartment. i love digital paintings that emulate a more traditional look through visible brush strokes and simplified details (but with a more vibrant colour scheme). i was also inspired by this amazing oil painting of mon by arthur gain—which i saw go on sale but couldn’t afford 🤠—so although i’m nowhere near that skilled, this was the best thing i could do!
i know there’s a lot of the sentiment of “why would they send anakin on his first solo mission with a hot senator who he’s clearly drooling over, what did the jedi expect to happen” which is true and also funny, but I do think that was probably at least somewhat intentional?
anakin is being tested, it’s what the jedi do in evaluating whether someone is ready for knighthood. it’s not an impossible test, completely beyond anakin’s expected skill and maturity level, and I don’t think it’s being set up to fail so much as putting him in a situation that WILL test his ability to do the job a jedi needs to be able to do.
in the jedi apprentice books, qui-gon thinks about how he thought xanatos was ready to be knighted but yoda still had doubts. for his final mission as a padawan, xanatos and qui-gon were sent to xanatos’ home planet, where his family was wealthy and had a lot of power. and xanatos fails. he shows his true colors and when it comes down to it he chooses to align with his family, and the power that relationship can offer him, over the jedi.
from the Jedi’s perspective, if a prospective knight was only ever put into situations that wouldn’t implicate any of their weaknesses, they would never be tested. and jedi knights wield a lot of power, that’s why you have to show you can handle it before you’re knighted. you can think that’s wise or manipulative or good or bad or whatever but it’s not illogical and it’s not only something that applies to anakin
i don't know when i'm gonna get over "because of obi-wan?" girl the one who keeps bringing up that sexy older man for the past several years is you !!! lock the fuck IN anakin!!
crazy how i find myself thinking i've got a handle on it all finally and then i see the ways that other people tangle their lives together so easily and live so easily together with their friends and i feel like that girl at the top of the stairs painting by norman rockwell
in more pleasant news: this year is seeing the biggest humpback migration in Australian history, bigger than it was PRE whaling. That's right, there are more humpbacks migrating off the coast of Australia than there were BEFORE industrial whaling started.
A huge, fat W for environmentalists and Greenies. what an achievement
Hi! Yeah, there doesn’t seem to be any one style of meditation, we see both of these in the movies, TV shows, and comics.
Obi-Wan and the other younglings in class usually seems to prefer sitting for their meditation:
In general it seems to be Obi-Wan’s method as an adult as well:
Meanwhile, Kanan and Cal Kestis often prefer to kneel to meditate:
But sometimes we’ve seen him sit regularly:
Yoda seems to prefer sitting as well:
The younglings in the Kanan comic sit during their meditation sessions as well:
But we’ve also seen the Jedi Council meditate together and they do it standing/kneeling on one knee:
There does seem to be battle meditation styles as well:
There’s also a softer kind of moving meditation, as well as sensory deprivation meditation–also, Qui-Gon goes to meditate in the gardens, so that’s a possibility as well:
Or even just lay down to meditate:
(From Master and Apprentice)
Ultimately, it seems to be whatever works for each individual, there’s really no standard. We’re most often shown the sitting version, so that’s probably what most Jedi favor/find the most useful, but there’s a multitude of other ways if that’s not working.
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