Date: April 20, 2010 09:32 am Title: Chapter 1
I think the phrase "hurts so good" might just be applicable here. Amazingly well written angst, painful and uncomfortable, but I just couldn't turn away from it. This feels very honest - exactly what they day after could have looked like.
If you ever felt inclined to write another Office fic, I would be a very happy reader. :)
10 [Report This]Date: February 28, 2010 09:34 am Title: Chapter 1
I have to say, this has probably become my favourite story on this site (and there are some great stories here). I've read it at least five times since you posted it and finally decided to review. It describes perfectly what the aftermath of Casino Night could have been and each and every character sounds spot on.
I can't wait for your next story.
10 [Report This]Date: February 14, 2010 10:52 pm Title: Chapter 1
Wow. This was truly amazing. So beautiful and so full of emotion. I loved it! Best thing I've read in a while. I'm looking forward to reading more from you.
Author's Response: Thank you so much! :) I just started a new story yesterday, so hopefully I'll have something new out soon!
Date: February 14, 2010 06:47 pm Title: Chapter 1
Perfection! Please write another--you've got talent for this!
Author's Response: Thank you! Glad you liked it, and I just started a new one yesterday. :)
10 [Report This]Date: February 12, 2010 06:30 pm Title: Chapter 1
I am so glad I stopped by MTT tonight. This is amazing. It is raw and powerful and tense and real- almost certainly the best treatment of the time before Jim left that I've read, and heaven knows I've read a lot. The voices are all completely in tune, the characterizations are spot on, and your prose sings. Simply beautiful.
Author's Response: Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to comment. I'm so pleased you enjoyed the story and really appreciate your kind words. :)
Date: February 11, 2010 05:24 pm Title: Chapter 1
This is a fantastic piece of writing. You portrayed the pain and heartache of the CN aftermath perfectly. Pam's realization at the end was so tragic.
Thank you for sharing this incredible story.
Author's Response: Thank you! I'm so pleased you enjoyed it, especially that last little coda. Took me forever to think of how to bring it to an end! Thanks so much for reading, much appreciated. :)
Date: February 11, 2010 03:13 am Title: Chapter 1
That was the best thing I've read on here in a very long time. Thank you!
Author's Response: Wow. Thank you so much! :)
Date: February 10, 2010 08:52 pm Title: Chapter 1
Seriously...WHERE have you been all my life?
That was perfect. I don't recall ever reading about THAT particular day. The day he left and how it all went down. Your voices for every character you tackled were ridiculously on target. I ached for Jim and Pam...you took me RIGHT BACK to that moment with such precision.
The fact that it was the yogurt lid that he turned down, and that we all know it's a yogurt lid that winds up saving them...Brilliance.
This was perfect. Thank you. Please write again soon.
Author's Response: LOL! I've been hanging out in other fandoms! ;) So pleased you enjoyed this - glad it tallys with your view of how things might have happened. I'm especially happy you thought I had the other character voices right, because I was pretty wary trying Michael and Dwight - so much of that is in the performance! So, phew! ;)
Date: February 10, 2010 02:40 pm Title: Chapter 1
What a treat! As other reviews have mentioned, your characterization is spectacular and the tone and dialogue are pitch perfect. I have tired to visualize what happened immediately after CN and I always come up blank. Fallout is so well done that everything that you have presented seems so obvious--like of course this is what happened, and of course this is how Pam found out about the transfer, of course Pam would try to make things go back to normal, and of course Jim would be that deliciously bitter towards her.
Really, there is so much to love and so many great details and lines that I’m sure I’ll have a list of more subtle favorites that I missed on my first two read. I’m fighting the urge to damn near copy and paste the entire story, and I’m not doing so well. Here are a few of my favorites:
He smiles and feels ashamed of the harsh, angry glee. But he takes a breath, lets it settle, and feels calmer. Stamford is his way out and the knot in his stomach relaxes a little. He wipes up the coffee on the counter and takes the mug back to his desk, and when he looks up there she is at reception.
Their eyes collide for an instant before he looked away. He flushes, curses himself, and forces his mind to go blank as he sits down and pretends to work. Stamford, Stamford, Stamford. It’s like static in his mind, running interference. Everything else is just noise.
His anger, sadness, and embarrassment are so wonderfully encapsulated here.
She watches him leave, watches the door slowly shut behind him, because it’s easier than looking anywhere else. And she doesn’t want to see Jim watching her with that expression she always hates, the one that says ‘Why the hell are you with that guy?’
Time moves strangely for the rest of that afternoon, simultaneously galloping and crawling. The tension is excruciating and she just wants the day to be over already so she can go home and blank the whole thing out. But when the day is over he’ll be gone; he’ll be gone and she might never see him again. The pain of that prospect is so sharp it’s hard to breathe around.
Heartbreakingly perfect
He flinches when he sees what she’s holding, and his eyes turn sharp with disbelief. She’s never really seen him angry before. Backing away a step he shifts his hold on the box as if to say ‘I don’t have a spare hand’. “Keep it,” he says, “I’m taking enough junk with me already.”
::thud::
It is very clear that you took a great deal of care to construct your story! So glad to have a fantastic new author around these parts. Please post again!
Author's Response: Wow, thanks so much for such a thoughtful review! I'm thrilled you enjoyed the story and that it felt genuine to you. I'm glad you liked angry!Jim - I hadn't intended to write him that way, it just sort of evolved. I'm pleased it worked! I have some ideas for other stories, so hope to post again. :) In the meantime, thanks for commenting! :)
10 [Report This]Date: February 10, 2010 01:58 pm Title: Chapter 1
I'm not sure what I can add that hasn't been said already (I'm late to the party because of a lack of electricity. Thanks, Winter Storm 2010). But I could not NOT review. This was perfect. Beautiful and simple and dead on and just perfect.
And the end? Gah! Just...broke my heart. I loved it. Great, great, great, GREAT job.
Author's Response: Thank you! So pleased you liked it - and thanks for taking the time to comment, Winter Storm 2010 notwithstanding! :)
10 [Report This]Date: February 10, 2010 01:38 pm Title: Chapter 1
I have never read such a perfect fic about the time right after the infamous Casino Night. But now, when I re-watch this episode and the beginning of S3, I'll be thinking of this story!
Thank you so much for sharing such a heartbreaking look into the final conversation between these two before all the other things happened in S3. I've always wondered but now, thanks to you, I won't have to anymore.
Can't wait to read more of your stuff, even if it's angst (since I can always watch the later seasons ;o)
Author's Response: Thank you so much! I'm so pleased you enjoyed this, and it felt like how things might have happened. I have a few more plot bunnies bouncing about, so there may be more angst on the way - good job we know how it turns out! ;) Thanks again for the lovely comment. :)
10 [Report This]Date: February 10, 2010 11:26 am Title: Chapter 1
Sal, this was amazing. Really and truly. Absolutely plausible, the missing piece of a puzzle. I wish I could be more articulate, but it's just impossible. ::adds to favorites:: I hope there's more where this came from. I'll look forward to following your work.
Author's Response: Thank you! I'm so pleased you enjoyed this, and that it rang true. That's great to know, what with it being my first foray into Office fandom! Thanks so much for commenting. :)
Date: February 10, 2010 05:42 am Title: Chapter 1
This is extraordinarily good, and will be forever more in my mind, exactly what happened that day. I would quote things, but I'd have to quote something from nearly every paragraph. I truly loved how you brought the yogurt lid into the story - and this makes that later scene from The Job all that more meaningful. Man this hurt, but it hurt really really "good."
*standing ovation*
Author's Response: Oh thank you, that's a real compliment. I'm so pleased this feels like it could have happened! Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to comment. :)
Date: February 10, 2010 05:24 am Title: Chapter 1
This rings astonishingly true of those unseen post-CN days. It's all here, rendered just as I imagine they would have been - Pam's confusion, inertia, desperation, anger, hurt, sense of doom...and Jim. Wow. His mix of weariness, bitterness and loss - of being just so heartsick he literally felt like he might throw up - is not easy to portray in words...and I love that you did it so artfully - the dialogue, their subtle interactions, tiny details like leaving his coffee behind - make his malaise so resonant. I could cite a dozen lines/moments that are simple, but so achingly strong (...the way he purposely demolished the careful fiction that they were just good friends. And ...there’s something of the gallows about him...) and of course the ending. I appreciate the obvious care you took with chosing the right words as opposed to simply unleashing a lot of them.
Also, wonderful bits of the other characters - Michael, Dwight, etc. - everyone effortlessly pings as themselves here. Even the sense of that awful, interminable day passing slowly, minute by painful minute, is vividly tangible. Really, really beautifully written, start to finish.
Author's Response: Thank you for such a lovely comment! I'm so pleased you enjoyed this, and thanks for picking out my favourite line (the careful fiction that they were just good friends). I just discovered your stories today, so I'm doubly honoured that you liked my first effort! :)
Date: February 10, 2010 04:53 am Title: Chapter 1
That was just too damn good! I felt as though I was right back in that netherworld of unnerving uncertainty between Seasons 1 and 2, wondering and hoping along with all my fellow "jammers", just how the hell this thing between them was ever going to work itself out! Reading this "fic", my insides were churning with every new sentence. Great job!
Author's Response: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the nostalgia trip! :) Oh the angst...
Date: February 10, 2010 02:32 am Title: Chapter 1
*weeps*
What a beautiful ending! And middle. And beginning.
Author's Response: Thanks so much! I'm so pleased you enjoyed it. :)
Date: February 09, 2010 09:45 pm Title: Chapter 1
Nice, nice job. Captures perfectly what may have happened after CN, because I can't imagine Jim being able to tolerate being in the same room as Pam for very long, with the awkwardness and distance now between them.
Loved the yogurt lid scene at the end. It all comes full circle, doesn't it?
Author's Response: Thanks so much! I definitely think Jim got out of there as fast as he could, poor thing. I'd love to have seen those deleted scenes! lol
10 [Report This]Date: February 09, 2010 09:40 pm Title: Chapter 1
I do hope you post here again. This was heartbreakingly perfect. So sad and cruel and it leaves me wanting more, more, more from you. Ribbon on your first story, too! They don't had those out too much anymore, but this so deserves it. You can feel his nervousness in the beginning and hear the sound of every brick being laid down for he wall he is creating by the end. I'm going to echo everyone else by mentioning the line- “Keep it,” he says, “I’m taking enough junk with me already.” It feels like a stab to the heart.
Author's Response: Oh thanks so much, I'm so pleased you enjoyd this. And the ribbon! That's so cool. :) Oh S2 is just so heartbreaking, poor Jim!! I love it! Can't get enough of the angsty goodness. ;)
Date: February 09, 2010 09:09 pm Title: Chapter 1
Whoa. This was insanely good. Thank you for joining and showing the rest of us how it's done! ;) I hope you stick around and bring us more things like this. This is the best kind of hurt, reading stories like these. The part with the medal between Pam and Jim was perfect. And the ending kills. Please post again. Great first fic here. :)
Author's Response: Thanks so much, I'm thrilled people have enjoyed this - it's aways a bit nervewracking, posting in a new fandom. I think I've got a few more fics in me yet though, so watch this space... :)
10 [Report This]Date: February 09, 2010 07:59 pm Title: Chapter 1
I've been avoiding Office fic for quite some time because the married/baby stuff just doesn't do it for me. But this! Perfection. Here is one of my favorite lines: "because he can’t stand there listening to her silence anymore". Guh. Great job ... hope you stick around!
Author's Response: Thank you so much! I confess, I've never been one for married/baby fic in any fandom (even if it's canon!). ;) I'm hoping to stick around the Office for a while, so bring on the angst!
Date: February 09, 2010 07:46 pm Title: Chapter 1
This was simply lovely. It explains what went on in a realistic and heartbreaking way. I'm so glad to see something new posted by someone new so thank you for that. It is also quite a feat to make every person sound in character and you did that here with flying colors.
Looking forward to reading more from you.
The teeny tiniest of nitpicks - because I'd want someone to tell me - the company is actually spelled Dunder Mifflin. :)
Author's Response: Thank you so much, I'm so relieved you thought I got everyone in character (was somewhat nervous about that!). And thanks for the heads up about Dunder Mifflin! Doh. And I meant to double check that before I posted too... Corrected now, so many thanks. :)
10 [Report This]Date: February 09, 2010 07:26 pm Title: Chapter 1
....I've never wanted to cry at a fanfic before
Till this one.
Author's Response: *passes the tissues* Thanks so much! That's a lovely compliment. :)
Date: February 09, 2010 07:23 pm Title: Chapter 1
Ahhh. That one's a gut punch. Wow. Hope to see more from you.
Author's Response: Thank you! Hope the gut-punch wasn't too painful! ;)
Date: February 09, 2010 06:35 pm Title: Chapter 1
Wow -- I'm so glad to see a talented writer discover The Office and MTT.
If TO went for the high drama route, this could totally be how the days between Casino Night and GWH. Ouch.
I can only stand to read this deliciously painful fic is knowing how it turns out. Yowsa.
Author's Response: Thank you! I'm so pleased you enjoyed the story, I really needed to figure out in my head what happened between those two episodes - I'm glad this rang true for you!
10 [Report This]Date: February 09, 2010 06:29 pm Title: Chapter 1
WOW!! This was simply phenomenal. Not an extra word anywhere. Pitch perfect internal monologues. This is one of those pieces where I can't point out my favorite bits, because I'd have to copy and paste the whole damn thing. I will say, this simply took my breath away:
“Keep it,” he says, “I’m taking enough junk with me already.”
Absolutely the most cutting, cruel, effective Jim line I think I've ever read.
I hope you have more stories in you! I'm ready to read another.
Author's Response: Thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed it, especially Jim's parting shot! Ouch. I think I may have a few more Office stories in me, so watch this space...