Just a guy with Jim and Pam on the brain, trying to get the song out of his head by singing it.
How Jim and Pam might have grown up together if they'd met in Kindergarten.The Memoirs of Pamela Beesly.
(Hi, this is deludez3 on AO3. w4A21qMoPh0Ezyj)
Now THAT'S Kelly as a quality wing woman. nice to see Pam recognizing the role Roy is playing for her here, and trying to move beyond her issues with Karen... she's showing a lot of maturity.
Jim starts calling her Beesly right after Karen leaves? Hmmmmm.
Oh, Pam. Come on, now. Your moment was right there. What a gut-punch.
Awwww. Glad they got their kiss... and that Pam recognizes the stakes of what happens next. And this is an interesting twist on the fight in The Negotiation. Poor Dwight.
A lovely way to wrap this one up!
Author's Response: :))))
1 You know, I am a confirmed fan of fluff, and in such a dark story it feels like they've really earned the happy ending of epilogue A... and yet epilogue B seems weightier somehow. I'm glad you posted them both.
A colorful look at the evolution of Pam and Jim's relationship.1 Oh, man. This is so them.
1 "I wanted her to expect things from me." Goodness. Season 2 Jim and Pam are just heart-breaking when done right.
You're killing me.
This feels like a really good look at Pam's head pre-Cocktails in particular.
"How wonderful it was to always be understood." Beautiful.
This feels a lot like how they'd actually fight - really passive aggressively.
And wildly predictive of Season 5 as it turns out!
Cinderella meets Groundhog Day meets Dr. Gregory House. Pam will never be the same. (Set during S3's Ben Franklin.)1 Well. Didn't think I was going to be sold on this. I am now. Well done, Moxie. (For the record, Pam suggesting lupus was the tipping point.)
1 Oh man, there's a lot I love about this. Pam using sports to bond with Jim when she's doing so much he can't understand as easily is lovely (particularly bc you wrote this before we found out Pam was a jock in high school). The way she identifies with the small, obscure nations, the way she makes the connection back to their own experience as "Olympic organizers...." and the ending of them knowing their future is just touching. Gold medal for you.
Author's Response:
Yay, gold medal for me! I do love the Olympics, so I made them love it, too. But it could have been almost anything-- the important thing was exploring how they were managing to build their relationship even when they were apart. (Which they did, considering that they got engaged during this period).
Thank you.
1 This is... remarkably prescient, even as it makes me extremely sad for Pam.
Author's Response:
I think in all the fic I wrote, I only made accurate predictions three times-- Pam leaving Phyllis's wedding with Roy, this one about her art school floundering, and them having a baby girl first and then later a boy. But I remember being confused why other fic writers were launching Pam into this successful international art career when that was really, really not what this show was about. I guess I never used fic for wish fulfillment as much as exploration of the characters and world as it was (or seemed to be).
Sad for Pam, somewhat, but ultimately led her to her happily ever after, I think.
Oh, and thank you for continuing through my archive. So fun to see your notes and get to think about these things again!
A golf pencil, two hot sauce packets, a Boggle timer, a mixtape, a high school yearbook photo, a card, and a teapot. Yup.1 This is just... perfect.
1 Okay, ouch? Why? Just why?
Honestly, the Pam-meets-someone-else-in-New-York scenarios are maybe my least favorite fic mini-genre, because I just feel like it completely assassinates Pam as a character - but I do think it would be something Jim would be thinking about pre-Pratt, and it's always been my head-canon that Jim is a little more insecure about their relationship than Pam and Pam is a little frustrated with him over it. So. I'm just going to say this is about that.
Author's Response: That’s exactly what it was about, in my head. And the idea that these two had some issues to overcome.
1 Well, this is really downbeat, but I actually think the ending works - it seems very Pam that going too far with Jim on Casino Night would have had a surface-level counterintuitive impact on her decisions.
1 Dwight and Angela's exchange over the body of an increasingly panicky Jan are definitely the highlight of this story for me, but it's darn funny overall.
Any memory of where you were headed with this one?
Author's Response: Oh, I think Michael was going to show back up and off they'd go to the hospital, to be a happy family. I was waaaay off of where the Michael/Jan/baby storyline was headed.
If I remember right, I trailed off on this one because it didn't get a lot of reaction, and it was always hard for me to sustain too much plot over several chapters (you may have noticed. Ha!), so I stopped. It's too bad, because reading it now I think the tone is pretty good and it would have been fun to see it resolved. Thanks for thinking it was funny-- I think people liked my fluffier stuff better but I always loved being funny. I mean, it's a comedy... ;)
1 This is lovely - a charming portrait of a dramatic, fraught relationship settling into normalcy and regular life. After all that, it does seem like something Jim and Pam would relish and have earned the right to.
1 *Very* interesting set-up! And sad to see how much Roy and Pam's relationship has not at all changed.
1 Yikes. Probably shouldn't have invited Pam to this wedding, Jim.
1 Oh, Jim. And more importantly: poor Karen.
1 I absolutely love this because it seems so plausible and so very THEM that they would be brought back together by the games that always bound them in the first place.
1 I like this injection of just the tiniest bit of doubt in their minds... feels very real. And the dialogue feels spot on, you did really well capturing their voices.