Date: April 12, 2022 03:12 pm Title: "A real relationship can't be forced. It should just come about effortless...ledly."
It’s not a simple feat to make me feel bad for Karen. This girl follows this man’s words to go with him to Scranton, begins a relationship with him, and stays after realizing his heart isn’t in it and he’s in love with someone else. Why would I feel bad for her, when she did this to herself?
But you, ma’am… you made me feel bad for Karen. This poor girl put her everything into this skinny relationship that was destined to fail, HOPEFUL that the people around her were wrong and she was doing the right thing… for it to be true. Ugh…
At least her HEA is on the horizon!
GREAT chapter, TD!
Date: April 10, 2022 11:01 am Title: "A real relationship can't be forced. It should just come about effortless...ledly."
Please, I BEG OF YOU, I hope you write about Jim coming back, their first date, and reconnecting with each other!
Author's Response: I would never leave y’all hanging. Next chapter is the last one ;)
Date: April 09, 2022 12:57 am Title: "A real relationship can't be forced. It should just come about effortless...ledly."
This was a hell of a read, TD. I lived this chapter but found it a difficult read because it’s hard reading about someone else loving Jim and him trying to be with that other person when we really want him to be with Pam. But you gave Karen so much pathos and you gave us permission to have sympathy with her, whilst at the same time allowing us to still enjoy him leaving her and hearing back to Scranton. That is some great writing, Lady!
Author's Response: Thank you so much! I know this one is a heavy read, hopefully the last chapter will be a welcome reprieve. Thanks for sticking with it!
Date: April 08, 2022 04:44 am Title: "A real relationship can't be forced. It should just come about effortless...ledly."
This chapter was like the story within the story and I was totally here for it - what Karen was experiencing through all this did warrant some unpacking.
The poor girl - she feel in love with with the Jim he was trying to be, only to find out she fell in love with a person that didn't quite exist...sure he still had the smile but so much else of what she feel for was a facade, the biggest of which was his ability to give himself over to someone else.
I like the contrast of her with her no-nonsense friend, Monika...and here's what I noticed...as viewers of the show we see Karen as the no-nonsense, able to act, goes for what she wants, opposite of Pam - but here we see that it's all relative; here Karen is weak one in comparison seeming unable to see what she's put on blinders to.
**It’s weird, the way your body sometimes understands things before your brain does. But this is exactly what happens to Karen when she reads Jim’s text.** - so true and I really like the way you present this
Right from the start we see Karen's attraction to qualities that aren't really the Jim we know (although in some aspects they are - the drive he has just wasn't ever for selling paper, and he is helpful) - yeah scratch that - but even so she was still meeting a alt-Jim, when she first noticed him.
**“Thanks,” he finally says after a minute or so. He still won’t look at her, just stares up at the stippled ceiling. He sounds far away again. “For being so upfront about everything. For not making me wonder.”**
This hit me - more for how it made me feel for Jim again and the hurt that was obviously still so raw, especially after coming back.
**In an instant, all of the little moments between her boyfriend and the receptionist she’d wondered about since they arrived in Scranton shuffle through her mind, one after the other, like a puzzle she didn’t realize she’d been putting together this entire time. And Phyllis has just handed her the final piece** - What a perfect description.
The double talk Jim gives her in the coffee shop exchange - great in that he doesn't quite lie and moves the conversation to a direction where he doesn't have to.
OKay, I loved the whole bit with the sunken-cost fallacy - and Karen so seems like the type who would see things with him as an investment she wasn't ready drop - she'd put too much in - including a move to Scranton.
AHA - the stuffed animal on her desk - I was curious about your interest in that and I enjoyed how you worked that in.
The talk on the way home after the beach, was well done and felt so accurate.
She stops trying - the juxtaposition to Jim in the last chapter..nice.
Thanks for giving us the little flash ahead - Lets us see that Karen will be okay and gets over her anger at having been used as *Kelvar* (nice) and understands that they all wound up where they were meant to be even if there were bumps to get there.
Great chapter- really enjoyed it. - but can't wait for what's coming - saving my last JB for the magic moment.
Date: April 07, 2022 11:57 pm Title: "A real relationship can't be forced. It should just come about effortless...ledly."
THE KAREN CHAPTER. IT'S HERE. IT'S HERE. ABONDANZA.
"It seemed like an open and shut situation. But there was just one problem. “I love him,” she’d said." Oh, Karen. This is not going to be a year you look upon at all fondly.
This fountain sequence is a gut punch. Karen's body reading Jim's text accurately is a nice touch, and the sense that for the first time she's seeing Scranton Jim and knows what that means... ooof. But awesome.
I love what you've done throughout this chapter in contrasting the Jim Karen sees with the Jim we know. This first impression of him she gets is just... so not Jim, and she has no way of knowing that.
"He told her himself he’s really bad at reading signals and for his sake more than for her own, she decides not to send him that one." Oh Karen...
"It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing Jim would spend so much valuable work time on." Oh, KAREN. SO many red flags you're just willfully looking away from in this conversation. Girl. GIRL.
I've said this before, but I think this is very valuable added context for what was going through her mind with the pummeling of Jim with about three different relationship milestones in one conversation in Back From Vacation. Everyone's trying their best here. It's just that their best is not up to the task.
"indicating she has no idea what Phyllis is talking about would make it seem like she doesn’t know Jim as well as she thought she did. And then it hits her. She doesn’t know Jim as well as she thought she did." Oh, KARENNNNN.
"She hates to admit it, even to herself, but the two of them seem perfectly suited for each other in every possible way. It doesn’t make any sense." We know, Karen. We know.
"Maybe everything is going to be fine."/"Everything is not fine." There are a lot of fantastic transitions in this chapter, but this remains my favorite.
Another thing running through this chapter I particularly enjoyed are the indications that it's not just that Karen doesn't know real Jim - it's that the glimpses of him she sees are largely the aspects of his personality that rub her the wrong way. Oh, Karen. (*glares at Jim*)
"I just want all this Pam stuff to be over." Do you, Jim? DO YOU?
"she was never going to be someone he could love when she was essentially just Kevlar." LOVE where this ended.
"“No, it wasn’t,” he says, to her surprise. “I think everything would have been okay. But… I think we both deserve more than ‘okay.’ Don’t you?"" PRECISELY.
"It’s the exact same thing Pam said to her yesterday before she left, as if they share a fucking brain or something." Awwwww. I mean, in context, ouch. But also.
Omg. This ending. Omg. This is perfect.
"DTMFA" definitely existed by the summer of 2006. I remember it fondly.
Date: April 07, 2022 09:14 pm Title: "A real relationship can't be forced. It should just come about effortless...ledly."
I was not expecting to get all of Karen's thoughts on the previous year in this chapter. As always you did a remarkable job getting into her her head. Starting out there leaving the caf? for the fountain it's the start of everything. Karen is remarkably intelligent and with everything that had gone on since Beach Day it's unsurprising that she has a premonition of what's coming. But there's the real Jim sitting at the fountain. The Jim who rolls up his sleeves and who's heart belongs to Pam. It really feels like this is the first time she's seen more than just glimpses of who the real Jim is.
Going back through their relationship one can see with the benefit of hindsight just how many red flags were really snapping in the wind. She got sucked in due to physical attraction and then let her feelings get to involved as well. Her admitting, at least to herself, that she was in love with Jim seemed to clarify that. But then as the months go on things change, even if she keeps saying things are going good. The more she gets glimpses of the real Jim and gets more clues about Pam the more things feel on edge. Great buildup to her thought process with all that. How much she wants the relationship to work even if it's just because of how emotionally invested she is in it by now. At times it did seem like she and Jim would work out. But always there was Pam. Karen clearly wasn't wrong when she told Jim there was one to many people there in Scranton for her and Jim to stand a chance.
Speaking of that. The actual breakup scene was one of the more interesting ones I've ever written. It's rare for Karen to be quite so in control like that. However the setup for it showed it was very plausible. It hurts her yes but she does well to stay in control for as long as she can. I think she knew that there really wasn't anything she could have said or did that would have saved her and Jim's relationship at that point. She was right to finally demand the full and honest truth from him. As hard as I'm sure it was I also respect Jim for finally laying it all out there for her.
Also thank you for giving us some hope for her as well. In reality the only thing wrong with Karen is that she just wasn't Pam. She also saw Jim at a vulnerable time in his life where he wasn't really acting himself. She also saw in him what she wanted to see to a degree. So that's why I'm glad you gave us that mini flash forward. Adds a nice touch of closure for her.
1 [Report This]Date: April 07, 2022 12:36 pm Title: "A real relationship can't be forced. It should just come about effortless...ledly."
Karen definitely should have listened to Monika.
Monika really hit the nail on the head with not just Karen’s relationship with Jim, but also with Karen
herself. The red flags were there the whole time and Karen choose to ignore them. She was right in that Jim was a different person in Stamford than he was in Scranton, which is what I’ve been saying for a while.
Karen fell for the guy who she THOUGHT Jim was,
and Pam wanted Scranton Jim. In other words,
the real Jim. In the end that’s who won out.
Karen should have known that she couldn’t suppress the real Jim for too long because he kept coming out like when he found the glasses to prank Dwight.
Also Karen’s annoyance with Jim’s pranks also showed how they really didn’t have that much in common, or chemistry. It was interesting to see things from Karen’s POV, but also showed that she actually wasn’t as confident as she tried to appear.
Yes she was good at her job, but as a woman deep
down she was insecure. I do think that she has every right to be angry at Jim because he did lie to her,
and was leading her on to think they could possibly have a future. At least Karen seems to have
a happy ending to with the doctor, because the camera guy was right in that Karen should be with a guy that chases after her.
Date: April 07, 2022 12:26 pm Title: "A real relationship can't be forced. It should just come about effortless...ledly."
A whole chapter on Karen…nooooo! But it was incredibly well written and all the moments you created were perfect.
“Yeah. Okay, here's the…” he looks around the coffee shop, as if the way out of this little pickle is written on the menu or something. This made me laugh so much, such a great little line in there.
CANNOT WAIT FOR THE LAST CHAPTER!!!