Galentine's Day 2014
Feb. 12th, 2014 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raven
[image: Leslie Knope and Ann Perkins punching the air! Leslie looks delighted. Ann looks kinda worried.]
Happy Galentine's Day, lovely ladies! So it isn't Galentine's Day until tomorrow, actually, but tomorrow I must be out of the house for twelve hours, so!
What's Galentine's Day? Here is Leslie Knope to explain that:
"Oh, it’s only the best day of the year. Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast-style. Ladies celebrate ladies. It’s like Lilith Fair minus the angst. Plus frittatas.”
I genuinely believe Galentine's Day should be a real holiday celebrated by everyone, so here goes. If you would like a story about ladies, now is the time to ask. It may be short, but it will definitely be sweet. (Not just Parks and Rec! Brooklyn Nine-Nine is my other teeny-tiny sitcom fandom right now, but have at it with any fictional ladies you like, if I know them I will do my best.) Alternatively! Let me tell you about my favourite thing we've ever done together or why I think you're a beautiful sunflower! (Spoilers: you're a beautiful sunflower. Yes, you.) Onwards, you noble land mermaids.
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on 2014-02-12 12:35 pm (UTC)In the meantime, just going to stare at this some more: http://www.knopecompliments.com/
You good-looking, elegant baby turtle, you. <3
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on 2014-03-02 11:26 pm (UTC)where February is thirteen months long
Indiana House Bill 1239 is hung up in committee on the day Ann gets in her car and drives down from Michigan, through bleak fields of corn, broken stubs under a vivid sky. She means to surprise Leslie at the statehouse, turn up with balloons and a cake and those things that make a noise when you blow into them, and April is Leslie's most senior aide - and Ann would never accuse Leslie of nepotism but she'd still like to know how the hell that works - and she probably wouldn't blink twice if Ann strode into Leslie's office armed with a helium canister and a spray can of whipped cream. But then Ann drives into the city and it's chilly and strange, as though she's come carrying the ghosts of all that dead land she crossed to get here, so the radio playing bubblegum pop sounds sad and the balloons bumping against the roof of her car look sad. Ann thinks that Leslie would charge on regardless. She catches a flash of blonde hair going around the corner of the block and leaves her car parked on the lines.
Leslie comes to a stop a little distance away, leaning against the railings, looking down at the canal water gleaming dark and wintry. Ann gives her a moment, and then comes up beside her, pressing against the metal rail so their arms touch. "Ann," Leslie says, after a moment, with a note of disbelief in her voice, then hugs her with a fluid motion as though she was ready, as though she knew. Ann is wondering, even as she holds Leslie tightly, how much Leslie needs this; how long she's been waiting.
"I heard," she says, as they draw back far enough to take a proper look at each other, Leslie's eyes wet and shining, "about the bill."
"Funding across the board for women's refuges," Leslie replies, promptly, "supplemented nutrition in pregnancy and new centres for early education. And" - as though she'd actually forgotten - "recognition of Galentine's Day as a state holiday, with particular celebration in public schools."
"That's great," Ann says, because it is, and it's got Leslie's legislative fingerprints all over it. Without even asking, Ann knows this is why Leslie didn't come to Michigan, even for a while. "How are you?" she adds, meaning it.
Leslie shrugs, her eyes lifting towards the sky a little, and it's strange, and not strange at all, that Ann has seen Chris do that, too, under another sky, under cascading lake-effect snow. Leslie misses Ben.
"I should head back," she says, a little confusedly, "I only - i just needed a minute."
Ann nods, and they start walking, arm-in-arm, back towards the statehouse. They go through the security line and the guy checking bags clearly wants to know who Ann is, but doesn't dare ask in the light of Leslie's glare; they head up to Leslie's office without incident and it's all a far cry from Pawnee City Hall but Ann can make out a familiar cadence of yelling. Oddly, it makes her smile. The phone rings again as they step inside.
"Leslie Knope's office," April says, into the phone. "Yeah, she died. Yeah, the newspaper got them the wrong way around. No, she can't talk to you. Call back never."
"April!" Ann says, kind of horrified at that, but doesn't go on as April glares first at her, then at the phone.
"They need to stop fucking bugging her," she says, almost to herself, and Ann is startled by the momentary softness in her face.
Leslie says, "April. Was that the Democratic National Committee? Barack Obama? No? Fine. Get us some coffee and cake and the balloons out of Ann's car."
"How did you know," Ann starts, and Leslie waves an impatient hand.
"It's Galentine's Day! April, get your girl interns. Don't scare them."
April disappears with alacrity. Ann watches her go with amazement; when she turns back, Leslie has slumped a little, sitting on a chair the wrong way, looking at the ground as though defeated by that display of energy. Ann can't find a way to express, at this moment, how much she loves her.
"Leslie," she says, a little desperately, and trails off, looking around the room. it's full of bright colours and pictures: the old familiar one of Hillary Clinton, one of Leslie and Ann, another one of the Pawnee Commons. The last time Ann visited, Ben's sister Stephanie was here, too, and the picture taken on Leslie's wedding day was face down. It's upright now, because Leslie Knope is made of steel and determination. "Leslie, are you okay?"
Leslie looks up and smiles, and doesn't answer. "Are you going to stay?" she asks, a little uncertainly.
"I have to," Ann says, "they've probably towed away my car" - and amazingly, Leslie laughs.
"Bill 1239 is in committee," she says, tentatively, "I can't do anything more. I mean, we could go see a movie. Or something.
"We can do anything you want," Ann says, gently.
"We could take April," Leslie says. "We could get takeout."
"Anything," Ann says, and the door opens to a chorus of April and her interns, who've found the helium and noisemakers in Ann's car. Ann holds Leslie's hand tight. "Anything you want," she says again.
Leslie smiles, a real smile, and April throws a handful of confetti into her hair.
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on 2014-03-03 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 01:30 pm (UTC)I am likely to spend Galentine's Day snowbound, but I can hang with my lovely lady neighbors.
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on 2014-02-13 11:28 am (UTC)“Salaries,” Geoffrey had intoned, with the gravitas left over from his King John, in rehearsal all morning, “cost money. Course credit” – this with the certainty of Magna Carta – “does not.”
Anna had been so delighted that he’d finally figured out the relationship between income and outgoings that she went to the phone then and there and called every institute of higher education with a theatre programme in a hundred-mile radius. And when the students came they were mostly sweet and dedicated and delighted to actually act on real stages before fee-paying patrons, and Geoffrey directed them with a gentleness that recalled for Anna her first days in this world, an arts admin intern pathetically grateful for Geoffrey’s kindness, smuggled Scotch bottles and refusal to treat her as less than human. Everything was going swimmingly, until the day the bailiffs came for the refrigerator and Ellen made three nineteen-year-olds cry.
“Anna,” Geoffrey was saying, “there’s water coming down from the ceiling, stage left – Anna, what is it? Uh... who is it?”
“This is Lucille” – something in Anna’s mind, damnably fair-minded, pointed out that it was kind of difficult to make out Lucille's face what with all her lovely hair, her Ariel make-up and the fact she was busy sobbing noisily into Anna’s shoulder – “who just had the misfortune, Geoffrey, to walk into your wife’s dressing room by mistake.”
“I’ll go talk to her,” Geoffrey said, sighing, and Anna shook her head.
“No, you’ll do better here,” she said, and strode down the corridor thinking that that bit was true, Geoffrey could soothe worried young actors by calm instinct by now, get them something to drink and assure them it would be worth it in the end (and in Geoffrey’s hands the play usually would be worth it in the end, that was the point), but maybe that didn’t mean she, Anna, was naturally disposed towards this particular duty any better than Geoffrey. But now she was barging in without knocking – working with actors taught you to use the momentum of a moment, at any rate – and it was too late, anyway.
“For God’s sake, Anna!” Ellen caught her eye in the dressing room mirror. “Does no one knock before they come in this place?”
“They do their best,” Anna said, and oddly, talking into the mirror was easier. “They do their best, like everyone around here, Ellen, and of course you were never a student, or a young actor, or unsure of yourself, which means you are perfectly entitled to shout at those who are.”
“Sorry,” Ellen said, after a minute, brief and grumpy.
Anna resisted the urge to either roll her eyes or say, “Whatever” – as well as actors, she worked with teenagers – and just said, “Good. Don’t do that again, please.”
“Anna,” Ellen said, as Anna turned around to the door, hiding her rising colour and her breath coming too fast, because even with practice, this never got easier. “Anna, I really am sorry.”
“Yes,” Anna said.
“I can go talk to, to, what’s-her-name.”
“Please don’t.” Anna paused again, turned back around. “Ellen. There are people upstairs who have come to take away our refrigerator.”
“Why?”
“As collateral against our unpaid rent,” Anna said, opened her mouth to say it and found Ellen beating her to it. “Théâtre Sans Argent. Yes. Maybe, maybe you could go talk to them.”
“I would be happy to,” Ellen said, grandly, and when she stood up she was Titania – all rustling skirts and haughty disdain. Just perfect, Anna thought with some fondness, held the door open for her, stood watching as she swept down the corridor, ready for war.
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on 2014-02-13 01:15 pm (UTC)Everything was going swimmingly, until the day the bailiffs came for the refrigerator and Ellen made three nineteen-year-olds cry. That's it; that's the show.
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on 2014-03-03 02:16 am (UTC)I think you nailed ALL their voices in this, as well as how they would all interact with the young up-and-coming actors. One of my favourite things about Geoffrey in the series was how, somehow, there was a truly amazing, generous *teacher* hiding under all his grandiosity that got to come out sometimes. I love that we got to see a bit of that here through Anna's eyes.
And Ellen going to war against the repo people to save the refrigerator! Just perfect, indeed.
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on 2014-03-04 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-16 08:27 pm (UTC)Peter and Nightingale, Lesley tells her dad one night as they're walking along the shoreline, watching the arcade lights blink in the distance and listening to the gentle, distant sound of the waves depositing bladderwrack and plastic bottles, have a thing. Not like that, she amends - at least, she doesn't think so; it's more that somehow, despite Nightingale's posh-boy childhood and echoingly silent adulthood, he responds to Peter's cheeky irreverence, to his way of being rooted in his family and his estate and his city, and Peter in his turn has found something, some bone-deep-copper familiarity in Nightingale's own loyalty to his patch.
"Right," Lesley's dad says, and doesn't add anything about just how smart and sharp Lesley is, how good she is at reading people, because he's thinking it, and she can see it on his face. "And you and Nightingale?"
Lesley shrugs and doesn't say anything, because that's it, isn't it: Nightingale and Peter bonded through death and magic and murder, and Lesley's seen all of those, but alone. It's okay, she wants to tell her dad: that to make light, where there was no light, is enough. It's enough. It's all she needs.
And it's funny that it's so soon after that, just a couple of days after that evening walk with her dad down on the Clacton seafront, that Lesley and Nightingale are driving back from some abortive foray into finding a Little Crocodile out in Oxfordshire somewhere, and it's late and the wind is howling and nothing else is open, so Lesley's pulled into a McDonald's on the M40, and they both turn to each other and say, "Maybe you should..." - and break off.
"Okay," Lesley says after a minute. "It's obvious, why I don't want to." She waves a hand at her mask. "Maybe it isn't, I dunno. Why don't you want to go in and get the food?"
Nightingale looks at her, and for a second she thinks he's going to deny it, but in the end he just shakes his head. "In these... enlightened days," he says after a moment, "I find... I am not sure what words to use. In what order. And in these" - he waves out of the window - "places, especially."
Lesley thinks about that, then grins. Nightingale doesn't react at all to whatever effect that must have on the mask. "I guess if you weren't raised with Chicken McNuggets and Happy Meals," she says, "it's pretty weird to go up and ask for them. It's pretty weird even if you were."
Nightingale says nothing, but he smiles, and Lesley comes to a decision. "Listen," she says, "it's late. There won't be anyone in there. How about we go in together, eh?"
So they do: they walk across the windswept, deserted car park and go inside the restaurant, the door bell echoing hollowly around the place, and they go up to the counter together. The pimply teenager behind it gives Lesley an odd, slightly frightened look, but with Nightingale beside her Lesley's sure of her power. "Quarter-pounder, please," she says, confidently, "and same again for my friend."
When the food comes they take it to eat by the window, and Lesley eats hers hungrily while Nightingale picks at his out of curiosity more than hunger. "Is it all right?" she asks, gently, not looking at him but through the window, at the litter being picked up outside and scattered against the glass by the wind.
Nightingale picks up the plastic wrap from the burger, and puts it down. "It's fine," he says, and that is a smile threatening. "And you?"
Lesley considers. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I'm okay."
Nightingale nods, calm and accepting.
"I guess we should head home," she adds, after a while, but neither of them move, in their small island of light, surrounded by the storm. It's late and it's getting later, but there's no hurry for them to return for London. After a while Nightingale buys an ice-cream, with Lesley telling him what to order, and they both take occasional spoonfuls from it, Nightingale hungrily, now he knows what he's eating, and Lesley slowly, as she tries to imagine eating soft-serve air-whip crap for the first time. It's nice, she decides: like she used to get by the sea, when she was a little girl.
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on 2014-02-16 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-03-03 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 02:37 pm (UTC)Diaz and Santiago!
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on 2014-02-12 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-16 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 06:47 pm (UTC):D
p.s. you glorious woodland creature :D
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on 2014-02-16 10:00 pm (UTC)a triptych on breakfast food
1. On April's second day working for the Parks Department, it rains like it did on the Ark, water hammering on the roof all night and still coming down in big cascades from the gutters when she leaves the house in the morning, and April doesn't get credit without attendance and she's pretty sure that slim-to-nothing as her chances of ever leaving this one-miniature-horse town are right now, they're probably actually-fucking-nothing with no college degree, even an associate's from Pawnee Community Inadequacy, so she's going to work - but this is her second day, and on her first, she met Leslie Knope, who is blonde, and enthusiastic and kind of weird, which is fine, April likes weird, but also really... happy. And April has poor impulse control. Which is why Leslie sits down at her desk to find a pretty box from JJ's Diner in between her keyboard and her monitor screen. Inside the box there's like, three, four earthworms and a kind of surprised-looking woodlouse, and then there's a lot of yelling.
April doesn't feel bad about it until later, when she sees the squeamish, shrieking gentleness with which Leslie returns the creatures to the soil.
2. On April's second day working for the newly-created Department of Animal Control, she brings Leslie a morning latte and a waffle. "Here," she says, looking at the floor, and stomps away before Leslie can have feelings all over both of them.
Leslie opens the box and looks up, and April braces herself, but Leslie only says, "This waffle's half-eaten."
"Whatever."
"No," Leslie says, "it's just, you never used to like them" - and takes a big bite from the virgin side.
3. On April's second day as aide-in-chief to the United States Representative for the Indiana seventh, she sits down at her desk to find a croissant, a tiny jar of raspberry jam and a cappuccino with two shots of espresso, just how she likes it. She takes the lid off the coffee and knocks as much of it back as she can without actually dying, then barges into Leslie's office without knocking.
"I have, like, fourteen interns," she says, without pause for pleasantry, "like, a million interns, Leslie, I was gonna make them get you a coffee every ten minutes, and every waffle inside the Beltway and proper eggs and bacon and croissants and hash browns and anything you fucking want, Leslie, seriously, you're not supposed to, not for me..."
"Eat your breakfast," Leslie says, calmly, "it's the most important meal of the day. Sit down, April."
"I hate you," April tells her, and looks down and finds the croissant still in her hand, mysteriously, so she sits down on the edge of Leslie's desk and takes a bite, spraying crumbs all over today's legislative agenda, and Leslie toasts her with a pain au chocolat, and smiles.
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on 2014-02-16 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-03-03 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-18 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 07:03 pm (UTC)I would like to know why you think I'm a beautiful sunflower, please! (I was going to add a sentence justifying why I need this right now, and then I was like, no, self, no! You are a beautiful sunflower, and you deserve to be told so whether you are having a good day, a bad day, or simply a day-day.)
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on 2014-02-12 10:40 pm (UTC)Also, here's why you are a beautiful sunflower! Because of your generosity of spirit. You're very smart and you're very kind, but never one without the other. You crack me up and you tell me interesting stuff and you make me think, often all at the same time, and that is why you are a beautiful sunflower. :)
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on 2014-02-13 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-13 12:44 am (UTC)In return: I was thinking about you and me eating enormous waffles with toffee ice cream and fruit in that place on Bold Street. I am so glad that I've known you this long!
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on 2014-02-16 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 11:48 am (UTC)So there are many things we've done together that are my FAVOURITE, I disdain the actual meaning of the word! So, in no particular order: that time we decided we were going to watch like, one episode of Slings & Arrows! And then it was 3am and we'd watched them ALL! That time you finished your Finals and we ate cake and toasted you in your room at New! That time we went to the St John's Ball and sat in yurts in ball dresses and ate doughnuts! And, finally, how we had tea and lunch at the Imperial in Delhi on Christmas Day, and took pictures of ourselves next to a life-size chocolate Santa Claus!
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on 2014-02-12 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 12:24 pm (UTC)Whichever of the options you like, please. If fic, either Buffy and Tara or Buffy and Faith.
(NOBLE LAND MERMAIDS.)
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on 2014-02-12 01:48 pm (UTC)Faith
Faith is looking for Slayers. Where she looks, she finds: girls on the basketball court, watching as the ball soars into the vaulted roof, thumps through the basket with perfect strength; girls who put down their books on summer afternoons and stretch out, as though something deep within their bodies feels different. On a city street in Lagos she watches as a girl smashes a man’s face, returns an elderly lady her handbag, and sits down on the dusty roadside and cries, with amazement and wonder. In a rural hamlet in England Faith stands with a girl, silently, as dust swirls down in the churchyard around them. In a high school in Georgia Faith is quiet as a girl with stubble glares at the men’s room mirror.
(“You shouldn’t be here,” says the girl.
“Neither should you,” says Faith.)
Faith answers their questions and pays their bail. She puts them on flights across the world and gives them books for the journey. She calls them after they’re settled, sends them postcards and candy.
She doesn’t talk to Buffy. No postcards, no emails, no phone calls full of awkward silences for the dead. But when the girls come to Buffy’s door they say, awkward and shy, “Faith sent me, Faith said-” – and Buffy says, “Of course, come in, you're home now.”
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on 2014-02-12 09:57 pm (UTC)As it is (nearly) Galentine's Day and you deserve celebrating too, you are a beautiful sunflower for many reasons! Your writing, whether it's fic or everyday posts, is compelling and skilled and enjoyable; you are impressively capable and clever; you have a very similar taste in books and TV to me, which means I get to
steal them fromtalk about them with you. I feel lucky to know you.(Fun fact: I went swimming after work and told myself I was a noble land mermaid.)
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on 2014-02-13 10:43 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-03-02 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 04:23 pm (UTC)You are also a beautiful sunflower because of your perspective on things, which is thoughtful, insightful, sensitive, bold, and smart, and because of how it informs your writing - both fiction and non.
One of my favourite things is when you came to visit in Berlin and stayed in the gingerbread house with me and how we failed at the city but still had a fabulous time.
You didn't think Galentine's Day was one-way, did you? Have a waffle. <3
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on 2014-02-16 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 04:42 pm (UTC)And a very happy Galentine's Day to you too.
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on 2014-02-13 10:49 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-12 09:13 pm (UTC)Consider something with the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home? Or Dana. Or both! :D
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on 2014-03-02 09:50 pm (UTC)almost there
As a little girl, Dana had imaginary friends: the echo of a voice in the cellar; the ghost of one of her dolls who came to life at night; a friendly creature with bat wings, who took dust baths in the yard. There was the faceless old woman, but she was real: no one could see her, unless only for a second and they knew exactly where to look, but Dana had been born in Night Vale and knew the difference in her bones.
On the way through the dog park through the house in Desert Creek through the desert, through the great shimmering heat-haze of desert, with seisemic waves passing through the ground and the red light far ahead on the hill, blinking on, then off, then on, then off, then on, Dana has them all with her: the echoes, the dolls, the creatures with wings, her faceless old woman, Cecil and Carlos and Mayor Winchell and Barack Obama and William Shakespeare and every life that has at any moment touched hers, all their selves and echoes, sharing the space of her body; as Dana is walking the sand at the dawn of things, making the space for everything else to be born.
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on 2014-02-15 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-16 12:34 pm (UTC)