spookyrobbins

[spookyrobbins]

Hey, I loved your Arizona/Erica fic from a few years ago. Is there a chance that you might revisit the ship and write something new or maybe continue the AU for the one existing?

hey thanks!

i never say never but i can say im not currently working on anything for them. i think any addition to that au would probably be less smut and more calzona focused when they figure out they both slept with erica.

that said, i’m open to doing more arizona/erica should an idea strike me. i do quite love a rare pair and they’re about as rare as it gets.

[spookyrobbins]

i can't wait for people to read the fic im writing. i hope i finish it someday

[spookyrobbins]

Could you give us the link to the discord server again?

here you go! https://discord.gg/D7fx47bN

i haven’t been as active on discord or here as i’m currently traveling in europe before i start school but im also kinda always around 🤷‍♀️

[spookyrobbins]

Ok but the whole adopting Mark's grandson still gets me, like, what was Callie thinking, like imagine her actually going through with it without ever mentioning it to Arizona because why would she and then when she has already signed the papers she finally tells Arizona. And of course Callie acts like it's nbd because that's just what friends do for each other.

genuinely such an underrated wild storyline

bc yeah like what exactly was the plan there callie?

i think the most “realistic” way to go about it would be mark adopting his grandson and callie who doesn’t formally adopt him but is heavily involved. bc mark who wants callie’s help and support, but he’s also very aware of how tied together he and callie will be if she adopts the baby too and he’s desperately hopeful that lexie will just change her mind. which in some ways it’s kind of a nightmare scenario for callie.

bc she’s obviously going to get attached but much like arizona and sofia in s8, there aren’t really any protections for callie. and she and mark suck at boundaries and now they’re in a situation that desperately needs boundaries. like is callie coparenting? or just helping out and watching the kid from time to time? does callie have any authority or does she defer to mark? like it very easily and very quickly could get messy

and also callie who sort of quickly learns that she’s not actually ready for a baby, that she doesn’t want a baby like this, that this isn’t really her family.

also for fun, callie and arizona who have this sort of prolonged break up bc they’re barely speaking and neither one is really up for having that conversation.

[spookyrobbins]

i’m sorry to say that this will not be uploaded on ffn. ffn can’t support the necessary formatting. it is public on ao3 though.

can i interest anyone in robbins siblings angst?

ao3

[spookyrobbins]

I tried to read your latest story but I found the format challenging to read and could not finish. When will the next story be out?

i’m sorry to hear that. i know it was a slightly different format from what i normally do and i totally get it if it wasn’t your cup of tea!

as for the next one, yall know the rules - i never promise when anything will be out bc frankly i don’t know either lol

[spookyrobbins]

lena: returns from the dead also lena: writes 10k of just voicemails to make people cry

yes well it made me cry too if that’s any consolation

[spookyrobbins]

but then callie is terrified arizona will keep the baby away from her. and doesn't really listen to arizona when she assures her that she won't. so callie goes into panic mode which makes the whole situation even worse.

oh absolutely callie panics and overcorrects so hard which makes arizona panic and everything is just a total mess

like callie demanding to be at all the appointments and arizona was always going to let her but now that callie’s making it a thing, arizonas going to be a pain about it. like she’d never outright stop callie from coming to the appointments but it’s not going to be straightforward and easy

and callie wants arizona to move back home which ofc arizona wants to go home. but now arizona loves her little apartment and she has no interest in living with her ex wife. and callie’s just so stressed by the idea of arizona pregnant and alone and she’s hovering and arizona snapping “now im the one who’s suffocated calliope” which is super super chill

[spookyrobbins]

omg yes exactly, callie who doesn't know arizona is pregnant when she asks for a divorce because they both thought it just didn't work again, and arizona was planning on telling callie after the 30 days ended and they were "back together" and arizona feeling more helpless than ever, considering abortion for just a split second and then immediately feels horrible for it because she wants her baby, she just doesn't know if callie does

arizona who totally had this whole, very sweet plan of how she’d tell callie and then the most portal opposite situation occurs. and she’s left pregnant and alone and she doesn’t know if callie will even want this baby (which of course callie will, even if she’s entirely wounded by how arizonas handled this)

and 100% i think arizona would have this split second thought about abortion. i think it’d be naive to think she wouldn’t have it, regardless of how fleeting. and the last thing arizona wants is to trap callie (again) but she loves their baby.

and bc arizona who’s already planned out five years down the road and how exactly she’ll manage this by herself. bc she won’t even allow herself to be hopeful that callie would want to be involved. and that’s absolutely devastating to callie bc for her, it’s just another time where arizonas pushing her away.

[spookyrobbins]

LENA WHAT HAPPENED TO TIMS VOICEMAIL

it’s hard to remember to pay the phone bill when you’ve just fallen out of the freaking sky and gone through an immensely traumatic experience

[spookyrobbins]

that line about tim and sofia in your new fic is going to haunt me all day

babes it’s gonna haunt me for much longer

[spookyrobbins]

can i interest anyone in robbins siblings angst?

ao3

[spookyrobbins]

"let’s all consider arizona who was actually pregnant when they were in couples therapy" literally the best time for arizona to be pregnant. because i mean imagine arizona alone in a hotel room after callie told her she wanted a divorce, pregnant, not knowing if callie even wants this baby

no exactlyyyyy

arizona who has this fleeting moment of hope bc they’ve been trying for a second baby for years at this point, only for it to be immediately dashed bc callie feels suffocated. and won’t another kid just be that much more suffocating?

also arizona who of course is kind of a mess and waits until they’re officially divorced before she tells callie. which doesn’t even take that long but still she waits to tell her so callie doesn’t feel trapped.

[spookyrobbins]

You know what would be a really screwed up situation? If Calzona had 2 kids, Sofia and one that Arizona gave birth to, and Callie decided to leave with Penny. Would she want to take both kids? Would she only take Sofia?

(spoiler alert: i love calzona 2 kid custody battles)

the answer is clearly parent trap. each one gets to keep a kid.

okay so the custody battle happens what like 2-3 years after the divorce? i know greys timeline is super crunchy and weird in the post plane crash era. for simplicity/story reasons, calzona’s second kid is 2. and bc why not make arizona suffer, let’s all consider arizona who was actually pregnant when they were in couples therapy. so she gave birth after the divorce. bc yay fun times for arizona

callie would totally sue for both of them. she wouldn’t just sue for custody of sofia. bc presumably she has a touch more personal understanding of arizonas fears of losing sofia (although very little practical application of said understanding) callie’s sort of in a similar situation where she can legally adopt their baby but the baby’s arizonas biologically. except obvs the mark of it all with sofia and the added stressor of mark being involved was for arizona. so yeah callie’s suing for both kids

as for the outcome, my gut instinct is sofia stays in seattle with arizona bc she’s already in school and the toddler goes to nyc with callie. this is partially (semi twisted movie) logic, partially the exciting possibilities this has.

we already basically know how sofia in seattle with arizona was, so i’ll focus more on callie directly.

callie who’s living in a new city with her toddler who looks just like her ex wife and her younger gf seems freaked out by the whole thing and never wants to be around said toddler. bc penny definitely wasn’t trying to sign up for being around a toddler when she moved to nyc. and penny who slowly drifts away bc she’s a resident and she’s not ready for how domestic this all is and she’s generally uncomfortable with the whole thing. and callie who finds herself slowly losing the whole reason she went to nyc and burned everything in seattle to do so.

but also callie who’s only ever raised kids with a fairly involved village plus a generally positive co parenting relationship with arizona. which was probably true in canon with sofia. callie doesn’t have anyone but penny to help out with her kid, but that’s not necessarily helping their relationship. callie basically going from a 24/7 support system to a single mom in an instant and she’s got a 2 year old who wants their mommy. and lbr a 2 year who lost half their family and is in a new place can’t be easy. like tantrums and fits and the whole nine yards. and callie has no support system and she’s not necessarily going to admit defeat and call arizona (yet at least)

in this case i think it’d be more likely that callie folds first and wants to move back to seattle. like callie who has this startling realization of her own cruelty in the custody battle bc they both won and lost and nobody’s happy with their arrangement and she doesn’t know right away how to fix anything but it feels like she should fix it. and callie eventually hitting a point where it doesn’t seem like there will ever be a clean option that doesn’t feel like admitting guilt, and she just calls arizona and tells her this isn’t working and she thinks they need to move back

[spookyrobbins]

no. game over is "i wish i had married mark instead of you"

i don’t remember what the game was but presumably anon you won

[spookyrobbins]

Can we talk about Arizonas career? You’re the only one I’ve ever read who actually dealt with Arizonas career in and I’ll be yours. How do you view her career progression?

anon i could talk about arizonas career all day. i have devoted far too much time to dissecting her career to not have thoughts lol

the sort of highlights for my interpretation of arizonas career within the confines of the show (which i generally follow greys precedent for medical careers vs the actual real world)

for all of this, it’s important to note that arizona was born in 1976, callie was born in 1975 and arizona skipped a grade bc of all the moving around so they graduated college the same year but when arizona went to med school, callie did two years in the peace corps

we do actually know a bit about arizonas career pre her first appearance on the show. namely that she went to johns hopkins for med school and her residency

now in greys canon; you do a generalist surgery residency (except for ortho apparently??) and then a specialized fellowship

and so arizona did her fellowship at seattle grace, which we know bc she says that she applied for the grant when she first moved to seattle a few years ago before she had any reason to stay in seattle

as for some of my own nuance, we know she’s considered a prodigy and that she’s very close with mccale at jhu - so why did she do her fellowship in seattle instead of baltimore?

i think it’s two fold: 1) tim - tim probably died sometime between arizonas 3rd year of residency and right before her fellowship. i’ve based this on a few things. if it’s during her fellowship, that means tim died under 2 years when arizona talks about him with callie and that just seems extremely fresh imo. additionally, based on essentially the logistics of how/when tim could’ve died. he was an army ranger and the rangers were extremely active in both iraq and afghanistan in a variety of roles. but the gwot was very year to year and there’s some degree of nuance there as well. as for how this impacts arizonas career, i think arizona would’ve chosen to get away from anything that reminded her of tim.

2) i also think arizonas fellowship was a bit of a “push the baby bird out of the nest” moment. arizona spent nearly a decade at johns hopkins and while she’s very talented, i think arizona also trends towards taking the safer option. so i think mccale in particular really pushed for her to go away from baltimore to challenge her

this is a semi notable plot point in smbr but i do think arizona did not intend to stay in seattle after her fellowship concluded and probably intended to go back to hopkins

as for her fellowship at sg, kenley was probably not the greatest teacher but also fellows are pretty independent etc and arizona seemingly disagreed with his style of treatment so she probably didn’t really care if he was the worlds greatest teacher

it’s also notable that in the last portion of her fellowship, sg was both literally and figuratively falling to pieces. and for arizona, who is extremely type a and competitive and had spent the majority of her career at one of the top med programs in the country, i think this was a problem more so than kenley. again this is basically ripped from smbr

in that vein, the only reason arizona stayed in seattle was bc she happened to become department head incredibly early in her career, like very shortly after her fellowship concluded or perhaps even before - which i don’t think is out of the realm of greys possibility tbh. webber presumably has a high standard of who he would hire to run a department but given that peds is incredibly competitive and that sg was falling apart, his options might be limited. and he probably viewed arizona as a good, cheap, manageable option, especially after he had such a poor relationship with kenley

and i think becoming department head was honestly one of arizonas primary career milestones. unlike callie, she’s not particularly research inclined. she’s also not quite in the same vein as a derek or cristina where they’re always pushing boundaries. we’ve discussed this previously but arizona is much less inventive or risky in her surgical approaches - which is in part bc of her specialties and in part bc of her personality. but above all else, arizona wants to help people and be the very best at it.

i don’t really think arizona would want to be chief of surgery, she’d want to be where the action is, where she can actually be doing something. so for arizona in s5’s mindset, she basically achieved everything she had planned on which i think adds an interesting dimension to her character. she’s presumably the youngest department head (mark and derek i believe are about a decade older and they’re probably the next youngest), is having to maintain a competitive program that’s effectively hamstrung and figure out how to actually be a dept head. like she’s going through it in that mid s5-s6 period

im just realizing how much i’ve rambled about arizonas early career and we’ve only just hit the point where she’s on the show. which is maybe not what you were looking for? if you want i could do another one about her canon career

im also realizing i didn’t really talk about her motivations for either becoming a doctor or surgeon or going into peds. which ironically i’ve just spent some time workshopping for a fic

but yeah a lot of those are the sort of my base hcs for arizona. i spent a lot of time on timelines for smbr and i really will just tweak minor details fic to fic but rely on that as a sort of skeleton if that makes sense?

[spookyrobbins]

do you think callie treating arizona the way she did after africa had anything to do with her feeling some guilt about sleeping with mark? yeah, maybe part of her slept with him bc she knew it was arizona’s biggest insecurity, but she also never expected to see her again and have to tell her about it. it might’ve seemed like the right thing at the time to callie, but her face after they slept together showed her guilt (shame imo) and regret over it.

so i’m deeply fascinated with the concept of post africa calzona without sofia. bc with sofia, they kinda slap a bandaid on everything and call it even and get back together without any resolution. but if there’s no sofia, there’s no way calzona are getting back together any time quickly.

and that’s a roundabout way of saying yes i do think callie felt guilty/regretful about sleeping with mark. at least in relation to arizona. i also think there was a part of callie who felt the smallest hint of satisfaction in sleeping with mark bc it would hurt arizona but only when arizona was in africa and it was all in abstract. i think any of that would have vanished as soon as arizona was back in seattle. bc then it’s real and arizonas real and she’s telling callie she loves her and callie slept with mark. and i think callie very acutely felt guilty bc she already knows how it will hurt arizona to know. and there’s pretty much no way arizona wont find out.