#this show didn’t go far enough into donna’s perspective before having her quit being josh’s secretary

[anders-hawke]

me last month: i guess i’m writing a west wing fic now, i’ll make sure i actually get it done

me now: oopsie, i started a dragon age fic

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

Hi. I’m the one who left that Josh/Amy comment on your fic here awhile ago. This might sound weird, but I wanted to say that if you ever want to discuss Josh/Donna & Josh/Amy, I’m up for it. I have a hard time sometimes with the latter because I can’t “ multiship,” but I recognize their importance for Josh’s character development.

Hi! That doesn’t sound weird. I’ll talk about TWW anytime, really any aspect of it. :) I’m an endless multishipper, and also a lifelong fan of Mary-Louise Parker, so I think I am more of a fan of Amy and Josh/Amy than most Josh/Donna devotees. They’re still my faves and I adore them, but I also love Josh/Amy in a “they were never going to work but they have a beautiful aesthetic appeal and I’m always down for totally hopeless pining” sort of way.

(This is gonna be really long. I’m sleep-deprived and rambling all my thoughts at this point without aiming for brevity; read at your own risk of confusion and/or boredom.)

So…Josh/Amy. My personal take on them is that I love them both individually, and they just weren’t well-suited. Amy’s entire personality is about pushing back against things, and Josh’s is about fighting but not pushing too hard, so she never respected his limits because she never respected ANY kind of status quo and the thing is that politically, I support that. It made her both an ally AND an antagonist for the Bartlet administration, which of course means we were rooting for them and not necessarily her, but just like with Stackhouse in S4, the centrist government needed liberal radicals–not to let them burn the house down, like she often tried to do…but to TRY to do that, to keep tugging them left so that they didn’t ever completely lose sight of what they wished they could do in face of the opposition.

I haven’t slept, so to try and make that sound clearer…those who actually have to govern can’t try to throw out all the rules and do whatever it takes, like Amy was willing to do to get what she believed was right. When Josh tried, he’d tend to cause the biggest messes and get into fights with the President or Leo or Bruno. BUT if they, as an administration, didn’t have interest groups and lobbyists who were unrealistically radical in their goals, then the conservatives they needed to negotiate with would always have the ability to pull them further right? So it’s like Amy and her ilk helped maintain the balance, of outside interests that contributed to what the government was able to justify doing. Hopefully that makes any sense at all. (Seriously, I’ve been up all night.)

PERSONALLY, though, of course Josh should have been able to state clearly that some things were off limits and have Amy respect that. To her, the political was personal and vice versa and her ideals mattered more than anything else, including her relationships. Again, on a political level, I get that! I’m a romantic in my personal life, but I totally understand making your life the pursuit of equality or justice or whatever your beliefs are–to the exclusion of all else. But it meant she and Josh were always doomed.

Do I think their relationship made sense though, and mattered? Absolutely. Amy’s smart, and she gets him. Not like Donna does, because nobody sees him like Donna does, but Amy gets him well enough to be his only major romance in the entire show before he and Donna get it together in S7…and it’s completely because she knows him well enough to know that he needs to be ‘hit over the head.’ There’s a reason why his crush on Joey Lucas goes nowhere, and it’s not for lack of adorableness: it’s because Joey expects him to stand up and make a move, if he’s interested, and Josh is too awkward and avoidant in his workaholic way, to be that guy.

It’s Donna who makes her interest clear, before they finally sleep together. It’s Donna who sweeps into his room after that and takes him by surprise, and it’s Donna who invites him to go for a walk or something. Before that, it’s the woman with the telescope who drives him out for a not-quite-date and gets his full attention…and it’s Amy who throws a water balloon at him, because she’s interested and she knows that nothing will happen unless she makes the first move. 

(For that matter, it’s Donna who points out in S2 that his M.O. is to NOT ask a girl out on a date but instead to “randomly tumble into a girl sideways and hope she breaks up” with him soon. So of course it’s Amy who gets things rolling, and then Josh is hooked. She knows how to hook him.)

Anyway, I think their relationship is important for his character development but also for Josh/Donna, because before Amy, nobody’s seriously turned Josh’s head. He has an obvious crush on Joey, but nothing happens, and Donna clearly figures out quickly that nothing’s going to, so then she feels comfortable trying to nudge him in Joey’s direction. If it’s not gonna happen, then there’s no reason to fear the loss of their dynamic.

But with Amy…Josh makes a real effort with Amy. He lets her push past the boundaries he tries to establish, mixing work and their relationship. He turns off the TV for Amy and tries to be the kind of guy who can leave the job behind for a weekend. It’s about as serious between them as it could be, when they were only sometimes on the same team.

So when Donna says, “A whole new chapter begins,” in S4, that’s the most directly snarky we’ve ever seen her. She’s so nice about Joey, even OVERLY supportive, enough that smart, savvy Joey Lucas is paying better attention than Josh himself and can tell that Donna’s worried. But while Donna starts out there with Amy, chatting to Josh on the phone while he’s with her, teasing and keeping up their usual banter…over time she gets sort of obviously sick of it. 

And even just from a friend perspective, that makes sense. Amy’s not good for Josh, and he’s not that good for her either, cuz he’ll never be willing to capitulate as much as she wants and honestly they’re both people who want to be right all the time but who see government from completely different perspectives and Josh IS his job and Amy threatens his job which means threatening his actual identity…

Which is why I love the way Donna gets exasperated and implies that Amy doesn’t understand Josh well enough at the end of S4. Because I’m not sure that she’s right about that, I’m not sure that THAT’s the issue, I think it’s just as likely that Amy knows most of his insecurities but she isn’t willing to ever let up and cater to them…but either way of course Donna wants nothing more than to make that stop, of course she wishes that Amy would just GET IT and be a little gentler with Josh because Donna sees the scarred parts of him, she was there after Rosslyn and after his father died and she’s willing to push him when he needs it but she also wants to protect him.

Amy as far as I can tell has zero desire to protect him, and most of the time she’s happy to USE him, along with every single other method/tool/way she can think of to get what she wants. And if he were like her, that single-minded and unsentimental, sort of, then they’d maybe be less toxic as a couple. But he’s not. He’s good at his job but he also has limits and boundaries and tries to rein himself in because otherwise he fucks things up–and he’s got a very tender heart under all that swagger, and so the way Amy approaches the tension between their romance and their conflicting jobs? Josh would never do that. 

He’ll fight and try to win, but I honestly don’t think he’d ever fight as dirty as Amy is willing to, because some things still matter more to him than winning. Despite his bravado, it’s not ALWAYS the most important thing, and he doesn’t ALWAYS see the issues in black and white. But Amy’s crusading, not just legislating, and she does.

However, with all that being said, I don’t see her as some ubervillain, and I don’t hate her, and I don’t even see her as an obstacle to Josh/Donna. He and Donna weren’t ready in the early years, and for me his relationship with Amy was a totally separate thing. An unhealthy cycle in which they could never be really good for each other, even though they wanted to be, yes–but not at all a threat to what he had with Donna, not really, because he and Amy weren’t meant to last, and he and Donna were. 

But I love him with Amy in that sad doomed way, because I love the way he smiles at her when he realizes she’s flirting (I wish Josh more happiness always and less lifelong angst) and I believe she means it when she says she misses him (but only once he can’t hear her) and even though I was always ALWAYS rooting for Josh/Donna, that completely silent scene between Josh and Amy in S5 with her painted toes and her inability to stop talking? That whole thing is art. Even if I didn’t like them, I think I would still love that scene, because the staging and the acting and lighting is just all so gorgeous.

So, yeah. I like the way that the show makes their issues obvious from the start and never really shies away from them. I love that they’re self-aware enough that Amy can tell Abbey basically that they don’t work but have chemistry, because that one exchange explains their four years of interactions, always. I love how sad they are by S6, when he no longer has Donna in his life but that doesn’t mean seeing Amy will go anywhere, because their problems were so much bigger than the fact that he’s loved Donna for years whether he was willing to face it or not. 

I love that by S7 when he’s finally with Donna, he still gets that slightly awed look on his face when Amy’s at the memorial, not because he still wants her, but because she’ll never stop figuratively hitting him over the head, surprising him even if it’s just by appearing when he least expects her–and I love the way he can be sort of fond with her, now that he’s loved and happy, but she has a bitter edge when it comes to them and to her new guy, because romance is never going to be her priority enough that it’ll be what MAKES her happy. Somebody she doesn’t constantly fight for dominance in the world she cares most about is really the best she can hope for…but I think she wanted that person to be Josh, just not in a way that meant she was able to give a little.

And as for my fic and our bit of a comment chat there, I think whether he loved Amy and she loved him is up for interpretation because the show never states it outright–but in my opinion he loved her a lot, enough to keep trying long after it hurt, enough to let her push him and make his job harder and to see it as a personal insult when she worked with Stackhouse and when she fed lines to candidates besides Santos. I think he was fully able to love both her and Donna, in different ways, without making either less valid.

It seems to me that what he had with Amy was a little bit similar to what he had with Mandy, but with better chemistry between the actors. And I think that in the post-canon world where Amy works with the Santos adminstration, she and Josh probably work well together sometimes, fight a lot still over policy and the best course of action, and are never able to quite be friends, not in the way they could have been if they hadn’t loved each other and hurt over it not working out.

(Tangentially related side note: I think there are sort of weird parallels between Donna and Amy when it comes time for J/D to actually have a shot, and I’m still not sure how I feel about that but I’ve never mentioned it on my blog either so why not now.)

TL DR; I love Amy Gardner as a character and even though Josh and Donna are my faves I love the pain of watching Amy and Josh try so hard…because there’s something so relatable and human in the fact that they both want it to work but wanting it isn’t enough to make it healthy or even possible. 

[etraytin]

The Very Last Fic-A-Day Fic of the Day

IT’S FINALLY HERE! THE TIME LONG PROPHESIED IS UPON US! On September 27th, 2016, I posted the first in a series of short prompt-fics designed to give me a short break between Part I and Part II of Such A Winter’s Day, because the end of Part I had been so angsty. I had a great time writing them, and came up with the idea that maybe I could do one every day until the upcoming election, as a way to deal with my freefloating political anxiety in a constructive and pleasing way. Thus the 42-Day-Fic-a-Day-Til-The-Election was born. It was fun! I wrote a bunch of stories, did a bunch more chapters of SAWD, started up a couple new continuing stories, answered a lot of prompts. On November 9, I posted Doctor’s Orders, which was the first Very Last Fic of the Fic-A-Day, posted a cheerful message to my readers, and went to do phone banking. 

You guys all know what happened next. God knows I hate thinking about it. But on November 10, it occurred to me that if I stopped writing West Wing fic, I didn’t know when or how I would be able to start again. The idea of finding hope or meaning or even sense in politics seemed impossible. But in doing the Fic-a-Day, I’d remembered my love of writing, and redoubled my love of the fandom, and I wasn’t going to let that be taken away from me. So I wrote Still Here, posted it, and made a promise that I wasn’t going anywhere. The Fic-a-Day continued, this time with an open end date. 

I have loved every day of the Fic-a-Day, and if I had but worlds enough and time, I’d continue it indefinitely. But I am tired, and my muse is stressed, and there are stories I want to tell that I can’t write even a chapter of in a single day. Today, January 4, 2017, is Day 100, and that is a good day to stop. Counting the chapters of SAWD and the single other story I did before the Fic-a-Day, I have written 305,000 words in the fandom.  I’m not done writing, not by a long shot, so keep sending me your prompts and messaging me about the show. I love to talk with people! 

And now, without further ado, today’s fic is from a prompt by Yorkiemusketeer, who asked for a mid-post episode for Transition: the hours before Josh and Donna get on the plane, how he asks her, what the plane ride is like. Hope you enjoy!  .................

Josh understood what was happening as soon as they arrived in Washington DC, when Donna moved in with CJ instead of staying with him. People sometimes accused him of being an idiot when it came to women, of a level of blind incompetence that was frankly rather unflattering, but just because he made a lot of objectively terrible decisions during the course of his relationships with women didn't make him completely unable to decipher their thoughts and actions. Women were people, just like politicians were people, and it was his job to understand hidden motivations and unspoken words. When Donna refused to make herself readily available and instead said they needed a way to navigate their situation, it was pretty much the exact equivalent of scheduling lunches with him.

He'd be lying if he said the situation didn't unnerve him. They'd been in this boat once before, and she'd bailed, and it had overturned the whole damn thing. Matt Santos might not be president-elect today if Josh had kept even one of those eight broken lunch dates, so obviously they were pretty important. He knew that this time he couldn't weasel out again. That had been poorly done of him last time, and even if he still thought quitting without notice had been a severe overreaction, a little time and distance had given him perspective. Donna was a person who needed the people in her life to confirm her value. Ignoring her when she'd needed to talk about important things minimized that value, left her angry and hurt instead. He didn't want to do that again, he owed her better than that. If nothing else, not taking the time for her when he was sleeping with her really would make him no better than one of her old boyfriends, and he didn't think he could countenance being added to the Gomer List.

At the same time, though, getting together with her and actually talking was a lot easier said than done. Part of it was the sheer logistics of transition. There weren't enough hours in the day for sleeping or eating or grabbing regular enough showers, much less sitting down with one's... Donna and figuring out what exactly she was to him and vice versa. That had always been one of the good things about Donna, she'd always just been there and it had never been complicated, right up until that hadn't been enough anymore. Now she wanted things from him, and it made him feel like an asshole not just because he wasn't sure he could give them to her, but because it made him realize that if he couldn't give her this little bit, then what he'd been giving her before was basically nothing. But it was like Lou said, people like him didn't have lives, they had politics. They had legacies and memoirs and, he was increasingly certain, terminal cases of acid reflux, but lives were for the people who weren't out making things happen.

When Donna had come to his apartment and hadn't made him talk, that had been perfect. He knew exactly how to be with her when they were just being together. Some deep part of him resonated to the beat of her heart and the movements of her body, like she was the metronome that kept him in time. But actually saying that aloud would sound ridiculous or worse, and god's honest truth, he didn't know what else to say. Part of him was ready to put a ring on her finger right away with no thought at all; eight years of waiting was more than enough even if it hadn't all been roses. Part of him wanted her to join his staff so he could see her every day but have four or eight more years before he had to sort this out. Part of him wanted to just bury himself in her so deeply that he never had to come out and face the world again.

No part of him was ready for her to sit him down first thing in the morning when his brain was full of fog and Congressional talking points, look him in the eye with that oh-so-loving-and-serious face and tell him that if he wanted to keep her, he had to get the hell off the dime. Or words to that effect. He could tell she'd practiced the words; she had a particular way of storing up and reciting little speeches on things that were important to her, but it was still mostly babble to him. Four weeks, that part definitely stuck in his head. Four weeks to figure out what to do with Donna, when he'd spent nine years already wracking his brains about it. He was still staring at her dumbly when she gave him a really spectacular kiss and gone off to work before he could do more than babble out a goodbye.

Work that day was a disaster in progress, like every day of transition had been so far. CJ was warmer to him than she had been lately, and he could tell she was already looking to the end of the road. Getting her for the new administration would be quite a coup, despite the awkwardness of having a chief of staff and an ex-chief of staff, but he suspected that CJ wouldn't stay in Washington for love or money after January 20th. She was good at covering, but she was tired and she wanted out. Like the MS fight, but this time there was nobody to haul her back from the edge. Josh felt a little bad about that, but he had more than enough troubles of his own. He felt a little less bad later after her bitch-fit about Kazakhstan, no matter how justified she might have been in her tirade at the President-Elect. Nobody got to yell at Josh's guy that way but him.

Josh didn't get a chance to talk to Donna at all that day, but that did gave him a few seconds to think about what he was going to do with her. The deputy press secretary job was still open under Lou and whoever Lou put into the press secretary slot, almost certainly Edie Ortega. Josh wasn't sure what the job entailed, but it couldn't be that difficult; CJ had gone through like three of them and he had no idea what any of them even looked like. Deputy press secretary wasn't enough for Donna, wasn't close to what she was worth, but maybe with a lower-pressure job she could finally finish college and in a couple years Josh could let Sam go back to doing whatever Sam was doing in California and make her his actual deputy for real. That honestly didn't feel like enough either, but it was a plan, and a plan was good.

They met in the hallway between meetings, and it took her less than thirty seconds to completely destroy the plan. Not only had she been offered a much better job in the East Wing, chief of staff to Helen Santos, but she assured him that no matter what, she wasn't going to work for him anymore. Josh couldn't fault Helen Santos for noticing talent when she saw it, but the idea that Donna wasn't going to work for him, would barely be working near him, was vaguely panic-inducing. Josh knew she was looking for reassurance, waiting for him to say that of course they couldn't work together because they were going to be something else to each other now, but he wasn't anywhere near ready for that talk. Instead he told her that a month wasn't long enough, there was too much going on, what they had between them was too complicated, and he just wasn't going to be able to do it. He was having flashbacks to college, throwing himself on the mercy of a professor for just one little extension, just this once. But she was intractable. This was one lunch she wasn't going to reschedule for him.

Three weeks and six days to plan the rest of his life. Ten weeks to plan the future of the country. Twenty-four hours to figure out how to rein in the president-elect on foreign policy before CJ took Josh's head completely off, perhaps literally, perhaps to present on a platter to President Bartlet like some modern-day Salome. And maybe at some point he ougtht to sleep as well, but that was entirely negotiable until the actual hallucinations started. In any case, he was in a pretty bad mood by the time Otto had the tremendously bad fortune to try and update his Blackberry. Even as he was yelling, Josh knew he was going too far, knew Leo would've had him up by the scruff of the neck and be demanding what the hell he was doing, but somehow he couldn't seem to stop. The fact that Otto wouldn't stand up against him was just as infuriating as anything else; how could the kid expect to survive in a town like this if he wasn't made of iron from day one? This place was brutal and it would steal everything and leave you an empty husk, and if ittle-bitty Otto couldn't handle it then maybe he should get the hell out of town before January.

It was Sam who intervened in Leo's place, Sam who gave Josh the come-to-Jesus talk (so to speak), Sam who issued another, even harder-lined, ultimatum. It seemed to be Josh's week for ultimatums. It made him wonder if that's what it had really come to, that the people he was closest to were having to put it all on the line just in the hopes of reaching him. Was he really so far gone? He thought of his conversation with Lou, thought about his conversation with Donna in the hallway, and realized it was probably true. When Sam walked out, shutting the door softly behind him, Josh just stared after him for a long minute. Was this what he'd come to, yelling at helpless subordinates because he felt out of control himself? Making Donna an insulting job offer just to keep her neither too close nor too far away, risking the end of a relationship he couldn't afford to lose because he was afraid to just say what he was feeling? Being chief of staff to Matt Santos was surely going to be the first line of his obituary at this point, but at this rate it was going to be the only line. That wasn't what he wanted. Josh picked the Blackberry up, turned it over in his hands, then set it down firmly on his desk and went to find Sam.

Two hours later, Josh stopped by Donna's desk as she was putting together housing notes for the First-Lady-in-Waiting. She was incredibly organized, lists arranged in neat folders, everything in the exact right place and doubtlessly meticulously researched. She would be a good chief of staff, he realized. Probably a lot better at the everyday COS duties, the schedule-juggling and the gatekeeping, than he himself was going to be, even if she'd need to play catch-up for awhile on the politics. “Hey,” he began, his voice catching just a little bit. He cleared his throat when she looked up. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

She looked up at him, her eyes full of the emotions he was just starting to be able to read again after their long separation. Caution, plenty of that. Donna had become very cautious about a lot of things in the last year and a half. He hated that for her, but it would probably serve her well as she spread her wings in this nasty town. Under the caution, though, was hope. She was still waiting for him to get himself together, she still had faith he was going to do it. Just seeing it was enough to smooth the ragged edges of his nerves from the meeting with the President-elect. “Sure,” she told him easily, rising and following him to his office. “What's up?”

He closed the door, checked that the blinds were already drawn. “I told you earlier that I didn't think four weeks was enough time,” he started. “I changed my mind. I want you to give me one week.”

She blinked in surprised puzzlement. “Josh, what-”

“Please,” he interrupted. “I need one week from you. One week of your time, you and me, going someplace and doing all the talking that we should be doing and never have the time to do. And maybe other stuff too, like vacation stuff and beach stuff, all those things you always want to do when we're campaigning in  California or Florida and there's never any time. Or hell, we'll go somewhere that we can ski, there's gotta be tons of ski places open, right? It's fucking January!”

He closed the distance between them, wrapped his hands very gently around her wrists. “This could be the most important thing either of us are ever going to do, and it deserves time and thought and talking,” he insisted. “You're right that we're never gonna do it here, so let's do it somewhere else. Wherever you want to go.”

Her hands were warm in his, her eyes intent as she searched his face, trying to tell if he was serious or not. “You really mean it,” she said, mostly not a question. “The President-Elect?”

“Swear to god,” Josh promised. “I talked to him, I talked to Sam. One week, just for us.”

She smiled at him then, and while it was a little too uncertain to be her full sunshine smile, he could feel the warmth and promise of a new day in it. “Wow,” she murmured. “I mean... wow. When do we go?”

“Tonight,” he told her, bouncing a little on his heels. Now that she'd all but said yes, the idea was really growing on him. “Why wait any longer? It's not like it's going to get any easier the longer we wait? And for god's sake, I kind of think we've waited long enough, don't you?”

Her eyes widened as she considered all the many things that would probably have to happen to make a trip happen tonight, but she didn't say no. Josh counted that as an extremely good sign. “Tonight?” she repeated. “Oh my god... I have to talk to Mrs. Santos, and pack, and tell CJ I'm going and-”

“And pick a place,” Josh reminded her. “I've got a travel agent waiting for the word.” He grinned at her. “There's a thirteen hour flight to Hawaii leaving at nine tonight. Once you figure in all the time zones we're flying through, we could be there  in time for breakfast on the beach.” He counted her squeal and enthusiastic kiss as a yes. It was close enough for government work.

It was possible, remotely possible, that neither Sam nor Josh nor the President-Elect had fully considered the amount of planning to be done before a weeklong vacation, especially one that was being embarked upon with barely five hours notice. Josh had some kind of ultra-mega-golden frequent flier miles status after the campaign, and he suspected it was the only reason the travel agent didn't laugh in his face when he told her what he wanted. But he got the tickets, and he got a suite at what had better be an extremely nice hotel considering how much it was going to cost, and he got home with just enough time to shower, change his clothes, and put his very small amount of casual clothing into a suitcase. He was going to have to buy a swimsuit in Hawaii. Donna's end of the planning was a little more complicated than that, judging by her slightly wild-eyed look and two full suitcases when he met her at the airport, but after that, the rest was out of their hands and it was time to relax.

The flight got off only five minutes behind schedule, practically a miracle at National, and by the time they reached cruising altitude, both of them were ready for vacation. Josh put up the armrest to let Donna lean against him, just like they used to do on the campaign buses back in the old days. The caffeine was beginning to seep out of his system, leaving him jittery and nervous,  his stomach churning with too much acid. Donna ordered ginger ale for both of them and produced a sleeve of saltines from her bag, the same prescription she'd been using on him for years. This time she ate some of the crackers too, coping with her own stomach acid and blood-caffeine level. They made stupid jokes about airline peanuts and guys on the wing, then Donna showed him the travel guide to Hawaii she'd picked up at the airport. She had big plans, enough plans for two trips to Hawaii. It was probably some cunning feint to secure a second trip. He found himself strangely comfortable with the thought.

Josh eventually fell asleep where he sat, head lolling forward unceremoniously as weeks of stress and grief and exhaustion caught up all at once. When he woke, hours later, he was leaning against her where she leaned against him, asleep with her hand on his chest. The lights in the cabin were dim, noises muffled by cabin pressure and the overwhelming sounds of the engine. They wouldn't be talking much tonight, not here, not while they were both so tired. But that was okay, because now there was time to think, time to sit down and actually have a real conversation.

It was especially okay because now, with Donna's head resting on his shoulder and one of her dreams unfolding in front of them, Josh finally knew what he wanted to say. Having the legacy was good, writing the memoirs was good. Hell, one day he'd kind of like to have the money too. But he couldn't picture any of it meaning anything if he got there alone. Figuring out a relationship across the wings of the White House would be tough, but they'd done tough things before. And having so much of his future tied up in one person was only scary if he didn't trust that person to handle it. Donna was probably better prepared and more qualified to be in charge of the rest of his life than he was himself, but that wasn't her style. Just being there would be enough for both of them.

Josh yawned and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, smelling the citrus scent of her shampoo and the warmth of her skin. She mumbled something unintelligible in her sleep and snuggled in closer, her fingers tangling in the front of his shirt. With a sigh, he rested his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes again. They had plenty of time.

(This fic is also archived at AO3, same author name, with the title “Fortuna Audaces Iuvat.”)