Title: Absurd Comparisons.
Continuity: Anytime between 'The Merger' (Season Three's 8th episode) and 'Travelling Salesmen' (Season Three's 13th episode.)
Song: -.
Feedback: Of course, reviews are highly appreciated.
Warning/Comments: Slightly A/U. Jim's and Karen's POV. Okay, this one is a bit angsty, like the previous one, but it basically compares Karen and Jim's thoughts on Pam, although it takes place before Karen finds out about the whole story of her boyfriend with his best friend. I'm glad I had the idea of writing this- although I would have appreciated it if my muse would have suggested it on daytime and not when I was about to fall asleep, XD- because it really sucks for Karen throughout the entire Season and she deserves someone to listen to her talking about it. So let's listen. Or should I say let's read?
Karen didn't get it. She simply couldn't understand it.
Karen thought Pam Beesly wasn't pretty. She had watched her attentively and of all the things she had seen, she couldn't mention one that she found attractive.
Like, for example, Karen thought Pam's hair tended to get too messy.
Karen thought Pam's skin looked way too pale sometimes.
Karen thought Pam's lips were too thin.
Karen thought Pam wasn't tall or slender.
(Jim, on the other hand, couldn't take his eyes off Pam; he loved her eyes, which he considered the most perfect shade of green; he loved her hair, which perfectly framed her delicate features; he loved her smile and the fact that she had the perfect dimensions to fit in his embrace. To him, Pam was beautiful.)
Karen didn't like Pam Beesly's personality either. To her, it seemed like the receptionist was mellow and shy and way too passive; coward even. Besides, it annoyed the hell out of Karen that Pam always looked like she was bored as Hell.
(Jim, instead, knew Pam's real personality, the one that he described with words like caring, sweet, kind, funny, compassionate and smart. Pam was the girl that was always ready and willing to help him pulling a prank on Dwight but that also was there for him when he was down; Pam was the girl who genuinely cared about everybody; Pam was his best friend. And he missed her. )
Karen thought that Pam Beesly was so typically average, that there wasn't anything remarkable about her. She wasn't that smart or funny or pretty. Karen couldn't find anything interesting about her.
(Needless to say Jim found Pam fascinating.)
Karen thought Pam was the kind of girl who had zero ambitions; the girl who settled for being a receptionist for years and years and years in a small paper company branch with a doubtful future.
(Jim, on the other hand, knew everything about Pam's dreams of becoming an artist, marrying a man that loved her and having a big house with a terrace where she could plant a lot of flowers, and all the other things that she wanted but never mentioned, because she didn't feel comfortable asking life for too much. Jim would have given anything to be the one to make those dreams come true. )
Karen did her best to like Pam; but at the end of the day, she just couldn't stand her.
(Jim did his best not to love Pam, but at the end of the day, he simply did.)
Karen thought that Pam Beesly was full of flaws.
Jim Halpert, on the other hand, was flawless.
And so Karen Fillipelli couldn't understand how a man like him could ever be interested in someone like Pam.
Karen thought Jim was spectacularly perfect; the kind of guy you find once in a lifetime. And to her eyes, Pam Beesly was so… ordinary, so unworthy of someone like him.
But there had been something between them- of that, Karen was sure. She had noticed the way they acted when they were together, how awkward and weird things seemed to be every time they were forced to interact. Karen was aware there was something going on between his boyfriend and his best friend- she didn't know what, but she would find out as soon as possible.
If Pam had let Jim go, it was her problem. Karen had found Jim and she had fallen in love with him and it wasn't fair for her to have to stand being treated like she didn't exist. He was her boyfriend, not Pam's, after all. It drove Karen crazy that Jim didn't pay her as much attention as he paid to his best friend. That was why she had started to compare herself with that girl.
If Karen was asked about herself she would objectively and sincerely say that she was smart, capable, hard-worker, competitive and responsible when it came to her job, and that she was funny, likeable and easy- going in the other aspects of her life.
If Karen was asked if she considered herself good looking, she wouldn't pretend humility and she would say yes.
If she was asked how she was within a relationship, she would tell the truth: she was loving and passionate and straightforward: when she wanted something or someone, she didn't stop until she got it.
If she was asked what she wanted from love, the answer was simple: someone who could love her the way she was.
Karen was a rational person; she could have understood that his boyfriend had troubles getting over his ex if that woman would have been as special as him. But the fact that he couldn't get over Pam Beesly really pissed her off.
It wasn't that Karen though she was perfect. Not at all. But she considered herself worthy of love.
She was worthy of love. She didn't deserve this.
Karen was patient, but she had reached a turning point.
She was proud and brave and she fought for what she wanted. She wouldn't let the man she loved slip right through her fingers. No.
Karen Fillipelli would fight every battle, even when it seemed like she had already lost the war.