Elizabeth Greene, MD

Formerly SkatingThroughLife35 on A03; now known as The_Finest_Bagels_and_Muffins. Multi-fandom blog, though mostly focused on The West Wing these days. Chief of Staff at the In This White House Discord server. Ask me anything!

[drelizabethgreene]

Fandom Masterlist

AO3 Profile: The_Finest_Bagels_and_Muffins

Fandoms I've Written For:

ER

Law and Order SVU

The Resident

9-1-1

The West Wing

Other/secondary: New Amsterdam (no longer active, but you can check out my Sharpwin fics if you're so inclined), Gilmore Girls, The Princess Diaries (Mia/Nicholas)

In This White House - Discord server for fans of The West Wing

[drelizabethgreene]

Sharing a Leo/Jordon snippet for WIP Wednesday this week. This is part one of a two-parter where Jordon is struggling after an uncertain test result and asks Leo to come over and talk. Set late Season 3.

Excerpt below the jump due to a potential TW for discussion of cancer.

She shifted again, putting her hands on the table. “Right as I had started to eat my lunch, my doctor called and asked to talk about my mammogram. I was surprised; I usually get a letter with the results, but I said OK. She told me there was an abnormal finding in my right breast, and that it may not be cancer, but we can’t be sure without more testing. I didn’t even know what to say at first. Now she’s recommending I go for a second mammogram--they call it a diagnostic mammogram--and an ultrasound. I feel like I should be calm and do the adult thing and schedule it, but I’m not ready. I told her I needed to check my calendar and see what I could rearrange, but I didn’t do that. I was so panicked that I got my stuff together and told my admin and paralegal that I had an emergency. I couldn’t stay at work after that, you know? I don’t know how to be calm when there’s even a slight possibility of cancer.”

“I don’t think you can be,” he said quietly. “But you’ve been alone all afternoon just waiting for me? Does any of your family know?”

“No. I don’t want my mom or one of my sisters to freak out and jump on a plane before I get any definitive news. It’s a lot.”

“I can imagine.”

She bit her lip, realizing he didn’t know what to say and was trying to not make the situation worse

[drelizabethgreene]

Not to overlook the second place pairing in my poll, here is an excerpt from the Jed/Abbey ficlet I’m working on. Set as a canon divergence of the shutdown arc in Season 5 (and post Zoey’s kidnapping) when Jed makes a deal to avoid the shutdown and goes to New Hampshire himself to convince Abbey to come back to DC.

Thanks to @broadwaybaggins and @unseenacademic for asking for this one! More below the cut:

“Anyway, I know this was supposed to be a short getaway, but I wouldn’t call it that. We really need to talk.”

She closed her book. “You know, I was thinking last night…this has to be the longest time we’ve gone without speaking since we’ve been married. And I’ve been plenty mad at you in your career even when you were still the governor. After everything that happened and not feeling like myself, I decided it was best to come up here with Zoey for a while so we could decompress in private.”

“And you were wishing I could come but also knew I couldn’t leave.”

“Yeah. That’s what hurts me the most. If we were anyone else, we could get through this as a family. This was one of the first times I really believed I was on my own as a parent. Not only am I worried about Zoey, I knew this could do a number on your MS. Sometimes I get tired of being the worrywart of the family.”

“Does the Shareef situation complicate things?”

Abbey sighed. “As soon as I said that, I wanted to kick myself. You always told me even back here that there were always going to be meetings and decisions you couldn’t tell me about, and I always understood that. But it’s different when it’s our child. I shouldn’t have blamed you.”

“It was the cherry on top of the last couple of years where I’ve been caught up in some sort of breaking headlines. The MS, destroying the evidence with the assassination, and now a kidnapping.” Jed shook his head. “Once you said you were coming here, I questioned if this was even worth it. I thought about resigning for a few minutes.”

“You would never.”

“I know. But I was worried you were coming this close to asking for a formal separation or even a divorce.”

[drelizabethgreene]

So I was out last night and forgot about the poll I posted for WIP Wednesday. So I’m making WIP Thursday a thing.

The winner was Donna/Carol! A little F/F snippet after the jump ahead of Pride Month.

Donna smiled softly and began playing with the buttons on Carol’s pajama top. She still felt shy about going this far, especially since she was about 95% sure Carol wasn’t wearing anything underneath. But she undid two buttons anyway and slipped her hands into the collar and shoulders.

“You want to finish what we started in the basement?” Carol teased, leaning in closer.

“Oh, absolutely. I’ve been thinking all day about how close we came to actually doing something at work that we might regret later. And right now I would not regret anything.

“But just one other request. Could we shower after this? I loved when you washed my hair over the weekend and helped me with my lotion afterward. Your hands were so warm, but in a good way.”

“I would do anything to make you happy.”

With that, Donna laid back on the couch and sighed as Carol lifted her tank top and began kissing her stomach, which excited her the very first time they got close and hadn’t gotten boring since.

This was hardly the worst way to spend the rest of the night.

[drelizabethgreene]

Want to share an excerpt tomorrow for WIP Wednesday! The catch: I’ve worked on four West Wing concepts this week. Which one do you want to see? (If no one votes, I pick at random. If it’s a tie I flip a coin.)

Leo/Jordon

Jed/Abbey

Donna/Carol

Something from Margaret’s diary

I will inbox you a prompt or an ask about one of the ships.

Voting ended onMay 28

[drelizabethgreene]

Still sad about the leak, so wrote an angst fic to revisit C.J. and Toby in more ordinary times, post-Rosslyn. C.J. knows that everything is wrong, but when Toby comes to visit, it couldn’t feel more right.

Very late to the @febuwhump prompt that inspired this but used “I like you better when you’re broken.”

Comments are always welcome.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[drelizabethgreene]

Just watched Toby confess to the leak, and with it, my C.J./Toby loving heart shattered into a million pieces.

[drelizabethgreene]

New entry for Margaret’s diary! Set just before Christmas 1998 and after a Christmas visit to the Bartlet farm pre-White House days.

From the Diary of Margaret Hooper - December 20, 1998

[drelizabethgreene]

Finally started Season 7 of The West Wing and am disappointed in the cold open of The Ticket.

Bartlet to everyone else: Mentioning their work/career life and congratulating them

Bartlet to C.J.: “We need a picture of the baby!”

Sad that C.J. was relegated to that in the end (and with Danny, no less) after everything she achieved. That landed like a big old thud.

[drelizabethgreene]

Excited to share the fic I wrote for The West Wing Hot of the Presses Event, my first epistolary story! Thank you to @claudiajcregg for hosting and to @unseenacademic for the encouragement on WIP Wednesday in the 30+ Fanfic Discord!

Happy to bring you Margaret’s diary, starting after the 1998 election and bringing her POV on canon events (canon compliance and divergence), sharing her life through headcanons I have, and more. Who knows where this will lead, so enjoy the mystery of the 1/? on AO3.

Comments encourage me to keep writing! Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[drelizabethgreene]

Finished Season 6 of The West Wing. Want to elect Matt Santos in real life. (And I’d even consider voting for Vinnick because that ice cream scene between him and Bartlet was special.)

Unpopular opinion maybe: I love CJ but don’t think she should have been named COS. The “there’s only one name” was a bridge too unrealistic for me personally and I can suspend realism when I like the plot.

But regardless, really enjoyed the season and the campaign plots. Can’t believe I’m almost done but I am filled with sadness knowing what’s coming for Leo…

[drelizabethgreene]

“Come on, wake up and smell the chaos” is going to be my new life mantra.

[angel-of-the-lorde]

how it feels to enjoy multiple contradictory headcanons for a character

[drelizabethgreene]

Me imagining C.J.’s post canon as either going friends to lovers with Toby or happily single (with no baby), living in a small town in New England or New York, and writing her memoir.

[drelizabethgreene]

Don’t know if Moodboard Monday is a thing or if I’m just making it up! But either way, today is Monday and I made this Leo/Jordon moodboard over the weekend and wanted to share!

Comments appreciated!

[writcraft]

Okay I have to say, the general advice I have just happened across (in an open fandom context) of ‘if your fic isn’t getting enough feedback’ maybe investigate what’s popular is…not my recommendation.

PLEASE write what makes you happy. Please, please do that. I’ve been in fandom for a stupid number of years and writing towards an audience has made me the most miserable, because the only thing I have to measure my ‘success’ on is statistics. I check the stats. I get emo over my fic versus other fics. I wonder why something I poured my heart an soul into doesn’t get the kudos other stuff might. WE ALL HAVE THIS. 

Writing to an audience never works, because then all you have to go on is reception. Write for an audience of one, if you like someone to write towards. Revel in your ideas, cherish your creativity. Take risks. PLEASE take risks. Write your fucking hearts out. Kill off half of the main ship if you want to, make them feel pain, make them love, make them come out from the other side. Be fluffy, be flippant, be controversial, and let your own voice shine through in your stories instead of trying to adapt to a formula that’s been successful in the past. Please, don’t agonise too much over where writing what’s in your heart gets you, because it could be the story you tell hits one person right in the feels and it changes things for them.

If your entire writing process is feedback oriented, it’s bloody miserable and it leads to a bunch of fics that all have a similar focus. Write what you love. Please. I’m not just imparting worldly knowledge from a lecture theatre, because I have to tell myself this every single day, when I’m chasing a nebulous dream of trying to be a bright star. I have not always got this right, but I promise you, one hundred percent, those fics that I wrote for myself are the ones that, ultimately, made me the happiest. 

[glorious-spoon]

Writing for an audience makes sense when it’s your job, and it’s always nice when something that’s a true labor of love picks up a bunch of notes, but if you’re writing fic purely for feedback you’re going to be miserable if and when you don’t get it. Weite stuff that makes you happy. Even if it’s weird and dark, there will probably be someone out there who wants to read that exact thing.

[drelizabethgreene]

I feel like this is the hardest thing for me to remember. I’m grateful for the comments I do get and have for years always wanted to be more popular or be like a specific writer in any of my fandoms who is popular.

It’s only this year that I started to not feel as bad about my stats and embrace that I just don’t always write what’s popular, and that took five years of being on AO3. But I’ve taken comfort in that the things I don’t expect to be popular do take off in their own little way and that’s also validating and nice to see!

[drelizabethgreene]

Looking for something to read on this rainy day? I fulfilled another prompt in the February Ficlet Challenge last week (kidnapping). Although for the interpretation it’s more the aftermath of a kidnapping.

The evening after Zoey is found, Leo goes home to Jordon, who has cooked dinner and helps him decompress by reminding him they still have things to look forward to.

Mostly canon compliant, except for the fact that Jordon is still around and she and Leo are engaged when this fic takes place. Set after The Dogs of War in Season 5.

Comments encouraged! This is the full version of the fic I shared in the @thirty-plus-fanfic server for WIP Wednesday last week!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[drelizabethgreene]

My first West Wing fanfic turned one today, so I thought I would re-share it!

A canon divergence of In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part 1, where C.J. does the first press briefing afterward and then ends up back at the hospital when her concussion symptoms are too much to power through.

Comments always welcome! (Please no concrit; I know it may be a little rough for the first time I wrote for TWW.)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works