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who else decodes you? (mitchsen fic)

Beca Mitchell was the editor-in-chief of the Barden Music Journal, and she loved it. She got to interview bands, write up reviews, and work with her best friends. She was pretty good at student journalism. Her readers loved her. The problem was, her readers were also Aubrey Posen's readers. Aubrey Posen, editor-in-chief of The Barden Gazette, and ex...person...in Beca's life. High school was a long time ago, but unresolved feelings had a funny way of coming to light through damning articles and meddling friends.

read chapter one on ao3 here, or below.

BARDEN MUSIC JOURNAL

You ever stop and think for a moment – what the hell am I doing?

When you’re lounging in the library in the middle of the night, the god-awful coffee from the vending machine on the third floor already cold by the time you reach your desk, a couple equally unlucky souls hanging around the desks nearby, all dutifully typing up their assignments whilst you’re struggling to focus. What the hell are we doing?

What is it about the world that forces us into these situations? Capitalism, obviously, but beyond that. Why do we need to work on assignments about some fucked up centuries old King of England when what we really want to do with our lives doesn’t concern royalty at all? At least, not the generational kind.

It’s really no secret that I – being this journal’s editor in chief – want to work in the music industry. I want to work with music royalty. I want to earn music royalties. It’s all rad being a college student and getting a degree until that degree drives you further and further from your dream. It’s no longer rad then, it becomes trite. Exhaustive, a waste of time and energy and brain power.

That’s when music brings you back to life.

That’s what music is for, really.

The assignment is long forgotten, buried in a sea of tabs and documents that I have no desire to revisit. Spotify opens (for the tenth time today), and all liked songs are shuffled. In the dead of the clinically lit night, music is the only thing that can bring me back to life. It doesn’t matter how many times we try to convince ourselves that what we’re working on is worthwhile, it can’t be, not if it isn’t electrifying. The first song that plays will determine my mood for the next several hours. Will it be some sappy love song, forcing me into a well of yearning and heartache, allowing me to consider King Henry’s tragic love life in a new (still clinical) light? Or will it be heavy metal, screamed lyrics bouncing around my brain so fervently that I scrap my assignment on the King altogether and instead focus on the extreme anger half of his ex-wives must’ve been in by the end of his reign?

The Way – Ariana Grande feat. Mac Miller.

Okay. I guess it’s time to write about the only good relationship he had? Jane Seymour it is.

Music governs my life. It would be impossible to do anything without it. I don’t know how they coped in the 1500s. Heads being chopped off left, right, and centre, and no Spotify to numb the pain. Sounds like hell.

By Beca Mitchell

THE BARDEN GAZETTE

Some students at this college feel as though life is an endless, meaningless array of pointless assignments and lacklustre library trips for degrees that don’t matter in the grand scheme of life.

How wrong those students are.

They are even more wrong to write about it.

Attempting to convince college students that they’re wasting their time and money on a degree as if it won’t increase their job prospects, credibility and comprehension of the world is ridiculous. A degree cannot make you famous overnight, it’s true (unless you have an exceptionally high GPA, and a near-perfect essay paper worthy of publishing). But what BARDEN MUSIC JOURNAL fails to reconcile with is that hard work is what leads people to working with royalty, however that royalty may come.

One does not simply snap their fingers and find their way into their dream profession. If I were to do that, I would be the worst lawyer on the planet.

Barden does not prepare you for dreams, it prepares you for reality.

Statistics state that 61% of employees with degrees advance to higher ranking positions within 12 months of beginning their careers outside of the academic sector. It is statistically proven that those long nights in the library pay off in ways that governing your assignments on whichever song blares into your headphones cannot. If I were to argue a case based upon the plot of the last fiction book I read, I would fear for my client. It is highly unlikely that my book would relate to the international, criminal, property, or even environmental law I may be practising.

We as journalists have a duty to tell the truth. First person pieces are great, but no reason to pass by objectivity. Objectively, every assignment set at Barden is set for a reason. Every hour you put into your studies will pay off in the end, no matter what you decide to do with your degree, your time will not have been wasted at this university. I for one am sick of people pretending otherwise. Through all the complaints, we’re all still here. Thousands of students graduate Barden every year.

As my father always says: A school of fish is no school at all if they all drown.

Study hard. Don’t be distracted by the fool’s paradise of flimsy dreams. Don’t leave your assignments to the point of all-nighters with undesirables, like those who allow algorithmic playlist shuffles to control their GPA. Take it from the editor in chief of the award-winning Barden Gazette. Take control of your own life.

By Aubrey Posen

“What a fucking bitch!”

“Beca. Not cool.” Cynthia Rose frowned at her from the desk across the small office. She swore all the time, but she didn’t tend to appreciate when people called women bitches for malignant reasons.

“This calls for some fucking profanity, dude. Look at this.” Beca stood up, snatching up the paper she had just angrily tossed onto her desk and stalked over to her friend, throwing it down in front of her. The small brunette waited with a deep scowl etched onto her face, tapping her fingers against her thigh as she watched Cynthia Rose skim the article on the front page.

“Shit,” Cynthia Rose’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “This feels…uncalled for.”

“I can’t believe she’s starting this again. We had a truce. Where the fuck does she get off?”

“Probably at her typewriter,” Amy sang from the corner of the room, where she was busy scouting the internet for some fresh talent. Or so she said, but her friends knew that was simply code for online shopping.

“This is low. Even for her.” Beca fumed, grabbing the paper again and skimming until she found the right quote. “I mean, she basically called me a ridiculous liar who can’t write an assignment on my own. What the fuck?”

“It’s a lot,” Cynthia Rose said.

“It’s fucked up. I’m not standing for this. She thinks just because she controls that fuckass gazette that she should control the minds of everyone at Barden.”

“They get more readership than we do.” Amy mumbled.

Everyone turned to her incredulously, as if she was poking the bear. Beca glared daggers at her across the room.

“We’re a specialist journal!” Beca snapped. “Of course the gazette which publishes boring ass shit about the new paint in the Chemistry lab gets more readership than a journal aimed at one group of the student demographic!”

“Didn’t you write that everyone listens to music, so everyone should care to read about it…”

“Shut up, Jesse.” Beca shifted her glare to the boy reading a sappy fiction novel in the bay window.

“Why don’t we just…go over to the Gazette and talk this out with Aubrey?” Benji asked gently. He was seated next to his boyfriend, being the only other person in the room actually working on the layout of their next issue.

“If I see that fucker’s face I will punch it in.” Beca growled, scrunching the paper up in her hands and throwing it aside. She needed to get out of there, right now. It didn’t help that her friends weren’t as angry as she was. It made her feel like she was overreacting. She tore her jacket from her desk chair and stalked out. “Be back later.”

The journalists were silent for some moments after Beca left.

“Yeesh,” Amy said, trying to diffuse the tension. “Hasn’t it been like, a whole semester of their truce? I thought she’d be kinda over it by now,”

Cynthia Rose shook her head immediately. “It’s too deep for that. You know they went to the same high school.”

“I actually cannot imagine what Beca and Aubrey would’ve been like in school.” Benji looked uncomfortable. “They’re at each other’s throats now without all the high school stuff to deal with.”

“I bet they were homoerotic.” Jesse said, making Amy bark out a laugh and Benji stare at him in surprise. “What? You think two gay girls on the same newspaper was wholly platonic? Why do you think they hate each other so much??”

“Nah, you’re right,” Cynthia Rose nodded, leaning back in her swivel chair. “I’ve been thinking that. I mean, no one else gets B so riled up. And she claims to hate half the people here.”

“There’s a fine line between love and hate,” Amy grinned. “Are you all thinking what I’m thinking?”

“We are never thinking what you’re thinking.” Jesse gave her a pointed, but amused, look.

“Duh! Get them together!”

“Hell no.”

“I don’t know about that…”

Jesse spluttered, “you want us to get in the middle of the crossfire? Are you out of your mind??”

“Awh, come on, it’ll be just like that movie! With the ginger twins!”

“The Parent Trap? That’s a pretty good movie,” Benji perked up.

Jesse turned to his boyfriend with a disapproving glare. “Pretty good? Benj, that film is a masterpiece. It’s right up there with Ferris Bueller.”

“Debate your movie preferences at the movie journal.” Cynthia Rose said, not wanting to have to hear yet another spat between the boys about the colour grading of one scene out of an entire film. “Ames. Meddling is fun but this shit is too deep to meddle with.”

“The parents in the parent trap had literal twins across the ocean. That was deeper than a potential high school breakup,” Jesse pointed out. “I’m in. Beca needs to get laid, anyway.”

“She never wants to date any of the girls who hit on her. Maybe she’s saving herself for a special blonde someone,” Amy waggled her eyebrows.

“How do you propose we do this, Amy?” Cynthia Rose sighed. “I’m not agreeing. Just curious.”

Amy stood up and paced for a moment, biding her time as she made an exaggerated thinking face. The other three watched her in anticipation. Eventually, she clapped her hands together and grinned. “We need to infiltrate the gazette.”

“The gazette would never let us inside their office.” Cynthia Rose shot back immediately.

“I don’t mean literally. We need to talk to someone on the paper. Boytoys. Which one of you has a class with that fashion editor? Stella?”

“You mean Stacie? She’s in my labs,” Benji said cautiously. “But I’m not really that close with her…she also does astrophysics. And I look at 3d models, so it’s not really compatible-“

“Apples I don’t need to know your life story.” Amy rolled her eyes. “Okay. Try and get the downlow from Stacie on what Aubrey’s like. If she ever talks about Beca. You know…”

“Why would she tell me? She knows I’m from our journal.”

“Bribe.” Cynthia Rose shrugged. “Obviously. Offer her something.”

Benji’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I could show her-“

“Not magic.” Three voices chorused, making the curly haired boy blush lightly.

“Sorry,” Jesse chuckled, nudging him.

“We need a backup plan.” Amy continued. “Because no offence, Apples, but I don’t trust you to complete this mission.”

“That’s fair.” Benji said quietly.

“Cynthia Rose. You’re in charge of online stalking.”

“I never said I was in.” Cynthia Rose huffed.

“Don’t give me that bullcrap, like you don’t want to get people off your back about how you and chief should be an item.”

“Why do people think all lesbians are in love with each other!?” Cynthia Rose slammed a hand down against her desk. She and Beca were best friends, but that was all. She hated the insinuation that they were more, especially when she was in a perfectly loving long distance relationship with a girl from her hometown. “Fine. I’m in.”

“In for what?”

The four of them nearly jumped out of their skin at the sound of Beca’s voice wafting in from the hallway. Seconds later, Beca appeared with an iced coffee, looking decidedly calmer than before, but still frowning. She shrugged her jacket off and threw it to the side, revealing a vintage Lauryn Hill hoodie which she hadn’t been wearing earlier. She pushed her headphones off and walked back over to her desk, before eyeing her unusually quiet friends. “In for what?” she repeated herself.

“Sushi.” Benji panicked. “And-and fries.”

“Sushi and fries?” Beca asked, her mouth forming a disgusted line. “What?”

“We’re hungry.” Amy nodded. “I want fries. Benj wants sushi. Jesse suggested both. CR’s in. You in?”

“We haven’t done any of the lay in. I know you dopes haven’t been working whilst I was gone. And you’re talking about food?” She narrowed her eyes at them. Beca loved to slack off when she felt it appropriate. But she wasn’t in the mood today. Especially not after the barrage of insults the pristinely perfect Posen threw at her in the paper today. Posen with her big team of journalists and editors, ultra-organised.

“It’s not due to publish for another three days.” Amy whined. “Come on, Bec,”

“No!” Beca snapped. She tugged her laptop out of her backpack and grabbed her headphones again. “Don’t disturb me unless you’re dying.”

Once they were sure Beca was lost in her computer and listening to music loud enough to blare them all out (they could hear it bleeding from her headphones), Jesse turned to Amy dully.

“Great. Now she’s mad at us too.”

“Don’t blame me, blame your boyfriend!"

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