Commentary > Castle > A City Built on Bones
As requested by literary_critic.
Welcome to the Gina extravaganza! I really have no good answer as to exactly where this came from, except I think the impetus might have been a fanvid that included Sorensen’s “does he know how his books got you through your mother’s death? Or how you waited in line for an hour just to get your book signed?” lines in “Little Girl Lost.” Yeah, I never said this was going to be insightful. Or not embarrassing. But ultimately, I love looking at canon (or, in this case, almost canon) relationships from an outsider’s perspective. I did it with both “Alice” and “Tin Man,” but never had with “Castle.” And Gina is a character that intrigues the hell out of me (see also: “In Medias Res.”) All of Castle and Beckett’s significant others do, basically because they are that - significant. I’ve never been the type to bash a character simply because they’re a cockblock to my OTP (unless they’re just an obvious roadblock with no redeeming qualities whatsoever - Reuben’s mom in “CSI: NY,” I’m looking at you.) Maybe it’s just my talent at reading too far into things, but I’ve always been fascinated as to the romantic choices characters make. It’s that perpetual five-year-old thing, always asking “why?” And Gina was never shown as a bad person, per se; her showing up at the end of season two was definitely a WTF moment, but I think Marlowe established her nicely in the following season and as I said, Castle isn’t a dumb (or as much as he liked to play it off, shallow) guy, so she had to have some redeeming qualities for him to give her a first and second chance. Hell, even Martha liked her at one point, and we all know I pray to the altar of Martha. So those are the odd beginnings to this story.
She can’t believe he doesn’t remember.
She shouldn’t let the thought nag at her whirlwind brain, clunky disbelief catching between the grooves and gears. But she’s paid to pay attention, to pull up black and white details to frame Richard’s colorfully evocative language, and the fact that he doesn’t remember meeting Kate Beckett far before she arrived at the Storm Fall launch party baffles her beyond description.
She can still remember the smell of the not-from-a-forest-she’d-ever-like-to-visit-if-it-smelled-like-that pine cleaner the Borders staff had used in their ultimately overzealous attempts to both greet and invite him to stay curled up in the welcoming confines of air-conditioning and a worn leather chair perched in the back corner. Hooray for run-on sentences! It had been mid-July and the city was ensconced in a thick heat wave (later, she will sidestep the heavy iron weight of the irony (and here we have the perils of Effie not looking over this as she should. You know, with betas. And sadly, this is not the last time I do the repetitive dance in this piece. Those are the things I get caught on, not anything positive this piece may have achieved. I don’t know. I’ve never been good at patting myself on the back when it comes to anything, especially my writing.) like a tightrope walker, a bemused and knowing smile adorning her face) and her stomach was rolling as the audience’s impatience mixed with the weakening strength of their deodorant. Ew, self. But Richard, focused on enduring the signing only because she and Paula had tag-teamed him with heavy-handed chastisement (oh, how the more things change, the more they just stay the same) took long sips from his water and surreptitiously rubbed at fingers sore from so many autographs, smiling as genuine an indulgent smile as he could, asking for name after name and thanking people for coming out to see him.
I do wonder if Mel would have allowed those parenthetical comments if I’d let her read this. She and Meg, two thirds of my writer brain, argue on that part, which just gives me migraines. :D
Gina had never quite figured out why she’d turned when she did. She’d been engrossed in the buzzing of her Blackberry, and frankly, she didn’t care who was in line as long as they paid for their books beforehand.
(There is a part of her - a very small part, mind you, that only comes out in the darkest minutes before dawn - that thinks it’s because the universe needed someone to bear witness.
After all, the greatest love stories have to begin somewhere. Who cares if it starts with once upon a time or remember when you walked up to me in Borders and I misspoke, asking your name when what I really meant to say was ‘so what are you doing for the rest of your life?’)
I’m pulling a Johnny Cash right now and walking the line between approving of that line or slipping in the sap it just spilled. Because while it might be something that Castle might think, I don’t think Gina has a similarly lyrical or whimsical mind, in a sense. But I did preface that by saying “a very small part of her,” so I suppose we’ll call it a draw.
Phone forgotten, she’d glanced up at a brunette who could have been stunning were it not for the lines more consequences than truths had sculpted into her face. She’d been dizzyingly confused when Richard’s simple inquiry as to the other woman’s name was met with nothing but silence.
On the few New York signings she’d visited both as a wife and then solely as publisher, Gina had seen fans become overcome with meeting Richard before. But there was a way in which this particular admirer carried herself - the way the sorrow wrapped around her shoulders like a fur wrap, à Effie’s stupidity reigns supreme! Details at eleven! like she’d seen the things Richard had only envisioned in his imagination - that was so unlike the other fangirls. This woman was well-dressed, clad in a black off-rack Donna Karan suit as though she’d used her lunch break to stop by, and the jagged ends of her dark hair sliding protectively against her chin, her professional façade juxtaposed by the way in which she played with something resting near the hollow of her throat. Subtle hair porn shoutout, because unpopular opinion alert: I liked the season one hair Gina watched as the other woman swallowed, then tightened her posture as though she were working up the nerve to say something far more important than a simple introduction.
Gina’s eyes had then moved to Richard, who had yet to say anything in prompt. Behind her, she felt the air shuffle and figured Paula was on her way over to lay bets on whether or not he’d write his phone number on the title page instead of just his signature. Someone asked me if I really thought Castle would do this. I do, absolutely. The pilot firmly establishes that he’s a ladies’ man (as does an episode as late as “Food to Die For” and the bachelor listings) and I think he lived that life as fully and with as much fun as he could handle. But I also tried to subtly show that while we don’t know what he wrote in her books, this meeting was quiet but meaningful, which I think that pre-“Knockout” is how it’s most aptly described. I also wanted to show that even in a moment as fleeting as this, Beckett could still alter his world view a bit, a harbinger of things to come. But the way Richard was looking at the woman standing in front of him was not lustful or even charming; there was no sign of the telltale mirth that always accompanied Richard’s bad boy streak - and if there was ever anyone who should recognize it, it would have been Gina. Instead, it was almost like he knew that this would be the last time she’d take such a position with him; like he knew that from this day forward, a vow made between the mystery and young adult aisles, that they’d stand together, protecting the streets of a city built on bones; that there would be time for as much or as little discussion of history as their self-preservation would allow. The other small push behind starting this piece was the phrase “a city built on bones.” It actually refers to St. Petersburg, Russia, and though I was watching the History Channel at 2:30 in the morning, that phrase went down in the writing notebook. Everything started to come together after I watched whatever fanvid included the Sorensen bit. And yes, I do realize how ridiculous and random that is.
In all the time they’d been together, not even a hint of that inevitability had graced Richard’s features, and Gina had felt it like a glancing blow. But later Gina would be glad of it; Kate Beckett turned out to be the one person who had cried at so much more than that, one person who had already loved and lost and could weigh the risks and rewards far better than Gina ever would.
One person who would appreciate the gift of taking control back when it had been so viscerally taken away. I think this line came from a discussion with Meg. About what, I’ve no idea, but it was undoubtedly AMAZING, as all our discussions are.
In the end, the woman Gina would come to know as Kate Beckett finally decided to utter only her name, offer a small, sad smile of thanks as Richard handed the book back to her, and started to make her way back to the front doors, Richard’s eyes following her all the way out.
(Perhaps the real reason Gina remembers that day is because it’s the last time she’ll ever see Kate Beckett give up.)
I think this helps validate the earlier line I dubbed whimsical about why Gina remembers this meeting, and in retrospect is probably strong enough to not be a parenthetical comment. Then again, it matches the form set forth, so again, we’ll call it a draw.
Gina never finds out what, if anything, Richard wrote in that book; sadly, it’s lost in a pile of cinder and ash, but in a way that almost seems fitting, given how the phoenix is born in such a pile. In the months after Beckett is shot, the synchronicity is almost as pressingly palpable as the haze and humidity that had blanketed the city the first time around, because Richard never does sign her copy of Heat Rises, his hand not wielding the exhaustion, but instead his heart.
I am oddly fascinated as to whether or not Castle actually signed her copy of Heat Rises. And whether or not he found his books on her shelf before Dunn blew her apartment up in “Tick, Tick, Tick” and “Boom.” I’ll take “Weird Things Effie Should Stop Thinking About So She Can Remember Actual Important Things to Do With Real Life” for $500, Alex.
(Not that he could ever put into words just what the detective truly means to him anyway.
Not that he’d ever be able to escape the fact that the reason his heart beats is found in her existence.)
In the beginning, Gina had wanted to point out just why Kate Beckett strode up to him so easily in that bar. Yes, the reason behind her attendance at the party had something to do with the determination in her step - Gina will come to learn that the only thing that means more to her than Richard is the sanctity she puts in her job, her faith not found in a chapel or a crucifix but instead with her 9MM and crime scene tape - but the editor can’t seem to shake the feeling that with their awkward first meeting behind them, Kate was better equipped to approach him with something resembling confidence.
But with time, Gina’s become quite certain the Kate Beckett that stood in front of Richard Castle in Borders then is not the same Kate Beckett that stands in front of a murder board now. Instead, she has replaced the editor as the one who tries to build fences around Richard Castle only to have him knock them back to the ground, all the barriers she tries to utilize to keep him at bay toppling into a pile. The only difference is, while Gina and Rick tripped over the obstacle, he and Beckett are awaiting the inevitable spark that will set it alight - just as they have set each other’s souls - and around which they’ll tell the stories of all the times they met - the first signing, the first crime scene, the first investigations into Kate’s mother’s death and then the threat of her own.
I don’t think that metaphor works particularly well. I think that tends to be a crutch of mine (along with alliteration), because my writing and reading philosophies overlap in the “I hate boring sentences” fashion. Writing and reading “this happened and then this happened and then there was cake” is, frankly, boring. I think I skate by most of the time, but this is one of those instances where I fell through the ice rather than successfully navigated it.
In the end, it’s not about the when or the where, it’s about the why.
In the end, it’s just about the places to begin.
I’m - gasp! -- satisfied with those last lines far more than I have been with a lot of others. I don’t do well with openings or closings, but this is one that came easily and worked from the first draft., and oddly, one that actually was never up for cutting, as most of my stuff is.
fin
Welcome to the Gina extravaganza! I really have no good answer as to exactly where this came from, except I think the impetus might have been a fanvid that included Sorensen’s “does he know how his books got you through your mother’s death? Or how you waited in line for an hour just to get your book signed?” lines in “Little Girl Lost.” Yeah, I never said this was going to be insightful. Or not embarrassing. But ultimately, I love looking at canon (or, in this case, almost canon) relationships from an outsider’s perspective. I did it with both “Alice” and “Tin Man,” but never had with “Castle.” And Gina is a character that intrigues the hell out of me (see also: “In Medias Res.”) All of Castle and Beckett’s significant others do, basically because they are that - significant. I’ve never been the type to bash a character simply because they’re a cockblock to my OTP (unless they’re just an obvious roadblock with no redeeming qualities whatsoever - Reuben’s mom in “CSI: NY,” I’m looking at you.) Maybe it’s just my talent at reading too far into things, but I’ve always been fascinated as to the romantic choices characters make. It’s that perpetual five-year-old thing, always asking “why?” And Gina was never shown as a bad person, per se; her showing up at the end of season two was definitely a WTF moment, but I think Marlowe established her nicely in the following season and as I said, Castle isn’t a dumb (or as much as he liked to play it off, shallow) guy, so she had to have some redeeming qualities for him to give her a first and second chance. Hell, even Martha liked her at one point, and we all know I pray to the altar of Martha. So those are the odd beginnings to this story.
She can’t believe he doesn’t remember.
She shouldn’t let the thought nag at her whirlwind brain, clunky disbelief catching between the grooves and gears. But she’s paid to pay attention, to pull up black and white details to frame Richard’s colorfully evocative language, and the fact that he doesn’t remember meeting Kate Beckett far before she arrived at the Storm Fall launch party baffles her beyond description.
She can still remember the smell of the not-from-a-forest-she’d-ever-like-to-visit-if-it-smelled-like-that pine cleaner the Borders staff had used in their ultimately overzealous attempts to both greet and invite him to stay curled up in the welcoming confines of air-conditioning and a worn leather chair perched in the back corner. Hooray for run-on sentences! It had been mid-July and the city was ensconced in a thick heat wave (later, she will sidestep the heavy iron weight of the irony (and here we have the perils of Effie not looking over this as she should. You know, with betas. And sadly, this is not the last time I do the repetitive dance in this piece. Those are the things I get caught on, not anything positive this piece may have achieved. I don’t know. I’ve never been good at patting myself on the back when it comes to anything, especially my writing.) like a tightrope walker, a bemused and knowing smile adorning her face) and her stomach was rolling as the audience’s impatience mixed with the weakening strength of their deodorant. Ew, self. But Richard, focused on enduring the signing only because she and Paula had tag-teamed him with heavy-handed chastisement (oh, how the more things change, the more they just stay the same) took long sips from his water and surreptitiously rubbed at fingers sore from so many autographs, smiling as genuine an indulgent smile as he could, asking for name after name and thanking people for coming out to see him.
I do wonder if Mel would have allowed those parenthetical comments if I’d let her read this. She and Meg, two thirds of my writer brain, argue on that part, which just gives me migraines. :D
Gina had never quite figured out why she’d turned when she did. She’d been engrossed in the buzzing of her Blackberry, and frankly, she didn’t care who was in line as long as they paid for their books beforehand.
(There is a part of her - a very small part, mind you, that only comes out in the darkest minutes before dawn - that thinks it’s because the universe needed someone to bear witness.
After all, the greatest love stories have to begin somewhere. Who cares if it starts with once upon a time or remember when you walked up to me in Borders and I misspoke, asking your name when what I really meant to say was ‘so what are you doing for the rest of your life?’)
I’m pulling a Johnny Cash right now and walking the line between approving of that line or slipping in the sap it just spilled. Because while it might be something that Castle might think, I don’t think Gina has a similarly lyrical or whimsical mind, in a sense. But I did preface that by saying “a very small part of her,” so I suppose we’ll call it a draw.
Phone forgotten, she’d glanced up at a brunette who could have been stunning were it not for the lines more consequences than truths had sculpted into her face. She’d been dizzyingly confused when Richard’s simple inquiry as to the other woman’s name was met with nothing but silence.
On the few New York signings she’d visited both as a wife and then solely as publisher, Gina had seen fans become overcome with meeting Richard before. But there was a way in which this particular admirer carried herself - the way the sorrow wrapped around her shoulders like a fur wrap, à Effie’s stupidity reigns supreme! Details at eleven! like she’d seen the things Richard had only envisioned in his imagination - that was so unlike the other fangirls. This woman was well-dressed, clad in a black off-rack Donna Karan suit as though she’d used her lunch break to stop by, and the jagged ends of her dark hair sliding protectively against her chin, her professional façade juxtaposed by the way in which she played with something resting near the hollow of her throat. Subtle hair porn shoutout, because unpopular opinion alert: I liked the season one hair Gina watched as the other woman swallowed, then tightened her posture as though she were working up the nerve to say something far more important than a simple introduction.
Gina’s eyes had then moved to Richard, who had yet to say anything in prompt. Behind her, she felt the air shuffle and figured Paula was on her way over to lay bets on whether or not he’d write his phone number on the title page instead of just his signature. Someone asked me if I really thought Castle would do this. I do, absolutely. The pilot firmly establishes that he’s a ladies’ man (as does an episode as late as “Food to Die For” and the bachelor listings) and I think he lived that life as fully and with as much fun as he could handle. But I also tried to subtly show that while we don’t know what he wrote in her books, this meeting was quiet but meaningful, which I think that pre-“Knockout” is how it’s most aptly described. I also wanted to show that even in a moment as fleeting as this, Beckett could still alter his world view a bit, a harbinger of things to come. But the way Richard was looking at the woman standing in front of him was not lustful or even charming; there was no sign of the telltale mirth that always accompanied Richard’s bad boy streak - and if there was ever anyone who should recognize it, it would have been Gina. Instead, it was almost like he knew that this would be the last time she’d take such a position with him; like he knew that from this day forward, a vow made between the mystery and young adult aisles, that they’d stand together, protecting the streets of a city built on bones; that there would be time for as much or as little discussion of history as their self-preservation would allow. The other small push behind starting this piece was the phrase “a city built on bones.” It actually refers to St. Petersburg, Russia, and though I was watching the History Channel at 2:30 in the morning, that phrase went down in the writing notebook. Everything started to come together after I watched whatever fanvid included the Sorensen bit. And yes, I do realize how ridiculous and random that is.
In all the time they’d been together, not even a hint of that inevitability had graced Richard’s features, and Gina had felt it like a glancing blow. But later Gina would be glad of it; Kate Beckett turned out to be the one person who had cried at so much more than that, one person who had already loved and lost and could weigh the risks and rewards far better than Gina ever would.
One person who would appreciate the gift of taking control back when it had been so viscerally taken away. I think this line came from a discussion with Meg. About what, I’ve no idea, but it was undoubtedly AMAZING, as all our discussions are.
In the end, the woman Gina would come to know as Kate Beckett finally decided to utter only her name, offer a small, sad smile of thanks as Richard handed the book back to her, and started to make her way back to the front doors, Richard’s eyes following her all the way out.
(Perhaps the real reason Gina remembers that day is because it’s the last time she’ll ever see Kate Beckett give up.)
I think this helps validate the earlier line I dubbed whimsical about why Gina remembers this meeting, and in retrospect is probably strong enough to not be a parenthetical comment. Then again, it matches the form set forth, so again, we’ll call it a draw.
Gina never finds out what, if anything, Richard wrote in that book; sadly, it’s lost in a pile of cinder and ash, but in a way that almost seems fitting, given how the phoenix is born in such a pile. In the months after Beckett is shot, the synchronicity is almost as pressingly palpable as the haze and humidity that had blanketed the city the first time around, because Richard never does sign her copy of Heat Rises, his hand not wielding the exhaustion, but instead his heart.
I am oddly fascinated as to whether or not Castle actually signed her copy of Heat Rises. And whether or not he found his books on her shelf before Dunn blew her apartment up in “Tick, Tick, Tick” and “Boom.” I’ll take “Weird Things Effie Should Stop Thinking About So She Can Remember Actual Important Things to Do With Real Life” for $500, Alex.
(Not that he could ever put into words just what the detective truly means to him anyway.
Not that he’d ever be able to escape the fact that the reason his heart beats is found in her existence.)
In the beginning, Gina had wanted to point out just why Kate Beckett strode up to him so easily in that bar. Yes, the reason behind her attendance at the party had something to do with the determination in her step - Gina will come to learn that the only thing that means more to her than Richard is the sanctity she puts in her job, her faith not found in a chapel or a crucifix but instead with her 9MM and crime scene tape - but the editor can’t seem to shake the feeling that with their awkward first meeting behind them, Kate was better equipped to approach him with something resembling confidence.
But with time, Gina’s become quite certain the Kate Beckett that stood in front of Richard Castle in Borders then is not the same Kate Beckett that stands in front of a murder board now. Instead, she has replaced the editor as the one who tries to build fences around Richard Castle only to have him knock them back to the ground, all the barriers she tries to utilize to keep him at bay toppling into a pile. The only difference is, while Gina and Rick tripped over the obstacle, he and Beckett are awaiting the inevitable spark that will set it alight - just as they have set each other’s souls - and around which they’ll tell the stories of all the times they met - the first signing, the first crime scene, the first investigations into Kate’s mother’s death and then the threat of her own.
I don’t think that metaphor works particularly well. I think that tends to be a crutch of mine (along with alliteration), because my writing and reading philosophies overlap in the “I hate boring sentences” fashion. Writing and reading “this happened and then this happened and then there was cake” is, frankly, boring. I think I skate by most of the time, but this is one of those instances where I fell through the ice rather than successfully navigated it.
In the end, it’s not about the when or the where, it’s about the why.
In the end, it’s just about the places to begin.
I’m - gasp! -- satisfied with those last lines far more than I have been with a lot of others. I don’t do well with openings or closings, but this is one that came easily and worked from the first draft., and oddly, one that actually was never up for cutting, as most of my stuff is.
fin