#andi's spreadsheet project
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Season 2 Observations - What the DS9 crew call each other
I'm back with my spreadsheet and armed with new facts. Let's go! (For Season 1 Observations, see here.)
This is a bit longer and there was still more I wanted to include - if you want to check out the raw data yourself, you can view the spreadsheet here!
Sisko
Is slightly more likely to introduce himself as "Benjamin Sisko" (6x) than "Commander Benjamin Sisko" (5x) - though this is often followed in both cases by "of the United Federation of Planets" or something similar.
Kira, Odo and Quark mostly call him "Commander", and rarely "Sir" - all are extremely consistent with season 1. (37:8, 16:2 and 11:0 as compared to in s1 35:8. 15:2 and 9:0)
Miles and Julian are more likely to call him "Sir", but use "Commander" often as well. How often has changed for them both since Season 1:
> Julian has moved from using both equally, to using "Sir" twice as often.
> Miles has moved from using "Sir" three times as much to almost using both equally (40:35)
Dax still uses Benjamin almost exclusively (24x), although she will use "Commander" on occasion (2x).
Is most often referred to as "Commander Sisko (22x), followed by Sisko (12x) - O'Brien is the only one to use "Sisko" more frequently.
Kira
Most often calls herself "Major Kira Nerys" (4x).
Everyone, apart from Dax, almost always calls her "Major".
Dax exclusively calls her Kira (2x) - Bashir and Sisko have both also called her this (2x and 1x respectively).
Is most often referred to as "Kira" (13x), followed by "Major Kira" (6x) - a change from Season 1 where the "Kira: Major Kira" ratio was 5:18
> Odo bucks this trend: as in season 1, he refers to her as "Major Kira" 2 times and "Kira" only once.
Odo
Introduces himself as "Chief of Security Odo" (2x).
Is called "Odo" by everybody; Kira (7x), Dax (7x), O'Brien (4x) and Quark (24x!!!!) will use this most often.
Sisko and Bashir are more likely to call him "Constable" - 13:8 and 2:1 respectively.
> Kira and Dax never call him "Constable"
> Miles uses it almost just as much as "Odo" (3:4)
> Quark calls him it twice
Is almost exclusively referred to as Odo by everyone - Kira referred to him as "Constable Odo" once, and O'Brien as "the constable" once.
Trends are consistent with Season 1, apart from Kira stopping using Constable entirely, and Bashir, Dax and O'Brien actually speaking about/ talking to him more than two times this season!
Julian
Refers to himself most often as "Julian" or "Julian Bashir".
Sisko, Kira, Odo and Quark exclusively call him "Doctor" - apart from Kira calling him "Julian" once, on his request!
Dax and O'Brien more often call him "Julian" (9:1 and 12:5 respectively)
> After Armageddon Game, O'Brien only calls him Julian.
He is still referred to as "Doctor Bashir" most often by Sisko, Kira and Odo
Jadzia still refers to him mostly as "Julian".
O'Brien now refers to him mostly as "the doctor" or "Bashir" (2x each), as opposed to "Dr Bashir" in S1 (2x)
> Quark similarly uses "Bashir" most (3x), followed by "the doctor" (2x)
Jadzia
Refers to herself as "Jadzia" most often (5x), but 4 of those times are in the episode Playing God where she is talking in the third person about herself.
> She also calls herself "Dax" (2x), "Jadzia Dax" (2x) and when talking to Klingons in Blood Oath, "I who was Curzon Dax" and "You knew me as Curzon Dax".
Sisko and Kira call her "Dax" most often, followed by "Lieutenant" (22:11 and 7:5 respectively).
> No change from S1 for Sisko, but Kira only began to call her Dax this season.
> Kira also first calls her Jadzia - unprompted! - in Blood Oath.
> Sisko only calls her "Old Man" once.
Odo, O'Brien and Quark exclusively call her "Lieutenant".
Julian exclusively calls her Jadzia, but only twice.
Sisko, Kira and O'Brien usually refer to her as "Dax" - the latter two exclusively.
> Sisko uses "Jadzia" just as much (6x), but only in the episode Invasive Procedures, when talking about her as opposed to Verad Dax who has stolen her symbiont.
> Once again, this is same as S1 for Sisko, but a change from exclusively "Lieutenant Dax" (1x) for Kira.
Julian most often refers to her as "Jadzia" (4x), followed by Dax (2x).
Miles
Calls himself "O'Brien" most often (4x) - "Miles O'Brien" (6x) is skewed because of his repetition of it (4x) under torture in Tribunal.
Everyone most often calls him "Chief".
> For Odo, this is equal with "Mister O'Brien" (2x each), and for Quark this is equal with "O'Brien" (1x each).
"Mister O'Brien" is still used at a similar rate by Sisko, being used about four times less frequently than "Chief" in both seasons. Kira only uses it once, in early s2, compared to "Chief" 14x - she used both equally in S1.
Sisko, Bashir and Dax most often refer to him as "Chief O'Brien", a change for all of them from S1.
> For Sisko, this is followed by "Mister O'Brien", his most common use in S1.
> For Bashir this is followed equally by "O'Brien", his most common in S1, and by "the chief".
Kira and Quark refer to him as "O'Brien" more often.
Odo uses both "Chief O'Brien" and "O'Brien" equally (2x each)
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Thanks for your interest in this, it's definitely encouraged me to keep going! Not sure if this is the correct tag etiquette, but I thought I'd tag those of you who seemed keen to look at more data - let me know if you don't want this to happen in the future! (Or indeed if you want to be added to the update list!) But 100% thank you so much for your kind comments about this project - I'm glad to see it's not just me who likes to nerd out over cold, hard data! (Also feel free to talk about stuff in the comments, there were so many tag comments I wanted to reply to aha 😅)
@joelleity @elainemorisi @istherewifiinhell @dumbnerd13-42 @yourea--stubborn--man @writteninsilences @worfianism @mickstart @ilovefredjones @tomthefanboy @ds9official @ussdefiant @autisticburnham @daforged @loudfederationscreeching @deepacenine @thethirdromana @tocautiouslygo @transhologram
#andi's spreadsheet project#ds9#ds9 meta#benjamin sisko#kira nerys#odo#julian bashir#jadzia dax#miles o'brien#WSB
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Hi! I was looking for the fic where Andy is a sex therapist and I think it got taken down. Do you by any chance know where I can find it? Thanks!
Hey Nonnie
The fic you're looking for is The Science of Sex by the lovely and talented CharlottePriestly. I'm not sure why you haven't been able to find it. My link still works direct from my spreadsheets, hopefully it will work here too.
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End of year reading round-up! Woo-hoo!
My reading goal for 2023 was to read a book a week – while using very broad definitions of “book” (includes things like plays, novellas, and graphic novels), “read” (audiobooks and radio recordings count, not just written texts), and “week” (sometimes I read multiple short things in a week, sometimes it took me two or three weeks to get through a longer book). I’m also defining “finished” as when I’m done with the book, but not necessarily when I’ve read every word on every page – I picked and chose chapters a bit from the essay collections, for example, and bounced off a few books halfway through if they just weren't for me or weren't for me at that time. Anything with an asterisk is a reread. I have these roughly in chronological order of when I finished them, but I tended to be in the middle of several books at once and didn’t keep a good spreadsheet to keep track, so it’s a bit cobbled together from my memory and library records. Also, please note that just because I read a book, doesn’t mean I agree with or endorse all or even most of the ideas in it.
The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
Flight Behavior* by Barbara Kingsolver
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making* by Catherine M Valente
Deerskin* by Robin McKinley
Holy Silence by J Brent Bill
You Don’t Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right by Brad Hirschfield
A Letter in the Scroll by Jonathan Sacks
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
One Nation, Indivisible by Celene Ibrahim and Jennifer Howe Peace
Chalice* by Robin McKinley
Braiding Sweetgrass* by Robin Kimmerer
Dracula* by Bram Stoker
Hamlet* by Shakespeare
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Here All Along by Sarah Hurwitz
This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Alan Lew
The Scientist’s Guide to Writing by Stephen B Heard
Everything is God by Jay Michaelson
The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
The Poisonwood Bible* by Barbara Kingsolver
The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile
Unsheltered* by Barbara Kingsolver
Pride and Prejudice* by Jane Austen
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler
Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler
Jane Eyre* by Charlotte Bronte
Praying with Jane Eyre by Vanessa Zoltan
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Proverbs of Ashes by Rita Nakashima Brooks and Rebecca Ann Parker
The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
Staying with the Trouble* by Donna Haraway
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
The Incarnations by Susan Baker
Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire by Rebecca Ann Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock
The Anthropocene Reviewed* by John Green
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
My Promised Land by Ari Shavit
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel by Ian Black
Dragonflight* by Anne McCaffrey
The Masterharper of Pern* by Anne McCaffrey
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin
Dragonsdawn* by Anne McCaffrey
Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about the list! There are definitely some themes that pop up again and again, but there’s a nice mix of genres, fiction/nonfiction, length, tone, first-time reads and rereads, etc. I haven’t set a formal goal for this coming year yet, but I’m hoping to get some off-the-beaten-path recommendations from friends for things that I wouldn’t otherwise have heard about – so, if you have any favorites, I’d love to hear about them!
#Fen's rambles#2023#end of year reading list#I didn't actually think I'd meet my goal#But yay!#I guess the good thing about having a slightly disastrous pre-field-season-construction-period is that I had hours and hours and hours#of audiobook time#most of the books from about August to November were audiobook “reads”
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Hello!
6, 15, 21 for the book tag?
Thanks for the ask!! <3
6. Any new favorite authors?
I read Andy Weir for the first time this year, and really liked Project Hail Mary and absolutely adored The Martian. I also read Summer Sons this year, and I believe that is Lee Mandelo's only novel so far, but I will devour absolutely anything else they release going forward just on the back of how much I loved it.
15. A book you never thought you'd be into but were proven wrong
Hmmm. I don't tend to pick up books I don't think I'll like, so this is a challenge. I read On The Road this year (as a request from my dad) and while I definitely had my issues with it I liked it more than expected. I was also pretty hesitant going into The Magicians series, because the tv show was such a mess, but I would up absolutely loving it. Oh! And Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood. I was very skeptical of her writing YA, but turns out I'll be obsessed with seemingly any novel she releases.
21. How have you kept track of the books you read this year?
I use Goodreads pretty religiously, so there. Additionally, I have a google sheets spreadsheet where I track what I read per month (including star ratings and page counts).
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HOW DID YOU TWO DECIDE TO DO THIS ASHDKSKDHSK IM SO EXCITED
see, this is now a fun game y'all get to play called "who is answering the ask/making the post--grey or andie?"
(this is very obviously a joke because i dont think two mods could have more different ways of interacting)
BUT-- this came to be because one of us wanted a taylor swift fic fest (dedicated to her ENTIRE collection of songs and not just newer taylor or certain ships that use taylor songs), saw other people mightve been interested, and then immediately reached out to the other to help co-chair.
literally everything (spreadsheets, ficfest design etc) was completed within 8hrs. the two of us fresh out of school, exam free, and immediately giving ourselves a new project.
this is very much a selfish endeavour, the two of us wanting to create the ficfest we wanted to see in the world and we are BEYOND EXCITED to read everything that comes out of it 💖
#asks#grey and andie answer!#but also shameless appreciation for bestie andie in the tags#wouldnt have wanted to do this with anyone else#xoxoxo
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Best language for webscraper
Read the second part where we send out the tweets and tag our ISP for slow internet speed. Now just run your app and let’s see what you get! For a good guide on hosting a bot on heroku please check out this great article. Once all of this has been completed we can host our bot on AWS or my personal recommendation heroku. Once you receive the email confirming your API keys be sure to copy them into your function so they function as expected. To learn what these tokens actually do I would recommend that you check out the tweepy documentation. The consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_token and access_token_secret are all API keys provided to us by twitter and should be some long, unreadable string. The tweet function that we wrote will take one argument of ‘top post’ which is what we figured out in the scrape section. There’s a lot going on here so let’s slowly go through it. set_access_token ( access_token, access_token_secret ) api = tweepy. OAuthHandler ( consumer_key, consumer_secret ) auth. Features The reason why Python is a preferred language to use for web scraping is that Scrapy and Beautiful Soup are two of the most widely employed frameworks based on Python. It is a complete product because it can handle almost all processes related to data extraction smoothly. strip () tweet ( top_post ) def tweet ( top_post ): consumer_key = "#" consumer_secret = "#" access_token = "#" access_token_secret = "#" auth = tweepy. Python is the most popular language for web scraping. find ( "h2", class_ = "crayons-story_title" ). find_all ( class_ = "crayons-story_indention" ) top_post = posts. i only know python but it has many ways selenium, scrapy, beautifulsoup, all very easy to learn. To note, the biggest constraint in these things is usually network speed. find ( class_ = "articles-list crayons-layout_content" ) posts = home. Speed doesn't matter much for this kind of application, but ease of programming does - so Python and Beautiful Soup are the places to start. Uses RemoteTable gem internally.From bs4 import BeautifulSoup import tweepy import requests def scrape (): page = requests. Goutte project web site: First release dateĭownload, unpack from a ZIP/TAR/GZ/BZ2 archive, parse, correct, convert units and import Google Spreadsheets, XLS, ODS, XML, CSV, HTML, etc. It provides a nice API to crawl websites and extract data from the HTML/XML responses. Guzzle project web site: Programming language With reference to web scraping languages, this is popularly used for such a process. Python Python is one of the most common coding languages. Remember, HTML is the file type used to display all the textual information on a webpage. In return, the scraper gets the requested information in HTML format. It simplifies how you interact with other sites and takes away all your worries.īuzz is a lightweight PHP 5.3 library for issuing HTTP requests. Answer (1 of 6): Top 5 web scraping languages for web scraping 1. The first simple step in any web scraping program (also called a scraper) is to request the target website for the contents of a specific URL. Requests for PHP is a humble HTTP request library. Urllib2 extensible library for opening URLs It is designed to conform to the WHATWG HTML specification, as is implemented by all major web browsers. Html5lib is a pure-python library for parsing HTML. Httpv://httpv://httpv://First release date One of them is Python But Python remains the most preferred choice of businesses to scrape content from website because of the ease of use, a large collection. Stateful programmatic web browsing in Python, after Andy Lester’s Perl module WWW::Mechanize. Httpv://httpv://httpv://httpv://Last release date An open source and collaborative framework for extracting the data you need from websites.
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#today turns out to just be a study in what happens when you take a nervous wreck and give her one (1) [I] compliment from her favorite prof#and then make her recite a technical speech in front of people that hate her#the answer is you now have a structurally inconsistent goop of a human being#who inhales a pound and a half of pasta#personal#food mention#thinking abt *** and ******* comment abt#like i gotta grad in a year and i have near nothing to show for it#logically i know its unhealthy to compare yourself to ppl 5-15 years older than you#BUT GUESS WHAT IVE BEEN DOING ANYWAY#bdg really is making me wanna put a fire under my ass tho i do have a projects timeline spreadsheet#and when i get a free chance#we're gonna commit to creativity again#also#pygmypouters if u read this ur kindness has inspired me#and andy? im gonna draw so many goddamn frogs i just need a hint of spare time in my schedule#i still wanna make a lot of art of my mutuals oc's#and im gonna. im speaking that into existence. its gonna happen i just need time
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Brettsey + Tell Me
Matt stares at the piece of paper in his hand.
Truck had been out on a call and when they got back, Ritter, who was manning the tower, slipped it to him. It was a phone number for Griffin Darden, a name he hadn’t heard in close to nine years. It brought back a lot of memories - taking the boys out for ice cream along Navy Pier, bringing Griffin to see Andy’s badge, playing indoor football at his old place. There’s also that lingering sadness of saying goodbye to the boys when Heather was released from prison and moved them to Florida. A fresh start, she had said.
He thinks about whether to give Griffin a call but he’s not exactly sure what to say after all this time. He wants to talk to Sylvie about it but she’s been busy with her project and he didn’t want to bother her with something that feels so insignificant compared to what she’s been doing with her spare time - trying to help the CFD with ways on how to lessen the paramedics’ non-urgent calls.
So he keeps it to himself and tells himself he’ll consider it, weigh his options.
One night, when he’s staying over at Sylvie’s he wakes up to find her not in bed. He thinks he can hear something coming from the kitchen so he puts on a shirt and opens the bedroom door.
He finds Sylvie on her laptop, her eyebrows furrowed as she reads what’s on her screen then jots down something in a notebook.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, walking over to her.
Sylvie’s head snaps up at his voice, “hey, sorry, did i wake you?”
Matt shakes his head, taking a seat next to her and looking at her laptop. She has a spreadsheet open filled with numbers and graphs.
“Where’d you get all this data?” He inquires, impressed.
“Oh, Mouch has a few contacts at the 911 call center so he helped me get about six moths of call data so I could analyze and see if there are any patterns in terms on non-emergency calls. I think that would be the first step to figuring out how we can route ambulances properly.”
“You’re amazing, you know that?” Matt says in awe.
Sylvie smiles softly, shrugging off his compliment, “Mouch really came through with this. I’ve been trying to get my hands on it but no amount of sweet talking did any good.”
“Didn't know anyone could resist you charms,” Matt teases.
Sylvie tilts her head back and laughs. It’s a sound Matt won’t ever tire of and he hopes he has many more years to make her laugh.
“You want some cereal?” Sylvie offers as she gets up from her chair, “I think I need a bowl of sugar if I’m going to get through this.”
“Sure, need some help?” Matt asks,
“I’m good but I’d love some company,” Sylvie tells him as she grabs two bowls from the cupboard.
They sit in silence eating cinnamon toast crunch while Sylvie continues to look at her data. The stillness brings Matt’s thoughts back to that piece of paper he has tucked in one of his drawers at the loft.
Honestly, he has reservations about contacting Griffin because Heather asked him politely not to contact them. Somehow, he thinks he still needs to honor her wishes. She is their mother after all and maybe, she knew best. He’s quietly stirring his cereal, so lost in his thoughts, that he doesn’t hear Sylvie talking to him until she pokes his side.
“You okay?” she questions, raising her eyebrows.
“What?”
“Matt, is everything alright? I noticed you getting that faraway look where you forehead creases right about here,” she illustrates by pointing to the middle of her forehead, “I keep meaning to ask but we never seem to be at the same place at the same time lately.”
Matt sighs, “it’s nothing really and I didn’t want to bother you with all the great work you’ve been doing on the side.”
“Hey, you can talk to me about anything - big or small,” she assures him.
Matt looks at Sylvie in gratitude.
He realizes he can go to her anytime, anywhere because it’s how they’ve always been with each other no matter what. He knows it will never change even if she's busy or he is and aims to commit that to memory.
Sylvie looks at him expectantly, closing her laptop, putting all her focus on him.
“Do you remember Andy Darden?”
Sylvie nods.
“I don’t think I ever told you that I took care of his kids when their mom got into a bit of trouble,” Matt opens.
Sylvie shakes her head. She leans in closer, resting her chin on her palm as if telling him that he can definitely share the story now. And it feels so natural to just talk about it in the middle of the night with Sylvie while they’re eating sugary cereal because it just is. There's no other way to describe it.
He starts from the beginning - how hard it was at first being an instant guardian to two young boys, how he tried to console Griffin, who was having a hard time with his father’s death, how they got through the hump and it started to feel like he was their family, how his heart broke when Heather called and took the boys away, how he wishes he kept in touch.
Sylvie listens quietly, squeezing his hand or nodding from time to time.
“Griffin left me his number. I think he wants to catch up,” Matt confesses quietly.
“And you’re on the fence about this?” Sylvie inquires.
Matt nods slowly, “yeah, it’s been a long time and I’m not sure why he’s reaching out.”
Sylvie is quiet for a moment before speaking again, “I think you should meet with him. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
There's no judgment in her voice, just her honest opinion on the subject and if Matt decides not to go through with this, he knows she'll understand.
But of course, Sylvie is right and he has a feeling that he’ll be saying that a lot for the rest of their lives. Because despite his fear and reservations, he wants to know why Griffin is making contact and he wants to make sure the boys are doing well. He loved those boys and if they need his help, he’d gladly give it. Talking to Sylvie was the last push he needed to do it.
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My Roommate is an Apparition: Saturday Morning Cartoon Complaints
Based on characters created by @reddpenn
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There once was a lonely apparition that haunted an apartment in an old building. No one knew where it came from, how it came to be, or why it was there. In fact, nobody knew the spooky specter actually existed since nobody could see it. Eventually, the apparition met someone who could see them, and they were no longer lonely. But before that, there were a few instances where the incorporeal creature made contact with human beings.
This is one of those stories.
It was September 20th, 1997, and Terrence “Terry” Vanderbrook was working as an operator for a local CBS Network Affiliate. He spent his days making sure that people calling into the station were directed to where they needed to go, and also screening out any unwanted calls. Regardless if they were folks calling in to speak to the news team about breaking news, people wanting to partner with the station for a special event, or for any other reason, Terry took care of them all.
One call, in specific, would go down as one Terry would remember for the rest of his years. (Mostly because he wasn’t sure if it actually happened or not).
“Thank you for calling your local CBS station, W.O.-“ Terry began to say before being cut off.
“Where...?” came a voice that sounded like breath on the wind.
“I’m sorry?” Terry asked.
“Where... are they...?” the raspy voice asked.
In the couple of years Terry had been a phone operator, he received more than his fair share of crank calls. Some were very obvious from the get go, while others were subtle and not quite as apparent. On occasion, a call might start off sounding like a prank, but actually turn out to be a legitimate call. Terry learned that the hard way after being berated by a 76- year old woman who was calling to complain about a breaking news report interrupting Diagnosis: Murder. On that day, Terry learned never to underestimate the appeal of Dick Van Dyke to seniors.
Still, uncertain if this was a prank or not, Terry did exactly what he was trained to do: proceed in a professional and courteous manner while trying to obtain more information to determine the needs of the caller. (At least until he was sure whether this call was genuine or not.)
“What can I help you find today?” Terry responded with a smile in his voice (as outlined in the Employee Handbook for Telephone Operators, page 12).
The raspy voice spoke a little louder to get its point across, “Car... TOONS!!!”
“Cartoons?”
“Where. Are. The. Car. Tooooons!?” the voice demanded.
Terry looked over at the small calendar on his desk. It was Saturday. “Oh! You mean the Saturday Morning Cartoons?”
“Yesssssss...” the voice said with a hiss.
“Give me one second,” Terry said as he began to type away at the keyboard to his Windows 95 work computer. Connecting to the network’s server, Terry began searching for and pulling up the schedule for the day’s channel listings. A memo had circulated around the office not too long ago about changes to the channel lineup this fall, but Terry hadn’t paid too much attention to it. He still hadn’t gotten the hang of the search function for his e-mail just yet.
“I’m... waaaaaaaaaiiiii... tiiiiiiiiinnnnngggg,” the voice said as nasally and obnoxious as possible.
“Hang on, kid, I almost got it,” Terry shot back. At this point, he figured the caller was some kid, probably sick in bed (which would explain the raspy voice), hoping to watch their Saturday Morning Cartoons and having trouble with it. (Terry was way off the mark, but he didn’t know that).
While the inter-network speeds within the CBS station’s computer network were much faster than the new 56 Kbps speeds Terry got on his dial-up modem back home, it still took a while to get to the shared network folder that contained the spreadsheet containing the day’s programming lineup. With a double-click, Terry opened up Excel 95 and saw...
“Oh...”
Terry bit his lip and breathed in through his teeth. He always hated calls like this; calls where he had to be the unfortunate bearer of bad news. The person on the other end of the line NEVER took it well. It would lead to lots of yelling, screaming, and demands to speak to his manager. And that was when Terry was speaking to full grown adults, so he was rightfully concerned about the kind of tantrum a sick child could produce.
“I’m sorry,” Terry said with regret, “but it looks like the CBS Kidz programming block has been replaced with CBS News Saturday Morning and a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show.”
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Due to the nature of the apparition’s existence, it was debatable whether or not it was actually “alive”. Considering the facts, it had been “born” a few years ago and hadn’t “lived” for very long by the time it made this phone call. Furthermore, during the time in between, it experienced emotions such as happiness, sadness, inquisitiveness, and many more.
But this was the first time the apparition became truly angry!
The apparition was frowning. It’s worth mentioning this, because before now, the apparition had never, ever frowned. Its face was no longer smiling, or expressionless like a confused child, like it had been for every day since the apparition began its existence. It was consciously moving the non-existent muscles on its face to move downward to express just how angry it was. Its sharp teeth were on full display like a snarling beast. To say it was not a pretty sight would have been an understatement.
The ethereal hand that had been twirling the coils of the telephone cord was now clutching the phone book as tightly as it could. Visions of cartoon characters expressing their anger whirled through the apparition’s head as it began to conjugate steam out of its non-existent ears. The apparition could not find the words to express the outrage it felt, so it did something else to vent its frustration.
It made a wooden chair suddenly fly through the air at one-hundred and twenty miles per hour into a wall.
*CRASH*
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The sound of wood smashing and splintering could be heard over the phone, and nearly made Terry jump out of his chair.
“WHOA! Kid, are you okay!?” Terry asked with genuine concern.
“BAAAAACK!!!” the apparition practically screamed. Its voice had distorted and sounded sinister; carrying a demonic reverb.
“...BRING! THEM! BAAAAAACK!!!”
“Poor kid,” Terry thought to himself, “they are definitely not taking this well.”
If it had been anyone else other than Terry taking that call, the horrific voice over the phone likely would have scared them out of their pants by now. But he was a veteran at handling the phone and this was not the first time someone used a voice distorter on a call. It was the first time a kid had used one (as far as he knew), but Terry had seen the toy commercials for “YakBak” on TV and knew that any kid with one could do funny things to their voice.
“Listen,” Terry said calmly, “I understand you’re disappointed, but that’s no reason to break things and throw a fit. You might hurt yourself or make yourself even sicker.”
————————————-
The frown had vanished from the apparition’s face. In its place was a look of sheer confusion. This was definitely not the reaction the apparition was expecting when they made this phone call.
The last time the apparition used its scary voice was back when the previous apartment tenants were talking about getting rid of their TV. To keep that from happening, the apparition practiced hard on finding the best voice it could mimic that would “persuade” the residents living there at the time to keep it. It even figured out how it could project its voice into any electronic device with a speaker to create an even more haunting effect (and to make sure the people there could actually hear its demands).
It worked, but it worked a little too well.
Shortly after the apparition began to actively haunt its oblivious roommates, the tenants packed up and moved out in a hurry, leaving their furniture and appliances behind. This included the 32” CRT TV that the apparition was fond of, and a landline telephone. The apparition didn’t care much for the phone line since they were happy just having the TV all to themselves twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. (Plus, they didn’t have anyone to call or talk on the phone to, anyway.)
At least they were happy until about a week ago, when the Saturday Morning Cartoons were a complete no show for the first time in years.
But the apparition had seen shows come and go, television programming blocks change for no apparent reason, occasional weather alert bulletins interrupting their cartoons, and some of their favorite cartoons canceled. They learned patience, understanding, and compromise from these experiences. Just because there were no cartoons that week didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be cartoons next week.
Two weeks without cartoons, however, simply would not do.
The apparition scoured the apartment for a phone book, concentrated on solidifying its fingertips to turn pages, located the phone number for the TV station, and dialed. It took a lot of effort for a ghostly being to make a phone call, and it was not about to let its efforts go to waste.
If the scary voice didn’t work, they’d have to take a different approach. It was time for Plan B.
————————————-
“...Sorry,” the apparition apologized, “...please... bring them... back?”
Terry sighed. He had kids of his own, and dealing with them could be a real challenge; especially when he couldn’t give them something they wanted. Once they realized throwing a tantrum fit wouldn’t work, they start trying to “bargain” just like the kid (who wasn’t actually a kid) that was on the phone.
“I’m sorry, kiddo, but it’s out of my hands,” Terry said using his “sympathetic Dad” voice, “I know it stinks, and if I could bring them back, I absolutely would.” After some frantic scrolling through his work e-mail inbox, he finally found the e-mail he was looking for. “But, thing is, we got to follow the rules from the FCC, so-“
“Eff... See... See?” the voice interrupted to ask.
“The Federal Communications Commission,” Terry explained, “You might not have learned about them in school yet, but they’re a part of the government. They make the rules we here at the TV stations got to follow, and one of those rules is to show three hours of educational programming, and the cartoons we had, well...” Terry tried to find a way to let the (not) kid down nicely, “...they just weren’t educational enough. That make sense?”
————————————-
It did not make sense. The Apparition had no idea what the heck the person on the other end of the phone line was talking about. All it knew was that they took away their cartoons and they weren’t going to give them back.
Taking a look at its transparent fingers, the apparition decided it was time to take matters into its own hands. They had tried scaring the person on the other end of the phone and they had tried asking nicely, but now it was time for plan C.
The apparition plunged its fingers into the tiny holes of the phone receiver. The phone was eventually engulfed in the apparition’s being and soon after that, the receiver began to slowly suck the apparition into it.
If someone walked into the room at that moment, and if that person could also see the apparition, they would see the lower half of a person’s body up to about their waist with the upper half crammed into a phone. It looked like a cartoon where someone had taken the receiver of a phone and hit someone over the head with it so hard that it jammed them inside.
Meanwhile, inside the phone, the apparition’s upper body stretched as it squeezed its way through the telephone cables. It wasn’t easy, and the apparition had never tried anything like this before, but it was filled with determination. Following the voice of the person on the other end of the phone, the apparition could feel itself getting closer and closer to its destination.
It smiled a sharp, toothy grin and created sharp claws on its hands in preparation for its arrival. Soon it would wreak havoc against those who had wronged it. They would rue the day they had taken away their source of Saturday Morning joy! It could see a light ahead of itself, and once it finally reached it, the apparition took its mangled, clawed hand and...
————————————-
*scritch*
“Ow,” Terry said as he pulled the phone away from his head. Something had just scratched him. Looking at the phone receiver, Terry blinked and then blinked again as he came to comprehend what he was looking at.
It was a very small, tiny hand with what looked like long fingernails poking out from one of the holes on the receiver. It flailed and strained as if it was trying to reach out but couldn’t get itself through. The closest thing Terry could liken it to was if a mouse or hamster had somehow gotten into the phone and was sticking its paw through the holes on the phone.
It was kind of adorable.
After a few seconds, the hand retracted into the phone. A second after that, Terry could have swore that he saw a tiny head poke out of one of the holes on the receiver. It had long hair, large eyes, no nose, and looked rather irritated. It struggled as it tried to pull itself out of the phone, but it just couldn’t budge.
Terry was quite sure he was seeing things. He wasn’t sure if it was because of something he ate, or from not getting enough sleep. The thought never entered his head that he was looking at a supernatural being that had shrunken its upper torso, shoved and stretched itself through the phone line, and was now trying to crawl its way out the other end. That would have been silly.
After a few more seconds of struggling, the apparition seemed to realize that this was not going to work and silently admitted defeat to itself. It looked up at the (relatively) gigantic face of Terry who was casually looking at the apparition without an ounce of fear, shock, or horror showing on his face. Without really thinking, Terry just looked at the tiny head poking out and just shrugged as though saying, “Sorry, can’t help yah there, bud”.
Dejectedly, the apparition pulled its head back inside the phone as Terry absentmindedly waved goodbye to it.
————————————-
Back in the apartment, the apparition pulled itself out from the phone and sighed. It held the phone up to its earless head to hear what the man on the other end had to say.
“So, uh...” the man said before a hesitant pause, “...I know this is going to sound crazy, but...” another pause as the man on the other end tried to put what just happened into words, “...did you just try and travel through the phones so you could claw at me?”
The apparition looked to the left, then looked to the right, and if it was capable of it, it would have broken out in a nervous sweat. Sheepishly, the apparition responded, “...yes,” with the same tone of voice a child would use if they had been caught eating cookies before dinner.
A slight pause before the man followed back with, “...didn’t really work out for you, did it?”
Again, sounding like a child that knew they were totally busted, the apparition responded, “...nooooo...”
There was another pause on the phone before the man on the other end eventually said, “Well... better luck next time.”
This call was starting to get extremely awkward as the apparition had no idea what was going to happen next.
After about a minute of silence (which is considered taboo among telephone operators) the man on the other end finally asked, “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
This was a battle the apparition had thoroughly lost, and it knew it. It was time to throw in the towel. With a depressed sigh, it responded back, “No... thank you”.
————————————-
Despite not being sure what exactly he just saw, Terry leaned forward in his chair and decided the very least he could do was offer some encouraging words. “I know you’re disappointed, and I get that. I really do. But other TV channels have cartoons too. You can always watch them there.”
“...yeah...” the voice responded.
“It’s not like all the cartoons in the world just suddenly vanished, right?”
“...I suppose...”
Terry was ready to wrap this call up and had his closing spiel all set to go. “We appreciate you caring enough to call in today and while I may not have been able to help you, I do hope you feel better soon. Okay?”
There was a moment of silence before the voice responded back, “...okay...”
“Thank you very much for calling CBS, and have a good rest of your day,” Terry said earnestly.
There was a click signaling the phone on the other end had disconnected. Terry hung up the phone on his end, leaned back in his office chair, and looked up to the ceiling.
At that exact same moment, the person they had been talking to just a minute ago thought the exact same thing as he did.
“Well... that was weird.”
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YO I need some advice on gay business y'know so, there's this thing we call student projects workshop and it's a bit like our school's own illuminati, super nerdy shit, anyway, our teachers are so sweet and want to get us all funky socks to celebrate going back to school. Things happened and apparently, I'm responsible for choosing the patterns for everyone. So I'm staring at my beautiful, neat spreadsheets assigning every team member their own pair of socks. -wait tumblr won't let me write more
I'm BACK Now. I have this one gay friend, I'm gay, they're gay and we're gay together, although rather low key. Like world's most useless secret agents, yes. I want to give them an Andy Warhol (a gay gay homosexual gay) themed pair of socks (there's literally Warhol's face on one sock), not only because it looks dope, but also because it would be a small wink from me (my friend probably won't know tho lol). is that evil genius or straight up evil?
ok, so that was part two so-
first off I just think it's awesome that you get to choose the socks dhsjkfxdhjkd. You wield much power.
Do ittt. You are an evil genius my friend
Imagine having socks with somebody's face
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Kira and Julian in Life Support
Feelings 1:
Bareil, as far as I can see, has never called her Major on screen, called her Kira a few times before they got together and then called her Nerys very consistently, notably in The Collaborator.
But in this episode, he doesn't call her by name once. But when he wakes up from the brain surgery, this happens:
"Bareil?"
"Yes, Major?"
AND I AM SO DEVASTATED FOR HER.
Feelings 2:
Just Kira and Julian's whole interactions with each other:
(For context: Julian usually calls her Major; "Kira!" has been used once when rescuing her, and "Nerys" once when he was flirting. Kira usually calls him "Doctor"; "Julian" has been used on three occasions, once under duress when he was flirting, twice when she was protesting his orders to take a break.)
Julian breaks the news that Bareil has died
"Thank you Doctor. I'm on duty in Ops. Excuse me."
"Kira. I think they can get along without you in Ops today."
Kira slides into her usual formality, since she's using work to distract from grief. Julian drops his usual formality and gently calls her by a friendly, but not intimate name.
When he is debating the first brain surgery with Kira and Winn
"I think she's right, Julian. I think Bareil would want the positronic implants."
"Kira, if I go through with this, the man who wakes up may not be the man you used to know."
"I realise that, but I know how important this is to him, and I know he wouldn't want to just be put into stasis indefinitely, waiting for some medical solution that may never come. Do the surgery, Julian. Let him finish what he started."
Kira begins to his name as she tries to persuade him. Julian continues to call her Kira; almost unthinkingly, he's more concerned about saving Bareil than about Kira's feelings here.
When Bareil is dying.
"It's the other half of his brain, isn't it? But you can still help him can't you? You can replace the other half of his brain with a positronic matrix."
"I'm sorry, Nerys, but this is where it ends."
....
"Julian, you can't give up now."
"Nerys, if I remove the rest of his brain and replace it with a machine, he may look like Bareil, he may even talk like Bareil, but he won't be Bareil. The spark of life will be gone. He'll be dead. And I'll be the one who killed him."
Kira continues to use his name to cajole him into saving Bareil - You're Julian, you're my friend, why won't you help me, Julian?
But there is no way for Julian to offer Kira comfort here, and he knows it. So he does the only thing he can, dropping every formality and identifying himself as her close friend by using her given name - even as he tells her he has to let the man she loves die.
#I can't write#This is all so much softer in my head#But I hope my meaning is conveyed?#It's hard also because I'm trying to stick to facts in my posts rather than going hard on the narratives I could imagine happening#It's hard also because I'm trying to stick to facts in my posts rather than going hard on the narratives#Man this episode was sad enough without it also being their first /real conversation with both given names being used#Kirashir#Kira Nerys#Julian Bashir#Julian & Kira#I love these two and this episode is too sad#Meaning: I love it#andi's spreadsheet project#my trek musings#WSB
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You feel brave little cub-cub
Welcome to my totally self-indulgent, insane and ridiculous Season 7 Countdown Project! For the month of January, I’m planning to post one missing scene fic a day. Yes, that’s 31 stories. I don’t know what possessed me to do this, except it seemed like a fun idea? And I like absurd challenges?
Anyway, on to the first fic! Only 30 more to go!
Summary: Amy and Jake decide to finish the Worst Date Ever after ending their stakeout and catching the bad guys. Takes place during The Bet. (Read on AO3.)
It’s well after 11 by the time they make it back to the precinct and hand their perps off to processing, and Amy is that particular kind of late-night punchy that comes from lack of sleep, physical and mental fatigue and the rush of having just made two arrests that weren’t even on her radar a few hours ago.
So that’s why she turns to Jake and says, “You have 38 minutes left on your date. Where are we going next?”
Jake just stares at her all agog and says, dumbly, “What now?”
Amy glances at her watch and snickers, then shoves it up in Jake’s face. “Thirty-seven minutes now, loser. Look, I just want to make sure we finish this thing so you’re not holding it over my head forever that I bailed early.”
That’s not entirely true – in that, it’s not her reasoning, though now that she thinks about it, that would be such a Jake move. The thing is, she can’t deny, at least to herself, that she kind of wants to see where else this worst-date-ever will go. She’s not quite ready for the night to end.
Jake’s eyes go wide and he nods slowly. She can practically see the gears spinning in his head. She’s sure he’s running over his horrible schedule of events for the night, and his mouth curls up in a look that Amy can only identify as glee. The look gives her a moment of doubt and she takes a half-step back, but Jake’s hands are up, catching her by the elbows.
His eyes are sparkling, his whole face is glowing, and Amy takes in a shuddery breath.
“Come with me,” he says, and wrenches her toward the elevator.
+++
He doesn’t make her put on the dress again, which, thank God. He refuses to even entertain her questions on the 10-minute drive to their next – and final, she presumes – stop for the night: a brick-faced walkup in Bedford. Jake parks in a passenger drop-off zone right in front and rings up at the lobby door and gives his name when a man answers. They’re buzzed in right away. Amy shivers in the blast of heat when they walk inside.
Jake takes them up a flight of stairs and down a beige-painted hallway, and he knocks on a door at the end, three sharp raps with his knuckles. He gives her an exaggerated wink and the very definition of a beaming grin, so big and joyful Amy doesn’t even try to fight her own in response.
The door cracks open and bald man with more face piercings than Amy can count says, “Quick, inside.” He shoves the door closed behind them and turns about 18 locks.
“Jake-”
“I know, so cool, right?”
“This is so not cool,” Amy hisses at him.
The apartment is empty aside from a single beat-up couch pushed against the half wall beneath the kitchen counter. The walls are covered in disturbing scratches and gouges and what Amy’s pretty sure are patches of old dried blood. The bald man has disappeared.
“If you brought me to a murder apartment for a date, I will kill you.” Amy says, eyeing the majorly locked front door and wondering if there are any other exits. Jake turns and beams at her again and Amy adds, “I am serious, Peralta.”
Then a door back beyond the kitchen swings open and the bald man walks toward them, and in one hand he’s holding a leash. And at the end of the leash-
“Oh my God. Is that-” She cuts herself off, blinking fast as the room takes on a surreal, shimmery quality.
“Yes, Amy Santiago,” Jake says, going down on his knees to greet the approaching animal. “That is a tiger cub.”
+++
“This can’t be legal,” Amy says, for like the fifth time. The tiger cub is curled up in her lap and purring while Jake feeds it from a bottle. It’s seriously the most adorable thing she’s seen in her life, and she has a lot of pretty cute nieces and nephews.
“Yeah, I rented it on the darknet,” Jake says.
He coos at the cub and it blinks its eyes open lazily and rests one fuzzy paw on Jake’s hand holding the bottle. Amy melts.
She’s stroking the tiger’s back, scritching her fingers through its so-soft fur. After eating, the bald-headed handler says, watching them from the kitchen as he sips at a beer, the tiger will want to play for awhile.
They spend two hours with the cub, whom Jake names Goliath (Bald Man is weirdly secretive about the tiger’s real name). Amy rolls around with it on the carpet that smells like stale cigarettes, and Jake rocks it in his arms like a baby, and they both end up with shallow scratches all up and down their arms and tiger saliva in their hair. The tiger makes these grunting, labored crying sounds when it plays, something between a cat’s meow and a baby’s whimper, and Amy knows she’s going to be looking up tiger cub videos on YouTube the next day just to hear it again.
When the bald man finally says their time is up, and lifts the snoozing cub out of Amy’s hands by pinching it at the back of the neck like a mother would (Amy supposes – another thing she’s going to have to look up), it’s hours past the end of their date. Amy’s knees pop as she stands, and Jake stretches his arms up over his head and bends side to side, groaning at the pull of muscles.
He gives her a soft, guarded smile before leading the way out of the apartment and back to the car.
They don’t talk at first, and Jake weirdly doesn’t touch the radio, just lets it play whatever station he had it on before. Some pop song Amy doesn’t recognize crackles over the cheap speakers.
“That was amazing,” she says, as Jake merges into the late-night traffic on Myrtle. He’s looking in the rearview mirror, but she catches his gaze flirt over to her.
“Yeah, it kind of was,” Jake says, voice gone thoughtful, like he’s surprised even himself.
“And seriously illegal,” Amy adds.
“Oh, so illegal.”
They both laugh, and the silence that follows is gentle and easy.
Jake flicks the radio to something she still doesn’t recognize and Amy stares out the passenger window, at the red and orange lights bouncing off rain-slicked streets. She’s thinking that she’s glad she’s not allergic to cats. And that she hopes Bald Man takes good care of that tiger cub (and also that she should definitely report him to animal control in the morning).
And she’s also thinking that this worst-date-ever has been one of the better dates of her life.
“Why a tiger cub?” she says as Jake turns onto her street.
Jake doesn’t answer right away, just pulls next to a fire hydrant right in front of her building. Both his hands are on the steering wheel, thumbs tapping some rhythmless beat.
Finally he shrugs. “I guess I was just inspired.”
“Inspired,” Amy repeats, and he looks at her and nods.
The air in his car has gone charged, and Amy swallows hard.
“By me,” she says.
Jake’s face goes flushed with surprise and it takes her a moment to realize he’s flustered, and he says quickly, “No, what? No. By the bet. I was inspired by the bet, Santiago.”
“Okay,” Amy says, hands up. She thinks maybe she should feel offended but she’s not. “Well- thank you. I mean, for not making tonight too horrible.”
“Oh trust me, I had so much more terrible stuff planned, but-” He stops and lifts his hands in defeat. “Crime’s gotta come first.”
“I think you might want to reconsider that phrasing, but sure,” Amy says with a chuckle.
She reaches for the handle and pushes the door open with her shoulder, because it always gets stuck. She’s halfway out when she feels Jake’s hand on her upper arm and she turns back to him.
“Thanks for being a good sport,” he says. He’s leaning across the seats toward her, and his face is in shadow.
Amy shrugs. “You won.”
“I guess I did,” Jake says.
He lets go of her arm with a goodnight, and he stays idling at the curb until after Amy’s closed the lobby door behind her.
End Notes:
The FANTASTIC @fezzle is taking on the absurdly large job of beta-ing all of these stories. She also totally supported my craziness in planning this thing and gave me prompts and didn’t laugh at my planning spreadsheet even once. I love her so.
The rules of my countdown project are: All fics must be canon-compliant missing scenes, and at least 1,000 words.
Jake/Amy fics will dominate, but I’m deliberately diversifying. All of the main characters will have at least one POV fic. And several secondary/one-off characters will get POV fics too.
The titles will all come from The Lonely Island’s Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience. This...works shockingly well. The title for this fic is from Let’s Bash (and specifically Andy’s amazing baseball teams frap).
Look, do we know that Jake and Amy hung out with a tiger cub at the end of their date? We do not. But do we know that they didn’t? WE DO NOT.
I will happily take prompts!! Seriously, please send me prompts. If there’s ever been a missing scene you’re dying to read, now’s the time to request it. Or you can really challenge me and give me something super weird (just, no Cheddar or Sgt. Peanut Butter POV). My asks are wide open!
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Art Class
Hello, here’s a lil fic based on this prompt!!
~
There were many things that Cyrus associated with TJ Kippen. Being loud, being athletic, and being the most unbearably gorgeous guy in their year. That’s why it was always somewhat of a shock walking into art and seeing him alone, completely caught up in his researching, or his essay-writing, or his painting. Their teacher absolutely adored him because of this, and Cyrus would always see him linger behind after class to have conversations with her.
Art was a subject he’d been forced into due to timetable clashes, so although Cyrus loved looking at art, especially Andi’s, he just didn’t seem to have an eye for it like his classmates did. In fact, he would usually spend a majority of the time talking to Buffy, who didn’t particularly like the subject either.
It was a pleasantly cool spring morning when Cyrus took his usual seat beside the girl, offering her a small smile as he did so.
“Good morning, everyone. Today we’re going to start a project that some of you may not necessarily like, but it has to be done as per the curriculum at least once during the semester. It’s a collaborative art piece.”
Cyrus and Buffy, in contrast the groans that filled the room, looked over at one another in excitement. If they paired up, then technically they’d have an excuse to talk during class.
“Of course, I’ll be assigning pairs based on varying factors, including whether or not I think two people can work together well.”
Their faces immediately fell.
“She could’ve just called us out directly,” Buffy mumbled darkly, which Cyrus couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh at.
“I’ll put the pairs up on the board, then you guys can arrange yourselves, hopefully without too much chaos.”
The collective sounds of chairs scraping and quiet murmuring filled the room as everyone packed up their things and sought out their partner. Cyrus stayed where he was for a few long moments, looking over at Buffy with a heavy sigh.
“Burdening someone else with my total lack of art skills is not what I was counting on today,” he told her, a grimace on his face.
Buffy gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder as she stood up. “We can make it through this. Who do you have, anyway?”
Cyrus looked up towards the board, almost afraid to see whatever name had been placed next to his on the spreadsheet. His eyes widened slightly, and as he opened his mouth to reply a voice had both of them turning around.
TJ was stood there, an easy smile on his lips as he addressed Cyrus.
“I think we’re partners.”
Buffy’s eyebrows shot up at that, and she whirled back around again to check. A small scoff escaped her as she turned back around.
“I guess I’ll leave you two to it, then,” she said, giving Cyrus one last pat on the shoulder before moving across the room in search of her partner.
Cyrus’ stomach was doing somersaults as he looked back at TJ, who had a vague expression of confusion clouding his face.
“Uh...are you okay?”
He snapped himself out of it, pushing any thoughts about how effortlessly TJ’s hair was swept up, or how nicely his basketball hoodie matched his eyes, or how charming his smile was, forcibly to the back of his mind.
“Yeah!” he responded after a moment’s delay, sitting down in his seat again. “I’m fine.”
TJ took the spot beside him, clearly amused, and the class fell silent as the teacher issued instructions about what they were to do that lesson. Gentle sunlight was streaming in through the windows, warming Cyrus’ desk, and he could feel drowsiness tugging at his eyelids by the time she was finished talking.
It was only when he heard shuffling and movement pick up around him that he managed to break himself out of his haziness and offer TJ a tired smile as the boy turned to him.
“Just so you know,” he began, pulling some supplies out from his pencil case, “I’m not great at art and it’d probably be wise to switch partners while you still can.”
TJ observed him intently for a moment, with an expression on his face that Cyrus couldn’t decipher.
He began to smile. “I keep hearing you say that about yourself, but then I look at some of your art that’s hung up on the wall and I can’t help but think you’re lying.”
Cyrus felt his face grow hot at that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told him, glancing over at his collage of space, “none of that is good in the slightest.”
“What would I have to do to make you realise that it is good?” TJ asked, leaning forward slightly.
There was a sparkle in his eyes now that almost made Cyrus want to look away with how ridiculously cute it made him look.
“Something drastic,” he replied, looking shyly down at his hands.
TJ considered this for a moment, before nodding. “Something drastic, huh?”
“That wasn’t a challenge,” Cyrus added hurriedly, “just so you know.”
He glanced up to find that TJ’s usual smirk had given way to something softer, almost like the grass dethawing outside, and Cyrus’ heart warmed at the sight.
“Okay, then. Let’s start planning! Have any ideas for a theme yet?”
“...A theme?”
TJ let out a huff as he playfully took Cyrus’ pencil away from him, writing something down on the paper they’d been given.
“Were you listening?”
“Not in the slightest,” he answered truthfully.
He glanced around at the other pairs around them, brainstorming away, and he couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty. TJ didn’t seem to mind though, if the smile on his lips was any indicator.
“We have to select a theme for our piece, what elements we’re going to use, and what ideas we want to get across using our theme.”
Cyrus almost felt inclined to lean back in his chair with a dramatic groan as he always did when confronted with art theory, but he somehow managed to refrain and leaned forward on his elbows instead, trying to at least feign some semblance of art knowledge.
“Space?” he suggested, and TJ laughed.
“You really like space, don’t you?”
He shrugged, blushing slightly, and watched as the boy jotted it down.
“Dinosaurs? Social media?”
TJ raised a playful eyebrow. “Are you just listing things you like?”
“So what if I was?” he smiled, taking his pencil back to jot the words down.
“What about rain? Or rainbows?” said TJ, eyes flickering between Cyrus and the paper in front of them.
“I like that,” Cyrus nodded, writing them down.
By the time the bell sounded they’d settled on ‘rainbows’ as their theme and came up with a few of the elements they wanted to use in their piece. Cyrus eventually found himself relaxing as he spoke to TJ, who against all odds turned out to be one of the least judgemental people he could’ve been paired up with. He liked cracking jokes and making vine references, but he also seemed to have this guarded intelligence that would come out when he spoke about varying ideas he had about the elements they could use.
Cyrus, who usually would’ve recoiled at that sort of thing, found himself clinging onto to every word that left TJ’s lips. His head was rested on his hand as he watched the boy talk, resembling some love-sick puppy pining hopelessly after their crush. For a brief moment, he couldn’t help but think he was.
Buffy approached him as they filed out of the classroom, face lit up by an excited smile.
“I got Libby! She’s a straight-up art goddess. How was TJ?”
Cyrus blushed. “He wasn’t too bad.”
~
“So, dearest Cyrus, I gave it some thought and this was the most drastic thing I could come up with.”
Cyrus looked down at the paper that had been placed down in front of them, before turning his gaze to TJ. He was sitting down beside him now, with an adorably bright smile on his lips.
With a disbelieving huff, Cyrus turned the page and scanned over what was written on it.
“You did not do this,” he managed, stifling a giggle with his hand as he read.
In TJ’s neat cursive, the words ‘sign this if you think Cyrus’ art pieces are great’ were scrawled at the top, and below it was a large collection of signatures from people in their art class.
“Have you accepted that you’re wrong yet?” TJ grinned, eyes shining, and Cyrus just scoffed.
“How do I know you didn’t threaten any of these people?”
“Bold of you to assume I had the time or patience to do that.”
Cyrus’ expression softened ever so slightly, and he tipped his head to the side. “Okay fine, maybe I’ll accept that they’re okay. I still can’t believe you actually did this, but...thanks.”
TJ just waved him off. “It was nothing. Now - shall we continue planning?”
“We shall,” Cyrus confirmed, leaning forward towards the desk. He laughed slightly when he noticed the small chicken TJ had drawn in the corner of the page, with a speech bubble above it reading ‘i got my red dress on tonight.’
“Have we given this chicken a name yet?” he asked, and TJ immediately stopped writing.
“No,” he gasped out, “how could we possibly forget that? I vote Greg.”
“Generic, but I like it,” said Cyrus, as he grabbed a pen from his pencil case and began drawing another speech bubble.
TJ watched in amusement as he wrote ‘greg says: gay rights!’ and leaned over to begin colouring in some of the feathers.
Their arms brushed as he did so, and Cyrus tried desperately not to think about the nervousness that bubbled up inside of him at the contact.
“So...we’ve created a rainbow chicken who supports gay rights. Or is gay. Or both,” said Cyrus, as he admired their work.
TJ laughed and nodded, picking up his original pen. “He’s a king.”
“He is,” Cyrus agreed, “I think we should have him be our art piece.”
“Okay, that’s where I’ll have to draw the line,” TJ replied, smiling at Cyrus’ responding giggles.
With that, the pair began deciding the rest of their elements, with the occasional headcanons about Greg finding their way into the conversation.
~
It was another bright blue day on Thursday, with sunlight pouring into the art room that filled it with a gentle warmth. Cyrus felt a rare sense of excitement as he waltzed inside, seeking out TJ immediately and taking a seat beside the boy. He saw Buffy in the corner, chatting animatedly to Libby, and the sight brought a small smile to his face.
“How’s the greatest basketball player in the world doing after yesterday’s game?” he asked, smile widening when TJ just laughed.
“I’m not that gre-“
“Do I have to get a signed sheet from your teammates?” Cyrus warned, only half-seriously.
TJ rolled his eyes at that, but didn’t object further. He was still smiling as he pulled their page out and looked over at all of the things they’d brainstormed so far.
“This is our last planning session, so we should probably start visualising what our piece is gonna look like,” he said.
Cyrus nodded and tore out a separate piece of paper from his notebook. “I had a dream last night.”
TJ raised his eyebrows. “Was it about art?”
“It was about rainbows?” he offered, and TJ shrugged.
“Close enough. Hit me, then.”
“Okay! It was actually kind of dark, but oh well. I was being teleported to all these different landscapes, I’m talking cities, beaches, forests, cliff-faces, deserts, mountains, you name it. Everything was in full colour except I was always in black and white. I kept looking down at myself and getting really upset because I wanted to be in colour super badly for some reason. Don’t get a dream interpreter on that one. Anyway, there was this one scene with the northern lights where I looked up and began wishing that I wasn’t grey anymore. The tips of my fingers gained some colour, and I got so excited that I woke up.”
TJ looked at him for a moment after that, just blinking, before a smile began to spread across his face. “That’s our art piece!”
Now it was Cyrus’ turn to give him a blank look. “Pardon?”
“A greyscale person looking out at a rainbow scene! We could paint them looking out at a city where everyone is on their phones if we wanted to be super melodramatic about it.”
“I love being melodramatic about stuff!” Cyrus cheered, to which TJ laughed.
They both began sketching out a rough draft, arms brushing much like they had the previous day, and for some reason Cyrus couldn’t will down the blush on his face. TJ kept sending him all these furtive glances, and he was on the verge of shuffling away so that he wouldn’t be so distracted by them. He remained though, right until the bell sounded, and the boy gave him a smile as they began to pack up.
“I’m so glad you told me about that dream.”
“Me too.”
TJ got up from his chair, smile softening slightly. “I’ll see you next lesson, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he breathed out, much quieter than intended, as he watched the boy head towards the door.
He sent Buffy a glance, who was still packing up her things, before biting his lip and springing up from his chair, catching TJ as he began to weave his way through the crowds.
“TJ - wait!”
He immediately turned around, eyebrows drawn together in confusion as he approached the boy and pulled him gently to the side so as to avoid the rush.
“What’s up?”
“I, um...I...”
What was up? He knew deep down why he’d chased after the boy, but now that TJ was standing in front of him it was like his whole body had just decided to freeze. He opened his mouth to speak, before proceeding to close it again.
“Are you okay?” TJ asked gently.
Cyrus nodded. “Yeah, I'm fine! I was just, uh, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to...um...hang out sometime?”
TJ’s face brightened. “Like a date?”
“Oh! That’s not what I...I mean, yeah! A date would be great. If you want, obviously.”
The boy just smiled, taking out his phone. “We can text about plans later tonight.”
After exchanging numbers, he gave TJ a beaming smile. “I’ll message you later then!”
“I’ll be waiting,” he replied, voice soft in the most heart-melting way possible. Cyrus might’ve swooned a little.
As TJ walked towards his basketball friends, who all began shoving him playfully and asking him ‘who the hell that cute boy was,’ Buffy approached him from behind and came to a stop beside him.
“Something tells me that having TJ as a partner isn’t just ‘not that bad,’” she teased.
“Oh hush,” Cyrus told her, blushing crimson as they began to make their way to their lockers.
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Andi Mack 4B Plots
My 4A Plots
Trigger Warning for depression - nothing too dark, but it is a significant plot of this season.
Extra 4A plot to be nestled somewhere before the finale:
Halloween!
The GHC & Co. trying to decide whether they’re too old to go trick or treating. Intense debate with Cyrus, Andi, and Marty on one side, TJ, Buffy, and Jonah are on the other.
“How can you be too old for free candy?!” Cyrus exclaims.
“I’ve always hated dressing up,” Jonah rolled his eyes.
“Halloween is the best time to practice sewing!” Andi expresses.
“I hate sewing,” Buffy groans. “Besides, I’m trying to put my dentist out of business.”
“It just seems like none of you want to have any fun.” Marty says.
“I’m on the high school basketball team. I have an image to keep.” TJ crosses his arms.
“Is the image a boring, funsucker? Because you’re nailing it,” Marty teases.
Eventually the opposing group crumbles underneath the pressure of their friends and free candy. Planning their route is also intense - Cyrus definitely has maps of Shadyside and a detailed house list of who gives the best candy with averages he’s kept throughout the years.
The Crafty Crew joins them for trick & treating.
Cyrus dresses up as Waldo.
Andi makes a ‘cereal killer’ costume, including a cereal box skirt, blood, the whole shebang. Even Cyrus groans at the pun (but secretly high fives her).
Buffy goes as Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Marty goes as Fred from Scooby Doo. Buffy says he was supposed to be Spike from BVS, Marty laughs and says he thought Buffy and Fred were a better match.
Jonah puts those fake vampire fangs in and some fake blood on his face. Buffy chases him around all night.
TJ dresses up as a failed math test because it’s the scariest thing he can think of.
Walker dresses as Miles Morales & Libby dresses as Hawkeye (we deserved a deaf hawkeye!)
And finally, the episode ends with an intense candy trading session. Lots of smiles, laughs, and friendship/couple moments. Halloween episodes should always be the most lighthearted!
4B.
Episode One.
Bex is laying in bed. She’s awake, but she’s not doing anything but staring. Her phone goes off and it’s revealed to be 3pm. Andi’s calling. Bex hesitates, then answers. “Mom - are you okay? You were supposed to pick me up fifteen minutes ago.”
Bex shuts her eyes, then opens them again. Suddenly, energy is in her voice. “Oh yeah - you know me, just running late. Traffic! I’ll be there soon, Andiman.” she hangs up quickly, she sighs. Her eyes are distant. She rushes to get ready, throwing on whatever she can, v messy, not caring how she looks.
Next scene Bowie is seen in a restaurant kitchen cooking. They ask him if he can stay late - he says no, he’s got to be at Red Rooster Records for the open mic night, revealing that he is working two jobs to try to start saving, referencing the potential for a second child (as Bex listed financial fears as a main reason).
We see Jonah’s apartment when he invites Cyrus over to hang out. Jonah says “it’s kind of small,” but Cyrus smiles and says “You know, it’s actually cozy. My house can be so...lonely.” Jonah kind of scoffs and rolls his eyes, muttering something about rich kid perspectives. He admits he had to get rid of a lot of stuff, including his old baseball gear and complains that he can’t play his guitar after a certain hour because his neighbors complain because the walls are basically paper thin. “Basically, don’t say anything you don’t want Dave to hear. He’s basically a member of the family at this point.”
Bex is off on the drive home with Andi. Andi’s talking non-stop about school events and how she failed the last project (revealed in the 4a finale) and how she needs to improve, but she feels so out of place in the school. Bex is saying “yeah” and “mhmmm”, barely listening. When they get home, instead of cooking, Bex orders pizza but doesn’t really eat much. Andi starts to get worried and asks if Bex is okay, but Bex just says she thinks she’s getting sick. Bowie comes home exhausted and both him and Bex fall asleep on the couch during a movie that they were supposed to watch as a family.
Cyrus is a little bothered by “the rich kid perspective” comment and tries to analyze how much his upbringing colors his opinions. The next day, he’s talking about it with Buffy and Andi at The Spoon and how he’s worried that he gives off entitled-rich kid vibes. They laugh and say sometimes he’s oblivious and dumb with money, but he’s not entitled. Andi complains about how tired Bowie always is now and then mentions how strange Bex was acting yesterday. Cyrus’s brain jumps to the worst possible conclusions. Buffy has to reassure Andi that everything is probably okay. As a distraction, she talks about how happy her parents are to be back together and shows off goofy pictures of them. She says her father hasn’t stopped talking about her mom in church since she’s gotten back. GHC smiles.
Episode Two.
Bex’s work has started to get a little sloppy and customers are leaving bad reviews. Celia presses into Bex, saying she didn’t invest so much money into this business just for Bex to get lazy. Bex sighs, shakes her head. “Reschedule my appointments for tomorrow, mom. I think I’m sick.” Celia’s eyes widen, as if she suddenly understands something. Bex goes home and slips back into bed. She doesn’t really go to sleep, but just scrolls her phone aimlessly.
Now that TJ is out at school, Cyrus asks him if he’s going to introduce him to his parents as his boyfriend. TJ awkwardly laughs and says “I should, shouldn’t I?” Cyrus nods. “But if it helps, we can have dinner as boyfriends with my parents first?” TJ’s eyes widen. “All of them? At once?!” Cyrus laughs. “No, we can do dinner at one house and dessert at the other?” TJ nods. “Uh, yeah okay.” Cyrus holds TJ’s hand. “Come on, Teej, you have nothing to worry about. They already love you.”
Jonah bumps into Amber in the hall and brings her to a quiet spot in the hallway. He grins and says he’s going to therapy. Amber asks him how it’s going and he shrugs, but doesn’t seem upset. He says “it sucks, but you know...it really does help. I really didn’t like it at first and didn’t talk, but he asked me to play some music the other week and that helped break the ice,” Jonah explained. Amber smiles and hugs him. “Congratulations, Jojo. I’m proud of you.” He asks how she’s doing. Amber says she’s getting there, but that she wished she was a freshman again because she’s struggling with her AP classes, driver’s ed, her job, and her family issues. He said it sounded like a lot, but that he’d try to be there for Amber because she was there for him. Amber nods and says she’ll keep that in mind. Suddenly, there’s a security guard telling them they have detention for skipping class. At first, Jonah and Amber look at each other scared, then they crack up at the situation they’ve gotten themselves in.
Andi comes home and sees Bowie sitting with Bex in the bedroom. She overhears Bowie comforting her and then hears Bex saying “I don’t want Andi to know…” Andi freaks out, texting the GHC group chat saying something is wrong with her mom.
Episode Three.
Friendsgiving episode! GHC + Crafty Crew all get together at Andi’s apartment a week before Thanksgiving and have a huge feast. Cyrus put together a spreadsheet and organized who brought what. Buffy and Marty have a competition to make the best dessert. Jonah buys store-bought microwavable mashed potatoes. Andi decorates the entire space and Bowie makes the turkey. TJ brings the BEST Green Bean Casserole and everyone bothers him the entire episode to give up the recipe. They give each other updates; like the dinner with Cyrus’ parents went really well, Jonah and Amber talk about how their detention teacher hated them because they kept laughing, Buffy talks about her parents, etc. Everyone also shares traditions their family does for the holiday.
Walker says that his family covers the table with paper and everyone writes/doodles what they’re thankful for throughout the meal. They then hang it up until it’s time to decorate for Christmas.
Libby says her family go on a long walk after dinner with each other.
TJ says his whole family plays football together before and after dinner.
Cyrus says he has several Thanksgivings and too many traditions to name - but his favorite is his mom’s side, who volunteers first and then have a small meal afterwards.
Buffy says after dinner they decorate for Christmas, which is her parent’s favorite holiday.
Jonah says they play a bunch of different board games and family games.
Amber says that her family doesn’t argue for the whole day - and also watches old home movies.
They ask Andi what traditions her family has. She seems upset and explains that they used to go to pop’s family and celebrate, but now they have to make new traditions without him because he left them. Everyone comforts her. Bowie overheard and tells Bex - they both want to give Andi the best Thanksgiving in the world. Bex tells Bowie that “all this family drama is why I don’t want Andi to know…”
Episode Four.
Cece takes Andi out for a bonding day, saying that she’s been missing her. Andi says she misses her too. They go to an art museum and have lunch where Andi talks to Cece about not doing well in SAVA and maybe she’s not great at art like everyone thought. Cece tells Andi that when she was a toddler, she grabbed a pack of crayons and for weeks, she wouldn’t put them down. Cece would catch Andi awake at night DRAWING. Andi would fall asleep with a pack of crayons cuddled close to her. She’d color in the car, at restaurants, in the bathtub with bath crayons, everywhere she could. “And that first year you went to camp, I’ll never forget how excited you were about crafts...Andi, I don’t think you’re bad at art. I think you think you’re bad at art which is making you bad at art.”
Andi says “wow…” and knows that Cece is right. SAVA wouldn’t have chosen her otherwise. They go out to have Fro-yo and Cece asks how Andi is doing at home. Andi tells Cece that it’s been weird having Bowie working so much and then mentioned that Bex is acting strange too. She asked Cece if she knew anything about that and Cece nods. “Yes, but it’s your mother’s choice to tell you.” Andi complains that no one’s ever told her anything.
Cece rolls her eyes and then says “Well I have important news. My dad is moving in with me.”
Andi asks “Wait, why? Is everything okay?”
“He’s okay, yes. He’s still healthy, especially for his age - but,” Cece pauses. “You know, he misses you and Bex. He’s been spending so much time with Mei and Ling and the twins and Ronald, he thought it’d be a nice surprise.”
“Yeah, it has been awhile since we’ve seen him, but...he doesn’t need to move in with you. He could just visit, couldn’t he?”
“I asked him too.”
“Why?”
“I thought it’d be good to have someone in the house. I know you, Cyrus, and Buffy still have sleepovers there, but it’s just been too empty for too long. I know how important Andi Shack is to you and how important the house is to your mom, so I decided to keep it.”
“Oh. Cece - I’m sorry. I guess I got caught up in my own stuff again…” Andi says, hugging Cece.
“It’s okay. You’re the child, remember?”
Cece drops Andi off. She calls Bex outside and they close the door.
“Rebecca,” Cece says. Bex avoids her eyes and focuses on the ground, her nails pressing into her skin. You think it’s going to be a lecture, Bex thinks it’s going to be a lecture, but Cece pulls Bex into a hug. “Andi’s worried about you. You need to talk to her.”
Plot B of this episode is Buffy and Cyrus hanging out at Buffy’s house. We’re introduced to Buffy’s father (headcanon: he’s black. I know sofia is mixed, but I think it’d be cool to have men of color in the show). He wears a cross necklace and is clearly religious, but Cyrus never feels uncomfortable mentioning his boyfriend TJ. Buffy’s father treats Cyrus with nothing but love, honestly, and mentions that he’s the son they never had while eating dinner.
Episode Five.
Jonah reveals that he’s gotten a job as a cashier at The Red Rooster. He’s not immediately great at it, which causes a spike in his anxiety, but instead of having a panic attack he’s able to ground himself using techniques his therapist taught him.
Andi’s teacher, the one who was critical about her art, notices a huge change in Andi and her work and compliments her new project, stating that she knew Andi had it in her. Walker, Libby, and Andi all celebrate together at The Spoon.
Buffy & TJ hang out - they play basketball and get to know each other better. “I don’t think we’ve ever hung out without Cyrus,” TJ laughs. “Yeah...I don’t think so? This is nice,” They play H.O.R.S.E, as well as a game they made up where each basket they make, they get to ask a question. The harder the shot is, the harder the questions they can ask.
At home, Bex is pacing the bedroom. Bowie is sitting on the bed. Bex complains that she doesn’t know what she should do or how she should even talk about it. Bowie listens, nodding his head. “You know, when my father was sick, he didn’t want to tell me. He wanted to be strong and proud. And he almost didn’t tell me, but I found his medication. I was terrified because something bad could have happened any moment and it would’ve been a complete surprise to me.” he pauses. “Andi is worried about you and probably thinks something really bad is going to happen and I don’t think it’s fair to hide it. Besides...she’s starting to get to that age where maybe it’ll start to affect her…”
Episode Six.
Christmas is coming up and the GHC + Crafty Crew go to the mall. They split up into their normal groups; TJ, Jonah, Marty + Walker and Cyrus, Andi, Buffy + Libby. They’re playing Secret Santa for each other so they’re trying to hide the gifts they’re buying and throwing each other off. Of course, they’re also buying gifts for their SOs.
Secret Santa List -
TJ has to buy for Marty
Jonah has to buy for Buffy
Cyrus has to buy for Jonah
Marty has to buy for Andi
Andi has to buy for TJ
Buffy has to buy for Cyrus
TJ fretting about what Cyrus would want and if he should even do a Christmas gift because Cyrus doesn’t celebrate (he would celebrate non-religious aspects with Buffy & Andi some years)
Cyrus complaining that Christmas is so materialistic - but then also trying to find the best gift to give TJ and Jonah.
But while TJ, Jonah, Marty, and Walker are shopping trouble arises when they’re wandering around a store, picking up different things, putting them down and whatnot. At some point, Walker notices a security guard staring him down. He feels uncomfortable, but knows he didn’t do anything wrong and continues to just walk around the store with Jonah, Marty and TJ. But it all goes wrong when the group tries to leave the store. They’re all stopped by the security guard, but Walker is singled out. The guard says that he knows that somebody in this group stole and that he has his suspicions as to who. The group all look at each other and furiously shake their heads, saying none of them stole. The guard asks Walker to empty his pockets. Walker does, he has nothing in his pockets besides his wallet and house keys. The guard lets them all go with a warning. Walker is embarrassed and angry that no one else had to empty their pockets. The group buy him some food to try to cheer him up and all agree that it was really wrong.
Episode Seven.
Christmas/Hanukkah special.
They all celebrate their respective holidays. Cyrus invites TJ to celebrate Hanukkah the day after Christmas. TJ of course agrees. We see Cyrus’ family celebrate Hanukkah. Andi, Bex, Bowie, Cece, her dad AND Mei, Ling, her husband, Ronald, and the twins celebrate at Cece’s house. Mei and Cece start to argue, but their dad reigns them in. They finally call a truce after their entire lives of competition and decide their feud isn’t worth it. (“What were we even fighting with to begin with?”) Buffy goes to church and celebrates with her family. Marty celebrates with his family; it’s the first Christmas with his step-siblings.
The gifts they all bought for each other are revealed when GHC + CO get together during Christmas afternoon. TJ gets Marty a joke gift (probably something about always forgetting him), Jonah buys Buffy a bag full of all of her favorite snacks/candy, Cyrus got Jonah an anchor necklace to keep him grounded and a guitar tuner, Marty buys Andi some weird gag gift like a yodelling pickle, Andi buys TJ a Troy Bolton basketball jersey, and Buffy buys Cyrus a mug that says ‘you’re so weird, i like you’ because she knows Cyrus loves mugs.
TJ and Cyrus psyched themselves out and ended up panicking and getting something neither of them really liked. They laugh about it and then realize they should get to know each other better.
Buffy and Marty treated it like a competition. Buffy got Marty a pace tracker that goes on his sneakers, a scrapbook for his future marathons, and those weird toe socks. Marty gave Buffy two of his hoodies, a necklace shaped like deer antlers which symbolizes strength and gentleness, and an NBA video game that they can play at his house.
The episode is light-hearted and easy, but the whole episode Bex is still just a little off. Bowie and Cece are extra mindful of her. Andi is still really confused and worried. At the end of the episode, when they all get home, Bex sits on the couch and says “Andi...I have something to tell you.”
HIATUS.
Episode Eight.
Special opening similar to the gun-control episode, as well as the anxiety/panic attack opening talking about how mental health is important and if you or a friend are struggling, tell a trusted adult and take care of yourself.
“Andi...I have something to tell you.” Bex’s voice is serious. There’s a lot of tension. Andi seems worried. Bex seems nervous. Bowie has his hands on Bex’s shoulders comfortingly.
“Mom? I’m scared...are you sick?”
“Yes,” Andi seems shocked and scared at this revelation. “But not the way you’re thinking, Andi...gosh, this would be easier if I was still just your cool, older sister.” because this is the kind of thing that ‘cool, edgy’ older siblings go through. Not parents. “Andi, I have depression. I’ve had it since I was about your age. It...doesn’t go away, but I’ve been on medication since my twenties and it worked great. But, with work stress and everything that happened with Pops, well...it stopped working. I should have been more open with you and everyone and gotten help when it started…”
Andi stops tensing. She sits with Bex on the couch. “Mom...I didn’t know…”
“Yeah, only Bowie and Cece did. I wanted to be the best mom in the world, especially after giving you up for so long. I wanted to do everything and be everything for you - I didn’t want you to have to worry about me or feel like you had to take care of me. I wanted to be strong.”
“Mom, I love you. You don’t need to pretend to be something you’re not or do more than you can.”
Bex hugs Andi. She’s definitely crying.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Andiman. You don’t have to worry or take care of me ever, okay? I’m the adult. I’ve talked to Bowie and Cece. I’m going to get my medications adjusted and I’m going to go to therapy.”
Andi feels like a huge weight has been lifted off of her chest but it only lasts momentarily. She gets out of the hug.
“Mom, I learned about depression in school…” She pauses. “It can be genetic...what if I get it?”
“Then we’ll help you through it. No matter what.” Bex and Bowie wrap her in a hug again. “You talk to us, though, okay? Don’t hide it like I did.”
PLOT B. Buffy and Marty have a massive fight. This leaves TJ and Cyrus in awkward positions because TJ thinks that Marty is right and Cyrus always sides with Buffy. This leaves Jonah has a tie-breaker and he totally panics and exclaims that this is why he hates relationships. When they realize that he got really anxious choosing a side, they realize they were being stupid and shouldn’t have put anyone in the middle of the fight. They all apologize to him and make up.
Episode Nine.
Buffy’s birthday!
Similar to Bowie, Buffy has never liked huge birthday parties or attention on her birthday. Andi says “Buffy likes attention everyday...except her birthday.” Cyrus and Andi make sure to tell Marty the first of the month that under no circumstances should he try to surprise her. He asks Cyrus and Andi what they do for her birthday then. Cyrus says that they have a Buffy birthday tradition that they’ve been doing since the second grade.
They meet at Buffy’s house for a celebratory breakfast of Froot Loops and chocolate milk because Buffy went through a phase where that’s the only thing she would eat and drink for breakfast, then they walk to school no matter what the weather because on her birthday in second grade, she demanded to be able to walk alone because she was “all grown now” (her parents followed them, just further behind. If it’s a weekend, they walk to The Spoon). After school, they walk back to her house and they play Buffy’s favorite game at the time “Twister” (Cyrus’ least favorite game) and have a silent dance party (at the time, her mother had just come back from war and asked them to not make too much noise). Then, they eat “garbage pizza” because Buffy had just learned the name of it and thought it was hilarious, and her favorite cake. Then, Andi and Cyrus stayed up as late as possible watching whatever movies Buffy wanted to watch.
During lunch, while Cyrus, TJ, and Jonah are getting their lunch, Marty asks Buffy if he can join in on her birthday traditions. Buffy is pretty rigid and likes the traditions as is, but says that maybe they can create their own birthday tradition. Marty comes up with the idea of a three-legged race (Him and Buffy vs TJ and Jonah) and then going out for ice cream - that way, all of Buffy’s new friends and boyfriend can be included before she goes back home to celebrate with the GHC.
That goes just about as well as anyone would think. Hilarious montage, honestly. This is the silliest idea I’ve come up with and yet, I love it.
Episode Ten.
After school, Jonah and Buffy decide to hang out. They go to a skatepark. Jonah is much better than Buffy - which he celebrates and exclaims “finally!” She’s determined to learn a pop-shove it.
While at work, Bex thanks Cece for supporting her during her depression and tells her that she got her medications adjusted and is starting to feel better. Cece nods and says “I’m really sorry for not supporting you when you were younger. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” Bex forgives her.
TJ and Cyrus experience some homophobia both in school and outside of school. Cyrus gets upset and insecure, TJ loses his cool. They sigh and realize that it’s probably something they’ll have to go through a lot - but at least they have each other to go through it with.
Andi, Bex, and Bowie go to Cece’s house to spend time with their grandfather/great-grandfather. During the visit, Bex and Andi brush up on their Mandarin, they play games like dominos, cards, and Mahjong, and they eat traditional Chinese food.
Episode Eleven.
Amber got her driver’s license. She surprises Andi & Buffy on a weekend for a road trip. They drive to the town nearing Shadyside and have all sorts of adventures. They take lots of pictures to always remember this momentous occasion.
Cyrus is sick which leaves Jonah, TJ, and Marty alone unsupervised. They decide to have an adventure of their own and have a giant game of “The Floor is Lava” in public. They get kicked out of multiple locations. They end the day by going to The Spoon and having an eating competition to see who could finish their burger, fries, and milkshakes first. Being that TJ and Marty are used to bulk eating, Jonah is definitely the one who gives up and almost throws up.
Episode Twelve.
Walker, Libby, and Andi are preparing for the end of the year project where they could potentially be accepted into the school’s gallery, which is an honor and a party. Andi knows that she can create something amazing - but doesn’t know what she wants to do yet. They’re all stuffed into Andi shack, bouncing ideas off of each other. Walker wants to do a self-portrait vs. how the world sees him, Libby wants to create a sign-language sculpture, Andi is conflicted and has no idea what she wants to create.
Buffy/Marty + Cyrus/TJ double date. Lots of hijinks. They also definitely go bowling and Cyrus tries to bowl without bumpers. At one point, TJ ran to the bathroom and told Cyrus to take his turn (it didn’t matter because he was so far ahead, there was no chance of Cyrus ruining his chances of winning) Cyrus rolls a strike and celebrates. He then tries endlessly to replicate it for his own turns to no avail.
While at work, Jonah is talking to Bowie about life. He says that therapy is going really well and he hasn’t had many panic attacks since. He thanks Bowie for being there for him in the beginning and Bowie says that it’s no problem at all and that he’s glad Jonah is getting professional help. Jonah says that he really looks up to Bowie and tells him that today was career day and that the high schoolers were prompted to think about what they want to do when they’re an adult. Jonah said he has been thinking about pursuing music and wants to join a band. Bowie smiles and tells Jonah that he reminds him a lot of him when he was Jonah’s age. He advises Jonah to join a band, but to do it for the music and not for fame, because when he’s older and traveling, he might regret not being home for big things. Jonah tells Bowie that if he doesn’t do music for the rest of his life, he doesn’t know what else he would do. Bowie shrugs and says “You might not know what you want to do now, you might not know what you want to do when you’re 23, or 45, or 55. Life isn’t a straight line, it’s full of twists and turns. Just follow your heart and listen to The Universe in those times and you’ll end up where you need to be.”
Episode Thirteen.
Andi has decided that her end of the year project will be focused on her family. She decides to create a literal family tree - she crafts a tree and each branch has a picture of each family member. Branches, like Pops and his family’s, are clearly snapped at the base to show that it’s a broken tree and he left. Bex’s branch has the picture of her as a teen after just giving birth to Andi, Bowie’s branch splits into two to show that he was absent for 13 years, but then heavily involved, etc. (IDK. I know nothing about art and couldn’t come up with anything else lol)
Bex starts to participate in her photography club again, has been doing better at work, and has become more involved in the PTA at SAVA again. Bowie asks her if she remembers what they were talking about earlier in the year. Bex says “Another baby?” Bowie nods. “Yeah...I’m ready now.” He grins and tackles her in a hug and lots of kisses.
TJ gets his first A in math class, on the final test to boot, after a lot of hard work, tutoring, and accomodations. Cyrus takes him out on a date to celebrate.
Buffy and Marty are in this episode at some point, probably not a big part tbh. Mostly because I’m losing steam lol.
Episode Fourteen.
Andi made it into the gallery. Her entire family, GHC+, and Crafty Crew turn up to the gallery to see it and they all go to the after party for her. Cece says “I told you you just needed to believe in yourself first…”
Bex and Bowie tell Andi how proud of her they are and because they are literally awful at timing, tell her that they’re going to be trying for a baby. Andi has very mixed feelings about this, but Walker interrupts and drags her out to dance and party with everyone.
The night ends with Cyrus, Buffy, and Andi having a sleepover. Lots of hugs, celebrations, and love. They definitely squish Andi when she’s sitting between them on the couch while watching movies.
At the end of the episode, Andi texts Jonah about how mixed she feels about having a sibling. Jonah says he can understand - she feels like she might be being replaced, that he felt that way a couple times. Andi asks, like when? Jonah admits that he felt that way when he saw Walker and Andi at the Bar Mitzvah and that was his first panic attack. Andi said that she had no idea he was having panic attacks that long, Jonah says “well now you know. Sorry for not telling you.” Jonah tells her that he’ll always be there to listen to her if she needs it.
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An Origin
A fanfiction I wrote about Andy (Oscar’s dad) convincing Jim (Hedgehog’s father) to let Hedgehog go to camp.
Hope you enjoy!
Word count: 626
An Origin.
Andrew Peltzer was good at talking on the phone. Most people hated it, but Andy had a bit of a knack for it; having worked at a firm as a PR representative for a while before quitting, he was a natural at it. Even at his new job in the media, most of his plans and projects were discussed...over the phone. Andy Peltzer had truly become a master of the medium.
But every mast has his weakness. And Jim Lelan was Andy’s. The two went back, back to when Andrew got his job at the firm, even. And though they were on good standing, Andy didn’t really like talking to Jim on the phone. Being honest, NO ONE did. Jim was cold, abrasive, cutting...it was as if a bank spreadsheet had gained the ability to talk. Nothing but facts and numbers...ESPECIALLY the ones you didn’t want to hear.
“It’s not going to happen, Andy, I can’t let her take that long of a break!” Said Jim, looking over the schedule for this ‘Island Camp’...June to August, the whole summer. ‘All that time,’ thought Jim to himself, ‘And NOTHING would come from it!’
“Jim, I know you were going to send her to that business thing, but-”
“Oh, that? She’s not going because SOMEONE forgot to do her forms in time.”
‘Wow,’ Andy thought to himself, looking with incredulity at the wall as he thought, ‘A teenage girl didn’t do papers for a camp she didn’t want. How on EARTH could THAT have happened?’ Andy sighed, shaking his head and pinching his trunk, “Look, this is a perfect opportunity! There’s only a few slots left and if we get the paperwork in on time, they’re in!”
“Andy! Hedgehog needs to work NOW if she wants to start a good fund for her retirement! I’ve been teaching her things over these summers, you know!” Jim audibly shifted in his seat, “remember who taught Oscar about a Roth IRA, or the importance of a good stock portfolio, that was Hedgehog! She’s got all the information, she just needs that push-”
“Do you think she’ll be able to focus on anything like that without Oscar there?”
There was a pause. An awkward one.
Andy and Jim both knew about how important Oscar and Hedgehog were to each other. It was a symbiotic relationship at this point; Hedgehog kept Oscar on track academically while Oscar kept Hedgehog from descending into the same problems that plagued her mother. It was proven by an event two years ago that those two were in it for the long haul.
“...Do you think it’ll be as bad as it was two years ago? With the Hospital, I mean.” Asked Jim. He may not have always been there, and he knew his fault. But he couldn’t stand to see his daughter like that again. And he knew Andy couldn’t bear to see his son anywhere NEAR that bad.
“The hospital was four weeks. This’ll be 12.” Andy said. “I’m going to leave this decision to you, Jim. I-” He was cut off by another beep. “That’ll be a client, Jim. I’m sorry to cut this short, but I have to take this. If you do want to do this, just make sure to email the people on the site.”
Click. And Andy was gone.
Jim slowly put down the phone and looked out his window. Those kids again, playing soccer this time. Didn’t they have school or...something? He got up to close his blinds...but then found himself staring.
He asked himself just one question as he slowly sat in his office chair, electing to let the light from outside keep the room lit.
“...Do I know my daughter?”
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