#asodgihpoasih i hope this is decent

[cavehags]

annie edison after greendale

@swordwlw i was writing this in response to your post but then you deleted the post i guess? anyway here’s my interpretation

it’s july 2015 and annie has just scored her dream internship (since recently) with the FBI. DC is as far as she can get from colorado emotionally and geographically and she thinks it’ll be good for her. she likes the work, but socially she’s always feeling outmatched. the stories the other interns (nearly all of them identical 21-year-old white men) tell about their college experiences are fun to listen to and full of naked girls and fraternity adventures, while annie’s stories always fall flat. she realizes the other kids think she’s full of shit after her second paintball story and she realizes how she’s coming across - like a small fish in a very large pond who’s desperate to be liked. she stops talking about herself after a while and tries to imitate what the guys do, complete with the clubbing and the shots and the throwing up in the backs of ubers, but he efforts to be “one of the guys” never pay off like she wants, and she never feels like they want her there.

but that’s okay. before greendale, no one wanted annie anywhere. being alone sucks but she knows how to get through it. and if her solitude comes with much more bitterness and gritted teeth and angry determination to succeed in spite of everyone else than it ever did in high school, maybe that’s just what happens after you’ve spent so many years in places that don’t fit and you finally shake off the pretense.

it’s september 2015 and annie doesn’t want to go back to school. she knew when she left that this was it, even if she couldn’t say it. but her internship is over and it costs too much to stay in DC without a definite plan so she applies for a ton of jobs, all over the country. she had to sell some of her clothes to make rent after the internship stipend ran out, so she has one top and one blazer that she wears for all of her skype interviews.

she finally gets offered a job with a private investigator in new jersey. the firm is run by two brothers in their late forties and the main one annie talks to over the phone is so arrogant and slimy that she almost would rather spend another month eating microwaved rice and cheese in a bare apartment than work for him, but even a crappy opportunity is better than nothing, so she packs up her limited amount of stuff and gets on a bus to newark.

it’s december 2015 and the new job isn’t so bad after all. the bosses are sexist creeps, but the scope of annie’s job doesn’t involve much interaction with them. she interviews clients, processes the billing, and does some office administration that she actually wasn’t ever asked to do but their chairs are falling apart and someone has to. she actually is really interested in the work - she loves asking clients questions and following hunches that will guide the direction of the investigation. when they solve something successfully, she puts a little pink star next to the client’s name in the ledger and makes a note for herself to follow up with that client later for a job reference as soon as she decides she’s ready to move on to bigger things. at night, she gets to go back to a relatively spacious apartment over a noisy commuter highway, where she does sudokus until the commuter noise dies down enough for her to sleep.

it’s march 2016 and everything is changing for annie. there’s a client at the firm that she can’t stop thinking about. her name is jennifer and she has a tattoo in the style of a maze on her collarbone that annie is always trying to solve whenever they’re talking, mentally drawing a line from point a to point b until she catches herself and stops, red-faced. jennifer has enlisted annie’s bosses’ services because she thinks her own boss is stealing from her company, and she’d rather be a whistleblower with evidence. annie asks her questions in their information-gathering sessions and has to remind herself to be professional, to keep the awe and shock out of her tone, so that jennifer thinks they’re actually capable of getting things done instead of just gawking at her case. but it’s hard to look jennifer in the eyes and not feel emotionally affected.

may 2016 and jennifer’s boss is behind bars. she wants to celebrate and she asks annie to join her, never once thinking to invite the actual investigators (she never met them and personally doesn’t think they do much around there anyway). after five months of being incredibly lonely, annie doesn’t even think about declining, but she does spend an hour trying to decide if she should wear make-up or do her hair any particular way, because it’s been a while. when jennifer picks her up, annie bites her lip and feels her stomach do a somersault when jennifer tells her she looks nice. later she won’t remember the details of their night out, but not because she drinks too much - because she spends almost the entirety of it in her own head, working through the fact that she is definitely in love with this former client.

june 2016 and annie and jennifer kiss for the first time in the theater while ghostbusters is playing. annie initiates it and when she draws back she forgets to keep her voice low and asks at full volume, “was that okay?” jennifer’s eyes are surprised but her smile is undoubtedly content. she wipes popcorn butter off her hands and touches annie’s hair, softly, making annie’s heart do another flip.

august 2016 and annie realizes that it wasn’t just sex with jeff that didn’t appeal to her.

october 2016 and annie and jennifer are in the middle of a passive-aggressive argument about who should take the responsibility for driving the other one to work when annie unexpectedly bursts into tears from frustration. she didn’t realize she was about to cry leading up to this moment, so she waves jennifer away and rejects any attempts to comfort her until she can sort out her own feelings. it’s the election, it’s the shitty job working for exhausting men who never acknowledge her work, it’s the fact that she’s leaning on this one (admittedly pretty terrific) woman for all of her social needs in a city she doesn’t like. she’s happy with her relationship but she’s not happy. it takes her a few weeks to figure all this out and when she does, she cushions it in apologies as she relays it to her girlfriend, saying over and over that she wishes she just knew what to do.

it’s december 2016 and annie and jennifer are over. annie needs her career to come first now, or so she tells herself while she’s trying not to cry on her flight to boston. it is different than last time she moved because she does not have a job lined up yet, but she has a contact there, a client from the investigator’s office who works for massachusetts general hospital. she liked annie, even told annie in certain terms that she wished annie was working for her, and when annie called her and said she was leaving, mrs. galavey invited her to come see the hospital and see what appeals to her. it’s a gamble, following such a preliminary lead, but annie has her sights set on being less lonely and living somewhere that feels more navigable than newark, and boston is as good a place to try things out as any.

it’s february 2016 and the best perk to working in a hospital is the subsidized therapy. talking to someone once a week has helped her cut down on the crying and feeling sorry for herself that made her feel like such a failure in newark. on top of that, working in an office with lots of other people her age and eating in a cafeteria every day makes her feel less like she’s all on her own. she makes friends. the first day she signs a birthday card for a co-worker, she can’t stop smiling for twenty minutes.

march 2016 and annie doesn’t know where she’s going next. she’s content for now, doing work she thinks makes a difference and very tentatively flirting with a nurse she sees in the cafeteria sometimes who has a purple streak in her hair. the nurse’s name is elise and she runs an employee affinity group for LGBT employees, and annie has marked the date and location of their next meeting on her calendar, posted in her cube, written in the one purple gel pen she managed to hang on to from greendale. elise’s purple hair reminds her of another social activist she knew and she thinks she’ll skype britta sometime soon, maybe to tell her about jennifer and moving on from jennifer and to ask britta what she’s up to these days, whether she’d like to come for a visit. she emails with frankie and abed occasionally too, exchanging memes and quick snapshots of their respective lives away from colorado. she knows they were worried about her for a while while she was in DC and then in new jersey and she hopes they feel good about her chances now, her ability to succeed on her own. she feels better about her own chances, anyway.