When Agent0002 first asked me to do this whole Editor's Note thing, my first thought was, Oh dear, she has no idea how much I'll probably write for this... So I sent her a link to the 2,655-word-long blog post I once made on Wikia about how I discovered Odd Squad to prove my point. The fact that you're reading this E/N today shows she didn't care. :)

I will be the first to admit, the moment she first mentioned to me back in early May of 2016 that she was considering writing a fanfic based on Ships Ahoy!, the alarm bells went off in my mind. A few years ago, a younger and more naive me had gotten mixed up in another fandom where this crazy stalker chick decided to write 50 bajillion oneshots using my canon and my OCs, and to this day I'm still working my rear end off to clean that mess up. So even though Agent0002 had been nothing but pleasant in her reviews of Ships Ahoy! (SA) and our occasional PM conversations at the time, I wasn't exactly thrilled. The last thing I needed was a repeat of my online plagiarism nightmare.

Nevertheless I tried to be pleasant. I offered to beta-read if she ever got around to writing this fanfic, but otherwise brushed the idea off like it didn't mean much to me. Still, I answered her questions about my story thoughtfully and truthfully—most of which had to do with the finer details of my fanfiction, whether I could picture Olive and Oscar attempting a more serious relationship (to which I decided no, they'd probably have to leave the squad and grow up into adults), and whether the release of "O is Not For Over" would affect how I'd end SA (to which I firmly answered no, I was still going with my original plan—not telling her I'd known about the plot to OINFO for several months and had already planned on having Olive and Oscar break up ;) ). We also analyzed episodes/characters and chatted randomly about the show/actors/fandom and made plenty of jokes, and over the next couple months I unwittingly came to trust her as a sort of penpal, more than just a fan of my work.

And then, on July 5, the day "Oscar Strikes Back" first aired, I got this message from her:

"In light of Oscar's being made president (let's be honest, his being written out of the show) it now makes writing fanfiction involving him, along with Olive and Otto, infinitely easier. No stinking canon to come blast a hole in your ship or something. So I've been thinking more strongly about writing an odd squad fanfiction. What I'd like to know is if I were to write a (well written, age appropriate) fanfiction involving Olive and Oscar getting back together later on (and I'm talking much later, I mean maybe back together as friends sooner, but years [decades, centuries?] later for a true boyfriend/girlfriend relationship) would you approve of it? And yes, I know I don't have to get your approval for any of this, but if it's based on your canon I'd really like to have your approval for it. If not, that's completely fine and I'll just drop that idea :) note, I'm not saying that I will, but hypothetically speaking?"

I was wary, but intrigued. I was flattered, but patronizing. She'd sure been listening when I said Olive and Oscar would have to leave Odd Squad before their relationship could become more serious, but hadn't I broken them up for a reason? They were supposed to stay that way, they weren't supposed to ever get back together. Not in my canon, at least. And why was she so insistent on using my story canon? Why not make up her own about Olive and Oscar, I'd read that for sure and still find it cute! So I had mixed feelings, but in the end I figured, Eh, she doesn't seem like the crazy stalker type. She writes a short story, I'll make sure she knows they're not supposed to get back together in my canon, and it can't do any harm. With this patronizing attitude, I gave her a thumbs-up and a green light to write that fanfiction, with a minor suggestion to maybe wait until the Odd Squad Movie came out to see what Olive, Otto, and Oscar would be up to in there.

After that I didn't hear much from Agent0002 for the rest of July, except for the occasional conversation about the new Season 2 characters and theories about where Otis came from and how Oona made tons of 80s references. With vacation plans and college preparations underway on my end, I completely forgot about her fanfic aspirations.

Until August 3, two days after the Movie aired, when I got a PM from her saying she finally had "a bit of a fanfic written" and asking if I was still willing to beta-read it.

Immediately all my mixed feelings came back, but dutifully (and yes, still quite a bit patronizingly) I showed her how to send me the document through DocX, and on August 11 the first installment of Full Circle (FC) showed up in my DocX.

Okay, so Full Disclosure: I did an utterly crappy job of taking my beta-reading duties seriously the first time around. I pointed out all the basic punctuation/grammar/diction mistakes, but I didn't try to ask her what direction she wanted to take this story, or tell her to add more description to better show readers what's going on, or help her fix the rushed feeling the chapter had, or any of that stuff I made sure to do for later chapters. I even over-complimented her on her writing at the end, when in reality I thought the idea (and some of the dialogue) was clever enough but the story itself was a little meh. I now feel terrible and ashamed of my not-total-honesty, but back then I was too relieved about it only being a small nod to SA to even consider putting in a bit more effort.

Little did I know there were 17 more chapters on the way.

When the second chapter arrived a week later on the day I moved into my freshman dorm, I was caught off guard. There's more? I remember thinking, a little apprehensively. But then I read the chapter, and it dawned on me that she was actually serious about taking my canon to heart. This also began the other realization I came to as the next few chapters gradually arrived: this wasn't just a continuation of Ships Ahoy!, it was a full-on tribute to my work, and yet still so original. Any patronizing feelings I still had were completely destroyed by the knowledge that this girl really knew what she was doing with her writing.

More than that, I came to understand the utter scope of her brilliance in conceiving Full Circle. For example, I once asked how she picked the title, and she said it was originally because, besides sounding mathy, it showed how Olive and Oscar had been together and separated, but in her story were now coming back together to start hanging out again. The title also mirrors something Oscar says to Olive at the end of my first fanfic Olive's Last Partner when they first get back together again, which Agent0002 still swears up and down is a total coincidence. ;) But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out other ways in which FC is brilliant. Putting the climactic encounter between Olive and Oscar in a 50s night shindig was a beautiful completion to a circle I'd begun in SA's "The Playboy" when O'Donahue leaves Oprah for other girls at a sock hop: not only do Olive and Oscar figure out a compromise for being together and apart in their new careers, but Oprah and O'Donahue also get a second chance at their date night in 1959—and as was foreshadowed by O'Daniel in the epilogue (and as you will eventually see in my upcoming fanfic Opalescent), even Otto will have his own full circle moment with a very special someone at this same 50s night.

And can I just say how bRILLIANT THE ENDING WAS?! Like, WOW?! When Agent0002 initially wanted them to get back together and I initially didn't, but she somehow found a way to balance the two?! Utterly ¡increíble! I was blown away, and now I can't imagine any better ending to their story. Not to mention FC wasn't supposed to have Olympia/Otis/Oona in it that much, but halfway through she made them the biggest parts of the fanfic!

See, throughout the entire process of her doing the writing and me doing the beta-reading and editing, she has kept insisting FC belongs to me as much as it does to her. But I think the opposite is even more true: she has made SA belong as much to her as it already did to me. I now take her work into account whenever I sit down to write a piece of fanfiction based on SA canon, and I've even tried to squeeze in FC references whenever I can. And every time she sent a chapter, it got to the point where I would literally tremble with anticipation as I read, knowing whatever she had in store was gonna be brilliantly amazing and make a wonderful addition to my own canon.

Not only that, but our conversations have been AWESOME. We had to branch out to a chat room on Pinterest because we kept sending sooooooooo many PMs to each other and since then we have had extensive conversations about all kinds of topics, including the following:

1) the Hebrew Poetic Structure and how it applies to OLP, SA, and FC

2) Odd Squad fandom gossip behind other fangirls'/-boys' backs (whoops...)

3) whether to ship Oona with Otis or Ocean or someone else (I still can't make up my mind and Agent0002 is very frustrated with me about this lmao) [EDIT: We eventually decided that EVERYONE has a crush on Oona, but she only reciprocates toward Ocean.]

4) what the actors have been up to since, like when we watched Timeless just to see Sean Kyer on that one Alamo episode lol

5) whether pre-teen menstruation for girl agents counts as a pre-existing condition—don't ask about that one...

6) OTP prompts for Olive and Oscar, like what they do on rainy days and who takes longer showers (we decided on Oscar for the latter because he gets distracted reading the ingredients on the shampoo bottle)

7) supporting each other when life happens, such as getting sick or rejection from crushes or rants about hating everything or depression or existential insecurity

8) what all the Odd Squad agents' MBTI personality types are (and I ended up making a chart, go check it out on my deviantArt!)

9) why we love leg hair—again, don't ask...

10) MEMES. ALL THE MEEEEEEMESSS.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of making the incredible project and crazy journey that has been Full Circle possible, and I'm definitely going to miss it. But even more importantly, I've gained an invaluable friend and confidant in Agent0002, and I have no clue where I'd be without her today. :')

Finally, I'd like to close with something she told me after I got a hate review on one of my fanfics asking why I wasted my time writing about a kid's show. Here's what she said:

"Why do I 'waste' my time writing fanfiction for a kid's show? Because a story needs to be told. Because it brings happiness, if only momentarily, to people who don't want to smile. Because Odd Squad is a show about the value of friendship and teamwork, even when you just want to fight your own battle. Because a story has the power to make someone laugh two seconds after they've cried, to feel every emotion you're capable of, to 'think'. Because it makes me feel good. Because it sparks my imagination. Because I can't sleep. Because it's a hobby and a passion. Because the only way anyone will ever know the full story is if we tell it."

This is what Full Circle has done for me. And I hope it has done the same for you.

~ lilac-kat

[EDIT: It's been more than 3 months since I last heard from Agent0002, and not a day goes by when I don't miss her and the spark she placed in my life. Obviously I respect and admire her choice to completely unplug from the Internet, and I'm glad her physical/mental health has improved as a result. Still, I hope one of these days she'll come back for a chat, Odd Squad or no Odd Squad. 

And Agent0002, if by some miracle you're here reading this, know that I still love you and miss you every day. I still believe our paths will cross in real life one of these days. But in the meantime, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, and keep on keepin' odd. :') ]