Deviating from the Norm (A "Freaks and Geeks" Fanfic)

Story notes, references and useless trivia

If you've made it here than congrats, you finished the story! That is, unless, you were just trying to skip to the last chapter. In that case, head back one, junior. :P

With this chapter I want to take some time to point out and explain various references and useless trivia I have scattered throughout the entirety of this tale (and I will fully admit that I am happily borrowing this idea from trinfaneb's F&G/BtVS crossover fic Freaks and Geeks and Vampires. If you haven't had a chance to read that fic yet, I highly recommend you look it up. It is quite entertaining and well-written. On FFN it is posted under the 'Buffy X-overs' section).

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Chapter 2:

- Jesse Greenburg and Chester Zellner (both names are a combination of names from the movie Dude, Where's my Car?, a guilty pleasure of mine)

-...there tended to be more salt on the roads than actual snow in Chippewa. (this idea came directly from the Freaks and Geeks bible where Paul Feig wrote, "This is the Midwest. Lots of road salt plus students with very little money divided by a blue collar/lower middle class upbringing equals lots of rusty, crappy cars." and " Almost every car is rusty. The road salt every winter makes most cars rust out all along the bottom of the doors and fenders. Most of the students cars are rusted right through, creating holes along the bottom." so I kinda wanted to make it a point to both mention that the road salt was abundant in the winter, but Donovan was adamant about not letting a bit of rust tarnish his baby)

Chapter 3:

-As stated in the A/N, the twist for this chapter was taken from the F&G website as the 'Alternate Dance Ending', as well as a snippet of the dialogue and action (the whole 'geek asking Kim to pour him a cup of punch' scene)

Chapter 4:

-Daniel's Firebird being a neglected piece was intentional, that was for certain, but I believe it was a bit of a goof on part of the show's crew to have the Trans Am be the special tenth anniversary car from '79. There is absolutely no way Daniel would ever be able to afford that car, let alone just a scant few years after it came out. Furthermore, unless someone intentionally tried to make it look that bad, there was no way it could look so washed out in such a short time-span, either. Regardless, I tried to come up with a somewhat believable backstory for how he acquired it and why it is so run down.

Chapter 5:

-When they are in the caddy, Lindsay suggest that they could go to the movies, as there is 'a new Friday the 13th playing'. The only problem was that this was still 1980 by that point in the series and the first one had just barely came out in theaters (May 9th), so her suggestion that a new one was already out was a bit of a blunder from the writers (as the second one didn't open until May of 1981). Again, I did my best not only to incorporate this idea, but correct the blunder as well.

Chapter 7:

-It (Kim's yard/house exterior) was an unclassifiable mess and yet it somehow looked nicer than Daniel's yard, which was practically hidden beneath rusted junk. (We get a quick glimpse at Daniel's house (trailer) and yard in episode 15, Noshing and Moshing. It literally is a cluttered mess of rusting metal crap and random junk. We also get a nice shot of the disastrous Kelly yard in episode 4, Kim Kelly is my Friend).

-Arlo (In the Freaks and Geeks bible, Kim's home-life is described as being fairly different. For starters, her father is still married to Cookie and there is no nameless stepfather in the picture. Secondly, Kim's father, Arlo, is described as a physically abusive parent who used Kim to take out his aggression on when she was a child. As Paul Feig wrote about the female bully character- "Kim's father, Arlo, is an alcoholic who has physically abused her in the past. Not sexually but through beatings and other forms of physical punishment." By the time we get into the show, Kim has taken matters into her own hands and shown Arlo that she is a force to be reckoned with and ends her abuse by fighting back and breaking his arm when she made him fall into the kitchen table. As twisted as it may sound, I liked the dynamic of Kim not only coming from a broken home, but an abusive one as well, because I felt it helped define exactly why she was the way she was. So I incorporated the name and background to the stepfather character)