Record of an Engoodifier

by Cure Orchid

Ollie Chen has a lot going on in his life, school, family, and now he's the new Chairman of the Ghost World! A set of stories exploring Ollie's character, his relationships, and going through his Chairman Arc.

7. Trending

This chapter is my first time writing Andrea, so I hope I did her justice!

So this weekend I attended my first (and probably only) D23, and I cosplayed as Molly during the D23 day at Disneyland. So not only was a bit of this chapter written while I was dressed as Molly, but two lines were written while I was inside the Haunted Mansion.

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It was late in the afternoon one day at Ruben's Root Beer Pub. The brewery's namesake was polishing some new bottles when he heard the front door open and someone come rushing inside.

"Dad, I'm here!" Ollie leaned against the counter, catching his breath. "I am so sorry I'm running late! There was a dispute between these divorced ghosts and-"

Ruben calmed his son down from talking a mile a minute. "No need to apologize. I know you have a busy schedule." His son had promised to come by and help out at the pub today. He couldn't control there being issues in the Ghost World that needed the Chairman to step in. "And besides, it's been a slow day. You wouldn't have had much to do anyway."

Ollie looked around and noticed only three other people in the pub, he really had lucked out at not missing a crowd. "Ah. So I guess I'm… done here?" The boy wasn't sure if he should still help, or go home, or a third thing.

"Not exactly. I've got something you can help with." His dad turned around and quickly fixed something behind the counter. He held out a freshly made root beer float and handed it to his son. "I need someone to taste test the ice cream that came in this morning."

That got a grateful grin from the boy. "I think I can manage that." Ollie took the sweet treat, along with a spoon, paper straw and some napkins and went to take a seat at one of the tables. He had his choice of where to go, though a head of light blue hair caught his eye. "Oh, hi Andrea!"

The young influencer looked up from her phone and happily waved to her friend. "Ollie! How long has it been? Take a seat!" Andrea invited him to her table. Though the two didn't hang out very often, they were pretty good friends. Especially with their families working together, they ended up talking more often.

"Thanks." Ollie sat down and placed his stuff on the table. Andrea was drinking a specialty blend of root beer rather than a float like he was. "What kind of root beer did you get?"

"This one has kind of a minty flavor to it. I didn't get what it's called, but it tastes fab." Andrea took another sip. "Reminds me of that one winter in Austria where I had the best mint tea! Have you ever been?"

"Not really an easy place to travel to." Ollie awkwardly sipped his float.

As quickly as the subject came up, it left when a new one popped up. "BTW, I haven't seen you outside of school much lately. What have you been up to?"

Without thinking, Ollie answered truthfully. "I've got a part-time job that's been keeping me busy."

"No way! Where do you work? I have to drop in and say 'hi'." Andrea missed the 'oh I messed up' look in Ollie's eyes as he realized what he said.

"Uhhhh…" Ollie froze in a panicked sweat. Andrea didn't know about ghosts, well she kind of did, she'd encountered them before. But she didn't know the truth-truth about the Ghost World and his friends like Scratch and the others. Frankly, Ollie had no idea how she'd take it, let alone how she'd react to hearing that he was the leader of all ghosts. He needed a believable lie and fast! "I… I meant that I'm… helping out around here! The Root Beer Pub!" He smiled nervously, it wasn't actually a lie. He did help out around the place from time to time. "Just cleaning tables and serving drinks. Not making drinks. I have to specifically make it clear I have no involvement in the creation of the root beer."

Andrea tilted her head. "Is it like, a health violation code or whatever?"

"Nope. I LITERALLY cannot make root beer… or any sort of food that isn't microwaved." Ollie clarified.

The bluenette accepted the answer and went back to check her phone. "Ugh, have you seen the latest stuff on ClickClock? Absolutely nothing is trending that has earned it." She showed the webpage to Ollie. The top 10 videos were, like she said, absolutely nothing. "Putting DVD's in a frying pan? Jump scare grandpa in the shower? One video is just a mime pretending he's trapped in a box!" Andrea voiced her disgust.

Ruben chose that moment to pipe up from over at the bar. "Ollie, weren't you afraid of mimes until you were eight?"

"Dad!" Ollie nearly slammed his hands against the table when he shot up, mortified at having that bit of history said out loud.

His dad seemed to realize his mistake. "Ooh… OK yeah, shouldn't have brought that up in public. That was completely on me, sorry son!"

To Ollie's relief, Andrea went right back into what she'd been talking about before the interruption (but not without holding back a couple of laughs) "What I'm saying is, ClickClock is starved for some good media."

Ollie raised an eyebrow. "What about your videos?"

The bluenette sighed dramatically, slumping her face against the table. "I've hit a slump. There hasn't been anything stream worthy in days!" She dragged out the last word, rolling her face onto the table.

"Oh, that stinks." Ollie didn't know what to say.

"I need something fresh! A total shake up." Andrea lamented. "Preferably without an identity crisis." She added, much to Ollie's befuddlement.

As if the heavens themselves answered her pleas, the plot started moving forward. "Huh-" The teens could hear Ollie's dad checking his own phone during the lull in business. "I never noticed we hadn't made any new kind of advertisement since the grand opening."

Ollie could see the gears turning in Andrea's head, the glimmer of inspiration lit up her face. "That's what I'm missing! Product placement!" She spoke as if she'd solved the mystery of the universe.

"… Should I ask where you're going with this?" Ollie hesitated to ask.

"So I used to do commercials for Davenports before we went out of biz. After hyping up your dad's root beer, I haven't done any other advertising stunts." Andrea explained. "The catchy jingles, the bargain of our deals, that one guy working the mic who listened to my nail polish tips, it's been too long!"

Ollie couldn't relate, but this was something Andrea was passionate about. And what Ollie was passionate about was helping. "Dad just said we haven't had a new ad since we opened two months ago. What if we made one?"

The suggestion was perfect for not only Andrea, but Ollie's dad too. "OMG! That is totes the best idea!" The girl was 'totes' on board already.

"That'd be a huge help, you two." Ruben walked over to the teens. "If you wanted, you could shoot here tonight after we close."

Andrea mulled it over. "A little short notice, but I am so into the challenge! I'll get some gear from back home and meet back at… what time do you close?"

"Eight." Ruben answered.

"Hmm, not much natural light by that time. No matter, I have just the thing to make the colors pop on screen for any time of day!" Andrea finished off her root beer and headed out to get what she needed.

Left alone with a melting root beer float, Ollie was also coming up with some ideas for the video. It had been a while since his family stopped doing their MeTube channel. He couldn't be too rusty after not filming for a few months. Yeah, this would be fun!

OXOXOXOX

Ollie and Andrea arrived back at the root beer club just as Ruben was locking up. He let the teens inside and handed Ollie the keys. "Be back home by ten, and don't forget to turn off the lights and lock up when you're done."

"Sure thing, dad." Ollie accepted the responsibility (and keys) while he and Andrea took their stuff inside. The two were on their own now, and Ollie knew just where to start. "One thing really quick-" he set his backpack down and pulled out a nice, yet hastily made poster board and hung it on the door. It was a sign reading 'filming in progress' "There we go. That should deter distractions from distracting us."

To Ollie's dismay, it seemed like Andrea hadn't heard what he said. She was focused on setting up her lighting and makeup. She had her laptop and selfie-stick equipped phone ready, she even packed a green screen, apparently judging by the green tarp poking out of her bag. "Couldn't pack too much, but I've done more with less. It'll be so cute to film a whole commercial by ourselves! When filming the Davenport's commercials, we had our own crew. If we'd had more time, I could've gotten them to work their magic, but alas, they were already booked for this evening."

Elsewhere in Brighton, Weird Larry was outside his shop filming a commercial with the aforementioned film crew. "Are you sure we can't get the skunk stink to be smellable on TV?" The pawn shop owner asked, while his skunk was getting blush applied.

Back to the actual story, Ollie seemed unsure of the scale she was planning. "I don't think we can make an actual commercial. A short promotional video would be more manageable with just the two of us." He'd never shot a commercial before, but had plenty of experience making short videos on MeTube. "I brought some of our old filming equipment. It'll give us better quality than filming with a phone."

The two finished setting up their respective gear. Now came the important part; what direction to take their video. "So Ollie, I have a few ideas for us, but first I need to hear the root beer pub's jingle." Andrea requested.

"We don't have a jingle." Ollie informed her.

"Don't have a…" Andrea trailed off, dumbfounded. "Doesn't every business have a jingle?"

"... Not really."

Andrea was mystified. "You mean, stores without commercials don't just play their jingles on the radio where only old people listen?" This was an eye-opener for the girl. "Wow… that's just crazy. I feel like my entire worldview has flipped on its head."

"Yeah, I've been there." Ollie muttered while he rifled through his backpack. Aside from the sign he made, everything else inside the bag was already in there when he grabbed it. The stuff was a little random, but perhaps it could prove useful during filming. He reached in and pulled out a rubber band ball… ok, not everything could be useful. "... This isn't even mine."

Moving along, the lack of a jingle actually helped narrow down the ideas Andrea had. "Without a catchy tune, and with no time to write one. We need to focus on grabbing the attention of our viewerbase." She scrolled onto the top of the front page of ClickClock. "A strong presence and showy opening are how some of these videos have made it to the top, with no regard to actual content. I mean look at this one!"

The phone was shoved in Ollie's face just as the video loaded. A very familiar baby doll wore a red cape and waved sparklers around while shouting, "Lord Doom, Number One Superstar!"

"See! It's called possessed baby doll, which sounds pretty far-fetched, but it got into the top ten videos of the week because it draws in the viewers within seconds." Andrea explained. Ollie wasn't going to mention that he knew the ghost in the video.

"So how do we compete with sparklers and charisma?" Ollie asked.

The bluenette had a plan. "Only with the single most effective and merchandisable culture; we go kawaii."

"Go ka-what?"

"Kawaii. You know, super adorbs characters like Konnichiwa Koneko. Fluffy pastel animals. Ribbon-filled lolita dresses." Andrea accompanied her sales pitch with visuals from her phone. "It started in Japan but Kawaii culture has reached all over the globe! Except Antarctica, apparently, they're still in a grunge phase."

After the explanation, Ollie had sort of an idea what she meant. "Oh! I have one of those things in my backpack!" He reached inside and pulled out two identical pairs of fuzzy socks. "Does this qualify as kawaii? It's fluffy, a pastel mint green color, and has my favorite animal on it, a capybara!"

"Um, I guess it's kawaii. But why?"

"Capybaras are such friendly critters! They are also smart enough that-"

"Actually, I was wondering why you have two pairs?" Andrea clarified her confusion.

"Ah, that." Ollie sheepishly saved his capybara facts for later. "I completely forgot that I bought one the other day and bought another." He still had the receipt, but debated whether he should return the extra or give it to Molly. Did she like capybaras? That was the decision maker.

While the socks could be considered cute, it wasn't what Andrea was looking for. "It's a step in the right direction. But I've already got just what we need." She unrolled her green screen. "Let's get that camera rolling!"

OXOXOXOX

The two finished filming, Andrea directed them and was now putting the special effects into place. "A sparkle here, a winking pony in the corner… fini!" She saved her work, then looked over to her current business partner who was taking a drink of water. "Ollie, come see the finished piece!"

Ollie placed his reusable water bottle down and knelt beside Andrea to see her laptop. "Let's see how it came out."

Andrea pressed play and the video started. J-pop dubstep music blared from the speakers as Andrea and Ollie in the video struck a pose against a dreamy, pastel background. Bright-colored anime animals popped up around them and animated rainbows filled the screen. The colors transitioned into the duo sitting at the barstools with glasses of root beer. Cute Chibi faces appeared on the root beer mugs and the teens' faces went through a bishoujo-style filter. Bubbles pile up over the screen, and they pop to reveal Andrea winking at an animated unicorn in the corner. A star-shaped wipe crosses the stream and reveals Ollie as he moves to face the camera. A pastel chibi capybara floats beside his head. Hearts and the katakana for 'doki doki' change the scene again to a root beer keg seen through a pink dreamy filter with lots of sparkles. The video closes with Andrea and Ollie clinking two bottles of root beer over their heads, and animated diamonds and sparkles come flowing out of the tops.

Once the video was finished, Andrea looked at Ollie for approval. "So how much do you love it?"

"Um… I have some notes." Ollie awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "For starters, the name of the pub was never mentioned."

"…" Andrea froze with her mouth stuck in a hopeful smile. Ollie was concerned and waved a hand in front of her face. Her face fell along with the rest of her head when she face planted into her keyboard. She had gotten so hyperfocused on the kawaii aspect, she forgot they were doing this to advertise the root beer pub. "The cuteness is an all-encompassing void. It sucked me in. I went in too deep." The boy almost put a hand on her shoulder when she whipped herself back up. "Kawaii culture is too powerful for this. We need reshoots and a new direction."

Ollie gave her some space and went to set the camera back up. "Maybe I could direct this one? I did plenty of videos back when my family had our-" He mumbled the next part. "-ghost hunting-" and back to normal "-MeTube channel."

"Give it a go!" Andrea encouraged him with a thumbs up. Not an actual thumbs up, rather she put an emoji of one on her phone and showed it to him. "June was just mentioning the other day how much fun you and her had making those ghost videos." The influencer was properly introduced to the youngest Chen during the grand opening of the pub, they bonded over coding and a friendship was born. "It's too bad you stopped, I would have totally been down for doing an interview about my experience with ghosts. I did some vids of my own last year, you've probably seen them, and I've seen them like three or four times, so I probably have a better idea what they're like than most people."

The irony of much of what she said was not lost on the teenage leader of the Ghost World. "That's a whole bag of worms for another time." Ollie muttered to himself. Shaking his head, Ollie focused on the matter at hand. "So I was thinking we could do a sort of pitch like the one we did for your parents. You know, highlight the selling points of the place, showcase the quality of our product."

Andrea wasn't entirely sold on his sales pitch about making a sales pitch. "Hmm, there's only two of us. Would that really have the same effect?"

"Sure it will!" The boy was confident. "We can recreate what we did before but with fewer people… and I don't have my clip-on tie… and I can't brew the root beer myself, so we have to use what's already made… and we don't have the judging table…" That confidence faded with each sentence. "Alright, so we can't recreate what we did before. It's like they say; 'if you can't redo, make a new song or two'."

The bluenette recognized that phrase. "Isn't that from a 'Boys Back in the Streets' song?" She wasn't a fan of boyband music, but recognized it from other videos or music playing in stores.

Ollie was mortified that she recognized it. "Uh- haha-yeah! I must have heard it once…" Andrea raised an eyebrow, not buying it. "Er-My mom liked the song back in the early 2000s?" He tried again, Andrea didn't budge. "... they're my favorite band and I know the words to all of their songs." Ollie finally admitted his guilty pleasure.

This got a smirk from Andrea. "All of their songs?"

Whelp, time to demonstrate his singing voice. "~Why won't you tell me, exactly how you want it to be~" Aw dang, this boy can sing! Why couldn't he have gotten more than one song!?

Andrea applauded his singing. "You are coming to karaoke night and singing that."

"Can we please start filming?!"

OXOXOXOX

Filming took longer than editing this time around. Andrea let Ollie use her laptop for the editing process, but he surprised her by finishing it in under fifteen minutes. "Save the changes, and… it's done!" Ollie announced.

"Wow, you are a fast editor." Andrea hopped off the bar stool she'd been sitting on and came back over to the laptop. She missed the uncertain shifting of his eyes when she mentioned editing and went ahead and pressed start.

The video starts, showing Ollie behind the bar and Andrea walking over. "Hiiii!" Andrea excitedly greeted. "My friends told me the root beer at Ruben's Root Beer Pub is the best root beer in town."

"You heard right!" The Ollie in the video confirmed. "A-" his voice cut off and a low quality image of the shop's logo appeared noticeably placed on a generic red background. "Ruben's Root Beer Pub-" Ollie's voice spoke over the logo. It left as abruptly as it came and returned to a still of Ollie looking at the camera. "-eer pub. We have a root beer for everyone! We have…." He stopped. The film continued to run on Ollie looking at the camera, then he peered down and read from his notes. "Classic blend-" a close up of the kind in question interrupted him announcing it. It switched to another kind, but no sound came from the video. The same happened with the next type before it switched back to a closeup of Ollie. "-ore earthy aftertaste. And come try our n-" another sudden cut to a photo of a root beer float. They weren't going to make one just for filming, so Ollie took a picture of the one he had earlier… which had already been halfway finished.

The picture cut back to Andrea, the same clip from the beginning. "My friends to-" suddenly switching to a new clip. "-So much variety! How can anyone choose?"

"I kno-" Ollie's response was interrupted by the pub logo from earlier. "At Ruben's Root Beer Pub!"

The video came to an end, bewildering its own creators. "Ollie! That was the worst editing job I've ever seen!" Andrea might've been very direct, but she was right. Clips were not properly synced to audio, the cuts were all jumpy, it was a mess. "What about all the videos you made with your family?!"

"I've never been in charge of editing! I've seen my mom and June do it, so I thought I could do what I saw them do! I was the research guy!" Ollie went off. Why was he the worst editor in his family!? He didn't even know how to add special effects. "But the audio wouldn't sync-the clips were hard to cut-I think I accidentally uploaded something to ClickClock!"

Pulling up the website, Andrea checked her account and noticed a short video had indeed been added. "You want the good news or the bad news first?"

"Bad news, it makes the good news easier to swallow."

"Bad news is you did post a few second video to Clickclock." Andrea confirmed his concerns. "Good news is that the clip is going viral!"

Ollie looked over at the screen, it was a short bit from the first take, of him doing his signature hair swoop. The clip was titled 'How do I cut and paste footage into video editor?' and the view count kept going up. A very noticeable comment caught his eye from one user of the name N_H4PP1F13R (WOOOO THATS MAH BOYFRIEND!) He smiled at the comment, then noticed a few other comments actually answered the question in the video title. "Huh, that's helpful." He'd have to remember that for later.

Andrea was amused by the mishap. "Going viral on accident is no easy task. Even more when it's not anything embarrassing happening to you." She whipped her head around to make sure no one was listening to what she was about to reveal. "One time I did a 'how-to' on choosing the right accessory for your pony, and my pony, Majesty, pooped on my mothers favorite rug! The clip went viral for two days and my mom was so mad that she cut off my credit card for a week!"

The story was a little relatable, not because of the pony but for accidentally making her mom angry. "That sounds bad but I've done worse. When I was little, I got lost in a mall trying to find this costumed mascot of a dragon character from a show I liked. My mom was furious when she finally found me."

Ollie's story hit its mark, Andrea muffled a snort. "Yeah, yeah, we can keep trading stories, or we could finish our video."

"Finish the video. We really need to get it done." Ollie concluded. "We tried it your way, and we tried it my way. Which only leaves us one more option."

"We combine our strong points and direct it together." Andrea followed. Ah, the cliche of combining individual strengths never fails. "We'll go closer to your concept, but I'll handle the effects and the 'WOW' factor."

Swoopy hair agreed. "Yeah! Let's make this last take count!"

They set up their equipment for one final try! But first, Andrea needed to purge his video from her laptop. "This cannot be allowed to exist." She shook her head, sharing in the shame Ollie felt towards it.

OXOXOXOX

The start button is pressed on a video and it plays. A spinning logo for Ruben's Root Beer Pub sparkles onto the screen briefly before fizzing away to reveal Ollie and Andrea sitting at the barstools. Ollie's voiceover played over them. "Looking for a fizzy refreshment in the Brighton area? Ruben's Root Beer Pub has something for everyone." The two teens clinked their root beer bottles together, releasing animated bubbles from the clink.

A splash of root beer transitioned into a quick montage narrated by Andrea. "More variety than you can name. Freshly brewed on site. And now you can enjoy a root beer float with your choice of brew and sweet vanilla ice cream!" Andrea and Ollie showcased various products, using some creative editing for what they didn't have on hand.

The sparkly logo from the beginning returned, with both teens talking over it. "There's no better root beer than the ones you'll find at Ruben's Root Beer Pub!" A fissure of fizz erupted over the logo and ended the video.

"Be honest, do you think we could have done more? We had to cram it all into thirty seconds and if we had more time-" Ollie's rambling was silenced by a straw being shoved into his mouth.

Molly giggled after finding a creative way to get her boyfriend to stop for a moment. "Ollie, you and Andrea worked really hard on that video, and it came out great!"

It was a few days after Ollie and Andrea made the video. It was uploaded the day after, once they showed it to his dad for approval. While it wasn't the highest trending ClickClock of the week, their promo made it to number 8 in their region. More customers came to check out the pub, so they could definitely call it a success. And success is best celebrated by taking your girlfriend on a date to your family's business and sharing a root beer float.

Ollie swallowed a bit of soda and removed the straw before talking again. "Thanks Mollberry. Though I am still wondering how a video of a bowl of alphabet soup that spelled 'soup' beat us by a thousand views?"

Esther picked that moment to walk by their table. "You know, Molly, whenever Ollie has alphabet soup he insists on eating the letters in alphabetical order." As a parent it was her duty to reveal embarrassing facts about her son to his lover.

"Mom! That was ages ago!" Ollie insisted. True, he hadn't had alphabet soup since the last time he was sick, back in November. But he was still going to eat it alphabetically next time too…

Thankfully, Molly noticed someone arriving and changed the subject. "It's Andrea and Alina!" The chipper girl waved the newly arrived couple over to their table.

"OMG, Hey Mmm-Ollie!" Andrea waved back, her other hand stayed holding onto her girlfriend's, whom she then leaned over to. "That's their ship name."

"Ah, right on." The redhead approved. Ollie hadn't met Alina yet, but he'd heard about her from both of the other two girls present. "Name's Alina, nice to meet you Ollie."

"Nice to meet you too." Ollie returned the sentiment. The girl lived one town over in Mewline, so she probably only visited the town on business or to see Andrea.

Andrea was beaming with excitement. "Alina saw the vid we made and wanted to come check it out, so we're having our weekend date here!"

"Aww, us too!" Molly chimed in.

Alina addressed the boy once more. "Gotta say Chen, that was a cool promo you two did. Davenport was telling me how you guys collabed on the work."

"I mainly contributed to the premise and staging, the flare and effects were all Andrea." Ollie humbly shared the praise.

"Come on Ollie, you kept it all from becoming an overly kawaii mess." Andrea reminded him. "We might not have trended at the top, but we had fun making it, and now we get to enjoy what we set out to promote."

"Well said, Davenport." Alina gave Andrea a quick kiss on the lips. Making the bluenette's face match her girlfriend's hair color.

Molly 'awed' at the gesture, then came an idea. "What would you guys say about turning this into a double date?"

The suggestion was met with unanimous agreement. Molly hopped out of her side of the booth to let Alina in, then planted herself down beside Ollie while Andrea went to order a float for her and Alina. Ollie and Molly went to drink out of their float when the former remembered something. "Oh, by the way, Molly, how do you feel about capybaras?"