Lost In Purple Announcement
UPDATE: May 2024
Hello friends. If you happen to have stumbled across this update, then I unfortunately do not have some good news. If you don't want to read the thoughts of a neurodivergent loser, just skip to the end.
If you have been a long-time reader and have followed this story all the way up until I had to postpone updates due to the release of Monsters At Work Season 2, then I will have to apologize once again. I originally stopped updating Lost In Purple because I wanted this story to follow the canon storyline of Monsters University/ Monsters Inc and essentially fill in the parts of Johnny Worthington the Third that we did not see. I obviously never intended this story to be one thousand percent canon or fact, but I at least wanted this story to be my own headcanon. Unfortunately, Monsters At Work Season 2 did the one thing that I was really afraid of, and that was explicitly saying and showing the relationships of Johnny after the events of the main movies.
I was hoping that his relationships were going to be unnecessary for Johnny's story within Monsters At Work Season 2 and just never mentioned, but apparently that's not the case. Johnny apparently married Claire Wheeler and even raised two kids with her, making the entire basis for Lost In Purple to be nothing but pure fanon. I'm going to be completely honest with all of you and I'm going to say that I'm absolutely devastated by this 'plot point' and even went through the seven stages of grief after finding all of this out within the few first minutes of the second season.
I know that sounds very childish and stupid and dramatic, but the Johnny and Claire pairing is quite literally the one pairing that I absolutely hated with all of my guts. I hate it so much that I genuinely don't understand how it would even come to be if it were a real relationship. Claire, at least to me, is one the most boring, ugly, insignificant characters in Monsters University, and her falling in love with Johnny makes zero sense to me. She's a goth, meaning that she absolutely hates everyone that's 'normal.' She would also hate the system she lives within, and the people who run the system. I shouldn't even have to explain how she would hate 'elitists.' These kinds of people, by definition, are ones who consider themselves to be superior to others in terms of their intelligence, talent, wealth, and power…and that's literally Johnny. There's no possible way that a goth college student like Claire would ever love someone like Johnny, and I don't see how Johnny would even consider her Claire as a love interest. You can argue all you want with me (and you literally can, but all I'll say to you is: "I don't care, it makes no sense to me. This pairing happened so that Disney Animation could drive home the idea that Johnny has grown up to be a responsible adult"), but any other pairing in the Monsters Universe would have been miles/kilometers better than this one. I would have been fine if Johnny married one of the PNK girls. I would have been fine if he married some random scarer that doesn't officially have a name. I even would have been fine if he married one of the side characters shown in Monsters Inc. Him marrying Claire though, absolutely not.
There's also a lot more that I want to say about Monsters At Work Seasons 1 & 2, and about how poorly it works its way into the world we were given back in the early 2000's, but I'm just going to save that for when I finish writing this story; After the last chapter, I'll write a whole essay about the issues I've been struggling to accept these past few years, and tell you all about how I'm having a very hard time accepting Monsters At Work as 'canon'. On top of that I'll do some acknowledgements and stuff.
Anyways, I just want to say that I'm very upset right now. I've loved Johnny as a character ever since I first saw him in theaters. I was thirteen years old, and ever since then I've been developing this exact story within my head, believing that we wouldn't ever officially see him again. I literally decided to write this story because I didn't think we would ever get to see how he ended up after the events of Monsters University, but here we are 11 years later.
I regret to inform you all that since this story no longer holds up in terms of canon (since that's the whole foundation of Lost In Purple), I'm going to have to put this story on an indefinite hiatus. Instead of trying to follow canonicity I'm just going to fix the entire story, chapter by chapter. I'm only doing this because I ended up writing the ending of the story while following canon. Basically, Johnny and Melanie break up once again and never see each other again until after the events of Monsters At Work Season 2. I absolutely HATED writing it. It ends up being a catastrophic tragedy, and I did not want the story to end that way. I even had plans to write a sequel to Lost In Purple, but now I don't really know if I should. Again, you can consider me to be childish, stupid or dramatic, but I've had multiple accounts on FanFiction over the years, and there wasn't a single story I wrote where someone complained about canonicity. It was a constant bombardment of "this character wouldn't talk like this. This character wouldn't do this. This character wouldn't fall for that character. This plot point makes no sense because it contradicts with this plot point," and so forth. I genuinely want to make a story that makes you all feel happy to have read it, even if it was just a few chapters.
So, I'm just going to completely revamp the story. I mentioned before that I was going to rewrite a couple chapters, but now I'm just going to edit/rewrite the entire story and turn it into what I guess you could call "headfanon." You could also probably just call it "alternate universe fanfiction," but again I'm genuinely not happy with Monsters At Work, and I don't really know if I even want to consider it canon.
In summary, this story will not be updated for an even longer amount of time, and I'll write a giant Author's note after the last official chapter of this story explaining all my issues and choices and whatnot. I apologize if this upsets any of you, but there's no way I would be happy ending this story to align with Monsters At Work. I've had Melanie as headcanon for over a decade (because I'm a weirdo) and I refuse to let her go because of an addition to the universe not made by Pixar.
I hope you all can suffer through this unfortunate circumstance so that you can then enjoy the good that comes from the eventual finished product.
I hope you all can forgive me,
Lupinelectro