Author's Notes (Prefix Edition): The response to this story has already been extraordinary. Even Rotten Apple didn't start off this strong way back when. Either I'm doing something right, or the Loud House + NSL is still a very hot commodity. I'm not just saying that to humble-brag either: the fate of this entire story hinged on the response I got for it. You see, I initially intended for this to be a relatively short, straightforward Lincoln/Lucy drama fic to replace Rotten Apple (see the Suffix Edition A/N for the tell-all as to why we're getting this story and not that one). Maybe 10 chapters. And unlike Rotten Apple, this time I would do it on a chapter-by-chapter basis. I started writing on a whim, intended to prewrite the entire thing, and could quickly tell that 10 wasn't going to be enough, so I figured "Maybe 15-20."
But after three chapters I had so much fun writing this tale that another thought occurred to me: if people really want it, I could hunker down and transform this fic into a much longer one. I figured that I'd publish the first six chapters, and then just the first four once I finished them and realized where the plot was going, and gauge people's response to the story.
So went my plan: get to chapter four and ask readers if they wanted an extended fic.
However, the response to the FIRST chapter was so much better than I expected out of four of them that I decided to go ahead and plot out some trajectories for the story past a hypothetical chapter 20.
There's still enough time for me to crash and burn and for everyone to hate this fic. I could still reach a new low.
But enough faffing about. Let's get on with the story, my droogies.
The best kinds of days are spent reading comic books in your 2,000-thread count underwear. Lincoln's latest infatuation: an ultraviolent Japanese manga called Ninja Jack, which bizarrely he'd been introduced to by Lana. Since when had she ever been into manga? Ever since the Bad Luck Incident. This proved perhaps the single best side-effect of the Incident— at long last, at least some of his sisters had finally adopted his interests after giving them a chance and realizing, 'Hey, Lincoln's stuff isn't so bad.' Where this would lead, he didn't know. Even if his sisters did what they always did and wound up being better at his own interests than he was, at the very least he'd be into it. Either way, he won.
On the page, Ninja Jack did bloody battle with his latest enemy, the Shinobi of Shadows, the dirty traitor and former closest ally of our hero. In the last arc, Jack had been defeated by the evil Brushogun who manipulated all his friends into turning on him and was left hanging on for dear life, hoping to be rescued by the Shinobi, whom he had a powerfully strong relationship with— only to be let go and fall into Akumatsu Ravine where he faced his greatest challenges ever. While Jack had fought all his friends into painfully understanding they had been duped and altogether they defeated Brushogun, he vowed mortal revenge upon the Shinobi. Now that the battle had come, the Shinobi did not attempt to fight back in some lame attempt at convincing Jack he knew he had done wrong. He turned the page and saw the obvious outcome: Jack refused his apology, making the snow-haired boy gasp and go, "Oh boy, he's in for it now!" Ninja Jack may have been violent, but he was normally so forgiving, even to his mortal enemies!
The manga concluded with Jack demanding the Shinobi achieve penance through pain and threw him into the Akumatsu Ravine, shedding a single manly tear over the trials he knew his friend was to suffer in his desperate attempt to atone.
Lincoln had been obsessed with this plotline for weeks and couldn't wait to see if and how the two could possibly reconcile or why Jack drew the line at him. But he knew that the Shinobi of Shadows wasn't going to have an easy time. There was such a sense of tragedy to it, like despite his justified anger, Jack had made a mistake he himself would soon regret. And that was the sort of storytelling you only found in Japanese manga. He loved the stuff and was so glad Lana saw the same thing he did.
Reading the exploits of the world's most violent ninja was made easy because of another fun fact: the Loud House had gone quiet!
"Lana!" screamed Lola as the princesslet chased her twin through the halls for some unknown wrong.
Well, quieter. This house had gone chill, but not for any particular reason. Ever since the Incident and its aftermath, his sisters had not been so chaotic, a testament to their efforts to alter their worst behaviors. It was still there, in fact to Lincoln's pleasure since he felt he needed some chaos in his house.
He set his comic on his chest and thought back to the previous weeks. To his time when his only sibling was a brother from another mother named Clyde. Why had they decided to just be friends? That was obvious: having only one sibling turned out to be fairly boring, and that was before it became tense when it became obvious that there's some stark differences between a friend and a sibling. When a friend becomes a sibling, you started finding all the uglier warts of their personality that you were blind to before. He found himself fighting with Clyde more and more, getting annoyed by him and his habits, and inevitably realized that Clyde wasn't just his new brother, but also his new brother, with all that brought with it.
Some things are just immutable facts of living with siblings. An only-child would never understand. And those things are, as he felt, what made life so fun. So long as they didn't get carried away in the future, he sang again, Wouldn't trade it for the world.
With music in his heart, he put on his noise canceling earbuds, connected them to his phone, and boogied to some tunes. He danced downstairs and past Luan, largely ignoring her as she watched TV. He passed by Lisa, tinkering on a robot that she explained would act as her assistant, more effectively carry out scientific experiments— in fact an idea she developed after she got into reading one of Lincoln's comics, Dynamo: The Action Droid.
See? Being into his stuff helps them out! "Ain't such a useless kid after all, eh?" He would say.
And always there was Luan, her hair down into its auburn heart shape, her hand against her cheek and eyes half-open, and she silently said, "You're not useless, Lincoln. Don't ever say that," whenever he did.
Lincoln butt-danced his way through the house, ignoring Luna. She strummed plenty of notes on her new and rustic acoustic guitar, in fact her only remaining guitar. Though she welcomed him, he had already passed her by.
Lincoln butt-danced so far through the house that he left the house. It was the heavy and humid air that snapped him out of it where he saw a familiar fist shaking at him.
"Dang it, Loud! Put on some clothes before you go flashing your behind at the neighborhood!" shouted Mr. Grouse.
"Whoops, sorry!" And quickly he rushed back in, shuffling around Cliff with a single stroke of the cat's back.
"Poo-poo!" cooed Lily as she waddled nearby.
"Aw, hey Lils! What's shakin'?" He answered. "Only mah rump! Oh yeah," picked her up and carried her over his head, and continued his gluteus groove towards the kitchen, following the aroma of fresh Lynn-sagna, still hot out the oven.
The way Lynn Sr gazed upon his creation was similar to the way he gazed upon his wife, especially in recent days. It was so beautiful, he could cry.
Lori passed by and said, "Hey, Lincoln." He saluted her and kept dancing, and she said to Lynn Sr. "Hey, Dad, I found that recipe you were looking for." With a quick motion of her phone, she gave him quite the treat.
"Yep, that's it! Hoo boy, twenty-two years it's been since I've seen it. Thanks, Lori!"
"No probs. I heard you—" she and Lynn Sr. watched Lincoln p-ass them back up and dance up the stairs. "... I heard you talking about Mr. Bierpong and thought, 'Hey wait a minute, I heard he was literally still in town.' So I messaged him."
"Ooh, yeah, I knew he still lived in Royal Woods. Poor fella gave up the culinary profession decades ago when he married his schoolyard crush. It's too bad, when we were in school together, he'd bully me about my dreams of starting a family."
"Nooo," went Lori, now listening to this daddy gossip while fiddling on her phone.
Leaning against the counter, the patriarch said, "Huh! We basically got the same raw deal in different ways. I got eleven kids, he's had eleven kids."
Lori lifted an eyebrow. "Wait, how…?"
"He adopts delinquent kids. Why, at the worst of the whole ordeal over the Incident, your mama and I were seriously thinking about sending some of the kids to live with him."
"Oh wow… But Dad, everyone I talked to says he's mean!"
"Beggars can't be choosers. For a minute there, the whole town hated us."
Lori facepalmed. "The whole town still hates us, Dad."
They looked outside, and conveniently, a bunch of kids finished TPing the tree.
"Loser Louds!" one screamed as they biked off.
"Hashtag Save Lincoln!" was the last thing they heard before the doppler effect won.
Lynn Sr. nervously pulled at his collar and said, "We-ell, as Grandma Harriet would always say, all storms pass eventually." He then rang his cowbell. "Kids, supper's ready!"
Lincoln, now fully dressed, pushed Lynn towards the stairs and set her wheelchair into the stairlift.
"Thanks, Stink… I mean… Lincoln."
"No prob, Lame— I mean, Lynn."
Lynn's face coiled in offense, though with a wry grin. "Hey!"
Lincoln shrugged. "Can't dish it, don't serve it. Ain't that right, Dad?"
"Yyyou bet, son!"
At this moment, Lincoln expected a cold punch on the shoulder. Instead, Lynn chuckled. That's what she'd been doing for weeks now, no matter how often he passive-aggressively insulted her.
"Yeah, yeah, I guess. Thanks again, Linc."
Ugh, it was bumming him out. Come on, Lynn! Where's that good ol' fashioned Lynnsanity? It's not as fun when you're nice.
"Don't trip and fall!" he shouted as he watched her slide down. "You might break a leg!"
No response other than that dumb agreeing chuckle. Dang it.
What hurt was that he knew Lynn was probably sincere in finding it all funny. He didn't want her to agree with him. He wanted her to get mad at him. Wait, why do I want her to be mad at me?
He pondered this question as he followed his sister down the stairs, keeping eye contact squarely on the back of her head as he lost himself in thought and tripped.
"Dang it!" he cried as he crashed to the bottom.
"Omigosh, Lincoln!" cried Leni as she helped him up.
"You okay, bro?" asked Luna
He brushed himself off and grinned. "Ahh, I'm fine. It takes more than that to put me outta commission."
The two girls grinned and rubbed the back of their arms, then followed their brother to the table.
When Lucy appeared behind him, she asked, "Are you well? Do you require last rites?"
He angrily pulled his arm away from her, walked to the table, and drooled at sight of his meal.
The lasagna was typical, lightly burnt, well seasoned, nothing special, and yet Lincoln felt the worst tension as he devoured his dad-cooked meal. There, surrounding him, was his family. Some weren't watching him. Others smiled when he looked at them. This had been the nightly reality for three weeks. Lincoln Loud was Lord of the Table, and his new vassals knew it.
Sometimes these meals would devolve into food fights. Not so recently, and that was yet another bummer. Whatever happened to those fun little fight nights?
Ugh. Even when they're nice, they can still tick me off.
It wasn't that Lincoln wanted to get into fights. But still… just a piece of meat, huh? Or maybe a slab of pasta, just one. Flying through the air. Splatting against a face. Oh how he'd look forward to it. He could think of a few faces he wanted to mess up.
Luan meekly started, "Um... L-Lincoln?"
And he looked to her, unamused. She looked away, nervous. "Well, can't speak for you, so..." and went on eating. She tried again, saying his name and he waited, but again, she looked away.
Ting ting ting
Lynn Sr. coughed and cleared his throat. "Luan, do you have anything to say to your brother?"
Extra emphasis on 'your brother,' I notice. Dad's really desperate for everything to go back to normal.
Lincoln looked over to Luan and watched as she trembled, looking back and forth between her plate and him.
Calm down, Luan. Be a clown again, for goodness's sake. Take your own advice. 'All you need is laugh.'
The awkwardness hung in the atmosphere heavy and hard, so Lynn Sr. felt it time to buzz through it with a saw.
"Alright." He stood, his chair screeching against the floor. "It's time for the family to get together and for the last of the girls to speak with Lincoln. If that's okay with my boy, that is." He looked over. "Is it, son?"
Lincoln innocently shrugged. "Fine by me. Better than this start and stop sputtering."
Lynn and Lucy both kept their faces down. The former rolled herself away from the table and her eyes followed Luan to the living room. Lincoln finished his dinner, walked over to the couch, and sat across from the fallen jokester, his family in the background.
She rubbed her arm and trembled. For three weeks, she'd been so reserved and distant, that Lincoln was actually pleased she chose that night to finally act. Any longer and she'd probably have started wearing black and saying, 'Sigh.'
"U-um, Lincoln… I know I've been putting this off… because—" She paused and looked right at him. "Because I didn't want to rush things if you weren't ready."
He lifted his brow and shrugged. "Anytime's better than never, sis."
"You…" She rubbed the back of her neck and looked to her family, who thumbed her up with big grins. Then back to Lincoln. "Is it meaningless to apologize, Linc?"
"Luan, look. You're a creepily unaware, often sociopathic teenage girl who desperately needs to learn that not everything she does is funny to everyone. You've nearly killed me on April Fools multiple times just for a laugh! You're crazy, you're insane, and you really need help. Sooo… Yeah. I forgive you. I'll give you a second chance and all. But please, you DESPERATELY need to do better."
His words didn't immediately cheer her up. This clown could only frown these days. Weakly however, she did grin and said, "I will try."
"A wise space goblin once said 'Do or do not, there is no try.'"
They hugged, Luan got up, and sat at the stairs.
The whole family clapped, with Rita clasping her hands together and sharing a hug with her husband.
Right as she sat down, Lincoln turned over the backrest of the couch and said, "And please tell some jokes again, Luan! I'm not saying you're not funny. Just do better is all!"
She smiled and looked down, her hands together and head between her legs.
Dang… The others weren't kidding. Luan really took all this hard. I mean, guys, I get why. She's a girl who made it her life's mission to spread happiness. Knowing she did the exact opposite hit her pretty hard. And yeah, it's kinda unsettling to see her so unhappy. But I wouldn't worry. I think that now that Luan's got my nominal forgiveness, she'll begin looking up to things again. Might be a while before I'm really that comfortable around her, but hey, for all her faults, Luan has (almost) never let me down before. She can do it, I know she can.
"Good job, Luan. And thank you, Lincoln." The man turned to the table and said, "Well, the last two are Lynn and Lucy. Are ya willing, son?"
Lynn gulped and choked on her spit. "N-n-n-no, I'm not. I'm not, I think—"
"Lynn, come here," Lincoln said coldly.
Her whole body froze. She looked at him as if ice daggers shot from his eyes.
"Come here," he said again with a hint of annoyance. She rolled her chair into the living room, slowly, letting each creak annoy her ears.
Her heart hit her chest so hard that she feared it'd stop. But it kept going, the closer and closer she got to him.
Finally, they sat face to face. He opened his arms and embraced her.
She returned the favor. "God, I'm so so sorry, little bro," she said as tears fell from her eyes and she ran her hands across his back. "I…"
"Lynn, it's okay. It happened." He pulled her away. "Look at me. You messed up. We all agree on that?" he asked to his family.
"We all did, son."
"But you're growing from it. I can see you are. That's all I ever wanted, and you delivered. A total slam dunk." He looked back to Luan, who looked at him with a little smile.
"Did you tell Dr. Lopez the truth?
"Well… I didn't tell her everything. I thought she'd have gotten CPS to split the family up if she knew I nearly got heatstroke at the beach."
"You're a hard mofo, Lincoln. Even the sun couldn't put you down." Again she reached in and embraced him. "It's all my fault any of this happened."
He pat her elbow and said, "Well technically, sis, it was my fault since, you know, I was selfish for wanting some alone time."
He eyed his family, who again looked dour and guilty. "I guess I'm the most selfish guy in town. Or maybe the most selfish guy around. In town? Around? In town….? Around….? Ehhh."
Lynn chuckled and kept her hug tight. "Hey, Linc."
"Yeah?"
With embers in her eyes like an evening sky filled with Chinese lanterns, she asked, "Do you forgive me? Even after what I said to you?"
He sharply exhaled and said, "That's a hard one to call. I think I already did when I moved back in with you guys."
She clasped her hands together. "I swear I'll do whatever it takes. I'll take whatever you can dish at me. Like you said, can't serve it, don't dish it, right, bro?"
There on his face grew a little grin.
"Alright. I guess you learned your lesson. You got your second chance." Right as Lynn moved in for another hug, he pushed her back with a bit of force. "Bup-bup-bup, wait a second."
The whole family stopped, a sudden wave of worry washing through them.
"W-what is it?"
He beat his chest and burped. "'Scuse me. Now let's hug!" He pulled her in and she had to deal with the rancid breath cloud invading her nose, but it was fine. If anything, it was rad.
She pulled away again and pressed her hands on his shoulders. "And hey, I got an idea. I was tossing it around with Lucy. You know that sister chart you have?"
"Yuh huh."
"Throw it out."
"Can't do that. I've gotta help you guys out." He shrugged and grinned sheepishly. "You'd fall apart without me. You know, again."
"No, you don't hafta do any of that. How about we help you out instead? We all get our own Lincoln chart and help you when you need it?"
Lincoln pressed his hand against his chin. "Gee… sounds pretty good actually." He inhaled and exhaled loudly. "Sounds… real nice." This grin of his grew large.
Actually yeah, no, that sounded ULTRA nice. Made me happy Dad decided to let Lynn talk to me tonight, because that'd work out so well for me. "But let me decide which days you help me out, m'kay? No more meddling sister tornado."
"Deal," said the sisters.
Lincoln grinned at Lynn and said, "See? It's not the end of the world. Sure, you guys messed up, but I'm still here. I still love you guys. And I could always rely on you before." Briefly his head turned towards the table and his eyes looked even further, seeing a flash of black, before he turned back to Lynn. "You know, I don't want you all to lose what makes you Louds."
"I get that, Linky. I really do. I just don't want things to be what they were before if it was that bad for you."
Lincoln sighed. "It wasn't that bad for me, honestly. Until it got that bad. If things went differently, I probably wouldn't have even ran away. I mean Lisa got all my stuff back too." He looked over to her. "Thanks again, seriously."
"Yo," she said, badly flashing a gang sign.
Heh. Cute.
"It could've gone a lot worse…." He quieted and licked his lips and looked down. "So tell me then, how did you get in this wheelchair? You've been hiding that from me for weeks."
She bit her lip and looked away. "I may have slipped on a few banana peels while playing soccer."
Lincoln smacked his lips. "You did not." Then he looked to Luan. "Did she?"
Luan said nothing, instead looking to Lynn as if to tell her, 'Don't run from this too.'
She sighed and said, "You remember when Hawk and Hank tried to sabotage your game?"
Coyly, he rested his knuckles against his cheek and thought back to that episode, most humiliating to this girl sat before him, and went, "Yuh huu~uuh…"
She sniffled and said, "I couldn't let them get away with wrecking your party."
"Hmm."
She nodded. "So I found those bozos and gave 'em what for! Heh heh! But… They got me back pretty bad."
"That's kinda messed up. I know what I said, but I didn't actually want you to lose your legs!"
"Uh, Linc, I still got 'em."
"You know what I meant." He raised his finger and said, "And furthermore, that's illegal for two grown dudes to beat up a 13-year-old girl! More than illegal, it's just wrong. Why didn't you tell the police?"
She looked away. Yeah, why didn't she, one of the Louds, ask the police for help? What, were they not gonna believe you or something?
"I guess I thought I had it coming."
Lincoln recognized the curves in her eyes and said, "Like I said, you guys learned your lesson pretty thoroughly. I know I didn't wanna be a Loud when it really got going!"
She grinned and snickered. "Well, on the bright side, I'll be able to get out of this lame wheelchair in a couple weeks, Stink— I mean... Lincoln."
"That you will, Lame— I mean… Lynn."
She grinned, he grinned back, and the hugs came for days, and the family clapped again, with Luna cheering, Lola and Lana sharing their own hug, and Lucy actually smiling. Then again, that may have been anxiety. All of this had been put off as long as it could.
"Alright, kiddo. Are you done? Need any more time? Or are you ready for one last girl?" The way Lynn Sr. said that was so cheerful and chipper, undoubtedly boosted by the excellent outcomes of the past two, the past eight.
Lincoln frowned. There went his heart, palpitating enough to warrant a medical emergency.
Lucy stood there, so demure, so nervous.
Two apologies in one night's good enough. I can do this tomorrow or next week or whatever.
"Remember, Lincoln, if you don't want to, you don't have to. We're not forcing you to," said Lori.
Leni went, "Yeah, if you hate us forever, that's totes fine too. As long as you're feeling better." The most coherent thing Leni's ever said, and it made him realize she meant it. They weren't forcing him, but it damn sure felt like it. How dare they be this nice. They weren't this nice when they kicked me out.
Okay, maybe they were. That was the most sickening part about it. The family genuinely meant no harm while they stabbed him in the back. To them, it was like they genuinely thought he liked the feeling of a knife in his spine. Self-preservation, right? They thought he was bad luck and didn't want anything bad to happen to themselves. Because they were goofy or some crap he said.
If only they knew how much their relationship was strained by that mess. But it was his fault for not making it known. It was his fault for saying he forgave them. Because deep down, he really did. It wasn't going to be unconditional and he wasn't going to ever let them off the hook. But he did. He did and really did.
And they allowed him to feel that way. They let him have his own feelings, his own space. And that felt nice. They did good for once. They stabbed him in his back, patched him up, paid for his medical expenses, and then treated him like a king. Didn't change what they did, but he appreciates the change. If they were snakes, they've evolved legs.
"Winky...?"
He snapped back to reality. Lily pulled at his pants and pointed to Lucy, who looked like she was about to start crying.
And Lily said again, "Wucy!" as she kept pointing.
Not gonna make this easy on me, are ya', Lils?
Three weeks ago, this would have been easy. At least back then, he wouldn't have had much time to give it much thought.
Three weeks. He'd been in this house three weeks. And in that time, a familiar tradition hadn't happened. A secret tradition. Just thinking about it put heat under his cheeks.
The silence hung like a corpse, and the Louds exchanged increasingly nervous glances.
Why wasn't he saying anything?
Why was he hesitating?
The parents had their own exchanged looks, casting perturbed glances towards Lucy. In her saturnine mind, she had a feeling she knew what was wrong.
"Linc, if you need time, just tell us," said Rita. "It's fine if you feel exhausted."
"Yeah, it was my fault for dropping this on you all of a sudden. I just thought that maybe if Luan was ready, then—"
This breath of his was the biggest one that ever left his lungs. "I'm fine. Alright. Last one."
"Attaboy," said Lynn Sr. so cheerfully. Lucy looked surprised that her brother actually regarded her, and Rita pat her forward, clasping her hands together with such a hopeful grin. This was it. The moment their family finally came back together for good. They had been waiting for this moment for two months now and vowed to each other, to all of them, that they never would take their son for granted ever again. The changes they had set down, the ground rules they said they were going to enforce, all of that would now mean something greater than themselves.
Lucy ambled into the living room, her hair swaying with every step as she played back in her head what she wanted to say. Lincoln's hands were together, grasping two fingers at the arm rest, as he watched her stroll up to him.
He thought about how he had forgiven his family even if he hadn't fully meant it. All this time, the bitterness lingered, but his better nature always won out.
"Lincoln, I..." She cleared her throat. "I know I said it before, but... I-I'm sorry for my infernal actions against you. We rejected you. I rejected you. When this family turned against you out of superstitiousness, I stood by and did nothing. Worse, I participated in your grave exclusion. The devils below know I deserve the fate I received. I just ask for a moment..." And she pulled out a paper from a pocket. "I-I just want you to know that I do love you, even if I failed to show you that love when you needed it. I wrote this for you, an extended apology from which I had to pull from the deepest depths of my pained soul."
She pulled the paper closer to her face, and in the background light, Lincoln could see multiple dried spots on the paper.
Enough.
Lincoln snatched the paper out of her hands, tossed it over his back, and said, "Sorry, Luce. Apology not accepted."
The whole room froze.
Author's Notes (Suffix Edition): And now begins the melodrama.
It's time for another extended author's note (there's going to be a few more of these)
So, about the apple rotting in the room.
"What happened to Rotten Apple, dude?"
Simply enough it collapsed under its own weight.
The short story is that it got so inflated and complicated that I just didn't want to write it anymore more out of fear that it wouldn't live up to what I had planned.
The longer story is… well, I hope you have a snack or some lube, because this is lengthy.
One of the reasons why Rotten Apple collapsed under its own weight is because of that weight itself: I calculated it out and realized that I'd need to write at minimum 100,000 words and much more likely 250,000 to 300,000 words just to get to the part of the story I actually wanted to tell: that goopy platonic Lucycoln dramedy and juicy Lynn Jr. angst (which is what birthed the story in the first place back when it was called House Arrest!). And even that would likely take another few hundred thousand words out of my life too before I'd get to the really juicy stuff that'd take place during the Second Year of that story. All in all I was looking at a story that'd almost certainly steal well over a million words of my time. For reference, the average novel is about 70,000 to 90,000 words. I'd literally be writing the equivalent of an epic novel franchise just to get to the point. And it was impossible to streamline it. The way the story developed, if I cut out the first act, the rest of the story would've felt hobbled and deeply incomplete, no matter what I did to rectify that. I tried rewriting it so that it was all backstory and that the pseudo-Syngenesophobia portion was basically a therapy session explained by Lincoln to Dr. Lopez, but that didn't change that the second act had to play out and paid off tons of set-ups in the first act, and that's still without getting into the bulk of the story. The payoffs to the set ups early on were the best part.
"Bit off more than you can chew" is an understatement. I tried chewing an entire fresh-cooked mammoth!
Not helping matters is that I came up with the story when I had a fairly bare knowledge of the show. Even to this day I certainly haven't seen even a majority of episodes from the show and to be honest, the more I watch, the less interesting the show gets to me precisely because my brain keeps finding deficiencies. The concept for the show is outstanding and keeps me coming back, but the execution has been lacking. But my point is that I felt deeply uncomfortable creating such a lore-heavy, million-word story about a show for which I hadn't even seen 50% of and wanted to wait until I saw much more of it before I went forward with it. Rotten Apple was meant to be set between season 4 and 5, but the garbled continuity of the show itself makes it hard to call when certain episodes take place.
There's so many side and minor characters that I didn't want to just ignore or get criticized for not including (remember the good ol' days of Ed Edd n Eddy when there were only 12 characters in the entire show?). It suffers the same flaw Spongebob had in its middle seasons of having dozens upon dozens of often episode-specific characters. I went "Forget this, I'll just make my own fanon." Hence things like Scoots' cat. I know she doesn't have a cat in the series, but I thought it'd be funny if she did. That played a minor subplot in Rotten Apple that ballooned into a huge chunk of the story.
And on that note, there was the matter of subplots. This is what made me put Rotten Apple away. I like procrastinating but only so that I can make a better story as a result by thinking up new plotlines and scenes. It was a big exercise in set-up and pay-off (because I'm a gun nut— a Chekov's gun nut that is), so changing even a few things early on led to catastrophically different outcomes later down the line. Well the straw that broke the camel's back was a subplot I played with having in the exact middle of the story. Summing it up, "Lincoln forgives his other sisters, but doesn't forgive Lucy" (in that case because he felt robbed of the promise of six months without any of his guilty sisters and had to spend all that time contending and bonding with her without reflecting on his still raw feelings). This would have kickstarted a fairly dramatic subplot but it crashed against the story that had already been established so I trashed it. Thing is, I still loved that concept because of how needlessly tragic it was and wished I could do something more with it regardless.
Be careful what you wish for, I guess, because you just might get it.
So to sum things up, this is why Rotten Apple stopped at two chapters. It got too big and was still getting bigger, I felt I needed to get more into the franchise so that I didn't fuck things up (but put off doing so because the shows were getting less interesting to follow), and I procrastinate-planned the story to death, and all this happened as I got demoralized over the prospect of spending months writing a story I didn't care as much for just to get to a part that I did. I was setting myself up to spend months or a year writing a lamer truncated Syngenesophobia with virtually nothing different that That-Engineer didn't do much better other than some OC additions, all for what was essentially the prologue of the larger story. And THEN there was that constant doubt that it was now some sort of epic novel in my head, but under my fingers it'd be a needlessly over-complicated, meandering, and awkwardly melodramatic fanfic (which to be fair will probably describe A Life in Decline too). Even if I did it as best I could I still wouldn't live up to my own hype.
Technically it's still coming. It's on cold hiatus, not dead. After discussing the unbelievable state of AI with an old acquaintance of mine, I realized that I could probably turn it into a comic using AI in a few years and realize it in a vastly better way. I still have my overwrought outline (which is literally longer than some classic novels and isn't even a complete cover of the entire story) so it won't be difficult to feed it into a machine and get something out of it.
If you think that sounds farfetched let me tell you: you literally have no clue what computers are capable of right now. I didn't even have a clue until literally very recently.
Phew! That was too long, and I promise it's the longest these author notes will ever get (unless review responses get lengthy). I had more to say (mainly musings on what I'm going to do for this project but also responses to reviews) but let's cut this off for now. I'll do some review responses next chapter.
If nothing else, I will say "Don't worry about this one being abandoned anytime soon." When you're stagnant and stuck, sometimes all that's needed to bring you back to life is a breath of fresh air.