In a metal moment for the story, we've officially reached 666 endings. That's more endings than most stories have chapters. With more to cum...
There are 5300+ chapters in that story. It's been a little over 1000 months since Lois Lane debuted in 1938. If you equate a chapter to an issue, she might have appeared more times in that story than in all of DC comics.
Not doing the numbers this month because: 1) It was a really shitty month in terms of writing 2) Had ~250 notifications today which means a lot more chapters-to-be-written added to the queue, and I had to spend a couple hours updating the spreadsheet just to figure out what's next in the queue. The road goes ever on and on...
Sorry if you're waiting on certain storylines to finish, I'm dedicating May to dealing with the backlog of epilogues that need to be written.
Slowly getting back into things. Hopefully, I'll get the green chapters done soon, and I can go back to chipping away at the massive orange chapter backlog.
Writing isn't going to be great because I'll be traveling a good chunk of the next week or two, but finally policed up the <20 green chapters. Going to try a slightly new approach to whittle away at the still-massive-pile of chapters to-be-written: going to start from the top (orange chapters with most likes/bookmarks). No prioritizing the epilogues, no writing sequels to chapter 19s early to finish off a branch, just going to start from the top (currently: 20 likes w/2 bookmarks) and work out way down from there. Which is going to be long and slow, but if I can whittle some of the orange chapters down and keep on top of the <20 green chapters... ...who am I kidding, I'm gong to be writing this story frickin' forever.
Finally re-organized and revised the What's this? Another App! chapter. I'm not sure it's actually useful, but I don't have better ways of organizing branches that aren't more labor-intensive.
Chapters written: 5,485 (+268) Chapters to be written (green): 32 (+23) Chapters to be written (orange): 886 (+166) Chapter 20 endings: 686 (+44) Highest orange chapter: 16* Highest green chapter: 13* Deepest Chapter: 36 (+1) Haven't updated the stats since April, so here we go...does anybody read/care about these things but me? Anyway, the long and short of it is that between my writing falling off schedule (real life happens) and a LOT of likes, the story is no closer to being finished now than it was in...I dunno. Ever. Literally 898 chapters to write, and you know there will be more likes. In hindsight, some of the efforts to cap off storylines or prioritize epilogues probably ended up driving more likes than I thought they would. On the plus side, now rated #8 story on the site! So that's something. But yes, the SCP protocols to contain this anomaly are working.
Lois Lane's Night Out currently stands at 5,525 chapters... ...and the end is not in sight. I'm debating whether to discontinue the likes = new chapter gimmick in favor of just wrapping up existing storylines. We're way past how big I thought this story was going to be. Anyone want to weigh in on that?
The thing is that because your story is so popular, you will inevitably get lots of likes which means that you'll never finish with the gimmick. Ultimately, it's your choice.
Okay, after much internal debate, I have decided to raise the thresholds: Second options for chapters <20 now require 15 or more likes. Epilogues for chapters 20-and-up now require 15 or more likes for the first, 25 or more for the second. Which means: all the current orange and green chapters are done, and I can now focus on finishing off the branches with <20 chapters. If you still want to see a chapter get a sequel, like it! And if you really, really want a branch to continue...it's a moderated story. Write it yourself. [/edit] Despite being relatively popular the story also has really low engagement for a top ten, so I don't expect many people to kick up a fuss.
Did a quick count, and barring inevitable likes, currently have 362 branches to end. Which is much better; I can probably knock that out before the end of the year.
Started in on the sub-chapter-20 endings and...it's okay so far. Leaning a little toward the Bad End vibe, but nothing wrong with that. Or at least, no one has complained so far.
Lois Lane's Night Out is five years old today. It's come a long way (5,596 chapters) from that first chapter.
354 branches left. Been a little slower, but endings tend to take longer to write, even if there tends to be a lot of similarity in some of them. I'm not just going to write "Lois Lane Choked To Death On A Cock For The Third Time, THE END," but I appreciate how there's a lot of pregnancy-ever-after branches - readers like those.
I know I've slowed down considerably on this, but I want to finish Bad Sex first, and endings tend to be longer and less fun to write.
On the plus side: finished writing all the Bad Sex chapters, and will probably get tired of waiting and upload them all this weekend. On the down side: still struggling to finish the LLNO chapters.
