Fanfic / A Second Chance

A Second Chance is a The Loud House Dramedy Alternate Universe Fic written by WDGHK. It's set in a universe where the Loud kids’ destructive antics at home finally caught up with them; resulting in a Noodle Incident where their house got destroyed and their long-suffering parents divorced. The plot kicks off with Lisa traveling back in time (by a few months) and implanting memories of the Bad Future in Lincoln and Lynn’s minds while they are asleep, hoping that they can Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

Now, with less than two weeks before “the incident” is destined to go down, and with the aid of a snarky ally from the original timeline (who also got a visit from Lisa), Lincoln and Lynn are faced with the daunting task of fixing their Dysfunctional Family before it's too late and they also have to keep their sisters away from their house on that fateful day. With a family like theirs, it’s easier said than done.

Family drama, hijinks, and the odd life-and-death situation ensue...

The story continues with the Immediate Sequel No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, showing how the characters' lives continue in the new timeline, with bad blood still running rampant within the family and their foes seeking retribution.

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The stories contains examples of:

A Second Chance

• Action Girl: Due to this being an Actionized Adaptation, Lynn gets to show off her chops a lot more, especially when Lyle or One Eye are involved or when she dons her ninja suit.
• Adults Are Useless: Ultimately what the protagonists aim to change about Lynn Sr. and Rita. The latter at least is showing more initiative than her husband, while the former is slowly starting to put his foot down and assert his authority over his misbehaved daughters.
• Adapted Out: Lilly doesn’t exist in this AU, as the author views her as a pointless character that adds nothing to the story.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Happens to both Lucy and Leni, who, unlike the other sisters, never needed to perform a Heel–Face Turn in the first place, with the latter being The Pollyanna, while the former is a put-upon Shrinking Violet (despite her creepy, gothic exterior) who has little intention of causing trouble and is also shown to be more mature, considerate and sensible than the rest of the Loud sisters. Her being the Unfavorite who constantly got shunned and/or ignored by her siblings except for Lincoln taught her humbleness and gratitude. So unsurprisingly, Lucy joins Lincoln, Lynn and Ryan on their mission and is later let in on their secret.
  • Thanks to their Christman Carol-esque Character Development, both Lincoln and Lynn are far more altruistic and heroic than their canon counterparts. Lincoln is characterized as an All-Loving Hero Nice Guy whose sole goal is to help his family and make their lives easier, never once caring about making himself happy, and tends to be so moralistic to the point of being corny (akin to the superheroes he reads about). Lynn, meanwhile, who in the show usually tended to be Innocently Insensitive at best and a self-serving and inconsiderate Jerk Jock at worst, has shed most of her worst canon traits, though she retains her Leeroy Jenkins tendencies. Both siblings also act as the Straight Man to their sisters (sans Lucy), since they have learned the hard way to keep their worst urges under control or else their whole family will suffer.
    • While still eager to win, Lynn shows a much stronger sense of sportsmanship here, as emphasized in the “All or Nothing” arc, where she adamantly insists that her team does not cheat during the sibling duel, as doing otherwise would compromise her integrity as an athlete. But she’s ultimately forced to condone Ryan being her team’s saboteur after it becomes clear that Lori’s team will cheat and resort to every dirty trick possible in order to win.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: The individual relationships between the siblings have never been well-defined in the show, where they usually defaulted to just fighting or getting along as a group depending on what the plot called for. This story gives several of them more clearly defined dynamics, as part of the of course with this being an Alternate Universe Fic.
  • In general, most of the sisters keep to themselves and don’t actively hang out with each other, due to a lack of common ground, with few exceptions. Because of that, they tend to be rather antagonistic towards each other when they do interact and their lack of mutual commonalities often fuels their fights and arguments. By contrast, many of the sisters are shown to have a high opinion of Lincoln (Lynn, Lucy, Lisa) or at least consider him more tolerable and approachable than their fellow sisters (Lori), and none of them seem to have any clear issues with him in particular. Though Lola does start to harbor disdain for her brother after he stops cowing down to her will, as does Lori, once he starts actively meddling with her affairs.
  • In contrast to the show, Lynn and Lucy here are on very frosty terms, thanks to their clashing personalities and Lynn’s history of being an uncompromising Big Sister Bully. Because of that, Lucy tends to view Lynn as a boorish Jerk Jock, while Lynn sees Lucy as an Annoying Younger Sibling. Once they are forced to work together on the same team, both parties take delight in belittling and undermining each other whenever the opportunity arises, and are all too eager to ditch each other as roommates after Luan suggests it. Perhaps the only thing they have in common is the fact that they greatly respect Lincoln and both consider him their closest confidant, along with getting along well with Ryan.
  • As mentioned before, Lucy and Luan form an Odd Friendship, becoming quite supportive and protective of each other in the process, with Luan becoming a Cool Big Sister for the former. The author has stated that he simply could not envision such a relationship working out between Lucy and Lynn, hence why they have an antagonistic relationship instead. By contrast, Lynn forms a similar dynamic with Lana in this story, as they bond over their rowdy nature and tomboyish interests (something the show rarely acknowledged), and Lynn even starts being a positive influence on Lana.
  • Like in the show, Lori and Leni are the closest to each other (and roommates), but here Leni serves as an oblivious Minion with an F in Evil to Lori’s Alpha Bitch. Lori also frequently manipulates and browbeats her, though Leni takes it in strides.
  • The twins’ Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic gets deconstructed here, as Lola, following a string of recent fights with Lana, does something unforgivable to her twin (rip her favorite hat in two out of spite), which puts a severe damper on their relationship, and both twins are currently on hostile terms, which prompted them to seek out Cool Big Sister figures in Lynn and Kathleen respectively.
• Adaptational Villainy: As explained elsewhere, Flip is far more amoral and underhanded here than in the show, as his Establishing Character Moment unambiguously shows. Later, we see him shooting at Lincoln, Lisa, and Darcy when they accidentally teleport to his junkyard home, though his dialogue implies that he mistook them for cops or mob enforcers.
  • Played for Laughs with Scoots, who has been upgraded from an abrasive loudmouth to a full-blown Jerk with a Heart of Jerk Racist Grandma who treats Lucy like shit during the latter’s brief stint as her caretaker in “A Grandfather’s Wisdom” and is openly hostile towards Seymour. Though she’s also implied to be suffering from severe dementia…
• Adaptational Wimp: The fic plays up the fact that all the Loud sisters are minors with the kinds of physical limitations that come with their individual ages, and the younger they are, the less physically capable they tend to be. It’s very evident with Lynn and Lola.
  • The former might be a very strong and athletic Action Girl but she’s still just a 12-year-old girl and is physically defenseless against larger opponents, such as Hank and Hawk, or One Eye. She’s also the only Loud sister who is capable of handling herself in a real fight, implied to be due to years’ worth of schoolyard and sports field scraps.
  • Lola might be a Spoiled Brat with a Hair-Trigger Temper and a penchant for violent Disproportionate Retribution, but she’s only 5 years old and poses no physical threat to Lynn and Ryan, or even Lincoln, despite the latter admitting to being a wimp. Early on in the story, Lincoln stops cowing down to her demands, and afterward, Lola can do nothing to intimidate her brother or make him do her bidding, with Lincoln easily manhandling her when she falls out of line and once even makes her cower after snapping at her.
• The Alcoholic: Rita is shown to have become one due to the constant stress in her life, using wine to numb the pain. Lincoln and Lucy find her rambling while she’s in a drunken stupor and Rita admits that she thinks of her daughters as “lost causes” who will never see the error of their ways, while seeing her son as the only good child she has.
• Animal Jingoism: Subverted. Despite initially being wary of him, Marceline and Charles get along pretty well. It’s Cliff that Marceline treats far less kindly.
• Ascended Extra: Fenton and Maggie. The former was a toy who only appeared in one episode but here, he gets upgraded (literally) to being Lisa’s robot assistant and a prominent character. Maggie was likewise a one-shot character but here, she’s given a small but reoccurring role as Lyle’s unwilling lackey (and cousin).
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played with. Several characters (especially Ryan) expect Fenton to go that route, and given some of his deadly arsenal and Trigger-Happy attitude, their worries aren’t unfounded, even more so given how Lisa’s inventions have a history of going haywire. But so far, he has been a Benevolent A.I. with Undying Loyalty to his creator, and even actively helps out the main characters in later chapters.
• Alpha Bitch: Kathleen Tisdale checks off all the boxes; rich, beautiful, popular, manipulative, and captain of the middle school cheerleading squad, who also delights in bullying Luan. She’s also a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who is actively manipulating Luan’s family and weaseling her way into their hearts (especially Lola’s).
• Alternate Universe Fic: The author has made it clear that his Loud House stories (both before and after the Soft Reboot) did not follow the show’s continuity, as this offered him more creative freedom and the ability to remove any perceived problematic and/or obnoxious elements from the show (which he thinks it has in spades). Lilly's absence and many other changes to the lore make that clear.
• Arch-Enemy: Kathleen is this to Luan at middle school. Unsurprisingly, given all the torment she had to endure, Luan has little interest in burying the hatchet.
  • Lyle seems to consider Ryan to be his, but the latter does not take Lyle particularly seriously, often mocking him for being a massive Big Bad Wannabe and an incompetent oaf, much to Lyle’s growing frustration. If anything, Ryan shows much more of an interest in taking out One Eye. Notably, Lyle hates Lynn just as much as Ryan but always tries to downplay her being any sort of real threat to him.
• The Atoner: Both Lincoln and Lynn see their mission as a chance to redeem themselves for taking their loving parents and comfy lives for granted, the latter even more so, due to having been far more destructive, inconsiderate and unpleasant in the past than her brother.
  • Lisa also becomes this after her careless experiments nearly caused a Zombie Apocalypse, becoming far humbler and more compassionate in the aftermath of it. Lincoln does find it in his heart to forgive her eventually, but Lynn and the others aren’t as forgiving. Sadly, history repeats itself, thanks to Lola stealing one of Lisa’s experimental serums and accidentally giving Lyle Super-Strength, thus allowing him to kidnap and try to kill Lincoln, Lucy, Luan, Lola and Lisa herself, after which Lisa decides that her family can only be safe if she permanently rids herself of her high IQ.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Due to being much younger than her teammates, Lucy tends to get this treatment and it frustrates her to no end, with Lincoln and Ryan being reluctant to include her in certain missions, while Lynn mainly uses it as an excuse to exclude her as much as possible due to her dislike of Lucy (though protectiveness is also implied to be a factor). After a talk with Luan, Lucy begrudgingly accepts that at the very least, this shows that they truly do care about her, unlike the rest of her family, who tend to ignore her.
• Babysitter from Hell: Renee Taylor (Ryan’s older sister) is this in spades. She’s a draconic, authoritarian tyrant who will punish kids for even the slightest disobedience. The Loud children find out the hard just what a hardass she is. Though, unlike most examples, Renee’s harsh treatment of the kids doesn’t stem from sadism, as she doesn’t take any joy from what she’s doing, she’s simply a Control Freak Perfectionist who takes her job very, very seriously.
• Battle Couple: Ryan and Lynn become one, and a pretty effective one at that. Especially when they don their ninja disguises.
• Barbaric Bully: Lyle Owen might as well be a Stephen King bully. He’s a supremely violent and unhinged thug who is quick to resort to Disproportionate Retribution over the slightest provocation and cares little about maiming or possibly even killing his victims. He only gets worse once he gets a taste of Lisa’s Psycho Serum.
• The Big Bad Wolf: One Eye is a classic example; a big, terrifying wolf that stalks the surrounding woods and targets humans, especially children. The kids even call him that multiple times. And as Lincoln and Lisa learn in chapter 47, he is horrifyingly successful at it!
• Big Bad Ensemble: Lyle, Kathleen, and One Eye all serve as active antagonists, but they all operate independently. Renee temporarily joins the club between chapters 31-48, before suffering her Villainous BSoD.
• Big Brother Worship: Lucy holds Lincoln in high regard, as he has always been one of the sanest of the Loud siblings and the only one who ever gave her the time of day while they were growing up, while her sisters either ignored her or lowkey bullied her (like Lynn). As a result, she puts a lot of faith in his judgment and it’s one of the main reasons why she believes him when finally lets her in on his secret (besides figuring out the Captain Obvious Reveal). She also starts viewing Ryan as a cool older brother figure as they both have a fondness for Halloween and share macabre interests in general, along with Ryan treating her fairly from the moment they met. Ironically, Lincoln and Ryan don’t get along with each other and have very polarizing ideals.
• Big Sister Bully: Lori acts as one toward all her siblings, constantly flaunting her status as the eldest sibling and generally being a condescending bitch to everyone. Her bullying ranges from passive-aggressive insults to open hostility depending on her mood. While she usually prefers verbal bullying, she can get physical if properly enraged.
  • Renee has been shown to be very emotionally abusive towards Ryan, always treating him with contempt and basically acting as if he’s disowned. It’s implied that his older sister’s lack of emotional support and cold and condescending attitude throughout his life has had a major role in shaping many of Ryan’s Jerkass qualities and his unwillingness to open up or show any weakness. Lynn slowly starts to see this and rightfully calls Renee out for being a horrible sister during their Enemy Mine moment, but Renee is unmoved and refuses to admit any wrongdoings.
  • Subverted with Lynn herself, due to her Character Development from the original timeline. She feels immensely guilty for having been a cruel bully to her family in the past, and especially towards Lincoln, and bringing up her bullying past is a huge sore spot for her. It’s pretty clear that her guilt is the thing that fuels her determination to fix the bad future the most.
• Birds of a Feather:
  • Luan and Lucy form an Odd Friendship, bonding over the fact that they have both been subjected to All of the Other Reindeer by both their classmates and their sisters, due to their eccentric personalities and peculiar hobbies, becoming very close in the process. Later, Lynn and Lana also begin bonding over being the two token tomboys of their family, who don’t fit in with their more traditionally feminine sisters. Similarly, Ryan finds companionship with Lucy and Luan for the same reason, finding out that they are more alike than he originally thought.
  • On the villains’ side, Kathleen takes a genuine liking to Lola and the two start to form a connection over their many commonalities, with Kathleen becoming an Evil Mentor to the young Loud and starts encouraging her to remain a Jerkass Spoiled Brat, with progressively less subtlety.
  • Subverted with Lori and Lola. The two are arguably even more alike than Lola and Kathleen, and yet there is no love lost between them. This gets emphasized during the “All or Nothing” arc, where Lori and Lola team up against the protagonists during the sibling duel, but their massive egos and inability to admit their mistakes cause them to clash nonstop, resulting in Teeth-Clenched Teamwork at best. Lori ultimately proves to be even worse than Lola, by constantly browbeating the latter for her incompetence as a saboteur during the second half (even though Lola did everything in her power to help her team and hurt herself pretty badly in the process), getting under Lola’s skin in the process and eventually reducing her to tears after giving the latter her "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The villains (Lyle, Kathleen, One Eye) are quite ruthless, and Lola and Lori are huge Jerkasses but the main characters (Lincoln, Lynn, Ryan, and Lucy) pull a lot of stunts that are…morally questionable at best (as Lincoln keeps lamenting), especially Ryan and Lynn, which includes breaking and entering as well as kidnapping. Ryan repeatedly stresses that if you want to get things done, you need to get your hands dirty. Most of their actions are depicted as necessary in order to accomplish their goal (since their opposition won’t settle for reasoning), and it helps that the protagonist often have to go through hell to succeed on a daily basis and the main victims of their escapades tend to deserve what’s coming to them.
• Book Dumb: Lynn, as exemplified during the third challenge in “All or Nothing”, where Lori’s team deliberately pick her to go up against Luna in a trivia quiz. Given that she mixes up George Washington with Benjamin Franklin, confuses “pi” with “pie”, and thinks “American” is an official language (among other things), needless to say, she fails miserably and Team Lori scores their first victory. The same chapter also subverts this with Luna, who shows some Hidden Depths by faring surprisingly well in the challenge.
• Candy Striper: The aptly named “Candy Stripers” arc involves Lincoln, Lynn, Ryan, Lucy, Lisa, and the twins joining Kathleen’s charity group, “The Teens of Tomorrow”, and spending a whole day working at a kid’s hospital and later at Albert’s retirement home in order to make enough money to pay for Renee’s hospital bills. They even wear vertically-striped shirts for the occasion.
• Cassandra Truth: Parvana sees Lincoln, Lisa and Darcy teleporting back to the children’s hospital right in front of her. Naturally, no one believes her and they think she’s crazy.
  • Subverted with Lincoln and Lynn themselves. They are well aware that nobody would believe their crazy story about traveling back in time, so they largely keep it a secret.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Played with during the “All or Nothing” arc.
  • Lynn (wanting to uphold her integrity as a player) wants her team to play fair and square during the sibling duel but begrudgingly agrees to resort to cheating if Lori’s team does. Of course, they do, so Ryan acts as his team’s secret saboteur (he cannot participate in the duel himself, since he’s not a Loud), easily outmaneuvering and outsmarting Lola, who acts as her team’s saboteur, with the aid of Fenton. But Lola manages to get the drop on him during the third challenge and causes Fenton (who was feeding Lynn info) to short-circuit after pouring a bucket of water on him, leading to her team’s first victory. Realizing that there’s no point in upholding the ruse anymore, Lynn’s team comes clean, and Kathleen simply makes cheating part of the final challenge.
  • The final challenge involves Lynn and Lori racing towards Royal Woods, with Ryan and Lincoln and Lola and Luna respectively acting as their “pit crews”, as in, their personal saboteurs, who both try to stop the other racer from making progress, with the nasty tricks that both sides employ escalating as the race goes on. Eventually, Lola and Luna get apprehended by the boys, but Lola manages to escape and causes Lynn to trip on a banana peel and crash as she’s about to reach the finish line. But just as Lori is about to win, she gets a cramp, allowing Lynn to cross the line first and secure her team’s victory.
• Children Are Innocent: Darcy is a very sweet and energetic toddler, who also remains totally oblivious to the danger she’s in after she accidentally sends herself, Lisa, and Lincoln on a rapid Random Transportation adventure. She even mistakes One Eye for a Big Friendly Dog.
  • Since the story puts more of an emphasis on the Loud kids’ individual ages, the younger sisters tend to be naive about certain topics, such as their lack of understanding (and general disgust) about romance. Even Lisa and Lucy, despite the former being a Child Prodigy as well, occasionally exhibit the kind of lapses in logic that you’d expect from a small child. Their older siblings sometimes try to shelter them from being exposed to graphic or lewd content, especially Lincoln with Lucy.
• Child Hater: Renee candidly admits to being one, which is strange, since she herself is only 14. Though she seems to deem people “children” based on their inferred level of maturity rather than physical age, as she also treats Luna and Leni like hapless children, despite the former being the same age as her and the latter a year older. Though admittedly, she’s not wrong.
• Compensating for Something: Heavily implied to be the reason why Lyle becomes so fixated on getting revenge on Ryan and Lynn, as he’s incredibly insecure about his self-proclaimed title of “toughest kid on the block” and feels threatened by them after they both manage to beat him in fights, even more so with Lynn (due to her being a girl). It comes full circle in “Lyle’s Last Stand”, once he starts experiencing the side effects of the Psycho Serum, which has many steroid-like qualities, with predictable results. Ryan does not miss the chance to mock him for it.
• Cool Old Guy: Albert, the Loud kids’ maternal grandfather, is a jovial and easygoing fellow who gets along great with his grandkids and he’s one of the few characters to be unconditionally nice to Ryan upon meeting him. Once he learns of the kids’ mission to save Lynn Sr. and Rita’s marriage, he wastes no time joining their cause, as he was already well aware of the troubles his daughter and son-in-law were going through back home. He starts off by encouraging Lynn Sr. that his marriage (and children) aren’t unsalvageable.
• The Comically Serious: Renee Taylor compared to everyone else. She’s very stoic, dour, and humorless and any comedy surrounding her usually comes from her total lack of human emotions or empathy.
• Cranky Neighbor: Like in the show, Mr. Grouse is this to the Loud family, with his disdain for them being far more explicit here. However, given the Loud family’s long history of being huge nuisances to him on a daily basis, his hatred for them is very much justified.
• Deadpan Snarker: Ryan’s defining character trait and he often serves as the Sarcastic Devotee to Lynn or Lincoln. He can’t seem to go five minutes without making a snarky remark, even when he’s in mortal danger. Lucy, Lisa, and Lincoln have their moments as well.
  • Renee also makes a lot of dry and sardonic remarks during her stint as the Louds babysitter, especially towards Leni and Lola.
• The Determinator: Both Lincoln and Lynn won’t stop at anything to achieve their mission, no matter the odds. It’s even more noticeable (and admirable) with the former, as he’s visibly more and more shaken by continuous Trauma Conga Line he has had to endure, such as the Zombie Apocalypse and every encounter with One Eye or Lyle, and yet he keeps soldiering on, with his determination not faltering one bit.
  • Lyle is a villainous example, never stopping at trying to get payback on the main characters, no matter how many humiliating defeats he has suffered. It’s the closest thing he has to a redeemable quality.
• Dramedy: The author intentionally aimed to avoid making it a Dark Fic. While it’s Darker and Edgier than the show, and the family drama and character relationships are played straight, it also has a boatload of intentionally absurd and/or comical moments and includes many more surreal plot elements, especially in relation to Lisa's inventions (such as Fenton). Overall, it comes across less like a Loud House story in terms of tone and aesthetics and more like a modern Disney Channel cartoon, balancing out drama and humor within a heightened world, along with a lot of sardonic and self-referential humor.
• Dumb Muscle: Lyle. He’s incredibly strong and durable, enough to go one-on-one with both Lynn or Ryan, but he’s also a huge moron who always acts without thinking and never learns from his past mistakes. His impulsiveness and shortsighted nature always lead to his downfall, culminating in him getting arrested in “Lyle’s Last Stand”.
  • Downplayed with Lynn. While she’s not stupid, she is more impulsive and boneheaded than Lincoln, Ryan and Lucy, and also Book Dumb. Her main contribution to the team is usually of the physical variety, unlike the other three.
• Dysfunctional Family: Whereas the cartoon itself portrays the Louds as a Quirky Household, the story has them teeter much farther towards this trope, what with the rampant dysfunctionality within the family, the sisters’ selfish, entitled, and inconsiderate behavior, and the parent’s lax attitudes towards disciplining their children and asserting their authority slowly but steadily destroying the family. And unlike many other fics, Lincoln isn’t the one who arbitrarily suffers the brunt of the dysfunctionality, with the sisters treating each other just as badly (if not more so), and logically, the family members who are affected the most by the dysfunctionality are Lynn Sr. and Rita, who have been burdened with the thankless job of taking care of 10 misbehaved and ungrateful children and their lot in life is slowly driving them to the brink.
  • While much more lowkey than the Louds, the Taylor family has been shown to be a very dysfunctional lot, with Mr. and Mrs. Taylor being guilty of severe Parental Neglect, with them constantly being away on business trips across the country and leaving their son and daughter to effectively raise themselves. Renee herself, who is effectively the head of the household, is very cold, condescending, and emotionally abusive towards her brother. It’s not hard to see why Ryan grew up to be as screwed-up as he is.
• Dysfunction Junction: The main characters are Lincoln, Lynn, and Ryan, who are working on preventing the bad future where the Louds’ house gets destroyed and their parents get divorced. They later get joined by Lucy as well. But the All-Loving Hero Lincoln and the Pragmatic Hero Ryan naturally don’t see eye to eye, not helped by the latter taking a huge delight in teasing and annoying Lincoln at every turn, while Lynn and Lucy are on very frosty terms, due to their likewise polar opposite personalities and Lynn’s history of treating Lucy like crap. Yet despite all that, they manage to be an effective team when things get serious. It probably helps that the other Loud siblings are far worse at working together, due to their clashing egos and refusal to make compromises, being barely able to engage in Teeth-Clenched Teamwork.
• The Ditz: Leni, even more so than in the series. She’s perpetually cheerful and seems entirely incapable of noticing anything negative around her, even if it slapped her right in the face.
• Easy Amnesia: Happens twice:
  • First at the end of “One Flu Over the Loud House”, where, after reverting back to normal, Lori, Bobby, Leni, Luan, Lucy, and the twins have no recollection of the events that transpired while they were zombies. Makes it all the easier for Lincoln and Ryan to cover it up. Though Lucy learns about her stint as a flue-zombie after joining Lincoln’s team, and unsurprisingly, she’s fascinated by it and regrets having no memory of the experience.
  • Happens to Lyle after losing his Super-Strength and getting hauled off to juvie. His memory seems to have been scrambled and he doesn’t recognize Ryan or any of the Louds. Though the news article Kathleen reads in “True Colors” implies that he’s slowly regaining his memory.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Lucy, as usual, but there’s also Ryan, who is described as looking even more ghoulish than her, to the point of being a Gonk. Several characters freak out upon meeting him for the first time, assuming he's suffering from some kind of illness or substance abuse. He and Lucy further bond over their shared “unique complexion”.
• Emotionless Girl: Downplayed with Lucy. While she’s still quite reserved, she shows a wide range of emotion throughout the story, albeit usually in a composed manner.
  • As mentioned before, Renee is very much The Stoic, but she has plenty of Not So Stoic moments that only grow more frequent over the course of “No Guts, No Glory”, as her aggravation with the Loud kids and her brother grows.
  • Played straight with Maggie, who never shows even a hint of emotion, even while she’s being waterboarded by Lynn for intel in “Lyle’s Revenge”!
• Enemy Mine: After Lana eats drugged candy (courtesy of Flip), goes crazy, and starts running amok across town with Super-Speed (while streaking), Lynn and Renee are forced to team up in order to have any chance of catching her. Lynn does it to save her little sister from hurting herself, while Renee only does it to save face from her clients (Mr. and Mrs. Loud), much to the former’s disgust. They do manage to work together and safely catch Lana, but this does not lead to any sort of newfound understanding between the two girls who have been on hostile terms since they met. Lynn even lampshades it.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Kathleen Tisdale, Luan’s Alpha Bitch Arch-Enemy, weasels her way into the Loud family’s hearts by presenting herself as an Idle Rich benevolent philanthropist who runs multiple charities and is cool and friendly with everyone and all too eager to shower them with expensive gifts. In reality, she’s a Manipulative Bitch and The Sociopath with a Hair-Trigger Temper to rival Lola’s, who has been forced into doing the aforementioned things by her father as punishment for her past misdeeds.
• First Kiss: Ryan and Lynn finally kiss at the very end of "True Colors".
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Deconstructed with Ryan and Renee. While at first glance they seem to be a classic example of this trope, with the sister being the responsible, studious type and the brother the callous and misbehaved rebel, as the story goes on, Ryan shows himself to be the more easy-going, sensible, and compassionate one while Renee is so fixated on being The Perfectionist to the point of being obsessive, anti-social, abusive and displaying a shocking Lack of Empathy.
• Girls Have Cooties: Unlike in the show, the younger Loud sisters are thoroughly disgusted by the prospect of romance and have no reservations about stating their opinion when the topic is brought up. It was an intentional deviation by the author, as he thinks that things like that greatly trivialize the individual sisters’ ages.
• The Ghost: We never see Ryan and Renee’s parents or Kathleen’s father. In the former case, it’s because they are constantly on business trips, while the latter is likely an extremely busy tycoon (though not too busy to deal with his daughter).
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": While being stuck as the storyteller for the hospitalized kids in “Candy Stripers”, Ryan recounts a very embellished version of his first encounter with One Eye, where he frames himself as a muscle-bound Rambo copy and effortlessly beats up the wolf, here depicted as a behemoth with saber-teeth and spikes covering his back, after the latter kidnapped his friends, that being Lynn, here shown as a hysterical Damsel in Distress wearing a red dress, Lincoln, here depicted as wearing a diaper and suckling on a pacifier, and Lucy and Lana, who are manic, cheering fans who even dress like him.
• Heroic BSoD: Lisa goes through a severe one following the near-Zombie Apocalypse she caused and becomes a complete shut-in, suffering from depression and severe self-loathing. It only gets worse following the incident with Lyle in “Lyle’s Last Stand”, the latter resulting in her deciding that she must cleanse herself of her dangerous intellect before she can harm her family any further.
• It Can Think: One Eye slowly reveals himself as not being a Non-Malicious Monster. It's first shown in “In the Wolf’s Den”, where he seemingly pretends to be asleep and toys around with Lincoln and Lisa before moving in for the kill. Fully confirmed at the very end of “True Colors”, where we finally get a scene from his point of view and learn that he’s plotting to hunt down the protagonists, capped off with a Psychotic Smirk.
• Internal Reveal: Lincoln, Lynn, and Ryan spend most of the story not knowing how they went back in time (though they don’t dwell on it much). Humorously, after Lucy officially becomes part of their team in chapter 42, she immediately deduces that Lisa must have been behind this, citing how their Mad Scientist sibling has “done the impossible before”. The older kids promptly feel like idiots for it.
• It's Personal:
  • Lyle is quick to declare war on Ryan and Lynn after they both kick his ass respectively, and he’s more than willing to resort to Revenge by Proxy, putting all of the Louds on his hit list.
  • Following several encounters and after they try to poison him, One Eye is enraged and plots to personally hunt down the kids and slay them, with a convenient Red Herring allowing him to have the element of surprise.
  • Over the course of the story, both Lori and especially Lola start harboring more and more personal hatred towards the protagonists, especially Lincoln, for “daring” to interfere with their affairs.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain:
  • Lola becomes this over the course of the story. She’s as unrelenting and vindictive as ever, but as mentioned under Adaptational Wimp, she poses no physical to the protagonists and her schemes for revenge are shortsighted at best and tend to backfire on her, or the protagonists see it coming from a mile away, leaving her as little more than an Iron Butt Monkey who constantly gets hit with Laser-Guided Karma. Over the course of the fic, each one of her siblings gets fed up with her (sans Leni) and walk out on her, including Luna and Lori at the end of “All or Nothing”, leaving her as a pathetic heap with no allies and a ton of people who have an ax to grind with her.
  • Given his track record, Lyle often teeters on the edge of being one as well, only to then remind you what an unrepentant bastard he still is.
• Jerkass Realization: Happens gradually with each sister, usually following a Scare 'Em Straight experience. Except for Lucy and Leni, who, as mentioned elsewhere, didn’t need one in the first place.
  • Luan is the first to get one, after her latest “Prankmageddon” leaves her as a pariah within her family and her sisters start actively mocking and browbeating her after finally getting fed up with her antics, along with Ryan explaining to her how her actions have unintentional consequences, with this one, in particular, causing Rita to assume Lynn Sr. bailed on his family in order to save his own hide (which happened for real in the show once), further straining their relationship.
  • Lisa is next, getting a pretty brutal and clear-cut one via nearly causing her family’s demise after accidentally causing a Zombie Apocalypse. She then starts actively helping out the protagonists whichever way she can, when not working on her personal project to help her family…
  • Lana’s is a slow burn, starting off with Lynn becoming a positive influence on her, once the two start spending more time together. Her older sister eventually explains to her in a blunt and straightforward fashion that their antics negatively affect their parents and how they, in the worst-case scenario, could lead to a divorce. Lana doesn’t take this lightly and later on, after being one of the sisters invited to Kathleen’s mansion to join in on Lori and Kathleen’s ludicrous and amoral plot to get the former’s parents to lift their children’s punishment, Lana realizes the unethical nature of that scheme and bails on them and informs Lynn and her team about it, tearfully admitting that she was wrong for ever even going along with Lori, showing that her Character Development has come to its logical conclusion. Like Lisa, she also effectively becomes a member of Lynn and Lincoln’s team after that, serving as The Mole.
  • After spending most of the story being willfully ignorant of her Jerkass behavior, and then being a reluctant ally to Lola and Lori during the sibling duel, the triple whammy of being subjected to Renee’s babysitting tactics, getting rejected by Sam and then suffering an Humiliation Conga while working as Lori’s saboteur, which results in her team losing and becoming the protagonists’ servants for the next 24 hours, along with being thrown right back into Renee’s clutches, Luna finally has an epiphany and realizes how stupid she was for ever listening to Lori and Lola and angrily walks out on them for good, and after Lincoln shows her kindness by offering her a sleeping bag while she’s stuck in the basement, she starts to reconsider about whose side she should be on.
  • Defied by Lola. She has several moments in the story where she begrudgingly starts questioning her actions, especially once she becomes a pariah, but it always results in an Ignored Epiphany, as she somehow rationalizes her actions and maintains that she’s the victim and the others are bullies. After causing Renee’s accident, which left the latter hospitalized, she’s once more on the verge of having a Jerkass Realization, but unfortunately, she then starts succumbing to Kathleen’s Toxic Friend Influence.
• Lack of Empathy: Renee Taylor shows just how apathetic she can be to other people’s suffering once she gets appointed as the Loud kids’ babysitter for two days, with a lot of her harsh disciplinary measures veering into wanton child abuse territory, and she’s no better (and arguably even worse) with her brother Ryan. Some of it gets Played for Laughs but other times it’s deeply unnerving. Renee herself identifies as a high-functioning sociopath, though she thinks “sociopath” itself is a derogatory term used by overemotional idiots.
• Large Ham: Pretty much every character sans maybe Lincoln has their moments, but Ryan is the most prominent example. He often speaks with a lot of grand affectations and has a strong taste for theatricality, usually in line with his Deadpan Snarker persona. It seems to be partially an act to play himself up as more “cool”, as some of his interactions with Lucy and especially Lynn (usually when they are alone) have him show a more sincere and mild-mannered side.
  • Lola is another major example, typically falling in the Evil Is Hammy category.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In the original timeline, the Loud siblings swore never to speak of “the incident” that caused their parents’ divorce, and Lincoln and Lynn maintain that vow, much to the ever-curious Ryan’s annoyance.
• Love Triangle: One forms between Ryan, Lynn, and Luan, with Ryan actively flirting with the latter while he and Lynn were Just Friends. After Lynn makes it clear that she feels the same about him, Ryan is caught in an awkward position of trying to let Luan down gently, whose crush on him borders on obsessive. Though he wasn’t above letting the two girls fight over him for a little bit.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Several examples.
  • Lynn and Lincoln are this as usual, though despite being a Non-Action Guy, Lincoln is still very proactive and does everything in his power to be useful and is generally the more insightful of the two.
  • Rita and Lynn Sr. also count, with the former obviously being the one to wear the pants in the relationship and being more assertive and self-assured, while the latter is far more meek, insecure and submissive, being the true pushover parent of the two.
  • Marceline and Cliff are yet another example; with the former being far more physical and in tune with her feline instincts, while the latter is a full-fledged Lazy Bum and wimp who doesn’t even know where meat comes from.
• McNinja: Ryan (somehow) has a whole arsenal of ninja weapons at his disposal and dresses up as ninja when going off to do things he would rather keep under wraps. Both he and Lynn don ninja disguises for several stealth missions, such as when they break into Tisdale Towers to retrieve Rita’s lost envelope (which contains a large sum of cash) and later sneak into Kathleen’s mansion to eavesdrop on her scheming with Lori, Leni, Luna, and the twins. During their second outing, Ryan comes up with the codenames Dagger (for himself) and Jinx (for Lynn), effectively making them their alter egos.
• Momma's Boy: Hank and Hawk are shown to be this, so much so that Lyle manages to trick them into going after Ryan by lying to them that the latter had been talking shit about their mother.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Ryan Taylor’s character in a nutshell. He’s rude, sarcastic, self-absorbed, and chatty, and also has fairly lax moral standards but he’s also unquestionably loyal to those he considers friends and will go to great lengths to help them when they are in trouble without asking for any compensation, though he will adamantly deny that he’s “nice”.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Happens to both Lisa and Lola.
  • Lisa says it almost word for word after realizing that she has turned Lana into a flue-zombie, who has started biting and infecting her other siblings.
  • While she doesn’t say it out loud, Lola’s internal thoughts make it clear that she was utterly horrified and wracked with guilt after she accidentally pushed Renee out of a second-story window (with a secret assist from Kathleen), despite hating Renee’s guts.
• Named by the Adaptation: Some minor or one-shot characters are given full names here. Maggie’s full name is revealed to be Margaret Morgan and Scoots is given the full name Emilia Scooters. Albert’s last time is revealed to be Winfield and Hank and Hawk’s surname is Hogan (the two are brothers in this).
• Never My Fault: Lori, Lola, and Lyle are all very adamant about never taking responsibility for their mistakes, and vehemently try to pin the blame on others. It never works out for them and usually blows up in their faces, especially with the latter two.
• Nice Girl: Most of the minor characters and random townsfolk are depicted as Apathetic Citizens or jerks, so Sam, Darcy, and Parvana stand out for being one of the few nice people the protagonists meet over the course of the story. The latter is even unconditionally courteous towards Lucy while they work together on reception duty.
• The Nicknamer: Ryan has a penchant for giving nicknames to pretty much everyone (regardless of whether they like them or not). He calls Lynn “Freckles” or “Red”, Lincoln “pipsqueak” or “Twinkle Toes”, Lucy “Spooky”, Lisa “Lizzie”, Lana “squirt” (though so does Lynn), Lola “Pinky” or “Princess”, Lori “Blondy”, Luna “Moon Girl” and Lyle “Mohawked/Monobrowed Moron”, and Lynn Sr. and Rita "Mr. & Mrs. L".
• Non-Action Guy: Compared to Lynn and Ryan, Lincoln is not much of a fighter, and generally ends up as an Action Survivor, and is a self-admitted wimp. But he’s far from useless, as he not only serves as the de facto leader and The Heart of his team, but he usually manages to put his wit, quick-thinking, and resourcefulness to great use, such as when he jumpstarts an abandoned forklift to ram a roided-up Lyle and save Ryan and Luan from his wrath, or when he momentarily stuns One Eye with his pepper spray and saves Lisa and Darcy (without any aid from his stronger comrades).
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Lincoln, of all people, delivers one to Lola after he and Ryan capture her at the end of the “All or Nothing” arc. He does not do it willingly though, but Ryan (who at that point was thoroughly fed up with Lola’s shit), forces him to do it, telling him that if Lincoln won’t do it, he will give Lola her just deserts. Knowing it was no idle threat, Lincoln opts to spare his sister a far worse beatdown and obliges, and wounds up enjoying it more than he thought, much to his horror. It’s all Played for Laughs.
• Noodle Incident: We never get an answer as to what exactly “the incident” on June 29th was, other than that the Loud sisters somehow caused the house to collapse, which was The Last Straw that made Rita divorce Lynn Sr., and Lincoln and Lynn swore never to speak of it again.
  • In chapter 54, we also learn how Lori once filmed an “epic wipeout” of Lynn’s and used it as leverage to force Lynn to do her bidding for two weeks. Ryan is never told the details about either event, much to his annoyance.
  • In the following chapter, we learn of yet another one. Whatever Lynn did to Mayor Davis that got the former banned from Royal Woods’ annual Astonishing Quest, Lisa remarks how it was miraculous that the mayor didn’t press legal charges against the Loud family.
• Not Me This Time: After returning from their trip to Great Lakes City, Lynn Sr. and Rita find Renee broken and defeated and she terminates their contract herself before leaving. The former immediately assume that their children must have abused her until they broke her spirit and refuse to believe them when they claim that it was the opposite, that she had abused them, before punishing them by relieving them of all their privileges for a week. This puts another strain on their relationship; but given their history together, you can hardly blame the parents for thinking that their children are lying to through their teeth.
• Older Than They Look: Subverted. Unlike in the show, Lynn is specifically depicted as being taller than Lincoln and similar in height to Luan, as emphasized in one moment in “One Long, Lousy Day”, where Lynn, Luan, and Ryan are allowed to go on a ride at Dairyland but Lincoln and Lucy aren’t because the latter don’t meet the height requirements. This was done because the author considers Lynn’s short height in canon to be a random and pointless idiosyncrasy (since it doesn’t inform her character in any way), so he candidly nixed it from the get-go.
• One-Steve Limit: The fact that Lynn Sr. and Lynn Jr. share the same name gets poked fun at, especially in chapter 31, where Lincoln, Lynn, and Ryan are having a meeting in the former’s room when they hear Rita calling for Lynn. Assuming her mother’s looking for her, Lynn Jr. walks out, only to learn that Rita was looking for Lynn Sr., with Ryan then pointing out how impractical and confusing it must be for two people in the same nuclear family to have the same name. Then they hear Rita calling for Lynn again and ignore it, only for her to barge in on their meeting and reveal that this time she was looking for Lynn Jr.
• Original Character: The story features quite a few; Ryan Taylor (who is one of the focal characters), his older sister Renee Taylor and his pet cat Marceline, and the antagonists, which consist of the local bully Lyle Owen, the rich girl Kathleen Tisdale and One Eye the rogue wolf.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Lana becomes a “flue-zombie” in the “One Flue Over The Load House” story, a horrifying combination of the flu virus and a failed brain-boosting serum made by Lisa. The mutated virus promptly infects Leni, Lori, Bobby, Luan, Lucy, and Lola (via bites), leaving Lincoln, Ryan, and Lisa trapped with them in the Louds’ house and having to fight them off while Lisa makes an antidote. The “flu zombie virus” turns its hosts into conventional-looking zombies (specifically said to be undead, rotting corpses) with typical zombie-like powers, but they also sport blank, anglerfish-like eyes, move and behave like rabid animals, foam at the mouth and excrete mucus from their nostrils, screech and growl, and retain their speed and agility. They can also spit acid!
• Outside-Context Villain: One Eye, as he’s not a human and not even the protagonists fully understand how he ticks, along with the fact that his main motive is to brutally kill them, thus raising the stakes whenever he shows up. The same is true for the Loud sisters and Bobby during their brief stint as flu-zombies.
• Patient Zero: After contracting the flue while visiting their grandfather, Lana is put in quarantine in the “One Flu Over the Loud House” arc but unfortunately winds up drinking a dangerous serum Fenton was supposed to dispose of (courtesy of Leni) and it turns her into a “flue zombie” who promptly goes on a rampage in the house and infects most of her siblings.
• The Pollyanna: Leni Loud is described as “not having a single malicious bone in her body” and it shows. She’s the only Loud sister who is unflinchingly kind, generous, jovial, and never judges anyone. Unfortunately, she’s also Lethally Stupid and Oblivious to Hatred, completely unaware of how much both of the Taylor siblings loathe her and that even her own siblings sometimes find her annoying, and her idiotic antics sometimes make up for her lack of malice or ambition, most notably in “One Flu Over the Loud House”, where she feeds Lana a dangerous serum, mistaking it for canned soup, and turns Lana into Patient Zero.
• Pushover Parents: Lynn Sr. and Rita are both this (more so the former), and have been like that for years, which is the root cause behind the rampant dysfunctionality within the Loud family and their daughters’ lack of discipline and respect for authority. Lincoln and Lynn are actively working to change that and are trying to get their father to grow a backbone, though their mother is shown to be bolder and more willing to punish her kids (especially when she’s pissed).
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Ryan, Lincoln, Luan, and Lucy give one to Lyle as they beat him into submission at the climax of “Lyle’s Last Stand”, once his strength starts to waver, calling him out for the pathetic and insecure Dirty Coward he is. They are also intentionally trying to rile him up, as they realize that a rush of adrenaline will counteract the effects of the Psycho Serum.
  • Lincoln, Lynn, Lucy, and Lana give an epic one to Renee at the end of the “Candy Striper” arc, after she gets outwitted by Kathleen, who takes Lola away. They call out Renee for the abusive monster and Hypocrite she is and for failing to live up to her own, impossibly high standards. Being The Perfectionist, the criticism hits Renee hard, resulting in her Villainous B So D, where she’s left in an almost catatonic state of depression. Though she snaps out of it at the end of "All or Nothing".
  • Speaking of that, at the end of the “All or Nothing” arc, after finally getting fed up with their Jerkass behavior, Luna delivers one to Lori and Lola, telling them that they are both to blame for their team losing the sibling duel, while also realizing how stupid she was for ever allying herself with the latter two in the first place. After she’s done, Lori promptly gives an even more brutal one to Lola, calling her out for all her shortcomings. While Lori is obviously being a massive Hypocrite, it still counts as a Jerkass Has a Point moment.
• Red Herring: Ryan, Lynn, and Lincoln try to get rid of One Eye once and for all by using poisoned bait, but the wolf is wise to their tricks and disposes of the poisoned pork they left at his cave on top of Bearpaw Hill, accidentally leading to another wolf eating it. After learning, via news broadcast, that a wolf has been found poisoned and dead near the location where they left the bait, they assume One Eye is gone and celebrate, giving him the element of surprise.
• Revenge Before Reason: Lyle’s subplot in a nutshell, as he goes to more and more extreme lengths to get revenge on Ryan and Lynn for kicking his ass respectively, and starts using Lincoln and the other Louds as bait. It culminates with him gaining Super-Strength after accidentally being doused with one of Lisa’s serums, where he drops all pretense and actively tries to murder the protagonists. Fortunately, just as he’s holding Ryan and Lincoln via Neck Lift and prepares to rip their heads off, his strength starts to waver and the protagonists manage to beat him into submission, before leaving him to be arrested by the cops for his rampage.
• Robot Buddy: Lisa repurposes the Fenton the Feel-Better Fox toy into her own personal android assistant. He’s very much a Do-Anything Robot, having a ton of built-in gadgets depending on what’s convenient to the situation and he’s also unflinchingly polite to everyone, though not above using threats of violence (though he does in the politest way possible).
• Roommate Drama: Addressed and dealt with. The story points out how incompatible some of the sisters who share a room are, most of all Lynn and Lucy, and how that only fuels the friction between them. So, halfway through the story, the siblings make a mutual agreement to swap roommates, with Lucy going with Luan and Lynn going with Lana (see Birds of a Feather), while Lisa reluctantly takes in Lola (largely out of guilt), while Luna is left to have her old room to herself. Leni, however, enjoys being roommates with Lori, so their old accommodations (as well as Lincoln’s) remain as they were.
• Savage Wolves: One Eye is a rogue, man-eating timber wolf that Ryan, Lynn, and Lincoln run into on multiple occasions. He’s a Super-Persistent Predator and an Implacable Man, meaning there’s little the kids can do against him except run and try to keep him at bay.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Maggie hightails it out of there before the final battle between the protagonists and the roided-up Lyle goes down in “Lyle’s Last Stand”. She hasn’t been seen since.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Lincoln and Ryan have this dynamic. Ryan frequently teases the former about his lack of masculinity, but Lincoln seldomly bites. It’s later implied that Ryan does respect Lincoln’s gall and determination in spite of his physical shortcomings. Though with Ryan being Ryan, he’s not going to admit it any time soon.
• Secretly Selfish: While Luna is far more lucid and affable than most of the other, more overtly bratty and self-serving sisters, she still prioritizes her own desires and has a very myopic outlook, often being willfully ignorant to other peoples’ feelings or how her actions can affect them and/or have consequences in general (though mainly out of ignorance and complacency, not out of malice like Lori and Lola), as shown when she tries to talk Lincoln into helping her escape to attend a SMOOCH concert while Renee has their house under lockdown, not even once considering how that could land her little bro into hot water and offers nothing to him in return, as well as her routinely getting her family noise complaint tickets with her loud guitar playing. Her crush on Sam is also presented as an Entitled to Have You situation, as she never takes into consideration whether Sam would return her feelings (or if Sam’s even into girls) and gets jealous when she notices that Sam is dating Sully. Though she finally has a Jerkass Realization at the end of the “All or Nothing” arc and regrets taking Sam and Lincoln for granted.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: As usual, Lisa Loud does this a lot. Though she tends to lapse into talking more casually whenever she’s under stress or depressed, which becomes much more evident later on in the story, where she largely drops her sophisticated way of speaking.
  • Fenton, being an A.I, naturally tends to speak like that, in combination with Machine Monotone and a penchant for awkward pauses.
  • Lucy also has a rather eloquent vocabulary, fitting her Wise Beyond Their Years nature and love for poetry. When she’s not being Little Miss Snarker anyway.
  • Kathleen Tisdale is also rather well-spoken for your typical Alpha Bitch, though this seems to just be part of her “benevolent philanthropist” façade.
• Sliding Scale of Beauty: Occasionally brought up. Lori and Leni are apparently considered World Class Beauties among their peers, while Lynn is considered Just Average (not helped by No Guy Wants an Amazon) and Luan Uncanny Average (with her mismatched eyes and buckteeth, along with her wacky personality), and Lucy is considered Ugly and Uncanny (leading to her status as a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold). On the other hand, Ryan finds both Lynn and Luan very pretty and their personal quirks are part of the reason he’s attracted to them.
• Spoiled Brat: Lola is at her absolute worst here, with all of her worst canon traits amped up and at the forefront. Unfortunately for her, as the story goes on, her vile personality, Hair-Trigger Temper, and unflinching Never My Fault attitude not only sour her relationship with Lana but also gradually make her a total pariah within her family, to the point that even Lincoln starts doubting if she’s redeemable. To make matters worse, just as Lola is starting, or rather being forced to accept reality and see her own faults, Kathleen comes in to take her under her wing…
• Teens Are Monsters: Lori does little to refute that stereotype, as she’s the most openly antagonistic of the Loud sisters along with Lola; being loud, selfish, entitled, conceited, judgmental, openly disrespectful to her parents, and throwing a tantrum over every minute inconvenience, along with being a massive Jerkass and bully to everyone in her family. Her one redeeming action so far has been coming to comfort Bobby in Great Lakes City while he was dealing with a family tragedy.
• Toothbrush Floor Scrubbing: Renee makes Lucy do it during the former's first stint as the Louds' babysitter. When Lucy points out how ineffective it is to clean a bathroom with a mere toothbrush, Renee states that this is the point of the punishment, to make it all the more strenuous and tedious for her charges.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Kathleen becomes this to the Loud sisters who haven’t had their Jerkass Realization yet (Lola, Lori, and Luna, along with the ever-oblivious Leni), constantly encouraging and enabling their bad behavior, especially Lola’s. This reaches its peak when Kathleen proposes to the girls that they should employ the most extreme form of guilt-tripping ever to get their parents to “appreciate them” and lift their punishment of having their privileges revoked for a week; faking their own disappearance! Fortunately, Lana sees reason and becomes The Mole.
• Traumatic Haircut: Lynn receives one in chapter 49, after getting darted by a diluted version of the Psycho Serum that gave Lyle his Super-Strength, resulting in her ponytail and the rest of the hair on her scalp falling off. She now has to wear a beanie to cover it.
  • Lyle also loses all of his hair as one of the side effects of his Psycho Serum.
  • Played for Laughs with Lucy in "One Long, Lousy Day", where she's tasked with distracting Leni by letting the latter do her hair and subsequently spends the whole day with braids and pigtails, since her teammates, being two boys and a committed Tomboy who know squat about hairstyling, can't undo them.
• Troll: Ryan freely admits to being one, often seizing whatever opportunity he can to get a rise out of someone; with Lincoln being his favorite target, followed closely by Lori and Lola.
• Underdogs Never Lose: Played with during the second challenge in “All or Nothing”, where Lincoln gets picked by Lori to be her opponent during their pugil bout (with hockey sticks instead of actual pugil sticks). Despite his best efforts, Lincoln soon becomes overwhelmed and knocked off his platform by Lori. Except that Lincoln manages to hook Lori’s leg with his hockey stick and pulls her down with him, resulting in a draw and ensuring that his team leads the game into the halfway point. Turns out to have been a Batman Gambit on Lincoln’s part, as he knew that this was the best outcome he could have hoped for.
• Would Hurt a Child: Lyle, which is ironic, as he himself is only 12. Regardless, being an unhinged Barbaric Bully, if you piss him off, he’ll be gunning for you regardless of how young you are. Even Lucy, the twins, or even Lisa aren’t safe from his wrath. The fic pulls no punches in that regard, as exemplified in one instance where Lyle slaps Lucy so hard, he knocks her unconscious! And his motive? Lucy barely knowing about him and offhandedly mentioning that Lynn called him “Nobody important”, which made him deduce that Lynn and Lincoln didn’t take him seriously as a threat.
  • Played with in regards to Ryan. Even before his Heel–Face Turn in the original timeline, he had a strict rule about not hurting kids much younger than him. But when he meets Lola, the two initially just exchange insults and Ryan treats her with casual dislike…until Lola almost gets him and his new friends killed after accidentally dousing Lyle with Lisa’s Psycho Serum, followed up by Lola accidentally pushing Renee (his sister) out of a second-story window. After the second incident, Ryan loses all patience with her and actively tries to pummel her and has to be held back by Lynn and Lincoln. Afterward, he always gives Lola a Death Glare and she is uncharacteristically mindful not to push his buttons unless she has Lori or someone else to use as a meat shield. The two cross paths again in “All or Nothing”, where they act as the saboteur for their respective team, and when Ryan catches her, he’s all too willing to beat the shit out of her, but only spares her and locks her up in an outhouse instead because he had more pressing matters to attend to (help Lynn cheat her way through the trivia quiz).
• Wrestler in All of Us: Like in the show, Lynn is an avid wrestling enthusiast and has her own Masked Luchador persona, Lunatic Lynn.
  • In “A Jock In Love”, she gets Ryan hooked on the sport too and gives him his own costumed persona (Ravage Ryan), as the two square off in a makeshift ring, with Lucy acting as the referee. Unfortunately, Lynn was still in denial about her crush on Ryan at the time and as result, snaps and beats the bejesus out of him before realizing what she has done and running off. This ultimately leads to the two admittinghow they really feel about each other (while still in their luchador costumes), and subsequently have another friendly match.
  • In “All or Nothing”, the first challenge involves Lunatic Lynn fighting against Lori, who is given her own mask and persona, which she dubs “Chica Grande”, and Lynn deliberately interprets the name literally and proceeds to mock her for it. Despite Lori being older and stronger, Lynn utilizes her greater experience and knowledge of multiple wrestling moves to gain an advantage and defeat Lori, winning the first round for her team.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

• 0% Approval Rating: The story further highlights just how unpopular the Loud kids are within Royal Woods. Lynn Sr. and Rita’s anniversary party goes off without a hitch, but only after they assured their guests that their kids were away for the day. Once Lynn and Lincoln end up crashing the party to stop Kathleen, the guests all get enraged at the sight of them and leave in a huff.
• A Shared Suffering: Lynn and Lana come across a mother opossum with ten babies, with Lana wanting to take them back home. Lynn, naturally, objects at first but ends up pitying the animal due to feeling immense guilt over having caused her parents so much suffering over the years along with her nine siblings, so she agrees to help Lana bring the possums food and find them a shelter.
• All for Nothing:
  • After Lynn’s impulsiveness leads to her parents’ anniversary getting ruined, the next day, she, Lincoln, Ryan, and Lucy try to make it up to them by bringing them gifts (a bunch of unused belongings from Ryan’s absentee parents), but Kathleen and Lyle (with Chandler as an Unwitting Pawn) ultimately get the better of them, resulting in Lynn and Lucy getting dropped into a sewage dump, Lincoln getting burned by scalding water, and Ryan pointlessly getting himself pummeled while trying to distract Renee, while Kathleen successfully tricks Rita and Lynn Sr. into accepting up her offer to visit her family’s summer home.
  • While he wouldn’t have been of much help anyway, once the Louds arrive at their vacation home, Charles spends the entire first day vigilantly guarding his owners, down to constantly running back and forth between them once they separate, trying to protect them from One Eye. Once the wolf finally makes his move, however, Charles is left behind at the house completely plastered (along with Cliff), because Leni accidentally put vodka in their water bowls (misreading the label on the bottle as “water”).
• Ambiguous Situation: Kathleen’s flashback further reinforces how she was forced by her father into doing philanthropy and that he wants to see everyone she has wronged publicly accepting her apology, but it’s not clear whether he’s legitimately shocked and enraged by his daughter’s immoral behavior and wants to straighten her out, or if he’s just as bad as her but more savvy and pragmatic and wants to preserve his and his family’s public image.
• Animals Hate Him: Luan protests by refusing to stay in Kathleen’s summer cabin and camping outside, only to get quilled by a porcupine she tries to pet. She sticks to her guns regardless, but that only leads to her getting menaced and humiliated by more of the local wildlife, ranging from raccoons to bighorn sheep to Canadian geese.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: After learning that Lincoln got badly burned, Leni seems to be on the verge of realizing that it might be connected to the “good luck ritual” Kathleen told her to do…only to get distracted by a butterfly.
• Black Comedy: During Kathleen’s flashback showing her getting chastised by her father, it’s shown that she posted a compilation video online of her pranking and humiliating Luan in various ways, titled “Thirty Reasons Why Luan Loud Should Kill Herself”. The video has 2 million views.
• Blood Knight: After getting attacked by One Eye at his own home, Ryan enjoys the fight way too much, constantly taunting the wolf, laughing manically and being just as vicious in trying to kill his attacker, including trying to hack him to pieces with a weedwhacker. Though it’s also made clear that he’s still scared out of his mind, especially when doesn’t have the upper hand.
• Boring, but Practical: Lynn Sr. is understandably in full-blown panic mode after realizing that he forgot about his and Rita’s anniversary until the eleventh hour, but Lincoln and the others advise him to simply buy her chocolates and flowers since it’s the thought that counts the most. Lynn Sr. agrees and adds a grill party on top of that, which works very well for Rita and the dilemma is solved. Until Kathleen comes and ruins it.
• Brought Down to Normal: Fenton reveals to Lincoln and his team that Lisa had stripped him of all his weaponry off-screen, in case he “malfunctioned at the last second”. Too bad that’s when One Eye attacks them and damages Lisa’s IQ-tampering helmet. In the aftermath of the struggle, it’s revealed that despite her helmet getting damaged, Lisa’s IQ has successfully been lowered to that of a normal 3-year-old, leaving her completely normal.
• The Bus Came Back: Darcy makes a comeback after her debut in the “Candy Stripers” arc, since her family is camping at the same place where the Louds are having their vacation. As Lisa is already acquainted with Darcy and Darcy has grown very fond of the former, Lisa takes this opportunity to form genuine friends with Darcy once she has made herself normal.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • After crashing the anniversary party, Lynn and Lincoln, along with an unsure Lynn Sr., try to tell Rita that Kathleen was conspiring with the sisters to fake their own disappearances, but Kathleen manages to spin it into sounding like it was the girls’ idea after they misconstrued Kathleen’s advice to remind their parents of how much they mean to them, and implies that Lynn and Lincoln are trying to undermine Lola’s own efforts to commemorate her parents’ anniversary, not helped by Lynn's attempt to interrogate Kathleen. Rita doesn’t outright believe everything Kathleen says, but she doesn’t trust her own children either and angrily berates Lynn for her impulsive behavior and ends up calling her a “burden”.
  • After they reunite with One Eye, Lucy is the first and only one to realize that this was not a chance encounter and that the wolf is actively stalking them and is likely more intelligent than they thought. She's right, but also jumps to the conclusion that One Eye must be a werewolf, so Lynn and Lincoln don't believe her. Later, when they are on Kathleen's yacht, Lucy spots One Eye watching them from afar but misconstrues him leaning on some fallen logs as him standing on two legs, making her warnings fall on deaf ears once more.
  • When Kathleen's yacht crashes on a beach and Lynn and Lana get thrown over and cling to the railings, Kathleen tries to throw them off under the pretense of trying to help them up, and after Lynn tries to tell Lola, Lori, and Leni what happened, none of them believe her, due to Lynn's well-known dislike of Kathleen, Lola blindly trusting Kathleen, Lori always trying to endear herself to Kathleen, and Leni just being a clueless idiot. Lana, meanwhile, was too scared and focused on clinging to Lynn to notice what Kathleen was trying to do.
• Children Are Innocent: After being Brought Down to Normal, Lisa acts exactly how you would expect a toddler to act. It also makes her and Darcy instantly compatible.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: As punishment for her attempted escape, Ryan, Lucy and Lana try to throw Lola into a gas chamber (actually Ryan’s closest where she would be locked with Lana, with the latter letting one rip), complete with Lana dressing up as a cop and Lola as a prisoner and in handcuffs. Though Lola manages to escape that fate.
• Cope by Creating: It’s shown that when Luan’s in a state of serious depression, she falls into “mime melancholy” (as her siblings call it), where she takes a vow of silence and stays in her mime persona for the indefinite future. This happens when her family accepts to stay at Kathleen’s summer home for a week and her “protesting” (staying outside and roughing it) goes horribly wrong immediately, leaving her with no option but to sulk in her own bizarre way.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Happens to Albert in chapter 16, when he falls off a stool as a result of Lola and Lana fighting, which results in him throwing out his back, and leaves him confined to the couch and unable to help Lincoln and Lynn out much anymore.
• Demoted to Dragon: Lyle returns, as we learn that after the Psycho Serum incident, he’s been on house arrest, but Kathleen arrives to bail him under the pretense that they perform a Villain Team-Up where they will be equals. Naturally, Lyle buys into it and becomes a glorified lackey to her.
• Didn't Think This Through: Almost averted with Lisa’s IQ-tampering helmet. Following her long history of inventions going haywire, she’s savvy enough to only install an “Average Intelligence” setting, thus removing the risk of reverting back to her old self or getting reduced to a brainless idiot. She also installed safety clamps to ensure the helmet can’t be removed from her head until it has fulfilled its function, which helps when Lincoln, Lynn, and Lucy catch her red-handed at the last second. She did not, however, count on One Eye crashing the party and damaging her helmet, which results in it overloading and exploding, catching her and everyone else involved in the explosion.
• Drunk on Milk: While the protagonists were celebrating their victory, Lincoln somehow got drunk on root beer and ended up having to be put into a sleeper hold by Lynn after he tried to dance on the roof. The story opens with him waking with no memory of what happened the previous night.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: When Ryan washes up on a beach in the woods following his fight with One Eye, a trio of wolves approach his body and promptly panic and run away in terror when he wakes up. Later, Charles confronts another random wolf who also runs off in fear after spotting Lincoln in the distance, while Charles thinks he drove him off. Both show that the average wolf is nothing like One Eye.
• Enemy Rising Behind: While preparing to follow the Louds to their summer home in order to help expose Kathleen, Ryan gets cornered in his treehouse by One Eye, who rises through the hatch behind him and Ryan first sees the beast in the mirror, flashing a Slasher Smile.
• Epiphany Comeback: After Lisa is Brought Down to Normal but forgot to install a self-destruct mechanism in Fenton, the robot remains adamant about destroying himself in order to respect his master’s wishes, but Lincoln convinces him otherwise by pointing out that One Eye’s return puts Lisa and her entire family in mortal danger, and Lisa’s whole reason for turning herself normal was so that her family wouldn’t be in danger, thus Fenton finds a new purpose in aiding Lincoln and his team until One Eye has been dealt with (since that’s what his creator would have wanted).
• Extra-Strength Masquerade: With his team agreeing that Kathleen, One Eye, and the friction within the Loud family itself take precedence and that this would be a big bomb for their parents to deal with at the moment, Lincoln covers up Lisa being Brought Down to Normal by claiming that Lisa’s strange behavior and fraternizing with Darcy is the result of the former being Lost in Character while doing immersion research on the inner workings of a regular toddler’s mind.
• Forced into Evil: In the "Cruising for Trouble" arc, after Lucy cuts Lyle out of the picture, Kathleen makes Jenny go beyond her usual Beta Bitch duties and kidnap Lisa and tranquilize/dispose of any of the Louds if they get in her way. Unlike Kathleen or Lyle, Jenny is horrified about having to do such an immoral task and is constantly on the verge of panicking and/or backing out of it but keeps going purely out of fear of retribution from Kathleen, and throughout her struggle with Lucy and Lincoln, she tries not harm them beyond hitting them with the tranq darts.
• Funetik Aksent: Some of the Woodland Creatures speak this way. Notably, Wejack, the shifty fisher, speaks with a Joisey-type accent, and Della, the overworked opossum mother of ten, speaks with an Australian accent.
• Given Name Reveal: After being Only Known by Their Nickname for all of Second Chance, at the end of chapter 22, One Eye's real name is revealed to be Soto.
• Guilt Complex: It gets lampshaded while Lisa’s briefly in a coma, following her experience with the malfunctioning IQ-tampering helmet. Lincoln blames himself for pushing her to do this due to getting angry at her before, but Lynn and Lucy quickly point out how Lisa almost started a Zombie Apocalypse and that Lincoln had every right to get mad at her, and if anything, he forgave Lisa relatively quickly.
• Hard Truth Aesop: While alone, Lincoln and Lisa end up having a very frank discussion where they both admit that having Massive Numbered Siblings living in the same modest household is inherently a bad thing, a difficult and overbearing situation at best. But, as Lincoln points out, if that's your lot in life, the least you can do is try and work things out rationally and make compromises with your family and vice versa in order to make cohabitation more bearable, while inane and petty quarreling only exacerbates things.
• Here We Go Again!: Ryan and Lucy’s reaction at the end of the first chapter after seeing Lana and Albert park in front of Ryan’s house with an unconscious Lynn Sr. in the back of the van.
• Karma Houdini: Subverted with Chandler. After getting hired by Lyle to destroy the apology gifts Lynn and Lucy were trying to bring back to their home, Chandler and his goons successfully dunk the gifts into the sewage dump while also getting the chance to bully Lucy. Chandler then avoids getting beaten to a pulp by Lynn due to Lyle’s intervention…only to then get cheated out of his payment and beaten up by Lyle For the Evulz.
• Lesser of Two Evils: At the start of the story, Ryan, Lynn and Lucy are all too eager to torture the losing team as much as possible (mainly Lori and Lola) but Lincoln tries to spare them the misery by convincing his teammates to let the losers build them a treehouse. Luna takes Lincoln’s offer in strides, while Lori is initially hesitant but eventually comes to her senses and opts to partake in the treehouse construction.
• Lethally Stupid: Leni once more, when she (unwittingly) pours scalding pot water on Lincoln after being tricked by Kathleen (who is trying to stop him from interfering) into thinking that this is a good luck ritual that will bring her family fortune. Later on, she’s seen blissfully cleaning the inside of a blender, barely avoiding getting her hand shredded after accidentally turning it on.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Doubles as Disproportionate Retribution. In Chapter 25, after learning that Luan had told her siblings various embarrassing secrets about Kathleen in order to get her to snap and show her true colors, Kathleen isolates and traps Luan in the room the latter was hiding in and mercilessly beats her up before trying to strangle her.
• Not Now, Kiddo: Ryan outright tells Lana that their suspicions about Kathleen won’t be taken seriously by adults without any incriminating evidence. This is immediately followed up by Albert telling Lincoln that old people have it no better, as people tend to dismiss their concerns under the assumption that they’re just a Scatter Brained Senior.
• No-Sell:
  • Charles attempt to stop One Eye from scoping his owner’s house. One Eye completely ignores him until Charles bites his leg, which barely fazes the wolf and he kicks Charles away. Charles attacks him again and bites his front paw, only to be flung away like a bug, and crash into his doghouse, getting knocked out in the process.
  • When One Eye finally catches up with and attacks Lincoln and Lynn in chapter 18, Lucy (who otherwise goes unnoticed by the wolf) stabs him in the leg with her silver knife, thinking he’s a werewolf, only to be swatted away and knocked unconscious with one blow.
• Poor Judge of Character: Subverted by Rita, as Lincoln learns that his mother pegged Kathleen as a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing the moment she met her, due to the latter trying too hard to come across as a benign philanthropist. Unfortunately, Rita only suspects their host of being a Rich Bitch who is a Slave to PR and thinks she can exploit it for a free vacation.
• Skyward Scream: Lynn does it after Lyle and Chandler pushed her and Lucy into a sewage dump along with the anniversary gifts for their parents.
• Talking Animal: As a side effect of Lisa’s IQ-tampering helmet (previously a universal translator) blowing up, every animal caught in its blast radius gains the ability to talk with humans, which includes One Eye (who took the brunt of the explosion) and the Woodland Creatures Lana is sheltering.
• Took a Level in Badass: After pretty much being a Butt-Monkey Harmless Villain for most of Second Chance, Lola shows some competence here, as she manages to overpower Lucy and tie her up before escaping, though she still gets captured, but not before overhearing the protagonists talking about her parents’ anniversary. She then manages to avoid getting thrown into a “gas chamber” by exploiting her own pineapple allergy and weasels her way out of servitude. And while she’s in bed and out of sight, she uses the chance to contact Kathleen, which kicks off the main plot.
• Too Dumb to Live: The ranger that finds Soto carrying a boot (belonging to Lyle) and callously approaches him while telling him to drop it, as if he were scolding a pet. Unsuprisingly, he pays for it with his life.
• Underestimating Badassery: When coming after the kids, One Eye opts to attack Ryan first, knowing that he lives away from the rest, expecting an easy kill, and corners him in his treehouse. However, despite being no physical match for the wolf, Ryan manages to take him on regardless, thanks to his agility, resourcefulness, quick thinking, and sheer viciousness, relentlessness, and craziness, including wielding a weedwhacker.

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