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Fic: Crossing Stars
May. 25th, 2025 11:56 amI'm about to post the final chapter of my novel-length fic -- my very first multi-chapter fic! My best friend had such fun writing a multi-chapter fic that I wanted to get in on that action, too: people reading along, getting invested in it, saying what they thought would happen and hoped would happen. Crossing Stars is an extremely complex fic, interweaving large numbers of characters, timelines, and fandoms (a big part of why I'm so proud of it!), so I rather hoped to have readers along the way to help me keep track of everything, say whether they'd like more follow-up on one part or another ... but no. :-( One person apparently read about a half of it and then never commented again, and another person recently commented on the third-to-last chapter, but otherwise, the few comments I got were spam. (The spam comments on AO3 are a new thing! And ugh.) So I ended up being basically on my own all the way through. JUST LIKE MY CHARACTERS! Well, so it goes. I was bummed about that ... but I am incredibly proud of the fic.
The irony in how unpopular it is is that as I was writing it, I thought it's one of my more crowd-pleasing fics?? At least, according to the usual standards: lots of action, high body count. I guess there's no real romance, and it gets a little technical at times, but people like time-travel stories too, right?? But alas, this did not translate into readers.
I have a few theories about why people weren't reading it. The main character (an OC -- another thing people usually avoid) is fifteen or under for the entire fic and is infatuated with a grown man member of her team. She's in the body of a grown woman and can thus (try to) trick him into believing she's also an adult and into having a relationship with her, an effort which persists throughout the fic -- is indeed a focal point of the fic -- and has repercussions for the plot and for all the characters unto the end, but he always senses something is off and nothing ever happens (except she steals a couple of kisses). I certainly understand people avoiding an unfinished fic where they think something underage might happen, because it would not be at all surprising on AO3 if someone posting a WIP suddenly sprang underage content on the audience, not having tagged for it before the chapter in which it happens, and readers don't want to get invested in a fic they might suddenly find themselves turned off by and unable to finish. So maybe once the fic is complete and they see there's no tag for underage, they'll give it a chance where they were afraid to before. I hope so.
There are also the people who just don't read WIPs until they're complete, which I also get, since the number of abandoned WIPs must be legion. My fic in particular is one where everything leads up to the end, where all the plot points and themes aren't fully realized until then, so getting invested in such a fic would be especially bad while there remains fear it will never be finished.
Also, I didn't realize until I'd already written most of it that all three of the main fandoms (Travelers, 86, and Classroom of the Elite) are essentially dead fandoms, sigh. Just my luck. They are not dead to me; they live on very brightly inside me, but I guess most people lose interest shortly after a show is no longer releasing new episodes.
It's also occurred to me that maybe people think it's gonna be one of those fics that throws a million shows in the tags that are barely actually touched on in the fic? I've never really gotten what's going on with those fics. I've tried to read them before to see what they did with a tagged character I like, and in the couple I did try to read, they like ... passed by in a hallway or had a single line, lol. I don't get it! Unless it's like I felt in my teens about the real people my friend and I had an 'oral tradition' of ficcing about, where I was thrilled by the idea of them simply being present and making a little fun cameo. Is that it? Or is it maybe that they're throwing in a hint of every show they can think of so they can include it in the tags in hopes of getting more readers? Seeing the tossed-off cracky quality to those fics I did try to read, I don't think that much thought went into it, lol.
In any case, Crossing Stars is not one of those kinds of fics; the three main fandoms and the three main characters are all a very fundamental part of the fic. Natasha, Bucky and Steve from MCU also have a pretty important part, although much smaller, as the main characters' senpais. Finally, the My Hero kids have a small but important role as their kohais, as I needed literally a hundred kids fighting against impossible odds, a fandom where putting the kids in such a situation wouldn't be off brand lest I traumatize the fans of some lighthearted fandom with my very dark fic lol, and My Hero fit the bill perfectly. I don't want to trick anyone into reading the fic thinking it's a My Hero fic, because it isn't, but those characters are also present so I've got to tag for them. But I did include the show listing in order of importance to the fic in the tags.
I've never been so proud of a fic I've written. It's incredibly complex, interweaving multiple fandoms and timelines imo quite skillfully. It's got action and heart. It does justice to the amazing shows that inspired it. It covers 15 years of the main characters' lives, so you get to see long growth arcs for all of them. It was fun but challenging to write their characters at all those ages when people grow and change so much, taking into account that these are also highly trained genetically designed geniuses. It was so hard!! But so fun to write, and so personal to me. I went through probably the biggest transition of my entire life over the course of writing it. I started the fic during a trip that represented a big part of that transition, even though I hadn't been able to write in a long time (now that I can write again, I think all my creative energy was going toward manifesting my new life, but at the time, I believed I would probably never be able to write again, and this fic was the singular exception), and finished it only recently. The fic kept me company through what was ultimately a wonderful transition, but which was at times extremely grim and scary. At the end of the transition, I had to leave behind so much about the life I'd lived up to that point. That old life is the life I honored with this fic so that I could give it a good burial and leave it in my past. So I can't fully put into words just how much this fic means to me. Maybe in the end the fic will only have been for me. But it really is a killer fic that has in it so much I think would move a reader and that they would enjoy, so I really hope more people give it a try.
The irony in how unpopular it is is that as I was writing it, I thought it's one of my more crowd-pleasing fics?? At least, according to the usual standards: lots of action, high body count. I guess there's no real romance, and it gets a little technical at times, but people like time-travel stories too, right?? But alas, this did not translate into readers.
I have a few theories about why people weren't reading it. The main character (an OC -- another thing people usually avoid) is fifteen or under for the entire fic and is infatuated with a grown man member of her team. She's in the body of a grown woman and can thus (try to) trick him into believing she's also an adult and into having a relationship with her, an effort which persists throughout the fic -- is indeed a focal point of the fic -- and has repercussions for the plot and for all the characters unto the end, but he always senses something is off and nothing ever happens (except she steals a couple of kisses). I certainly understand people avoiding an unfinished fic where they think something underage might happen, because it would not be at all surprising on AO3 if someone posting a WIP suddenly sprang underage content on the audience, not having tagged for it before the chapter in which it happens, and readers don't want to get invested in a fic they might suddenly find themselves turned off by and unable to finish. So maybe once the fic is complete and they see there's no tag for underage, they'll give it a chance where they were afraid to before. I hope so.
There are also the people who just don't read WIPs until they're complete, which I also get, since the number of abandoned WIPs must be legion. My fic in particular is one where everything leads up to the end, where all the plot points and themes aren't fully realized until then, so getting invested in such a fic would be especially bad while there remains fear it will never be finished.
Also, I didn't realize until I'd already written most of it that all three of the main fandoms (Travelers, 86, and Classroom of the Elite) are essentially dead fandoms, sigh. Just my luck. They are not dead to me; they live on very brightly inside me, but I guess most people lose interest shortly after a show is no longer releasing new episodes.
It's also occurred to me that maybe people think it's gonna be one of those fics that throws a million shows in the tags that are barely actually touched on in the fic? I've never really gotten what's going on with those fics. I've tried to read them before to see what they did with a tagged character I like, and in the couple I did try to read, they like ... passed by in a hallway or had a single line, lol. I don't get it! Unless it's like I felt in my teens about the real people my friend and I had an 'oral tradition' of ficcing about, where I was thrilled by the idea of them simply being present and making a little fun cameo. Is that it? Or is it maybe that they're throwing in a hint of every show they can think of so they can include it in the tags in hopes of getting more readers? Seeing the tossed-off cracky quality to those fics I did try to read, I don't think that much thought went into it, lol.
In any case, Crossing Stars is not one of those kinds of fics; the three main fandoms and the three main characters are all a very fundamental part of the fic. Natasha, Bucky and Steve from MCU also have a pretty important part, although much smaller, as the main characters' senpais. Finally, the My Hero kids have a small but important role as their kohais, as I needed literally a hundred kids fighting against impossible odds, a fandom where putting the kids in such a situation wouldn't be off brand lest I traumatize the fans of some lighthearted fandom with my very dark fic lol, and My Hero fit the bill perfectly. I don't want to trick anyone into reading the fic thinking it's a My Hero fic, because it isn't, but those characters are also present so I've got to tag for them. But I did include the show listing in order of importance to the fic in the tags.
I've never been so proud of a fic I've written. It's incredibly complex, interweaving multiple fandoms and timelines imo quite skillfully. It's got action and heart. It does justice to the amazing shows that inspired it. It covers 15 years of the main characters' lives, so you get to see long growth arcs for all of them. It was fun but challenging to write their characters at all those ages when people grow and change so much, taking into account that these are also highly trained genetically designed geniuses. It was so hard!! But so fun to write, and so personal to me. I went through probably the biggest transition of my entire life over the course of writing it. I started the fic during a trip that represented a big part of that transition, even though I hadn't been able to write in a long time (now that I can write again, I think all my creative energy was going toward manifesting my new life, but at the time, I believed I would probably never be able to write again, and this fic was the singular exception), and finished it only recently. The fic kept me company through what was ultimately a wonderful transition, but which was at times extremely grim and scary. At the end of the transition, I had to leave behind so much about the life I'd lived up to that point. That old life is the life I honored with this fic so that I could give it a good burial and leave it in my past. So I can't fully put into words just how much this fic means to me. Maybe in the end the fic will only have been for me. But it really is a killer fic that has in it so much I think would move a reader and that they would enjoy, so I really hope more people give it a try.