[This chapter will be deleted in a couple of days. Sorry for posting it here, but apparently if you put it in "auxiliary chapters" it doesn't count as new and doesn't notify readers.]
For a while now, I've been considering writing a Marvel fanfic alongside this story, one focused primarily on the X-Men.
The idea would be to use the MCU as a foundation purely for convenience. Not because I think it's better than the comics, but because the continuity is infinitely easier to manage. If I tried to follow the full comic-book timeline, I'd have to deal with fifty cosmic events, twenty reality reboots, and universe-ending threats every other Tuesday.
The plan would be to roughly follow the MCU timeline while incorporating elements from both the classic and modern X-Men films, although I'd probably discard things like Apocalypse, Days of Future Past, and Dark Phoenix. Not because they're necessarily bad—though they are—but because the mere existence of the protagonist would change those events completely.
I've spent quite a long time looking for Marvel fanfics that genuinely hook me, and I've noticed that many of them eventually fall into the same problem.
Harems. Huge, forced, and honestly rather ridiculous harems.
Stories where the protagonist collects characters like Pokémon, while every woman involved is perfectly happy to share him because he's powerful, attractive, or because apparently that's the natural reaction when your partner tells you they want to sleep with someone else.
Right now I'm reading Meta Essence Gacha in Marvel, and honestly, I like it quite a bit.
But it's also the perfect example of what bothers me.
What I enjoy most about that story is all the mutant politics. How the protagonist's existence affects the X-Men, how it changes the relationship between humans and mutants, what happens to Genosha, the Sentinels, Magneto, Xavier, the inevitable mutant crises, and the ideological conflicts.
I find all of that fascinating.
But I feel like a huge portion of the story eventually shifts toward who's in love with the protagonist this week, which girlfriend is jealous, who's going to join the group next, and how everyone else reacts. And, of course, the sex scenes that may have been enjoyable at first eventually become unpleasant simply through repetition.
Eventually, I feel these storylines consume far more space than they should. Not because romance is bad. In fact, I enjoy good romantic stories quite a lot.
But when you have a dozen simultaneous relationships, romance stops developing characters and starts consuming space that could be devoted to things that, at least for me, are far more interesting.
Mutant politics. The government's response. The Sentinels. Ideological conflicts. Discrimination. The real consequences of power. The construction of Genosha.
And in the end, I came to a very simple conclusion. I can't expect another author to write exactly the story I want to read. And it wouldn't make much sense to ask them to stop writing something they clearly enjoy writing.
So the most logical solution is to write it myself.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the idea. That said, I should make one thing clear: I have no intention of publishing that fanfic anytime soon. My current plan is to wait until the Game of Thrones fanfic is at least 90% complete and I have at least 50% of the Marvel story already written before I even consider releasing it. I've seen too many authors abandon stories because they split their attention between multiple projects, and I'd rather avoid falling into the same trap.