It's... been a while, hasn't it? About 8 years now? Sounds about right. So, you can probably guess what this is about if you read the title of the "chapter" when seeing the email notification. If you haven't caught on yet, I'm canceling this fic. Now, you can click off now or stay for a few more minutes to hopefully understand my reasoning as there are a few reasons this was dropped by me as this has been personally canceled by me for a few years now.
First and foremost: interest in the NCIS franchise. NCIS has been, for a very long time, a series I've held very near and dear to my heart. The characters and their stories. However, it has been forever since I've watched the show, and my interest in it as it currently stands is borderline non-existent. All I know is that NCIS has a spinoff series like they did with LA down in New Orleans and did some more crossovers with Hawaii Five-0 (haven't seen that show in a long-ass time either, is it even still ongoing?) but nothing else.
Second: lack of a roadmap to solidify what I needed to write and at what pace. For those that follow me on this site rather than the individual stories, you'll know that in a pilot posting I made for a Yakuza/Harry Potter idea that for this idea I wrote up an entire roadmap as it concerns when major events happen. This is me now, almost a decade after starting this fic. I have no roadmap. I have no guidance on where to even direct this story. And this leads into the next point I'll get to in a second. But the major thing is, I have no idea how I wanted it to end. NCIS is on its 21st season and being on TV for 21 years. Gibbs was written out of the series during season 19 and is off of the show as the actor has moved on but may still appear for cameos every so often. If I wanted to do this, I'd have to figure out how to reach that point or even modern NCIS but currently, it's going to keep going as it always has done as it is one of the longest-running TV shows on CBS. And to that end, where to end the story itself? At what point does the story finish serving its purpose and can end satisfactorily?
Third: integration between two franchises/fandoms. One of the lesser-known issues when writing fanfiction is how do you integrate two different properties together? And to that end, how do you make it believable? How do you make it so that everything makes sense internally to these two universes? I'm going to bring up that Yakuza idea again because it's relevant. How do you make events that outside characters of a franchise interact with different to varying degrees? Where do you do it? When? If Kiryu takes care of Harry (in the Yakuza idea), how does this affect his schooling at Hogwarts? How does it affect his sorting? How does it affect the critical events of the story (the Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets unlocking, etc.) and where do the story divergences happen to the point where none of the source material can even help? How much of it do you keep to the events of the books/films without it becoming just a retelling of the story but with what is essentially a borderline self-insert character puppeting the body of the character? To stay on topic for this story, in particular, Kelly is alive because of Harry's magical intervention by accident and they're penpals for the most part. He escapes with Hedwig to the US where he now lives with the Gibbs family. Ok, now how does the rest of Order play out? How do Half-Blood Prince's events (at Hogwarts) play out without Harry being there? How does Deathly Hallows' events play out (the big ones)? And then the counter-side is how do what happens in this alternate Order does this affect the NCIS team, Gibbs' family, and Harry in the US? How do the events of HBP play out for them? How does DH play out? Then, how does all of these events, potential traumas, affect the characters involved in them going forward? How will Harry participate or be involved with NCIS as I'd rather not do retellings of every single episode (as there are 400+ of them) and make extremely minor changes which amounts to almost nothing different happening? You may as well just watch the episode on Netflix or something at that point. This, out of everything, is legitimately the toughest thing about writing a crossover fic. This is why a lot of people (no judgment since I've done it too) make a lot of tagalong fics, basically where characters from another world are born into that world to begin with (or are isekai'd into it), and then participate in it. It's easy. It's safe. You can't fuck it up. Usually. And to the authors on this site and others who have mastered this skill I both envy you and don't because just contemplating these things was mind-bending and I never figured it out. I applaud every author who has managed to master blending universes together to make their own thing. One that immediately comes to mind is Mr Chaos's several-volume-long Pokemon/Harry Potter series. That, in my opinion, is a masterwork of blending the two together.
And there you have it. The three reasons I'm canceling this story. I'm sorry if you feel like this was bait or you wasted your time on it. Honestly, at the end of the day, it's been a learning experience for me and a masterclass in planning ahead before you even write your first word on a fresh doc file. I've been on this site for a long time, I've seen many stories get started but they never get finished. If there's one thing you learn from this should you wish to become a fledgling writer, it's note-taking and planning before you even get started. You need to know where you're going before you take your first steps. And with that, I bid you all farewell on this endeavor as the book has closed on this particular chapter in my writing "career" (I don't get paid for it as I do it as a hobby but I don't know what else to call it). If you do like to read just what I write, I've been doing a repository of various stories which have been all over the place which I invite you to check out since I do upload to it regularly as interesting ideas never cease to come to me. If this was all you read from me, I guess I'll see you somewhere else on this site. It is quite vast after all.
Until next time, wherever that may be.
