Query on Potentially Hopeless Endeavour Avoidance

Much more time ago than I thought it would ultimately take to finish the story, I put up a poll for what story to do after Understanding Does Not Presage Peace was completed. I put up some polls, one here, one elsewhere on the net where I get the best reader engagement. Long story short, the final result was that I would pick up Sons of Suns and Sands, my Star Wars story where Luke resets the galaxy to Republic days and Obi Wan gets to pick up his life all over again just as he turns 13. I was very proud of it when I first wrote it.

Already at the time of polling, though, the Star Wars franchise had been effectively murdered by Kennedy's Lucasfilm, and everything that came out since then has just been the raping of its corpse. I won't lie and pretend it hasn't soured me on the whole thing, but the bigger fact is that the reigning sentiments towards Star Wars all over the world seem to have gone from contempt to utter apathy. You only need to look at the ' performance of stuff like the Acolyte and Outlaws for that. More tellingly, the only Star Wars show that was good - Andor - did poorly in terms of viewership too.

It's practically inevitable that a bunch of you here are over Star Wars too, now, even if you weren't before.

Additionally, I've since learned that I'm not very good at predicting which of my stories will actually be truly popular. Understanding itself was a surprise, while I expected the other story that won the polls - Everything Everywhere One Thing at a Time - to draw a lot more engagement than it has since I resumed updating it. I still consider it my best story to date, but the numbers are clear. I am absolutely sure Sons of Suns and Sands won't garner even half as much, at this point.

Conversely, Bylaws of Babel (my new Warhammer Fantasy/40K fusion) has already exceeded all of my other stories in popularity. In fact, it almost matches Understanding in the eyes of you lot here, and far exceeds it everywhere else in terms of engagement.

I've managed to update four stories each month for the last three months, but it's not looking to be sustainable, unfortunately. So, as much as it might be a dick move towards those who voted previously, I'm putting up a poll between the Star Wars and Warhammer stories to see which one is actually the biggest draw with my existing audience. I hope to be able to continue doing four a month, but it's far from a guarantee. The initial burst of enthusiasm will come to an end sooner or later.

Take your time deciding. I'm going to take a 'break' and not pick up Understanding's successor this month, to get a bit of rest (which is really just a return to the prior update rate) and re-read the story if it proves necessary.

Ignore my whining and vote for the one you want most.