I don't get it.

And yes, this is relevant to 30k. In fact, it's about 30k.

How is it that this story, one-and-a-half years old, still manages to do as well, and possibly even better, than Stratosphere, where it's simply linked in? And I'm serious. There was at least an equal amount of favorites and comments for 30k as Stratosphere received. If not more.

Is it the 'ooh, more than 100 upvotes and perfect rating!' thing? Because it baffles me. I'm not bugged by Stratosphere not becoming super-popular. It's just... the situation is what bugs me. It's... not frustrating, but definitely... strikes me as odd?

A quick backstory on 30,000 Feet for the numerous people that favorited it long after its original posting:

Originally, this story was written waiting outside of a Cheesecake Factory on its first opening week. It was completely written on my iPhone. And so, it has a couple of awkward typos that would be incredibly weird to make on a regular keyboard (whether or not I fixed them later, I forget). Also, the 'altimeter countdown' was a good concept that made it easier to write on a phone. The concept wasn't created because I was on a phone, but it made it convenient.

Now, during those olden times of FiMFic's first year, weird behind-the-scenes stuff was still happening around FiMFic, i.e., the site was still going through a lot of reworks. During that weekend, for some reason, almost no stories were being passed. I recall maybe three stories being passed over at least three or four days.

If I recall correctly, each one of them was effectively auto-boxed as was any story essentially on the front page for the few days where no new stories were being passed (and as a fun note, this was one of them). And this was back when there was a feature box in the top right side of the site. On every page. (Obviously getting featured back then was a pretty big deal, because your name was on every site page with the box being all-present.)

Here's the thing. I have incredibly bad luck, but for that weekend, my luck had gone up very slightly. 30k was not one of those few lucky stories that was posted during the story drought, but it was one of the first, if not the first story posted once story approving restarted. And even then, it was a slow restart.

My point being, with my incredibly terrible luck (there's a better story I love telling because of how angry I feel every time I tell it), 30k managed to be my best rated story because of some site issues that made it so people were just looking for new things to read. And it so happened to be that 30k was posted at the perfect time to get decent exposure. If it weren't for those circumstances, 30,000 Feet might've just been another story completely lost to the sea of fics with few views.

But it was still never feature boxed. No, it had about 40-50 upvotes before the critical period ended. That's right, this built up its +120 rating over a year and a half. Thanks to all of you readers by the way.

I'm happy about how 30k turned out, despite its flaws due to it being written during my learning period. It's one story that allows me to be happy because it got somewhere, even.

But I wrote this backstory about 30k because it still baffles me about how it still manages to do well. Even over a new fic that it's just linked in. Because of maybe just its high rating that took so long to build up. I guess it's also just me continually wanting to chase down that elusive box (and I'm sure that's a quality ingrained in every writer that joined before the universal box went away).

Anyways, that's that. At the least, I'm back to legitimately wanting to write things.

If you took the time to read this blog, I have a spoiler for you for the next story.

The next flight storywill be aboutCelestia. And naturally, you can extrapolate.

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[Spectrumancer]

*crashes into sun*