I totally understand, as a writer, that having hits and comments gives you a high that makes you want to continue. I've always wanted more hits and comments (I've bemoaned this in public more than once before).

At some point, though, I stopped being as concerned about that and became more concerned with the quality of the fic. I'm glad I did this serial thing, because it was an excellent experience as a writer, but I can tell you that just generally, serials tend to be of worse quality than works written straight through (because of all the reasons I've posted above), and I can see the kinds of mistakes I've made that definitely make this one worse than my straight-through stories. There are things I would never have let myself get away with if I wasn't trying to desperately write and post before the next episode aired.

I completely agree about not being able to fix things after a chapter has posted - I will fix small things (and even medium-sized things) after the fact, but I can't go back and reshape a character's reactions or delete something I put in unthinkingly that is going to be a pain in my ass later.

I also totally understand about the hits/comments/bookmarks, it's bothersome to me, too. I don't have imposter's syndome about writing (and I know how fucking lucky I am, there), but I totally understand. It's always going to bug me that this fic will be among the highest hit/kudosed/bookmarked of everything I've ever posted, because it's just not that good - as a whole. Some of the chapters are actually lovely short fics! But the whole story is only mediocre, not cohesive or particularly interesting, I think.