Why did you stop reading a comic/story?

[MovieNut14]

I had cleaned out my reading list a while back and here are a few reasons why I unsubscribed to some titles:

• Just didn't click for some reason: Like, I really wanted to like the story but I just...couldn't.

• Romantic subplot becomes main focus: Ugh, too many fantasy BLs with great worldbuilding that gets chucked aside for two leads with barely any palpable chemistry...

• Too much plot, not enough character development: I mean, if you have this grand scheme of a story in place, the very least you could do is focus on your characters a bit more.

• Characters are total jerks/idiots: It's really hard to make me like a story if the characters are throwing themselves into situations they're ill-prepared for (but think they aren't) or they're just a bully to everyone they encounter.

(If any of these sound like your stories, I'm both sorry and not sorry for calling you out like this.)

Anyway, what about you? What made you drop a story you were otherwise interested in?

[Lirina]

I thought you'd love my novel because there is lots of character development but then read the last bullet Both of my mcs are jerks in the beginning to allow for the aforementioned character development 🤦🏼‍♀️

Anyway to the topic, I mostly drop novels because they are too slow paced with lots of non-relevant stuff. For comics it's mostly the mcs not having a real personality or the art style. Somehow, I'm super picky despite not being able to draw myself...

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

One of the main reasons I stop reading a story is when the author just... isn't a very good storyteller. I don't judge too hard, because storytelling is difficult, and everyone's got to start somewhere, but if, after 10 pages, I have NO IDEA what's going on, and it's not due to some actual mystery in the plot/scene... I just can't read it.

[crowstories]

These are all good reasons, I think.

Some reasons I'll quit reading:

Relentlessly grimdark -- life has been stressful enough recently, and I use fiction for escapism, so I'd rather it not be a complete bummer
Certain types of violence -- again, if it stresses me out, I'm probably gonna nope out of there. Some violence is fine but there are things I don't want to read about.
Non-con/dub-con
Too much focus on romance/gratuitous sex scenes that do nothing for the plot
Difficult to read -- in terms of comics, this is often a matter of font choice/size. For novels it's more likely to be about grammar/sentence structure/lack of clarity that makes me work harder than I want to understand what's going on and breaks the sense of immersion.

[BarBarKetrab]

Let's see.
Some reasons would be:

• If very little happens in the story over a long period of real time (this doesn't apply to hiatuses. This is when the story is actively being updated, but nothing major enough happens to hold my interest).

• If the characters stop being likeable to me. Sometimes character development can drastically change the way a character behaves. This isn't always bad, but sometimes it can cause me to stop liking the character because of how different they are compared to the way they were before, when I liked them.

• Too much action/blood/gore/fights without anything to balance it out. More often than not, I'll become bored of a series like this.

• If the story becomes too repetitive and the same thing happens over and over again for a long period of time. This is why I tend to not like most battle shonen that much anymore.

I think those are the main ones. Thinking back on it now, there aren't many series that I have outright stopped myself from reading, though.

[Oto_Kouda]

Character Regression

Imagine reading a story, getting invested for months, only for a lot of character progress and the like to magically disappear.

It almost hurts as much as watching my Sims game crash hours after my last save.

[chestnutriceeee]

When the characters start doing idiotic things just to make the story proceed. I dropped many Light Novels because of this. They act completely out of character just to either fall into some crazy labyrinth or maybe lose of the support cast to a villain or something.

[ar-ninetysix]

Poor pacing and general plot development..

My least favorite experience being a single fight that started early on that lasted a year to read through, it spanned like 4 chapters out of the 7 it had at the time.. I just got bored of how overwhelmingly dramatic it felt for what actually caused it. That's when I knew I didn't need to see every detail of a fight lmao

[azzy-m]

I don't typicall unsubscribe stories, but when i drop a comic it's usually because the comic for whatever reason stopped being good and/or interesting, or if the story started showing problematic aspects that I no longer feel comfortable reading (this happened to me way more often that it should tbh)

[AmysGames]

Hm, thinking of some of the comics I stopped reading...

1) Too NSFW. Really not my thing.

2) The first chapter and/or the premise was more interesting than the story itself ended up being.

3) Relies too much on referential humor that I don't understand.

4) Or sometimes, nothing in particular is wrong with the story, it's just that something else grabbed my interest and I forgot about it, lol.

[joannekwan]

A turn of events that I wasn't expecting that doesn't grab my interest. I've definitely had a few books where I just left my bookmark in the middle of it. I do plan of finishing a couple for the sake of finishing … when I'm in the mood.

Characters aren't progressing in their development (either in their relationship, themselves, etc.)
or the Obstacles they face aren't revealing new aspects of their character. Lumped these two together since they sometimes go hand in hand. Like I'm reading, but feel like I'm not getting anywhere or I'm not learning more about the characters.

Favorite character dies. If I only like one character out of the entire cast and they die, then most of my interest in the rest of the story dies with them.

[rajillustration]

I mean most of the time I drop a comic because they stopped updating after a year, being real--but other reasons are:

1. Doesn't follow human logic. Like you got people that don't react to things, you got plots that are convoluted and I do like an air of mystery and weirdness, but there's also instances where it's like "I don't understand at all what's happening" and I'll kinda leave.
2. Doesn't follow page logic: panelling, honestly. The panelling.
3. The font is so terrible. I have dropped good comics because of comic sans. Unless you are Toby Fox with a really good reason, like why? There are other comics I love, but they hyphenate every other word. It's very OCD of me but I have a very hard time with this. Unless your comic is a direct translation from another language, why should you ever have to hyphenate? You wrote it. You designed this page. I'm sometimes guilty of hyphenating, too, we're all doing our best. But every other word? I have to love your comic so freakin much to still read it if it's hyphenated like 6 times a page. Fit your text in there before you draw it. Please.
4. A plot that was originally for a neat exciting premise turns out only exists for horny reasons. And I'm just not in the mood for that right now, tbh.
5. We've been in a talking heads situation for like 2 years. Comics are really slow to make, and one of the bummers about webcomics is I have to read it in real time. A conversation can literally take 2 years and that just saps your energy right out of your body.
6. The plot is too generic to interest me anymore.
7. it lacks aesthetics/it's only aesthetics
8. Creator turned out to be a huge asshole on twitter.

But honestly I'm not too, too picky, despite this huge list, and I'll give a comic kind of a long time before I nope out if I already went through all the trouble to subscribe.

[MovieNut14]

Oh, I get that first mark big time. Had to drop a few comics because I have enough anxiety as is; I don't need to see a fictional character going through even worse.

[DemureGirl]

Here's something completely different: I dropped a comic due to the fan base.

I had been enjoying the plot. One female character was set up as the villain in the first episode showing the future, and the comic was playing catch up to that point.

While the villain is clearly not a wholly good person, she doesn't actually do anything wrong. Terrible things keep happening to her, and she fights against them. If the story was from her pov she'd be a hero.

But the fanbase gleeful enjoys the horrors inflicted on this poor girl. Someone even tried to poison her so she'd abort her unborn child and people CHEERED the perpetrator on.

I just couldn't get past that. I heard that stuff happens in the future that she does that fully pushes her into villainy, but honestly, it just made me sad that she doesn't get a not horrible ending. So I dropped it.

[Crusoe]

Some of my reasons:

• uncomfortable themes that I don't agree with or that make me uncomfortable as noncon/dubcon or incest
• frequent uploads but a very slow story making the narrative extremely vague and I keep forgetting what happened
• stories with an extremely slow start due to for example too much lore or introductions
• unreadable fonts

[Drag0nPrincesS]

ah this is an interesting thread!
In my case it's either
I didn't click
I just don't, sometimes I do and sometimes I don't I have in fact interacted with less stories as I grew older
or
I'm not attached to fiction anymore if I stop I will probably forget about it, just enjoy what I enjoyed and then move on with my life.
If I had to choose in between experiencing a story or cleaning up my fish-tank, or finishing a watercolour study or going out with friends, the real life ones would probably take up priority, because I guess I'm getting more stimulated by real life than by a story. When I was younger I had read, watched, listened to, and played so many stories that at this point very few actually grip me or make me feel something.
it's like the phrase "everything has been done before". I've seen it before and I know where it's going and I'm not getting anything new or interesting from it.

[Llyrel]

• Infodumps. Lots and lots of infodumps. Characters talking for pages upon pages about the lore of the story instead of... y'know... showing you stuff. I get it, dear author, it's a fantasy world, it took you a long time to craft it and its culture and you want to make sure that your readers are aware of it... but dammit, there are better ways to show it than "character X explaining the entire political system of a fictional nation for five pages in a row while sitting at a table"! D:
• Romance and/or smut being the only focus of the story. I just can't bring myself to care, sorry.
• Poor pacing and/or zero progression. Stories that get stuck for MONTHS on the same scene with new pages adding little to nothing new to the plot or, alternatively, jumping from a scene to another without ever giving closure to anything.
• Offensive/disrespectful content.
• The author being an ass. Yes, I dropped comics exactly for that reason, even though I was a fan of the story.

[SurvivALIST]

I agree with your last bullet. I only allow that if and only readers like me will sooner realize that the MCs are in deep trouble. Like the creator was so great that s/he can trick both readers and characters into misleading paths of the masterpiece. The ones that do unexpected but superb elements of surprise.

[YS_og]

So much I was glad to read and be aware of ahead of time! Very grateful to stumble upon this topic

[MeltingCORE]

It's rare for me to drop a work but when I do, it's for the following reasons:

-creator adding their fetish into the work (sorry, it's always glaringly obvious and uncomfortable)
-characters/plot having no development (someone else mentioned this, I'm sorry but I can't wait twenty chapters for things to happen if the characters are literally sitting around)
-story plot not making any sense after awhile
-one-dimensional characters (ie bad guy bad because evil, softie who does no wrong but gets beaten up by everyone, mysterious guy mysterious because reasons, etc - boring)