Discussion Novels You Loved But Dropped For Some Reason

Ack, CEO novels where the ML is an absolute deadbeat son of a biscuit... but it's ok, he has jadelike skin and is the heir to a billion dollar empire!

 

Yup, this is why I don't touch novels with the word CEO in the title anymore.

 

Lot of CEOs in real life are high functioning sociopaths...

Though probably it's not as extreme or numerous as the myth proclaims.

 

Rather, CEO novels are considered works of fiction because the CEO is supposed to fall in love with something that is not money.

 

Out of topic but I just learned an unfamiliar word today and it is shadowbanning. I didn't know there is such a word. Welp, I guess I am boomer now. Anyhoo, the one where I just want to scream is Avoid the Protagonist. I didn't really drop it but forced myself to MTL-ed the rest to confirm my grim feelings. It had a good premise and the MC was actually doing her best to avoid the ML.

Spoiler: Surprise! Surprise!

The author had let me down. He/she literally did some voodoo narrative that made MC accept ML. And, what did the Ml do all this time? Became a stalker and whatever you imagined from a so-called "cool and cold" ML. Boohoo, "You don't understand me", says the ML who didn't understand MC's vehement rejections.

The only respect I had for this novel was the Translator. She did a fantastic job and I am sad that she pushed herself to finish this hell of a mess novel.

 

The second coming of gluttony.
I didn't know it was a harem. I read till he got to the tutorial thingy despite subtle harem hints. But then it got ridiculous, so I had to drop..

 

Starchild escapes arranges marriage

Someone said that dude stop crossdress at some point... which don't happen; also MC started pissing me off and having only females in the cast also annoyed me despite liking harems

 

I stayed away from the novel since the picture on NU looked like the ML was interested in the MC. It looks like I made the right choice.

 

I gave it a benefit of the doubt because I concluded that the picture was only tied to the synopsis and title; I was wrong.

 

You're braver than me.

 

For me it's probably The Lady is a Stalker. Usually I'm against dropping something before really getting into the meat of it, but for the translation team I perfectly understand. The translations go up to chapter 15-20, and thus far NOTHING has progressed between the protag and the ML. They've had several conversations already and NOTHING changed between them. It's basically the same tsundere song and dance ad nauseam with even less progress than usual.

There's also Cheating Men Must Die. I don't hate it or even dislike it per se, but it's like cotton candy to me: it's sweet, fun to have every now and then, but devoid of actual substance. It's pure revenge porn and while I do enjoy peeping in on it every now and again, like Nidome no Yuusha, it gets boring to binge read fast. There's also not a lot to find interesting about the protagonist, it's usually the spectacles she creates that draws attention. It's fine on its own, but I don't really think it's amazing or all that praiseworthy otherwise.

 

The sage who transcended samsara
The translation is just really really bad... I tried to read more and it was quite interesting. But the translation just get worse and worse that i just don't understand the world building sometimes

 

Thanks for bringing up Nidome no Yuusha, I used to follow that for years! It was so unique too. But, because there was so much time between chapters, it went from "what a new and unique idea" to "lots of people have done it better...".

I kept up with it since it had a great start, but dropped it when the corrupted priest girl attacked him. The events that happened afterwards were such a kick in the pants... and if you've gotten there you know what it is... it felt like the author tried to do a small genre shift. I put it down and just said, "no, I'm not dealing with this anymore."

 

Yeah, that's kinda how I felt. A big problem is Darkness Induced Audience Apathy. If literally everyone is a total jerk for no reason at all then why should I care? Why should I invest myself in a setting where everyone's a piece of garbage?

It honestly feels like a vent fic. "Revenge is fun and cool" and "Everyone is a piece of sh*t" is a really sh*tty moral, it feels like it's trying to be the Count of Monte Cristo without actually acknowledging the nuances and complex morality behind the concept of "revenge".

 

Yeah, I liked it when the crazy priest girl appeared and revealed she still had her memory. As the she was praising her god, the MC was like, "Who are you? You used to question every revelation you received from the god and tried to find a way to solve it yourself... now you're just a yes-man." Then the priest girl's original personality came out, but was quickly smothered.

I thought things were really going to start picking up from there! To find the mastermind behind everything and show not everybody was bad, they were just being controlled or something. Then, the author pulls some BS.

Spoiler

He got sent back to his original world so the priest girl could summon him again without his memories. AND HIS FAMILY IS REVEALED TO STILL BE ALIVE! Which is the whole reason he went on this revenge power trip.

 

Bakarina.
Only because I only cared for female characters, and 2 back to back novel is about MC's bro and prince.
Also there is no tl, but I can read the raws, but I have 0 interest to do so.
It just gets long and repetitive I guess.

I Favor The Villainess
Same reason as above, I dropped the story once MC and FL get married, and I think the wn is tagged completed at that time... I didn't expect authors to add chapters I think, so I just not bothered. I really enjoyed the story, but just have no motivation to read.

 

The one that made me the angriest was Sovereign of the Three Realms. I was more than three-quarters through it when I rage-dropped because the MC's inconsistent, wishy-washy attitudes to his enemies were p...ing me off too much.

 

I stopped early on, with the aphrodisiac scene. I don't know if anything actually happened, but it was such a cliche moment. "We, the bad guys, are going to use an aphrodisiac on him! He will die if he doesn't find a women to help him... but no one is there to help deal with his lust, so this will definitely kill him!"

If a villain wants to kill someone, WHY ARE THEY USING APHRODISIACS!!! It's just an excuse to add a woman to the MC's harem.

I imagine the author's reasoning goes like this:
Oh, the MC and this one girl don't have romantic feelings for each other? Aphrodisiac! What? The MC is written to be an all-knowing superman who cures illnesses with ease? Well... this aphrodisiac is too fast acting for him to counter! The MC is immune to almost all poison? This is an aphrodisiac, not a poison!! It only kills you if you don't vent your lust!!

W.T.F.

 

many that I really liked would have random edgy chapters in the middle of light hearted stuff and I would straight toss them at that point. similarly there were a lot that I rather liked and would have willingly binged all the way through but the pacing was so slow that even reasonable tl update frequency was a total turn off. there were quite a few like that, where I caught up to the TL and for a few weeks followed the translation schedule but found that I couldn't continue enjoying it because of the pace. like filler is fine if you still have 50 more chapters to read before catching up, but sometimes it's not if you are waiting 2-3 days between updates.

 

I forgot saying, but when I encountered NOTP I tended to drop it. Or skipped the NOTP chapter.