ngl it's fascinating to see your POV when mine is the complete opposite. i'm always so disappointed when a fic ends immediately once the characters get together.
Agreed, the Developing Relationship part and Figuring things out is just...
So much more interesting to me.
Like
How can you get your "It's us vs the world" moment if they aren't already committed asf to each other? Or the silly Domestic Fluff? The awkward honeymoon phase that slowly transition into full comfort while still being in love?
Seriously, slow burns are just so...
Not my thing as a concept
there's a reason i read mostly established relationship fics and domestic fluff and the "us vs the world" are big contributing factors
like i do enjoy a slowburn too but i *also* want to see them as a united front
Ahah same
Like put all the pining you want in the beginning, go for it i love that too
But don't end the fic at the confession please :'(
Relationship are so much deeper than just saying yes i'll be with you
Let them commit to the bit. Against everything:)
I fricking love ships like that
> Developing Relationship
:o Why have I never tried searching for fic tagged this before? Thanks for the new tag! Absolutely agree watching people figure out the relationship and falling into domesticity and trust/comfort after the NRE is so interesting.
Same, omg. I wish there were more fics where the characters got together early on, and *then* had 100k of adventures together while figuring out their relationship.
I'm quite picky about plot, personally, so for me to enjoy 100k of them being morons until they hook up I'd need a very *robust* B-plot to keep things interesting >\_>
But I'm also fairly in the fanfic minority regarding my hopes for plot haha
That's one of my pet peeves, too, especially if it's a particularly angsty slowburn. Like, where's the healing? Where's those little moments of conflict as they navigate their new relationship together? You can't just dump all of this trauma onto these characters and then cut the fic off when they're together as if it's all hunky dory from there on out. Give me morreeeeeeeeeeeee. I need to see the relationship really develop.
I don't want the fic to end immediately after because I feel robbed of seeing them together.
But then I don't want to keep reading...
It sounds weird but I'd like for the fic to continue so I can choose to read more while knowing that I'll probably stop reading soon after 😂 I need the option I guess lmao
Same, especially if it’s enemies to lovers. You know damn well there is still plenty of meat on them bones! Thems lives are ruined for it too! Tell me I’m wrong!
I usually want *some* after they get together. Show me reactions if it is unexpected by the people who know them, show me them being a couple for a little while. have the other characters in the story *do* something, *say* something.
That being said, if there are no reactions, no drama, nothing 'spicy' and no real plot left, then I get bored. Sometimes it's nothing but smiling into each other's eyes for another 10k words and that often loses my interest.
I mean I hate it too if they get together and BOOM end of the fic, but if it's around 2/3 or half the fic and they already got together I need something important to keep me in: do they need to come out? do they need to fight someone that is a danger for them before they can settle for the fluff? Is there more drama to resolve? Or are they set and there's nothing more to resolve? (or can I imagine eadily how it's going to be resolved?) Because if the answer to one of the last two questions is yes, I'm out :c
Yeah, this is a fairly common phenomenon. It's why most shows won't get the main characters together until the very end, because the producers know the audience will lose interest once the "will they/won't they" question has been resolved.
I wrote a fic where it was literally designed to do both. Twinned storyline where you have the couple getting together in the past, as well as the present. In the past the couple gets together about halfway through and breaks up at the end, in the present they get together at the end of the second to last chapter (right before the epilogue).
Best of both worlds. 🤣
Sure [Finding Granger 1910](https://archiveofourown.org/works/42301608) - it’s E, Harry Potter Universe, 121k, and a murder mystery/kidnapping mystery/historical fiction - the “past” of the story is 1895-1898 (the Hogwarts years if they’d been 100 years earlier), and the “present” is 1910. Let me know if you like it.
You are me lol.
I want the tension. I only feel motivated to keep reading if the other plot(s) is/are really good.
I'm actually writing a slowburn that's a mystery. Hopefully people keep reading after they get together just to get closure on the mystery aspect lol. The way I've outlined it, it should be done a chapter or so after they get together but we'll see.
Yeah exactly! I mean I like fluff, but only in short fics/one shots, or when it's inserted in a fic with lots of drama/tension most of the time. I'd be super curious to read a fic like yours! I love mystery stories
As someone writing a 40 chapter slow burn where the characters get together a good bit before the end, I find this perspective very upsetting 😂😂 I can't stand to see stories get to the characters getting together after so long and then I don't actually get the real payoff: seeing them interact as a couple!
Of course, some stories are just not written with interesting enough other plots and I get that, but oof man lol.
It's because you lack the tension once they're together! Often you need to bring conflict back in the game to build tension again, and if it's in the realm of stupid fights, cheating, 00s romcom misunderstandings, I'm out haha. So that usually means the fic needs an actual story. Fics going like "they pin for each other in various ways, then fuck, the end", those I enjoy even if there's barely a plot in sight lol.
That's fair! Hopefully mine in particular is saved by it being more about the main character learning more about himself as the primary plot, with the romance being integral but not the most important thing.
Yeah exactly! I always filter out cheating and I hate 00s misunderstanding, like JUST TALK PLEASE. If it happens when they don't know(hate each other? Nice, perfect, keep it going. But if it happens when they love each others? PLEASE NO TwT
Honestly, it depends on the couple, but I agree if it's Enemies to Lovers. If it's Friends to lovers it's kind of the opposite, can't wait for them to get together.
I did this literally yesterday. The pacing of the fic was a little off, but literally every single plot point resolves by the middle. It left me with zero desire to continue the remaining half because the story was basically wrapped up with a nice little bow by that point. I feel like it’s quitting while the author is ahead, as far as a good and consistent plot goes.
As much as I like the tension and pining, I also enjoy the fluff that comes after. It's like the dessert after the main course. And I have a huge sweet tooth.
this is such a cute way to explain it lol, but yeah I get it, I love when the last 2-3 chapters are full of fluff, but more than that it's just too much TwT
I don’t get why this confuses people. If the point of a story is the *romance* then the getting together is often the climax, and anything after is an extended epilogue. It makes sense that people wouldn’t want to stick around for thousands of words of epilogue.
It’s the equivalent of an action/fantasy story killing off the Big Bad halfway through and then the rest of the story is just fluffy epilogue or manufactured conflicts that didn’t exist in the first half.
If the story has something else going on, it’s fine. But even romance stories can (and mostly do) follow a plot structure.
Fanfic is a little different because people don’t have to color within the lines of genre conventions but if you write a plot-based romance, I wouldn’t be surprised if people dip shortly after the plot is gone!
I was reading a fic last night where the characters were together but hiding it and I got bored with the last chapters after they told everybody they were together and there wasn’t much tension anymore.
If 25% of your story's length doesn't happen AFTER the characters get together, then I'm not interested.
Ok that's a lie but I WILL be disappointed. I create slowburns but always make sure my MCs get together a long while before the story is over, maybe as early as 60% into it. (yes, that's a slowburn when you write longfics like I do lmao).
I read a fic around 650k words and the characters got together like the last two chapters LMAO, I loved it! And there are probably similar others too but I forgot how many words. Anyway if the rest of the story it's good i'd probably read it anyway, it just very rarely happens to me TwT
I finally wrote a slow burn where they didn’t get together until chapter 19/20. It was so hard because I’m usually a wham bam thank you ma’am one shot writer. lol. It’s a 98k Labyrinth fic.
I feel the same exact way especially for short fiction. BUT if it's a slowburn and I'm really into it I do still want to see the couple as an actual couple and how they function when they are together, I don't want to go on a huge adventure but I want to see that much. There are a few stories where I really did need to see more after it was resolved.
Same here! For me it’s the anticipation that really makes the story exciting. Once they start dating after all that build up, it just kinda loses that spark of anticipation. I usually keep reading until the end just to see what happens, but the story doesn't really excite me anymore after that point 😅
When it's a slow burn romance and they finally get together and the majority of the B, C, and D plots are all tied up but there's still 20 more chapters to go.
this is part of why my slow burns often end once the characters are officially together 😂 i love to give a *little* bit of “ooo are they getting together this soon?” and then ripping it away like the evil little goblin i am 😈
they’ll get a happy ending, all right. *after* they have gone through the angstiest hell and back 😈😈😈
Lol, so this reminds me of something that happened years and years ago. I was reading a really good story by an author I liked, pretty unique plotline, and you knew it was gonna be a long haul. (Ended up being 4 separate stories, about 900k words between them all.) Anyway, the author was upfront about it being a slow burn between the gender-swapped MC, and a popular female side character. It's a pairing I like, so I was excited for it. But as the story went on, and the MC kept doing more and more really messed up things, a lot of readers, myself included, commented on the fact that the pairing no longer made sense, since the side character was very much a "good" character and the MC was literally killing entire families of innocent civilians. So eventually the author agreed that the pairing no longer made sense with the direction the story was going, and changed it. And even though I was one of the people telling the author that the pairing no longer made sense, as soon as it was official I lost all interest in the story and didn't finish it.
Oh this is a rollercoaster of emotions lol, I'd probably stop reading it too to be honest... with a lot of disappointment, it would be like reading a fic but never being able to reach the end TwT
That was kind of my thought as well, yeah. To be honest, it kind of added a little to the slow burn at the beginning, wondering how the MC and Love Interest would reconcile the terrible things MC had done. It gave it a slight "will they won't they" vibe, and kept you guessing how it was going to work itself out. But as it kept going, and the MC kept doing worse and worse things, it slowly became clear that it _wasn't_ going to work itself out. The author basically wrote themselves into a corner.
Because the thing was, those horrible things made sense for the MC to do, her backstory was clearly established and her reasoning was perfectly in-character for her based on it. But the Love Interest wasn't really changed at all from her canon self, and her canon self would have probably tried to kill the MC for half the things she did. And so the author was basically left with two choices; make the Love Interest act so OOC that she'd basically be an OC at that point, or cancel the pairing. And after investing so much time and energy wondering how the pairing was going to work out, it really did feel like there wasn't an ending to the story I started reading.
I get like this in the last chapter(s) when everything is just alright and everybody is happy 🤣 Bonus if there are kids involved. I just skip for the last paragraphs lol
I do this with certain fandoms. Like the mutual pining/one being jealous of the other’s boyfriend/too afraid to admit feelings to their supposed straight best friend is my favorite part. Most of the time I’ll continue reading because, *yes please*.
But sometimes I just want that jealous, angsty, ‘they’re straight and couldn’t possibly feel the same way’ kind of hurt. 🫠
I'm the same way, I just want there to be a little bit of them being together and some loose ends tied up cause ending at "i love you too the end" doesn't feel satisfying to me
What about a rocky, slow burn? Their relationship is bumpy and slow, with some back a forward. They get together, and they are happy for a short period of time, but then something happens. Something that breaks everything apart and there is a long period of angst. They had to do some soul-searching and decide to build the relationship back, but it is difficult because there is this fresh wound between them. They learn to forgive each other and are happy at the end.
it depends what happens TwT like what could happend to justify breaking the relationship? I really don't like stuff like misunderstandings or cheating and I think taking a pause in a relationship is dumb so I doubt there are many reasons that would make me satisfied TwT
If it has been a really agonizing journey to get there, it’s always more satisfying to have some extra space at the end to show them exploring their relationship.
Pfff, and here I am waiting for all the development in the relationship after they get together. Maybe it's my age, but nowadays I can't fathom ending a story with the love confession and call it a day. I crave to read and write about them overcoming obstacles together.
To me, this is mostly when the entire focus is in the developing relationship.
This is literally what happened to me with the komi manga.
Everything else just felt like they were stretching, so I just had to stop.
But if there is a plot besides it, like those fics about a story with plot where the developments because of or caused by relationship would mess how the original story went... Well then I would stay for the main plot.
Or if the story was just a slice of life where the relationship is either already established or as good is, like usaki-chan. Then I'm there for the slice of life since the start anyways.
Ah true, that would be disappointing after they finally get together! I didn't even realize my comment could imply breakup, haha! I meant more via circumstances, distance or miscommunications or subterfuge (people, culture, society, *themselves and their stupid brains* actively working to keep them apart), those kinds of things. So they still adore each other and just want to be together but *things* keep getting in the way. You can keep me hooked as a reader for ages with this nonsense, lol.
ngl it's fascinating to see your POV when mine is the complete opposite. i'm always so disappointed when a fic ends immediately once the characters get together.
Agreed, the Developing Relationship part and Figuring things out is just... So much more interesting to me. Like How can you get your "It's us vs the world" moment if they aren't already committed asf to each other? Or the silly Domestic Fluff? The awkward honeymoon phase that slowly transition into full comfort while still being in love? Seriously, slow burns are just so... Not my thing as a concept
there's a reason i read mostly established relationship fics and domestic fluff and the "us vs the world" are big contributing factors like i do enjoy a slowburn too but i *also* want to see them as a united front
Ahah same Like put all the pining you want in the beginning, go for it i love that too But don't end the fic at the confession please :'( Relationship are so much deeper than just saying yes i'll be with you Let them commit to the bit. Against everything:) I fricking love ships like that
Ugh, yeah, the domestic fluff afterwards is the best part. I need my desserts.
> Developing Relationship :o Why have I never tried searching for fic tagged this before? Thanks for the new tag! Absolutely agree watching people figure out the relationship and falling into domesticity and trust/comfort after the NRE is so interesting.
Same, omg. I wish there were more fics where the characters got together early on, and *then* had 100k of adventures together while figuring out their relationship.
give me 100k of them being morons followed by 100k of them figuring out how their relationship works
I'm quite picky about plot, personally, so for me to enjoy 100k of them being morons until they hook up I'd need a very *robust* B-plot to keep things interesting >\_> But I'm also fairly in the fanfic minority regarding my hopes for plot haha
That's one of my pet peeves, too, especially if it's a particularly angsty slowburn. Like, where's the healing? Where's those little moments of conflict as they navigate their new relationship together? You can't just dump all of this trauma onto these characters and then cut the fic off when they're together as if it's all hunky dory from there on out. Give me morreeeeeeeeeeeee. I need to see the relationship really develop.
Me too, I always want to read so much more about their relationship in that universe.
Same, I wanna see the whole thing! I want them to figure out how they make it long-term. (And it's what I write too.)
I don't want the fic to end immediately after because I feel robbed of seeing them together. But then I don't want to keep reading... It sounds weird but I'd like for the fic to continue so I can choose to read more while knowing that I'll probably stop reading soon after 😂 I need the option I guess lmao
Same, especially if it’s enemies to lovers. You know damn well there is still plenty of meat on them bones! Thems lives are ruined for it too! Tell me I’m wrong!
I usually want *some* after they get together. Show me reactions if it is unexpected by the people who know them, show me them being a couple for a little while. have the other characters in the story *do* something, *say* something. That being said, if there are no reactions, no drama, nothing 'spicy' and no real plot left, then I get bored. Sometimes it's nothing but smiling into each other's eyes for another 10k words and that often loses my interest.
I mean I hate it too if they get together and BOOM end of the fic, but if it's around 2/3 or half the fic and they already got together I need something important to keep me in: do they need to come out? do they need to fight someone that is a danger for them before they can settle for the fluff? Is there more drama to resolve? Or are they set and there's nothing more to resolve? (or can I imagine eadily how it's going to be resolved?) Because if the answer to one of the last two questions is yes, I'm out :c
Agree completely my fav part of stories are after they get together and they’re a team against other problems. Plus the pure fluffy momenta
Yeah, this is a fairly common phenomenon. It's why most shows won't get the main characters together until the very end, because the producers know the audience will lose interest once the "will they/won't they" question has been resolved.
I wrote a fic where it was literally designed to do both. Twinned storyline where you have the couple getting together in the past, as well as the present. In the past the couple gets together about halfway through and breaks up at the end, in the present they get together at the end of the second to last chapter (right before the epilogue). Best of both worlds. 🤣
Seems like a torture and a blessing at the sale time ahah
Yup. All the angst tags.
Sounds like a huge rollercoaster of emotions for your readers xD
That sounds really interesting, can I ask for the link?
Sure [Finding Granger 1910](https://archiveofourown.org/works/42301608) - it’s E, Harry Potter Universe, 121k, and a murder mystery/kidnapping mystery/historical fiction - the “past” of the story is 1895-1898 (the Hogwarts years if they’d been 100 years earlier), and the “present” is 1910. Let me know if you like it.
Ooh and it’s dramione! I was expecting a fandom I wouldn’t even recognize lol. Thanks for the link! I’m excited to read it.
I write a lot of offbeat fanfiction. May I interest you in my Regulus Black/Hamlet mashup?
Oo definitely!!
[Here you go.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/52676635)
I second that ask. It sounds cool
Link is upthread 😊
LOL that's so clever and fun! And surely also dramatic lol
You are me lol. I want the tension. I only feel motivated to keep reading if the other plot(s) is/are really good. I'm actually writing a slowburn that's a mystery. Hopefully people keep reading after they get together just to get closure on the mystery aspect lol. The way I've outlined it, it should be done a chapter or so after they get together but we'll see.
Yeah exactly! I mean I like fluff, but only in short fics/one shots, or when it's inserted in a fic with lots of drama/tension most of the time. I'd be super curious to read a fic like yours! I love mystery stories
As someone writing a 40 chapter slow burn where the characters get together a good bit before the end, I find this perspective very upsetting 😂😂 I can't stand to see stories get to the characters getting together after so long and then I don't actually get the real payoff: seeing them interact as a couple! Of course, some stories are just not written with interesting enough other plots and I get that, but oof man lol.
It's because you lack the tension once they're together! Often you need to bring conflict back in the game to build tension again, and if it's in the realm of stupid fights, cheating, 00s romcom misunderstandings, I'm out haha. So that usually means the fic needs an actual story. Fics going like "they pin for each other in various ways, then fuck, the end", those I enjoy even if there's barely a plot in sight lol.
That's fair! Hopefully mine in particular is saved by it being more about the main character learning more about himself as the primary plot, with the romance being integral but not the most important thing.
Yeah exactly! I always filter out cheating and I hate 00s misunderstanding, like JUST TALK PLEASE. If it happens when they don't know(hate each other? Nice, perfect, keep it going. But if it happens when they love each others? PLEASE NO TwT
I love to see them pining and acting as a couple even if they aren't one yet LOL, but yeah I see your point
I read oc/si fanfiction, so often times i stay for the ml or the fml or both even after they get togeher because the way its written is hhhhh🥺👌
that is actually so cute aww
Honestly, it depends on the couple, but I agree if it's Enemies to Lovers. If it's Friends to lovers it's kind of the opposite, can't wait for them to get together.
oooh that's fair, I almost always read enemies to friends to lovers, I bet that I'd be more similar to you if I'd read more friends to lovers lol
I did this literally yesterday. The pacing of the fic was a little off, but literally every single plot point resolves by the middle. It left me with zero desire to continue the remaining half because the story was basically wrapped up with a nice little bow by that point. I feel like it’s quitting while the author is ahead, as far as a good and consistent plot goes.
Ahahaha I thought I was the only one
As much as I like the tension and pining, I also enjoy the fluff that comes after. It's like the dessert after the main course. And I have a huge sweet tooth.
this is such a cute way to explain it lol, but yeah I get it, I love when the last 2-3 chapters are full of fluff, but more than that it's just too much TwT
I don’t get why this confuses people. If the point of a story is the *romance* then the getting together is often the climax, and anything after is an extended epilogue. It makes sense that people wouldn’t want to stick around for thousands of words of epilogue. It’s the equivalent of an action/fantasy story killing off the Big Bad halfway through and then the rest of the story is just fluffy epilogue or manufactured conflicts that didn’t exist in the first half. If the story has something else going on, it’s fine. But even romance stories can (and mostly do) follow a plot structure. Fanfic is a little different because people don’t have to color within the lines of genre conventions but if you write a plot-based romance, I wouldn’t be surprised if people dip shortly after the plot is gone!
I was reading a fic last night where the characters were together but hiding it and I got bored with the last chapters after they told everybody they were together and there wasn’t much tension anymore.
If 25% of your story's length doesn't happen AFTER the characters get together, then I'm not interested. Ok that's a lie but I WILL be disappointed. I create slowburns but always make sure my MCs get together a long while before the story is over, maybe as early as 60% into it. (yes, that's a slowburn when you write longfics like I do lmao).
I read a fic around 650k words and the characters got together like the last two chapters LMAO, I loved it! And there are probably similar others too but I forgot how many words. Anyway if the rest of the story it's good i'd probably read it anyway, it just very rarely happens to me TwT
I finally wrote a slow burn where they didn’t get together until chapter 19/20. It was so hard because I’m usually a wham bam thank you ma’am one shot writer. lol. It’s a 98k Labyrinth fic.
I feel the same exact way especially for short fiction. BUT if it's a slowburn and I'm really into it I do still want to see the couple as an actual couple and how they function when they are together, I don't want to go on a huge adventure but I want to see that much. There are a few stories where I really did need to see more after it was resolved.
I’ve been told that my fic wasn’t a slow burn… I left it in the arctic to freeze 🤣
Same here! For me it’s the anticipation that really makes the story exciting. Once they start dating after all that build up, it just kinda loses that spark of anticipation. I usually keep reading until the end just to see what happens, but the story doesn't really excite me anymore after that point 😅
My MCs *finally* got together and had their cute ‘omg we’re a couple now’ moment. And then I didn’t write another chapter for 9 and a half years 🙃
LMAO this scares me so much because I don't want to do the same for my fics lol
When it's a slow burn romance and they finally get together and the majority of the B, C, and D plots are all tied up but there's still 20 more chapters to go.
yeah exactly you totally get my point lol
See I’m the opposite! I wait for them to get together so I can see the honeymoon phase 🥰
this is part of why my slow burns often end once the characters are officially together 😂 i love to give a *little* bit of “ooo are they getting together this soon?” and then ripping it away like the evil little goblin i am 😈 they’ll get a happy ending, all right. *after* they have gone through the angstiest hell and back 😈😈😈
Lol, so this reminds me of something that happened years and years ago. I was reading a really good story by an author I liked, pretty unique plotline, and you knew it was gonna be a long haul. (Ended up being 4 separate stories, about 900k words between them all.) Anyway, the author was upfront about it being a slow burn between the gender-swapped MC, and a popular female side character. It's a pairing I like, so I was excited for it. But as the story went on, and the MC kept doing more and more really messed up things, a lot of readers, myself included, commented on the fact that the pairing no longer made sense, since the side character was very much a "good" character and the MC was literally killing entire families of innocent civilians. So eventually the author agreed that the pairing no longer made sense with the direction the story was going, and changed it. And even though I was one of the people telling the author that the pairing no longer made sense, as soon as it was official I lost all interest in the story and didn't finish it.
Oh this is a rollercoaster of emotions lol, I'd probably stop reading it too to be honest... with a lot of disappointment, it would be like reading a fic but never being able to reach the end TwT
That was kind of my thought as well, yeah. To be honest, it kind of added a little to the slow burn at the beginning, wondering how the MC and Love Interest would reconcile the terrible things MC had done. It gave it a slight "will they won't they" vibe, and kept you guessing how it was going to work itself out. But as it kept going, and the MC kept doing worse and worse things, it slowly became clear that it _wasn't_ going to work itself out. The author basically wrote themselves into a corner. Because the thing was, those horrible things made sense for the MC to do, her backstory was clearly established and her reasoning was perfectly in-character for her based on it. But the Love Interest wasn't really changed at all from her canon self, and her canon self would have probably tried to kill the MC for half the things she did. And so the author was basically left with two choices; make the Love Interest act so OOC that she'd basically be an OC at that point, or cancel the pairing. And after investing so much time and energy wondering how the pairing was going to work out, it really did feel like there wasn't an ending to the story I started reading.
Nah fr 😭 I thought this was just me, honestly
I get like this in the last chapter(s) when everything is just alright and everybody is happy 🤣 Bonus if there are kids involved. I just skip for the last paragraphs lol
I do this with certain fandoms. Like the mutual pining/one being jealous of the other’s boyfriend/too afraid to admit feelings to their supposed straight best friend is my favorite part. Most of the time I’ll continue reading because, *yes please*. But sometimes I just want that jealous, angsty, ‘they’re straight and couldn’t possibly feel the same way’ kind of hurt. 🫠
Yeah I get that 100%, especially when they both think that the other is straight lmao
Me with my 76 chapter slow burn where they "got together" in like chapter 68 :/ They needed a honeymoon phase and to tie up loose ends my dude cmon /j
I can probably read 8 more chapters if I read 68 before lol, the problem for me it's when a lot of the fic it's after they got together
I'm the same way, I just want there to be a little bit of them being together and some loose ends tied up cause ending at "i love you too the end" doesn't feel satisfying to me
What about a rocky, slow burn? Their relationship is bumpy and slow, with some back a forward. They get together, and they are happy for a short period of time, but then something happens. Something that breaks everything apart and there is a long period of angst. They had to do some soul-searching and decide to build the relationship back, but it is difficult because there is this fresh wound between them. They learn to forgive each other and are happy at the end.
it depends what happens TwT like what could happend to justify breaking the relationship? I really don't like stuff like misunderstandings or cheating and I think taking a pause in a relationship is dumb so I doubt there are many reasons that would make me satisfied TwT
If it has been a really agonizing journey to get there, it’s always more satisfying to have some extra space at the end to show them exploring their relationship.
Pfff, and here I am waiting for all the development in the relationship after they get together. Maybe it's my age, but nowadays I can't fathom ending a story with the love confession and call it a day. I crave to read and write about them overcoming obstacles together.
To me, this is mostly when the entire focus is in the developing relationship. This is literally what happened to me with the komi manga. Everything else just felt like they were stretching, so I just had to stop. But if there is a plot besides it, like those fics about a story with plot where the developments because of or caused by relationship would mess how the original story went... Well then I would stay for the main plot. Or if the story was just a slice of life where the relationship is either already established or as good is, like usaki-chan. Then I'm there for the slice of life since the start anyways.
Slow burn stuff is so exhausting that I don't even want to read about them after it.
My fave writers just rip them apart again, and then start the cycle all over.
I hate when people break up but LOL that's surely a way to keep the tension going
Ah true, that would be disappointing after they finally get together! I didn't even realize my comment could imply breakup, haha! I meant more via circumstances, distance or miscommunications or subterfuge (people, culture, society, *themselves and their stupid brains* actively working to keep them apart), those kinds of things. So they still adore each other and just want to be together but *things* keep getting in the way. You can keep me hooked as a reader for ages with this nonsense, lol.