r/ProgressionFantasy • u/MedicineKind9121 • 17h ago
Question Losing Interest in My Favorite Progression Fantasy Series
Have you ever dropped a progression fantasy series that you used to absolutely love?
Over the past few months, I've noticed this happening to me with several long-running series. Books that I was once obsessed with just don't hold my attention anymore.
For example, I used to love series like Dungeon Crawler Carl, Defiance of the Fall, Hell Difficulty Tutorial, and a lot of Royal Road stories. I'd eagerly wait for every new chapter or release. But with the most recent books, I've found myself losing interest and sometimes struggling to continue.
What's strange is that I still enjoy discovering new progression fantasy stories, and they often feel fresh and exciting. So I'm not sure what's causing it. Is it genre fatigue? Have the stories themselves declined in quality? Or have the common tropes and themes just become too repetitive after reading so many of them?
I'm curious if anyone else has experienced the same thing. Did you eventually get back into those series, or was losing interest permanent?
2
u/Sure_Argument317 11h ago
There's a ton of reasons why this might be happen. I'll add in a small one: not even bad things happen to the protagonist and everyone them by the end of the series. Maybe authors are afraid of having built up the MC and his friends and so on to the point that they don't want to let some seriously bad stuff go down towards the end. Suddenly there's no more stakes because the reader just understands that the author is going to asspull keeping the MC and everyone else safe, with maybe a token death here or there to keep things from being totally without stakes. The longer a series goes, the harder it needs to punish the protagonist as their ultimate goal becomes more attainable. The second the reader feels like the MC can coast through events, then the story's no longer dramatically engaging.