I’m not sure what to call this, but after seeing in at least two separate featured stories that were released recently I want to think this is a pattern.
See, I first seen this in Wicked Sins, which had to condense a lot of stuff from the original. After a (weird) time skip in the finale, there is a choice where you end up with Declan doing whatever or going back to your own life without him. Similarly, in Penthouse Passions (Working for Him is the Original) in the finale MC decides whether to actually get in a relationship with Masarotto (which, spoilers, the aftermath is so anti climatic if you don’t choose to kiss them) or become friends.
Now I can think of several things why this may be happening lately:
Both of what I listed so far are around the 50-60 chapter range, and to Episode this choice is best to end their versions because of the missing like 5/6s of the original content.
They both coincidentally contain … questionable and problematic romances, even shown in the beginning, and at least a portion of people would not fall for them like that.
Either way, I’m pretty Glad of it so far, even though the execution makes the endings sorta anti-climatic. It’s also a meaningful choice for people who aren’t falling for how these stories are written and paced too.
I doubt many people would read Featured stories religiously or routinely as I do, but if you still want to discuss it, feel free
I like having the option not to end up together, because often I have trouble finding some of the relationships in featured stories appealing (nothing against these two stories you mentioned in particular, as I haven’t completed either of them).
It’s nice to have some agency in the romantic plot, especially when the story tells the reader “you” are the MC. I often feel a bit put off when the MC I’ve been asked to define starts gushing over a character I find slimy. Even if the ending feels underdeveloped, I enjoy telling toxic guys to take a hike.
I would rather they stopped buying stories with problematic and toxic romances altogether, but by itself, I think the concept of allowing you to break up with your LI is kinda cool. Doesn’t work for every story (you’ll probably never catch me doing it), but it reminds me of when authors back in the day would write out “last chapter options” like:
Choose Dylan.
Choose Adam.
Stay single.
And then the story would end after a little epilogue lol. This was back when classic was the main art style.
In general, I’m led to believe that those featured stories which originals have a lot of plot and subplots, within eight chapters it rushes through everything, leaving an unsatisfactory wrap up
The “stay single” option is underrated. I just finished one where I reached episode 8 thinking I didn’t really care about either LI, but the final choice was to choose between them. I just went with the one who wasn’t an asshole, but the one I picked was still pretty white-bread-boring.
This is from the Ricci story Mr Billionaire, which obviously had a lot of stuff to push in Still a bit pissed about having to pay gems for Gideon’s backstory. So this is very very fresh considering the original, though weirdly the ‘Stay Single’ option is unnecessarily harsh on Gideon (but then again I don’t know because I didn’t pay crap)
