I was just thinking lately about how much my reading motivations have morphed.

When I first started reading VN's, the main drive ended up being post-confession romance stories. I spent years upon years of watching anime and other media, that screw around the watcher with frustrating harem scenarios and contrived drama, only to end the show before the relationship even starts. So, discovering that there's an entire medium of media with a big focus on doing exactly that was naturally magnetic. I wanted to read every route and enjoy getting to know every character. Like a kid in a candy shop.

But now, after over a decade of reading, if I'm being frank, my favorite part of a VN is the common route. The common route is typically the richest part of the VN. It's got all the best narrative points, the most interesting scenes with the romantic candidates, the best multi-character interactions, etc. Whereas the post-confession routes in a lot of VN's... well, they devolve into more or less: "blah blah blah date? blah (Insert H-scene here) blah lap pillow? blah (Insert H-scene here) blah feed each other? blah." They become very focused going through the motions rather than keeping the narrative going.

Obviously, this wildly varies in severity between VN's. But it's become commonplace enough to slowly adjust the flow of my motivation. Now, I've started not reading routes of characters I'm not particularly interested in. It's typically becoming the case where if I have a choice between route number... lets say 4 of a VN, or the opportunity to take a big bite out of a new VN's common route, I end up finding the latter more appealing.

So all in all, I just find it really interesting that my tastes have essentially done a big 180 from when I started. What I initially ran from when I came to this medium, in the end became my main motivation to keep reading.

How about you guys? Do you have any similar stories to share from over the years?