issues with QbitTorrent stalled torrents

I am just getting back my sea legs, but apparently they're pretty shaky because I can't get my ubuntu torrent (no seriously, it is) to download. It never starts downloading and is stuck in "stalled". I've tried a number of things, but even with default settings it isn't starting. I'm using proton VPN on Linux Mint, but even with the VPN disabled it doesn't work.

last time I torrented was probably 15 years ago.

EDIT: i managed to get it working. As expected it was a Qbit config issue. First issue was a port forwarding issue. second one was the interface i connected it to. Apparently the interface named something with "vpn" is not the correct one to bind Qbit to, its a dummy created by the VPN that doesn't work. I had to select one named "tun0". If i just selected the regular physical interface I had IP leaks with the VPN enabled.