FimFiction Link - Short ID: 344970/no-place-like-nowhere
Published: Sep '16 — Nov '16
3/10.
Flurry and Cadance wake up in a forest with amnesia and wander around trying to figure out what happened. This one's shit. Don't read it. First multi-chapter I've downvoted in a long time. The first big issue is glacial pacing. I thought Rites had bad pacing, but at least stuff actually happens in it. Flurry & Co. wander around the forest for 20k and agonizingly little happens, either action or mystery resolution-wise.
The second and far bigger problem is the ending. The author completely botches it. The central mystery of "What happened? Why are they in the forest?" is never answered. It's a blueball mystery. Instead, the author turns it into a bat pony lore fic for the last 20k that sucks all the oxygen out of the room and inserts NMM, who's really just an OC alicorn with a coat of canon paint on her, as the new protagonist. Flurry and Cadance are brushed aside and nearly forgotten by the end. Their return to Equestria happens offscreen.
And to add insult to injury, the author COPEs and has the bat ponies conlang Polish with no narrative translations until the end, so you don't understand a word of their dialogue, and can only resort to skipping past it, ruining what little interest there might have been with their lore.
Authors just need to get over it and write their fucking OC fics. Don't drag in canon characters to act as bait so you can sperg out your lore to unwilling readers. It pisses me off and the people who might be interested in the lore never actually click on the story because you instead told everyone it was a Flurryfic.