Bad Writing, Or Blatant Misdirection?

I've noticed a silent plague around the site and it's infecting a lot of stories. The process can be summed up as this:

• You find a story that calls for your attention with a nice premise. I've seen it mostly on stories about a canon character returning to Equestria after some kind of life-changing event (crossing over to another world or franchise like Fallout, or just some kind of pilgrimage/travel/adventure) that turns the main character into a badass. It can be a new story, or one with many chapters already.
• The first chapters deliver on that promise, and you want to read more. You dutifully continue reading it.
• Canon character finally encounters the rest of the cast. Heartfelt reunion, many feels... You know the drill. They ask about the character's whereabouts all this time. This is when the shit hits the fan.
• You are treated to a whole another story for an unending period of time. Chapter after chapter of background about the previously mentioned experience of the character when they were on another world/out of Equestria. And it keeps going and going...
• After a while you realize that what you are reading it's not what you were promised. You notice that two thirds of the story (in some cases just the whole thing besides the first two token chapers) it's just this background thing for the returning canon character.
• You try your best, but you get off the ride after waiting for the story to get on the rails, but it's just a hopeless thought.

Sounds familiar to some story you may be/been following?

What is this bloody bait and switch that it's happening around? If you advertise 'Twilight gets back from the Stardew Valley universe with her husband and foals to revolutionize Equestria' I want that, not how she had to plant one hundred and twenty two radishes and then goes to the mine to get gems to gift to her future husband because she has the hots for him. If I read in the descrpition 'Applejack is ponynapped by some portal and comes back knowing how to build a warp drive. Welcome to the Space Age Equestria' I want to read that, not how she flunked space academy 'till she didn't try to use apples as an analogue for everying.

What is wrong with you, people? If you want to tell those stories JUST DO IT, don't bait people into reading something they didn't signed to. Have some faith in your idea!

I can't even remember how many times I got this exact experience in this site. I don't remember this being such a big problem, so what the hell is happening?

I just don't know anymore. If you want to put your two cents on this please feel free to do so. I would like to know if this is just me being grumpy old fart or if this is really a thing.

PD: Interlude chapters can burn in hell too. Blasted things keep popping out in every story. If you need to ease the tension you have been building up do it via the narration itself, not cutting off the action of the main story to show us how the bloody background guy from chapter 3 parragraph 23 is picking his nose, talking about those odd fellows that passed near him some chapters ago. Plus I find these kind of chapters to be jarring. If you can't defuse the tension in your story naturally without them you should stop, read it and think where this is going and where you want it to go... and if you keep raising the tension with the interlude then you are doing something very wrong.

PD2: Also those damn cliffhangers with some nebulous evil entity that pops out out of fucking nowhere without context that are used to suddenly turns a Slice of Life story into an epic adventure. Just... WHAT THE HELL!? Really, what's with the change of heart? I know of one very famous story in this site that hurts from this very thing, and it's terrible. Turning fluff and just niceness into a bloodbath because reasons. Bloody hell...

Comments

[mastermenthe]

my takeaway from this:
Stardew Valley Crossover?! WHERE!!!???

[Khenlos]

4869137
It was just an example. I don't think there is a crossover with Stardew Valley here

[Axel Azabash]

Just thinking how right this post was when I saw your avatar on it and... oh... Eeeyup. Except for Malachite... all the other nebulous evil beings out of flippin nowhere can go to hell. And yeah, those stories telling just a perfect fluffy slice of life suddenly turning into slicing of lives... Almost all slices of life end up like that, and I'm a fan of slice of life fics, imagine my pain watching them going to sudden adventures out of the blue.