Here's a little spot I've set aside for the most jaw-dropping fuckups I've ever seen on this site. Fics that have the author entirely lose sight of where they're going, take the easy way out or just completely drop the ball. Here are the top five fics that make me foam at the mouth due to the wasted potential:
NUMBER FIVE: The Queen and the Stray
This one's pretty recent, but solidly made it on here. As with the others on this list, it commits the sin of having a fantastic idea but an awful execution and ending.
THE PLOT
The story begins with Twilight abandoning a day-old alicorn infant she created through experimentation with dark magic to die in a sandstorm in the desert. Luckily for the filly, she's quickly found by a changeling and brought before Queen Chrysalis. The queen, in turn, decides to adopt the filly, now named Yucca, and raise her as her own. All goes relatively well for the two of them, until the day that Yucca decides she needs to go defeat the 'Evil Pony Princesses' to make her mother proud, setting off for Equestria.
WHAT WENT WRONG
The first half or so of the fic was pretty good, I'll admit. Yucca was a bit 'internet random', but she still managed to be endearing with her enthusiasm and determination to make her mother proud. However, it went off the rails pretty damn fast once Yucca arrived in Ponyville. This is the point at which things started to get ridiculous. To sum up: Twilight, convinced she's done absolutely nothing wrong, proceeds to trick Yucca into a 'game' that ends with her banished from Equestria, Chrysalis sells her out to the royal sisters and Celestia enslaves her and uses her as a weapon. Twilight gets off without even a token punishment, and everything continues as normal under the tyrannical heel of the god-empress.
The biggest fault in this story is the absolutely amoral nature that all the characters develop partway through the fic. It feels like the author went 'Wait, no, you aren't supposed to like Yucca, you're supposed to like Twilight!' and somehow thought that making the rest of the characters support her in her attempted murder of a day-old infant would make us support her, too. Here's where the biggest 'fuck you' comes in, though. During the confrontation in ponyville, Twilight says one of the stupidest things I've ever heard a character say:
"You still chose to side with Chrysalis in the end."
Apparently, Twilight supports racial segregation to the point where 'It doesn't matter that ponies left you to die in the desert and someone of another species adopted you and did their best to give you a good life, you aren't one of them so you need to side with us!'.
Twilight is evil, Celestia is evil, Cadance and Luna are entirely ineffectual, Shining Armour is the author's mouthpiece of 'Oh because it's Celestia doing something that makes it right', and Chrysalis is made to do a complete 180 and sell her out to help the author establish... Whatever the hell they were going for.
It does not work.
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NUMBER FOUR: More Than She Could Dream Of
This one has been one of my personal bugbears for a while. The author and I don't see quite eye to eye, what with my propensity for telling people a truth they don't want to hear and their propensity for deleting comments they don't like.
Out of respect to a friend of mine, I'm not going to go into detail on this one. I'm simply going to state the fact that no matter how many epilogues they tack onto the end, it's not going to change the fact that they completely copped out with an incredibly lazy ending in favour of appeasing the shipping crowd and to avoid having to make hard choices.
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NUMBER THREE: Too Good To Be True
This one... Doesn't need any sort of in-depth analysis, really. Where the author monumentally screwed up was both completely obvious and completely infuriating. They ruined a very clever and promising story with sheer laziness.
THE PLOT
The story begins with Twilight showing her friends a new spell she'd learned: A paternity test. While experimenting with it, she happens upon the discovery that Cadence is actually her half-sister, exposing her father's affair. What follows is a rather interesting political story about how their family is trying to put itself back together while Shining and Cadence try to prevent an utter paparazzi clusterfuck... Until the author fucks it up.
WHAT WENT WRONG
The author got lazy. Seriously, that's it in its entirety. Everyone got a story update, and upon reading, it's a 500 word chapter going "LOLOLOLOL TWILIGHT KILLED EVERYONE WITH AN AXE LOLOLOL but seriously I don't care about this fic I got bored and don't want to finish it."
Seriously. That is a thing that happened. The epilogue and the author's note have since been deleted, but the story remains 'on hiatus'.
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NUMBER TWO: Not quite done
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And now, the NUMBER ONE AUTHOR FUCKUP/AWFUL ENDING: Elementals of Harmony
This fucking fic. This fucking fic. Even remembering that this fic exists pisses me off to a point I hadn't thought was possible.
Unlike a certain fic elsewhere in this list, I'm on quite good terms with the author. We've discusses our disagreements, and they can see where I'm coming from in terms of hating this story with the intensity of a million George Foreman Grills. Seriously.
The biggest thing in this fic, and the one that makes it not only number one on this list, but possibly the worst thing I've ever actually read, is the potential. This fic had SUCH potential. I absolutely loved it, up until one specific chapter. That one chapter, however, ruined it entirely. No redemption. There is literally nothing that can be done to fix it, short of first removing that chapter and any references to it, and then issuing a public apology to the written word as a whole.
THE PLOT
The plot to this fic was... Fantastic. It was a Magic: The Gathering crossover, and it starred Ditzy Doo (Derpy Hooves, to the morons among you). Ditzy was a single mother. She was also a Planeswalker, a being gifted with incredible power and the ability to walk between worlds.
The first chapters of this fic had me absolutely riveted. They told of her life, her worries, her struggles. They told of her terrifying (and quite accidental) initiation as a Planeswalker. They told of how she sacrificed everything to keep her family safe. They told of how she had to avoid letting anyone close to her to protect her secret and her family, of the loneliness she suffered trying to do so, and the sacrifices she made to keep both her home and her family safe.
It was an incredible character study, the likes of which I've rarely seen in fiction. It was inspiring, heartbreaking and absolutely amazing.
AND THEN PINKIE PIE HAPPENED.
WHAT WENT WRONG
In a word, Pinkie.
This story stands forever as an example. It's an example of many things, most of them positive. How to write a character, how to make us empathize with one, and how to completely ruin an amazing story in one chapter.
It also stands as the textbook perfect example of how NOT to write Pinkie Pie, and how abusing her as an 'insert wacky here' card can absolutely devastate a story like nothing else can.
Here you are, you're reading this fic, and it's beginning to get exciting. All of a sudden, Pinkie shows up. Immediately, the story becomes a joke. It turns into LOLOLOLOLOL GUISE PINKIE BREAKS THE FOURTH WALL AND SHE KNOWS TEH MEEMEES AND TEH INTERNETS AND RAMBLES ABOUT TEH MEEMEE COMIX AND TEH RAGE FACES AND THE CAKE IS A LIE U GUISE, ISN'T THAT SO FUCKING FUNNY?!
Oh, and remember how you just spent the past however many chapters watching Ditzy suffer and sacrifice and work herself to the bone to protect her family and her secret? LOL THAT'S NOW ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT BECAUSE IT TURNS OUT PINKIE IS THE OLDEST AND POWERFULLEST PLANESWALKER EVER AND SHE NEVER HAD TO WORK A DAY IN HER LIFE OR SACRIFICE ANYTHING BECAUSE LOLOL SHE'S PINKIE!
Just remembering this actually happened long enough to write this fills me with the sort of incandescent rage I didn't think was possible. Yes, it turns out that everything Pinkie in this fic is just one huge fourth wall joke, constantly referencing memes, rage faces and the internet, as well as completely invalidating everything that Ditzy did by having Pinkie Pie do it with absolutely zero effort because 'lololol it's Pinkie'.
I'm not sure what else I can write about this. I don't believe the English language has words strong enough to convey my utter hate for this story, and the absolute disgrace that was done with Pinkie. It is the worst thing I have ever read because of the sheer mishandling of Pinkie, and I'm starting to repeat myself so I'll cut it off here.
There's a reason it's #1.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/382393/mega-covfefe
Quick thing about the section of your userpage called "The List", and it has to do with this:
Now for my rebuttal (not that I really care what name she goes by, but it is still ever so slightly offensive [not that I don't also call people morons, but when I do it, there's usually a pretty good reason behind it, such as the person making typos, or the person saying or doing idiotic things.])
The name Derpy Hooves was the original name for the character, and it has since been popularized by the outstanding YouTube series: Doctor Whooves and Assistant.
Now that I've got the business stuff out of the way, is your story Irreplaceable ever going to be updated again?
2130021 That shit happens to me all the time!
2129940 I have been since like chapter 2, I just have giant sausage-thumbs and a small phone screen, which leads to unfollowing/re following due to button placement
Thanks for the follow, and the comment!
Sorry for the dickish comment, I'm kind of an ass like that! xD