Going on a Dangerous Business in,
>/FSBC/
You can run into old posts claiming that DB, OTEM, and Austraeoh defined the "ponies go on an adventure" genre. Perhaps that is fine, since despite being flawed, all of those fics are pretty good. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Lost and Found yet.
I was sick this week, but honestly, if not for the bookclub, I'm not sure I'd even finish it! But before getting too negative, let's recap the good in the fic. Firstly, it's a certified Oldfic, with all that this entails. Expect many, many references to parts of S1+S2 episodes; this is something that old stories do a lot. Secondly, this Equestria is firmly the one we know from the show, and you can expect the plot to try to bind itself to the events that have been described in S1/S2, such as HWE, Princesses(+NMM), Elements, Discord, etc. And indeed, it appears to be an Elements fic. The atmosphere, while not really trying to keep 'pony', is definitely oldfic-flavored, which is good. We start with the "Mane6 SoL until [X]" adventure setup progressing that's extremely emblematic of the era.
Also, the writing is not excellent, but it's serviceable for 2012, which makes it a positive outlier worth mentioning, even as I'll soon complain about it.
What is not good are these ponies. Sweet Luna, maybe it's the point, but the first 80 pages are horrible. Just ponies being mean-spirited and bitchy. Nonstop, over and over, for more than half of this week's reading. This includes all of M6, the Princesses, M6's interactions with the Princesses—no one is spared. And yeah, I get "Twilight doubts Celestia" as a plot point, but not like this, I beg thee, author. This is just bad. It's not the only oldfic that does this, either; I think clarifying a better grasp on what "pony" atmosphere means is one of the biggest general improvements in fic writing over time. Grammar is the other.
Anyway! I will not complain about the pacing of the story, since I think it's okay, and this "slow adventure" tone can work—and has worked—for many oldfics. What plainly did not work was the pacing within each section, in each scene. It's absolutely at its worst in the AJ&FS section of the adventure, where lengthy "AJ and FS walked in straight line for two weeks" section will be randomly broken with a single paragraph of super important ruins before switching back into the monotone adventure. What I mean is that the parts that should be important get completely lost in the narration, the author spending zero effort on making them stand out. I think this is the biggest difference between this fic and the three "classics" I mentioned at the start of the post—the cool setpieces are just not given the words or narrative importance that they should get. The characters seemingly just from place to place, and following them through the paragraphs is unnecessarily unintuitive.
The later parts were better, which inspires at least a little hope for next week.
Next week: up to 22.