Tuesday 6 January 2015

The long and the short of it

Pointless factoid of the day: according to the nallar.me list of ponyfics, a story called Tales of the Winter Magic Academy has 179,999 words. Given that it hasn't been updated in years and only even seems to exist online in about two places (barring a few even more incomplete versions) I fear that it will be stuck forever at this slightly irritating level. :P I suppose its companion piece would be Through the Eyes of Another Pony (listed as 310,001 words) although a rewritten version of that does seem to be in progress still, albeit glacially slowly. And no, I haven't read either one!

All this serves as introduction to the fact that, as you'll know if you follow Ponyfic Roundup, my preference is generally for shorter works: the considerable majority of the stories I review are under the 10K-word mark. Part of that is simple practicality: I can't read five or six long stories in a week. Part of it is that a lot of old and overlooked fics are short, and I like to give some of them a moment in the sun. But partly it's that I like short stories. I write them for that reason, too. The art of telling an interesting tale in a couple of thousand words is, I think, sometimes undervalued.

It is of course true that I've read some long ponyfics in my time, most notably the behemoth that is Fallout: Equestria, which weighs in at 620,000 words, famously more than War and Peace. Calibre tells me, though, that I've only read five other fics with word counts in six figures: Austraeoh; It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door; The Games We Play; Shipping and Handling and Integration. (You could make a case for the Hard Reset trilogy being one story, in which case that would join this select group.) That's not a huge number for an avid reader closing in on three years in the fandom.

I may try to read a few more longer stories in 2015: among those on my Read it Later list are Anthropology; The Immortal Game; Mother of Invention; Flash Fog... and Past Sins. Yes. There's always Past Sins. All of those are over the 100K-word mark, so I may not get through the whole lot of them this year, but I'll see how things go. And of course there are plenty of stories in the intermediate-length category to consider, too: some of those have been in RiL-limbo for months, come to that. Maybe I'll do a PR at some point focusing on those mid-length tales.

What I think is unlikely is for me to move away from reviewing mainly short fics. I enjoy it, it means there's a lot of variety, I can get through several in a week and the really bad ones don't become a terrible slog. I haven't DNF'd a single PR story yet, though one of these days I expect it will happen. As ever, I'm open to recommendations: most of you know the sort of things I prefer (and if you don't, here's a summary) but there aren't many things I'll rule out entirely. In the meantime, I need to finish writing up the PR I have planned for tomorrow!

8 comments:

  1. Flash Fog was enjoyable, but it was a little long. Past Sins is worth the read just because of how popular it is. I was underwhelmed with it, so not sure I'd recommend it on the merits of its story.

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    1. I'm hoping that my favouritism towards Fluttershy will help me with Flash Fog. As for Past Sins, I'll be reading it mainly because of its fame, yes. I'm not expecting great things, so any aspects I enjoy will be a bonus.

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  2. The Hard Reset Trilogy, Life and Times of a Winning Pony, Integration, Shipping and Handling, and Flying High Falling Hard are the five 100k+ fics I've read, in rough order of brilliance.

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    1. Hmm, if FHFH is less good than S&H, I may give it a miss! As for TL&ToaWP, that may get read eventually, as part of my very slow "read the most famous fics" programme...

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    2. God, acronyms can make a post hilarious if you're not sure what they mean.

      "If Fuhfuh is less good than Sand-Huh, I may give it a miss! As for Teh-Land-Toe-a-Whupp..."

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    3. I wouldn't have done it had handyj443 not used the full name of each one in the comment I was replying to. :P

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  3. Are you considering reading The Sweetie Chronicles: Fragments? I'm sure you know the premise - Sweetie Belle jumping through various fanfic universes and facing challenges in each. Some of the stories you list feature in it, plus some others that I know you've read. Not to mention that TSC could count itself among those epic, groundbreaking stories from the early years of the fandom.

    I actually read TSC without reading a lot of the stories that feature in it, and I don't feel like that dampened my enjoyment any - if anything, it made it more exciting to be genuinely surprised by what was coming.

    The only downside is that TSC isn't finished yet and doesn't look it will be any time soon, but if you want to see a fantastic author revisit worlds that you've been to, it's the perfect fic. Also my all time favourite fic. ^^

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    1. Tbh I think it's fairly unlikely: given that I could read 68 5K-word stories in the same time, a 340K-word story has to do a heck of a lot to get me to read it. And one of those things is probably to be complete: I don't like the thought of spending years following a fic only to find that the author leaves the story unfinished in 2018 or something! This is also one reason I'm losing interest in the Austraeoh saga, and that This Platinum Crown isn't on my RiL list.

      What I do plan to do at some point is read something of more manageable length by Wanderer D. As I've said, I make a conscious effort not to concentrate on already-famous authors' works, but it is nice to read such things from time to time. Mr(?) D has 30 stories published, so I'd imagine I could find something more to my taste in that lot.

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