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| A tiny portion (perhaps 2%) of the Hay Cinema Bookshop |
NB 11 Feb 23: This was originally numbered 264, but I have only recently discovered that I numbered the following Roundup 264 as well. To avoid a huge amount of renumbering, I have decided to list them as 264a and 264b from now on.
I have a good reason for the low story count this week: I've been to Hay-on-Wye! Thanks to someone kind giving me a lift there (I can't drive for medical reasons) I had a great day poking around the second-hand bookshops. There are so many there (well into double figures) that I just couldn't find everything I might have liked, but just being in a bookshop with six-figure volume counts spread over three floors was wonderful. And Hay has two of those. Plus all the others.
Read it Later story count: 236 (-3)
Anyway, since I'm writing this later (on Tuesday night!) than I might have liked, please accept my apologies in advance for any stupid errors I may make. I absolutely would welcome them being pointed out in the comments! Here are today's three:
Saboteurs by Raugos
The Fastest-Paced Story Ever Told by DmitriTheWriter
I Don't Want To Write This by Aragon
★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Lyra, Bon-Bon and Berry Punch
Slice of Life; 8k words; Jan 2017; Teen
Lyra is convinced that Ruby Pinch and Berry Punch are undercover supervillains, and she will do whatever it takes to expose the truth before it is too late.This fic might be better tagged [Slice of Life/Adventure], but it was published at a time when Fimfiction wouldn't let you use both tags at once. It seems to take inspiration from the Special Agent Sweetie Drops thing, but twists it by involving Lyra very closely and having their neighbours under suspicion. There's a wild twist about halfway through, after which the adventure begins. It's hard to say more without spoiling it, but there's heaps of action and even a hint of dystopian horror. I do have reservations about the (thankfully incidental) mention of Lyra's hands obsession and an "Orbital Friendship Cannon", and the very end is disappointingly clichéd. It's quite a ride up until that point, though! ★★★
The Fastest-Paced Story Ever Told by DmitriTheWriter
Twilight, CMCs and OCs
Adventure/Comedy; 1k words; Sep 2019; Everyone
Just how much story can be crammed into 1,000 words? Let's find out!Twilight is camping with the CMC, who want to hear an epic tale – but they're getting tired, so they want it in ten minutes. Twilight initially demurs, but then goes for it. And boy, does she go for it: the story she tells, which is exactly 1,000 words long, packs as much as possible into its running time. Subplots whiz past, characters develop and change in two or three lines, you name it. Coloured text is used, which often annoys me, but here I just interpret it as Twilight doing different voices. It's pretty silly and not at all deep, but as a five-minute diversion it'll probably make you smile. ★★★
I Don't Want To Write This by Aragon
Rainbow Dash
Drama/Slice of Life; 4k words; Feb 2015; Everyone
Rainbow Dash is trapped in a room, and she can't get out until she writes a letter.One of those stories where, at the start, we're deliberately given very little information about what's going on, and things gradually become clearer. The best thing here is that Rainbow Dash sounds like Rainbow Dash, even though she's doing something rather un-Dash-like in writing a long letter. I also found her emotional state believable. Also, hurrah for no crossed-out text. On the downside, the letter really does get slightly unbelievably long for something Rainbow would write, given that it's the entire 4k words of the fic. Plus I'm not sure it really sounds like a letter; it comes across more like a semi-internal monologue. As for the pony she's writing to? YMMV, I suspect, as not a lot of detail is given about her relationship to them, beyond the obvious. I found the restraint believable, since from Dash's perspective there's no need to explain, but some may find it too sketchy since we don't know everything Rainbow knows. Still, the emotional hit is there and the voicing is there. That lot means very high three, I think. ★★★
Next time on Ponyfic Roundup: all being well, I will be starting my look at the winning entries in the Fimfiction Feghoot Festival contest! There were 11 of those, so I can't manage them all in one week.
I love Hay-on-Wye! I hope to get back there someday.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that the town Bales* in Twilight Sparkle and the Forgotten Books of Autumn is a ponified version?
With places like the Hay Take-away in the real town, it feels pretty pony-ish already.
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* I love the double/implied pun there!
I did know that, as it happens -- I think I must have seen a tweet or something from G. M. Berrow mentioning it. I thought it was in the book's dedication, but checking just now there's no sign.
DeleteAs for the real town, it just so happens that when I was there, there were several large banners advertising a forthcoming play called Unicorns, Almost. Actually about a WW2 poet, but I liked to imagine otherwise. :D
One thing about Hay that I found interesting was how un-Welsh it felt. I'm used to places like Llandudno, where there are national flags everywhere and you'll usually hear at least the odd bit of the language spoken. Hay, almost on the border, could easily have been in England, barring a few almost desultory bilingual signs. There weren't even markers on the border for the most part!
I had the same issue with Aragon's story, but to a larger degree. It says it's a letter, but it just doesn't feel much like one, for multiple reasons. Not a bad read, by any means.
ReplyDeleteI kayak/canoe on the Wye every now and then, and have been to Hay on a few occasions. Lovely place, and a haven for bibliophiles. Shame so many of the bookstores have fallen into becoming more standard antique stores, but there's still some dedicated and awesome places to find a good rare book or three.
ReplyDeleteThere are still enough for me -- it's well over a decade since I was last in the town, so I can't remember more than hazily what it used to be like. Some have gone online-only in the past few years, though, which is understandable but still a shame.
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