Read it Later story count: 95 (+1)
Words read this week: 10,000
Today, I'm returning to the Thousand Words Contest III winners, and the slate features the first ten of the sixteen Pewter Medal winners. For reasons I'm not entirely sure of (I'd guess a tie in judging) there were four such medals awarded in the Horror category, but only three in each of the others: Drama, Slice of Life, Comedy and Experimental. Today I'm covering the Drama, Slice of Life and Horror medallists in that order:
Too old to start over by TheDriderPony
All the Right Questions... by daOtterGuy
Encamped, Entrenched by EileenSaysHi
Pool Boy by TheDriderPony
Twilight Sparkle is Moving Back to Ponyville by RB_
The Daisy Behind Her Ear by Math Spook
In the House by Cold in Gardez
i [sic] by PseudoBob Delightus
It Was a Beautiful Day in Ponyville by gloamish
Jack of All Trades by TheDriderPony
★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 5 | ★★★★: 3 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
Pewter Medal, Drama
Too old to start over by TheDriderPony
OCs
G4; Drama/Sad/Slice of Life; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
The advent of one mare's golden years is tarnished by a slip of pink.
Receiving a "pink slip" is the rough US equivalent of being given your P45 over here, though specifically for involuntary termination. In this fic, Baguette Knife, age 53, is sacked with immediate effect. Company belt-tightening – but how will she cope, and how will she tell her husband of what it means for their "golden years" planning? This reminds me of an Admiral Biscuit slice-of-lifer, despite medalling in Drama and despite the fic being set in Equestria. The problem for me is illustrated by the start of this review: the story is very American in tone, since Baguette's no-notice dismissal would be illegal in the UK.¹ Hence the star rating; this is a nicely written piece, but as a Brit I just can't relate to it very well. US readers should probably bump the score up a bit. ★★
¹ Other than for gross misconduct or employees who've only been there a few weeks.
Pewter Medal, Drama
All the Right Questions... by daOtterGuy
Stygian and the Pillars [which isn't a Sixties pop group, honest]
G4; Drama/Sad; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
Stygian asks about what makes the Pillars the Pillars
This is quite a clever one, as I'd expect from this author. "The Styg" (no, sadly he's not called that here) goes from Pillar to Pillar, asking what their Elements represent. It seems rather pedestrian and reminiscent of 2011-era fics that try to give each Mane an equal role. However, here, the whole thing is put in a very different context by Stygian's interpretation of their comments and how what he hears isn't necessarily what they said. This fic repays a second reading after you know the ending. ★★★
Pewter Medal, Drama
Encamped, Entrenched by EileenSaysHi
Gloriosa Daisy and Timber Spruce
G4 EqG; Drama/Slice of Life; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
Several years after her brief transformation into Gaea Everfree, Gloriosa Daisy wonders how much her life has really changed.
No surprise that EileenSaysHi would choose to write an Equestria Girls story, but this one focuses on characters who don't have a whole lot of love in ponyfic. It's very nice to get a further look at Gloriosa, who was interesting in Legend of Everfree but didn't have enough time to get much depth. Setting this a few years down the line works very well, allowing enough time for things to have happened – read carefully. This is a really fine character piece, making me care about somone (Timber) I generally have little time for. I'm rather impressed. Top-end three for me, but big EqG fans should bump it over the line to a four. ★★★
Pewter Medal, Slice of Life
Pool Boy by TheDriderPony
Other, Filthy Rich and Spoiled Rich
G4; Slice of Life; 1k words; Jul 2024; Teen (Sex)
When he was in high school, Buck Withers made a roadmap for his future. But at some point in the last ten years he must have made a very unexpected detour.
Buck's ended up working as, well, a pool boy at the Rich residence. A rather dull job, except that the chapter title ("Payment for Services Rendered") hints at a rather more unofficial side to his employment. TheDriderPony gets much more into a thousand words than you might think, thanks to skilful and economic use of show-not-tell, character hints and careful snippets of dialogue. The ending is the icing on the cake. There's an entire soap opera going on here and the implications and possibilities are endless. ★★★★
Pewter Medal, Slice of Life
Twilight Sparkle is Moving Back to Ponyville by RB_
Twilight
G4; Slice of Life; 1k words; Jun 2024; Everyone
A thousand years passed and she's come full circle.
Far in the future, in an Equestria where G4 never became G5,¹ Twilight is travelling on the maglev train back to Ponyville. This is a rather different take on the "Immortal Twilight" trope that's been used many, many times. The fic was apparently inspired by a British song I don't know, but the bittersweet tone comes through well. Twilight has achieved so much, yet she's invisible to the ponies around her – she's travelling in disguise – and you wonder whether they even think of her? Nice world-building and a simple yet effective sense of moving forward. Top-end three. ★★★
¹ The author explicitly refuses to tag the story [Alternate Universe]. I can understand that decision.
Pewter Medal, Slice of Life
The Daisy Behind Her Ear by Math Spook
Cheerilee and OC
G4; Slice of Life; 1k words; Jun 2024; Everyone
A colt is bullied by his new classmates until Cheerilee intervenes.
Although gaining its recognition as Slice of Life, this fic was also submitted to the Experimental category. Its detached narrative style means we never actually see into the mind of the colt in question, apart from one or two hints from what he does and how he behaves. There's a sense that he may have a little bit of a crush on Cheerilee even before she intervenes to stop the bullying, but we don't know that – he's very young, after all. I struggle a bit with understanding this fic (it's apparently inspired by the very beginning of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I'm not good at Joyce) but it's certainly interesting and I love Cheerilee being Cheerilee. As such, a three. ★★★
Pewter Medal, Horror
In the House by Cold in Gardez
OC
G4; Horror/Thriller; 1k words; Jul 2024; Teen
Raven has a new book to enjoy tonight. Alone, she thinks.
As others have pointed out, this is an exercise in social horror, something rarely seen in this genre. Raven is enjoying a somewhat steamy romance story, along with her magical auto-quill (my term) that writes her subconscious thoughts automatically. Including, she realises, her private thoughts about the book's characters... But then it comes out with "IT'S IN THE HOUSE." I found this deeply unsettling, with the ordinariness of the build-up contributing to that. A striking ending, too. This one appealed to me quite a bit. ★★★★
Pewter Medal, Horror
i [sic] by PseudoBob Delightus
Twilight
G4; Horror/Sad; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
It's okay. I'm here. I can remember what happened.
"I remember reading this in a web browser," states the author in the longdesc. That's because both whitespace and shades of grey in the text are important. This author often likes to play around with formatting, which I'll confess isn't always my favourite thing, but here it's used simply but effectively. There's one fairly obvious interpretation of what's happening with Twilight, but when you consider Equestria's peculiarities there are others as well. A lowish three-star rating here, possibly a smidge higher if whitespace stories are more your thing. ★★★
Pewter Medal, Horror
It Was a Beautiful tDay in Ponyville by gloamish
Twilight and Spike
G4; Horror; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
Damage to a vinyl record can cause the needle to skip from its groove, interrupting normal playback.
Oddly enough, this story is also an unsettling one focusing intensely on Twilight, but this time the formatting is more conventional. It's quickly clear that Twi isn't properly remembering things that have happened in the recent past which, together with the repetition of a simple phrase of the everyday, made me assume this was another "Twi has dementia" story. It's more original than that, though, with well judged escalation and an ending that hits hard precisely because of the lack of bangs and crashes. ★★★★
Pewter Medal, Horror
Jack of All Trades by TheDriderPony
Starlight
G4; Dark/Horror/Thriller; 1k words; Jul 2024; Everyone
At the eve of her demise, Starlight trusts her instincts and makes a dangerous gamble. Her wager? Everything.
You may read that shortdesc and think, "Again?!" It's hardly a novel setup in itself, is it? But here, we're right back in Season 5, with Starlight escaping from the villagers and the Manes. She hits on the idea of using the cutie marks she stole on herself – as the fic notes, we know a pony can at least temporarily have more than one mark, since Apple Bloom's cutie pox had that effect. It's a fascinating idea and one I haven't seen before, but I can't help thinking it's a bit too ambitious for a thousand words. One or two too many implications that there just isn't the room to even hint at. That said, this same author's Pool Boy (reviewed above) did all kinds of things in the same space, so I dunno. Still, I would love to see a version of this story that wasn't constrained by such a tight word count As it stands it's just a tad frustrating. Top-end two, though I acknowledge I may be being a mite harsh. ★★
As I've stated before, I'm spacing out the contest-winning fics to give other stories a chance over the coming weeks and stop things feeling too samey. Next time I'll be returning to the tried and tested format of five shortish fics. To wit:
One Sprout, Many Buds by Whinifree
"For I Am A Jelly God" by Posh
The Additional Alicorn Affair by PonyFate
Butter Up by GaPJaxie
The Darkest Day by Summer Knight
Honestly, for only being on the equivalent of the honourable mentions, this is a strong enough slate: we usually need to start getting to the stories that places to have that few two-stars and more than the odd four-star. There's even a few here I can see myself reading too (which, being honest, is rare for all but a select few thousand word contest stories). Looks like this contest's slate keeps getting better and better with each year!
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I think the lack of Experimental winners is part of the reason for that. The two fics here that were submitted to that category actually won recognition in another. I don't have an especially great record with Experimental fics, and the pewter medallists in that category are still to come.
DeleteThe only one of these I've read is "i" and... it did absolutely nothing for me. I didn't find it unsettling at all, and even ignoring that, my impression at the end was that nothing happened, that it had tried to survive on the gimmick alone (I had the impression, maybe erroneously, that it had also been submitted as Experimental) without ever actually telling a story. It wouldn't be the first time something just went over my head, so if there was a story, I missed it.
ReplyDeleteThe only other two winners I read probably won't come up for a while, and as they're both comedies, that's the genre most prone to very subjective reactions. I did like both, and I'll be interested to see if you did.
It's entirely possible I misinterpreted i, or even saw something in it that wasn't actually (meant to be) there. I did read it first on my phone, which preserved the whitespace but didn't get the greyscales right, and it definitely didn't do as much for me as it did second time round on the PC. The thing that is really starting to get on my nerves, though, is when fics do weird things with formatting in order to fool the word counter. That wasn't the case here.
DeleteAs an aside, I'm not entirely surprised I scored TheDriderPony's fic so differently from each other. I checked back how I'd rated the same author's three medallists in this contest in 2023, and there was one two-star rating, one three and one four.
ReplyDeleteWhich ones of those were comedies, if any? She's known somewhat more for comedies, but like I said, those by their nature will be more hit or miss with readers.
DeleteThe four was drama/sad (Her Mother's Daughter, Unfortunately).
DeleteThe three was slice of life (Peanut Gallery).
The two was comedy (What Are You Doing, Stepfish?).
Seems to fit your point quite well.
I enjoyed RB_'s fic quite a lot. It may not seem like it on first glance, what with the bitter-sweet tone and all, but that's what complete success looks like for Twilight.
ReplyDelete