Bicyclette's "A Thousand Words Contest" really did produce a lot of interesting entries. Here I look at the first five of the ten Bronze Medallists. You'll note that two of them are by the same author – the rules allowed you to enter a maximum of one fic in each of the five possible categories (Fluff, Angst, Humo(u)r, Grim and Experimental) if you wished, and some authors took advantage of this. A pretty solid week, I'm happy to say. Can't really quibble with the judges here.
Everybody Knows by The Red Parade
How to throw yourself at the ground and miss by Axolotl222
A Stitch (Or Nine) Saves Thine by TheDriderPony
Exploiting Equestrian Generosity Through Unlimited Cupcakes by Gallus T. Griffon by Meteor_Mirage
Per My Last Email by The Red Parade
★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 2 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
Everybody Knows by The Red Parade
Roseluck
G4; Sad; 1k words; Mar 2022; Teen
I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU
Angst, as that short description may suggest. I've noticed over the years that poor Rose seems to feature in a lot of fics about emotional trauma, for reasons I'm not sure of. So it is again here, as her intrusive thoughts take centre stage while she's alone (or is she?) in her flower shop. In this case, those thoughts are not a subtle nudge, they're an ever-harder sledgehammer. The use of increasing font size won't be to every reader's taste, as it hammers you over the head to get across what's happening to Rose, which though effective does risk feeling like it's the author doing the bludgeoning and not the... ghost. Don't expect all the answers by the end, though there are plenty of possibilities to ponder. ★★★
How to throw yourself at the ground and miss by Axolotl222
Zipp and Queen Haven
G5; Slice of Life; 1k words; Apr 2022; Everyone
Or that time Zipp jumped out a window as a filly
G5! Inspired by a Tell Your Tale episode! Title a nod to Hitchhiker's! This Fluff medallist had several interesting points before I even started reading it. I enjoyed it, too: it's cute in the way good fluffy filly stories should be, and the characterisation worked very nicely for me, Zipp's especially so. Better than it has in much of Tell Your Tale itself so far, if I'm honest. Nice little pun at the end, and a keeper as far as G5 stories are concerned. ★★★
A Stitch (Or Nine) Saves Thine by TheDriderPony
Rarity and Sweetie Belle
G4; Dark/Comedy/Slice of Life; 1k words; Mar 2022; Teen (Gore)
Sweetie Belle is... special. The kind of special that needs unique care and attention. The kind that creates all sorts of hard-to-solve problems. But Rarity always rises to the task. Because she's her sister. And big sisters fix things.
Grim in a T-rated fic (the contest discouraged, though didn't outright ban, M-rated entries) was quite a challenge. This is comedy grimdark, too, which is quite something. Sweetie cannot feel pain and so is forever getting herself injured, and Rarity uses her skills to patch her up. This is not a metaphor. The comedy comes from the steady escalation of Sweetie's injuries, but that [Gore] tag is at least somewhat warranted so keep that in mind. The premise that Rarity is doing this at least in part to avoid medical bills doesn't have such resonance for us non-US readers, and I'm not really convinced that Equestria uses the American system. That aside, though, this is remarkably fun for a grimdark. High three. ★★★
Exploiting Equestrian Generosity Through Unlimited Cupcakes by Gallus T. Griffon by Meteor_Mirage
Gallus, Sandbar, Smolder, Rarity and Pinkie
G4; Comedy/Random; 1k words; May 2022; Teen
In which Gallus learns that cupcakes aren't meant to be trifled with.
Yep, it's a kind of school essay that we have now in the Humo(u)r category. In here we have ruminations on the nature of Equestrian society, we have sex jokes that are actually funny, we even have an uncommon ship (GallBar) made to work. Add to that little throwaway references to multiple genders and a great narrative voice and this is a winner. A shame the ending is the least interesting part of the fic, and the little bits of coloured text don't really add anything, but the rest is so much fun that it's a comfortable recommendation anyway. ★★★★
Per My Last Email by The Red Parade
Wallflower Blush and Strawberry Sunrise
G4 EqG; Romance/Comedy/Random; 1k words; May 2022; Teen
Hi, I'm still waiting on those expense reports for November. Please get those in. Thanks!
Finally for this week, Experimental. This fic is written as an exchange of emails; there's some minor formatting to that effect but nothing important you'll miss if you read offline. Romantic comedy via electronic comms isn't a new idea, so I'm not sure how experimental this fic really is, but as a story it's very entertaining. Expenses containing "$1.50 for a candy bar I bought because I was depressed. It wasn’t very good", for example, is such a perfect line. There is an apparent 420 joke, and I find those really tedious, but fortunately it's only a passing reference. The rest of it is a whole lot of fun, enough so for it to shade into the fours. ★★★★
Next time, as you'd expect, I'll be reviewing the other five Bronze Medallists.
oh man, if you find 420 jokes tedious, just wait till you find out what they've done with 69 ;D
ReplyDeleteSometimes I'm half-tempted to take off one star for every "Nice" joke, so if you ever see a fic that scores minus 27, you'll know why... ;)
Deleteokay, but what if it scored -69...?
DeleteI would be tempted to take off an extra star, but as that would be unprofessional I would list it in a different base or something. :P
DeleteI don't know how to feel about this contest NOT having a rule saying that a given author can only place once (meaning their best entry places, and thereafter others aren't considered in the rankings), which you would expect to be a given. Maybe they thought limiting each author to one entry per category would be enough? Evidently not, given the large amount of double dipping (or even quintuple-dipping).
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I took do not care for 420 jokes. Or jokes to do with that other number Present Perfect mentions. Or responses to that number.
Seems a solid-ish roster, as one would expect so from the contest's top fifth of fics.
It was certainly an interesting rule, but so far at least there seems to be a good range of authors in the featured positions, so I'm not too bothered. If one person had won every Gold, then yeah, that might be more of a problem.
DeleteI'm with you on the second para. I don't especially find them offensive, I just find them extremely boring. Some memes roll around to being funny again through being massively overused. For me, at least, this one really does not. It's just tedious.
Pity, no 5-star fics this time. Course, they can't all be Womb!
ReplyDeleteStill, overall there were quite a lot of 3-star fics and a fair share of 4-star ones across the lot you covered. I suppose when there are almost 170 fics, it's predominantly the absolute cream of the crop that gets this far. A lot across the lot that looks great, even if I can see myself reading very little of it – it's hard for 1K fics to really grab me these days. But I remain glad for the contest and its continued success, even if it absolutely cannot come anywhere close to this output next year.
Also, for all the people that signed up, a lot of people have repeat performances in the top ranks. Wonder what that says about them, their skill level, or the contest…
Beyond a Boundary by The Cloptimist
Is 11 days between fic publication and review the quickest you've ever gotten to a fic? Probably not, and I doubt there's a reliable way of checking, but it's bloody fast either way! Explainably so, given the cricket gimmick.