Ponyfic Roundup 447: Treefics 2

Read it Later story count: 97 (nc)

Words read this week: 12,278

It's time for the second roundup of fics entered for Mockingbirb's Arboreal Yearnings Contest I. As happened last week, I've managed to read and review five of them, although my total word count is still very low. Here are today's stories:

His Tree by EndlessPossibilities58
If You Go Down In The Woods Today by SilverNotes
A Fir-ly Difficult Choice by Mokoma
Branch Shaking by Moproblems Moharmoney
A Calming in the Forest by GurbangulyBerdimuhamedow

★: 0 | ★★: 4 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Signal boost: The "New Blood" Contest

Here's a ponyfic writing contest for which I'm not eligible but which I'm still very pleased to see. Organised by Bean's Writing Group (of which I confess I know very little), the "New Blood" Contest is open only to accounts created in 2020 or later¹ (and not since the contest was announced) and that have never reached 100 followers. This all sounds intriguing!
¹ Which have to be authors' primary accounts, as alts are explicitly prohibited.

The rules section drags on a bit, so I won't try to summarise it here – the link above will let you read it for yourself. Two highlights, though, are that this is for short fics – the maximum word count is just 4,444 – and that the main prompt is "A Secret Life". There are monetary prizes on offer, plus a sprinkling of bonus challenges. I shall be keeping an eye on this one!

Ponyfic Roundup 446: Treefics 1

Read it Later story count: 97 (+3)

Words read this week: 12,184

Today I am setting out on my reviews of fics entered into the Arboreal Yearnings Contest I that Mockingbirb ran recently. I wrote We Are the Everfree for it, as it happens, though obviously I won't be reviewing that one! I have managed five fics in the spotlight for this first edition – but they're so short that it's an extremely low weekly word count for me, as I'm not yet quite back in the mood for reading extensively.

Trees Don't Think by Starcoder
Séance by Muramasa
A Tree in the Park by Lingo
Immortal Tree by Bad Dragon
Forest Dryad by Twilight_Shimmer

★: 0 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Okay, here's the plan (at the moment)

Given what I shall refer to here only as Events, there will not be the usual Ponyfic Roundup tomorrow. I doubt this comes as a huge surprise. However, you won't be waiting another week! What I shall do is to make a post on Friday – and this post will go up even if I only have a few stories to write about rather than the expected nine. Obviously the total word count is likely to be absurdly small, but let's see how it goes.

On a more personal note, I am extremely grateful to those of you who have given your kind wishes, whether on the last post or in other ways. That means a very great deal. Thank you.

I am back

Hello again, everyone. I'm back from the Scottish Highlands. It's been an eventful week. Good thing: the first four days were spectacular, with glorious weather. Bad thing: I was then in a car crash in a car also containing my parents. Good thing: the safety devices did their thing and everyone is physically okay. Bad thing: the car is too badly damaged to repair and will need to be replaced. Good thing: everybody (five of us) on the holiday is now safe at their homes.

I've put the "meta" tag on this post because the echoes from what happened may mean I have to change my posting schedule here. It all depends how I feel as time goes on. I can only suggest you all keep an eye for posts as and when they come. I will be writing about ponyfic, since reading that is calming as it's about a different world without cars. (So don't expect as many EqG fic reviews for a while.) I shall stop waffling now!

Away for a short time

Because of a holiday, I'll be away from Louder Yay for a week or so now. I haven't scheduled anything to go up in my absence, so you can all have a nice rest from my meandering blathering. :D See you all later!

A little bit of deadlink-fixing

The other day I posted a short article about theFriendship is Magic Season 6 trailer, which – surprisingly enough – I started with an embed of said trailer. However, that has now been made private! Seems a pretty weird thing to do seven years after it was posted, but possibly the privating had nothing to do with MLP and this was just collateral damage. I don't know and probably never will. What is important is that I've now fixed the post by linking to a different, working upload. :)

Ponyfic Roundup 445: Spotlight on The Party Hasn't Ended

Read it Later story count: 94 (+2)

Words read this week: 56,037

As I've touched on before, I'm off on holiday in a few days' time, and that will mean a week without a Ponyfic Roundup. Here's a Spotlight for you before I leave. It's a pretty old story, and one which I don't think I've even heard anyone mention for many years now. It got 15,000 views in total, though, and made the Pony Fiction Vault, so I can't be the only person who's read the thing! Let's see how it goes...

The Party Hasn't Ended by butterscotchsundae
Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Big Mac and Caramel
G4; Romance/Dark/Adventure/Comedy/Sad; 56k words; Jan 2012*; Teen

Pinkie's unrequited love for Dash precipitates an adventure across time, space and dreams.

Five genre tags? You can't do that any more! You could in 2012, though – and in fact this story wasn't new then, *first appearing on EqD in April 2011! In essence, though, this is a PinkieDash shipfic, which ends predictably. With a lot, and I mean a lot of other shipping. Good thing: bar rather too much POV-jumping, it's pretty easy reading. The prose doesn't stand out especially, but nor does it do so for bad reasons. It slides past smoothly most of the time. Bad thing: it feels very clichéd. That's a bit unfair: the story is so old that it more or less pioneered some ponyfic clichés. Even worse thing: a blatant reference to another fanfic that has no business here at all. Another bad thing: a terrible last few pages which for me ruin the otherwise generally okay tone of the story. So no, I haven't dug up some long-buried gem. It's far from the worst shipfic I've read, but unless you're really into both PinkieDash and oldfics, there's probably not much for you here. Two, and not that high in the band either. ★★

There will be big spoilers beyond this point, so proceed at your own risk.

The Thousand Words Contest returns!

Many of you will remember the highly successful Thousand Words Contest that Bicyclette ran last year. I have particularly happy memories of it because it got me to publish something again after a full year's gap – and the story that I wrote for the contest, Echoes of a Song, is one I'm really quite happy with. I'd been thinking about writing another thousand-worder at some point, but now I have an extra incentive because...

...the contest is back! A Thousand Words Contest II is set up in a very similar way, but with a few differences that make it important to read the rules in full. (Okay, that applies to any contest.) There are still five categories, but not the same five as last time. In the new contest, they are: Drama, Slice of Life, Horror, Comedy (all of which require the respective Fimfiction genre tag) and Experimental. As before, fics have to be exactly 1,000 words on the title card.

Edit: please read the comments to see a clarification on the rules, but the important bit is: "someone can submit the same fic to multiple categories, but only one fic can be submitted in a category. so Comedy/Slice of Life can be submitted to both Comedy and Slice of Life, but if the author wants to submit a second story they would have to pick between Horror/Drama/Experimental."

The contest is now open, and its closing date is 30th July at 7:59pm ET. (BST is five hours ahead, so 59 minutes after midnight for those of us in this time zone.) The other rules I'll leave to folks to read for themselves – though note especially rule 11 on Bicyclette's DNI policy, which bars any account which features published foalcon from entering. As you might imagine, this is not a rule I object to! Depending on how many entries there are, I may well do a Ponyfic Roundup series on them after judging is over.

While I can't absolutely 100% Pinkie Promise, I most definitely intend to write at least one entry for the new contest. What it will be remains to be seen!