'The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.'
Rarity and Twilight Sparkle chat over a game of chess. The stakes, as always, are a little obscure.
This story is part of the First and Only Raritwi Bomb. A week's worth of stories and art all centered around FimFic's beloved Purple Girlfriends. If you liked it, the last story posted is SigmasonicX's RariTwi: Love is War, and you can find a master list of all Raritwi Bomb content on Monochromatic's Blog, here.
Have a lovely day!
There was an additional challenge when it came to writing this: refrain from using adjectives or adverbs where possible, so if there are any outstanding ones, please let me know.
Cover image is cropped from Mundschenk85's 'Good Move'.
Good story. Twilight getting overwhelmed by Rarity is always fun. Guessing Rarity made illegal moves that Twilight failed to notice when overthinking.
I liked the grandiose narration, especially as it increased in scope as Twilight came closer to losing. However, I admit I did find myself skimming over some of it as it went on.
9872878
Merci~ and it’s understandable, I suppose. It does lose a little steam near the end, I agree.
It’s a fairly experimental piece though, and despite its occasional clumsiness, I’m quite happy with it. The two main aims were: to not use any adjectives or adverbs; and to essentially render Modernist poetry (particularly that of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound) into pony prose :) The first was technically challenging, the second more so from an aesthetic point of view.
Outstanding works that influenced the writing style are Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ (hence the setting and the title, both of which come from the poem’s second movement); ‘Gerontion’ and ‘The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock’ for a great deal of the imagery; Pound’s ‘Homage to Sextus Propertius’ for some of the lines; as well as a couple of scattered works like ‘Macbeth’ or Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ for an incidental line or image here or there.
Hopefully it was still an interesting read overall :)
You've very vividly evoked a sense of desperately treading water through an ocean of metaphors to glimpse the sweet and simple scene taking place just above the surface, and I found it bizarrely effective. I can't say I've ever been able to really appreciate massive and intricate poems like The Waste Land, but I think you captured, for me at least, that same feeling of being just a little bit behind and lacking just a touch of context to understand any given line, so hopefully you can count that as a sign of success.
Regardless, it's definitely an interesting piece.
It was indeed a touch heavy on metaphor, simile and purple prose. Or rather, to use the language of the story, I found myself adrift on a tyrian sea of metaphor, buffeted by byzantium winds and lost in a desert oasis of carmine simile, dying me wine dark with incantations of magenta literata.
Now, as I have run out of obscure purples I shall take my leave.😝
An interesting piece, though.
Felt like I was choking on a thesaurus, but the ending was fun. Nice work (solid Shakespear references) :D
Some delightful prose went into this! Adorable and nicely done.
A bit over the top in regards to metaphor.
10102100
That is the point of a piece like this, where dramatic action is actually minimal, yes? The burden of creating narrative tension therefore falls to language (and thus poetic technique) being exercised in a deliberately baroque manner to create drama and colour through imagery, hyperbole, and imaginary landscapes alone.
10102526
Fair though I was beginning to question Twi’s sanity/if this was a Discordian fever dream at a few points.
10102769
Fair’s fair, some narrative styles do end up lending themselves to that impression, like James Joyce’s Ulysses or other High Modernist novels.
It turns out Rarity has a portable Stockfish engine hidden in the novel pages.
glorious. As a small published poet I must say your meter is fantastic!! Intentional or instinctual the ebb n flow was Shakespearean and I want for nothing in the recanting of this tale. Thou mayst have swapped a few names and a hoof and hand. Lo this be a monument to sapphic songs.