Hey, Wildboots, thank you so much for stopping by!
The short and sweet is that I enjoyed these overall! I'm not familiar with the Craig Taylor plays, but I always love a little of the real world seeping into pokemon, and I love seeing something capital-L Literary being translated into pokefic! And Hoenn, no less! I love gen 3, and I also loved getting a refreshing change of pace: my rendition of Hoenn is very American-flavored and very, uh, on fire, so it was a treat to snack my way through these lighthearted and decidedly British morsels.
Thank you! Big fan of Gen 3 here also, and glad to hear that you managed to find some sustenance in these little snack-sized fic comestibles.
I'm only sad that the titles seem to imply that we'll only see each location once! Though I suppose there's nothing to stop you from doing "[town] 2" or revisitng characters. There should certainly be enough to occupy you in Hoenn for a while at least.
Locations will appear more than once throughout the project! Repeats are necessary since there don't seem to be at least 100 unique locations in Gen 3 Hoenn that I could find (and some I've omitted for being too niche or not interesting enough) so we'll be revisiting some places to make up the numbers. Towns and cities are the ones most likely to crop up more than once, given that they have the broadest scope in terms of potential different stories, characters and types of locales/businesses to set scenes in.
I'm afraid I don't plan on revisiting specific characters though, since the aim is very much to write one hundred absolutely unique plays that are all as distinct from each other as possible, so I'll be trying not to repeat characters, plots or scenarios. We'll see how successful I am in keeping with that as we progress, though!
3, 4, 5 - I sort of wanted one more ending line to take a firm stance or tie things off. Like, is the cacnea dead or not? My heart wants it to be snoring or something at the end, haha. Similarly, in 4 I wanted the nurse to turn to her coworkers after the guy leaves and make some kind of comment to help nudge us toward a firmer conclusion about his shady activities or to show us how common/uncommon that is. Like, "I'm glad I don't pay taxes!" is such a specific type of jerk and it paints an image ... but also in a lot of HCs, it would be valid for the clapback to be, "He knows that no one is taxed for this, right?" And last but not least, in 5 I think it's clear that she's not into Cole, but I'd love a final line either confirming that she is a sleep ... or letting us know that she's pretending very hard to be asleep.
It's very interesting reading these, as a question that's been on my mind throughout this project is "how much information is really necessary to show the reader, and what can I get away with not showing?" My goal with these plays is definitely to write them to be as lean and tight as possible with minimal fluff/fat, so I often do trim them down to their barest components for brevity's sake. With things like Lindsey/Cole, the intention was certainly to imply Lindsey feigning sleep as she stops responding to Cole's conversation prompts entirely and he's left prattling away on his own, unaware that she's now just flat-out ignoring him. I do agree with you on Play #4 though, and I think I could have maybe tweaked that a little to give a fuller picture of what was going on.
These early, early plays do lean a bit more on the shorter side and the ones I'm writing now hopefully feel a bit more fleshed out, but I will keep your comments in mind in future!
6 - This one stood out to me for not actually being tied to the place it's named for--this could be almost anywhere. The game titles are so delightfully over the top though, and I thought the ending line on this one was perfect. I absolutely want a look at Spinda Spreadsheet Simulator and Team Magma: Dream Wedding Brigade.
Glad you liked the game titles; I had a lot of fun coming up with those! The nature of the project means that not all plays will be heavily tied to their location (some towns and cities really are just normal settlements with very few distinguishing features) so yeah, some might be a wee bit more generic than those set in very specialised settings like Contest Halls or Herb Shops.
I am planning on releasing some fun bonus material once the project is finished though, and
Team Magma: Dream Wedding Brigade may well be making an appearance then. Watch this space!
7 - This is another one where I thought the best punches came around the middle rather than the end. But the concept is so good. Very Monty Python!
That's quite the compliment, thank you!
8 - I wonder what rumors fly around about the Rustboro gym! I'd love either some kind of confirmation that these rumors are pure, unrealistic fantasy OR that Rustboro gym trainers also get some kind of crazy benefits they take for granted. (Free cake? IDK, you tell me.)
That's very interesting - the rumours weren't meant to be fantastical in nature at all and were supposed to sound more on the mundane side! For reference, I was using the British system of holiday entitlements as a sort of guide, as full-time employees here get at least paid 28 days off a year (with many employers offering more days off as an extra bonus/incentives), so it felt suitably amusing to me that employees at Rustboro would be rhapsodising about other gyms getting 25, 27, etc days of annual leave, which would still be below the legal bare minimum in the UK. "Free pizza" and "pinball machine" also felt like easy shorthands for those sort of employee benefits that seem attractive at face value but are actually ways for upper management to try and appease workers while getting out of paying for employment benefits that actually really matter, such as robust sick pay, good pension contributions or thorough health and wellbeing support. Maybe I need to think a bit harder to ensure those sorts of distinctions are made clear enough so that they're not lost in translation for readers from other parts of the world.
19 - I feel like I need a little more information for this one to land. Like, is the principal fluttering around trying to fill silence because they're suspending the kid for practically nothing? Or are the parents silently exploding?
That's a fair point - maybe I didn't think enough about how clearly the whole scene might be portrayed to a new reader as I had all the component parts so clearly envisioned in my own head. Will keep that in mind for future also.
I'm not sure if I have one favorite but I did especially enjoy 5,7, 9, 12, 13, 14 & 17.
I'll drop by again when you've got another batch. 🎉
Lovely, thank you! Many thanks and gratitude for taking the time to read and comment, and hope you enjoy reading the rest as they come out, too. The next batch of five plays will be released imminently...
