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| All's Fair by Inkling | 6 Review(s) |
|---|---|
| Leaward | Reviewed Chapter: 12 on 9/2/2005 |
| I'd started reading this a while back and got distracted by real life. I love the author's notes at the bottom, I'll have to remember them when I'm writing my own tales -- if it's good enough for the professor to ignore potatoes and pipeweed, then we can have a little licence too. Anyway, I wanted to say I'm really enjoying this story, and I think you've made a lovely tale of Frodo and Hyacinth along the lines of Cyrano de Bergerac but you've brought it alive with incredible detail based on the 'canon' of real life. Wonderfully done, Inkling. Author Reply: Thanks Lea! I'm glad you rediscovered this and enjoyed the rest of it, and appreciate your letting me know. I remember the note you sent me way back when I first starting posting it...ever since I can't think about Clive without thinking of your dad! *snicker!* | |
| good_one_pip | Reviewed Chapter: 12 on 5/30/2005 |
| That's absolutely hilarious! Pipeweed was never meant to grow in Buckland, I guess! :) Author Reply: In his own way Rory’s as much of a dreamer as Frodo, and their fortunes rise and fall together in this story. Glad you liked it! | |
| Larner | Reviewed Chapter: 12 on 5/27/2005 |
| I agree--some Power apparently has it in for Rory's tobacco crop. Hilarious! And love the making up between Frodo and Merry. Author Reply: Well, “’Twasn’t natural,” after all. Thanks Larner, glad you enjoyed it! | |
| Ariel | Reviewed Chapter: 12 on 5/22/2005 |
| Use of the paper wasp as a form of natural pest control is accurate too…and they really do chew up the worms and feed them to their young! Who’d a thought…? Actually, the use of biological controls is well documented as a practice and goes back into prehistory. Those old farmers knew their stuff! Today we employ biological controls on all sorts of non-native invasive pests. If you had to deal with the gypsy moth in the 80's you will notice that you don't (so much) any more. That is a biological control success story. The moths were an asian import so we had to import the predators for it - in this case a fungus and a bacterium - both from its native range. We do this all the time in forestry. Right now, the pest we are trying to control is the hemlock wooly adelgid - though the little bugs we are trying to breed to eat them are proving a challenge. They really are so selective they will ONLY eat hemlock wooly adelgid and so we have to raise a lot of the pest to raise the bugs! LOL! Thanks for all your hard work and attention to detail on this story - it shows and it is appreciated! Author Reply: Those old farmers knew their stuff! Yes, they did! Things really went downhill after the Industrial Revolution, IMO... and so we have to raise a lot of the pest to raise the bugs! LOL! LOL is right!! There's a certain bizarre logic at work there... | |
| Andrea | Reviewed Chapter: 12 on 5/21/2005 |
| Merry looked at him, wide-eyed. "Did you adopt me?" he asked. Frodo smiled. "Yes, I suppose you could say that." I just loved this conversation! It's really a shame that Frodo never had children. He would have been a wonderful father. Don't worry about the New World crop. I think the pumpkins fit in perfectly well along with the potatoes and the pipeweed. Though, pipeweed at Brandy Hall, "’Twasn’t natural!" ;-) Author Reply: Thanks Andrea…that was one of those conversations that just sort of wrote itself (I wish it would happen more often!). And yes, wouldn’t he have been a great father? Wise, kind, gentle…sigh. As for the pipeweed, guess that was just one anachronism too many for the “powers that be”… Poor Rory just didn’t heed the signs! (See my reply to Ariel below for more on this…) | |
| Ariel | Reviewed Chapter: 12 on 5/20/2005 |
| I just KNEW it was going to hit those tobacco plants! Yes, I know corn and pumpkins are New World crops…but since Tolkien didn’t worry about the presence of tobacco and potatoes in Middle Earth, I’m not going to worry either! ROTFLMAO! Considering my area of expertise, this little 'problem' with Tolks always made me giggle. I think you are right not to worry about it. Tolks was no ecologist, just an astute observer, and M-e's ecology has all the earmarks of 1930's Britian, where non-native, invasive species were pretty common. Heck, he even wrote a locomotive into his fic if you recall. If Tolks wasn't getting his panties in a bunch about the ecology, I don't see why others should get terribly bent out of shape when people write fireflies into a fic. Author Reply: he even wrote a locomotive into his fic if you recall Yes, LOL! That’s about an invasive a species as you can get! ;) However, you’ll be glad to know that the tobacco diseases and pests are carefully researched (hey, even anachronisms deserve to be accurately presented!). I fell in love with all the odd and yet, somehow, very hobbity names (spotted wilt, black shank) and wanted to use as many as possible. The number of afflictions—10—was quite deliberate: the same as the number of plagues to strike Egypt in the Bible! Use of the paper wasp as a form of natural pest control is accurate too…and they really do chew up the worms and feed them to their young! Who’d a thought…? Thanks Ariel! | |