Thirty Minute Pony Stories
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bombasticbookman The Bombastic Bookman -
donnys-boy Pony Shipping with Donny's Boy -
kyronea Kyronea's Randomness -
norsepony NorsePony's Mead Hall -
obselescence Planned Obselescence -
professorpiggy A Study in Nonsense -
rwlart RWL's Daily Art -
theobscurereference Weird crushes on Pokemon: the blog
Smoke. Too much smoke. Granted, even a little smoke wasn’t the best sign in a library. It’s even worse of a sign in a lab in a library. And, as mentioned before, this was more than a little smoke. If it could this to everything around it, then what did it do to the one-
Focus, Twilight. Observe your surroundings. Make sure there’s no immediate dangers. Panicking and getting emotional helps no one. No fires. That was good. That beam didn’t set anything aflame. Hopefully it hadn’t opened up a portal for some hellspawn. But there was a severe lack of demonic chanting growls. Now where was-
“Owlicious! Owlicious!” Spike shouted, before falling to a small bout of coughs.
“Spike! Follow my voice!” Spike must’ve been close, as he made it to her side in seconds. “Where’s Owlicious?”
“I don’t know!’ he exclaimed back, voice panicked. “When that flash of light came out of that experiment, he pushed me out of the way! It’s my fault! If I had been faster I-”
“Don’t blame yourself, Spike. It’s not your fault. It wasn’t your experiment. It was mine,” she said, eyes lowering to the floor out of guilt. Her eyes quickly refocused on spike, alight with determination. “But we can’t spend time assigning blame to ourselves when Owlicious needs our help.”
“Yeah. Yeah! You’re right!” Spike bounced with renewed purpose. He cupped his claws together and bellowed, “Owlicious! Owlicious buddy!” Twilight joined in as they shuffled through the thinning smoke.
Finally, they were answered with a “Hoo?”
The Prompt: Your mind makes it real.
“Mind Over Mining” by nikkisartcorner
“A Chicken and a Dictionary” by Epsilon
“Fairy Tale” by Fairy Dust Bunny
“Pinkie Pie vs Unicorn Magic” by Shutaro
“Daring Dash” by ShatteredScribbles
“Letting Fear Get the Better of You” by DerFurShur
Stop me if this gets too complicated. The mind of a pony may be the most powerful tool of a pony. We have muscles, or our horns, but those body parts won’t do anything if they don’t have the mind to tell them what to do, right? Our minds are thus what shape the smaller reality around us; our society. Our society is formed by the actions and words our, and our ancestors’, minds decided on. There are cases where since ponies’ minds believed they were dying in a dream, they died in real life. So, our minds affect our personal reality as well. How far does it go? Our minds create dreams and their worlds, what if it goes beyond that? In short,
The Prompt: Your mind makes it real.
This is a thirty minute prompt, which means you have a thirty minute time limit in which to write your story. (The thirty minute limit includes writing time only and does not include pre-writing thinking or planning.) The submission box will be open for six hours and will close at 6 p.m. Pacific/9 p.m. Eastern/1 a.m. GMT.
Also, if you don’t happen to have a Tumblr account, please submit via e-mail to thirtyminuteponies@gmail.com. (Tumblr will let you submit without an account, but that system is very buggy and tends to eat submissions instead of giving them to us.)
See, that wasn’t so complicated, was it?
The Prompt: Funny thing about black and white. You mix it together and you get grey. And it doesn’t matter how much white you try and put back in, you’re never gonna get anything but grey.
These are the collected stories from last Saturday’s prompt, Prompt #290.
“Hidden behind the Grey” by Stagmanparty
“Knowledge is a Bitter Fruit” by HungryLibrary
Bookman’s Comments
Nice story, Stagman! It’s an inspired way to take the prompt, and the look at the altered universe caused by Twi’s magic and how it changed history was intriguing, and something I wished the show had took a deeper look at it. Seeing them stuck with the wrong destinies was disheartening, but I liked how the ending showed that there was still hope. Keep up the good work!
“Well. Isn’t this a rather outrageous predicament? It seems we’ve reached an impasse, my dear Princess.”
She ignored him.
With stoic intensity, well-developed and exercised, she ignored his venomous words.
“But I suppose this was to be expected. You and me, standing off before the ultimate prize. Funny how everything has come full-circle, don’t you agree?”
She could feel it. As sure as she could feel the needles prick at her legs, she could feel the flickering candle of anger slowly flourish. Yet, she stood frozen, secretly hoping that her silence would get a rise from the detestable cretin grinning at her.
“Not feeling very talkative today, my sweet? I suppose that’s fair. After all, you never were much of a conversationalist… not like your dear sister.”
And there it was, the candle lost within the hot flash of rage. She cursed herself, having exposed such a childish fit through a crinkle of the nose.
“Ah, there it is! I was wondering when I’d strike a nerve. Perhaps now you can see the futility of your intervention. You cannot defeat me, nor could Celestia.”
“No… You have caused enough refuse! On my honor, I will end your campaign!”
He laughed. Oh that terrible, terrible laugh.
This world is wrong, but only he can see it. Genius is so often unappreciated in its time. Is that not what they say? He wouldn’t know. He had only been released from his prison a while ago, and this was the first time he had been… persuaded to try and live with the ponies rather than above them. Of course, it’s cool when Celestia rules over them! No respect, I tell ya, no respect!
Only… Only it wasn’t. Cool, that is. It was a perfect temperature, just that even mix of hot and cold designed for maximum enjoyment. Just as it had been scheduled. In a few months, it would be annoyingly hot, just as scheduled. A few months after that, snowy and cold, just as scheduled. But not too hot. Not too cold. Just enough to help the land be juuuuuuustt right.
Juuuuuust right meaning boring, obviously. Discord found himself wondering if it was this feeling that caused Celly and Luna to decline his offer all those eons ago, when he offered them the chance to rule with him, to subcumb to the chaos. The feeling of having sold out. The feeling of… having compromised his morals. Huh. So I do have morals! In your face, Twilight!
But really. What has he been reduced to? A trump card. For whatever big threat comes along that the alicorns can’t handle for the ponies. His little jokes were all he had left of his old self. Because this world is filth and weak and corrupted(but then, he can’t really be the judge of corrupting things, can he?). Every last thing had to be controlled. Animals had to be tamed, most of their savagery eroded away as they grew dependent on ponies for survival. If the ponies were to disappear, most of the animals would starve, yet the short sighted fools probably haven’t considered that at all!
Twilight blasted back another barrage of sludge , but that only granted her a short reprieve. In a few seconds there’d be another attack, from above or from below or-
She heard a whooshing sound from behind her, and sidestepped it before letting out another magical zap. She couldn’t do this much longer. These things were too hard to see in this dark cave, and it was way too closed in. There was little room to fly, and these things were fast. Twilight was by no means a close range expert. She needed to get out. They needed to get out. No matter how annoying he was, it was important he survived too. Where was he, now that she thought abou-
“Boo,” whispered someone into her ear. Twilight jumped, and Discord laughed heartily.
The prompt: I resolve to be noticed.
And thus ends another theme week here at TMP! We hope y’all had fun, and best of luck keeping those New Year’s resolutions!
“Dressing the Part” by Versulia
“Quiet Lesson” by Stagmanparty
“The First Wonderbolt,” by rwlart
“Preparing for Her Big Day” by Commissar-Rarity
“We Got A Deal” by icemoonbankai
Your stories will be up shortly.
Yes! I’ve got it! You guys didn’t say anything about the change being about me on the inside and all that gooey mushy stuff! And let’s face it! I don’t get the attention I deserve a lot of the time! Like with the Wonderbotls, obviously. Even though I’ve done so much, I feel like I’m flying in place. Or with the town. You can save all the lives you can, but you get a little cocky and suddenly you’re the bad guy… Er, I mean. I’m just too perfect and you know, cool to worry about emotinal junk, ya know? So, here it is!
The prompt: I resolve to be noticed.
In the cool way, ok? Not in any lameo “I want people to see the real me,” junk, ok? I was totally gonna go with Trixie’s idea of “I resolve to make other ponies see my perfection,” though a little edited, cause woah, arrogant much? But these mods said it was apparently “too long” and “limiting.” But I guess if you want to do that emotional gooey junk where I’m or somepony else are accepted for who I am or who they are and stuff, I can’t exactly stop you, can I? Not that I want those or anything. Um, oh, look, the rules!
This is a thirty minute prompt, which means you have a thirty minute time limit in which to write your story. (The thirty minute limit includes writing time only and does not include pre-writing thinking or planning.) The submission box will be open for six hours and will close at 8PM Pacific Time, 9PM Mountain Time, 10PM Central Time, 11PM Eastern Time, and 4AM GMT.
Also, if you don’t happen to have a Tumblr account, please submit via e-mail to thirtyminuteponies@gmail.com. (Tumblr will let you submit without an account, but that system is very buggy and tends to eat submissions instead of giving them to us.)
Now, the one requirement I do have is your stories gotta be awesome. Don’t let me down, writers! Go!
The Prompt: (S)He who fights monsters…
Stories are listed in the order in which they were received, and I am telling you this because I haven’t had my coffee or breakfast yet and am not awake enough to be clever or original. But that’s my fault, not the stories’, so you should totally read them.
“To Prevent All Other Breaking” by Cynewulf
“Never Ending Fight” by Shingo
I didn’t mean to become like this… I just wanted justice. I hear their cries every night in my dreams. Where did I go wrong?
This is a thirty minute prompt, which means you have a thirty minute time limit in which to write your story. (The thirty minute limit includes writing time only and does not include pre-writing thinking or planning.) The submission box will be open for six hours and will close at 7:00 PM PDT, 8:00 PM MDT, 9:00 PM CDT, and 10:00 PM EDT.
I fought monsters…. Should’ve known….. After all….
The Prompt: (S)He who fights monsters…
Forgive me…
(Season 3 Episode 3 spoilers)
Dear Elements of Harmony,
You probably don’t remember me. From what I’ve learned, you’ve taken out way bigger and scarier things. We were probably just another Sunday to you. Wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, eat some cake, take out some “threat”, eat more cake, sleep. No time to think about what you’ve done. No, no. I told myself not to be a bitter pie. That’s not what I’m trying to do.
I should start over. Heh, even after all this, after all I’ve experienced, I’m still rambling. You always end up like your parents, right? One way or another. You remember a pond inside a cave deep inside the Everfree Forest. Full of magicky… magic? Pinkie made some clones? You took care of them all. Quickly. Easily. Practically. Or so you thought.
You missed one.
Surprise!
It’s a stupid risk, even for….. me? Pinkie? Whatever the heck I am? But I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep living without knowing. Without finding out why. Why did we need to go? What did we do? What was wrong with us? We were your children, Pinkie. You created us, told us what was important, what to do. Fun, fun, fun. We did what you asked. And you reacted with the worst thing ever. Worse than hatred. Apathy. As your children died around you, you didn’t care at all. Why? Why weren’t we good enough for you? What did we do wrong?
Dear Daughter,
You know I’ve never been the best with emotions. Your father was always the one for that. Please look after him for me. I know he’ll act like everything’s fine, that he’s accepted it, but you know your father. Better to lie through a smile and a joke to keep others happy than bring them down with the truth. I’m sure you’re used to that from your mare. Tell Pinkie Pie that I loved her as my own, and that there is no pony more worthy to have the love of my daughter.
I should get back on track. If you’re reading this, then I am obviously dead. I hope that you have reacted to this with the appropriate amount of tears, rather than dancing on my grave and sprouting magical fireworks. I can see you in my head, gasping that you would never do that, or maybe scowling at how distasteful I am, but come now my dear Twilight. You know it was funny. You’re probably smiling the slightest bit, in that cute way when you’re trying not to indulge the silliness of those around you. I love you so, you know that? It is for that reason that I must say this.
