Welcome to 2024, folks! I hope it's a good year for everyone, whether 2023 treated you kindly or not. We're back to the usual 150-word limit this month, and so please remember not to go over that! (Well, not if you want your entry to be eligible, anyway...) If everyone's recovered from all the Auld Lang Syne-ing, then let's get cracking:

Here are the full rules.
Please use this word counter.

You'll note that Rule 6 accommodates G5 entries. Since this means that an active generation is permitted, please bear in mind Rule 9 on spoilers. As always, comments are welcome in the relevant thread.

Remember, there is no prize, as such, for this contest -- but if you win, you will be able to choose the prompt for the next contest. You'll also get a mention on the group's front page. It will, however, be a 2024 mention, which is one higher than anyone managed last year, so for the first month at least you'll be special! Anyway...

Prompt: "Cue the Fireworks!" (selected by EileenSaysHi)
Rating: E or T
Word limit: 150
Closing date: Sunday 21st January 2024, 11:59 pm UK time (world clock)

Please reply to this post with your entry. This makes it easier for me to keep track. Please do not leave feedback until after the closing date.

Entries are now open! Have fun!

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Happy New Year Everyone!!!!

Fluttershy wasn’t a big fan of fireworks. They were chaotic, noisy, and often spectated by crowds just as tumultuous.

Of course, that didn’t mean there was nothing she liked about them. The way they flew and burst into vibrant flickering colors was something she always marveled at. She just wished the harsh pops and bangs didn’t accompany each burst.

Pinkie had invited the girls to watch the Canterlot Square New Year’s Celebration however, and Fluttershy resolved to bear the ceremony for her friends. For Pinkie.

She was surprised then, that when entering her pink friend’s car, there were things already in her seat: a box of earplugs and a pair of earmuffs adorned with purple flowers.

Realizing what they were, Fluttershy smiled gratefully at Pinkie, who simply smiled and winked back. She inspected the gifts, trying them on.

Tonight she could enjoy the fireworks and her friends’ company in peace.

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“Princess Celestia,” Rainbow Dash reported. “I nailed those posters, no sweat. Twilight whined that fireworks shouldn’t be capitalized, but I told her it’s okay for awesome things to be capitalized.”

“You are correct,” Celestia said. ”Twilight is wrong.”

“Booyah! Looking forward to the awesome fireworks.”

“Oh, err… You are Fireworks from now on.”

“Wait, what‽” Fireworks exclaimed.

“Due to budget concerns, we had to… ‘adjust’ the fireworks this year.”

“Adjust how?”

“You will have to squeeze yourself into this shiny, multi-color furtight bodysuit and wear it from now on.”

“But I already have to wear this itchy Wonderbolt uniform!” Fireworks rubbed one encased foreleg against the other.

“Indeed, you will have to wrap this one on top.”

“What kind of sick…”

Celestia cut her off, “Guards, help her out!” She then watched the struggling mare. “I am looking forward to your awesome rainbooms on tomorrow’s celebration, my loyal Fireworks.”

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I cough, blood spilling out of my lips as I claw my way forward.

Scraaaape….

Everything hurts. My horn, my wings, even my mane feels like it’s in agony.

Scraaaape….

Boom! Thud!

I hear my sister outside, whaling upon the doors with her magic. Each crash and each boom added another dent, the hard metal buckling inward.

Scraaaape….

Bang! Bam!

Cough, splatter, drip….

I wasn’t long for this world. My sister knew that. Her last attack had severed my hind legs as I reached this small haven in the command room, one front leg already broken to smithereens.

“Not long now….”

Scraaaape….

I was just out of reach of it. Almost to the red glow of salvation.

Crack! Kerblam!

The door blew into the room.

Scraaaape…. Push….

My sister entered to see my hoof press down on the button. I looked up to her with a delirious grin.

“Boo-”

-oom!

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I've always had a love for the magical, medieval fantasies. They tend to play out the same way, but there's so much passion being placed in them. Constructing a functional society, showing entirely new concepts for creatures and challenges, even the characters who're bold and devoted are put to the test in some tight scenarios.

Recently, I've been getting into Record of Lodoss War, and it's not any different from many traditional takes on the subject, but... just once... I wish these stories did more than just have the heroes gawking during those climatic moments of peril.

Opaline laughs as Twilight's tattered body skids across the floor. She points her illuminating horn at the unconscious princess, but hastefully shifts to a barrier for the divebombing Dash. She snarks at Dash shoving her forcefield, "Back for more? My, how we never learn."

"I hate losing. Know the difference!"

"Ha!" Opaline springs Dash off with the pulse of her magic. She comes back and Opaline smacks her down with the flap of her wings, "Don't talk to me about differences, little pony."

Dash slides back on her hooves, slowing herself and glaring at Opaline as she floats in the air.

"I am an almighty alicorn, reigning power that far exceeds all of Equestria. Confronting me only postpones my will and forfeits your meager life. Take your meaningless pride and scurry back to the crack you crawled from."

"No," Dash shifts a hoof back, tapping Twilight, "I'm not losing her!"

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Spoiled Rich could cry on command. It looked perfectly natural, at least until one spent enough time around her to realize she only cried when she wanted something. Then the tears would flow, followed by the barbed words, the accusations of ingratitude, and the remarks on Diamond's unfilial ways. It always put Diamond in mind of chess, one of those openings that was so well-studied you could play the first few turns without thought, d4-d5-c4-c6-cxd-cxd. One learned to stop caring, eventually; regrets and apologies became checklists and countdowns.

Spoiled wasn't special; she was just the one Diamond happened to grow up with. Plenty of creatures had tear ducts, but only ponies cried; a certain threshold of sociability was needed before you got anything by displaying your emotions like that.

As the blank-flank before her bursts into tears, Diamond idly wonders how long it'll take her to learn this pony's checklist.

31 hours 45 minutes to go if you want to enter this month!

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It was an usually warm winter's morning, when Twilight met her friends in Ponyville. As traditional, they donned their snow gear at set off towards Dragon's Peak.

Marching through the snow, Applejack wondered how many times before her knees finally gave out.

Huffing, they told old stories.

Fluttershy exclaimed, "I've grown a lot since then!"

Rainbow said, "If you think that, we should call you Flutter-deny!"

"Mmmmmmm..." said the girls.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "I'm old, okay!"

Laughter...

"Oh!" Rarity sighed.

At the peak, they saw golden clouds like glowing fields, and the Canterlot mountains brushed in peachy
inhues. The snow blanketed towns of Equestria dimmed, as the last evening glow kissed the golden domes of Canterlot Castle. Equestira darkened. A cold breeze blew through to campsite as night set.

They watched fireworks explode into balloons. Yellow and blue.

Look at me, finishing a little early this time.

Two unicorns, two pegasi, and an Earth pony stood before Pinkie Pie and her mystery box. She’d told them about her plans, vaguely, and they could tell by the pair of earmuffs gripping around her belly that it was going to be something loud. She knocked off the lid, contents still unseen, and took a match from her mane; she struck it along her hoof, and tossed it in the box before hopping away with a big smile. She nearly fell over when she reached them and stopped, because all of her didn’t stop moving until she fell over onto Applejack, who gave her a displeased look.

Then there was a line of fire out of the box and into the sky, followed by an explosion, followed by more lines and explosions, all blue.

“It’s a boy!” Pinkie shouted, but nopony would be able to hear her for several hours.

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Okay, time's up, everyone! As always, thank you to everyone who had a go.

Usual procedure applies now: I'll think about the entries, judge them, and announce the winner on either the 28th or 29th. (Depends on how good I am at remembering... )

Feedback is open!

I usually ask my family for advice and ideas and this month they got upset when I told that my entry was not our original idea. They challenged my dignity as a writer in fact! So I decided, I would write it! This is just a quick fic about Pinkie putting her nose (or rather her mouth) into places it shouldn't be. Chaos ensues. Why did I feel compelled to post it here?

Pinkie carefully, very carefully, slid lid of the unmarked box off. She looked both ways to make sure no one was in Sugar Cube Corner. She checked under the drawers in the flour cabinet, in the lazy susan, and in the sink.

Nopony around. Good.

She rubbed her hooves together, carefully opening a plastic bag contained within the box of treats and removed... one single, tiny gummy bear. She looked at it admiringly. The inside sparkled with something... unkowable, yet popping and familiar. With clandestine reverence, she placed the gummy bear upon a special plate so it left no trace on the counter. She closed the bag, replaced the lid. And had a moment of doubt. Mrs. Cake had remarked in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances should Pinkie even look into the box, much more--no! Much less! Eat something from it.

Pinkie looked down, guiltily at the bear.

But it beckoned to her.

she took one delicious bite.

And you know what, the regret? It was immediate.

Pinkie's insides turned violently a diarretic expression forming within her colon. Sparks began to erupt into her tail. Her whole body vibrated, her pinkie sense going absolutely wild.

KABAM!

Sugar cube corner, now with a new side entrance, slid away from Pinkie and she skidded to a stop, and spat out wood and plaster.

She gulped, "Well that was--"

KABAM!

A force unlike any she had previously know spanked her straight into town Square. And she smelled it, like gunpowder and birthday cake and grape juice.

"PINKIE!!" Screamed Twilight, throwing down her newspaper as Pinkie crashed through Twilight's bemch.

"I'm sorry Twilight!" PInkie spun and sat down hard, this time intending to be suppress the next explosive outburst. Even as she started to vibrate, she said, "just a little accident!"

"YOU ATE ONE?!"

Pinkie was about to ask what one Twilight was referring to when--

KABAM!

Chunks of earth and sod blew away from the sight of take off, Pinkie rocket over the roof an adjacent building. Falling, managed to catch a gutter. She breathed a sigh of relief, but--

KABAM!

Let's just say the thirty minutes were very exciting for Pinkie Pie. She fart-rocketed all around Poniville before Twilight finally caught her gave her the antidote. Yes, there was an antidote, because it turned out, the treats in that unmarked box were special made with certain spells for one of Celestia's very secret parties. Mrs. Cake had been tasked this year with the creation of said treats, with Twilight providing... certain spells.

Of course, the following day at work was met by two very frustrated cakes, and Pinkie demoted to menial labor.

Even still, it made for funny story.

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This one made me chuckle, I must admit.

Thanks to me being diverted by something unexpected (not bad, just time consuming) the results will be up tomorrow. Thank you for your patience!

7930965 No worries, take as much time as you have to. Sometimes you just have to take care of that need, even if it does take some of your valuable time. At the finish, it all seems worth it.

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"Fluttershy?"

"Fluttershy?" Rarity asked again , a little louder.

"Fluttershy!!" Rarity yelled.

Fluttershy lifted an earmuff. "Huh?"

"We're leaving my dear," Rarity gestured to the rest of the girls, packed and ready to go. Further away, most of the other onlooking families already left, only a few die hard fan left.

Rarity raised an eyebrow, "Those earmuffs must really really work."

"Uh, yeah," Fluttershy smiled.

As you can tell, I really enjoyed this entry! It was very nice, wholesome!

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It would be funny if when Celestia said it, Forework was capitalized. I thought this one was pretty well executed, I laughed.

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Hah! Love that payoff. Cannonically, I think Pinkie has a daughter?

7931123 But it is capitalized when Celestia says it:

“Oh, err… You are Fireworks from now on.”

Except for here:

“Due to budget concerns, we had to… ‘adjust’ the fireworks this year.”

but she can't be referring to RD here because they had to change last year's fireworks, and there were actual, regular fireworks last year, not RD. So, it was the fireworks that changed, not Fireworks; fireworks changed in a way that they were replaced with Fireworks.

Either way, I'm glad you liked it. I was actually a bit worried that nopony would get it since Celestia just undid 9 seasons of Rainbow Dash's character development.

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And here we go: results time! Considering the smallish entry (seven) it's a testament to all of you that I still had such a tricky time choosing. And so:

Hon mensh: Gettier Case -- a nasty (in a good way) little piece here, economically putting across its point. You do need a tiny bit of chess notation knowledge to fully appreciate it, but it's not excessive. I'm assuming we're with pre-reformation Diamond here. The tense shift for the last line was odd, but otherwise it read very nicely.
Winner: FigurativelyFluffy -- well, someone has worked out the way to the judge's heart! A cute, simple piece that dwells on a friendship I like and which (I suppose due to Andrea Libman needing a rest sometimes) we rarely saw as an extended thing in the show. I like the touch that Flutters enjoys the sights of fireworks but not the sounds. That fits nicely with her work with animals, too.

Well done! FigurativelyFluffy, please think up a prompt for the February contest and post it here when you're ready. It's fine to take a day to think if you don't already have a prompt in mind, but if you do then by all means post it now.

Feedback is still open.

7931286
Thanks for the feedback! Regarding the tense shift in the last line, I wanted there to be a bit of a separation between the backstory dynamic between Diamond and her mother and the ongoing effects of that backstory on Diamond's outlook, and the tense shift seemed like a way to suggest that without taking up much space. In retrospect, I agree it didn't work, and would have been better sticking with past tense throughout.

7931286
Could I request feedback for my entry? I know it was pretty violent, but I tried not to be M-Rated with it.

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7931123

Ahhhh!!! Thank you so muchh!!
I'd like the next prompt, unless it's already been done, to be: "Here's the Plan."

Thank you again!

7931617
Sounds like a good choice to me! Thanks; I'll edit the group's front page now and "Here's the Plan" will be our February prompt.

7921851
Structurally, I liked this one a lot - the opening sets up a question ('How will presumably-Celestia get out of this dire situation?'), the tension of which is built on until the explosion at the end gives the grim-but-satisfying resolution of 'she won't, but she'll take out her sister with her'; in particular, the line 'red glow of salvation' is fantastic, because it says a lot about her character that she considers mutually assured destruction to be 'salvation'. There were three minor details that didn't work for me: first, "my mane feels like it’s in agony" knocks me out of the scene a bit ('alicorn manes have sensation' is in principle a potentially neat worldbuilding detail, but I don't think in context 'neat worldbuilding detail' is the thing you want top of mind); second, given the extent of Celestia's described injuries, the claim that she's still able to escape her sister even temporarily challenges my suspension of disbelief (I'd be surprised if it was possible to even remain conscious with severe internal bleeding, a broken leg, and a double amputation)- it could work in a longer scene that actually shows how she pulled off the escape, but I think given the narrower focus of the 150 word limit you'd have been better served with less immediately-impairing set of injuries; third, you shift from present tense to past tense about halfway through.

7931531
I really enjoyed it, honestly. But, I feel like that wasn't out of the ordinary for me.

I was impressed that it's so economical. Nothing seems heavy handed or unecessary, it's very point driven which is very good. I didn't find myself impacted by the ending in a deep way. Not in the kind of way I was with Logan's top picks.

I felt that the bodily trauma endured by Protag was interesting, and that line about their legs hits with the correct kind of unpleasant.

If you want to go for something more poingnant, it might be interesting to explore amputation and the horror of body-loss... Admittedly I know very little about that kind of thing though, sooooo...

but I tried not to be M-Rated with it.

In my eyes, you can get very very gorey before something exceeds a teen rating. For me, gore will never be the worst part. A part of me is usually curious about seeing the body exposed whether through surgery videos or the mouse corpses my cat leaves me. Really for me, it is the emotional impacts that matter. Because, in a pair of legs, there's a person's identity, a part of them that has been tangibly removed.

I hope this helped! I made a feedback on your entry in my first comment, but I managed to reset the comment several times while writing it. I'm glad I got an opportunity to revisit my thoughts on it.

7931725

"my mane feels like it’s in agony" knocks me out of the scene a bit

For me, the "even my mane" really helped establish the tone. I felt the speaker meant that her scalp was pain (she feels like her mane is in agony), probably from being flung or handled by her mane. That kind of hair-pulling detail feels very believable in an fight. Moreso, to me it conjures a deeper, more complicated kind of fight that's not your standard "As soon as someone endures a significant injury, they are out of the fight immediately" action-y kind of fight.

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FWIW, I think my views accord pretty well with what Merallakos said. I'm pretty much in two minds about the "mane feels like it's in agony" thing, but then I don't think I can better the slightly different angles on that given by Merallakos and Gettier Case have. On the specific point about rating, that's a T for me. A fairly hard T, but a definite one. I would intervene during the contest if I felt someone had crossed the line into M, especially given that this group is not classed as NSFW and so I'd want to avoid any such content even in forum comments.

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Hah! Love that payoff.

Thank you.

Cannonically, I think Pinkie has a daughter?

I don't regard much of anything past the second season as relevant or canon. Everything I saw of the finale was disrespectful to the spirit of the show, in a mean-spirited way. Besides, on a fanfiction website, it shouldn't matter.

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On a first point, I actually couldn’t decide between Celestia and Luna being the villain of the story.

On a second point, I feel like Alicorns have a bit of leeway on the injuries we can expect them to survive as the pinnacle of Pony biology. From being banished for a thousand years to being punched through mountains by Tirek(to be fair, she was supercharged), I feel like they can take a lot of damage and still manage to kick butt.

And the tense change was a brief description of how she came to that point, which I’ll admit could probably be more well thought out.

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I’m glad you enjoyed it!

As for the ending, I wrote out the end of a fight in the final desperate moments as one sister seeks to resolve the conflict instead of letting the other win. And with the theme, well… There had to be some kind of explosion.

Body horror seems deserving of a longer fic than 150 words allows, so that’s gonna be a maybe. Hmm… I do have ideas for Twilight for that…

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Thank you for being diligent with the moderation for these monthly contests. It’s all fun and games till somebody fits a lot of fun and games into 150 words.