Penny Pinch has always been considered an unusual salespony. Any other merchant would laugh at the idea of selling a rowboat in the middle of a desert, but not her.
Unfortunately, things do not go as planned, and the situation quickly spirals out of control for her thanks to a bizarre encounter...
Won first place in /mlp/'s 2nd PASTEJAM 2023. Only slightly edited to fix minor errors.
STORY RESTRICTIONS:
Write a short story set in Equestria. It must contain an unusual sales pony and the story must include a rowing boat. Also use the sentence 'Aaand she's gone overboard!'
Bonus prompt 1: The story takes place in a desert.
Bonus prompt 2: "Make a wish, then doom them all all in one go. That would be hilarious."
Hardmode: Use both prompts, the sales pony must not be an antagonist
Below restrictions are added by myself from a previous failed PasteJam.
Bonus prompt 3: As the saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words"
Minimum length 1000 words.
No maximum length.
That was a really fun story. You write reformed discord really well, and I like to imagine he has lots of those wacky adventures with random ponies behind the scenes.
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I really enjoyed writing Discord, so I'm glad to hear it.
In my opinion, it feels like he does too little in the show. That might be due to simply not being able to show that, but still, surely you'd at least hear about it. I don't expect the lord of chaos to be lounging around in his dimension 24/7, only occasionally leaving to bother the main characters.
This was... chaotic. Like, breakneck speed, I'm not even sure where we're heading chaotic. It starts off with a relatively simple premise, and then it switches to Discord's antics in a way that is honestly pretty dang fitting. He really does turn the entire story upside down and I wholly believe he'd do that. But then I get a strange feeling of aimlessness, like there was not much of a point to anything and we end up at a heartwarming end that was not really all that foretold. I might be less inclined to like it if it wasn't for Discord being a factor here. Honestly, I am impressed by what a tightly written piece of absurdist narrative this is, without ever deranging into madness or nonsense. It's just a fast paced series of events that take place in a single time and place at the whims of, well, Discord. So I cannot complain at all for that. In that sense, giving Discord the full reins could only end like this, and I enjoy that about the story.
Only for uniqueness, in that I haven't read anything that left me feeling quite like this, I give you props. It was fun and I did get to the end, so you must have done something right. Overall, I give you a confused thumbs up.
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That's Discord for you! I doubt I could get away with it if it was any other character, but that's exactly why he should be used in these situations.
He jumps rope with logic and throws stories into unexpected places.
Thanks for the review.
… was that a poke at AI art I saw in there?
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Truthfully, I don't really have anything against AI art if it's used correctly. However, the competition this story was written for used a... rather thoughtlessly generated AI piece as the prompt at first. Everyone hated it, and so the prompt was quickly changed to something far more interesting. I decided to include the old prompt to mock it. It complemented Discord's character quite well, so I think it was worth it regardless of my initial intention.
This was a delightful way to write Discord, and Penny Pinch (excellent name too) and Coral Skip were great. All around just enjoyed reading this quite a lot.