"Second reply to this post gets a story!" If you were in the MLP General thread on /co/ in 2011, you probably saw a post like this, followed by several crude suggestions. A couple dozen posts later, a three-part real-time fanfiction began, sometimes concluding in the next MLP General thread.
When the fandom first started, fanfics were rare and brilliant, and their authors honored for bringing more pony into existence. I shared in those heady early days, not because I sought honor, but because I wanted to make magic. To my surprise, I often did. I saw authors seeking story prompts or being given them unsolicited. So I tried my hand at it, and found that my imagination was bursting with amazing imagery and joy-filled scenes of friendship that I just had to share.
This is the collection of Duplex Fields' short fanfictions. As I edit my way through my older works, I will update this anthology. Not all of these came from story prompts, and I've lost track of which posts inspired some stories; most will have Author's Notes.
Awww, poor widdle Sowawia. MwahahahHAAA-heehee-hooo! At least her mopey little sister is out of her hair!
1. For such a short tale, it carries a fine message. But such is common for works in which the message alone is the story. I'll update this comment as I read the rest.
2. I think that sometime before adolescence, Diamond Tiara will realize that her air of superiority does not benefit her at all, even turns her peers against her. There's hope for everyone to change; they just need the right incentive, be it a carrot or a stick.
3. This Tombstones of Harmony is a nice concept. It's very poetic in passing on a legacy.
4. It's upsetting to think such a dumb kid who probably can't stick up for himself has such an asshole of a dad. That little detail really contradicts the first half of this prompt, which had me chuckling when Pinkie Pie just jumped into a kids' game on a whim.
5. SpikeBloom, huh? A nice passage with little added beyond the prompt, but I like to think Spike will end up with one of his friends; they're not that far beyond him in years.
3718535 Thanks for the comments.
4. Introducing Eric Cartman as Snips and Kenny as Snails. (Just kidding.) The goal with that one was to show what kids' lives are like, at least a little. They know whose dad beats them, they know whose parents are splitting up, but they focus on their own lives because that's what they know how to do. Life in our world is a series of little tragedies, and one of them is that we get used to them; in Equestria, they're fewer but more dramatic.
This was written with some assumptions: that Pinkie Pie wasn't known around the entire town except as the party hostess of Sugarcube Corner, until after Winter Wrap-up at least; that Snips and Snails are always getting in trouble; that adults can be oblivious to many things, including the inner realities of children. It was also written in a dour mood, late at night.
I love the absurd innocence of this.
Poor Snails. A paddling is one thing, but destroying his toys?
What the hell up with 4chan's obsession with futa?