History Website / FimfictionDotNet

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fimfiction_logo_aug17_by_knighty_4756.png]]

[[http://www.fimfiction.net/ Fimfiction.net]] (also known as [=FIMFiction.net=]) is a Web site dedicated to hosting FanFiction based on ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic''. It's also a community gathering place for fans of ''Friendship is Magic''.

The site began operating in July 2011. It was created by [[http://www.fimfiction.net/user/knighty knighty]], who remains its lead developer.

Additional staff can be found [[http://www.fimfiction.net/?view=page&page=staff here.]]

Note: Please list only tropes which apply to the ''site''. Since Fimfiction exists to host and promote fan fiction, it's a given that FanficTropes will be found there.
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!![[AC: This Web site and its users provide examples of the following tropes:]]

* AprilFoolsDay:
** Like ''Blog/EquestriaDaily,'' the site admins used to always do something for April Fools' Day. Invariably, because they couldn't seem to find [[SlidingScaleOfSillinessvsSeriousness the perfect mix of silliness vs. seriousness]], they caused controversy. After the poor reaction to three straight April Fools' Day pranks, the site admins decided to end all future jokes.
*** In 2013, knighty announced he was leaving the site and that Poultron was taking over the reins. They also announced that they were banning all Human-tagged stories, and were moving all former Human-tagged stories elsewhere. No one was very happy about the announcement, and the staff were forced to apologize and explain that it was all a joke shortly after.
*** In 2014 it was the announcement that [[https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/304533/fimfictionnet-now-owned-by-facebook Fimfiction had been acquired by Facebook.]]
*** At midnight at the start of April Fools' Day 2015, UK time, they announced changes to the Featured Box that would essentially cement certain authors into the Featured Box if they had more followers by multiplying their heat rating. No one was sure whether or not this one was a prank until Obsolescence posted a [[https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/464174/featured-box-update-faq blog]] explaining that [[BlatantLies it was not a joke in the slightest]] for roughly 2/3 of the post (until the very end where he does clarify that it was just a joke). They also "banned" all stories of a certain (nonexistant) genre, claiming they reduced the overall integrity of the site.
** Many of the site authors post the usual set of updates (they're leaving, they're deleting their stories, they're done writing for good, etc.) but a good number of authors post April Fools chapters (usually troll chapters) as well. One user went so far as to [[https://www.fimfiction.net/story/159019/11/starbound/2016-april-fools-special-the-immortal post a full chapter update]] that was just all 44 chapters of the badfic ''FanFic/MyImmortal''.
* AntiFrustrationFeatures: New authors have to submit stories and have them approved by moderators before they're allowed to go in the update queue. Should an author get enough fics approved for submission by the mods over time, the author is given the chance to use an "Auto-Approve" feature that skips moderation and puts it straight into the queue. An author can still submit stories the old-fashioned way if they so choose, though.[[note]]Using the Auto-Approve feature to put in a story that would normally never pass moderation is a good way to get banned from the site altogether, so as to prevent abuse of the system.[[/note]]
* AntiTrollingFeatures: Users have to submit their new stories into a queue that only moderators can see to prevent spam and/or abuse from coming through. A user can get stories Auto-Approved without submitting them to this mod queue, but only after a certain number of their stories have been approved for submission. This cuts {{Troll Fic}}s on the site down to almost nothing, since no one is going to spend time crafting even mediocre stories of at least a thousand words each for the sake of trolling with Auto-Approve.
* AscendedExtra: Many authors love developing minor MLP characters in their stories. A well-known example is Cloud Kicker: she's a completely insignificant background pegasus in the show, but many Fimfiction users know her as the promiscuous star of ''Fanfic/TheLifeAndTimesOfAWinningPony''.
** ''Fanfic/RainbowDoubleDashsLunaverse'', conceived as an AlternateUniverse version of MLP, was founded on the premise of bringing minor/background characters into the spotlight, while putting the stars of the real show in the background.
* BestialityIsDepraved: Practically inverted in most fiction which involves humans; the fact that ponies aren't actually animals narrowly averts this trope by definition. In practice, ponies superficially resemble horses, yet this rarely seems to bother humans, though this has been deconstructed several times (most notably by ''Xenophilia'').
* CastFullOfGay: Stories with gay pairings outnumber stories with hetero pairings by a country mile, whether the ship be innocent, mature, or otherwise. It's not that surprising, since almost all of the core cast of ''Friendship is Magic'' is female. Some stories deal with the implications of having a mostly-homosexual society, but it's mostly {{Hand Wave}}d or ignored.
* CrossOver: One of the most often used categories on the site. The writers have crossed ''Friendship Is Magic'' over with [[Rule50 pretty much anything you can think of]], and this combined with the entire pony fandom's tendency to cross everything with ponies led to the creation of Rule 85: "If It exists, there is pony of it. No exceptions."
* CloudCuckooLander: The review blogs have the site's foremost reviewer staff [[BlatantLies calmly and logically]] set up a scenario for the review before getting to the actual reviews.
* DarkerAndEdgier: Popular in Teen and Mature rated stories. Also should be expected if the fic is a crossover with a darker franchise.
* DeadFic: The site tries to make identifying these easier by allowing authors to mark stories as "Complete," "Incomplete," "On Hiatus," or "Cancelled." However, authors often abandon stories, leave them as "Incomplete" or "On Hiatus," and never get around to updating or canceling them.
* DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu: Discord gets a lot of shipping stories especially with Celestia, Fluttershy, and Twilight.
* DivineDate:
** Many a romance story with Celestia or Luna features elements of treating them like gods, as does romance involving Discord. There's plenty of stories where the immortals date other, though.
** Also shows up if it's a Shining Armor and Cadance story set before their marriage but after she's become an alicorn.
* FanVerse: Implicitly, any single story of an author can be considered to occur in its own continuity, thus creating a 'universe' for anyone who wishes to treat it as such. Some authors will make this more explicit and define a canon of their own work (or even multiple canons, if they've created several 'universes'). If a 'verse becomes popular enough, it's generally given a name, either by the author or by fans (for example, the Winningverse, which takes place in the continuity that began with ''Fanfic/TheLifeAndTimesOfAWinningPony''). Finally, there are authors who explicitly set out to ''create'' an AlternateUniverse (for example, ''Fanfic/RainbowDoubleDashsLunaverse'').
* GrandfatherClause: The site did not always have rules against meta stories or stories tagged with more than five characters. Stories which already had these things when the rules were implemented were allowed to remain the way they are, with only new stories being affected.
* HollywoodHypeMachine: Embodied by the popular and featured boxes. These two sections on the front page display stories that are currently receiving a lot of attention (generally measured in how many votes/favorites/views it is receiving at the time). As they get into the featured box, they get more attention and more upvotes that let them stay there for longer, before eventually falling by the wayside.
* HumanityEnsues: A lot of stories feature the ponies turned into humans, with a whole group being dedicated to humanized ponies.
* InterspeciesRomance: Human x Pony stories are quite common. Something of a DeadUnicornTrope in the MLP fandom; the blatant WishFulfillment overtones of a human appearing in Equestria have been deconstructed several times over, but they keep showing up regardless.
* KonamiCode: Keying this in on any page will cause a sprite of Rainbow Dash to appear. She'll follow the cursor around, and has a few lines of dialogue that are either quotes from the show, or references to popular fics.
* LadyLand: Some fics imagine an Equestria (or Equestria Girls world) where females are dominant. This even spawned a subset of fics, known as [=RGRE=] [[note]]Reverse Gender Role Equestria[[/note]].
* MassTeleportation: Stories where Equestria appears on Earth can be found in bulk as a type of FirstContact. Stories that have Human cities and, in some cases, ''entire countries'' showing up in Equestria have also appeared, but in significantly fewer numbers.
* {{MST}}: The site allowed them originally, but they have since been prohibited. Some users still post them in blogs or on other sites, but they can't be uploaded as actual story entries.
* ObviousRulePatch:
** When the site was first founded, a person could tag their stories with any number of characters and descriptors (such as "Dark", "Slice of Life", "Comedy", etc.). This was eventually changed to limit the number of characters and descriptors to five apiece, with the expectation that only the most relevant characters and most important styles will be tagged. Stories that existed before this patch [[GrandfatherClause were allowed to keep their tags]], though.
*** Related to this, the main characters of ''Friendship is Magic'' are commonly known as the "Mane Six". They eventually got their own "Main 6" tag to show that they were all in the story so that writers didn't have to add each individual character in the tags. The same was later done for the main characters of ''Equestria Girls'', then changed to "Main 7" once Twilight Sparkle's human counterpart joined the lineup.
** Quite a few users have [[SockPuppet more than one account]], a common reason being that they use one account for SFW stories and the other for NSFW stories. The mods and admins eventually declared that this was okay, but users couldn't like/favorite/comment on the same story more than once with all of their accounts, and they could not like/favorite/comment on their own stories with a sock puppet account.
* PhraseCatcher:
** "KNIGHTYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!"
** Majin Syeekoh seems to attract "Goddamit Syeekoh" a lot. Given he came up with ''Fanfic/BeanisCinematicUniverse'', it's the only right.
** Penstroke, author of ''FanFic/PastSins'', is often credited (jokingly) with writing ''FanFic/MyLittleDashie'', to the point where it's become a full in-joke for nearly all of [=FIMFiction=]'s userbase.
* PoesLaw: The site users really have a hard time distinguishing between serious site updates and joke ones, though the blame partly falls on the mods and webmasters for making it seem like it's an actual serious update.
* RuleThirtyFour: Just like every other fandom. However, due to the nature of the featured box relying on upvotes and the fact that [[SexSells many readers enjoy the material]], stories of this nature are always populating the featured box. Fortunately, the site allows readers to block stories of this nature, though it can still cause a FlameWar when a particularly colorful one pops into the featured box.
* RuleSixtyThree: Like the larger FIM fandom, genderbending the characters is a very common topic, in both stories and forums. Varieties range from Alternate Universes where the characters are a different gender, to characters meeting an OppositeSexClone, to every permutation in between.
** This is so common, that the fandom came together to agree on what would be the "canon" names of the genderswapped Mane Six (as well as a few other major characters).
* ScrewYourself: Has it's own group, with a different folder for all the ways it can happen. Especially occurs with RuleSixtyThree.
* SexSells: The most popular group is the Clopfics group. And at any given moment, at least one fic in the Featured Box is likely to be a clopfic, even with the new setup (7 new fics occupy the first few spots, and if a featured fic has been updated, it automatically queues in the first of the last three spots, with newer updates bumping it down to second, then third, then off again).
* SockPuppet: It's not uncommon for writers to use a secondary account to host sexually explicit stories. Alternate accounts are allowed, so long as they don't upvote or favorite each others' stories.
** Case in point, Blog/EquestriaDaily prereader and site moderator Alextrasza himself had one, as [[https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/608722/a-cloppy-secret he revealed after he announced his retirement from Fimfiction.]]
* StreisandEffect: Discussed in the article "[[https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/317772/how-to-handle-criticism How to Handle Criticism]]". The article's author advises to not [[DearNegativeReader respond to negative criticism]] or attempt to delete comments that are trying to give ConstructiveCriticism on one's stories. The reason behind it is that people who weren't interested in your story are going to be attracted to all the drama surrounding it, and the story will be more known for being FlameBait than whatever it was originally being criticized for.[[invoked]]
-->Commenters mobilize. Friends arrive to support friends. Review-blogs are made, publicizing the scandal further. Eventually the story itself becomes irrelevant to the controversy. The comments section is a wasteland of commenters battling with the author. The story has accumulated dozens more downvotes overnight. Eventually the author either concedes the point, or continues on stubbornly and descends into infamy, their story's reputation a shattered hulk.
* ThrowingOffTheDisability: There is a folder within the Scootaloo group specifically for stories involving her [[https://www.fimfiction.net/group/473/folder/4723/taking-flight gaining the ability to fly]].
* TrueLoveIsBoring: A common fandom plot involves ponies cheating on their significant others. For example, Cadance and Shining Armor--the show's resident HappilyMarried couple--are only portrayed as a couple 52% of the time.
** Stories that focus on two characters getting together also have a habit of ending after or right before the relationship has actually started.
* WikiWalk: Possible with the help of Similar/Also Liked feature.
* AWizardDidIt: Common excuses when it comes to enabling plots are "Celestia did it", "Twilight screwed up a complex spell", and "Equestria just works that way".
* YuriFan: As a site. According to [[https://docs.google.com/document/d/10F6Zsc9BxmKeHpxQWfEoP8EE7CdnKLETSyOROau6TN4/edit this wonderful shipping report]], out of all the homosexual ships, 96% are lesbian.
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* BestialityIsDepraved: Practically inverted in most fiction which involves humans; the fact that ponies aren't actually animals narrowly averts this trope by definition. In practice, ponies superficially resemble horses, yet this [[AnythingThatMoves rarely seems to bother]] humans, though this has been deconstructed several times (most notably by ''Xenophilia'').

* CrossOver: One of the most often used categories on the site. The writers have crossed ''Friendship Is Magic'' over with [[RuleFifty pretty much anything you can think of]], and this combined with the entire pony fandom's tendency to cross everything with ponies led to the creation of Rule 85: "If It exists, there is pony of it. No exceptions."

* HollywoodHypeMachine: Embodied by the popular and featured boxes. These two sections on the front page display stories that are currently receiving a lot of attention (generally measured in how many votes/favorites/views it is receiving at the time). As they get into the featured box, they get more attention and more upvotes that let them stay there for longer, before eventually falling by the wayside. Again, SturgeonsLaw applies to separate the mass-appeal but ultimately insignificant works and the genuinely good works.

* SturgeonsLaw: The site attempts to avert this. The featured box automatically displays a few stories to the entire site (and its younger sibling - the popular box - shows more stories, but less prominently), and one of its criteria is upvotes and downvotes (both number and ratio).[[note]]The exact algorithm involves several variables, but is intentionally kept a secret to prevent abuse.[[/note]] In practice, however, PanderingToTheBase is often as important as story quality when it comes to getting into either box; many stories with poor grammar, punctuation issues, or other significant errors can still get featured if they center on a popular ship or an interesting premise (or if they include gratuitous sex).[[invoked]]
** All stories also have to be approved by a moderator before being posted to the site (unlike fanfiction.net). While guidelines about minimum acceptable punctuation have been mentioned by the staff, they aren't actually listed in the FAQ. The moderators mostly check to make sure the story follows site rules, not for quality.
** There are a couple groups--the Royal Guard and the Royal Canterlot Library--whose purpose it is to try and promote good stories. They have official site posts and thus can actually act to promote said stories (though some of the stories they promote still end up being unpopular). Blog/EquestriaDaily also frequently serves the same purpose. Other groups exist for similar purposes, but none of those have official status.
** There are also numerous reviewers on the site who spend time reviewing ponyfics and help separate the chaff from the wheat.

* EveryoneIsGay: Stories with gay pairings outnumber stories with hetero pairings by a country mile, whether the ship be innocent, mature, or otherwise. It's not that surprising, since almost all of the core cast of ''Friendship is Magic'' is female. Some stories deal with the implications of having a mostly-homosexual society, but it's mostly {{Hand Wave}}d or ignored.

* AWizardDidIt: A common excuse when it comes to enabling plots is "Celestia did it". "Twilight screwed up a complex spell" and "Equestria just works that way" are also quite common.