Recursive Fanfiction / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, due to the inescapable hold it had over the Internet during the early 2010s (resulting in many people becoming fans of the series and/or fans of the fandom itself), has had more than enough recursive fan-works to get its own page.

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• Lost Cities is both a case of this itself and the inspiration for others:
  • The last chapter, "The Waters of Mynnkyun's Harbor", describes the ruins of a city whose end is depicted in another story it serves as a homage to, The Last Dreams of Pony Island.
  • The story itself has inspired a number of Spiritual Successors, each describing the ruin and decay of a grand, magical city in some forgotten corner of the show's world. These include The Seal of Wax and Glass, The Gentle People, Unknown Architecture, Keskiyönnon, Far Kobresia, Aletheia, The City that Breathes and The Land of Glass and Stone.
• Turnabout Storm: Since the author mentioned after the story's completion that they have no plans to create a sequel, several authors decided to make their own sequels to the series; some good, some bad:
  • Invoked for the "Wright a Bad Ending" contest, where fans were invited to write what would have happened if no one had shown up to save the day when everything seemed lost.
  • Many fan works based on the series have been made, including a cancelled spin-off, an unofficial novelization that adds an Interspecies Romance subplot, and several Fan Sequels.
  • Elements of Justice, a sequel series by a different writer, is now running. Much like Turnabout Storm, the series follows the Visual Novel style of the Ace Attorney games and is fully voiced.
  • In Turnabout Reunion, Sunset Shimmer is accused of murdering Flash Sentry and Phoenix Wright has to prove her innocence... with the help of a few friends, of old and new. Takes place during the events of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies and after the events of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls.
  • In Turnabout Moon, Phoenix Wright is once again called to Equestria to defend Princess Celestia of the murder of her sister Luna. Also takes place during the events of Dual Destinies and takes place some time after season 4.
  • My Little Ace Attorney: Equestrian Trials is set up as an episodic story, mirroring the Ace Attorney games. In the first episode, Fabulous Turnabout, Rarity is accused of murdering Gold Guardian. The Wright Anything Agency is once again requested services from Princess Twilight Sparkle, though due to a mix-up, Phoenix isn't the only one up for the ride this time... This episode mirrors case 1-1, so it is revealed right at the beginning of the episode that Suri Polomare was the one who actually murdered Gold Guardian.
  • A more direct sequel is found in A Prosecutor's Past, in which Twilight attempts to find out once and for all the truth behind Trixie's black locks. This is less of a crossover, though, since, after the first chapter, the only Ace Attorney characters in the story are the Judge and Mia.
• Better Living Through Science and Ponies:
  • The fic spawned a Chapter 4.5.
  • There is now A Trusted Friend in Science and Ponies, which is a direct sequel.
• The Infinite Loops loves to play with fan concepts, having loopers discover a variant of their own reality based on fanon and a few fanfics. The My Little Pony loops even bring Nyx into the cast, and Twilight flat out states they do not talk about the bureau.
• Ace Combat: Equestria Chronicles has a spin-off, Ace Combat: Gryphon Wings, which takes place ten months after The Equestrian War and serves as a tie-in between the two main stories.
• The work on The Little Pony Legend is...interesting to say the least. The original Series Fic was written all by one author: Maggiesheartlove. However, with her wanting to start working on her own original works, she passed the main writing duties on to others to either continue or explore her saga in different ways. However, she did retain the privilege of being an editor for the others, so while she no longer controls the story, she can temper it so it matches her vision. Most recent in this change is The shadow of Ronin.
• Never the Final Word is a collection of short stories which are nothing but recursive fanfiction - and in at least one case, recursive fanfiction of recursive fanfiction.
• The Conversion Bureau has spawned tons of fics set in the same setting or a variant thereof. No wonder, since it is a very convenient setting for Wish-Fulfillment and satisfying one's desire to live in Equestria. Its misanthropic tone (which the author adamantly insists he never intended to convey) has, however, also spawned several Hate Fics, parodies, and Deconstruction Fics. Notable examples include The Conversion Bureau: Not Alone, The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum (and its Continuity Reboot Spectrum) and The Negotiations-verse.
• Fallout: Equestria has a number of sub-fics. Though that's understating the case: "a number of sub-fics" means over 200 of them. The most notable is Project Horizons, which has even spawned fanfic of its own.
  • In many ways, "Fallout: Equestria" has become its own distinctFiM genre, analogous to the Fuku Fic, and there are plenty of fanfics that explore the basic concept of a Fallout-inspired post-apocalyptic Equestria whilst putting their own spin on things. For example, in the canon Fallout: Equestria, the fate of Rainbow Dash is ambiguous, but in Fallout Equestria: Renewal, Rainbow Dash is revealed to be a half-feral ghoul lurking outside of Stable 10.
• Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles) has several alternate ending fanfics written, and a few sequels:
  • Everything Is Broken is a Crossover series of Cupcakes, Happy Tree Friends, Luna Game, Dreamy Rainbow, Flutter Island, and Rainbow Factory.
  • Le Petit Four is a fan sequel which has in turn spawned its own fan sequel in the form of One Last Party Favor.
  • Rocket To Insanity has Cupcakes as a reoccurring nightmare of Rainbow Dash's. One day she finally snaps, attacks Pinkie thinking that she's trying to make her nightmares come true, and commits the first murder Equestria has seen in centuries.
• Five Score, Divided by Four has tons. Got so bad they got blanket-banned by the site.
• Rainbow Leap is a Quantum Leap-inspired ponyfic wherein Rainbow Dash tries to fly faster than ever with some Applied Phlebotinum from Twilight Sparkle, and ends up dimension travelling through not only Cupcakes but several of the fanfics based on it, making it a recursive recursive fanfic.
• Progress, focused on Princess Luna adjusting to the changes in Equestrian society over the last thousand years, has inspired Luna Vs. Videogames, Celestia vs. Time, and the NSFW Luna Vs. Threesome. Luna having an abacus is also mentioned in several otherwise unrelated fics.
• Silent Ponyville has gone on to spawn at least three different fanon continuities, some of which have had a significant influence on the central continuity. Also has a DeviantART group with plenty of fanon works.
• The Pony POV Series has spawned another Discorded Ponies Series fanfic and The Letters To Ponies series. As the POV Series itself includes a large multiverse, other fanfics that appear as alternate timelines in the series include Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles). Cheerilee's Garden, The Best Night Ever, Past Sins, Story of the Blanks, and more.
• Xenophilia has gone on to spawn a significantly large number of other recursive stories.
• Story of the Blanks is referenced as a real occurence in a lot of fanfiction.
• Researcher Twilight by NATO Strike is a fun case; it's based on a Tumblr blog, Ask Researcher Twilight, which itself was based on another fanfic, The Experiments Of Twilight Sparkle.
• A couple of fics are set after Past Sins, though it's usually just an excuse to use Nyx without being a direct sequel to the story. RealityCheck's Nyxverse is very much a sequel. Some of the most notable ones are the Alternate Universe Fic Point of No Return and the Slice of Life style "Nightmare Night and Nyx".
• Another work of Pen Stroke's, Better Living Through Science and Ponies, is getting a fan-sequel, A Trusted Friend in Science and Ponies.
• Each chapter of The Sweetie Chronicles: Fragments is set in the universe of a different fanfic. Stories covered so far include Of Mares and Magic, Nightmares Don't Last Forever, The Light Never Goes Out, On a Cross and Arrow, Fallout Equestria: Pink Eyes, The Best Night Ever and The Immortal Game, and the second April Fools episode takes a turn through several of the author's own other stories. Furthermore, This Platinum Crown (the sequel to The Best Night Ever) is said to treat the events of that chapter as canon.
• Friendship is Optimal has a group, “The Optimalverse”, for its fanfiction. Several stories also have their own pages, including Friendship Is Optimal: Always Say No, Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens, Friendship Is Optimal: The Law Offices of Artemis, Stella & Beat and Let's Play: Equestria Online!.
• The Life and Times of a Winning Pony has its own group to handle spinoffs and derivative works.
• Hard Reset picked up a fanfic picking up ... um ... somewhere in the mess. Hard Reset 2: Reset Harder splits off on the premise that why should Twilight be the only one who gets the Groundhog Day treatment?
• Topping everything off, we have fanfics about the canon in-universe fanfic that the canon Rainbow Dash was writing in Spike At Your Service.
• Crisis of Infinite Twilights is a rare one that is a recursive fanfiction that has also created Recursive Fanfictions. The story itself includes appearances of Faith and Doubt's Faith and Abstract Twilight, Nyx, and Lunaverse Twilight. It has also caused the creation of several other fics, including ones based on Twiley and Green Lantern Twilight.
  • Its prequel story, The Many Secret Origins of Scootaloo has done the same, with the Snowblinduniverse of stories springing up based on an alternate reality Doctor Whooves visited.
• All-American Girl (Shinzakura) likewise has its own group, with a handful of third-party stories set in its universe.
• The Demesne Of The Reluctant Twilight Sparkle, in addition to being inspired by the denouement of The Princess of Books (with which it is not otherwise in continuity), spawned The Quiet Equestrian, which expands on the civil war subplot.
• Seven Days in Sunny June now has one, You Are the Woman, about a girl in love with Sunset Shimmer.
• The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle has inspired three. One starring Sweetie Belle, one starring an Original Character named Breaking Dawn,^note Warning: Breaking Dawn is a Large Ham. and an alternete version titled Vengeance of the Star where Spike is killed and Twilight is forced to watch. It doesn't end well for Spike... Even more so for the assassins.
• Friendship is Witchcraft introduced "Sweetiebot", an interpretation of Sweetie Belle as a cyborg/robot that has soon eclipsed the source itself. Sweetiebot appears in many fan-works completely unrelated to Friendship is Witchcraft.
• Monochromatic has written Bodyguard AU, a series of fanfics, starting with The Queen and her Bodyguard, based off of an AU by the artist Earthsong9405. In it, Rarity is royalty, Twilight is her bodyguard, and the two flirt a lot. There are also a few other fics out there based off of Earthsong9405's work.
• The hatefic My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic has inspired Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship, which in of itself is a Hate Fic that deconstructs the setting of the original fic.
• Fics concerning the oft-disliked Anon-a-Miss story from the comics are already one of the most common types of Equestria Girls stories, but one of the earliest of these (Dainn's Anon-A-Miss) is the poster child for all the Darker and Edgier takes on the plot: if the Anon-a-Miss story you're reading involves Sunset Shimmer getting beaten to a pulp by her classmates, with Gilda leading the charge, then you can thank Dainn for it. And that's not even counting the fair amount of stories that either denote themselves as being continuations of Dainn's or start from the warehouse attack scene in his story and diverge from there.