My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan fiction

The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom has generated a vast body of fan work, including fan fiction. The fandom's literary output spans diverse genres like romance, adventure, horror, sci-fi, crossovers, and slice of life stories. Fimfiction, the largest repository of My Little Pony fan fiction, contains over 150,000 published stories. Particularly influential and acclaimed works, such as Fallout: Equestria and Background Pony, have gained mainstream critical attention and have inspired fan dubs, fan art, and fan translations. According to a 2018 study, 8.6% of bronies reported that they frequently wrote fan fiction; 39% reported that they read fan fiction almost daily.
Despite the original show concluding in 2019, the My Little Pony fan fiction community has remained consistently active. Fan-created works experienced an uptick in popularity in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

History

Fans began creating fan fiction of Friendship Is Magic shortly after the show's premiere. The character of Derpy Hooves was created by the brony fandom after fans spotted her in the background of the first episode and collectively gave her a name and an agreed-upon backstory through fan fiction.

Platforms

Fimfiction

Launched in July 2011, Fimfiction is the largest repository of Friendship Is Magic fan fiction. By July 2015, Fimfiction had 185,014 users and 86,009 published stories., the website has over 600,000 registered users and over 150,000 approved stories.

/mlp/

The /mlp/ board of 4chan has spawned genres of fan fiction, such as the "Anon in Equestria" format, where the anonymous human character "Anon" is a self-insert for the reader.

FanFiction.Net

hosted many early works in the fandom before Fimfiction's launch in July 2011. Cupcakes, an infamous fan fiction in which Pinkie Pie is depicted as a serial killer, was originally published on FanFiction.Net.

Adaptations

In other media formats

Various works of Friendship Is Magic fan fiction have been adapted as dramatic readings and fully cast audio plays; some have also been published as physical novels.
The animated web series Rainbow Dash Presents parodies several of the most popular fan fictions to come from the fandom. Set in an alternate universe of Friendship Is Magic, each episode of Rainbow Dash Presents retells the events of a fan fiction from the narration of a whimsical and naive Rainbow Dash.

Fan translations

According to a 2021 study, fan translation spaces of the brony community tend to be more comprehensive and methodical than those of other fandoms. Studies of Russian-speaking bronies translating fan fiction into English have shown that writers naturally form roles based on their expertise.

Fandubbing

bing is another creative practice that complements the fan fiction of the brony fandom. Similar to the experiences of the Russian brony interviewed by Shafirova and Cassany in their study of language acquisition, My Little Pony fandubbers often engage in meticulous translation and voice acting work that not only strengthens their fan identity, but also develops their language skills. One fan noted that fandubbing was an opportunity to learn English, but in doing so, wanted to apply their acting skills as well as be part of the community by producing new content for the international brony audience. Friendship Is Witchcraft, created by Jenny Nicholson and Griffin Lewis under the pseudonym "Sherclop Pones", is a reimagination of Friendship Is Magic with darker, more satirical themes. The fan-made My Little Pony episode The Tax Breaks, released in May 2022, used the text-to-speech platform 15.ai to fan dub a work of fan fiction with AI voice synthesis technology.

Fan music

has both been written about and directly inspired some of the most influential fan fictions. Since its release in 2011, Fallout: Equestria has become the subject of countless songs ranging drastically in tone. In many cases, musicians have embraced the dark themes of the story in somber rock or metal music such as The Living Tombstone's song "Run, Shoot, Kill... and Cry" based on the fan made spinoff called Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons. In contrast, other musicians in the fandom such as the band The Wasteland Wailers have embraced the influence of 1950s American on the fan fiction's setting with jazz and electroswing music.
The relationship between fan music and fan fiction in the brony community is one that is uniquely symbiotic. This is best exemplified by The Rainbow Factory, a fan fiction by AuroraDawn inspired by song by WoodenToaster of the same name. While the original song focuses on the Rainbow Factory shown in the episode "Sonic Rainboom" and the idea that pegasi are killed in the production of rainbows, an idea expanded on in the fan fiction. In the years after the fan fiction's release, WoodenToaster produced two more songs focusing on the Rainbow Factory. Meanwhile, AuroraDawn released four more fan fictions that followed this same story and made direct references to WoodenToaster's songs. The popularity of the fan fiction and its relationship with music would also inspire several works from other fandom musicians such as Slyphstorm's "Pegasus Device" and Koa's "Broken Wings".

Genres

Alternate universe (AU)

Alternate universe stories reimagine the My Little Pony universe or characters in different settings, timelines, or circumstances than those presented in the show.
In the 2020s, a horror-themed subgenre of AU stories known as "Infection AUs" gained popularity on TikTok. These alternate universes involve zombie outbreaks in Equestria that transform the ponies into disturbing, hostile entities. By 2024, the trend had expanded beyond My Little Pony to other family-friendly animated shows, including Bluey, Miraculous Ladybug, and Pokémon.

Self-insert

Self-insert fan fiction involves authors inserting themselves into the story as a participant and describes themselves interacting with the ponies and Equestria directly. One common variation involves the Anon in Equestria format, in which a generic anonymous human character finds themselves transported to Equestria.

Slashfics

Slashfics in the My Little Pony fandom refer to slash and femslash stories focusing on romantic relationships between characters of the same gender. Within the brony fandom, these relationships are colloquially termed "fillyfooling" for mare-to-mare relationships and "coltcuddling" for stallion-to-stallion relationships. As Friendship Is Magic mostly consists of female characters, lesbian stories make up a large portion of romantic fan fiction on Fimfiction.

Clopfics

Clopfics are explicit or pornographic My Little Pony fan fiction. On Fimfiction, such stories are labeled with the "sex" or "porn" tag.

Analysis

Hybrid masculinity

Unlike many fan fiction communities that tend to mostly be female, Fimfiction has a predominantly male audience. In a 2022 study, researchers identified two approaches to masculinity among bronies. Emotive interpreters engaged with the show and its fan fiction primarily for emotional expression and described finding the show during a period of emotional need. They valued the community as a space where they could express emotions more freely than in traditional masculine spaces, and their fan fiction often emphasizes themes of friendship and emotional growth. In contrast, aggrieved remixers transformed the show by frequently introducing violent themes and sexual content that reinterpreted the show's feminine elements through a traditionally masculine lens.

Identity

Studies have indicated that writing and reading fan fiction can be a form of identity negotiation. In one ethnographic study, researchers described a 15-year-old brony's participation in writing fan fiction as a form of "transgressive humor, and resistance to conformity" that connected his childhood interest in books with more mature creative expressions.

As an educational tool

bronies have reported using the fandom's fan fiction community as a way to improve their English by developing learning strategies when consuming and producing fan content. Bronies interviewed in studies have reported marked improvements in their writing skills. One fan fiction writer wrote: "Writing fan fiction and getting instant feedback over the past couple of years has improved my writing significantly."

Religion

Academics have studied how Christian bronies use fan fiction to explore Christianity and their fandom.

Activity

According to a 2018 study, 8.6% of bronies reported that they frequently wrote fan fiction; 39% reported that they read fan fiction almost daily. The fandom continues to produce new content even after the conclusion of the television series in 2019. Fan-created works experienced an uptick in popularity in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns.