Hey guys,

We have nothing to validate this other than hearsay, but we have a report that password hashes for users on the site were accessed by a group of people. Because of this we recommend that you change passwords as a precaution. We have also updated our backend to support better encrypted passwords, so changing your password on Fimfiction will give you a much stronger password for the future.

We apologise for this, but again, it is hearsay right now and I want to let you guys know so you can take precautions if you're concerned.

As a note: If you don't understand the terminology, a password hash is an algorithmically generated version of your password. Plain text passwords are not stored, but it is possible to crack hashes given sufficient time.

To the sender of the care package containing one hundred pounds of asparagus: your prank was not appreciated.  To the remaining denizens of fimfiction, we return with our weekly installation of reviews!  We were told that the site makeover wreaked havoc, but we honestly haven’t noticed.  These lovely armchairs by the pool we suddenly found ourselves in when the servers went down have been too comfortable to leave.  Well... except for Sessalisk.  

Did you know the legal drinking age here in Mexico is eighteen?  Casca and I didn’t until she ran off for the tiki bar screaming and waving her hands in the air like a monkey after a banana truck.  Haven’t seen her since. Maybe that’s for the best.  At least she left her review for us to post—that’s all that matters, right?

Anyways, Casca and I have sent our reviews to those back in the office.  I hope Pav Fiera sees the return address; he’s always loved the beach—martinis, too; we’ve got plenty of those in our systems.  Now all we need is to figure out what to do with one hundred pounds of asparagus.  You should go read our reviews while we figure that one out!

Sessalisk:

When I was looking through the queue of all the other stories, this one was better than the other 90%. Sturgeon’s law and all. Despite the relatively solid prose, though, I couldn’t really enjoy it. The story starts out with a long description of Daring Do’s surroundings, and without a very good call to adventure. With a cold open like that, I thought it was asking a little too much and not giving quite enough.

There are lots of descriptions, descriptions of the temple, of Daring Do’s supplies, of her surroundings, of the rocks, etcetera, but none of them explained why Daring Do was exploring the temple. Sure, treasure, excitement, all those things, but I felt almost like we were supposed to go in and take this sort of thing at face value rather than to experience it with her as the readers.

It’s definitely an above-average story, though, and if you’re a fan of Daring Do then this one might be a keeper.

Corejo:

I like this story.  It’s got Daring Do.  I like Daring Do.  (And so should you!).  Who doesn’t love adventure?  Only boring ponies don’t like adventure.  For non-boring ponies, there’s plenty of adventure and mindscrew abound in this story.

Before anything else, I do have to point out the poor hook in this story.  As many of you know, a good hook is the most important aspect of a story; without one, a story will often go unread.  But that doesn’t stop this fic from finding its footing a little further in.

If the dull, three hundred-ish word intro isn’t enough to make you close your browser tab, the story quickly picks itself up by the bootstraps and marches along with style.  There are hiccups in the writing—the redundancy of information one normally finds in fanfiction and the like—but nothing that interrupts the flow of the story or the mystery within.

Give this story a go.  You won’t regret at least that much.

Casca:

This is a Daring Do story. From what I gather, usually there’s high risks and high rewards involved, and almost always these bear resemblance to Indiana Jones in both structure and setting. In short, adventure played straight, with ponies.

It’s funny how much of a gambit WUtG is, similar to the themes of hope, loss, insanity and choices it presents. Most of the story is Daring Do walking around in a cursed temple on her lonesome. I’d like to say that it’s as interesting as it sounds, but what surprised me was that it was interesting to an extent. The details are lush but not overbearing. The actions are consistent, and the perspective never stops moving as Daring Do is pushed by both circumstance and self to progress and act. But it’s also actions and scenery revolving around a character that doesn’t get all that much in-story establishment, and as a result, I felt some degree of detachedness to everything going on. If the descriptions and planning were mediocre, I would have panned this for being several thousand words of a pony whom I don’t care for doing things I don’t care for. But I cared, because I was interested, because it was interesting, and that counts for something.

Halfway through the fic, I was beginning to worry whether I would be disappointed, whether anything of relative import would actually happen. 17116 words is no simple investment time- nor effort-wise. But the ending actually gave me a good sense of closure, and changed my opinion of the story from “all right” to “actually worth something”.

And that’s where the gambit aspect lies. The story requires a good deal of investment from the reader, almost as much as it requires from Daring Do. It requires one to gear up and work through a first chapter in which nothing of high intensity happens. Hope flickers with paragraph after paragraph of strange, shifting tunnels and dead ends, flickering with Daring Do’s own resolve as she meets these in their narrative. There’s just enough twists to keep you from wandering off, directly related to how Daring Do loses important things one after another, yet never all at once (which I’ve only noticed in hindsight). But when dawn breaks forth, and you reach the exit of the temple, and the ending comes, you can look back on the process and say, “That was worth it”.

Well, I did, at least. Perhaps some readers will need a little push to get going. Consider this review that little push.

Sessalisk:

Now why on earth would there be an abandoned castle in the Everfree Forest?

If you’ve ever had an annoying roommate or even if you’ve grown up with siblings, you might laugh along in sympathy, grit your teeth in anger, or suffer from post-traumatic flashbacks.

We’ve all been there.

The story is written in a series of back and forth notes between Celestia, Luna and Discord, several thousand years before the start of the series. This sounds like the setup for some serious drama, but it leads to much more silliness instead. Living with other people can be a huge pain, whether it’s by having terrible, messy pets; eating the food you bought for yourself; or even purposefully doing things just to tick you off. Never does this come across more clearly than through these notes.

There are heaps of immaturity on all sides. They are passive-aggressive like it’s going out of style, and, at one point, Luna even degenerates into drawing an enormous butt and claiming it’s Celestia’s. How could anyone not love that?

Corejo:

Oh, man.  This story.  This story knows what it’s like.  There’s always that one person you meet (whether an actual roommate or friend/acquaintance) just like this.  This story grabs you by that experience and thrusts you into one of extremes, never straying too far, nor staying too close.  The story’s perspective is done very well, and captures the essence of what it is to have a roommate.  But if you’ve never had this experience, it plays out so well that you feel it regardless.

Ever wonder what immortal demigods might do when living together?  This is a ridiculous look into just that.  It’s over-the-top, but through what it’s relating to, feels so natural.

And then there were Moons.  Lots of them.

There is nothing revolutionary about this story in terms of depth, but there are definitely more laughs than most could ever dream of getting from something so simple.

Casca:

There’s not much I can say about this one, except that I found it pretty amusing, and I’m, uh, the one who suggested it to be on this week’s feature, so there’s that.

The format, via post-it notes, is novel, and half of the amusement the story provides comes from what’s unsaid because of the limitations of the format. One fills in naturally the results of Discord’s disorderly habits, Celestia’s annoyance, Luna’s eyes rolling and whatnot, and this happens because the jokes are simple enough for the fill-ins to be done without much effort, and the author includes enough clues for us to fill it in ourselves without being fed. It’s active participation from the reader which brings life to the story; if you happen to have a brain of stone, there’s probably not much for you here.

This is also downright silly. Anyone who takes Luna’s banishment and Discord’s imprisonment very, very seriously - hint: if you believe in the New Lunar Republic, or make anthems for them, or whatever - is going to be pretty irked. But fie, fie I say, and let the rest of us hobbyists have our fun. That’s what this story is. It’s short, silly and fun. And that’s good.

Sessalisk:

Immortals relax

Engaged in a game of chess

And introspection

This story takes a peek into the psyche of Cadance and Luna, their personalities and their motives. The rock-solid dialogue shows that the writer has an excellent and interesting grasp of the two characters. Luna says some things that are rather melancholy, but they never cross the line into mopey or overwrought, a pitfall of many of the stories that dabble with the idea of immortality. Underneath her pensiveness lies hope.

Cadance is no slouch herself, her lines belying both a wry sense of humour and her relative inexperience. Throughout the story you can see a light, but skillful, hand touching upon these issues.

There are some editing issues with this one for sure, but anyone interested in reading a thoughtful tale about colourful pony princesses should not be disappointed.

Corejo:

Concise imagery is oftentimes a hard mechanic for fics to pull off, but boy does this story go against that grain.  LunaUsesCaps shows a fine mastery of penmanship in his initial chapter of A Long Night’s Day on this front.  The intro scene wraps you in its arms and holds tight.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Long Day’s story progresses at a reasonable pace, one that lets everyone settle down with their favorite hot beverage and enjoy the story being told; it feels natural.  In this beginning chapter we are given a short but well-rounded snippet of the story to come that will leave you begging for more.

A Celestia/Luna origin story has yet to intrigue me beyond casual perusal.  I have a feeling that will change as this story unfolds.

Casca:

I should probably start off by saying what I didn’t like the most: the way the first chapter ended. It came across as muddled due to lack of clarity with attributing pronouns, i.e. tagging actions with “She” when there’s more than one of them in the scene.

Okay. That’s out of the way; now for the rest of it.

A Long Day’s Night is a promise. It starts off with a wise Luna and a Cadence capable of feeling something other than tiredness or desperation, and some rather clever dialogue with a lot of nuance and implications exchanged. It continues with the reveal of conflict, an interesting take on Cadence’s thoughts on being useless oft the rescued rather than the rescuer, and then breaks to a nicely established scene of Celestia and Luna right after defeating Discord - not without cost. There’s another interesting take on a certain creature, and then the aforementioned muddled ending, which, while muddled, is also intriguing.

I mean, the author handles his dialogue, character and descriptions well, and it shows promise, but there’s not enough of it to see whether it’ll stay that way during periods of intense conflict or careful build-up. Promise, though, is still promise, and it’s that which gets this into today’s feature.

You all done reading?  That’s good.  It’s nice to see people enjoying great stories they may not have even known existed.  That’s why we’re here—to protect and to serve get wasted on martinis.

We set the asparagus adrift; Nietzsche said Belligerent Sock’s tracking device was pinging out in the Arctic.  I hope our little raft makes it to him.

As for Casca and I, we’ll be relaxing in the pool.  Log on and go to our group page to send us your feedback on this episode of Seattle’s Angels!

Originally posted to the Vault on 11/23/12.

Today we find out what Celestia and Discord were up to while Twilight and company were trying to re-imprison him in his stone prison, exploring the past and Celestia's psyche.

[Dark] • 11,700 words

Princess Celestia is a paradigm of virtue. Calm and benevolent, she stands strong as the moral guide of all ponydom, its infallible protector and symbol of all that is good.

She is... isn’t she?

Discord knows the truth. And he will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to make Celestia see it too.

The truth is never clear. Fear, however, is not so hard to find.

Hit the break for a chat with Mystic, and links to Dancing on Silver Strings out on the ponynet. And don't forget to grab your own ebook over at the Vault's Downloads page!

Howdy folks!

As part of the (le epic) site redesign, we're looking at retooling the FAQ - it's showing its age a bit, especially with all of the group changes that have come out recently.

That said, we're hoping you guys can offer some questions for us to throw in there. Things that, as a user of the site (or a potential user) you might have wondered about. Current examples of forthcoming (or already present) questions include:

- How do I make an account?

- I didn’t receive my sign up email, what should I do?

- How do I create a story?

- How do I edit a story?

- What are groups, and why are they so awesome?

- Why can’t I post comments or add stories to a particular group?

While we probably won't be able to fit all suggestions into the updated list, the more you can give us the better, so we know what kind of things it would be helpful for users to know.

Also, thanks to everyone for their support and feedback throughout our updates!

Edit: Oh God Knighty broke the comments

As a further change to the comment system after adding likes/dislikes, I've added comment ordering by date for stories and blog posts. Both of these default to newest first, and I have some reasons why I made this decision.

1. By ordering by newest first, it means comments get more equal exposure and removes the incentive to first post, and even if someone does it's quickly forgotten about.

2. Comments on stories/blogs are more frequently individual posts, replies to the base topic itself, so it makes less sense to order them as a linear discussion

3. When you receive notifications for comments, you're almost always jumping to one of the last few posts. When ordered ascending, this means you end up jumping page every single time you go to a comment. This adds extra strain to the server AND slows things down for you guys.

Regardless, I know some people will probably prefer to keep things as they are, so I've kept the ability to order it ascending if you want.

No doubt most of you have noticed this by now, but comments around Fimfiction now make use of a thumbs up/down system. By clicking the thumbs up icon you increment that total by one, and vice versa for the thumbs down icon. Pretty simple stuff.

The goal of this system is, at a high level, to improve comment quality on Fimfiction. By allowing users to agree with posts it saves a lot of need for short posts that don't further discussion but still add their view. It also incentivizes better quality comments as people are more likely to upvote them. On the dislike side of things it makes it easier for us to find poor quality posters and spammers and automatically hide their posts, but we can only do this effectively if people make good use of the system, so please use it a lot, but responsibly!

Things you should thumbs up

People who add insight to the discussion

People who make interesting new points

Comments that are friendly and helpful

Things you should thumbs down

Spam posts

Posts that have no purpose in the discussion, eg "Adding to my read it later list" and image macros

People who post rude comments about other people

Things you SHOULDN'T thumbs down

Comments that you disagree with but are otherwise not offensive and not spam

Originally posted to the Vault on 11/16/12.

Lyra is almost as big in the fandom as Derpy, with a unique fan-created persona that is obsessed with humans. In what is (almost - it recently got beaten out by some little upstart) the most favorited story on FIMFiction, we learn why. (And have you guys heard the song? There's a great song.)

[Adventure][Human Crossover] • 130,400 words

Humans.

Truth or myth? Ancient lost civilization or just an old pony's tale?

No pony has ever seen one, and most haven't even heard of them. But Lyra knows that these wonderful creatures are more than just old legends, and she's going to find out... and possibly drive her roommate insane in the process.

Hit the break for a chat with JasonTheHuman, and links to Anthropology out on the ponynet. There are some pretty nice ebooks waiting for you over at the Vault's Downloads page, too!

╗Σñ╬ └╝¼ ╩? もしもし？Har du några sparris? Hello? Is this thing on? Can you read this? Ugh, finally. You have no idea how much havoc this site overhaul has wrecked on the group. Alex's office got downgraded from a broom closet to half a broom closet. Nietzsche lost his glasses, and now he can't walk down the hall without getting nauseous... something about a lack of depth perception, or perspective, or whatever. Pav was all packed and sealed up in a box without any air holes. He's still pulling packaging peanuts out of his hair. We haven't found the rest of the group yet; they're presumed to be dead, at their second jobs, alive, accidentally sent to the Tegucigalpa branch of FimFic's offices, and/or simultaneously dead and alive.

To be perfectly clear, the reason that this wasn't posted until Wednesday is 100% due to the fact that the site background is now silver instead of tan. Any notion that this post was late because we're slackers is baseless slander.

Anyway, enjoy some stories!

So, yesterday's update of Fimfiction certainly had some issues, and I've spent the following 24 hours with very little sleep, and spent it all programming. Nonetheless I think most of the bugs are squashed by now, and we're just left with some aesthetic ones primarily. I'll try to nuke the rest shortly.

Anyway! I didn't even get a chance to talk about all the things that have happened to the site with this update! So in this post I'm going to post about as much stuff as I can remember that I fixed.

Remember that you can send me your group events and invitations for the monthly reminder!

Only two three four this time: