Fandom Specific Plot/My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

One of the most popular shows of The New Tens which attained a healthy, and near unprecedented, Periphery Demographic, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has several plots that you can find over and over again in the fandom.

Yes, there are even fics about those kinds of plots.

General

• Before the Season 2 premiere, it was common for the Elements of Harmony to face the Elements of Discord/Chaos.
• Princess Celestia turning out to be a horrible tyrant, or Equestria being a Crap Saccharine World. Often, this will involve the characters being unaware of this and scolded by some OC for how naive they were.
• Fluttershy nursing a hurt character back to health (which has some basis, given that she's the Element of Kindness). Even Trixie is in one of these.
• In Derpy fics where she's the mother of Dinky, it'll often center around the hardships of being a single mother and/or Derpy's ditziness.
• Many a Bonbon and Lyra fics are about Lyra being unable to get a job, as she's a musician in Fanon.
• Any fanfic that is centered on Scootaloo is usually going to make her an object of pity, as it will either be about her inability to fly or her lack of any known family. She often ends up being comforted or adopted by Rainbow Dash as a result.
• Given that the show can be surprisingly dark at times, with some rather interesting political themes, Darker and Edgier adaptations of the series are quite common.
• The Season 5 finale was... controversial to the say the least so reimaginings of it, up to including Twilight saying how Starlight's Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse, popped up very fast.
• "X" is a Changeling.
• A male Alicorn, usually sporting a black and red colour scheme, shows up.
• What happened to the human Sunset Shimmer? She usually either died young or was removed somehow by her pony counterpart.
• The Equestria Girls coming to Equestria.
• Twilight, now an immortal Alicorn, outliving all of her friends.
• Popularized by The Elements of Harmony and the Savior of Worlds, it's quite common for Megan Richards to visit Equestria and be some divine figure in the lore.
• Checking on the real Grogar.
• Rarity turns into a dragoness (sometimes a baby, sometimes fully grown) or Spike turns into a pony.
• Prior to Rainbow Rocks, it was common to see fics where Twilight didn't make it through the portal in time and had to spend thirty moons in the human world.
• Prior to Friendship Games, fics about the human Twilight coming to Canterlot High were common. The three most common personalities for her were: The personality she ultimately ended up having, making her a copy of Princess Twilight, or making her a more polite, non-alcoholic Rick Sanchez.
• While the Next Gen Fic was always a thing, stories that focus on Luster Dawn and her own experiences learning about the magic of friendship quickly popped up after the Grand Finale. It's common for these fics to cover the Time Skip that led to the Distant Finale.

Crossover

• The standard plot for getting the ponies themselves into another universe is famously "Twilight Sparkle tests out a new teleport spell, and it goes wrong". It's gotten to the point where Equestria Daily explicitly points it out when a fic doesn't do this.
  • It's not just "teleport turns into dimensional travel"; when Twilight tries out any new spell in fanfic, things will go south. One fanfic involving Twilight visiting a darker parallel universe had Equestria Daily note that the universe's existence isn't her fault: "Is that even allowed?"
  • On the flipside, exotic energy on the other side of the dimensional wall can just as easily drop someone into Equestria, such as the Ghostbusters crossing streams or the Tesseract's energy.
• Crossover fics dealing with other characters getting transported to Equestria, almost always getting inexplicably "ponified" in the process. Doctor Who is the most common victim of this, thanks to a background character who looks like a pony version of the Tenth Doctor.
• Doctor Who:
  • The TARDIS lands in Equestria and the Doctor remains humanoid. Usually the Daleks (wanting to mine Equestria's resources) or the Cybermen (wanting to assimilate Equestrian magic into themselves) are invading.
  • The TARDIS lands in Equestria but the Doctor becomes a pony. His companions will either be Twilight and Derpy. Usually portrays the Whoniverse and Equestria as Alternate Universes with the TARDIS having fallen through a crack between the worlds. The Doctor usually does not return to his native universe, either simply because this is never mentioned or because something prevents him from returning.
    • Though there are a few where the Doctor falls through a crack and remains humanoid.
  • Any character with an hourglass cutie mark is a Time Lord.
• And of course, "Humans in Equestria" stories.
• Star Trek:
  • John de Lancie voiced Discord, an omnipotent trickster. John de Lancie also played Q, an omnipotent trickster on Star Trek: The Next Generation. You see where this is going right? The usual set-up is that Q invites Jean-Luc and his crew to Equestria.
  • "We are the Borg."
  • Most First Contact fics usually take place through Kirk's crew.
• In Star Wars fics, Equestria is bursting with the power of the Force.
• The parody series Friendship Is Witchcraft reimagined Sweetie Belle as Sweetie Bot. Combine that with FiM being Friendly Fandoms with Transformers, and you arrive at one conclusion...
• Mass Effect crossovers often portray Equestria as a giant simulation that the Ponies' Precursors built to hide their kind from the Reapers. At some point, Rainbow Dash will learn that being a Leeroy Jenkins doesn't work quite as well on the Citadel as in Equestria.
• On account of the show's geocentric model of the solar system, sci-fi franchises often feature Equestria in an Alternate Universe or some Techno Babble laden explanation as to why the Ponies think the world is geocentric (usually that they're just dark age idiots).
• The Equestria Girls portal, or another like it, is used to access an Alternate Universe. Given how divisive Equestria Girls is however, this is not a very popular one.
• If the portal is ignored, which summarizes about 80+% of all crossovers, the usual workarounds are having the other characters come from another planet in the same universe or simply saying that the Equestria Girls portal need only apply to that particular universe. After all, the various mirror portals of the comics never transformed the characters into copies of their counterparts from the other universe.

Ascended Fanon

Put it to you this way, this fandom lasted so long with so many plots that, just mathematically, some were made canon.

• "Luna reintegrates into Equestrian society" stories became (and remain) incredibly popular almost since day one, with Progress only being the most well known. Almost all contain some form of The Atoner mixed with Adorkable, No Social Skills and Fish Out of Temporal Water, and most draw some sort of parallel to Twilight's situation, if not outright having Twilight help her adjust. "Luna Eclipsed" confirmed all of these and further strengthened their prevalence, although later ones drop the fan-made meek, submissive portrayal and adopt the official Large Ham portrayal.
• After the Season 2 premiere, Defeat Means Friendship fics were common for Discord. Take a wild guess what the plot for Season 3's Keep Calm and Flutter On was...
• Rainbow Dash having an accident and, irreparably or not, injuring her wings, requiring another character to care for her (may or may not involve shipping). At one point these were so ubiquitous that Equestria Daily outright banned them. Then there was the actual episode where Rainbow broke her wings and was confined to a hospital bed...
• A popular story has Twilight Sparkle (and possibly the other members of the mane six as well) turning into Alicorns and taking over the rule of Equestria from Celestia and Luna, who have grown tired of immortality. Twilight became an Alicorn in the Season 3 finale and was given the keys to Equestria in the Grand Finale.
• It was once very popular to pit the gang from Friendship is Magic against updated versions of G1 villains, such as Lord Tirac from "Rescue at Midnight Castle", the Smooze or Grogar. All three of them eventually showed up in the show.
  • Lord Tirek was the Big Bad of Season 4, and formed part of the Big Bad Ensemble in Season 9.
  • The Smooze appeared in Make New Friends but Keep Discord, though it was subject to Adaptational Heroism and made a Non-Malicious Monster who just wanted to be friends.
  • Grogar was the Bigger Bad of Season 9. Or rather, Discord was masquerading as Grogar, as the real one had been defeated off-screen centuries ago.
• Featuring a seventh Element of Harmony. Sunset Shimmer was eventually confirmed, by Word of God, to be the Element of Empathy following the end of Rainbow Rocks.
• A common set-up for Transformers crossovers is to have Twilight or Chrysalis' magic interfere with a Space Bridge, bringing the Cybertronians to Equestria. When it comes to a Villain Team-Up, the Changelings were the most popular choice to join the Decepticons. All this is the set-up for My Little Pony/Transformers.
• The instant "The Last Problem" finished airing, fans began writing up their own version of Season 10. So did IDW Publishing.