Flipper Fanfiction Recommendation Engine

The Flipper Fanfiction Recommendation Engine, generally just called Flipper is an application programmed by Zekses (known as zerkses on Reddit). Zekses used it privately for about a year before publicly releasing it in February 2018.

Flipper replaces Fanfiction.net's native search functions with a fuller-featured search and recommendation engine. It does not require the user to have a FFN account. Zekses said they plan to add support for AO3, SpaceBattles, and SufficientVelocity in the future.

What it can do:

• create personalized recommendation lists for FFN

• search within these lists

• delete fics/fandoms from searches forever so that the search results always contains fics you haven't read/seen yet

• allows you to tag stuff to organize your reading

• semi decently autodetects fics' genres (where it can) and detects which is the main genre for a fic and which is present in trace quantities

• just generally has more filters than FFN and can be used as a search engine both over your rec list and over all fics it has in its database (currently, ~1/3 of FFN).

Flipper also contains a "Slash Filter" with "Light/Medium/Strong" settings for those who wish to filter out slash; or can be set to show slash fics only. Since FFN does not have any native "M/M" identifier on fics, the app identifies slash with a multi-stage approach. Stage one is finding certain keywords in fic summaries (e.g. HPSS, HPDM, yaoi). Stages two and three run these known slash fics against the database of user favorite lists; fics that appear in user favorites alongside slash fics are considered more likely to be slash if they do not appear in "non-slashy" favorite lists.

Reception

"Significantly better than the FFN search engine and I think I like it more than wading through tag soup on AO3."