A Little Bit About My "Hall of Fame" ! · 6:54pm Mar 3rd, 2020
Some of you may have noticed that I have a “Hall of Fame” section on my profile. It’s for my Top 5 favorite stories on the site at the time, and though it’s changed a bit since its inception not too long ago, I thought it would be neat to give everyone a bit of an overview on why I love these stories and why I think you should read them, too! I’ve also gotten the authors of these stories to help out a bit, and they’re all super cool for doing that and I thank them tremendously so make sure to check out their other work, too!
So without (okay maybe a bit of) further ado, here are my Top 5 stories on the site! These are in no particular order, and I’ll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum (though beware nonetheless!)
Sunset Shimmer is breaking up with Rainbow Dash. Graffiti is coming to life to terrorize Canterlot City. Fluttershy gets a baseball bat.
These may sound like one-sentence summaries of three individual stories, but all of this happens in Aragon’s WORLD IS IN DANGER. DON’T TALK TO ME. And when it does, Aragon blends it so well that he’ll have you wondering why more authors don’t try to use murderous street art as a plot device in romantic comedy.
The story clocks in at just about 15 thousand words, and while that’s normally a bit of a commitment for me in a story, its pacing barely allows it to breathe in the best way possible. The story centers around the somber prospect of Sunset Shimmer ending a relationship with Rainbow Dash, but it's more about the ensuing repercussions because the event in question already happened. And even in its calmest moments, the quips in the dialogue and the humor in its tone make the story fly by like your favorite rollercoaster. The story somehow manages to be hilarious, endearing, thoughtful, and wrenching all at the same time, and it's a story I'll reread from time to time and desperately wish I wrote.
“WORLD IS IN DANGER is a story about the consequences of a breakup, not the breakup itself, and the way it affects everyone around it. But it's also funny, cause sad things tend to be ridiculous, and often you find yourself laughing at them.” – Aragon
When it gets to the action, it does it exceedingly well, and it’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had reading a story. It’s meaningful in its message, a blast in its cleverness, and it’s has a certain swagger to it that only Aragon can pull off. It’s also the story that inspired me to even have a Top 5 list in the first place, as a matter of fact, so it gets some bonus points for that, too.
Favorite Line: “There were no meetings in the Docks, there were only ambushes.”
When something becomes so iconic, how do you even talk about it? What can you say about something like Dangerous Business that hasn’t already been said a thousand times before? It has its own TV Tropes page and well over a thousand likes on this website.
What I can say is that the entire piece was one of the first Pony Fics I ever read, and the epic tale was one of the first things to help me realize that I would stick around in the fandom. Its inspiration from Lord of the Rings is worn proudly on its sleeve, but the story’s author, Jetfire, has found a bit of a new appreciation for it as the years have gone by.
"It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door is meant to be the quintessential adventure story. The inspiration it takes from Tolkien is well-known at this point, but when I reread it these days, I really do love the sense in which it's like The Hobbit. It's 'there and back again,' a journey into adventure and peril that ultimately ends with everyone safe and sound at home once more." – Jetfire2012
Dangerous Business features a quest from Rainbow, Rarity and Applejack to find a cure for a deadly disease Twilight has come down with after she attempts to teach Rarity to teleport. It’s an enchanting ride with plenty of action, charming original characters, and a final challenge (you know the one) that instills the perfect sense of grandiose climax to a story where characters we know and love grow into something far more than we could have ever imagined.
There are a ton of adventure stories in the fandom, but there's only one Dangerous Business.
Favorite Line: “’If their courage is failing, you can restore it. If their strength leaves them, you can help them find more. If their spirits are broken, you can mend them.’”
I’ve been very thankful that AShadowOfCygnus has helped me edit two of three stories that have been featured on Equestria Daily (Place and The Last Ride). He’s a wonderful writer with a sense of description I heavily admire, and this story was the reason I sought him out to help me fine-tune my own work.
Peaceable Kingdom tackles terrorism in Equestria, a subject I have almost never seen explored on the website. The story starts from a certain point and then goes back to the time before it, in which some of the main cast see a fire blaze from Canterlot and slowly begin to realize that something is very, very wrong.
“We are constantly beset by tragedy and outrage; that much is as true now as it was for the entirety of the three-year period over which I wrote Peaceable Kingdom. Here is a moment of crystallized tragedy, seen through the ever-fracturing lens of a fictional world we desperately hope never has to experience it, and desperately long to see overcome it.” – AShadowOfCygnus
Not only does the story serve as a message for the real world, but the harrowing slow burn that AShadowOfCygnus employs during the story is executed incredibly well. The evolution of each character’s reaction to the tragedy is one of the more fascinating parts of the story, and the sense of description throughout it – and the way it paints its morbid picture – is enough to give you chills.
It's one of those stories that goes from zero to one hundred and back to zero just as fast, and even still, every lull and rise in the narrative compliments each other perfectly. It's a masterclass in description and emotion, and I can always go back and read it when I'm trying to paint a picture in one of my own stories.
Favorite Line: “Fire falls on Canterlot. Not all at once, mind you. Not in the manner of a tidal wave or an earthquake, but . . . slowly. Like snow.”
Chrysalis has seen many interpretations across the fandom. Through all of them, though, I haven’t quite read a Chrysalis like MagnetBolt does in Trolly Problem.
"A Trolley Problem Named Desire is a story about Chrysalis lying. She lies to Cadance, to Tirek, and at the end she lies to herself, but the reason for those lies are what drives her character arc." – MagnetBolt
Chrysalis lies about a lot of things in this story, and yet the way it’s written, we can see right through all of them. Chrysalis is staying with Shining, Cadance and Flurry Heart after being freed from captivity, and even though she lies to them with every quip and snide, you can see the truth in her slowly unfurl itself as the story comes along. She’s witty throughout the entirety of the story and has some brilliant one-liners across the course of the tale, but you see every side of her as a situation she’s found herself in begins to develop itself as it proceeds.
There are some moments where Chrysalis lies to you, too. You really do wonder if she means the things she says or even the things she thinks as you read them across the page. But once the story ends and she gives her (absolutely brilliant) closing line, you can look back on the story and read it again and again with a new perspective in mind.
The titular “Trolly Problem” is weaved into the story quite nicely, though perhaps not in the way you think it would be. Overall, it’s a serious and emotional tale that lets a villain be a villain, but also lets them grow into something else entirely to an often hilarious backdrop.
Favorite Line: “I swear, you trap somepony in a dark pit and steal their husband and they just never forgive you.”
“Circles is a horror story that I started writing with a simple premise in mind: What if Luna wasn't alone while she was banished on the moon? And then it turned into a whole lot more than that.” – Grimm
1000 years is a long time. Grimm’s Circles will make it feel much, much longer.
I haven’t written a pure horror story on this site yet, but I did allow it to influence quite a few aspects of my recently completed story Dear Faithful Student. Circles, though, is a tale of cosmic horror that’s slow burn is so meticulously disturbing that you’ll be dreading its ending just as much as Celestia, who the story is being told to.
Somehow, Grimm is able to describe an antagonist that can’t really be described, and he paints an all too vivid picture of an entity that isn’t really there. The sense of dread is built up brick by agonizing brick, and the sheer sense that something is horribly, horribly wrong underlying even through moments where Luna and Celestia are simply speaking to each other over tea is executed in a way I couldn’t pretend to be able to pull off.
And then it gets weirder, and weirder, and weirder still, and it will convince you of its surreal horror and well-paced storytelling far before Luna convinces Celestia. It also puts an interesting spin on the relationship between Luna and Celestia and delves a bit into their past, but I can't go any further than that without ruining the experience.
Circles presents a serious of questions throughout the story, and it leaves you wanting answers just as much as you desperately won’t in the best way possible.
Favorite Line: “No, you felt it, it felt cold. It felt dangerous. It felt wrong.”
So there you have it! All of these authors do great work and there are plenty more gems among them to be found, so give their other stories a look if you checked these out and enjoyed them. As for myself, I’m currently working on a shortish multi-chapter story I plan on publishing all at once -- called One Night Only -- that I'm hoping to put out there within the next few weeks or so, so stay tuned for that as well.
Thanks for reading!
~ Muramasa
Trolley Problem Named Desire gets even better after you read its sorta-sequel~
5213508
I actually haven't read it, but now I'll have to. Thanks for the heads up!
5213508
MagnetBolt is in my opinion one of the most underrated authors on this site.