The Most Internally Linked stories on FiMfiction. · 5:03pm Jul 9th, 2013
Before I get started, a quick signal bump: BronyCon needs some really, purposefully bad fics. They're having a panel called the Hoof of Argon, where people will attempt to read really, really bad fics out loud without laughing, and they need some more fics. These must be submitted by the author. The stories also have to be PG-13 or under, the awfulness will have to rest in the writing, not the shock value of the subject.
If you have something you think is bad enough that it would be a challenge to read it without laughing, PM a link to Applejinx.
Now, on to the real fun: Spreadsheets!
If there is one thing I love more than gathering really interesting data, it’s when someone else gathers it, and drops it in my lap! So, I have to thank barbeque over and over and over, because he’s an amazing person and deserves all the hugs for this.
Back in my post about how the best fics in fandom aren’t always on EqD, I mentioned that I thought a better way of finding great fics would be a list of what other FiM users were recommending on userpages. My argument was that there are only fifteen slots on userpages, and people have to actively set them. So for a story to be on a userpage it needs to be not just something you liked, but at least in your top fifteen fics, and memorable enough that you took the time to edit your page. Also, a story can be widely linked this way no matter how controversial it is, something Bad Horse has talked about with regards to the Top Rated list on FiMfiction, and the weighting of thumbs down in how they organize that.
Barbeque brought me that list. More than that, he brought me four lists: A spreadsheet about the most linked stories, a spreadsheet about the most linked stories that are not mature rated or on EqD, a spreadsheet about the most linked stories weighted by how many followers the people who link have, and the same but excluding mature and EqD.
Now this is interesting. Here are the top twenty Most Linked stories, overall:
Past Sins
My Little Dashie
Background Pony
Anthropology
Vinyl and Octavia: University Days
The Immortal Game
It Takes a Village
Eternal
Xenophilia
Allegrezza
Arrow 18 Mission Logs: Lone Ranger
The Ballad of Echo the Diamond Dog
On a Cross and Arrow
The Sweetie Chronicles: Fragments
The Life and Times of a Winning Pony
The End of Ponies
My Roommate is a Vampire
Griffin the Griffin
The Best Night Ever
ARTICLE 2
And here are the top twenty that are linked to the most people (the list is weighted by the number of followers the people linking it have. So a story linked by SS&E is higher than one linked by fifteen people with zero followers):
Background Pony
It Takes a Village
The Best Night Ever
Eternal
Past Sins
The Immortal Game
Xenophilia
Allegrezza
Romance Reports
My Little Dashie
Anthropology
White Box
The Flight of the Alicorn
Yours Truly
Composure
The Sweetie Chronicles: Fragments
The Life and Times of a Winning Pony
The Glass Blower
Beating the Heat
Austraeoh
This is interesting, because if you look at the Most Linked stories, this is our fandom. These are our classics, for better or worse. These are the stories that come up over and over, whether you like them or hate them. Some of them are awful, some of them have sex scenes, some wouldn’t make EqD and some don’t deserve to make EqD. But there are only one or two stories on this list that I’ve never heard of, and most of them I’ve read discussions about.
Compare this to the twenty Top Rated (according to the FiMfic metrics):
Paternally Yours
Visiting Hours
Yours Truly
Spike’s Centennial
In Celestia We Trust, All Others Pay Cash
A Novel Tale
Vinyl and Octavia: University Days
Greenfire
Not By Its Cover
Melt
Mort Takes a Holiday
My Choices: Twisted Tales Through Time
Minuette’s Lesson
How to Remove a Unicorn Tooth
A Candle to the Sun
Pandelirium
Rites of Ascension
Princesses Don’t Potty
Inscape
The Best Night Ever
Now, the Top Rated list might be better written; Xenophilia and My Little Dashie are among the fics that I will happily rip to shreds. But I’ve heard of Xenophilia and My Little Dashie. I’ve discussed them. There are lots of people out there who really love them, while I’ve never met anyone who loved Visiting Hours. I’ve never even heard of it.
I don't know about you guys, but Most Linked is the list I want to be on. I don't want to write the story that a lot of people liked enough to click a button, or that the EqD prereaders liked enough to let through. I want to write the story that made people say "This is among the best stories I've read on the site! I should tell other people about it!" even if the grammar or spelling isn't perfect, even if it gets auto-thumbs down for being shipping, or humanized, or dealing with sex. If you’re looking for well written fics that no one hated, Top Rated is the list for you. But if you want to know what fics really touched people, and influenced people, and changed the way fics are written in this fandom, the Most Linked lists are a gold mine.
Anyway, as a final note, I’ll take a moment to point out that of the three fics that share the Most Linked and Top Rated lists, only one of them has been on EqD (University Days). Yours Truly and Best Night Ever have never been on EqD, which I feel supports the point of my original post that spawned this: some of the best fics in fandom aren’t on EqD. (This is incorrect, they were both on EqD in gdocs form, but the FiM versions of the stories are not linked from EqD.)
And all of that is why I so very much enjoy this site.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Solid point, well said.
I wish I had an intentionally bad fic to send to them, sadly I do not. Most of the intentionally bad fics that I've read or done dramatic readings for have been a bit...mature. Still, sounds fun.
They haven't? Pretty sure that at least Yours Truly has been on there, let me get back on this later.
And yeah, The Best Night Ever is linked by iirc 6 people with over 600 followers or something.
When the heck did Sunny Skies fall of the top rated list? I haven't been this disappointed since Evolution of Dance was no longer the most watched video on Youtube.
Erm... really? (Unless there are different wildly popular fics with the same title...)
1198901>>1198896
My mistake, I was looking at the FiMfic page for each story, neither of which is linked to the EqD page (so it doesn't show up in stats for the story.)
In other news, I (used to) use peoples' linked stuff looking for potential Vault fics all the time. Found some great stuff that way. I'd love FIMFic's stats to track this somehow, so you could sort by "most linked" fics.
I am surprised that Rites of Assension was not on the upper two lists, and that Blue Angel was not on any either.
And on the topic of reading spaghetti, me and a few friends occasionally read such stories outloud to each other in group calls... just because its hilarious!
Those lists look surprisingly similar to exactly how I expected those lists to look.
Anyway, by my count (looking at the weighted list), 17 of the 20 most linked fics are on EQD. Only Xenophilia, The Romance Reports, and Austraeoh are missing. Two of those contain explicit sex, the other is as much a literary project as it is a story.
I'd say this is more evidence of how EQD affects popularity, but it's shows well enough that most (maybe not all) of the best stories in the fandom are on EQD. Or the most linked to are, at least.
Regarding the terrible story stuff, I assume we can send over stuff that isn't ours, at which point someone will go about getting the author's permission or do we have to get the author's permission first?
Well then. I'll just keep holding on to my 35 slots.
And as a random sidenote, A Cup of Joe is on the last list. It most certainly made EqD.
1198946
This is the weighted list with mature and EqD fics removed (though I think Green is close to being posted on EqD... I'm not sure where Steel Resolve is in the process.) Other than Austraeoh, A Bluebird's Song is the big surprise there (to me at least. A lot of TwiDash shippers swear by it). And part of my original point is that while I understand EqD's policy, Romance Reports is widely regarded as an extremely influential fic that's not on EqD because of the Mature rating.
1198986
Nope, the author has to send it.
And as of the time I suggested the idea, there were only 15 slots because you could only repeat the faves module three times. That must have been fixed in one of the updates.
That is fascinating. I love seeing this kind of analysis.
1199006
Awww...
As for the list, I'm noticing a lot of fics that I'm fairly sure I've seen on EqD. I'm bored right now, so I might just go through and find a bunch of the ones that have actually made EqD.
1199006 Yeah, it was. At one point it was unlimited, which incidentally led to very long load times on a user page. I used to have like 20 fav boxes or so until I switched over to a free form format.
Makes me wonder if Barbeque pulled all stories off of the user pages he scanned, or just the ones in a fav box.
1198989
And this is why I think these lists are more evidence of how EQD affects popularity than evidence of how it does or doesn't showcase quality.
Of those 25 fics that haven't been featured on EQD, Austraeoh, Green, A Bluebird's Song, My Roommate is a Vampire, and The Make Me Better Boutique are the only ones I've ever even heard of. That's not a coincidence.
EQD gets stories (good or bad) popular. When they become popular, they get internally linked through fimfiction more often. The very, very popular stories reach a certain point where they're able to continuously feed off their own reputation.
The problem with this metric is, if I linked to any of Skywriter's stories on my front page, then I'd have to link to all of them, and then there wouldn't be any room for any other stories.
1199040
I've heard of a few more (Letters from a Disgruntled Friendship Student, Get Thyselves a Room) but I agree with your point.
I'll also point out that many of the EqD featured fics are old- some of them, like My Little Dashie, are from before EqD had prereaders at all (or when the prereaders job was: can you read it and is it ponies?) That's partially do to with the format of the userpage links- a story might be linked from pages of people who don't read as much fanfic anymore, or don't update their userpage, and those are likely to be authors with a lot of followers. (AbsoluteAnon, Device Heretic, etc.)
1199018
A Cup of Joe should be gone now. I only really checked the first 50 of absolute-noeqd by hand (ie googling 'eqd story title' for every one of them). I only realized just after this was posted there is also a group on fimfiction somewhere with EQD stories, maybe I can use those as well.
1199031
Only those in fav boxes. People use custom links for very different things, for example things they edited or something.
When does BronyCon want the fics, and is there a desired word count? This sounds like kind of a fun writing exercise, to me.
Also, let me use my new EQD Pre-readerly abilities to say, "No, bookplayer, you're wrong! All the bestest pony fictions of ever are things we approve of, and nevermind what links and viewcounts and upvotes and anything else says! No one is allowed to be a good writer without our stamp of approval!"
Then, let me use my inherent lack of dickishness to revise and say, "Yeah, it'd be awfully nice to be on that list. I think that's a very good goal. I don't know if I, or anyone, is capable of it at this point, with how much pony fanfiction has grown—but I still think it's still a worthy goal to shoot for. I'd love to pull that off. And I wish you, and everyone else, the best in trying to achieve that. Especially because somebody needs to knock 'My Little Dashie' out of the list."
Oh, God. Pokemon crossover fic. I know how to write badfic now.
1199057
I just finished going through the top 50.
Here's what I found. Note all the really old dates. It seems to be a common theme.
The number indicates the row on the spreadsheet.
7. Somewhere Only We Know
9. Tilt
13. Celestia's Teeth
20. The Colour You Bleed
21. The Make Me Better Boutique
24. Wingmares
40. Spark
43. A Million Things to Do
50. Kindness's Reward
1199040
The last one you mentioned is on EqD
1199080
I'm not sure of a deadline. You could PM Applejinx and ask. But I know that there's no requested or required word count, depending on the awfulness. 1000 words is fine, if someone can't get through the first sentence without wondering what you were smoking. Also, spelling and grammar errors are encouraged, and will be read out loud as written.
1199084
They should all be gone now (from the -noeqd ones) and not return in future results. Thanks for pointing them out
1199090>>1199080
The original blog by Applejinx
I actually asked it in the comments back then (and still have produced nothing) but essentially before the end of the month I guess.
I have heard of just about all of these stories but I certainly haven't read them all (I wasn't known for much of a reader on this site, huh?).
I will say Background Pony actually brought me to this site. I remember seeing Background Pony and White Box and thinking "wow, I can do that!" when in fact, I could not do that, but tried anyway.
Other than that, I've only ever read Austraeoh (fantastic), My Little Dashie (didn't care), The End of Ponies, and In Celestia We Trust, All Others Pay Cash
1199126
I am continuing on my merry quest of searching out all these old EqD fics that managed to make the non-EqD list. Huzzah!
I also did not even see this one on the spreadsheet the first time around:
4. The Turning of the Screwball
You just had to go and delete the ones from the previous list from the spreadsheet, didn't you? Now I have to fix my numbering!
)
42. The Old Stories
45. Ditzy Doo's Dismally Derpy Day
46. The Song of Syhlex
53. Adventures in Cake Making
54. Equestrians in Undergarments
55. Fire & Rain (Well, it had an EqD page. It's gone now.)
56. The Spiderses (Okay, but seriously. This one slipped through? This getting on EqD is easily more infamous than Cupcakes making it on. This was, like, the experience to end all experiences. Come on, man!
61. A Candle to the Sun
66. A Night (to Try) to Remember
69. I don't even think this story is on FimFic anymore
73. Solace
75. Tonight I Shall Be Laughter
79. Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying
81. Common Sky
85. My Little Pony - Hospice
92. For Want of a Dawn (It made it through as a sequel.)
95. Pinkie Pie's Incredible Interplanetary Super Prank
96. Pinkie Prefers Her Pasta Plain
98. Veil of Thoughts
I have now looked at how many stories are actually on this list. I think going through 100 of them is good enough. No need to go through 5k+
1199195
Wow, that are, uh... quite a lot that slipped through I guess. Should be gone now. Not sure what to do with what once was #69 but it doesn't exist anymore and will still be in the normal overviews anyway.
But yeah, almost all of them were old ones with only a few people with lots of followers linking them.
This makes me sad indeed. It started out as a possibly interesting story, but has gone straight downhill and hasn't looked back.
I wish that we had even more data, such as when a story was added to someones page, or even if it has been added then later removed.
Of the 11 stories on my user page this is the only one on that list. I am part of the problem.
Yeah, Austraeoh made it onto one!
Also, finally started Background Pony, and its amazing so far. I think I've become a bit of SS&E fangirl without being aware of it until now.
The one and I hesitantly say *only*, problem with these lists are that they aren't capable of accounting for stories that aren't published on this website, or stories that were published on this site after their most popular days were past. Thus the most glaring omission is Fallout Equestria, but I'm sure there are a few others. Otherwise, I agree that these lists are much better indicators of the better fics in the fandom than anything else currently out there.
1199399 It probably depends on the impact the story had in the fandom before being posted here. Past Sins went up well after it originally made EQD, and it easily captured an impressive following.
If Fallout Equestria was ever posted, I'd expect a similar crushing of the featured box/popular stories list.
Those were interesting. I'd personally say that the best metric for determining the popularity of a given story is the number of favorites over views, and for determining celebrity the raw favorites numbers work best (or at least, these would be the cases if we didn't have merged favorites and tracking lists. Still the best option available). The problem with the link boxes is that not everyone uses them, and that those who do use them inconsistently. With most any metric we also run into what I'd consider bad data in the form of abandoned accounts - someone with fifteen stories linked on their page who hasn't accessed the site in twelve months only indicates the condition of the fandom twelve months ago, not now. Of course, as has been mentioned, the biggest problem when looking at this site as an overall indicator of the fandom's writings, is that we don't have it all here. We don't have FOE, we don't have Cupcakes (I'm pretty sure, at least): some of the most infamous fics in the fandom aren't represented at all in lists like these.
1199504
You're right, Past Sins certainly made the leap easily, but Past Sins is Past Sins, and even most of the other top fics don't have that kind of buzz and good will. Still I'll admit that them being posted here after the rush is much, much less likely than simply not being posted here at all. I couldn't name one offhand that hasn't achieved the sort of success here that they achieved on EQD or elsewhere.
There's a few things I find interesting about this list:
1) There are a lot of human fics (as in, fics involving humans on equestria) on that list of most linked to ones. Or in the case of Anthropology, the opposite. Six on the top list - Anthropology, Xenophilia, Arrow 18, The Ballad of Echo the Diamond Dog (also transformation), Griffin the Griffin (ALSO transformation), and Article 2. So much wish fulfillment. It is interesting to note how many of those fall off on the middle (unweighted) list, as four of them fall off the top 20.
2) How many of these are LONG stories. I think the shortest thing on the top list, and the only one that qualifies as a short story, is My Little Dashie (ugh). The bottom list includes White Box, which is cute, Yours Truly (not yet read, though this makes me want to), and the Glass Blower.
3) I find it interesting that both Eternal and Composure (two very Celestia-centric fics) are on the second list.
4) I find it sad how many of these are incomplete, and many of them appear not to have seen updates in six months to a year.
5) There are far, far fewer clopfics than I expected. Xenophilia (which I'm sorry to say is not only porn, but poorly written porn, and I blame YOU GUYS for making me read it. LOTS OF PEOPLE READ IT IT MUST BE GOOD RIGHT? WRONG. Jerks D: ) is obvious, but there are a few others (not as many as I expected though). However, this may also be a function of the fact that porn, no matter how well written, is kind of awkward to recommend to others on your page, while Xenophilia can pretend it is something other than "I want to have sex with ponies" (even though it is totally exactly that). Admittedly I don't list the one good clopfic I have read for exactly this reason, though I'm not sure if it really beats out the bottom fic of my 15 recommended ones.
One other thing of note: Cupcakes is probably the most infamous fanfic, but isn't on this list at all, because it isn't actaully on FIMFiction (or is it?). I wouldn't call it one of the BEST, but it is certainly a major reference point. Fallout Equestria obviously is also absurdly popular.
Also, regarding favorites: I have a disproportionate number of ongoing stories I'm reading marked as favorites because it is convenient, whereas I only favorite a finished story (and thus a short story) if it is actaully great, rather than "good enough to be worth keeping reading". So I'm not sure how useful of a metric that is.
The recommended fics thing IS certainly interesting though.
I think most of my personal favorites list is short stories (IIRC 10 of the 15) and I consider most of them much stronger than the longer stories I've read, or at least more worth reading.
I am still sad that The Cough was wasted on a goddamn pony fic though. That's just an amazing premise for a story, and it would work so well in a zombie apocalypse or similar scenario, more gritty and appropriate.
PS. I now have 560 fics on my read later list. 560. And they're mostly the fics that are too long to read on the spot and I am responsible and mark them to be read later.
560. ; ;
And I probably have more that I should add.
How many do most of you kids have?
1200734
Most if that is interesting. But I can explain your first point.
The bottom list is based on ratings, which take into account both thumbs up and thumbs down. Among the categories that many people will thumbs down without reading, stories involving humans are up there with the romance and sex tags. So while some of those recommended human fics deserve to be poorly rated, even ones that don't deserve it are a lot less likely to make the Top Rated stories because of the human tag.
1200765
I was actually referring to the weighted versus unweighted lists there, sorry that wasn't clear.
1200765 You've just met someone who loved Visiting Hours
Here's an interesting potential metric: how many times has someone linked (as in, inserted a Link) to a story? I do know that Google uses that kind of information to assess "relevance" (likelihood that the site is about what it claims to be about) It would be another way to see how often someone has actively recommended something. (Which I know I do a lot for certain stories)
1200862
I didn't recognize the title, but I actually just read that story the other day and enjoyed it. It was cute.
Though I wouldn't call it one of the best stories on the site.
I'm getting a little bit of hipster pleasure from the fact that only one fic out of the 15 recommended on my page is on any list. This is probably because I reserve 10 slots for fics that I think have an unacceptably low ratio of likes* to story quality, and only 5 are for fics that I just really liked. But then, Arrow 18 is probably going to vanish from that box once The Writing on the Wall** gets more exposure, because that story is not leaving my userpage in the foreseeable future.
1199535
I'm not a fan of favorites over views, because I tend to reread stories that I liked a lot. Which means that my favorite counts for less on a story that I love than it would on a story that I barely liked enough to +fav (which is a low bar for ongoing fics).
*I use likes (+ dislikes) as a proxy for views because I'm too lazy to keep checking on view counts. And also because I like to reread fics that I enjoyed, and I assume that I'm not the only one who does that, and I would rather underestimate a story's exposure than overestimate it.
**Do you like horror? Go read it. Link goes directly to the story because of spoilers in the first comment.
1199276
So what went wrong with Article 2? I haven't read it, I started reading it and it seemed interesting but I have only gotten to chapter 8 or so.
1203486
When I quit reading it the story had veered off into "are you kidding" territory in regards to what the protagonist was getting away with.
1203519
Fair enough I suppose.
It seems alright. Honestly I'd say, after reading it, its biggest flaw is the fact that the pacing is off. The concept is interesting, but the story is creeping along.
I wouldn't rate it as one of the best stories on the site though.
I must have missed this when you posted it. Great post!
1198896 (raises a hoof)
... Oh, THAT Visiting Hours. I forgot that existed.
And yay for Petriculture, Inscape deserves being on that list.