1,000 FimFic Users Can Absolutely Be Wrong · 1:34am Oct 12th, 2017
So, a few weeks ago some people were doing a thing where they compared their stories official rankings on FimFic (as decided by some algorithm that I only vaguely understand) to their personal rankings of their stories. I have been chewed out (gently) for unintentional memeing on my blog before, but I did my list myself to see what it looked like, and there was a really interesting result. I mean, not surprising, but interesting. So I purposely waited, and now I want to share it with you guys. I hope you'll give it an appropriate amount of time if you feel like doing the same.
Site rankings, my own rankings, and some commentary below the cut!
I cut the unfinished fics out of both lists because it's kinda hard to judge them.
First, here's FiMFiction's list:
1. You Can't Always Get What You Want
2. Three Little Apples
3. A Guide to Magic
4. Somepony's Daughter
5. The Importance of Being Earth Ponies
6. Dubious Enchantment
7. A Fact for Twilight
8. Of Cottages and Cloud Houses
9. Best Young Flyer
10. Wet Feathers
11. Wisdom is Just Being Old
12. Daring Do's and Don'ts
13. How To Do A Sonic Rainboom
14. The Only Applejack On Sweet Apple Acres
15. In the Service of The Princess of Friendship
16. The AppleDash Project
17. Daring Do and a Place Called Home
18. Love Means Having to Say You're Sorry
19. Tunnel of Love
20. Maidens Day
21. Fit for a Princess
22. Farce of Nature
23. What Did You Call Me?
24. The Homesteading
25. A Very Long Day
26. Good Ponies Don't... Do They?
27. Lost Time
28. Respect and Respectability
29. Love on the Acers of Sweet Aplles
30. The Spirit of a Pegasus
31. A Flim Flam Family Affair
32. Sleepless in St. Maretinique
33. Moonshine
34. Christian Values
See if you can figure out what the bold titles have in common.
...
Funny how that works out, huh? 
Anyway, here's my list, with the official rank in parentheses, and comments:
1. Lost Time (27) -- Royal Canterlot Library Correct the Record winner (sort of.) You know it, I know it, everyone knows it except the people who downvote.
2. The Spirit of a Pegasus (30) -- Almost as good as Lost Time, in my opinion. This one is brand new, though, so I do expect it to rise up the list a little over time.
3. You Can't Always Get What You Want (1) -- My Writeoff Gold fic, and apparently the voters thik you can't go wrong with Sunset Shimmer.
4. Daring Do and a Place Called Home (17) -- a lot of my older work is rough compared to my current stuff. Not bad, just uneven and sparse. This fic is an exception, and I credit Zecora for forcing me to up my game.
5. The AppleDash Project (16) -- I'm not super proud of the writing on this one, but I have to say it's a joy to read. Every time I go to look at just one line or chapter, I end up reading the whole thing again.
6. A Guide to Magic (3) -- Earned me a silver medal in Writeoff and a beautiful review from Wanderer D that I'll remember for a long time.
7. The Homesteading (24) -- A lot of my fics are controversial story-wise, but this is strangely controversial just in terms of enjoyment. People either seem to love it, or they just can't get into it. That said, it's some of the best atmospheric work I've done.
8. Dubious Enchantment (6) -- My other Writeoff silver, and even if it is a bit uneven it's still an awesome geekfest, and I'm in love with my descriptions of the shop.
9. Moonshine (32) -- I had this idea forever, and I have to credit my co-author Merc the Jerk for pulling it out of me, and picking up my slack in a lot of places. And yes, Merc, we should write more in this 'verse.
10. In the Service of The Princess of Friendship (15) -- This one was written for a writeoff minific contest, then cut down, then expanded again. I think the word limit really helped me for making me pick my words carefully.
11. Wet Feathers (10) -- I just looked at this one the other day, and I still tear up in the third chapter.
12. Maidens Day (20) -- The mature story that demanded to be published. That said, I love almost everything about it.
13. Best Young Flyer (9) -- My entry into the Pony Fiction Vault. This one is really bumpy, especially at the act two climax, but there's a lot of good stuff in it.
14. Tunnel of Love (19) -- When I finished this one, I emailed Bad Horse all excited, along the lines of: "Bad Horse, I wrote a story that's actually about something! Will you preread it for me?" He did, and agreed that it was about something.
15. How To Do A Sonic Rainboom (13) -- I wrote this story just because I thought the headcanon was cool, and somehow ended up with one of my best short stories.
16. Respect and Respectability (28) -- As I told my friends, if you can't write a story that gets people to see that there's more than one reasonable perspective, you can at least write one where no one agrees one which of the perspectives is reasonable.
17. Fit for a Princess (21) -- This is pure, predictable, romantic fluff, and it's better written than it has any right to be.
18. Of Cottages and Cloud Houses (8) -- my original entry into the Royal Canterlot Library. I'm kind of sad that Dash has canon parents now, because I love Jack Arnold Rainbow Dad.
19. A Fact for Twilight (7) -- My first featured story (under the Old Style feature box, even!) This is pure, predictable, romantic fluff, and it's exactly as well written as it has any right to be.
20. Wisdom is Just Being Old (11) -- Jossed by alicorn Twilight, but elderly AJ is just so much fun.
21. Somepony's Daughter (4) -- This is often the highest rated AppleDash fic on the site, and my highest rated romance, and it doesn't deserve it in any way. It's a fine little story, but it got posted in the middle of the night, avoiding the shipping downvotes, and being one of my early and shortest AppleDash stories it got a lot of attention from "who's this 'bookplayer'?" readers. It's not bad, but it's waaaay overrated.
22. The Importance of Being Earth Ponies (5) -- I love the headcanon here, and I think I got Pinkie spot on, but I could have done this in a more interesting way.
23. Christian Values (33) -- This story is exactly what it's supposed to be. My other fic in the Moonshine setting, also co-authored with Merc, it's a simple sweet story about lesbians, 1920s small towns, and church. So it offended almost everyone. 
24. Love Means Having to Say You're Sorry (18) -- This fic is weird. It's essentially canon-style shipping (there was almost a letter to Celestia at the end.) It's funny and sweet, and has the most immature Rainbow Dash I've ever written.
25. The Only Applejack On Sweet Apple Acres (14) -- Another story I wrote just for the headcanon, this one is okay. It earns a solid shrug from me.
26. Three Little Apples (2) -- Only Jossed this season, but I probably should have slapped an AU tag on it anyway. It was a cute idea, and had some early bursts of good writing from me, which combined with time and no romance tag placed it waaay too high in my site rankings.
27. A Very Long Day (25) -- I hardly count this story. It was my first fic on the site, but it was eventually subsumed into The AppleDash Project. Not a bad debut, though.
28. Love on the Acers of Sweet Aplles (25) -- My real claim to fame. Truefact: this story was actually rejected by the mods until I PMed them and explained that it was written as a badfic to be read aloud at BronyCon. In answer to the obvious questions: No, I was not drunk or high. I just purposely typed way too fast and didn't delete or spellcheck, and went for the worst phrasing and metaphors I could think of. That said, I truly love the line "He loved cherriell with the love of a big heart, because a heart is a muscle and all of Big macintosh muscles was large."
29. A Flim Flam Family Affair (31) -- I sat on this story for a year after I wrote it. Something feels off about it, and I still can't put my finger on it.
30. Good Ponies Don't... Do They? (26) -- A reviewer accused this story of being more of an argument than a story. They were right. It's got some great scenes, but it's really just playing with different perspectives on an issue.
31. Daring Do's and Don'ts (12) -- This story has some good jokes, but there's really not much there.
32. Sleepless in St. Maretinique (32) -- My most uneven fic. Written and published in three days for a contest, it's got some parts that are really fun and other parts that make me cringe.
33. Farce of Nature (22) -- Similar to Daring Do's and Don'ts but the jokes aren't as good. The title is a great and accurate joke, though.
34. What Did You Call Me? (23) -- I wrote this just to show people how to write MacDash. As I was writing it, I figured out a faster way to express it: just write Jay and Silent Bob shipping.
That's all for now! Remember, downvote responsibly.
I thought about doing that survey thing on my own fics, but quickly ran into two problems:
1: I have over a hundred, and I can't even remember the names of all of them. Or in some cases, what they're about.
2: How could I not put Twilight Eats a Peach at the top of the list?
Gosh, I guess I'm gonna have to give this a go, won't I?
Though my personal picks for your stuff would have to be the Founders stories, Twijack stuff, and Lost Time as the oddball to those ones. It's hard to pick just one...
Very glad to see Lost Time at the top. I mean, it would have been your Vault entry if the timing had been different (not to diminish Best Young Flyer, of course, which I did enjoy very much). I adore it, and I'm faintly shocked it's so far down the site algo ranking.
The problem with running the Vault was that you damned writers kept improving after I held up one of your fics as being something everyone should read! Rude.
XD
Also, dat quote from Acers. :D That's powerful stuff.
I know what you mean. My top rated story is currently sitting at #532, and I honestly think it’s just okay. I’ve got a half dozen other stories, most short, one super long, that I think are objectively better.
Much has probably been said about Christian Values largely just being downvoted because people don't like religion and assumed the story was going to be about AJ and RD vs. gayshaming in the 1920s. Which, if I'm remembering correctly, it wasn't.
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It's about church (especially historically) as something that binds a community. Which made at least a handful of atheists furious at me, too.
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"How dare you point out a historical accuracy through the lens of humanized pony! Other things bind communities together, you know!"
Something like that?
I already sunk two hours into this ranking exercise and gave up… Maybe I'll have to give it another go.
I'm enthused to see The Spirit of a Pegasus sitting so far up the list. After I read that one, the first draft of my comment was along the lines of "this is one of your best," which I quickly realized I'm in no way qualified to say; I've read but a tiny fraction of your work, shame on me.
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I had one person arguing that it was inherently un-pony and OOC to even consider humanized pony characters going to church. Another guy was on the "church has never done anything good, ever, and anyone who suggests that it's helped anyone at any point is dangerous."
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...honestly, kinda wanna see what kind of fabricated evidence the first argument used to support such a strange claim.
The second is just blatant historical inaccuracy, and also thinks soup kitchens are fake news.
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I think the comments are still there if you feel like wasting an evening. It was a looong couple of days. (Which is entirely my own fault, I admit.)
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...On second thought, think I'd rather waste an evening just brute-forcing my way through writer's block. Thanks for the offer, though.
Damn straight
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And it was worth every second. Been a while since I laughed that hard.
I'm still determined to do one of these, but I have to categorize. After all, The One Who Got Away/Drifting Down the Lazy River are completely different than the Pony Prankster Princess series of shorts that I've done.
(And I'm making a touch-up pass through Monster, just to clean up things that have bugged me for four years, so it may take a while.)
Ya know, it's a running joke at this point that Romance and I don't get along on this site. But, like, that's your thing. They shouldn't be almost the entirety of your bottom 19. C'mon people.
Lost time is probably my favourite as well
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My trick for the ranking was to go through and separate things into "Love it" "Like it" "meh," then divide each of those groups in half ("top" "bottom"), and then try to rank within each smaller group. (You could do a few more divides if you needed to, as well.) There are a few I was on the fence about, Maidens Day and Best Young Flyer switched places a few times, and the 24-27 group could easily go in another order on another day. But it was much easier than looking at the fics one by one.
Well, I'm going to have to get busy. I'm not sure that I've read any of the stories on this list.
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When I do it I'm going to sort by genre (with possibly some showing up more than once.).
Twilight eats a peach is your raison d'être.
Maybe it's just too early but... no, I don't see what they all have in common. Gabe needs coffee and leftover birthday cupcakes.
Also, how does one do this anyhow? Is there actually a place with all your rankings laid out? It might be fun to do.
Personally, I'm really happy to see Best Young Flyer where it is. It's the very first story I found on this site, the very first story I followed, and what got me vested in pony fiction.
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The bolded stories are all of my stories with the romance tag.
And if you go to your published stories list, you can sort them various ways. One of those is ranking, which uses the same algorithm the site uses as a whole to determine "top stories." (Though it's different from the feature box algorithm.)
(And happy belated birthday!)
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Eight of my top ten are romance, and not even necessarily clop romance. I mean yeah, I write a lot of romance but that's still not everything. I think it's just that folks sort of... see me as a romance guy. That's my primary function.
Romance, eh? That's a little sad but I guess I can see it.
And thank you.
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It's there. Just go to your userpage, then the stories tag. It's right on top in the drop down next to the "order" button.
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Found it, as I edited. Quite fascinating, as things I liked most were down on the list. Still, romance
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I know. But I try so hard to rise above that.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Sleepless in St. Maretinique is underrated both by you and readers. I mean, yes, it's not top-tier — it had to deal with the contest constraints (which were pretty crippling, and my own entry to Switcheroo suffered in my own rankings for that reason), but St. Mare was still one of the best things to come out of that contest.
I am indebted to the RCL contest for forcing me to read Lost Time, and having read it, I'm extremely embarrassed that I had to be forced to read it in the first place. It's just that good.