Ranking My Stories

25 stories. I can’t believe I’ve written 25 stories in (kinda) horse words. Some are unfinished, some are cancelled, and not all of them were made equal. I’ve had hits and misses, and I wanted to vaguely collect my thoughts into what I think would be a nice top 25 list.

Technically speaking, I’ve actually published 26 stories, I’ve just deleted my first one because a rewrite of it is present on my profile anyhow.

This is meant to collect my thoughts on the 25 stories I’ve written and put them in an order which I think shows my opinion on every single story I’ve written, from worst to best.

Without further ado, I shall begin!

25. Hurt

Behold, I speak its name, though I really don’t want to.

If any of you have followed my blogs, Hurt is ‘the story we don’t speak of’. I wanted to write something based off of Johnny Cash’s Hurt, and I didn’t do it justice at all.

Hurt is one of the best covers Johnny Cash ever did. It’s sad, and it’s heavy with this theme of remorse, regret, and this idea that he should’ve lived a life that he never did. It’s honestly one of my favorite songs.

So, what’d I do to adopt it? I had Twilight be a mopey bitch for 1.2k words and eventually turn herself into stone. I then slapped a bow on it and called it good.

While I don’t hate ‘Twilight outlives her friends’ stories, Hurt takes the premise... and really just takes the premise. There’s no substance, and Twilight is out of character for the entire freaking story. If it had one redeeming quality, it was the ending lines, “I figured it was time to write Celestia one last letter,” which are honestly a great capture of the story that I wish the rest of it lived up to.

There are three dislikes on that story, and one of them is me. I absolutely hate that Hurt is my most-viewed story, because I’d rather it be buried in the landfill with the ET copies. I don’t like deleting things unless they’ve caused harm to a person though (I like showcasing my growth as an individual), so it’s staying on the internet for now.

24. The Piano Mare

This story isn’t really bad. It’s just not very good. It was my second story I’d ever wrote, based on Billy Joel’s Piano Man. While I think that the story was pretty indicative of my writing skill at the time, and pretty good for it as well, the story needs more substance.

The Piano Mare is like seeing a delicious donut right in front of you, and when you take a bite, it’s completely hallow. The ending was basically me just trying to wrap the thing up instead of creating an ending.

It also doesn’t deviate from the original song much. It’s not taking any ground that hadn’t been walked on before, and it’s basically just Piano Man. While I really like the idea of this story, and think it started out strong, it ended a little weak, and I’m dissatisfied with it nowadays.

23. The Shad0Ws Within

This story is only so low on the list because I ran into a brick wall writing it. I don’t foster any ill will toward this story, and it inspired Reinventing Music, but there’s not much story.

I wanted it to be this fascinating story about how terrible working conditions and inner demons could lead to one living like ‘DJ Shad0W’ does in the story.

Instead, I basically went, “So, this pony’s depressed... and that’s enough for now,” and then I never touched the story again.

What remains is a setup for a story, not a full story, and while I might just write a new chapter for it out of spite, in its current form, it’s basically a chapter story with no chapters, just a prologue.

22. Equestrian Idiot

This story was originally going to be a story based on American Idiot, which actually happens to be one of my favorite albums I’ve listened to. It’s on hiatus, and my interest in American Idiot right now (I do a monthly thing on Author’s Academy where I talk about a legendary album, American Idiot was what I chose for this month), might actually carry over to rewrite the thing.

I mainly dislike this story because Celestia of Suburbia is kind of a pain, and just a very badly written rebel character. I also realized I misinterpreted the story, and now that I have the amazing album insert at my beck and call, I have since realized what St. Jimmy is supposed to be.

Equestrian Idiot is a lot like The Shad0Ws Within, being a prologue without a story. It introduces you to the Celestia of Suburbia, and that’s it.

I have a feeling that a rewrite of this story would likely earn it a couple spots, but every story on this list is judged in its current form, and in its current form, Equestrian Idiot kinda sucks.

21. Seasons

I remember very little about this story, and I’m the one who wrote it. I seem to recall a rushed romance and an ending that very clearly tied into what I thought at the time would be my flagship story.

I mean, said flagship story is actually nowhere near my flagship story, so whoops.

The story is based off of DragonForce’s Seasons, of which the acoustic version is still an amazing song despite me not being much of a DragonForce fan anymore. Seasons is a song about a lost love and the process of getting over it.

I actually think Fred Leclerq’s songwriting might be an influence on my stories as a whole, actually. He wrote some amazing things before he left the band.

The story I wrote is similar, but it’s thrown together in a weird way.

It’s mainly on here so low because I don’t remember a thing about it, which means it’s probably disposable.

Sorry about the lack of critique on this one.

20. StallionForce

13-year old me was a huge DragonForce fanboy (yes, I do mean boy, didn’t identify as a girl yet). The picture used as the cover art here is actually what inspired me to get a FiMFiction account. I saw the StallionForce picture and decided it’d be a great story.

This is what I thought my flagship story would be. I thought this’d be the story everyone would want to read.

What came out in the end was an alright story with some legitimate tension and villains. It has some decent characters, but it’s nothing that I tell myself I want to read. If I’m deciding to read one of my stories (which is something I do do), I’m going to read something else.

In fact, the original (now deleted) story was probably more fun, but the pacing was all weird. This story has better pacing, but is slightly less fun.

Just kind of a simple story here, I don’t have much to say about it.

19. A Series of Letters

I was awfully proud of this story when it first came out. I had just written a thousand words a day for an entire month, and the story was actually fantastic. It talks about how not all enemies are actually enemies and how disaster can strike when you least expect it.

It also contained an LGBT+ character, Sparky, a lesbian.

While I still maintain that the story had a ton of potential, I feel like a lot of it devolved into me using my own opinions to ‘poison the water’ of the story. There’s complaints directed at nihilistic depression, the military, and too much emphasis on the ‘enemies are not enemies’ angle.

There’s also the main character marrying a person who he already had a crush on after his wife died. That to me feels incredibly bad, and a little underhanded.

The main point of this story was to reverse the ‘soldier dies in action, leaves wife behind’ angle, and I think it succeeded at that, but the letters become awfully repetitive, and some of the story is hard to read.

Again, I love the final letter, which is a Tangled Up In Blues inspired letter written to Corn Husk’s wife by him. It talks about what he’s done, what the kids are doing, and it indicative of the ‘where are they now’ ending I love so much. I just wish the rest of the story had more of that.

And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the entire story was basically leading up to me quoting P.S. I Love You by The Beatles in the final letter.

18. Orion

This story’s actually not bad, I actually think it’s quite cute. Unlike For You..., Dashie’s in character. I also think that this story idea is absolutely adorable, Rainbow Dash tells Scootaloo about constellations because she finds them really cool.

This story is plotless Scootalove fluff, and while it’s good at doing that, it’s not one of my favorite stories. It isn’t very entertaining to reread, and I honestly just feel like it’s merely alright.

I don’t really have a lot to say about Orion, so I guess I’ll say, This Dashie04 story sure exists, doesn’t it?

17. Not Who I Thought I’d Be/

This story is very recent. It may surprise you that it’s this early on the list.

However, this goes beyond me having unpleasant memories of the comments on that story, I truly feel like I didn’t make the story I wanted to make. I wanted to write enby acceptance fluff, and I got that much right at least.

However, as the single bit of actually helpful criticism on that story said, this story needs more. I needed to go into how Lil’ Cheese feels about their gender dysphoria, and acceptance problems.

I didn’t want to do any of that because it was originally rated E and I wanted to keep it rated E. Even after I shuffled it around to T because of a slight trigger warning, I didn’t want to rewrite the thing.

It somehow manages to both be sluggish and fast-paced at the same time, likely accounted for by how dour Lil’ Cheese’s narration is. I tried to rectify that at the end by making them act how I’d expect they’d act (just imagine how active the child of Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich would be), but it didn’t really help with the rest.

Overall, this story is decent in its current form, but it could’ve been a lot more.

16. The Drumming Pegasus

Boy, this Dashie04 story sure does exist, doesn’t it?

But enough with the Diamond Axe Studios references, this story is so okay, it’s average. It’s even more so that then Orion is.

It stars my ponysona, the one pictured in my profile picture. Her name is Reinn, which is actually a reshuffling of my actual chosen name (and is always an option to call me instead of ‘Dashie’ if you like it more). I realized that my OC didn’t have a cutie mark story, so I wrote one.

Naturally, it’s starring a trans character, but I never actually go into her transition. It’s mainly just a cutie mark story.

This is another story I’ve gotten actually helpful criticism on, and the critic in question actually mentioned that that was one of their gripes with the story, the fact that it doesn’t go into Reinn’s transition (and also that I described the cutie mark as a sensation of quicksilver running down her flank, which to me just kinda feels shiny if that makes sense?), but The Drumming Pegasus isn’t really about her transition.

It’s a cutie mark story, and it came out so okay, it’s average.

One good thing about this story is that it’s the first story where I took the, ‘I’m the narrator and I’m specifically talking to you’ angle, which has kind of become a way that I write in a few stories.

15. Rockin’ On

This story remains my only truly cancelled story on my profile, for some reason. It’s another story 13-year old me thought everyone would read.

Shocker, the story isn’t like that.

I cancelled this story because I thought that the story was getting really bad, and after recently rereading it, I don’t know why.

The story’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a lot of fun. Rereading the last chapter kind of made me want to write a rewrite of this story with updated characters.

Rockin’ On is a story that is basically about ponies who follow the Rock Band 4 tour mode. It’s a silly idea for a crossover, but it worked. I did write something alright here. Eventually, this story melted away, but what’s there isn’t bad by any means, just really messed up in pacing.

14. Turning Pages

This story is actually good. The tone is done incredibly well, and I feel like I truly captured this story’s influence, Turn The Page by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, in the story. The loneliness is done pretty well, and I love how ‘out on the road’ it reads.

However, there’s one big, glaring problem.

I wrote a song for this story, and that song is awful. I’m not much of a lyricist, admittedly, I’m a drummer. However, I do write songs sometimes, and all of them are way better than ‘I’m Gonna Fly’. The rhythm is irregular, the lyrics are pretty childish, and it’s just not good.

This wouldn’t be that much of a problem if the story was mainly all of what I wrote before the song, but the song takes up a majority of the story. I feel like the song really brings down the rest of the story.

However, one guy in the comments simply saying, ‘tune’ is probably one of the best comments I’ve had on my stories.

13. Trench

This story is really my first story I’m genuinely proud of. While I feel like the first couple chapters could use a bit of a touch-up, I really like where it went afterwards. I especially like Wingless, who was my first LGBT+ character, being asexual(/aromantic).

While I will say that Scaled and Icy is better than this story, I still really like how Trench came out. My favorite parts of this story are basically everything after Neon Gravestones, because I feel like my writing really shone through there, having solid moments like Legend and Leave The City.

If you’ve read Scaled and Icy but not Trench, I suggest you give this story a try.

12. The Friendship House

I appreciate the angle this is trying to go for. It’s a griffon war, and a pony has ran into one, and tries to make friends with him. The story is written like it was an ancient time, which is something I’m going for with The Butterfly Effect as well. However, this story actually takes that tone and does it well.

However, the big flaw to this story is pacing, as per usual. There isn’t enough discussion about how these characters actually became friends, and I want to learn more about them.

It’s partially justified in that this story is supposed to literally be a story being told to ponies a long time after this event presumably happened, but it could still be a little more detailed. Much like Not Who I Thought I’d Be, it just needs to be longer.

Aside from that, I really like the tone and the voice of the story, which is why it’s higher on this list. To me, it feels like a mystical story, and I like that.

11. Scaled and Icy

I like how this story came out. It’s better than Trench by way of a more interesting plot and characters. I absolutely love how Pebble is in this story, and I’m glad that I actually got a fight scene actually written down decently.

I just don’t have much of a personal connection to this story, and it feels like I was just checking in boxes. While I like how well-written this is, I just don’t feel like it was a story I wanted to write.

I don’t really have much else to say about Scaled and Icy really, it’s just good, but at the same time, simply decent.

10. The Great Equestrian Journey

This story is a lot of fun. It’s so far my only pure comedy story, and I think I genuinely got comedy put in there. Inspired by GeoWizard’s Straight Line Missions, this story is basically just a Straight Line Mission across Equestria.

The first chapter I wrote for this story, I think, is very funny, and while subsequent chapters dropped that off a bit, I was crafting a little mini-story for this story as well.

The next chapter is actually unpublished on the story right now (though unfinished), and I’ve had urges to return to it, because sometimes I just want to write something fun and funny.

Maybe someday, when I can write a better comedy story where the humor stays the same across all the chapters, I’ll return to this. Until then, it stays as a story where the humor kind of drops off after the first chapter.

9. The Nightmare Procession

I have a personal connection to this story, I genuinely wanted to write it. I feel like the story here is really good, and it’s teaching a good message (don’t let your past define today). However, I wrote myself into a corner.

The main problem with this story is that I had Geode do something so extreme that I’m not sure if he should get off scot-free for it. However, this story depends on him coming to terms that his past isn’t today, and I don’t know how to tread that line, which is why this story is currently on hiatus.

Other than that, I feel like the characters are decent, and I love the plot (though a fantastic plot is kind of what this story is based on). I also love the ‘I’m the narrator and I’m talking to you specifically’ voice for this story.

I know this story has plenty of potential, and that potential is shown in what I have. I just managed to write myself into a corner.

8. Fallout Equestria: 21st Century Breakdown

This story shares a name and was supposed to share a few key characteristics with 21st Century Breakdown another Green Day Rock Opera that is one of my favorite albums I’ve ever heard. It may seem weird that this story is this low when there’s only three chapters, but I love the chapters.

The characters all feel natural, War Hawk is a rebel character who’s actually written pretty well, and I love Glory. I want to keep writing this story, but Fallout: Equestria is a high bar to clear, and I don’t quite want to plan out a half a million word story because I’m lazy.

I have a three-act story in my head, but I don’t quite know how the first act will continue. That being said, I love FOE:21CB’s story idea, being a wartime FO:E story. I loved taking notes, and I want to see this story go somewhere, but what I have is a pretty good and solid introduction to characters, and the world around them.

7. The Butterfly Effect

This story is still in progress, so this may be too hard to judge, but I’m happy with this story so far.

I especially love the first chapter here, the prologue, so to speak. It’s sort of like a short description, and I could probably just move it to the short description, but I feel like it truly establishes that the bulk of this story will be in the past.

I love the sibling relationship between Sunny Side and Rock Candy, I feel like it’s a good indicator of how siblings feel about each other. They’re there for each other because nobody else is there for them.

That being said, the syntax in the actual first chapter is a mangled mess. It leans too heavily into the ‘this is a long ago story’ voice, while at the same time trying to create a readable normal third-person story. It goes all over the place while trying to describe ponies.

This is probably something that will eventually annoy me so much I’ll fix it, but I like the story so far otherwise.

6. Reinventing Music

This story’s also a whole lot of fun. It’s a blast for me to write, and it’s fun to read. Sure, Mercury is an aloof jerk to almost everyone around him, but I feel like that’s a good way to write a story about a Rock Star.

Of course, I’m biased, because I love these types of stories, where people try to recreate something that was lost. Reinventing Music also does that, and I think that’s part pf the reason I like it so much.

Stories like Yesterday or The Beatle might’ve caught my attention and received my praise because they were taking those ideas and doing something with them. The concept behind these stories is amazing, and any story that uses that concept and does something with it is a win in my book.

I think part of the reason I like Reinventing Music is because it uses that concept.

I do think that the story could use a little polish though, as do most of my stories (they’re quite literally uploaded in first draft form). The constructive criticism on this story mentioned that, and I’m trying to work more polish into all of my stories, not just this one.

5. The Meeting Place

This story is incredibly low here.

Not only does this story have a personal connection, but it’s actually one of the stories I’ve greatly changed while it was live. People who recently read The Meeting Place are not reading the exact same story as people who read it when it came out.

This story was inspired by a birthday party I went to in 2020. All of my friends were there, but mainly just some friends from a D&D group I’m in with another friend from my old school.

One of these characters is based off of me, naturally. When I first wrote The Meeting Place, his name was Sunny. He was, get this, a feminine stallion who insisted on being called Sunny, wore eyeliner, and quote, “liked a weird show”. He also made jokes about him not knowing his own sexuality.

Upon deciding to reread The Meeting Place I realized that ‘Sunny’ was basically me just trying to be as girly as possible. This was after I found out I was trans, as well.

So, Sunny is now a trans mare in the story and it has an extra couple hundred words describing her and how intense the situation with the war had gotten. This ‘war intensity’ is brought up because she was drafted. They were drafting every man, and Sunny only had to be born one.

I feel like that the edit I made greatly improved the point I was trying to make with The Meeting Place, that war is an unchanging force of nature. I feel like that, combined with the tone of the story, makes The Meeting Place easily one of my favorite stories I’ve written.

4. For You...

This story is also another story where I feel like I executed it rather well. Dashie’s OOC, but it’s not frustrating like it is in Hurt. Despite this, I feel like For You... is better than the other Scootalove story I’ve written.

For You... exemplifies that sibling bond that I love to see in Scootalove stories. I feel like it also has a pretty good message (you don’t need to forget about those you’ve lost), and it also apparently helped somebody, which makes it pretty good in my book.

I don’t feel like I had pacing issues with this story, if anything, I dragged it out (and it still barely cleared the thousand word requirement). I just feel like For You... is a very good story and I love how it came out. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be.

3. Sitting On the Dock of the Bay

This story’s not my best-written, but it’s very good for the time I wrote it, and it also has the personal connection. I feel like this story holds a place in my heart, because it was written as a what if story after my grandfather suffered a massive heart attack.

He’s fine, thankfully, but that got me thinking, what would’ve happened to me if he had died?

Thus, I wrote Sitting On the Dock of the Bay. It’s a short little story about taking solace in things around you and examining every little thing. While I feel like I could’ve executed it better, the story means a lot to me.

It’s a fun story, and I’m glad I could share it with the people who have read it.

2. The Endless Cycle

I’m sure everyone reading this saw this story coming, but I feel like some people didn’t expect it to place at number 2. I state in my author’s note that in my opinion at the time, it was the best thing I’d ever written.

I still feel like it has some merit there, it’s a straightforward fable about the cycle of life. One good deed flows into another, and so on and so forth.

It’s my flagship story, some of my favorite writers at the time, FabulousDivaRarity (who still is one of my favorite writers despite the fact that she’s not active anymore) and ZombieDice commented on the story, FDR favorited it! It still remains as my most popular story when the number of likes as well as the views are taken into account.

I still feel like the story was written very well, especially for younger me in 2019. I’m older now, and I still read the story sometimes and enjoy it.

It’s just that the descriptions could use a little work. That’s the one thing I don’t like about this story, but it does nothing to really overtake how much I still appreciate and like The Endless Cycle.

1. Neon Moon

The first few stories on this list are stories that fell flat of my expectations or stories that I just don’t remember. The next few only fell slightly short of my expectations. I could’ve done a little more with that, the pacing was bad, and so on. Stories 10-3 met my expectations, they were what I expected them to be. These last two, they absolutely crushed my expectations and what I had planned for them.

Neon Moon crushed them the most out of any story on here.

Inspired by an aside moment in an RP I was in back when I was on the WoF Wiki, an RP which I thought was run by a really cool person (one who I currently am in a relationship with now).

He brought up Neon Moon by Brooks and Dunn, and after listening to it, I just had to write a story about it. So, I wrote this story, and it turned out really, really, well.

While the story is absolutely full of music references, there’s not a single one that interrupts the flow. All of them add to the already incredible descriptive nature of the story. The tone is fantastic, and the details and flashbacks I felt were written incredibly well.

One complaint I have about this story is the main character’s name, which is the very silly Jack Daniels, but I otherwise really enjoy this story.

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This took an incredibly long time, almost 3 and a half hours to write this entire thing. I don’t know if it seemed like I was patting myself on the back too much or whatever, but I wanted to talk about some of my stories. I feel like I accomplished that goal.

If you’d like to support my thoughts, add your own, or just say that this list is bad and I should feel bad, go ahead!

And until next time; be awesome!
-Dashie