Review: Diamond Do and the love of a sister · 2:03pm Jun 8th, 2015
I love pony fiction. A surprising declaration on a pony fiction fan site, I'm sure, but it's true. So, in the spirit of pony fiction, I thought I would start trying to review, analyse and/or critique some pony stories.
If you have a story you'd like me to review, leave me a comment either on my user page, or through the private messaging service.
Diamond Do and the love of a sister is tagged:
Slice of Life
It features the character tags:
OC, Daring Do
'Diamond Do and the love of a sister' was written by Keam, and can be found here. Full story spoilers below the cut.
Daring Do is one of my favorite side-characters of MLP, which is what attracted me to this story to begin with. Despite Dash and Twilight's back-and-forth recap of Daring's continuity, we don't really know very much about Daring; we don't know how much of her accounts are fictionalised, what her role in Equestria is, who her family are, etcetera. These are questions which interest me, and I always like reading stories which attempt to flesh out those aspects of her character.
This story in particular addresses two of those points; we get a little bit of insight into Daring's family, via her sister, and provides a "Cutie Mark Chronicles" style flash back to explain how Daring got her cutie mark.
First thing is first; anyone who reads this story needs to be aware that there are more than a few spelling and grammatical errors; the title of the chapter, for instance, reads "Not all can be find in the Daring Do books", when it should read as "found". This is a recurring issue throughout the piece, a result (by her admission) of the author not being a native English-speaker. Ordinarily, I wouldn't point it out- there are more than enough typos in my own work for that- but it is a consistent issue throughout the story, so it's something which I feel needs to be addressed.
As for the story itself, it's focused primarily around the characters of Daring and Diamond, so analysing them seems like the best place to start.
Daring is characterized pretty well, albeit it a bit more emotionally than I usually like (a necessary change, due to Diamond). Even so,it's good to see her still acting largely based off of impulse (as when she hugs her sister), and off instinct, both as a child and when she completes Diamond's verse of the song.
By contrast, Diamond is presented as more restrained and intellectual, possibly even a little jaded. Where Daring still has a love for "real" adventures, Diamond has reached the point where, as she puts it, the world no longer impresses her.
It's interesting to view both these characters in light of the revelations about A.K Yearling. This story was written after the reveal that Daring Do and A.K Yearling are the same person; in fact Kaem works that in as an aspect of the story, mentioning that Daring and Diamond haven't seen each other in some time in part because Daring's time is taken up with her adventures and her book writing.
Even so, I can't help but read this as a story about Daring Do trying to reconcile those disparate sides of her; the young adventurer, working off of gut instinct, and the intellectual, who is more at home decoding ancient maps and reading (or perhaps inventing) stories about adventures in far-off dusty tombs.
This reading might not be what the author intended... but then, once something is published, how it is interpreted by the audience is really beyond the writer's control, and it might be significant that, though Diamond mentions their father, he never makes an apperance. The entirety of the story is told as two incidents involving Daring and Diamond, and only Daring and Diamond; a Fight Club, Tyler Dyrden style physiological reading isn't particularly discouraged by the text itself; and may in fact by encouraged by the fact that Diamond's home- a "small house"- might be mistaken for Yearling' cottage from Daring Don't.
It would also explain how Daring is able to complete her sister's rhyme so quickly and fluidly... though this might also simply be an aspect of her near-supernatural instincts knowing what to do.
As for the content... for the most part, it's fine. There are some odd sentence constructions- one early line describing Daring and Diamond hugging from Diamond's perspective describes Daring's feathers in a way that seems more appropriate of a romance fiction in my mind- but aside from the grammar and spelling errors, it's functionally fine.
My only complaint from the content is from the conclusion to the flashback; while the conflict is resolved by Daring recieving her cutie mark, it feels a little... unnatural. Daring jumping from sad and shouting at her sister to her glee at having gotten her compass cutie mark feels like too sudden a mood whiplash; the first time I read it, it created the impression that Daring got her cutie mark for hating Diamond.
(Of course, if this story is interpreted as being about the conflict between Daring Do and A.K Yearling, that might be acceptable).
By contrast, the beginning of the flashback- featuring a young Daring on an adventure- and the ending with the two sister's making up is well done, with the latter only spoiled somewhat by being a repeat of the flashback; perhaps it would have been better to cut out the reconciliation between the sisters in the past, ending that segment on the realization that Daring has her cutie mark, so that the ending reunion is more sweet.
Overall, while I think I would prefer this to be a bit longer with a more sedate pace to build up the relationship between the two sisters, I feel the main issue with this is the aforementioned spelling and grammar. Besides that, it's an interesting story which I just wish was a bit more expanded; since Diamond is an original character inserted into Daring's life, I want to get to know her- her adventures and her perspective on things- a little more.
Always good to see more reviewers around the fandom!
This was an interesting read, too. The one thing I might say is that it was pretty spoilery -- so if you're intending to continue that style of reviewing, a small spoiler warning at the start of posts might be a good idea. 
3132103 Or, alternatively, mark spoilery parts with the [ spoiler] tag. Going through this has the added bonus, in my experience, of forcing you to think about what exactly you consider a spoiler in this context. Anyway, like Logan said above, it is great to see new people getting into reviewing, keep up the good work!