Doggone It · 11:42pm Dec 4th, 2022
This blog is meant for those who've read Every Dog Has Her Day. If you haven't yet and want to avoid spoilers, you've been warned!
Okay okay, I'll cut it out with the dog puns. For now.
This one's my shortest story to date, but I think it's the exact length it needed to be to tell a small tale of friendship and realizing that the things you were told growing up may not be true. The theme was choice, and in the end Precious makes the choice to turn away from the other dogs and join the ponies. Simple, clean, and hopefully enjoyably heartwarming for those who read it.
AU Divergences:
Species Change
The core of the contest, and something I kept moderately simple. It's a singular character shift, Rarity going from unicorn to diamond dog, placing her within the pack near Ponyville instead of creating sweeping changes in the political situation to facilitate her presence. This Equestria looks a lot like the one we know because of it, and it's easy to mistake it for being just like the one in the show, at first. It makes for the piece being very focused on the viewpoint character herself, and those around her, without showing much of the ripple effect from her not being exactly where and who she originally was.
Elements of Harmony
This was somewhat self-indulgent, mostly because I like to imagine a multiverse where the Elements are a little different whichever timeline you step into. Still reflections of virtues valued by the culture they appear within, still a source of power for their wielders, but taking various forms and not always the exact same ones, or the same number of them.
Spike taking Rarity's place as the Bearer of Generosity seemed natural, as he was already there during the pilot (presumably he didn't wear himself out as much as he did on the show and didn't fall asleep to convientently step off the stage for the remainder of the episode), and has a definite generous heart in him that struggles against a dragon's inherent greediness. I'd already committed to sticking to just one species swap, however, and his being a dragon shapes part of the narrative, being Fluttershy's reason to go out into diamond dog territory and the initial excuse Precious can grasp at to try to protect the ponies from Rover.
So that threw off the pre-Twilight-ascension balance of two unicorns, two pegasi, and two earth ponies. That balance certainly isn't necessary, but it's something I like, along with equivalent balances in worlds where there aren't ponies wielding them at all. So I thought more about it, and, well, in Equestria Girls there are seven elements (downplayed in that the actual necklaces/crown don't exist, which I think was a smart move on the writers' parts), so... maybe this is a universe that happens to have Empathy as one of the artefacts? A universe where Sunset didn't run off and so could wield it. Then we have seven elements with two unicorns, two pegasi, two earth ponies, and a dragon.
All in all, it's an Equestria much like the show, but a Sunset who stuck around and a Spike who is an official member of the team still offers little divergences that no doubt ripple through the timeline the further you go, and may have the potential for exploration in the future.
Setting
Diamond Dog Culture
So... FIM doesn't give us a lot to work with for diamond dogs.
In the show, they're essentially a Gollum reference, named after a David Bowie song, and they get their singular episode as villains for Rarity to wrap around her hoof, followed by a throwaway reference in The Last Problem. That's it. That's all we get.
And so naturally, where the show was lacking, I'd turn to the comics for inspiration, and... well. We're a bit thin on the ground there too. Diamond dogs feature in two comic storylines, once in a Friends Forever issue and once in the Season 10 comics, and here's the fun part: the latter does not acknowledge the former as having happened at all. Both give us the "real" home of the diamond dogs, with different names and cultures, and brush aside the ones we see in the show as either exiles or distant cousins. And as a bonus, the diamond dogs look very different in each; Friends Forever has them look closer to the show designs, while Season 10 throws all the Gollum-like traits out of the window and just gives us anthropomorphized dogs of varying breeds.
Comics continuity, man. It's a mess.
Neither quite sat right with me, because I wanted to expand on the show diamond dogs rather than just toss them aside, so the idea took shape: That diamond dogs used to live on the surface, quite extravagantly like the Season 10 dogs, even, but their civilization was destroyed and now there's just remnants that live underground.
Now, are the stories about what the world used to look like, that Precious was raised with, true? There's likely a kernel of truth to it, but just being faced with the fact that ponies are as powerful as they are shakes Precious up, so she's likely to look back at those tales with a necessary grain of salt.
I also tried to work in other things. Diamond dogs needing gemstones for their magic or in general having geomancy isn't something I can claim as original on my part, but I used it to contrast their seeming insatiable greed in the episode with a culture that actually has very little in the way of personal belongings and pools all of their resources together, with the greatest status that can be granted being the dog that contributes the most to the pack. Putting gems on their collars is as fancy as they get, and even then, they're "reject" gems that aren't magically useful.
There's also the detail of names. Rarity essentially needs to browbeat her captors into calling her anything other than "pony," and Rover, Fido, and Spot, while named in other media, never introduce themselves properly in the show, Rover simply saying that he's "a diamond dog" when asked who he is. So I turned it into a strong association between names and respect; you don't use the names of lesser beings, nor allow them to use yours.
Diamond dogs have a warped sense of honour, with their Code of Canis, though when it comes to bettering the pack, some will even throw the code away. Like Rover. The fatal flaw of the diamond dogs is their arrogance, thus why lapdog becomes an insult for those who leave the packs; they don't have high opinions of their non-sapient cousins and a comparison to them is the worst thing they can think to say.
All in all, for a short story and working with very little of a canon framework, I think I crafted something interesting to add texture to what were originally one-note villains.
Characters:
Precious
So this was an interesting experiment.
Why Rarity as a diamond dog? Irony, primarily. I was toying with thoughts of what would be a change that would provide a major difference, not just cosmetic, and thinking of making her one of the creatures who she, in canon, terrorized into regretting kidnapping her, just seemed like a concept ripe for playing with.
The best compliment that I've gotten for the reimagining was a comment on the story that it was possible to mistake it for simply being a tale of a particularly pleasant and tasteful diamond dog. I placed the "this is yapping" reference front and centre to try to flag as quickly as possible who was being changed, but otherwise I treat Precious a lot as her own entity. She has her own name (and choosing "Precious" was definitely leaning into the Gollum-ness of the dogs, as well as being its own level of irony that she isn't valued very much by her people despite being called such) and I didn't even have her fire off a single "darling."
Instead, her speech is more in-line with how diamond dogs spoke in the show (I rewatched A Dog and Pony Show and kept a transcript up in another tab as I planned out the dialogue) and a lifetime of being discouraged from being herself at every turn and being isolated from other species has made her more timid. But I tried to still keep up her fundamental Rarity-ness. She strikes a pose when wearing her sweater, she wants to share the beauty she finds on the surface with the other dogs even when they don't appreciate it, she offers gemstones to Spike, and when push comes to shove, she'll sacrifice her place with the pack to keep her newfound friends safe from the other dogs.
There's also little references here and there. The note of her having ambushed Rover with herbs is a nod to Rarity having complained about his breath in the episode, her notes about the tunnels being musty and the other dogs need to bathe more also rooted in Rarity's gambit of breaking the dogs with complaints. Her fur being white, her sweater being purple, and the gem on her collar being a blue diamond are nods to Rarity's coat, mane, and mark. And her getting Spike a large blue diamond is referencing the jewel she gifted him in the episode, that he ended up sacrificing to use as bait to get the other ponies into the tunnels. And of course, her ability to literally sniff out gemstones is an echo of Rarity's gem-finding spell.
Given time to grow with her new friends, Precious may start to reflect Rarity a little more in how she holds herself, but she'll always be a diamond dog. She's a bit like Spike, in fact, in that she has an opportunity to define for herself what being a dog means to her, like he does with being a dragon. And as she's convinced of in the end, everything will be okay, because she isn't alone anymore.
Fluttershy
Fluttershy seemed like the obvious point of contact, for a myriad of reasons.
She and Rarity have an especially close connection in the show, something that felt right to echo with her becoming Precious's first pony friend. She also made the most sense motivation-wise to be out there. In a universe absent Rarity, Spike being close to Fluttershy tracks with how much she wanted to talk to and learn about him in the pilot. Likewise, that moment with Spike makes her wanting to get to know Precious instead of being frightened off by her non-pony appearance make perfect sense. Other ponies are scary, but Precious is just a large dog that talks, just like how a manticore is just a big kitty.
But while Fluttershy is kindhearted to a fault and not afraid of diamond dogs, she's not necessarily going to know a lot about them. She doesn't realize that Precious might not celebrate Hearth's Warming until her confusion is obvious, and fully admits that because her frame of reference for non-ponies is Spike, who was raised by a pony family, she can be ignorant of cultural differences between species. Her heart's in the right place and she's trying to do right by her new friend, but that ignorance allows her to not spy the red flags that Sunset and Twilight do about Precious being on the surface on her own until they're pointed out to her.
There will be profuse apologies for that in the near future, and the two will no doubt be extremely close for years to come. Given what kinds of friends Fluttershy is destined to make, the future could be very interesting, too. But that's a story for another day.
Other Notes:
- While this story doesn't take part in the same universe as my other stories, since Rarity is very much a pony still in The Long Eventide, I think of it as occurring in the same multiverse cluster, in that the underlying worldbuilding is shared. If/when I feature diamond dogs in my "mainline," there'll be a lot in common in how they operate.
- When I was listing location names during the narration about the Old Kingdoms, all three are references. Dimondia is the kingdom of diamond dogs from the Friends Forever comics, Caninia is the kingdom in the Season 10 comics, and Lycosura, as the odd name out, is a reference to an Ancient Greek city said to be founded by King Lycaon, whose name, and the myth of him being turned into a wolf by Zeus, gives us the word lycanthropy.
- The story originally had an epilogue, taking place near the series' end and featuring an interaction with Capper, but was ultimately cut before I got to the drafting stage. It disrupted flow of the "every chapter is a season across the year" structure, and it felt a bit too final of an ending. I'd like to explore this branch of continuity a little more in the future, and so where, exactly, Precious's life trajectory is going will be left a mystery for now.
What's Next?
As I said in my previous blog, there's one more contest entry and a chapter for my ongoing fic on the horizon, and that hasn't changed.
However, writing all of these shorter fics has definitely inspired me to do that more often going into the new year, even without contests acting as the prompts. And, would you look at that, there's a set of story ideas right here looking for a good home...
Very, very interesting!
What I find both amusing and fascinating in equal measure is without little beyond the basic prompt, we inadvertently created mirror fics. Two stories both focusing on "Mane 6 member as a Diamond Dog" but in opposite.
Your Precious is the outsider of a Diamond Dog society that's nasty (slavery and supremacists) but has strong pack and familal ties, who looks towards pony society and the wonders of a quieter, more friendly, life in Ponyville.
My Twilight is stuck in the centre of Pony culture, from a race of Diamond Dogs more akin to Movie Tolkien Orcs (Cannibalisation and Murder), who finds herself cracking under the strain of Equestrian expectations and attempts to meet them, no matter the location.
I honestly think Twilight would be envious of Precious, whom (presumably in turn) would call her spoilt for not appreciating all she has.
Fascinating stuff.
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I did find it very surprising that someone else went with turning a Mane Six member into a diamond dog for the contest, since they are such a little-represented species. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Reflection and seeing the angle you took, and I look forward to seeing any other stories you create in that particular universe.
I agree that these two meeting would likely have a distinct "grass is greener" reaction. From Precious's point of view, Twilight has it made. Not only the adoptive child of a pony, but royalty, as well as being one of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and advancing research in the art of geomancy. Never having had to live in musty old tunnels, never having been pushed around or mocked by other dogs. It would take her time to realize that growing up among another species, learning to loathe your own kind and what you see in the mirror, is its own pain.
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Yeah it was a shock to me to!
Originally I ran through two different versions of a "All the mane 6 are different species" fic and it just wasn't working, something didn't click. I considered dragon Twi, but it's been done a few times and generally better then what I felt like I could do. I kept being drawn back to Diamond Dogs though because they're so unrepresented, one episode and a few cameos in EQG. Even the Kirin get more!
I do have some stuff turning up soon. Mostly Flashfics just fleshing out little background bits, but bigger stuff is on the way. I'd be interested in seeing Precious further, but I do understand your porting this style of Diamond Dog into your universe as is.