Golden Oaks Book Club mini-review #5: The Sisters Doo (spoiler warning) · 2:59am Feb 2nd, 2015
Ponky’s back! Ponky’s back! Ponky’s back! Ponky’s back! Ponky’s back!
Well… he is in a few days at least. But! In honour of this long-awaited and momentous occasion, the Golden Oaks Book Club voted to read The Sisters Doo. Since it’s actually slightly over our word threshold (at 117k words), special permission was granted, and we went right into it. So, how does a fandom classic stack up in these post-season two times? Does it stand the test of time? Is it actually as good a story as its legacy would lead one to believe?
Get my point of view below.
Author: Ponky (duh)
Synopsis:
Daring Do seeks a favor from her sister in Ponyville. Due to buried grudges, things quickly get out of hoof. She soon finds herself on her most perilous mission yet... with her biggest fan in the world. In the midst of truth and lies, loyalty and treachery, love and hate, one thing is clear - some family situations are stranger than fiction.
Current Length: 116,988 words over 22 chapters, averaging 5,318 words per chapter
Status: Complete
Review: Daaaaaaamn, it’s been a long time. Two years ago, I delved head-first into this adventure. Having just finished watching all of season two as a fairly new brony, I was interested in Daring Do stories. I wanted to see more of her, truly. When I accidentally found The Sisters Doo after finishing Sin and Upheaval: Breaking Point, an explosive amount of excitement went off in my head (I can still remember my mother looking at me weirdly after I just yelled out “Yes!” in the living room for no apparent reason… heh).
Now I’m not going to say that Daring was as much a heroic figure to me as she was to Rainbow in Read It And Weep, but I will say that I couldn’t wait to get started with the adventure. Daring was cool, Daring was awesome, Daring was… a conceited, selfish bitch?
Huh. Interesting.
All throughout the story, Daring revealed herself to be an arrogant pony who thrived on waving her success in other ponies’ faces. It’s strange, though. Even the first time I read the story, something didn’t make sense to me, and with the reread, it’s still kinda hazy. Why would Daring bother to write her adventures as an anonymous author, if she’s completely unopposed to revealing who she is with excessive amounts of bravado and gusto? She’s basically Rainbow Dash, but with zero sense of humility (yes, even RD had some in season two, especially after second-worst episode The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well brought her back down to Earth a lot). She’s horrible to Ditzy Doo (her sister, who in fairness is rather hostile in return), she adores attention, she lies about her exploits and puts other ponies down, and makes many promises out of personal vanity. For someone who’s supposed to be a story protagonist, it’s hard not to wish some vicious form of Karma to befall her.
This is where the story really champions Ditzy Doo. Depicted as a former adventurer alongside Daring as her partner (until she took an arrow to the gut in the form of her daughter, Dinky), she settled down into a quiet life of motherhood. While she may not be in the mood for adventuring anymore, she still has the skills and the knowledge of a world-travelled mare. So while she at first vehemently rejects Daring’s er… daring proposal to join her on another adventure, she reluctantly insists upon accompanying her after the Cake Twins are abducted by agents from another nation—a nation that both mares are very familiar with. The difference in motives between Ditzy and Daring jetting off to rescue the twins really throws both of their characters under the spotlight: Ditzy only wants to get the twins back from their abductors because it’s the right thing to do, while Daring only wishes to get them back because she thinks it will make for an awesome new story.
All over the story, we learn more and more about Ditzy and Daring’s history, and the lengths that both mares are willing to go through to outdo each other as they search for the twins beyond Equestria’s borders. And really, this is a major aspect of what makes a great story: internal conflict in parallel to the external conflict. It’s nowhere near as fun to read about a group of friends who never fight/bicker/disagree in any way. Games like Battletoads, Final Fight, and Golden Axe utilise the “friendly fire” mechanic in-game, where you can actually damage/hinder your own allies without being careful. Sure it makes the game more difficult and annoying, but while it can be frustrating to have your ally accidentally beat you up regularly, it definitely adds to the entertainment value of the experience. This is no different in The Sisters Doo: Daring, Ditzy, and sometimes even Rainbow Dash are all at each others throats quite often.
Oh yeah. I know I was forgetting something. Rainbow Dash! While Ditzy and Daring might as well be OCs in this story due to their personalities, Rainbow’s character is definitely on vivid display here. She can be a little reckless, but she serves as the boulder that holds the adventure together. Now, depending on how you interpret Loyalty, you could say that she’s either extremely loyal to the overall adventure, or a flip-flop with it as she seems to switch sides quite often. If anything, I personally feel she’s too loyal to the cause. She’s trying so hard to be loyal to her hero (who is quite quickly revealed to have fallen off of her Broken Pedestal in Rainbow’s eyes, and must take her as her true self, Warts And All). Yet at the same time, while still respecting Daring somewhat, she quite often sides with Ditzy after Daring makes a complete arse of herself. In the end, without Rainbow flitting between where her loyalties lie and trying to hold the party together, the story would have had a much darker ending. So points to Rainbow.
Something else I have to give points to the story for: its use of Alicorn OCs that aren’t ridiculous, OP, or poorly thought-out. The story brings forth the lore that there are six alicorns in total (Celestia, Luna, Alula, Piedra, Beatrix, and Calupan) who all control an aspect of nature. None of them are overdone, although Alula is definitely the most interesting. Sure, he’s depicted as powerful, but as an alicorn of Wind, and being just as old as Celestia and Luna, one would expect him to be. He’s actually quite a charming fellow… at least until you get toward the end of the story. Piedra, too, is kept on a leash in terms of his power and involvement, and the other two are only briefly mentioned.
In terms of readability, prose, grammar, structure, mechanics… The Sisters Doo actually surprised me, considering its age. It reads almost flawlessly, with a grand total of only one or two typos or grammar slips throughout. It does make use of a fair amount of saidisms, and a tiny amount of LUS, however the story itself was just that compelling, that absorbing, that I really didn’t mind. Barring probably five instances in the story, my immersion remained 100% intact, and was quickly recovered even after a little thing jumped up and licked my face as opposed to trying to eat it.
There are things wrong with the story, though. Not many worth mentioning, except for the sudden appearance of the CMC, and Twilight and Pinkie near the end. Now, even though a simultaneously-updating side-story does/did exist to explain Twilight and Pinkie, it was only very recently that another side-story about Dinky (that will hopefully explain how the CMC and she arrived in time to save the day from seemingly nowhere) came into existence. The story pretty much implies that you need to read the side-stories to understand what the hell happened. This is the story’s only really major flaw for me. Side-stories exist to expand and shed new light on events related to the main story, not to be the sole method of explaining events in the main story. The main story should offer at least some explanation why Pinkie and Twilight, and the CMC suddenly appeared near the end at just the right time. Without the side-stories, it really feels like a Deus Ex Machina out of nowhere, and that’s not a good thing. One might even argue that Dinky’s ability to control wind magic and match her alicorn father point-for-point in strength in this regard is Deus Ex Machina too, although considering where specifically Dinky is standing (or rather, what she’s standing next to), it becomes a little less of a stretch to believe.
As expected, Karma does take a huge, steaming dump all over Daring toward the end of the story, in the worst possible way. And yes, she deserves it. It’s up to you as the reader to decide whether or not you feel sorry for her, because despite acting like a huge jerk the whole time, Daring does actually undergo a fair amount of character development, just like Ditzy. Rainbow was probably the mare who developed the least, although she did learn those important lessons about Pedestals and Warts at least.
Whether you like Daring Do in this story or not, overall it is incredibly well written, engaging, exciting, amusing, at times shocking, and finally, heartwarming. The Sisters Doo, to me, stands the test of time, and rightfully deserves its place in my most loved adventure fics.
9/10
Next Review: More from my ongoing favourites list.
Words read in January:
…
I’m sorry. I failed. I could only manage 952,459 words before time expired. But I’ll keep counting until I get to the Million anyway 
My memories are a little hazy, it's been a while since I read the story. But I remember seeing Daring's arrogance as half-bluff, half self-deception. She's shown as not really having it all together on several occasions, just putting up a tough front for her fan that is tagging along. On the other hoof, one could make the assumption that part of it is that she's been sitting around writing stories about the old adventures for a while and might be a little scared to go back adventuring when she knows she isn't as young or as physically fit as before. So she covers that up with the 'I can do anything' mindset.
So close to 1M words! I managed it, but mostly by pushing myself and having no life. It's not an easy thing. Next time I think I'm just going to cheat and read Fallout: Equestria again.
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That is also true of Daring, and probably something I should have covered. It allowed me to hold a little bit of sympathy for her every now and then. But then I thought back to the middle of the story, especially on board Fancy's airship when she was being a drunken twat. That was just herself getting lost in her indulgences and genuinely not caring.
I'd have liked to see more of Filoplume the griffon too. His one-shot appearance was disappointing, considering he had a huge impact on RD's mindset at the time.
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Yeah, still means Daring was being a jerk. Just a plausible reason why she was a mostly anonymous author when in the story she's all bragging and stuff. Really do need to reread that one.
Hey, thanks for this! A nice way to be welcomed back.
The Sisters Doo is far from a perfect story, but -- as I think you understand -- I never intended for it to be such. I was new to fanfiction (and with this two year hiatus, I'm still new to fanfiction) and thought the side-story melding thingy would be a cool device. I'm still proud of it, but mostly because I learned so much from the experience as a writer.
In the end the goal is to entertain and hopefully uplift, and it looks like I succeeded for a quite a few readers. That's worth it to me. Thanks for the review, very kind of you to read it again. Ciao!
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Good to have you back. I hope everything was more than worth it.
If this was a new effort for you, and it was this good, I certainly await the stories you can produce when you reach a level you consider "experienced." I mean, damn. Well done, Indy—very well done indeed.
Here's to the future! *raises glass of (insertbeveragehere)*