Alright ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves...
Can we just talk about how good Read it and Weep and Daring Do was/used to be instead of how insufferable Daring Done was?
Daring Do and Rainbow Dash in this are at the bottom of a valley of poor characterization. Daring Do starts off in this pitiful slump, which, okay, seemed like a decent conflict to explore at first; it makes sense there'd be some people out there that don't fully appreciate what she's doing. However, our first problem arises: as soon as it's obvious she's been had by Caballeron (aka the moment he started talking), you'd expect the shrewd and resourceful adventure pony to figure it out and come up with a brilliant plan to reveal the truth to everybody. This is the person that managed to escape a quicksand, tied-to-a-table-while-spikes-are-coming-from-both-sides trap with her hat, but RD has to pull the weight for her in Daring Done.
And on a rewatch, it's come to my attention that Caballeron only set her up in the case of the glow paz, but not the statue crumbling; she actually did screw that one up. However, now we have a second problem: I realized this flew completely over my head the first time because there is such a bizarre, not-resolution to this that it actually convinced me it must've been ALL Caballeron during my first watch. The whole episode is centered around how this town and all of Southern Equestria apparently is not fond of the way she's treated them, and through LITTLE TO NO interaction between the two parties, they've somehow come to completely forgive her? Let me explain...
At the end of the Sonambula story, the crowd is clearly not on friendly terms with the menace Daring Do, and they leave. The next scene they're in is the final confrontation with Caballeron. Caballeron exclaims "At first, I just wanted the glow paz. But then, I saw an opportunity to write you [Daring Do] out of the story for good! *laughs*" and then it cuts to the crowd gasping... uh, why does this town suddenly give a shit about Daring Do? She still screwed up your statue and ran away instead of helping you out with it. To the town, this should just be a squabble between a vandal and a thief with little sympathy towards either.
This was the obvious part to settle that score in a one-on-one way, Daring Do having to face the consequences of her actions that has been informing her character this entire episode, but instead, it just fizzles. You contorted Daring Do into this shell of her former self to have this conflict, but it is straight up avoided by both the characters and the writers. What a waste of time.
Yay! Daring Do you're so loved and great and special! Whew!
And can we talk about RD now? Just shut up, Rainbow Dash. SHUT UP. You're a nuisance to everyone around you. The WHOLE problem is that everyone in this town thinks Daring Do is a bad dude, and actually to a certain extent, she kind of demonstrably is. So what is the very first thing RD does? Walks up to someone and talks about how awesome DD is. Where is that supposed to get you? After Daring Don't, the episode where 1. Rainbow Dash is bad at making plans but Daring Do shows her that it's a good idea to have a plan and 2. Rainbow Dash learns to not overhype her idols, you would think she would've approached this a little differently.
Regardless, it continues. And continues. And continues until I want to blow my brains out at how annoying and one-dimensional she is about this entire thing.
But can I really blame her? Daring Do wouldn't do jack the entire time. There were probably more raw seconds of her running away from scenes than having a dialogue with any one townsperson. Like I said, a shell of her former self. So much so that she ends up feeling more like a dispenser of feel-good lines directed at the two main characters. "Everypony I try to help is mad at me..." Really? C'mon. "Thanks for helping me come to my senses. You two are true friends." Please, stop. "Thanks for reminding me to never give up hope, Pinkie!" JFC. I literally started a list titled "bad Daring Do lines" for this. One of these days they're going to have to actually make a Daring Do episode where she and Rainbow Dash have some genuine banter, some genuine comradery so that when she says this schlock I might buy into it at least a little bit.
She's looking for some good Daring Do dialogue but I can't seem to find it either!
You know an episode where there actually was a compelling relationship between the two? You're never gonna believe it, but Read it and Weep. Damn, that episode was so gangster. The way the two situations mirror each other in clever ways. The way RD gets kicked out of the hospital at the most perilous part of the story. The way they show how much RD is into the book by self-sabotaging herself in her favorite board game that she never loses at but still can't bring herself to express it to Twilight. Everything works so perfectly with the characters. You can feel RD's plight when she's been chased all the way across town by the doctors and finds herself having to admit to Twilight that she tried reading and she likes it even though she was so sure of herself that reading was dumb at the beginning.
There was nothing like that in Daring Done. And it all goes back to freakin' Daring Don't and the stupid development of Daring Do being real. That episode on its own is actually pretty good, but that ruined so much that could've been cool with Rainbow Dash and Daring Do's relationship; ironically, it was so much better when they didn't know each other at all.
"If only she could escape this oppressive atmosphere and fly up into the cool, blue sky. But her crash landing in the jungle had injured her wing and she was grounded for a few days. A few days... it might as well be a few months. Or a few years!"
"I'm right there with you, sister," Rainbow Dash said, as she stared exasperatedly at her own injured wing.
That moment, among others in Read it and Weap, is so much more of a compelling connection than anything that happens in THIS episode despite the two ponies, as the Daring Done painfully points out, being best buds. Ugh.
...
In addition to the main problems with the episode, it felt like it lacked polish. I guess you could just call them "nitpicks," but to me they were more like small things with easy fixes that made me go "huh?" a couple of times and they just piled up.
First thing was when Rainbow Dash is speaking to the crowd in front of the statue. She mentions Ahuizotl, and then it cuts to the crowd. They're just kind of talking, as in they could either be discussing the issue or confused on who that is — you can't really tell either way. But then for some reason it cuts back to Rainbow Dash explaining who Ahuizotl is. It's just kind of like, are you sure they didn't understand who you were talking about? They didn't give the impression of looking decidedly confused at specifically that. Maybe throw in someone speaking up and saying "who's that?" from the crowd?
Second thing was Rainbow Dash getting captured. She made no effort to resist besides yelling, and if she did, it was awkwardly off-screen. Even if it was off-screen, literally from the get-go of the conversation she just sits down in submission. It's like, why is she sitting? Very un-Rainbow. The solution was to have Caballeron restrain her by surprise before the conversation started.
They literally gave her Fluttershy body language for this scene to work.
Third thing was the "leap of faith." It really had no relation to what actually happened in the story. Even though she was making a leap of faith, at least Sonambula had SOME information on what was going on like the bridge she saw in front of her and the prince's voice. On the other hand, Pinkie's literally like FUCK IT and jumps. Huh? Did she know she at least had a chance or survival? How did the legend manage to have more rationale than the real world? "It's just Pinkie being Pinkie" doesn't work here when we had an entire story dedicated to setting up this moment. It would've worked the exact same way if the characters and the audience both clearly saw the air puff puffs.
The animation was also pretty weird. DD first just kind of moves up in down from a sitting position and then they do the bouncy thing as if they're hitting solid ground. It would've been a lot more fun if every bounce semi-violently shook them around.
Why is that the position they chose to put her in?
Fourth thing was when Caballeron was first confronting Rainbow Dash, he tells her "when I saw you, her closest friend, I knew that Daring Do would not be far behind." The implication seems to be that he saw Rainbow Dash independently of Daring Do and had enough time to consciously think about the likelihood of Daring Do arriving soon without knowing for sure. HOWEVER, if you rewind back to the beginning when the heroes first arrive in town, Daring Do as A.K. Yearling, who we know Caballeron knows to be Daring Do from Daring Don't, is standing right next to Rainbow Dash — there's no way he could miss her being there, even in those first few moments.
Please do not lie to me and tell me that Caballeron might've maybe just missed Daring Do with ^that^
And if that wasn't enough, two seconds later Daring Do runs away because of his comments, and we see Caballeron smirking, so clearly he knew that was her.
So it just makes the later line feel clunky. Of course you knew she wasn't far behind — she was literally standing right there!
Fifth thing was those townspeople were so dumb! During the exchanges between Rainbow Dash and hooded Caballeron before and after the Sonambula story (which was a nice refugee from the main story I might add), they treated every sentence like some massive revelation that completely changed their outlook on the situation.
"Daring Do is a pretty cool dude."
"Alright, alright, she makes a good point."
"Actually, I don't know if you guys know this, buuuuuutttt... Daring Do... is BAD!"
"BOOOOOOOOO!!!"
The faces of some true Sonambulan intellectuals.
Sixth thing is that the Daring-Yearling dynamic is really f'ing convoluted at this point.
Okay, so of course back in Daring Don't, we found out that the author of the Daring Do books actually really is Daring Do, and that everything in the books actually happen. At the time, it's still kind of unclear whether or not people know Daring Do is a real person that actually does all the things in her books, but that seemed to be answered in Stranger Than Fan Fiction when Quibble Pants said "Whoa, you're real?!" to Daring Do when they first meet; if Quibble didn't know she was real, then probably no one does.
...or so we thought. Now we arrive to Daring Done, and things just go completely off the rails. From the conversation in DD's cottage, apparently, Daring Do is now known to be a definitely real person to a region of Equestria known as Southern Equestria, or at least just the town of Somnambula. It's unclear whether or not this is specific to this region or that only recently word has spread that she's real to all of Equestria. But as an added bonus to this mess, Southern Equestria doesn't sell her books, so no one there knows who A.K. Yearling is or that Daring Do's doings get published. So if Southern Equestria knows who Daring Do is but not A.K. Yearling, and the rest of Equestria knows who A.K. Yearling is but not Daring Do being real, does that mean the two halves don't communicate? No way. Daring Do must be known to be real in non-Southern Equestria at this point. That would seem like a big development, yeah? Probably a big deal that would be addressed in this episode that her character is now known to be real? Unless we're just totally retconning the fair assumption that Daring Do was not known to be real at the time of Stranger Than Fan Fiction and Quibble wasn't in the know...
Huh. I just had a strange feeling of nostalgia. It was calling me back to the days of Daring Do just being some character in a book that Rainbow Dash related to. That's weird.
I don't know, my dudes. I'm the number one Daring Do fan — I just bought the Berrow books and they're actually pretty solid so far — but this episode was a dumpster fire. The coolest thing from it was that scene when Rainbow and Pinkie were heading to the inn...
...looks pretty good. And the Sphinx...
In fact, I think it's one of the best monster designs in the series. It combines the beautiful look of the ponies with something a little more cat-like and a little more frightening.
I can't think of much else that I liked about the episode. Pinkie in the opening scenes was funny. Oh, and a really nice touch was Rainbow Dash's pupils got small when they took off her blindfold. I would never think to add something like that in.
I am the fan that they were making fun of in Stranger Than Fan Fiction, but I don't care. Make Daring Do great again.
(I'll admit I waited a bit to post this because I didn't want to do all that work to be stuck at the bottom of the previous page
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