YMMV / Dork Diaries

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Nikki really as big of a loser as she claims she is, or is this just a case of her being an Unreliable Narrator and having low self-esteem? The only kids who regularly bully her are the C.C.P., while the rest of the student body seems to tolerate her just fine. She also has a good amount of friends including the more popular Brandon.
  • In Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl, Nikki, while in her rat costume, runs into Mackenzie in the school dance bathroom. Mackenzie doesn't seem to recognize the rat is Nikki but when Nikki goes into a stall to change, Mackenzie steals Nikki's duffel bag containing her costumes. Did Mackenzie know all along that it was Nikki and was giving her a false sense of hope, did Mackenzie not immediately recognize Nikki and only realized it after she went into the stall or did she just wanted to screw around with some random person who just happened to be Nikki? While it was Mackenzie was the one who gave Nikki the rat costume and was the who masked her, it should be noted that Mackenzie never referred to Nikki by name until after the unmasking.
• Awesome Art: Nikki's manga-esque illustrations are one of the most enjoyable aspects of the series. For a 14-year-old girl, she obviously has talent.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The main character herself, Nikki Maxwell. Some love her for her dorky and relatable personality, while others hate her for being a whiny Bratty Teenage Daughter.
  • Brianna is sometimes this alongside Dork Diaries fans, who either dislike her for making her older sister miserable with her mischievous antics, or love her because of her irresistible cuteness.
• Bizarro Episode: Tales From a Not So Happily Ever After. It revolves around Nikki getting a bump on the head and going through an extremely Fractured Fairy Tale featuring fairy tale versions of her friends and enemies. There is Fridge Brilliance in this, though — the entire story takes place on April 1. It's basically a 295-page April Fools episode.
• Cliché Storm: An awkward girl moves to a new school, finds a nemesis in an Alpha Bitch, and falls in love with a cute Nice Guy who returns her feelings? Yeah.
• Continuity Lock-Out: The books are much more serialized than one would expect. It is absolutely necessary to read them in chronological order, as many crucial plot points are based on events that happened in previous books.
• Crossover Ship: Some fans frequently ship Nikki with Greg Heffley from Diary of a Wimpy Kid, likely because both Dork Diaries and the Wimpy Kid series are about the misadventures of middle school kids who keep diaries that they recount their escapades in, despite the massive Fandom Rivalry.
• Fandom Rivalry: Some fans of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series seems to hate the series, comparing them to more recent Diary of a Wimpy Kid books (due to having longer plot-relevant events). However, it seems to have pewtered out in favour of an Enemy Mine against Minecraft-themed copycats.
• Foe Yay Shipping: A large group of fans online ship Nikki with MacKenzie, despite MacKenzie bullying Nikki and them hating each other. This is mainly due to these fans feeling like the two have good chemistry and the fact that despite being enemies they have a lot in common.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: Many readers don't find Dork Diaries to be appealing for being very girly, unlike Diary of a Wimpy Kid and its appeal to both genders; it's presumably the reason the Spear Counterpart The Misadventures of Max Crumbly was written. The online "Ask Nikki" column does address the ghetto:
  You know who else Dork Diaries is for equally? Boys AND girls! I get quite a few boys writing to me to "confess" that they enjoy Dork Diaries. That's awesome! I'm glad! I wish they didn't feel like it was something that should be kept secret.
  You know what else? No one is surprised to see girls reading and enjoying Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Wimpy Kid and Dog Man. Like, what's up with that?! No one makes them feel weird about it. So why shouldn't boys read books that feature a girl main character?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Nikki's Leaning on the Fourth Wall comment from How To Dork Your Diary became this once a movie adaptation was planned in the works.
  I know this might sound really crazy...! But what if Chloe actually turned my very private, dorky tales of WOE into a bestselling book series?! AND a blockbuster movie?!
• Memetic Mutation: Most Viral Video Moment. ^ExplanationA screenshot from "Tales from a Not-So-Happy Birthday/Birthday Drama" with Nikki, André and Brenton dabbing, captioned "Everyone dabbing and doing cool Fortnite dances, like the Floss, Hype and Orange Justice!" went viral as said dances were considered "cringe-worthy" at the time.
• Minority Show Ghetto: Although author Rachel Renée Russell is African-American, the protagonist, Nikki is white. She actually explained in this article why she did this.
  Rachel Renée Russell: If you have a character of a different race, your book tends to get put in a category that isn't mainstream, and we wanted something to appeal to everyone.
• Self-Fanservice: Nikki herself receives this from time-to-time. In the books, she's just your average teenage girl with Girlish Pigtails but some fanartists will give her a larger bust and make her a bit more curvy.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Various people are calling this series a rip-off of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Nikki Maxwell is compared to Greg Heffley, her little sister Brianna to Manny, the two sisters' parents to Susan and Frank, and the Alpha Bitch Mackenzie Hollister to Rodrick.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: As shown in books 9 and 10, Mackenzie has become the least popular girl at her new school thanks to her own actions against Nikki. This could have lead to book 11 being about her having Break the Haughty moments that force her to make a Heel–Face Turn and become friends with Nikki...but nope, Status Quo Is God.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Ever since the series started in 2009, the books have a tendency to make a lot of Shout Outs to media that were really popular when these each book was first published. Some of these books later got reprinted years later that removed several references that faded in popularity since the original publishing.
• Values Dissonance: The first book used the word "retard" a few times. Granted, while this was considered rather surprising for a book aimed at young girls, it is now a lot more offensive nowadays than it was when it was first published and would definitely not fly. As such, later prints of the book remove the word.

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