Metamorphosis
By Mares Guyver

Reviewed by Asilin & Rinnaul

Greetings from our couch, it’s another Asilin & Rinnaul joint review, brought to you by whiskey, gin, and a seriously overworked spellcheck, courtesy aforementioned whisky and gin.

It’s not your fault (yet) — it’s just that we’d just watched the 2nd presidential debate, and 90 minutes of Trump whining and interrupting could drive anyone to drink.

I’ll let Asilin do her “introduce the crossover” thing.

Holy crap, this is old. February 18, 1985 — this is older than me!

Wait, I may not want to claim that.

(silently transcribing the rambling)

It’s also older than you, by a few months.

Okay, plot… oh fucking hell.

Well, it’s not totally copying the anime’s story. I’ve seen way worse stuff than this for originality.

It’s enough to concern me, that’s all.

Anyway, old skool anime is old. The essentials are that an evil corporation has created or gotten a hold of some crazy tech that transforms the users into powerful fighting monsters. One of their own turns rogue and flees with the tech but blows himself up after getting stopped, causing the tech to go flying. One ends up near the protagonist, Sho Fukamachi, who ends up merging with the unit. Evil plots, mecha- and monster-fighting, and apparently a shocking plot twist ensues. Y’all can check out Wikipedia for more, if you want.

Bio Booster Armor Guyver

Quick Recommendation: While there are some very good ideas here, and it’s at least worth a chance from fans of Guyver, changelings, or the Hooves family; the slow pacing, lack of focus, and purple prose might deter anyone else.

Hey, it’s a… what’s that thing where a story opens with a quote?

Epigraph.

Right, an epigraph opening. Normally I don’t care for these, but in this case, it’s a call back to the anime crossover, and even gives us a tiny bit of into on the story. On the other hand, this narration is a little bit tedious.

It’s the classic show vs tell problem, but in this case, it takes it too far towards showing. It’s okay to dial it back a bit and just tell some things.

Yeah, it over-describes things. Way too much detail. It kind of reminds me of the time I tried to read Eragon.

Just wait until you get to the OC description.

...Actually, I think that’s Doctor Hooves.

Wait, really?

Light brown coat, dark brown mane, blue eyes, necktie, hourglass cutie mark… Wait, sorry, “two triangles, one inverted such that the tips of both shapes touched one another in the middle of the form”. Seriously, guy, just say “hourglass”.

Or “hourglass shape”. Also, since when is Doctor Hooves a vampire?

Maybe in a Halloween episode? Those get weird. Also probably in the comics. It’s like Marvel’s AU storylines. Everyone’s eventually a vampire somewhere in those.

Also, it also kinda sounds like he’s like… the Hulk but eats souls?

...does he do that?

No, not really. Well, again. Comics. Who knows in there.

Okay, that point aside, he’s still a well-known canon character. Just name him. The same thing goes for the diamond dogs. And why does he sound like he’s an outsider in an unknown world. This should all be known to him.

And this cutaway to all the birds and animals reacting. It’s totally unnecessary. Anime likes establishing shots, and a visual medium can do this because it just cuts away for a few seconds. But in writing, the cutaway is too long, and becomes separate from the other events — just throw in a line or two about birds taking flight around the forest or something. Anyway, next chapter.

*BRRRRRRIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGG!!!!!!*

In response to the sudden aural intrusion…

…that sounds like the weirdest kind of rape.

…the lump beneath the thick covers of the bed shifted…

…or listening to Trump.

…a low moan emerging from the bed’s plush depths…

This is sounding weirdly sexual.

Also, how in your last story we talked about sentence variety? This is the opposite problem. Long, complicated sentences are just as bad as all of them being too short.

The purple prose…

That too.

Or as this story would say it, “the meandering lavender scripture drifting through the reader’s thoughts” or something.

Okay, I added some bits.

You aren’t including that “over-the-top fic reading” part, are you?

That’s spaceholder. It’s going to be replaced with the fic excerpts you were loudly reading at me.

We’ve spent 400 words getting her out of bed and down to the kitchen.

What. Also, “magenta-coated mare.” Don’t you guys have a term for—

Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, yep.

…Her cheeks now aflame, Amethyst rose up back on all four legs with a sheepish grin of her own…

Okay, I kind of zoned out for a bit there cause this is just so tedious to hear, but that sounded like Meet Cute in the middle there.

Also, is this a thing? Calling attention to ponies not having hands?

Kind of. Usually more subtle than this, though.

…Ditzy fought the grin on her face as a low moan emerged from the direction of her daughter… Did she just come from the smell of muffins?

…Okay, I have an excuse for my fanart spam this time.

Oh, okay, it was just to her coffee..

Hey, I’ve written clop where someone got off to coffee.

“Sweet, Blessed Celestia, that’s the stuff.” Oh my god. We are too drunk for this.

We’d be laughing anyway. The liquor is just making us laugh harder.

It’s not just the pacing anymore. It’s not frequent, but I keep running into missing words or places where clearly the wrong word is used.

This is too cutesy. This is Pony fic and it’s too cute. I think this is where you were saying it starts too early.

We’re 1000 words in and we’ve done nothing. The problem with a prologue is you need two hooks — one for the prologue, and one for the main plot. You don’t get to use the prologue hook twice. There’s no hook here. It’s totally squandered the interest from the prologue.

Swallowing the remainder of her meal, Ditzy finally managed to speak aloud. “Y-y-you’re going to h-h-have one of t-t-those!!” she stammered in horror, pointing with one shaking hoof at the offending item now floating out of its package—an English muffin!!

That would have been funny if hadn’t taken so damn long. Also, they should be Trottingham Muffins.

And I still say English Muffins are perfectly good food. You just need lots and lots and lots of butter.

That’s all English food.

Also, cutting one cleanly in half? What is this “cleanly” you speak of?

Lowering the two muffin halves into the toaster, she finally turned to look at Ditzy, who was ashen-faced and still pointing a shaky foreleg. This such an overreaction at this point.

Seriously, give it three or four lines for a joke like this.

Ditzy proceeded to make a variety of inelegant gagging noises, holding her hooves to her neck like she was being choked before finally dipping backwards and collapsing onto the kitchen floor. Seriously, I don’t know if this is a crossover thing, or a cartoon fanfiction thing. You can’t do sight gags in writing. No sight gags.

How many ways have we described these eyes? Why do we keep coming back to them? Is this some kind of shipping thing?

I kind of want to write a story using a thesaurus and a random number generator for describing her eyes now.

“appropriately-named appliance” — Author, you just lost all good graces here.

That was so bad… You couldn’t see the synchronized headdesk, but it happened.

“Dinky Doo exclaimed as she bounced into the kitchen…”

Oh god, it’s still breakfast.

“in the end, they really did taste bitter”

Hey! It’s not breakfast anymore. I can see the next line. It says “breakfast ended.”

How many words?

2100.

That is a third of the chapter. And nothing of any importance happened.

Can we go to bed now? I know that means we’ll be sober for the next part, but it’s four AM.

After the three ponies had fully clean up… The minutia, why the minutia.

We’re still reading?

I wanted to get to the end of the chapter at least.

That will be at least five AM.

The hook. I want to find the hook.

“are you looking at my butt” — More shipping. — “such a cute tush” — More shipping. More shipping, more shipping, more shipping… It’s weird that he’s using dressage terms in a pony fic.

Huh?

“It was Pip, you know, Pipsqueak,” Dinky finally uttered. “I was just trotting through the town square the other day and just happened to pass him by. I don’t think he knew, but I saw him . . . glancing at me as I trotted away.” If it was even possible to do so, Dinky blushed further, “I may have, passaged a bit, after I noticed him look.”

…okay, we all use horse words, but that’s pushing it. Though, to be fair, Rocinante would probably use it, and I edit for him.

…Dinky didn’t reply right away, but as she turned to glance to the side, the shy, gentle smile on her face told Amethyst all that she needed to know…

And then there’s a flashback.

What?

I skimmed ahead. There’s a flashback to her cutie mark story. The girls go into town, they do sister things, Amethyst goes to work and banters with her boss before getting her assignment. Then it’s a flashback.

Do I need to read anything in this flashback?

Nope. We flash back to her youth, she’s helping Rarity with something, she sees the potential of some piece, does her magic, makes it awesome, and gets her butt stamp. I also found the point. Just 5,400 words in. Seriously. There are short fiction groups that this story is too long to qualify for before it even hits the hook.

Um, there’s still no hook.

…He just came back to the action but didn’t establish a hook, didn’t he?

Yep. There’s no hook for any of the slice of life stuff, and this is just relying on the hook from the prologue.

Which we’ve forgotten by now.

More importantly, it finally ended here.

And the Doctor is a changeling. That… makes sense? More than being Soul Reaver Hulk, anyway.

Unfortunately, nothing else happens in this chapter. There’s that confrontation between Dinky and Diamond Tiara, and I commend how Dinky handled her bully, but how is it relevant? And will any of these characters be important?

I had to look up half of them.

And we’re past 10,000 words without a hook. Want to bet we don’t get one in the next chapter.

No, actually we do. We get to the point. It’s amazing. I mean, not the point. That we got there.

Still coughing, the Changeling Commander grimaced and tried to do a headcount through the lingering particulates. Is this even using that right?

Well, it’s insanely detailed, but seriously, I’d be quoting four paragraphs at a time at this point.

And we take a break from the action, in an already extremely slow-paced story, to dump headcanon that amounts to “not all dwarves are male”. And yes, the commander would know her rank, it’s his unit.

And “a lightly-glowing ring of light shining”. I know he meant those in different ways, but seriously, repetition.

This “family rules 57, 50, and 53” thing just makes me want to see a variation on the Evil Overlord list that’s instead a survival guide for the Doctor’s Companions.

Also I like that Alula is basically just a pony version of Luna Lovegood.

“...it’s definitely biomechanical” and then all the rest of the “magical child able to understand things she clearly shouldn’t” stuff. Isn’t there a trope for that?

Child Prodigy, but this actually reminds me of an older review I did, for Escape From This Afterlife. In both cases, the characters acquire information that is unbelievably detailed — “unbelievably” in the sense that it’s immersion-breaking that they can access it — and yet uselessly vague.

“he mettled” You need an editor. This isn’t even just a bad spelling error. You took a noun and made it a verb.

…and I legitimately can’t tell if Amethyst’s Time Lord puns are snarky hints about their father on her part or the author trying to be clever.

Shaking her head, Amethyst turned to face the mystery object still sitting in a small crater by the pond’s bank. The round apparatus was roughly the same size as a small wagon tire, and consisted of several dull metallic plates of varying width encasing a bundle of tube-like coils. The coils themselves were thick and segmented

And somewhere in Equestria, a chainsaw wielding pony named Ash is coming face to face with an Army of Darkness. If you have to explain the joke, then your joke —

No.

No?

That’s not how we do things here.

Watch.

…I miss Hamill Joker.

We all do. Mark Hamill makes everything better.

Before she could turn to yell at Alula, however, her eyes widened and her ears swiveled as she heard a rising *zahhmm* close by. The onomatopoeias…

Presumably, the opening “sha-” was too quiet to hear.

…entombed by the fleshy mass… and we have another footnote cutting away to explain that the author did hentai before Guyver. And that weakens the description even further. It seems like it should be horrifying, but this is just too mechanical.

I kind of want to give it a shot myself, but I’d want to see how the anime did it first. Which is easily resolved.

...oh god the 80s anime. The voice acting. The boring fights.

I need watch some One Piece or something from Madhouse to make up for this.

But hey, we finally got to the actual plot! And it only took us 17,000 words. After that we…

We watch the anime, but with ponies.

Basically. And then she runs away and we end Chapter 3, thank God.

So let’s start with the good here. In terms of syntax and grammar, this story is well written. While there are a few missing words and a few misused words, on the whole, I have no problems with the technicals of the writing. On top of that, the author does have a good eye for description, using some fairly solid and apt descriptors. Further, on the whole, the plot idea itself isn’t a bad one.

The major issue here is that, well, the pacing issues really kill the story here.

First, there’s the fact that this story has a problem with sentence variety. I mentioned on Rinnaul’s last review that always using the same short simple structure is a problem. Here, we see the opposite end: complex and long. Outside of dialogue, nearly every sentence has at least one dependent clause or includes a conjunction. Many have both. This slows the pace down massively.

And that’s not to say that a slow pace isn’t good. But when the narrative pace is always slow, that’s a problem.

There’s a great quote by Gary Provost on sentence length:

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

As you read the paragraph, you can feel the tempo changes. And if you note, his final sentence is a lengthy and complex one. You slow down. You want to take the whole thing in. And that deliberate slowing -- that instinctual retardando -- gives the line a gravitas that separates it from the rest of the paragraph.

But if you’re always using that sentence type, the impact is lost. And your reader gets mired in the weight of your words.

So the narrative itself is slow. Then, on top of that, the plot pace is slow.

And this is what really made me want to put the story down.

The ultimate problem is that with your plot, you fell into the classic blunder.

The classic crossover blunder. Using one source’s plot with another source’s characters and settings is a staple of crossovers. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it can be incredibly interesting.

It also has the biggest problem: adaptation.

A graphic novel is not a novel. An anime is not a novel. A movie is not a novel.

You can’t follow the exact same beats of a graphic novel or anime in a novel. Why? Because, to be trite, “a picture is worth a 1000 words”. Essentially a graphic story can convey in a frame what a novel will spend pages on. So when an anime cuts away from the action to show us the slice of life and ordinary story, they don’t have to spend forever on it to make us aware of the concerns and desires of the folks who are going to be involved in this mess.

In the case of this story, it took four chapters (counting the prologue) to get to the actual story hook. In the manga/anime, it was established by the very first chapter/episode. That’s what you need to be aiming for. A prologue has to have a hook, but so does the first chapter. Also, the prologue honestly didn’t stop in the prologue. It got carried out to chapter two.

When compared to the manga, this makes sense. The first chapter starts with the runaway individual, then shows the actual protagonist, then back to the runaway, then back to protagonist for a last look at their regular life (which is interrupted by the explosion), then back to the bad guys, then back to the protagonist, where it stays.

That’s what the first four chapters are trying to cover, but it spreads it out so much that all impact is lost.

If we looked at it from a novel perspective, first we need to know what POV we want to go with. The instinct would be to go with omniscient, but there are pros and cons to that. I won’t go into it here, but POV will determine what plot elements you can include. But the events with the runaway and the bad guys? All that should be in the prologue. Then the first chapter can spend a page or two on the protagonist before she gets mixed into everything, but should still hint at some larger personal problem that they’ll have to address as they deal with the external plot issue which should be introduced as soon as possible. And within the first chapter.

I’d also like to note that this is what needs to happen just to make this a decent crossover fic. To make this an excellent crossover fic, you actually need to think of how the new setting and characters will affect the plot. They can’t just be placeholders for the original characters. Basically, Amethyst Star can’t just be Sho in a different body. She has to be Amethyst Star who is dealing with a Guyver unit in her own way.

And before you point out that I didn’t get far enough, I’d like to note that, if I were a casual reader, I would’ve dropped this story by the middle of chapter one. And we’re here to try and help you improve your story as an author, not as readers. Speaking as someone who volunteers for literary magazines as a slush reader, the slow pace, lack of sentence variety, and lack of a hook would’ve gained this story a rejection.

Asilin covered the big stuff already; the pacing and plot structure issues. My only real contribution is in the same realm as her point about not just using the pony characters as stand-ins for the originals, but I’m looking at it in a big of a broader scope. And honestly, I think you’re sticking too close to Guyver, not only in the plot, but also in a number of details.

I’ll grant that sometimes, a full blending can work — I’ve been working on a Shadowrun crossover for a while now where practically everything is altered to fit the setting. But it has to be: Shadowrun is a very dark and violent cyberpunk-fantasy fusion. Like combine Robocop/Ghost In The Shell and Lord of the Rings, add a fixation on the 1980s, and top it all off with the sense of humor of Borderlands. A lot of things have to change for Pony to interact with this at all.

In the case of Guyver, I don’t think you need the full plot reference. You introduce the Guyver units as being weapons created by the changelings. Do they really need to include aspects of the anime villains? They’re some of the best monsters/villains in MLP, and the idea that they’ve created these sort of superweapons is threatening enough to be a solid hook on its own. I’m not your editor, but I think between that and playing up the Guyver units as alien and terrible things, you have enough for a strong story already, without all the meandering you have right now.

Oh, and I just recalled the other major issue I had: the description length. I do want to reiterate my opening: you have a very good eye for description. What you need now is the practice to use it effectively. Right now, there is so much over-description, that your pretty descriptions are lost in the mess. For example, we opened with a full description of not Dr. Hooves. Now, I realize why you didn’t name him, but that description is too long and too precise to the point of being unclear. You want enough details that we can tell the difference between characters and settings, but not so much that we lose sight of the big picture. Think of a room. Heck, look around your own room. What immediately draws your eye? Now, what, of those items, would convey a specific tone to your setting? Those are the details you pick and choose from.

For a more concrete example, couple of comparisons. I’m currently at work. So here’s how I can describe my setting:

I sit at my desk, surrounded by the grey walls of my cubicle, a couple of grey cabinets full of old paperwork hanging from the top of the walls. The black wire mesh baskets for incoming work are currently empty, but not for long. Above me, the fluorescent lighting causes a glare on my glasses, making it difficult to focus.

Seems a bit depressing there, right? Now, compare to this:

I sit at my desk, the cushioned walls of my cubicle defining my space. A bright green lucky bamboo plants sits on top of one of the hanging cabinets, joined by a couple of Legend of Zelda figurines. Pictures of my family smile at me, sitting next to the empty mesh inboxes for my work.

More positive, right? And you’ll note, in both cases, I didn’t go into full descriptions of any particular item. I picked what elements I wanted to concentrate on to convey the mood of the scene (for instance, a full description of my cubicle walls would be grey, patterned, cushioned fabric). You get to choose what’s important.

And yes, that holds for character descriptions too. There are plenty of novels where you never get a full list of how a character looks. You get details doled out sparsely, if at all.

Also, to go back to the not naming thing in the prologue, if you actually combined all the prologue parts into one, you could go with something like the “form of Dr. Hooves” or something. It’s a prologue, so you can’t spoil too much.

Watch better anime.

Hush. My biggest tip is to basically restructure your story. Right now, you’re hurting your story by slavishly holding to the conventions of another medium. Your story is not a manga. It can’t be a manga. So don’t treat it like one.

Figure out what your POV is going to be. For your prologue as well as the main body of your story. They can be different POVs, by the way. One of the major benefits to a prologue. Once you figure out your POV, figure out what that POV would or would not be able to see in the story and, of what they can see, what’s really important. A 2000+ word treatment of a morning routine isn’t necessarily important, even in omniscient.

Structure your plot around your characters as well. Don’t just have them repeat the steps of the plot source’s characters. You’re cheating your characters of their own ability to grow in ways proper to them.

And balance Show vs. Tell. It’s okay to tell! It really is! It’s okay to say “Amethyst Star got out of bed and headed downstairs” without going into detail about how she woke.

Though it’s impossible to ignore the story’s glacial pace, overly broad focus, purple prose, and excessive explanations and description, there are some good ideas here, many of which I’d like to see play out, and the technical aspects of the writing are up to speed. All in all, we’ll call it:

Enjoyable.

5556628

Watch better anime.

Boku no Pico is a monarch of classic anime. I highly suggest that the author starts there first.