TGuardian

• MLP: FiM
• Romance
• Comedy
• Slice of Life

Guardians, defenders of Equestria and preservers of harmony. Golden Dusk, their teammate, returns to Canterlot after a two month long mission. With trouble brewing within the city’s shadow, and his infatuation for his teammate, how bad is it, really?

• OC
• Royal Guard

Xrevias · 83k words  ·  30  1 · 1.1k views

Guardian

by Xrevias

Summary

Guardians, defenders of Equestria and preservers of harmony. Golden Dusk, their teammate, returns to Canterlot after a two month long mission. With trouble brewing within the city’s shadow, and his infatuation for his teammate, how bad is it, really?

Initial Thoughts

This one caught my eye by surprise. From the cover art to the description, I would guess this was an adventure story, but the tags… don’t think so. It’s listed as a romance, a comedy, and a slice of life story. This discrepancy intrigued me, but also gave me pause. If the short description was so confused with the tags, what sort of story was I in for? Well, I found out.

DISCLAIMERS – I only read the first 9 chapters of the story. I just couldn’t force myself to go any further, so you may be aware of what kind of review this will be. The issues I will bring up might get better, but I took the time to skip ahead. I was not impressed.

SPOILERS.

My General Reaction

I’m not sure who I’m more disappointed in. The story, for letting me down and being a by-the-numbers Mary Sue OC Wankfest, or myself for getting my hopes up and falling for the tags.

The Guardians are, apparently, Equestria’s Black Ops. They’re the Pony Specters. Really, they’re more like the Avengers, if the Avengers were written by DC, and every member was just an emotionally unbalanced Superman. These sorts of set-ups are always a bad idea, since it steals the spotlight and glory from the Mane Six and the Elements of Harmony, and here is no exception.

We open on Golden Dusk doing some Batman-ing over in Klugetown, and the story already starts hitting snags. The pace is too quick to really get invested, the Klugetowners are clumped together under non-descriptive and boring catch-all terms despite being a highly varied and diverse bunch of scum and villainy, and quite frankly I'd rather read about Dusk's adventures here as opposed to what we get later.

The prologue is largely purposeful-less, since the first chapter also heavily features Dusk, and works better to show off his actual personality. Which, judging by how he interacts with Royal Guards (of which he and the Guardians are ostensibly members), would be “freaking psychopath”. The narration’s inability to show, as opposed to Tell in the most blatant exposition dumps I’ve ever read on this site, makes this worse, as Shining Armor has to tell the guards that Dusk is powerful enough to potentially destroy Equestria on his own.

The guards, by the way, always seem to cower and mewl from then on whenever a Guardian is openly near them. So… great teamwork, guys. Threatening to murder your coworkers not covered under some sort of workplace safety and etiquette guide?

Following this, Dusk and the Guardians are shown to be on a first-name basis with the Princesses (something even Twilight Sparkle didn’t have until post-Season 3), which just feels wrong. Combine that with the “cool” nicknames they all give each other, like Hunter, Valkyrie, Warlock (maybe, I don’t care anymore), the villains being a group of mysterious cultists in black robes, and that Dusk appears to be a unicorn-batpony-shapeshifter… my eyes couldn’t be rolling harder.

That sounds harsh, but it’s true. I don’t know what it is about cute ponies that invite so many middle schoolers to make them dark, edgy, and basically copypasted brooding anime characters, but it’s all so tiresome. This is why I decided I couldn’t get through the whole story. At least, not without cringing.

I could also talk about Golden Dusk’s odd male-female dichotomy. He’s described (mocked, even) as being very feminine, to the point where he’s often mistaken for being a mare. It serves (as of chapter 9) no conceivable purpose, except to cause a fight and provide other characters a cheap shot at him. Is he trans? The story doesn’t really explain… anything, actually. Not unless it’s in an infodump my eyes skipped over. Is he just anime-protagonist-tier pretty? I'd truly be interested if something like one of those things were the case, but the story itself never delivers an answer on that. It's just pointless.

One last note on the Romance. It’s a Will-They-Won’t-They plot. Absolute dealbreaker for me. It may even be the primary reason why I don’t feel conflicted about giving this story a review like this.

Grammar and Word Things

5/10 – Not un-readable, but thick with errors and mistakes.

There are a lot of points in this story, basically every couple of paragraphs, where an error will pop up like a hiccup in the flow of the narrative. Sometimes, it’s a misspelled or misused word, like in the first chapter, where the wrong form of “feint” gets thrown around. There are constant tense errors, shifting from past to present every other sentence at times. Pronoun misuse also comes up a lot, as does mid-text perspective flips. All these errors, together, make the story a little difficult to get through.

Story/Plot/Pacing

2/10 – Slow, ponderous, and boring.

Show, don’t Tell. This is the one style of writing that should be kept, no matter how… experimental one might try to get in other areas. This story does not seem to follow this advice whatsoever, and it harms the flow of the narrative. It’s like playing a videogame with an internal wiki or database. When new characters and situations pop up, everyone/pony has to stop and explain things to the reader. The awkwardness of this really drags down the story.

Characters

5/10 – Uninspired Mary Sues Abound

The thing that really hurts this story, for me, is the characters. The narration’s boring, sure. The plot is hamfisted. But the characters are almost stereotypical Mary Sues. Super powered to a lore-breaking extent? Check. On a first name basis with the Princesses (something even Twilight didn’t get until she was one)? Double-check. I’m giving some points since the characters have personalities, but they’re usually unpleasant or far too inspired by anime tropes. Edgy, is the word I’d go with to describe most of them.

Final Word and Rating

4/10 – Skip

Guardian is a classic example of the Edgy fanfic. Intricate-yet-video-gamey magic, armor, and gear thrown over paper-thin characters, and tossed into a painful main plotline that fails to hold attention.

To the Author: I feel like most of my advice would come across poorly, since I can see much of it being “You’re having fun in a badwrong way”. And… to a certain extent, that’s the case. This story should have been labeled with different tags, in my opinion, since I felt like it was only sort of a romance. This feels more like an Adventure, or even Mystery (though the Telling nature of the story hampers this from being the case either).

Therefore, my real, neutral advice would be to find an editor. It’s the grammar that kills this story, honestly. Everything else can be up to personal taste, but the fact that there are so many tense shifts, mistaken words, and other errors cannot. Further, there’s far too much “Tell” and not enough, or any, “Show” in the story. Stop telling the audience what the characters are feeling, and instead show them. The info dumps should also be melded more naturally into the narration or character interactions. It takes the reader out of the story when you stop to explain, in detail, who Shining Armor is, or what’s up with Batpony culture. Instead, just have those elements directly interact with the characters.

Again, there are a few moments in the story where you do just that. Just… do it more, and trust your audience to understand implications.

Feel free to comment below.

<For Archive Purposes: 4/10>

Wew, thanks for the review, especially for not holding back!

I can see myself that Guardian has plenty of flaws, be it its plot, writing, or the characters. Looking back on it now, I should've developed the characters more, and not have given them such a high status. More than that... the edginess of it, which I cringe at now.

Initially, I had planned for it to be your typical, oh-the-main-protagonists-are-op, story. Honestly, it was a bad choice, since I ended up enjoying writing the romantic bits more than the fight scenes. More than that, the plot ended up being messy, and the urge to add more romances between the characters slowed down the pacing, I feel.

The characters are already undergoing adjustments, since I had already realized their flaws, or lack thereof, and wanted to make them a twinge more interesting. Not in the way that they're almost perfect, but rather that they have flaws, and they're trying to make up for 'em.

Hopefully, I'll be able to improve my grammar and wording as I continue writing, time's all it's gonna take, I bet.

Anyhow, thanks again!

I'm glad I could be of some help, even if that help was, admittedly, kinda rough.

If you revisit Guardian again, I'd be very much interested to see how a more truly Romance-focused story would play out. OP characters can work, but I've seen it done very rarely. I think the overfamiliarity with the Princesses, as well as the Guardians' general OP-ness is what put me off most of them right away. It just didn't jive with how I expected such characters to behave, when compared with how others tended to in canon. I mean, if even pre-Princess Twilight didn't get to call Celestia Tia...

But, like I said. The characters are moving in the right direction, as far as characterization goes. Some clichés and tropey bits with them did set me off at times, but I gave them points for still having personalities.

One question I did have for you, though. Dusk's hoodie. I felt like a hoodie was an odd choice of clothing, in the first place, but I suspected it was meant to hide some grotesque injury. Imagine my surprise when it was only hiding a tiny scar. Not even an ugly scar. I laughed, a little, actually. Back in the day, one of the big bullet-points for identifying a Mary Sue was scars that didn't detract from the character's looks (or enhanced them). So, if the scar wasn't bad looking, why did Dusk hide it? I assume it has something to do with his mother's passing, which I didn't get to if it was covered later. And if that's the case, I don't intend you to spoil anything here.

Thank you, for taking my criticisms so well. I may get heated when discussing writing and stories, but it's only because the medium matters. I have every confidence that you have the right attitude, and the necessary skill, to improve your craft from here on out, and I wish you luck.

You are right. Time and experience are the greatest teachers.

7396907
Eheh, yeah, as mentioned, I'm adjusting accordingly, and I'm already brainstorming on a more romance-oriented plot for the story! The characters may be tropey, I admit, but as my first few OCs, I was extremely happy with 'em. Though, I do realize that having them be Mary Sue's ain't fun, for me and for readers, because if they could handle everything, then I may as well not bother throwing a conflict at them

As for your question... I do realize now that him wearing his hoodie wasn't really justified, since the scar wasn't really grotesque. I thought the size of the scar would make up for it, but nah! I don't even remember how I wrote it in the story now, and that just proves how little of an impact it was. So, yeah, when I do rewrite the story, that scar is going to be more profound, not only for it to justify the hoodie, but to start as a foundation for a prequel.

Overall, while the story was fun to write, I'm not as happy with how it came out, from an objective standpoint. Yes, seeing my characters come alive brought me joy, but the story told in what I wrote was, to me, lacking in multiple aspects. The characters' motivations weren't rightly established. Rather, I created them, I let them live, but... I guess they were missing purpose? Like, again, if they could do everything, what was the point? Not just with their fighting, but also with their personal flaws; I didn't let them shine. Their motivations may as well be stagnant and the same with each other.

Again, thanks for the review! Sometimes, you need to be broken down before being built right back up, right? Perhaps, in time, I shall be able to write a story that you'd enjoy!

Also, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I know it's both late and early respectively, but heya!

7396278
Thank you for posting such an informative review! Whilst reading it, I learned a new term, the “Will-They-Won’t-They” trope.

The structure of your review especially appealed to me, regarding how your breakdown provides a score for each criteria & a succinct explanation of that score before elaborating in greater detail with a paragraph below.