TA Guardian's Hope

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Adventure
• Sad

Returning to Equestria after murdering a princess? Well, sometimes you do not have a choice.

• Violence
• Gore
• Death
• Human
• Alt. Universe
• OC
• Nightmare Moon
• Main 6
• Chrysalis
• Sunset Shimmer

Last Satisfaction · 145k words  ·  27  6 · 726 views

Well, this is probably going to be an odd review as this had to be rewritten as well as the format having to change from my original because, more than every other story I have read, everything this story does right is also something that creates issues. So to fit with this development, I will be going over the aspects of the story one by one, starting with the issues and finishing with how it was done well.

To begin, this story is about a character who kills Celestia and plunges the world into chaos and despair and follows about seven characters as they try to reestablish a form of normality. Oh, and major spoilers ahead.

First of all, this story suffers from both an over-use and under-use of show don’t tell and in medis rez. How, you may ask, is that possible? Well, I have been on an Overlord (anime+Light novel) bent for a while now so I think I should use it as an example (spoilers for that series, it is really good so you should watch/read it if you get the chance).

In the Great Tomb of Nazarick, a group of workers are teleported to a gladiatorial stadium and are informed by a dark elf child that they invaded the wrong tomb are now going to be punished by fighting and being killed by her superior, the ruler of the tomb, Ainz Ooal Gown, an advanced elder litch. The workers see that they are outmatched and try to plead to be let go. Ainz denies them this, but the workers counter by asking if them having gotten prior permission to be there would allow them to leave unharmed. Ainz understands this to be a farce but humors them. The leader of the workers begins vaguely describing an individual that gave them permission leading to him saying that the individual said ‘If you go to Nazarick, tell Ainz hi.’ After Ainz confirms that the person being described actually said Ainz, he goes into a blood rage calling them filthy maggots and disrespecting the memory of his friends and what they did together.

Now tell me, can you deduce with a high degree of accuracy who is the protagonist, who to sympathize with, or why Ainz went into a blood-rage? I highly doubt this, and the reason for that is that this is from Volume 7 of the Light novel and in episode 8 of season 3. I bring all this up because this is exactly how this story starts. At least four plot threads are opened without context or explanation in the first two chapters. This is not a recommended way to start a story as it creates confusion and frustration in the audience. As a horror saying goes, ‘you can't scare an audience that’s confused', and the same goes for just about every other emotion.

So for the sake of clarity, a character is introduced that has a second consciousness in their head (which for me was not adequately put across as it needs to be inferred from context clues); Celestia is dead; the changelings are being culled to the last on the orders of Luna, who also has brought back Nightmare Moon; the double character can pop into Canterlot to see Luna and not be immediately killed despite being a known killer, and has been living somewhere that Luna presumably knew of for some time; the killer is actually a second consciousness from another universe… can you see where the confusion and ‘What in the hell is going on?’ might come in when none of this is explained, and all in the first 10K words?

Now, it is fine for a story to have dozens of unanswered questions that take forever and a half to answer, but the thing is, you need to drip feed these questions over time, not all at once. I thought for some time about how I would handle reworking this story so it didn’t disgorge all the questions ever at the start but keep them as questions, but the problem is, these questions are the perfect fire triangle. The only way to have these all be questions is if they are introduced in the first chapter, and the only way to answer one of these questions so that the reader is on a more solid footing that doesn’t make it feel like I just started to read the sequel of a sequel, is to answer all of these questions.

This is what I was talking about with too much showing as well. As a reader, I am thrown into this story with next to no understanding of what is going on, and the author seems to want me to figure out a lot if not all of this on my own at the start before solid answers are given. The problem though with this is that unless, as I said, the reader has a solid base of information to go on, all showing does is confuse them as there isn’t any context for the information being provided.

What does redeem this somewhat is that these questions are answered, but that starts after about five chapters. However, I will give the author credit in that they did a good job answering and developing the questions that were raised in a meaningful way. The answer of why Nightmare moon is back is especially satisfying as it shows a degree of moral ambiguity being presented in the story, something I cannot get enough of in stories. And, putting aside the fact I was thrown into the deep end of this story’s universe with only the instruction to ‘read and find out’, the pacing is rather well done. Things develop at a decent rate and allow the story to unfold in a meaningful way that is quite entertaining. That being said though…

The next issue I would like to bring up is that of the writing. It isn’t bad or wrong on a fundamental level, but it feels more than a little clunky. It’s not something I can easily demonstrate in a quote correction type style as I usually would, as the issue is one of substance over a multi-paragraph length.

The main issue I have is that we go from A to B to C extraordinarily fast, and a good portion of the reason why is that the characters just don’t seem to be able to make the proper decisions. I say this because time after time, characters just do things that should by all rights not be done, or at the very least, be punished. The reason this bunks up the pacing is that because there isn’t a punishment, or the reason WHY that action was taken is presented, the constant question in the back of my mind is ‘why is everything happening so easily?’

For the longest time, there really isn’t any hardship that people are experiencing, leading to things just… happening, and everyone involved just going along with it. An amazing point of contention would be raised, something that would by itself deserve an entire arch to explore the implications of and would lead to a great deal of character growth and introspection, only for this to be resolved in the same chapter at best or in the next few paragraphs at worst. The number of multi-chapter conflicts and arcs can be counted on one hand, which is sad. Again, my confusion mounted as I tried to understand the character's motivations as well as what was going on and why.

This is also where the other half of the show don’t tell issue comes up. The dialog comes across as stilted and unnatural. Because there were no answers given to a great many questions that are raised at the start, the author seems to want to provide such by way of character conversations. The problem though is that how the dialog is handled comes across as the author trying to relay information to the audience rather than as natural conversations. It would have been far more enjoyable if the dialogs would have gone on for about twice as long so that rather than all the information the author wanted to convey being provided in one or two statements with little in the way of extraneous information, we receive more of a feel for how the two interact and who these individuals are.

Now, on to spoilers for the last chapter to finish off the gripes of characters I have before I get to the good. Going back to Overlord, the character Ains kills thousands upon thousands of characters and is evil to a horrifying degree. That being said though, there is a degree of empathy one can have for him as he is never so evil without some justification. I started to think about this because I could have always used Pain from Naruto as a good example of how to create empathy in a short period of time, but the reasoning of ‘I must do bad to survive’ is something that happens in Overlord, so that story and this have a parallel. The reason I bring this up because I got the feeling that we are on some level supposed to empathize with Pepper. The problem though is that the author makes this nigh on impossible without jumping through and engaging in some MAJOR mental gymnastics. Let me share with you why I am making this parallel.

“You are the one who failed to protect him. Do not push the blame onto others. You, who were weak, are at fault. Also, you seem to be mistaken about something… you do realize that I am much more powerful than the Bafolk you claim to be stronger than you, no? ...Although I can forgive some insults because I pity you for the loss of your child, I will slay you if they get out of hand.”

The Sorcerer King reached out a bony index finger and rested it on the father’s face.

“That, that’s because you’re strong — that’s why you can say that! Not everyone can be as powerful as you!”

“Well said. I can say this precisely because I am powerful. Then, it is precisely because you are weak that being taken from is your lot in life, no? The strong preying on the weak is a very natural sequence of events.”

The Sorcerer King turned his eyes to the people around him.

“Have you not also experienced suffering because the Bafolk are strong?”

“Are you saying the strong can do what they want!?”

“Exactly. The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must. This is the way of the world. The same rule applies to me. Even I would become the victim in the face of someone stronger than me. That is why I seek strength.”

[…]

“Even I would be oppressed if I were weak. Therefore one cannot forget to seek strength. I need to engrave into my heart the fact that beings of comparable power to myself most definitely do exist.”

"Why did I do this to Celestia?" She looked for a simple analogy. "Imagine two predators fighting over a hunting ground. The one who wins will be the stronger. I did this to be stronger, to defeat those who will sooner or later try to kill me."

[…]

"I see. I thought you were a good pony, but in reality you were manipulating us."

"This is how I live. I am not Twilight, I do not have artefacts of power that automatically assure me a perfect victory. I am alone, I have always been alone, and if I had stayed here in Equestria, sooner or later I would have been an easy prey to a predator far too powerful for me. And this is something I can not come to terms with."

"What about Rainbow Dash? Do you have any idea how much she has suffered because of what you did?"

Pepper was silent for a moment. "Prince, princess, king, queen, I have seen a lot of those during my travels. And when one dies, another one takes its place. Celestia is replaced by her sister. Maybe Luna will be replaced by Twilight. And so on, that is life."

"But Princess Celestia was our Princess! She was Princess of Equestria for a thousand years! And she surely could have ruled a thousand years longer! You had no right, Pepper! You had no right!"

Pepper shook her head. "Celestia, a princess? Maybe to you." The corner of her lips folded into a mocking smile. "Twilight is a princess in training, yes. Luna is a princess, that is for sure. To me, Celestia was just a weak, old mare."

Can you see now why I drew this similarity? Now out of context, you might say that these two pieces of these stories would elicit the same response from me or any other reader, and that there is no way to make this mentality palatable. However, here is the context. In Overlord, this happened right after The Sorcerer King killed a hostage in order to win a battle and save the most people from a slave camp. He did this horrible act because it would result in the best possible outcome for the most amount of people. Pepper, on the other hand, just does this because she wants all the power, at least from what we have been told. Now, if this was the author’s goal, to just have Pepper be there as an ass to drive the story forward, then they accomplished that goal. However, if we are meant to empathize, there desperately needs to be more moments where Pepper’s motivation for being an ass is more than what I see in every Saturday morning cartoon villain.

The thing though is, outside of each character having that one aspect of their personality that just feels like it exists to further the plot of the story at the expense of several IQ points, the characters are very well written. Everyone seems to be multi-faceted and have contradictory aspects that work against themselves and cause the individual to suffer/question what they hold to be true, you know, like real people. While I would prefer that more of this exploration into the nature of the characters were to be given, what is present is sufficient to make the individuals relatable and endear them to the audience, with few exceptions, such as what follows.

[[Redacted on authors request due to this section of the review containing a major spoiler only I was apparently able to discern because I have an unreasonable amount of trust issues.]]

Before I finish, I would just like to address the matter of Japony. It is less of an issue, and more of something I feel was a distraction. The amount of Japanese lore around Sunset is rather heavy. This isn’t bad in and of itself, but when this is the only real-world element that is in a story and it goes beyond just set-dressing or something that is easily considered to be a principle of reality, it just kind of feels shoehorned in or superfluous. A good example would be the explanation of the katana. Did I really need to know everything that was described that went into the making of a katana? I suppose not. Personally, I would have just kept it at bad vibes get put into the sword you make and that it had a name. I would do this because the more details you add, the more it stands out as not entirely belonging. That, or as someone who loves them some world building and creativity, seeing real-world concepts being treated in the same manner as standard worldbuilding feels wrong. Probably just a personal thing.

Final scores;

Writing: 8/10, As I said, functionally, this is a solidly written story, the problem being a function of pacing and information conveyance. Not a whole lot of detail is being presented as it comes up for things that matter or should be elaborated on. A suggestion I would have would just be to slow things down a little and not try to rush or make every single addition matter, add a little extraneous information so that we as the readers can indulge in the word being presented.

Pacing: 7/10, As in writing and what was said earlier, this story is streamlined to an extent that it hurts the enjoyability of reading it. Improving this is simply a matter of resolving issues and conflicts over several chapters rather than paragraphs. You want to make your audience feel like the outcomes, whether positive or negative, are the function of the characters' choices and had to be earned, not because the author needed that to happen. See Rainbowdash as a good example. In one chapter, she goes from avoiding her friends to willing to return to the status quo in the span of a conversation. Again, excellent plot threads keep getting brought up only to be truncated a paragraph later. If you really do want a quick resolution, to make that feel earned, either a great deal of resistance or an extraordinary show of intelligence and skill is required

Characters: 8/10, these are well-written characters. They feel human and have their wonderful idiosyncrasies. The problem I had was just that they either made dumb decisions because what felt like plot, or the way they were handled just lit off every alarm bell in my system to kill this character on sight. Going forward, I would say that the author is doing great with humanizing the characters they have (again, for the most part. Pepper being an exception.) and addressing both their good and bad aspects, but they should just work on getting the characters to just think a little more before committing to an action so it doesn’t feel like they are all just acting on emotion and their first instinct.

Atmosphere: 9/10, This is a well done story when it comes to conveying the theme and maintaining the tone. It is a dark and cruel world being conveyed and it was really enjoyable to watch it unfold. I will say though, around chapter 5 or 6 or so when we are dealing with Chrysalis’ daughter and when addressing Celestia’s murder, the tone shift to hopeful and positive felt a little out of place. It is fine to have hopeful moments and scenes, but I would just say to consider how positive the scenes are and their context. As an example, Celestia posthumously and humorously saying to let go and move on and all these positive thing does not feel like it comes from the same story where a cold war threatening to go hot again is being raged where the amount of suffering is almost Lovecraftian.

Mystery Quality: 8/10, The pacing on the reveals of the questions getting raised is quite good and greatly adds to the quality of the story as important questions don’t look like they will be forgotten and never answered. I just wish that, again, that we weren’t introduced to seven questions in the first five-thousand words, making the introduction far from elegant.

Total Score: 40/50 or 8/10, I can honestly say that I rather enjoyed this story. While I will admit I hold reservations with continuing with it, that is more to do with Pepper’s character rubbing me the wrong way because I enjoy media that handles her primary character trait more morally grey (my preferred handling of the matter) and [[Redacted]].