Vertigo Reviews: A predator meets ponies · 8:59pm Feb 1st, 2020
I’ve had no desire to do reviews, mostly because I don’t care to read stuff in FiMFiction. Though every now and then, I make an exception (generally to friends of mine or when I’m not working). The other day falls into the latter of the two parenthetical categories. I saw a story entitled “A predator meets ponies”. It immediately caught my eye for a few reasons, but the two largest were my love for the Predator franchise and it was rated M.
Knowing that the author couldn’t botch up Predator any more than Shane Black, I gave the story a chance and now here I am. All that’s really on my mind is how I seriously need to stop having hopes for anything with the Predator label on it.
First up, I want to draw some attention to the story’s short description.
Scar dies during a final duel along with Lex, but shows up in a new world
You forgot a period.
Now onto the long description.
When Scar died a noble death, Lex mourned for her ally. Yet unbeknownst to them both, he would be taken to a world named Equestria. However, an all to familiar disgraceful monster would follow him (Hint: he is the killer of Fugitive Predator).
Mlp and Predator belong to their rightful owners
Takes place in season 6 in To Where and Back Again Part 2
Plus possible harem
Going by the most generic, stock fanfic description one could make, this isn’t bad. It’s straightforward and gives you a sense of what to expect. A Predator dies (specifically one from Alien vs. Predator), ends up in Equestria, and the story goes from there. We have a canonical time frame. That’s all fine and dandy, but two things bother me considerably.
The first is the parenthetical statement of “Hint: he is the killer of Fugitive Predator”. That, to me, feels out of place and reads like something one would put in if they think their audience is too stupid to pick up on a hint or cue (a good example of this is when a comedy explains the joke after it’s told). It also feels like you’re spoiling a potential twist in the description for no apparent reason.
The second is the “possible harem” statement. I’m not fond of harems, but I don’t think you should publish a story and include a “possible” warning. I’d recommend not publishing something if you don’t have serious details like that set in stone.
As for the story itself: it’s very simplistic and generic. Scar—the aforementioned Predator from AvP—ends up in Equestria after the chestburster (which later becomes the Predalien from AvP: Requiem) erupts from his chest. In Equestria, he becomes a “winged unicorn” (as the narration puts it). I’m normally not one for visitors to Equestria becoming alicorns, but it makes sense for a Predator to become one. Given they’re meant to be the most fearsome and skilled hunters, you may as well go all in. I also think it fits the style that the Predator franchise has become known for.
That said, the opening chapter is really weak. For starters, there are images embedded throughout of characters that appear (though not for all of them). Scar, Starlight, Trixie, Thorax and Discord are all shown. Why exactly, I don’t know. My only guess is the author wanted a graphic novel or comic book style, though it could also be due to them not knowing how to properly allude to what characters were though (which makes no sense since no character in the world of Friendship is Magic looks like Discord).
Then there’s the pacing to the chapter. It’s extremely fast. This actually wouldn’t be that bad given Predator isn’t exactly a film known for being a slow moving drama, though the story has little to no showing. It starts off telling us what happened (fair enough) and then poof! Scar falls into Equestria. Then he follows Starlight and the others, Chrysalis is there and a very poorly put together action scene takes place. Then the chapter ends.
This isn’t how a chapter—especially an opening chapter—should go. This is closer to the outline of a chapter would go. To give an idea as to what I mean if you don’t understand, here’s one of mine for an early draft to something I’m working on.
1. Story starts off with Sunset waking up. It’s a snow day due to a snowstorm, so she goes out and shovels some snow.
2. Outside, shoveling, sees creepy guy nearby who keeps waving. Tells Twilight about it after she comes over to hang out; Twi says it’s probably some weirdo.
3. Fast forward. Blizzard hits and Twi stays over. Le spooks happen that night as Sunset hears something clawing outside. She stays up after peering through a peephole and seeing a fleshy white thing.
4. As the scratching keeps up, Sunset goes out the backdoor and walks to the side of her house. She sees the creature, which turns to her. Its glowing, piercing yellow eyes scare her and she runs away, though she can hear it chasing her. She rushes inside, locks the door, and hears it prowling around the house for the rest of the night; it scratches and claws at the sides of the house until the sun rises.
I was working on a remake of a story so I could try and find my jive in what type of story I wanted it to ultimately be (which is an M rated horror-comedy). Likewise, I feel that the opening chapter reads similar to the outline above. It’s so fast, so loosely strung together, and so absurdly light on any sort of description or even action that most of what I’d like to say isn’t appropriate for FiMFiction. It’s that atrocious. I know I’m not one to talk—my body of work on this website is anything but worthy of glowing praise in any sort of legitimate literary context (God knows that most of it is probably bottom of the barrel read-once-and-throw-away junk you’d get a store that would sell a book for 10 cents). That said, I’d like to think that my understanding of what should be published—if you wish to take your craft in any sort of serious manner—is good enough to where I can say that this is unacceptable.
That isn’t the end of it though. The chapter is plagued by grammatical errors. Granted, that happens to everyone. It’s a fact of life that we’ll all make spelling, punctuation, and structural errors. Sometimes we make one, sometimes we make a few, and then there are instances where there are several. This story has more than several though. In fact, are a few in the very first sentence of the story.
Scar the noble Predator who allied with Lex Woods had died a heroic death
This should read as follows:
Scar, the noble Predator who’d allied with Lex Woods, had died a heroic death.
The original version of that sentence lays the groundwork for what follows in the chapter. I won’t even attempt to fix them all as I’d be here all day. So instead, I’ll move onto the chapter’s descriptiveness. While the use of telling is fine in certain parts (such as telling us what Scar looks like in his equine form—which I must admit is quick and to the point; I tend to hate an entire paragraph being devoted to describing every square inch of what the character looks like), other instances of it take away from what could be something pretty cool.
One of those many instances comes in the form of its action scenes. Given that this is an M rated story (which is something I’ll go into more detail at the end of this review), the action is naturally where the M rating comes from. However, rather than showing the superior arsenal that the Predator sports, its brutality, its ferocity, and its overall physical superiority over whatever it goes up against, the story instead opts to tell us what happens. We aren’t shown the awesomeness, we’re just told it. Here’s an example of this:
Suddenly, she was decapitated and her blood was splashed everywhere as the formerly imprisoned heroes gave horrified looks (Or in Scar’s case, dismay when he recognized the creature) at the creature that just killed her. He looked as if he was a large, black and tall monster, but this time he was a large pony, with a height similar to Celestia.
Given that this is meant to be a crossover with Predator, one thing I would expect is a raw description of Chrysalis’ head more or less exploding like a watermelon with a bunch of rubber bands around it. Instead, we get nine words and then we move on. On the plus side: I’m glad that Chrysalis wasn’t giving a fighting chance. I’m serious, it’s nice she was at least picked off to showcase the superiority of the Predator. In that regard, I’ll give the author props. I’ve never been fond of characters who are, by all accounts, significantly more powerful than what’s shown in Friendship is Magic either having to put effort into fighting or getting beaten with unnatural ease.
As for the dialogue—what little there really is—it’s subpar at best, but I wouldn’t exactly expect that much from a story like this. If you’re going to stay loyal to what made Predator famous, it’d be a lot of one-liners and testosterone. This story doesn’t really do that and instead aims for a brooding, edgy tone that doesn’t suit the story that well. Or at least, I think it’s aiming for an edgy tone. The dialogue between Scar and the ponies at the end hints that he wants to ride solo (which is a bit strange, given that the story establishes that it’s in perfect continuity with both AvP and AvP: Requiem—the latter of the two should be jettisoned into the nearest star). For all I know, the aim was something like the first Predator film and the intention didn’t land as was planned.
I will concede that I did like that Scar didn’t take the silent “hero” route and spoke to the ponies. I also do like the rebellious personality to a degree—it fits the Predator as a character—but I don’t think the execution was the right way to go about it. It feels like there’s a hint of humanity inside of Scar that shouldn’t be there. The best way to describe it is Scar feels like Walt Kowalski from Gran Torino. It doesn’t fit properly with what the Predator is meant to be at heart.
Beyond that, the chapter ends on a decent enough note that, in a better story, may have gotten me to track it (even if I wouldn’t end up reading it for another 5 years—should the site still even be operating then). Now let’s move onto chapter two!
This chapter opens up with Scar resting beneath a tree, falling asleep, and then a very strange tonal shift occurring where we’re told that he and the other ponies run around ala The Benny Hill Show. I guess it’s not a surprise that this chapter is called “Benny hill chase scene”. We also get an embedded video for that iconic piece of music.
The rest of the chapter is pure chaos in the worst way possible. It also establishes numerous cliches that are seen in an innumerable amount of other stories like this. The ponies are all xenophobic to the creature and want to purge it from the world like it’s Smallpox with legs, Scar outsmarts them and nearly kills them, but ultimately saves them. Then when they’re back at the castle and it’s shown he saved them, the ponies all freak out and want his head on a pike. It’s really stale given how many stories I’ve seen this done in and it isn’t even done all that well. The reactions are extreme and the excessive use of capital letters makes it feel amateurish and tiresome.
Spike turned his head and said next to him "You can come out now."
Scar, then walked in the room and saw the ponies giving surprised looks and they yelled at him
"YOU!!!"
They got ready to fight as did Scar, but Spike got in between them and shouted
"Twilight, stop!!"
"SPIKE, GET AWAY FROM-"
"NOW!!!!" Spike shouted at the girls, leaving them shocked as he gave an annoyed look.
If I can offer any advice to amateur writer out there: never ever use capital letters like this (unless you’re describing a text message from one friend to another, though even then I’d suggest refraining from it). Also, never use more than one exclamation mark and interrupted dialogue requires the usage of an em dash (this: —) and not a hyphen.
Anyways, all of this culminates in the two parties making amends—remarkably quickly, even by the standards of a story like this one, but whatever. The ponies all introduce themselves and Pinkie Pie is portrayed in her most generic form where she does that thing that every fanfic author does: she talks without spaces and I contemplate if I should stop bothering with the review and go back to playing Game Dev Story to kill time. The chapter is short and could’ve easily gone on for a few thousand more words, but it doesn’t.
That’s the last chapter as of the time of this writing and I can’t help but feel grateful for that. This chapter suffers from the exact same problems as the previous one, only the violence is even more neutered and there aren’t any consequences for any actions taken. Everything is as generic as can be in an “X in Equestria” story. There are no twists on anything, nothing is done in a way that can be considered exciting or even good. It’s all safe, bland, and excruciatingly mediocre at best.
I don’t say this to be mean, I don’t say this to be a hater, and I don’t say this to discourage the author. By all means, I hope they keep writing and they manage to improve. However, as a first impression, this story is dreadful and I wish to God that I could say more positive about it that doesn’t make me feel like I’m forcing myself to smile in a PR move that one would expect from something that went through hell (such as 2015’s Fant4stic).
That said, there’s one final thing I want to discuss in regards to this story: its rating. M rated stories on FiMFiction tend to come across—in my eyes—as one of two things. Either they’re shameless smut that amount to little more than a few thousand words of mindlessness for someone to pleasure themselves to or they’re mindless gore that thinks it’s edgy, cool, and the R rated equivalent to The Dark Knight.
Basically, it’s either poorly written sex or poorly written edge.
For every well written M rated story, there’s about two dozen terrible ones. This story, somehow, manages to be neither. In fact, I don’t think it needs the M rating. Sure, a character is decapitated, but there are PG-13 films out there where worse stuff happens. Venom has the titular character bite a guys head off, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has a zombie’s head get blown off on screen (albeit, there’s no blood). Heck, you could pass off Mad Max: Fury Road as a PG-13 film in the way of its violence for the vast majority of it (I think the themes are what got the film an R rating, but I could be wrong).
For this story, it simply doesn’t feel like it deserves the M rating, which is incredible given it’s Predator. A film series where the titular character rips people apart, skins its prey and strings them up, and all around is the epitome of brutality. Why the story feels like it holds back could be on the author for simply not being that skilled at descriptions (which may seem like a “no duh” moment, but I myself am very far from being the best at time) or it could be that they didn’t know how far to go. Whatever the case may be, I’m honestly let down by how little gruesome imagery there was in the story.
Overall, “A predator meets ponies” is a story I wish I could say more nice things about. I never like lambasting someone’s story, even if it’s an author who I’m not fond of for whatever reason. FiMFiction is a website dedicated to fanfiction and most are here to have fun and share their creativity or even use it as a springboard to become a professional writer. That said, we all start somewhere and I hope the author—and potentially even others—take what I’ve said into account. I’m by no means the greatest author on Earth (heck, I barely write fiction anymore), but the elements of what makes a good writer lay in every genre and type of writing. You can make a good story out of this one, it’s simple and straightforward, but the way it is now doesn’t allow for that greatness to show itself. It suffocates it beneath a plethora of issues that make it read like any other generic and lame M rated fanfic.
To the author: I recommend getting an editor and learning a bit more on how to make a stronger story. Your premise is fine (though I would personally change a few things; that’s just me though) and your setup is about as good as one can get when it comes to “X ends up in Equestria” if you don’t want the Predator to just fly their ship to Equus, land, and start to wreak havoc. I also want you to once again say that I didn’t write this to be a hater or to hate on you as an author. I wrote this because I love the Predator franchise and want to see you succeed in writing a fanfic featuring it. The series could seriously use the positivity after Shane Black had his shot at making a Predator film!
Final Score: D-
As always: thank you all for reading and I hope you all have a great day. If you have any questions, or want to suggest a story of your own for me to take a look at, leave a comment and I’ll see if I can make any room in my schedule to read it.
Ooof. Yep, that's bad.
Still at the very least, provision of constructive criticism and good advice is still good.
.......jeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssuuuuuuuuuusss.
Still, at least you tried and here's hoping the author will listen to this, and learn from it. Also, you still owe me a review of What's Your Desire, Vert!
well vertigo you'll JUST love archie meets predator and archie meets predator 2