Another poem from Golden Fang Ryu Shenron, this fic tells the story of a patriarchal tiger who takes revenge after his family is slaughtered by ponies. This fic is listed as a sequel to Tears of Black, though it doesn’t appear to be related.

Opening Thoughts

I have to be honest: I’m coming into this fic skeptical. Worse than skeptical - I was burned pretty badly on the author’s previous fic, the plot of which was lifted directly from a Zulu folk tale and given a poetic twist… though the poetry left something to be desired.

In this fic, I’m really looking for two things: (1) is the story original, and (2) has the poetry improved since the last go-round.

Plot/Concept

This fic is considerably different from the previous story for two major reasons: (1) it is considerably more bloody, violent, and sad, and (2) the author admits they were inspired by the film The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale. This should have been done up front, rather than left as a surprise at the end of the fic, but I’ll give a little bit of credit where credit is due.

In this story, a tiger’s family is murdered by ponies. No motive for this action is given to us. The tiger goes mad with grief and slaughters the entire village of ponies living below him with his newfound gift of fire. Suitably fairytale-esque in its simplicity and random magical abilities, but with little to offer in terms of a lesson that wasn’t, again, borrowed from the film it is based upon. In this case, whereas the film presents a tale of obsession capable of destroying entire civilizations, the fic tells a story of revenge that is very nearly meaningless. The original poetic ending of hunter and tiger locked in an embrace as they die is stripped from this story, since no specific hunter is named, and the tiger slinks back to his cave to die beside the corpses of his family.

Like I said, this story is a lot darker and bloodier than its predecessor. But that doesn’t make the plot any more original. Since it does have some tweaks to it, and since the author actually owns up to being inspired by something else this time, I won’t be giving this section a zero. That said, I’m still disappointed at the quality of this adaptation. As I mentioned in my previous review, there are two important aspects of writing an adaptation: the first is being honest that it is an adaptation, but the second is building sufficiently on the original. This fic doesn’t do that any better than the last one - generic humans are swapped out with generic ponies, though these ponies seem to have undirected bloodlust and modern weaponry—seriously, there’s guns in this fic. Some amount of explanation on even one of these points would have been great.

I can’t give credit for plot elements the author didn’t come up with. This is a story about revenge that the author took from another storyteller. Rather than weave it into the FiM universe, it simply had its emotional impact halved.

1 / 5

Pacing/Length

Much like the last fic, this story is way too long. The couplets are repetitive, simple actions take far too long (such as realizing your family is dead, roaring in grief, leaving your cave, etc.), and still no motivation is developed for the initial slaughter, no characters are built or given any depth at all, and there really isn’t any summarizing point to bring it all together. I hate to “this could have been an email” a fic, but this is just… way too long. It would have been so much more powerful at about a quarter of the word count. The length just kills any drama or tension this story could have had.

I will give the author credit for a slight improvement in the pacing - the parts of this story are all of an appropriate length in relation to one another, even if they all individually drag on too long.

3 / 5

Characterization

Same as the last fic, there isn’t much to talk about here. The father tiger is the only one given any character (sad his family died). The mother tiger gets something with a description of her “gentle sharp tongue”, but I really couldn't tell you what that meant. The ponies who murder the tiger’s family in the first place are given no faces, no names, and no motivation - this is incredibly frustrating, seeing as the ponies in this fic seem cool with cold-blooded murder and are armed with guns of some sort. I feel like we deserve to know what their deal is. Their role in the story is purely to be evil and die for their actions, so we really don’t get to see what drove them to kill these animals. An odd choice, and not one I understand.

1 / 5

Writing Quality

In my review of Tears of Black, I outlined what makes a couplet: two rhyming lines of poetry with matching meter which contain a complete thought. I also discussed briefly that the choice to write a story as a poem implies that certain things (such as word choice, rhythm, and lyricality) take some amount of precedence of the plot. This is reinforced by the plot itself - it is a very simple story in the style of a folk tale, and doesn’t have a lot of narrative depth. In this way, the poetry is the depth. 

You can imagine my disappointment when, once again, this story delivers exactly no depth through poetry.

It has a lot of the same problems as the previous story: no sense of lyricality or rhythm, excessively poor word choice, and many a forced rhyme. Here are some examples of couplets that were especially frustrating to me:

That would soon fall upon their king

One being heavier than the feather from a wing

“Heavier than a feather” is a really, really low bar when we’re talking about sorrow.

Leaving his mate to care for the young

Making them behave with gentle sharp tongue

I’m not sure what I’m meant to gather from the phrase “gentle sharp tongue”.

The harsh truth hit the king hard and fast

Making an injury useless to any cast

I think I know what the author was going for (a cast would be useless in healing these injuries), but this is a real grammatical tangle. Also... invoking the image of a cast is bizarre.

The agony inside him swelled inside

Growing larger with the strength of a tide

Double use of “inside” in the first line.

Along with the rage that was coiling within

Increasing to where it couldn’t even fit a bin

“Bin” is just so nonspecific and weirdly modern.

Slowly, the king emerged from his cave

Creeping out of the mountain like an ocean’s wave

“Creeping” and moving “like an ocean’s wave” are very much at odds. Waves don’t exactly creep - the tide might creep, but… well, “tide” doesn’t rhyme with “cave”.

He looked out into the land that was his home

One that was soon to be his very own tome

Finally, he reached the top of his home

The one that would also become his own tome

I’m fairly certain the author was looking for the word “tomb” - “tome” refers to a book, which doesn’t make any sense. Of course, “tomb” doesn’t rhyme, so I’m actually doubly confused by this one. The author also manages to misuse the word twice, so make that quadruply confused.

Then from his lips drew a growl

One so deep it was thicker than a towel

Another instance of a weirdly modern and commonplace word shattering the tone.

Their bullets shot and tore through his skin

Just like how his claws went through each shin

The ponies have bullets for some reason? When is this meant to take place? I found myself checking to see if this poem had an alternate universe tag… this isn’t even for a rhyme. It would have been so easy to swap this out with something not quite as tone-demolishing.

With a final lunge, the king ended each pony’s life

Ending what would have been an endless strife

Three permutations of “end” in these two lines. It’s too many.

This fic also has a fun new twist - couplets borrowed from the previous story and barely tweaked to pass as new. Here are some side-by-side comparisons (Tears of Black first, followed by King of the Mountain):

A clone that came in the form of her son

One that could’ve been no bigger than a bun

The mother was a kind and gentle soul

With young fluffy cubs no bigger than a bowl

A duo of very odd size comparisons with nearly identical phrasing.

Walking past animals big and small

Even ones that were as short as they were tall

Flourishing with creatures big and small

Some being big with others being tall

Animal sizes. At least the newer one is less confusingly phrased.

But the cheetah silenced it with a bite to the neck

With the equivalent of a pirate crew stomping on a deck

With each happy moment his sadness grew

Growing to the size of a whole pirate crew

Weirdly, a reference to pirate crews in each fic. 

And, much in the style of the previous fic’s mutated triplets, we have a single line with no rhyme:

The ones that he had failed to help continue live

And hope they’d find it in their hearts to forgive

With a final exhale, his life flowed away

Becoming a ghost that flew into the light

Soaring above in all the animals in sight

As I discussed with the previous fic, not all poetry adheres to strict rules of meter and rhyme. It’s when you set yourself up within those rules that you doom yourself to failure, just as this author did. Mistakes and imperfections are magnified because, in those rare moments where the writing falls into a rhythm, lines out of rhythm stick out like a sore thumb.

In the end, the slight improvements in word choice do nothing to lift the overall mechanical feel of emotionally detached poetry.

2 / 5

Je Ne Sais Quoi

I shouldn’t be pleasantly surprised to reach the end of a fic and see that it was borrowed wholesale from another storyteller. It should be frustrating, or even angering. It is, however, an improvement over the last fic’s silent plagiarism.

All of the same problems are still present. This is a story taken from another source and changed for the worse, it is written in poetry that sucks even more life out of the original, supposedly plopped into the FiM universe without any explanation as to the major tonal clashes it brings with it, and passed off as something of substance. While there is a slight improvement in the number of couplets which made me react with anger and disappointment, it isn’t enough to make this fic worth anyone’s time. It comes across as mechanical, someone generating stories which they think will gain them positive attention. I don’t know that this was the motivation behind this fic, but it is the impression I get while reading it, and that counts for a lot of how an audience might take this story.

The choice to write poetry implies that word choice, rhythm, and lyricality will add something to your story. In this case, the poetry actively takes away from the story.

1 / 5

Final Thoughts

Someone else's story with all emotional teeth removed, told through slapdash rhyming couplets, and given such a tenuous connection to FiM that it really shouldn’t be calling itself fanfic.

1.6 / 5