Humans Acting Villainous is a fad.

The following is a dictionary definition of the word fad:

fad

noun    /fæd/

› a style or activity that suddenly becomes popular but which usually does not stay popular for very long.

Like x_verbs_a_y, Halo crossovers, inb4regidar, and Chess Game etc, the cosplayer-in-Equestria sub-subgenre of the Human In Equestria subgenre of the whatever I don't know genre... Anyway, just like those, HAV has exploded in popularity due to a great many incompetent, stupid people shamelessly copying the ideas of a few competent authors who released similar, much better, fics around the same time as each other.

Contrary to popular opinion, HAV stories are not universally bad by default. The concept has been done reasonably well by a few people, including RainbowBob (who is RainbowBob, nuff said) and RealityCheck (who, despite his ego, is a very, very good writer). Its infamously low average quality and lack of originality are the result of the same problem that plagues general Human in Equestria fics: it's popular, has an established formula for success, and can be fun when done properly by real authors. This makes it appealing to multitudes of talentless hacks, who then ride the fad into the featurebox and guarantee themselves everlasting e-fame until people move on to the next fad.

This flood of poorly written ripoffs of Malideus, The Rise of Darth Vulcan, and F*** it I'm having fun resulted in a generally negative perception of cosplayer-in-Equestria stories. Many would agree that the existence of over two hundred of them--as of this writing--is a cancerous growth on the ass of FIM fanfiction itself.

Let me clarify now that I'm not going to spend this entire review spewing hate for cosplay fics. Most of you already know how much I dislike them, and furthermore I've already made it clear right here that I don't. There are only so many ways I can say it before it starts to get stale. I'll comment on them a bit, but I don't feel like making ten pages of shit that amounts to "I HATE THIS SHIT BLAJFHG IT SUCKS LOL IM FUNNY" would be a constructive way to waste my time. I'll sum it up like this: there are a few great ones, some pretty good ones, some mediocre ones, a lot of bad ones, and occasionally some really, really awful ones.

The reason I gave all that meta shit, though, is that it sets the background for this story I'm going to review.

The name of this story is Air Superiority, and it's by a guy called TCogArchitect.

This story manages to exemplify perfectly the very worst aspects of the cosplayer subgenre while at the same time failing to achieve even the relatively low standard of quality set by that community. It's all the negatives with not a drop of positive mixed in--like most of the fics I give Lengthy, In-Depth Reviews to, it's not only bad, but insipid. And yet, it still managed to get featured despite having only one 2500 word chapter--a chapter with no ponies in it at all, I'd like to add.

I'll get to that shit later, though, because right now, I want to give you something that will sum up exactly why this story is so pathetic.

Behold:

I only chose this particular bandwagon because it's still relatively active, and I'm sick of getting on bandwagons too late for them to actually be fully enjoyable. The popularity thing only assures me that I am, in fact, capable of making something that can be popular.

--The author, TcogArchitect

Yeah.

At least he's honest.

Title credits roll over a loop of video where a topless fat black woman with grotesque, mutated blue parasprites for breasts shakes her titties disgustingly, and this song plays:

Youtube Video

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy SHIT!!  Where the hell am I?  What even happened?!  I need to find out.  Now.  Shivering on the ground in a body that isn't even yours isn't how you fix a problem.

Shall I add that to the database, sir?

Who the fuck said that, and how did you get into my head?!?

I believe the designation you have assigned me is 'Laserbeak,' sir.

That is an actual quote from the Air Superiority.

Yeah, I cringed too.

I should add now that this story is a Transformers crossover. The author has written four fics, and three of them are also Transformers crossovers. His avatar is a Transformers robot. His name is (I think; just going by what I remember from when I was 5) a Transformers reference. His short bio is (I think) a Transformers quote.

Are you seeing a pattern yet?

There's a metric ton of autism in this fic even without the Transformers bullshit. I'll start at the beginning, with the summary--Oh, and I almost forgot: the story pic is a fucking Transformers go-bot, too.

I finally saved up the money.  I finally had a costume I felt was sufficient.  I finally got to go to Botcon.  As Soundwave.  I even practiced his special disturbing walk cycle for extra effect.  Granted, I had to do it all with a missing Laserbeak, but hey, I could always roleplay that the little bugger was off on reconnaissance. Then I saw a way to skip that little mistake altogether:  A perfectly sized, articulated Laserbeak, with straps to hold it on properly.  I didn't even think about it.  I didn't think about why what appeared to be an entire prop shop was set up in the middle of a con.  I didn't think about what the chances of this particular prop even existing were.  I couldn't even be bothered to think about the creepy dude wearing a creepy hooded robe working the booth as he chuckled at my enthusiastic strapping on of my perfectly-sized addition. Now I'm in the world of ponies, and have been turned into one of the most technologically-advanced villains of a completely different universe.  Nothing to do now except make myself useful, I suppose.

And thus, I throw my hat into the ring with all the other LoHAV stories.  I've been wanting to do this pretty much since the whole trend started, but couldn't figure out which character to use.  Let's see how this goes, shall we?

Of note is the fact that I condensed this a little bit to save room. It's so long that I had to expand it just to read the rest of the fucking summary. By comparison, the average summary length for most decent fics is between three sentences and two paragraphs. The summary is not the fucking story--don't tell one in it!

Anyway...

Oh.

Before I continue, let me grab something from the summary and bring it to your attention, since it was probably lost in all that santorum.

I even practiced his special disturbing walk cycle for extra effect

his special disturbing walk cycle

special disturbing walk cycle

Never mind the fact that that shouldn't even be in the summary... You know what, fuck, I'll just let you come up with your own reasons to be annoyed by those four words. Trust me, if you read that line a couple of times in your head or (god forbid) out loud, you'll come up with a lot of them real fast.

In we go. First chapter is called "Data File 01: Location Unknown" because the author likes Transformers way too much. You know, in case you didn't already notice he likes Transformers way too much.

It's the standard waking up in an alien place schtick, which I'll dissect in a little bit. But first, if you don't know how a cosplay fic typically goes, let me give you a rundown:

--Average human male of college age dresses up as a fictional character the author thinks is badass.

--This human then goes to a cosplay convention, or a Halloween party, or whatever the excuse to wear the costume is.

--Character is then mysteriously transported to Equestria for absolutely no reason at all.

--As a result of this Without any explanation at all, the human gains the powers of the fictional character they're cosplaying.

--The human receives a brain-liquefying head injury/magical spell/voodoo/autism that causes them to believe that they are the character they're cosplaying.

--Equestrians then think they are that character, resulting in hilarious misunderstandings and the protagonist being edgy and badass.

Do you see?

The story starts out with a typical jarring opening. The protagonist falls out of the sky and lands in a heap. Shitty writing starting every sentence with "I", the usual.

But then, we get this... mayhem.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy SHIT!!  Where the hell am I?  What even happened?!  I need to find out.  Now.  Shivering on the ground in a body that isn't even yours isn't how you fix a problem.

Shall I add that to the database, sir?

Who the fuck said that, and how did you get into my head?!?

I believe the designation you have assigned me is 'Laserbeak,' sir.

People totally talk to themselves that way in their thoughts.

I am currently having a discussion with myself about whether I should continue to analyze this or just kill myself, and this is literally what is going through my head, word for word.

I have to finish this reviews, but I hate this story so much it makes me want to die. It kills my soul. Oh, damn, I'd like Shining Armor's penis in me. Oh god. Why am I thinking about that? I need both holes stuffed by futa ponies. Shit, what is this. I need it together. Come on! No, I want to masturbate to futa porn and then end up in Equestria. NO YOU DUMB WHORE YOU HAVE TO FINISH WRITING THIS REVIEW. FUCK YOU CUNT I DO WHAT I WANT!!!

And in the end, the second alter won. I will be seeing my psychiatrist tomorrow at 5, by the way.

So this guy apparently turned into a Transformer. Gee, I didn't see that coming a mile off--even before I read the summary. OP lives, eats, breathes, shits Transformers. The autism predicts the outcome. What's unique about this particular autistcome is that the protagonist spends about half of the fic's lines conversing with this dipshit in his head.

The dipshit, who is actually a little metal bird named Laserbeak, functions as a convenient exposition device to suck out any suspense from the story whatsoever while OP heads for civilization through a swamp.

Except for this question, which haunts me.

Why are there no ponies in the first chapter?

None. Nada. Zilch, save for a thing at the end with "a colt" who hid in a tree while the protagonist fought a gigantic crocodile. The amount of pony in this chapter is 3 lines of colt in tree, comes down after and is amazed when the protagonist says.

I fucking quote:

"Crocodile inferior, Soundwave superior."

Yeah.

But it gets better.

Afterward, he says this to himself:

Yeah, I thought, now that's a catchphrase for the ages.

I won't even comment on that.

But this brings up the reason why it really exemplifies HAV flaws. The reason, in fact, why I found this worth reviewing, in the end.

Air Superiority isn't about ponies at all.

This guy likes to write about talking horses. It's something he's comfortable doing. He also likes to write about Transformers. It's something he's comfortable doing, and it's apparently his fetish (Hey, I'm not gonna judge). The problem is that he likes to write about Transformers more than he likes to write about ponies, and it shows in this story and two of the other three he's posted.

It's a common complaint about crossover fics that they use the FIM world as a vehicle for the author's favored non-MLP characters to posture in. It's basically presented as "what if this came into contact with ponies", except it's really just an exercise in showing what the author likes about that character in the context of ponies discovering it. In fact, that's a common complaint about crossovers in any fandom.

Good crossover is not just "take this thing from one world, put it in another world", it's a process of blending two very different universes. The same is true of HAV fics, which are actually crossovers because the protagonist is just a particular character that used to be an OC.

In this case, OP wants to show off how cool Transformers robots are, because... I guess that makes him horny, or something. Again, I can't judge--I get off to some kinky stuff. Anyway, OP does this showing off by having Soundqueef defeat a giant crocodile in front of a wide-eyed, amazed colt, who is then treated to that stupid catchphrase.

Actually I have to mention at this point that in the second chapter, it turns out the colt was just freaked because he noticed all his stuff fell in the river, or some contrived fail of that nature. Which, in turn, implies that the protagonist's comment was supposed to come off as a sort of Austin Powers "I think I'm so cool but I'm really not" thing, except that the author thinks he's cool, and so he writes him to be cool (by which I mean bland and uninteresting) except for that one line.

But it's not about ponies, again. The second chapter shows this just as well as the first.

OP got in a bit of trouble with the mods once people started complaining that there were no ponies in a featured story on a site about ponies. But that just makes me wonder: how the hell did this get through moderation? Say what you want about the moderation team, but they're usually pretty good about basic stuff like, you know, being relevant to the site it's posted on. Somebody derped.

Maybe they just got so fucking bored reading it that they scrolled down to the bottom, saw the word colt, and gave it a pass because, on those grounds, it technically does fulfill the site requirements... I guess. Anyway, I don't really blame them. Mistakes happen, and the real one at fault was OP.

In the end, OP was forced to publish his unfinished second chapter, which someone (I think it was BlueBastard) pointed out appeared to have been written in the FIMFic story box instead of, say, Word or Gdox. Just a little tidbit to make you lol.

His second chapter is essentially the same as the first, but more boring. It has some bland, uninteresting bullshit with the mane 6 in the forest for some reason I can't even remember, and the author actually--

Wait, back up. I want to show you something.

Well, then, it's time to start acting like a communications officer, and intercept some information.

Like the walk cycle line, this is amusing for reasons I can't quite pin down. There are a couple of things I could point to, but none of them are really sufficient to sum up my feelings about it. It's just a very bizarre, stupid line that tries to sound cool and fails, I guess. I don't know. Somebody help me out?

Anyway.

He actually writes this to denote POV shifts:

POV Shift, Third Person

POV Shift, Soundwave

If you have to do that to alert us whose POV it is, you need to make your characters more interesting. I don't think I'd have even known it was Soundwave's POV if he hadn't been doing... Soundwave stuff, and if it didn't have that disclaimer. He's that boring and forgettable.

Gotta say, this fic even fails at being a cosplay fic. Cosplay fics usually at least make it clear that the character is a cosplayer that thinks they're a... whatever. But this one, aside from a couple of references and the typical "shit what's going on how do I get home oh ponies blafrghgdhf" it's basically just this nameless dickcheese running around as a Transformer called Soundwave.

Part of the humor in legitimately good HAV is the fact that these people are not the characters they think they are, and they don't actually know what the hell they're doing. This fic is exactly the kind of thing that, if HAV were a parody subgenre, it would likely be parodying. It's just the guy showing off how badass his OC-turned transformer is. Even the end of the second chapter sets up a situation where the guy will beat up wolves to save the mane 6. Fuck you, I think they'd rather die just to get out of that story. (pardon my breaking of NPOV for a moment there)

And again, the ponies are utterly incidental. They only serve to compliment the Transformers character's AWESOME traits like beating up crocodiles, talking to people using soundbytes of their own voices--And another thing. Apparently, this guy also knows how to use Transformers tech even though it doesn't correspond to real tech. Earlier HAV stuff didn't imbibe the characters with new knowledge (of technology that's nothing like ours, to boot) but rather just had the character think like and think they were a particular character, and maybe get that character's weapons.

I'm going to end this before I break the page with the amount of text I write. There's literally that many things wrong with the fic: it fails at being MLP fiction, it fails at being HiE fiction, it fails at being crossover fiction, it fails at being HAV fiction, it fails at being fanfiction, it fails at being interesting, it fails at making sense, it fails at engaging remotely intelligent readers in the slightest, and ONNNN and ONNNN.

You see?

It's that bad.

There's one more thing to bring up, and that's the author's conflicting attitude and expressed feelings towards writing.

You see, when Peppy asked him why he made this, he said:

I only chose this particular bandwagon because it's still relatively active, and I'm sick of getting on bandwagons too late for them to actually be fully enjoyable. The popularity thing only assures me that I am, in fact, capable of making something that can be popular.

Later, when defending his writing against the increasing heat directed at it, he said this:

TcogArchitect

1 · Chapter 1 · 5m, 16s ago · · ·

BlueBastard

1. No, I haven't done anything original yet.  You know why?  Because it's the FIRST CHAPTER.  Nothing new is going to happen in the setup.  Expecting something new to happen in the first chapter of a story based on an entire trend is like expecting a whale to suddenly give birth to a shark.

2. Just because I shouldn't jump on the bandwagon doesn't mean I don't want to.  And just because there's a whole bunch of people who don't like the bandwagon doesn't mean I shouldn't have fun with what I want to have fun with.  If I went by that logic, I wouldn't watch MLP in the first place, now would I?

3.  First of all, I don't really care too much about writing clop.  I have an idea or two, yes, but even those would probably never make it to the featured box, either.  Second, I don't measure myself by the public's standards.  I never have, really, despite the occasional bout of lonely depression it brings on.  Beyond that, though, I never show things to people if I don't think anyone will like them.  It's part of the reason I don't draw.  All of my art is garbage, which I don't think people would enjoy.  I think people will enjoy this, though, so I'm going to write it.  And no amount of irrational hate or incessant insults is going to stop me.  You don't like it?  Fine, hit the dislike button and leave.  You think you can help me make the story better?  Leave a comment or send me a PM.  I have endless patience for constructive criticism.  But if your entire argument against something is that you don't like the original premise, than you really aren't a brony.  Because this fandom is supposed to be about toleration, and that includes tolerating things or people which you may find displeasing.  Deal with it and move on.

tl;dr: this guy wants all the popularity and no criticism.

Guys...

Yeah.

I think I've made myself pretty clear, but still.

Look, there's no such thing as an inherently bad idea. Anything can be made good if the writer is competent and engaged in making the story worth reading for more than its expected popularity.

But if you write something as utterly soulless as this dreck, you might as well not write at all. Sure, you'll get a ton of boneheads saying how great it is, but do you think half of those people would even be able to pick a good story out of a lineup? Are they a good standard for how good your fic is, when they'll upvote and fav anything that appeals to their particular perseverations and fetishes?

There's a ton of shit about achieving and dealing with fame and whatnot, so I think you guys know by now that while it's good to aim for the featurebox, you shouldn't just jump on the bandwagon because you don't want to be late.

Don't be that guy who writes for the worthless e-fame and nothing else. Some people with counts of upward of two or three thousand followers write nothing but bland garbage that's guaranteed to appeal to as many mindless upvote bots as possible--you probably know who one or two of them are, so I won't mention any names. Yeah, they get e-fame, but what's that worth, in the end? Most of them just use it to... get more e-fame, and occasionally organize personal armies to attack people who criticize them.

On a completely unrelated, non-sequential note that is completely random and has nothing to do with the preceding paragraph: next, I'm going to review Aegis Shield's The Return of Princess Nightmare Moon. If he'd like to decline to be reviewed, all he has to do is send me a PM with a polite request that I not write bad things about his story. Since, as all of you are probably aware by now, I don't write these blogs about people who show themselves to be nice, I will honor that request. All he has to do is contact me and ask nicely. Which I am sure he will do, because he is very, very willing to mingle among the non-3000 follower plebeians.

Speaking of people with less than 3,000 followers...

There are a lot of very underappreciated authors on here, and a lot of us with the power to reach large numbers of readers do our best to promote them. I (and many other people) make frequent blog posts promoting stories by undervalued FIMFic writers--the ones that I make usually stay up for about two months, and then I remove them to avoid clutter, although I keep rec blogs for exceptionally good fics (like Asylum).

So next time you see a fic recommendation posted by someone like me or Kaidan or Tittysparkles, you should check it out.

Because whatever it is, it's bound to be better than this cancer.

Link to the fic I have reviewed --> Air Superiority, by TcogArchitect <-- Link to the fic I have reviewed