Next up is red dead john merston: the return and dislike
, by Max Ralone.
Granted, I haven't played Red Dead Redemption, but I'm fairly certain it gets a lot wrong about this game, starting with how the Marston family's names are spelled.
The fic starts with John "Big Tex" Merston, joining his wife, Abigail "Deadly Widow" Merston and his son, Jack, "Little Red" Merston, having come to Texas to fight Jack "Revolver Evil" William. I can understand John having a nickname, but think it's going a little far to have the same apply to his wife and kid, and even his enemy's name sounds ridiculous.
Jack is not happy to see John, declaring himself superior and his intent to be the greatest Merston. John laughs it off and asks Jack to go hunt a bounty with him, but Jack is serious. Abigail is upset, since her husband almost got killed by the other Jack, but then it turns out that her son, the first Jack, was the one who hired him so that he could usurp his father's position.
Abigail pleads with Jack not to do this, but Jack kills her, saying that he's old enough to handle his own problems. His way of proving that is... misguided, to say the least.
John is furious with Jack and declares that he'll kill him. Jack counters that he had to be the "HERO OF THE FAMILY" when the FBI took John away. John declares that Jack is too young, but Jack says that he's not too young to kill his mother, and will do the same to his father.
John has had enough and declares that he will get a "redemption" for his wife... "A RED DEAD REDEMPTION!" Often, when a title is used in a work, it's usually a common phrase, or a specific use of terminology related to the work (for example, Mass Effect is named after the discovery that enables interstellar travel), making it more natural.
A duel between Jack and John happens offscreen, and Jack wins, killing his father in the process, "because john is too old for this stuff." Again, it seems as though badfic writers are too lazy to write good battle scenes.
Jack, after some Evil Gloating, gets his father's gang together and names it "Jack Big Tex and the bad ones".
Little does he know that his father is Back from the Dead, out for some revenge... "A RED DEAD REVENGE." But while Unexplained Recovery is a favorite of badfic writers, it's never put to use, since the fic ends right here, being marked as "Complete."
All in all, this was entertainingly bad, and it's a bit disappointing that it didn't go on for longer, so we could see more illogical and Out of Character insanity.
I'm introducing a new feature for these; doing The Bechdel Test on the fics I've covered, including the ones I've covered thus far.
The Bechdel Test: Fails Condition #1. There's only one female character, a textbook Disposable Woman.
