Predators Are Mean/Playing With

Predators are Mean: The heroes are herbivores, and the villains are carnivores.

• Straight: A few rabbits and squirrels band together to save themselves from the evil wolves.
• Exaggerated: The predators love to torture their prey for hours before killing them.
• Justified: The story is intended to be from the point of view of the rabbits and squirrels, and as they don't want to be eaten, they would view predators as villains. The story is meant to explore what life would be like for a creature who is frequently preyed on by other animals.
• Inverted: The wolves are the heroes, and the rabbits and squirrels are the villains.
• Subverted: The wolves are actually quite pleasant and friendly.
• Double Subverted: ...Until they rip your throat out.
• Parodied: The heroes are talking plants and the villains are ravenous herbivores.
  • In a Five-Man Band of a horse, a human, a wolf, a tiger, and a hawk, the horse is constantly recognized as the Token Minority and assumed as the Token Good Teammate.
• Deconstructed: The rabbits and squirrels drive the wolves out, then they reproduce so much that they exhaust their food supply, ruining the local ecosystem, resulting in mass starvation. And that was just plain careless and irresponsible.
• Reconstructed: The wolves return and enjoy a delicious bounty of food, causing the rabbit and squirrel population to return to sustainable levels, ensuring a plentiful food supply for everyone!
  • Alternately: Then, the rabbits and squirrels work to solve the population problem by executing some and take up farming to ensure there is food for everyone. Others wish for the 'good old days' when they only had to worry about the wolves instead of eachother and bring the wolves back. This results in a newer more complex system with a variety of factions on both sides, none of which are truly evil or truly good.
• Zig Zagged: The rabbits and squirrels band together and drive away the wolves; unfortunately this leaves an ecological niche open for weasels, coyotes and other meat-eaters. And after they're gone, those hairless apes with their tame wolves and thundersticks arrive...
• Averted: The predators are no more good or evil than their prey.
• Enforced: "There's a nice easy source of conflict. Let's make the wolves evil!"
• Lampshaded: "How dare that shark want to avoid a painful death of starvation! Satanaclly evil, isn't he?"
• Invoked: "Don't trust Professor Wolverton, Mayor Long-ears! He's just wants to eat us all up!"
• Defied: "Just because we have to eat animals to survive doesn't make us evil! It's just a (burp) necessity."
• "I can't feel my legs..." "Even with elf medicine, you will never walk again. The only question remaining now, rabbit, is do you want some fiveleaf, or will you face death with a clear head?"
• Discussed: "No voice actors for the velociraptors, then."
• Conversed: "Hrm, a chinchilla serial killer. Didn't see that coming."
• Inverted and Exaggerated: A Five man band of a Lion a wolf, a Hawk, a Tiger, and a human fight a Five bad band of a Cow a Squirrel, a Rhino, a Donkey and a Deer.

---

Back to Predators Are Mean, Prince With A Thousand Enemies!