Foxfire’s Rant
By Dragonborne Fox

Reviewed by Rinnaul

Well, I haven’t done The Author Of Many Names in a while. Unlike her usual, this isn’t a lengthy adventure fic with scenes of rape, gore, and mutilation, but instead a Slice-of-Life oneshot where an alicorn OC just rants about things to a news reporter. It’s still tagged Dark, though.

Commentary and Review combined due to brevity.

So, the entire story basically revolves around Foxfire, the titular alicorn and student of Luna—apparently this is a side-story to another author’s ongoing work—telling everypony near her about how weird and stupid her day was. This day apparently involved meeting a half-changeling/half-vampony mad scientist’s creation who has the same name as her. Even beyond her frustration at this thing even existing, the chimaera (since that’s essentially what she is) decides to stick to Foxfire for the entire day. As in literally, like with some sort of changeling adhesive.

She has various misadventures trying to get rid of the chimaera, including burning it, fighting it, flying away, trying to drown it, and eventually begging the princesses for help. Nothing works until she goes to Discord, who gets it off of her and then has sex with it while she watches.

Also apparently the chimaera was designed to be the perfect stud magnet. Every stallion Foxfire saw that day wanted to bang it. And then Celestia sent the chimaera, its creator, and all of his other experiments to the sun. Happy end.

Frankly, this whole thing felt a bit, well, pointless. Having Foxfire tell the story after the fact separates the reader so much from the events of the story that we can’t care about them at all. I suspect that all of these things happened in the story this spins off of, but then why shouldn’t I just go read that? Well, beyond it sounding very bizarre.

And, to be honest, the whole thing reads like a novelization of a Roleplay session. The thoroughly-random events and lack of any logical explanation just remind me of my days roleplaying on CompuServe chats, where they were the product of a massive, unplanned improv session with no one in charge. The fact that Foxfire’s actions are sometimes flagged with a hyphen at either end, a common thing in chat roleplays, encourages that impression further.

As well, this seems to leave everypony Out Of Character for nearly the entire duration of the story on the grounds that “it’s Random, nothing has to make sense here”.

Don’t use “action marks” to indicate character actions. Just describe them out in the narrative like you normally would.

Unless the entire story is spoken, speech still goes within quotes. For what it is, the story would be stronger without the occasional breaks for Foxfire to take another drink.

There’s not much else I can do here, as the rest of the problems this story has are inherent in it being the retelling of a different story.

Needs Work. Simply put, this story accomplishes nothing. It’s just a retelling of someone else’s story, in a rather dull fashion, with some weak grammar and formatting choices further damaging it.

3432653 I can live with the grade. I just kinda herkaderked on the keyboard and I could've sworn I was drunk that day myself.

3432726
I think we all have those days.

3432728 Yep. I remember this one person who swore she stayed up all night, fell asleep on the keyboard with her page on a G-docs, and then woke up. BAM, self-insert alicorn OC that morning.

3432734
eeeeyuuup. Those were the good days.

3432737 The things we do just to get criticism, constructive or otherwise. I had the original Foxfire's Tail submitted to Rage Reviews (I say original because there's a re-written version also up on my page.)

3432739
Ah, I really don't like Rage Reviews... Avoided that group more than any others.

3432779 I can understand why.

3432783
Ya, I would rather be apart of something that helps build and increase confidence with accurate information than let trolls be the deciding factor.

3432789 Indeed.