#my blood was boiling a lot the first time I read tfc

[puemort]

Neil Josten better than me bc I actually would've punched everyone in the first book I don't even care Andrew cut me open with your knife but I'm gonna punch you, your cousin and kevin in the face first.

[poetatertot]

ok so i’ve slept and sifted through my thoughts about this. if you feel like reading me yammering then by all means.. (WC 1.3K)

Please keep in mind that these are my own opinions. I’m just tossing out words here. Also be noted that there are some major spoilers towards the end, so I guess if you’re bugged by that.. yeah.

So here’s the rub. I didn’t know anything about this series going into it save for tiny comments here and there about how the MC has a tragic backstory. I’ve had people tell me this is their favorite series, I’ve had people tell me it was utter garbage. Nobody ever gave any clear reasoning to why they felt the way they did.

The most difficult part about assessing The Foxhole Court is that I honestly don’t know what to feel. As a series that’s primarily character-driven, the cast is supposed to precede the plot. This does not happen until roughly chapter six--40% the way through, long after most readers irritated with half the crew (the bad half! but I’ll get to that later) have put it down and written off the whole book as a disappointment. Prior to this, everything feels like a mashup of two characters making inexplicable decisions and everyone else reacting to them in a X-leads-to-Y manner. This first part, taking place in the summertime before the school year/sports season, drags. It’s only when hefty exposition is dumped onto the MC and the second half of the team is introduced that a balance is established and the story opens up, shifting from a stall into full throttle.

The first chapter of TFC opens up to a scene of our MC smoking a cigarette, dramatic backstory and suffer-puppet mode already fully engaged. If the line about smoking to remember his mother didn’t make me laugh (and it did) then the following sequence of events would have definitely gotten me; after contemplating his own pitiful existence, Neil (MC) meets one of the two central secondary characters, Andrew, who introduces himself by swinging a stick into his ribs for utterly no reason. 

Andrew’s entrance is only the precursor to a small-scale boatload of mayhem, all inflicted by him and his crew of equally-pleasant chumps. I honestly had trouble discerning who was who in this period because there are no defining characteristics in dialogue or behavior that discern one boy from another and boy, they talk over each other a lot. Andrew’s pill-popping and destructive tendencies make him an outlier; the other three boys seem to bleed together, only divisible by one-hat roles. Kevin is an angsty stump, Aaron is quiet enough to be utterly unimportant, and Nicky is Utterly Detestable.

I’m all for queer representation but I’m honestly so disappointed that the resident hispanic and most “out” character, Nicky, is so fucking ugly. His lascivious nature makes him an insulting caricature of a gay man, and the way he talks about “pushing” Neil into swinging is honestly gross. Combined with a collaborative rape joke between him and Aaron about Neil (which boiled my blood so much y’all have no idea) and his willingness to jump on Neil after Andrew (forcefully) drugs him, Nicky is dead last for likeable characters. I like him even less than other characters that I’m supposed to hate.

(I will concede that about 75% through the story and beyond he starts to become a little more well-rounded, but all this does is create the question of why he started out so ugly. Why would you sabotage his entrance by making him spew such garbage? There’s no way he can come back from that even if he had bothered to try and redeem himself.)

The one ironic beacon in the midst of the Bad Apples that make up half the team and the lukewarm niceties of the regular, other half, is that Andrew is the most interesting character the book has to offer. Although he’s written to appear unreasonably violent and honestly fucking nuts half the time, he’s the only character captivating enough to keep my attention. His motives for his obsession with Kevin and Neil are indiscernible for most of the story, but that’s what makes him partially interesting--there’s a something about him that keeps me tense and focused on him whenever he enters a room. His moral code is backwards and twisted up like an old fruit roll-up but at least it’s consistent. I honestly found myself constantly going back and forth between appreciating him for who he was and hating him for being a downright awful shitlord, but at least he’s memorable (unlike about a third of the team). 

Other than Andrew and my hate for Nicky all I can feel for everyone else is indifference. Most characters pop in to speak or do one thing and disappear again. Even Neil feels empty to me, existing in a cycle of dull reactions to other people and constant, irritating paranoia about being found out by Andrew and Kevin. It’s a damn shame.

But I still want to read what happens next. Why?

The plot in TFC is weird in that it flickers in and out in exposition-heavy infodumps given by other characters and longer, slow lulls where Neil and Andrew circle each other, pushing each other’s buttons to see who gets Kevin’s approval. There is no discernible climax to TFC; the tension runs higher closer to the end as Neil meets Riko (the antagonist who only shows up once in a blue moon through word of mouth) for the first time, but there’s never any defining point. It’s like watching a horror movie where the atmosphere builds but never goes anywhere before it ends. 

(Not that the plot itself is anything particularly mind-blowing--I found myself barking out a laugh when it was dumped on the MC for the first time what Kevin’s backstory was all about. Still, at the very least, you can’t deny that mafia organizations running under a made-up sport facade isn’t original.)

Things only really pick up about 80% of the way through TFC. At this point, the shuttle that’s been filling with passengers is taking off at a breakneck speed that threatens to unseat everyone on it. People are meeting people, insults are being thrown on live television. Andrew is raging to get off his meds and hurl an insult or two in the wrong direction.

And then, in the middle of all of this, somebody dies.

The death, while somewhat climactic, is dulled and honestly ruined a bit by Neil’s apathy. Not that I was expecting some sort of sob scene--there never was any love cultivated for Seth’s character, only begrudging acceptance of his shtick as The Grumpus Asshole--but the way Neil takes the news is so laughably anticlimactic that I can’t help but sigh. We get that you grew up around death. We get that you feel bad about being the reason for his appeared suicide. But if you’re so ashamed about others taking the fall for your own wishy-washy behavior, then why don’t you act like it? Rather than throwing up your hands and going “well shucks” the least you could do is feel anything at all..

But that’s neither here nor there, I suppose. The real reason I’m sticking around is to see what’s all about Andrew. His decision to work with Neil feels like a minor triumph after 250 pages of them practically killing each other, and to be honest, I can’t picture what that sort of collaboration would look like. I want to see it. I want to know what happens to Andrew.

Fuck Neil tbh. Fuck this whole mash of a plot. I want to know what the fuck is poppin’ with drug-eating, glass-smashing Rage-boy McYell. 

And the second book is only 99 cents. I don’t have to feel bad about it if it turns out to be worse than this.

its 3:37am and i am so annoyed because i just finished the foxhole court and want to read the next one