Moxietale

Moxie the Fox

Bio:

Moxie is 16 year old princess from a kingdom of foxes that had been shrouded in darkness for many years until she sought the help of the warrior gods, Sun & Moon, to free them.

Moxie was the daughter of the fox queen, Denice, and unbeknown to herself, the god of death, Shinigami. She lived with her mother and her brother, Roxie, isolated inside the walls of their castle, but her adventurous spirit brought her to exploring outside where she found how miserable her kingdom had been for years, and she swore to stop it somehow.

Her mother nor her brother saw anything wrong with how things were, and none of the castle servants were brave enough to stand up to them. So on her own she decided to seek help from two legendary warrior gods, Sun and Moon. She nearly perished on her journey to find them, but Moon - the healer of the duo - saved her life and brought her to their temple. When Sun heard of what was happening in her kingdom, they understood that Shinigami was behind their suffering, and came to cleanse the land.

In the ensuing confrontation, Moxie's mother was killed by Shinigami and Roxie was imprisoned for his unwillingness to cooperate, but the kingdom was liberated from the oppressive presence. Moxie believed afterwards that she was too young and naive to rule, so she decided that she would follow Sun and Moon on their quests across the world until she became strong enough to lead.

Moxie is an archetypal bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young protagonist - adventurous, compassionate, and trusting of others' goodwill. She instantly comes to idolize the god duo and see them as a second chance of having a family, along with Rainbow after the tragedy that befell hers.

Her naivety would lead her into a cosmic drama the likes of which she never would have imagined, but it was planned that eventually it would be her compassion and open-mindedness that would put things back together.

Origins & Inspirations

Moxie was based on one of my oldest OCs in memory. Originally, the character and a proto-Sun were both ponies in a head AMV set to Don't You Dare Forget The Sun by Get Scared, and specifically based on this MLP animation by LongMuzzlePony (now Hubrk). In that old concept, Moxie was a bat pony princess going mad in her gothic castle, when Sun in the form of a golden earth pony confronts her. The bat pony's emotions get the best of her and she ends up turning into a beast which must be slain by the earth pony to save her. Very reminiscent of the tale of Nightmare Moon from MLP itself.

From this, Moxie's background as a dark princess needing to be saved by a warrior of light grew, though she herself lost a lot of agency in the matter to make way for a story about a peppy protagonist learning about the evils of the world. As well, her design was taken from a one-off of a black and white fox who changed artystyle based on mood. That backstory and that design (minus the shape-shifting) were fit into one which became the Moxie I developed from 2015 to 2018. What might not sound like all that much time now, but was during some of the most important years of my childhood.

I would also be remiss not to mention Steven Universe as a large inspiration. It can be felt in the premise and main character. A young child stuck between two worlds - fantastical and mortal, whom gets sucked into cosmic drama both grand and familial. Moxie's own caretakers being the ones with the darkest plots in all of this was a harsher twist however.