If I were to critique this, my first thoughts would be:

1- That Icon you use for your story is terrible, get more creative with your font choices and reduce the line spacing.

2- How and why would a ferret have sex with a dragon and why did you write that description in such an awkward way and put it in the middle? Sometimes less is more in terms of information especially when it’s so overly specific (and also kind of sounds like a Gary Stu).


3- Even for something as degenerate as fetish writing world building is a key part of the experience;
How does the inflation tablet work? How does the world handle inflation?
Is this inflation past time prevalent or something weird, random and specific like the topic is in real life? Are there consequences for doing it? I.E. physical changes from prolonged use and/or any psychological changes? If it is prevalent, are there applications for it? Are there furry-people who made being living Ballons filled with some kind of gas their profession for example?

4- All my points lead me to say that this is the equivalent of a fart, it adds nothing, it builds nothing and only the most desperate are gonna get off to something so little.

Sorry kid.

That's a bit harsh, don't you think? Sure the work could have used a higher word-count, and some re-ordering would greatly improve it, but its not terrible like you seem to be thinking. Your simile of this work being, and I quote, "the equivalent of a fart" is not accurate, it merely needs some minor improvements and logical re-arrangement.

I know it really isn't my place to defend the writer, for I should not interfere with other people's business, but I hate it when people leave useless criticism related to either personal belief, or irrelevant topics, like the icon. This type of criticism has no place in an art-based community because nobody can grow from it, for all you are doing is devaluing somebody's work. This would be the equivalent of me telling you that I dislike your user icon. It serves no purpose, and nobody grows as a person from it.

For future reference, criticism and critiquing are points like, "The piece is a little short and could use a bit more descriptive language, but the structure is good," or "The order of events and expository information are introduced too late in the piece." Also, as any piece of art goes, just because it seems distasteful to you doesn't mean that it is a bad piece, it just means that it isn't what you like.

By the way, kudos if you even read this reply to your comment, 66778899, most wouldn't even try.

Kudos to me I guess then but I believe furries need a bit of a kick in the boot to stop accepting terrible content or in this case even just plain middle of the road flat-lining content.
I want to see people at their peak .

To go back to what I said, I think a fart is the perfect analogy for this kind of content, both are short, generally not pleasing to witness and you best try to forget that you actually did. I tried to be concise and condense something that I should have elaborated on. I suppose it did create a bitter tone in your head in regards to what I meant to convey.


I still stand by what I said about the graphical illustration for this story, it’s lazy and I personally could do better even, if eyes are the windows to the soul then icons for things like that are windows to the quality of a story because these things are generally indicative of the effort and thought people put into their stories. And here too it feels like a fast and rather sloppy execution:

Bad usage of space, Ariel font, letters touching the edges of the box.

Call it petty but some standards should apply, right?

Plus and let me put this as bluntly as possible, I don’t care about the lad or lassie behind the keyboard’s feelings, you threw the stone, I create the ripples.
I won't hold back on talking shit about a movie just to not hurt the director’s feelings, I’m here to watch the movie and voice what I have in mind on it. I enjoy using my privilege of expression and possible emotional bugbears are to be dealt with when they come.

Also I detect a double standard, you say that things like the icon are irellevant to you and that personal beliefs don’t belong but isn’t your standpoint on the icon’s irrelevancy a personal belief too?

You point out some interesting points, and just to be certain that I didn't blur my initial point, everyone has the right to their own opinion, but ultimately it's useless, from personal experience, when someone comments with information such as "This is bad," because this doesn't allow you to fix the issues with your work.

I completely understand why you find the icon important too, I am only stating that it is irrelevant because it is an extremely common thing on the FurAffinity writer's community to simply MS paint some text on a background color. It may show a lack of creativity, but usually it shows either a lack of visual media art skills, or a rush to get the next piece out on time.

As I see it, terrible content is held within the eye of the beholder, I, personally am not a fan of this particular piece, but I can see its potential. I am a writer myself, and I know how hard it can be to create your first and second drafts. This piece, to me seems like a first draft, and as the saying goes, and, please excuse the profanity, "Shitty first drafts."

Thank you for further elaborating upon your simile of the "fart," I now understand what you were getting at, however I still think this is just an early, underdeveloped draft of a potentially excellent piece.

Keep in mind, no artist or author is at their peak with an early draft, and most writers I've read on this site usually only write one to two drafts before uploading.

To make my point of view as clear as I can, I think that this piece is good for an early draft, but needs a lot of work. There are ideas that are out of place, expository information that is out of place, and a lot more detail that could be added, but the piece is an excellent starting point for a far better work. I too, honestly don't care about the writer's feelings, but I feel that all criticism should be a specific point that they can use to help them revise and edit their works.

PS

Okay before this becomes too much of any kind of argument I'm just going to say that I understand your criticism; when I was writing this story I kept thinking things like "this is horrible" and "why am I continuing with this". It's really bad compared to how I normally write, and I probably should've at least rewritten the story, if not scrapped it entirely. To start, let me simply address your critiques one by one:

1. For the thumbnail, thanks for the critique, I see where you're coming from with it and I'll definitely start looking for something different. After a while of using it, even I began to see some flaws with the font (and with the letters touching the edges, like you said).

2. The ferret dragon mix part was simply part of the character that Indy is; I've seen much weirder mixes and I don't think of them as strange to almost any degree. As for how (or why) Indy's parents even had sex, I prefer to simply look past that and take the character for who they are. For the description, I agree that it was put in a very awkward place. There are tons of other places I could've put it, and maybe I could have just not bookended the story like I did (I added in the first paragraph after writing the rest of the story, which was a mistake in my opinion).

3. As for the world building, it does make sense what you're saying. Even stories related around a fetish, like the ones I write, deserve at least a bit more of a fleshed out environment than what I gave this one. However, these environments don't need to go to the level of detail you specified, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have any detail at all.

4. Agreed. This was a horrible story compared to what I normally write, and I wonder why I even went through with actually posting it.

I'm definitely not going to delete this post, as I believe the bad posts have just as much a place here as the good ones, if not more in the way that they show I'm not a perfect writer, or even human in general.

Just to give you a heads up, posting fetish related stories carries a lot of burdens, in my opinion not as much the usual “oh your a weirdo” and self doubt burdens, but more in the sense of naturally being more sheltered due to the niece aesthetically dubious subject, and a community forming around it.

I think this is the kind of thing you should be posting in terms of format small pieces targeted towards a certain aspect of writing to receive feedback. Not sure where exactly since as I said above fetish stories is something not generally garnering literary feedback.

I myself am only here because these things are so disturbing, Tuesday evenings are just that slow.

That is why I say that generally posting fetish stuff isn’t useful practise for writing, the formats these things work on are different from usual stories and so are the expectations, sure going in-depth about the specific mechanics of a world aren’t expected here but in a real story? Get the fuck out if you can’t do that, everybody will tell you that :)

Not saying that is what you need to do if you write fetish stories but it does add another dimension “off screen” that I can’t see here :/

Also PS I love how by now this thread has more text than the story you wrote.

Sorry if this seems like an argument, I truly believe its more of a friendly philosophical debate, but if you would like it to stop, I'd be more than happy to oblige.

I have to admit, its fun having a philosophical debate about the ethics of criticism.

(Sorry for the broken off PS, I clicked tab, forgetting that this site doesn't allow for complete text formatting.)

I don’t really comment on something like this since a lot of it is either really eclectic to the point where you might be forgiven for thinking it comes from another planet or just too ridden with clichés maybe because of this I didn’t really see it coming that people would talk this in depth about me saying something instead of talking about the story.

But in retrospect that makes perfect sense given the collective mentality of the furry fandom, go and mediate, protect, preserve the artist’s feelings first and foremost make it about an identity rather than the conventional view of art.

I know it definitely seems like I care about their feelings, but I only really care about the piece whenever I read anything. I do admit that I have a bit of an obsession with editorial work, and quite often send comments to the writer pointing out as specifically as I can how they can improve their story. I too am annoyed about people being overly protective of other people's feelings, but to be transparently clear, I only replied to your comment because it didn't have any specific enough points to be used for the writer to revise their work.

Upon your first sentence, I also almost never comment on this type of work, and quite usually I steer away from it.

Does that mean that I've rectified the problem you had, with my replies?

Effectively. Now that I clearly understand what you were getting at, I can see what you were referring to.

Thanks for holding a civil conversation, most wouldn't.