Sobek's Search for a Girlfriend (NSFW)

[vincent_richter]

Please, for the love of all things holy, do not excuse subpar writing by claiming fursecution.
There are times when that is an appropriate response; replying to confusion over specsheets masquerading as creativity is not one of them.
If you truly wish to improve your craft, think about how you can relate the sexuality of a piece of hardware without resorting to - and here I'm dating myself - Tim Taylor "arrr-arrr-ARRRR!!!" shenanigans.

Honestly, this could be Shakespeare for all I know; my interest in it went right out the window when the real-world references far outweighed the fantasy. It shattered the illusion, and I can't believe you don't find that jarring.

Although, much of that issue could probably be solved by replacing product placement terms - brands, team names, logos and such - with generic references or better descriptors.

"The pair wandered to his (salmon? DayGlo Pink? Sun-faded Barbie Dream House?) (pickup, truck, rig, other love interest), its supercharged might barely restrained by the bounds of the ignition." All but maybe one of the original descriptors is superfluous, but the original intent - relaying that he possesses an ironically-colored truck that could eat us all alive - is not lost.

Explore the space you're given; crack a thesaurus or dictionary to look for similar ways to relay the same intent; avoid stale repetition and you'll draw more interest.

Incidentally, and on this I should've said something sooner, primarily male-centric content should go to Everything Else, with limited exceptions. The Growth subforum is meant for female or couples at the time being, so yes - despite asking ahead of time, you may still see some irate responses.

[Kitran]

Your story looks like a game of Mad Libs gone horribly wrong. Every element seemed so generic and lacked character. First, as said before, the real world references were completely unneeded and distracted from the story. Could have easily said that they were moving up the coast or just watching a football game without needing to pull out unnecessary names like the teams or the names of military bases. It wasn't important to the story. Second, there wasn't any depth to the story. For example, there was no backstory as why there were giant reptiles or niguana (which I had to look up in the urban dictionary because this term was never explained in the story) at all. Even the paragraph structure wasn't great, but I can usually look past that if the story was decent, which in this case, it was not. Finally, the comment about this being a furry story kinda insults me, and I am a furry. This story didn't scream or even whisper 'furry' to me and the fact that you used that as an excuse to avoid criticism from your readers is rude and disrespectful both from a reader's aspect and a fellow author's aspect. The reason you decided to share this story was probably because you thought it was good and wanted to hear the opinions of your fellow forum mates. But you have to be respectful to all comments and critiques, be them positive or negative.

[vincent_richter]

Originally Posted by Kitran

Your story looks like a game of Mad Libs gone horribly wrong. Every element seemed so generic and lacked character. First, as said before, the real world references were completely unneeded and distracted from the story. Could have easily said that they were moving up the coast or just watching a football game without needing to pull out unnecessary names like the teams or the names of military bases. It wasn't important to the story. Second, there wasn't any depth to the story. For example, there was no backstory as why there were giant reptiles or niguana (which I had to look up in the urban dictionary because this term was never explained in the story) at all. Even the paragraph structure wasn't great, but I can usually look past that if the story was decent, which in this case, it was not. Finally, the comment about this being a furry story kinda insults me, and I am a furry. This story didn't scream or even whisper 'furry' to me and the fact that you used that as an excuse to avoid criticism from your readers is rude and disrespectful both from a reader's aspect and a fellow author's aspect. The reason you decided to share this story was probably because you thought it was good and wanted to hear the opinions of your fellow forum mates. But you have to be respectful to all comments and critiques, be them positive or negative.

Wait wait wait... he used "niguana" in a serious story? Fuck it, I'm done. That'd be like using chinkodactyl or spickraffe to the same end, and if he really is a fur, he should be proud that he's another example of why people hate furries.

If more of 'em were reasonable, like you, there'd be no bad trend to buck.