Criticism of some furry story

 The first things first, I want to say that you may or may not count this as a criticism, that’s pretty irrelevant, call it whatever you want, because truly there are some “critics” that do not understand why does criticism exist to begin with, and they just blindly follow the “rules”, so at some point it feels like they use it as a defense mechanism whenever they do not understand the narrative, they pull their cards to seek refuge - I am here to explain that story-telling methods that were mentioned here were actually invented specifically to improve that “how to convey whatever I want to convey”. All am I saying right now is, that you should not take whatever I am going to write after this as an insult, they are not meant to say “whatever you did is pretty bad and should not exist”, that is not a point of so-called constructive criticism – On the other hand, they are definitely meant to say “every single story that exists should have existed and each one of them has their own value in the world”. Now, I do not mean the objective value, because as I believe, everything is meaningless from an objective standpoint (Nihilism much, I know) – But I am definitely focused on the subjective view-point. “General Audience” is nothing more than a collection of subjective feelings – so it is important to have emphasize on WHAT EXACTLY SHOULD FEEL AT THIS EXACT MOMENT. I am pretty sure, as far as the feelings go, from this server everyone disliked your work more than how they explained, but they tried to remain rational, because what comes after the feelings is whatever is “under the surface” and how well things connect to each other. Yeah, sure, “everyone's a critic nowadays” but in reality most of the people do not care about how well-written the thing is. Funny, there are even people that DEMAND that everyone SHOULD care about the writing (hurr durr Griffith is well-written for some reason, so he did nothing wrong). That’s plain stupid, if you ask me (and even if they were right - Griffith is not even well-written, they are just deluded fans at this point – so yeah, everyone has their idea of what makes something well-written anyway). Everyone will and should rate whoever they deem necessary, if rate at all and hopefully some people will have a sense of value. Everything has its own place. Funnily enough, some people associate the good writing with the emotional states of the characters… Woah, a person can get depressed and do bad deeds… color me impressed… never seen before… such a visionary artistry… you get the point – characters SHOULD feel like humans and that’s default, a necessity, that won’t just turn something into a deep masterpiece.

When it comes to rating, some people also do not realize that they should not judge the monument in an identical way as you would judge an oil painting (meaning, that the genre or the themes or whatever may suddenly alter said “rules” of judgement and some people are so one-note that the do not know that they should adapt). 

Another thing they are forgetting is as to how forgiving and unforgiving they may get while judging something and why exactly. 

-There are some people that are so forgiving that they completely ignore the plot holes or whatever is tarnishing the reputation of the writing as soon as the themes connect… you may ask “why would I care about the reputation of the writing”  - you may care about it, because if the author wanted to tell the message you as to how the things work (be it a psychology or whatever) and for some reason he needed to artificially force the actions out of the character/plot, then how can you trust the message of someone who could not even explain how the things work in HIS OWN world?!

-There are some people that are so unforgiving that they completely stamp the work as “a train-wreck” or just decrease the score with at least a point, if they noticed some flaw in the plot. This is, of course, ridiculous – if the story has tons of elements to stand out in the medium and is very rich in terms of novelties and at the same time well-written in said departments, how can you decrease the score and say that the author is implausible just because of few issues that are otherwise overly compensated?! (this is especially apparent when it comes to mysteries… hell, people may refuse the canon explanation if few things are not convincing and may even start the search of their own answers… again, ridiculous)

With this piece of work, I will try take care of both of these views, as they are inter-connected (writing exists to make as more attached to the context and to enrich the context, duh) and tell you exactly how you failed at conveying whatever you wanted us to feel in your work and also offer a piece of advice as to how to fix said failure – then again, it is going to be just my opinion, whether you will consider it or find your own way or just stay static, that is completely up to you. (There is also a selection of audience, but I won’t talk about it – you should be able to choose your own audience and tweak the story accordingly)

First, I will explain the meaning of STORY-TELLING and the main tools of it (whatever I will remember)

Obviously, it is called STORY-TELLING because you decided to tell the story to someone else, so if you would have done it for yourself, then it would not have been a narrative, which basically means that “story-telling tools” exist just to help you with that.

When God started the creation of the world, he declared: “Let there be a structure” and suddenly he could continue the creation day by day. Said structure had three phases: Build-up, Climax and Resolution. You see, these things are their own phases, because they should not be mixed within each-other and for a reason. At the start, we first focus on understanding whatever is happening to not have questions as to what is happening, for us to not get distracted and be able to focus on the narrative, meanwhile we also get attached to things to the setting and the characters, hence the moment from where we start caring about the things. It goes like this - Establish what there is to establish -> put an event that should affect already established detail -> change said detail (be it a character development or whatever) -> showcase the result of said change, because it is a chain reaction and should affect other established things. Here. it makes perfect sense. Well, everyone has their own ways to alter this idea and still somewhat make everything work - one of the tricks are the use of flashbacks, yes, when one character arc follows the structure I mentioned above, they may meet other character that are in the middle of their character arcs, so the authors need to insert flashbacks to give us what we should know, but that is not happening in the middle of the climax, it is happening in some other in-between scene to not be distracting.

After that, it mostly comes down to what kind of a story you want to write and that usually is a choice between "dramatic" and "fun" - but, no matter what you choose, it is important to have understanding of human nature. For instance, when you are making an action fiction full of warmongers, it is ridiculous for such figures to not get lost in adrenaline and sadism amidst the battle, they are not supposed to turn into softies in mere seconds, considering how sadism and adrenaline tunnel visions your perception and the desires just dictate your mind. So, to turn them into softies, you need to craft very specific environment for the fight and the situation in general - Usogui did that perfectly in Battleship arc, because sadist there not only saw a reflection of his past failure (which triggered his regrets, naturally) in his opponent, but also the bet did not let him to be indulged in adrenaline, rather he started feeling anxious and gradually his psyche managed to completely melt down. Another reason as to why people despise "crybabies" in action stories is because they expect for characters to be exploding with charisma to derive the pleasure of what they are capable to do and will do (remember that if you promise something in a story, you must do it, otherwise it is just a cheap cop-out - so if you have bomb that is supposed to crush the city, but nothing is damaged at the end of the day, that's just underwhelming), so crying or being overly emotional is not accepted in general because it is not fitting - Imagine if One Piece's protagonist was Shinji Ikari. Well, I would say that they are supposed to cry and feel things, but from time to time, otherwise (if screaming, crying and etc is common for a character) it would lose its novelty and value, which would result in desentization and if the audience is desentized, they won't feel what you want them to feel at the given scene.

That last point is the reason why authors tend to balance the tone, so the experience won't feel dry (on the opposite, imagine if the best friend of a character died and said character did not react at all - that is equally bad), but to do so, you need to insert them properly and not just jump around feelings in a speed of light, or else you will get a tonal abomination, which basically translates as "people won't know exactly what to feel". My point being, that when character is not written as likeable, you should not suddenly make her cry, for that is an obvious demand from a reader to care about his or her existence, but it is not fitting, considering they have no reason to care if (s)he is not likeable, they want to see the character indulge in their unlikeable-ness, so crying is out of question, because even in real life, if you despise someone and that certain person suddenly started crying, you would feel like "serves you right" or something similar, rather than just triggering the care button.

That is quite easy to avoid if you want to make them cry or convince the readers to care about them: when writing a character, you can give them all sorts of different situations, but the most important one is to establish the two distinct "modes" of a character - how do they act IN and OUT of conflict? When you want to understand someone, clearly, you should know who they are and what is the best way to get to know someone? Yes, get close to them when they are not in the middle of the conflict. Hopefully the characters won't have a reason to be assholes outside the conflict, though. In addition, many consider "contradictions" as depth, so you will be adding the one of the superficial ones for free. Now these contradictions play the important role in writing, on their own - everyone and anything can serve as a contrast, so that is your trick of constant expansion within the narrative. You won't just sit and think about something new, you will be thinking about the nuances and facets of your own narrative.

Then comes subtlety, which is connected to the contradictions as well, when it comes to the subtlety in terms of the character writing (now that we are focused on characters here, I will ignore the others). Dunno, maybe should I showcase this one with a comparison? Alright, take a stereotypical with - they OBVIOUSLY mean and ugly beings to the core and when you see them that is exactly what comes to mind. It is not artistic by any means - it is predictable and in-your-face and lacks any sense of originality and appeal. Now look at the TV series named Revolutionary Girl Utena - there is a character named Anthy, who is a cute girl, perfect submissive waifu material at the first look, but deep inside she is completely opposite: she is suffering a stockholm' syndrome, has her own familiar, is passive-aggressive and is capable of achieving whatever she wishes by aiming at the weaknesses of her surroundings. Not only does this make her a breath of fresh air and all-around very appealing and interesting, instantly better than any of her counterparts from the witch-hood, but this is also a perfect depiction of how does women's psyche get affected in a masculine men centric's society that which is suppressing femininity as to use them for their own selfish desires  - victims do not turn into angels like they are usually presented, no, they seek coping mechanisms and indulge themselves in an unhealthy behaviour(s). In other words, it is somewhat connected to your themes of freedom.

Talk about your story, let's get to it.

Panel 1 - you decided to start with the presentation of a location, which is good, because we need to know what is happening and where, but anything  is barely visible here and what is even worse, you did not give it a single page, just a small panel.

Panel 2 - you did not bother to continue the presentation of the place, which is important, as the background details are not supposed to be merely decorations, but they are capable of telling us the story behind the place and said context will give more weight to the story and the importance of the actions from the both side. What makes it even worse, it feels as if you started the story from the second chapter, as they are in the middle of a fight and we have no idea why these sides would antagonize each other. On the other hand, facial expressions here are pretty good, but then again, if such simple designs (borderline caricatures) did not EVEN THAT, I would have been worried. Also, the way you put the text makes her sound like "Looks like you are no match for -- HAHAHAHA - Taigiri Pantera", 

Panel 3 - I would say this panel is completely unnecessary, as you already depicted the design of the character and the facial expressions are almost identical, if not the same. Her legs are also getting in the way of the sword and her hand, which hinders the imagination of the reader.

All in all, this scene did not have anything to justify it is own worth for so many pages, but at least we get to know what are they talking about when they say that she ruined several dojos and that scene was good, considering how a comment about the manners subtly hints at the theme of “Freedom vs. Order” and the imperfection of said order.

In the next scene, it is rather weird that she actually acts like a spoiled brat when she starts to go against her upbringing out-of-nowhere, with no explanation whatsoever as to why would she do that, so here is a good room to give a scene. She does say “because you forced me to do it” but that is not how psychology works - People get conditioned into believing whatever, it gets in their mind and they get brainwashed if they won’t be aware of contradictions, so you need a scene in which she starts realizing them and, of course, you also need to showcase motivations, benefits of being a slave or free - and give a dilemma, as to which one would she choose and why exactly. Talk about explanations, you also have not explained as to why would she get so strong to be all of these dojos, so that also feels out-of-nowhere and undeserved when she wins the climactic battle - in that battle, she also lost her nonchalant attitude when instead she started screaming right away, you could have saved that attitude up until she would get hit, and get serious alongside her opponent. When her opponent smirked, there you could have made both of them smirk, because both of them wanted to fight… mindless drone?! What era is this, they have science-fiction there?!

So suddenly they were friends, huh?! Feels weird when MC starts crying and feelings get mixed, because we do not know what to focus on, a fight or just wonder why would she be crying here? But then you place flashbacks of them being childhood friends - this won’t suddenly add weight, because not only it has a focus for half the page, it is also too vague to the point of it being weird that such thing could have been forgotten - I mean, such thing would be remembered (“we were friends once” or something, you can’t forget that”, but you could have given some specific dialogue that actually could have been forgotten and worth remembering by the opponent. Also, when you are trying to shatter a pride, that is not so easy. Sword broke. Nothing special. Pride is deeply connected to self-worth and self-esteem and people will always desperately hang on it. There should be at least a scene in which the opponent will blame the luck, get another sword broken and leave dumbfounded.

“I never realized what I have done until now” what? What did Komodo do to deserve the title of a piece of shit? I do not see a reason. If anything, Taigiri is the one worthy of that title, edgy child who found out what freedom meant, deluded herself into believing that it is possible to achieve it and went to ruin the order of things while not understanding the importance of order, which is a fundamental part of maintaining the peace in the world. So, how did Taigiri prove that concept just by swinging a sword? If nothing was proven, why did Komodo change the deeply conditioned mind for no reason at all - basically, neither psychology nor philosophy makes sense in your piece of fiction… and… “I am dropping”, huh? Why?! That move not only ruins any artistry (when you develop character into the identical persona to the main characters, it becomes extremely easy to know just what the author is trying to PREACH by writing a story), but you also miss a great opportunity to explore another facet of freedom and give some nuance to the story, by giving Komodo his own agenda and the way of doing things - changing the system from within. Would have been a good mirror to Taigiri and would not have thrown out of the window everything that Komodo achieved throughout his life. Oh, and you would also get rid of the unneeded and unintentional conditioning of Komodo - by that, I mean that getting beaten and becoming a follow of Taigiri could be interpreted as Komodo being enslaved to Taigiri’s charisma, so the freedom is again very questionable.

Now to fix the structural problem of it, I would have added a page as a prologue - panels that showcase the growth of their friendship, the specific dialogue that would be recalled in the finale of their battle and how they lost said friendship along the way. This will not only give the reason for someone to get attached to the characters, but we will also know for sure exactly what the whole chapter is going to be about and what should the readers focus on. Perhaps, the prologue I mentioned could be presented as a dream and in the next page she would wake up and well, you also need a scene, where the main character is doing something that would not have been accessible if she stayed to dojo and in that exact scene you would also need to explain why she would go destroying the dojos instead of doing whatever she was doing beforehand, so here is that. Because right now it seems to me that she just wanted to randomly wreck things and that does not seem plausible.