I would like to reference https://itch.io/post/15361620 which I think got a lot of my problems, so I'm going to focus a bit more on some of my specific problems, outside of the way the prose puts the other parts of the con in the background.
This could just be me, but these people do not seem like friends, especially if they're going to be rooming together? Swift doesn't know what Osgood looks like, how old he is, or even is sexuality/orientation. He and Blake have a good conversation at the start before the rave, but every single moment after that is mostly them talking about sex, while Blake is catty, and Osgood is a little oblivious or grossed out. They go to the rave together and then immediately split up. I'm not even sure how Osgood is friends with them all in the first place all things considered, and Swift bails after losing one friend without even bothering to tell the other.
Which followup, these people exist, but I'm not sure how they got to where they are. Osgood, certainly, but Diesel is the one that stands out. DL conservative trucker who is a union man and also a confederate is absolutely 100% a type of guy that exists, and he is not hard to find on grindr pretty much anywhere south of the mason-dixon line. But if Diesel is scoffing about the puphood/fursuiters in public, how the hell did he make it to the furcon, with a room, at the rave. Like the aura of a solid 60% of the average furry rave attendees should have struck him dead alone. I could certainly see this kind of guy lurking at the edges to pick up people who don't know or have low standards, but it feels unrealistic that he's that deep when the average furry draws his disgust.
Personally, and this isn't a criticism, just a gripe I have: As someone who is nonbinary I'm not sure how I feel about Blake but it definitely isn't good. The way they're described as extremely promiscuous, and also a goblin and gremlin ("Like a small gremlin child in a ball pit made of meat"), with not much else besides this air of "knowing better" and hitting Swift with the ojou sama laugh every time he fucks up, they just kinda come off to me as more of a caricature, they're Nonbinary, the Third Gender. But I feel like mileage may vary for other people, that's just me. I do like that you gave them a name that isn't an easy gender neutral copout.
Swift feels born yesterday in the weirdest ways. I know in part that he's just new to furcon, but his naivete extends to all aspects of his life, which feels at odds with who he is at the very start. We get this little mention about how he's a cartoon animal, he doesn't know how everyone else can't see it, and how he's a dude who likes dudes, but not necessarily in a cis way. This opens up an idea of him being a sort of nonbinary therian that is just... never followed up on, and while he uses the term incorrectly, he does bring up things like emotional labor and gender performance. Then at the con he's totally out of the loop on pretty much everything. Even if this is all stuff he hasn't absorbed by osmosis, you would have thought in the modern day he could have at least looked some of this stuff up? The douching scene, of all things, is a great example of this. His idea of cleaning himself is to just... hope for the best and I get part of it is to have him face down ass up for the bit with Osgood, but like. C'mon dude, just google it, my god. This also is weird with him wanting the Amicus Dildo, I assume to put to use. That thing isn't exactly small, once again he's confident in being a bottom but has never done any sort of hole exploration?
This extends to the pulse shooting, which is one of the really big problems I have. I am painfully aware of the shooting, its scale, and now the people and politicians who wish to see us systematically killed and erased from history. I'm lucky enough to live in a relatively progressive state, but I still know who all of these bastards are. on the other side of the country, so how the hell does Swift not??? (As an aside, I do feel compelled to bring up that missouri does have some really good queer spaces, especially in St. Louis and Kansas City, though that's neither here nor there.) Swift takes part in this act of rebellion against a literal coverup, but instead of being about the community, we really just get this focus on Hammer. We get blasted by Swift's blushing bottom face while Hammer explains to us one of the greatest modern gay tragedies. It just gets dangerously close to the gay furry equivalent of John Green Fault in Our Stars "We kissed in the anne frank house and everyone clapped." complete with Hammer taking a quick break from distracting the cop (with a just completely incorrect definition of intersectionality?) to make a "call me" gesture at Swift. I think I understand what the scene was trying to go for, and I'm not opposed to having politics, even real life ones, in fvns, quite the opposite, but the execution feels in poor taste, and leaves a bad impression overall.
My other big problem is Osgood. I'm not upset that narratively there's a character who is a nice guy pickme type who turns out to be an actual Nice Guy Incel, or even that it's Osgood, though there's definitely something else to say about the kind of person that Swift is, considering he's hanging out (and then hooking up with) Osgood out of pity, but becomes indignant when he finds out that Osgood was looking down on him as well. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANTED TO GET INTO. Before this happens Osgood and Swift hang out and go to a panel on retro arcade machines. There's a line that reads "I can't say I care much about the topic, but his enthusiasm for it is magnetic. Osgood is enraptured, which I guess checks out. This seems like a neurodivergence hotspot." So like, did you use the word neurodivergence because if you said autistic it would sound like a slur? Neurodivergent people include Bipolar Disorder, Dyslexia, Schizophrenia, face blindness, OCD, etc., but really what you mean is this seems like a hotspot for people who have special interests, commonly associated with Autism and ADHD, or the nicknamed combo for both, AuDHD. Neurodivergent isn't a shorthand for that, or an acceptable substitute that makes that kind of statement less weird. To be honest, I don't even know if I would have cared that much if you just said special interest! There has got to be a better way to write that. And that just combines with the extremely common autistic ableism problem of infantilizing autistic people, including in sexlessness. Swift assumes, incorrectly, that Osgood is ace/aro, and we find out he's wearing a sweater (which we get a full scene of Swift dunking on him for, comparing him to a walmart family photo, or the example photo you get in a frame you're supposed to throw away) made by his mom. These scenes where we the viewer are supposed to go "aww cute" and I get that he's supposed to be pathetic but it doesn't feel endearing, it just feels mean. And no, I don't mean the sexy mean, I mean it ends up treating Osgood with the same disdain he ends up having for Swift's proclivities. And because of all the other "that's just not what that word means" moments in the game, it doesn't feel like it's supposed to be commentary or a faux pas on Swift's part, but just a gross oversight on the authors' part. Maybe it's easy to fall into that trap, because you already know what kind of person Osgood is, so it's easier to justify this when you have the foresight that he's a dipshit incel.
I really want to like the vn, I think it's got an amazing premise, with the potential to show a lot of love to the community. The music is charming, the UI is creative (i love the little noises), and of course phwog's art is PHENOMENAL as always. The scene where Swift thinks he's being clocked in a waffle house when really the waitress is aghast at the confederate flag is so good. When Diesel goes from being his fursona back to a human, because he's not one of us, that's really powerful imagery. But it struggles to know what it wants to be about, and the prose is often hampered by every other line feeling like it's trying to be a hit post on bluesky, or injoke references that make no sense without a few more layers of context. The characters are animated but the rantsona look about such a heavy subject followed almost immediately by horny bottom blushing is... hard to keep up with. It's a strong concept that ultimately gets away from itself, and fails to pick a direction that works. To the people it resonated with, I hope your next con is a lot better than Swift's.