Subject: Some things to think about:
Author:
Posted on: 2019-08-07 13:07:00 UTC

Do birds actually get into a fetal position, and what does this look like? (I’m not acquainted with Sonic the Hedgehog and can only guess that the animals are anthropomorphized so much that they totally would do that; it would still be nice to get a description that doesn’t depend on me imagining a human being curled up in a fetal position, but actually being a macaw. To keep this in Gizmo’s POV, it should actually be a description of how exactly Gizmo moves to get into that position.) Alternatively, what might an actually sentient macaw do in a situation where a human would curl up in a fetal position?

Why does the man who is later revealed to be Makes-Things immediately refer to Gizmo as a "kid"? Does Gizmo look like a macaw poult? Huh, unlike my dictionary, MS Word spell-check doesn’t know the word "poult"? I wonder whether I picked the right word and whether Makes-Things would know it (the retranslations of "biddy", "chick" and "fledgling" look too ambiguous to me). Makes-Things saying, "Oh, no, not another─ what's this poult [or some applicable synonym thereof] doing here?" might clarify the situation. On the other hand, if you flesh this out, Makes-Things trying to be comforting without realizing Gizmo’s young age may add some tension and genuine misunderstandings.

Makes-Things yelling at his co-workers after trying to be friendly and comforting to an "intruder" feels out of character even in the context of this story alone. When I think about his background, I remember that in TOS he was afraid of agents, or at least of assassins. He may have overcome this and may yell at agents who repeatedly break their gadgets, but did being the First and Senior Technician really get to him so much that he would yell at colleagues? If this were a Permission prompt and I were wearing the PG hat, I would ask you to point me to appearances of Makes-Things which imply he would do this. IMO he would just tell them to get back to work in a much calmer tone, and wouldn’t threat them with his mood getting worse.

Having an "omniscient narrator" who knows every characters thoughts and motivations is okay although a bit old-fashioned when done right. Alas, most of this story looks like it is in "third person limited", where the narrator only knows what one character – in this case Gizmo – knows. Thus, Makes-Things realizing that he needed to comfort Gizmo and later Makes-Things doing his best to calm down the bird stick out as sudden head-hopping. Changing the narrative form/POV whenever it’s convenient is a badfic trait frowned upon. The advanced art of storytelling includes conveying what’s going on while only showing one character’s tainted impression. (I admit that there may be readers who need everything spelled out and, if not told otherwise, might perceive Makes-Things as evil just because Gizmo is afraid of him.) The change of POV near the end, when Gizmo has left, is okay, but in a longer story it would warrant the start of a new chapter with a new POV character.

"Past perfect" is a tense you should use when you narrate in past tense, but refer to something that happened before what is actually narrated. Example: He just met him, so he wasn't sure if he was a truly good person should read "He had just met him, so he wasn't sure if he was a truly good person”, because Gizmo meeting Makes-Things had happened a bit further in the past than Gizmo thinking about whether he could trust Makes-Things. Your first paragraph confuses me so much that I can’t even be sure what the intended time-flow is and which parts thus should be in past perfect.

Now, all these many words may look like you’re doing everything wrong, but hey, your draft looked promising enough for me to invest all this time when I’m a slow writer in this foreign language, so you are probably on a good way.

HG

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