(I don't have the time to look at your other stories, sorry - I think Zing has done a great job commenting them up, though.)

You've definitely solved the problem of what the characters look like - a simple 'anthropormorphic' or 'two-legged' has worked wonders, so good job there. (Although as the writer of Agent Mmrrowl, I have to convey his disappointment that there's not going to be an actual crow for him to chase.) I think the characters' motivations come through nice and clear, and chopping the previous Corvus-considered-his-decision back to one sentence worked nicely to preserve the surprise 'twist'. (As you've just demonstrated, one-sentence paragraphs aren't something to be afraid of! In the right place, they're brilliant.)

You've also nicely avoided the 'talking heads' problem; your characters interact with their environment and with each other all the time. I actually can't see any overall issues with the story, just specific mistakes that you'd want to look at. Like, the singular of hooves is hoof. ;) And this paragraph:

“Forgive me, but I object to that,” the Pegasus retorted, shaking his head. He then had a stern look on his face as he spoke. “I fear that you may do something reckless and endanger yourself.”

I think you can probably spot what's tripping me up here, right? 'He then had' makes it sound like the stern look just sort of... happened to Cornelius. How did it get there? I'd probably go with 'A stern look appeared on his face', or 'formed on his face', to keep the flow of time going; but you could also just drop the 'then' entirely. 'He had a stern look on his face when he spoke again', perhaps (or 'When he spoke again/continued, he had a stern look on his face'). There's lots of ways you could do it, but the one you have is pretty clumsy. (I'm guessing you originally wrote '... the Pegasus retorted. He had a stern...', and then edited the headshake in and added the 'then'? Good instincts, but you missed the mark on that one.)

Anyway: very much improved. Nice one.

hS

Hey, Hanafuda.

As someone who's been active on the Discord, I do recognize you, and know you've been pretty active there since joining the PPC. I...would encourage you, and everyone else who's almost exclusively a Discord PPCer, to come over here now and then, though I do understand some people prefer one format over the other. Still, y'know, I'm not going to not encourage the whole community to at least occasionally post in the same place. Heck, maybe RP threads could work as a draw--last I checked, there were 2-3 Discord RP channels, with a good amount of activity, and we've had a ton of RPs on the Board over the years. (They're also neat because I'm most cases you don't need Permission to join!)

Anyway. Slight tangent aside...Silv is right. This is really (becoming) much more of a beta situation. And that's perfectly fine! You're allowed, even encouraged, to ask for Permission piece betas! It just normally...comes with that phrasing, or switches to it.

At any rate: hS also makes some good points. It looks like you've deleted the first doc or restricted access, so I have no idea what the edited version looked/looks like, but I did glance at the original yesterday. I also liked the Corvus-Cornelius dynamic; it got perhaps a little less clear toward the end, but I remember laughing a bit near the beginning.

He's also right about SPaG: your spelling is great--if there were any typos, they didn't jump out at me in any of your pieces, though I admittedly go over pieces much more thoroughly when my Hat (or just beta cap) is on versus when it's off. Your punctuation, on the other hand, needs work when dialogue is involved. This is especially apparent in your narrative Xmas piece. What you want is one punctuation mark inside the closing quotation mark; what you have in many places is either a punctuation mark outside the closing quotation mark or one inside and a different one outside.

(Some quick examples for clarity:

"Really, it's no trouble!", he said. <-is wrong.

"Really, it's no trouble!" he said. <-is correct.

"Really, it's no trouble," he said. <-is also correct.

"Really, it's no trouble", he said. <-is wrong.)

This rule holds true even if what's inside the quotation marks is written rather than spoken (although it could also be formatted as italics with no quotation marks, to symbolize writing).

What else did I want to say...ah. A couple of things.

Firstly, a little bit more on the second snippets you provided. The letter works nicely; it's a bit untraditional as a piece on its own, though, to be fair, it both really does work to show character and writing ability (and you've also provided dialogue+narration style pieces, so we aren't left wondering if you can do that as well) and seems to be a kind of extra for the second snippet. Nicely done there.

For the second snippet...well, I've mentioned the punctuation already. Apart from that, I think the story flow is reasonably good, but there's something I can't put my finger on that could be improved (which I know is pretty unhelpful. Sorry! Like I either said or implied earlier, I've done a quick read rather than a very thorough one in this case. Someone doing a proper beta job could tell you more). It might be something in the wording around introducing Vanille...? Not sure.

Which brings me to: for a Permission piece, which I'm assuming you mean this to be...I'm not saying using other characters is forbidden, but I think I might prefer a piece where Corvus is a bit more prominent if you're going with him as one of your Permission agents. As it is, with only this piece to go on we don't have a clue how he knows Gizmo, or even if he does; I didn't catch this at first because I remember seeing them interacting in RP format, but with only this piece to go on? The obvious implication is that they know each other well enough for this to happen, but that could mean anything from "I'm your best friend and found your Santa letter and decided to do something to make you happy because I don't want you to feel so homesick" to "I'm an acquaintance who stumbled upon your letter and decided to play Secret Santa on a whim."

But yeah. Put it this way: as a Permission piece, if your agents are Corvus and Cornelius, I'd advise using something where one of them appears more than just showing up at the end. You're trying to showcase the two of them; any other characters are making cameos/appearing as a bonus. These two should be the stars of these pieces.

As a regular interlude, especially if you've already put up something about Gizmo and Corvus or will soon after, you've got something solid. Add a little betaing and it'll work great.

One final thing: hS has another good point, and I want to state it a little more clearly. While we aren't going to pitch a fit if you go a little off book with your request (see: I'd be okay with a second Permission piece that's missing one of the agents, so long as the one who is there is very present), you do need to provide more components. Specifically, bios for your agents and a badfic to take on, unless they aren't in an Action department. hS' comments are actually a perfect illustration of one of the reasons why bios are so important: a reader who has never encountered your characters before has no way of knowing how and why agents identified as a crow and a Pegasus have hands! With a physical description and a continuum of origin, that confusion is eliminated. Personally, I don't think I've seen Cornelius before, so no clue there; Corvus I believe is from the same place as Gizmo, which I remember as being either Kingdom Hearts or a related canon? So he's a humanoid crow like Gizmo is a humanoid macaw?

That's one example, but bios are helpful in a lot of ways. Essentially, they tell us who your agents are, what they're meant to be like, where they're from, and what department they're in (can't remember if that was present in the first doc, though I do remember they were getting missions and weren't Floaters--possibly DMS, since they were going to assist on a mission with a Sue?) They're also helpful for gauging if your characters are well-rounded or have anything to them that really won't fit with the PPC, as well as how well your writing of them matches up to how you intend them to be (which can shift! But it's nice to see if there's an intentions vs reality gap, so we can help you sort that out).

Essentially: it's not a bad beginning, Fuda, but this is an incomplete Permission request. My recommendation is to take some time to put together the bios and find a badfic you want to mission (assuming your intention is to write missions), and write or choose a second piece that showcases one or both of your Permission agents more. (You can change which ones you're using in your request, by the way, though you do have a pretty nice dynamic going with Corvus and Cornelius. I just don't want you to think that you're locked into using them.) Once you have that, and/or in the process, get a beta or two via Discord, Board, or both, and then put it all up together as a Permission request (don't forget to acknowledge your betas!) (Also, a note on betas: they're encouraged even for Permission requests--especially for them!--because when writing missions and interludes, ideally you'll be working with betas. Betas are great: they help you polish your writing and your stories, and sometimes point out things you don't see on your own that spark amazing changes. Using a beta or several on a Permission request is both good in general and shows us that you can work with them and take advice/concrit. Also, depending on who they are, they may have already gotten Permission or seen/betaed successful requests, so...useful resource!

(You may have already heard this; I'm including it both in case you haven't/as a reminder, and for anyone else who might be reading this and wondering why we promote using betas for Permission requests.)

And I think that's it. Long, I know; hopefully you find it helpful.

Keep going, Hanafuda. You're very close; take a bit of time to put together a full, polished request, and it looks like you'll have it!

~Z

Maybe you should... wait a bit? It's not particularly, uh, expected, for someone to essentially ask for Permission twice in quick succession. The PGs have lives too, and you can't really expect for them to set aside time for you. It's the same reason why the prompts are only supposed to be 400-800 words, and why the bios are important: it gives the PGs enough information to tell if you understand how to write well, and that your characters are good, without them having to go through too much.

If you were going to post in quick succession like this, then maybe a beta is what you should have asked for, rather then going straight for permission.