User blog comment:Vinnnn/Character Critiques, Tips, and Hints/@comment-3991308-20150727063921/@comment-33209858-20150730073429

Hey there C: I'd be more than happy to help!

Starting with Airmid and which direction you'd like her to go in, well, I'd say feel free to delve much deeper into her personal thoughts and maybe even her backstory. Her personality would offer a lot to a fanfic that centered around character development, whether that comes from a quest/avdenture or just late-night "Who am I" wonderings. Since Airmid is an intellectual, I would love to see how she treats the Royal vs Rebel debate with her logical mindset

As for her relationships, I would love, love, love to see more on her relationship with Death. From her relationship section, Airmid and Death are super close, so I'm wondering just how that make Airmid feel about her destiny, seeing as how the person who she loves so much is destined to be the one who kills her. If you're focusing on making Airmid a main focus in a fic, pehaps an angst-related fic about her and her godfather would be some really good character development. And it might even make or break her relationship with Death, depending on how you want to write it out

I also noticed that Airmid had siblings. Perhaps more on them? They're only mentioned once, so I'm guessing they don't play that big of a part in Arimid's life, but I am curious as to who they are, and why Death didn't raise them as well along with Airmid

Well, that's all the ideas I have for now. Hopefully some of them are decent, if not, just let me know and I'll come up with some more! But for now, I'll start my critique on Branches~

I like how you tied both Avian and Icarus's diaries into the fic by making them the first two chapters. It really helped set the overall tone of the story, as well as helped set up a good amount of exposition without entirely solving the conflict, either. Something that I particularly enjoyed about Branches was that a couple of the chapters focused on Mac and Marlene and their relationship with each other. Something I find to be really interesting is that Mac and Marl could totally serve as foils for Icarus and Avian - Even if it's not intended, it was something that I noticed and thought, "Wow, that's clever"

I also liked the dynamic shown between Icarus and his father, and how Icarus was totally standing up for his favorite, Marlinchen - That being Avian, of course. And I like how you paralleled Iccy and Mac's conversation with Marlene and Avian's. I like how one parent is convincing his kid to give up, while the other parent is telling her kid to fight for it. It was very interesting to see, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it affects both Avian and Icarus

Something that sort of threw me off was how chapter six was written in 2nd person. The rest of the story, excluding the first two chapters/diaries, were written in 3rd person. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I was curious as to why it suddenly shifted to being 2nd person. It was interesting to see the the new POV, but I did feel like it could have been written in 3rd person as well, and still have kept its tone and meaning. Still, I did feel like the sixth chapter was probably the most powerful, as we got to see just exactly what Marlene went through and how she was feeling through it all. The POV of each character was a little short, but it still conveyed what it needed to, so that was really nice to see

Also, the demon that made an appearance in the last few lines totally reminded me of Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls and I am more than excited to see how he ties into the story, and how he obviously had affected it before also i may or may not have read his lines in bill's voice sorry not sorry

Overall, I really enjoy reading Branches. It's nicely paced and each chapter ends with you making the reader want more. Plus, it's really good development for Avian and Icarus in particular, but I thought it was good to see a bit of Mac and Marlene's thoughts and perspectives about it as well. I say keep up the good work! ^^