>>18 The things people say are often not what they really mean, and the things they mean are not always the reality. In this case, "I want children because I'm getting old," is usually a very incomplete way of saying that the woman either already wanted a child for other reasons and is especially desperate now because age is looming; or she feels like because she's gotten old there's nothing left for her to do but settle down and become a mother. In both cases, the fact that she's getting old is a part of her motivation, but it's not the full story. It's fine for Medic herself to have an misplaced or incomplete understanding of own motivation, but as an author it's usually helpful to know what's really going on in their character's heads. >>22 That's entirely up to you. Are you confident enough in your ability to pull things back together after a rough start, or do you think it would work better if you started again? I will point out that if you don't rewrite at least the first chapter, you're probably going to have a lot of readers give up on you before you get to the third chapter. And, OP, I'd like to second the last bit of >>20. I admire your attitude. This is a sizeable heap of criticism, even by TF2chan's standards, and I'm very impressed with how gracious and mature you're being. It's wonderful that you're so ready to work with critiques. Even though I haven't got a lot of nice things to say about this particular story, I have no doubt at all that if you keep going with this mentality you will develop into a fantastic writer. >>23 Is that the one where Heavy joins the pudding club with aliens? That was a gem if I ever read one, and a fantastic workout for the diaphragm. Also, somebody or several somebodies are not saging when they should, so I'll be an old stick and say that if you're not posting a new chapter or some other very important update that all the readers aught to see, type the word "sage," in the email field so that the thread doesn't get bumped.