Gears: Coby and Flynn's Debut!

[Jonas]

Finally finished! I hope you all enjoy the final (and hopefulyl best) incarnation of Coby and Flynn, two characters that have taken far too long to get from my head to the page. The .doc file is included for Virmir's beneft, but I'd prefer if anyone else used the pdf version.

Note: The second Debut file (the 99.5 KB one) is an edited version that has a reduced number of footnotes.

[Selden]

I liked it.  Coby is a very amusing and consistent character, and easily steals the show from Flynn - but he deserves it.  He's a fox. 

[Raf_Cian]

It was a very enjoyable read. The flow in particular was very good. Elaborated just enough details without dragging into monolog. The characters where nice as well. The wizard and his familiar aspect reminded me of another book I read once.

[Jonas]

The footnotes were inspired by the Bartimaeus trilogy by Johnathan Stroud. I heartily recommend the series to anyone who enjoys fantasy.

[Tvorsk]

I guess I don't have anything original to say, but:
I like the story a lot. It flows smoothly, both in plot and in narration style.
Coby is amusing, cute, with a dash of egocentrism - yep, a red fox all right.
As of Flynn, he follows the best tradition of a Spark, at least the kid-friendly ones.
And their quarreling between the two protagonists...well, best tradition of literature and movie industry, the rare kind of trope that's usually still funny (and very funny in here).

The "... and occasional odd bit of welding" passage reminded me of  sounds in cartoons when a mad contraption is built offscreen or inside a cloud of dust.
Alcoholic dragon is a new, at least to me. Amusing, and surprisingly fitting.

Hope you plan to write more about them two.

[Jonas]

Hope you plan to write more about them two.

I do! I really enjoy these characters and want to write more about them. Also:

As of Flynn, he follows the best tradition of a Spark, at least the kid-friendly ones.

What does this mean?

[Tvorsk]

Girl Genius is a well-known (and quite funny) webcomic set in a steampunkish world, involving, among other things, people with a talent for mad science (known as Sparks), which usually comes with the whole standard set of eccentric (but expected) behaviors. The plot is way darker than most of your works, and the general rating is one step above PG.
What I meant by that quote would be better just said as "And he's definitely giving the right impression for a (slightly) mad scientist... despite being a wizard.", but I read your post right after my daily webcomic dose, so kinda put in a reference without thinking.
Didn't mean to insinuate anything, sorry.

[Virmir]

Great character interaction! Really enjoyed the squabbling between the two. The setting is fun and interesting as well.

The footnotes were largely an entertaining addition, though honestly I think you go a bit too far with some of them. You can probably safely work half of them into the body of the text and save the rest for the more more out-there footnote-ish asides (and quips). Honestly with so many in such a short work it kinda feels like you just found out how to do footnotes in Word and are excitedly playing around with them.

The blo... the blo... the red stuff described here is done so in a manner with makes me veeeery queasy (a minor, and therefore believable injury... *twitch* *twitch*)

Getting down to the plot... well I didn't really see much there, unfortunately. It's very much a "debut" as you title it, as it reads very much like chapter 1 of a book. Which is okay... assuming there's more.   The strong character interaction is entertaining enough to get me interested in reading more, but no real conflict has arisen yet.

In short: great start! Looking to reading (and very much expecting) more!

[Pontos]

Nice introduction for the characters! This one is a much more simpler and casual start for a story compared with the first draft you wrote before (With the weird guy showing up right when Coby and Flynn were about to get groceries), which works better for a long story since it doesn't jump straight into a complex plot and lets the reader familiarize (pun intended) with the characters.

Regarding the removed footnotes, did you remove them altogether or added them to the actual story? (I didn't compare both versions, so i can't say).
Unless they were really unimportant, fitting them into the story would be the best action.

[Jonas]

All but two of the removed footnotes were simply added to the main story. The two that I eliminated outright didn't integrate well in their section of story and weren't interesting enough to justify rearranging things.