March 25th 2024
—— critique for @essayist

Hi Finley! It only takes a few paragraphs for me to tell that this is a very poignant (and well-written) piece. Since you asked for general critique, I’ll try to stick to that. However, I did have a few line-by-line suggestions that I’ll share first.

“Before chaos threw it’s cape,
I used to wear my own. “
– Chaim

“It’s” there doesn’t need the apostrophe. I just want to say, though, that I loved the way the cape symbolism was apparent from the very beginning of this piece. It’s very intriguing.

Confining us in a room with thousands, controlling our minds and our every action; robbed all our chances.

I understood upon a second read that two things listed in the beginning “robbed all our chances,” but it did confuse me at first. This is just personal opinion, but you could consider changing this to “and robbing us of all our chances,” to fit the list of three.

Giving no chance to say goodbye to the life we’d always known, we bore witness to all our overwhelming emotions.

This is also a little confusing, and I’m not sure if the grammar is entirely correct.

“Mama may allow us to walk in the field !”. So naive, Chaim was, as if Mama would let us step foot outside.

There’s a little punctuation mishap after the quotation. Also, the “naive” part seems a bit repetitive. Is that intentional?

Ahh I love this piece! The imagery is beautiful, and all the symbolism is so well-done. I agree with you, the chemistry between your main characters is really good. However, I felt like in some places it could’ve benefited from being a little less vague. I couldn’t really tell until the author’s note that they were siblings (and not love interests oop-), and the last few paragraphs seemed a little confusing to me. Overall though, I really loved it. It’s like word cake and it was delicious. (Excellent job with word choice, can you tell it was my favorite part?) Thank you so much for letting me critique this piece. I hope any of these tips were helpful. <3