Young Writers Society

Heya manilla,

Shady here with a quick review for you this fine review day, courtesy of the blue team! Let's get started...

First of all, I think your format for this was really powerful, and really lent itself to the message. I'm a bit confused as to what the numbers themselves meant, but there was a clear progression to the message, and I think the bold text followed by some exposition of what that means under each one was just a really good stylistic choice to get your message across.

I'm not sure that I understand what the "framing love as greed was better" under 301-400 but that could just be a me-thing, just pointing it out in case it might not be clear to everyone and might be something you want to take another look at if you go through to edit this.

I'm honestly not sure what else to say, so sorry if this isn't the most helpful review ever. I mean clearly this isn't a poem -- but it almost seems closer to that than a short story? It's just a fascinating work with a fascinating format, but it is a really clear, succinct, to-the-point message and you did an excellent job with crafting it.

Keep writing!

~Shady

Hey Manilla!

I love the visual style of this, it makes it so interesting! I think it definitely enhances the content. It reminds me of an index or a filing system. It's pretty hard to express vast numbers of things in few words and because of the way you've framed the content it feels like there is a vastness and complexity behind it. The variety of punctuation, sentence length and the use of bold all add to it.

I like the progression of it as well. 1-300 are all fairly vague and uncertain, kind of like a daydream, but 301-400 feels like those daydreams suddenly take reality. The way 'understanding society' translates straight to the reactions of a parent makes it seem very personal as well.

I'm not entirely certain who is referred to when you mention 'them'. It might be people who have been persecuted, or it might be past crushes. Or it might be both, I'm not sure.

The ending works pretty well, it's okay as is, but it doesn't quite feel as personal as the rest of it. I think because the path less taken is a fairly common reference, it seems to lack that introspection within the rest of the piece.

I really like this. You've done really well to create a sense of emotion and complexity, and to frame it in such a visually interesting way. Nice work! Thank you for posting =]