Thanks for the crit, I really appreciate the line edits and your thoughts on my story. Cheers!

But focus alludes me. '

instead, it's 'eludes,'  you'd have gotten on your own of course, still just pointing it out.

Your grammar is good, vocabulary stellar. Your turns or phrases are almost on a lightly poetic level, which I thoroughly enjoy.

We used to be liberators. Now, we are rulers.  - maybe, making this one sentence might improve flow.

'They want me dead.' - they 'wish' me dead maintains the slightly poetic flow

 I call her that because she can’t stop me.  - Using cannot instead fee a tiny bit stronger, more impactful.

'If ever Zu has to dirty his hands, then I will know that the world is lost.' - In the context of what follows and what precedes, I think this should be stated in past tense, as his hands are already dirtied by violence at that point.

 'By the sluggish speed of the tear crawling down the sides of my face.' - should be tears, one for each side of the face, I assume.

 'Even the moral center of our liberation, our canary inside the shadows, has decided that

> Hey again! I had a great time with this piece.

Hello! Glad to hear. It's always good to know if I'm doing something right lol

> The hook works well. But I love the second paragraph even more.

Good point. Time to cut. 

> General

Appreciate the notes here. I'll look into the changes. Especially...

> Was I meant to think that Sasha had some means of saving Zu? 

Yeah, you're right. It doesn't feel urgent if she can't do anything anyways. I'll add it in.

> Intrigue

Yeah, I took the advice last time and went less is more. Glad to know that its well received.

> Always cool to see a piece develop live-action.

Thanks for your help developing it! Appreciate the crits

Hey again! I had a great time with this piece.  

**General**

The hook works well.  
  
But I love the second paragraph even more. Juxtaposition of the finely crafted dress and Sasha's accident is shocking and got me to laugh. I get the sense that this character doesn't entirely buy into her own status. Everyone shits when they die, even royalty. Sasha carries an authenticity that sticks out from the airs and the forced applause of the council. "Errant" sticks out to me, and it might be worth checking out some alternatives.  
  
> I have never in my life worn anything as extravagant.  
  
Is this the first time she's wearing the dress? Why today? I didn't get the sense that this occasion was special, excepting the assassination.  
  
> A dozen pair of eyes peer at me. My council encircles me, watching with curiosity as I squirm on the ground.  
  
Good stuff. Council seems alien/bug-like in this moment.  
  
> Their allegiance is like the waves, formed by the tide and for the tide. As

I really appreciate the crit and all the questions you had. There's definitely a balance between what I want to reveal rn and what I want the reader to mull over as we get through the story.

> I personally found the suspense/tension stilted by the fact that you had to keep interjecting explanations.

That's fair. I can look to mix things around and see if we can sustain the tension better.

> The short blurb at the top confuses me more than contributes to the story. 

Yeah, I can cut that.

> If this is her coronation (which I assumed bc she’s wearing her dress), then why does she say that in a week’s time she’ll receive her crown?

Maybe I'll call it a pre-coronation instead. It's more of a party in which she goes through some trial to prove that she's strong enough to be queen (even though she thought they weren't going to do the trial at all)

>  OH, is Alessandra not actually a physical person there but is just inside Sasha’s head, a second entity sharing her body??

Yep! She's th

**Here are some things I’m confused about even after reading it a couple times…** you may be fine or may have intended some of this to be confusing or something that the reader figures out along the way, but I’m listing my thoughts here in case there were things that you DIDN’T mean to leave so ambiguous.

•	By the end of my first readthrough I was a little confused by the council and the arrangement of the “liberators” – who was who and why were they there and so forth. When Sasha says that in the mural her friends are “reaching towards an emerging sun” and then says that she’s in the middle of the mural, do you mean that she’s the emerging sun? That seems like a super important point that doesn’t return in the rest of the piece. And, are the council the other liberators? Seems weird that they’re trying to kill their “sun”.

•	If this is her coronation (which I assumed bc she’s wearing her dress), then why does she say that in a week’s time she’ll receive her crown? Isn’t a coronation

Hello -- First review for r/DestructiveReaders! My explanations might be kind of clunky since I am not very practiced in providing critique but I hope that despite my rambling some of this is helpful. I think I have to break this up into two comments.  
  
**Thoughts (First Pass):**  
•	Overall I like the tone of this piece, the details you’ve included, the world you’re building. I don’t entirely understand what’s going on in this scene but maybe that’ll become clearer on the second read.   
•	Some of your descriptions, you don’t need all the words…I’m not sure how to properly explain it, but from your first page: “the dress’ light silk” could just be “the light silk” since we know you’re describing the dress; “a dozen pairs of eyes peer at me” could just be “a dozen/dozens of eyes” since naturally human eyes come in pairs—the added detail of “pairs” is only useful to describe if it was other than what’d the reader should expect or if the fact that there are 12 people watching her 

Back again with the next rewrite. Previously, I was tonally all over the place and didn't have enough stakes to make the scene exciting. I've done a complete revision to fix these issues and focus on what matters. The end goal, as always, is still to build an *intriguing* chapter 1. Would you read on?

~~[Crimson Queen](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_VgjOQohdqfpC1pQugnv5_Jz8TvJGhg1WuqhN-lKx8/edit?usp=sharing)~~

---

For mods: [[2420] Opening chapter - coming of age](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/w0voo6/2420_opening_chapter_coming_of_ageliterary_novel/igp3s08/)

---

Edit: got all the crits I need. Thanks all!

[2150] Crimson Queen v3