Post 1

Very clean writing style.

A hook in the opening post. You give the reader a reason to keep reading – I want to know what the phantasm was. A good touch.

Post 2

One of the common mechanical mistakes you make has to do with punctuation choice in your compound sentences. “Aynur was concerned, there were often times when Varin fell silent or went rigid from something.” The comma here doesn’t fit; you can either use a semicolon or just split the sentence into two. Connecting two independent clauses with a comma requires a conjunction (and, but, as, etc). You could make a comma work here, but it would require some reorganization. For example: “Aynur was concerned, as she often was when Varin…” In this case, ‘as’ is the conjunction that allows you to join the two independent clauses with a comma.

“Aynur didn’t mind, she never usually did when it came to his silence.” Same thing – either a semicolon or just two separate sentences.

“Deciding that whatever bothered him, she would do her best to alleviate it.” Fragment. Can be fixed simply by altering the first word to ‘She decided’

“Aynur bought the mallet down hard, she felt it bounce off of something, but heard no ding.” Another example of incorrect comma usage. This is the last example of this that I’ll point out, but it’s something for you to work on, if you wish to do so.

Given that your character can’t see, you do well with setting. I appreciate the way you appeal to the reader’s other four senses.

Post 4

This comment goes for both of you – your characterization is very strong. Both of these characters have lifelike personalities and you play them off of each other very well.

Post 6

“She realized that, maybe, that was rude. “Oh… I’m sorry, that was rude.”” Repetitive. You could delete the first sentence.

Another hint at upcoming danger, perhaps, with the red-and-black aura? Though there isn’t much thread left at this point.

Post 9

Couple of typos. Looks like you were excited to finish, haha.

“He still had some fritters left, at least, squirreled away away in his robe pockets for later.” Doubled up on the ‘away’

“Mostly, he drakari just couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than what he had right now.” “Mostly, the drakari…”




Closing thoughts:

I’m finding it difficult to articulate my thoughts on this thread. You both write well, and I enjoyed it, but I found it… unrewarding, I suppose. And I’m not just talking about the romance-but-not-really dynamic between the main characters.

My biggest issue with the thread is that you teased at conflict a few times – the blue-eyed phantom in the first post, the red-and-black aura in post #6 – but never delivered. Perhaps they were remnants of ideas that you scrapped in the writing process, or perhaps I put too much emphasis on a couple of details that you intended to be minor. Either way, they left me expecting some sort of conflict or antagonist that never materialized, so that was disappointing.

On the positive side, setting and character are both strengths of this thread. The town festival was a familiar-feeling backdrop that you painted well, and both Varin and Aynur are good characters with a lot of life.

The relationship between the two main characters is clearly the centerpiece and star of this thread, and it’s bittersweet and very well-written. I’m interested to see more of this dynamic between Varin and Aynur. Good work!