Performance Round

Miss JessicaConcha's Reviews

Reviews:

Affectionate Aversion

This story has a lot of heart! You can tell that it was written with the readers in mind—the way the writer tried with the imagery and the sequencing of words to put adjectives and fillers together to effectively translate the story for the readers to understand. I like that it has a structure of the beginning, the climax, and the conclusion, and that I wasn’t left entirely confused by the end on what the story is trying to accomplish. It has an intact theme and it tries to tap on to the emotions of the readers.

However, this story still has a number of syntax errors and has some inconsistencies in language choice. There were some wording choices that weren’t common vernacular, some gave me that—“what does that mean?” reaction while I was reading it that only made sense after reasoning it out on my own. I thought that it had a lot of words that were drowning and the fluidity of the sequencing became a little off. By the end as a reader, I focused on how I’ll be able to understand the sequencing rather than focusing on the actual story itself.

Ey Bi Si Di

I loved this piece!

First off, mad props on actually writing with proper punctuations. This was refreshing to me because I do not see a lot of writers writing as formal as this one (myself included as I write in contemporary Filipino already). I loved the ambiguity of the story in the beginning. It kept me interested to the point that I kept asking myself, “Anong meron?” but it still left me glued to it without feeling completely bored. Gustung-gusto ko yung idea na it brought me back to those memories na hindi ko na rin matandaan personally. It was very relatable, the sequencing was very clear, and I like that it was very coherent and intact. I like how the beginning ultimately tied to the ending in a manner that you wouldn’t think would work but it did with this piece. It has the feel of abstract writing without trying too hard.

The three things I will really pick on this story were really minor typos—nothing too detrimental that took my interest away from the story and there were some slow and draggy narration in the middle. A couple of inconsistencies on word choice (from guro to titser at one point) can be noted.

Footprints

What I liked about this story was its strong connection emotionally to the readers. It has that very strong uniform and consistent narration in terms of getting its point across: the commonality of the family interactions and the build-up of each character in their importance to the story. This actually works well with contemporary readers without having it completely westernized. It’s an easy read.

On the other hand, what I did not like about this piece was the questionability of its overall theme. When I was reading it in the beginning, the theme that I was focusing on was how the protagonist was fighting to be recognized on her own strengths and how she will prove herself to her family. Nearing the end of the story, it then dropped a single twist with the family issue. Instead of the usual reaction of being completely blown away by the sudden plot twist, I was more shocked at how it randomly shifted to a second theme. The family issue or having the uncle as the dad was almost an isolated event for me as a reader, and in my opinion, it took away the thunder of the original theme that it was building up to begin with. I think if the writer was trying to incorporate this plot twist, it shouldn’t have gone through the trouble of explaining the relation of the characters because it felt long and unnecessary. I think this information could have done and incorporated better within the narration.

I really liked the idea and how deep the author is trying to bend this, but it can be improved.

That Girl Named Lee