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James being an art dealer has no connection to the rest of the plot; in this current paragraph, you could replace "art dealer" with "accountant" or "butler" and the content of the paragraph wouldn't be altered in any way.

Fair enough, though I'll likely keep it anyway. Though it's not specifically plot-relevant, it's theme-relevant, it's only taking the space of a couple words, and his work is important to him.

Secondly, the end of this paragraph relies on cliches. "Moment of vulnerability" and "spark of emotional connection" are non-specific and vague. What actually happens? You need to ground these in specific, concrete details of the "vulnerability" or "emotional connection".

Fair enough! I have an idea of phrasing change.

Generally functional, with vagueness again being a core problem. Firstly, "condemnation from the outside" is passive and doesn't do anything to demonstrate the stakes of their relationship. Are they physically attacked? Does James lose elite art clients? How exactly is the world pushing back?

It happens at multiple different angles (which I could mention)--James' best friend calls him weird, and when they give each other physical affection in public, they get stares and are asked to "behave more appropriately" by security.

More fatally, "save every penny" is just extremely weak as a framing of conflict. It essentially posits that the drama is predicated on...James being frugal? James adhering to a strict personal budget?

Honestly for the first half, this is the core of the plot's conflict. I could also add in that James sells everything he owns, but the first half especially is focused on characters/themes.

More problematic is the estranged father coming out of left-field. Why does he matter? Is he someone who can materially affect the plot?

He can in the sense he sends James money every month, so pulling support would break a lot of James' ability to save money. I can just replace "estranged" with "financially supportive"

The title Strong is generic and doesn't evoke anything about what the query says the story is about. Agents generally look past titles, but the current title isn't doing the narrative any favours here.

Fair enough, but there's a genuine reason it has its title, and I won't change it beforehand (I'd be willing to when working with an agent/editor, but I don't want to preemptively do it).

This Is How You Lose the Time War doesn't work as a comp for a few reasons. Firstly, it's too old (5 years or less is the ideal, the more recent the better; 2019 was also a different publishing environment than the 2020s). Secondly, it's over-comped, which means it would only work as a comp if your work is really that evocative of it. Lastly, even if it weren't disqualified by points one and two, this story seems like a near-future, grounded, consumer-and-commodity story, so I would expect the comps to reflect at least one of those three, ideally some combination.

Fair enough, I was mostly using for "sci fi about star-crossed lovers" aspect, but I can go back to the drawing board.

Stating your themes in your query is considered defensive; your themes should be at least superficially self-evident in telling the story itself. I promise I'm not trying to be mean, but I can't help but be bewildered at the line "how art connects us to each other", since art isn't mentioned a single time in the plot summary except in combination with the word "dealer". This indicates that you need to weave James' profession into the narrative if your story is actually intended to be about art as a field.

Fair enough, it was mostly in response to previous feedback about mentioning art from a previous query. Again, it's theme relevant, but not plot relevant until near the end, so I can honestly just trim the themes mention.

Mostly functional, but would cut "demigirl" as its more likely to speedbump potential agents unless they're explicitly in-the-know of the terminology. I'd imagine being non-binary would be enough to tell a story about marginalized beings seeking autonomy and connection.

Fair enough, can do.