○ThePinkSoldier○

 New Moon 

 

 

Title: Then You Happened

Author: ThePinkSoldier | Asianfanfics

Chapters: Ten

Status: Ongoing

Reviewer: yingjumeihua

 

Title: (2/5)

Is your title interesting? I guess it is, a little bit. If I was browsing through a long list of stories to read then it’s possible that I’d click on yours. It isn’t super interesting to the point where I’ll click on it and go ‘OMG! What is this about?’ and feel like I have to find out. It does perk up my interest a little and I’d click on it. Does your story match your title? No, not really. From Yul’s perspective I don’t really see how the title comes in. Honestly, when I first look at the title I automatically think that life was going fine, until that person (in this case, Jessica) came in. It’s almost trying to say that the character who came into the protagonist’s life messed up the protagonist’s life and they don’t like the sudden change that the character has brought with them. That was the feeling I was getting from your title; I don’t think that’s there in your story.

 

Foreword/Description: (6/10)

First of all, your description personally doesn’t intrigue me. It may intrigue readers who love a little change in personality and someone completely unexpected being the cause of that change, but since I’m not interested in that genre I wouldn’t continue reading. Secondly, I know that you might like the colour ‘pink’ but choose a darker tone of pink because readers might find it hard to actually read the text. There are other few errors but I will talk about them in their respective categories. Concerning your foreword, it is an excerpt from your story. It tells readers a little bit about your story and when I read it; I saw where your story was going to go. But honestly, I didn’t really find anything interesting about that part. Yes, it gives readers a description of Yul’s treatment and attitude towards teachers, but I think that it lacks a hook to make your story really grab readers’ attentions. (The worst part is that your excerpt from your foreword is nowhere in your story.)

 

Plot and Originality: (10/20)

Your plot isn’t really intriguing. It’s about a guy who isn’t living the best life and you could say that the police station has almost become his second home. Obviously it’s time for change and the one that will bring that change will be from the group of people that he hates the most: teachers. I don’t really find anything interesting about your plot or anything attention-grabbing. I actually don’t know what the conflict is. If your conflict was about Yul struggling to accept Jessica’s help and getting over his grudge for teachers, it’s not a really good conflict because you solved that conflict within roughly six chapters or so, when normally characters solve conflicts, it takes them at least twenty or so chapters. (It may be shorter but that’s because the chapters are ten thousand words long.)

Personally, I found your plot cliché and a little bit recycled. I have seen so many fanfictions (in particular, gender benders) which have very much similar plots to yours. There are plenty of het fanfictions which are also very similar. The settings are very similar to the majority of stories on AFF. It’s all set in school. Thankfully, you’ve put a spin and made it so that Yul was kept down 6 grades and it was plausible for someone like him to date a teacher. I’ve also heard of a lot of stories which have a student and a teacher dating. (Hell! Even dramas do that.) The characters themselves have seen before countless of times. There is always the typical bad boy and then the ‘good’ girl in high-school set fanfics. It’s quite common, actually.

 

Characterisation: (6/15)

The characterisation in your story is okay, but there are some flaws that I find with Yul and Jessica.

Yul is extremely cliché: bad boy who sees no meaning to life, until Jessica comes in. The main inconsistency in characterisation for Yul is how fast his relationship is going with Jessica and how he treats her. Yul has probably spent his entire schooling life hating teachers and after one day of meeting Jessica, he softens at the sight of her covering herself up. Taking into consideration his personality, this probably isn’t the first time that he’s done something like this before. If this is his first time softening up and you plan on him softening up, it should be somewhere down the line when he develops respect for her (which may take a while, but makes him more realistic). What really shocked me about his personality is that he’s already apologising to Jessica in detention on the same day. Based on the way that he talked to his parents and his uncle, readers would inference that he is very stubborn and doesn’t really care about other people’s feelings and therefore, does not feel the need to apologise. And after one day, he’s already apologising to Jessica? His parents and his uncle are people who have interacted with him before and actually know him, whereas Jessica is a completely stranger. I realise that he could be very kind towards attractive women, but he never struck me as the kind of person to be attracted to teachers (whom he hates to the point where he calls them ‘sh*tchers’). When he later thinks about his behaviour around Jessica and him acting really nicely; he thinks something along the lines of ‘I shouldn’t be so nice to her’. In my opinion, I don’t think he’s supposed to be thinking like that about a teacher. I feel like there should be swearing to match his personality more accurately. Also, when Yul is in the police station in Chapter 3; there is a paragraph where he just spills everything about his life to Jessica. From what I know about him, he doesn’t seem like the type of guy to go and spill his past out to a teacher who he isn’t really close with at all. I think all that information should be known to readers later in the story, not at that stage in time where they barely know each other. As well as that, I find it weird how he likes to talk about pretty girls and flirting and hooking up with them, etc. and yet when Jessica touches him, he doesn’t like it one bit and flinches at the contact. It’s really contradictory in my opinion.

He also acts very friendly towards Jessica, almost immediately when they become friends. Shouldn’t it take a day or two for him to be friendly to her when he was so determined on refusing her help just hours ago?

Another thing that I find weird with Yul’s character is the talk with his father in Chapter 3. Based on his personality, I think that he’s more likely to keep the gun out instead of pocketing it, and be prepared to shoot it at his father if he says something insulting. I also think that when he’s yelling at his father, he shouldn’t be crying with tears rolling down his face. From his earlier confrontation with his father, he seemed very cold, very emotionless, very mean – like he doesn’t really care about his father that much and probably doesn’t. If he’s crying while he’s yelling at his father, it just means that deep down inside, while he refuses to show it, he actually cares about his father and what his father thinks of him. There is another thing about Yul that I found really creepy: where did he get the gun from? I’m not too sure how Korean law works but I don’t think that he’s supposed to have a gun. Technically, because he’s twenty-four (and if the Korean law allows), he can have a gun and use it. But, he’s also a student and I think that if you’re a student, you’re not supposed to have a gun. I know that he’s a bad boy and everything and that he could have acquired a gun after he punched the living daylights out of the previous owner, but he seems to be the type of guy to be more involved in drugs than with guns. It just irks me out that he actually has a gun when he doesn’t seem like to be the type of person to be owning and using a gun.

Moving onto Jessica, I think that Jessica isn’t the type of girl to take a liking to a guy like Yul. If anything, I think that she’d avoid him. It is understandable for a teacher to be concerned about their students and want to help them out, but I think that Jessica is doing it for the wrong reasons. She doesn’t seem like the person who would help Yul because she thinks that he’s cute or whatever. She’s more likely to help him because she is either concerned for him or she pities him. Also, shouldn’t Jessica (being the teacher and all) not be flirting with Yul? It’s inappropriate and as a teacher, she should understand that more than students. She seems a little too friendly after only a few days of being friends with him. I do believe that teachers are given very strict instructions to not maintain too much of a personal relationship with their students, unless they’re family. As a part of protocol and it was probably stressed to her several times during her training, she is a new teacher and should be very cautious of what she’s doing.

 

Flow: (7/15)

For me, our story didn’t really flow that well for me. It didn’t really have any flow and your story wasn’t really smoothly written as one thing happened and then another. It all was jaggedly put together and it doesn’t fit in together like how it should.

In terms of pacing, it was rushed especially the characterisation of Yul whenever it came to Jessica. (I have elaborated on that in Characterisation, so I don’t think I need to elaborate it here.) Their relationship was especially rushed. He likes her and then falls in love with her, way too soon. He admits to loving her, the night after he confesses to her and just hours after he asked her to be his girlfriend. Then Jessica says that she loves him as well and for me, that’s way too soon. If anything you need to slow down the process of falling in love. It’s way too fast and it’s not realistic.

 

Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation: (15/25)

*Note: the suggested changes are in red.*

In this category, there were errors in each. For Grammar, there wasn’t a major issue except for one thing: tenses. When it comes to verbs and putting them in the correct tense, it is always important to remember that you must choose one tense and stick with it the whole way through. Don’t change tenses for different chapters, and you most certainly don’t change tenses in the middle of sentences (yes, I have seen it happen). To the readers, the sentence doesn’t make sense when you read your work. I recommend that you read over your work out loud and you’ll see where the mistakes are.

There are instances where you add in an extra word and where you don’t put in a word when it’s supposed to be there. If you read your story out loud, some of your sentences won’t make sense and you’ll realise that there are places where you’ve left a word out, or you’ve added in one that is unnecessary and makes the sentence confusing for readers.

I’m going to edit your foreword/description here and point all the mistakes there. Note that in your chapters, you’ve also made similar mistakes.

“Kwon Yul is a rich, twenty-four year-old, high school gangster who knows nothing but drinking, smoking, fighting, stealing and going to jail. There’s not a day in his life that he doesn’t face Officer Han, his uncle from his mother’s side. His life is a mess and he looks at the world as a penal institution with the people around him as the firm steals surrounding him. There are many things that he hates so much. But of all the things that he hates, there is a certain word he despises; TEACHER or what he calls Sh*tchers. He loathes them. What if a new teacher comes into his life and makes him hate teachers more? But what if one day the teacher changes his point of view?”

With your foreword, there are many misuses of punctuation. Have you noticed that sometimes when you use question marks, it turns out like this ‘??’ Don’t – whatever you do – put double of anything punctuation mark. I know that you’re trying to emphasise a sentence but that’s ‘Bold’ and “Italics’ job to do so.

 

Vocabulary: (3/5)

The thing with your vocabulary is that they are places where you use words that aren’t exactly in context. It doesn’t sound right when you say it out loud. Like, for example:

“I’m so full of you.”

This is taken from Chapter 3 and it is what Yul says to his father. I don’t think that it’s supposed to be ‘full’. In my opinion, I think the word ‘sick’ is much more commonly used and makes more sense in the English language.

“When he arrived in school, he saw Jessica getting off Taecyeon’s car.”

Now unless Taecyeon’s car was really dirty and Jessica cannot stand the terrible hygiene inside his car and instead decides to sit up on top of his car (like on the roof); I don’t really see how Jessica could get off Taecyeon’s car. Normal passengers sit inside a car, not on top of it. Therefore, ‘off’ should be changed to ‘out’.

There are plenty of other examples. This is just two that I found.

 

Bonus Points + Overall Enjoyment: (2/5)

I have never been a fan of girlxgirl fanfiction. They kind of irk me out and if it’s a gender bender, those stories just confuse me to no end.  Your story is somewhat enjoyable as it is interesting to see Yul's character and personality change in such a short time. 

 

Total: (51/100) | Grade: C-

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