Name of Story: You are my sweetest downfall (I loved you first)

Author: Dhanshiri

Pairing: BTS Jinkook (Jin x Jungkook) and vhope (Taehyung x Hoseok)

Chapters read: 1/1

Warning: Review will contain spoilers.

Forewords

All in all I liked your forewords, so my comments are minor.

I liked your description. It was intriguing and made me wanna know what happened to Jungkook in the past, and what would happen to him in the future. This is obviously the most important part about descriptions, to get the reader invested enough to start reading, so I think you did that really well.

The title... is a bit long, and not especially title-like. I think either:

"My sweetest downfall"

or

"My sweetest downfall (I loved you first)"

would be better and more catchy, but in the end, that is just personal preference.

I think your warning is too strong however, the language in this story wasn't particularly offensive, so I would tone it down a little.

Other suggestions for changes I would make:

Add Jin and Jungkook to your tags, possibly taehyung and jhope too.

Add a link to the Regina Spektor song. Since the story was inspired by it, I think a link would be nice. People who are interested could check it out and get a feel for what you intended with this story, and it's not disruptive for people who don't care.

Use of Language

I think there is no way around this, so I'm just going to say it bluntly:

You are overshooting.

The vocabulary that you use is extensive, and in my opinion too extensive.

First of all, it's bad for the readers. Know your audience. Your fanfic readers (primarily non-native speakers) are not going to understand a large fraction of the words you use, so the meaning that you intended won't reach them and the story becomes too difficult to read and understand. Basically, you won't reach your audience.

Admittedly, you can have the goal not to be limited by the knowledge of your readers, which brings me to the more important point:

This is bad for your writing and the quality of your story.

In principle, using complicated words is not a bad thing. The bad part however, comes from the fact that you don't use these words fluently. A large fraction of the time you use the words awkwardly, and sometimes it's plain wrong. On top of that, you have the normal issues as a non-native writer, such as occasional grammar errors and unnecessarily cumbersome sentence structure (problems I deal with myself constantly). This is not a serious issue in itself, because you are mostly fluent in English. The problem comes when you have a badly phrased sentence, with a grammar error, and also a complicated and uncommon word that is not correctly used. First of all the reader then has to figure out what the sentence means as is written, then try to figure out what you intended it to mean, and frankly, this takes time and readers are lazy (and it's not high quality writing).

There are many instances when your ambition to “sound fancy” took away from your story.

For example this sentence here:

“Sitting would be glorifying the boy's position but prostrating would be exaggerating.”

What does this even mean? It means that the boy was not exactly sitting, but not exactly throwing himself to the floor in submission either. But I'm actually no closer to knowing how he was positioned, since there are around million other possibilities.

also

“...since the child they dubbed a potential anomaly...”

I think you misunderstand this, because being a “potential anomaly” is not necessarily anything horrible (especially with the "potential”), it just means that they think that he's potentially different from normal people.

“Small as he was, his face held a defiance so regal it reminded the men of she, who was the daughter of the head priest they regard with so much veneration, who would not be the abominable creature she was at death if not for the boy's father.”

Try reading this sentence out loud. It doesn't really make any sense and should be split into two,

(apart from the “of she” -> “of her” (unless she's some sort of a goddess that goes by 'she') and “regard” -> “regarded”)

Also, there is not a clear link between being a sacrilege and being raised in a shrine, so that segue is a bit lost on me, also I'm not sure you're using "encumbered to” correctly, it's slightly odd to drink the “remainder" of a drink. I'm pretty sure that “pinnacle of sturdiness” is not a thing, even if it is grammatically correct, nobody would ever say that, and “carve his own face” sounds a lot like him cutting his own face up, though your use is not incorrect per se, but in the context it is weird.

Also:
 

“With that, Jungkook augurated his fall from grace.”

Did you mean that he foresaw his fall from grace? Because that doesn't really make any sense (apart from the fact that he was never in any grace? Considering the horrible life he had at the shrine.)

Also “Estimate the rest yourself.” should be “Figure out the rest yourself”... estimating is more like figuring out the rough price of your whole group of shopped items, but doesn't really apply here.

Why that is is a bit difficult to explain, so this is a very understandable mistake. But I think that the main reason why this is wrong is because to estimate something it needs to be a measurable quantity, like the height of someone, or price, or distance. But a story or a range of events cannot be estimated, that can be figured out, guessed or simplified. I hope this helps.

Each and every one of these is maybe a minor issue, but there are so many of them, throughout the entire story (my list here above is far from complete) that it becomes a problem. This both reduces the quality of your story, because there are so many sentences that don't mean exactly what you want them to mean, and it becomes cumbersome to read.

It's a common myth that more complicated words == higher quality of storytelling.

This is simply not true. Sure, fantastic stories often have high level vocabulary, but the key aspect is that the writers of these have very good use of language and know exactly what they are doing. Also, when story is really well written, it doesn't matter for the reader if there is a word here and there he/she doesn't understand because he/she can figure it out from the context (and that's actually how we learn new words and how to use them). Randomly putting in fancy words does not an excellent story make.

The good news is, that this is very easily fixable. Simply stop using a dictionary.

Or maybe more accurately: Use it differently. Use dictionary to look up words that you already think you know, but to double check if you are using them appropriately.

If however, you truly enjoy using obscure words, you should continue to do so (because your main goal should always be to have fun), but tone it down a lot. Limit yourself to 1 obscure word every 2000 words or so (preferably less). And a good rule of thumb:

If a word gives less than 2 million results on google, it should not be used in fanfiction.

(unless there is a really, really, really good reason to use that specific word instead of any other).

Apart from overshooting it with vocabulary, your writing style is good, you have a nice flow. Occasionally your sentences run on a bit too long, in a non-fluent way, but I think this will be fixed with practice, when you put your focus away from having a complicated vocabulary and to something more useful. Also if your sentences are long, try to read them out loud, then it's often easy to spot if something goes wrong along the way.

(Also a tiny issue: your use of italics doesn't make any sense to me, except when Jungkook was reading that book.)

Characters

Actually, I liked your characters a lot!

You didn't really describe them extensively, but still managed to give a subtle feel for all of them, making them feel like real people, which I think is not easy to do (and a style I prefer over the more direct descriptions).

We got to know Jungkook from early on, and I think he was great as a boy trying to find a new way of life, and Jin was very mysterious and intriguing (so I could really understand Jungkook's interest in him), and I think the character just suited him.

Also Taehyung, and J-hope, Jimin, Namjoon and Suga were all real characters even though we got to know them a lot less. And I liked all relationships between characters.

So I think you have a good sense for creating characters without being too on the nose about it, which is a valuable talent.

Story

I liked your story!

But because of the way you use language, I had to read it at like 1/3 of my normal reading speed, which means that I would probably have given up along the way because of impatience, had this not been a review. Which would have been a shame because I think the story itself is good. There are many things that happen, and many characters, but the story doesn't feel rushed or characters just name-dropped, everyone has a personality of his/her own and is more than one dimensional and there is a point for the events that occur.

The shrine and surroundings were very well described, in the sense that the reader got a feel for them and could picture it well.

Most importantly the story itself is interesting with twists and turns and isn't predictable, and I really liked the ending. It was bittersweet and realistic and many feelings involved, both hope and sadness.

Minor concerns:

It was a bit unclear to me in the beginning, that where Jungkook was, they practiced mono- and not polytheism, so it could have been pointed out more clearly earlier. But maybe I just missed it?

I don't think that the connection between the forewords and the story is so clear.

The title "You are my sweetest downfall (I loved you first)" indicates that Jin was somehow bad for Jungkook (from the “downfall”), that he took power away from him/dragged him down, when in fact it was the opposite.

Also it indicates that there is some sort of a love triangle, with the “I loved you first" hinting that he loved Jin first, but then there was someone else coming along “loving him second”. So the title didn't necessarily fit with the story for me.

Same with the description, though that was closer. Because there was all this talk about “coming of age” like that was somehow a very specific and an important moment in Jungkook's life, but it wasn't really in the story.

But these are all minor points that don't have significant influence of the overall quality of the story.

Overall

I liked the storyline and your description of environment and characters.

However, and I cannot stress this enough. You are overshooting it with vocabulary.

I'm not saying this because I didn't understand all the words (although I didn't, and for fanfiction, a person with my English level should be able to understand most things, but let's ignore that for now, and assume that you are aiming for “higher” audience). I am actually saying this because when I did understand the words, often you were using them weirdly and slightly or fully wrong, making your text unnatural and sometimes weird/wrong.

This is however easy to fix. Try writing a story without using a dictionary. Try it. Seriously. If you can't find the exact word, work around it. Your English is already fluent enough so you should be able to.

The point with writing a story, is conveying the characters, storyline and feelings to your readers. It's not getting them to say: “Wow, that vocabulary though...”

(and if it is (it shouldn't be), you need to get a better grip on the words you use for it to be truly “high level use of vocabulary”).

You still have some minor issues with sentence structure and grammar that will be much easier to fix once you don't have to think about those dictionary words you don't fully understand or have a good feeling for.

But I want to make it clear that I'm not saying that you should Never try to use new words. That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying you should try it at a slower pace, practice using the words you already know so that you are using them correctly, and then maybe add a few new for fun (if you like to do that, though honestly you don't really need to). But when you find a word in the dictionary that you are not completely familiar with, make sure to read many examples on how to use it.

I'm sorry if I sounded harsh, that was certainly not my intention. It's just that I see a potential in your storytelling that is currently not being allowed to fully bloom. So I wish you all the best in your future writing, and I did enjoy your story!

Thanks for the request!

OK-girl