짜장면 (Black Bean Noodles)

Reviewer: dhaatk
Review for:  JaeRin345336

Requested on: 11/09/2014
Finished On: 11/13/2014

NOTE: 14 Chapters (Spoiler Alert)

(10/10) Title: I think the title deserves all points, because it truly relates to the story and I find it original to the root. I hope the ending scene will be some characters eating those black bean noodles, in order to story develop an unbreakable link with the title.

(10/10) Character: I can't comment on idol-characters being canon, because I'm not familiar with Infinite and how they are really presented to the world. Nevertheless, I will speak about them in general. Kim SungGyu seems generous and genuinely thankful to Cha MinAe and that moment of their first encounter, that led to such strong friendship. I actually love the relationship they have as far as you have portrayed it. Both SungGyu and MinAe may not know that much about each other what considers basic facts, such as favourite colour, structure of family and so on, but it can clearly be seen that the friendship they share is deep and long-lasting, because they share something more than basic knowledge of each other, they exchange the spiritual understanding of each others being and that's the best kind of friendship one can experience. Aside from the relationship itself, I like the protagonist. To me, having read countless fanfics and many of them being too similar, MinAe's character seems really fresh and well-built. From the beginning she looks quite reserved, easy-going and just chilled, but as the story develops, so does her character, in the latest chapters you also show another side of her – the considered and friendly one, where she cares for her friends and feels bad for paying too little attention to their achievements and so on. Talking about minor characters, majority of them are there, but not really and it's not a bad thing. They just fill up the empty places and everything is great. They sometimes play some role, through some lines but aren't too random.

(10/10) Originality: I'm giving all points again, because to me this story is really original. Of course, there are a lot of fictions about a girl being good friends with a celebrity, then slowly falling in love with them, but I've only read those, where they're friends from birth and so on. This was first time I saw an ordinary girl forming strong friendship with a celebrity so randomly and unexpectedly.

(40/40) Storyline/Plot: I think the flow is not lacking at all and story develops well. Even though the friendship between SungGyu and MinAe had already started two years before the story takes place, you managed to show the backstory and current situation. Also, you are able to keep the tension, which is essential in good and gripping fiction. The narrative pace, that you worry about, is not bad either. I wouldn't say that events happen too quickly, but it's not too slow as well. I personally despise stories, where events are outstretched just for the sake of longer and more chapters. What is more, I like how you depicted both almost-kiss scenes. It created the so needed suspense and anticipation, I really was curious to see if SungGyu will finally kiss the girl or no. To end with, I loved these lines in Chapter 13: “SungGyu smelled a bit different than Professor Lee though; more familiar. More like home. But maybe I was just used to SungGyu’s body scent which mixed well with the perfume. Also, he smelled a bit like ramyun.”, especially those words “more like home”. It's cute, heart-touching and true literature!

(20/25) Grammar/Errors:

Considering you aren't native speaker but have stated there's a betareader, I took out five points for the mistakes I've spotted. Also, what was very strange for me, there weren't a lot of grammar mistakes but somehow the way you arrange word order or sentences is just unappealing and I really can't say why. Something just doesn't click, but that could be changed to better by more and more writing.
Chapter 3 – “JaeJin joked, earning himself a death stare of mine” – “death glare from me”
Chapter 4 – “two beer” - “two beers” or “two bottles of beers”
“in les than two minutes”
– less
“took a zip of beer” – “a sip of beer”
Chapter 5 – “and lay down” – “laid”
Chapter 7 – “back and fro” – “back and forth”
“it looked ridicuous” – “ridiculous”
“once I introduced" – “introduce”
“I blurtet out” – “blurted”“doof” – “door”
Chapter 12 – “my lack in interest” – my lack of interesting
“as much Infinite-related things as I could” – “as many”

(3/5) Overall Enjoyment: All in all, the story was good, just as I've mentioned before, choice of words and how you put them is somewhat lacking to me, so it was a bit hard to read at the beginning. But within the story I got more and more drawn to it.

(93/100) Points Total

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