Genre: romcom, chat fic.
Characters: Kim Taehyung, Jeon Jungkook.
Type: non-rated.
Reviewer: Hyeri.
Chapters reviewed: 40 (approx. 61000 words).
Requested on: Jan 28, 2018.
Request completed on: Feb 20, 2018.

picked up

title

The title itself is uncommon; it gives off a light-hearted vibe and I believe that the title was very fitting around the first part of the story.

The second half of the story (and most of the story) was not just about Taehyung being good at taking blurry photos. That notion is vaguely presented in Jungkook and Taehyung’s meeting and it was just a little something that they bonded over and it wasn’t the whole theme of the story.

Since I’m a BTS fan, I knew exactly who would be the one taking the blurry pictures, and I think it was a good idea to go off a concept that’s already well-known to ARMYS (Taehyung and his blurry pictures).

DESCRIPTION/ FOREWORD

The description sounds kind of awkward. Although it gives a general description of how Jungkook and Taehyung met that leaves me wondering more, it is worded weirdly. How exactly does texting the person you like help a lot? I could see that it aided in Jungkook’s situation by gently forcing him to become more social, but in Taehyung’s case not so much; because Taehyung didn’t have much conflict that needed assistance through texting a person they like. The description also implies that Taehyung was interested in Jungkook first and not the other way around, so I think you should reconsider wording that.

The foreword shows some character traits; as a reader, I can imply that Jungkook isn’t usually fond of blurry pictures and his friends are surprised by the fact that he was staring at one for some time. It was just a simple introduction of when Jungkook first became interested in Taehyung and I didn’t see a lot of problem with using that certain scene as your foreword, in fact I think it was a good choice considering any other parts of the story would have been revealed too much plot.

PRESENTATION

Your poster and background fit very well with the genre of the story. Vibrant, neon colors are definitely the best choice for comedy; the pink is also really good for fluff. But, taking your title in account, I think Taehyung should have been in a blurry photo. Or at least something in the graphic should be blurred, because the story title is literally “King of Blurry IG Photos” and it’s quite contradictory to have high quality photos as the graphic. However, I believe the poster is beautiful and fits well with the chatfic theme (the text messages on the phone) and the genre.

I like the organization of your chapters and the horizontal line used to separate scenes and chatrooms. The layout made it very easy for me to read and was set up in the same way as a regular messaging app. The chapter titles however seemed to be a little messy (not the content of it, but how it was presented). A few were in the correct title format, with all the first letters of the title (aside from words like ‘of’ or ‘a’ etc.) were capitalized. While the rest were all in lowercase; if you choose to go for one certain theme, then you should stick to that—then all the chapter titles should be in lower cases.

CHARACTERIZATION

For the most part, all the characters were moderately realistic. None of them really said anything that was out of character. However, in each chat, it feels that they’re all talking to each other—as in, they all feel like they’re just one person talking to themselves. There was virtually no diversity in any of the way they texted. Since Rapmon was kind of described as more intellectual, I would have expected his texting style to be different from the other guys such as using ‘you’ instead of ‘u.’ That was just an example, but I think it could have added on to their character in a better way if they had different styles of texting. But their style of messaging each other is very much like fifteen year-olds texting other, so it was very relatable personally.

The names for each person and the different group chats got confusing for me; it especially got confusing when the names started to change throughout the story, I would suggest sticking to just their regular names even though I really did find the nicknames to be cute. I was glad that the nicknames at the bonus chapter were based around their given names, so I wasn’t confused with who was saying what; I believe that you got confused as well with the different group chats that had different names for each of the characters. I applaud you for rarely getting confused between the large diversity in names, though.

Jungkook: He grew very well in the story. He was very brave to be fighting his phobia head on because of Taehyung, and the way he developed was well-paced and wasn’t too fast. He was very cutely described in the story and his interactions with Taehyung always brought a smile to my face and sent my heart into a flurry of emotions.

Despite his phobia, he was willing to meet new people because he wanted to overcome it. He had a passion for dancing; he loved it so much that even with his phobia, he could perform in front of people because dancing put him into another world—I liked that small detail added, because I think that’s what made him more appealing.

Taehyung: He was a very understanding person and not a clichéd rich person. He was very humble and down to earth. His acceptance of Jungkook’s situation was very heartwarming and it overall made him a very likeable character. He was also a very generous person, he literally bought everyone tickets to America.

He fell for Jungkook pretty fast, just by seeing how he was good looking and nice. But when he fell for Jungkook, he didn’t just fall in love with him halfway, I could already tell he was deep in love when he was willing to fight someone for hurting Jungkook in the past (Jungkook’s mom).

Jimin: I enjoyed his presence, and not just because whenever he was in the chatroom the others found ways to make fun of him. Jimin was basically like a brother to Jungkook and he really cared for the younger. He was also basically the reason why the “Taekook” couple was together and I thought it was cute how he kind of ‘played cupid’ and tried setting them up for each other.

The rest of the characters didn’t seem that distinct; they all kind of blended into the background for me.

PLOT

Basically, Jungkook finds this cute guy on Instagram that takes blurry selfies and is captivated by him, even though he himself is not all too fond of anything that is not in high quality. He then meets the said guy, Taehyung, and they hit it off immediately and he learns to overcome his anthropophobia because of him. There aren’t that many chatfics that I can name off the top of my head so I think the idea was very original. And adding a non-monogamous relationship into the story was a unique idea and I totally didn’t expect Jimin to enter Suga and J-Hope’s relationship.

The major conflict of this story was mostly internal, and I interpreted it to be Jungkook learning to overcome most of his phobia by entering a new relationship with Taehyung. You never really strayed from that plot and the majority of your chapters contributed to that concept of Jungkook growing with Taehyung. There were times when there were unnecessary references (like the Riverdale one) and that seemed like filler to me. Fluff stories usually contain a lot of filler, but I usually interpret that as more characterization. But in some cases of your story, the one part that I really found unnecessary, was the scene where they were referring back to Riverdale (I didn’t really understand it, nor could I find a way to characterize the characters through it). Since the chapter began with them arguing about Riverdale, that itself blocked out the main point of the chapter (And I also didn’t really know why it was there, it seemed off).

I think the backstory of how Jungkook’s phobia developed wasn’t enough for me (although I do appreciate that you added in how he got it in the first place) I did get some vague emotions coming from the scenes where his mother confronted him, but I would’ve like more; something that could leave an impression and something that hits deeper than just ‘she left him when he was younger.’ I didn’t feel too content with the amount that you provided and it would’ve been nicer if that topic was more detailed and touched upon.

I understand that there are different ways to fall in love and everyone is different and so on, but it seemed as though Jungkook and Taehyung fell in love fast. Their infatuation quickly turned into love and I thought of it as mostly lust at first since they would always flirt and excite themselves over how hot the other was. Yes, Jungkook fell in love with Taehyung for the obvious reason that he was understanding of his situation but Taehyung fell for him just because he was nice and cute and there just has to be some deeper meaning to that (Maybe I’m looking too far into this or I’m just really skeptical of the idea of them falling for each other so fast) Love that is quickly developed through infatuation can be painful and unhealthy and although I don’t believe this was the case for Jungkook and Taehyung, I think their meeting should’ve taken a bit more time and they should have gone from liking each other to loving each other instead of just straight going into ‘I love you.’

At one point in the story, you mentioned something along the lines of ‘use proper English’ or something like that. They’re in Korea, and I assume that they are all native to that country, so even though this was written in English and not Hangul, then it should be ‘Use proper Korean’ so it can let the reader know that the characters and everyone else are Korean.

FLOW/ PACE

The pacing of the story was a little fast, and I sort of mentioned that in the plot. Jungkook and Taehyung fell into deep love fast; or rather it was described in a rushed manner. It was hard for me to decipher between the time frame and when Suga mentioned that “Taekook” had been dating for three years going on to four years, I actually thought they had been dating for just less than a year. Although I was glad you added the disclaimer that four years suddenly flew by, I think you should have warned us before we read about Jungkook considering a proposal part so there wouldn’t be so much of a shock.

Around the ending especially, a lot seemed rushed. One chapter would go from Taehyung and Jungkook missing each other, then Jungkook and Taehyung talking about what they would name their kids, then Jungkook proposing, then a big wedding. All of that happened within the span of about five chapters, which based on your word count, was about 10,000 words or a little more. These are big events which I felt needed greater detail in their description.

WRITING STYLe

The way you organized the dialogue into a separate line for a different individual speaking, made it easier for me to read and neat and organized (this applies to the sections of text that were not in a chatroom/chatfic format). You were pretty descriptive with your writing and although there were some parts that were hard for me to understand, I could still perfectly visualize what you were trying to go for and was able to paint a picture of the scene in my mind.

GRAMMAR AND SPELLING

Since this is a chatfic, I kind of overlooked the spelling errors because I thought it was more realistic that way. Texting isn’t perfect or refined; when you’re messaging someone through the phone, you just want to get your point across to them, not send them a college entrance exam every time. Some things however, either irked me enough to the point where I had to pick them our or plainly made me confused. So I just put in a couple of examples since there were unfortunately too many for me to pick out.

In the chapters that weren’t in the format of a chatfic, you switched between past and present tense a lot in your writing and it made me a little confused about the meaning of some of your sentences (But context clues really helped me out in that predicament). I think that maybe you should reread those chapters and check if everything is in the same tense and if everything is in proper grammar or have someone else proof-read it (it’s an understandable mistake though).

Chapter 2:

“pinky: jungkook likes this guy

pinky: I Am Very Sure Of It

emo_kid: no im not”

Jungkook’s reply doesn’t make sense in this context. For example, if Jimin were to say ‘Jungkook is running,’ it would be okay to use ‘no I’m not’ in the context; adding that statement and answer into one sentence would convert it into ‘No, I’m not running.”

In this case, it wouldn’t make sense to word it as ‘no, I’m not like this guy.’ (it would, but it would have a whole different meaning than its intended) The correct response would have been ‘no, I don’t.’ This would turn the sentence into ‘No I don’t like this guy.”

“calculatorwatch: since when did music taught how to hack and get info from people?”

Taught is past tense, and in this case it should be used in future tense. This should be changed to ‘Since when did music teach how to hack and get info from people?’

Chapter 23:

“daddy: ice cream’s for desert not dinner tho”

Spelling can really make a difference in the meaning of sentences. Ice cream is a dessert, not desert. Deserts are dry and are a plot of land, a dessert is sweet and can be something like ice cream. This should be ‘ice cream’s for dessert, not dinner though’

Chapter 26:

“blindfold: EVERYONE HAS A FETUS”

Again, spelling. Although this error did make me chuckle at the thought, I believe you meant to you ‘.’ A fetus is an unborn baby and not a kink (). This should be ‘Everyone has a !’

Chapter 28:

“pudrakels: YEAH BOI HE’S BACK”

There’s nothing really wrong with this (aside from spelling and the capitalization that I chose to overlook), it’s just that the nickname wasn’t bolded.

Chapter 32:

“sunhigh: so? what did your dad told you?

mochi top: funny story

mochi top: his dad deadass asked tae if he wants his mom to hell him to pick a lingery since auntie apparently has good taste

bottoms up: …….

bottoms up: can somebody get me the exact same parents as tae’s

bottoms up: i badly needed one.”

This passage has more than one mistake. First off was the first line, It should be ‘So? What did your dad tell you?’ Although it already happened and I can see why you think past tense should go there, English is confusing language (I’m struggling to keep an A in that subject) and this should be used in a future tense. ‘Tell’ should be used instead of ‘told’ because it is being said to another person; basically, for the verb ‘tell’ to be used, the information has to be communicated to someone.

The third line had two spelling mishaps and was worded awkwardly that it made me misunderstand the meaning. This line should be worded and changed to ‘His dad deadass asked tae if he wants his mom to choose lingerie for him because she apparently has good taste.’ I believe that you were trying to go for that meaning, because the original sentence made me perplexed and I had to read over it like eight times before finally understanding the meaning.

The last line, since ‘parents’ is plural, then the statement should be something along the lines of ‘I badly need a pair.’ And the ‘needed’ shouldn’t be in past tense.

Chapter 35:

“white: seokjin’s not happy

priest: since when isnt he happy.”

Since you’re trying to make it seem as though Jin is never happy, this should be worded as ‘since when is he happy’ to imply the assumption ‘since when has jin ever been happy before.’ Saying that he is not happy then saying when is he ever not happy doesn’t make sense.

Chapter 40: (I would suggest revising this chapter)

“‘Uncle Jin and Uncle Joon buy us ice cream!!’ Taekook proudly said, followed by the footsteps of the said couple.

‘I know you’ll kill me for giving them sugar but Taekook wants to eat,’ Seokjin rolled his eyes and plumped himself comfortably on the couch followed by Namjoon.”

This should be

‘“Uncle Jin and Uncle Joon bought us ice cream!”Taekook proudly declared, as the said couple followed behind him.

“I know you’ll kill me for giving them sugar, but Taekook wanted it,” Seokjin rolled his eyes and plopped himself on the couch comfortably beside Namjoon.’

Since Jin and Namjoon had already bought the ice cream, then Taekook should be saying ‘bought’ and not ‘buy.’ Using ‘buy’ would make it seem like he is asking them to buy him ice cream; and not stating that they already bought him ice cream. I also changed some of the word choice so that the sentence would make better sense. And again, in the second part of the dialogue, ‘wants’ should be ‘wanted’; this was also a sentence fragment because there was a verb without a subject (“Taekook wants to eat” What does he want to eat?) So it should just be ‘Taekook wanted it’ or it could be ‘Taekook wanted to eat it.’

SPECIAL

Chatfics don’t usually spark my interest unless they’re meant to be extremely funny. I thought your story was cute and comedic but about halfway through it felt like the same thing to me (Not including the ending though, because the wedding was quite interesting). Your witty lines and remarks for the characters made me laugh out loud more than once though, and I can relate well to that sort of humor. There was one quote stuck in my head and it goes something like ‘I raised him right, but at one point I think he did a left turn.” And I actually choked on my saliva reading that. And the part where they were teasing Jungkook about how he probably got a because Taehyung bit his lip while he said Jungkook was dancing ily had me in a fit of laughter at 2 o’clock in the morning.

★reviewer's notes:

I personally liked the cuteness in the story. Stories with a lot of chapters make me a little bit nervous because I don’t have a good memory so I have to end up screenshotting everything and then I get lost in the sea of screenshots that I take, so I’m sorry if I ended up taking a while to review this. I wanted to make sure that I took time to read your story (but since this story still had like forty chapters, I could have easily missed something or misinterpreted something so I would love to hear your feedback on that).