Title: Our Favourtie Leader

By: lyasungnew94

Sims says: I am aware that my tenses are quite screwed up for this review. I must have caught the tenses-illness from this author, *sigh.

Wow, will this somehow lead to an or something?

Title

The title, ‘Our Favourite Leader', is very subjective and for me, I have no beef about it and yet, I'm not particularly a fan of it either, so you could say I'm neutral about it. I would have to say it's one of those titles that leaves the choice of clicking the link to check out the story to their own gut feeling. Note that I'm purely taking the title into account here and not considering the very appealing (which is again, very subjective) tags that involve so many pairings in the series nor the sneak peak of the introductory statement which almost confirms loads of fighting between the members for the affections of their favourite leader.

The title gives off this 'lighthearted' feel despite having many contenders vying for Onew's heart, so readers will be expecting some not so deadly competition between the other 4 members.

And to be honest here, with the introduction of being able to 'showoff' the number subscribers underneath the title, this story will no longer need potential readers to go according to their gut feelings about the less than stellar title because the number is already more than enough to send a spontaneous click on the mouse to check out the story. 

Poster

IT'S TOO OVERCROWDED! It's like putting all my favourite foods together on a table and I don't know which one to eat first so I start pulling on my hair.

That aside, the mood complements the vibe that the title excudes, so that's a plus point. This further substanciates the fact that this fic (seems) harmless- with all the smiley and 'loving' pictures on the top half of the poster.

Despite the poster being densely populated, the choice of images are very appropriate in bringing forth and setting the perfect mood for the entire series.

Intro

I appreciate the efforts put into using questions to arouse the interest of potential readers. But unfortunately, that’s the only good point I could identify from the introduction.

The punctuations are horridly and awkwardly placed, but there’s a section on its assessment so I’ll rant about that later on in the review.

The saving grace for this intro is the fact that 4 members are fighting for Onew, so the suspense and wait for the revelation of the ‘winning couple’ at the end of the series is enough to (miraculously) keep a proportion of readers from losing interest after reading the lacklustre introduction.

Intro Results

Title: 3/5

Poster: 3/5

Description/Foreword: 2/5

Content

The first sentence of chapter one already turned me off (and I’m not even taking the dull introduction into account). The tenses are messed up, the words used are awkward and taking the top spot for biggest eyesore is the punctuation. I will push them aside for now and purely assess the content.

There were too many scenes throughout the whole series that came off as half-hearted and made no sense, so much so that I thought the characters to be childish and quite dumb.

They were already fighting for Onew’s heart in the beginning and then not long after, Taemin (smartly) suggested that they ‘fight over Onew’. An even smarter Minho stated that they ‘already are fighting over Onew’ and Taemin countered by stating, and this is from the horse’s mouth, the unedited and very much real version: No … I mean we fight over Onew hyung and who ever make Onew hyung falls for him will be the winner  plus Onew hyung will be his automaticly !

Can anyone tell me what is the difference with the initial statement and Taemin’s latest one? It’s just a more elaborated version. And what made me puke out blood was the fact that the other 3 members thought it to be a good idea and all agreed to start competing for Onew’s heart.

Coincidentally, Onew overheard about their competition and decided that whoever proved their love towards him the best would earn his heart. Don’t you feel pity for Onew and think him stupid at the same time? After all, he did just strip himself of his own privilege of choosing who he actually wants to love and be with.

The following chapters will see loads of jealousy between the 4 others as they each take turns trying to work their charms on Onew.

Then out of nowhere, the Big Bang people come into the picture and an unjustified one and a half chapter is dedicated to Onew helping TOP to shop for a ring because the Big Bang member wants to propose to GD, in which he succeeds to carry out later on.

And in the next chapter, TVXQ pops into the series to kidnap Onew because they supposedly missed him.

The author shoots herself in the foot by making Onew reply, ‘But you always can see me at Shinee’s dorm’, and now the TVXQ members look like idiots too.

I don’t understand why Jaejoong suddenly wants to show Onew an ultrasound scan (it’s not like as if the two are that close to share information of such a level), and why all the TVXQ members seem to want Onew as much the other 4 Shinee members do by attempting to adopt him as their son. Somehow, Onew cannot go back to his dorm because the manager wants to see how the Shinee members would react when their leader is gone, which cues for more awkward Onew-TVXQ scenes. 

IS THAT TEST REALLY NECESSARY? It makes no sense. And now I’m crying (internally) for wasting my time reading this plotless, totally random and senseless story.

Organisation

Because this story is built on pure randomness, all events in the series are not developed in a judicious order. The beginning was somewhat clear because it was 4 members against each other fighting for Onew’s heart and the scenes would jump from one member to another. It started to get hazy when Big Bang came in but I decided to push my slight confusion aside because authors like having other stars cameo in their series to spice things up. However, I started to get a migraine when TVXQ came in and took over the spotlight. I felt the story was truly thrown off track from that point onwards...and with the newly introduced fact that Changmin seemed to feel something for Onew...*runs to grab my pain relief pills.  

Vocabulary, Language and Structure

This has got to be the worst scoring section for the author and her story. The punctuation was one big mess. There was a spacing before every single type of punctuation mark, less than 5 full stops in every single chapter poster so far (HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE!?) and the worst has got to be the ellipse, ‘…’.

Her ellipses range from 3 to 8 ‘dots’. It seems to me that the author just presses the ‘.’ button with reckless abandon and it comes off as a big eyesore and irritation to me, and I’m sure it’s the same for readers.

Oh wait, I’ll just take that back. It seems that more than a hundred people are masochists and enjoy a tortuous read such as this one.

Just when I thought the story mechanics couldn’t get anymore screwed up, the author forgets more than just the existence of full stops and decides against using quotation marks in Chapter 7 as well, making the story even more mind boggling as conversations and thoughts are nearly impossible to detect on the spot.

The tenses are all over the place because a sentence can begin in present tense, morphs into past tense and ends off in present tense once more.

Time travel?

Audience engagement/effect on readers + Originality

The opening line already made me lose hope in thinking that I could finish reading all 13 chapters posted up so far.

The punctuations were enough to turn people off. The fact that there were hardly any full stops in sight made reading tiring, so the more I read, the more lethargic and irritated I got.

This story’s originality lies in its randomness in the later chapters, so things are extremely unpredictable…in a bad way.

Character Design/Depth

Jinki (only in Chapter 1)/Onew (for the rest of the chapters) is a pathetic character. I consulted ChelsJong, who has extensive knowledge when it comes to Onew, and asked her what leadership qualities Onew possessed.

Comparing the real guy to Onew in here, I found that the Fictional-Onew was hardly comparable to the original one.

He can cook (but is careless and forgetful so he burns them), but is incapable of eating his own meals, so much so that someone has to feed him (Shim Changmin… I know, even you’re confused as to why Changmin’s even feeding him in the first place. Don’t worry, I’m just as dizzy so you’re not alone.).

The only time he is useful towards Shinee as a leader is when he tells people to get ready. That’s all.

Honest.

I’m not going to elaborate on the other characters for there’s nothing fabulous about them either.

Part 2: Story

Content: 2/10

Organisation: 2/10

Vocabulary, Language & Structure: 5/30

Audience engagement + Originality: 3/20

Character Design/Depth: 2/15

PM me to complain or clarify on anything related to this review.