Title: Bottled Butterflies

By: SilverSerenity

I know I took quite some time before posting this review up, that’s because I’ve been really busy with school and procrastinating.

Excuses aside- your story is more on ‘angst’ instead of what you had labeled as ‘romance’. Perhaps you can think of adding the ‘angst’ tag in.

Title: 3.5/5

From what viewers can gather solely from the title, it’s not going to be a smooth sailing story, perhaps riddled with some turbulence here and there in the form of unrequited love and whatsoever.

I must say that this title is well suited to your story after reading through the description, so good job.

Poster: 2.5/5

The placement of the two guys in the poster is somewhat awkward because they are not properly blended into the entire poster and seem to have gatecrashed a party. The vibe I get from the overall poster is somewhat melancholic and sad, but the expressions on the two guys’ faces are contradictory to the mood and description of the story.

I also have beef with the fonts. Perhaps the ‘Bottled Butterflies’ font was used because it gave off the ‘romantic’ feel, but I wonder why they are of different shades of blue. The biggest problem I have with the poster is the extremely redundant words at the bottom where the bottled butterfly is. I don’t know if you are the one who typed it in or if it comes with the butterfly image but it serves no purpose whatsoever since the English in there is whack and incomplete in the first place.  

I have to hand it to you though, for your efforts in creating the poster yourself.

Intro: 2.5/5

Congrats on writing a short foreword which basically sums up the entire story but when viewers read it, seems so longwinded and draggy.

I understand that questioning the audience makes things more interesting and interactive, but when it is overused, it is extremely overwhelming to readers which is unfortunately the case here.

Content: 4/10

You begin your story by asking us to click a link to a song but you didn't do the linking properly, *sigh. 

That aside, readers get first dibs on the inner workings of Jongup’s mind and I wish we weren’t given this privilege because all we got was us groaning in agony or rolling our eyes after learning how dramatic and negative he is as a character/person. He keeps assuming things and thinks childishly, which leads to beating himself down because he lacks self-confidence as well.

And then the first loophole is revealed because you stated that Mr. No-Self-Confidence is ‘leaning on a wall that he used to hide himself while watching Daehyun from AFAR’, and then 3 paragraphs later, Jongup’s buddy, Junhong, pulls him away from the hiding place but when he turns around, the people he was spying on were just INCHES from where he had hidden himself.

Perhaps you don’t know what an inch is so let me tell you now: An inch is 2.54 centimeters.

Junhong is seen trying to reassure Jongup but this pillar of support ends up crying. Why is he crying anyway? I guess birds of the same feather flock together- *cough*weaklings*cough*.

The rest of the story pretty much goes on and on with only one unfortunate purpose and that is to continually shine a big fat spotlight on Jongup being a seriously pathetic character.

I can’t exactly classify this particular action as a loophole as I feel it’s more so on it not having been thought through enough: The throwing of the bottled letter. Who in the right mind would just throw a letter filled with juicy secrets which also contains his and his crush’s name out of the window when it’s not like as if it’s an ocean down below? Someone’s bound to find it- most likely the school cleaner, but since this is the very coincidental fanfiction world, Jongup is lucky enough to have his crush pick it up instead.

Organisation: 7/10

This is an easy scoring section for your story because everything happens in school so there is no way you can jump the gun that horribly. From behind the wall, to the lab and back to the ground floor of the campus, they’re all developed in a judicious order and coherence is maintained, but let me be clear, I’m only talking about events, not your language use.

Vocabulary, Language and Structure: 10/30

And now, prepare to get blasted.

Your prepositions are all over the place, so much so that your sentences come off as awkward and meanings/information get twisted.

‘…tugging me out of my table’, that's a bit grotesque don’t you think? It’s like as if he’s attached to the desk.

‘…welcome by nothing but darkness and the orange sun of the laboratory’ – You contradict yourself by stating that it is totally dark; pitch black where you can see NOTHING then at the next second, you state you can see the sun, PLUS, you put it in a way that sounds like as if this particular laboratory actually contains one. Nice.

‘…found nothing but peace and grass’ – What do you mean? Those 2 words don’t go together in the first place. The common usage would be ‘peace and quiet’ or ‘trees and flowers’, not ‘peace and grass’.

You were describing Junhong stopping in his tracks but he suddenly became an animal because you used ‘its’ instead of ‘his’. Do take note of that because it causes us readers to laugh, and I don't mean it in a good way.

Throughout the story, I noticed that you were trying your best to describe feelings and emotions as vividly as you possibly could. I do recognise your efforts. However, it seems a little overdone and hence, comes off as very stiff and unnatural. 

Audience engagement/effect on readers + Originality: 5/20

Bottled Butterflies was a one-shot and it is saddening to say that I’m extremely relieved because of that. It was agonising to watch Jongup beat himself down the entire time and coming to conclusions which seemed so half-assed and weak. I’m sure all readers wished at one point of time that he could find enough courage to at least make conversation with Daehyun. What’s the use of not even trying and giving up without a fight?

Character Design/Depth: 3/15

Too bad for Jongup wasting his time and groaning about how he isn’t ‘handsome enough’ for the ‘superficial’ Daehyun because his crush goes for guys with nice names as he will automatically ‘grow fond’ of such things. Eek.

Jongup is terribly depressing and he shouldn’t be called a man.

Daehyun is portrayed for more than half a story as being superficial because that's how Jongup feels about his BELOVED crush- solely going for boys with looks.

Youngjae is…I don’t know anything about him except that is supposedly more handsome that Jongup because that’s what our weak protagonist thinks.

Junhong is the 'dependable' (highly debatable) friend (of Jongup's) who cries on a whim.

PM me if you have any queries about the review.