(July 2015)

Title: Forever Chained
Author: peachbubbletea

Reviewer: eleutheromaniac

Title: (4)/5
While this probably isn’t the most unique story title I’ve seen on the site, it has a nice ring to it and a clear connection to your story.

Description/Foreword: (6)/10

Your description is a bit difficult to read, but only because you have to horizontally scroll to read the whole thing? I think that’s more of an HTML error, but it’s still a pain nonetheless. That aside, the overall aesthetic of the section is nice. I do think that you might’ve revealed a bit too much in the opening description, but that might just be because I like knowing as little about a character’s backstory as possible. When you explain the status of their relationship like this, it doesn’t really leave me too curious about what’ll actually happen within the story.

That being said, while everything looks in tip-top shape, there’s nothing within your description that really grabs my attention. It seems kind of boring, in my opinion.

Plot: (5)/30

Alright, I’m going to be blunt: the reason why your plot is being scored so low is because the foundation of your entire storyline is a weak one and there are countless times when it feels like you’re manipulating the characters away from their true personalities just for the sake of plot convenience.

Arranged marriages on this site tend to be one of those “tried-and-true” plotlines on aff that have definitely been tried over and over again but always end up feeling like an overused clichė. I was hoping that you would add in something that would make your plot feel more unique, and there’s definitely an attempt: Luhan and Yoona having affairs with other people seemed super interesting at first—unfortunately, it was executed quite poorly. At the same time, the flow of your story feels way too rushed. In chapter eight, there’s a paragraph that starts with Yoona just having woken up and it ends with her having walked all the way to the coffee shop and hugging Sehun. What on Earth? Paragraphing seems to be one of your weaker points and I’ll address it more in the grammar portion of this review.

Your reasoning behind the forced marriage is a weak one and even after having read sixteen chapters, I’m still not sure that I understand it completely. That’s definitely not a good thing because this “forced marriage” concept is the very groundwork of your story; if it’s not set up properly, then it’s hard to properly build anything on top of it. It’s said multiple times that Yoona’s parents have abandoned her, but later, in chapter six, you have her say that she hopes her parents are watching over her—so are they actually dead? Those are two very different scenarios and they have a big impact on how the reader feels about Yoona and her parents. It makes sense for someone who’s lost their loved ones to feel as though they owe them something, but if they’ve been abandoned by them, then it’s a completely different story. (Of course, Yoona and her weak characterization will be discussed more in the next section of this review.) What I don’t get is this: if, say, Yoona’s parents are actually alive, then why can’t Luhan’s parents just track them down in order to repay their debt? You’ve said multiple times that they’re rich, so if they feel truly indebted to them, it shouldn’t be that much of a burden for them to track down the Im family. Why do they jump to arranged marriage? At some point you say that the marriage had actually been arranged when Luhan and Yoona were younger, but I don’t know—there are a lot of explanations you give us, but I can’t buy into any of them.

The introduction of Donghae was done nicely, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the execution: you made it sound as though everyone who Yoona involves herself with romantically ends up leaving her. But in all seriousness, I found myself rooting more for Donghae than Luhan—which I’m guessing is a problem since you tagged this fic as exclusively luyoon; though I suppose this explains some of your later actions in regards to plot convenience. The way I see it, Donghae “broke up with” Yoona (I’m still not sure if he broke up with her or just rejected her advances, to be honest—you need to work on your clarity), was not obligated to her in anyway, and is a changed man that wants her back. Luhan, on the other hand, is her best friend that left without a word and is now married to her while in love with someone else.

In all honesty, none of your character relationships are realistic at all—it’s all too sporadic and rushed and I feel like I’m reading a romance story written by someone that doesn’t even know how these complex emotions work. You’ve written “love” as though it’s an object that can just be cast away at a moment’s notice when it’s not like that at all; sure, there are times when it seems like the characters are “struggling” with their emotions, but their inner conflict is written so poorly that I don’t believe that they even know what they’re talking about. I’ll talk about this more in the characterization section, but it’s being said here as well since it negatively detracts from the plot.

There are other things in regards to your plot that I still don’t understand: Sehun’s reasoning behind his “request” in chapter five (like, I honestly don’t understand his argument at all—it ends up feeling like an unnecessary addition to your story that makes his character look dumb), why Yoona can’t know that Luhan’s a celebrity (or why it took so long for her to figure it out; honestly, why wasn’t she even curious about what he did for a living? Why couldn’t he just tell her? Wouldn’t it be easier for her to watch her movements better if she knew that she would constantly be watched by the press just for being in his proximity?), why Tiffany would bring extra wigs and clothes on an outing with Luhan when they’re going into his car (it just feels like an excuse for you to put Luhan in a dress and doesn’t add anything to the story at all), and why we get no reaction from Yoona finding out that Luhan’s an international superstar.

You have a lot of potential in certain parts of your story that you never truly elaborate on and that’s a true shame.

Characterization: (4)/20

You mentioned in your request that one of the things you were most concerned about in regards to your story was the character development and I can definitely see why. Your story is roughly a year and a half old, so I’m sure that you’ve changed a bit in regards to your perceptions of the world and how you portray your observations in your story. Unfortunately, I don’t think you had as much knowledge when you were creating these characters as you do now. To put it frankly, the characters you’ve written here come off as very flat and one-dimensional.

I have a lot of things to say about a lot of your characters, but I think I’m going to start backwards; so side characters first.

Let’s start with Yoona’s aunt: it seems like Yoona genuinely loves her and respects her a lot, but her actions make her seem like one of those people that I would not want to have in my life. What gets me the most is her interaction with Luhan in chapter three—like, who in the world acts like that? She hears that Luhan is Yoona’s childhood friend and for some reason that’s a good enough reason for her to go straight to packing her niece’s things? Why doesn’t she allow Yoona a say in the matter? Who would let a stranger into their adopted daughter’s room while said adopted daughter is sleeping? Despite Yoona’s appreciation for her, she seems like an awful caretaker and with her bossy attitude, I’d be miserable living with her.

There were moments when I actually liked Sehun (I can’t remember which chapter it was in, but there was a time when he actually gave Yoona advice that made sense and was plausible for his character to actually be able to say), but those moments were overshadowed by the way you wrote his character. It seems like he’s either the type of person who changes opinions fairly easily or he just doesn’t really have opinions at all. When he meets Donghae, he admits that he liked him more for Yoona than Luhan, but the way he acts in chapter sixteen betrays that notion entirely. His character in general seems to only be there when you remember to throw him in; I don’t think that the guy we met at the beginning of the story (who was super apprehensive about letting Luhan even speak to his cousin) would forget to check up on a sick Yoona when he already knows about all the emotional trouble she’s going through.

Tiffany’s character is just… very flat. In all honesty, I think that I would’ve preferred for her to be a stock over the nonexistent personality that you’ve given her. At first, she comes off as very jealous even though she insists that she’s not, then later, she helps plan the luyoon wedding and seems very cheery. She tells Luhan to stay away from her and hang out with his wife but then gets upset when the two of them don’t hang up. His fans attack her for a supposed affair and it’s totally okay, but at the beginning of the story, Yoona taking a bit longer to get her order down pisses her off. With Tiffany, you’re throwing a lot of character traits at us and they don’t mesh together very well. I’m not sure if she’s supposed to be some kind of two-faced character, but if she is, then there’s definitely a better way to write her.

Your most well-written character—by far—is Donghae… it just started to go a little downhill by the time in your more recent chapters. I’ve talked about him a lot in the plot section of this review, but I also want to add that at first, he seemed like the most realistic of all of your characters. There were also bonus points because he was such a gentleman and wow, we need more people like that in the world. What upsets me is what you end up doing with his character later: he goes from the guy who was willing to do so much for Yoona’s sake to a guy that totally just throws it all under the bus in order to piss Luhan off. Like ??? There was absolutely no foreshadowing to this possibility at all and the writing of the event wasn’t convincingly written, so it ends up feeling like a bad trait for an underdeveloped character or just plain plot convenience—which really , because he had been the frontrunner of all of your characters.

I get that this is supposed to be a luyoon fic. But there’s nothing wrong with making the other love interest appear genuine and likable? I hate it, but it happens in k-dramas all the time; one example I can think of off the top of my head is To the Beautiful You. Lee Hyunwoo’s character does everything that he can to win over Sulli’s and he never once sabotages Minho’s character or goes out of his way to make him jealous. He’s honest about his courting and when he realizes that it’s not going to happen, he drops out of the battle gracefully and him and Sulli’s character remain great things. There’s nothing wrong with that (except Sulli’s character not choosing him, but that falls to my personal opinion and I digress). Don’t allow yourself to fall into easily avoidable clichės.

Luhan is probably the most unstable character in the whole series, just because I can’t come up with a single adjective that properly describes him. It feels like his personality changes so often that I’m ultimately left thinking that he simply doesn’t have a personality. For the most part, he comes off as a huge hypocrite in regards to his treatment of the Donghae/Yoona affair, and it’s hard to feel anything but annoyance at this point because you never real delve into the emotions behind his hypocrisy. In chapter one of your story, there was a lot of description about the way the characters were feeling, but you lost that as you continued to write; now it just feels that all of your characters go through the motions of feelings but don’t actually feel anything—that’s definitely what you don’t want in a romance story. Him not saying goodbye to Yoona because he thinks that goodbyes hurt more feels like this huge clichė that feels like more of an excuse than an explanation. The way that you manage his emotions is very haphazard and makes him out to seem fickle and unbelievable—and, in all honesty—annoying.

I’ve never come across a well-written Yoona because for some reason, authors always choose to assign her these flamboyant Mary Sue traits that make me want to cringe. It starts in chapter one when you say: “She stopped studying at the age of 15 because she already gave up on her life. Well, even though she didn’t give up she can’t afford to pursue her studies because of financial problems so it’s best for her to stop studying. Her parents abandoned her ever since she was a child and the only relative she knew is her aunt which is fortunately the owner of this coffee shop.” Not only is the “orphan/not orphan” situation typical of these characters, but so is the whole “pretty girl that can’t stand up for herself but everyone likes her anyway and she’s super clumsy and bad at taking care of herself and can also cook” thing that you have going on here. These are all stock traits of a Mary Sue and you really don’t want a stock character as your main—though you preferably shouldn’t have any at all—and I think it detracts greatly from your story.

The most beautiful moment we get from her was in chapter four, when she admits to Sehun that she wants to marry Luhan but that she’s hesitant to because she knows that he doesn’t love her but she thinks she can learn to love him. When I got to this part, I honestly thought that there was hope. Unfortunately, you’ve made her as fickle as Luhan and so it’s difficult to feel any true connection to her. It’s one thing for a character to not know what they want, but the vibes I’m getting from your writing lead me to suggest that perhaps it’s the author of the story who doesn’t really know how she wants these characters to behave. They say one thing, then behave in a completely different way, and then there are times when it seems like they forget who they are entirely. An example is at the very beginning of your story in chapters one and two: you keep saying that Luhan’s broken Yoona, so why does she let him back into her life so easily? Real people don’t act in this way and it makes your story lose an incredible amount of believability.

People not acting like people is a recurring issue throughout the story, to be honest. Another example of this is in chapter five when Yoona encounters Jessica: honestly, who just spills their heart out, says the other person is pretty and should be happy, and then leaves? It’s such an inhuman thing to do. Throw in some emotion, like, maybe Jessica is an awkward person and simply didn’t know what to do so she leaves in this uncomfortable atmosphere. That could’ve added some humor to an otherwise stale conversation! Minseok in this story is another example of this since most of his reactions to things don’t make sense to me at all.

Try to think about whether or not you can imagine someone acting a certain way before you write about it. If the only people you can think of are idols or actors/actresses in k-dramas, then there’s a problem.

Grammar: (7)/15

I think that your grammar improved a bit over the span of your story which is obviously a good thing. You had a bit of a preposition issue that became less evident as your story went on, but reading up on it a bit may still prove to be helpful. A quick Google search provided me with this website. There are a couple of times that you forgot you omitted your commas as well, so just be sure that you’re careful. Another smaller problem you have is your convention errors. Make sure that you spell out your numbers (i.e, “six” instead of “6”).

Your bigger grammar issues have to do with your tenses, word choice, and paragraphing. Though it’s more evident in the beginning of your story, there are often times when your sentences simply doesn’t make sense. An example of this would be “...and that’s just doesn’t seemed right.” You have a lot going on here and the mistakes that you’ve made can be a little confusing for your readers. It should be: “...and that just doesn’t seem right.” This problem may have to do with your tense issues as it seems that you switch between the past and the present tense a number of times. Again, this is more obvious at the beginning of your story, but it’s still a very relevant problem in the more recent chapters.

One problem you have that hasn’t seemed to have gotten better, however, is your paragraphing. Remember that each time a new person starts talking, a new paragraph should be made. Hitting that “enter” key isn’t very hard to do and I promise that it makes reading a lot easier for your readers! Otherwise, multiple people speaking in the same paragraph can be a little bit confusing since it’s more difficult to tell who’s saying what.

Writing Style: (6)/15

So it’s pretty obvious that this story was written over a period of time because you can definitely see a transition in your writing style. At the beginning, there wasn’t much variable syntax and the story was kind of a bore to read through. Your imagery came off as incredibly forced (especially in chapter one, dear Lord) and your diction was quite choppy. However, when your story progressed, your diction and syntax improved significantly and you basically got rid of all of your imagery so I guess that’s a bit of an improvement. Another issue that I noticed was that your word choice in general doesn’t always fit what you have your characters doing. An example of this is in chapter one when you have Luhan shrieking at Yoona.

Though there were some improvements in your writing style over the duration of your story, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. Read up on how to use punctuation like em dashes, semicolons, parentheses, and colons within your story when you feel as though you’re ready and I promise that it’ll pay off in the end.

Personal Enjoyment: (2)/5

I’m going to be completely honest with you: the longer I read your story, the more I began to dislike it. Though the grammar is a tad bit better than some of the other stories I’ve reviewed, the flaws in your characterization became more and more apparent as I continued reading; there weren’t many characters you had that impressed me in the first place, but then you turned around and made me dislike them as well. The plot’s foundation already put it at a rocky start, but when I got to the later chapters, the decisions you made for the sake of plot convenience were truly saddening.

Total Score: 34/100

Reviewer’s Comments: Someone once told me that a way to know whether or not a character is well-written is if a reader can recognize who’s talking without seeing a name because it means that their voice is so lifelike, it transcends the page. I think that that’s something that you can think about while you continue to write, and hopefully it can help you liven up your characters a bit. Your plot’s a bit unstable, but sometimes having characters that truly shine is enough to assuage the instability of a story, so I would definitely work on making your characters more lifelike.  (This also may be a personal thing, but I’m a Yixing-stan and seeing no mention of him whatsoever when Exo reunites—especially when him and Luhan are so close in real life—made me cry a little on the inside. All in all, there’s a lot of progress in your story that can be made, but don’t give up! With some hard work, I’m sure that you can achieve the goals that you set out for yourself. c: