Review for dhaatk // Reviewed by: jongupper

Title and Story link:  

Namjoon the Great (Completed, reviewed with 10 chapters)

Title: (20/20)

I like that your title matches the contents of your story so well - it can be interpreted as something highly sarcastic, like it’s some sort of snarky comment, but also serves as a perfect description for your main character. Great job!

Overall Appearance: (4/5)

I’m really pleased about the fact that you’ve chosen to keep your story in a certain part of the color-scheme. The poster is grey and white, the font is just the right size and not some crazy font-type in size 24, and your character charts give out a really good look at the characters’ attitudes.

I am not, however, a fan of how long your commercial section seems to be. I get it, support to the shops that put in effort and time to review your story and to make you that poster is important, but I think that when the commercial section fills out more than the rest of the foreword and description combined, something needs to be fixed. But that’s a layout-wise pet-peeve of mine, and in no way a criticism of you or the shops that have been helping you.

And another thing: I actually liked your old poster for this story too. Maybe you could’ve used that one as a chapter poster and the new one as the story poster?

Description and Foreword: (17/20)

I think the description of your story is incredibly on point. The two lines of description speak for themselves, but the quotes below it are really adding fuel to the fire that’s supposed to spark your reader’s interest.

And I don’t know how many times I’ve read a story and then wished for less character description that what I got, but the fantastic thing about your foreword is that nothing but their name, age and picture is given. I, as a reader, get to explore the characters myself, and that is, in my head at least, ten times more appealing than getting it all served on a silver platter.

Plot: (20/30)

What I like about this story is that it’s an idol story, but not in the kpop world, even though you customized it to be a story for kpop audiences. I like that you’ve chosen to make Namjoon something else than a rapper and a singer, because while I love Namjoon and his abilities, watching an idol being portrayed as someone completely else is what makes fiction fiction. I must say, however, that your entire plotline is a bit confusing. Your foreword stated that nobody got to actually see who Namjoon was behind that mask, but your plot did little to explain it. Actually, what I experienced most wasn’t a smiley idol who needed a hug and some friends who didn’t do drugs, it was more an idol who went on impromptu travels to the other side of the planet, hooking up with his ex after a small conversation and being apart for two years. What I see isn’t some romantized idea of how hard the idol life is; I see an idol who’s messed up. And you’ll have to forgive me for not being able to tell you whether that’s a good or bad thing.

Originality: (14/20)

Writing about partly broken souls seems to be the new black on this website. It has occurred to me that writing broken people are way more fun than a happy-go-lucky guy who genuinely loves his job - he would just be described as too much - and maybe that’s why I’m not going to score you that high on the originality scale.

Your fresh blow to the whole broken-soul-poor-rich-guy is his relationships. Namjoon clarifies in the beginning that no, he doesn’t like boys like that, and yet he’s still (quite literally) messing around with both Luhan and Jaejoong at any given opportunity. It’s not a brand new experience to have a superstar mess around with any kind of human relation he or she can find, but it’s a nice step away from self-pity lane. Great job!

Language: (12/20)

I actually have to say that, based on the quotes and the way you wrote your description, I sat my hopes and expectations up higher than they were reached. You sometimes mess up your tenses, and I have to say that your language might be a bit to the rough side - I know you stated this as a warning, but still I feel the need to address it.

With the way you’ve written this, it feels like the whole story is revolving around how much Namjoon is getting - the gender doesn’t really matter, but the amount apparently does. And I get that creating Namjoon’s character as vulgar and self-absorbed seems somewhat realistic, because haven’t we all at some point met a guy with those qualities? But here it’s just become too much. I’m not priding myself of being neither especially lead or holy, I swear a lot too, but reading some parts of your story actually made me slightly uncomfortable.

“Just learn your ing lesson for once, kid. If I want to you, I'll come to you myself, I don't need you always trying to seduce me. And no, you don't love me. You're just a stupid spoiled child with ed up emotions” - an example could be this. First of all, this gives off a hint that there is more to Luhan’s and Namjoon’s relationship than what you as the author or them, as the characters, have told us. Second of all, from start to finish, I cringed when reading this sentence, and the paragraph that followed. It just seems too crude to me.

Grammatically speaking, you sometimes tend to switch between using past and present tense. It’s usually not longer than a few words in a sentence, but trust me, stuff like that really throws off a reader.

“Namjoon has banged her already twice, but he knew that he would gladly do it for a third time”

“Namjoon had banged her twice already, but he knew that he would gladly do it a third time” - I’ve changed the whole sentence into past tense, and then I switched around some of your words. When dealing with verbs, a nice rule to remember is this: If it ends on -s, then it’s the future tense of the word, or the present tense of the word. If it ends on -d, it’s the past tense.

Fixer-uppers like these aren’t a big necessity in your story, because it seems as though they’re sprinkled over the chapters in a kind of random way. 90 percent of your story has no faults in the grammar department, but maybe an extra look on the remaining 10 percent would do you good.

Writing Style: (10/20)

Well, for starters I think this story in particular was very short-lived. Your sentences and paragraphs were fine in length, but I truly felt like I was missing some depth. In the scene where Namjoon finds Chaerin almost passed out you write that Namjoon is scared. But I as a reader didn’t feel that. Nor did I feel his distress when Charin called him back from Tibet, his pain when his mother died or his fear when Luhan practically died by his hand. I need depth, that’s all I can say.

Characterization: (18/30)

I know you asked for focus on the character development, so I’ve tried my best to really pay extra attention to your characters.

First things first, let’s go with Namjoon. He’s a stereotypical brat, and he truly needs someone to pull him back down on earth - this is a job that Nari’s perfect for. He seems like he’s missing something important in his life, a significant other or something, but instead of trying to make himself better he acts like a Scrooge McDuck - stubborn and rude until the world crumbles under his feet.

And you said that Luhan was the second most important character, right? I didn’t see that. I feel like his suicide came out of the blue air, and all he ever did was to hit on Namjoon. His second lead-role was instead passed onto Nari, but as I’ve understood it, that wasn’t the plan.

And sweet Nari. Oh God I love her. I love how she isn’t a celebrity and how she has this unrequited crush on Namjoon but still stays his friend. To be brutally honest, she seems like the most realistic person in your entire story.

Overall speaking, I found little to none character development. Yes, you made Chaerin get back in school and quit her drugs, but that’s it. And suddenly Namjoon realizes he loves Luhan. Your character development happens as though it was a spur of the moment kind of thing, and that’s really a shame, because developing your characters and watching them grow before your very eyes is what makes writing these things an adventure.

Flow: (12/30)

I’m sorry, but the flow here is off. It seems kind of weird to me that you can get Namjoon’s disdain towards his photographer to last a whole paragraph when Namjoon’s mother’s dead and his reaction didn’t even fill out an entire line. It seems as though you’ve switched your priorities around, and whether that was a deliberate choice or not I’m not to say. Furthermore, when you reached chapter ten and wrote in the dream where Namjoon meets Luhan again, it seemed rushed and unfinished, like you didn’t know when to stop or how to do so properly.

Reader's Scope/ Overall Enjoyment (2/5)

I won’t say that I’m completely devastated because my expectations weren’t met, because that wouldn’t be true. I did, however, like the story less and less as I read on, because it seemed like it lacked some depth. That does not, in any way, mean that your story isn’t good, because it is. Really. It just needs a bit more processing.

Bonus (+4)

Final Score/ Total (133/200) = 66.5%

A/N:

**