anthealkl
❁Crimson Twilight Review Shop❁ {PAUSED/Finishing requests}
母爱： 母亲的秘密 ( My Mother's love: Her secret )
About: angst, family, slifeoflife, exom, luhan, yixing, kris
Bleu
Finished on 3/25/2014
Title 5/5–I have mixed feelings about your title personally, whenever a title is written in this format “_____:___” it always makes me feel like there's a sequel or a prequel, but there isn't right? I guess that this format is just heavily used for stories with a series that I automatically think there's a prequel or sequel. I think this title is really relevant to the story, cause after all, that is what the story is based on, a mother who loves her son, but one that also has a secret. Although I wish you hadn't revealed so much of the mother's past, since I would have preferred if you revealed it one by one, and not all at once.
Foreword 8/10–I really like the way you formatted your foreword, it doesn't make it look empty or out of style. It looks really neat, and it's eye-catching as well. The only thing I have against your foreword isn't the formatting, well it sorta is, but if you look at the four dialogues in at the top, you notice that you had a space after the first set of quotation marks, which you shouldn't have. Another thing is, I think the last dialogue, you forgot to put a space after that period at “Your mother left you.She's dead in our hearts.” Moving on, at the next section, I noticed that you put spaces before the comma and after the comma, you should know that you only need spaces after the comma. I don't know if this was a mistake or you did it on purpose. Also another thing is, I think you should add a description of what a “samfoo” is, I know what it is because I'm Chinese, but others don't and there are some people who are way too ignorant to bother to search it up online. I noticed that you repeated the same mistake, where you had spaces before and after a comma, every now I then, I think these were mistakes maybe? Because you seem to have some prior knowledge that you shouldn't have spaces before it. I noticed that you had some formatting issues, everyone has them every now and then, and sometimes they're just unfix-able, so I won't mark any points off because I know it's not you're fault. Whenever you write a dash, you don't need to put a space after it, after all, it is connecting two causes, just like the semi-colon it needs no space after. I really like how relevant the huge quote is, it's exactly what Luhan is representing, the fact that he has no mother.
❁” Grandma, tell me about my real mother.” should be,”Grandma, tell me about my real mother.”
❁” You don't have one Han.” should be,”You don't have one Han.”
❁” That's a lie Grandma, everybody has one.” should be,”That's a lie Grandma, everybody has one.”
❁” Your mother left you.She's dead in our hearts.” should be,”Your mother left you. She's dead in our hearts.”
The reason I decided to change these few pieces of dialogue is mainly because you kept putting a space after the first set of quotation marks. I don't know if this was a mistake, or if you did this on purpose. I don't think you did it on purpose since this mistake wasn't repeated constantly. Another reason I changed that last piece of dialogue was because you didn't put a space after the first period.
❁”When Luhan finds a photo among his father's possession shortly after his death, he recognises the young man in the traditional red samfoo as his father , Lu Zhi , but the bride is unfamiliar. Who had his father married all those years before? A few months later Lu Han's aunt sends Lu Han a letter which reveals the history of their family:The story of the abusive man his mother had married and the son she was forced to leave behind.” should be,”When Luhan finds a photo amongst his father's possessions shortly after his death, he recognises the young man in his traditional red samfoo as his father, Lu Zhi, but the bride is unfamiliar. Who had his father been married to all these years ago? A few months later, Lu Han's aunt sends Lu Han a letter which reveals the history of their family: The story of the abusive man his +mother had married and the son she was forced to leave behind.
❁”An unforgettable story of secrets, betrayal and love of an undaunted bond of a mother and her child.” should be,”An unforgettable story of secrets, betrayal, and the love of an undaunted bond of a mother and her child.”
Plot 19/20–I really enjoyed your story, the plot is really historical, and it feels like it's exactly what it would be in the 1960's in China. Back then it was still new land to most people, and I think the most important thing was their pride and family ancestral. If you come from a wealthy family, you could live the rest of your life with freedom, it would have been a miracle if you got to marry into a wealthy family, but I guess it's not all fun and games. There were consequences and sacrifices as well. That's why I really loved this story, it tugged on my ethnic ancestral and it made me really grateful for what I have currently. The only thing I have against this story is that I wished it focused more on Luhan and it revealed Luhan's Mom's past a little bit slower instead of all at once. Cause then there would be more excitement on what's going to happen next etcetera. Another thing is, I really like the foreshadowing you have with Yi Fan and Yi Xing, they might not seem to be a imporant factor currently but they actually are. You have a perfect amount of twists and cliffhangers and right now I'm dying for the next chapter. In the end, this story is about a mother and child, and the many interferences that they will cross, I really love this story cause it really talked to me and my own experiences. I think others would really enjoy this as well.
Characters 19/20–One thing I have to praise is the original characters name, Xie Kai Ling. The thing I really want to praise is how realistic that name is, I've read many stories where the Chinese girl has such an unreal name, and I'm really glad you picked a name that actually make's sense. The characters were perfect to me, they each have their own personality, the only thing I would prefer is for Kai Ling to be making a bigger impact, I personally didn't enjoy how she was already Lu Han's girlfriend when the story began, I wish there was more rising action but it's also interesting to read it from this perspective as well. You do a good job at bringing in characters and describing them to perfect amounts. I'm really looking forward to how you're going to bring ing Yi Xing and Yi Fan more, cause I feel like they could be your trump cards and end up fooling the whole readers.
Grammar and Spelling 16/20–I noticed throughout the story, you had this problem where you kept changing your font sizes in the middle of the story. I personally don't know why you had decided to change the font sizes, but it certainly made your story layout odd. You have some times where you had like a “, ,”which I was rather confused by, you also have times where you put spaces before and after a comma, and after the first set of quotation marks. I feel like you should go over your story and double-check the spacings because that seems to be your main problem. The only thing I would warn you is your spacings, besides from that, your grammar and spelling is perfect, this time I didn't fix any of your mistakes cause they were rather simple, just spacing errors.
Flow 15/15–The flow is perfect in my opinion, and your transitions are really good. You have complete understanding of when to switch paragraphs, whenever you switch speakers, time, topic. There is not one time where I thought to my self, “What is the author talking about?”, “Where are they right now?”, cause you're just that good at keeping track the setting and time for the readers. There aren't any times where the story suddenly sped up, or any times when the story suddenly slowed down tremendously. That's what I really enjoyed about this story, it was really consistent and I personally couldn't find anything to complain about.
Enjoyment 5/5–I really enjoyed this story, I was really amazed by how accurate your Chinese was, I personally couldn't translate it to excel since my Chinese isn't that good, but I had asked my mom and she told me that it meant exactly as the English translation. I believe that you used google translate or wikipedia to find some of the names, cause I remember that you mentioned that you were a Native American Speaker. I couldn't find any mistakes at all in this story, and nothing to complain about, so you pretty much made my job boring haha. I really enjoyed just relaxing and reading a good story every now and then.
Structure 4/5–I noticed that you had some trouble formatting, but I don't blame you, after all, it was stupid AsianFanfics problem that they messed up your formatting. I find it really random how your font suddenly changes sizes every now and then, I don't know if you did this on purpose, or if it was another formatting problem. I guess sometimes there was a purpose for the font size change, like talking about the past, but there were also times that were just complete random so I was rather confused. I feel like your paragraph spacings, font type, color is perfect the way it is, but there were some line spacings that were odd, but that was also something AsianFanfics did which I assume.
Overall 91/100–Almost a perfect score, the one major thing that really brought your score down was your grammar and spelling. You had a lot of spacing issues, such as times where you spaced before commas, after the first set of quotation marks, and etc. You had formatting issues but I don't think that was your fault since you had no intentions of doing that so I didn't take any points off for it.
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