Review for clear_penguin // By: pilsuk123 

Title and Story Link:

Title: (8/10)

I personally love how the title sound and I like how it wasn't a obvious title that might reveal the exact story plot. It was simple, easy to remember and most importantly even before reading chapter 1, there's a lot of connections that I could already think of between the title and the story! I was glad that you briefly manage to explain the title in the first chapter right away without any delay and it definitely close any confusion or misinterpretation from the readers! However, despite all the good points on the title, 'gulp' will definitely associate more to swallowing food or water instead of pills etc. The title did grow on me, I find myself really liking it at the end! It gives off an awkward but artistic feel to it.

Overall Appearance: (7/10)

There wasn't a poster but the picture of Minho that you've place as the main picture was slightly misleading at some point in the story. For example, for a rather Taemin concentrated part in the story, I would have wished that the picture wasn't there to confuse me or to constantly remind me of Minho. To be honest, I feel that the story is a lot more concentrated on Taemin instead of Minho, only during the last chapter it was mostly on Minho's point of view, I would have hope for a poster or no image at all instead. The font and size of the words used in the story was pleasing and easy to read.

I realize though that there wasn't any actually long break/long spaces for a whole new paragraph. All of the new paragraph was slightly squeeze and together. I would have divided the paragraph clearer by adding more spaces before starting a whole new part. It's bearable to read it now because on average your chapters are rather short so it was still fine reading it but imagine one long chapter without proper or obvious spacing/break in between, it would looked too wordy and disorganize.

Description and Foreword: (6/10)

The description was simple, great and it was concise, I love that. The description was interesting as well, I would love to read on to know more about it. However, I was have hope you didn't spoil the page or spoil the story by writing character death in the foreword or anorexia as a story tag. It spoil the story immediately and I would have hope you kept it secretive so when there's character death or scenes of anorexia, it would come as a pleasant surprise.

Plot: (12/20) 

The plot somehow didn't feel realistic enough and there was a lot of holes in the story plot. Firstly, in terms of being realistic, knowing that Taemin was depressed and suicidal, I can't believe no one was assigned to watched him. Even if Minho was busy, shouldn't he ask someone to at least watch over Taemin when he found out that Taemin was about to kill himself? It didn't feel realistic how his family just seems to abandon him or did not care for him at all! Especially when you state that his parents once bragged him, there really isn't anyone at all in the family who cared? At least if there's clues that his parents hated him, it felt too unreal when his family just decide to leave him in the lurch when all Taemin was suffering was depression etc. If Taemin have contracted a disease that could be contagious, it would have more sense for them to leave him. 

Secondly, holes in the story. The story was vague from the start, there wasn't any sort of explanation in the story. There wasn't any information how Taemin manage to end up to the state he's in, how everything went down, how it all happened etc. It was rather sudden to just start the story with the state Taemin is already in. This affect the flow of the story as well because it didn't flow correctly from the start. The start should be when Taemin was still healthy where he's still in SHINee and suddenly break the news of his problem and how everything went down from there. 

Lastly, there was a confusing drastic change in Taemin in the later chapter. There was a part when Taemin was admitted to a hospital, and suddenly he wants to be normal or pretends to be normal. If that's the case, why would he kill himself after he was released from the hospital? The only reason I could come up with is that maybe Taemin didn't want to die in the hospital but it was a reason enough to clear the confusion of wanting to be better. 

Despite all that, I think you were trying to heavily focus on the emotional feelings and experience of Taemin and Minho which I really like.

Language: (17/20)

This is probably your strongest assets in the story - language. As mentioned in 'plot', you heavily focus on Taemin and Minho's feelings and experience in this phase in Taemin's life. I enjoyed the story because of how you write the story, there was vividly expression of emotions of Taemin and Minho which I really love. It made the story come alive in my mind! The rare conversations was greatly appreciated and it made the story amazing.

You didn't spoil any moment with too much conversation or unnecessarily explanation! Still, here are some of the typo/mistake that I've found which I felt could be better phrase or using the wrong choice of word. One last tip though, try to be more specific in the story. For example, who is the 'he' you're referring to. You could replace 'he' with the description of the character or simply write the character name. For example, you're trying to replace 'he' of Taemin. ''The skinny boy .... etc''

Chapter 1:

In fact, he wasn’t even sure if they would kill him.

(In fact, he wasn’t even sure if that was enough to kill him.)

But Taemin had nothing to talk about, it was already the end. 

(But Taemin had nothing to talk about, it was already the end for him.)

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter