"Offside"

Author: roughivge

Main Characters: Hahm Eunjung , Park Jiyeon (T-ara)

Genre: Drama, Fluff, Gender Bending, Romance

Status: On-going

Description of Story:
He never wants to fall in love. He did not believe that he is worthy of even being loved. All she wants is to find the one for her. She believes that there's a happily ever after out there for everyone. Sometimes fate just loves to play a cruel joke, by pushing two people who could never be more different, towards one another. Will they realise that they had been caught in the neatly executed offside trap of Cupid? Or will they let their one true love slipped by without knowing?

Reviewer's Note: I am really sorry for the ultra late review but I've been busy with some stuff. This is my first review so I may not be as detailed as some others, so I apologize beforehand for it. As I have said, I am very, very, nit-picky about formatting and sentence flow, so I may seem like I'm just trying to find fault. That said, let's head to the review :)

Story Title: 4.5/5

I went to search it up on Google and learn that it was actually a term in soccer (if I'm not wrong). It's short, sweet, and relevant to the plot of the story, so yep, points for that! But I docked half a point because if I don't think I would be really interested if I just saw the story on the archive :(

Description and Foreword: 8.5/10

First, the author note should be in the foreword and not the description. If I'm correct, the description is for the synopsis and character list, and the A/Ns and any excerpts goes to the foreword.

I spotted a grammar mistake in the synopsis- it should have been 'slip by' instead of 'slipped by'.

Also, the fonts are quite haphazard; perhaps you should just stick to two frequently used fonts?

Also, I don't think you should introduce the characters in the format of a character chart. From how I see it, it seems more like a brief introduction and baiting of the characters, without listing their personality traits etc. I think you can just remove the colon behind their names, if you want to :)

Characterization: 9/10

Eunjung's character really tugged on my heartstrings; I can totally picture him being all snarky and sarcastic and witty and everything else on the exterior but underneath all that it's actually an abused, insecure but kind person. All those little actions that he does for other people is really sweet, even though those 'other people' may not even thank him for it. His insecurity is really well portrayed, by how he says that he is not worthy of love, and how he fights his inner demons. I attribute this to how most of the chapters are written in his perspective.

While Jiyeon is also well characterized, I don't think her personality comes off as strong. At the beginning she's really annoying and I wanted to punch her for being so mean (I am sorry > <) but I still find her cute at the end where she tries her best to make Eunjung feel better about himself. Those few excerpts do really give an insight to her character (they are seriously gold) but it's still difficult to wrap around how different she is at the beginning and the end.

Plot: 35/40

The plot is really good, I can totally see how Eunjung is a soccer player and how his career (?) was ruined because of that injury > < I can see the struggle he has because I get the feeling he still has a passion for it but he's too haunted by the incident, plus the pressure from his family. The foreshadowing from the first few chapters were great, and it was really a good way to convey the plot!

And the break-in by the dude (it's not the same person as the Lee Woohae p