batch 2 // azeline // 17.

☆ Hallucinated Dreams Reviews Archive ☆

the sun's coldness by asianpng



Criticism Level: 9

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Title: 4/5
I have never heard a title like this before, so you've scored for originality. About its relevancy... I am not exactly sure. While you did link the title with the ending, the ending was not very appropriate in my opinion (refer to Plot for elaboration). Nevertheless, it is short and sweet and the contradicting words intrigue people.

Description & Foreword: 8/10
The description consists of only one quote, so you may want to add more information since it is a bit vague. Your preview does give an insight of the story and it interests people to know more about the story. However, it only shows part of Baekhyun's side of the story, so you can consider adding a short snippet of Chanyeol's side of the story as well.

Characters: 16/20
Chanyeol is a mental patient and he is seen as abnormal for obvious reasons. I can understand why he felt upset when he heard the conversation between his parents. Nobody would like it when everyone gives up on them, especially their parents, and I can see how uncomfortable one would feel when everyone is looking at him or her in a different light (regardless whether they care about other people's opinions or not). At the same time, I can understand why his parents made the decision to send him to a hospital as well; he needed professional help and that was the only logical decision that anyone would make as well.
Baekhyun is an interesting character; he is not exactly normal but not exactly different either. He admires mental patients because they can view the world in different perspectives and also due to some other reasons, but here is something I do not exactly get. I do not know what is his definition of 'mental patient', but scientifically, a mental patient is someone that suffers from a mental disorder and thus, he or she has an impaired ability to function in ordinary life. They suffer a lot emotionally and the pain they feel is not something that is very pleasant. Is Baekhyun referring to insanity (which I suppose is what Chanyeol is suffering from)?
The part about Chanyeol's appearance is kinda funny... maybe because in almost every story, the appearances of the characters are often described as perfect. This may be more of a flow problem, but the first meeting went by pretty fast. It is hard for a mental patient and a normal patient to develop a relationship because of their differences in thinking (then again, if the normal patient is understanding and the mental patient can trust him or her, it may go fine). Chanyeol trusts way too easily and Baekhyun is too kind(?) towards him. Also, I feel that until the very end, their personalities and stories are not fully explored because the focus of the story is on romance (and your story is a one-shot). The characters have little to no negative traits and they can even be classified as mary sues. Baekhyun is more of a mary sue that Chanyeol in my opinion because it is not clear as to what had happened to him beforehand.

Plot: 15/20
The plot is like a typical romance story, but the characters are a mental patient and a normal one who has some problems himself. Largely believable but some parts mentioned in Characters also affects the realism of the plot as well. There are many rare themes which your story has briefly touched on, but never fully explored. For example, the difficulties that mental patients face because they are looked upon differently in comparison with other people. There is also no conflict in the story except towards the end (and sadly, there are little people in the world that are like Baekhyun).
About your ending, it is pretty cliche and expected. One issue I have with angst stories these days is that they mostly end with someone having an illness and he or she is separated from his or her loved ones like that. These things actually happen in real life but for your story, that ending is completely unnecessary (I pity Chanyeol though... he is sick both mentally and physically). If you do not want to end happily, maybe you can end with Baekhyun leaving Chanyeol because of the number of times they clash and he finds it too tiring to continue their relationship. It is sadder this way and kinda reflects about what happens in real life because of people not willing to accept the other person's flaws, but it is up to you how you want your story to end. By the way, what happened to Baekhyun in the end? 

Flow: 4/5
There are times when I have felt that your story goes too fast but that is understandable as your story is a one-shot. Your story stays as Baekhyun's point-of-view all the time which is great.

Grammar & Vocabulary: 13/15
Your grammar is relatively okay, but there are some minor errors:
'blur-ness of the events' - This should be 'blurriness' instead.
'weather its the sweat droplets' - This is a pretty common spelling error.
'catch up to his friends' - 'with' should be more appropriate.
You also have a slight tendency to switch tenses, for example:
'weather its the sweat droplets' - This should be replaced with 'it was' since Baekhyun is trying to recall what had happened.
'all of these are caught by his ears' - Since all of these was caught by his ears back then, this should definitely be a 'was' and not an 'are'.
Try not to use over complicated sentences that are too wordy (e.g.: he isnt sure weather its the sweat droplets that had somehow seeped into his eyes while he was running in the summer's humidity to catch up to his friends who were already at the diner or to blame the lack of concious to reality his mind was currently desperately trying to increase.) That sentence is way too long and it does not flow well. Perhaps you can replace the sentence with two shorter sentences. 'conscious' should be 'consciousness' as well.
Your vocabulary is exceptional and you have a wide variation of sentence structures - just be sure not to use over complicated sentence structures that will confuse your readers.


Description & Emotions: 10/10
Your story is very descriptive and I really like your writing style. You are able to form images inside your readers' heads and describe the actions and behavior of your characters in detail. I have nothing else to say here.

Format (Graphics & Layout): 7/10
You do not have a layout but if you want to enhance the visual effects of your story, I'd advise you to get one. The format is pretty neat and words are readable. I know you have told me not to judge the capitalization part but I have noticed that the second half of the story has some of the words appropriately capitalized while the first half of the story has absolutely no capitalized words at all. It is kinda distracting (especially because the capitalizing starts at the half of a paragraph). Your poster is pretty though I do feel like something can be done better (I cannot exactly picture out what that is, sadly).

Overall Enjoyment: 3.5/5
The read is pleasant, but it does not really stand out much.

Total: 80.5/100 //B (+) 
I like the way you write and narrate the story, but definitely something more can be done. This review is quite late so I apologize for that... I am trying to work on my speed. Thank you for requesting and please remember to follow all the rules!


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