and even all the stars cannot keep me (from you)
Story by fetchings
Reviewed by amber_rose

Title 
Your title is definitely interesting and the link to the actual story itself is evident. I noticed that the way your title is structured (with the lapslock and parentheses) is a stylistic decision as all your stories have titles structured the same way. It’s great that the structure of your title conveys a strong personal style and voice, which will go a long way to differentiating yourself as an author among the many authors there are out there. I also liked that there was some sort of tragic irony in the title, considering that Jongin and Jongdae were actually kept apart in the end: although their hearts never left each other, they still could not be together.

Description/Foreword
It’s not always easy to pull off a single sentence description and do it well, but I reckon your description is on point. You’ve managed to succinctly convey the essence of your story in that one sentence, so kudos to you for that! I did think that the flow of the sentence could have been improved by rearranging the positions of some of the commas though and introducing some alternate forms of punctuation like an em dash, so that the pauses are in different places and it reads better when you’re saying it out loud. You could also consider breaking the sentence into two altogether, by putting a full stop after the word “same” and shifting everything behind it to a new sentence. If that second sentence were on a different line, it could introduce additional dramatic effect to the presentation of your blurb. The last point is with regards to the presentation of numbers in writing. Typically non-journalistic writing follows the Chicago Manual of Style (journalistic writing has some differences) which recommends that any number between zero and a hundred be spelt out in full rather than being left in its numerical form. Therefore, it would be better if you had spelt out “twenty-three” instead of using the numerals—you’ve done this in the story itself, so might just want to adjust the description too.

Original: It's been 23 years, and Jongin still loves Jongdae the same despite space, time and infinity in between.

Suggested: It's been twenty-three years and Jongin still loves Jongdae the same—despite space, time and infinity in between.

Plot
I must confess that I had mixed feelings when reading this story. On the whole I felt that it was a well-written and compelling read, but at the same time because I had watched Interstellar twice myself, there was no longer any element of surprise or intrigue about the plot of the story. As such, I will review this story using two different lenses: from the perspective of someone who already knows the Interstellar plot and someone who doesn't.

Assuming a reader hasn't watched Interstellar before, the entire concept would have been highly novel and interesting. After all, the whole concept of time dilation is pretty advanced physics and not something you would come across regularly (if at all) in a fan fiction. Therefore, the idea of gravity and space-time resulting in a disparity in the timelines between Jongin in space and Jongdae on earth would have been rather ingenious and impressive. However, given that the concept of time dilation is quite complex and counterintuitive, it could be difficult for readers to grasp the idea quickly. This phenomenon was explained rather succinctly by Luhan’s character, however there was one section of his explanation (“That’s why we perceived positive beacons from Miller's planet all these years, when they were merely just minutes before she was killed by a wave.") that could be confusing for the reader because it requires prior context in order to be understood. It could already be challenging enough to wrap your head around the gravitational anomalies and time dilation concepts without introducing another element known as Miller’s planet into the fray. Someone who had not seen Interstellar before would not know what Miller’s planet refers to, and the natural assumption would be to think that it is simply the planet’s name; it would be near impossible to infer that Miller was the astronaut who had originally been sent to that planet, and that Jongin and crew had found their way to the planet because they had detected Miller’s beacon and thought that she might still be alive. Given that this is a short story and it would not be possible to provide the necessary background without writing out everything from the movie that preceded this scene, I would suggest that you remove specific mention of Miller altogether so as not to generate any unnecessary confusion for people without the prior knowledge.

The occurrence of time dilation was a great set-up for the context of Jongin and Jongdae’s relationship, because it created the reason for the emotional angst and turmoil experienced by both the characters. The conveyance of these emotions was well done in the second half of your story, where Jongin watches the video messages that Jongdae had recorded for him. I liked how Jongdae started the video messages with simple, everyday things like updating Jongin about what their friends were up to, yet at the same time there was a purpose in these particular updates: through Chanyeol and Baekhyun’s relationship developments, it highlighted starkly what Jongin and Jongdae could never have, thereby making their romance all the more wistful. The same goes for the next video that features little Seungwan, since that particular message reminded Jongin of how they could have adopted a child as well, if not for the fact that he left for space and they were now miles apart. I thought that your choice of content for these video messages from Jongdae was spot on because they both had a distinct purpose and helped to add richness to the relationship portrayal. However, I thought that there could have been more of these messages woven into the story as the jump between the Seungwan message and the final message was a little too sudden. If there had been a longer build-up towards the final message, I believe the emotions would have hit the reader even harder and everyone would be a sobbing train wreck after.

Now, from the perspective of someone who is familiar with the Interstellar storyline, the level of appreciation for this story could be rather different. In terms of predictability and originality of the plot, there would be nothing surprising or novel given that the premise and plot largely replicates what you see in the film, right down to what happened on Miller’s planet with the tsunamis. Even the video messages somewhat mirrors what happened between Coop and his daughter, except that you've gone and replaced it with a love line between Jongin and Jongdae. It would have been more interesting if there had been some additional twists to the plot, so that it avoids giving the impression that I am merely reading a synopsis of the Interstellar. Given that you've replaced the film characters with Korean characters, I also found it odd how the name Miller was still retained and that gave me even stronger Interstellar vibes that didn't help on the originality front. I understand that you're a big fan of the film and it feels like this fic is meant to be somewhat of a tribute towards it, but it's difficult to sustain the reader’s interest if they already know what everything is going to be about and the author’s personal creativity and ideas don't come across as strongly.

Characterisation
Given the short length of the fic, it would have been difficult to go in-depth into characterisation simply because there isn't much room to do so. Despite that, I thought your portrayal of the main characters Jongin and Jongdae was relatively well done and they came across as real and believable people.

Jongin: The development of Jongin’s emotions as the story went along was rather fluid and smooth, beginning with his disbelief at the time lapse that had taken place, followed by his anger and frustration at his current circumstance, and finally by regret and despair (mixed with a tiny remnant of hope) when he watches the video messages from Jongdae. All this was a logical progression of his emotional states and it was conveyed clearly to the reader through his dialogue with the other supporting characters and through his own thoughts. My only gripe would be that he reminds me too much of Coop, the Interstellar character that he mirrors, and once again the originality card comes into question. I suppose that is an unintended consequence of basing your story off an existing one, because it becomes doubly difficult to break out of the mound and make characters step out of the shadows of the originals.

Jongdae: Unlike Jongin, there is less challenge in making Jongdae a unique character because his equivalent in the film would be Coop’s daughter and the father-daughter relationship will no doubt be different from the lovers relationship. I thought Jongdae’s character development was okay, considering that we can only understand him through the messages that he sends to Jongin. From what was available, we could see that he was a kind and gentle sort of person (based on his interactions with Seungwan and his hopes for a family of his own), and that he was devoted to Jongin (based on his final message). The final message was particularly useful in providing a glimpse into the emotional turmoil that he was going through, as the one who had been left behind. However, it was a pity that there weren't more scenes through which we could get a more in-depth understanding of him so that his character could become richer.

Language
You definitely have a good command of the language and most of the grammar is spot on, so good job! There was only one minor issue that I noticed, which could easily be rectified to make the story a smoother read, and that would be the inconsistencies in the use of dashes throughout your story.

You obviously know how to make use of dashes to add some variation into punctuation, and that is an important part of story presentation. However, you would need to be careful of which dash you use and ensure that they are used correctly throughout. The one that you intend to use for the most part is the em dash, which should be slightly longer than the en dash and has a distinctly different purpose. There were a few instances where you used the incorrect en dash instead, possibly because you weren't paying close attention to it, but this is a minor area that could be easily corrected. Also, you might want to adjust the spacing around your em dashes—there should typically be no spaces flanking the dashes. In your story there are some instances where you introduce a space after the dash, which would be incorrect.

E.g. “Stop playing with us Minseok - this isn't a ing joke!” In this example, an em dash should have been used and there shouldn’t be spaces on both sides of the dash.

E.g. “There's static— bow-shaped lips, twinkling eyes, and furrowed eyebrows swim into view.” In this example you’ve used the correct type of dash, but you’ve introduced an unnecessary space after the dash.

Structure and Style
Overall I thought you had a strong author’s voice and it was commendable how you managed to successfully convert scenes from a film into prose. It is a lot easier with film because they can make use of rich visual cues and sound effects to help convey the story and emotions, but that's a lot more challenging in writing as it tests the writer’s ability to plant images and evoke emotions in the reader just through the words on a page. I thought you did that fairly well and I was able to understand the story and empathise with the characters. That being said, I had seen Interstellar before and that could have helped somewhat in facilitating my understanding and appreciation of the story.

The flow of your story was logical and it was structured appropriately, with the exception of the sudden jump to the final video message from Jongdae which I've already elaborated upon on the Plot section. I thought that was the greatest flaw in the story because it affected both plot and characterisation, and also made the flow slightly disjointed. Think of it as walking up a gradual slope, and then there’s suddenly a steep section in front of you and no steps to help you scale further up; that was how I felt about the ending, and I thought things would have flowed better with a more gradual build-up.

Personal Enjoyment
I think I enjoyed the story mainly because of the way you wrote it and the style of your writing, more so than because of the actual plot of the story itself. It was a short story with a rather straightforward storyline, so I was pleasantly surprised at how well you managed to portray things, especially in helping readers to connect with the characters.

Reviewer’s Comments: I think you are well on your way to becoming a great writer, given what you've been able to do with this short story! I would love to be able to read some of your work with more original storylines because I'm sure they’ll be great reads.

The permanent copy of your review can be found here: x