Paper Cranes

Title: Paper Cranes MT-Challenge : Completed
Author: Sushi
URL: http://www.winglin.net/fanfic/P_C/
Reviewed By: Lone Ranger

Title
MT challenge fic title. No comment =)

Poster & Background : 7/10
Well I can see work done in the poster but it didn’t seem of the right mood and I didn’t like the overall feel of it. Nice quote on the poster though.

But I liked your background a lot. Not only was the colour pleasing to my eye without obstructing my reading, I think it suited the mood of the story perfectly (and shows how out of place your poster was)

Forewords: 9/10
I was this close to giving you full marks until I decided I was a tad bias =) Definitely beautifully written, I was drawn to your writing. (Side note: OBVIOUSLY you write well, you are a MT reviewer! Okay, that wasn’t me). It did an amazing job making me wonder who really was Jung Hoon and Charlene and how come the love was “forbidden”

Cast Used: 3.5/5
I think by pairing up Jung Hoon and Charlene together was already fresh enough. You got me wondering how the story would turn out.

Well although the characterization was good enough as it is, I felt more could still be done. You could have included those little details about what Jung Hoon like, how he was like especially since Charlene was so in love with him, she would take note of the tiniest detail right? And it would also be great if you could do more to explore Charlene as well. She sounded nothing more than a love sick girl sometimes (not saying it’s a bad thing)

Originality & Creativity: 9/15
Well, I guessed it was fresh enough for you to explore the whole issue of forbidden love in terms of teacher-student relationships taken in the middle of war although I did doubted the reality element in your story because I thought you got some of the historical facts wrong (coughs. History student speaking) but since you didn’t specifically state the year in the story, it could be me making the mistakes =)

As a whole, your story is considerably fresh based on Winglin standards but I have read a handful of stories based on wartime separations and all and so it killed a little of my interest. Also, I felt that there were bits that felt cliché. Especially towards the middle of the story with all the sweet things that Jung Hoon did. It was heart warming and all, but looking beneath it, it was pretty cliché.

Story & Plotting: 11/15
I must say I had no complains about the way the story was plotted. It was fantastic. Perhaps during the middle of the story the pace might have gotten a little missing but still good nonetheless. I especially enjoyed your forewords because it was intriguing. Chapter 1 was good enough for the introduction of characters. I liked how you ended the story with simply the hazel brown eyes looking longing at her. It was obviously Jung Hoon and you managed to bring that across without putting up a banner saying “JUNG HOON RETURNED SAFELY”. I thought that was amazing and the way you ended the story left me gasping. All I could say was, wow. It captured my heart.

And like I stated at beginning of this section, half way through I felt the intensity began to slip away and some things became a little cliché. Somehow the story became a little too fantastical. But you managed to still bring across the ideas well enough.

On a personal note, I would have preferred the story to be more intense.

P.S: I can’t take my mind off the scene where Jung Hoon first kissed Charlene

Spelling/Grammar/Vocabulary: 9/10
Splendid English! You had no problems with grammar and a relatively good command of vocabulary. I particularly enjoyed how you managed to grip the readers with a few words and how you managed to weave in descriptions within dialogues and events.

Flow Of Story: 7/10
Full credits goes to you for such nice flow and how you managed to rotate between past and present pretty smoothly. It was pretty obvious when was when and I liked it. I could also see how each chapter had a striking theme and it was just wow.

My only critique would be that perhaps the story was moving a little too fast. The one year didn’t seem like one year when I read (it could be because the story’s pretty short), my suggestion would be to actually include incidents in the middle that would first, show how Charlene’s love for Jung Hoon was and to basically act as a bridge so that the 1-2 year was more believable.

Writing Style: 3/5
I would have actually preferred if you had made the story more intense. But then again it was personal. I felt that I could see you through the fic and especially through the words that you used and the way you chose to convey some of the emotions in the fic. And the most important was I could set the story apart from many other fics in the main index.

Well, if you asked me a suggestion it would be that, you need to have flavour of your own. Your style is good, it’s like a good perfume. Now could you make you own unique scent that smelt uniquely you? Like a brandname?

Overall Enjoyment: 8/10
I enjoyed the fic. I adored your ending and beginning. In general, it was a pleasant journey and heart wrenching at times. And I guessed I summed my major personal grievance against this fic and it was that, it wasn’t intense enough. But it’s personal, because some people may just prefer something more light that deep.

Bonus marks: 2/5
For rushing the fic out before the deadline. For a completed fic.

Total mark: 68.5/90 (76/100)

Additional comments:
Good fic. I think you picked the wrong reviewer because I tend to be slightly stricter when it comes to emotional fics because I read too much of them. But nonetheless, well done. I really liked it. Congrats on the award by the way =)

Reviewed by Lone Ranger (aka Jess @midnight-tree.co.nr)