Link: http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/12348/the-edge-of-love-jaejoong-jessicajung-jonghyun-minho-shinee-snsd-yoona

It’s quite an interesting title really, interesting in terms of its wording and meaning. These are one of those titles that when read over, one may still not get the full meaning behind its wording. This title is very much the same, yes, appearance wise, it looks beautiful and sounds very eerie and mysterious. However the meaning of your title is another thing, when I read it over, I was thinking to myself whether or not this title made sense to me. I was always asking myself whether or not this title was just made to appeal to readers with how it sound rather than how it meant.

Because I certainly couldn’t understand how something could be on the “edge of love”. In a way, this title both makes sense and doesn’t, it really depends how deep the readers’ meaning is of your title and how their view on it is. For me, it was only after a great deal of thought that I finally realized what the title really meant and how it represented the story. To be on the “edge of love” can be almost said as being on the edge of a cliff, you’re on your boundary limits, just one push and you will fall. This title is a complete mirror to the lives of many of the characters in this story because they are standing in the “edge of love”. They are standing in the deepest, narrowest parts of love that they can physically and emotionally damage themselves. I can already see from the character description that Yoona will clearly be a part of this example.

 

This title is truly powerful, in terms of its meaning and the emotions expressed. There is something amazingly dark yet lovely about this title, I really can’t put it into words, but this title fits into your story like a jigsaw piece. It’s beautiful and compelling, a rare gem of a title.

 

What a stunning and captivating poster, there’s so many things to describe about it that I don’t know where to start. 

The first thing that I must comment is the use of the colours in the poster, the colours in your poster was what caught my attention at first. It wasn’t the pictures, or the title, or the layout, it was the colour that grabbed my eye. If I said that your poster was colourful, then I would be lying, but then how can something catch your eye if it’s not colourful? This is a question I like to ask myself when looking at your poster. There was something, something about the use of the colours that grabbed my attention. 

The way the colours were all splattered onto the background like a spilled bucket of paint is quite an interesting way of making a background, usually in posters, colours and background are very neat looking and easy on the eyes. Your poster went on a different direction. And I must say, it was definitely effective, the way the colours were all thrown into the background sort of implies the messiness of emotions in your story. After looking at the colours of your poster, it sort of implied to me that your story was going to be a one heck of a rollercoaster. 

The way the colours were all messed up and splattered told me that your story wasn’t going to take a straight approach on any sort of emotion. There was going to be more, a mix of emotions, comedy, sadness, grief, love, dark, angst. Like I had said before, a splatter of colours in your background, a splatter of emotions in your story. Well that was the general idea that I had thought. 

The positioning of the characters wasn’t really that interesting, but I must make a special note on the choice of the pictures. The way everybody had the same serious expression is quite eerie adding to the general dark tone of your poster, no surprises there seeing that the poster is leaning more and more to the darker and edgier side. The picture of Jaejoong however caught my attention, maybe it was deliberate or accidental, but the way he was presented in this poster was quite different due to the fact that he was the only one shown with colour (apart from Jonghyun). And might I add that he was the only one in the poster that was wearing visible white? Could this be something implying to the plot? Could this be symbolizing anything? 

This is a real poster, a real poster doesn’t just give us a visual of your story, it leaves us hanging with questions and curiosity. With this curiosity, it is the driving force to make us READ the story, and that is the main idea, to provide an appealing visual and to describe the plot in a bits-and-pieces fashion. Excellent poster, loved it.

A very detailed foreword, the plot was very finely written and each character had a thorough description of their part in the story. I would like to take a special and serious note on the layout of your foreword, as a foreword, your main objective is to provide a detailed summary of the plot of your story and also introduce the characters within it. Your foreword was detailed and long, no doubt about that but I felt that it was too detailed and that was a bit of a problem. 

I felt that after reading the foreword of your story, many bits were revealed about the plot which I thought would have been better been shrouded in mystery or just left aside. We read the foreword to be introduced to the story, not to be delved into it, that’s what chapters are for. But the foreword is different, although it is technically a chapter, it is more of a pre-text or a blurb. 

Apart from the bits of spoilt details in your foreword, I was quite bothered with the fact that it was a bit dull and plain looking. A foreword doesn’t have to be pretty, it’s not the law to give it colour and little bits of detail everywhere, but it doesn’t hurt right? I felt that when reading your foreword, my mind sort of drifted a bit because not only of its length and complexity but also because it had no general sense of appeal to me.

A good example of an appeal that could have been used in your foreword could be the use of pictures to depict the characters. It’s not necessary so don’t take this too seriously, but the use of pictures helps us form a clearer image of the character in our head. Yes, we all know how Jonghyun looks like. We all know how Yoona looks like. We all know how Minho looks like. But in your story, these characters are much different to the ones that we know of in real life, that’s why the use of pictures can give us a clearer image and impersonation of them in the story. 

Apart from the lack of appeal and some spoilt details of the foreword, I felt that everything was just right. 

I don’t think I’ve ever read, or come across, or even thought of a fanfic that was based around the idea and underground lives of mafias. Originality? Oh gosh, how should I say it? A TOTAL ORIGINAL, and I’m dead serious, I mean to come across a fanfic about gangsters is quite rare seeing that most fanfics these days are always about love and hate. 

Not only that, your fanfic although very dark and angst-grief sounding, had a key theme that revolves around it, romance. To mix something in a story, both dark and angst with romance is something that most authors find hard to write. This is because both of these themes tend to need great amounts of description to describe the emotions that are part of the two themes, thus stories like these are quite hard to come by, because most authors tend to lean on the safe side by resorting to a one sided theme like romance only. 

Your fanfic however took a different approach, both dark and romance? I like it, the whole idea of this underground mafia theme, and this tragic fate of love and misunderstanding somehow gives me an idea of some alternate and romantic version of the Godfather. Which will never happen if you were wondering.

Something that I fear about this fresh and compelling plot of a story is that its theme, as in the whole part idea of gangsters and mafias, would not be able to appeal to a wide range of readers. Most readers lean to stories based on romance, I mean, that’s the whole idea of fanfics anyway, to write romance related stories about their idols. But to mix in this whole gangster-mafia plot is quite a risk, in a way, readers can’t relate or find interest in this as it’s too boyish of a theme. 

I haven’t started reading the story yet, but in truth, I don’t take special interest in mafias and gangsters, I do however hope that the romance part of the story contributes greatly to the plot. 

The flow of this story was fast paced and very addictive. Usually I’m not very fond of the “10 years later” chapters because sometimes lots of valuable bits of their past is lost, and we as readers lose the general aspect of the plot because in past & present chapters, there are TWO plots. Which is why it is risky to write because sometimes the general idea written about the past may have been left behind. This in turn affects the present because both cannot mix together because one plot doesn’t make sense, and the other plot is too thin. Thus, everything becomes a jumble of mess because we do not understand the present because of the past. 

Fortunately you written the past in a simple and straightforward manner, I liked the fact that there were no relationship conflicts in how you presented the past. The main conflict that it was about was Jaeyoung’s disappearance and how it affected everybody, thus the past was kept to a simple and minimum manner. There were general hints about who liked who, but there were no clear relationships at this point, and this is a good thing because we want to be introduced to the characters and the main plot of the story, but we don’t want to be delved too deep with their life and everything that revolves around them. 

In that way, both past and present came together smoothly and the fact that each chapter started and ended with a cliff-hanger gave it more suspense. Two birds with one stone.  

Like I had said before, the plot of this story was a total original. There is a big uniqueness about the aspect revolving around a lost brother, leading on to mafias and gangster organisations and then love in between. The lost-brother aspect of the story is quite a cliché that I have seen in dramas and movies, but I certainly haven’t seen it been used as much in a fanfic. This whole idea and beginnings of a plot kept it fresh and unique and it woven perfectly with the theme of mafias in this story. 

This story plays a lot in the what-if section, what if Jaejoong’s father had never been killed? What if Jaeyoung had never went missing? What if Jaejoong really fell in love with Yoona? What if Minho and Yoona fell in love? The whole idea of the what-if is that it gives us an alternate idea for the plot of the story in our mind. This whole plot of the story was a huge twist and turn, it can be more described as a huge maze, and I guess the goal of this maze is to reach Jaeyoung, but it’s the route in getting to him that is the question. Will they choose the long path? Or the short path? Will they encounter danger along the way? And what sort of obstacles will across them?

A plot with so much twists and secrets adds to its suspense and this drives the whole story because the plot was simply so captivating and compelling. 

I do believe I gave you a full mark for this category on your last story that you requested from me? It’s quite hard finding anything to say in this category because seriously, I couldn’t even find any mistakes or incorrect grammar even when I wanted to! Every sentence was well described, punctual and had meaningful words. 

Descriptions were lengthy and complex, but beautifully written.

You must either be a genius proof-reader or have an excellent beta-reader, either way, whatever you’re doing, keep it up!

To have such a good plot, and an excellent flow to the story, one must exact a good well-rounded use of characterisation. Even though a story may have every character, one must be able to exploit the personality and mood of their character effectively. Because this gives us a connection with the character and helps us understand their situation more, and it makes us feel for them. 

And that is the general sense of characterisation, the character, their actions and personalities drive the plot. That is why to have an effective characterisation, most if not all characters in a story should be different. I’ve seen too many stories where every character is almost perfect, their life is perfect, they look perfect, urgh.

I’m glad that your story is different, the characters in your story contributed to the plot greatly. Jaejoong’s damaged self from the loss of his brother, Yoona’s silent and loving self from her silent love for her best friend, Minho’s understanding self for loving somebody and understanding that sometimes they will never love you back. The personalities of the other characters were truly unique, but I thought it was these three characters that stood apart for me. 

These sort of personalities are quite cliché with the unrequited love thing (loving and not being loved back), but how real are these characters portrayed? Don’t we all like somebody who never liked us back? Haven’t we ever felt down from the loss of something important? The realism of these characters not only connects us to the real life, but connects us as well. 

Effect use of characterisation, simple as that. 

Your writing style here is a complete parallel to how you write for your other fanfics. Descriptions were deep, complex with emotions and twists, caked with emotions and grief, and sometimes there were tad bits of black humour here and there. Your writing obviously belongs in an A-class of fanfic writers, your writing was so deeply written yet so understandable and simple. Everything felt so real, from the plot (aspects from it), the theme of the story (angst and grief), the characters (mainly Yoona, Jaejoong and Minho) and everything else.

To write in such a manner that makes you want to jump right in there to comfort the characters and their troubles takes real planning in writing as well as skill in writing. I can’t say that your writing style has improved from your previous stories, because it has still remained much of the same, something that I find quite expecting and predictable. Well anyway, I loved your writing, it was beautifully written and so captivating.