Title: 𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐜 - 𝐀𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 by 123hikibakas
Source: ᴬʳᵗⁱˢᵗⁱᶜ ᴱˣᵖʳᵉˢˢⁱᵒⁿˢ ᴬʷᵃʳᵈˢ by janefanfics
Category: Brushstrokes of Feelings
Mature: Y (alcohol, blood, death, explicit sexual content, murder, physical assault, smoking, strong profanity, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: G (mention)
Status: Complete
Special note (judging): I had five books from this category, and the other judge, Saramitra_, had five books.
Score: 82/100

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book, or click the link in the inline comments here. →

*****

Rubric:
- Blurb: 5
- Creativity & Practicality: 5
- Grammar: 5
- Plot Development: 5
- Style, Tone, & Feelings Factor: 70
- Component Compatibility: 5
- Overall Rating: 5
- Total /100

*****

Total score: 82/100

Blurb: 3/5
I don't really like quotes or book excerpts splitting up a blurb (or in a blurb at all), so I'd move those down below "It's another story." When you have a prospective reader clicking on the book title and bringing up that pop-up box, they don't see the full text of the blurb, so every bit they do see needs to count.

As far as editing suggestions, the line with "this is not" repeated twice should have a semicolon or a period instead of a comma, and the following line with "It's another story" should end with a period. For the first quote, the second "not" should be all lowercase, and "that I will" should be "will I." Starting that line with a hyphen and ending with a tilde (~) feels weird, too. I'd probably replace the tilde with an ellipsis (...) to give the trailing off effect I think you want.

But, content-wise, this has a nice, mysterious feel to it, almost ethereal, and I'm down for a retelling of the Titanic, so bring it on!

Creativity & Practicality: 5/5
Well, excluding the images you created, this is definitely creative, and we won't even talk about the talent needed to make those images, or my latent jealousy. I would never have thought to merge the Titanic with BTS. You've definitely taken some liberties, as I would expect from a fanfiction, so things that would impact practicality don't really mean as much here. What I mean by that is historical accuracy. Out of curiosity, I was Googling things as the story progressed, because there were a lot of things I was sure didn't exist at the time of the Titanic, and I was right. It wouldn't be a bad idea to stick a note at the beginning that you're not going for historical accuracy here.

Ready for the list? Just for funnsies. And because I need to pretend my side research had value. 😉

Coke, cans, car radios, TVs, zippers, and bras did not exist at the time of the Titanic (although bras were invented in 1914). Cars didn't come into common use until the '20s and '30s, commercial flights not until the '20s (and still weren't common until after World War II), showers existed but weren't really even in homes until the '20s, and although chest compressions existed, CPR wasn't invented until 1959. Also, there was a Bambi reference, but that movie didn't debut until 1942.

And homosexuality was at best extremely unacceptable during that time period, so Jungkook would never have mentioned the guy making a pass at him, and that guy would not have made a pass at Jungkook unless he was dead certain Jungkook was gay, because if he was wrong, the consequences would have been dire. Like, the third class got much better treatment with the rats at the bottom of the ship than the treatment a known gay person would have received. 🥺

But, of course, having an Asian captain would have been unheard of, too, so, eh, whatever. 😉

I would, however, like to say that none of the characters would have used the term "vintage" to describe anything around them, as it was all new and in the present to them. And I have a ton of notes about inconsistencies that might fall under "practicality" but also fall under "plot development," and you'll find those further down. I apologize in advance. I'm a very detailed person who can't help seeing this stuff. 😅

Grammar: 3/5
Okay. This is a big section. It seems like English isn't your native language, because a lot of these are mistakes I see other non-native English speakers using, and that's understandable. English is an incredibly difficult, weird language. I apologize. But I would like to add that most of these are minor errors that don't detract from the readability of the story, so not too big of a deal.

So, first thing, there are pretty common sentences with awkward or clumsy phrasing. Most of them are longer sentences, but some are shorter: "I love the waves, also I hate it so much..." In this example, "waves" are plural, so you should use "them" if you're saying she hates the waves. If she hates something else, that needs to be clarified here, because this is written in such a way that it sounds like she's referring to the waves. "But" would also work better here than "also" to show the contrast between her loving and hating the same thing. And it's this kind of thing throughout. Sometimes it makes sense on paper, but in practice, it doesn't work. For a long example, see the seventh paragraph in chapter 26. I had to re-read that several times to make sense of it. Condensing by eliminating extra words would help to make the meaning clearer.

Punctuation errors are another common problem, especially surrounding dialogue, but these errors are inconsistent, which leads me to think the errors are things you missed during proofreading. You wrote this story over two years while attending medical school, so I'm sure you didn't have a lot of extra time to spend editing when your readers were waiting impatiently for the next upload. Running back through using the spelling/grammar check through Microsoft Word or Google Docs will probably catch a lot, but an editing tool like the free version of ProWritingAid will catch a lot more. That's what I use, and it catches me tripping up all the time. I'll actually check this feedback with that before I submit it.

So, first thing, there should never be a space before punctuation (except for opening quotation marks for dialogue), and there should always be a space after punctuation. Dialogue should always end with a punctuation mark, and you should substitute a comma for a period when the dialogue leads into a dialogue tag. Commas should never end a sentence, so when the dialogue tag precedes the dialogue, both need to be in the same paragraph. When a comma ends dialogue, the dialogue tag needs to be in the same paragraph. Always keep the dialogue tag with its dialogue, and to eliminate confusion, the same person's words, actions, and dialogue tags should all be in the same paragraph. When you change the speaker or actor, create a new paragraph. There are quite a few areas where I see something like this:

She looked at him and said,
"Are you okay?"
"Jungkook? Are you okay?" she asked.

Nope. It should be:

She looked at him and said, "Are you okay? Jungkook? Are you okay?"

I also see a lot of this:

"Yes, I'm fine," she looked at him doubtfully.
"Don't lie to me, Jungkook."

Also no. That makes it sound like she's saying the first line and he's saying the next. It should be:

"Yes, I'm fine."
She looked at him doubtfully. "Don't lie to me, Jungkook."

There are quite a few words and phrases misused throughout the story, and I know what you meant with most of them. Things like she "crouched on his shoulder." That means she was crouched down, like someone hiding in a corner, maybe on her hands and knees, physically on his shoulder. Like her entire body was crouched on his shoulder. Based on context, she was actually resting her head on his shoulder, so the intended meaning was entirely different from the words used.

I tried to note other words/phrases as I came across them:
- Italic origin->Italian origin
- Gave me a Willie->gave me the willies, meaning to make you nervous (singular Willie capitalized is actually slang for male genitalia)
- Horned the ship->blew the horn
- Clothes lying stubbornly on the floor->This just doesn't make sense. Are the clothes supposed to get up and go somewhere else on their own?
- Doe eyes->This is one that I see misused a lot. It does not mean big brown eyes. It actually means large, innocent, naïve eyes. Think a woman looking pleadingly at a man for help, like a damsel in distress looking at her knight, or a ditzy woman who doesn't know that a guy is coming on to her but just goes along with it because she doesn't know any better.
- Glanced->This is a fast look toward and away. It does not linger.
- Jerking sound->"Jerking" is a motion. There is no sound associated with it.
- Thin lips->This was just something I saw a lot, and the characters in the images don't have thin lips. They have full lips. For an example of thin lips, Google Major Frank Burns from M*A*S*H (also a great example of a weak chin, if you were curious).
- Amused->This means to find something funny. If Madam Collete was looking at Y/n with amusement after Jungkook was apparently shot and froze to death in the ocean, I have concerns that she's psychotic (and she's not. I love Madam Collete, btw).
- Looked dwelled->I have no idea what you meant by this one. Both words are verbs, and I'm guessing you mean one as an adjective or adverb? Not sure.
- Campaign->Not sure what you mean by this, either. It sounds like it's supposed to be a building where the survivors were recuperating, but a campaign is not a building. It's a plan of action, like a political campaign or a military campaign.
- Ship's right side torso->Pretty sure this is supposed to be the front right side of the ship? It had me picturing a ship as a human body and wondering what the legs were.
- Hair bangs->Repetitive. You don't need "hair."
- Kiths and kins->kith and kin (works as singular and plural)
- I flickered -> my eyes flicked
- Cross belt->suspenders?
- Wrecking->I think you mean "decaying." "Wrecking" is a physical, immediate action that inflicts damage, not slow erosion.
- Y/n couldn't see or contact Yeonjun after that day->The "after that day" part makes it sound like there was a long time period that passed from Yeonjun giving her the ticket until the day she got on the Titanic, when in reality, it all happened in a matter of hours.
- Orbs->This is creepy. Just call them "eyes." "Orbs" is on par with "eyeballs," making me picture an actual eyeball floating in solution in some weird Sci-Fi lab. It's gross. It removes all human and emotional attachment. Using "orbs" very occasionally for stylistic effect is fine, but you use this way more than you use "eyes," and it makes me shudder every time.

Other one-to-one word swaps I noted throughout the story, with the word on the left being the one you used, and the one on the right being the correct word: been/being, aboard/abroad, cowered/coward, mooched/smooched, topical/tropical, wondering/wandering, smooth/soothe, boarders/borders, haunting/hunting, scrapped/scraped, scrap/scrape, thrones/throes, trespassing/bypassing, tickling/trickling, codes/chords, bombshell/bomb.

A few consistent misspellings: cole (coal), verticle (vertical), mam (ma'am), pisky (pixie).

Some words that don't exist: amourly, closening, farewelled.

And I dropped a comment where I saw it, but the alcoholic beverage is actually "brandy," not "Brandi."

Another consistent problem is tense. The story is overall in past tense, but there are frequent slips into present tense, which are confusing, especially given most of the story is an extended flashback. But even the "present day," or whatever you'd call the opening and closing chapters, is also in past tense, so everything should be in past tense, regardless.

There were some run-on sentences, more common in the beginning, and some random capitalizations midway through a sentence, also more common at the beginning. "Aka" is used a few times in the narrative, and slang abbreviations like that are really out of place in an otherwise formal tone, so spell it out or (better yet) use something else. There's a random exclamation mark ending dialogue, and then the dialogue tag is "said quietly," which doesn't make sense. An exclamation mark is something you'd use for shouting, not for speaking quietly. And there's a random pronoun swap toward the end that confuses who's doing what in the final steamy scene.

Plot Development: 3/5
Okay, so, the overall plot development is good. The pacing is usually good, although it drags in the beginning, slows to a crawl again right after they hit the iceberg, and drags at the end (more on this under style and tone). There's a consistent flow with the most important details holding true throughout. But...

There are a lot of inconsistencies and one huge plot hole.

Um...I looked at a map to double-check...and the Canary Islands are off the northwest coast of Africa. Meaning the Titanic had to cross the Atlantic to get there, and it just had to go roughly straight north to get to England, so it never would have entered the Arctic. Unless they did a weird Z pattern, where they crossed the Atlantic to the Canary Islands, crossed the Atlantic again toward Canada, and then went back across the Atlantic AGAIN to England.

So...yeah. That's a huge plot hole. I came to refer to the deadly iceberg as that darn Portuguese iceberg, picturing the encounter happening off the coast of Portugal on their way north. 😅

I can ignore the Titanic leaving America and heading toward England, when it actually left England heading toward America. And I can overlook all the historical accuracies that aren't that big of a deal in a fanfiction that doesn't strive to be historically accurate. But...simply looking at a map or knowing the geography destroys all logic in the plot. And I have no idea how you would fix this. Changing it to the Caribbean gives you the same problem. They would go south to the Caribbean, and then northeast to England, never crossing the Arctic. It would probably be better for them to never make that stop and just say the wealthy investors pushed the crew to pilot the ship at top speed the entire journey, although then you'd miss that beautiful bonding scene on the rock...

Anyway. The inconsistencies.

Her entire backstory before boarding the Titanic is...muddy. I actually think it would be better not to include it at all. What caused the rift between her and her parents? What was she doing that they didn't like? There's no explanation, and it's all really, really vague. Why would they think sending her to college in America—on her own—would be a good idea? Girl gets into trouble, so parents send girl to another country, all by herself, and hope she turns out right. That's what I get from that.

Then there's the gang. Or cult. Or rebel group. All three terms are used to describe them at various points in the story, and those terms are not interchangeable. A "cult" is a religious sect centered around specific tenets and often one leader who takes on a god-like aspect. That doesn't describe this group at all. I got the impression from the first chapters that they were a gang, and then at the end of the story, she talks about them as if they were rebels, which would imply they're honorable people fighting for a cause, but robbery, murder, strangling women who don't kill for you, and chasing said women with a gun on a sinking ship aren't exactly honorable. So...I guess the bottom line here is, what was she doing in England her parents didn't like? Chances are good this gang, or rebel group, or whatever, was into similar stuff. What did they do? Why did she revere them? I don't know what they did before the robberies and murders, but the few vague details in the story tell me they were a gang doing illegal things and calling themselves a rebel group, and she fell for that hook, line, and sinker, only to realize when she was in too deep that they were actually horrible people. What did she think they were rebelling against? This wasn't a period of rebellion in America's history. What did they even want her for? A young woman had basically no power or status in society at that time, and although her parents had to have money to send her across the Atlantic for college, it's pretty clear that she was poor. I can only think of one thing a gang would want with her, and that would be sex, whether forcing her into prostitution or one guy picking her as his favorite toy.

What about the college she supposedly attended? What was she studying? Did she even go?

This is why I think it's better to leave all this out. We don't need any of that info, but if you give some, you need to give more, and that will just bog down the actual plot. Having the story start with her boarding the Titanic would be a much better idea, in my opinion. Leave her background up to mystery. We don't need to know anything other than she's running from her past. When Beom shows up on the Titanic, leave it general. He's trying to kill her. That's it. Her new life started when she boarded the Titanic, and letting her abandon her old life to unanswered questions and the bottom of the Atlantic is perfectly fine. Show her running into Jungkook before she boards. That's fine. It actually feels like that was added as an afterthought, since it isn't even mentioned until a much later chapter, so it really should show up earlier. Even if you decide to cut a lot of her backstory, you can still easily include this without explaining all the rest.

But, anyway, back to the backstory, she was running around in a bloody dress, and nobody noticed? She never stopped to change between killing that guy and boarding the Titanic, and she met multiple people along the way. Which makes me wonder, when did she have time to pack a bag? And what happened to that bag when she threw it aside to rescue the girl?

That rescue scene is something I'll tackle down in style and tone, too.

Why didn't Beom Hyeon find her earlier? That rescue made her a celebrity, and then she was hanging out with the ship's captain all the time. She was extremely visible and, assuming Jungkook left her alone to go do ship captain things now and then, extremely vulnerable.

Madam Collete came to the rescue with a disguise...that made her stick out like a sore thumb. A beautiful white dress. Not much of a disguise.

Where did they lock Jungkook? He was with the rest of the crew in a busy working cabin...

Thousands of lives? That would imply multiple thousands died when the final count was less than two thousand.

Her family? Weren't they in England? They cared about her enough to send her to America to get her away from...something (not sure what), but not enough to come see her when she survived the Titanic? And where was her brother? I thought he was in America with her, but he's suddenly in England? How did he beat her there when she was on the "fastest ship" of its time?

And at the end, they talk about how expensive cars are, so most people can't have them, but I'm pretty sure in the beginning, they were in a car, listening to the car radio.

Jungkook is ripped again after three years of being pale and sickly? All he needed for muscle development was to be reunited with Y/n? I don't care how much action they're getting up to—it ain't enough to get rock-hard abs.

Yeah, as I said, I'm a detail-oriented person, so...I notice these things. 😅

Style, Tone, & Feelings Factor: 60/70
But this category in this award is called "Brushstrokes of Feelings," and that is what weighs the heaviest in the score. Feelings. Which you've nailed, skipping her pre-Titanic life, anyway. I couldn't get a handle on that, so I couldn't relate. But the heartbreak in the beginning of the story, the curiosity that leads her to explore the Titanic and make new friends after she boards, the daring when she rescues the little girl, the immediate attraction when she meets Jungkook—and, of course, their actual relationship. That develops quite nicely. I appreciate you not throwing them in bed together before they even really knew each other. That happens far too often in stories. And I appreciated that there wasn't tons of smut, since I picked this up from a judge who dropped out, and I don't normally read sexually explicit content. I will say that you set the second smut scene in the Arctic up really, really well, starting the chapter in the middle of the scene and gradually showing the readers what was going on while blending metaphors of cold and heat together, and that absolutely doesn't work if they aren't in the Arctic, so figuring out that big plot hole about the route would be in this story's best interest.

Anyway. On to the anger at the wealthy investors' insistence to ignore Jungkook's warnings, the building terror when they hit the iceberg, the growing hopelessness, panic, and stubborn perseverance, all wound in a single emotional braid throughout until the letdown when Jungkook apparently dies. Her numbness following that, the slow climb out of the pit of despair to their reunion... Yep. Hitting all the feels here. It's all vivid, it's all relatable, and I must say, probably the best emotional section for me was the Titanic sinking. That literally got my heart pounding.

I also love the scene on the rock in the Canary Islands and again at the railing. I'm a sucker for a romantic scene with the guy standing right behind the girl, especially if he intertwines his hands with hers. It's really intimate, and it speaks to their emotional relationship more than their physical relationship, which is arguably the most important part. People don't stay together because of good sex. They stay together because of love.

And you have a knack for using punchy, short, one-line paragraphs for emphasis. This heightens emotions so much, and most people don't know how to do this right, but you have it down.

Okay. So. Clearly, you do emotions well, and I kind of have a cutoff point for the rest, because there's a lot lumped into this category of the rubric, and the emotions need to weigh the heaviest for this category of the award. I don't go over 10 point deductions for style and tone for that reason.

Style and tone. First, don't announce a flashback. Ever. You don't need to do it, and it creates this jarring effect that breaks the smooth flow of the story when there are these big, bold headlines telling the reader what they can easily gather from just reading. You'll hear people say to show, not tell, and they're often talking about descriptive detail when they say that, but it applies here, too. And it's the same with POV changes. It's very clear in the text, and you don't need to announce it.

When the first flashback starts, what follows is basically a new prologue which reintroduces her. The previous chapters already amounted to an intro and prologue, and then we get it again, and that really drags the pacing down. We already know who she is, and we're expecting to jump into the action here, but first, another long summary. This goes with what I said in plot development. Just cut this bit out. You don't need it.

The flashback within a flashback at the end. That gets really confusing. I think it would be better to start that chapter just like you started Jungkook's flashback. In the moment, in his rescuer's flashback. Like, do his flashback first, without a heading to say that you're doing that, because we can easily tell it's not coming from Jungkook's POV. Then blend it into his discovering Jungkook. Without italics.

And about those italics. At the beginning of the story, you use this way too often. Sometimes it's her thoughts in the flow of time, sometimes it's her thoughts later as she reflects on everything, sometimes it's a point you want to emphasize, and again, it's just not necessary. Seeing that text change cues a reader to change tracks in their mind, to wonder what that text change means, because it must be extremely important, and that breaks concentration with the story. For that reason, italics, bold, and any other major font change should not be used frequently. Only use them for interjections to make an important point or to cue the reader to change how they're reading. It loses importance if it's overused. Kind of like the boy who cried wolf.

A section divider between the story and the author's note at the bottom would be nice. And those long gaps at the end of each chapter are...annoying. I already know it's the end of the chapter, and you never continue writing the story after a long gap like that, so I know not to expect anything else. I'd just like to move on to the next chapter without all the extra scrolling.

Your action scenes can be difficult for me to picture. That rescue of the child is the prime example. I have no idea what was going on there. The best guess I have is the kid left the railing and decided to climb down the side of the ship via...other railing? I was left clueless at the end of chapter seven, and then I hoped chapter eight would explain it, but that just made it more confusing. Nothing made sense until they were back on deck. What...happened there?

Later on, when Beom shows up, she kicks him and lands a punch, and a punch makes a puncture, and a lethal attack doesn't kill him, and he licks blood from his own forehead. Um...kicks are done by legs and feet, punches are done by hands, and punctures are done by stabbing objects. "Lethal" means "deadly," so if it didn't kill him or have the potential to kill him, it wasn't lethal, and...I pictured a lizard licking its own eyeball with a crazy long tongue.

And...the epilogue. Wasn't. An epilogue. I thought I was just reading the cast list again, and I skipped most of it until I saw the tiny little paragraph explaining that it was Taehyung's book. Starting the epilogue with him writing would have been better, so I knew there was an actual story going on and not a repeat of the cast list. But, honestly, the last five chapters felt like an epilogue. Y/n and Jungkook had reunited, and the story felt like it should end right there, multiple times, but it didn't. And it just wouldn't end. It really started to drag. Shuffling that all into an extra-long epilogue, or cutting a lot, or making a series of bonus chapters would work better, I think.

Component Compatibility: 4/5
Emotions are good, descriptions are good, general plot concept and creativity are good, but the pacing, plot holes, inconsistencies, and stylistic choices like flashbacks and epilogue bring this down.

Overall Rating: 4/5
It's an interesting concept. I may have to watch Titanic again sometime. The blossoming relationship is portrayed in a very natural, relatable way, and skipping the smut still allows for a deep emotional tie-in to the story. Actually, I don't think the smut contributes to the relationship development or emotional attachment at all, but that's just me. The pacing drags at times, but it usually doesn't, so that makes it easier to wait out the slow zones. And while the plot inconsistencies will always bother me, many, if not most, people won't notice or care, and I had fun filling in the blanks in my mind with things like Portuguese icebergs.