Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Painite: The End of Everything

Title: The End of Everything

Author: DontYouWantToKnow

Reviewer: awesomeSTG

Since this is a short story (and the first time I've encountered one), some criteria such as plot and realism may be very short and not befitting to the type of context that I do. So what I did was just scrap that stuff and make a new criteria altogether.

Summary: 4/5

For starters, the summary is awesome. It has so much depth, so much grief and sadness radiating from it that the one liner is like a punch to the gut. It piques the curiosity, it makes us want to wonder what would it feel like if our parents are dead, and how we would cope up with it. 

Very powerful and interesting summary, it really pulled me in. Kudos!

It's a shame those emotions in the summary never got to the rest of the story.

Description: 2/5

You're using simple and easy to understand words, which I both like and (just a little) dislike. I like it because it gives the imagination more roaming area, which applies to the term less is more, but then as I had stated before, I didn't quite like it, too. Why? (Subjective and personal preference comes into play when tackling these matters, please remember that.) Well, there will always be a specific word to describe the scenario of your setting and characters. There was repetition (redundancy) in both narration and dialogue that made the overused word stiff and just tiring to see. Soft is one of the most overused word in there, with usages such as "she smiled softly, she said softly," and etcetera. They're just so soft all the time. Are they sundae swirls or something?

There was way more telling than showing, which might raise a few questions for me because the story itself is supposed to be talking about being able to cope with the death of a mother, so merely "telling," us about it is kinda boring. Six times out of ten I've stopped reading The Aftermath because I felt like the characters, Ari and Ce, were just floating in a blank white space, not doing anything, just hovering in there, reading a bunch of flashcards and then feeling sad, and then getting relieved, and then feeling sad all over again, and then repeat.

There's a part in the story where she states something about feeling regret, but then after that single paragraph everything's over. Regret is a very strong, very powerful emption, but it is never portrayed properly. You can't just say regret without showing us how it feels. Heartbeat going faster? Knots in the stomach? Cold blood, cold sweat, cold everything? And then it's gone just like that after "shaking it off." What about that emotion you just told us? Did it just simply vanish? How can you even shake off a feeling of regret? You can certainly pretend it's not there, yes, but you can't stop it from happening. This is an inconsistency to the story, since if Ce could do this all along she wouldn't have consulted a shrink to begin with.

Also, I don't know what Ce looks like. Is that bad? Maybe I forgot. Yes, I know, this story is all about Ce trying to cope up with the death of her mother, but in my defense, if a character has no physical description whatsoever, they are just invisible talking blobs in our heads. I don't remember where I've read this, but it shows that there should be at least hints of what the character looks like (especially the main) along the first to third chapters.

Well, since this is a short story, Ce's hair and eyes or figure and facial structure would've been more than enough. Some of the examples of how a scenario would've been better if shown and not told is in the Grammar section, so I hope it helps let you see where things started going down.