Sanctuary Reviews

Fortuity by mistopher

Fortuity

By mistopher

This will be a relatively short review as I am not too familiar with this fandom, so I will do the best I can. I was pretty confused throughout, both because this is written assuming its audience knows these characters already and because the writing wasn't very clear. The dialogue oftentimes lacked tags so it was difficult to understand who was saying what, and the characters speaking weren't established very well...a few character names were given to the reader, other times, the reader had to remember that the "blonde one" is speaking right now or "oh yeah, this is the muscular guy." This story struggles the most with clarity in dialogue, in introducing new characters as well as their relationships with one another, and their backstories.

The storyline isn't so easy to pick out. I understand that in this AU, Bang Chan (I think? I honestly wasn't even sure who the main character was or the difference between characters like Changbin and Bang Chan) is homeless and visiting a shelter or soup kitchen. I wasn't sure why he was homeless. Then suddenly, there is a very quick cut and he is in the apartment of his friend Felix where they have a romantic moment that comes out of nowhere...I'm not sure if their relationship had been previously established and the reader was supposed to know about it coming in, but as a new reader with no knowledge of this fandom, it was really difficult to keep track of what was happening in each chapter, from he first chapter with Felix and Changbin to the scenes with the family and Belle to whatever Bang Chan is doing...This story seems eager to sacrifice storytelling to get to the steamy scenes as fast as possible which can be very frustrating for readers who are more familiar with more traditional styles of writing and pacing.

I also wasn't sure why some words were italicized, especially adverbs. Take this for example:

"I always liked this tattoo of yours," he giggled, breath hitching when Changbin pounced on him playfully..."

I'm not sure what that kind of formatting was chosen when the words can provide emphasis of their own without italics.

I think that this project was written for a very specific audience and that I simply didn't understand it. I tried to finish reading the first five chapters the best I could but I was simply lost. I see many people in your comments enjoying it very much so if the project's goal is to please other members of the fandoms then I'd say it is a success, but for outsiders, it leaves us generally confused and in the dark. It brings up the age-old question of "should fanfiction be written in a way where everyone can understand it or is it appropriate to just write it for the fandom exclusively?" and I think the latter is what you did here...I don't think there's a wrong or right way to write fanfiction, just be aware that when writing exclusively for the fandom, there's a significant portion of your potential audience that you're leaving out.

I apologize for this short review but there's really not much more I can say, and I apologize for not understanding your story...but that doesn't mean your story is bad, it just means that it's written for an audience that I'm not a part of. I wish you luck and many reads in the future.

See you, space cowboy