Forbidden..

[GirlieNinjaRose]

Forbidden..

​

A tower, no matter how unstable, will never fall so long as it is built on a strong foundation. In the last few weeks, I have learned that nothing could be truer. I never thought I would come to rely upon those words, but yet here I am, giving myself over to them body and soul. For this tower is not some being of stone or clay, it is something so much more. It is truth, and hope, and trust… it is love. It seems like forever has passed since the first day I spoke to him, and in a way, it has. As this world of dreams may know me, I am Elensa, and this is my story, our story.

It all started one day in the middle of March, a couple of years ago, when I got a rather alarming message from my friend Kimarhi (Kimi) telling me about one of my guildies. Apparently this guy, Narum, had taken notice in me- even though I had never said so much as three or four words to him. So, what do I do? I hide. Well, I had been successfully avoiding Narum for about two weeks, when one night I let my guard down, and a message flashed across my screen. That was the first time I talked to him, and we were up all night together. From that day on, we grew closer every second, and everything was perfect. It was our carefully guarded secret and only our closest in game friends knew.

Then one frigid winter's day, an impenetrable darkness came crashing down on our fairytale. Narum had spoken to his father about our relationship. Without warning we found each other being torn apart, lucky to be together for a couple of hours each week. From the start, we had battled a distance of over a thousand miles, and now we had an adversary that could not be defeated with something as simple as a plane ticket. Suddenly our romance was a forbidden one to rival Romeo and Juliet themselves. We found ourselves doing the only thing we could, sneaking down in the middle of the night for a few stolen moments together.

This is how it continued, night after night, hiding from the rest of the world so we could create our own. A world in which it was just the two of us, with no one to fight us, where we could be together. Slowly his father pushed our love to the back of his mind, and forgot it ever existed, thinking that his word had broken us. But everything he fought for went up in flames- for instead of tearing us apart; he was drawing us closer and closer. We carried on like this for a long time, with the constant fear of being discovered hanging over our heads. But slowly that too faded, as we tried to reassure ourselves that the worst had come to pass.

The clock struck midnight and cheers shook the nation as we bid farewell to the year 2008 and prepared for a hopeful change in the bleakness of the world around us. As it started, things couldn't have been better, in fact, Narum and I were forming bonds that we felt could not be broken. Words were spoken between us, exposing feelings that had never been shown before.

"I think about you every second of every day… I didn't want to tell you, because I thought it would scare you" I typed each letter slowly, afraid it would be too much

"Why would it scare me, I feel exactly the same way… everything I've ever said has been an understatement, I just didn't want you to think I was some obsessed freak…"

"Well then, I guess we have nothing to hide"

Words that we had saved in our hearts came pouring out, and I suddenly felt as if I couldn't go another day without him. Soon after, I spoke to my father; I told him everything, hoping that somehow he might understand. We were tired of hiding it away, tired of fighting alone, two people against a cruel and uncaring world bent on breaking us. And suddenly, we had an ally, not only did he understand, he had been there, and he wanted to help us. He was willing to do anything to bring us closer.

By now, it had been almost a year, maybe two, since Narum and his father had talked about me, we were hopeful that maybe he would bend. After all, nearly two years is a big deal considering the unbearable distances that separates us. We were devastatingly wrong. His words were like a knife to Narum's heart, and suddenly the tower we had built and protected for so long was falling. My world was crashing, and all I wanted was to simply vanish, and never feel this pain again.

"I don't know if I ever even loved you…"

What… What did he say? How could he mean that… after all of this time. This strong foundation, this beautiful tower, has it fallen? Immediately I had turned to Kimi the one person who had always understood us, and who had been by our side from the very beginning, if anyone could help- it was him. He stayed on with us, talking and helping us more than I have space to say, and then trying to comfort me once Narum left to think. He was devastated by what was happening, how could Narum's father win? While we waited for his return, we were convinced that the love Narum and I shared was broken beyond repair. I was falling, prepared for the worst, and yet ready to give anything to keep it from happening.

A light popping noise on my computer announced his return, and I couldn't help but close my eyes and wait for the worst. But wait… what is he saying, were Kimi and I wrong?

"I was just really unsure, but I'm not anymore. I know what I want, and part of that…is you."

My head was spinning, could he have really turned him self around so quickly? Is he really sure that he knows what he wants to do? The answer was yes. Suddenly the blade that had been pushing down on my heart for so long was lifted, and replaced by a new hope and a will to go on. I suddenly realized, that no matter what came in our way, no matter what pain we faced, I was willing to fight for our love, and nothing but death itself would stand in my way.

We're both freshman in high school now, and time is flying by. It's been getting harder and harder to spend time together. And yet we still find ourselves thinking of each other for hours each day, despite the anguish and torment that threatens us. Everything is back to the way it was before, but this time, we know what that is. Love. Not just the high school substitution, the kind that will last for the rest of our lives and beyond. We plan on meeting someday, and who knows where that will lead us. For now, only one thing is certain - this tower we have built has been eroded, damaged, and bruised, but it will never fall. Not with a foundation so beautiful and pure, a foundation built of truth, and hope, and trust…Ours is a love so impenetrable that even after the world around it has fallen to pieces and can never be restored, it will remain…and not even death itself can tear us apart.

 

[JX Valentine]

I'll start off with a compliment. The first paragraph was very well-written. You've got some interesting lines, all of which are incredibly poetic. It's a good way to set up the dramatic, romantic tone of the rest of the piece, and it gave the reader a good glimpse of who Elensa is by letting us hear her speak.

From there, though, it could use a bit of polish.

To start off, a lot of this fic is centered around telling instead of showing. Rather than show us interactions between Narum and Elensa, you tell us Elensa got a message, Narum's father disapproved of their relationship, that sort of thing. We don't get a glimpse of Narum breaking the news to Elensa that his father forbade them from meeting. We don't see Elensa crying or watch her talk things over with Narum. It's all basically Elensa telling us these things way after the fact, rather than taking us through each scene, at the risk of being redundant about it. As a result, it's harder to connect emotionally with Elensa because we don't really watch her struggle. We're only told that she does.

Also, telling instead of showing their plight has another negative side effect. Most of the fic seems to be focused on sounding dramatic, which makes it a little harder to take it seriously. This is mostly because it seems a little on the narmy (i.e., unintentionally funny) side when you start off with a very serious and dramatic paragraph beginning with a pretty cool metaphor and then reveal that their relationship takes place primarily over a game. Then, we find out that the players are just starting high school (by the end of the fic, at least), yet they're talking about each other like they're soulmates. What finishes this off is the entire trouble involving Narum's indecision. ("I might not love you. No wait! Yes, I do!") That last issue seems to have lasted only about five minutes because there's really nothing more to that discussion besides Narum's two lines. Sure, you tell us that Elensa goes through some angst and that Kimi helped the both of them through it, but we don't really see the argument happening. We don't really feel the sting of tension. We don't watch Elensa get more and more frantic and Narum get put off by the fighting. It's just "I might not love you" and "I need you."

As a result, the relationship ends up feeling a little shallow. From the looks of it, it's an internet relationship between two kids who barely know what love is like beyond typical romance novels and flicks. Their only trouble is Narum's father, who's justified in being cautious and preventing Narum from just running off to be with Elensa. (I mean, Narum is pretty young, there's all sorts of shady people online, and it's very easy at that age to mistake a simple crush with the full-fledged, "I need you" kind of love.) Moreover, it's difficult to take all of this seriously because, put extremely bluntly, you emphasize the drama of love so much that there's not a paragraph that goes by without Elensa telling the reader that love is difficult or that people in love can overcome all kinds of odds.

To put it shortly, what you need to do is the same kind of thing you'd do if you used third-person POV. Even if a character is telling this story, you'll still want to let us see them interact with other people. You'll want to show us scenes, their conversations, their actions, and how they feel at that exact time. That way, the relationship seems more in tune with reality. It wouldn't seem like it's happening in five minutes, and we'd be able to pick up on the emotions of the characters.

Also, don't try to emphasize any bit of drama too much. The more you say "love will conquer all" or "we were two people against an uncaring world," the more it feels like a parody than it does something you meant to have be a serious romance.

Finally on the concrit front, a couple of nitpicks:

1. Always end a sentence with an ending mark of punctuation. For example, you're missing a period after "nothing to hide" and "afraid it would be too much."

2. This may simply be personal taste, but don't insert comparisons to Romeo and Juliet in your romantic work. It's cliché, and in any case, it's not a good comparison. Romeo was literally a stalker, and Juliet was an idiot who was both below the age of consent and the entire reason why their relationship ended in a double-suicide. The both of them barely met when they fell in lust (not love) with each other and decided to get married despite not knowing a thing about their soon-to-be-spouse besides what their last names were. To finish things off, yeah, double-suicide. Shakespeare's tragedies tend to not be so much about love but more about stupidity induced by love. (And on that note, Othello is a better tragedy, complete with a far better example of a relationship. Even though that ended badly too.)

Long rants short, I can tell you have talent. You can set up a nice mood, and you can find fitting words for a scenario. The only thing you need to do is remember that you want to focus more on storytelling and character development in any story than just the emotion you want to evoke.

 

[icomeanon6]

Though I can feel that there are some powerful emotions at work in this piece, I don't think that they were handled very well. At times, I couldn't tell whether I was reading a story or a plot synopsis. You tend to stick to simply stating that there's a lot of love between them, which doesn't make it particularly convincing for the reader.

I think part of this might be because you opted for a short, nearly dialogue-less story instead of a longer one. The reader doesn't have any time to get to know these characters, which is a major problem in a romance story. If you were to write entire scenes instead of just descriptive sentences, I feel that I would empathize more with the characters. This sentence in particular made me feel that I was reading a very bare-bones story:

Suddenly our romance was a forbidden one to rival Romeo and Juliet themselves.

Comments about the story aren't a good replacement for a full story. Flesh things out, and if something is obvious, make it implicit.

That aside, I felt that the ending was kind of sappy. You recognize that most high school (and especially pre high school) romances are kind of shallow and don't last. However, another thing about them is that most high schoolers that are actually in one think that they will last. I couldn't see how their relationship was any different than the average high schooler's. Is the reader just supposed to take it on the girl's word that their relationship is somehow all magical, pure, and permanent? It left me skeptical, which isn't a good way to end the story.

Your writing mechanics are solid, and you clearly have the skill in writing emotion to make this story more believable and real for the reader. In order to get there, though, I feel that this needs significant revision.

 

[Astinus]

Agreeing with the other reviewers here. The story came off as rather shallow because of the way it was told. The opening paragraph was rather good, drawing me into this story. I wanted to know more about these two characters, and even about their world. (I didn't know if this was going to be a fantasy setting or how a tower was going to relate to the story.)

Then your story got a bit weaker. There wasn't any time in the story set to show how the relationship was developed. Since this is a story about a relationship, it doesn't seem good to just simply tell the readers what happened. Everything goes by rather quickly, not giving any chance for the reader to get a good glimpse into their lives, or their relationship. So it's like the reader doesn't have the time to care before the story's over.

I'm also kind of bothered by the fact that your characters are really rather young. If they're only in the first year of high school, that would make them around fourteen-years-old. And they probably started "dating" at the age of twelve. It seems a little too young to be talking about true love and soulmates. This also makes it difficult to take the threat of Narum's father seriously because the kid is thirteen-years-old and talking about wanting to run off with someone he met in an online game. So really, the father's concerns are logical, especially given the age of the characters.

While much of the writing style is good (as I said, I really did enjoy that first paragraph), the rest of the story wasn't as enjoyable because there wasn't time to develop the characters and their relationship. The potential is there, though.

 

[GirlieNinjaRose]

Wow, I never expected someone to read this story. I am so glad that you still enjoyed even with mixed reviews. Thank you!