SubZero

1 star

This story is way too cliché filled for my liking and is full of inconsistencies, such as when

Also, the parts of the love triangle that seem to be taking place between Clove and her two love interests are way too on the nose for me. What was also too on the nose for me, was the way Clove's eyes were described. All these symbolic metaphors and similes were used by a character to describe Clove's innocence and character and the depth of her eyes, and some other fake-deep nonsense and whatnot, and this was perhaps the most cringe-inducing thing I had to make myself read throughout the entirety of this webtoon. There was actually a line where a character was thinking about Clove and how he “could ease the sadness in those stunning, innocent eyes...” Who the hell thinks like that? Who the hell legitimately thinks of such preposterous lines to themselves?

There was one line where Kyro's sister was talking to Clove and said that she's “different” (or something similar to that); basically, she said something that would be a synonym for Clove being not-like-other-girls. This made me cringe very hard for obvious reasons. Speaking of Kyro's sister, she keeps giving Kyro these short lectures about, essentially, how great Clove is, how much he's underestimating her (how not-like-other-girls she is), and so on. Kyro's sister is just acting as a spokesperson for emphasizing how brilliant Clove is, but it doesn't make any sense for her to speak so highly of Clove at every given opportunity? It feels incredibly awkward and contrived. It's as if the author needed to make the readers know how “different” and “unique” Clove is, so this way they were able to communicate that with both the readers and the main love interest, thus killing two birds with one stone. This killing-two-birds-with-one-stone approach may sound good in theory, but it was just executed extremely sloppily.

I often see stories with this one moment where the protagonist with the heart of gold that we're all rooting for has some sort of heart-to-heart conversation/exchange or does something kind and sympathetic to help a child or someone who is underprivileged; it's as if this is the only way the author is trying put on full display how kind and noble the protagonist is, and it's just one of those cliches that absolutely grinds my gears because of how lazy it seems.

Another thing I hate in storytelling is when the author already shows something to us, but then unnecessarily tells it to us as well.

see

already being shown?

Overall, the story seems to follow a very generic plot structure, which definitely isn't always a bad thing as long as it is executed well, but here it's being executed in a way that makes me want to constantly roll my eyes. It's leaning too heavily into overdone tropes in a very in-your-face sort of way, rather than a more sophisticated way. Needless to say, I will not be continuing with this ongoing webtoon.