Apr 28, 2025
WHY DID IT TAKE FIVE MORE YEARS FOR THEM TO MARRY LMAO
anyway I'll fail to keep it brief
In general I'd say it's very easy to read, with a fun premise and characters. My least favorite was easily Blake by virtue of him being every 90s yaoi bottom protagonist ever, and it frankly doesn't help that he has no personality, especially compared to everyone else. It also took some time to figure out what was Marco, who was Marco, but then he was aight, also a stereotypical golden retriever type seme who's energetic and loving but also violently writes songs after dark. baka in the streets senpai in the sheets
The other characters were pretty nice. Underdeveloped, sadly, because contest constraints, but they shone with what little time they had, even the closest thing this story had to boundaries aka Stephanie and Valentina. Jet and Darcy's relationship was highly amusing, though her asking for him to give paw and having him whimper was kind of... esoteric, let's put it that way. I honestly wouldn't have minded seeing a bit more from the squad in general and/or other contestants.
Now, this thing is RUSHED and it shows. Obviously most entries are rushed by definition, but this one is RUSHED. Leaving aside the numerous typos, it legitimately feels as though you just vomited out words to get it done with, especially near the end, and it would feel this way even if I had no context. There were several chapters where basically nothing happened, and I don't mean "filler
conversations or whatever, I mean it was just rambling, meandering nothing with a single event taking place in which no character was developed, no world was built, etc. There is a total of four chapters which are solely dedicated to tallying votes despite it being obvious that Australia will win, not only because the story in general isn't necessarily surprising in any way, but also because there is a chapter called 'we are the winners' so... lol. No joke, I legitimately feel as though you would've axed a third of the words from the second half with nothing of value being lost. I'm all for "things that don't further the plot" and whatnot but there are random nothing convos between side characters, and there are 8k+ words of stalling because hur hur eurovision does that.
I'll also say that the "conflict" is nonexistent. It's very sad and stuff that they can't fuck for a month or two while the competition is still going on, but then what? Literally what is stopping them? It's clearly not distance because they spent 7 years together already and they marry at the end. It's not even the competition itself because what little opposition there is just gets crushed a few chapters later. Marco's lambert moment could've hit a bit harder if the pseudo-conflict didn't feel like a mosquito trying to get through the net, since I assume it would've been this grand declaration of love, but alas, like everything else, it's just kinda there. I will say that this didn't help the 'nothing happens' vibe a fifth of this story suffered.
Did the band break up after Blake went to live with Marco? Because if so that's depressing 
I get it but damn, man just abandoned his friends for monster italian dick. It is what it is. (on another note, I'm glad you got rid of Marco's broken english tbh)
Unironically kind of feel like Darcy and Jet navigated the prompt better,,, but ehh. Also, it usually would bother me that Jet casually learned sign language in weeks, but he actually feels like he could pull it off? Never underestimate the power of wattpad love interests. They also had way more chemistry than the main couple, but I digress.
with that said tho I did like it I just got really annoyed by the end and the lack of real stakes with anything kept me from like liking it while the not blake characters, their interactions and dialogue in general kept it enjoyable and also jet carried this thing so hard he got mpregged
yeah I think so too. I honestly don't think it's anything a second draft can't fix, especially when it comes to any underexplored elements you might want to dive deeper into, but I would also suggest maybe considering which beats might fit your story and which don't, or how to include them based on setups/payoffs rather than because the template says so. 