Talk:Both/@comment-5101683-20180918011443

This is a pretty good story.

The problem I have with this story is that it's made clear that the lover is spiteful and cowardly, starting from the very second paragraph, but this is never expressly talked about within the story. Sure, the woman addresses it, but we are trapped in the point of view of the main character. That would be fine if an indignant thought about how "[the Devil] is only interested in seeing us suffer, and will only answer to me once I tell him that I will go back to that inferno" is challenged by someone pointing out that as he says this, he is trapping his girlfriend inside a raging inferno, but without some other point of view, the message falls flat, because we don't get the validation of knowing whether or not how he's acting is unreasonable. This can be fixed by making the story in third person, so the audience can understand when he's being unreliable, because I don't get the feeling that an unreliable narrator is optimal in this situation.

Also, another thing is that there are italicized lines throughout the story, and I believe they might form a poem. However, only the last four lines at the very end actually rhyme. I guess that's fine. Also, the last line of the poem implies that only one of the rooms is hell while the other room is something else, and while that could be an interesting twist - one of them goes to heaven while the other goes to hell - it would have been better suited by either leaning into that interpretation or not including it. After all, is heaven really best expressed by an empty white room?

I get the feeling that I'm probably messing up the themes. If EmmanC. is in the audience, could you please tell me if I'm wrong or not?

Regardless, I must say that at the very end, the idea that there was never really a choice - that either choosing to trap one's partner or choosing to risk the flames would yield the same outcome in the end - is a really cool idea. Really, what I'd have liked to know is why they got this punishment exactly. Does it have something to do with what they had done in their life?

These are all the problems I could find with the story.