Self Destruction
written by fefedove
reviewed by SouthWest

Title: 7/10
Do you consider 'Self Destruction' or 'The Tragic Flaw' to be the title of this one shot?  'Self Destruction' is a fitting title, but not very exciting compared to the way you write the rest of the story.  Throw in some of your imagery.  '(Adjective) Self Destruction' or 'Self Destruction of (something).'  'The Tragic Flaw' I don't get at all.  I suppose 'tragic' alludes to how it ends, but I want to know what flaw?  Whose flaw?  The story doesn't tell/show me. 

Plot: 32/35

                5/5: Originality
                The whole abusive relationship/accidentaly killing the person you love, that's not original.  But the way you told it and brought it to life with the metaphors and imagery made it original. 

                8/10: Believability
                I had a lot of issues with the line, "Because leads to , depression leads to alcohol, and pain lead to Sehun."  I understand what you're getting at, but does not necessarily lead to , depression doesn't necessarily lead to alcohol.  You're kind of cheating by only using the names without digging to the source.  For example, if you were to say something like, 'The high of leads to a search for better ways to escape the truth of reality, depression leads to a search for something to drown out the hurt, Tao's search for pain led him to Sehun.' Use your gift with metaphors here, don't just shortcut it.  It feels like I'm nit-picking, so I'm sure it's going to come off like that.  I just needed to mention this line, because it's a senstive subject and it hits a little close to home for me, and I know I won't be the only one. 

Another thing I want to mention here is that I never really saw Zitao and Sehun as people.  Maybe it's not important for what you were going for with this story.  But the pain of these characters would have been so much more real to me if I had been able to see beyond the pain.  That's all I know about Zitao, that he likes pain, and all I see of him is his drive for more.  But who is he?  What made him crave this pain in the first place?  Like I said, maybe not where you were going with this story, but without it, Zitao doesn't feel real to me.  He's just the embodiment of this craving for pain.  The only time I really see him as more than that is in the third part: "It hurts... It hurts...  But he likes it, doesn't he?"  I felt like, in that moment, Zitao has to remind himself that he likes it and shows the reader that maybe there's hope, maybe there's something beyond the pain.  That was the most powerful moment in the story for me.  (Though maybe I totally read into that wrong.) 

                10/10: Narration
                I love the metaphors and the imagery in this story.  It often felt like one of those scenes in a movie where something crazy weird happens but then it cuts back and you realize it never actually happened and it completely trips you out.  In a good way. 

I don't like present tense.  It's a personal thing.  But I'm still able to appreciate that it was a very smart choice for this story.  Keeping us in the present and having us experience everything the same time as Tao made the story a lot more powerful.

                9/10: Setting
                I feel like the setting was a character in of itself in this story. The short moments when we see the (school?) bathroom and the room (rooms?) they are in really amplify the emotions and the senory of the story.  But I honestly have no idea where Tao is half the time.  I don't always need to know, but there were a couple points in which I was distracted because I didn't know.  I needed to know if the bathroom Tao was in in the first part was a school bathroom (you hint at it, but I'm never quite sure) and I needed to know if the room he is in with Sehun is the same room he was in alone earlier.