> I hear your criticism on the last part o the events falling flat, but I don't think I agree about *how* to solve it.

As I said, how to solve it is up to you. Satisfaction of getting what she wanted would be the most obvious way to go, but if you want a different resolution, that probably could have worked too. The problem right now is that there is no resolution at all. Which is doubly a problem because the line where she chooses her own death as one option to achieve satisfaction sets up that expectation that needs a resolution.

> I suppose I could have done more to communicate the guy's internal state, even from Riley's perspective - Riley's perspective is the point, she's the protagonist, but her perspective from that point is the removal of self. I could have perhaps communicated that better too, and believe me, I'm taking notes.

Yes, yes. Even taking this last render of mine into example, there's often also some kind of removal of self going on with my characters, but I also have them revel in it properly, which in turn lets the reader revel in it too. You don't have to make it as wordy as I tend to, but the point is that even if the idea is the removal of self, it still could and should be communicated.

> Well, I just disagree about how much reflection / explanation a guro story needs. What's going on in her head past that point is mostly just that she's in pain. She's not having philosophical epiphanies while dangling from one hand, just existing in the moment.

No, not explanation, and not necessarily reflection. But even if she's just existing in the moment, make the reader feel it. Because you're saying how she's in pain, and technically the story did say it also, but it didn't make me feel it. The fact that hanging is painful is just a dry and obvious fact. But how does that make her _feel_? Is she enjoying it, excited, satisfied? Suffering, desperate, regretting? All of that in a unique bittersweet mix which makes it all totally worth it?

All of these things you're explaining now - should've been in the story itself. Like it could have a line saying just this: "Riley was in pain, and right now it was all that she was. No place was left in her mind to contemplate how this suffering was exactly what she longed for just a couple of minutes ago, or even how in another couple of minutes she was going to be dead and thus free. No past or future existed for Riley, only one present moment that filled the whole eternity, and that moment was pain". See, like this the story can even contemplate how Riley isn't in a place to contemplate anything. But the reader is surely in such a place and wants to savor Riley's internal state, whatever it is. Like, returning back to this last render of mine, you could say the text is savoring Rin's internal state, and while that internal state doesn't even exist with her being dead, that non-existance itself is then being savored.

> I guess it's also a thing that to me the *choices* are hot, and the last choice Riley makes is taking off the ribbon.
Oh yes, it absolutely is, as I've already said, her reasoning for that (someone has to die, might as well be me) is the hottest thing in the story. But this is then smudged by the rest of the story written only as an obligation to finish it. If it gives out you didn't enjoy writing it, then the reader can't enjoy reading it. If you want the reader to feel passion from the story, you have to put your passion in it. If you can't, I'm now thinking that maybe finishing the story on the line where she takes off the ribbon could've actually worked out well enough. There's already one erotic death earlier in the story to set up the mood, and then by finishing the story with this line you could have had it be an actual punch line instead of losing its punch to the subsequent uninspired text. Have the hottest part of the story be its actual climax and hopefully a climax for the reader, instead of setting the reader up to await "the actual climax" further in the story and then not getting any.

Ugh, now if only I could write actual stories as productively as I write these ranting walls of text.