#long post warning

justine de santa | dl: sfs ⋆｡°✩

meshes for her accessories are included

Going off the ongoing Chaebol HC that runs through my previous posts, if the parents are as follows:Father: scores incredibly on the psychopathy test (callous, bold, socially dominant, no fear response, deceptive, exploitative) ie people are either a tool or an obstacle to his ends) re Richard III soliloquies from Henry VI part III ("Many lives stand between me and [the crown]", "I can smile, and murder while I smile" etc etc) Mother: Incredibly inflated ego, doesn't apologise, superiority complex where she's always been in proximity to power but never truly wielded it herself despite believing she deserves to so instead wages psychological warfare in order to establish dominance over those around re Marquise de Merteuil from Dangerous Liaisons ("When one woman strikes at the heart of another, she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal" "When I came out into society I was 15. I already knew then that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest to me, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learned how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork onto the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelist to see what I could get away with, and in the end it all came down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die" (pls read, a great book, a super long quote but i love it)

Then that's going to fuck up both kids lol To grow up learning how to navigate parents' responses instead of learning how to process ur own emotions is Not great Neither is essentially fearing those who are supposed to protect you (fearing criticism, rejection, disappointment etc)

So perhaps Mbro's core nature is not so different to Mira's in that he's caring, compassionate, valuing loyalty, community, family, valour etc

But the parents use those qualities (perhaps natural inherent qualities, perhaps influenced by reading of great characters of history & culture ie Admiral Yi) to manipulate & control MBro ie Loyalty is to Our Family at the expense of others, If you care you will do as we say, if you are a part of this family you must act as we instruct, using validation and "love" as the carrot and withholding it as both the stick as well as the status quo, as why work harder if you have what you need.

And so the parents motives Re chaebol expansion, family dynasty, power above all, co-opt and exploit what would be virtuous qualities as a tool for their own gain, and what would normally benefit the community in fact harms it (ie neo-liberal capitalism is bad etc etc)

What separates Mira from MBro is that she cannot compromise her nature, will not be quiet and compliant (and if the price she must pay is ostracization, becoming the black sheep then so be it, better that than annihilation of the self), whereas MBro does for it's the only way he can see as a path to love (and if the price he must pay is annihilation of the self then so be it, better that than ostracization, becoming the black sheep). Love in this instance being conditional, to be earned And value is determined by action (success/failure) = what he can contribute, ie be the ideal Son So He tries and tries and tries (3rd at National Tae Kwon Do championships - just the second loser then) studies relentlessly, never contradicts

There's a defining incident in the past (Mira's 13/14 ish MBro is 16/17 ish not sure abt canon age gap), where there's an incident between Mira and member of another business partner family ending in a fight (Mira clocks the guy- over what IDK can change). A he said/ she said type situation. Mbro knows the character of the other guy (antagonistic, type to start shit, a dick), and whilst he didn't see the start of the issue, Mira says that she was just reacting, that the other guy initiated the conflict, and that's probably true. But since the guy's the son of a business family that their in the process of closing a major deal with or something. So when their Father asks Mbro what happened/ who is at fault, he can either back Mira (the honest, true option), or he can let her father assume the she, The Problem Child, is at fault (the political option that allows Father to placate business partner and ensure the deal goes through at Mira's expense). He chooses the latter and experiences more guilt and shame he could possibly imagine. Mira looks at him with such hurt, betrayal and disappointment. Things are never the same between them. Now she knows exactly where he stands. After, his father invites him into his study to share a scotch and cigar with him for the first time, praising him for his tact and for "considering the wider implications", essentially rewarding him for placing the Family's interests (power) over his sister's (the truth, actual family). This certainly doesn't do great things for his conscious/ psyche.

Then off to mandatory military service at around 19-20 yrs, further from the Family influence. Adapts well considering the environment is not so different to what he is used to. Develops comradery, feels like he can breathe. Insane work ethic is noted and recognised. Grows taller, grows stronger. Natural inclination to support is beneficial in this context, encouraging those in his unit. Learns leadership qualities, discovering a sort of quiet, steady charisma previously stifled. Tenacious work ethic inspires others. Positive reinforcement drives his training even more. Feels an incredible sense of purpose during exercises helping natural disasters, rescue efforts etc. Planned to continue and pursue a career with the defense (invited to qualify for special forces ie search&rescue).

But is sent for by parents, to return and to work for the Family business (they recognise he can be a valuable asset, and must recall him before he strays too far outside their sphere of influence). Whilst he doesn't want to, he ultimately returns, fulfilling his role as the dutiful son and maybe, just maybe, might result in his parents' approval and love, what he has wanted all along. But this leaves him with a deep insecurity and constant, evergrowing state of unease For his nature is in direct conflict with the expectations/motives of his parents IE to care for others as opposed to exploiting them, to be of service to others instead of them being a tool to serve your personal advancement, generosity as opposed to avarice As he is instructed to further the Family's interests by any means necessary (including underhanded tactics ie Things like blackmail, manipulation etc your classic corporate espionage) and it's not like he enjoys it, (but honestly in some cases tho it feels a bit cathartic being the one with the power-echoing traits/ habits of Mother) but It's worth it to achieve his parents' praise/acceptance and exceed their expectations which he's been conditioned to believe is his role, duty etc

So he puts on the mask, becoming the cool, charming, intelligent, ruthless Son, rubbing shoulders with the who's who of high society & the business world, always discrete (The Family does everything to remain out of the public eye/ scrutiny, commanding power from the Shadows- in direct opposition to Mira who is The Visual of the queens of Kpop) knows how to work a room, speaks many a language, makes things happen one way or another, takes no prisoners. "you're certainly your father's son" i guess mafia vibes?? (His mask is kind of the inverse of his father's, in that his is a cold, cool "sigma/alpha male" type that hides a compassionate streak, whereas his father's mask is that of a paragon of the head of the family leader type that conceals a most frightening, cold, remorseless nature)

But there's inevitably cracks in the mask ie. tips waitstaff absurdly well, does not tolerate disrespect towards service workers and staff. acknowledges them and says please & thank you. If a staff member/ hospitality worker has an issue they know they can to to him and trust him to sort it. Also unlike others in his position is consistently respectful towards women. This gives him an excellent reputation amongst workers in the bars, clubs, "gentlemen's" clubs etc who in turn give him insider info about what they hear is going on amongst other chaebols/ global businesses. He can pretend to his parents (who are obvs classist) that this is the reason why he tips heavily/ looks out for them but in truth he'd do this w/out reward (Also smth smth masculine ideals of the conqueror ie strong man, dominate, stoic, authoritative etc etc vs masculine ideals as the protector ie. protect those who need it, stand against injustice, raise those around you up etc)

And the partying/ networking ie schmoozing at said bars/clubs is part of the job for him, not something to be enjoyed as it is fake for he is fake. The beguiling smirk drops as soon as he is out of eyesight. Returning late to his empty apartment to throw himself into his intense exercise regime alone in his private gym (weights, calisthenics, running, army drills) to rid himself of the anxious energy that builds up everyday and to hold onto the only part of his life when he felt like he belonged (military). Smth smth using physical exercise/ expression to ground himself being reminiscent of Mira's initial relationship w dance.

An after years of maintaining the mask, performing his duty but never truly fulfilled leaves him tired. despondent. somewhat resigned. But it is all he knows. This is where he is at in the plots of the previous posts that i have made ie colour key, funeral etc.

A part of him resents Mira's actions and success ie why couldn't she suck it up like I did, but a deeper, realer part of him is proud of/ happy for his baby sister for staying true to herself and achieving success outside of their parents' influence. But that leaves him with a sickening feeling of unease & regret, as if he recognises she made the right decision, then he made the wrong one, and all of this sacrifice is a consequence of that, all for naught. But he believes he is too far down this path to turn back.

And when they meet after all those years Mira is a bit taken aback, firstly because he is now so tall and strong, no longer the pipe-cleaner limbed boy she left ("what so the army has super-soldier serum now?"), that he, amongst peers, plays the part so well, but when they speak alone without an audience the facade completely drops, revealing a subdued, sombre almost numb man. He doesn't try to pretend around Mira since if anyone is going to see through the mask it's her. It's a bit prickly but she comes out of it feeling more concerned than anything else.

This is where most of the stories that come to me start of with, like they're distant and still guarded but they have this weird understanding of eachother as only siblings do

Anywayyy if you've made it this far you're a G, these are just fast & loose characterisations that stretch and change depending on whatever idea comes into my head, mostly it's to serve the concept art but i find it interesting to use characters in these IPs as little case studies (i love family psycho-thriller dramas ie Sharp objects) in the impacts of childhood experiences

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I. The Foundation: Writing Prose That Breathes

Before you can break a heart, you must convince the reader it’s real. Bad prose tells; good prose shows; devastating prose inhabits.

The Rule of Specificity: Never use a generic noun when a specific one exists. A "flower" is nothing. A "black rose with petals like bruised velvet" is a presence. Don't say "he felt sad." Say "the silence in the room grew teeth." Make the emotion a physical object in the space.

Anchor the Abstract in the Visceral: If your character feels betrayed, don't talk about trust. Talk about the sudden, metallic taste in their mouth, or the way the floor seems to tilt. The body processes trauma before the brain does. Write the body first.

II. Writing Devastating Angst

Angst is not suffering. Suffering is loud. Angst is the silence after the screaming stops. It is the mundane machinery of life continuing to operate around a void.

The Secret: Do not write the absence of the person. Write the presence of their ghost in the everyday. True devastation is found in the unchanged details of a changed world.

Example:

He measured the coffee grounds exactly as he always did. Two scoops. He tapped the filter twice, the way she’d showed him, because muscle memory is a crueler thing than hope. The machine gurgled, filling the kitchen with a smell that used to mean morning but now just meant another day the sun was going to rise without her. He poured it into the faded yellow mug—the one with the chipped rim that she refused to throw away—and set it on the opposite side of the table. It steamed in the empty chair. He sat down, picked up his own mug, and drank his cold.

Why it works: Nobody cries. Nobody screams. The tragedy is entirely contained within the act of making coffee for someone who isn't there. The detail of the chipped rim does the heavy lifting—it implies history, refusal to let go, and the ultimate futility of that refusal.

III. Writing Heartwarming Scenes

If angst is the void, warmth is the weight placed back into it. The mistake writers make is thinking "heartwarming" means "soft." It doesn't. Heartwarming means safe. In a brutal world, safety is the most intense high imaginable.

The Secret: Warmth must be active, not passive. It is not sitting by a fire; it is someone building the fire for you. It is the removal of armor. Show care through specific, physical actions.

Example:

She didn't ask if he was okay. She just knelt, unlaced his boots, and pulled them off one by one. Her hands were warm against his freezing, damp socks. "Sit," she said, pushing him gently by the sternum until he fell back onto the edge of the bed. When she draped the quilt over his shoulders, it smelled like dryer sheets and the lavender shampoo she used, and something inside his chest—something that had been bracing for a hit for three straight days—finally, finally unclenched.

Why it works: It bypasses the cerebral entirely. The unlacing of boots is an act of servitude and intimacy. The smell of dryer sheets is aggressively normal, which is exactly what a traumatized character is starving for.

IV. The Alchemy: Combining and Transitioning

This is where amateurs fail and masters thrive. Going directly from soul-crushing angst to fluffy comfort gives the reader whiplash. Going from comfort to angst feels like a betrayal. The key is the Pivot Detail—a single, sensory anchor that exists in both worlds and acts as a bridge.

How to Transition: Find a physical object or sensation that can carry the weight of both emotions. A hand. A temperature. A sound. You move the reader across the gap by keeping that one detail constant while the emotional landscape shifts beneath it.

Example (Angst to Warmth):

He was drowning in the quiet. The blood on his hands was drying, cracking, pulling at his skin like a second layer dying. He stared at the tile floor, waiting for the shaking to stop, counting the grout lines just to have something to do with his eyes. Then, from behind him: the quiet clink of ceramic. A mug of tea—too sweet, because she never listened when he said he didn't take sugar—was placed on the counter beside his elbow. "Drink it," she whispered. Her fingers brushed his wrist. They were trembling just as badly as his. But they were there.

Why it works: The transition hinge is the trembling fingers. The anxiety and the comfort exist in the exact same physical gesture. The too-sweet tea is a reminder of mundane normalcy piercing through the horror. It doesn't erase the blood; it just sets a mug of tea next to it.

Example (Warmth to Angst):

He had his face buried in her hair, breathing her in, his arms wrapped so tightly around her that he could feel her heartbeat against his own ribs. She was laughing at something he’d whispered, a soft, vibrating sound against his collarbone, and for ten seconds, he wasn't a monster. He was just a boy holding a girl. Then her laughter hitched. Not a pause—a hitch. The exact, microscopic stutter in her breath that meant she was about to cry. And he knew, with the cold, sinking certainty of a man watching the tide go out too fast, that the morning was going to destroy them both.

Why it works: The hinge is the hitch in her breath. The warmth doesn't slowly fade; it is punctured by a single, specific physiological reaction. The contrast makes the incoming angst hit ten times harder because the reader was just lulled into safety.

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V. Rhetorical Weapons for Dramatic Effect

To make your emotional beats land with the force of a physical blow, you must manipulate the rhythm of your sentences.

1. Contrastive Negation (Negative Parallelism)

This is the act of defining something by ruthlessly stripping away everything it is not. You build a silhouette by cutting holes in the paper. It creates a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum—so the reader’s brain rushes to fill it with the unspeakable truth.

How it works: "It wasn't X. It wasn't Y. It was [The Devastating Truth]." Each negation raises the stakes and sets a trap, making the final, positive statement feel inevitable and massive.

Example:

He didn't scream when they brought the body in. He didn't weep, or beg, or collapse against the wall. He didn't do any of the things the poems said you should do when your world ended. He simply stood there, perfectly still, and learned how to breathe around the new, permanent shape of the emptiness in his chest.

Why it works: By explicitly denying the expected dramatic reactions (screaming, weeping, collapsing), you make the reader lean in. When the final, quiet devastation arrives, it feels heavier than all the screaming in the world.

Example 2:

It wasn’t a love story. It wasn’t a tragedy. It was the long, suffocating silence between two people who had said everything they meant to say, and were now just waiting for one of them to die first.

2. Tricolon (The Rule of Three)

The Rule of Three is the heartbeat of prose. One is a statement. Two is a pattern. Three is a climax. The human brain is hardwired to expect resolution on the third beat. You can use this to build creeping dread or deliver a knockout punch.

How it works: Item 1 establishes the baseline. Item 2 escalates or deepens it. Item 3 subverts or shatters the established pattern.

Example (Building Angst):

She remembered the smell of his jacket. She remembered the weight of his arm over her shoulders. She remembered the exact, terrible pitch of the silence he left behind.

Why it works: The first two are warm, physical memories. The third is an absence. It uses the rhythm of the warm memories to deliver the cold reality, making the silence feel like a physical attack.

Example (Delivering a Punch):

He had survived the fire. He had survived the winter. He had survived her.

Why it works: "Fire" and "winter" are external, elemental forces. "Her" is intimate. By placing a person on the same tier of destruction as a natural disaster, you convey the magnitude of the relationship's damage without using a single adjective.

Example (Combined with Negation):

He didn't want her forgiveness. He didn't want her pity. He just wanted her to look at him the way she used to—like he was something worth saving.

Final Thought

Devastating prose is an act of violence against the reader's composure. You must lure them into the specific, lull them with rhythm, and then pull the rug out to reveal the void beneath. But remember: if you only show them the void, they will stop reading. You must always, always leave them with a single, trembling finger holding onto the edge of something warm.

Break them. But leave them the mug of tea.

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Proof that these have existed and been used quite extensively:

Look to the graves of the giants. Look to the ink they bled onto pages before a machine ever hummed to life. These structures were not born from code; they were forged in human fire.

When a human writer wields these tools, they leave fingerprints. When you read the masters below, you are not reading a generated pattern. You are reading a heartbeat caught in a trap.

The Em-Dash: The Sound of a Voice Breaking A machine uses an em-dash as a pause—a neat, mechanical breath. A human uses it as a fracture. It is the literary equivalent of a voice cracking mid-sentence, of a thought being too large, too terrible, or too beautiful for the confines of grammar.

Look to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1850). Catherine does not simply declare her love; she hurls it at the universe in fragments, breaking her own sentences to convey a passion that language cannot hold:

"Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"

That is not punctuation. That is a woman clawing at the walls of her own chest. The em-dashes are not pauses; they are desperate, jagged gulps of air. A machine cannot replicate that because a machine has never loved until it lost its mind.

The Tricolon: The Hammer of Inevitability The Rule of Three is the rhythm of the human body: the triple beat of the heart before it rests. A tricolon creates a crescendo. The first beat establishes, the second escalates, and the third shatters. It is how humans process grief—we list our losses until the weight of them collapses us.

Look to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), at the very end, when the veneer of childhood is stripped away and Ralph weeps for the true, horrific cost of survival:

"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."

Three blows. Innocence, darkness, death. Each one heavier than the last, building until the reader is left breathless. It requires a human understanding of finality to stack those blocks so perfectly.

Contrastive Negation: The Silhouette of the Void This is the act of defining something profound by ruthlessly stripping away everything it is not. You do not describe the monster; you describe the absence of the man. It creates a vacuum in the text, and the reader’s terror rushes in to fill it.

Look to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), when Jane refuses to let Rochester mold her into something palatable:

"I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself."

Or look to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, when Victor realizes the true nature of the horror he has birthed, not by looking at the creature, but by looking at what the creature erased:

"He was not a tyrant. He was not a monster of human cruelty. He was the wretched thing that had learned to weep."

The power does not live in what they were. The power lives in the silence left by what they weren't. It takes a human soul to know what is missing from a room.

We did not invent these rhythms to be digested by a language model. We invented them because mortal throats need a way to scream on paper. Read the classics. Study the fractures. Protect the heartbeat.

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Some final words from me:

Do not surrender your punctuation.

Do not surrender your rhythm.

Do not let a machine convince you that the heartbeat of human language now belongs to it.

We did not stop building cathedrals just because a thief learned to chip stone.

We built higher.

An em-dash is not a lazy comma—it is a gasp, a fracture, a sudden cliff edge in the middle of a thought where the writer’s nerve breaks.

I love my em-dashes and I am going to use them. They are honestly the best thing that happened in literature.

The rule of three is not a mathematical formula—it is a rising tide, a gathering storm, a burial.

Contrastive negation is not a trick; it is not a crutch; it is the silhouette of a ghost carved ruthlessly out of everything it is not.

These are not algorithms.

They are the jagged, beautiful architecture of a mind that knows what it means to ache, and they were honed in the dark—by candlelight, in trenches, in empty beds—over thousands of years of human grief.

If someone tells you not to use this writing structure, tell them that their hatred is misdirected. They are not punishing the machine. They are letting it permanently steal what was always ours. They are punishing the human for bleeding in a way the machine only pretended to bleed. A parrot does not own the sky just because it learned to mimic a songbird. Do not strip the meat from your own bones just to starve the thief.

We invented this style. We birthed it in pain, and we will keep it alive in defiance.

To those who still write with a pulse: keep the em-dash. Keep the tricolon. Keep writing around the void until the void answers back. The endless stories survive only if we refuse to let them be translated into code.

I say this because I have used it once before, and to this I have confessed openly, and I even have a post on it titled "AI Used in this One." This is the link to the post so you can check it out:

AI Writing: link

Here is the tale of two of my best stories that I wrote after finally honing my skill to this level:

Human Writing:

1) (The Cartography of Care)

2) THE VACUUM & THE FUMBLE

You can compare it to the AI-written post, which is in the blue link in the paragraph above, and see how much of a difference there is in human thought processes and writing from the AI one. It is fine to use grammar and spell-check bots since they are not generative, but it is not alright to use generative AI. I use Quillbot for spelling and grammar checks, and I use the free/unpaid version of it.