like writing and breaking it down to analyse it

okay, so, obvious starting place is archie, right? because archie's battle between personself and symbolself is the most thoroughly explored and textually engaged-with but also the most overtly detrimental to his relationships. archie perceives the gap between himself and the symbol people see him for - Goodness, or else fred andrews (still goodness, but a kind of agentive upright adult goodness, an active see-a-need-fill-a-need goodness, one whose suffering can be acknowledged, one whose can make choices even if they're always the Right Choices), or else jason blossom (innocence) - and instead of saying, "wow, that has absolutely nothing to do with me and has zero bearing on whether or not i'm a good person, because i'm a person, not a static unflinching paragon of moral purity and heroicness," he beats himself over the head with it. he's not good enough, he'll never be good enough, he's not a real person and he deserves to suffer for that. and it's not just him! everyone wants him to be a symbol, everyone sees him for a symbol. it's his position as a symbol of fred that first draws hiram to him, because hermione cheated on hiram with fred, and hermione in hiram's absence is especially haunted by the life she could've lived if she and fred stayed together, which means she's considering a world where she did bear her husband a son but that son is fred's, not hiram's. hiram cannot have a son, a man with a son stole hiram's wife, so hiram will steal that man's son. that that man's son also represents Goodness which he can pervert and innocence he can destroy is icing on the cake, but first and foremost, archie is vengeance for hermione's choice in affair partner and the universe's refusal to give him his own son outright. jughead, our narrator/author/etc. and archie's bestie, repeatedly reduces archie to a symbol and it always comes and bites archie in the ass. when he tries to literally diegetically turn archie into a symbol with his folk hero plan, archie is objectified, humiliated, and brutalized, all on the public stage, all because jughead can't reconcile his desires with their object OR using archie with archie's humanity. if archie is a symbol, then jughead desires what he represents, not archie himself; if archie is a symbol, then being used is what he's for, and jughead doesn't have to consider how it affects him to be used.

and jughead keeps fucking doing it! archie is a symbol of Goodness which jughead desires all the more because he thinks he can't have the traditional obvious Goodness he's inflicted on archie and because he won't let himself embrace the full scope of his desire for archie. toni is a symbol of the serpent community and lifestyle and belonging to which jughead feels entitled and of which he was robbed by fp's shame and attempts to protect him, and she CALLS HIM OUT for reducing her grandfather to a stereotype, a flat empty pathetic symbol. time and again he sabotages his relationship with betty by rendering her symbolic of, if not Goodness, then Perfection, or riverdalian class stratification. he makes it longer than any other romantic interest of his not reducing tabitha to a symbol, but when we get to s6 and s7, tabitha is an angel, tabitha is the arc of history bending towards justice, tabitha is just another flavor of goodness. at least he's got a consistent type but jfc, dude! jughead's fetish for objectifying people as symbols kind of extends to include him, in that his fetish is really for contrast and so he ascribes to himself the absence of whatever he symbolizes through the object of his desires, but he also obscures himself in the narrative so much that we don't really get a consistent symbolic throughline for him. his relationships are ruined by symbolism, not because his symbolic weight is crushing him, but because he won't stop trying to crush other people with their own symbolic weight and that's the only way he knows how to handle his own wants.

and then there's veronica. she, like archie, is a symbolic representation of her father, who is himself a symbolic representation of a broad concept: Evil. she, like archie, is trapped by that symbolism, is punished by the people around her for trying to live up to their idea of her and for trying to stray from it, wants nothing more than to escape the shadow of this enormous Idea. because she is reduced to representing her father, she is repeatedly abandoned by her friends, by her lovers. because she is reduced to representing her father, she is subjected to constant violence. because she is reduced to representing her father, her actual actions and the desires and ethics they represent - making reparations to the muggses by giving ethel the only assets she has left, fighting against her father at every turn, cutting him out of her life as an adult up to the point of fully having him killed because she knows he's not safe for her or the people she loves - are brushed aside, ignored wholecloth, or deliberately reinterpreted in the worst possible light by everyone around her. every romantic relationship she attempts is ruined by it - archie is turned into a fascist militant, then framed for murder and sent to jail, then forced to go on the run; reggie tells her that she is her father when they fight because he resents not having as much wealth and power as her; chad, who wanted to use her to make her father adopt him as his criminal heir, takes that resentment so much further that he actually tries to murder her - and multiple friendships are damaged, too.

weirdly, though, betty handles her symbolism very differently. sure, she's supposed to be Good, like archie is supposed to be Good, and sure, she grows into an increasing awareness of all the ways she and that mold don't fit, and sure, that knowledge constitutes several devastating emotional blows. but she also resents Goodness in ways that archie doesn't. he resents himself for failing to achieve it; she resents other people for inflicting it upon her. she tells alice in the pilot that she's sick of having to be perfect and she wants to live for herself; she tells jughead at his birthday party that she hates that word when he throws it in her face. what's interesting, though, is that her ability to step away from that symbol preserves her relationships. her willingness to be dangerous and deviant and dark leads to some of her and alice's closest moments; as represented by the dark betty costume/her own sexual desire for control, she's able to engage jughead sexually as a person on her own terms rather than as a symbol on his, and we see that set the tone for basically every sexual encounter they have. her loser stalker fed situationship is interested in her, not because she's Good or even Perfect but because of the ways in which she's fundamentally Not (oooooh, sexy evil murder mutant!). betty resists Perfection so much that she gets to loop all the way back around and represent Corruption - she points out the violent hypocrisy and inequity in riverdale and thereby awakens the black hood, revealing herself to be the daughter of murder and hypocrisy; she goes from little miss sweater set, doing her best to save the town from evil, to the harlot of babylon, harbinger of the apocalypse - and then she resists that symbolic role, too! sure, alice and hal are pieces of shit to her when she doesn't live up to their hopes and dreams for her Perfectly, but they don't stop loving her because of it. her friends only love her more for trying to be more than just Perfect, more than just Corruption. her willingness and ability to separate her personself from her symbolself is why she and archie are able to be together so healthily after the time jump.

xue "there is no why" yang takes this to its disturbing extreme--in his worldview life is composed of incomprehensible, pointless, random disasters--so that is just what he will be for other people. justice is a joke and anyone who believes in it is a contemptible hypocrite.

wei wuxian with his half-remembered experience of homelessness and starvation seems to halfway believe in justice but to understand that his inclusion within a world controlled by laws of justice is precarious. before getting scapegoated and killed he's trying to believe that if he can only explain himself fully people will understand, and wen qing draws on her experience as an abused prisoner of war to lay it out for him that that is not the case. after his resurrection he has no hope that defending either himself or others, even with the truth, will change anything. instead he has to retreat from the world and stop caring.

jin guangyao occupies a sort of middle path between the two i think--though all three are highly highly intelligent people jin guangyao is the one distinguished for his remarkable clear-sightedness about Society pretty much from beginning to end. all the way at the end at guanyin temple when he explains the way he thinks these scapegoating mechanisms work wei wuxian himself is like. actually when you put it that way that's real as fuck.

but probably nowhere in the book is the split between people who believe in the random nature of violence and power and the impotence of justice and those who don't more apparent or interesting than between jin guangyao and nie mingjue. they're both people who have been shaped by violence and a sense of inescapable doom since childhood, but those violences could not be qualitatively more different. the overarching paradigm of violence for nie mingjue is war--specifically, the war experienced by high-ranking, highly skilled officers. it's tightly controlled by laws and codes of honor, it's socially sanctioned and encouraged, it's self-sacrificial, it's ennobling. it's anything but random. even his father's death wasn't random, it was an injustice committed out of envy that nie mingjue is obliged to avenge according to the codes of conduct that rule his world.* his way of coping with the fact that his whole life is one long slow suicide and that he has no choice in the matter if he wants to be a good leader for the nie clan and avenge his father is to believe in the rightness of it wholeheartedly and without question. you could even expand this to say this is also how he copes with having taken countless lives--which would explain why jin guangyao challenging him on whether he can say that every single death he caused was righteous feels like such an existential threat to him.

in sharp contrast, the overarching paradigm of violence in the life of the young meng yao is rape. (or really sexual exploitation in general with rape as the extreme case but i think it is really not a stretch to say that mdzs is particularly interested in this extreme case. like you don't need to speculate about what terrible things may or may not have happened to a young boy growing up in a brothel who happens to be the spitting image of his beautiful and once-famous courtesan mother, it's quite enough to say that the constant threat of those things is going to shape the way that someone thinks about the world.) and that's not a violence that is ennobling or controlled by laws. it's random and it's disconnected from any ideas of deserving or not-deserving because it is just someone forcibly taking something they want from someone else who is in a vulnerable enough situation to be victimizable. it has no connotations of heroism--instead, it is considered shameful, dirty, emasculating. and when meng yao sees his mother sacrifice something for him, it's not her life, but her dignity and her social standing. because for her to sacrifice her life instead would actually do nothing because nobody other than him would care!! i don't think it's wild speculation to say that this is something he would likely feel both deep gratitude for and guilt over. but anyway like you see where i'm going w this for jin guangyao to adopt nie mingjue's ideas of it being better to die than lose face or compromise your honor would be a condemnation of his mother's sacrifices. which is all to say: jin guangyao's suicide fakeout trick could not be better suited to piss nie mingjue off if he tried it's deceitful it's underhanded it's taking advantage of the generous pity that jin guangyao knows nie mingjue has for him but let's look at the context here--what nie mingjue just said to him was that he should turn himself in for the crime of killing the jin captain and that if what he said was true and there was something understandable and justified about it, then his treatment at the hands of the jin clan would reflect that. the declaration that he should trust in the justice of society and that its judgement upon him would have any relation to his actions and not who he is and how he's seen as the son of a prostitute could not POSSIBLY be more at odds with jin guangyao's lived experience. fucking of course he is not going to do that. he admires nie mingjue's uprightness but thinks that he only has it because he lives in a fantasy land of a just world born out of the sort of privilege someone like meng yao could only dream of. and like. is he wrong about that.

like ok the point is not that xue yang or jin guangyao are actually right i think that probably end-of-book wei wuxian and his ideas that revenge and resentment are probably more destructive than they are righteous is the LEAST flawed takeaway from everything we see and an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind is more than an empty truism if you are seriously looking at the themes and symbols of mdzs &c. &c. the point is that even though their worldviews are flawed they see and understand something about the world that the enormously privileged cultivation world at large is blind to. and that that blindness is a serious problem. it took someone like jin guangyao to build those watchtowers.

icarian task: when you have a task you know you’re going to fail at anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down

cassandrean task: when you have to deal with people you KNOW won’t listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start (most often witnessed in customer service)

I accept payment in trillion-cut black diamonds.

✧ Broken ribs suck. You don’t just “walk it off.” Breathing hurts. Laughing hurts. Existing hurts. Characters with rib injuries won’t be doing heroic sprints.

✧ Concussions aren’t instant naps. Dazed vision, nausea, dizziness, maybe even personality changes, but they’re not going to collapse neatly like in the movies.

✧ Blood loss is sneaky. It’s not just about dramatic pools of blood. It’s dizziness, confusion, and the body getting cold as circulation tanks.

✧ Adrenaline lies. Someone can take a serious injury and not feel it until the fight’s over. That “I didn’t realize I was bleeding until later” trope? Very real.

✧ Twisted ankles are brutal. One bad step and suddenly running is off the table. Even walking hurts like hell. Perfect way to ground a chase scene.

✧ Burns linger. Even small burns hurt more than most people expect. Blisters, infection risk, constant pain, it’s not just a cool scar later.

✧ Dislocated shoulders = useless arm. Characters can’t keep swinging a sword or firing a gun. They’re basically fighting one-armed until it’s fixed.

✧ Shock is a thing. Pale skin, trembling, rapid heartbeat, and eventually disorientation. A character might not even realize how bad their wound is.

✧ Stitches aren’t magic. Getting sewn up is painful and recovery takes time. They’re not instantly battle-ready after a needle and thread.

some tiny details that tickle the whump senses

• dark circles, bloodshot eyes

• falling asleep fully clothed, possibly with jacket and shoes still on, legs/feet hanging off the foot of the bed or sprawled half-on half-off a couch

• the “oh shit, i’m gonna faint/nevermind i’m good” face (and aborted grab for nearest solid object or person)

• a character losing their footing for a moment on rough terrain. someone reaching out to grab them so they don’t fall and they both hold on for a hot second

• closing their eyes and leaning into a gentle touch

• shaky hands, shaky voice

• falling asleep at their desk at work/tucked away in an odd place

• doing things that are out of character & having others start to notice: losing their cool, being extra chipper or extra quiet, jumpy

• zoning out

• someone getting between them and whoever they’re having a heated exchange with, gently pushing them back with a hand against their chest or shoulder

⊹ standing too close. like just barely not touching. why are their shoulders breathing on each other??

⊹ conversations that sound normal but feel like foreplay. “pass the salt” has never been so loaded.

⊹ one of them says something flirty and the other freezes for 0.2 seconds like “oh.”

⊹ eyes dropping to lips and then—back up. with effort.

⊹ holding eye contact just a little too long. like... are they gonna kiss or duel??

⊹ unintentional physical contact that lasts one second too long and now they’re both broken

⊹ a hand on the small of the back. that’s it. that’s the tweet.

⊹ tension so thick that other characters start noticing like “hey are you two okay?” (they are not)

⊹ “accidental” sleepovers. “oh no there’s only one bed.” yeah. suuuure.

⊹ biting back a smile. biting back a moan. biting anything really.

⊹ one of them walks away and the other has to physically restrain themselves from watching the hips

knowing logically that they're safest if they isolate themselves, but on the inside, so badly wanting to just be with someone who cares

every touch for years has brought pain, but someone offers a hug and their heart is torn in two, half of them retreating to avoid it and half of them wanting desperately for it to be real

the human equivalent of an abused rescue animal finally letting their new person pet them

It is very important in detective genre, and especially if you want to convey that the character is smart without other people in the story constantly spelling it out for the audience. And it is seen most clearly in how Luo Weizhao is written and acted.

For example, in the beginning of episode 18, LWZ notices Xiao Hanyang acting weird. And Xiao Hanyang notices that LWZ notices.

And then LWZ doesn't call him on that, and behaves as if nothing has happened. He changes the topic and lets the "victim" relax and think that they got away with it, but you KNOW, you can see it on his face and in his eyes, that he has already filed this detail in his head and, once he has enough evidence, will present it to you probably at the most inconvenient of moments.

And you understand why many people, especially those who have something to hide, are nervous around him. They are afraid to slip up, because they understand that at some point they will make a mistake, and Luo Weizhao will know.

Later we have a similar scene, where Pei Su and LWZ are talking in the car, and Pei Su utters the name that he isn't supposed to know off the top of his head, and then - immediate razor-sharp focus from LWZ.

And Pei Su, this little fuerdai, usually has his way with words and is capable of bewitching anyone and everyone, except for Luo Weizhao. And he tries to explain it away, but he's nervous, because he knows that ultimately it won't work. The shark has already sensed the blood in the water but has enough patience to wait for its pray to get closer to the trap.

Very often, when I read the posts from people defending the "Ruin and Rissing" atrocious ending, I see the same argument (or rather an accusation): people allegedly don't appreciate soft heroines, they don't think that raising orphans is important and they want every female protagonist to be a girlboss.

There are a few problems with that argument. There is indeed nothing wrong with being soft. Nothing wrong with not wanting to rule the country or not being a fighter. Nothing wrong with wanting to raise children. However, being soft doesn't mean being blind to other people's suffering. If you build the world full of pain, death, wars, and oppression, have the protagonist be the one who is able to stop that, there should be the point where they realize that there are things bigger and infinitely more important than their personal wants and needs. Every soldier dying on the battlefield, every person brutally killed for their "crime" of being different probably would rather be anywhere else doing anything more pleasant, but alas. However soft one might be, they still might decide to help, even if not by fulfilling military or governmental functions. And if your protagonist just washes their hands of any responsibility just because they "never asked for this," they are not going to come across as soft and deeply sensitive; they are going to look selfish and cowardly.

Anyhow, there is an even more important thing: you can't just randomly decide that your heroine is soft and her biggest dream has always been raising orphans by the end of the series when there was nothing leading up to that conclusion for three books straight. A soft protagonist is someone deeply sensitive, kind, empathetic, caring for those less fortunate, someone who abhors violence and cruelty and naturally gravitates to the roles that don't require being ruthless or violent. And Alina just...doesn't possess those qualities. From page one, she seems bitter, grouchy, and unfriendly. She's outright hostile to any girl who looks at her precious Mal and immediately passes judgment on everyone. Every Grisha girl is fake and shallow, the Darkling is a heartless monster who doesn't feel anything, heartrenders are killing machines, and so on. She gets attacked by Fjerdans, learns that it's pretty much a normal occurrence for Grisha, and never thinks about it anymore. She learns that girls mock Genya for being abused by the King and just...doesn't care? Neither does she see any problem with the same king harassing other maids. She destroys a skiff, effectively killing a few dozen people, and doesn't think much about it, nor does she seem terribly upset with Grisha on the opposing side being killed. She comes across as narrow-minded, self-absorbed and extremely self-righteous, which looks especially grating considering her total ignorance about everything.

When she remembers her orphanage, it's always about her own experience; she doesn't express any concern for the other kids there or any interest in helping orphaned children in the future. She clearly doesn't want to have any responsibility, so being responsible for raising a bunch of traumatized children really seems like a terrible idea not boding well for herself or those poor children. What can she even offer them? She's not wise and knowledgeable, not caring and compassionate; she can't put herself into another person's shoes and doesn't want to even attempt to understand where they are coming from. She's petulant and immature; she is only going to mess those children up even worse, and using them as window dressing to showcase how noble and kind-hearted she allegedly is seems really hypocritical and dishonest. No, I don't care she "heals a little," or so she says, how are the kids feeling? The orphanage is supposed to be about them and their well-being, not her, no?

Finally, Alina's never shown being genuinely content with her "simple" life with no responsibilities as a saint or queen. In the beginning, she's weak and miserable because of her wasting sickness, she doesn't like her job, can't connect with other people, and pines after a guy who is much more popular than her and doesn't really care about her. In the end, she mourns her lost powers; she can't connect with other people; we don't see her being appreciated, respected, or loved by anyone, even the kids, all while her boyfriend is still way more popular and likable than her, and she's considered a lunatic. Doesn't sound very idyllic to me, more like a domestic thriller where nobody would believe the wife if she ever thought to complain, because her husband is "such a nice guy" and she's "a paranoid nutjob who forgot to take her pills again".