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@obrian-of-the-surface-world

Very cool topic! I love your use of subtext to imply the danger in the piece! It’s really interesting!

@this-is-not-an-alien

In my current WIP I keep using the image of a doll both to forward the witchcraft underlying plot and to symbolize manipulation or someone being dehumanized and I also use the word “doll” to connect plotlines that I don’t want to outright state are connected because that would involve too much preemptive explaining.

Ooh, that’s so cool!! That’s awesome, I loved the imagery you used! Ahh, Alessio is so awesome! *Still wants to give him a hug*

 

Ummm…. So you know when someone asks you about a specific thing of your WIP and the entire plot dissolves and you remember nothing, especially not where you used this or that?

Yeah. That’s happening XD

I did think of something that might work, though!

In the second book of my WIP, (Not really spoilers, I’ll keep it very vague 😉 ) I found myself using blood symbolically very often. To be more specific, Liorah, my main character, has terrible nightmares and in almost every one, she notices that her hands are covered in blood.

Here are some samples, one during the dream and one right after she woke up:

Blood poured out of my arm, the scar once again a weeping wound. The blood singed my skin as it trickled over my fingers, dripping onto the stained ground. My sword was crimson. Why was there always so much blood?

 

I looked down at my hands, expecting the wound on my arm to gape open in a mess of torn skin. Once again, it was only a pale line, barely visible in the moonlight.

And this is later in the book. In this specific occurrence, she’s actually hallucinating because of {Indistinct mumbling}

I buried my face in my hands, then recoiled as I felt something sticky smear over my face. I gasped. My hands were dripping with blood. I tried to scramble backward, instinctively.

The blood wept from the wound in my arm and leaked through my fingers, dripping down my arms, smeared across my face. Hadn’t the cut long since healed?

I frantically wiped my hands on my pants, staining them with scarlet streaks. The blood shimmered and morphed in unnatural ways, rippling and changing color from a deep burgundy to brightest crimson.

All these instances are connected to a traumatic event that happened in the previous book, where she literally had blood on her hands. (The event where she got the aforementioned cut on her arm) So I kinda string all these dreams together via that one image. (Or at least, I will in later drafts. It’s a fairly recent idea XD)

The blood also always implies two specific (but opposite) concepts. Guilt, and sacrifice.

The guilt part is also connected to the phrase where ‘having blood on your hands’ literally means that you’re guilty of someone’s death.

The sacrifice, as you all might have guessed, might be a referral to His ultimate sacrifice. (At least, I guess so. This only occurred to me a few days ago, I just thought it was neat.)

The healed cut on her arm opening again during nightmares is also a way to imply that she has unhealed (emotional) wounds from that event.

And, some time later, after she worked it out, check out what happened:

I looked down at my hands, expecting to see them wet with blood. The blood was there, but it was dark and dry, already flaking off.

The trauma isn’t gone, but it isn’t as recent as it was, and it’s the first step to healing.

So, yeah. Lots of subtextual stuff. Also, some of these only occurred to me as I was writing this post. XD Anyway, that was probably the place where I used it most.

*Rereads the post* Well, this was extremely dark. XD