One of my favourite things about Mori and Fyodor projecting onto Dazai is that they keep thinking he's exactly like them when... no??? He's not???? At all??????
Idk maybe I interpret Dazai differently but while Mori and Fyodor are clearly Dazai-foils, I just can't see them as really all that similar.
Sure, strategy-wise, they have a lot in common. They're also all relatively unbound by such things as morality and have few close people - feeling lonely for the most part.
But what gets me is... Mori does what he does because he is an ambitious leader. Fyodor does what he does because he has an ambitious dream. Both are after a way to make the world/city better according to their visions and are prepared to go about darker means to achieve this.
Dazai... doesn't really have any ambitions? They all have eerily similar lines of thinking and ways of dealing with and manipulating situations and people, but their emotional cores are completely different.
Dazai is not ambitious. Dazai is empty. What's more, he's kind of lazy and only really motivated to take action on someone else's requests/orders - otherwise he's actually a really passive character imo. He took orders from Mori in the mafia, only intervened in the DHC because Chuuya got mad, and left the mafia and helps people in the present day because he made a promise to Odasaku. All his strategizing and planning is retaliatory, rather than proactive like Mori or Fyodor. I think the only time we see Dazai planning proactively is in Beast, but even then, that's not some lofty vision for the world/city, that's a desperate plan to save one single person.
This is a huge part of the reason why I think Dazai's threats to kill Mori and take over as the boss were complete bs. Why would he want that? That's more responsibility. I don't see why he would have any desire to lead the mafia outside of Beast.
But because Mori expects Dazai is just like him, and this is something he would do in that situation, he accepts it, putting him and Dazai in this uncomfortable stalemate where neither has complete power over the other. So it has a tactical purpose, yes, but it's far from ambitious.
What's more, Mori and Fyodor are shown to have no compunction with sacrificing people like pawns, even people close to them. Logic wins out, at all costs. Dazai is not good at sacrificing. He's selfish. Once he has something or someone, he's loathe to let it go. If he is significantly close with someone, emotion will actually win out in the end (Odasaku). Dazai is afraid of loss.
So, yeah, they are all amoral brilliant strategists who are isolated from most other people but their motivations are completely different. In all actuality, I think Mori and Fyodor have a lot more in common on that note than Dazai ever did.
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Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.
VIDEO
sorry but literally its still SO SO SO fucking funny and iconic to me that this guy gets separated from everyone for the WHOLE SEASON all bc he refused to run when a freakshow gunman is spraying them w anti tank riflefire. like. that is commitment to the fucking bit. i respect him so much for going "i could easily die but its less devastating than ruining my cool guy image. goodbye"
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Love that they kept in chillchuck looking at his dick
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art-trade with @armentarius
THEORY TIME THEORY TIME
ok. so. first of all FYODOR FCKIN DOSTOEVSKY I LIKE U AND ALL BUT???? REMAIN DEAD??? U JESUS FR??
ANYWAYS ignoring that
so bc i adore skk to hell and back obviously im gonna explore their dynamic first
what kills me is how familiar they are with each other. they arent insulting each other in every sentence, which is still alright. and what struck me the most is how much dazai seems to trust chuuya. more so than anyone.
so far we know that dazai isn't exactly the most open person around. his entire cheerful joking persona is a facade, a fake. what you see is usually only what he wants to show you. his real emotions? ive only seen them very rarely, if at all. now look at these
the way chuuya says what he does implies that he is already used to this habit of dazai's, which is only possible if dazai did this in his mafia days, AND even then, he was open and willing enough to let chuuya see it and know that dazai was anxious. which means that even before mersault, before dazai left the mafia, he and chuuya atleast were that close that the usually closed-off, know-everything demon prodigy could show his worry to his partner, multiple times.
i think that over here, dazai really isnt hiding his emotions. you can see the shock and worry on his face and in his eyes clearly as he puts the pieces together. not only that, hes also laying out parts of his plan to chuuya, in addition to his theories. which he rarely does unless im wrong about that (its possible). he isnt worried about chuuya using his emotions and weaknesses against him, because he trusts him enough, although i think the trust between them was already shown when both of them fake-killed each other.
its easy to see the panic in his eyes, and personally i feel that this is him showing a bit of weakness, which is perfectly alright. the thing is that again, hes letting chuuya see this. I very much doubt that he would have let down his facade enough to show this to absolutely anyone else.
also the poor guy literally looks so stressed out here give him a goddamn break asagiri
aaaaand now chuuya.
now what strikes me is that even in the last chapter/s, chuuya has multiple times tried to reassure dazai that fyodor is indeed dead to try and calm down dazai's worries. this can also be him also wanting a damn break but anyways.
and these panels. while many ppl are agreeing that hes just sitting there being a pretty boy while dazai tows through helicopter debris (and i agree), and definitely chuuyas sadistic streak when it comes to dazai is showing itself clearly, its often been seen in both the official arts and animanga that whenever working together, chuuya always covers dazai's blind spots.
think about it. dazai has his back turned towards everything. if someone launched a surprise attack on him at this moment, the chances of him dodging, finding out abt it in time is pretty low. chuuya is directly behind dazai. i got this idea from another post i saw, but what if this is also chuuya covering for dazai yet again? protecting him?
anyways thats it folks maybe ill make another post on jesus- i meant fyodor soon
In highschool I wrote a story about a middle-generation of stellar travelers. Their parents were born on earth and left as children, and the middle generation will not live long enough to see their destination. They live their entire lives on the ship and I wrote about them trying to find their place in everything. They will never know blue skies and warm beaches and open fields with warm breezes. They’ll never know birdsong or crickets or frogs. They’ll never hear the rain on the roof of a dreary day. I never could find the right way to end the story. I wanted it to be a happy ending, but I didn’t know how to do it.
I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, it’s obvious now. It wasn’t then.
In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. They’re apathetic. They’re just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.
In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.
And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear “it gets better” and “when you’re older things will be easier” and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.
When I was in highschool I didn’t know how to end the story. I didn’t know how to have a happy ending. I didn’t have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didn’t know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.
But now that I’m older, I’m learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.
You have to teach yourself that being happy is not a radical idea.
Absolutely fascinated by the Fairy Walrus Discourse. Naturally, I have a take:
This actually is also a fantastic illustration of a truism about Telling Stories that we all implicitly know but rarely acknowledge aloud: the improbable is far less believable than the impossible.
When you invoke the impossible, you silence the critically thinking, reality checking, lie detecting circuitry. Simpler rules reign supreme.
The Walrus, however implausible, is a thing which is real, and so whatever narrative you imagine either precedes or follows the reveal will be constrained by the envelope of the possible.
This is a webbed site all about Narrative.
The person answering the door to a Fairy is in a fairy tale, and frankly most of us would be overjoyed to find ourselves in a fairy tale. Fairy tales have sensible rules, structures we understand, tropes we love and hate.
A Walrus on your doorstep is just one more giant reminder that the world is a maelstrom of chaos, incomprehensible in its complexity, full of moving parts which obey no narrative. It’s another dose of “what fresh hell is this?”
A Walrus on your doorstep is a burden. A Fairy on your doorstep is an escape.