The angst potential of if Winners don’t remember those who didn’t go to Hell…
Imagine Angel finding Molly. Finding his twin. Finding his other half. Finding the person he regrets hurting more than anyone else. One of the main reasons he’s even trying to get into Heaven.
Imagine him finding her and she just looks at him blankly.
“Oh, hi, what did ya say your name was?”
“Uh, Ang— Anthony. Molly, it’s me.”
“Who??? I’m real sorry have we met? I don’t rememba an ‘Anthony.’”
The idea that she completely forgot about him. The idea that for her to truly be “happy”, for her to truly be in Heaven, she needed to erase “Anthony” from her mind. The idea that everyone in his life was right, as he was just a mistake. The fuck up. The twin that weighed his better half down. That the one person who always told him that wasn’t true doesn’t fucking remember him so maybe that was a mistake too?
“Oh… yeah. Sorry, I.., thoughtcha was someone else.”
Imagine him pushing himself away from everyone again, because maybe they’re better off without him too. Imagine him relapsing because if nobody wants him to be here he certainly doesn’t either.
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Again the sickness speaking but here's something that has been going through my mind since forever:
I feel like a good way to mitigate a lot of discontent with the doa arc ending and in general the whole Dazai-being-flawless issue bsd has going on is by comparing bsd to Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Please bear with me for two minutes.
When Sherlock Holmes was being published, people were intrigued and enamoured by Holmes' brilliant and charming, crimes-solving figure. People read the stories for the pure joy of being left gaping at his superhuman wits again and again; they didn't want to see him fail, they wanted to be shocked and amazed by his genius. When Holmes died and then came back, nobody lamented it being unrealistic, because realism was not what people were reading the books for! They were reading to be impressed, to cheer for the hero and then take satisfaction in seeing him turn out victorious. That's the author-reader deal that was made there: to impress and to enjoy being impressed.
As of recently I feel like we've been asking from bsd something it never promised us in the first place. Maybe it's just not that kind of series! Maybe it's more about surprising the reader with how the hero is going to make it and less about highlighting his flaws and insecurities. And like, that's okay! That's why Dazai getting away with it isn't it him getting away with it “again”, it's just how bsd is; in a way, it's what makes bsd bsd.
I think it really clicked with me like it never did before when I watched the last episode of season 5; because the arc ending felt so shocking and unpredictable, very deus-ex-machina trope, a little underwhelming in its lowering the stakes that were there the whole time, and yet so extremely on brand with bsd, I didn't even have it in me to be disappointed. It was so similar to the Guild's arc ending and even more to the Cannibalism arc ending, and maybe it really is just a pattern, maybe it really is what bsd aspires to be, and that's okay too.
Also, I can't stretch this enough: if it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. I can't say it's mine either. But I feel like criticizing bsd now for how it's always been falls quite short, because it really feels like demanding from it what it never promised to deliver in the first place. That's just as far as my current perception of the series goes, though, so feel free to disagree with me on this.
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Want Better Things
“You thought that was a bioweapon?”
The translator broke down for a second as the creature did a sort of broken exhale. Connotations were all that came through. Vague implications. Pity, the software flashed. Disgust. Anger.
A pause as it decided.
Sadism.
Valta was already backing away. The final decision didn’t change his behavior, it just made the hall feel far, far too short.
“I didn’t order it deployed. I didn’t make it.”
The thing was staring at him, and he couldn’t look away. The two eyes moved in such perfect tandem that he didn’t think it was conscious. It only had binocular vision because it only needed binocular vision. Always the predator, never the prey.
And now it was moving in on him.
“Oh, but what if you had? Then I could tell you all the things that were wrong with it.”
One of its hands - a sprawling, five fingered spindly thing - traced carelessly along the station's walls.
“No incubation period. Symptoms arrive within 40 minutes of exposure. No time to spread undetected. Minimum should be one week. Embarrassingly low.”
The pressure the thing was putting on the wall increased, the gentle glide turning into a buzzing scratch. Humans were strong, but not strong enough to cut through metal like this. The suit had to be powered and clawed.
“Spread through contact. Limited waterborne. No airborne. Intended mechanism of infection is viral load being put on hands from scratching, and then passed into the environment. Pathetically inefficient.”
The translator was working, but the thing was overeunounciating each word. The meaning was being passed along by a clean, helpful voice in his suit, even as the sound was being passed on through the environmental speakers. And the sound was dreadful - clicks of ceramized bone jarring against each other, wet muscles modulating air into something sharp and rasping.
“Mechanism of death? Lysis overload. Could be dangerous if it was transmitted into the lungs, but since the initial load tends to be dermal all we wind up with-”
It took its helmet off.
It took its helmet off.
It took its helmet off it took its helmet off it took its helmet off in a biozone it -
It looked a little pink, actually. A little scratchy. It lifted a delicate, taloned hand and rubbed its face against it for a moment before finishing.
“-is a rash.”
Valta’s prey drive had glued him to the spot. It was too close. The stupid, stupid part of his brain that still thought he was grazing on Duranga hoped that if he stood still long enough, it might not notice him.
The human paused a moment before continuing.
“Do you know why they sent me? Alphonse Ericsen, PhD, MD, civilian doctor, here to speak with you?”
Valta’s snout twitched. The suit translated the gesture for him.
“No.”
“Because one of our grunts is a dumb fuck,” the human said simply. “And he spent two days fighting on your station with his helmet off. He got infected that way and brought back your stupid, itchy plague to our carrier ship, and now we’ve all spent the last 8 hours scratching ourselves raw. But the jokes on you, because when we were treating that guy you know what we found? That he was in the asymptomatic phase of a COVID infection. So if this-”
It gestured to its pink face with a snarl.
“-is your idea of a bioweapon, then COVID is going to be your apocalypse. But if you work with me, and shut everything the fuck down for the next three or four months, I might be able to save most of you.”
Valta unstuck at that. He’d spent weeks down here, worrying about nothing more than the next skirmish. Now he was looking at a genuine existential threat.
“...What? Why would you help us? We wanted you to die. All of you. I wanted-”
The human cut him off with an exasperated wave of his hand.
“You wanted something stupid. Doesn’t mean I have to join you. Best I can do to fix you is keep you alive and hope that you feel ashamed later. That, I genuinely look forward to. Now come on, you’re going to be the one explaining to all your friends what’s at stake here. My bedside manner is so bad that they limited my patients to virology slides and USMC marines. I think that’s actually one rung below the guys that just dissect cadavers.”
Valta would’ve made an amused hum at that, but something already felt scratchy inside his throat.
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the "big picture" - whether that refers to some detached, calculated greater good; ruthless ambition and progress for the sake of progress; or even the dear listeners' cosmic indifference - as an antagonistic force in wolf 359 is so fascinating to me because of the way eiffel as a protagonist is set up to oppose it, just by nature of who he is. eiffel retains his humanity even under the most inhumane circumstances. his strength is in connection, and with that he's able to reach others who share his core values, but he's operating under a fundamentally different framework from the show's antagonists. he can never understand where they're coming from or be swayed by their points of view because, for better or worse, he can only see the world through a close personal lens.
it's an ideological conflict he has with all of them, but notably with hilbert: "you talk about helping people, but what about the real, live people around you? [...] that's your problem. you're so zoomed out." eiffel will never, ever see that "big picture" because he is so zoomed in. at his best, he puts things into perspective and grounds the people around him. at his worst, his perspective narrows so drastically inwards that he becomes blind to everyone and everything else. his failings are deeply, tragically human - they're personal, they're impulsive, they're self-destructive. they're selfish. no matter how much he might try to narrativize or escape from himself, he's still left with doug eiffel: "it's taken me this long to realize that running from everyone else means that you're alone with yourself." eiffel could never be convinced to harm others on purpose, but he has hurt people, and it's never been because he didn't care. the very fact that he cares so much, that he's incapable of reconciling the hurt he's caused with the things he values, is what keeps him from real growth for so long. where many of the other characters in wolf 359 will justify their cruelty in service of something they consider more important, eiffel is so caught up in vilifying himself and the fear that he's always going to harm the people he cares for without meaning to that he shuts himself off from the people who care about him and perpetuates his own self-fulfilling prophecy.
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ok but metatron meeting god in s11 is beautiful and heartbreaking because he is THE fallen angel.
lucifer is the king of hell and castiel is the winchester’s kingpin but metatron? metatron is nothing. he is the sisyphus of humanity. he is doomed to rot amongst the lowest of existence and relive his worst mistakes ad nauseam. his pride has been beaten to a bloody pulp and his divinity taken from him, but still he reveres humanity. he is full of so much hatred and vitriol and fury but its because he flew too close to the sun. he loved too strongly, and he was abandoned.
metatron is such an intriguing character in general because he is such a cunt and so disgustingly awful in his self-satisfaction, yet still so vulnerable. he is a human that walks among angels. he is a meaningless speck in the larger picture. he knows he is flawed, he is pathetic, he is worth so little, yet he still stands up to his creator. he is the scribe of god who was left behind. he has spent countless millennia hidden away in awe of god’s creation, enraptured with their wit and ingenuity yet too scared to ever partake. he’s all sorts of awful and fucked up but when push comes to shove he gets up in chuck’s face and tells him he’s a goddamn coward and half the man that he loves.
yet despite this metatron talks about god with such awe. such reverence. god was his maker and his destroyer, his world and its downfall. god was everything to metatron, and he never forgave him for leaving. it filled him with such dismay and rage to be his most trusted confidant, the one to speak directly with the lord himself, then to be left behind in silence. i mean, just look at the way metatron describes him:
you are light. beauty. creation. wrath, damnation and salvation. why did you abandon us? why did you abandon me? you picked me. your light shined upon me, but then you left me. i prayed, every day. i know i am a disappointment, but you are wrong about humanity. they never give up. but you do. they are better than you are.
i dunno man. it just makes me feel all sorts of ways about the broken, bitter and twisted shell of god’s voice telling him that he was his first love and his first light, but that he’s also a coward. that an angel of the lord knows he is flawed of his own mistakes but that what god did to the world— and to him, was blasphemy, no matter how bright He shines. tis a stark reminder that supernatural is the Family Is Hell show and that generational trauma has roots too deep to cut loose.
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