#I hope that in the future I can update this essay with more references to express my gratitude towards the analysis part of the fandom too

[kaus-quietis]

BSD Fyodor Dostoyevsky: an in-depth character analysis

“Человек есть тайна. Ее надо разгадать, и ежели будешь ее разгадывать всю жизнь, то не говори, что потерял время; я занимаюсь этой тайной, ибо хочу быть человеком.” / “Man is an enigma. It must be unravelled, and if you will unravel it your entire life, then do not say that you have wasted time; I occupy myself with that enigma, because I want to be human.” – the writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, in a letter to his older brother, Mikhail (St. Petersburg, 16 August 1839)

The purpose of this post is to present and analyse information related to Bungou Stray Dogs’ Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s personality and methodology. Softer than shadow, unsolved and endless, Fyodor may as well “hide” his soul under our very eyes and we still would not know if that is the “real” him. This is my promised Fedya essay, an info-gathering analysis masterpost I hope you will enjoy and find useful for contemplating and coming to understand his complex character a little bit better.

Warning: merciless BSD manga spoilers. Literally spoiling everything. Also, this is an unbelievably long post (20200+ words). Have some lovely tea, listen to Rachmaninoff, and read in serene leisure or endlessly curious passion.

Last update: November 2022. 20.200+ words. The BSD manga reached ch105, the BSD anime completed season 3, while season 4 is announced for January 2023. Please refer to my original post (this one) in the future, as I could add updates periodically when new chapters release (or so I hope). Please note that I am using the official English translations for chapters 1-94 unless stated otherwise. I am eternally grateful for all fan translations. Lastly, please note that in this essay I will not focus on: 1) connections to F.M. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment or other literary works; 2) connections to F.M. Dostoyevsky’s biography / personal life; 3) possibilities of what Fyodor’s ability could be; 4) the philosophical and ethical side of Fyodor’s motives. All these would require vast separate posts entirely (who knows, I might write them too one day). My intention is to offer guidance in decyphering what Fyodor’s personality is truly like, as well as how his methods and tactics play a role into shaping said personality or BSD’s plot. Last note: in this essay, quite frequently, I am making references to other beautiful posts written by BSD fans, tagging them and linking to their posts. If you are tagged and want me to remove the tag, please send me a message via ask box and I will edit the tag out.

Sections:

A. Let the hand of God guide you: Fyodor and hand / arm symbolism

B. He understands human nature deeply, if not perfectly

C. He values independence and (most probably) his co-workers

D. No confirmation yet that he is brainwashing others and why this is relevant

E. He loves and lives for entertainment

F. Humble, not arrogant. Self-proclaimed god or servant of God?

G. A strange divergence inside Fyodor. Is he a singularity?

H. Soft, discreet, graceful, yet playfully dramatic. His body language in the manga, in comparison to the anime

A. Let the hand of God guide you: Fyodor and hand / arm symbolism

When it comes to Fyodor’s character, even choosing a starting point for our discussion about him might prove challenging. For all we know so far, he is a Russian man with a completely unknown past, he appears to be in his 20s, just a pinch shorter than Dazai (as @kaikaikitanmp3​​ showed here), elegant, alluring and ambiguously sickly (see section H for more on his self-proclaimed anemia and overall physique). Until we get more canon manga information on his personal profile, I propose we start from something that already has numerous ties to Fyodor’s character, a symbol we can present the many meanings of, only to abandon us to our roaming thoughts later. This symbol is that of the hand, and, before that, the closely-related symbol of the arm.

Embrace of all. A symbol of both power and protection, the human arm represents the instrument to apply justice and punishment, to rule and to guide. Not only that, but as a symbol of a human’s strength and capacity to act, its image becomes that of vitality itself. To open one’s arms is an act of invocation, raising them to the sky – an act of calling for divine blessing, but this welcoming gesture also renders a person wide-open and vulnerable, receptive and embracing. A certain humbleness and vulnerability is involved in this gesture, because only then one can wholly accept what stands before or above them, let them in, understand and feel them. This willingness to embrace alterity, when represented in art or various media, can be of different nuances, thus triggering different responses in the viewer: it can be soothing, heartwarming, comforting, just as it can be unnerving, constraining, intrusive even for even just suggesting such embrace. It is no wonder we see this gesture in how Ango apparently imagines Fyodor (ch78). While his arms are covered by his coat, his open hands, as of darkness, extend towards the viewer. This image appears as Ango concluded that Atsushi getting shot by Nathaniel, later falling unconscious in Anne’s room, was part of Fyodor’s plan. How this plan covered and embraced that outcome is portrayed as unsettling, therefore making good use of the negative values of such body language and symbols. Together with the ch63 panel where Fyodor’s faceless silhouette is shown with his open hands turned towards his chest, each finger pulling a thin string, this example, too, suggests the idea of Fyodor’s influence and interference being disturbingly omnipresent, this time with the hand gesture emphasizing the hidden character of his plans. A different example, of Fyodor conveying openness through body language, specifically showing his palms to someone while even opening his arms in a welcoming manner, is when he was negotiating with Mushitaro in ch55, offering to end his imprisonment in exchange for Mushitaro playing a role in Fyodor’s Cannibalistic Mutual Destruction operation. At that moment, Fyodor’s gesture conveyed the sincere character of his offer, made more impactful by being accompanied by much gesticulation on Fyodor’s part during the whole scene (more on Fyodor’s rhetorical use of expressive gestures in section H).

Honesty and harmlessness. The symbol of the hand also represents human ability to act, putting a start or an end to action, as well as having the freedom to act. Just like the arm, the hand is a symbol of power, justice and dominance, as well as guidance and bestowing blessings. Open palms, much like open arms, convey the message of having no ill will, no hidden secrets, thus presenting oneself in an open, vulnerable position, but also one allowing reception of the other, and, in the case of the open hands, showing willingness to share, as the hand’s different “powers” are almost as numerous as human actions themselves: to contain, to take away, to keep hidden, to harm, to mend, to unite, to divide, to guide, to give. The meanings of these, melted together, would all still accurately be applicable to Fyodor’s character, who, in the most general sense, just like Dazai’s character or even more so, represents the complexity of human nature, so rich in paradoxes, so ultimately impenetrable. Now, showing your hands, and especially showing your palms or inner part of your arms (interior side of the wrists and upper arms, for example), means showing you have no ill intent (based on how, for example, since ancient times, such a posture simply showed the other that you do not carry any weapons). Hence, in this line of thought, we can approach the scene where Fyodor showed his fragile hand and wrist to Ace in ch42. It has a double meaning in this scenario: firstly, Fyodor is indeed honest and open, he does not have an ill intent, because his hidden purpose, in itself, addresses the greater good of humanity; secondly, Fyodor’s intent becomes “ill” only when related to Ace himself, who saw Fyodor as a threat and was ready to deny Fyodor his personhood, as he did with all his subordinates, who became his slaves or, rather, his disposeable objects and instruments. In so many of BSD’s events and organisational dynamics, it is evident how relativity rules the verdict we as readers can give to various groups or characters. BSD features excellent examples of grey morality everywhere, and the problem of whether Fyodor is good or evil is no exception. It is all relative to a past and a future we do not know yet, while still maintaing a certain unnerving, dark side that undeniably accompanies Fyodor’s character at each step. The reader is then immediately reminded of this dark, threatening side of Fyodor’s, as he concluded the ennumeration of his physical and circumstational disadvantages with the abrupt “So how about this? I’ll kill you instead”.  And while I did call this subsection “honesty and harmlessness”, everyone is conscious of Fyodor’s potential to harm at any time, most characters living in anticipation of being harmed by him, and yet we still have no clear idea how he applies physical harm (including death), despite having valuable depictions of how subtly he can exert mental and emotional harm, or simply influence, on others (more on that in the following sections). That being said, despite Fyodor calling humans sinful and foolish and expressing his desire to “purify” them (ch46, Fyodor: “Man is sinful and foolish. Even if they know it is all an artifice, they cannot help but kill each other. Someone must purify them for those sins”), we never see him acting like he hates or is disgusted by humans, nor like he forcefully wants to change how they behave. The latter reminds us of the thin line between plain manipulation (a thing Fyodor does when necessary for his larger strategic moves, as he has done in ch47 with fake Pushkin and the children or in ch75 with Sigma) and exerting oppressive corrective behaviour upon others (a thing we never see Fyodor doing, as he never changes the people he interacts with, who they are and what they value; see sections B and C). In fact, his openness to human nature in general is highlighted, for instance, in his interactions with Nikolai and in the way he talks about Sigma (see section C). Opposite traits blend perfectly into Fyodor’s character in most subtle ways, as I intend to prove by the end of this essay, so let us continue gathering such examples on the way, across all sections.

Bestowing blessings. In the manga, Fyodor was shown using a very specific hand gesture when using his ability on Karma, thus openly depicted only in ch42 so far. The same gesture, prepared but changed into one of covering Mushitaro’s head with its palm, appeared in ch56 in a hallucination, when Mushitaro was forced into a corner by Ranpo’s blackmailing, which for Mushitaro triggered images of Fyodor (more on this below). To me, this peculiar hand gesture is like a mixture of different acts I witnessed or experienced in religious contexts (to clarify my background, I’m slavic, Orthodox, and Eastern European, no “expert” in religions but fascinated by sacred rituals), and by this I mean specifically acts of blessing and chrismation done by priests. 1) Blessing marks bestowing holiness or invoking the divine will and protection upon a person (but also places, objects etc.), and is done in several ways: when one-handed and by a (consecrated) priest, using the right hand, with the finger positions spelling out the letters “IC XC” (for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Jesus Christ in Greek), the same sign being done with both hands when the gesture is two-handed; when one-handed and by a secular (also done between regular people occasionally), making the sign of the cross over someone or something using the thumb and index + middle finger stretched outwards, similar to the finger positions when making the sign of the cross on oneself. Fyodor’s hand position is most similar to the latter in this case, albeit with a sinister twist: Fyodor seems to use his left hand for the gesture. A different gesture for blessing, in this specific meaning mostly starting with the New Testament, is putting one’s hands over someone. There, this gesture is closely linked to the miraculous healings bestowed by Christ (as in Luke, 13, 13), and, after His ascension, keeping its relation to healing and bestowing the Holy Spirit, to the duty quite literally left in the hands of the apostles (as in Acts, 8, 17). 2) Chrismation is a Christian sacrament, where, in short, the priest anoints another person with the holy chrism, a ritualic ointment, while making the sign of the cross over specific body parts, each being a symbol of something, starting with the forehead (where the blessing of the mind is bestowed). Chrism itself, a common element in Mediterrean and Middle-East religious practices since ancient times, gained a particularly important role in Christianity, being used very often, in both baptismal and funeral rites, as well as sacraments (chrismation and acts of consecration). It symbolizes divine benediction, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but also bestowing power and glory (in the context of coronations or such). Each time the author of the benediction is considered to be the divinity, whereas the one who applies the chrism on the other is a mediator between the earthly and the holy. Notably, this use in baptisms and funerals marks an associations with beginnings and endings, life and death. To me, Fyodor’s hand gesture when using his ability, particularly the gentle touch of another’s forehead, always looked similar to the act of anointing someone with chrism (though it is not usually done directly with the fingers, but with a little brush or one half of the ointment’s recipient), and in line with his canon dialogues, we could say what he bestows is “the great silence”, “the salvation of death”, which can turn into the blessing of a meaningful, peaceful death, bone-chilling nonetheless, such as in Karma’s case (ch42, see section B where I expand upon this). This gesture links Fyodor’s character to the image of a mediator, the role of “the right hand of God”, carrying out a mission that can be regarded as holy (based on Fyodor’s use of religious vocabulary), although we still lack canon material to fully establish whether that is only a trait of his way of speech or indeed a hint for his motives’ origins (see section F).

Threat and manipulation, relative examples. Later, in ch56, Ranpo hit Mushitaro’s most profound, personal weakspot by adopting Fyodor’s type of manipulation, in the form of a one-time bargain with emotional pressure, an offer he could not refuse (Ranpo would have releaved a truth Mushitaro did not want to make public if Mushitaro did not accept Ranpo’s terms; see also @looking-for-stray-dogs ’s post here). However, given that we already saw Fyodor offering Mushitaro a deal in ch55, there is a noticeable difference between Fyodor’s and Ranpo’s deal here, which, in my opinion, shows that Ranpo cannot immitate Fyodor completely (or refuses to) while he also imagines him as a much worse person than Fyodor can be deduced to be, in fact, strictly based on his interaction with Mushitaro. In ch55, it is shown that Fyodor simply offered to free Mushitaro from the basement he was locked in, in exchange for Mushitaro using his ability serving Fyodor’s Mutual Destruction plan once. This deal was fulfilled and their interactions ceased. I would call this a case of pragmatic manipulation, because Fyodor did not profit of Mushitaro’s feelings or past, he only offered freedom from Mushitaro’s cell. By contrast, Ranpo, assuming Fyodor works only (and especially) with emotional manipulation, simply blackmailed Mushitaro into turning himself in. Of course, Fyodor is capable of emotional manipulation (as in Sigma’s and Nikolai’s cases, see section B, but also section H below), but he can also manipulate others not even bringing their emotions into the discussion (as in Mushitaro’s case). By limiting his assumptions to emotional manipulation, Ranpo may be walking down a dangerous path, disregarding the full spectre of Fyodor’s methods. Assuming Fyodor is “the worst person possible” by default could also prove to be a wrong approach, as it is easier and convenient to conclude on that for others, but assumes too much about Fyodor and adds a rigid label on him, one that Fyodor can exploit later. In fact, we saw he already did once, by giving the worst relationship advice on purpose in ch64, in Meursault, when Dazai asked for said advice within Fyodor’s “All-smiles Problem-solving Roooooundtable” (and yet, this, together with Dazai’s lines, were shaped that way for the purpose of establishing the terms of their secret code, as I shall argue below, in section C). Meursault guards are portrayed monitoring Fyodor and Dazai, whom they consider “demons” of crime, expecting them to be exactly the worst souless manipulator and the worst flirtacious lunatic respectively. I would like to thank Eliott @stories-from-saint-petersburg for discussing this scene with me in-depth and putting this aspect of it into very fitting words I shall copy below. Besides the ideas presented here, see also section C for this brilliant scene’s actual meaning, according to what I could deduce further.

Eliott: “But also, they know they are filmed and that people are listening to them. So it would make sense to give answers that are more far from their characters, to confuse or not to give too much info to their jailors. Just like they switch to code when speaking about more serious things. That’d make sense in a strategy where you have to deceive your opponent, the opponent being Meursault. If they both give shit answers (and the answers that are expected from them), then the way they make up their plans will be still more difficult to find out by the prison.”

There is more to be inspected in Mushitaro’s ch56 hallucination of Fyodor covering his head with his palm. For this, I shall leave a different discussion I had with Eliott below:

Lav: “One difference is that Karma (ch42) actually experiences that touch. He sees Fedya's hand, he feels the touch of his fingers. It happened as an event in his life. In comparison, Mushi (ch56) sees this image when Ranpo blackmails him into turning himself in, as Ranpo makes a speech about using the methods of a demon to reach his goal (debatable, I will expand on this when the time is right). Apparently, Ranpo's speech triggers an emotional reaction in Mushi, who then imagines Fedya reaching towards him, making the same gesture he did to Karma, and the panels are white, while the end of this vision (Fedya placing his whole hand over Mushi's head) is in black.” Eliott: “Can’t it simply show the effect Fedya had on Mushi? A feeling of being oppressed and trapped, or something akin to control from a mind that’s greater than his? To me it looks like an allegory of manipulation, but not especially like an ability or something akin to it.” Eliott: “If Mushi saw Fedya use his ability, then he knows his touch means death. Anyway, he knows Fedya is dangerous. Touching someone’s head is a common symbol for either intimacy, fondness or manipulation. Mushi probably knows he can end up killed, and this is a fear that can explain this imagery, and even the manipulation he’s subjected to. The fear of dying is a good motivation for someone. Furthermore, he is still traumatized by the death of his dear friend, so it’d make sense this is very impactful for him, either death or being near / in danger of it? Also, Fedya here looks like how his friend is depicted graphically.” Eliott: “<So,> he doesn’t have to <have experienced this physically before>! Imagining someone threatening touch you is frightening, even if you don’t know they can kill you with one touch. And when speaking of being trapped / manipulated, it’s quite logical to imagine the person that has you trapped touching you, it’s an oppressive image either way.” Lav: “True. (…) One detail that supports this <that Mushi only hallucinated without previously witnessing Fedya’s gesture> is how in Karma’s case Fedya stretched out two fingers (index and middle) to his forehead, much like in a blessing gesture, while Mushi imagines a hand with all fingers fully extended towards his forehead. Also the death touch to Mushi is done with the right hand, while for Karma it’s the left hand??” Eliott: “I still don’t understand that gkflg, I’m wondering if the artist just forgot to draw one right hand ahah”.

Important unexplained details. Everyone’s ability in Dead Apple has an ability gem located on their forehead except: Atsushi’s tiger (nape), Akutagawa’s Rashomon (inside its chest), arguably Dazai’s No Longer Human (inside his chest), and most importantly here Fyodor’s Crime and Punishment (the back of his right hand). Another note, out of all the abilities, only Mori’s Elise, Fukuzawa’s All Men Are Equal and Fyodor’s Crime and Punishment are able to talk or heard talking. One detail unique to Fyodor’s ability and Mori’s ability, though, is that they each have real eyes with irises and pupils, as if they are human, and not just an ability with empty, glowing yellow eyes like in all the other cases, except Atsushi’s tiger. One could surely speculate on why exactly Crime and Punishment has its ability gem placed on its hand, but I want to move on to other topics in this essay. Lastly, on Fyodor’s motto, “Let the hand of God guide you”, see section G.

B. He understands human nature deeply, if not perfectly

Contrary to the popular opinion that Fyodor does not have an ounce of humanity in him or that he cannot understand nor feel human emotions, the canon presents evidence that Fyodor understands other humans and their emotions profoundly. Let us keep in mind the definition of empathy (“the ability to understand other people’s feelings and problems”), as well as the fact that there are different types of empathy, such as affective empathy or cognitive empathy (the latter applying to Fyodor the best). Instead of speculating that Fyodor completely lacks empathy (a lack psychopaths share, and Fyodor’s case proves to be much too complex to simply throw into that spectrum and call it a day; see @tecchous-thicc-buttocks​​ ’s post here, where OP not only has a great post, but also a smashing username AND a superb N.V. Gogol reference in their blog description to laugh your heart out to), I invite you to explore exactly the opposite, namely the idea that he has capacity for perfect empathy and uses it instrumentally to make it suitable for his plans. The canon material showed us many situations that support this (too), as we shall see below.

Fyodor “connects” with others mentally, emotionally and / or spiritually in such an accurate way, that this skill of his is portrayed as bone-chillingly sinister, in scenarios holding starkly contrasting ideas. It is not just about analytically deducing what a person would do next or what would objectively motivate that person, Fyodor knows the depths of people’s hearts, as can be seen in his discussions with Karma, Shibusawa, Nikolai, and the way Fyodor talks about Sigma. I shall present each case in detail in what follows, made into a list of people whose problems Fyodor saw through and responded to adequately.

Karma’s problem was of intellectual nature: to die a slave or a free man, and how those are mutually-exclusive conditions, in regard to which Karma recognized himself trapped in the first condition (slave), but was later “transported” into the second condition (free man) by the circumtances and type of death Fyodor “granted” him. Frequently rationalizing each situation in his inner monologues, pondering each factor and possible outcome analytically and in admirable control of his emotions (as seen throughout the entire ch42), Karma explored, so to say, the “syllogisms” behind what was happening to him too: I want to be saved + I am a bad person + saviours do not save bad persons => I will never be saved; OR I am a bad person + I am not a free person + a saviour can free me by saving me + saviours do not save bad persons => I will never be a free person. Even if the concepts belong to morality discourse, Karma’s approach is straightforward and logical, therefore there is no scene of him begging Fyodor for help, freedom or vengeance, as well as no scene of him even running away from Fyodor: despite being frightened, he was able to withstand his irrational reaction and sought knowledge and clarifications through conversation even in the face of the Demon. Karma was a person who rationalized and accepted his personal condition, and he was all the more shocked that this “slave” condition was dissolved by the events caused by Fyodor. Although Karma had to be killed so that no trace was left by Fyodor, what deserves attention is, on one hand, the fulfillment on Karma’s dying face (dying as a free man), and, on the other hand, how Fyodor gave him privacy when he gave his last breath, as Fyodor is portrayed looking directly at Karma only after he passed away. The fact that Fyodor is portrayed as looking at Karma’s lifeless body afterwards at all can be interpreted as Fyodor contemplating Karma’s end, especially given how in ch42 all background elements vanish in this particular panel, deepening the solemnity of the moment (as @linkspooky​ noted too, together with Fyodor’s understanding and acknowledgement of Karma as a person, worthy of sharing knowledge with, here). And yet the anime (S3ep4) did not insist on this manga panel at all, skipping it entirely. The prayer that Fyodor offered for Karma at the end (“May your soul find salvation… released from the yoke of sin”), while facing him (unlike in the anime, where Fyodor does not look at Karma at all) was the conclusion of Fyodor’s solemn meditation, and I find it a shame that the anime did not linger on this aspect. This scene blends a merciful death with a necessary crime, such contrasts being typical to Fyodor’s character. This prayer for Karma may in fact not be the only one Fyodor offered to those he led to their death by necessity: indeed, Fyodor’s cello recital in front of a captured Katsura in ch47 may have served the same purpose. Given that Fyodor informed fake Pushkin about Atsushi and Kunikida’s arrival, via the telephone, in real-time, we can assume Fyodor knew exactly when the two Agency members clashed with the armed children and when the little girl triggered the detonation of her grenades. After replying to Katsura’s remark, meeting Katsura with the impenetrable grin typical to both him and Dazai, Fyodor recommenced playing with closed eyes and no smile (thus fully immersed), unlike in the anime (S3ep9), where Fyodor never stopped playing in order to talk with Katsura, yet him stopping to play the cello just for that is, in my opinion, very important, as I will try to show here. Fyodor’s cello recital ended with him offering a prayer, which at its end addressed specifically all children of the world (ch47, “Joy to the world… and blessings to all its children”). Therefore, the cello scene carries solemnity, thoughtfulness and emotion, contrasting with the violent sight of the dead children breaking Kunikida’s spirit, and in this light Fyodor’s recital (which Katsura himself did not understand the purpose of, as he was clueless about what was happening outside) becomes a musical prayer for the sacrificed souls. Once again, despite being terribly beautiful in animation and sound indeed, it is a pity the anime depicted this scene in a weirdly ecstatic and stereotypically evil way, giving Fyodor a demonic gaze and grin, as well as making Fyodor face Katsura while playing, despite Fyodor not being turned towards Katsura at all in the manga (ch47), given how he looked at Katsura over his right shoulder (Fyodor’s body position further supports the idea that the recital was not meant for Katsura). As a closing note here, the anime added a specific detail at the scene’s end, one I personally would consider mischaracterization: in the anime, Fyodor broke his cello after the recital, and yet this never happened in the manga, and now we can guess why (Fyodor prays for his innocent victims). See section H for more on Fyodor’s overall gentleness, as well as my previous post about the cello scene here.

Sigma’s problem is of emotional nature: for a man without a past, lacking life itself before he found himself “existing” directly as a young adult (I assume he is a young adult), he was most desperate to fulfill his most basic and primary emotional needs, i.e. having a safe place to call his “home” and belonging to people whom he can call “family”. These are exactly the things Fyodor offered to Sigma right from the start, as if anticipating his arrival in that state, but Fyodor also praised and described Sigma for Dazai (ch75) in a very positive, heartfelt way that also implies Fyodor’s admiration for Sigma, as well as acknowledges a certain superiority Sigma has, even compared to Fyodor and Dazai themselves. Depending on the true nature of Fyodor’s relation to Sigma, as well as Sigma’s true nature in itself, I assume this point here will change in nuance in the future, but in the present the canon tells Fyodor has read Sigma’s heart like an open book. I refrain from adding more to this paragraph until new chapters give me new ground for it.

Nikolai’s problem is of philosophical and spiritual nature: the very fact that Fyodor could understand Nikolai’s core problem, his central existential dilemma, not to mention how quickly Fyodor grasped it, is something that both elevated and destabilized Nikolai. Fyodor rightfully explained that Nikolai fights God “in order to lose sight of himself” (ch78), which, theologically-speaking, is very much accurate from a Christian perspective: a human’s highest and final goal is to “see God”, to return to where man was exiled from (heaven, the Fatherland or patria in Latin, the future heavenly Jerusalem etc.) and, once there, to contemplate God eternally, finally reunited with their Creator and seeing “face to face” (see 1 Corinthians 13:12). That is, because there is where man’s real nature lies, where it came from and belongs to, but also man being created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1:26), together with a Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophical legacy, led to a tradition of interpretations (part of our overall cultural heritage) where man’s divine part (or God himself) resides deep within the human soul: therefore, introspection or contemplating one’s own self holds incredible importance. Nikolai fighting God “in order to lose sight of himself” is a very well-chosen line for Fyodor and a great way of presenting (a glimpse of) the depth of Nikolai’s soul to the readers, one that opens many possible interpretations, not just the one offered above. Nonetheless, Fyodor’s response is particularly disturbing, because he calmly stated what frightens and enrages Nikolai the most: the fact that the sight of God is, in the end, the sight of himself, his true self, and “fighting against God” inevitably becomes “fighting against himself” too. So what is left when Nikolai fights against this truth? What is left must be what is unique to Nikolai as a being, if there is anything like that at all. So far in the manga, it seems Nikolai struggles desperately with the concept of the “omniscient God”, who possesses knowledge of past, present and future as well, which opens the particular Pandora’s box of “predetermination vs human free will”, a monstruous philosophical problem as old as time (or at least heavily discussed ever since Ancient Greek philosophy and Early Christianity too). One must note that, by answering like this, Fyodor essentially denied Nikolai the success of his mission, but granted him the rare gift or rare curse of being fully understood by someone else. One truth too much, the resulting emotional impact on Nikolai was disastruous, as Nikolai appears to be a person of high sensitivity, very susceptible to the power of words and how they plant ideas in his mind. Even if Fyodor’s response is not malicious in words (see, however, section H, about the meaning of the tilt of his head and how this scene is an example of intentional emotional manipulation), this interaction was profoundly unhealthy and destabilizing for Nikolai, which I would argue is well in the spirit of N.V. Gogol’s characters, having their spirits frequently broken by the most mundane things which nonetheless go beyond what they are capable to live with (read The Overcoat, Nevsky Prospekt first half, even Diary of a Madman).

Shibusawa’s problem was of personal nature, linked to his past: not only the Mayoi cards, but also the entirety of the Dead Apple movie make it clear that Shibusawa and Fyodor were long-time acquaintances before the fog incident in Yokohama happened. The most objective proof on this are Shibusawa’s words themselves, when telling Fyodor (in the Draconia room, in Dazai’s presence) that it was thanks to Fyodor selling information to Shibusawa that the fog incidents could happen, and in Yokohama too at such an impresive scale. Since Shibusawa told Dazai he did not find “having friends” necessary (since everyone was like a open book to him), I will refrain from calling the personal relationship between Fyodor and Shibusawa “friendship”. Now then, later on, despite being surprised by the ability-gathering Dragon event triggering after he approached Dazai’s “ability gem”, Shibusawa was not angry nor shocked when Fyodor cut his throat: Shibusawa immediately realized he found his most important personal memory as a consequence of Fyodor killing him or, rather, Fyodor “granting” him death once again. Here, too, two contrasting images combine: 1) Fyodor offering “death” as a “gift” or “blessing” that gives Shibusawa exactly what he needed most, and 2) Fyodor essentially killing his old acquaintance, but with the twist that Fyodor was aware Shibusawa would not die yet, quite the contrary – as a result of Fyodor putting a fragment of the crystal that gathers all abilities on the skull’s forehead (as a “small gift”, as Fyodor called it), Shibusawa was revived and enjoyed one last “epic battle” and then died a truly fulfilled person. In fact, Dazai predicted this outcome in the very first scene with the three of them at the table in Dead Apple, telling Shibusawa he is the one in need of “salvation”: Shibusawa then asked Dazai “And exactly who do you propose could save me?”, to which Dazai answered “Who knows? An angel, perhaps? Or, maybe, a demon” (then Fyodor enters the scene; note that I cite the dub version and that, at the end of Shibusawa’s and Atsushi’s battle, Shibusawa’s last words to Atsushi were “(…) The meaning of that man’s <Fyodor’s> words. I understand all of it now. It’s you! You must be the angel who has come to save me”). Anyway, the movie leaves several interesting questions unaswered: could Fyodor have granted death to Shibusawa, and therefore give him his most important memory back, at any time, or was the whole Yokohama setting necessary? If the latter, was it necessary for Shibusawa or necessary for Fyodor, and Fyodor acted only when their distinct goals aligned? In any case, allow me to expose something very intriguing in the next lines. After Fyodor granted Shibusawa death by cutting his throat in a single swift knife attack, the moment Shibusawa’s memory of his first death returned overlapped with the moment Atsushi’s memory of the same event returned to him as well. In the flashback, Shibusawa stated that he conducted those ability extraction experiments on Atsushi – specifically, Shibusawa pressed the switch – because “a Russian man” told him Atsushi’s “power was coveted by every gifted in the world”. Later, Shibusawa added “the Russian’s name was Fyodor”. This makes all events align in such a way that one could speculate Fyodor was leading Shibusawa and everyone involved with him (Ango and the government) down that precise path we see reach its end in the Dead Apple movie. This makes Fyodor’s words from ch42 all the more relevant: “People can be so simple… They truly believe they are thinking for themselves. (…) They don’t want to think they’re being led by the nose”; or, in S3ep4’s dub: “People are eager to believe that they are acting with free will, that they know best. (…) We all loathe to believe we can be controlled”. One last thing to note and analyse here: as Fyodor walked away alone on the hallway and the Dragon got unleashed, he had a “conversation” with Shibusawa’s skull:

Fyodor (sub): “I’ll tell you an interesting fact, in celebration of you finding a friend in me.” Fyodor (dub): “In thanks of our newfound friendship, I’ll offer you a bite from the apple of knowledge.”

Fyodor and his ability then delivered their famous “I am crime. I am punishment” dialogue. While there are significant wording differences between the versions cited above, how Fyodor referred to “friendship” here is mocking and ironic, so the nature of the bond between him and Shibusawa (beyond that of “informant and information buyer”) remains debatable. It is beautiful how the dub version of the line offers a splendid example of godly and demonic imagery blending in the character of Fyodor. In a Christian cultural context, two precise ideas come to mind simultaneously when hearing Fyodor’s line: 1) it was God who created everything, including the first humans (Adam, then Eve) in Eden, amongst all the fruit-bearing trees, giving them rules as to what they could consume or not (the power and authority “to offer” something rightfully was God’s, being the one to give and take away, to reference  Job, 1, 21), but also 2) it was the Devil who “offered” Eve such a bite, tempting her through suggesting she should eat from the forbidden fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (the infamous “suggestion” was the Devil’s, making a forbidden “offer” that was actually a transgression). It is unclear to which of these two ideas Fyodor is closer, and it may as well be possible he is equally close to both, further encompasing contradicting traits. Nonetheless, given that Karma himself introduced the yet unresolved theme of “transcending human nature” and “transcending good and evil” in relation to Fyodor’s character (ch42, Karma: “Ace was evil, but this guy isn’t even that. He’s some kind of nirvana. Something that transcends mankind itself…”), this particular line from Dead Apple supports Karma’s observations and how Fyodor’s character combines the ideas of creator and destroyer, like @looking-for-stray-dogs put into beautiful words here. This only becomes more interesting when we consider the archetype or role of the “servant of God”, which Fyodor consciously claims to fulfill (see section F below).

Kunikida: Yes, you read that correctly. While Ivan and Nathaniel are, as of now, total wildcards and I do not have enough information as to objectively describe their situation or how Fyodor won them over or “read their souls”, Kunikida’s case is the perfect example of Fyodor’s understanding of a person being so deep and accurate that he knew exactly what actions would cause them to break and render them useless for a significant period of time. Moreover, Kunikida’s case becomes even more intriguing if we remember that Fyodor successfully read his nature without even meeting him. Well, that would be the introduction to this minisection about Kunikida, but frankly I did not have enough time nor energy to dig deeper into this as of now. Perhaps in the future I will update this part with information and links to several great analysis posts I am sure Kunikida fans wrote out already, with their whole heart in them.

These examples share the fact that Fyodor accurately reads the intellectual (Karma), emotional (Sigma), philosophical and spiritual (Nikolai) layers of the human heart, as well as is capable of perfectly adapting to one’s personal baggage on the long term (Shibusawa). This means he posseses an extraordinary capacity for empathy, but, as he never loses his composure (except for small instances of surprise or adrenaline rush, like in ch46 and ch53), his willpower controls every single gesture and reaction he makes, which makes him a terrifying foe who has complete control over himself, never overreacts and thus seems soulless (ch42). His understanding of human nature fiels his skill to deduce future actions and thoughts of other people, which in turn may deepen Fyodor’s individualism or trigger his eventual alienation (paired with perceiving humans as “boring” because they are predictable, to which Dazai disagreed in ch77, albeit it must be noted that this is only an assumption Dazai made about Fyodor, that is not entirely supported by the canon dialogues; see section E), as well as encourage Fyodor to use others as predictable (and therefore reliable) pawns in his plans. Again, Fyodor’s character combines two very contrasting yet interdependent things in his strategies: acknowledging others as humans (with individual problems) firstly, and using them as instruments when necessary, on that basis (as Fyodor becomes their problem-solver). This shows both how versatile and accepting Fyodor is as a thinker and leader (see also section C). Theoretically speaking, could Fyodor use Dazai as a pawn, if Dazai is completely alien from being human? But that would open another massive collective essay on what is going on inside Dazai’s soul and mind, as the fandom so often and so admirably tried to figure out already. Personally, I am a firm believer in Dazai’s humanity, and if Fyodor can indeed understand it all the way to its core, then one may wonder if Dazai’s humanity will be his downfall.

C. He values independence and (most probably) his co-workers

Continuing on the previous paragraph’s line of thought, here’s the catch: it is important to keep in mind that Fyodor nevertheless seems to treat certain “pawns” differently, perhaps considering them closer to him in some regard. People Fyodor refers to as “his staff” (and, in ch64, the faces of Ivan and Pushkin appear as examples) may be a matter of genuine concern to him, enough so that Fyodor asks Dazai how to make his subordinates less dependent on Fyodor: “My staff show no independence. All they do is wait for orders. How can I make them into good workers who take the initiative?” (ch64). To me, this question, even just as a light-hearted example for the sake of their shared prison mindgames, is plain shocking coming from someone always thought of as using people like tools and discarding them like broken puppets. As a first thought, to my stupefaction, Fyodor really took into consideration the independence of even his lower-ranking “pawns” as something worthy of a question, and valuable enough as to lament its lack. However, on later inspection I came to understand that Fyodor’s entire “roooooundtable” session from ch64 is in fact more like an icosahedron with razor-sharp edges (I mean, complex and slick), and can be taken both or either literally (like in this section I took Fyodor’s words literally) or figuratively, assuming Fyodor and Dazai’s answers as being each a substitution for something else entirely. Until I reach that point further down this section, there are more examples that refer to Fyodor’s perception of his co-workers (note: for the manga, my points of reference are the official English translations):

1) in Dead Apple, Fyodor celebrated what he called the “newfound friendship” between him and Shibusawa in Dead Apple, thus calling Shibusawa a “friend”, which is further supported if we take into consideration certain BSD Mayoi card descriptions (“Dragon Head Feud” card description, or “Bundled up” card quote: “Oh my, it seems that Dazai-kun and Nakajima Atsushi-kun have managed to evade us today. Well, if Shibusawa-kun is happy, then I'm happy. I'm his friend, after all.”); however, if put back in the larger context, the benevolent character of this statement is debatable (see section B);

2) in ch42, Fyodor told Ace “My friends have taken over the outside corridors”, thus directly referring to his Rats in the House of the Dead as “friends”, even if the fact itself was a lie to pressure Ace towards his suicide;

3) in ch95.5, silently agreed to considering Nikolai a friend when Dazai complimented Nikolai’s prison game idea. There are two instances where Dazai mocked Fyodor about having a nice friend in Nikolai, both of them in this chapter, and only in the second one Fyodor played along, agreeing to Dazai’s claim, but one has to bear in mind that the two could have been mocking each other in both instances:

Nikolai, ch95.5 (fan translation): “The wish to save my friend is indeed very difficult to falter. That’s why I need to shatter this determination, such to prove the free will of homo sapiens!” Dazai: “Seems like… you have a nice friend…” Fyodor: “…” – Nikolai (after a few lines): “From now on, you two will be participating in a jail break duel!” Dazai: “You indeed have a very good friend.” Fyodor: “I know, right?”

Leaving the debate open as to whether Fyodor is genuine when using the term “friend” overall (see also bsd-bibliophile’s post here, further inspecting Fyodor and Nikolai’s interactions, as well as mentioning one instance of the term “friend”, used by Fyodor for Pushkin, being present in the fan translation, but not in the original Japanese text per se), all this information nonetheless supports the fact that Fyodor himself may not be oppressive towards others, and that his methods rather rely on communication, negotiation and manipulation. Indeed, strangely enough, for example when approaching someone new with the intent to work with them, Fyodor’s ways are all “clean talk”: no torture, no physical abuse, no threats, no intimidation or humiliation, no blood as of now (on the possibility of brainwashing, see section D below). Instead, Fyodor becomes the ideal smooth-talker and deal-maker when first recruiting others, perfectly reading into their soul and appealing to their most intimate desires (see section B above, as well as @gold-pavilion​​ / akai-koutei ’s post here /oldhere, and there was a beautiful addition by @/goddessesofeverything here, but all reblogs of the original post were deleted and I cry). When approaching a clear target, however, there can be freshly spilt blood, for example 1) Mori getting stabbed (ch46), 2) Katai getting shot (ch49), and 3) Shibusawa getting his throat cut open (Dead Apple), in each case the action being done directly by Fyodor (firing the gun or holding the respective knives with his own hands). Lastly, if we take into consideration how Fyodor played along with Nikolai’s puns in vol.14’s omake, and how highly and affectionately he spoke about Sigma in ch74 and ch75, Fyodor’s actual dynamics with his subordinates or fellow Decay of the Angel members could potentially surprise the reader in future updates, because his polite and discreet nature do not seem to be a mere façade.

Another point needs to be addressed here, and it is whether or not we can safely use the word “care” to sum up Fyodor’s relationship towards his close co-workers (thank you, Sel @oddeyesight​​, for your questions that led me towards considering this aspect in more detail). First of all, one needs to acknowledge there are persons Fyodor worked with and then disposed of in the most indubitable way, like the mafioso he forced information from in ch51, indirectly all children in ch47 and directly the little girl with the grenades, whom he talked to via telephone prior to the events. Secondly, compared to them, there are characters that are closer to Fyodor, which Fyodor refers to as “friends” (so far, this applies to Pushkin, Ivan, Nathaniel, and indirectly consenting to calling Nikolai a friend; see the paragraph above). Looking at definitions of the noun “care” – “the process of looking after someone” and “the process of doing things to keep something in good condition and working correctly” (Longman dictionary) – the first definition I give as an example here can imply affection, whereas the second definition does not, and refers to an impartial instrumental approach. So far, from what I gathered, there is no canon basis to claim Fyodor cares about someone else in the first definition’s sense, only in the second. Until future manga chapters may or may not change this, I propose looking at Fyodor from another viewpoint: in relation to the antonym of “care” (neglect), and a closely-related noun, indifference. For this task I propose starting with the following scene from ch74, when Dazai deduced the Sky Casino’s origin and purpose:

Dazai: “It was made for two goals. As a base for the next terror attack and as “payment” for the use of Sigma’s skill. …Never waste a thing, do you?” Fyodor: “Our boss does hate to be wasteful.”

By saying “Never waste a thing, do you?”, Dazai implied that Fyodor executed all the steps he deduced, yet Fyodor shaked this claim off, directing Dazai’s remark toward someone Fyodor called “our boss”. We, as readers, naturally think of Fukuchi, who is the leader of the Decay of the Angel in title, but I dare say the entire fandom does not buy this, as in everything else Fyodor still acts like the puppeteer determining the actions of all the group’s members, whether they know it (Nikolai and Sigma) or not (Fukuchi probably and Bram). Fyodor humbling himself and downplaying his importance is a recurring behaviour of his, in varying depictions such as in ch46 (Fyodor to Dazai: “I will not be the one who will bring down your two groups. It will be you yourselves”), in ch73’s cover artwork of Sigma holding cards (where Fyodor is not an Ace, not even a King, he is but a Jack of Spades), in ch77 (Fyodor to Dazai: “Me? I didn’t do anything. I just sat here and prayed… and those prayers were answered”; see section F for more). This aside, hiding the identity of Fyodor’s “boss” had at least two purposes: 1) keeping Fukuchi’s double identity hidden (both the Hunting Dogs leader and the Decay of the Angel leader) and 2) redirecting not only Dazai’s, but our attention too. Since Fyodor and Dazai imagine their actions as if within a mental game of chess, let us reconsider the fates of Fyodor’s pieces so far, which include both the Decay of the Angel members and the Rats in the House of the Dead:

1) Pushkin was apparently captured and eliminated from the “chess game” (lost piece, used and then captured by the enemy in ch53), and yet he is alive and well, even shamelessly spilling information to Ranpo to save his own skin, while being interrogated (ch54), providing him with the lead on Mushitaro. Despite leaking information, so far nobody was sent to “clean” Pushkin off the table (as in Mushitaro’s case, whom Nikolai said he was assigned to kill off at the end of ch56). Pushkin leaking information may be intentional as part of Fyodor’s plans, which means Pushkin’s role likely did not meet its end yet.

2) Ivan was apparently captured and eliminated from the “chess game” (lost piece, used and then captured by the enemy in ch53), and yet Ivan survived and is probably held somewhere alive; also, Ivan’s loyalty and “happiness” never wavered, not even when in Rashomon’s tight grip (ch53), which means his trust in Fyodor remained unchanged and he did not abandon his role of Fyodor’s servant and “head chamberlain” (ch52).

3) Mushitaro was, most probably, really supposed to die (sacrificed piece, used and then disposed of: died in an exploding car after Nikolai’s surprise attack in ch56), yet he is still alive, last seen (iirc) safe in Poe’s mansion in ch78.5 (vol.18 bonus chapter at the end). Since Fyodor sent Nikolai to dispose of Mushitaro, it is rather clear Fyodor was not indifferent to Mushitaro staying alive, and now this is a loose end, one where Mushitaro survived and we do not know if this scenario has already been integrated in one of Fyodor’s larger schemes or if it will serve against Fyodor somehow later.

4) Nikolai was apparently supposed to die (sacrificed piece, used and then disposed of: sawed in half in ch58), and yet he is very much alive and already influenced the current events of the manga drastically. Furthermore, in ch95.5, when Nikolai started explaining his prison game, Fyodor replied “So that’s what you’re planning”, as if the two already agreed upon Nikolai doing “something”, and apparently that “something” remained a surprise to Fyodor, hence his reply was phrased as a conclusion. Note how Nikolai’s action remaining a surprise reinforce Nikolai’s freedom and agency, and Fyodor allowed this and played along, despite how accurate to his character it would be to have deduced Nikolai’s possible actions already. Then again, it could be that Fyodor knew that Nikolai had to hear precisely that kind of reaction, in order to continue playing a role Fyodor secretly predicted for him. Later, in ch98, after Nikolai’s prison game started, when Fyodor was waiting for Chuuya to arrive, Nikolai asked him “It’s been five minutes since the game started. You aren’t gonna move? Can I take that to assume… your pieces are already moving?”. If Nikolai’s prison game is an independent consequence of him independently choosing not to die, then why would Nikolai smile as if in agreement with Fyodor, supposing that everything went as planned? The problem of free will remains unresolved and tightly knit into Nikolai’s character even in the current events.

5) Sigma was apparently supposed to die (sacrificed piece, used and then disposed of: shot by Nathaniel in ch76), and just like Nikolai he is very much alive and playing a crucial role still unknown to us (in a conversation with Alex @vampireonastick​​ I suggested that Sigma being on Dazai’s side of the prison game might be a well-disguised infiltration strategy already planned out by Fyodor, with whom Nikolai cooperates on this, despite Nikolai’s “sidequest” to kill Fyodor); we have an important hint as to how Sigma’s death was never required by Fyodor’s plan: the “roooooundtable” from ch64. It is indeed highly probable that the entire “all-smiles problem-solving rooooundtable” session proposed and moderated by Fyodor was his masked suggestion (masked from the guards!) of creating a unique substitution code that only he and Dazai would be able to communicate in, as @fantastic-rambles analysed more in-depth here. And just like @mydearestt​​ noticed in this post here that, through his reply, Dazai in fact referred to his plan to make the Agency move, the same can be assumed in Fyodor’s case. To remember the dialogue, I shall copy the revelant part here below:

Dazai: “Me next. “I tried asking the café waitress out, but she won’t bend an inch. What should I do?” Fyodor: “Make her lose her job and home, trick her family into disowning her and she’s bound to come crawling to you.”

I propose reading this sequence as referring to Sigma entirely, because: 1) Sigma, much like a waitress, was contained and bound to his workplace, the casino, unwilling to leave once there, no matter who asked; 2) Fyodor set up the entire scenario of making Sigma lose his job AND home in the most literal sense by completely destabilizing the casino; 3) by doing unbecoming irreversible actions, Sigma secured his own family rejecting him, and all ties were cut with Sigma’s “death”, yet Sigma survived – equally destabilized, he ended up in a situation where, if Fyodor would have granted him another wish, Sigma would not have refused, naturally seeking the one person who may still have power to grant wishes as grand and Sigma’s, and that is still Fyodor, who both gave and took Sigma’s home. This being said, like Alex @vampireonastick​ theorized in their post here, I strongly believe Dazai strategically manipulates Sigma in the prison game, “shaping” him to defy Fyodor, the person he would otherwise “crawl back to”. However, since Fyodor chooses his words with utmost care all the time, no matter if truthful or deceiving, I personally doubt Fyodor would carelessly share his strategy (disguised as the grimest relationship advice) without it already being implemented into a larger scheme, in which Dazai acts upon the words he hears from Fyodor (and Dazai already did so twice in this arc, firstly by choosing Sigma, secondly by “building up” Sigma for his eventual refusal of Fyodor). What Dazai perhaps does not expect is the fact that Fyodor himself already talked to Sigma in ways that reinforce Sigma’s agency: for example, in ch73, Fyodor directly told Sigma that, should the Hunting Dogs attack the casino, Sigma should run as he would have no chance of winning; Sigma, on the contrary, remembering Fyodor’s words – not once, but twice in the chapter –, was pushed only more vehemently to defending his casino, thus acting on his own and defying Fyodor already, a reaction Fyodor most likely anticipated when making Sigma hear his “advice as a co-worker” (in Fyodor’s own words, ch73). In the end, regardless of the content of Fyodor’s words, it seems his kidnapper from ch42 offered honest advice to Karma: “Watch out… If you talk to him, he’ll pluck your mind out”. Despite how there is no proof of an actual “plucking of the mind” action yet (see section D), Fyodor’s words (often, if not always) twist the minds of those around him in a way that, paradoxically, both acknowledges and denies them their free will, encouraging decisions that seem free to the agent, but are already predicted and known to Fyodor (and in this, I must admit, Fyodor bears a resemblance to an omniscient god; however, his canon dialogues often convey a different role, a tension I discus in section F). In this light, I wonder if Dazai had this behaviour before too and acted upon words he heard from Fyodor in previous instances, such as the Mutual Destruction arc.

6) Nathaniel was apparently eliminated from the “chess game” entirely (sacrificed piece, used and then disposed of: captured in Anne’s room of no return in ch76), yet this does not imply he is dead, which begs the question if Anne’s room, the Agency’s only true safe space, is now compromised, as me and Alex wondered here (see also the reblogs and replies to their post).

One thing I want to remark here is that, despite how clear it is that Fyodor “moved” all these “chess pieces” already (only number 3 to 6 are relevant in this case), in ch76, right after Nathaniel got captured, as Atsushi and Lucy were celebrating their victory, Ango explained to them how the events at the casino were no victory, and how instead everything played as Fyodor has planned, claiming that Fyodor has not made any move yet:

Ango, ch76: “We lost because you let Sigma die. Now we have no leads to the Page. And… the Hunting Dogs saw us try to rescue him. In their eyes, that likely looked like the Detective Agency helping their terrorist allies. Our plan failed and we’ve only sowed more doubt. This is likely exactly as Dostoyevsky planned. Frankly… I can’t stop shaking. Until now, he moved none of his pawns and gave us no room to deal with him. (…)”

As I shall leave Ango analysis to Alex @vampireonastick​ like in this post here, I will return to the fact that so far the only true “chess piece” that Fyodor ever truly let die was Shibusawa. Then, to sum up, when his co-workers fulfilled their purpose and no use nor entertainment can be obtained from them anymore, Fyodor’s pattern seems to be leaving said co-workers with apparent indifference to their well-being, often abandoning them in a state or situation that is destructive to them (Shibusawa is the clearest example, but it applies to all other aforementioned characters as well). However, the twist is that none of these characters did reach the end of their assigned roles yet (and we may wonder if they will ever do that), given that Pushkin, Ivan, Nikolai, Sigma, Nathaniel and even Mushitaro are all alive and healthy. Consindering all this, the way BSD is narrated becomes even more interesting, because the reader would naturally project treating others as expendable on Fyodor, where in fact it is more accurate to Dazai’s character to act this way (and he did and does act that way, as @linkspooky​ pointed out in detail in their post here). Back to Fyodor’s “our boss does hate to be wasteful” line, while still just an interpretation, it would make sense that Fyodor refers to himself or his ability (if it’s a separate conscious being, see section G) as “our boss”, because all this information suggests that Fyodor himself hates to be wasteful, and that, excepting Shibusawa, Fyodor never wasted even a single pawn of his. That means Fyodor never neglects his co-workers (whom he calls friends!) and is never truly indifferent to them, albeit in an instrumental way, given that there is no proof yet that Fyodor’s care towards his co-workers is affectionate in nature. Let us close this section with a treat, though: in ch51 and ch53, there are two panels of a teacup with three teaspoons to its left. Differing greatly from the anime, albeit delivering the same subtle deception, these three teaspoons help in fooling the reader into thinking that Ivan poured tea in Fyodor’s cup, placed the teacup in front of him and then Fyodor consumed that tea, together with the jam that filled all three teaspoons at first (ch51). Given that 1) Ivan prepared the tea with three teaspoons of jam and 2) at the restaurant, Fyodor drank his tea exactly like that, with three teaspoons of jam, from this we can deduce Ivan is very familiar with Fyodor’s tea-drinking habits, which in turn leads us to the very likely idea that Fyodor and Ivan (if not also together with other members of the Rats in the House of the Dead) frequently had tea together, or Ivan prepared tea for Fyodor often enough to memorize his precise habits. The latter would support Ivan’s self-proclaimed status as Fyodor’s “head chamberlain” (ch52), suggesting that their group lived as family and / or nobility in the same house, if the definition of “chamberlain” is taken into consideration (Longman Dictionary: “chamberlain, an important official who managed the house of a king or queen in the past”).

D. No confirmation yet that he is brainwashing others and why this is relevant

Speaking of his methods of acquiring new collaborators, so far, it is most certain that Fyodor is not brainwashing people: not Fukuchi, not Nikolai, not Sigma, not Karma, not Pushkin, and certainly not the little girl with the grenades, even though the anime depicted the scene differently (in the manga’s ch47, a flashback appears where Fyodor talks to the little girl via telephone, thus he does not simply appear in her clouded mind like in the anime’s S3ep9).

But two characters Fyodor works with are in a very ambiguous position as of now: Ivan and Nathaniel. To begin with, Ivan’s case is very tricky at the moment. In ch53, he openly told Akutagawa that “my master cut out all the parts of his brain that feel unhappiness”. What can I say except our dear Vanya here is a lil’ crazy. I find his replies rather unreliable at the moment, because he is the only Fyodor-subordinate who is behaving like an intoxicated bacchant for now. While the ch53 quote is singular and, therefore, I cannot make anything of it, there is another thing that needs to be considered: in ch52, as he was walking away from Akutagawa and Atsushi, Ivan told them “I will not forget you. …No… You will now serve as part of my master’s joyful order”, but immediately after that he added “after 10 more steps, I will most likely forget your faces”. Apparent self-contradiction aside, whether he meant “forget your faces” literally or not, Nathaniel, too, went through an apparent mind-reset, as he did not recognize Akutagawa in ch46 and appears to have lost his entire personality except for his devotion to Margaret Mitchell and his determination to save her life. Now, mind-resetting and brainwashing are not the same, and removing a part of one’s brain or mind that is responsible for a specific emotion is, likewise, something entirely different. The manga did not give us further examples of similar things that Fyodor apparently had a role to play in, so I cannot present anything new here, only speculation. We also do not know if these effects are caused by Fyodor himself (without using his ability at all, much like he could simply talk Ace into his own suicide in ch42) or Fyodor’s ability specifically. This simply limits my current analysis of Fyodor’s methods to the beforementioned “communication, negotiation, manipulation” trio, which is not dependent nor related to his ability, and I will update these parts if the manga later reveals that Fyodor did indeed mold the conscience or minds of other people into whatever shape or state he desired. Until then, he is literally just a genius smooth-talker, and I refrain from making rash affirmations or going into more speculation here.

E. He loves and lives for entertainment

So many canon lines convey Fyodor’s love for entertainment. It is more specifically entertainment in a “good literature” sense, meaning conflict, tension, intensity of will and emotions, devotion, despair and generally human beings fighting for their needs or to solve their problems of many different, often opposing kinds. Let us take Fyodor’s own words as references. First of all, at the beginning of the Dead Apple movie, as younger Chuuya destroyes the entire building in which he and Dazai found Shibusawa the first time, Fyodor watched the scene from a safe distance, on top of a building. All he did was “absorb” the whole event with utter satisfaction, concluding the scene with his line “This is too much fun”. The motif is repeated several times in the Dead Apple movie, linking his own enjoyment of whatever chaos unfolds to “fun” and “entertainment”, so this line is not the sole evidence that entertainment is greatly valued by Fyodor, as it is the thing opposed to boredom, which constantly eats away at his and Dazai’s hearts because of their superhuman intellect. As Fyodor was getting the two most important ability gems ready for his and Dazai’s plan, Fyodor tells Dazai “Would you not agree that the more entertainment there is, the better?” (dub); moreover, at the end of the movie, his lines highlight the privileged spot of “entertainment” in his understanding of the world around him again:

Fyodor (sub): “Everything is but entertainment. But in order to end this world, rife with crime and punishment, I do need that book. The blank novel sleeping in this town.” Fyodor (dub):“Everything is just entertainment. However, this world is so rife with crime and punishment… In order to finally end it, I do need that novel. This special book that sleeps somewhere within this city.”

However, paying close attention to his words, we need to consider the possibility that in this instance Dead Apple either contradicts or deceives the watcher greatly, because in the manga Fyodor’s goal is clearly referring to “saving the world”, not “ending the world” (see also section G, near the end, for more on Fyodor’s possible motivation).

Now, in the manga (ch63), Fyodor stated that he openly refused to devise a perfect plan (as demanded by another Decay of the Angel member, possibly Fukuchi) because perfection is boring (Fyodor, ch63: “A Decay comrade asked me for the perfect plan… but perfect is so boring. I won’t be able to view the karma of humanity like this”). While at first glance one could be surprised by this statement, especially considering that “God prefers perfection and harmony”, in Fyodor’s own words from ch77 (see section G where I expand on this specifically), both lines (perfection is boring + God favours perfection) could potentially be extremely deceiving: since the Agency knows Fyodor is involved in crafting the Decay of the Angel’s plan, it is probably this implication that leads, for example, Kyouka in ch63 to tell Atsushi that their plan is “extensive and flawless”, and Atsushi’s inner monologue, as a response, appears together with a panel of a faceless Fyodor pulling strained strings in the darkness. If everyone expects Fyodor to be perfect and to create flawless strategies, an opponent like Dazai could include unpredictable, irrational or impulsive actions in his own strategies to outsmart him, as Dazai describes his appreciative acknowledgement of this behaviour he finds in other people (Dazai to Fyodor, ch77: “What’s driving the world are those in the storm of accidental events who scream, run and spill blood. Faced with their souls, you and I should be petrified with fear”; more on this specific dialogue in the next paragraph). But knowing this reaction would be triggered, Fyodor could always integrate imperfections in his plans, leaving his opponents with the impression that they act in the right way, on their free will, when in fact nothing they do has not been already considered by Fyodor (holding true to his lines from ch42). Personality-wise, the “perfection is boring” line becomes relevant if (and only if) Fyodor really, truly means it literally, and 1) does not say it just to tell what his opponent(s) (or the reader themselves) would want or expect to hear, without meaning it, or 2) does not say it as some kind of reverse-psychology, without personal attachment, to trigger predictable reactions in his opponent(s) (again, see section G for a continuation of this particular discussion). As a last example to support the idea of Fyodor loving entertainment, finding both fun and beauty in it, when a very shocked Dazai was asking Fyodor about the reason (“for what?”) for his stupefying strategic moves (the coin bombs, staging the casino as the battleground etc.), Fyodor only replied “Isn’t it more beautiful that way?”.

Now, ch77 presents us with a dialogue between Fyodor and Dazai which seems easy to understand at first, but becomes increasingly complex the more one dwells on it. To remember the full context clearly again, I shall sum it up and add the full relevant quote here: after Fyodor told Dazai that “God favours perfection and harmony”, after which it is confirmed that the Page was also used for changing all the world’s police and investigative agencies not to act upon evidence of someone framing the Agency, a parallel is shown with Tachihara who, inside his heart, decided to finally identify fully as part of the Port Mafia, exiting the inner state of being a Hunting Dog (military police force), thus existing the Page’s influence. Tachihara’s situation exemplifies what Dazai then explains to Fyodor:

Dazai, ch77: “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Siding with God sure didn’t teach you much!” Fyodor: “…Let’s hear it.” Dazai: “‘Perfection and harmony’? To God, those amount to a hill of beans. I saw it many times. All HE offers is happenstance and absurdity. A weakness… shared by the two of us… For all our ingenious plans, in the end we’ve wound up here, in a deep-level prison. What’s driving the world are those in the storm of accidental events who scream, run and spill blood. Faced with their souls, you and I should be petrified with fear. (after POV change to Tachihara) You’re right. People are sinful and foolish. But… they aren’t as boring as you think they are.”

In Dazai’s dialogue, I put in bold two quotes that need to be inspected. The first one refers to Dazai pointing out a weakness the two geniuses share, which refers to the primacy of the accidental in reality, as opposed to the predictability both Fyodor and Dazai operate with in all their plans, which can make the world seem trapped in an inescapable causality rationally-accesible to those with an intellect such as theirs. Dazai “bets” against Fyodor on this cruel primacy of “happenstance and absurdity”, where reason fails to follow the exact consequences of each event or human action, and yet the nuances and risks of this “bet” I already exposed in the paragraph above. In this context, Dazai seems indeed to talk about this weakness in an admirative, even hopeful tone, despite the fact that he shares it; for a brilliant exposition on Dazai (both the author and his BSD counterpart) in relation to sin and weakness, I wholeheartedly recommend reading Kat’s (@pompompurin1028​​) essay here. When Dazai stated this, a flashback to Odasaku’s fight with André Gide is shown, which can be interpreted as that one time Dazai’s predictions held true, yet still Odasaku chose to fight Gide, fully aware of the end, driven only by what I would call here human subjective drive. Such human subjective drive, independent from reason and logic, is what awakened in Tachihara as well: if Odasaku served as an example of “defeating” Dazai by exploiting his vulnerability to the (uncontrollable) accidental, then Tachihara served as an example of “defeating” Fyodor’s precautious plans by unexpectedly exiting the Page’s influence. In the end, this parallel can become unbalanced if Fyodor already included this kind of variables in his plans and works not ignoring, but embracing human individuality and spontaneity, which I would argue is (paradoxically) more likely the case, for what I exposed in sections B and C. 

As for the second quote I put in bold, there are at least the following examples that render Dazai’s assumption (that Fyodor considers people boring) untrue: 1) in ch75, Fyodor openly praised Sigma, carefully examining his personal torment, placing him not only above the Hunting Dogs, but also above Dazai and himself, as well as “all of creation” ; 2) in ch78, in a flashback, as a reaction to (presumably listening to) Nikolai’s inner struggle, Fyodor replied “That’s wonderful”, smiling and tilting his head (see section B, as well as H for the significance of the tilt of the head); 3) in ch80, Fyodor described the Agency “as beautiful as the evening sunlight (…)”. If people are indeed boring to Fyodor, he would not find their struggles and states worthy of deeper consideration, lengthy speeches of praise or expressive, poetic comparisons (admittedly with a dash of pity and sarcasm towards the fate of the Agency). So far, Fyodor is never shown expressing boredom in the presence of other people, quite the contrary: he is shown expressing sincere interest, as if each human is a case study, an enigma to be unravelled, much like Fyodor himself is to me, and to us within the BSD community (therefore I chose that specific fragment from F.M. Dostoyevsky’s letters to start my essay with, as a motto; there is much more to be said about that, but I reserve that for another possible future essay, where it would be necessary to discuss Fyodor’s character in light of his corresponding author’s biography, personality and literary works as a whole). And so, I would argue that to Fyodor humans are not boring, but providers of entertainment worthy of attention and inspection, even more so when they play a role in his plans (and it seems everybody is playing on a stage set by Fyodor so far).

Fyodor is also quite fond of not only perceiving events or circumstances as games (like his mental chess game with Dazai in prison, starting in ch63, always mirroring the course of everyone’s actions outside), but also proposing this approach to others (his rooooundtable in ch64 and his card guessing contest with Ace in ch42), albeit not carelessly, as each time such – yeah, I cannot avoid it at this point, I’m a gamer myself, here it comes *inhales deeply* – each time such gamer approach has a multifaceted utility and never strays from serving Fyodor’s two main purposes, achieving his plan to cleanse the world of abilities, and having fun (yes). Killing boredom via playing games, especially when in the company of a person on the same level, seems to be the first move Fyodor does when faced with monotony (even in vol. 20’scredit page, where Fyodor said “I’m bored. Let’s play twenty questions”, even if Dazai immediately delivers the final answer “Snow White”, and thus Fyodor retracted his idea with “Actually let’s not”, as Dazai’s superhuman intellect killed the fun too fast).

To look into two examples just a bit more, in ch64, during his roooooundtable with Dazai, Fyodor suggested “Next, let’s ask a question at the same time”, which appeared to be innocently fun, because it challenges two persons, in this case a native and a non-native speaker of Japanese, to coordinate their spelling just for the amusement of simultaneity; then, in ch97, as Nikolai’s deadly prison game was about to start, Fyodor lamented the outcome he was confidently foreseeing: “Yet losing a chess opponent in the next 30 minutes is still quite sad”, saying this teasingly, still talking as if in the context of his and Dazai’s mental chess game. On a last, entertaining note, because why not, this entire section might as well serve as proof that Fyodor is cat-coded, just like Dazai (see @wintertaurus​​ ’s post here, where they scientifically prove this, I don’t make the rules), despite being the leader of the Rats in the House of the Dead, and so one more fine example of a fictional INTJ further strengthens the definition of INTJs as “human cats”.

F. Humble, not arrogant. Self-proclaimed god or servant of God?

Starting with the latter half of this section’s title, that is a very tricky subject, in fact, because we as manga readers can observe both 1) one line that established a connection early-on between Fyodor and calling himself “a god” if God is dead and 2) many lines by which Fyodor is actually displaying behaviour and speech akin to a self-aware servant of God. Let us begin with the first one. So, in the first chapter dedicated to showing Fyodor to the readers in more detail (ch42), and only in the original Japanese version and the fan translation, the first page of the chapter together with the last page feature a quote from F.M. Dostoyevsky’s Demons. The quote put together is “If God does not exist, I am a god”, which is part of a dialogue by the character Alexei Nilych Kirilov (“Если нет бога, то я бог”, see Part Three, chapter VI, II). Perhaps a beautiful coincidence, but in this exact wording that the fan translation chose, the quote also appears in Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, chapter “Absurd Creation”, subchapter “Kirilov”, where the French author discusses F.M. Dostoyevsky’s Demons and the mentioned character, Alexei Nilych Kirilov. There, Camus calls that line “Kirilov’s premise”. In retrospect, this is a very puzzling line to appear associated with Fyodor, or rather appear as spoken or thought by him, giving the ambiguity of the quote’s placement on the pages. It is also puzzling because until now BSD gave us a character who seems like a better candidate for using that quote or being a reference to Kirilov, and by that I mean of course Nikolai. Moreover, the way Fyodor talks about or mentions God in dialogues that are clearly spoken by him later (I shall discuss examples in the paragraphs and sections below) very much conveys the message that Fyodor does not think God is dead, invoking him over and over (whether he is referring to the Judeo-Christian God or simply “a god” is not yet addressed in the manga). Still, the most striking information about this quote remains the fact that it is not featured in the official English translation at all. For comparison, I shall put an image with the last page in both versions below, and you can see the scan of the Japanese first page of ch42 here.

As we are walking on quicksand with this one, let us move on to the second point I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, about Fyodor as a servant of God. Because of his mission, of which he speaks as if it is of a higher calling, of divine nature, Fyodor also appears to see himself as a servant, namely a servant of God (servus Dei). He has the mind and the skill to carry out a mission of divine proportions (for us readers still an ambiguous goal: Fyodor, ch46: “And I will use that Book to make a world free of sin and skill users”, where “skill” means the same as “ability” and “gift”, as the fandom is used to these terms more). This, in turn, could have made him develop a strong sense of responsibility and a feeling of authority. As we are currently following the “servant” train of thought, these (sense of responsibility and authority) are not to be confused with what is called a “god-complex”, a slang expression which loosely corresponds to different actual psychological disorders such as narcissistic personality disorder, a thing Fyodor does not display core traits of. As of now, Fyodor remains surprisingly humble, discreet and respectfully formal both in speech (see @looking-for-stray-dogs’s posts here and here) and in gestures (see section H, on Fyodor’s body language), he acknowledges the possibility of imperfections and even welcomes them (ch63), he was never portrayed as becoming irritated at others (except his eyes expressing either anger or furious determination, as Dazai attempts to drown him and Chuuya in ch101), he is not a show-off and is indifferent to being adored or agreed with, and he knows how to take criticism elegantly when Dazai holds different opinions or outwits him. It is true that his grandiose “divine” goal, his frequent use of manipulation, and his apparent omnisciency and unbreakable composure give enough space to speculate regarding an underlying “god-complex” in his character (together with the ambiguous use of the quote discussed in the paragraph above), but the reader must acknowledge that, in all his replies, Fyodor refers to himself as if to a servant of God par excellence, as is the most evident in his ch77 reply to Dazai: “Me? I didn’t do anything. I just sat here and prayed… and those prayers were answered”. 

This direct self-characterization, too, plays against him having an actual “god-complex”. I would say that, by building on the humble yet powerful servus Dei image, if at all intentional, Asagiri presents us a far more complex character in Fyodor. For example, one of the many important subjects in Biblical exegesis, since the beginning centuries of Christianity, was how Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took upon himself the role of servant of God (see Philippians, 2, 6-7), but also of all humans (see the Washing of the Feet), and so humility and divine power become two closely tied ideas. In the manga’s context, Fyodor’s own humility can also have an added disturbing effect on the reader because of the implied power that coexists with it.

On the topic of the “arrogant villain” stereotype, I myself cannot find instances where Fyodor is, per se, arrogant. Longman Dictionary defines “arrogant” as “behaving in an unpleasant or rude way because you think you are more important than other people”, but we know for a fact that Fyodor behaves far from rude and unpleasant to others. Quite the contrary, he is humble and considerate, as can be deduced from his way of using the Japanese language (see the references linked in the paragraph above). He is never portrayed denigrating, humiliating or belittling someone else thus far. What is true is that Fyodor considers his goal (and not necessarily himself unless the manga reveals the opposite in the future) superior to anyone and anything on Earth, and this accentuates his heavy use of smooth manipulation instead of inflating his ego, actually hiding his true self behind more and more layers of words and actions he uses out of necessity to reach his higher goal. If we speculate that Fyodor is indeed (Orthodox) Christian and familiar with this doctrine, then it would be no surprise why Fyodor would cultivate humility instead of pride in general, as pride (superbia) is the beginning of all sin (Sirach, 10, 15) and when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom (Proverbs, 11, 3). To sum up, I cannot find any manga panel where Fyodor is acting in an arrogant way, so I reached the conclusion that anything related to his arrogance, his stubbornness, his rudeness or, by extension, his superiority-complex is headcanon-territory at least for now. Only in chess did Dazai mention the “maliciousness” of Fyodor’s move while playing mental chess with him (ch72), and this malicious trait can refer to the bold and shocking way in which Fyodor attacks by directly using his King instead of other chess pieces (for a detail exposition of their chess moves, see @blackandwhitemusician​ ’s post here). Interestingly, Fyodor does indeed reply with “Malice is the greatest fruit God ever gave to man”, yet from what I gathered so far we still have yet to see a true act of malice from Fyodor, that is, an malicious action done for the sake of malice itself, and not for the sake of his higher goal demanding sacrifices or attacks on rival organizations. Lastly, from the current content one can safely deduce Fyodor is individualistic (in contrast to Dazai who seems to learn to rely on others, but once again I shall point to @linkspooky​’s post here to underline how, as they said, “Dazai doesn’t work together with others, he manipulates for the greater good”, emphasis in bold mine), but it would take more manga updates to make a step further and pinpoint Fyodor’s egoism or narcissism if he has any of these traits at all in himself, and not in how others portray him when they think about him (how Atsushi imagines him in ch63, or Ango in ch77, or Ranpo in ch95). Not only does Fyodor break antagonist stereotypes with these traits, but – still keeping the quote analyzed in the beginning of this section in mind – he continues to embody shockingly contrasting ideas all within himself, which takes us to the next section of this essay.

G. A strange divergence inside Fyodor. Is he a singularity?

Before I reach the point I want to present here, I suggest we reflect once more upon that unforgettable scene. Continuing in the atmosphere of the ideas from the paragraphs before, it is also important to remember how, in Dead Apple, Fyodor said “I am crime”, whereas his ability said “I am punishment”, and none of these imply Fyodor is seeing himself as a god incarnate who applies punishment, only that there is an open possibility that his ability, if it is an independent being/soul, might see itself as such, i.e. a force to punish others and/or to punish Fyodor himself. This would assign Fyodor himself the role of an agent serving someone or something else (presumably his own ability). About this, a quick note must be made here: since this is a piece of Japanese media, the word “god” can end up referring to something else rather than the Judeo-Christian God (whose name I always capitalize in this post, to emphasize the difference). We do not really know to what god Fyodor refers to all the time, who or what it is, or if said god’s identity remains the same throughout the manga. In this post, I chose to work with the assumption that Fyodor is Orthodox and refers to the Judeo-Christian God. Despite this assumption, I find the relationship between him and his ability truly intriguing, even more so if we put this discussion in the context of “singularities”, also known as “self-contradictory-ability-types”. Now, so far there are two clear instances where self-contradictions are implied in his dialogue, one of them being this scene from Dead Apple, the other one becoming evident when we connect Fyodor’s replies in ch63 (left) and ch77 (right).

Fyodor, ch63: “A Decay comrade asked me for the perfect plan… but perfect is so boring. I won’t be able to view the karma of humanity like this.” Fyodor, ch77: “You pulled the strings of conspiracy yourself, no? But God prefers perfection and harmony. Thus, I followed the heart of God and added one line to the page.”

By openly giving contradictory information, to me this is exactly an occurrence of a stark divergence within Fyodor, so let us give it our complete attention in what follows. Firstly, there is the possibility that Fyodor could choose to say something intentionally if he would directly benefit from the receiver hearing those exact words, even if Fyodor’s own belief lies somewhere else entirely (so the question to that remains open: what does Fyodor truly think about perfection, imperfection and God?). Secondly, in Dead Apple, we see Fyodor and his ability merge back together, from two bodies back into one single body, and this action seems completely voluntary on their part, thus opening the possibility that Fyodor and his ability could manifest separately when they will it. This makes me wonder if each of them can take over their shared body (in turns) when they will it, so that one of the lines reflects Fyodor’s way of thinking, and the other line reflects his ability’s way of thinking, thus the two statements are made in separate frames, resulting in no contradictions being made if, and only if, Fyodor and his ability control the shared body in turns. Even so, because they coexist, the ingredients for a singularity are already there within Fyodor, given this example and the Dead Apple scene, because Fyodor and his ability each identify with a term that contradicts the other (“crime” and “punishment”), with a possible implied superiority or “victory” on his ability’s part (the “punishment” bringing the “crime” to an end, lastly “killing” it on a conceptual level, in a succession that implies a linear flow of time). It would be all the more logical, in this context, for Fyodor to desire victory over his own ability at all costs. How his goal is worded in the Dead Apple Official Guidebook, as pointed out by @aja154ever​​ here, could also indicate a suspicious tension between Fyodor and his ability: “To create a world without Abilities is his desire, and it is a mystery if this has any connection to his Crime and Punishment Ability” (see the quote’s full paragraph on his ability in their other post here). For important references from the light novels on what singularities are, how they come into being and how they can manifest, as well as a wonderful theory on the possibility of Dazai being a singularity himself, see @beans-beneath-moonlight​​ ‘s post here. To close this chain of ideas, indeed on the open possibility of Fyodor being a singularity too, I want to mention what @beans-beneath-moonlight​​ observed in their post too, namely that in the BSD light novel 55 Minutes, there is also “Gab”, Jules Verne's ability that took over and killed him, continuing to live on its own as a separate being, so abilities existing separetely from their user’s bodies, as well as malicious abilities that can turn against their users, both can exist in the BSD universe. Lastly, I put just one useful, but short reference below, on a singularity’s cause and terminology:

Professor N in the BSD light novel Storm Bringer: “By causing a logical conflict with your own ability instead of with someone else’s ability, you can create a singularity,” as he said that Professor N raised his index finger and twirled it around. “That sort of ability. The German researchers who first discovered this, had named it ‘self-contradictory-ability-type’.

There is one last relevant dialogue I want to analyze here. Below are all of Fyodor’s words from his first appearance in ch12:

Official translation – Fyodor, ch12: “It’s all as I predicted. No matter what happens, we reserve the right to do as we please. Just as the hand of God and demon wills it…” Fan translation – Fyodor, ch12: “Everything is going as expected. In any case... you are now given free reign... as indicated by the right hand of God and the demons.”

Notice how the official translation says “the hand of God and demon” (demon is singular), while the fan translation says “the (right) hand of God and the demons” (demons is plural). I asked @popopretty​ for their advice as to how to understand this line better and, according to them, the Japanese quote allows for the noun “demon” to be translated either way. I shall put their answer below:

@popopretty​: (…) according to the Japanese version I have, the original phrase for that last sentence is “神と悪霊の右手が示しす通りに”, which directly translates to “as the right hand of God and demons show/point to”. There is no word to indicate that the word demon is singular or plural, but looking at the context, I think it is safe to assume that its plural. It says “right hand” here, which I believe because the phrase “right hand of God” is used a lot in Bible. It doesn’t make much different compared to the “hand of God” though, so I think the translation you quoted is close enough.

I agree that the chapter’s context, as well as the two coated shadows behind Fyodor, allow for an undertanding where “demons”, in plural, refers to Fyodor’s co-workers within his organization, Rats in the House of the Dead. However, since the official translation opted for “demon” in singular, I want to explore the other possibility here: what would it imply if “demon” is indeed meant to be singular here? I would connect this to what is stated to be Fyodor’s motto in the Dead Apple Official Guidebook “Mist Records”: “Follow the guidance of God’s hand”, as translated by @looking-for-stray-dogs here, or “Let the hand of God guide you”, according to the BSD wiki. It seems Fyodor’s character is connected once again to the symbol of the hand, specifically the manus Dei or dextera Dei, which, in art history, indicates divine intervention, divine approval, divine acceptance, as well as God’s – the Creator’s – omnipotence (see, for example, Acts, 7, 50: “nonne manus mea fecit haec omnia?” – “was it not my hand that created all these <things>?”). The hand of God can not only refer to God (the Father) himself, but also to God (the Son), appointing him to his right hand’s side (as prophecized), which means divinely appointing him as both his “representative” and “equal” (“sede a dextris meis donec ponam inimicos tuos scabillum pedum tuorum”, which, mot-a-mot, would go something like this: “sit to my right hand’s side until I put your enemies as the footstool of your feet”, which is Psalm 109, 1 in the Biblia Vulgata, a verse invoked by Christ himself in Matthew, 22, 44, marking a fascinating continuity between the Old and the New Testament). So, considering this information, the expression “the hand of God and demon”, referring to the subject or entity who “wills” whatever it wills, establishes not only a connection, but a shocking equality between the nouns “God” and “demon”, as the hand belongs to both of them. By definition, the two nouns cannot be synonyms, under no condition, thus the subject of the action makes no valid sense and cannot be an actual conceivable “being” without an external reader’s interpretation (like this one I am trying to unfold). Following on that, what can exist or be conceived in the human mind is someone or something whose “being” implies the contradictory yet inseparable coexistence of someone / something that possesses godly traits and someone / something that possesses demonic traits. Therefore, I interpret the expression “the hand of God and demon” as referring to Fyodor himself, or, more precisely, Fyodor’s existence, which implies him and his ability together, where one represents the “god” and the other the “demon”, although it is still unclear which is which. Given all this, I propose the theory that Fyodor is a singularity, just like Dazai (continuing in the spirit of @beans-beneath-moonlight​​ ‘s theory post I referenced before).

Moving on from the singularity discussion, based on Dead Apple’s “I am crime. I am punishment” scene once again, one can only be certain that the link between “sin”, “ability” and “punishment” becomes even stronger, but apparently so does the link between “human” and “crime”. It is no surprise that the famous nouns of the literary work are used for this scene, nouns that can refer to both the active and the passive component of the implied action (commiting a crime vs being the victim of a crime; applying punishment vs receiving punishment). This begs the questions: would freeing the world of abilities also liberate Fyodor of his own punishment (whatever it is, if it exists at all)? does “freeing” the world of abilities even imply “killing” the gifted, and if yes, would that lead Fyodor to a final act of self-sacrifice (or, closer to the etimology of the word “sacrifice”, an act of making the offered thing sacred – himself in this scenario, together with all the gifted)? If we take into account how Fyodor concluded that he and newly “scouted” member Nathaniel Hawthrone “will cover this land in the blood of the sinners” (ch37), together with what Fyodor said as he and Karma looked at Ace’s hanged corpse (ch42, Fyodor: “Thinking is a crime. Breathing is a crime”, or, in the anime’s dub, S3ep4, “Crime starts with thought. As natural as breathing”, emphasizing the naturality of whatever Fyodor identified as humanity’s “crime”), as well as what Nathaniel chanted as he was on his assassination jobs (ch46, to Fukuzawa: “Death! Death! Death to the skill users! An eternal underground sleep with no awakening!”, as well as ch46, to Akutagawa: “Death! Death! Death to the skill users! … To revive my beloved, I must execute the contract of death”), then we have canon ground to believe the death of all gifted is necessary after all, yet Fyodor never uses such expression. It is always “freeing”, “offering the salvation of death to the evil” (note how he does not say “the gifted”), “granting the great silence”, like in how Fyodor talks to Karma in S3ep4: “All evils that plague this world will receive the mercy of death”, “I will do you the honour of granting you the great silence”, “May you be free from the shackles of your crimes, and your soul be salvaged”. This raises another problem: Fyodor himself, as he says, applies cleansing, purification, salvation, liberation, but his ability clearly refers to these acts as “punishment” instead, which is a completely different concept in a religious context as well. So far, once again, this marks a divergence between Fyodor and his ability, another clear moment when the ability seems to behave like a different entity than its user, with a different perception of what the ability itself does (one possibility being, what to Fyodor is “freeing”, to his ability is “punishment”, or that his ability’s “punishment” is a “cleansing” or “freeing” in a corrupted sense of the words). As a closing remark regarding Fyodor’s goal in general, there is still a lot of room to speculate on its true nature if we consider the possibility of Fyodor opposing not the Agency, nor the Port Mafia, but first and foremost the military and different governments who 1) already have a bloody history of using ability users in the war (as implied by Yosano’s backstory and the bits of Fukuchi’s backstory), 2) had (and might still have) special laboratories researching and even artificially creating ability users or researching ways to exploit singularities (BSD Storm Bringer), 3) may have massproduced abilities of specific destructive types, according to one war story of Fukuchi’s past merits (ch82, when we are told he led an operation to eliminate 100.000 “skill-based ‘werewolf’ test subjects”, with Teruko and Jouno visible alongside Fukuchi in the panel describing this – one hundred thousand “test subjects”! for what?), 4) was aware of or working according to an entire skill doctrine, already developed and, I assume, generally-known at the time Mori used Yosano, a mere child, as his slave to achieve his Immortal Regiment plan, meant to prove that abilities are indeed suitable for use in war (ch65). In relation to this, we could take into account the possibility of Fyodor being repulsed by Ace’s behaviour in ch42 (as suggested by certain expressions of Fyodor in the manga), given that Ace represented the perfect example of someone using other people without any consideration of the weight of their lives, their personhood and their inner world. If this is the “evil” that Fyodor wants to purge from this world, and if making abilities disappear, one way or another, would make him accomplish this “greater good” (ending the use and abuse of ability users worldwide), then we are all the more justified in weighing the morality of anyone involved in this large scheme, starting with those implied in Natsume’s Tripartite Framework, supposed to maintain peace in Yokohama (the Armed Detective Agency, the Port Mafia, and the Special Division for Special Powers together with the military police). Besides this, how he phrased his goal in ch46 draws attention to how he identifies at least two different “sins” in current mankind: 1) that they consciously ignore the fact that they are controlled, and 2) that they keep killing each other regardless of said knowledge (ch46, Fyodor: “Man is sinful and foolish. Even if they know it is all an artifice, they cannot help but kill each other. Someone must purify them for those sins”). Based on this, one can assume he wants to stop people from killing each other, by itself a noble goal, but a backstory is much needed to understand the real nature of it before applying judgement. Personally, based on the current status of the manga, I am neutral on this while keeping it in mind, because Fyodor’s higher goal is still ambiguous, and one should not sugarcoat him, nor paint him as a pure demon just yet. After all, all BSD characters are extremely nuanced, and tastefully so. If we also take into consideration his profile page from the BSD Season 3 guidebook (see @ahli-stuff​​ ’s post here) and how he considers his strength “wishing for world happiness” and his favorite type of person “someone who loves all humanity equally”, we can further wonder if Fyodor will be revealed as a character who genuinely cares the most about all of humanity, with a love that may or may not have become dark till present time, or a love that demanded and still demands the cruelest sacrifices.

H. Soft, discreet, graceful, yet playfully dramatic. His body language in the manga, in comparison to the anime

There are many differences between the manga representation and the anime representation of Fyodor’s body language, not to mention the representation of his character overall. I suggest we treat the manga and the anime (this includes Dead Apple) separately and leave the creation of a clear list of the converging and diverging points for another potential post. I shall begin this section with the following statement, in hope of leading anime-only BSD fans to the truth: soft Fedya is real, because canon Fedya is soft. In the manga, Fyodor’s postures and gestures convey gentleness, discreetness, grace and fragility, in multiple instances I shall present below, in a random order.

MANGA. Being considerate. Speaking of discreetness and being considerate, let’s list a few examples of that. In ch42, when Fyodor’s ability activated to kill Karma, causing blood to shoot from Karma’s face, Fyodor did not look at the dying child, turning to face him only after he died, which can be interpreted as an act of respect for Karma’s intimacy during his final moments (see section B for a more in-depth analysis of Karma’s demise). Another occasion when Fyodor’s consideration was evident is in ch49 and how he took off his shoes and coat when entering Katai’s house (basic common manners, even though we must admit this is still bizzare in the context of breaking into a house to shoot someone, but read on), while the anime portrayed him fully-clothed, with his boots on (S3ep10), thus (what can I even say) disrespectful and uncaring of the cleanness of the (nonetheless wild and messy) house of his intended victim (in the end, not too surprising coming from the man who calls even his vampire slave with honorifics, “Chuuya-san”, in ch101, but also his abducted prisoner “Katsura-san” in ch47; for BSD uses of honorifics and nicknames, check this post here, but keep in mind that it covers info till ch87). His consideration of cleanness is also supported by the fact that Fyodor hid his ushanka in a clean, empty wooden box during his mission to stab Mori and infect him with Pushkin’s virus (ch46), yet the anime replaced the wooden box with a dumpster (S3ep8), setting the fandom down a cursed path of tasteless spamjokes basically.

Gentle touch of minimum intrusiveness. In the manga, the hand position when Fyodor is about to use his ability on someone also conveys gentleness and minimum intrusiveness (barely touching the forehead, using the tips of his index and middle fingers). Even the movement towards the forehead appears slow and elegant, thus even more sinister (for more on this hand gesture and its meanings, see section A). In the anime, however, this hand gesture is replaced by one that makes more physical contact with the other person, obstructing their view and breathing while being uncharacteristically intrusive: instead of Fyodor discreetly touching Karma’s forehead like in ch42, in S3ep4 Karma’s face is fully covered by Fyodor’s palm, which looks uncomfortable, unnatural and oppressive. Another revelant portrayal here, one that also conveys Fyodor’s overall gentleness in gestures, is present in ch64’s cover art: in contrast to Dazai, who holds his white pawn between his thumb and index + middle finger, Fyodor holds his black pawn between his thumb and middle + ringfinger, which, if reenacted, distinguishes itself by how Fyodor is using the least amount of pressure possible to lift the chess piece (thus very graceful), and so we have Dazai, who “takes” the piece and moves it insisting on a more secure grip, contrasting with Fyodor who “guides” the piece, letting it gently hang between his fingers as it is swayed following Fyodor’s movements.

High physical endurance. Despite his frail body, we can safely assume Fyodor has high endurance and vitality, given how he did not even flinch when Ace smashed a full wine bottle in his head (ch42) and how he let himself get captured and be kept in harsh prison conditions at least twice (ch42, ch54) before ending up in Meursault. There is also how he ran away from Mori and Elise (ch46) without gasping or showing fatigue afterwards. More canon material is still needed in order to establish how accurate or severe his self-proclaimed anemic condition is (ch42, “My body is weak and anemic”) or his low blood pressure (BSD Season 3 guidebook, but I only had access to this info via this post here and would greatly appreciate someone confirming this).

Oratory skills and expressive hand gestures. In the manga, Fyodor is always highly expressive in what regards his hand gestures during speeches, yet in a practical and elegant way, implying he has great oratory skills or training, besides excellent communication and manipulation skills (discussed in section C and pretty much all others). In ch42: Fyodor clapped as his card game with Ace ended, thus expressing joy through words and action; Fyodor pretended to be taken aback by Ace having listened to his and Karma’s talk, scratching his head in a wide-open gesture, conveying surprise and acknowledgement of Ace’s skills; Fyodor put a hand to his chest when telling Ace he has trained himself for “battles of starvation”, this gesture emphasizing the personal aspect of the information he offered, which this gesture implies is wholehearted and sincere. In ch46, while explaining his strategy and his way of thinking to Dazai, Fyodor uses various hand gestures to illustrate his phrases as well: extended arm explaining; hand pointing towards Dazai; explaining his higher goal with open palms in front of him, but close to his body, suggesting solemnity and confessed determination; sadly, all these gestures were replaced in the anime with Fyodor just holding his ushanka to his chest, conveying the same type of message as when he held his hand to his chest in front of Ace in ch42, as I described a few phrases above; still, at least in S3ep4 anime Fyodor gesticulated a lot while talking to Ace before the latter’s suicide, following ch42 pretty closely). In ch55, after entering Mushitaro’s basement prison cell, as Fyodor was revealing his intention behind freeing Mushitaro, he raised both hands to his chest, his fingers resting on each side of his heart, a gesture meant to suggest utmost sincerity. After that, still in ch55, when informing Mushitaro on the change of his condition (Mushitaro was captive, “but that ends today”, as Fyodor said), he held his right index finger to his lips, in a mischievous display of secrecy and child-like playfulness. This same gesture can have sinister undertones as well, given how it already appeared in ch47 in this way, where it is suggested, in a flashback background, that Fyodor did the same gesture when asking fake Pushkin to convey the “No changing the rules” message to the Agency, and they found this out after the death of the children. Lastly, these oratory skills can be used in playfully dramatic ways too, like in ch64, when Fyodor switched to the discourse of an overly-expressive, lively host of a (talk)show, as he suggested Dazai to participate in his “All-smiles Problem-solving Roooooundtable, hosted by yours truly, Dostoyevsky”, tilting his head further and further to his right as Dazai expressed growing confusion at first. About Fyodor tilting his head and what it means, see the paragraph below. So, all these scenes point to the fact that Fyodor gesticulates a lot, especially for emphasis and expressiveness during speeches or conversations, or for the fun of the dramatic effect.

Curiosity and tilt of the head. In conversational circumstances, we often see Fyodor tilting his head to his side. In his case, this is an expression of curiosity, in the sense of being (or wanting to appear to be) genuinely interested in the other person’s answers. Note that the simple tilt of the head to one’s side can also express endearment towards the thing one looks at (in genuine concern or admiration of something beautiful or dear, for example), but, combined with oratory skills – which Fyodor possesses as a master of communication – this can be a very effective tool that translates into non-verbal emotional manipulation. To give a few examples, Fyodor tilted his head 1) when he asked Sigma if he wished for a home (ch75), 2) when he replied to Nikolai capturing the essence of his inner conflict (ch78), 3) when greeting (and even bowing to) Mushitaro in the basement, just before offering him a deal to escape (ch55). In all these cases, the persons Fyodor was conversing with were already in a vulnerable situation (Sigma wandering in desperation, Nikolai presenting his inner struggle, Mushitaro being held captive), and thus Fyodor made sure to bind each of them to himself, planting the seeds of dependency by offering them validation and emotional response. Moreover, as a gesture of (apparent) trust, if someone tilts their head to the side, they present themselves in a vulnerable position (the neck area is open), subtly conveying the message that the other person is in a position of superiority, deepening the trap that, in Fyodor’s case, ends with the other people becoming dependent on him as the “benign” manipulator. Still, because of the display of vulnerability, the tilt of the head in itself is a gentle, humbling gesture, very fitting for Fyodor, whose character presence builds on the inexplicable tension between the terror and apprehension brought by his vast intellect and unknown powers, and the humility and gentleness of his speech and body language. The fact that, as of now, we still cannot draw a firm line and say from where to which point Fyodor’s gestures and words are genuinely benevolent or actually malevolent, so he remains beyond good and evil, and fascinatingly so, until more of his character or backstory is revealed. As a last example of Fyodor tilting not his head, but his entire body as an expression of curiosity, in ch42, finding Ace’s vault, Fyodor did exactly that and approached it together with a curious look (eyes opened wider, eyebrows raised), asking Karma something to which Fyodor already knew the answer probably anyway (“Oh, is this it? The vault where ace holds his jewels temporarily, to prevent a price collapse?”) and still Fyodor asked Karma because, I assume, having a conversation made the discovery simply more fun for the moment.

Biting his fingertips and nails. In ch42, Fyodor is seen biting his fingertips in three different panels, and yet the anime (S3ep4) never shows him doing this. Later on, we never see him biting his fingertips “on screen”, but “behind the scenes” he has been continuously doing so even up to the most recent chapter. Looking closely, you can see how his fingertips and nails are damaged and rough even at Meursault, for example, in ch95, when Fyodor is passing Dazai the salt, or in ch101, when Fyodor is inputting security codes to unlock prison doors. Of course, among other things, this habit indicates a Crime and Punishment novel reference, which should be discussed in a different post, and has in fact been discussed in nice posts by other BSD fans already. This aside, unlike his depiction in Dead Apple, manga Fyodor consistently keeps his hands ungloved.

Surprise and adrenaline rush. Other than the moments when his face shows curiosity, in the manga Fyodor’s composure appears to break rather often to express surprise, usually when 1) an brilliant move was made by an adversary team or someone else, but more recently also when 2) the enemy team made a move faster than Fyodor expected. In several of these occasions, his shock is accompanied by what seems to be delight, and I would interpret this as Fyodor enjoying the adrenaline rush of near-death situations (Nikolai’s prison game, introduced in ch95.5 / ch96, to which both Fyodor and Dazai reacted in a grimly ecstatic way) or general “end of the road” scenarios (Dazai and Fitzgerald “catching” him in ch53, although Mushitaro revealed that Fyodor’s capture was intentional in ch54: “And I… can never be forced to reveal the reason Dostoyevsky let them capture him!”). Now, for the second type of surprise, the clearest examples are Fyodor’s ch101 reactions to being cornered by Dazai and the prison room starting to get filled by heavy water. His expressions there do betray true shock, as much as his stare at the end of ch101 expresses true boiling anger and determination, but one must note that, despite letting his composure break, Fyodor may have already anticipated Dazai’s moves, and the true source of his surprise was Dazai executing said moves sooner than anticipated by Fyodor (for example, when the code input device explodes in front of Fyodor’s face, after an initial shocked expression, his eyes regain a look of steel, rationalizing “he got the circuit already”). In any case, for most insight on the whole ch101 situation and the in-context implications of this “already”, I recommend checking out @videogamelover99​​ ’s post here on, well, basically Dazai being too Dazai for his own good, or @vampireonastick​​ ’s post here for more discussion on the whole ch101 situation).

ANIME. The anime went with a different characterization of Fyodor entirely so far (as of now, November 2022, the anime has 3 completed seasons, and the trailer for January 2023’s season 4 revealed enough to see the anime’s characterization for Fyodor has not changed at all). In the anime, instead of being soft and discreet, Fyodor is confident, audacious and, I would say, stereotypically evil and creepy, whereas in the manga his sinister side comes to the reader’s eyes as a result of all the subtleties his behaviour and schemes imply, as well as a result of the contrast between his gentle appearance and his unnerving actions and plans, as I already wrote above. For example, in S3ep8, anime Fyodor smirked daringly at Mori after he stabbed the Mafia boss, seemingly enjoying it, yet in the manga Fyodor kept a blank face. Since various other differences between the manga and the anime were already discussed before this point of my essay, I propose an analysis of Fyodor’s body language in Dead Apple specifically, which goes hand in hand with his portrayal in the anime, and therefore differs significantly from the soft Fyodor we get to know in the manga.

Secrecy. In Dead Apple, in the first scene that reunites Shibusawa, Dazai and Fyodor, we see Fyodor approaching their table with confident steps and hands in what appears a rather tight grip, as opposed to letting his fingers comfortably open on each side of his body. This could express repressed or hidden intentions, as his fingers, in a fist, cover his palms and do not allow a completely relaxed stance. Next, unlike Dazai, Fyodor does not cross his legs when at the table, he instead positions both his feet firmly and perpendicularly on the ground, which conveys confidence as well, and is meant to assert total control of the room. When putting his arms on the table, he intertwines his fingers and rests his chin on his joined hands. This is a meditative position, suggesting a serious thought process going on behind his puzzling smile (again, suggesting confidence), as well as careful planning, or simply waiting for things to happen as he planned beforehand. His closed eyes shut down the world outside him, we could interpret this as logical in this situation if Fyodor has already predicted and planned everything through, which the movie suggests was indeed the case. The outside world is not as necessary to see in that case, plus he is surrounded by people who will not act impuslively and threaten each other out of the blue, so a sense of blind trust stays between the three strategists. One last thing to note about this scene is the fact that only Shibusawa and Fyodor are facing each other, while Dazai is facing no one, which may subtly suggest the personal bond between Shibusawa and Fyodor, one that Dazai does not share with anyone in the room, or (arguably) anyone at all after Odasaku’s death.

Confidence. In Dead Apple, Fyodor’s pose conveys confidence when Shibusawa shows Dazai the Draconia room (Fyodor is seen with his left hand on his waist, in contrapposto); Fyodor’s pose conveys having hidden motives when he and Dazai entered the Draconia room in secret (Fyodor has his back turner to both Dazai and the viewers, with his hands in his coat’s pockets; Fyodor’s pose conveys confidence AND having hidden motives when Shibusawa surprisingly stabs Dazai, followed by Dazai asking Fyodor “Didn’t you lock the door?” (Fyodor has his hands in his pockets, but also smirks and chuckles at Dazai while looking down to him, with Fyodor’s chin slightly raised).

A playful mind. As to what regards Fyodor’s playful mind, it is made more or less evident through Fyodor’s play of words and sharp, intelligent replies (see section E for his love for entertainment specifically). In Dead Apple, as the singularity event unfolds, Fyodor told a shocked Shibusawa that he will “fill in all the blanks” for him: Fyodor added “I’ll even tell you what was cut out”, proceeding to cut Shibusawa’s throat immediately after. This is a splendid play of word and action, coordinating them in a twisted sense of playfulness, indulging michievously in living a life entertaining for himself. But seriously, for more on Fyodor and his sense of entertainment, see section E above, it would be superfluous to repeat ideas here.

– – –

11 November 2022. At last, we arrived at the end of this essay. The end for now at least, as I could technically add more analysis and external references in the future, if my irl schedule allows it. Since January 2022 I’ve been working on this “thing” I jokingly called “marriage proposal PhD”, because why not, this is an accurate example of how an ENTP proposes to an INTJ, where understanding the other (or continuously trying to) is peak intimacy and love. I guess. However, I “yeeted” my emotions out while I was writing this, because nothing would have angered me more than my appreciation of this character clouding my judgement or making me err in my pursuit of the many subtleties that lead to his many paradoxical traits. Whether I will update this post or not in the future, I cannot promise. This post is intended to be my last contribution to the BSD fandom, but my ask box remains open for futher discussions on BSD or other media analysis. I doubt fans will read everything I wrote, and I am certain the fandom will perpetuate the cycle of Fedya’s mischaracterization despite my best efforts to bring many canon scenes showing different sides of him into the spotlight. 

Yes... Despite everything, I am at peace. I thought no media could revive my passion for analysis anymore, no character could make me draw fanart again, and yet... and yet!... Fedya is exactly the type of character one can analyze ad infinitum and feel thrilled at each discovery, at each little possible implication of a word or gesture. No matter how tranquil he may seem, no matter how certain we may be at first of his exterior serenity, for everything his character encapsulates, for everything we know and don’t know about him thus far, Fyodor’s soul is likely vessel to an incredible inner tension, origin of his determination. As I was writing more and more, I discovered he is intense, so truly intense, and that intensity has brought me… and brings me... and will bring me

boundless bliss.

Happy birthday, радость моя.

#bsd #bsd fyodor #bsd fyodor dostoevsky #bsd analysis #bsd meta #bungou stray dogs #bsd fyodor dostoyevsky #bungou stray dogs fyodor #bsd fyodor analysis #fyodor bsd #bungou stray dogs analysis #bsd character analysis #character analysis #analysis #unsolved and endless #beauties and gentlebeauties this is Lav's Fedya essay #please note that with a single reveal in the manga Fedya could make this entire thing come crashing down and I love this possibility #truly in-character till the end #Nov2022: my only regret is that I still had 100+ bsd analysis posts saved to read through and perhaps add more in-fandom refs to this #even when my and OP's analysis align only regarding 1 idea or 2 I find it highly valuable to cross-reference and communicate #I've seen both crueler takes and softer takes on Fedya's character - and some takes that have no solid canon ground as well #I value them all because discussion is important and it builds our minds - but mischaracterization should be recognized as such #I hope that in the future I can update this essay with more references to express my gratitude towards the analysis part of the fandom too #till then I hope the readers of this enjoyed it and know that I am open for discussion in the replies or ask box #even if it will take me a while to answer

[shahrwrites]

—Prologue;

Hi Hey Hello!! ヾ(＾∇＾)

Welcome to my blog! (I think it's pretty obvious I'm a little nervous by the ridiculous overuse of exclamation marks lol just ignore.)

So, before my blabbering mode enables and I plunge into a thousand word essay, let's get to the heart of it.

Who's talking?

My name is Shahrzad, or as I have elected to be referred to here, Shahr, for short. I'm 21 and my pronouns are she/her. Very nice to meet you! (〃▽〃)

Why did I create this page?

I hope to make this a safe place for me to share my fanfictions and art practices, and interact with the communities and fandoms that I'm obsessed with at the moment to share my thoughts and ideas and etc. I've been writing for friends and classes for as long as I can remember, but never before have I published anything online. And as for drawing, I'm just getting started, so please bear with me as I wrestle my way through. ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ̀ˋ

Where will I be posting my fanfictions?

For the moment, you can find me here on Ao3. I'm not decided yet, but it's possible to publish future works on Wattpad, as well.

You have prompts or headcanons you wanna read about?

Send ‘em my way, baby. I would love nothing more than to read them, and hopefully, expand them so you could read and enjoy! So don’t hesitate to hit the ask button!

I believe this about sums it up! But just in case I leave something out, this will be updated.

— Now, as to what you can expect me to post about in the foreseeable future; I'm currently finding my way around Batman comics. The characters I'm most interested about are the Robins, and out of the bat boys, I'm most in love with Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. (Jason will forever have a special place in my heart and I think that will be pretty evident in my posts lol.)

And with this, I will conclude this little, hopefully brief and efficient, Intro. Wish y'all the best.

#Here's to starting a tumblr blog #and being a wannabe artist #who am i kidding im just here to share headcannons and fanfics and my progress in drawing #maybe i should've just opened up with that and saved y'all the headache huh? #wrtiting #writeblr #fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 #fanart #art #artwork #drawing #artists on tumblr #digital artist #digital art #batman #batfam #batman comics #nightwing #dick grayson #red hood #jason todd #robin

[doublebassawareness]

WAIT STAR RAIL HAS DOUBLE BANNERS ALREADY

Like, I predicted that Seele would get a rerun 1.4, but I thought it would be at the expense of not getting a new five star character, maybe a new four star character instead

It feels so soon. 1.4? Not to compare it to Genshin, but that didn't get double banners until 2.3.

(Long ass essay. TLDR, I think HSR's story is going to finish really quickly because of this. Read if interested below the cut)

This makes me think a lot for the future of Star Rail. I think, compared to Genshin and Honkai Impact, it's run time it's going to be a lot shorter.

Like, let's take Honkai Impact 3rd for an example (for reference, I don't play the game. This is just from what I've heard). It released in 2016. The main story ended this year, 2023. Meaning, that it's run time is 7 years. It took them 7 years to finish the main story, to complete whatever the goal is in Honkai Impact 3rd (I'm not familar with the lore.)

Genshin Impact is still running, but we know from the Teyvat Travail Trailer that we are supposed to go to the 7 nations plus Khaenri'ah. We started in 2020, with two nations, and have added one each year, so assuming that there will not be any major story updates between the nations (like going to the light releam or Celestia or something) that warrents its own super patch (ie. the 1.0s, the 2.0s, the 3.0s, and now the 4.0s), then we will finish in 2027. 7 years again.

And let me talk with the pacing of content delivered throughout those 7 years, mainly with banners and account progression, since that's what usually sets the pace of the game. I'll be setting Honkai Impact 3rd aside for now since I have no authority to talk about it, but I feel like it's similar.

So let's start with account level. AR, Trailblaze level, essentially. In Genshin Impact, it took me about 1 year to get to the higher ARs (55+). I have been playing for almost two years now, and I have not hit AR 60. To be fair, I did stall doing acension domains to build, but I don't think that it's too much of a factor because I'm doing the same for Star Rail. In Genshin, 60 is the highest level you can reach. It's been almost two years and I haven't reached there yet. So, assuming that the run time for Genshin is 7 years, then it will take you a little less than half of the run time to reach max account level. Let's say it will take 2.5 years. So, 2.5 out of the 7 years will be used to reach max account level. Seems reasonable. My friend, who had been playing since launch just hit 60 in about March, so, that's about right

Now, let's look at Star Rail, specifically my EU account because that's the most developed one. I have been playing since April, so about 4 months now. The max level is 70. Guess where I am at.

60

My trailblaze level is 60. And I've been stuck here for about 2 months because I've been meaning to build characters better but school started and I've gotten busy. So, it took me 2 months to complete 6/7 levels. Let's say I get to Trailblaze level 70 by the end of December. You know, classes are over, it's winter break, I have time to play again. Meaning, it took me 8 months to reach the max level. And that's if I procrastinate enough. I have friends who have less classwork and assignments than me, so more time to play, they're already at 70. So, let's say the average time it takes to hit TBR 70 is about 6 months. Assuming that the proportions to time it takes for the average player to reach max level and the time it takes for the game to run is course is about proportional, what does it say about Star Rails run time?

I'm not done yet. Let's look at banenrs.

As you know, our first double banner is going to be occuring this patch, with a Seele rerun. I'm honestly hoping for a Jing Yuan banner next patch so I can pull his light cone, but that aside. For both Genshin and Star Rail, the patch run time is about 6 weeks, with some adjustments being made from time to time (Covid lockdowns during, and 1.4 being made 5 weeks because it's not story heavy??? I'm not sure of the reason behind this but apparently, that's what they did in HI3, so I guess that makes sense)

Anyways, not including phases and assuming each patch is 6 weeks, it took Honkai Star Rail until 1.4 to get their first double banner. So, there were 4 patches before that (1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3). 4 times 6 is 24 weeks, so about 6 months after being released to get their first double banner.

You wanna compare that to Genshin.

It took Genshin until 2.3 to get their first double banner, with the reruns of Albedo and Eula. Meaning, there has been 11 patches (1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2). 6 times 11 is 66 weeks. That's 1 year and about 3 months. Just to get their first double banner.

So, looking at these comparisons, we can now see that Honkai Star Rail seems to be progressing at a much faster rate than other Hoyoverse games. Unfortunately, for global servers there isn't too much information on the earlier patches for Honkai Impact, so I am unable to confirm when the first double banner, but I would assume it's around the same time as Genshin. I would like to guess that these measures, account level and banner cycles, will tell us how long the game will run until we finish the main story. So, using this guess, I can now do a proportion to figure out how long Star Rail will run for using Genshin as a measuring stick.

Doing some math, I get that Honkai Star Rails run time until we finish the main story is about 1.4 - 2.76 years. That's considerably shorter than some of their bigger mainline games, Genshin and Honkai Impact 3rd. If true, this means that Honkai Star Rail will wrap up its main story before we get to Khaenri'ah. The Trailblazer will have fought Nanook before the Traveler found their sibling.

Does this mean that it's necessarily true? No. I personally got into the game hoping that for a few years after Genshin ends, I will have something to play while I look for the next game to play, and I still hope that it's true. But if it's true, why would Hoyoverse speed up the player experience this much? Having double banners this early makes me nervous for two or three years down the line, where we might get to triple banners, especially at the rate the game releases 5 star characters. And for Trailblaze level, I personally wished it took longer, so it we are prepared mentally and with our builds, because now I already feel like a late stage vetaran player, and I've only played for 6 months. 6 months into playing Genshin and I still felt like a baby. It's good, because it keeps players something to work towards to for longer. For those who want to burn through content and levels, they will do that regardless. There are people who are my current AR and they've started playing this year. But the way the game is progressing makes it seem like Honkai Star Rail's run time is going to be shorter than you think.

(Edits: Fixed Typo on Jing Yuans name, fixed incomplete sentence, corrected Honkai Impact 3rd to Honkai Star Rail, man was I half asleep writing this?)

#hoyoverse #honkai star rail #hsr #hsr 1.4 #star rail #genshin #genshin impact #honkai impact 3rd #hi3rd #mihoyo #rant

[accio-victuuri]

Hi AV

I happened to note you share webiiiiooo links a lot. I am curious if you understand the language enough or do you have any tricks up your sleeve to navigate chineae cesspool? Please share. 😇

Hello Anon! 👋🏼

Here are just stuff that I do, that I think helps me in looking for things I need. You can google translate for some info, but not everything.

• Follow the supertopic and fan groups. They pretty much update in real time on what’s new with BoXiao so you can just go in one place. Ads & Videos etc.

The supertopic also has a tab for CPN/sugar, so I go there if I wanna look for something and confirm stuff. I swear, they notice alot. This is also where it gets tricky because if you don’t have some background, you will not understand the post. Even if the google translate is passable.

For example this one making the rounds today:

If you don’t have any idea about the CPN people had before of that bouquet, it won’t click immediately. GG was given a different bouquet by the crew during the wrap up ( seen in today’s BTS), so why did he post that flower in his weibo post for OOL. We had the CPN that it was from Web back in 2019.

I follow other accounts too— personal accounts give you more of what’s happening in the fandom. Things that are not allowed to be shared in supertopics and the occasional fandom drama. but that’s optional. ✌🏼

• Keep the links. Sometimes when i scroll the ST or weibo, I see interesting things or archive posts, I make sure to save those so i can reference later. That’s helpful if people ask things so I can link. Sadly, some people have weibo blocked.

• Search the tags. If I wanna know what people are posting in general. Usually those tags are in the post of the brand or weibo account so you can just click. For example with GG’s OOL video today.

• A list of character keywords. This is helpful to me since i’m using english alphabet on my phone, it’s easier for me to copy-paste and search. English keywords won’t help you. I search sitewide or specific blogs. Depends on what i’m looking for. This is what I did when I was searching about Yibo and Hangeng’s friendship. Or details on a future project.

• Google translate. This gives me a gist of what is being talked about but not all. && I use a different app to help me out too.

• Be patient and keep an open mind. I hear people always say, ‘ I don’t understand the language’ as a be all end all of not using Weibo. People don’t really post essays on there. lol. It’s more on photos/videos that anyone can appreciate. As for navigating, it’s pretty intuitive. Especially the international app, you have the like, comment, repost. You have your own feed. You can explore or look at things recommended for you. Just play around and have fun. The more time you spend on there, the more you’ll understand it and know who to follow.

Hope this helps! 😎

#ask response

[bloodybells1]

the entry

My intent with this blog has been, and I suppose to a certain extent still continues to be, to offer up my thoughts in a format that can be characterized as somewhere right smack in the middle between a fully edited personal essay on one hand and an off-the-cuff journal entry on the other. 

But what I’ve realized since I started this blog is that—to the extent that a publicly viewable blog tends to induce more editing than something that is, say, written by hand for almost no other pair of eyes other than one’s own—I mostly never write anything new in it. Simply put, the labor of revision prevents a frequent posting schedule.

Now, I never envisioned this blog to be a kind of mechanism by which I might update an audience with news of upcoming work or personal tidbits. That was for social media, I thought. The idea of a kind of rolling press release on the goings on of my professional life, or on simply just those parts of my personal life I deemed worthy of publicizing, seemed redundant while I was on Twitter and Instagram—both of which platforms I am (thankfully!) no longer on. 

I mean, that was the putative charm of social media, wasn’t it? That the incessant digital chatter of the feeds had provided a natural platform, the so-called ‘public square,’ for ‘content creators’ to air out any thoughts they wished to make public. No flight of cerebral activity was too fly-by-night for this seemingly organic Borg of never-subsiding textual persiflage. Indeed, Twitter’s now questionable motto (‘It’s What’s Happening’) seemed to support what so many of us had already believed for so long, namely that it could all happen ‘there,’ that some sort of amplified version of authentic human conversation could epiphenomenally emerge from the mere arrangement of endless ones and zeroes. 

Well, at long last, we’ve all been given a wake-up call, or at the least, the Overton Window has shifted on the question of bringing Big Tech to heel. Because it’s clear now—as if Cambridge Analytica hadn’t settled it—these guys are bad news. They are this generation’s Big Tobacco. I’m proud that I cut the cord on my platforms well before the whistleblower dug the long-awaited knife into the body of this rabid beast (we’ll see just how many more stabs are needed), but I’m not so proud that I waited as long as I did. The sham of the idea that these platforms are safe havens for authentic connection has been brought out into the light. And while I wish I’d seen it before that happened, nonetheless, I’m elated that, at least now, it’s a thing.

But back to the blog. Power hates a vacuum. In the pen there is might. And the squirrel mind to which it is hopelessly attached jogs unabated. My tortuously mixed metaphors here mean simply this: It’s all gotta go somewhere (where ‘it’ here refers to most of what I think about day and night and which flies back into my face forever until I finally get around to writing it down). 

So rather than these entries functioning as some sort of proto-personal essay collection, at least for now, I’m choosing to make them closer to the personal journal side of that spectrum I mentioned earlier, the one that served as my original model for this blog. Either that or these future entries will tack closer to the more extemporaneous nature of my old Twitter feed—minus the overt carping on politics (emphasis on ‘overt’). 

Technically yes, Tumblr is an example of a social media platform. But let’s set that aside owing to the plain fact that really, in the grand scheme of the global snakepit of Big Tech, it registers rather faintly on the Distrust-O-Meter. For now, Tumblr will do just fine in terms of insulating me‚ and you as well, from the types of vagaries and indignities and ill effects that come with posting updates and other types of entries on the dominant platforms. 

My hope, then, is that this adjustment to my model for this blog here on Tumblr will fix the issue of the frozen feed, the blog that is never updated, the blank page that waits an eternal wait for the pristine text. I’m going to start leaning on the handwritten side of the ticker tape parade of thought and feeling behind my forehead. Hopefully, it’ll break the logjam. I mean, it’s been paradise being off of social media, like the pellucid affective stream of consciousness that accompanies newfound sobriety. And if, in addition to this bliss, this blog becomes more frequently updated as a result, then, hey, that’s yet another plus.

As always, I hope you’ll enjoy. 

And my inbox is always open: [email protected]. ‘DM’ me there, if you’d like. 

Peace.

[daohanfu]

Extra Resources for CRYG: Mulan’s Historically Accurate Render & Research

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone whom shared and liked my (Relatively) Historically Accurate Mulan I | CRYG post. 

I am delightfully overwhelmed with all the responses from the past week, especially after I had some frustrating struggles with Tumblr’s anti-spamming and tagging system. As a result, I had to take out some very interesting references and external links from the original post.

If you are interested in learning more about the historic-cultural context of Mulan, or want to create your own historically accurate interpretations, here are some resources you’d be interested:

--

Zhuangshu Fuyuan 装束复原 (Chinese Historical Costume Restoration Team). They now have a Chinese WordPress site (might need Google Translate): zhuangshufuyuan.com

This Chinese indie group has made several live-action reconstructions of the fashion from the Northern & Southern dynasties (link).

In comparison to miniature sculptures and 2D paintings, their real-life reconstructions provide a better sense of the scale, layers, and structures of different historical Chinese clothing.

If you can read Chinese, I suggest you to check out their writings, as their essays provide an understanding of Chinese clothing from the angles of design thinking, art and cultural history, and beyond the aesthetics. 

You can also find them on Weibo via. @zgzhuangshu 

--

China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 A.D. by the Metropolitan Museum. A free pdf can be accessed on the Met’s website (link).

A great portion of this English publication centers around the Northern & Southern dynasties. Since it is more of an art history book, there are a lot of visuals, and the writing is easy to read. 

I want to point out this 2004 publication does contain errors, improper translation, and some outdated views or theories.

Particularly, I’ve noticed many descriptions and English word-choices of historic Chinese clothing are incorrect and can be misleading. 

These errors are understandable, because there have been more archaeology discoveries made, and way more research done on Chinese clothing and fashion history, since the book came out.

I still recommend this book, as it provides a well-rounded, overall intro of the historical context of Northern Wei and the entire history of a very complicated era, collectively known as the Three Kingdoms, Two Jins & the Sixteen Kingdoms, and the Northern and Southern dynasties. (The complexity is reflected through this lengthy, already-abbreviated name.)

--

ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) Online Collection. The ROM houses a significant amount of Chinese artifacts from the Northern & Southern dynasties. 

https://collections.rom.on.ca/search/Northern%20Dynasties/objects

After you visit the link, make sure you click on Filter >> Country >> “China” (case-sensitive), and all relevant results should be sorted.

If the above link doesn’t work, simply go to ROM’s online collection (here), and search any of these keywords:  Northern Dynasties - Northern Wei - Northern Zhou - Northern Qi - Western Wei - Eastern Wei

Note: as explained in the CRYG: Mulan I post, Western Wei / Northern Zhou & Eastern Wei / Northern Qi, are the two different continuations of the disintegrated Northern Wei.

--

Wikimedia Commons: 

 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

The best part about Wikimedia Commons is that most contents are released in the Public Domain or with Creative Commons licenses that allow remix & reuse

For Northern Wei arts, simply search the keyword: Northern Wei

--

Due to the concern of length, the info presented in the original CRYG: Mulan I post is merely the tip of an iceberg. Therefore, I hope these additional resources can aid you in your own research and/or satisfy your own interests. 

Of course, there are many other valuable resources on the Internet. I will have to save them for future updates of the CRYG: Character Reimagined Yi-Guan series.

PS. Due to these external links, this post will likely be hidden from Tumblr’s searches and tags, please manually re-blog if you find it useful.

#historically accurate #Mulan #research #chinese fashion #art history #CRYG #chinese culture #人物衣冠acg #装束复原

[ladyryukyo]

Always awesome to find another MFB blog!! Thanks for the follow btw 💙 Consider this ask an invitation to share any of your favorite MFB headcannons👀👀

omg hi! thank you for the follow, dude, your blog is awesome 💛,, hmm my favorite mfb headcanons...

I think I'll have to say the legendary bladers keeping in touch after defeating nemesis. I just don’t think it makes sense for them to split up without another word after saving the world from being destroyed by an angry, ancient god bey. I can’t imagine a more profound bonding activity lol.

it’s not initially the bladers’ idea to keep in contact but the WBBA’s. they wanted a way to contact the legendary bladers in case of emergency since they are the most powerful bladers in the world presumably.

(you never know when the world might be destroyed next. could be in the far future. could be next week. the WBBA just wants to be prepared.)

so they give every legendary blader a brand-new phone and hope no one accidentally destroys theirs in whatever crazy dangerous training plan they come up with.

gingka is the one who suggests creating a group chat with everyone which is of course a terrible idea which is why ryo absolutely loves it.

it goes well for about two hours and then yu finds out about the gc and wants to be in it. tsubasa joins to keep an eye on him and madoka joins to keep an eye on everyone. hikaru joins to supervise for the WBBA and after that no one can stop benkei from joining no matter how many burgers kyoya tries to bribe him with. then aguma argues that it would be unfair not to let bao in and suddenly there are way too many people and the gc is way too chaotic.

the first thing kyoya does is mute the chat, put his new phone on Do Not Disturb and proceed not to check his messages for the next two weeks. he only ever writes in the gc when he has another win against a legendary blader to report and to ask who wants to be his next opponent. other than that one message every few weeks, he doesn’t really exist in the gc.

benkei travels with kyoya from legendary blader to legendary blader but at least he lets everyone know that they’re both still alive. he sends a lot of photos in the chat, mostly sneaky, blurry pictures of kyoya, some selfies and pictures of the many different types of food they encounter. he makes everyone jealous with the last one and has to promise to cook some of them for everyone once he’s back.

tsubasa entertains the group chat w daily updates about everyone’s favorite pet eagle (whose name i don’t know but i’m pretty sure tsubasa just called it ‘eagle’ in the show?? it’s so no one figures out he actually calls it cutesy pet names in private. no one can know). eagle is a riot because she is well trained but also has a mind of her own. i just decided eagle is female. you can play catch with her as long as you’re respectful but in exchange she is allowed to land on your head and try and feed you the fish she just caught. yu likes to message tsubasa suggestions what he should make eagle do next. one time he asked tsubasa to put a wig on her and see what happens. she was very regal about the whole thing.

(i could write so much abt tsubasa and his pet eagle, this whole concept lends itself to so much ridiculousness. i’m going to write a separate post abt them another time.)

you know who the most hilarious texters of the group are? dynamis and aguma. everyone expects them to be as collected and serious as they usually are but. wrong. dynamis lives in a temple on top of a mountain that is protected by many deadly traps. he lives pretty far from human civilization and we can assume he never got many visitors so. i can’t imagine there’s good cell phone reception at mist mountain. has he ever used a phone before? does he even know what the internet is??

same with aguma: beylin fist is an exclusive organization forced into exile and obscurity for many years. their sole goal was to train until they could defeat beylin temple and prove themselves to the world. once again we can assume there was not much surfing the internet going on here.

expectation: dynamis and aguma text with proper punctuation and grammar, do not use emojis, do not understand memes, do not send gifs or anything that isn’t a fully formed sentence you could copy and paste for your essay in school that would make your english teacher weep with joy.

reality: dynamis: OMG!! 😱 The ✨ say you are super 🍀 this week, Aguma!! 🤩 You should 💪 a lot LOL!! 🔮 (trans: the stars say you are super lucky this week aguma. you should train/fight a lot) (also it’s a tragedy that there’s no spinning top emoji)

aguma: k iuss l2g l8er? (trans: okay, if you say so. would you like to go [fight] later?)

dynamis: YES!! (trans: yes)

aguma: gr8 cul (trans: great, see you later)

everyone is so confused. at least they can understand what dynamis is saying but what is with the exclamation marks?? the emojis replacing words? the abbreviations in all caps that make the texts look like a middle-aged wine mom on facebook wrote them? don’t get them started on aguma and the unintelligible mess he calls a text message. does he just take a bunch of random letters and numbers and throw them together however he sees fit? apparently not because dynamis understands everything he sends even if he is the only one in the gc that does.

dynamis and aguma bonded over their mutual ignorance of everything technology when the gc was first created. yu said lol once in the gc and that was the moment dynamis and aguma learned about chat speak which is why everyone blames yu for this disaster. dynamis thinks the emojis are very helpful and aguma straight up memorized a list of more than 1,500 internet abbreviations. no one has the courage to tell them that nobody actually speaks like that on the internet and that they took it a little too far than is normal.

you know these people that are super nice and soft-spoken in real life but swear like a sailor over text and reveal that they have like a really obscure humor? that’s yuki. although he usually doesn’t say much in a group and feels shy around other people, especially when they are as loud and extroverted as for example yu or king, over text when he’s not face-to-face with them he doesn’t feel like he has to watch himself as much. he is usually overly conscious of his actions and words but through the virtual barrier between him and everyone else it makes it much easier for him to just say what he thinks and what he thinks is actually really funny and weird.

yuki actually has a pretty large online following for his fandom blog about various books and tv shows where he very passionately argues over fandom meta and character analysis. because of his active interest in fandom his references can be... a bit obscure and specific. there is always one person in the gc that understands the references and finds them hilarious but everyone else is left thoroughly confused and questioning their sanity.

that is all i have for this for now but i’ll add more when i think of it. everyone is of course welcome to add their own ideas!

#this was so much fun tysm for the ask #i'm really sorry for how long this took me i just kept adding onto it and it never seemed to stop D: #mfb #mfb headcanons #metal fight beyblade #beyblade metal fury #i wrote this

[dragonofthedepths]

29/100 (29th of June 2021)

(29/100) Written/posted for the #100daysofwriting challenge by @the-wip-project

I spent several hours today filling out a survey on my fanfiction reading habits! This was not supposed to take several hours, but my inability to answer any free form question without writing multiple paragraphs dragged it out much longer than it was supposed to be! Considering that this was done around baking, having a friend over, and finishing a drawing that according to the timer on my art program took me a cumulative 22.5 hours to complete, I figured I would just copy and paste some of my more interesting answers here for today!

Here’s the link to the survey if you want to take it yourself, apparently it’s part of some kind of collage study: 

https://robertgordonuniversity.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/fanfiction-questionnaire

Question:

What type(s) of library/libraries do you use? What activities or purposes do you use them for?

Answer:

The local library. I go there every now and then when I’m looking for an actual book to read, I usually have what I want already in mind, but might end up picking up something new from the same section if anything particularly catches my interest. Very occasionally I grab a few reference books, usually on things like religions that are harder to find a comprehensive reference for online beneath all the sensationalism and opinions.

I almost always spend at last a couple hours there, looking through my selection and reading a chapter or two. the only reason I’ll leave without sitting down and beginning at least one book is if I’m already late for something somewhere else.

Tldr: I use my local library, I do not go very often but I take my time when I do.

———————————————O0—0—0O————————————————

Question (fanfiction.net):

If possible, please explain your typical process for finding fanfiction to read.

Answer:

Whenever  I get interested in a new show I’ll latch on to a concept or particular character interaction eg. Villain!hero, ensemble finds out secret, character A needs a hug, character A adopted by character B, character C & character D friendship & hurt/comfort. Sometimes (especially if it’s a lesser known thing/has a small fandom) I’ll be as vague as favorite character, timetravel, wingfic, or soulmate AU. Whatever it is that I’ve latched onto, I’ll enter it into the search bar on whatever browser I’m using, and open whatever links look most appealing in a new tab, giving preference to stories from any website except Wattpad* over any king of collection, and links to Ao3 preference over links to anything else.

From there I work my way through everything that was offered, and as I do so I eventually come across new things that capture my interest, and —in general terms— follow them.

On ff.net I’ll follow the link back to the page for whatever franchise this is, then open the filter menu, select "all ratings" and begin using the filters to look for whatever character or pair of characters (seeing as looking for idea is not really possible on ff.net) interests me most in either the family, hurt/comfort, or angst genre depending on which has the most stories, unless one of them has stories in excess of 3 or 4 hundred, in which case I’ll pick whichever has the least stories. I’ll then go through the offerings, opening any story that look is interesting in a new tab. If I make it through all of that and somehow haven’t found something better to do on Ao3, then when I’m done I’ll go back to the genre filter and pick whichever had the middling number of stories, then after that the one on the opposite end of the spectrum from most to least. If at any point I’m offered more than 1,000 stories I’ll add additional filters until the results drop below 1,000, because I am not dealing with slogging through that much ff.net at once. If there is that much written for whatever I’m looking for, then either there’s some on Ao3 and I can leave, or I’m actually looking for something more specific and was just over-estimating how vague I’d need to be to get results at all. This is very methodical probably because I do not like this site and am putting up with it only to find what I’m currently looking for, I never get new ideas prompted to me or am enticed to wander off the beaten track. I don’t use ff.net very often, though still more often then I go to the library.

———————————————O0—0—0O————————————————

Question:

Are there any search features or filters you wish fanfiction.net had for readers and searchers?

Answer:

Fanfiction.net is not a functional website, it’s a particularly shitty ghost town that is actively crumbling to pieces around its few remaining inhabitants. I it’s a hassle to read on and I only do so because I’m a fan of rare pairs, and have to take anything I can get, and because I’m a fan of a particular kind of low-brow overpowered-hero fanfiction that tends to be more common there then on Ao3 or Tumblr.

I wish it didn’t have adds in the middle of a page, every time I hit next chapter, ect.

I wish it didn’t have pointless captchas every time I  start a new session.

I wish it had a visually pleasant format for presenting the stories for you to select from. Whether they’re search bar results, the results of a filter search, stories in a collection, or stories on an author’s page. It’s the same aggressively bad format and makes it hard to tell them apart from eachother and hard to pick which one(s) I want.

I wish stories could have longer summaries. They are so short that it forces everyone to sound same-y and rushed, and if an author want to include trigger warnings they have to be even shorter.

I wish there was a way to exclude/search/mark trigger warnings.

I wish you could select more than four characters in the filters, I wish authors could TAG more than four characters.

I wish there was a way to search/mark platonic relationships instead of only romantic.

I wish there was a way to search/mark a single character in multiple separate relationships eg. [A/B] and [A/C]

I wish there was a way to search for certain tropes or cliches without relying on pure hope that either the author used part of their limited summary space to mention it, or that someone else already made a collection for that trope and managed to find at least a few (they never have all) of the fics containing it.

I wish you could copy and paste the text without having to switch to the mobile version of the website. I don’t personally know why you can’t do this on desktop but I’ve heard other people say it’s because it’s actually generated as a pdf instead of genuine text.

I wish there was a way to open the whole story in one tab instead of being forced to go through it other by chapter.

I wish there was a way for authors to include author’s notes without it being part of the chapter.

I wish there was a way for authors to respond to comments without doing so in the author’s notes.

I wish the formatting wasn’t so aggressively bad as to be actively harming the quality of the story. I have found stories that were posted on both Ao3 and ff.net and read them on both websites, no differences in text, in punctuation, in anything at all, but on Ao3 it flowed much better, was much easier to read, and I’d have given a higher estimation of the author’s skill level if asked. All because it wasn’t actively being dragged down by ff.net’s formatting.

There are probably a fair few more things that I’m just not managing to think of at the moment, but considering there’s no way ff.net will ever be fixed and is in fact very likely to completely implode and die in the near future, I think this is good enough.

Sorry for the essays every time I’m allowed to write an answer but you’re asking loaded questions.

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Question (Ao3):

If possible, please explain your typical process for finding fanfiction to read.

Answer:

Whenever  I get interested in a new show I’ll latch on to a concept or particular character interaction eg. Villain!hero, ensemble finds out secret, character A needs a hug, character A adopted by character B, character C & character D friendship & hurt/comfort. Sometimes (especially if it’s a lesser known thing/has a small fandom) I’ll be as vague as favorite character, timetravel, wingfic, or soulmate AU. Whatever it is that I’ve latched onto, I’ll enter it into the search bar on whatever browser I’m using, and open whatever links look most appealing in a new tab, giving preference to stories from any website except Wattpad* over any king of collection, and links to Ao3 preference over links to anything else.

From there I work my way through everything that was offered, and as I do so I eventually come across new things that capture my interest, and —in general terms— follow them.

On Ao3 I’ll head back up to the top of a fic I really enjoyed and click on the tag for whatever little bit of it I enjoyed the most, and begin browsing again from there, refining with filters and following links and tags from new stories.

I will filter out reader inserts, original characters, y/n, or notps if I keep seeing too many of them in my results, but otherwise I’ll just scroll past them. Sometimes if I’ve been reading for a specific idea for a while I’ll sort by word count and begin going through it from least to most to see if there’s anything I’ve been missing because it’s not been updated recently. And sometimes if I feel like reading fanfiction but don’t have anything particular in mind I’ll just head to the Ao3 page for the main character (more reliable then a fandom tag, if a franchise exists in multiple forms of media they’ll usually each have their own tag the fanfiction will be scattered accordingly) of one of the bigger fandoms I’m in and start trawling the page for anything that looks interesting.

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Question:

Please use the box below to write any thoughts or opinions on this questionnaire or the subjects within it that you did not get the chance to share.

Answer:

On how I find fanfiction to read on websites that are not ff.net or Ao3, copy-pasted from the original all-encompassing answer I wrote before I realized you were looking for answers only about the website you’d just been talking about:

Wattpad (which I did not select when asked what websites I search for fanfiction on because I never willingly go looking there I just end up on it sometimes to my great frustration.):

Whatever idea it is that I’ve latched onto, I’ll enter it into the search bar on whatever browser I’m using, and open whatever links look most appealing in a new tab, giving preference to stories from any website except Wattpad* preference over tags or other collections, and links to Ao3 preference over links to anything else.

(*If links to Wattpad make it onto the first page of results, I’ll take whatever meager scrapings I was offer from other websites, then give up the search as a lost cause and pick a new idea as a I mourn the lack of the content I want to read. Only if I am already very attached to an idea and very desperate will I follow a link to wattpad. That website is the only one I have ever encountered worse then ff.net and it is an absolute unnavigable MESS.)

Tumblr:

If I’m on tumblr (mobile, I’ve never used tumblr on the computer but I don’t think it works the same) then once I find one thing to read that I like, I’ll begin tapping my way through the suggested posts on the bottom based on whatever looks the most interesting from what little I get to see of it. Sometimes I’ll end up on a specific blog or a specific tag, and I’ll just scroll through reading anything that looks even mildly cool regardless of whether it has anything to do with what I was originally searching for or not, until I click on a specific post for some reason (usually a “read more“), and then I’m back to navigating by suggested posts again. I tend to wander through fandoms and subfandoms a lot faster here, trading one interesting idea for the next as they’re presented to me. It’s a lot of fun and I sometimes discover completely new stuff! I’ll often end up following Authors I really like so that their stuff will end up in my feed, and this is really the only site on which I do that.

Just another couple comments on my general media consumption habits that I didn’t really see anywhere else to put:

Everything I stated about my fanfiction habits when getting into a new show applied if it’s a movie or book or game too, it’s just that 90% of the time it’s a show. My favorite movies are documentaries so I’m not sure what fanfiction for them would even look like, I prefer video essays and theories for games, and I just don’t read as many books as I used to. About half of the remaining 10% of the time is actually probably musicals.

It’s not unusual for me to have seen only three or so episodes of a show, but to have read insane amounts of fanfiction for it. I have difficulty sitting down to actually watch a show, and I usually only expend the effort for my absolute favorite series, so most of my interaction with most shows ends up being fanfiction. Getting into a new show because I came across some really good fanfiction for it is not uncommon either.

#100daysofwriting #how do I tag this #scribblings from the deep #I guess #fix tags later

[kaus-quietis]

Dear Anon, It is not a weird question at all, as this scene demands careful inspection indeed, given that the differences between the manga and the anime are significant, especially in pretty much everything related to Fedya. Besides a bunch of other differences I already wrote out in my essay (to be published, hopefully, in June! *update* here it is, my Fedya essay, at last), it is true that Fedya never breaks his cello in the manga's ch47, whereas in the anime's S3ep9 we see him looking down to his broken cello at his feet, at the end of the episode. Here is a quick comparison of the last scenes in which the cello is visible in the manga and the anime:

We can see how the anime decided to include an entirely new scene, with a different message. In my opinion, this adds mischaracterization to anime!Fedya, but I shall talk more about that in my essay as well. 

Regarding Volume 19's omake, which you reference, it is important to note that the scenes from both pages happen in Sigma's dream, thus they never happened in the main timeline's "reality". The assumption that Fedya shipped his cello to Japan is plausible on its own, nonetheless, while the "for a mission" part remains debatable, as the manga never explained the purpose of the cello recital so far. In my essay, I offer an interpretation in which what I deduced was its purpose becomes clear, so I am rather eager to share it in the future essay post. Either way, I find it very interesting that Sigma dreamed of his co-workers and that this included a reference to Fedya’s cello being transported, because, according to Fedya in ch75, Sigma was born from the Book 3 years prior to the moment he and Dazai ended up in Meursault. That points us to a timeline where both Sigma and Kolya were already working with Fedya during the Cannibalism plan (since its very start), and even before. I think the fandom would be blessed if someone were to make a chronology of the main events and verify this. Also, since Fedya in Sigma’s dream explains to him that his cello was already shipped to Japan, we may ask ourselves where were they? – in Russia? or somewhere else in Europe? – given how it sounds that his cello was shipped to an external place, internationally. Imagine Kolya and Sigma together with Fedya in Russia, then sneaking into the Japanese territory together. Who knows? But then again, speculating on this “info” is like walking on thin ice, because:

As for why exactly Fedya captured Katsura, that too is never addressed directly in the manga, except for Fedya’s own words to Katsura (“I simply wished to ask about our mutual acquaintance. The Detective Agency, that is”), which tell us it’s all about gaining information again (Fedya is an information “trader” after all, besides a million other things). What is more, we as the readers are conveyed the following message by the simple fact that Katsura ended up in Fedya's basement (yes, basement, not a luxurious room full of stained glass, but this I can forgive because the scene was gorgeous animated in that room): Fedya can easily capture even those freshly arrested by the government (Katsura was arrested in ch40). Does this imply he got his own pawns in the government? An open possibility, I'd say. Or a given fact, at this point, but, until the theories are confirmed kjdsfgnjkf​

Thank you for sending me this lovely question, I greatly enjoyed answering it and I hope you don’t mind me answering here, on my main blog! I write my own thoughts / analysis stuff on main.

Bonus info I share again because my love is infinite: Fedya’s song is called “Bird of Death” in the BSD Season 3 OST, and there are two variants of it, which you can find both on youtube and spotify searching by their Japanese titles: 

チェロとピアノの為の「死の鳥」 (”Bird of Death” for Cello and Piano)

弦楽オーケストラとハープの為の「死の鳥」 (”Bird of Death" for String Orchestra and Harp) (((please note I sadly do not speak Japanese, and these title translations are from the BSD wiki)))

/// Anon’s full question is transcribed below the cut:

Anon to @kaus-fangirlis​​ (my sideblog): “Weird question: does Fedya break his cello in the manga? I saw that scene in the anime but I can't find it in the manga :( I mean,, yeah, Fedya sent it to Japan for the sake of a 'mission' (if the omake can be taken as canon) and it'd hella funny if he played it once and smashed it to pieces (why did he even kidnap that guy lmao) But I think he must attach a lot of importance to it and sent it on before he left for Japan,,, so he must have kept it somewhere safe before he went off to prison, broken or not....

tl;dr, if the cello-breaking scene is in manga please tell me in which chapter,,, it's very /important/ information I need to know ＞﹏＜”

#bsd fyodor #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd fyodor dostoyevsky #bsd analysis #bsd fyodor dostoevsky #Fedya's cello #analysis #Lav answers #Cello Anon #pretty anon visitors #cello scene #more like an info-post tbh #but nonetheless I shall tag it like this #I never answered an ask so fast gkfjgnfdjkgndfjkx #thank you anon this is a worthy flower to add to his altar lmao #I went full CRAZY THEORY DUDE on this one and wrote way too much but gkdfjsgnskfj yeah #your TLDR is - chapter 47 gkjdfhgk

[kalebishop]

Hope in a Mean World

The January 06 2021 US Capitol Attack. The Decaying Great Barrier Reef. Cancel Culture. Mean comments in social media. Asians attacked on American streets. COVID-19. The death toll of COVID reaching 2.5 million and rising.

 The list of deaths, disasters, conflicts, violence and wars from recent reports to the archived ones goes on and on, and the future may bring many more. Everyday there is always something new reported in the news, and without a doubt, there will always be something awful, unbelievable, or shocking, and only once or twice within an entire 30-minute news program will there be good news, unless of course it’s a magazine program. Some people view this as just information on the current events, but there are others who have been overexposed to these images of violence and abuse, thus they have begun to believe that we live in an evil world, a dangerous world…  a mean world.

 The phenomenon when someone believes in such a world is called ‘The Mean World Syndrome’; a hypothesized cognitive bias coined by George Gerbner back in the 1960s. The effects tend to overwhelm us viewers and consumers of these forms of media and it draws us toward the conclusion that we are living in a hostile world. It’s not just found in the news, but it’s also found in our Film, TV, and with the dawn of the internet the channels which violence can migrate to have expanded to social media, web searching, and video games. With the evolution of technology comes the evolution of communication, both good and bad, and in the latter’s case, it has invented cyberbullying, hate mails, hate messages, mean comments, and cancel culture, because of its ease of use to communicate such messages to others.

 Messages of violence tend to spread and evolve. For example, Trump’s Supporters attacked the capitol after Trump himself ordered them to do so. News reports and live coverage followed later of masses of people banging on the doors, breaking windows, and injuring police just to seek the heads of the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi herself. What followed were gunshots, tear gas, control tactics, and the arrival of military reinforcements. There were also reports of vandalism to have occurred. There was also a scaffold of a hanging station found.

 Another example, is the picture posted by a Chinese government official about an Australian soldier about to kill an Afghanistan child at knifepoint. This is in reference to the controversial misconduct of Australian soldiers killing innocent civilians during their fight against terrorism in the country. Several Ministers, most notably the Prime Minister, The Opposition Leader, and the Foreign affairs minister, were outraged by this post and called China to take the post down and demand an apology from them. That same week, a Chinese Embassy Ambassador to Australia named Wang Xining testified in the media that he was disappointed in the Prime Minister’s reactions to the work of an ‘artist’.

 Not just through tech, but through the people it evolves too, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, the people have evolved to abuse technology, or technology was upgraded to be easy to use for everyone, including the abusers.

 With that said, with all the facts, news reports and evidence, is the world truly evil, irredeemable, and hopeless?

After a long hard fight against COVID-19 from December 2019 until the present, countries such as Australia and New Zealand have reported minimal cases and have begun opening up again. Millions of frontline workers have been working tirelessly day and night and finally they are starting to receive vaccinations that they need including those from the Philippines, and soon the rest of the world will too, and at this rate we are expecting countries to start reopening by June of this year. With pandemic protocols, people have found new ways to generate income while making time for the things that matter to them such as spending time with their family, picking up or continuing a hobby, or finally getting a good night’s rest. A CNN Philippines news report, which was at March 10 2021, at the time of this essay’s first draft, was about the entertainment industry finally resuming production and will put over 400,000 workers back in a job. Finally, you, the reader, are a survivor of this COVID-19 pandemic and are still fighting to live another day; it’s a big news to keep celebrating about, even if it isn’t mass media worthy.

 The Mean World Syndrome, although growing in numbers, is simply a cognitive bias that could greatly affect our mental health if subjected to repeated exposure to such images of violence. However, it can also be countered by exposure and acknowledgement of a lot of good news and counting the good facts, or in other words, counting your blessings, and counting the things that bring you love. We don’t really do that every day, I understand, we are either so caught in our busy lives, or there truly is a lack of a newsletter which provides hopeful news bulletins all the way. If a journalist’s job is to cover relevant stories and events, then it’s our job to keep ourselves updated with the good things around us, and yes, it’s really a 24/7 full-time job to be our own ‘good news’ journalists.

 Don’t know where to start? First, you’re alive. Second, You have people who love you. Third, you’re working towards a better version of yourself today. Every smallest good news counts, heck even entertainment news covers every sensitive detail about celebrities, and gossip covers every little flaw in a person, so why can’t something as simple as a baby’s first laughter be news?

#MeanWorldSyndrome #Essays #Hope #USCapitol #Love #PeaceofMind #MediaStress #Despair #Misery #NegativeThoughts #Happiness #KeepCalm #Countingyourblessings

[addierose444]

Back to Campus: Spring 2021

It has been 10 long months since I last stepped foot on the Smith College campus (or out of my home state for that matter). I am now officially back! Hooray! As I said in a recent post, I was prioritized for early arrival due to my job in ResLife as a Community Advisor. As I only just got here and am far from being settled in, this post is mostly just about the process. Hopefully this year I will actually post a room tour of sorts! (Last year, I literally only posted a photo of my emptied out room).  

Back in mid-December, I signed up for an arrival slot (2:00 on Friday the 22nd of January). I was so excited about returning to campus that I started packing quite a while ago. To make the packing process easier in the future, I created an extensive packing list. To read my college essentials guide, click here. On Friday, my dad drove me to Smith. Before returning to campus, we stopped by the house of some family friends to grab the rest of my dorm essentials. Since Massachusetts considers my state (Vermont) high-risk, I wasn’t allowed to move directly into my spring housing. At this point in time, Massachusetts and Hawaii are the only states with low-risk status. 

My house, Parsons, has been using Discord for our virtual house community. You can read about the other apps I use in (remote) college here. As I was the first one on campus, I decided to keep my residents updated on the check-in and quarantine process. This was not part of my job in ResLife, but it definitely felt relevant to that work. Even though I am a returning student and in ResLife, I didn’t fully know what to expect and figured others would appreciate a student’s perspective. I was already planning on writing this blog post but decided to just compile my updates here. For starters, I didn’t see the need for a total rewrite. I also thought it would be a fun and different post style. Lastly, I think there is value in knowing what people are thinking in the moment rather than just reflectively. Note that my updates are written to my Parsons residents and weren’t edited to reflect the audience of this blog. I did add some additional images to this blog post, but most were also sent via Discord.

Friday @ 1:19

Parsons in real life! 

Friday @ 4:07

Just a quick update. I have moved into my quarantine location and thought I would let you all know a little more about the check-in process from a student's perspective. All official information can be found in an email titled "IMPORTANT ARRIVAL INFORMATION". You basically just enter the CC, present your OneCard (unless you are a new student in which case you will receive yours), follow the arrows, and do what you are told. The whole process is quick and easy. The COVID test is painless (you can feel it though) as the swab doesn't need to go super deep into your nose like with other tests. While I strongly advise showing up at your scheduled time, if you are a little bit early, you may be able to check-in anyway. (I checked-in about 20 minutes early without an issue). The only hiccup I had was that I got the wrong room key (my correct room number but for Park House). As it's hard to hear people with masks on, be sure to check the envelope containing your room key and bracelet before leaving the ResLife table (to avoid going around the CC for a second time like I had to). I think check-in will only get better and even going around twice was still very quick and easy. If you have concerns and would like to talk to me about them, feel free to send me an email or direct message me here on Discord. As for moving things into Parsons, it was exhausting as no one was allowed to help me. When you arrive at Parsons, someone (possibly me) should be there to greet you (and make sure you don't stay over an hour). (Some of you may also meet me in the CC as I will be helping distribute keys). See you soon! 

Friday @ 5:02

As for the quarantine location, I am currently quarantined in the Ellery Inn. The other location is the Fairfield Inn & Suites. You can get to either location by way of a free shuttle. (Your ticket is the bracelet you receive at check-in). Students sit far apart with masks, but I personally felt more comfortable having my dad drop me off at the hotel. It is also worth noting that both hotels are within walking distance. The bracelet is also important so that staff in the house know you are allowed to be there. (If you have approved guests (low-risk state), I think they also get bracelets). I haven't learned the whole color-coding system, but my bracelet is red and lists my Parsons and Ellery rooms. My quarantine room is actually really nice. I have a comfortable king-sized bed and my own bathroom. When you arrive you get a bag with a few snacks, water, activities from OSE, and general information (including the wifi password). I will keep you posted on the food situation as dinner is yet to arrive. I will momentarily post the menu that was in my welcome bag. Hopefully, these updates are somewhat helpful or interesting. Let me know if you have specific questions.  

Friday at 5:15

Still waiting on dinner (to be delivered before 7), but here are the aforementioned snacks.

Friday @ 5:34

Dinner! Will let you know how it is soon, but my roommate from last year has said "The chicken is very tender!". Basically what happens is the people delivering the food knock loudly on the door, announce "dinner" and leave paper bags outside your room. Breakfast for tomorrow was also delivered.

Friday @ 6:18

I was initially quite worried about the food situation (during quarantine) as I am a picky eater and didn't get to choose the meal. (It's all based on the food preference form). The first dinner was much better than I feared. The chicken had flavor, was tender, and was fully cooked. The greens were also tasty. The potatoes could have used some ketchup but were pretty good when eaten with the chicken. I don't really like beets, so I just ate a few to try them. They didn't have much flavor but were well cooked. As for the cookies, they had good flavor but were very hard. Overall, I was unnecessarily worried about the food situation but am definitely excited to get out of quarantine to pick my own food among other things.

Friday @ 6:26

Tomorrow's breakfast! Looks pretty good other than the fact I hate bananas. I am most excited about the vanilla soy milk. I just don't get why we get plastic bottled water at each meal.

Saturday @ 11:51

Lunch for day two in quarantine has arrived. Another gripe that I have is that we get a new full set of plastic silverware at each meal. It's the compostable kind, but I don't think it's going to be composted. So far quarantine is boring, but not that bad. There is a TV in the room with cable and Roku. Make sure you pack your quarantine bag carefully as you cannot leave your room until you get an official release email from ResLife. The rooms (at least mine) have a mini-fridge, so if you have food or medications that require refrigeration, not to worry. We got an email today saying that we will be released on Monday at the latest. I initially had the impression we'd get out on Sunday and yesterday it sounded like we may get out today. I am obviously hoping to get out sooner rather than later, but I'll just have to wait and see.

Saturday @ 5:57

Dinner day two. Even though I have been busy with a French essay, I am definitely getting restless here in quarantine.

Saturday @ 6:38

Yesterday's dinner was better than today's, but this one wasn't too bad. The tortillas were dry, so the meal was better and less messy without them. My main critique is that while the beef had good flavor, it was tough. I also think yesterday's greens were a little bit better. Here's what I got for tomorrow's breakfast. I am hoping to be released from quarantine tomorrow, but it could be as late as Monday. Quarantine releases are at noon or 4 pm.

Sunday @ 9:15

I passed my initial COVID screening! (Still waiting on my official release email from ResLife). Just for a reference point, I took my test a little before 2 pm on Friday and got the results email at around 11 last night. (Basically, you get an email letting you know that the lab results are available and are given a registration code to set up your account).

Sunday @ 11:45

Well, I am still in quarantine, but at least lunch has arrived. Noon is fast approaching, so I might not be getting released until 4.

Sunday @ 12:33

I finally received the official release email from ResLife!!! I can leave as soon as 1 pm and must be moved out by 4 pm. Like with arrival, there are shuttles every half hour. Starting tonight I will be ordering my food through the Grubhub app and picking it up myself. I also have another COVID test scheduled for tomorrow.

Sunday @ 1:17

I am officially back at Parsons! (I decided to walk instead of taking the shuttle). Feel free to continue asking questions, but I think this is the end of my arrival updates. See you soon!

#college #Smith College #spring 2021 #check-in

[halseyhazzard]

Scrolling Utopia: Internet Interaction Design and the Posthistorical Subject

Halsey Hazzard, fall 2018

for a class on German media theory

Writing just before the internet threatened to take over the world, philosopher and communicologist Vilem Flusser has often been called a prophet of the digital age, based on his concern with then-nascent internet technology and the applicability of his theories to the so-called digital age. Certainly he did dream of a utopian society in which communications technology would engender a more egalitarian global society, but his optimism was far from idealistic. Rather, Flusser’s work contains a demand that we understand the way technology shapes human consciousness so that we might develop and use it responsibly. A sense of urgency underlies Flusser’s calls for responsibility, and this call has grown only more crucial as the internet has grown more pervasive and social networks have ascended to global near-hegemony.

In many of his essays, Flusser argued that historical consciousness, engendered by linear writing, was giving way to a new, posthistorical consciousness as a result of changing technology. Now, nearly thirty years after his death, it would appear the new consciousness Flusser both dreamed and warned of has arrived, ushered in by the digital technology we call, not insignificantly, “social media.” In this paper I hope to deploy Flusser’s theory of humanization to understand one of social media’s most quietly pervasive design elements—infinite scrolling—and its relationship to the so-called posthistorical consciousness. Infinite scroll, I argue, is a key example of how technology shapes human consciousness and how its effects demand that we pay attention and take responsibility for the ways we are constructing ourselves as human subjects.

Throughout his work, Flusser articulates a definition of “human” that depends heavily on technology, and communication technology in particular. He is concerned with an apparent shift that took place with the appearance of apparatuses, which he defines in Toward a Philosophy of Photography as something that mimics a human capability and which merges with a human operator. The human is profoundly affected by its interaction with the apparatus, and because technology is constantly changing (being changed by humans), what is “human” is constantly in flux. What is constant, however, is communication. Humans distinguish ourselves from the “non-human” by our need to store and use “information,” defined as negative entropy. Flusser makes frequent reference to the second law of thermodynamics, arguing that humanization is thus the process of fighting against inevitable entropy through the creation of information technologies. He puts it succinctly in a 2003 interview with Patrik Tschudin: “a person becomes human to the extent to which he figures out which of one’s functions can be mechanized and then delegates those to machines. What remains, that which cannot be mechanized (for the moment, anyway), is that which becomes human” (“The Lens is to Blame”, 6). Taken together, these statements define humanity as a process of endless becoming, driven by the human drive to communicate and the responsibility to one another (and, as a result, agency) communication entails.

If humanization is a process of endless becoming, one should probably wonder what the human is becoming now. In “Humanizations,” Flusser illustrates the status of the human with reference to the “little brain man,” a model for how the brain perceives the body borrowed from neurology. In the linear era, the little brain man is a “tongue-thumb man,” but Flusser hypothesizes that in the telomatic future, “The fingertips, which will touch the keyboard, will doubtless be the most important organs, and it will become apparent that the purpose of the Brain Man’s entire body will be to support the fingertips” (“Humanizations” 190). While he is certainly right that technology has shifted the focus from the tongue, he was perhaps too quick to predict the shrinking of the thumbs.

In recent years, so-called “social media” has saturated Western culture, with Instagram in particular reaching one billion users worldwide (Carman). Much of this growth has occurred concurrently with the rise of smartphones, expected to be in 2.5 billion hands by 2019. While much attention has been given to the content on such platforms, this impending ubiquity demands an analysis of how the material apparati of apps like Instagram are shaping what it currently means to be human. In 2013, at the dawn of Vine, writer Chris Baraniuk situated the then-new (now defunct) video-sharing service in a long history of visual loops. Like the gif before it, the Vine video takes a moment—no more than six seconds long—and repeats it ad infinitum. Hypnotic and without a true beginning or end, digital loops are “uncanny” and “disturbing,” for, according to Baraniuk, ‘the complete absence of teleology and catharsis within the loop destroyers our sense of self, our idea of progress, our intention to accomplish anything.” (Baraniuk). The logic of the loop, he claims, is built into the very languages that make up the digital world. A similar “narrative dissonance” can be found in in “infinite scrolling,” a design element that, alongside the rise of digital visual loops, has quietly achieved near ubiquity as a feature of websites, in particular those considered to be “social media.” Infinite scrolling might at first appear to be the anti-loop. Where gifs only have one frozen moment to offer up for eternity, the infinite scroll seems to promise endless variety. Yet it shares with the visual loop a lack of teleology thanks to its lack of a clear beginning, middle, and end.

When one loads a page on a website that employs infinite scrolling, one is dropped into a seemingly-endless stream of modular pieces of content, known frequently as posts. These can be images, short texts, video clips, or a combination thereof. Scrolling is particularly popular in app design for smartphones which, with their small, vertical screens, replace the horizontal thrust of traditional text with a relentless vertical pull. The promise of new content just beyond the bottom of the screen draws the eyes down and the thumb up. Pagination, a holdover from the pre-internet days of bound paper books, presupposes a hierarchy of information, an order that requires a linear progression. Page one must come before page two, page four follows page three, and so on. Entries on sites like the search engine Google that still use this skeuomorphic setup, when not bound to a linear progression, are often algorithmically sorted by relevance. Posts on infinite scrolling sites, however, are typically arranged chronologically, which gives them all the same importance. Yet the constant updates endemic to social media mean the chronology of the infinite scroll is essentially an eternal present. It is impractical, if not impossible, to reach the end of the scroll, yet if even one were successful, one would have to find one’s way to the ever-extending beginning, and start the process all over again. The only way to read everything is in real-time. The infinite scroll thus begs to be constantly checked, foreclosing any possibility of action.

According to Baraniuk, this process--or, rather, lack of process--threatens our sense of self. He may be right, if what we mean by the self is the form of human consciousness that has for so long been constructed in and by linear writing: “historical consciousness”. In “The Future of Writing,” Flusser writes

“Writing is an important gesture, because it both articulates and produces that state of mind which is called “historical consciousness.” History began with the invention of writing, not for the banal reason often advanced that written texts permit us to reconstruct the past, but for the more pertinent reason that the world is not perceived as a process, “historically,” unless one signifies it by successive symbols, by writing” (Future 63)

For Flusser, writing is associated with logic and reason, with the sort of scientific thought that thinks of things in terms of cause and effect. History takes a narrative form, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The consciousness created by this kind of thinking is historical. The posthistorical consciousness, on the other hand, begins with the photograph. In contrast to the linear, logical thinking of alphabetic writing, images encourage formal thinking, and make it impossible to understand the world as “becoming.” Linear reading “has the sense of going somewhere, whereas, while reading pictures, we need to go nowhere” (Line 23). Images contain denser messages than linear writing, and demand to be thought of structurally rather than linearly. Images preceded writing, yet in their current iteration as photographs serve to explain written text, hence their post-historicity. This begs the question: if “[n]arratives make history” (On the End of History 143), does the narrative-less infinite scroll and its attendant digital consciousness make posthistory?

The infinite scroll, lacking finitude, has no historical sense of causality. In the scroll, things simply occur. The infinite scroll, then, with its lack of teleology, would seem to be a departure from linear, historical thought. Yet Flusser explains in “The Future of Writing” that in a world dominated by lines, “everything...follows from something, time flows irreversibly from the past toward the future, each instant is lost forever, and there is no repetition” (64). This sounds awfully like the endless streams of content on social media, signalling that the shift between history and post-history is not so cut-and-dried. In fact, the infinite scroll could perhaps best be compared to films, which, according to Flusser, “incorporate the temporality of the written line into the picture, by lifting the linear historical time of written lines onto the level of the surface” (Line 26). We still fail to grasp the posthistorical surface quality of films and TV programs, reading them as we would written lines. But Flusser suggests that “for those who think in films, it will mean the possibility of acting upon history from without” (25). This will become key, particularly if we understand the infinite scroll as a technology that allows us to step outside the procession of history.

Shortly after making this claim, Flusser calls attention to the distinction between immediate experience and the necessarily mediatized fictions of images and concepts, and further, the distinction between conceptual fiction (“line thought”) and imaginal fiction (“surface thought”). The relationship between these two forms of thought is at stake for our understanding of how media shape thought and thus impact humanization. Surface fictions, he claims, are not only advancing due to technological developments, but becoming more and more indistinguishable from reality, which linear fictions are becoming more and more abstract. Ultimately Flusser claims that “[t]he synthesis of linear and surface media may result in a new civilization” (31). The infinite scroll, by extending surfaces indefinitely so that lines may be followed forever, might perhaps be the very technological development that ushers in this new civilization.

This new civilization could ostensibly take two forms. The first, in which imaginal thinking fails to incorporate conceptual thinking, would lead to “the totalitarianism of the mass media” (34). If imaginal thinking does succeed, however, leading “to new types of communication in which man consciously assumes the structural position,” “a new sense of reality would articulate itself, within the existential climate of a new religiosity” (34). Flusser concedes that neither outcome is inevitable, and that the shape of the posthistorical future depends on choices made in the present. The infinite scroll could be a harbinger of either outcome. It is easy to see how the mass distraction and loss of teleology engendered by the technique could lead to totalitarianism.

On the other hand, the destruction of hierarchies it seems to encourage gestures toward a much more egalitarian future. Flusser, who often wrote urgently of the need for dialogue, might see this as a welcome step toward a classless, networked society.

The society Flusser has in mind is one where “dialogue and discourse balance each other out. If, as we see today, a discursive form dominates, which prevents dialogues from taking place, then society is dangerously close to decomposing into an amorphous crowd” (Stroehl, xvii). Media that encourages discourse imparts information from the top down, such as mass broadcast media like television or radio, whereas media like telephones encourage “[d]ialogue as a noncoercive relationship of mutual respect” (xviii). According to Andreas Stroehl, Flusser “believes that dialogue is the purpose of existence. The sense of responsibility inherent in the dialogic relationship between speaker and addressee offers the speaker an opportunity to give his or her own life meaning in the face of entropy and death” (xviii). To be human is to act on this responsibility to the other by communicating, and the technologies humans design to communicate impact the ways in which we become human.

Digital interfaces are no exception. Social media, by virtue of its “social” nature, can perhaps be seen as a step toward this telomatic networked society of mutual responsibility. Still, infinite scrolling is a key example of how it is not free from being determined by the political and economic contexts in which it was developed, contexts which impact the very interaction design of the internet. According to Chadwick Smith, for Flusser, “since objects impact the lives of others...and are a projection of some designer’s decisions, they are thus situated in a relational field, encompassing not just aesthetic and political dimensions but, given their infinitely intimate scale, ethical ones as well” (“The Butterfly and the Potato” 48). The infinite scroll, though a feature more than an object, is a prime example of this dynamic. In 2006, software engineer Aza Raskin developed infinite scroll as a way to maximize the time users spend on websites, eliminating the natural stopping points at the end of pages that inspired users to navigate away. This habit-forming tendency was conceived in the service of websites and advertisers that depend on keeping eyes on screens, indicating a motivation behind the design choice other than intersubjective goodwill. Even Raskin is critical of the scroll’s anti-human tendencies: “It's as if they're taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface. And that's the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back” (Hamilton). When we situate the scroll in the context of the rise of technocratic totalitarianism with which Flusser was concerned, it becomes part of the tradition whereby “The Enlightenment has overshot its mark,” causing extreme rationalism to turn irrational, thus barbaric.

If that is the case, what can we do to rescue humanity from this path? Flusser may give us, if not a plan, then at least a set of guiding principles. If being human is about communicating with each other to stave off impending entropy, and if humans have the agency to create technology to do so, then it is imperative that we take seriously our responsibility to each other in our efforts to design the future, especially considering the anti-human tendencies in what we’ve already built. As Smith writes, “Flusser’s concept of design is not about building a better world, but rather of eradicating from it everything that makes it worse” (“The Butterfly and the Potato” 53). That may not necessarily mean doing away with infinite scrolling, but taking seriously the dialogic potential within it when considering the effects it will have and is already having on collective human consciousness.

Luckily, if Flusser is to be believed, the posthistorical consciousness is giving humanity the means to step out of the stream of progress and look at structures, to critically assess our own history in order to fully take advantage of the opportunities the present presents. As long as technology like infinite scrolling threatens to pull us further into our future selves, we owe it to each other to know who those selves are, and who we will become.

Works Cited

Baraniuk, Chris. “‘The Wheel of the Devil’: On Vine, Gifs and the Power of the Loop.” The Machine Starts, www.themachinestarts.com/read/2013-01-the-wheel-of-the-devil-vine-gifs-idea-of-loop.

Carman, Ashley. “Instagram Now Has 1 Billion Users Worldwide.” The Verge, The Verge, 20 June 2018, www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17484420/instagram-users-one-billion-count.

Flusser Vilém, and Ströhl Andreas. Vilém Flusser - Writings. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Hamilton, Isobel Asher. “Silicon Valley Insiders Say Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter Are Using 'Behavioral Cocaine' to Turn People into Addicts.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 4 July 2018.

“Number of Smartphone Users Worldwide 2014-2020.” Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/.

Smith, Chadwick T. ““The Butterfly and the Potato: Vilém Flusser and Design”. artUS. issue 26, 2009-1, 46-53.

Smith, Chadwick T. “The Lens is to Blame”: Three Remarks on Black Boxes, Digital Humanities, and The Necessities of Vilém Flusser’s “New Humanism” Flusser Studies, vol. 18, http://www.flusserstudies.net/sites/www.flusserstudies.net/files/media/attachments/smith-the-lens-is-to-blame.pdf . Accessed 18 December 2018

#philosophy #media studies #h: 2018 #media theory #social media #h: assignment #vilem flusser

[mathilda-studies]

Starting my 8th semester in uni, I think I have now come up with a way to plan the semester and all the projects so that everything gets done on time, and without me actually perishing in the process, and so, here it is: 

How to plan your semester in uni (and not die)

(disclaimer: I am studying a MAhons in Archaeology at a university in Scotland, so your semester/workload might be different from mine, but you can still take these principles and use them however works for you)

1. Start planning the semester as early as you can (preferably BEFORE the actual semester starts) - I usually make a new notebook in OneNote for this, with 4 or more main tabs for each subject (index, lectures, seminars, and whatever projects we will be doing for the assessment). My index is the most important part, with 3 main pages and 1 optional (timetable, assessment, reading, and goals as the optional page):

Timetable: in which I take timetable from the handbook/moodle/wherever they put it, including day, time, and location of the lectures/seminars, as well as the topic (if available beforehand). This is what you will refer back to every week. 

Assessment: In the assessment I include all the given information on what I will be graded on during the course, from what type of projects to how much they are worth in my final grade, as well as their description/guidance (if applicable). 

Reading: The reading page is where I put any and all reading that is required for the course - seminars, lectures, and overall, which will be very useful when studying for the exam. 

Goals/optional pages: I also sometimes include a page on my goals with the course - what I want to learn from the course, and how I want to feel at the end of the course. Here you can also add more pages that suit you, for example emails to the lecturers, their office hours, and anything else that will be useful for you to have in the same place and not have to look around for in the future. 

2. When you have done this for all your courses, you should also know all of your due dates during the semester (unless you have shitty lecturers, in which case - I’m sorry and this might not be super helpful, but you can also update this as you go). Sort these in order of due date, and make a table of them in this order (see my example from last semester), and now assign them priority/time to work on them (I usually set around 2 weeks/project, but this also depends on the word count and my familiarity with the topic. My categories are: 

Low Priority, will take less time: here a scrapbook and a presentation, as well as the chapter of my dissertation because I could spread that out over the semester

Important but not a Due Date: something that happens that might disrupt/affect the work I am able to do that week, but not something due, here a short trip and a field trip with a course

High Priority, will take more time: essays and projects that are larger or more complicated, here most of my assignments for the semester

blue highlighting the current week so that I know where I am in the semester and what I should be working on

purple for when I should be putting much effort into a project

beige for when I should prep or can work a little bit on a project

3. Use the notes to describe what you will be working on a specific week, but keep this very general and somewhat flexible. Also specify which day of the week something is due, this will help. 

4. Then use this when you are planning your week or your month or your day, to always keep track of what you should be doing, whether you plan on paper or digitally. 

Good Luck, and I hope this helps! You can find the entire text, with the images here. Also check out my post on planning your week, which will be out soon!

#my post #uni #uni life #planning #plan your semester #uni help #studyblr #studyspo #study tips #how not to die in uni #helpful?

[tidalpunk]

Thinking critically about solarpunk

Any and all movements, however casual or fictional as that of solarpunk, that aim for a better society must not be afraid of self-reflection. Spurred to some degree by the discussion that lead to solarpunk being excluded from Wikipedia (both as its own page and as as a derivative of Cyberpunk), I’d like to post a couple of things about the ways in which I think that we should probably consider how we go about our designs and consumption of the movement itself. In keeping with the generally anarchist and non-prescriptivist ideals of solarpunk, I shall make a concerted effort not to address any of the following concerns as “musts” and “mustn’t"s, as tempting as that may be, but as “could"s and “probably”. This is not a manifesto about what solarpunk should be, but a suggestion for how we engage with the topics that give us our material ideals, based loosely on our societal ideals.

1) Attribution, inspiration and creation:

While a foundation is built on a understanding of existing designs, we may endeavour to distinguish between what is inspiring solarpunk, what is being created with a similar ethos to solarpunk, and what is actually being designed with solarpunk in mind during its creation. We are in very formative years, but we could learn to not point at things we like and go “that’s solarpunk!” but rather “that is in keeping with solarpunk”. Otherwise we run the risk of assuming that solarpunk is more defined than it is, and of essentially misappropriating creators’ works for our own gains. (I’m sideyeing the TV tropes page for solarpunk here, but it’s by far not the only place where solarpunk fans have taken the approach of just appropriating anything).

2) Historical Context:

To think we can create something good and beautiful in our present or future without careful analysis of the past reeks of naïvety. Almost the entirety of what I’ve found about solarpunk has been about what is wrong and how we can move into the future, but nothing about where these, our, ideals have sprouted elsewhere in history.

For example, our primary aesthetic point of reference is Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau, for context, was a late-Imperial European movement that relied heavily on a form of Orientalism that fetishised Ancient Egyptian designs and Japanese cultural traditions. Furthermore, Art Nouveau was inspired heavily by/ grew from the Arts and Crafts movement of England’s late Romantic period, which was largely lead by William Morris, who practically straight-out copied the designs of his carpets he’d bought from the Middle East (which you can view, fittingly, at the V&A museum in London). However, it must be recognised that he was a major player in the British socialist movement that ultimately lead to things such as the NHS, and that the Arts and Crafts movement was a reaction to Industrialisation and mass-production, a direct predecessor to our intrinsic DIY ideals.

This is, of course, a very quick note on just one aspect of our cultural heritage, and should I have time, or anyone want to collaborate with me, I’d like to see some parts that specifically analyse our points of inspiration in comparison to our ideals. Topics would include a more in-depth analysis of our relationship with the Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement; the hippie ideals and movements of the second half of the 20th century; socialist and anarchist practice; scientific theories and advancements; the general history of industrialisation; solarpunk’s relations to the other -punks and to Punk; our relationship to afrofuturism; and then to ecofiction and ecomodernism. And others, taking for example the note from Adam Flynn’s solarpunk manifesto:

“Solarpunk draws on the ideal of Jefferson’s yeoman farmer, Ghandi’s ideal of swadeshi and subsequent Salt March, and countless other traditions of innovative dissent.”

Such things have been brought up here and there, and I shall provide links to essays that are relevant, but a continuation of these analyses could only strengthen solarpunk. I intend, at the least, to create a masterpost at some point (?) of critical pieces relevant to solarpunk and historical context, and any help towards that would be wonderful.

3) Present context:

One of the great things, I believe, about solarpunk, is that we are willing to look in any and all directions to find resources to inform our practice and theory. This, however, is best done with an awareness of how interacting and being inspired by different groups affects us and them.

For example, in our endeavours to be open and accessible, we reach for ideas from indigenous populations. While considering them is definitely good, to most effectively promote sustainability of societies, autonomy, well-being and environments, treading carefully so as not to repeat the behaviours of the colonialist principles that come before us is vital. Should we wish to take into our theories or practice any of the concepts of these groups, we must make sure we have their full consent, cooperation, and leadership, because to do otherwise is to exploit or endanger them. To recognise individuals who are already are members of these groups who are already within our group is paramount. I’m personally fond of the relationship @noaasanctuaries have with Native American groups, but I’m no expert and would rather refer to the expertise of others.

On the other side of the same coin is the consideration of our relationships to Class. For example, I make a conscious effort to not promote luxury hotels on here, including the ones that are set up to look like traditional huts, as their exclusiveness, excess, and exploitation is in direct antithesis to our values. I’m sure I’ll make mistakes, and I’d like to hope that followers that notice my mistakes will point them out to me. To romanticise aesthetic over other considerations is to make solarpunk vulnerable to becoming yet another trend with all the superficiality and none of the substance. It is a tricky line to tread, as the rich will also more readily have access to the futuristic technology and resources we would like to eventually have available to all so not all fancy things can be discounted. And stealing some of the ideas of the rich so as to make them accessible rather than exclusive isn’t a bad thing, as far as I’m concerned. Again, this is about critical consumption, rather than “this is bad and this is good”.

Reading list:

Elvia Wilk: “Is Ornamenting Solar Panels a Crime?” - a broad contextualisation of solarpunk, which I thoroughly recommend. April 2018. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/191258/is-ornamenting-solar-panels-a-crime/

Sam Keeper (@stormingtheivorytower, currently on hiatus) : “Hack monuments: the methods of -punk” - another read I particularly recommend, August 2017  http://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2017/08/hack-monuments-methods-of-punk.html

@solarpunks​ : “solarpunk: a reference guide” - what it says on the can, dating from 2008 onwards. Last update Feb 2018. https://medium.com/solarpunks/solarpunk-a-reference-guide-8bcf18871965

Adam Flynn: “solarpunk: notes toward a manifesto”, 2014 https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/

Andrew Dana Hudson: “on the political elements of solarpunk”. The main premise of this essay, as with most, is speculative, but you get critical notes every now and then, such as “Nat Geo poverty porn”, fetishism of slums. https://medium.com/solarpunks/on-the-political-dimensions-of-solarpunk-c5a7b4bf8df4

Connor Owens: “What is Solarpunk?” https://solarpunkanarchists.com/2016/05/27/what-is-solarpunk/

#i need to correct the anarchist one as the word utopia is from greek not latin #but whatever #solarpunk #critical theory #ive had this in my drafts for frickin forever and i think im ready to click the post button now #long post #talk #community

[katandabbieslife]

Please stand up for yourself... Also small update...

Hi everyone, this is Abbie. Just thought I’d wish everyone a late Happy New Year and I hope you all had a great Holiday, whichever you celebrate. I also want to let you know I am working on the update I promised back in August. We both got hammered with School this past semester and things got way busier than expected. After writing papers and essays for school, it’s hard to sit down and write more. I know that’s no excuse, but god you guys, it’s gets hard to do sometimes. We’re both trying really hard to get back here and post more. Kat has even thought of something new to try, but more on that after I get the really big update out of the way. On a more serious note, I want to talk about something that happened to me on New Years Eve. Since we were back on the farm for Winter Break, Kats parents were having a New Years Eve party for some friends and clients. Kat and I decided to go to their party for a while and have some fun. Kats mom and dad were great hosts and nearly brought me to tears a few times when introducing Kat and I. They called us ”Their girls” or referring to me as “my/our future daughter in law”. One woman told Katherine “I thought I saw your son with his arm around another girl?” and Katherine told her “Oh, that’s Jessica. This is Abbie, My Daughters future wife.” It made me so happy I almost squealed multiple times. The serious part happened when I was walking around, mingling with several of the family friends I’ve met over the past couple years. I was standing and watching the celebration that was on the TV, enjoying my wine and I felt someone grab my ass and give it a squeeze. First thought was Kat, then I realized that hand was quite a bit bigger so I pulled away thinking it was Rick. As I turned, I saw a larger, balding man in his 60’s maybe? He had a smile on his face and just said “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” As he pointed to another woman about 15 feet away who was close to a foot taller than me.How are you going to confuse a girl the size of a child for a woman who is 5′7″ to 5′9″? He just kept smiling and staring at me and never apologized, just a piss poor excuse. I just told him it was ok and I moved away as quickly as I could. I wasn’t sure who he was, I just knew that everyone was either a client or a family friend and I didn’t want to cause any trouble so I just kept my mouth shut. As many of you know, I’ve been the cause for so much drama in my life. I avoided the guy the rest of the night and after midnight, I told Kat I was ready to go home. We invited Rick and Jess over to our house to party some more and I told Kat on the way home what had happened. Kat was furious and yelling, not at me, but at the situation, She told me I should have told her mom and dad and I told her I did not want to cause trouble or ruin the party. I didn’t know who the guy was and the last thing I wanted to do was cost their business money. Kat slammed on the brakes and we slid to a stop and she was getting ready to throw it in reverse and go back to the party and raise hell. I convinced her not to and she apologized for being loud and put her arm around me for comfort. She told me I should stand up for myself and I told her I know, but again, that I did not want to cause trouble. I guess I’m used to being treated like crap by men, I mean hell, I have been my whole life. My Dad, boys in school, even boys in high school cheated on me, I was physically abused a few times, Freshman year of college was hell. Shutting up and dealing with it my own silent way has been my go to for shitty things for so long. Anyway, we got home, grabbed wine, and a bottle of Vodka and went to the hot tub. About 15 minutes later, we heard Rick and Jessica pull up out front. Kat texted to let them know we were out back in the hot tub and we spent the night drinking, smoking, and just having a good time. The next morning, we went over to Kat’s parents and had Breakfast before going for a ride. I was eating and Kat finished and went to the bathroom. She didn’t come back for a few minutes and then I heard her step in the room behind us and ask her dad “Can you come here for a minute daddy?” I could hear them talking but not what they were talking about and after about 5 minutes, I heard him yell “Katherine, Abbie, can you come here for a minute?” We had no idea what was going on and we stepped into the hallway and then into his office. Kat was sitting in his chair behind the desk and he was standing next to her with both hands on the desk and his head hanging down. As I stepped in, he walked over and put his arms around me and apologized, telling me he was so sorry I had to experience that and that it would be dealt with. Katherine was as confused as I was and asked “What’s going on? What happened?” and he turned the monitor around to show the security camera footage from the night before. They have cameras in the dining room/kitchen/ family room area where the main part of the party took place. Kat had searched the footage for the old man who groped me the night before. Katherine watched and then “Did he…? Oh that fucking son of a bitch! How could he?” I’d never heard Kat’s mom use such strong language before, usually only shit and damn. She immediately hugged me and asked why I didn’t say anything last night and I explained I didn’t want to cause drama for them since I was kind of the outsider. I saw tears start to form in her eyes as she told me I was family, I belonged to them now. I’m as much family as anyone that was there the night before, and that made me feel so good.   Kats parents said the guy was not a real close friend and that they could do without lecherous old men like that at their parties anyway. They called him to let him know that the young woman he “felt up” at their party was their daughter in law and that he owed me an apology and he was no longer welcome on their property. I never got the apology, but the way Kat’s parents treated me made me feel so loved and so much a part of their family. I had a big smile on my face and tears in my eyes. They both know my history and told me to never keep anything like this from them again. They told me to remember I’m not the little 8 year old girl anymore and that I should never be afraid to let someone know when I’ve feel my personal space has been violated. By this time, Kat was behind me, arms wrapped around me with her chin resting on my shoulder, occasionally kissing my neck. My whole point for this post is to let anyone who might need it to know, please, doesn’t be stupid like I was. Do not keep your mouth shut and stay quiet if you ever feel like you’ve been violated in any way. Make yourself heard, let people know what happened and hopefully they won’t do it to someone else. If you are a follower that’s reading this, thank you for sticking around. I’m sorry we’re not as active as we once were. We’re going to try to get back to it and be more active. The current update/story I am working on will explain why we’ve been so busy and might also help you understand why we started strong and then faded. Please stand by for the new story soon’ish. -Abbie

#standupforyourself #metoo

[orangeeu]

A GUIDE TO TOO’S CHAN

Heya! Here’s my essay about why you should stAN TOO’S CHAN!

SO! I recently stanned TOO because of their legendary Rising Sun cover in Road to Kingdom and because of the man, the myth, the legend… CHO CHANHYUK! Yeah, if you watched the performance already you may know who I’m talking about, but in case you don’t or you just didn’t bother to instigate in some intense kpop boy stalking (but why wouldn’t you?), I’ve made a guide for y’all!!

//Ahem A GUIDE TO TOO’S CHAN / CHANHYUK!

(Oh, and btw, no, I didn’t just copy and paste this from kprofiles.com - I added some extra facts and actual, CONCRETE reasons as to why you should stan him!!!) 

‘KAY, ONTO THE GUIDE!!

[BASIC INFO aka boring (but important) stuff lol]

Stage name: Chan 

Birth Name: Cho Chan Hyuk

Position: Main Dancer, Rapper, Producer

Birthday: December 8th, 1999

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius

Height: 180 cm (5’11”)

Blood Type: O

Nationality: Korean

Element: Fire

YAY! BORING STUFF OVER!! Now here’s some insight on some Chan only tingz~~ 

[FUN FACTS]

He ranked 2nd place on the survival show that TOO was formed from called, To Be World Klass (DESERVED)

He has an older sister

Introduces himself as being “all-rounded” WHICH IS TOTALLY TRUE! He can rap, dance AND produce!!! 

Motto: “Let’s move smartly”

He is a former SM Entertainment trainee

He dropped out of high school

HE HAS A TATTOO ON HIS LEFT FOREARM AND BACK!! It’s hard to see them but alas! I’ve found a Twitter thread exposing his rad tats!: https://twitter.com/CHANHYUCKlE/status/1264654817261125632 From what I can observe, the one on his forearm is of a whale and flowers, and the one on his back is of flowers?? (He even once said that he hopes to get another tattoo on his waist!! YES PLEASE SIR)

He is left-handed 

He and Chihoon are producers/rappers for the dance group CUROHAKO. They actually have a Youtube channel and Chan is in two of their videos!!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uhq2pJA6oQ  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgTT4bBGI78 

His favorite colour is black 

His favorite emoji is the fox emoji 

His favorite food is sushi

His favorite movie is called ‘About Time’

He can freaking guess pizza by its scent!! This was so cute tho, please watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZHi8aNDTuc 

He ripped his pants during a stage but said he was fine with it as long as it’ll get his group views LMAO 

His dancer name is K!ZAROO (but I don’t know if he still goes by it)

His Myers-Briggs personality type is ENTJ (extoverted, intuitive, thinking, judging); natural leaders brimming with confidence and charisma. They’re determined when faced with challenges and thinks strategically in order to achieve their goals. You can read more about his MBTI here!: https://www.16personalities.com/entj-personality 

Part of the self-proclaimed, “sexies” sub-unit consisting of him and Chihoon

He was chosen as the most fashionable member in the group 

He used to have a lip piercing (I don’t know if it’s closed up by now or not)

He hates fluorescent lighting

AYE-- I wish I had more, but that’s all the facts I’ve found about him so far! I’ll update this in the future once TOO ages like fine wine..!

Here are scientific reasons as to why you should stan him!!

[WHY YOU SHOULD STAN]

IDOL TRAITS (why you should stan him as an IDOL):

1. DANCE

His dancing! He’s not the main dancer for nothing! His movements are smooth and natural yet aggressive and passionate..! His strongest point is free styling!  Whenever he free styles, you can tell that he’s simply vibing and embracing his element. It’s obvious that he really loves dancing and that he practices a lot.

People say that he’s similar to NCT’s Taeyong or that he’s “the next Taeyong” but I couldn’t disagree more.. Chan is his own individual with a distinct and unique dancing style. He’s NOT “the next Taeyong”, he’s Cho Chanhyuk! 

Sorry, I just get a bit annoyed when people say things like that.. Anywho, here are some videos of Chan being a dancing legend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLBYBAT1gGg 

https://youtu.be/TWiyBUBL3A0 

https://twitter.com/chanhyuckie/status/1265174013032034306

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZdxA2kewsg 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Eg6AuiNxc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TIR0W0YPLc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QrJ3cCBuzA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GFU0f5xKPs 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CdHHqH51gg

https://twitter.com/i/status/1272322590854590465

WATCH THIS ONE ESPECIALLY!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnx8pmtUwWo                                     

2. RAP

Tough tone that’s got its own colour! Also really good at free styling his rap! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o72hX8R28fo 

Chan’s free verse and him bopping with Lil Pump and the bois.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-elXeK0qYf8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lEetiEqvDI

3. PRODUCE

HE.PRODUCES.HIS.OWN.DAMN.SONGS!! It’s actually very difficult to produce music as it takes a lot of patience, knowledge and creativity! Pretty sick beats with more rad raps! Here’s his soundcloud!

https://soundcloud.com/canigetyourchan

Hope he releases the rest of his works!

4. CHARISMA

A born performer! He never fails to give me goosebumps!! Chan is just mesmerizing when performing, he’s like a magnet.. It’s hard to lose sight of him on stage because he stands out so much! He’s an expert with facial expressions and consistently makes sure to fully immerse himself into the performance; it’s his expression of self which makes him shine so brightly on stage. 

PERSONAL TRAITS (why you should stan him as a PERSON:

1. PERFECTIONIST

A visionary and true tireless idealist. For most people, being a perfectionist isn’t an ideal trait, yet I still find myself respecting Chan for being one. He’s critical when it comes to creating the perfect performance and works really hard to achieve results which reaches his (high) standards. I think that’s pretty admirable - the fact that he puts his blood, sweat and tears to put on not only a good show, but one that exceeds standards for our sake, his own sake and the rest of TOO’s sake. 

2. PASSION

I think that the thing that I adore about him the most is his passion. As I mentioned before, he absolutely loves dancing. It’s refreshing to visibly see an idol enjoy themselves on stage. Chan doesn’t just perform, he lives. When he’s performing, he loses himself in the thing that he loves doing the most and relishes the moment like there’s no tomorrow.

3. DETERMINATION

Even if Chan isn’t the official leader of TOO, his leadership qualities are quite prominent. He’s determined to reach his goals and get through challenges no matter what. Taking initiative, he leads the group in dance and assists others when they are struggling. This can be seen by observing World Klass clips of the boys practicing All You Need Is Love - when Chan noticed that Chihoon was having difficulty with the choreography he called him over and helped him with it. Another example is when they ranked last place in Road to Kingdom and Chan, motivated to do better and prove TOO’s capability of rising up the ranks, thoughtfully assisted in planning their performance and concept and rigorously practiced while leading the others. 

4. CREATIVITY

Idea bank! As an artist myself, I marvel at Chan’s creativity. The concepts and choreographies that he comes up with are astounding and prove to have super effective results! He actually came up with the Rising Sun concept in TOO’s Road to King performance. Because they watched the sun set from the rooftop, Chan was inspired to make their concept about them being rookies and rising in the music industry like the sun!! Say it with me: Chan swollen brain, Chan inflamed brain, chAN GINORMOUS BRAIN!!! 

Overall, Chan, despite his appearance of being intimidating, is actually a real sweet guy that smiles and laughs easily. He’s a soft boi (especially for Chihoon) and likes to initiate skin ship. Members actually stated that Chan likes to act cute and even refers to himself as ‘Chanhyukie’!! So please don’t be fooled by his cool guy demeanor, he’s a squish if you take a closer look..! 

Wow, that was a LOT of writing! That aside, here are some random Chan stuff!

[ MISCELLANEOUS] 

Predebut Chan pics: https://twitter.com/c12c8h__177o/status/1265420652011417601

PREDEBUT CHAN IN BOY STORY ASDFGK (if you squint you can find him in the crowd starting from around 2:48. He’s the one with the yellow hair and sunglasses): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klg8niUUjRQ

Cute clip from World Klass of Chan being all cuddly and cute with Kyungho!: https://twitter.com/i/status/1265176511146934273

Absolutely no context: https://twitter.com/CHANPlCS/status/1264522391008481280

E-BOY CHAN: https://www.tiktok.com/@too_offcl/video/6824848435217304837 https://www.tiktok.com/@too_offcl/video/6819342086857313542  https://www.tiktok.com/@too_offcl/video/6817551314097016069  https://www.tiktok.com/@too_offcl/video/6788981280240454918  https://www.tiktok.com/@too_offcl/video/6784186996119145733          https://www.tiktok.com/@too_offcl/video/6769724996559310086              https://www.tiktok.com/@too_offcl/video/6767461954127744262              

Saranghae saranghae saranghae Chan dance tutorial uwu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F4kQoaMljI

Chan humoring some fans: https://twitter.com/i/status/1249025324689453056 (scroll down below the first Tweet)

Chan English king: https://twitter.com/i/status/1251600155578494976

A cutie: https://twitter.com/i/status/1248594397056217088

Chan recommended this song! It’s pretty good so give it a listen!: https://open.spotify.com/track/7iooxPmnLY6wZynSplHUah?si=fBa5ppR0Qd-klOLa9tvnbA 

O-kay! I think that’s all the Chan content I have for now! Once again, I’ll update  this occasionally while on my journey with TOO! Don’t forget to stan Chan and TOO! Hope this has convinced you!! If it did, then please reblog this to spread exposure for Chan and TOO!

Before you go, please go watch their debut song Magnolia, thank you! Have a great day! 

(P.S., IF YOU FEEL LIKE THERE’S SOMETHING I SHOULD ADD OR CHANGE THEN DON’T HESITATE TO NOTIFY ME, THANKS!) 💖💖💖

#cho chanhyuk #chanhyuk #chan #too chan #chan too #too #too kpop #kpop too #kpop #please stan chan #you won't regret it #i promise #eeeee #he's great #tbwk #wk #world klass #toogether #to be world klass