#by the way: 'The Stray Dog' isn't just a BSD reference

[kikizoshi]

Feeling discouraged, so here's a short, unfinished Godos piece that will never be realised. Nikolai's attempting (read: failing) to write his first draft of a play (an adaptation of Dead Souls, Part 2). Fyodor was going to cheer him up and inspire him, somehow, but I don't have any clue how, so this is all I could get out of that idea. (I do at least like how it turned out, though, unfinished as it is.)

---

The words on the page taunted Nikolai like so many Sufi dervishes. They blurred, swirled into characters half-formed, who jumped and jeered just out of Nikolai’s sight. ‘Find us,’ they seemed to say. ‘Come and see our beautiful lives! And then depict us, reveal us to everyone, that we may truly exist.’ They beckoned him to find them, invited him to view their marvelous exploits, to laugh along with their absurd adventures—and then just as he reached to meet them, they slipped away, laughing. Unendingly they tortured him with scenes just beyond grasp, a perfect story hidden in the periphery of a dense fog.

Nikolai groaned, leaned back, and pressed his palms against his eyes. It was a perfect picture of agony, well-practiced and endlessly rehearsed. ‘Yet all the acting in the world won’t save a lacking script,’ he thought. ‘Ah, why can’t you just write yourselves? Hop along, I’ll even guide the quill, so long as you do something, anything, oh please…’ His entreaties, of course, prompted naught but more formless tittering. Nikolai sighed, and contemplated how effective bashing his scull against the door-jam would be at shaking something loose.

“Is something the matter?” an irritatingly calm Fyodor asked from behind him. Nikolai swung around in his chair, resting his arms on the back, and stared pointedly at his relaxed friend who lounged so serenely on the green recliner, a book nestled under his folded palms. The question itself was preemptive, a set-up, a frivolous first line of a three-line script which always arrived at the same conclusion. Nikolai recognised the offer for friendly—and perhaps even needed—advice, but took it no less bitterly. He smiled mirthlessly. Nevertheless, he played his part.

“Whatever gave you that impression? Was it the willful suicide of the last of my creative expression? Or perhaps you hear them laughing too?”

“Your characters won’t work with you?” (Here, the second phrase, to be replied with…)

“Oh, far beyond that. They won’t speak to me at all! I’m being shunned.”

“I see.” Fyodor concluded and stood, pulling the curtain on their impromptu play. Nikolai watched him go, mildly curious which remedy Fyodor would prescribe this time. “I need to visit the theatre,” he said finally. “Would you like to join me?”

Nikolai laughed flatly. “For what? The stage doesn’t—and I say this from great experience—do anything for one’s imagination. If anything, it’s worse, because you see everything that has been and none of what could be! Can you imagine that? I know, I know, you’re ‘not that way artistically inclined,’ but imagine for a moment that the sentences of your computer codes were jumping and jaunting about in front of your very eyes, and so to fix it, you decided to stare at someone else's pages. Well? Would that help you very much?”

“Most likely it wouldn’t.” Fyodor smiled. “But we won’t be going to the stage. I need to stop by the costuming department. Misha talked one of the women there into parting with an unused costume design for Verenka, but couldn’t pick it up himself.”

“And you just so happen to be free?”

“No,” Fyodor said, a bit dejected. “But I couldn’t stand to stare at my colleagues’ ‘pages’. As you say, it won’t do any good.” He sighed wearily. “Some fresh air and new scenery, tea, something else to think about… I need them greatly. And some company would be nice, too.”

Nikolai stood without ceremony (a shame, yes, but recall his lack of inspiration and forgive him), stretched, and said flatly, “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

---

As it turned out, Nikolai was quite quick to regret those words. A lovely stroll down the uncharacteristically sun-touched streets of St. Petersburg wound down into a bustling cafe.

---

Surprisingly, all went well at the theatre. The lady was quite nice, expressing her condolences and well-wishes for the ‘poor young woman’, and waved them on their way. Pattern safely secured, the two stopped by the next-door cafe, ‘The Stray Dog’, (home to aspiring and established artists alike), for a spot of tea. And thence all collapsed.

#writing #bsd #bsd fyodor #bsd nikolai #godos #fyolai #the projection is strong with this one #I wanted to try a story more from Nikolai's perspective #adding his way of viewing the world into the prose #because usually I do a more third-person omniscient style and Дом в котором inspired me #the Fyodor really wasn't Fyodoring in this one though... #by the way: 'The Stray Dog' isn't just a BSD reference #it's an actual cafe that was frequented by a lot of prominent silver age Soviet artists #and still exists today I believe after having been shut down for a while #it also happens to share a building with Mikhailovsky theatre. which is near-ish to the apartment they're in right now #(their apartment being on Grazhdanskaya street) #also to ramble a bit about Fyodor and Nikolai's living situation #they share a one-room apartment. which is why Fyodor was reading in the same room #Fyodor works on his laptop in the kitchen but prefers to read in the bedroom #Nikolai's writing desk is also in the bed/living room so it's often that he's writing/rehearsing while Fyodor's reading #which personally sounds like a living hell but they both grew up sharing rooms with siblings so ig they're already used to it

[fantastic-rambles]

BSD Headcanon: Fyodor the Wandering Jew

(Warning: Spoilers for Chapters 112-113/Season 5)

Disclaimer: I am not religious in any way and mostly just have a passing knowledge of various bits of different religions, including Christianity. No blasphemy is intended in these wild ravings of an overly obsessed fan.

As always, I can be a bit rambly as I mostly throw my thoughts out as they come, so apologies if it's somewhat disorganized. Many of my claims/connections are very tenuous (in particular, the final jump to the Wandering Jew), and I understand that, which is why this is just a headcanon.

Fyodor has always been a rather enigmatic character in Bungou Stray Dogs. Sometimes referred to as a "demon," and with an intelligence that rivals that of characters including Ranpo and Dazai, he has repeatedly shown himself to be a formidable foe capable of manipulating a great number of people and devising plans that are quite difficult to overturn. He also seems to be very religious, speaking often of God and sin and seeming to believe in predestination. Furthermore, despite his significant role in many of the plots involving the Detective Agency--from apparently being, at the very least, an active observer of the Guild's actions to devising the "terrorism" plot--very little is known about him and his ability "Crime and Punishment" other than its ability to kill without the need for skin contact. Although fanon has come up with a fairly plausible mechanism for how his ability works, it has not yet been discovered or revealed in canon, even up until his "death."

Immortality

"Death" because I am not entirely convinced that Fyodor is actually dead, despite Dazai's claim in Chapter 112. In the most recent chapter (Chapter 113), it has been revealed that Fyodor has many more mysteries to him as Sigma struggles to process the information overload that is his memories. Most significantly, that he has been alive for a very long time: at the very least, from a time that appears to be during the Middle Ages, when Bram was still alive and whole. This, of course, shocks Sigma (though, to be fair, that isn't a great metric for "shock" as he is easily surprised 🤣), but at the very least, Fyodor is as old as Bram and does not appear to age.

At the time, he apparently was passing himself off as a traveling minstrel, and he claimed to have intentionally gotten himself caught for the sole purpose of getting a look at Bram to judge his character as "evil incarnate" (something that would have appealed to Fukuchi for many reasons in apprehending him centuries later, as a prerequisite of the Decay of Angels plan). Of course, this seems like a preposterous reason to throw yourself into the jaws of death, so Fyodor is believed to be a spy and sentenced to death the following day.

Assuming that he wasn't somehow saved/Bram wasn't incapacitated (possibly stabbed by the holy sword for the first time) in the intervening time and his sentence was carried out... that means that Fyodor somehow also survived being killed at the time, while gaining some information about Bram that would have been useful for his "future" plans. (Some more of my musings on that topic can be found here, though the anime covered most of the key points--and especially confirmed my central theory--when Untold Origins was animated.)

If he is immortal, this could also help explain why his ability did not attempt to kill him when they were separated by Shibusawa's mist in Dead Apple: the "reason" provided was that Fyodor was "crime" and his ability was "punishment," and that they were good friends, but if Fyodor is immortal for reasons that are not tied to his ability, then it simply couldn't kill him even if it wanted to.

His Goal

Of course, this then raises the question of how long Fyodor has actually been alive. Although he has lent his assistance to many others, in the end, as he told Bram, he is working for himself. But to what end?

Ostensibly, of course, to rid the world of the "sin" of abilities. But coupled with immortality, which is, more often than not, a curse rather than a blessing in the hundreds of works on the subject out there, it raises the question of whether he is just seeking his own death. Maybe that was even part of his reason for getting caught by Bram: because he wanted to see if another immortal could kill him. But if there is some sort of supernatural, non-ability-based reason for his immortality (or even ability-based but not lost during Dead Apple), perhaps there are conditions that must be satisfied for him to achieve this: it is not enough for him to merely commit suicide or be killed. Thus, all of his plots could just be the means to an end, literally, for him.

Surprisingly, he does seem to have a genuine belief in God, which is quite interesting for a control freak like Fyodor (distinguished from cults that use religion as a tool to control followers but whose leaders do not genuinely believe in God). Even so, he expresses an understanding of and even an admiration for Gogol's desire to defy God and "lose sight of himself."

Perhaps he, too, wishes that he could oppose God and achieve his own sort of "freedom" or "release from the yoke of sin" that is denied to him.

The Wandering Jew

Which leads to the equally curious Wandering Jew (at least, in my weird brain). His relationship to Jesus seems to be a subject of contention, but at its core, he is said to be someone fated/cursed to walk the Earth until the Second Coming (via Wikipedia).

In my opinion, it is possible that Fyodor has been alive since the time of Jesus--if not longer--given the vast amount of memories that Sigma has to sort through of "every single one of [his] secrets." Enough, Fyodor says, that he may never wake up, just as Atsushi needed some time to process the information about the "page" that he received from Sigma. Thus, if he committed a "crime" at the time that resulted in his being cursed with immortality (by a higher power, or perhaps Jesus' ability--I'll try not to go down that rabbit hole 🤣), he could have a reason to believe in God, and he could also believe that engineering some sort of Armageddon might finally free him from his mortal coil. Just because Fukuchi wanted to achieve world peace doesn't necessarily mean that was also Fyodor's goal: especially given how he has apparently been manipulating people for centuries, at the very least, someone as "simple" and idealistic as Fukuchi was probably easy for him to use. I also highly doubt that throwing him into Meursault would have interrupted Fyodor's plans in any significant way, even though Fukuchi seemed to think that it would.

Furthermore, although he currently passes himself off as Russian and has taken on an appropriate alias, he has also claimed to be a "traveling minstrel" without any official affiliations and was suspected of being Roman by Bram's guards... which could also strengthen the connection to his being a "wandering" Jew.

And if we want to stretch it even further, he could possibly be another wanderer: Cain, cursed to roam the Earth for the sin of killing his brother, Abel, with God's mark on him that would prevent him from being killed by anyone else/that would return an injury sevenfold. Which didn't kick in when Ace tried to brain him with a wine bottle, so this is less likely on my list of "possibilities" (a term I use very loosely here, as I don't really think any of them are probable).

Of course, there are also his "last words," which are (allegedly) Jesus' last words when he died on the cross, though I think that is more of Fyodor seeing himself as a Jesus-like figure than him supposed to be representing Jesus. (The Wandering Jew and Cain are already a stretch as they are. 🤣)

#bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd #bsd fyodor #bsd fyodor dostoevsky #random thoughts #analysis #long post #mine

[june16th2018]

things i deeply hate in bungou stray dogs (and its fandom)

tw opinions

(disclaimer: bsd is one of my fav manga ever)

1 • those short ass chapters

like what do you mean i've been waiting for a whole month only to get a 12 seconds reading (jk ofc i respect asagiri's work but that's immensely frustrating)

2 • sigzai, kunikizai, fyoya and every nonskk ship being compared to the actual skk

i KNOW every ship is valid but you cannot compare your goofy pairings to a relationship as complex as dazai and chuuya's

you cannot

also if i see one more zigzag shipper saying that dazai kissed sigma bc he's in love with him i'm going to lose my mind, i don't think yall realize how ridiculous you sound

(and don't come at me skk isn't even my fav ship 💀)

3 • talking abt skk, the dumb shippers

sigzai shippers may be ridiculous asl but skk shippers are freaking dumb (hopefully i'm one of the smart ones 👩🏻‍🦯)

no chuuya wasn't devastated when dazai left, he celebrated with wine and it's canon

yall are drooling over the fact skk has the potential to be an enemies to lovers then ruin the "enemies" part, like cmon the whole point of their ship is to be a love hate relationship 💀

4 • dazai wannabes

"me, a dazai kinnie 🤓" bffr

5 • the fandom bringing up bsd in something about some author who happens to be the reference of a character in bungou stray dogs (when it has specifically nothing to do with bsd)

as a literature lover please stfu i would break my dead ass skull if i was one of those poor authors

6 • "rarepairs (or even popular pairings atp) are valid 🥺" and it's almost only gay ships

i just know yall would have been drooling over margaret and nathaniel's relationship if they were wlw or mlm

7 • goofy headcanons

like wdym you can change a character's whole gender and pronouns just bc it's a hc, and wdym you can change a character's AGE just bc it's a hc???

like if it's canon don't change it idk, i would set my country on fire if i was an author witnessing my fandom changing canon facts about a character i created as if it was their own 😍

just create your own oc atp 💀💀

8 • "us bsd fans are so gay and mentally ill 😝😝"

add cringe to the list

9 • the way the manga is running away from the original aesthetic

again i don't mind it that much, but i rmb when i first watched bsd the vintage/dark academia aesthetic was what made me really into it, before things got as interesting as now

10 • the anime adaptation

obviously, who doesn't

(and before anyone comes at me and calls me homophobic or transphobic i just wanted to say that i'm bi and i used to think i was a trans boy (turned out i'm not but still 🥺🥺))

in conclusion?🤓?? the bsd fandom is like a sort of mha fandom 2.0

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #bsd fandom #bsd dazai #dazai osamu #akutagawa ryuunosuke #chuuya nakahara #bsd chuuya #atsushi nakajima #bsd atsushi #ranpo edogawa #bsd poe #soukoku #ranpoe #suegiku #jouno bsd #bsd tecchou #bsd yosano #bsd kouyou #bsd kyouka #bsd tachihara #bsd fyodor #nikolai bsd #sigma bsd

[aconfusedkitten]

on soukoku and shin soukoku

so @stardreamerl0ve and i were talking about bungou stray dogs and various things about it, and it eventually ended up with us talking about why we think soukoku has so much more content than shin soukoku, despite sskk arguably being the main duo in the series, and this is what we settled on.

for reference, skk currently has over 20k fics, while sskk is just barely above 5k.

obviously, there are multiple reasons, but when it comes down to it, both of us agreed that it came down to their dynamics, and the amount of room there is in canon content for various interpretations and fics.

skk and sskk both have a similar dynamic, but there are quite a few differences. they're both enemies to lovers ships, and each of them have their own appeal.

shin soukoku is still figuring things out, and they don't have that same trust in each other quite yet, so their dynamic is constantly shifting and growing. as the audience, we get to watch as all of this happens, and see them go from enemies to people who can, to whatever extent, work together.

on the other hand, soukoku has a very set dynamic, and it involves a lot of things that fandom has a history of being invested in and enjoying. you have rivalry, codependency, insane levels of trust, as well as things like 'friendly' banter, interesting (however sparse they may be) interactions, and a shared history.

and really, that shared history is where we said a lot of the popularity gap comes from.

while shin soukoku have plenty of interactions during canon, we're seeing their entire relationship play out, from their meeting to whatever way it might end. and it's great! we get to see that development, and create content based on all of the scenes that we're give for them.

when it comes to soukouku though, there's seven years worth of time to write about. unlike sskk, almost all of their relationship happens where we can't see it, and because of that, there is a lot of room for interpretation. and that room gives them an advantage when it comes to comparing them against every other relationship in the fandom.

shin soukoku is absolutely a delightful ship, and skk isn't even the main thing i write in bsd, but soukoku has so many different parts of them that fandom loves (rivalry, complicated pasts, opposite personalities, i could go on), that it doesn't quite surprise me anymore how much more popular it is than shin soukoku, and even the rest of the ships in the fandom.

#cheshire rambles #bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs meta #bungou stray dogs analysis #kind of? i think the tag still applies #skk #soukoku #sskk #shin soukoku #honestly it all started because i was checking the top tags in all the categories #and saw that skk literally has 15k more fics than sskk #despite the fact that chuuya rarely shows up #and dazai isn't The Main protagonist #while atsushi and akutagawa are constantly at the forefront #anyway this probably isn't coherent #because its 3:30am as im posting this #but honestly who cares? #dazai osamu #chuuya nakahara #atsushi nakajima #akutagawa ryuunosuke

[ohgoditssnek]

It's this time of the month when snek complains about bungo stray dogs.

However, this time it is not entirely about bsd and more about general portrail of Lovecraft inspired characters in media. But since im too busy working on my diploma to write an actual paper about this topic, i will default to just being disappointed in bsd writing. And bsd Lovecraft is a good example.

So, anyways. Lovecraft is boring af as a character. I assume there is a piece of media that managed to make him fun that i missed, but bsd Lovecraft is nothing. So most of the others. And the reason is that they aren't based on the writer himself, but rather on one of his works. His nothing but a shallow Call of Cthulhu reference. Silly eldritch tentacle monster. In bsd his just a prop, standing there, being...tired. Yeah, yeah, Cthulhu sleeping in the depths of the ocean. I get it.

I assume Lovecraft as a person isn't very exciting. But the idea of making him into tentacle critter is even less exciting. That's the first thing that comes to mind and it's boring and unimaginative. That sort of interpretation just tells me that you don't know anything about the author really. It's the same thing as basing Lewis Carroll character ENTIRELY on Alice in wonderland.

If you want to make Lovecraft character based on his work at least choose less obvious one. Call of Cthulhu isn't even good. Lovecraft has much more interesting compelling works than this one. I know. I read all of them. I had a hypefixation moment, that's why I care about Lovecraft do much. I know too much information about him.

And H. P. Lovecraft is an IDIOT. He's STUPID. He's such a prick not like other girls hikka that it's hilarious. This man roleplayed with his panpals, he was talking about food SO MUCH in his letters, he kinned every 18-19 century poet and writer, he was an Edgar Allan Poe fangirl. Lovecraft was such a mess, I'd like to talk to him really. He wouldn't like me probably, because I'm not American and not even western European. And we both have such horrible social anxiety, we'd just sit in awkward silence and then I'd infodump about bees and dsmp lore and break him like a victorian child, unless he'd actually find concept of Minecraft roleplay interesting... BUT ANYWAYS BACK TO THE TOPIC.

Bsd Lovecraft is nothing but a plot device. He's there to be big scary monster for soukoku to fight. Nothing wrong with big scary monster to fight it's just. He has no personality, there's nothing exciting about him, no interesting thoughts or interpretations. Just an eldritch monster.

But you can make him so much more than that. He could be so out of touch with reality because his only source of information about society were old literature book, just like real life Lovecraft grew up petty much in isolation with a company of century old stories. Make him complain about humans, make him obsessed fashion, because he wants to look like a real gentlemen, but then he misses the point entirely. Just like real Lovecraft did. You can make his reason for helping Fitzgerald not some shady contract, but his own will to do something for a noble cause. There's so much more that you can do with him, instead of making him into apathetic wall with do a scary button.

But why bother writing all that for a background character who's only on screen for half an hour?

Why bother including him at all? I'm sure there's a way to do a soukoku moment without him in the narrative. Bsd has do many characters it won't make a difference if you remove someone of them. What's the point of forcing in a character if you not interested in making them fun or exploring them.

It's the whole premise of bungo stray dogs, isn't it? You come to see cool autor interpretation. Bsd is borne out of love for literature and writers, but then some of the characters get so much less attention and care then others. And it's not even that hard to write a good character when you have a real person as a reference. How'd come so many bsd characters are nothing but blank pages and troupes? If not for literature, half of the people won't be interested in the story.

Bsd is very strange media to consume. You have to wach anime, read manga, read novells to understand the characters and setting, and then you have to read autors' works and biographies to understand the meta (and because people will bully you on the internet if you don't). But then. Then you look at it as a whole and. It feels like a fever dream. It rushes to tell you all the cool stuff, but then it's either not enough stuff or too much stuff and you have to go do homework to understand what that was about. It almost can't pick want it wants to be.

Bsd is just one big fanfiction that just wants to play with all those cool characters and doesn't want to do boring storytelling stuff.

And idk.

Slay?

What was i talking about by the way? Ah yes, Lovecraft. Please stop making him into Cthulhu. That's boring.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk, i will now proceed to write logistic strategy for a small game development studio in Poland.

#yes snek we know #now go take your pills #Lovecraft #bungo stray dogs #bsd Lovecraft #unpopular opinion #that no one asked for #yes i know Lovecraft was racist #he's also dead #good for him #i forgot the point of him not wanting to take money for his work because he writes for the idea and not profit #i have horrible love/hate relationship with bsd #don't like don't read #i suppose #im just a random snek on the internet lmao #also Mark Twain is a useless character #fight me

[thepiratearcinhamlet]

Hello! I was wondering if the bsd stormbringer light novel had any chapters in the manga of the same story just like.. manga version? Because I heard the manga was the original so if the light novel did not have a manga to base it on, is it canon? I was also wondering if the manga is finished? What about the light novel series? I wanted to know which one was better to read, the manga, or the light novel :)

Omg, hello Anon! You're my first ask~

Stormbringer is, at the moment, only a Light Novel. Since Dazai, Chuuya, 15 is being turned into a manga, and BEAST has a manga, there's a chance Stormbringer, (which is the sequel to 15,) will also get a manga adaptation, but that is just conjecture at this point.

All Light Novels are canon - light novels are a way for manga authors to add more content separate from the main timeline, but are all 100% canon.

Bungo Stray Dogs is an On-Going manga, and as such, is unfinished. The Light Novels are bonus novels/content, so Asagiri will keep on writing them until he no longer wants to. So I guess they're unfinished as a "series", although series isn't how I would refer to them. Each novel is it's own thing - only 15 and Stormbringer are directly related to each other.

If you are new to BSD, please start with the manga. The light novels will not make much sense or give the right context. I'd recommend reading at least about half of the manga, (get through the Cannibalism Arc, which corresponds to the end of Season 3 of the anime,) and then read the light novels in the order they were written. (Please read the light novel for BEAST before reading BEAST manga, as the novel came first, BEAST manga after.)

Hope this helps! <3

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #bungo stray dogs #omg my first ask #i feel like i rambled like a nerd hhhhh #bsd light novel #dazai osamu #bsd stormbringer #chuuya nakahara

[alpona]

Self-awareness of BSD narrative:

...or something like that, I'm not even sure of the title. Ahem.

A story with a concept like incorporating real life literary figures as character names, and reference their works, is already meta enough, but it's also topped with more in-story materials too!

I'm probably 10 years too late to talk about this stuff, but, well, I'll just post this anyway.

*possible spoilers for the manga*

This one is pretty obvious , the book with power to re-write reality is a nod to, the bungou stray dogs script itself.

This whole thing is a self aware fiction within fiction 😌.

Every plot point that feels like plot convenience, the 'story like consistency', are because, they're exactly that! Atsushi is special because, yah, he was written as MC! He's got plot armour, because he does ! All the things that sometimes makes us think 'huh, ok, so that happened now', everything that actually does sound storylike, is because, they are!  If anything feels like it came out of nowhere, maybe it's because they did, like the sky casino for example.

This story is knowingly following the story-like consistency. (Stuff that we don't question and became part and parcel of supernatural anime-ness, but doesn't make sense in real context.)

"bound by the book" is also like how sometimes we, the audience/reader get trapped by the story narrative and don't see things from different perspectives. (After years of watching different shows, many of us saw this happening, right?) And then there are the audience who break free and enjoy a story from their own neutral perspective.

The hunting dogs, authorities can't see the detective agency is innocent because they're 'bound by the book's rule' to not believe them, and sometimes it's hard for the readers to see these antagonist's point of view either cuz we're bound by this story's narrative 😏. Again, there are one's who break free!

(Have you ever read/watched something and in the middle of the story, felt with a jolt that you've literally broken out of what the Narrative is saying? Kinda like Tachihara. I had this strange experience)

This is one of the storytelling issues I often ponder about, How brilliantly addressed! "painted as a villain by the narrative'' - Our MCs, detective agency literally faced this. and in turn, some readers might also be getting annoyed at the current antagonists, it's sometimes easy to forget that in their eyes, the ADA members are evil criminals.

What a take on the theme of villainifying (is this a word?) charactes!

Sigma. Just sigma. Yes.

Literally a character who just landed in this universe,  who's "story starts from the middle". In a way, Isn't that true for most fictional characters we get to know? And sometimes he's the clueless, only normal one, perfect as audience avatar 😂

Random theory, The final main villain will be Asagiri Kafka 😉 lol

Random theory 2 : A character we know actually wrote the entire state of BSD universe that we're seeing now 😶. What we're seeing now is an already altered reality.

Maybe the 'book' was already used to change many things, alter most character's memories. Maybe by Natsume Souseki. Or even Dazai! (Kinda like Beast, he was responsible for beast...? I should've read Beast fully before posting this!)

.... And many more I'm not writing or haven't noticed.

Wouldn't be surprised if the 4th wall is completely broken at some point, haha!  Ok, I don't think this will be blatantly addressed, but still, the meta references, how various storytelling trope is being played with, even an alternate universe storyline, everything is already brilliant! I'm absolutely loving this meta-ness!

So, these were my.... thoughts? Some theories? Mostly rant? Basically what I find most intriguing about BSD. This aspect of storytelling is usually my jam, I think of meta references everywhere anyway, so this series is a feast for me!

Excuse my messy writing, my lack of vocabulary in any language to express everything that's been on my mind, me being new in the fandom and not reading the novels yet... And I'm starting to sound like Atsushi.

Let me know if anyone feels the same! And sorry if you hate meta references.

#it's in my head but can't express #bsd manga spoilers #bungou stray dogs #bsd meta #bsd theories #bungou stray dogs theory #Bungou stray dogs meta

[n1kolaiz]

THE GREAT FITZGERALD

thank u @dazaistabletop for getting me so interested in Fitzgerald's character. ur my favourite Fitz kinnie ok mwah( ˘ ³˘)♥

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's novel— The Great Gatsby— was a love story that involved Jay Gatsby, whose mannerisms and characteristics appear to be quite similar to Fitzgerald in the Bungou Stray Dogs adaptation. I just finished reading The Great Gatsby so I thought I'd just make a comparison between the main protagonist of the novel and the main antagonist in BSD's Guild Arc.

Other than the fact that both Jay and Fitzgerald share similar character traits (ambitious, arrogant, and optimistic) the relationships Jay had with the other characters of the novel and the interactions that Fitzgerald had with the other characters of BSD are quite similar, too. I'll focus on three specific associations that both Fitzgerald and Jay experienced in a parallel manner:

Zelda Fitzgerald and Daisy Buchanan

Tom Buchanan

Louisa May Alcott and Nick Carraway

SPOILERS FOR THE GREAT GATSBY!

in case anyone hasn't read it but wants to :)

To avoid confusion, every time I mention Fitzgerald from here on out, I mean the character from BSD; I will specify my references if it comes to the author.

The Great Gatsby had its plot set around the time of the Roaring Twenties: the aftermath of World War I, the peak of socialite culture, and the growth of a prosperous economy and general wealth altogether.

The Roaring Twenties was also a time of luxurious pleasure and liquor, where people indulged themselves and got addicted to hedonism— the pursuit of gratification.

The Great Gatsby was actually written on the basis to prove how corrupt this age was, and the existence of such corruption was vaguely hinted by various factors, one of which included Jay Gatsby's actual source of income: being involved in the affairs of the black market. This proves that illegal activities were not uncommon around that time, as people did anything they could to achieve materialistic gains.

This isn't a history lesson, I promise.

Both Jay Gatsby and Fitzgerald had grown up in poverty and disliked the concept of being anything short of wealthy. They both worked extremely hard to attain financial abundance.

I presume that not everything they did was actually legal when it came to gaining money. As mentioned before, Jay was involved in criminal activities which founded the basis of his wealth, while Fitz once mentioned that in order to own a gun, he had to kill 4 people. He goes on to tell us that he ended up owning that specific gun's manufacturer eventually.

Daisy Buchanan and Zelda Fitzgerald.

The Great Gatsby is actually centered around Jay Gatsby's rather obsessive infatuation with Daisy.

Daisy was a beautiful lady with a incredibly charming nature— she didn't have much trouble with attracting many men back then before she got married to Tom Buchanan, the antagonist of the story and the rival of Jay Gatsby.

"Her voice was full of money," he said suddenly.

That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money— that was the inexhaustible chair that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it. the cymbals' song of it... High in a white palace the King's daughter, the golden girl...

Daisy and Jay Gatsby fell in love right before he was sent off to war and a few years before she met Tom. Before they were separated, Jay's dream of gaining wealth and status was primarily flamed by his intention of reaching Daisy's social ranking in order to be worthy of her love.

Initially, because of how passionate he was about his love for her, Jay lied to Daisy about his wealth. It was only after the War did he actually gain the riches he aimed for. By the time he did achieve his monetary goals, Daisy had married Tom already. Consequently, Jay hosted a bunch of lavish parties in order to gain her attention, prove himself and his love for her, and ultimately, win her back.

Jay perceived Daisy as a literal angel, void of any flaw whatsoever. He even tells Nick, the main character, that the fact that numerous men got romantically involved with such a lady just increased her value altogether.

But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there— it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy— it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions.

As the story unfolded, Daisy's character was torn apart for a proper, more brutally realistic perspective of her true character, revealing a shallow, selfish lady who solely placed her interest in money and luxury, the things which she often took refuge in when things went wrong. As the plot developed itself, the actuality that Jay fell in love with the idea of Daisy, instead of Daisy herself, was much more evident. And it took quite some time for him to discover and acknowledge the truth.

Fitzgerald's love for Zelda was very apparent, too, except that it seemed more genuine and pragmatic. Not much is speculated about Fitz and Zelda's relationship in the Guild Arc, but his love for her was very deep, as everything he did was for her and their deceased daughter.

Side note: Fitzgerald (the author) based Daisy's character partially on Zelda, as both women were brought up in wealthy families and took a general liking to lifestyles revolving around money and ease.

Fitzgerald was in love with Zelda, a woman plagued by a debilitating illness. In The Great Gatsby, Jay was in love with a woman who was plagued by the deceptive addiction of self-satisfaction gained by pleasure and whatnot. Zelda was impaired by an mental illness, while Daisy was intoxicated by the security of money and prestige. This is an abstract suggestion though. Personally, that's how I interpreted this correlation when it came to examining these dynamics in their respective universes.

Tom Buchanan

As mentioned before, Thomas Buchanan was Daisy's husband and Jay's rival who had similar characteristics in matters of personality. The Toms in both book and anime were arrogant and cunning, which pretty much vouches for their selfishness.

In the book, Tom is supposedly the love of Daisy's life, except that she just married him for his money instead of waiting for Gatsby. Then again, Tom was involved in a love affair outside his marriage with a lady named Myrtle Wilson. Tom cheated on Daisy by getting involved with Myrtle. On the other hand, Daisy was unfaithful to Tom by keeping her love and relationship with Jay a secret from him.

The climax of the story partly revolves around Myrtle dying in a hit-and-run car accident. The grand twist was that Daisy was the one driving the car, and the car actually belonged to Gatsby. Because the car belonged to Gatsby, George Wilson, the husband of Myrtle, was bent on revenge and tracked down the car. He ended up killing Jay Gatsby, and soon after that, he killed himself.

It was quite a scandal, but Daisy estranged herself from such a tedious matter. In fact, when Jay died, she did not even attend his funeral. Tom was under the impression that Gatsby was the one who killed his mistress, not Daisy, his wife. Either ways, Nick described them in a way that sums up what became of them after Jay's death:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy— they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...

It's interesting to note that in chapter 45 of the BSD manga, Tom appears as the antagonist who was later found guilty of murdering his employee, but the blame was originally put on T.J Eckleburg, the inventor of the Eyes of God.

Side note: T.J. Eckleburg was actually an optician who appeared on a billboard advertisement in the novel. This billboard was used as a personification by Nick Carraway, which was meant to embody the representation of a displeased overseer who observed the events that unfolded before him. The Eyes of God has a similar concept: scrutinising everything with an accuracy of 97%. It's a personal speculation, but the Eyes of God was proven to be of utmost importance in the Cannibalism Arc when it came to capturing Fyodor Dostoevsky. Likewise, T.J. Eckleburg's eyes showed how corruption and misconduct never escaped his judgmental visage.

sorry about the quality of the manga panels ;-;

In the manga, Fitzgerald manages to triumph over Tom by betraying his trust altogether in order to obtain the ownership of the Eyes of God and Tom's company. This stands in contrast to what became of Jay in the novel, but the protagonist got what he wanted in this universe.

Keep in mind that Fitzgerald didn't act according to fulfil what justice required; it was purely business. Just like Jay Gatsby put on the facade of a plain, rich man who was really just bootlegging his way to opulence, Fitzgerald wasn't afraid to betray someone's trust to get what he wanted.

Nick Carraway and Louisa May Alcott

If I were to pick a character that represented Louisa May Alcott in BSD from the book, I'd pick the narrator himself: Nick Carraway. Again, this is my personal interpretation, so the association between these two characters is just my personal opinion.

Nick Carraway was known as the more reserved, cynical protagonist compared to Jay. The both of them developed a cordial friendship as the story progressed.

Nick initially took a liking to Gatsby, who was his neighbour. The enigmatic aura Gatsby emitted called for Nick's attention, and in the same way, Gatsby reciprocated his interest in Nick by making the effort to acquaint himself with him.

He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

There were a few times which suggests that Nick didn't like the way Gatsby acted or spoke. Nevertheless, Nick was the only one who stuck with Gatsby until the end.

"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.

(This was the last thing Nick said to Jay before he died.)

At first, Nick was intrigued by Jay's mystical nature and peculiar idiosyncrasies, but found that Gatsby was a very strange, but 'morally bad' man. However, over time, Nick became one of the few who managed to recognise Gatsby's idealistic ambitions; he saw through all the fame and wealth and found a mere human being capable of being entrapped by love's snares. Basically, he understood Gatsby, despite disagreeing with his actions and even his behaviour at times.

As for Louisa, well, it is a known fact that she was loyal to Fitzgerald because of how much she respected and trusted him.

Both Nick and Louisa were intelligent, witty people with generally nice, honest, and reserved dispositions. Their self-contained demeanours make it very easy to get along with the more exurbent/dominant personas of Gatsby and Fitzgerald. So in the event where each pair was isolated from the rest of the world, they had each other to depend on.

Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfsheim, which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure a there’d be a wire from Daisy before noon – but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfsheim arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfsheim’s answer I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.

Such a dynamic created a close bond of trust. Just as Nick was not hesitant to stick by Gatsby's side, Louisa went to great extents just to return Fitzgerald back to his former leading position and work together with him.

Side note: Nick Carraway is suggested to have the INTP personality type, while Louisa is most likely an INFP. Both these personalities are strikingly similar in many ways. They are individualistic in thinking and described as 'seekers' of their place in the world. If you're interested in a more detailed comparison, check this post out

Alright, that's about it for my speculations; I hope they weren't too messy. Thank you so much for reading!

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

- Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby

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