#i miss gogol i want him to save the world

[diagonal-queen]

thungo thursday: how the hell did we get here so fast

'dad never even came to pick me up' SAME AYA LMAOO

they really did make the right choice for bram's va. i don't remember his name but all i know is that he's a seasoned anime va, but it like REALLY fits him fr

i'll never get over how much i love this intro you guys like it's so chaotic and colourful and dark and granrodeo is so good and this song especially is so epic and kishow supremacy

OH MY GOD watching chuuya struggle to breathe is like stressing me out so much that i need to pause and take deep breaths of my own lmao

AYO WHY DOES DAZAI LOOK LIKE A CRYPTID LMAOOOO

also i'm so jealous of him being able to cup sigma's cheek while I cannot

dazai and sigma are so weird to me as a ship because most of the ships i like are '[character that is just like me] + [character who i would have a crush on if i knew them]' but i kin both dazai and sigma so it's like watching the two opposite sides of me frolick around and it's so chaotic

sigma, literally drowning: 😰😰😰😰😰 dazai, also drowning: •-•

if i had a nickel for every time dazai stood on sigma's back/shoulders while they were breaking out of prison i'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

(yes i know i use that meme format a lot NO I WON'T STOP)

WET CAT SIGMA (and no i didn't replay the sounds of him gasping for air, why on earth would you think that)

we have both now <3333333333 thumbs up dazai best dazai

imagine someone asks atsushi how he knew to do things or how he had the mind to move forward and he replies 'the voices' but like he's deadly serious and it actually was the voices

wait dazai literally did that to sigma in prison didn't he shfkjhdhgjkhsk

wait so in the manga sigma can read russian, but in the anime he can't? is bones actively bimbo-ifying characters??? how are we letting this slide

akutagawa doing some goku type shit is the funniest thing ever bro actually said 'SHIAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH'

bones you don't need to remind us all about how much you fucked up akutagawa's death scene ok. his dub va literally predicted that his death would be done poorly and he was RIGHT ABOUT IT

(who would win. gonta and monokuma vs dazai and akutagawa)

if dazai's got a broken leg and losing blood very quickly then why is he grunting and moaning like that huh what's that all about

YEAH GET FUCKED FYODOR LMAOOOOOOOOOOOO

fyodor: because of dazai you realised something about yourself sigma...[describes me, dia, in disturbingly accurate detail]

i'm sorry but the gay agenda has warped me into viewing a man putting a gun to the head of a man on his knees not as a serious and threatening crime but as foreplay. this is what the gays are doing to today's youth. way cup america

brams life must suck. imagine life exactly the same except you can't frolick in the sun, smell roses, wear silver jewellery, finger gun yourself in the mirror or eat garlic bread. also the 'lacking a body and personal autonomy' thing but who needs those amirite

OH MY GOD THE GIRL **WAS** BRAM'S DAUGHTER!!!!! IT WAS HIS KID THE WHOLE TIME!!!!! YOU GUYS OH MY GOD/??????!!??!!???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i don't even feel bad for laughing when fyodor started having his mental breakdown like bro what is that face. is this what nikolai sees every night??? man no wonder he went insane

tfw they fisheye atsushi from afar while he's being stabbed in his vitals

i hope they have a stash of strepsils for atsushi's va in the recording studio

BRO WHY IS FYODOR MOANING TF

yknow that episode when teruko aged tachihara down to a child and he looked rounder and stuff? thats fyodor right now

no but actually imagine being pulled so hard that your leg and arm come off OUCHIES what is it with people and taking atsushi's body parts and like stroking them or whatever. if it were me, the only body part of atsushi's i'd be stroking is his di

fyodor you're a great character but i can't help but notice that you just stabbed my husband and then kicked him in the face. unfortunately you have no choice but for me to ruthlessly kill you dead

so much is happening rn i feel bad for the anime onlys who have to process all this shit within one episode whereas we got several chapters to soak it into our skull sponges

yeah, me too sigma. me too

LMAO DAZAI CALLED CHUUYA A BITCH????? THEY LITERALLY BICKER EVERY TIME THEY INTERACT WHY IS THIS PARTICULAR THING SO FUNNY TO ME

maybe its just cus like 'bitch' is a funny word especially. they can call each other 'ass' and 'bastard' and 'dick' all they want but nothing tops a good 'bitch!!'

hold on bones no. NO. you can't do that. dazai was shot once in the head by chuuya, then he smiles and laments before the scene ends and it's left ambiguous if he dies or not. YOU CAN'T JUST HAVE CHUUYA USING HIS CORPSE AS TARGET PRACTICE

asagiri: i wonder how i should design one order flowey from undertale: asagiri: amazing. brilliant. this will be perfect

well, fuck. im terrified for next week!!

#thungo thursday #i miss gogol i want him to save the world #OR I WANT Q TO COME BACK AND THEY DO IT #OR I WANT THE GANG FROM THAT ONE CHAPTER (MUSHITARO LOVECRAFT KATAI AND KAJII) TO COME BACK AND DO IT THAT WOULD BE THE GREATEST THING EVER #i just need this story to have a happy ending thats all i want for them please asagiri dont

[sorcerersandskillusers]

BSD abilities and how they connect to character trauma

This was inspired by this post: here from @noose-lion which you should defiantly read! TL:DR Op thinks abilities originate from trauma and gave some great examples and evidence.

I wanted to catalogue all the abilities we know that have clear connection to character trauma.

Atsushi: He was tortured from a incredibly young age, constantly abused by the orphanage director, Shibusawa and even his own parents. Of cousre a scared helpless child, who spent his life being hurt by people much strong then him would wish he could be a big strong tiger, who could never be hurt again (hence the bullet proof fur and regeneration).

Kunikida: An Idealist who wished to bring his visions of the world into reality gained the power to bring his writings to life by literally manifesting his Ideals from his book.

Akutagwa: A child who grew up in the chaos of the slums, constantly being hurt or attacked gained the power to defend himself and his friends with his only possession the clothes on his back. He gained a sword to kill anyone who he wanted and a shield to defend himself from any physical threat.

Fukuzawa: After seeing the pain an uncontrollable gift could cause to someone (I know Ranpo wasn't really gifted but the principle is the same). he gained the power to help other people control their own gifts and let them reach their full potential.

Kenji: A little boy who after having his best friend stolen from him by mother nature, gained the unimaginable power of a natural disaster himself, and used it to save his village.

Gogol: A man who so desperately craved true freedom, gained the ability to go anywhere he wished.

Tachihara: A boy who only wished to live up to his brothers legacy gained the same powers as him.

Fitzgerald: Someone who craves power and strength more then anything, was able to turn his biggest asset (his money) into physical strength.

Q: a child who must have been abused a lot and instead of just wishing to defend themselves they wanted to hurt people back as bad as possible, and make them feel out of control

I'm sure their are some I missed but to me these are the characters where its clear what lead to them getting their abilities.

There are also a few characters whose abilities don't fit the mold/aren't their own:

Chuuya: whose original power is still unclear

Verlain: who was a skill lifeform

Kyoka: who was given her power by her mother

Sigma: who was created by the book

All in all I think that the idea of abilities being born from trauma and desire but rarely actually fixing the underlying problem and often making things worse is an incredibly cool idea and fits the message of bsd perfectly.

Power does not solve your problem, the support of others is where true value lies.

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs abilities #bsd abilities #bsd analysis #nakajima atsushi #ryunosuke akutagawa #kyoka izumi #bsd verlaine #bsd sigma #bsd gogol #nikolai gogol #bsd chuuya #chuuya nakahara #bungou stray dogs q #bsd tachihara #francis scott fitzgerald #bungou stray dogs fukuzawa #character analysis #bungou stray dogs analysis

[narrators-journal]

fuck man that yan gogol series... a masterpiece. if you wouldn’t mind writing more for that, could we perhaps get some of gogols reaction? or really anything that comes to mind

Sorry if this is a bit rough, it gave me surprising trouble as I wrote it. I hope you enjoy a peek at the consequences nonetheless though!

You must've fallen asleep in the car because when you opened your eyes, you were being carried. "Wha...Where am I?" You groaned, your eyes feeling heavy and your head swimming with a thick fog of grogginess, making it hard to grasp Fyodor's response that slipped through your fingers like water, "I believe you are home," he hummed, and you could vaguely hear his split-colored-haired companion opening a door, which finally made you look at the house you were now walking into. Your stomach instantly twisted.

"P-put me down," you muttered, trying to wriggle and squirm free of the dark-haired Russian who held you. "Sorry little one, but I'm sure my friend wants you back," he said simply, not letting you go no matter how you writhed, your disorientation fading under waves of panic. You even tried to bite him, but his companion, maybe a butler?, stopped you. However, you were soon grabbed from him and pulled into a crushing hug that pushed the air from your lungs and making your ribs ache. "Golub! I missed you so much! You had me so worried!" Gogol about squealed, but the way his nails dug into your sides and his arms pressed you into him so hard your body began to ache and you could no longer take in a breath for a moment held a very quiet hint at his true aggravation towards you. "Kolya, you need to let her go, she might black out from lack of oxygen," Fyodor pointed out, saving you from further suffocation.

After that, you were held by Gogol, any attempts to move met with a bruising grip on your body. After a few moments, you were forced to give up, unable to get free. So, you just went limp, giving up on life. How did I get here? I was just living my life, how did I give end up like this? You thought glumly, staring at the tile floor with a few tears welling into your (e/c) eyes while Gogol and Fyodor spoke in Russian and Sigma stood off to the side, waiting for an order or something. Your insides felt like they were caught up in a tornado, being shredded by barbed wire fences and debris, torn to bits by the weight of failure, the yearning for freedom and a return to your old life, and finally just the tsunami of despair.

However, your moment was interrupted when Gogol pinched your cheek to get your attention, "Golub, look at me." He ordered, and you did, if anything, just to avoid being pinched or hurt again, "Why'd you run off?" his mismatched eyes looking down at you with a bit of hurt in them, along with a light that really set your teeth on edge. Nonetheless, you took a deep breath and glared back as best you could, not wanting to feed his sadism by showing how scared you were, "You can't just expect me to stay with someone who fucking kidnapped me." You pointed out coldly, making him pout more, "And here I thought you were warming up to me. Now I have to go to extremes." he lamented, and you narrowed your eyes to hide the fact that your blood had turned to ice when he said that, but his expression gave nothing away to tell you exactly what 'extremes' were for him. However, your unspoken question was answered when he dropped you.

However, instead of smacking into the kitchen tile, you fell into a completely different place. Within a second, you were no longer in the ranch house kitchen with Fyodor and Gogol, you were instead in a fancy ballroom, laying on checkered tiles while staring up at the tall, domed roof far, far above. For a moment, you just laid there, but when you did finally move, you were instantly stopped by mind-numbing shots of pain going through your body. Despite that, you sat up and looked around.

The new house was massive, with two halls branching off on opposite sides of the ballroom you laid in currently. From one you could hear soft music, the other was eerily silent, but what really caught your attention was the note set beside you, scrawled in neat, but somewhat choppy English,

I've tried to be nice, but if you're going to be stubborn, I'll just have to break you. No worry! You'll only be in my dimension for short time. I'll bring you out to talk

That sent another jolt of ice through your aching body, but you couldn't quite place why. So, for now, you shoved it to the back of your mind and got up to look for a possible way out. Sadly though, none of the many rooms in the more welcoming hall led you out of the dimension. The best you found was a big garden of sorts, but since you could still hear soft music, you knew it wasn't really the outside world. As your panic grew, your desperate search became more frantic, but after maybe two hours of what felt like the dimension playing tricks on you and true helplessness, you just flopped onto one of the couches in the living room area and sobbed, resigning yourself to whatever hell awaited you.

#sing sweet nightingale #bsd #yandere gogol x reader #bungo stray dogs #ask #sorry this so long #i had to basically reread my whole fic again lolololol #nikolai gogol

[tayaminaka]

'S/O dies while giving birth to their daughter' with Kunikida Doppo, Dazai Osamu, Chuuya Nakahara and Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Kunikida Doppo

His dream of a perfect family was gone...along with you. He tried to pull himself together but as he saw your lifeless, cold body, tears started to streamed down his face. He fell on his knees, lowered his head so that his forehead was laying in the sheets. took your hand and held it as long as he cried into the sheets

Now he's on his own. He would try to stay with his daughter as long as possible but he knows that work won’t wait. He would mostly hire a nanny but if Naomi really insist he would let her babysit his daughter

In his free time he would mostly go for a walk with your daughter. He would go to the most beautiful places and try to tell your daughter something about the places, even if she doesn’t understand anything yet

It was only 6 a.m. when your daughter woke up. Laying in her cradle she reached up her hands everytime he passed by, a sign that she wants to be picked up. After he had done everything he wanted to do, he went to her cradle and finally picked her up, receiving a happy sound from her. He knew that she didn’t want to sleep so he decided to make a little morning walk with her.

„This is the Yamashita Park, here i met your mother the first time. This park was built...”

He stopped as he saw your daughter trying to reach down to some flowers. He got on his knees with your daughter in his arms, so that she could reach the flowers. With her fingers she lightly touched the flower, looking really excited. He smiled, after all she was just a little kid. These were your favorite flowers, he remembered. You would always stopped by them to simply look at them. Oh how your daughter reminds him of you right now. He looked at his watch, it was time to going home. With a slowly becoming heavy heart he stood up...

„...Let’s go Home. You didn’t even eat breakfast, it’s bad for your growing body.” he said trying to brush off the heavy feeling in his chest. Oh how he wished that you would be with him now.

If she gets older and ask him about her mother he would first say that she’s at a better place now but when she’s old enough he would tell her the full truth. They both would casually sit in the living room and he would tell her some stories about you two.

If she’s old enough he would also go to the cemetery with her. When she was little he went alone to your grave but now even if his heart becomes heavy by the thought of you, your daughter still deserves to visit you. Even if you aren’t alive anymore.

Dazai Osamu

As he heard about your dead, a strong feeling of emptiness grow in his chest. Time stood still for him. He didn’t hear the doctor, he didn’t hear the noises around him, he didn’t hear anything anymore. He was thrown back to reality as he felt Kunikida‘s hand on his shoulder,reminding him that his daughter needs him.

He would sit right beside you,place your already cold hand on his cheek, a small tear would fall down from his eye and he would ask only one question ‘What should I do?’ over and over again only to be greeted by a pitiful silence

After your dead he would stop with his suicide attempts. Of course he wanted to do suicide but the thought of your daughter stopped him everytime. He didn’t want that your daughter becomes an orphan, is all alone or even worse, ends up in the port mafia

At night he would let her sleep in his bed. He would look at her peaceful sleeping face, pet her head a little and pull her closer to his body. Oh how much she reminds him of you.

„Look...the Sunset...”

It was evening, the sun was slowly settling but it was still pleasantly warm. He was standing at the balcony with your daughter in his arms. A few minutes ago your daughter was peacefully playing in the living room with some plushies. Dazai was sitting right next to her on the floor while holding another plushy in his hand to play with her but as he looked out of the window, he saw the beautiful sunset. The idea of showing your daughter something new spread through his mind, so he quickly grabbed your daughter and went to the balcony. Looking at the peaceful sunset made his heart ache. Of course he was happy that his daughter was with him, of course he liked the sunset...but it felt like...something is missing...

„I wish...you would be here with me...”

A sad smile was on his face as he looked into the sky,...you were gone and nothing would bring you back. Your daughter yawned a little, she became sleepy. With that he was thrown back into reality. As he looked at her cute sleepy face he chuckled...

„Well...lets get you ready to sleep, shall we?”

With that he looked the last time at the sky and went back in with your daughter in his arms.

Even if she gets older she would still be his little sunshine in his darkness. Maybe because of her, he would finally find his meaning in life.

Chuuya Nakahara

Out of anger he punched the wall beside him. It was hard for him to restrain himself from destroying everything around him.He was angry. He was angry, that the doctors didn’t save you, that his dream of a happy family shattered, that life is so fucking unfair

But after a while his anger setteled and sorrow came. He cried over your corpse as he held you in his arms. He stroke your hair, called your name desperately and hugged your tightly in hope that you would wake up and hug him back...But it never happened

Now he was alone with your daughter. The first weeks were the worst for him. Your daughter would cry the whole night, sometimes even the whole day and he would try to calm her down, give her food or change her diapers but it seemed that nothing of that worked.After two weeks he snapped...

„What do you Want?!” he shouted

He sat down on his bed and covered his eyes with his hands. He tried everything already to calm her down but nothing worked. Everytime she calmed down he put her back in her cradle but as soon as he laid down to sleep at least a little she woke up and started to cry. He looked in the mirror in front of him. Dark circles were already under his eyes, due the lack of sleep. Your daughter cried in the background,with a loud sigh he stood up to pick her up. He started to go around in the room with her in his arms and she slowly calmed down. But instead of putting her back in her cradle, he put her next to him on the bed and covered her with a blanket. A few strands of his hair were in her hand as she slept peacefully beside him.

„Good Night, Little sweetheart.” He said and a little smile appeared on his tiered face as he gave her a little kiss on her forehead

After that night your daughter slept with him constantly. At some points he would sleep on the edge of the bed while your daughter would sleep in the middle in the form of a star. Even if she gets older, when she has a nightmare she would run to Chuuya’s bedroom to sleep there

At some points he would get very sad. This sadness usually comes when something big or beautiful happens, like the first steps or words of your daughter or simply a lovely evening with your daughter at the park. Everytime a small tear would fell down his cheek but he will simply brush it off, so nobody see it.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

On the outside he remained cold, ther was no reaction or emotion but on the inside something in him ached.

He went to you, placed his hand on your cheek and brushed it a little with his thumb. He bowed down to you and placed all last kiss on your lips before he left, promising a better world for your daughter

After your dead he would work much harder on his plan to create a better world for his daughter. Because of that he would let Sigma look after his daughter (He's the most trustful and adequate from them all)

But sometimes if he has some time he would play a little with your daughter. Maybe with some (rat) plushies or other toys but as she gets older the games would start to get mature and mature. At some evenings he would play chess with her while chatting about some philosophic questions about god or the meaning of life and death.

It was already past midnight when he got home. It was quite and peaceful. He entered the room where his daughter was sleeping. He went near to the cradle your daughter were laying in. She held a little grey rat plushy in her arm while the white on was laying right over her head. He corrected her blanket and started slowly pet her head. She was so small, so weak, so defencless, oh he will make sure that nobody ever lay a hand on her. A little smile appeared on his face as his daughter frowned in her sleep and turned around...

„Sleep well,little mouse.” he chuckles „Soon the world will be a better place.”

With that word he gave her a kiss on her forehead and left to get himself ready to sleep. He’s gonna make the world much better for himself, for your daughter, for everyone.

About the existence of your daughter would only knew five people (Nikolai Gogol, Sigma, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Pushkin and himself) because of safety reasons and the possibility that your daughter becomes a part of his plans. After all, having a trump card in his hand is nothing bad...for him,...right ?

#bungou stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs headcanons #bsd #dazai osamu x reader #dazai x reader #kunikida x reader #kunikida doppo x reader #dazai headcanons #kunikida headcanons #chuuya nakahara x reader #chuuya x reader #chuuya headcanons #fyodor dostoyevsky x reader #fyodor x reader #fyodor headcanons #bungou stray dogs #anime

[linkspooky]

Gogol the Clown

A member of the decay of angels, one of the few characters in the story we have seen follow Fyodor willingly rather than being mind controlled or a sycophant, an immediately loud and attention grabbing character. Nikolai Gogol has an incredible impact on the plot, despite only being around for a short time. There is a lot of deeper themes and philosophy to unravel in this engimatic character. So let’s answer Gogol’s question, just who is he? 

1. The Overcoat

As an ally of all clowns I am obligated to give a more in depth look at Gogol’s character. The first clue to his true nature is the author of his namesake, Nikolai Gogol. The author Gogol had a reptuation of a dramatist and a satirist, and blended humorous and tragic elements in his story to make critiques of society therefore we have Gogol, the laughing and yet tragic clown. 

His ability is named after The Overcoat a short story that had great influence in Russian Literature, as said by Dostoyevsky as “We all come from Gogols’ Overcoat.” 

The story narrates the life and death of Akaky Akakievich, an impoverished government clerk and copyist. He lives as nothing more than a tool of the bureaucracy, until he decides to save up for a new stylish overcoat which soon becomes the center of his life. Akaky after fasting for months finally can afford it, and is praised for the first time for the quality of his coat, only to be robbed the next day. When he speaks with a government official and meekly asks for help in cooperating with the police to retrieve the coat, the general scolds him so fiercely for interrupting his time with an unimportant matter. Soon afterwards, Akaky falls deathly ill with fever. In his last hours, delirious, imagining himself again sitting before the general and he pleads for forgiveness, before finally cursing the general. 

While Gogol, a clown who cooperates with terrorists and tries to drag down society has almost nothing in common with a punch-clock bureaucrat who has no life outside of his work, there’s an interesting comparison on how different their stories are. Almost as if Akakay is what Gogol is terrified of being, so much so he runs in the opposite direction. 

Both of their stories are primarily about their own deaths, but the way they die is opposite, Gogol chooses death, whereas Akaky meets his death soon after he deviates just a little bit from the social order of his humdrum life. 

If Gogol is a deviant of society, a dangerous terrorist, then Akaky is the living definition of a normal person. He has absolutely no life outisde of doing what others tell him to do His name Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, in russian means Akaky Bashmachkin the son of Akaky Bashmachkin. Which basically makes it the equivalent of John Johnson. It communicates his role as an everyman. He begins at the story a introverted, and hopeless but otherwise functioning non-entity with no expectations of social or material success. 

He basically acts like he was born to fit in a slot. His entire life consists of copying down documents, he does not do anything for himself other than what he is told. 

“It would be difficult to find another man who lived so entirely for his duties. It is not enough to say that Akakiy laboured with zeal: no, he laboured with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employment. Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He gave no thought to his clothes.”

He ‘enjoys’ his life so to speak, but he basically lives without living. He never makes any choices for himself, or desires anything for his life. He is satisfied but only because he wants for nothing. He has no thoughts of disatisfaction, but only because he never thinks. He lives without worries, because he never takes on the burden of his own free will. 

In other words as a bureaucrat he is not a person. He is a tool in the system. Not only that, but despite the fact that he is a completely harmless existence lacking any evil or bad intention at all, he is almost constantly bullied. He causes no trouble for others, keeps his head down, and does not even retaliate when he is jeered at and yet people continue to constantly push him down. Even when he is on the absolute bottom of society, he’s pushed. The only time he retaliates is when their jeers start to get into his work, at which point the mocking of him turns from humorous to tragic. 

How little humane feeling after all was to be found in men's hearts; how much coarseness and cruelty was to be found even in the educated and those who were everywhere regarded as good and honorable men."

When he is asked to think for himself and change just a few words on a document, Akaky is completely unable to do it. He’s unable to have a self.

This caused him so much toil that he broke into a perspiration, rubbed his forehead, and finally said, "No, give me rather something to copy." After that they let him copy on forever.

When he starts to desire a coat for the first time, something outside of his work, Akaky develops as a person. His self-esteem is raised and his expectations towards lief are raised as well by the overcoat. Which is why, when it is finally stolen, and Akaky is put back in his place so to speak by a much more important general he crashes back down. 

"Do you know to whom you speak? Do you realise who stands before you? Do you realise it? do you realise it? I ask you!"

In the end it’s a story of someone who dies without ever living, and only ever really making one choice for himself which was immediately taken away from him as he was ordered to go back to fitting in his slot. It shows that there’s more to life than simply obeying every single order given to you. Akaky by all means lived what society might call a good life, he never caused harm, he was never greedy, he never missed a day or work and yet we see the only result of that is people continuing to beat him down without any consideration. It’s an argument of what fitting into a society entails, and how absolutely mundane human cruelty can be. 

And St. Petersburg was left without Akakiy Akakievitch, as though he had never lived there. A being disappeared who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, and who never even attracted to himself the attention of those students of human nature who omit no opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly, and examining it under the microscope.

A being who bore meekly the jibes of the department, and went to his grave without having done one unusual deed, but to whom, nevertheless, at the close of his life appeared a bright visitant in the form of a cloak, which momentarily cheered his poor life, and upon whom, thereafter, an intolerable misfortune descended, just as it descends upon the mighty of this world!

If you imagine Gogol as someone who exists in complete opposition to Akaky, trying to live a life where he makes every single choice in the opposite manner than the clown’s character becomes quite clear. 

Akaky is someone with really no free will, no free thought of his own, and no uniqueness. He is always the punch line to the jokers of other people. He is so plain what you see is basically what you get with him. He has no internal world whatsoever, and no designs of life. 

Gogol is a character based entirely around the concept of freedom, where freedom and his own identity, his uniqueness are the most important things to him. Which is why he dresses himself up as loudly as possible, plays the role of an eccentric, and becomes the clown. 

He is a terrorist, an outsider to society because for him that is the best method of being free. 

Society in Bungo Stray Dogs is after all, a lot like the one depicted in the Overcoat. A stagnant, uncaring thing, almost like a force of its own bearing down on others. Characters cannot easily move their position. Akutagawa is a stray dog, an orphan who is expected to die in the slums without ever receiving a helping hand, and the only way for him to escape that life is to become a murderer for the mafia. The poor stay poor, the weak are taken from, more orphans are not saved, the people in power stay in power in the name of an uneasy peace. 

The decay of angels is a group to hasten the destruction of a society that in their eyes, is already slowly decaying away. Not much is known on Gogol’s backstory, but if the alternative choice is for him to become downtrodden on like the man in the Overcoat it’s understandable why he would be so desperate for freedom he would flip the switch and go in the exact opposite, try to destroy anything that might hinder him, break any chain that might slow him down, run away from society so fast that running away and pursuing freedom became his only true identity. 

Gogol’s plan also shows how quickly society as a whole, but more importantly government bureacracy can turn on people the moment they stop fitting in a slot, the moment they ceae to be useful, no matter how much service they have given before that point. If the employees willingly give up their own humanity, the bureacracy will stop seeing them as people, as we see how quickly the government turns on the Armed Detective Agency despite all of their work before this point. 

The agency is the heart of the country, the nation’s pride, and then suddenly they are not. As easy as that. Which is a good existential conundrum showing that the rules you believe in, the securirty you believe you have, the structures in place are not as solid as you think they are. The foundation can crumble at any moment, and you are not a significant loss, because you are not a person to them in the first place. 

Gogol is someone who wants to be free to the point of radicalism. He deliberately disrupts the status quo, not just for his enemies but even the people he’s manipulating. He leaves the corrupt government agent alive because he does not want him to die until he realizes that he never wanted his seat in society, his power, his role in society in the first place. 

“As I grew up, I opened my eyes and saw the real world and I began to laugh and I haven’t stopped since. I saw that the meaning of life was to get a livelihood, that the goal of life was to be a high court judge, that the brighest joy of life was to marry a well off girl. That wisdom was what the majority said it was, that passion was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollar, that cordiality was to say ‘you’re welcome’ after a meal. And that the fear  of god was to go to communion once a year. That’s what I saw, and I laughed.” - Soren Kierkegaard. 

If Akaky is the joke, then Gogol is so determined not to become a joke that he becomes the clown instead and makes others the joke. That society for him is not something that people live in as themselves, but rather repress themselves so they can mindlessly repeat society better. 

2. The Only Philosophical Question is Suicide

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”  - Soren Kierkegaard

Then, what is the center of Gogol’s philosophy? If he sees society as something inherently meaningless that he longs to be free from, if the values of others are just empty ideas to him, if he acnkowledges that every role others might assume, everything they think is important is not, everything they want to hold onto forever was never theirs in the first place: If it is all meaningless to him one way or the other then why are Gogol’s ideals so strong he would die for them in the first place? 

Gogol is someone who tightly controls information. He makes others play guessing games so they can think for themselves. His goal is to make others fall from their roles, and to make them regret the roles they assigned to themselves in the first place. Once again though, this is an objective, this is a goal, there is motivation behind his actions. He acts like everything is meaningless to him, that he is flippant to the world’s woes, and yet he is sharply making these critiques and satires of the society around them with a purpose. That in itself is the central question of his character. His philosophy as confusing and contradictory as it is, is easy to understand once you unravel the central question of his character. 

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide... Judging whether life is or is not worth living. That is the fundamental question of philosophy.” Albert Camus, Myth of Sisyphus

Everything is a choice, and the first choice everyone makes is whether or not to kill themselves. Camus judged existence to be one that is entirely meaningless,  but rather than that negating the meaning of choice rather it makes choices matter more as they define who you are. A life that has no inherent meaning is therefore, defined by the actions it entails. 

“If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so… The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.” 

Therefore a lack of meaning, of outside validation, ironically gives people more freedom to dictate their own meaning. 

If the fundamental question of all philosophy is whether or not one should commit suicide, then what Gogol aims for himself is radical freedom. 

Sartre's notion of 'radical freedom' said that everyone always has a choice, and every act is a free act. When people say they have 'no choice' but to do something, they are lying to themselves.  

“We are left alone, without excuse. This is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free” (Sartre). 

Sartre’s view of the world is that everyone, everyone, is utterly free. Existence precedes essence. Human beings first come into existence, then they determine their own essence by the choices they make. 

There is no essence to any thing that exists.  There is no pre-existent essence that makes a thing what it is.  There is no essence to a human being that preexists the human and makes a human what that human is.  There is no essence to being a male or a female.  There are no predetermined roles.  NOTHING is predetermined.  There is NO fate or destiny.  Humans make themselves what they are.  Humans choose to believe what they do about themselves.  Humans choose to believe in something called a human nature.  But humans make that nature what it is by choosing to be what they are.  There is no God that predetermines what humans are and even if there is a God, God made humans free to determine their own natures.  Humans are freedom.  I am what I choose.

Therefore if everything is free, then everything is a choice which you bear responsibility for. The cost of Sartre’s absolute freedom m of realizing our own freedom is Angoisse, or the anguish of existence. Everything is terrifyingly possible because humans are just making it up as they go along, and are free to toss aside their shackles at any time.

Because suicide is a choice, that means that choosing to live is also a continued choice that people make. If a gun is put to your head, you are still responsible for your actions, because the choice to die was still a choice available to you. It is something that emphasizes an incredibly harsh respsonsibility on the ideal of freedom, as people are no longer able to blame outside their circumstances for their own choices, it is at the same time liberating but heavy. This is the same philosophy which Gogol holds. 

This idea of freedom is reflected in Gogol’s ability as well, it’s one that allows him to tranvserse space with almost absolute freedom. He can move things around at his will, as even dimmensions bend to his choices. 

During their fight, Atsushi assigns him the predetermined role of a villain. As if he was a character cast in a play, rather than a real person.  Atsushi himself like a striped tiger, sees things in blakc and white, often loses control of himself and blames the tiger rather than his own free will and emotions when his ability went crazy and lashed out. He is in a way the opposite of Gogol, someone who rties to chain himself down because it gives him a purpose, rather than soemone who liberates himself. Atsushi clings onto his past pain, his obligation to save others even to harm himself, and repeats those actions without analyzing their true meaning or even taking full responsibility for them. 

Gogol then plays to Atsushi’s expectations of the world. His black and white, regimented story roles. In Atsushi’s mind people can only cause hurt to other people, because they’re bad people who feel nothing. He has a hard time grasping complexity, because he himself does not want to take responsibility for his negative emotions, his resentment, his anger, so he completely fails to see it in other people.

Gogol confronts Atsushi with the reality that society is not rational and acceptable to him, but rather it is fundamentally irrational and something unacceptable. 

Gogol kills people, he acts as a terrorist, but his pursuit of freedom is the real deal. For Gogol, complete freedom also means the freedom to lose others, the freedom to hurt other people, the freedom to live also means the freedom to die. He accepts the anguish of existence, and the responsbility of all of his choices because to him that is what it means to be free. 

He does not take orders, he chooses to cooperate with Fyodor fully as an equal, because if he took orders he would no longer be responsible for his own essence, and no longer free. He does bad things of his own free will and does not attempt to hide from the guilt, and instead frees it and takes responsibility for the kind of person he is because that is what it emans to be radically free. 

He is someone completely honest with himself, because decieving himself, or lying, is something that would once again make him untrue to his own essence which he wishes to set out to define. 

Which is why Gogol is honest to Atsushi, but also tells him not to listen to the words of a clown too seriously. Because what GOgol says is a heavy revelation. The extreme freedom he exists for is almost too much of a burden, because it means accountability in every single one of your actions in every single circumstance. 

Atsushi can choose to live free of the stories of good and evil he thinks is meaningful, or he could continue to live bound to those stories trying to seek out meaning in them. If Atsushi let go of what other people told was meaningful, than Atsushi would have to define it for himself, which is hard for someone so desperate in validation from others they are almost entirely lacking in a sense of self. It would mean him acknowledging that the validation they constantly risk their life to seek means absolutely nothing. 

He might be happier not having that revelation, to think there is still value to his pointless struggles. Camus argues that after the revelation of an empty life, our search for meaning and happiness is a moral obligation, even though in the end it is as futile as siyphus pushing a boulder up a stone. It’s labor for labor’s purpose that will amount to nothing in the end. Existence is a search for meaning in Camus’ view. A search we must undertake even though we are certain there will be no reward. 

Gogol’s ultimate trick is to switch the roles that the detective agency thought were so fixed in place. They were the heroes one moment, and the villains the next, because the meaning and security they thought they had never existed in the first place. 

He sets them adrift from meaning the same way that he is. He frees them from obligation of protecting others, and makes them have to survive for themselves. He presents them with the same moral dilemna that he awakened to. 

Are the armed detective agency the good guys because they want to be? Or are they obligated? The same way Atsushi believes he is obligated to save others because he believes it is the only thing that will give his life worth. The detective agnecy are in a trap they 100% could have avoided if they simply made the choice for themselves to avoided it instead of acting out of thoughtless obligation. 

There is one truly seriously philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Gogol appears as a careless clown, but he is actually the most responsible character in the story. He lives with his choices, and then dies with them as well to live a life perfectly defined by his own choices, himself. His death therefore, awakens the characters to the fact that they are also responsible for their own choices. 

#nikolai gogol #nikolai gogol bsd #bsd meta #bungo stray dogs meta #bungo stray dogs literary analysis #bungou stray dogs meta #bungou stray dogs literary analysis #decay of angels #bungou stray dogs

[its-jijii]

atsushi appreciation post

hello i swear ill be back with actual analysis eventually. school is rough rn and ive been sick :( 

however, i only remembered earlier today that bsd raws are out. and i didnt emotionally prepare myself. so now im here to cry and appreciate atsushi (and also theorizing/analysis on the decay of angels below)

BSD CHAPTER 76 SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT (i reblogged the raws before this post if u need to find them)

okay i’ll start out with saying that i am biased as hell. i fucking adore sigma. i’d die for him even though he’s only existed for like 5 chapters?? anyway. i would’ve appreciated atsushi for doing this to anyone, BUT i got especially emotional bc it was sigma. im gonna try to not go on a tangent abt how much i love sigma, that’s for a different post. 

okay well this made me cry cause i was already really upset about sigma getting pushed off and i was so worried for him. but then comes atsushi, a literal fucking angel, he’s so underappreciated (even by me i think)

now i wanna say, atsushi didn’t have to do this. not at all. it was a risky move jumping out of a floating casino to catch his ENEMY from falling to death. it ended up alright because plot armor i mean, they landed and didn’t die. i’m pretty sure atsushi has a fear of dying, or not doing enough to save people, but i swear to god he was so brave in this scene. 

im probably missing a lot bc i can’t fucking read anything so idk he probably was following dazai’s plan of capturing an angel to hold them hostage (i forgot about that till i was writing this) but 😭 i don’t care he still saved sigma. which i appreciate. so fucking much oh my lord,, atsushi is a baby and he deserves the world and i’m SO HAPPY gjksfhkk

now, even if atsushi was doing this because of dazai’s plan, i’d like to think that he went beyond their goal of capturing him? again, i can’t read shit, and i haven’t read a summary either. but beyond the first time sigma fell, after he was shot and fell again, atsushi still reached to grab him, which got him shot in the process. its clear that someone was trying to eliminate sigma, and that would make atsushi an obvious target too,, but instead of trying to escape, atsushi still tried to help sigma??

after atsushi was shot, he also fell, but used his tail to grab something again. he could’ve tried to just support himself, he was very close to dying and probably should have been focusing on keeping himself alive in that situation. But No. he reached for sigma again and was visibly upset when sigma fell (so im gonna assume that he really wanted to save sigma, beyond capturing him for dazai’s plan) i love u atsushi!! so much!!!

now actually im gonna derail the atsushi post and be a theorist now 🤔 sorry ignore this if u dont wanna see me rambling abt decay of angels stuff!! 

i was confused at first when i read this, cause i wasn’t sure why nathaniel (who works under fyodor) was attacking sigma, another angel. why tf is the organization attacking itself,,, till i realized this has happened before? i believe that likely, whenever there’s a chance that an angel could be captured or interrogated, another angel kills them before anything could happen. 

mainly this came to mind in that sigma has only existed a few chapters, why is he about to die already? but the same thing happened with gogol. he existed for a few chapters and then died. thinking about it now, both situations involved an angel at risk of being captured, and both involved other angels doing something. 

in gogol’s case, he could be considered “trapped” by the ADA as he was in a room with them, and was at risk of screwing up the plan. the goal was to frame the ADA, but if he was left alive, that would create some questions and confusion regarding whether or not the ADA really did it. now, one of the angels was using the book to orchestrate that entire scene (i also have analysis on if gogol was killed against his will here if u wanna read). i discussed the possibility of gogol being killed against his will- there were some indicators that he didn’t actually want to die, and another angel was controlling everything, including his death.

somewhat similarly, sigma was at risk of being captured or screwing up the plan. things would have gone wrong if one of the angels was captured alive, as he could then tell the ADA about other member’s identities or their plans. the only person who would stand to gain from killing sigma was,, the other angels. it explains why nathaniel suddenly showed up, likely fyodor’s order, to attempt to kill sigma.

both times it seems that these people didn’t really want to die- rather, another member of their organization set them up to die so that their plan would succeed without an issue. now im really fuckin praying that sigma is okay bc i love him and he’s my favorite in the decay of angels. but um yeah i think since this has happened twice now in a similar fashion, i can at least offer up that it seems likely that angels are being murdered by other angels (not as a part of their plan, but as a safety measure. both gogol and sigma seemed surprised and/or unwilling to die in the moment). 

okay thanks for reading!! also yay for my 100th post 🥳🥳 small reminder that my last reblog was chapter 76 raws if u are looking to read them again (or for the first time idk)

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs manga #bsd manga #bsd analysis #appreciation post #atsushi nakajima #bsd atsushi #atsushi #bsd sigma #sigma bsd #bsd spoilers #bsd manga spoilers #the decay of angels #decay of angels

[msgirlfangirlingposts]

Bsd momentary summary

 Recently,I started to getting confused with the new bungou stray dog arc’s plot, then I had the idea of play detective a bit and write a summary:

About the agency whereabouts:

Now,the only one missing is Ranpo,unseen since Chapter 59,seen for the last time junping from the window and running away.

Fukuzawa,Yosano,Kunikida and Dazai were already arrested.Inside it;

Dazai is still in jail with Fyodor,he is there since chapter 63.He communicates with Ango through his heartbeat code in the transmissor in his body deployed in the prison.He talks with Fyodor about the plans in the cassino and tries find out Fyodor main to communicate with his colleages.

Fukuzawa was last seen in chapter 71,being questioned by Fukuchi.He tried to run away and steal his sword,but couldn’t.He affirmes Kunikida is not dead and the agency will resist and win the haunting dogs.

Yosano was captured offs screen after chapter 68,after Tachihara refused kill her to take revenge his brother.She wasn’t killed yet,but her execution is marked.

Kunikida,who was missing since chapter 62 after explode himself to protect the agency,is really alive.He defend himself using Tecchou’s body to stay alive,but lost his hands in the process,impossibling Kunikida to use Doppo poetry again.He was captured and Jouno offered him to join in the haunting dogs.He refuses,but fall in despair and apparently a sniper is aiding in his head.

Tanizaki and Kenji are running away from the haunting dogs in the Mafia tunnels since chapter 67,they aren’t captured but are being haunted by Teruko and Tachihara.

Atsushi and Kyouka joined to Ango and Lucy trying to prove the agency is innocent and to avoid the terrorist plan of the angels decay,being guided by Dazai.The plan is capture manager Sigma,one of the members of the angels,and question him about the page to innocent the agency.However the plan fails,the agency only sinks deeper thanks Atsushi’s action of try save Sigma,and Atsushi apparently suffers from a wound inflicted by Hawtorne,pawn of Fyodor,who ruinned Dazai’s plan by preview his actions.Nevertheless,they still didn’t give up,and perhaps they gain a new trump card:Atsushi finds out where the page is hidden.

           About the angel decay:

Only three of the five members are known for now:Fyodor,Gogol and Sigma.

The plan of them consists in the fall of the State.Through the bombs-coins in the sky casino,they will kill people and spread panic into the society,and the cause the people be afraid of money,what will break the economy.So they’ll use the other side of the page to eliminate the State.That will happen in ten days,if, before that,the agency or the goverment don’t take the page,they will be sucessed.

Sigma only is into the plan in exchange be the manager of the sky casino, that makes his place to belong,once he never had a home or a family.

Fyodor’s motivacions are unknown.It’s known that he isn’t the head,but he maked the plan by the decay’s colleages request,as said for him in the capter 63.

Gogol was supposted to be killed in the plan to incriminate the agency in chapter 58.5,but he had escaped and survived.Now,he plans to kill  “Dosto-kun” to make him a “Free Bird” cause Fyodor understanded Gogol when none did.For this purpuse,he saves Sigma from death to use him to read Fyodor and discover about his ability.

Besides Dazai,Kyouka,Lucy,Atsushi and Ango,the only one to know about their plan is Moshitarou,who made priosioner and tortured by them in order he cancel his ability cause like that the hauting dogs would arrest Dazai.

                About the book and the page:

While the present location of the book is unknow,he once was in director Taneda’s hands.Taneda took a page off to study,and Sigma stole the page after stab Taneda and then the angel decay used the page to blame Ranpo for Taneda’s attack.

One side of the page was used to incrinate the agency by kidnap and murderer important members of the governament and to ensure the police and the army won’t believe in their innocence.The other side is going to be used to eliminate the state after they explode te bombs-coins,but Atsushi and Kyouka intend to steal the page before this for clean agency’s name.

Not all the things written in the book will turn true,it need to be a story based on the karma,with the consistency of a narrative.What means the destruction of the world or the universe won’t happen.Moreover,just like in a commum book,every ambitious plot needs a extensive text,or else won’t work out.Because that limitacion of the book,the angel decay,can only use the page they have to the most basic aspects of the plan,(The agency being incriminate by their crimes and the final objective of the fall of the state),but the circumstances for them must be provided by their actions.

Apparently,what is written in the book can be reversal,there was written for Fyodor that none from” the police force and management organizagions won’t considerate the proofs that show the true culprit”,but Tachihara is showed believing in them.It’s not clear the reason,but the page is showed to rasg when Tachihara say the agency is the wrong culprit.

Now,Atsushi appears to find out where the Angel Decay keeps the page.

                       About The Port Mafia

Unlike was theorized,both Hirotsu and Gin survived to the Tachihara’s attack in the chapter 68 and are alive and well.Besides,both didn’t know who attacked them was Tachihara.

None from the port mafia seems to know about Tachihara betray.But, considering Mori and his actions in Light Novel Dark Era,could be that does he knows about it and is planning to use it somehow?

Added to it,Mori and Fukuzawa made a deal that someone from the agency must go to the mafia.Mori chooses Yosano,who refuses work for Mori again?What will be of the deal?Yosano will go to the mafia?If she discover about Mori’s cheat(Fukuzawa agreed with the deal if the choosen one wasn’t Yosano)Mori won’t have another choose than honor the deal honestly and choose another member of the agency?

Isn’t clear the port mafia still will help the agency or not.

The Mafia knowns the agency is innocent,but ,notably,they don’t know about the plans of the angel decay nor about the book.What mean the help they might give is limited.

                  About the Guild

Althrough isn’t explained how,Fitzgerald said he will support the agency.

Fitzgerald is looking for the book to revive his daughter,and one of the pages is in th angels hands and the agency intend to steal.What will he do if he finds about it?

Fitzgerald interchange Mittchel’s cure by Muchitarou’s location.Once Atsushi and Kyouka took him,presumbly Mittchel is cured.

If Mittchel is awake now,will her haunt down Hawthorne as Fitzgerald want?How Atsushi notes,both of them care very deeply for each other and sacrifice them selves fr each other.Or to see again Margaret will make Nathaniel leave Fyodor’s control?

  And is what I notice that is relevant about the new arc.It was most to myself to organize my thoughts,but anyone wants wants to use,be my guest.

#bungou stray dogs #bungou stay dogs manga #Bsd Spoiles #analysis #It's so big and awful #but I just had to do it

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

I feel like since an entire decade has just kinda swooped on past me..

And I thought it would be fun to briefly overview the memorable highlights of the last ten years by year. This isn’t going to be like my life story was - much shorter, though it might be loosely in that vain. I am going to segment it off by year though so I don't go on for too long...

Here is 2010

Highlights of 2010 1. fell in love with a low end celebrity (ehem, Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello) and painted him a picture thinking maybe he might remember me because of the picture and come back for me and save me from my mundane existence - i was naive and thought this was how such things worked back then, when i finally met him i realized we were not compatible at all and i was just a little bit of a crazy person, though he did seem to really like the picture and it was a great concert overall so totally worth it I'd say 2. listened to a lot of Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers - wanted to emulate that weird Jonathan Richman tweelike purity 3. I was really into drawing my anime comic at the time 4. volunteered at my local Senior Center where i was the slowest most inefficient prepcook you can imagine, i was always an hour late, took an hour to make salad, had no idea how to use any utensil, how to cut things. Sometimes they would just send me into the closet to reorganize stuff i think so that i wouldn't be in the way. I served elderly people piles of like, mashed potatoes on their cafeteria plates, and at the end of the day i took like 50% of the leftovers home and gobbled them up 5. Listened to a lot of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Bright Eyes 6. Still had a MySpace with no intention of leaving my 40,000 friends behind (i hated facebook, still kinda do) and was even more into deviantart back before the furries took over, eventually those 40,000 friends left me and MySpace ruined my page format so i had to leave 7.  I only was on facebook so i could help my mother feed her chickens on farmville 8.  dyed my hair rainbow and got pulled over by a cop for driving badly without a license (or really ever having been taught how to drive - still don't know how) - he was okay towards me overall. 9.  fantasized about going back to the mid sixties and dating Ray Davies (singer of The Kinks), a lot, to a pointless stupid degree (i was just crazy about his weird ass early seventies hair, his flamboyant concept albums, and the gap between his teeth, and his flowy beautiful theatrical hands) 10. I only had like, two friends and my little brother and sister. I didn't really know very many people, and i lived in a very small isolated world of like, adultswim on the weekends, my MySpace - deviantart people, and Sarah Mae 11.  Was totally crazy about The Mists of Avalon and likened myself to Morgan Le Fey before i found out what a creep the author Marion Zimmer Bradley was 12. lived in small emotionally unstable living situations where i had no room and ate a lot of instant oat meal and drank diet discount soda pop bought from my mother's food stamps as i tried to ignore my mother's loud Kung Fu movies with my brother's loud Depeche Mode at 3am 13. my second to eldest sister was on meth at the time and would come in and steal from us (she's clean and doing great now and i kinda laugh at this situation a lot now), at the time we were poor though and 1500 dollars gone was devastating 14. ended the year staying in a hotel room my uncle was staying at while he remodeled the basement we were all living in. I was eating a lot of subway sandwiches, sleeping all day and watching the history channel go on and on about alien abductions and government coverups with silly reenactments. I still believe in a lot of alien stuff. 15. The first real interview i went to was at Jack in the Box where the guy who was doing the hiring insinuated i do him sexual favors in return for the job, this was so beyond me i didn't realize what he was saying at the time and i left the building a sobbing confused mess because he had played a lot of weird mindgames with me for 20 minutes and i didn't know what he was getting at and just saw myself as a failure. He got fired like a week later for this. 16. I still firmly believed me and all my friends and family were going to be important famous people someday that our aspirational celebrity favs would all gather around and want to be our friends (because we were so cool), i just had to get a job and start a rock band somehow... 17. I thought Tom Waits was THE COOLEST MAN TO HAVE EVER LIVED, and honestly i kinda still hold to that 18. At some point that year, i had gone and seen Joan Jett play live, and she was really energetic and cool, and had aged so well. I wanted to be like her so i gave myself as similar of a haircut to her as i could. 19. My sister slept in the same room with me everynight, much like you see in Jane Austen and Bronte adaptations we would talk under the sheets and giggle 20. We lived with this old ex marine biker named Wes. He was a big guy with missing legs. He was sick in the hospital half the time. He was very nice to us, and my mother took care of him. He often times bought us things and made sure we were taken care of. And we ate shrimp or fish every Friday because he was Catholic 21. I had this weird ass cat named Nim who used to eat my sister's hair when she slept. She'd wake up with cat slobber all over her head. It was pretty gross, and i would sometimes stay awake and guard her so that it didn't happen, but the cat would become so obsessed and desperate that she would lunge at my sisters head in the night psychotically, so i had to battle him off and throw him, and he would hiss and run back for more.

22. Dax Riggs came out with his last album. It was /is sooo good

[aalinastarkova]

@kereudio asked for two of the kiss prompts. I’m only done with one so here it is! 

Nikolai Gogol/Dazai Osamu -  39: A kiss because time’s run out

This is based on an AU that we talked about, in which Nikolai was in the mafia for a considerable time and he and Dazai were friends. 

Sometimes, Nikolai likes to think about the days that are behind him. He thinks about the mafia and the extra bandages he would drape across his blind eye, giggling that he and Dazai matched. He likes to think about the days they didn’t leave the room they shared, his Osamu’s fingers in his hair and the times they lay in opposite directions but side by side, staring up at the paint drips spouting nonsense at three in the morning. He likes those memories, they’re peaceful and quiet alongside the turbulence of his life after it. Those memories get him up in the morning, hopeful that he might one day see his Osamu again and he counts the scars on his hands as days passing by.

The Decay of Angels isn’t the mafia and sometimes Nikolai is grateful for that. It’s harsher, but he thinks it’s funny. He thinks Ivan is funny and he thinks Fyodor’s bitten fingernails are funny, even as he slaps at his hands and tells him: “Don’t! You’ll bleed!” He thinks this life is funny even when it’s boring, when it drags at his eyelids and he lays, staring up at the paint drips alone at three in the morning. He counts them and they’re like the days passing by, static, never moving, never going anywhere.

He knows what happened after he left with the circus, he knows Dazai left, joined the agency and he knows Fyodor’s plans don’t include any agencies. It makes him angry, sometimes, but he doesn’t say so. He hides it behind his smiles and the card perched before his eye. It was a gift, that card. He doesn’t remember from who. He has such a hard time remembering things that aren’t Osamu. It’s scary, sometimes, to know that there are gaps in what he thinks he knows. It comes for him, curls heavy tendrils around his chest and suffocates him as the sunrises and he’s gone another sleepless night that he plans to hide behind the energy. If everyone else is smiling than it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t really want to! Sometimes even Fyodor smiles at his jokes and he’s glad for it. He loves that smile, almost as much as he loves Osamu’s smile.

He loves Fyodor’s kiss almost as much as Osamu’s but it’ll never be the same. It’s cold, so cold that he thinks he’ll freeze and he wraps around his dear Dos-kun, desperate to warm him up. Maybe, in the warmth, he’s hoping he’ll find a shred of Osamu. He doesn’t, he knows he won’t, but he stays close, listens to his heart beating and closes his eyes against the fingers in his hair. He knows that touch could kill him and he almost wants it to. But he knows what the plan entails, knows the end goal, knows he’ll be the winning chess piece. He’ll go, because it’s for Fyodor, but first he wants to take a step that’s his own.

He leaves the bed when the sun hasn’t risen and putters with the makeup for an hour, staring at his reflection in the dingy mirror as if staring will change the loss in his eyes. He draws the line straight through his eye and he giggles, softly at the frowning reflection. “Cheer up,” he says, “we get to see Osamu today!”

The streets are quiet in the morning, and the sun rises over the pier. Nikolai stays there for a moment and he counts the ripples. “Four ripples!” he says into the dawn. “Just like the four years I’ve been gone! I think it’s a sign.” He nods to himself and tugs at his cloak, skipping along the side of the water towards the building he knows his Osamu has taken up residence in. He’s taken the long way around and he knows why, but he’s choosing not to think about it. He doesn’t want to focus on the fear rumbling in his veins, an earthquake waiting to happen. There are ten million what-ifs running in circles around his head, but he bats them away with a hand and laughs at them. “He’ll see me! He doesn’t have a choice! Dead Souls doesn’t give him one!”

He knows he won’t be using his Ability to enter the apartment.

Nikolai plays with his cloak, winding his fingers in and out of existence. He wishes there was more time, wished time had permitted them to meet once before this. The world is so cruel, perhaps that’s why Dos-kun wants to change it so badly. Maybe he’s finally understanding instead of blind faith for someone who saved him. Someone who is nearly as important as Osamu.

When he arrives at the building, he stares at it. He doesn’t go in, not at first, he just stares. Then he smiles and marches forward, tucking away his doubts and insecurities. This is no place for thoughts like this, not when his life is an hourglass and the sand is almost gone. He throws open the door and takes the stairs two at a time, counting them. Four flights of stairs, four years. It’s funny! He doesn’t laugh, just smirks bitterly into the dusty hallway. “This is a sad place,” he says softly, and walks to the door. He raises his fist and knocks before he can reason against it.

It opens after a moment and Osamu Dazai is just like he remembers; scruffy brown hair and tired amber eyes. Eyes that widen when they meet Nikolai’s. They both stand there in silence, Osamu blinking slowly and Nikolai smiling weakly, wishing he would say something.

“Nikolai…?”

Nikolai’s name from his lips sounds out like a puff of air and the jester pauses for just a moment, long enough to let the softness of his own name tunnel into his heart. He throws up his arms and grins. “It’s me!” He has to keep up the happiness because if anyone deserves it, it’s his Osamu.

There’s blankness in response, for far longer than Nikolai likes and then it’s gone. A small smile curls his lips in response and he nods. Nikolai can’t help but smile back, rocking forward on the soles of his feet so he collapses into him and his arms wind around his neck, face settling into Dazai’s shoulder. The brunette stiffens and Nikolai almost pulls away. Then, Dazai lifts his arms and eases them around Nikolai, pressing his head into his hair. A laugh huffs out from the other’s lips.

“You’re back...” says the voice he’s missed more than anything and Nikolai feels the breath of those two words in his hair. “You’re back…?”

“I’m back, Osamu!” Silent words stab him in the back, but he doesn’t voice the truth. Not yet. He doesn’t want to think about that impending doom, let alone talk about it. Instead, he giggles and pulls back, patting the side of his Osamu’s face. “You look older! Oh! Are those gray hairs I see??” He draws out the words, standing on his toes to tug gently at a strand of Dazai’s hair.

Dazai’s eyes go wide and he pulls back, hands flying to his hair. “Eh!? I do!?” Frantic fingers smooth through the strands, searching for the gray hairs. “Where!?”

Nikolai covers his mouth to muffle the giggles, shaking his head and reaching up to claim Dazai’s hands. “I’m kidding, Osamu. I’m kidding, I promise!” He doesn’t let go of his hands.

Dazai’s bottom lip pouts out, though his fingers curl into Nikolai’s. He doesn’t pull back and Nikolai… Nikolai is so happy, he almost wishes to cry. He doesn’t, but he barely hears Dazai’s mutter of, “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

They stand like that, hands clasped in front of them, for too long. Then Dazai’s head tilts, Nikolai sees him swallow before speaking, “What happened to you? How did you find me, Nikolai?”

He doesn’t want to answer. There’s no simple answer and though he tries to chase one down, he doesn’t find it. He gives up and instead collapses against his Osamu, listens to the other’s grunt before arms encircle him again. It’s warm, Osamu’s hug and he lets out a shuddery breath. For the first time, in four years, Nikolai feels like he’s home. Dazai’s coat smells like the transition between spring and fall, like newly bloomed flowers and freshly fallen leaves.

“I missed you,” he murmurs, “I missed you, Nikolai.”

His fingers dig into the new coat, the color brighter and somehow more hopeful. Oh, Nikolai hopes he’s happy. He wants him to be happy, to smile! But Nikolai’s here… he’s here and he’s going to hurt him because he’s going to leave. Nikolai knows there’s no other option, his loyalty to Dos-kun is too strong.

“I missed you too,” he whispers into his neck and feels the arms tighten. He stays there for a long moment, just counting the seconds between their exhales. It’s peaceful and if he closes his eyes, it’s all okay. They’re sixteen again, snuggled up together on a worn out couch and Osamu’s laughter is a little thing, a twinkling windchime. Nikolai wishes he could hear it again, instead, he pulls back and pushes himself into the apartment.

(Behind him, Dazai sputters weakly, but doesn’t stop him.)

Nikolai inspects everything, counts the books on the shelves and runs his fingers over the spines. He comments on the colors, grays and whites, and the lack of food in the fridge. He doesn’t leave any stone unturned, and Dazai doesn’t stop him. Nikolai wants to memorize every little detail so that he might keep it with him when he goes. Then he stops, right by couch and his fingers play through his braid. He can feel Dazai’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t look up at him. “Can you guess where I went, Osamu? It’s a quiz, see! When I left the mafia where did I go!” He giggles, watches Dazai’s mouth open and he shakes his head. “The circus, that’s right! I went with the circus! But I’m back now, see!” He spreads out his arms, his heart is hammering. “For a little.” The three words are too soft, too true.

He sees the heartbreak on Dazai’s face. “For a little? Do you have more important things to do?” There’s a little smirk, playing off the heartbreak. “What could be more important than me, Nikooo?”

The fun and games are gone. He doesn’t want to laugh, he doesn’t want to joke. “There’s nothing more important, Osamu. You know that, don’t you? I won’t be around to do anything else!” He’s not smiling. It’s not a joke.

The smirk drops, quick as it came. They stand there in a tense silence, Dazai’s lips slightly parted. “What do you mean?” He says it in a way that suggests he already knows.

Nikolai smiles. “You’re not going to make me say it out loud are you, Osamu? That’s rude.”

Dazai shakes his head, doesn’t question again, just walks to him and reaches out with a hand that trembles. Nikolai wants more than anything to grab onto the hand and never let go, to collapse once again into his arms and pretend the world is fine. That it isn’t splitting down the middle and forcing him to choose.

“Why?”

“It’s for Dos-kun’s plan, I have to do it.”

“You can’t.” It’s quick, sharp, almost panicky.

Silly Osamu, thinks Nikolai with a sad shake of his head as he rocks forward to place his hands on either side of his Dazai’s face. “Hush! There’s nothing to say, Osamu. The decision has been made.”

Fingers curl around his wrists, Dazai’s face leaning into the touch. “To hell with decisions…” His eyes close, he sighs. “Can’t… Can’t you just  stay a little longer?” Nikolai knows the unspoken context, knows Dazai wants a chance to figure something. His Osamu always was so smart, just as smart as Dos-kun. It makes him sad.

He traces his face with his thumbs. He’s still smiling because if he stops he’ll cry. ”We’re out of time, love.” Nikolai’s words are soft, a prayer as he coaxes Dazai’s lips to his own, tastes the salt of his tears. Maybe they’re Nikolai’s own tears. He doesn’t know.

Dazai melts into the kiss and he feels the hands roam back into his hair, upsetting the braid. Nikolai copies his motions, leaning into his kiss and sliding his fingers back into Dazai’s hair, rummaging through the dark strands. He kisses him until he’s breathless and his lungs scream and even then he doesn’t want to stop.

He has to. He pulls back and leans their forwards together, feels the hot sting of tears trickling down his face. Neither of them say anything, but Dazai’s grip is firm around his shoulders.

“Osamu?”

“... Mm?”

“I love you.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath, a loosening of the hands for just a second. It’s all Nikolai needs. He steps back, flashes his cloak and he hears Dazai’s call of his name right before he vanishes.

#i love angst #thanks for this babe #don't mind us crackshipping to hell and back #it's fine #they're cute #nikolai gogol #dazai osamu #bungou stray dogs #nikozai #slight #fyogol #my writing #ask memes

[akutagawaprize]

What happend in this raws in short cut? cos i understand nothing

I actually don’t understand much, but from what I can gleam:

Title is Sunday Tragedy

New guy is Nikolai Gogol. His ability is called Dead Souls and apparently it��s space distortion. Likes giving out quizzes.

He works for Fyodor, but he’s also part of this organization called The Decay of the Angel (天人五衰 Tennin Gosui).  No clue if this is teasing the future appearance of a certain famous Japanese author, but it’s a concept in Buddhism.

Oguri has enough presence of mind to warn Ranpo about this new threat.

One month later, Kunikida is freed from prison. Fukuzawa receives an award in behalf of ADA. Soon after, they get a request to investigate a series of murders wherein people died in ways which recreated the five signs of an angel’s decay.

Ranpo refuses because he remembered Oguri’s warning. He has an argument with Fukuzawa and stubbornly says he wants to do things his way.

Ango contacts Atsushi because he can’t reach Dazai. He wants to warn him that someone from the government is a serial killer.

Dazai who skipped work is approached by a stranger who suddenly handcuffs him for charges of “138 conspiracy murders, 312 blackmails and 625 frauds”. Dazai’s like why just now lol. Then we see Oguri beaten up and it clicks.

There’s a new character called Attorney? He wants to take down ADA by exposing the members’ past crimes. Fukuzawa was an assassin, so was Kyouka, and then there was Yosano who was suspected of killing patients back in her military days.

But one of Attorney’s subordinates is revealed to be Gogol then bam! He shoots Attorney.

In short this chapter concludes with a moral dilemma for ADA: save Attorney and have their dark pasts exposed to the world or do nothing and fail as champions of justice?

I may have missed stuff but that’s all I remember.

#bungou stray dogs #asks #spoilers #chemicalvege #text

[tinymixtapes]

Live Blog: Riot Fest 2017

Riot Fest 2017 Douglas Park; Chicago, IL [September 15-17] by Joe Hemmerling on 09-27-2017 Looking back a year on from my Riot Fest 2016 coverage, I can marvel at my own naivety. Languishing in the jaws of the presidential election cycle, I (and many like me) thought this was as bad as it could get. Trump’s ascent to the top of his party — fueled by a complex cocktail of white nationalism, working-class rage, misogyny, and partisan inertia — had exposed some hard truths about this country that many of us didn’t want to face, but we were coming up on the finish line. November wasn’t too far around the corner, and when the dust settled, we were confident that we’d have a president who, while not universally beloved (even among her own constituents), would at least restore a semblance of sanity to federal politics. But we all know how that turned out. This year’s festival roster responded to the direness of our present political situation in a variety of ways. Ministry’s Al Jourgensen answered with fury and exhortations to violent resistance, Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hutz and Pedro Erazo with calls for unity among people of good will — hell, even the happy-go-lucky Tim Kinsella of Cap’n Jazz let slip the nihilistic observation that his privileges are paid for by the murders of people all over the world. The enormity of Trump’s presidency threatens to make punk rock’s defiant posturing look hollow and inconsequential. Yet it was a challenge many of the performers were willing to meet head on, even if some of the boldest, most transgressive, and genuinely punk performances of the Fest came from outside the white male-dominated sphere of punk rock. But before we get too far into that, let’s take care of some administrative items: * Despite last year being the biggest yet for the festival, Riot Fest scaled back for 2017, cutting out its Denver fest and paring back its lineup to 91 acts. This may, in part, be due to recent death of fest founder, Sean McKeough (May he riot in peace). * While I feel for Denver missing out, the smaller lineup was a boon. Bands got longer sets, and it made it easier and more worthwhile to cut out in the middle of a set if there were overlapping acts you wanted to watch. * This being our third year attending the festival (“our” being my wife and I), we tried to take in a little more of the nonmusical aspects, getting some yummy street tacos from Tica’s and witnessing the death-defying high wire acrobatics of Circus Una. * Security was friendly, but, like, maybe too friendly. The guards felt around my wife’s bust for that switchblade and set of brass knuckles she stores in her bra (lucky for us she stowed them back in the glove compartment). But, honestly, they could have strip-searched me and put three fingers up my asshole because (most importantly)… * FREE BEER WAS BACK IN THE PRESS TENT. The courteous festival staff kept the wheels of journalism thoroughly lubricated with all the Dos Equis and Heineken we could get down our gullets. --- The Essentials Saul Williams (Photo: Amanda Athon) Genre-bending rapper and father of slam poetry, Saul Williams began his set Friday with an improvised spoken word rendition of “Coded Language,” all those lengthy clauses beginning with and punctuated by the legalistic conjunction “whereas,” culminating in a litany of radicals, artists, and martyrs. But while the framework of his jeremiad was familiar, its contents were targeted specifically at us. “A riot is not a festival,” he chided. “A riot is a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd.” And to drive his point home further: “Your punk rock isn’t that punk rock if it doesn’t make fascists explode.” It took a moment for me to realize that the stage behind him was bare of equipment and that no band would be joining him. This drew hostility from some in the crowd, at least one member of which repeatedly shouted, “We came to hear music!” as he trudged off in the direction of the main stages. Williams was undaunted, taking aim at targets as large as the Catholic Church and Silicon Valley and as small as the Trump-supporting members of his audience. He attacked the gender binary, the digital revolution, and the sharing economy using the “Hack into…” lyrical framework of “Colton as Cotton,” before launching into an a capella rendition of “Black Stacey.” It was probably the gutsiest performance I’ve seen in my life, standing on that stage all alone and putting to lie the late capitalist notion that we can spend our way to a revolution, to call each member of the audience to account for their part in the oppressive structures that weigh us all down (albeit not equally). Unlike the Prophets Of Rage, who on Sunday asked their audience if they were ready to have a good time, Williams was there to educate, not to entertain. Next to him, even the most radical declarations of resistance seemed like kids’ stuff. Cute Riot Fest audience members (Photo: Amanda Athon) Friday’s other highlight was industrial metal pioneers Ministry. Uncle Al was eager to tell his audience how happy he was to be home, joking, “You all know I’m from here. Some of you have probably ripped me off on cab fare.” They played a relentless, career-spanning set, including a brand new song from their forthcoming album, “Antifa,” celebrating the anarchist resistance network. Watching masked dancers parade around the stage waving red and black flags filled me with a curious sense of unease. The uncritical acceptance of vigilante justice that I see coming from certain corners of the left is alarming for a variety of reasons that I don’t have the space for here, but suffice to say that I personally regard Antifa’s rise to prominence as, at best, a risky development for political discourse in America. Jourgenson’s embrace of the controversial group is hardly surprising, given his outspoken leftwing politics and heavy metal’s enshrinement of ideological, as well as sonic, extremity. In fact, a Ministry show seems like exactly the place where buttoned-up lefties can crow over fascists chowing down on a knuckle sandwich. I guess I just never thought we’d reach a point where the kinds of things that get shouted out at a heavy metal concert were being considered as a blueprint for political strategy. My political hand-wringing aside, Ministry was on fire. Jorgenson’s voice is as caustic as ever, and his band remains a finely honed engine of destruction. In lieu of footage from the stage, the band fed surreal psychedelic imagery into the screens: distorted pictures of nude women bleeding into news coverage, music video footage, and internet memes. They ripped through mid- and late-career highlights like “Senor Peligro” and “Bad Blood,” but aside from opening their set with “Psalm 69,” they saved most of their classics for a whirlwind four-song finale of “N.W.O.,” “Just One Fix,” “Thieves,” and “So What.” Peaches (Photo: Amanda Athon) If Saul and Al had to split ownership of Friday between them, Saturday belonged entirely to Peaches. The Canadian provocateur delivered a riotous and confrontational set of explicit sexuality and gender-fuckery. She opened with her ode to female ejaculation, “Rub,” wearing an absurdly bulky pink fur-suit and anatomically detailed vagina hat. During her second song “Vaginaplasty,” her backup dancers sauntered out in enormous vaginal headgear, while the artist herself stripped down to a flesh-colored leotard to which giant purple nipples and a fuzzy pink merkin had been affixed. By her third song, she was over the photo-pit rail and into the audience, and by the end of the fourth, her leotard was down around her waist. There were no fucks given. When Peaches needed to switch costumes, she turned her back and stepped out of whatever she was wearing right in front of the audience. Her dancers shed more and more clothing as the show went on, until by the end they were topless in a latticework of fetish-gear and undulating against the singer in simulated sex acts. Peaches performed a good chunk of the time in nothing but her skivvies and flesh-colored nipple-covers. It was, by turns, hilarious, titillating, and unnerving (like, should we be seeing this? Is this LEGAL?). Despite the lack of explicit political commentary, Peaches’ defiant ribaldry felt like an act of resistance, an expression of female power and self-determination. And it was some of the most fun I had the whole weekend. High-Wire acrobats (Photo: Amanda Athon) Still, despite the stiff competition, my absolute favorite set of the fest belongs to Chicago’s own Cap’n Jazz. This marks the seminal Midwestern emo group’s second reunion since their dissolution in 1995. Reunions as a whole tend to reek of cash-grabbery, and usually they don’t improve in quality upon repetition, but Sunday’s performance was as pure and unique a concert-going experience as I’ve ever been part of. Frontman Tim Kinsella may have crossed the threshold into his forties, but he remains a childlike presence, hurling his body across the stage, turning sloppy backwards somersaults, and generally jackassing around with the audience. His ebullience was infectious and his seeming disregard for his own safety and the integrity of the performance created an electric tension. Kinsella made a game between songs of requesting the return of a tambourine that he’d tossed out into the audience, and then throwing it immediately back into the crowd. During their cover of “Take on Me,” he hurled his mic over the photopit rail, but somehow managed to recover it just in time for the big final chorus, just like he miraculously recovered his sunglasses, lost early on in a crowd-surfing excursion. His bandmates played the grownups, with drummer Mike occasionally bristling over his brother’s showboating. They kept the grooves going when Tim’s shenanigans came between him and his singing duties, like during closer “Que Suerte!” when Tim stuffed the mic down his pants, threaded it through the bottom of his jeans, only to stick it back down once more and thread it down the other leg (he needed help from the security team to get it out his second pant leg). But if all of this sounds like the music took a backseat to the antics, you can put that right out of your head. The band was in peak form, hitting all the lurching starts and stops, tempo and signature shifts like clockwork, and all the while, they looked like they were having the time of their lives. Third Kinsella brother and American Football alum Nate stood in for Davey von Bohlen on guitar and brought a fan’s enthusiasm to the proceedings. Their set covered almost everything from their sole album Burritos, Inspiration Point… aside from “Bluegrassish,” “Flashpoint: Catheter,” and “Precious,” and they filled the rest of the set out with favorites like “Ooh I Do Love You” and “Forget Who Are.” --- Let-downs Bad Brains (Photo: Amanda Athon) This is uncomfortable for me to say, so I’m just going to blurt it out. X and Bad Brains were pretty boring live. I know. I KNOW. These guys are legends. They’ve been doing this for four decades now. They have nothing to prove. They’re up there in the years, and at least in H.R.’s case have health concerns. Not everyone can be Iggy Pop, who’s pushing a thousand and still writhing around on the floor like a teenager. They still sounded great, but there wasn’t a lot of energy in their sets. Saturday night’s penultimate act At the Drive-In had the opposite problem. Cedric Bixler-Zavala still tosses the mic around and launches himself off the drumkit with no apparent care about whether he’ll come down on his feet, but the volume they were playing at really muddied their sound and overwhelmed Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s precise guitarwork. It was still enjoyable to hear my favorite cuts off Relationship of Command, from which their set drew heavily, but years of being baited by ATDI’s reputation as a live band set my expectations at a level they couldn’t quite reach. Plus, no “Transatlantic Foe”? Come on, guys… --- Honorable Mentions Liars (Photo: Amanda Athon) I’ve drifted away from Liars’ recorded output over the years, but there’s no question these guys can still bring it live. Angus Andrew stalked onto the stage in a white wedding dress, his long lace veil billowing in the wind. Standing before a small podium, he fiddled with dials that hellishly distorted his vocals during the bouncier electronic numbers like “Mess on a Mission” and “House Clouds,” as well as on more harrowing fare like “Scarecrow on a Killer Slant.” The Buzzcocks made a good showing for old-head punk rock. Their hit-laden set (anyone with a copy of Singles Going Steady could do a reasonable job keeping score at home) was brisk and tuneful, and their chemistry forty-plus years in the making shined through at every turn, particularly on spacier numbers like “Why Can’t I Touch It?” Finally Nine Inch Nails brought Friday to a close with a riveting headlining performance. The fog-machines were going into overdrive throughout the set, such that the stage was constantly cloaked in billowing smoke like the steaming maw of hell. Reznor was intense, if a little aloof as he careened throughout his discography, lightly dusting his set with hits like “The Hand that Feeds,” “Closer,” and “Head Like a Hole.” Buzzcocks (Photo: Amanda Athon) Gogol Bordello (Photo: Amanda Athon) Gogol Bordello brought their brand of feel-good bedlam to the fest on Saturday and convinced me that I need to revisit Transcontinental Hustle. I was left pretty cold by the album when it came out back in 2010, but goddamn if every cut they played off it didn’t bring the house down, particularly “We Comin’ Rougher (Immigraniada),” which has taken on a pointed significance in the era of Trump. Following Dinosaur Jr.’s sublime album playthrough of You’re Living All Over Me, I crashed the angry party that Prophets Of Rage were throwing on Sunday night long enough to hear them drop a pair of RATM covers (“Testify” and “Take the Power Back”) amid some original songs from their hot-off-the-presses eponymous debut. But it was the siren song of M.I.A. that ultimately seduced me. The British emcee was in fine form, if surprisingly mute on politics. She knocked out hit after hit for her eager crowd, while a mesmerizing light show engulfed the stage. At the risk of losing all my punk cred, after that kind of spectacle, Jawbreaker just couldn’t hold my interest. Beyond one or two songs of Dear You, I’d never quite managed to find my way into them, but the die-hards in the front row seemed to be getting everything they wanted out of them, so that’s all that matters, right? --- And that, in a nutshell, was Riot Fest 2017. There’s a ton I missed out on, including Shabazz Palaces, Wu Tang Clan performing 36 Chambers, Built to Spill’s play-through of Keep It Like a Secret, and festival mainstays Gwar and Andrew W.K., but some of the sets I was able to take in this year numbered among the most powerful and exhilarating festival experiences I’ve ever witnessed. As the situation in the outside world grows more dire, we continue to look to art for solace, and there was plenty of that to be found. But the bravest artists offered something we needed more: a kick in the ass to get back out there and try to change something, however small and however futile that might appear. http://j.mp/2fSiPUP