#you know what actually i believe this applies to original fiction as well

[martybaker]

Writing fanfiction be like

‘Haha this isn’t about me, it’s just a fun fantasy scenario I came up with’

And then you open that document again and stare into a mirror

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #funnily enough this isnt about a kink even though it was inspired by me nervously checking if a fic contains any kinky business #outrageous kinky business #before letting my sister read it #only to discover my demi soul splurged all over the pages #oopsie daisies #you know what actually i believe this applies to original fiction as well #also ​is it wise to post your 4 am thoughts on tumblr dot com

[sparrowlucero]

Even if a creator is a bad person it's still okay to like their work. People need to mind their own business.

Honestly it's not really that sort of situation. I'll actively defend Steven Moffat here.

There was a huge hate movement for him back in the early 2010s - which, in retrospect, formed largely because he was running 2 of the superwholock shows at once, one of which went through extremely long hiatuses* and the other of which was functionally an adaptation of an already well regarded show**, making him subject to a sort of double ire in the eyes of a lot of fandom people. Notably, his co-showrunner, Mark Gatiss, is rarely mentioned and much of his work is still attributed to Moffat (and yes, this includes that Hbomberguy video. Several of "Steven Moffat's bad writing choices" were not actually written by him, they were Gatiss.)

People caricatured the dude into a sort of malicious, arrogant figure who hated women and was deliberately mismanaging these shows to spite fans, to the point where people who never watched them believe this via cultural osmosis. It became very common to take quotes from him out of context to make them look bad***, to cite him as an example of a showrunner who hated his fans, someone who sabotaged his own work just to get at said fans, someone who was too arrogant to take criticism, despite all of this being basically a collective "headcanon" formed on tumblr. Some if it got especially terrible, like lying about sexual assault (I don't mean people accused him of sexual assault and I think they're making it up, I mean people would say things like "many of his actresses have accused him of sexual assault on set" when no such accusations exist in the first place. This gets passed around en masse and is, in my opinion, absolutely rancid.)

On top of that a ton of the criticism directed at the shows themselves is, personally, just terrible media criticism. So much of it came from assuming a very hostile intent from the writer and just refusing to engage with the text at all past that.

Like some really common threads you see with critique of this writer's work, especially in regards to Doctor Who since that's the one I'm most familiar with:

A general belief that his lead characters were meant to be ever perfect self inserts, and so therefore when they act shitty or arrogant or flawed in any way, that's both reflective of the author and meant to be viewed as positive or aspirational.

An overarching thesis that his characters are "too important" in the narrative due to the writer's arrogance and self obsession

A lot of focus on the writer personally "attacking" the fans or making choices primarily out of spite.

A tendency to treat the show being different to what it's adapting as inherently bad and hostile towards the original

Just generally very little consideration of the themes, intent, etc.

This one's a little more nebulous and doesn't apply to all critique but a lot of it, especially recently, is clearly by people who haven't seen the show in like 10 years and their opinion is largely formed secondhand through like, "discourse nostalgia". Which. you know. bad.

I think these are just weird and nonsensical ways to engage with a work of fiction. I also think it's really sad to see the show boiled down to this because that era of who is, in my opinion, very thematically rich and unique among similar shows, and I hate that it's often dismissed in such a paltry way.

This isn't to say people aren't allowed to critique Steven Moffat or anything, but the context in which he basically became The Devil™ to a large portion of fandom and is still remembered in a poor light is very tied to this perfect storm of fan culture and I just don't agree with a ton of it.

* I'm sure most people have seen the way long running shows and hiatuses will cause people to fall out with a show, with some former fans turning around and joining a sort of "anti fandom" for it while it's still airing. That happened with both these shows. ** Doctor Who will change it's entire writing staff, crew, and cast every few years, and with that comes a change in style, tone, theme - the old show basically ends and is replaced by a new show under the same title. As Steven Moffat's era was the first of these handovers for the majority of audiences, you can imagine this wasn't a well loved move for many fans. *** I know for a fact most people have not sought out the sources for a lot of these quotes to check that they read the same in context because 1) most of them were deleted years ago and are very difficult to find now and 2) many of them do actually make sense in the context of their respective interviews

#and yeah i think the hbomberguy video is kind of bad #I can pull up examples but a lot of what he's saying is very rooted in this sort of critique #maybe most egregiously he sometimes just explains something very poorly or outright incorrectly to make it seem worse or more nonsensical #ex. saying a scene in doctor who 'steals a huge chunk of the plot' when it's less than 30 seconds long #saying two characters randomly start hanging out again while not mentioning the episode entirely dedicated to this #or the way her decision to keep hanging out with him is the emotional turning point of the entire season #etc etc etc.

[kouyou-arc-when]

ON DAZAI AND EMPATHY: A character study Before you read: Obviously diagnosing any character in fiction seriously is a fool’s errand, but I am a fool, so let’s just do this for amusement. The main thing I desire is to discuss is the extent to which Dazai is capable of various types of empathy, as well as how that influences the way he sees and interacts with others. It will be chaotic and all over the place because I just sat down and wrote this in a fit. Let me explain some factors in analyzing Osamu: The author's intention is clearly to make Dazai's internal world a mystery. Since we don't have enough information, all we can do is hypothesize based on external elements. Generally, across all novels, the only time we’ve seen anything of Dazai’s perspective is in “The Day I picked up Dazai” (Beast continuity) – where he “saves” Oda and tortures that random dude. We don’t hear his thoughts narrated from first-person perspective, unlike many of the other novels.

Now, the crux of the issue. For years, it’s been discussed whether Dazai is a “sociopath”. If we disregard that sociopathy is a very loaded term that can mean a lot of things depending on which specialist you consult, at the very least, Dazai does strike me as someone with a unique expression of empathy, who could qualify for Anti-social personality disorder or a related condition. I will abandon the idea that Dazai is a sociopath, and use actual concepts that have legitimacy within this post. Whether Dazai could qualify for ASPD or any other disorder is something I've seen discussed for many years within the fandom. I'll try to analyze how these concepts could apply to him. In regards to mental health and Kafka (since it is a contentious matter) and the validity of any of this: I understand that a lot of people are resistant to the idea that any of the characters could have conditions more complex than depression, anxiety, and PTSD. This is my counterpoint. I have noticed that Asagiri emulates a lot of characteristics commonly attributed to “geniuses”, without confirming or potentially even intending to write these characters as having a specific condition.

A great example is Ranpo – who will read as autistic to any decent mental health professional (Untold Origins). Did Asagiri intentionally sit down and say “I am going to write an autistic character”? Maybe not. However, the “genius” stereotype is profoundly connected to visions of autism, even if people aren’t aware of it. Take people like Sherlock, House and L from Death Note – they’re commonly believed to be autistic by fans. All of these characters borrow from the same group of traits, that just happens to correspond with a certain condition - savants have always been popular in fiction. It's been known that the favorite type of character for Asagiri is the “prodigy” type, and he has used geniuses across fiction for inspiration of most notable intelligent characters within BSD. For Ranpo it was Sherlock, for Fyodor it was Joker from the Dark Knight (a classic sociopath), for Dazai it was Patrick from The Mentalist.

What I’m trying to say is, you can see various personality disorders connected to the portrayal of these geniuses, and even without confirming their state, it is clear they are either intentionally or unintentionally coded to be that way. Extremely intelligent characters not being able to read social cues, lacking empathy, disregarding rules etc. is something we commonly see in fiction. Basically, a lot of people don’t even know that these stereotypes are based on certain personality types, disorders, and illnesses. It’s sort of like drawing a character and dyeing their hair a certain shade of blue that you don’t know the particular name of: it doesn’t change the fact that you used that color, and the fact it has a name. Most authors are not mental health experts anyways, so they may not be entirely aware of every detail of the psychological framework they write the character to possess. They also may not write it consistently, as they're mostly emulating stereotypes. I mention Ranpo and autism because a character can embody traits of a stereotype without the author even necessarily having the intention to do so, however, to anyone who knows a thing or two, it is clear Ranpo is on the spectrum. If Ranpo were to express a few traits that go against this, it would not necessarily take away from the large-scale portrayal he is meant to exude: an autistic coded genius.

Why am I saying this? It is entirely possible for the author to write Dazai as a person with anti-social personality disorder, to “code” him in that way, but to not be entirely aware of how an individual with ASPD realistically tends to act.  Because he may be emulating a certain "stereotype" of a genius, he may also end up emulating specific psychological states, without making them entirely consistent in a realistic way. Writing the way individuals with ASPD tend to deal with empathy can be extremely difficult for anyone. It's easy to emulate a sociopath on a superficial level, but beyond that, it gets more challenging. How would a person with limited empathy act when they're hurting someone? That is an easier idea to handle. But how will they act in a friendly relationship? This is where it gets tricky. That is likely why someone like Dazai can never be consistently compatible with a very specific disorder: but, he can come very close. Besides, concepts such as anxiety and depression are pretty well-known, but more niche mental health conditions are not as well understood. So, BSD Osamu was written with specific attention to mental health issues because the author himself was someone who spoke heavily on the topic. I’ve read a lot of real-life Dazai Osamu, with special attention to No Longer Human (the main inspiration for BSD Dazai was Yozo) – and neither RL Dazai nor Yozo gave me the impression they could qualify for ASPD at all.

I know BSD Dazai is the opposite of the RL author in so many ways, but I guess it’s relevant to mention this because we know so little of BSD Dazai’s internal working processes, and Asagiri's main inspiration can tell us a lot about the intentions behind Dazai's portrayal. Generally, an intention or idea behind a character can give a lot of clues to us - more than anything, I am under the impression some of the main ideas behind Dazai's creation was that: 1) He doesn't feel like he belongs among humans 2) He has mental health issues However, we have difficulty defining the exact source of why all of this is in more realistic terms.

Naturally, since Dazai, an extremely socially intelligent person, sees himself as "othered", it is logical to assume he is not capable of fulfilling some emotional function most people can in a successful enough way. If he were just mentally ill in more typical ways (only depression), I theorize he wouldn't feel that "othered". He specifically is not meant to feel human. Obviously, his extreme intelligence is one of the things that isolates him, but the question is what else?

We are led to believe Dazai "sees" something the rest of us don't, and that is one of the reasons he wants to die. However, there is something more to it, as I believe it to be. We have two characters who are as intelligent as Dazai: Fyodor and Ranpo, and neither of them is suicidal, as far as we know. I believe Dazai "feels" a certain way, and then finds a way to logically justify it. Due to his intelligence, he likely falls into a complex loop which leads him to existential nihilism: but you usually don't end up in a place like that if you tend to feel alright in the first place, regardless of how smart you may be. While Dazai is certainly isolated due to his extreme intelligence, most of the people who made an impact on him are nowhere near him in that respect. In fact, I'd argue Dazai isn't even looking for someone equally intelligent to him, unlike Fyodor (this would take another post to explain).

The man who means the world to him, Oda, is more emotionally intelligent and full of common sense, but definitely not his cognitive equal. You can tell a lot about a person depending on what they value: and due to this I believe that Dazai's main issues relate to emotional matters. He primarily feels isolated due to his emotional state, and his intelligence pushes the problem further. Otherwise, he would treasure people like Ranpo and Fyodor over guys like Oda and Atsushi: he's looking for something to ease his emotional pain. Dazai doesn't seek out raw intellectual stimulation as much as comfort/excitement. This post will be an analysis of how Dazai compares to the "average" psychologically and some of the reasons he may feel so othered. Basically, my theory is that the feeling of being "othered" comes from his emotional profile, as much as it comes from his intellectual capacity. Those two take equal parts in his psyche.

Why would Dazai feel so emotionally "othered"? I believe it may have to deal with a specific personality disorder or condition, and mainly how he experiences empathy. One of the possibilities is ASPD. Anyways, let’s look into common ASPD symptoms, and then we'll look into common behavioral patterns the character shows. Dazai is equal amounts portrayed seriously and in a “jokey” way, but his worst traits and moments are usually described without humor. To preface: Keep in mind that you can have any or all of these traits without it qualifying you for a certain disorder. It is the extent to which you show it that makes a person, like Dazai, out of the norm.

1. Repeatedly breaking the law: This one goes without saying, he was in the Mob as Young as 15, and seemingly a violent criminal even before that age. To differentiate him from other members of the Mafia, it is stated by tons of people throughout the story that Dazai was practically born for this job.

Oda in Dark Era:

He was openly murderous before the age of 15, according to both The Day I picked up Dazai and Fifteen:

Dazai and Oda interacting in TDIPUD When talking to Kyouka, it seems that he has an “interesting relationship” with murder as a whole:

One thing is for sure, Dazai is much calmer, calculated, and more Machiavellian than most criminals in BSD, and this all started at an extremely young age. Many people kill when they're young, but they're not this casual about it.  The age at which he was this cold about would be of diagnostic significance.

2. Lack of remorse: Everything mentioned above, it is clear that Dazai has an even more complicated relationship with guilt and empathy. I’m pretty sure anyone in real life would consider him out of the norm, as it’s explicitly stated Dazai doesn’t feel remorse for all sorts of things he does, but there are some hints he is either ashamed of the way he is, or regrets his nature, but accepts it. What is particularly significant here is how young Dazai is when he shows a marked level of these traits. A key event that stuck with me is from the Dragon Head event in Mayoi (from my understanding it was written by Asagiri), where Shibusawa mentions Dazai will regret something (to me it sounded like he meant that killing Shibusawa will end poorly for Osamu). However, Dazai’s reaction was interesting – it was like he was almost amused that anyone would believe Dazai “could” feel regret for anything.

Mayoi Later down the timeline it’s quite questionable whether Dazai feels regret for some of his actions because he hides his feelings like a snake hides its legs, but there are implications he is somewhat remorseful if you read between the lines. More on that later. Dazai has changed compared to his past self, but to talk about that, and the extent to which he has changed would take a whole other post.

More on his lack of remorse, In “The Heartless Cur” Dazai is very young when he gets some randos from the Mafia killed in front of Akutagawa, yet his main emotions are amusement and boredom. This is not the “typical” emotional range of most people, even practiced criminals. For example, Chuuya kills people just like Dazai, but his reactions to it are entirely different.  

from The Heartless Cur Murder tends to not be the preferred or first solution Chuuya goes for: there is an expected amount of hesitance if you read into Chuuya. He put a bomb below Chuuya’s and sabotaged Ango’s car without much bother. I’d say even if you do see It as a “means to an end”, the way he did it was really cold. Usually, when people of all kinds do bad things, they have remorse and empathy they need to suppress, but with Dazai we don't see much of that. It's like he can just "do it'. He’s also really great at torture, in Side B at age 15-16, he already describes himself as a “specialist”. This is also touched upon when he speaks to Kouyou:

No matter how "grey" a character is, torture is a very specific process that takes a particular psychological profile to pull off. To be a "specialist" at it, you definitely need to possess dented empathy. Lack of remorse and empathy does not mean a person is going to be a criminal at all - it simply opens the opportunity that they may get lost in those waters more easily compared to the average person.

3. Repeatedly being deceitful I’m pretty sure we don’t have to cover this one. Yozo, the character he was loosely based on, is a big liar, and commonly uses “clowning” to distract from his real personality. Even the real Dazai Osamu wrote extensively about the concept of “lying”.   There is a lot to talk about Dazai and “masking”, and I’ll get to that in the second half of the post. Generally, Dazai lies a lot, one can’t even be sure what his personality really is. He lies by omission, manipulates, and intentionally deceives people without any issues. There are so many quotes about this that I’d probably reach the image limit right there if I wanted to reference them all. 4. Being impulsive or incapable of planning ahead Does not apply

5. Has difficulty sustaining long-term relationships: Dazai is famously a hoe. From “All women are his type” (and it seems he has zero issues getting together with any woman, young, old or even taken) to being known as “the enemy of all women” (said by Chuuya), it’s clear he is very promiscuous. Wan is in the gray area of canon, but in one of the earlier chapters he has so many love letters by different women that Atsushi burns them all. Kunikida said he hits on any woman he sees in the Entrance exam novel, which is further supported by random Wan! Chapters, silly crossovers, and everything else (literally anything female).

Not only that, but Dazai sounds like a consistently manipulative and toxic romantic partner. In an Otomedia interview, written by Asagiri, Dazai’s real type was basically something like: “Any woman is fine, because he is confident he can shape her to suit his tastes” which shows a remarkable lack of care for the personhood and individuality of his partner.

When answered what he’d do if his partner cheated or betrayed him, his answer was even more concerning. Depending on the translation, it goes something like: “He has not been cheated on, but he has cheated on others” or “he set up women to cheat on him/betray him” where both are a lot, just in different ways.

Either he is compulsively unfaithful, putting all above together, or he plays mindgames with his partners. He’s also told Kunikida that: “And from my experience, it takes only a smile and some kindness to get a woman swooning over you when she's fallen on hard times” painting an image of someone who takes advantage of people’s weaknesses to get what he wants.

Regardless, it’s clear he is very manipulative and likely emotionally abusive. I won’t even touch upon his obsession with double suicide. There’s also the fact that he seems to use sex to get what he wants – insert scene where he fucks the nurse to get his phone back.

Other than that, Dazai appears to be rather solitary. Ango and Oda are said to be “the only ones close to him” because they respected said loneliness. Even in ADA, Dazai seems to be professionally close to people, but very few people seem to know him on a personal level. I’d say he keeps people at a distance intentionally – before it was violently, later it is by being avoidant. For as much of a womanizer he is, there was that early comic where he spent Valentine’s Day drinking at Lupin “with Oda”, instead of going out with any particular person. I think this demonstrates how emotionally distant he is from all the people he interacts with

6. Being irritable and aggressive:

Dazai is not particularly aggressive, nor irritable, but he has moments where he slips. Tbh, reading back, it says a lot about Dazai’s character who he gets angry at and why. It’s important to say that when Higuchi calls him out on “Hollowing out the hearts of his opponents” in incredibly brutal ways, Dazai replies that he thinks “Sadism is just a method, and how it’s boring”.

Akutagawa is the receiver of a lot of his violence to a disproportionate degree. He beats up Akutagawa beyond what could ever be “just training”. There’s something that ticks him off about Akutagawa, which is interesting, since Dazai tends to not react this way to anyone who doesn’t touch him “intimately” in some way. A lot of people justify Dazai’s physical abuse by saying it is “training”, but it stood out to me how he kicks Akutagawa in the stomach even the first time he meets him in “Beast”, when Akutagawa is just an extremely traumatized and deprived kid he refuses to recruit. There is not much utility to that kick, to me. It felt personal.

Another example of him expressing anger is when people “called him foolish for wanting to die” – clearly he did not take it well since all of those people ended up dead. This is from “The Day I picked up Dazai” when Oda tells him he is a fool for wanting to die.

Other times Dazai expressed rage was in relation to Ango and Oda, particularly anything that related to Oda’s wellbeing.

He snaps at his subordinates when they tell him he shouldn’t be friends with someone “of such low status”, and the only time we really hear Dazai say he hates someone is when he’s torturing one of the guys who put Oda in trouble in the Beast timeline of “The day I picked up Dazai”. Obviously, he is resentful towards Ango and incapable of forgiving him. “Dead Apple” guidebook touches on it.

“Though they were once good buddies who used to drink together, to Dazai, Ango is one of the persons who caused the death of Odasaku. He still holds that resentment up to now, and is unable to forgive. Ango also seems to feel Dazai’s silent wrath towards him.”

Harukawa has said to pay attention to how cloudy the eyes of a character are to accurately interpret their psychological state. I don't think there are many times Dazai's eyes are drawn in such an extreme way - there is no "light" she talks about here. His eyes are pure black when he talks to Mori during the Guild arc.

He also agrees with Fyodor on “Malice being the best fruit that God Bestowed upon Mankind”

There is also this with Jouno:

Basically, Dazai rarely gets angry, insults don’t work on him (as he tells Chuuya), nor does beating him up, but when he does get irritated he flies off the handle and has no issue crossing any normal boundaries.

That detail is what stands out to me – usually, people have a line they won’t cross when getting mad, but for Dazai it’s like most moral lines disappear. Imo, his anger is for social standards over disproportionate in how far he’ll go and how he'll act on it– he usually has a clear intention to harm the individual he's mad about. In comparison, Chuuya is someone who gets angry more than Dazai, but Chuuya clearly has a line he won’t cross. There is also no pointed sadism in his reactions. Dazai will likely do almost anything.

Basically, it's not how much Dazai gets angry, but the way he gets mad that sticks out to me. Most importantly, Dazai only ever gets enraged if it concerns something very personal and intimate: Oda and his death, his suicide attempts etc. At this point, for me, It’s safe to say that if Dazai gets extremely angry, it means the topic affects him on a deep level (a hint to whatever Is happening between him and Akutagawa, I could talk a lot about that). 

More on Dazai’s unpredictable and violent nature:

Stormbringer I think there is a valid argument in seeing Dazai’s aggression as just a tool he uses to keep others at bay, something to hold over people and control them – but even then, it shows a marked disinterest in social norms people usually respect.

7.Having a reckless disregard for their safety or the safety of others This one builds upon all the others. However, it’s always been interesting to me how it’s clear something flies over Dazai’s head when it comes to regularly empathizing with others.

This is often seen with Chuuya. In my opinion, most of the bullying Dazai gives Chuuya is not motivated out of rage, but rather some form of spite. He goes at length to Rimbaud about planning Chuuya’s murder in “15”, then he also lets Chuuya be tortured in “Stormbringer”.

I am under the impression he sees these moments as “amusing” and doesn’t fully emotionally understand why this is something bad, even if he does on a rational level. I’ll say that Dazai did seem to show some rage whenever anyone hurt him physically in the past (seems likely to be a hint to a traumatic past), which Chuuya did when they met, but I don’t get the impression he is generally angry with Chuuya, it’s more like he just enjoys fucking with him. Ironically, for how rarely Dazai gets angry, it seems he reserves his rage/irritation exclusively for people and things he cares about, so Dazai being specifically irritated at Chuuya is just a sign of how much the guy gets to him.

If Dazai were angry at Chuuya, it is in character that he would try to hurt him a lot more than he does. However, I'd say Dazai has a blurry space for what's ok between "keeping someone purely safe" and "deeply hurting them". There is some lack of emotional empathy there - to him, it is more amusing than anything to see someone he finds interesting struggle.

Dazai sees boundaries differently. He’ll put people into danger or through discomfort without worrying much, especially if he’s sure they’re going to walk and live after it, but sometimes not even that. (there’s so many examples of it). I’d say it’s not that Dazai doesn’t care, he just cares about people differently compared to what we’re used to socially.

Regarding personal safety, it’s pretty obvious: he’s a suicide maniac, but even more, he also puts himself in harm’s way all the time without any anxiety present. Examples are when he provokes that sniper in Dark Era (when Oda gets angry at him and wants to punch him), knows he is going to get shot by Fyodor, but lets himself get hurt anyway. When he “dies” in 55 minutes, he seems “lightly” surprised, but there’s no strong reaction to it.  To me, it seems that the only physical harm he dislikes is pain he suffers from another person (when he doesn’t plan it). Dazai apparently doesn’t feel much “anxiety” – I remember many different times when he comments on another character’s timidness or meekness, seeing it as something unusual.

8. Behave irresponsibly and show disregard for normal social behaviour He’s extremely eccentric, and even Ranpo says he doesn’t get him. Dazai asks women to commit suicide the moment he meets them, and often attempts suicide around people even if it distresses them (Entrance exam).

While I think he made this excuse in Dark Era to Taneda because he didn’t want to work with Ango, I do believe he believes what he said: “You’d lose your job if I did that.” Dazai wryly smirked. “I don’t like places with lots of rules.” Not being able to accept conventional rules is very often a telltale sign of a personality disorder. Clearly, Dazai fits many of the criteria necessary for having ASPD, so let’s look at some other details that are common for people with ASPD.

Masking: In psychology and sociology, masking is the process in which an individual camouflages their natural personality or behavior to conform to social pressures. Masking is common with many disorders, such as autism, ASPD etc. I am pretty sure it’s canon Dazai masks – on a BSD exhibit, the key element Asagiri wanted to talk about in Dazai’s personality was related to this.  

“When I describe Dazai to the staff, there is a phrase that I always use, “an unworldly being with a mental age of two thousand years.” Dazai has far surpassed the mental dimension that human can reach, thus no-one can even tell if the emotions he shows are the real things or not.

There are rare moments when that Dazai shows his very “human” side. That is when he talks to another superhuman who is on the same level with him. The other is when he talks about his old friend who has passed. This is the scene when Kyouka wondered “Maybe I’m, after all, just a murderer at heart.” and refused to be saved. And Dazai’s reaction to that. When he said “Don’t give me any of that!” here, he really meant it. That was an outburst from Dazai, as a 22-year-old boy, in this scene.” Light novels often describe his smile as fake, mask-like, and I could probably find 20 panels where Harukawa clearly drew him to intentionally seem like a fake smiler. From “15” to “Entrance exam”, Dazai often drops his mask, and then goes back to acting silly just to make the other person relax. He does this with everyone, Mori, Kunikida, Atsushi, etc. Chuuya also mentions that Dazai’s “happy-go-lucky” personality in ADA is something new, and he believes it doesn’t fit him.

Kunikida says this in the Entrance Exam: "For someone so full of eccentricities, there is something about his behavior that makes it seem as if he has an unobstructed view of the world. I don’t know exactly why, but all his emotions strike me as an act to some degree. Is he just playing dumb? Could there be more to him than he’s letting on, lurking behind his ambiguous mannerisms?"

More than anything, Dazai himself says that Oda was the person closest to seeing his “real” personality. That pretty much confirms he keeps his real self hidden away. I’d say that there are several possibilities to why this is: He hides it because he dislikes being vulnerable, he doesn’t know how to act “normal”, people are unable to understand him, so masking makes it easier for him to communicate with others…there’s a lot of theorizing I could do here.

Dazai also tends to have interesting thoughts about personalities as a concept.

You’ll commonly see Dazai say something serious, followed by a severe reaction of the other character, ending with Dazai changing his demeanor and saying “just kidding” to lighten the air.

Manipulation: Dazai is extremely Machiavellian – he is prone to manipulating everyone around him, regardless of how much they care about him or not. He manipulated Chuuya into joining the mafia, he does the same with Akutagawa even today: Here we have him preying on Aku's insecurities to sabotage his self-confidence

He seems to be able to cut off his emotions from any situation, seeing people in a raw, factual sense.

There are several moments throughout the novels where Dazai talks about people as if they’re purely resources or pawns. An example of this in Dead Apple (where Chuuya gets angry because he doesn't respect people or show enough sympathy)

The way he speaks of Atsushi, when asked what he thinks of him in a guidebook, is something like “developing as expected”. Especially in the original, it sounds extremely factual, mechanical, and cold. To me, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about Atsushi, he’s just the type to compartmentalize his emotions in opposition to his thinking. This is very common for a few personality disorders and mental health conditions: the capacity to totally cut off your emotions from the equation.  Obviously, many people are capable of doing this to one extent or another, but the amount to which he does it is what makes it significant.

Lack of traditional empathy: Personally, I think everything comes down to this. Dazai's experiences with empathy are one of the main themes of his character arc. I believe one of the things that makes him feel othered is his lack of emotional empathy.

People with ASPD tend to have issues experiencing what a lot of people consider “typical” empathy – however, ASPD is also on a large spectrum, so experiences certainly vary. Keep in mind that "lack of empathy" is common for all sorts of disorders, but since ASPD seems to be one of the most popular choices for Dazai, I decided to start there.

Before we continue, there are 2 types of empathy: Cognitive empathy is the ability to recognize and understand someone’s feelings and experiences and imagine yourself in those scenarios. Emotional empathy is experiencing shared emotions with someone or feeling emotions as though the experience is your own.

People with ASPD can commonly do the first type easily, and struggle with the second one. It does not mean they cannot experience emotional empathy, it’s just rarer for them to feel it. In my opinion, Dazai heavily relies on Cognitive empathy compared to Emotional empathy.

You can see often that he seems to not entirely understand “why” something is wrong on a personal level, but he can logically see it. This is a running theme, and you can commonly see that Dazai doesn’t fully understand “normal”.

“15” Asagiri seems to be writing Dazai as someone who has gone “beyond the human dimension” in his skills and intelligence, so other people can’t fully understand him, but I think this goes both ways. Dazai has lost touch with what’s the standard human experience.

One of the times Chuuya specifically calls out Dazai for not "acting human-like" is when he's not expressing empathy and respect. It is clear that Dazai's lack of empathy is one of the aspects which make others see him as "inhuman".

There is another situation with Kunikida  during the Azure Messenger arc where Dazai seems to apologize for not getting something “is normal”, it slips by you very easily. It is framed as a joke, and it can be read as him making fun of Kuni, but Kunikida asks himself why Dazai apologized. It does read a bit unusually.

To me it seems like Dazai doesn’t fully emotionally understand other people, so when his mask slips you can see that he struggles a ton with getting what’s exactly “typical”.

Because Dazai is extremely intelligent, he masks in order to fit into society, and he does it successfully since he can intellectually understand most social and emotional functions and processes. However, he slips up like everyone does. This is why he got along with Oda well – since Oda just let him act like himself without having ulterior motives. Dazai didn’t have to “mask”. He didn't see Dazai as "just anyone", but he also realized Dazai was human. Basically, to Oda Dazai was a kid that had empathy issues, but he was struggling much like everyone else.

Personally, I feel like Dazai doesn’t feel entirely “human” because he doesn’t feel “emotional empathy” on the same level as other people, and this is one of the key issues of the character (as it's clearly stated in the Dead Apple manga, where Dazai does seem a bit upset by Chuuya's reaction)

. The reason he felt “seen” by Oda is because Oda fully recognized this and still believed Dazai could do “good”. In our society, it is common for people to think that "empathy" and "sympathy" are conditions for being a good person, but it isn't so simple. The possible complexity of Dazai's moral state is why I find the character so interesting - a person without traditional empathy choosing to be good is really fascinating. (more on this later).

Boredom and general emptiness: “Boredom” is an extremely common complaint for people with ASPD – in fact, intense, non-standard boredom, along with other symptoms such as atypical experience with empathy, is one of the easiest ways to recognize ASPD. A “numbed” emotional state is common for people with ASPD, and due to their different emotional range and inability to connect with others in a more typical fashion, they are prone to “boredom” and seeking out extreme experiences.

Alcoholism/Substance abuse is common for people with ASPD, and it’s pretty much canon Dazai drinks a lot (alcohol is even in his likes). Aside from that, Dazai often cites boredom as one of the main reasons he wants to die, and I remember so many instances where he complains about it in bizarre circumstances. This is common for people with ASPD: depression/suicidality is comorbid, and I have heard people with ASPD mention they wanted their life to end once they no longer have enough stimulation. Dazai is often stated to be “bored”, or look bored even when extremely horrifying things are happening (people dying around him/telling their life stories..).  An example with Mori where he talks about wishing to die (from 15):

Another really funny thing, a lot of people with ASPD I have seen tend to dislike “dogs”. Obviously, this hatred comes from the real life Dazai being scared of them and thinking they can attack at any moment, but it’s a funny coincidence. They tend to dislike dogs for an entirely different reason than Dazai does, to be fair.

How Dazai seems to see himself and morals in general

Generally, to me it seems like Dazai is not entirely happy with his nature. He admires Oda and doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t use his talents to rise up in ranks within the Mafia, simply because that is logical to Dazai – perhaps it is that difference between them that he enjoys so much. He is frequently attracted to displays of empathy:

Examples: 1. Ango documenting the deaths of people within the mafia even if it’s “just a waste of money” 2. Almost everything Atsushi and Oda do

He often describes altruism as “interesting”. I am also under the impression that Dazai has a tendency to project his nature onto others, which we can gather from his “Evil expects evil from others” quote to Mori. Furthermore, he sadly remarks in Dark Era that he is “a man despised by righteousness”. so I feel like there is something up here, some sort of guilt, distaste or shame.

This tells me:

a)Dazai sees himself as “evil”

b)He is constantly assuming the worst in others or is prepared for the worst

Another thing this tells me is that Dazai is someone who is likely extremely wary of people’s intentions. This is a ubiquitous theme all across BSD, especially when we see him as a kid. Osamu tends to be skeptical of everyone and everything, as if he’s waiting for people to betray or fuck him over at any corner. In TDIPUD, he keeps getting upset that he can't figure out Oda, since it makes no sense for him to be so charitable for absolutely no reason. Oda said “good and evil are the same to you” – personally I interpret this as Dazai being largely amoral rather than immoral.  Whether Dazai can be described as “good”, “evil” or “neutral” largely depends on your view of ethics. Just because someone lacks traditional empathy, it doesn't mean they are necessarily sadistic or bad at all. Immoral and Amoral are two words that sound similar but have different meanings. Immoral is an adjective that describes “something against pre-established morals, ethics, or standard societal practices.” Amoral, on the other hand, is an adjective that describes “something or someone completely lacking morals.” In common society, if you’re not “good”, you are often automatically “evil”. Basically, a person who has "no morals" is just as bad as a person who has cruel beliefs, but those two fundamentally differ. However, in a technical, utilitarian fashion – this is often seen to be true. More or less, “good” is the neutral state, and the more you step away from it, the more “evil” you are perceived to be. The more moral conventions you break, the more "evil" you are, regardless of your intentions. The results of the actions matter more than the source and motivations. In the end, a person is dead, regardless of why you killed them or how you felt about it. The reasons why people do conventionally moral things can be all over the place too - people aren't always kind because they have sympathy. When I hear “evil and good are the same to you”, it sounds like Dazai has no need for either, meaning, yes, he has no inherent need to do good, but no need for bad, he is simply not opposed to either of them. Regardless of what he's doing, he feels the same way. They're both tools to satisfy particular needs. Many people read this and say "aha, so if he sees no difference between the two, that means he is evil", but I think the truth is in the middle. I always say that to estimate Dazai's moral framework, you need to judge him outside of normal conventions. Basically, his starting point in making decisions is different. He begins his process likely by thinking "what will this bring me?" Most of his “evil” is not out of pure sadism, it’s just that he feels no need to stop himself due to moral conventions, he mostly cares about practical results. This is opposed to Kunikida who cares about ideals and morals in a vacuum and pursues them in their most idealized version (and it's well known Asagiri writes duos as opposites). Entrance exam as a novel was about how idealism can lead people to ruin when it's unrealistic.

He’s naturally immune to socialized pressure that forms the moral frameworks of most people on an emotional level. All of this is very common for ASPD, and a few other conditions. The more I see Dazai talk about how he sees the concept of personality, murder, morality – the more I am convinced his ethical framework is focused on results rather than the inherent morality of said actions. Example: He's going to lie to you to make you happy, even though "lying is bad". There is no inherent value in staying honest if it makes an individual miserable in the long run, even though society sees frankness as a virtue. That way, most actions are “open” for Dazai to undertake, he has no qualms most people have against them, since he doesn’t have socialized morals. A lot of the time, we only see certain things as "unconditionally bad" because we've been socialized to see them that way, even if it's not necessarily logical. He simply lacks socialized morals, leading to a tendency to be amoral. Everything is a means to an end, every action is alright if it's a tool that has more pros than cons. Oda's death was a useful character arc, since it led Dazai to taking Oda's moral framework as his own. He doesn't believe he is better than others, nor does he enjoy hurting random people, he doesn't kill or rob randos to get something and believes he is justified in it. Things of that type would make him “immoral”. Most of Dazai’s evil actions seem utilitarian, rather than committed for the pure act of pleasure or cruelty. When I say “amoral”, I mean this from Dazai’s point of view. Since he has no “moral boundaries”, all actions are open for him to undertake. He can go as far as he wants to any extreme largely depending on his subjective worldview and feelings (as seen in Beast, where he breaks all sorts of ethical codes of being "a good man" so Oda could get a decent life). However, since he is aware that there is a fight between good and bad in every person, and that evil tends to win out compared to the good, under enough pressure, he admires people who selflessly continue to be kind. That is why Oda, a highly moral person even beyond what is logical (his insistence to not kill even if it harms him) is the opposite that pushed him to change. Ulterior motives tend to be something Dazai is worried about in people, perhaps because he is possibly projecting all he is, or can be, on others. He describes Oda specifically as:

"a man who has no ulterior motive". Oda is obviously being a good person partially out of self-interest ("people live to save themselves"), but this self-interest is not destructive. I think for Dazai, it was difficult to find people who didn't have an ulterior motive that was ultimately hurtful, and he projected that onto everyone. Oda acting in his self-interest was ultimately beneficial to everyone. All in all, while Dazai does admire Oda's morals - I think a lot of this appreciation comes from an intimate and subjective place, where he feels comforted someone like Oda even existed. Continuing Oda's work is likely an extension of this as well. Keep in mind, any person has the right to see Dazai's actions as bad, as they often are. I am more speaking of Dazai's internal mental framework. Conclusion: Dazai has no inherent need to do good or bad, for the most part. He just goes as far as he needs to to satisfy his emotional needs.

Oda saved Dazai’s life in the day I picked up Dazai, and listened to him, but expected nothing in return. I feel that Oda saw this struggle within Dazai, and the way “good and evil don’t mean much to him” due to his disorder, but recognized that Dazai perhaps didn’t want to be this way.

Since Oda saw Dazai’s “irregular” nature, and still believed he could be a good person, Dazai was touched and decided to change his life. I believe Dazai had some distaste for himself, regardless of his lack of empathy, he could recognize what he was doing was not entirely right. As Asagiri mentioned, Oda told him exactly what he needed to hear, and the fact that these words were so life-changing to Dazai tells us a lot about what he had on his mind.  In my opinion, to see who Dazai is, you need to follow exactly which words got to him.

In my opinion, it likely meant a lot that a person he actually admired wanted to be in his life, especially a person he considered so kind like Oda. He often says that Oda is “the most interesting person he knows”. Imo, this is because “empathy” is one of the things Dazai doesn’t fully understand. He had to learn it. Since he understands human nature so well, cognitive empathy comes easy to him, but he still fucks up sometimes.

Here, I also feel like he is talking about himself – he sees himself in Kyouka. It doesn’t come naturally to Dazai to be “good”, but he is trying his best, that is his ideal now. (Asagiri said this was one of Dazai's rare human moments). For that reason, I think Dazai admires empathetic people and tends to dislike those who are naturally violent, or even choose to be violent out of sadism.

On the BSD exhibit, Asagiri said Atsushi was "an empathy user", and how that is the key to his character. During one interview, the author mentioned that Dazai keeps testing Kunikida's ideals, but Osamu secretly hopes that Doppo will prove to be right, and Dazai wrong. This to me paints a picture of someone who hopes that "good" is worth it, at least from an intellectual point of view. When talking with Fyodor, he seems to admire people who live emotionally, thinking god doesn't prefer perfection, logic and harmony.

"The ones who actually make the world run Are those who scream in the storm of uncertainty and run with flowing blood"

Dazai seems to reject the idea that him and Fyodor and better because they are more calculating and cold - like I mentioned earlier in this god-forsaken post, this to me says Dazai believes empathetic and emotional people are better than him.

"I've come to see it many times, his gimmicks are the accidental and illogical that's a weakness two of us have in common" He suffers because he is not like them, and that contributes to him feeling "othered".

Negative emotions and Akutagawa

My guess is that one of the reasons Dazai has so many issues with Akutagawa is because he is projecting his own issues with his lack of empathy onto him. This makes him relate to Akutagawa, but also dislike him beyond how he usually treats people. Akutagawa questions why Dazai's acts of violence are justified, while Osamu is judging Akutagawa: to me it sounds that Dazai sees his actions as at least partly justified because they are "logical" and utilitarian. He puts a difference between him and Aku, as if Dazai's natural instinct is not to mindlessly hurt others. However, it's interesting he needs to draw this line.

I believe Dazai sees a lot of the hurt he enacts on others as either "justified" or subconsciously defensive. "If I don't hurt others, they will hurt me", and he uses this against all kinds of people to keep them in control. In the Dark Era novel, Dazai speaks of Akutagawa like this:

“When I first saw him over in the slums, I was horrified. His talents are extraordinary, and his skill is extremely destructive. Plus, he’s stubborn. If I’d left him to his own devices, he would’ve ended up a slave to his own powers until he destroyed himself.” Interestingly, Dazai was "horrified" at what Akutagawa was capable of, where most things don't seem to exactly phase him. I think something about Aku's capacity for violence even scares him, and he "lashes" out in response to control him.

Later on Oda calls out Dazai's thinking indirectly in Beast, saying that hurting Aku is still bad no matter why he did it. (more on this in the next section) However, it’s very clear he cares for Akutagawa in “Chopsticks and a Spoon”, so I do feel like he’s likely aware of it. In fact, that story contains one of the gentlest expressions Dazai has pointed at anyone, so I think he partially sees Akutagawa as "innocent" in nature, and more like a wounded animal. I'll likely write a post about it. Since Dazai has expressed some lament or even shame regarding him being a person "hated by righteousness", I do think he is a bit ashamed of who he is. This part is a theory: When talking about "No Longer Human", Asagiri mentioned that he felt the book was about "embarrassment". Since Dazai is canonically famously based on Yozo to some extent, I feel that we can guess that Osamu likely does feel some shame - the question is about what. The rare times we see BSD Dazai express something similar to shame is when talking about his moral nature (when he beat up Akutagawa in Dark Era), but it's a "blink and you'll miss it" type of thing. Yozo and RL Dazai's relationship with his father was one of the cornerstones of his work (NLH even ends with him mentioning how he would have been alright if he had a better relationship with his father). Within the book, Yozo feels all sorts of things which make him feel "inhuman", but he is terrified about being open about it due to his strict father who sees him as somewhat strange. Since the theme of "fatherhood" was lightly touched upon when Atsushi's orphanage director died, I do think this is potentially a sore spot for BSD Dazai too. My guess is that Dazai likely had a poor relationship with his father figure, who saw him as "strange" or "inhuman" due to the way he acted: leading BSD Dazai to feel shame over his nature. Perhaps one of the things that made his father see Dazai as inhuman was his lack of typical ethics and empathy. Osamu internalized this - and ended up becoming a criminal at a very young age, perhaps in an attempt to confirm what hurt him, seeing himself as someone who could mostly do bad (which could be one of the reasons he wanted to die so young). Perhaps Oda making a way for him to "act good" was life-changing because of that too - it targeted a specific wound. All of this is speculation, but Dazai did mention that "self-pity leads you to living a life that is an endless nightmare". My guess is he was talking about himself there: and his own experiences with shame. To extend this: I think one of the reasons Dazai is so harsh on Akutagawa is because he is possibly projecting his relationship with his father onto Aku. Akutagawa is violent and troubled, and Dazai was shamed for the same thing. (but it would take a lot of time to work through this theory, so moving on..)

Dazai exhibiting empathy However, Dazai does show empathy for Oda, and a lot of it. I’d go as far as to say that he over-empathizes with Oda, while he underempathizes with everyone else. His relationships with the people closest to him tend to be why some people think he may have BPD. Especially due to devaluation and the "favorite person" concept. For someone with this type of BPD relationship, a “favorite person” is someone they rely on for comfort, happiness, and validation. A FP is a person who someone with BPD relies heavily on for emotional support, seeks attention and validation from, and looks up to or idealizes. For Dazai, this is Oda. On the other hand, In the context of BPD, “devaluation” refers to a psychological defense mechanism or coping strategy that individuals with BPD may employ in their interpersonal relationships. Devaluation involves a shift in the person’s perception of others, where they view someone they previously idealized or held in high regard as unworthy, flawed, or worthless. They become unworthy of their affection and praise. The person with BPD may engage in behaviors such as intense criticism, verbal attacks, withdrawal, or even cutting off contact with the person they have devalued. These actions are often driven by the individual’s fear of rejection, abandonment, or a desire to protect themselves from potential hurt or disappointment. For Dazai, the clearest example of this is Ango. However, a person can exhibit the "favorite person" and project the phenomenon of devaluation without having BPD. In my opinion, Dazai does show heightened polarity in his feelings toward others, but I am not sure if BPD would be my choice for him. It's very difficult to say, as many conditions mask as BPD, and Dazai's expression of empathy is unique.

Dazai idealizes Oda, and deeply sees his pain as his own, while he always frames Akutagawa in a negative light, even though he is likely one of the people Dazai cares about the most (next to Oda, Chuuya, Ango, Atsushi, especially according to Beast). Another example of his heightened negative emotions are Ango, and Chuuya to a much lesser extent. My guess is that Dazai doesn’t deal with caring about people well, especially when they are any sort of “threat”: which is why he tries to “bully” them down. The reason he goes easier on Chuuya than Akutagawa is because he feels Chuuya is in his nature more sympathetic.

In my opinion, the moment Dazai warmed up to Chuuya was when he realized that The Sheep were pushing Chuuya around: he was no “King of the sheep”, he was acting out of empathy and care. Since Chuuya is so powerful, it was likely admirable to Dazai that he didn’t abuse his abilities for self-gain. This is when he decided to isolate Chuuya from the Sheep: and I think the reason above is specifically why

I'd say Dazai is likely "spikey" to anyone he cares about but has less confidence they won't hurt him. There are two camps of people: 1. Atsushi, Oda, Kunikida, Sigma (generally upright, meek, moral at the end of the day) 2. Chuuya, Akutagawa, and lastly Ango (people who are aggressive, challenging, and need to be put down in Dazai's eyes).

He cares about both camps (Sigma is debatable, I spoke of the type of personality Dazai seems to deal with easily in his case), but he likely feels "less safe" with the second type. Mori could potentially go into the second camp - there is some respect and resentment there at the same time. He even talks about this with Kunikida in Entrance exam.

"“I guess. But you, Kunikida, I’ve got a good idea of who you are now, so nothing you do will ever surprise me. I mean, compared with me, you’re just a simple man with a simple mind, after all.”

See? You wear your heart on your sleeve. You don’t hide how you’re really feeling. It’s nice. You know what else is nice? Just knowing that you’re going to be worrying later to yourself, ‘Am I really that simple?’”

“Why, you—”

But I refrain from arguing. Whatever my response, he’s just going to end up telling me, “I knew you’d say that.”

I suppose that being around Kunikida comforts him since he is predictable, yet kind. On the other hand, someone like Chuuya excites him, because he is wild and challenging enough, but is still a good person when it comes down to it. Basically, Dazai is hypervigilant of pain.

Akutagawa is “off the chain” in comparison to all of them. I am under the impression that Dazai can care about people without treating them well at all, and 2 of the people who are at the top of his list (Chuuya and Aku) are people he “seems” to dislike (In Chuuya’s case rather openly in his profile).

It appears that the more “intense” and “unpolished” parts of Dazai’s personality are strictly reserved for people he cares about, but he is extremely selective about who he shows emotional empathy to as it’s such a rare experience for him. He may capable of "cutting off" empathy to protect himself emotionally. It is quite clear some aspects of empathy miss him broadly in Beast, when he appears shocked that Oda would react so strongly to endangering Akutagawa since “it’s all supposed to end well if he survives”. That sentence itself is totally tone-deaf, yet Dazai is acting as if Oda is supposed to take that normally. It’s quite clear that Dazai doesn’t treat Atsushi all that well in Beast either, as he exploits his fears for Atsushi to be totally obedient to him.

I really like this moment, because it demonstrates that even if Dazai does have some point regarding Akutagawa and the way he goes about things, the way he has treated him is still too much – and Dazai can’t exactly convince Oda, a decent person, why this is ever justifiable under any circumstances. There is an aspect of regular empathy that misses Dazai – it doesn’t cross his mind why his actions are inherently bad. Perhaps it is possible that Dazai was treated with little to no empathy growing up, so he accepted that as a model for acceptable behavior. A lot of the time, cruel actions don't seem to even register to him as bad, in an almost innocent way. It's like it doesn't cross his mind that stuff is out of the ordinary. When talking to Oda about this, he was described as "childlike".

However, Dazai shows a lot of extreme emotional empathy for Oda, which tends to be rare for people with ASPD (obviously, all traits of it are on a spectrum).

Dazai clearly feels as if he himself is being beaten when Oda suffers. Furthermore, “Beast” shows that he is willing to endanger multiple people he cares about so Oda could live and write his book. In his words “the me from other worlds doesn’t care about the world” – showing that even though he may “care” about people, it’s really hard for him to fully emotionally connect with others.

This leads him to severe feelings of loneliness and isolation, but it’s quite clear Oda is the exception to this.

Dazai has multiple anxiety attacks when meeting with Oda in Beast and TIPUD:

“I see.” Oda says after he gives it a moment of thought. “I’ll do so then. That is very kind of you. You are a good guy.”

Dazai’s expression becomes distorted.

He opens his mouth, and closes it again, as if he can no longer breathe.

If he tells him everything now, maybe things will go back to how they were. The two of them will go to the bar together and have a toast. Just like that night.

“Odasa…”

Just as Dazai is about to say that name, a train passes by. The express train passing through that station cuts through the silence of the night, right next to where Dazai and Oda is."

and obviously the whole showdown at the bar. Earlier, Oda mentions that Dazai looks like he is about to cry:

 An interesting part here is that Dazai gets shocked that Oda would even consider that Dazai could hurt him:

It almost sounds absurd that Dazai, who is known for scheming even against people he likes, would be that surprised someone would expect this from him. This, to me, shows that Dazai does have that underdeveloped, childish emotional side to himself, where he doesn’t understand everything he does. It’s quite logical why Oda, or anyone else, would be consistently doubtful of Dazai, yet he is so used to not caring about anyone, that when he does feel things he is remarkably unpolished and just as illogical as anyone else. I’d say his heart is like a knife that went blunt from lack of use. Since he has no experience dealing with people he feels strongly about, it always comes across very messy – and Asagiri himself often describes him as childish at his most vulnerable.

Furthermore, the lyrics of the song for Beast have these words to say: “Loving you to death won’t kill me Because I don’t love this world enough” And in the Beast novel, he mentions all he has to give to the world is love. I think we can certainly see that Dazai is not emotionless.

To me it seems like Dazai is capable of selective emotional empathy. I feel like one of the reasons Oda was “the one” Dazai attached himself to the most, is because Oda was a struggling man who was also depressed (rather clear the more you read), but he was empathetic and accepted Dazai for who he was.

Him and Dazai had difficulties in common (the guy was a killer as a kid too), yet Oda did his best to be a good person – that is one of the reasons, as Asagiri mentions, why he had an “outburst” when Kyouka implied former killers can’t be good people. Oda was a good person in his eyes, and his role model of “empathy”: someone he wished to emulate. I am pretty sure that Oda became the blueprint for the moral compass he strives towards.

Most importantly, Oda didn’t really judge Dazai when he showed his lack of empathy, while he remained firm in what he believed in.

“Odasaku is the type of person who will never lecture anyone. Because he does not consider himself a superior person who can teach and guide others. However, it doesn’t mean that he has nothing he wants to say. The sentiments that he couldn’t convey in these two scenes were finally delivered to Dazai in the last scene through the words “Become a good person.” Very meaningful scenes when read as a set.”

is how Asagiri described Oda during the exhibit. As Asagiri says, one of the reasons he didn’t tell Dazai anything when he provoked the sniper was his modesty. Since Oda didn’t look down on him, yet showed concern and fully understood Dazai wasn’t just a struggling depressed kid, but someone with serious issues who also happened to be a child – Dazai grew to deeply care for him. Oda didn't shame him, likely avoiding Dazai's hypervigilant sensor for pain.

Selective empathy is common for many disorders – and Dazai, after not feeling “seen” his whole life, ended up making a true connection with Oda. I guess, in that sense – Oda was the one who really reached Dazai’s heart, and since he was the only one who came that close, all of Dazai’s emotional empathy is reserved for him.

In my opinion, the reason Dazai was so difficult to “get to” was that even people who had good intentions toward him never truly saw him.

To see Dazai as a depressed woobie who just needs to be saved is to idealize him – which wouldn’t exactly help him. They’re talking about a version of him that doesn’t exist. If the only way he could be seen as worthwhile was someone seeing him as more “traditionally good” than he truly is, it’s not going to work. He needs to be seen for exactly who he is, and still given a chance to be better.

Likewise, it had to be someone who wasn’t helping him in order to get something from him. I would say that one of the main reasons why Dazai got so attached to Oda was because his friend had no reason to save him, he gave him space, and didn’t even force himself into Dazai’s life.

It was purely altruistic, and for Dazai, who expects the worst from others and seems to fear people’s intentions, this was perfect. One of the main aspects of Dazai's character is his anxious-avoidant attachment style, where he is likely so afraid of potential pain, he pushes others away, or punishes anyone he cares about who might hurt him preemptively. A lot of this is not impulsive, but calculated, which is why he feels a natural resistance to Akutagawa (but relates to him and cares all the more because of it). He understands the self-destructive nature of Akutagawa.

"If I’d left him to his own devices, he would’ve ended up a slave to his own powers until he destroyed himself.”" I believe Dazai likely allows himself to fully empathize with Oda because he feels only Oda is "safe" in this world. The fact that Oda is dead and gone perhaps makes caring for him even safer, as his image of Oda will never change.

Conclusion: I'd say Dazai is someone who is probably extremely traumatized, with a specific emotional profile that doesn't allow him to experience empathy like normal people do - and this is one of the defining traits of the character for me. He is able to isolate himself from normal social pressures and boundaries - and because of this and his extreme intellect, he feels like an alien in this world. A lot of his struggle likely deals with the fact that he dislikes the hurtful person he is, but has difficulty seeing why he should be better - all while he has a distaste for sadism, cruelty and senseless violence in others. In my opinion, a lot of his own cruelty is "reactive": he acts "evil" because he expects the same from others ("evil expects evil from others), and decides he wants to beat them to the punch. He is comforted when he is in the presence of altruistic and empathetic people, because he doesn't have to be what he dislikes (as "enemy" evil will always make him react since he is threatened). In the end, he rationally sees that cruelty is negative, but he still feels it is an effective tool. If Dazai weren't this way, he wouldn't consistently choose empathetic people for his company throughout the story, while acting callous himself most of the time.

A lot of things Dazai does to me feel like he is avoiding hurt, or attempting to "control the pain" he gets in his life. Notably, Dazai mostly lets himself get "bullied" by people he sees as innocent and simple like Kunikida, since "Kunikida will never surprise him" - he knows that Doppo won't cross the line. Ironically, he famously says he "dislikes physical pain", but often gets himself into physically dangerous scenarios.

It's like he doesn't mind pain if he's the one in control (when Fyodor let the sniper shoot him, when that dude from Mimic shot him point blank). Avoidance of pain and control are other keys to Dazai's character. In that sense, I think Dazai was possibly traumatized and learned to almost completely disassociate from empathy early in his life. There are so many theories I could think of here that we'd get nowhere.

It is clear that Dazai is capable of extreme emotional empathy due to his relationship with Oda, and it's possible he doesn't allow himself to feel it in most scenarios due to his avoidant nature regarding pain. However, whatever the reason behind it, it is clear he doesn't feel a ton of emotional empathy in his day-to-day life, and this disassociation from empathy has crafted him into a person who doesn't fully understand "normal humans".

That is why he sees them as fascinating after Oda dies - he reaches Dazai's heart and opens him up to the idea that not all people are unempathetic and cruel - meaning Dazai doesn't always have to be on guard. Does Dazai have ASPD, or is his lack of empathy a result of other things: PTSD, CPTSD, is he perhaps autistic? I can't say for sure, as it could be so many things. Personally, anyone could make an argument for any of these in my eyes. Above, I mostly analyzed his displays of empathy and tried to study which emotional patterns he appears to follow. I think Dazai's character arc has a lot of worth specifically because we see someone for whom emotional empathy may not be natural trying to be good. It's a unique ethical dilemma, and that's one of the reasons I feel in love with the series. Since it isn't natural for him, his efforts mean a lot, and the struggle feels real and genuine.

Thank you all for reading if you made it this far <3 I've taken a lot of posts and translations I've gathered over the years, and I am sure I won't be able to thank everyone, but, I'd like to show appreciation for popopretty, aja154ever and many others for sharing info from exhibitions, databooks and so. Have a nice day !

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #dazai #dazai osamu #osamu dazai #osamu #oda sakunosuke #bsd dazai #theory

[sillymints]

guys, this is my persuasive speech for ian flynn (which i had to do in english class)

Some people only see the violence in video games. Some people view it as a waste of time and intelligence. And some people only look at their comics as a bed example of storytelling through art. They are just saying the negatives. Video games are a major source of entertainment, offering a diverse range of experiences. But, most importantly, video games opens up a world of possibilities for narrative and a unique powerful medium for messages, both simple and emotional. Some even life is changing, thanks to the writers behind the screens. Although it is not clear, if we take a deep dive, there are some role models who admire and inspire many to follow their same footsteps to write an amazing masterpiece through words, to overcome obstacles and have the passion for everything video game. Let us welcome Ian Flynn.

Without characters, who is going to drive the plot? Ian Flynn is a freelance writer and a concept artist for all forms of media (mostly video games and comics) but is mostly known for writing Sonic the Hedgehog. From playing on the Sega Genisis as a kid to submitting scripts, he knows all major and minor characters by heart. He has the ability to create original and fun characters (examples include Dr. Starline, Tangle, Whisper, Surge and Kit) as well as fixing familiar faces to make them interesting and likeable for the targeted audience. Let us take an example, Miles “Tails” Prower (Sonic’s sidekick, close friend, and a tech genius). On both Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Tails was written exceptionally well in his character arc as he learnt to believe in himself and step out of his comfort zone. He thrived from once an anxious and lonely kid to a confident and determined hero. Yet, in the 2010’s, new writers were hired without any knowledge of these characters which ruined everything that made Sonic… well Sonic! And poor Tails had it the hardest. His character development was inconsistent, his only usefulness was his inventions and always stood by the sidelines (like Sonic Lost World and Sonic Forces). Fortunately, James Ian Flynn (or “that Sonic guy”) changed things for the better. In Sonic Frontiers, his character was renewed yet still acknowledge his past mistakes and now is on his way to find his clarity. Characterization from Ian Flynn’s perspective is vital for the narrative and wanted many more to understand the importance, including video games. This is because if a video game has engaging characters, the player can be fully immersed and entertained during gaming. And I even agree with his statement. Characters, even fictional ones, can change someone’s life, like mine. Tails made me realize that I needed to get out of my comfort zone and believe in myself that I can do anything. Plus, what is funnier is that an eight-year-old fox has 300IQ and being the smartest one in the group (aka Tails).

Get your eyes peeled and make sure you are sitting up straighter because this next sentence is going to blow your mind! …Ian Flynn was actually a really bad writer. The hardest challenge was not actually his job but about getting the job. He first applied to Archie Comics in late 2001 but, it was a ‘laughable bad attempt’ as he describes in his website, The BumbleKing. The script were rough and embarrassing in retrospect; material thrown together with little to no thought behind the creation and it was not self-addressed. But he had hope and was determined. In 2003, he made a truly focused attempt, getting an English degree and his scripts improved drastically. During this time, the Archie Comics team were shifting and replacing their roles including their editors, artists, and writers so, he was lucky enough to get a spot in 2004. Quickly, he became one of the most talented members of the team, submitting scripts in 2005 and by March 2006, he was the head writer for the Sonic Archie Comics. Though his hardships was not insane or dramatic, it was life-changing since it shifted his perspective. Resilience and patience is key to being a writer.

2010’s was the worst decade for Sonic the Hedgehog as fans were left unsatisfied due to the poorly written characterization (as mentioned earlier) bland storyline and “trying to be funny” dialogue. Once known as a hedgehog for a like of adventures, a cool chill back attitude and the heart of a hero was suddenly demolished, and it is glory ripped into pieces. There was no hope left for this famous blue icon, no idea how to change it from junk to a wonderful masterpiece again. Until Sonic IDW comics. Sadly, Archie Comics was out of business in 2017 due to lawsuits (and had to cancel Issue 290 for the Sonic Archie Comics, which still holds the record of the longest video game comic series) so, where was “that Sonic guy” going to go next? Well, of course he had to take part in the Sonic IDW comics! Yet, since this took place after Sonic Forces (the worst Sonic game due to the storyline by reviews), he had only one goal. To revive the franchise. Issue after issue, fans eyes widened as Sonic was beginning to take back his place, especially since he became the head writer on April 9, 2018. New and old characters were now cool and interesting, storylines hooked the readers, especially in their intense situations and professionally written dialogue tied all together. I even fell in love with the comics when I first got into fandom. The passion for the fastest thing alive was alive. And as Sonic Frontiers was released on the 8th of November 2022, everyone joined hands with Ian Flynn for flawlessly saving the fandom. And all it took was dedication and passion. Let us draw it all back together. Video games is an escape to brilliant storytelling and characters and can actually benefit you. The ability to change points of view in games has changed everything. And a lot of people are actually heavily inspired by people like Ian Flynn to join the gaming industry to write a script that can positively impact everyone and everything around. With passion, determination, hope, resilience, patience, talent and a bit of good luck, game writers make themselves fairly good role models for future generations. Ian Flynn is a good role model. And so can you. Because if tv shows, movies, novels, why cannot video games and their comics do the same? That is your chance and your time to show the world what video games can do. What you can do. Because everyone can be just like Ian Flynn. I even tried to write a comic about Sonic the Hedgehog, and it is not easy as what meets the eye. But again, and again I tried and completed a short, simple yet cool comic and now banging my head on the desk, paying respect for this guy’s hard work. So, if you cannot do anything else… play Sonic the Hedgehog. I am begging you.

:)

#sonic the hedgehog #tails #sonic #tails the fox #ian flynn #sth #shitpost #funny shit #school #lol #haha #lolz

[scarlet--wiccan]

Idk if you know anything about Ice from dc, but I believe she is also a Romani character? Since you’ve shared thoughts on Dick Grayson and Zatanna, I was wondering if you had any on her.

I do have thoughts, and they're not kind. With DC Comics, it seems like Romani identity is something that is only ever applied retroactively to validate a character's exoticness, mysticism, or sexualization-- sometimes a combination of all three. I'm not going to say that Marvel is necessarily better, but their inclusion of Romani characters is definitely founded on a better understanding of our realities, particularly in the Silver and Bronze Age. When you look at characters like the Maximoffs or von Dooms, you get a sympathetic portrait of European Romani history that actually makes valid and helpful points, in spite of the problematic imagery. Characters like Ice, Zatanna, and Nightwing generally only make shallow references to a gypsy heritage that confirms certain stereotypes about their upbringing, but has no bearing on their adult lives.

DC also has a stronger tendency to portray portray Romani groups as organized crime families, as we see in Ice's revised backstory, first told in Justice League: Generation Lost #12. In my mind, this is a much more dangerous stereotype than the usual witches and fortunetellers. Romani communities are heavily impacted by racial profiling and over-policing, in Europe and in America. It's one thing for media to present gypsies as a fictional race of fairy-tale spellcasters; it's quite another thing to validate very real state violence against a very real people by parroting racist propaganda.

Anyways, Tora Olafsdotter, formerly known as "Icemaiden", now known as simply "Ice," was originally depicted as a member of a reclusive tribe of magic wielders from Norway. I don't know how overt this is in the original material, but I would hazard that she is actually based on stereotypes about the Sámi people. "Fixing" this backstory by making her Romani-- just in time to maker her family into overt villains-- is very similar to what happened with Magneto in the 90s.

The Romanifolket are a real Romani group, based primarily in Norway and Sweden. DC gets points for naming an actual vitsa-- most Romani characters don't have one at all, or if they do, it's fictional, like Doom's "Zefiro clan." The name "Is Bygd" is made-up, though, as are the clan politics of Tora's family. DC loses what little credibility they'd earned by representing the Romanifolket as an extensive crime ring who uphold scamming and thievery as a cultural practice. That's completely fallacious, and extremely harmful.

In her revised origin, Tora is a metahuman, meaning her powers are a genetic quirk, similar to that of X-Men's mutants. Her fanatical forebears believe that she is a reincarnated goddess, and they wish to use her powers to, you guessed it, do more crimes. This reinforces the narrative that Romani people are ruled by their arcane superstitions and pagan beliefs, as well as the pervasive notion that we abuse children and force them into early labor and/or marriage for profit. Sound familiar? Everyone's favorite X-Factor writer loves that one. [x]

Ultimately, Tora denounces her entire community as "very bad people." Generation Lost frames her Romani upbringing as a traumatic experience Tora wishes to distance herself from, and Romani culture as an inherent evil for which she seeks redemption. In that regard, she's not unlike Marvel's Amanda Sefton, but unlike Amanda, Tora's story is told without an ounce of nuance, and it was written recently. In the age of digital research, there's no excuse for this level of ignorance. The story of Ice is probably the worst Romani narrative I have ever witnessed in a superhero comic.

#tora olafsdotter #ice #ice dc #dc comics #dcposting

[fanastraea]

Analyzing VegasPete as a Writer, Pt 1: Vegas

Warning: This is very long. Last count in Word was 1600 words and it's definitely longer now. I don't know if this will interest anyone or not but I had to get it out of my own head so I might as well share.

As a writer I like to study my favorite stories to understand how they work, and how I can use that to make my own writing stronger. I can’t stop thinking about Vegas and Pete because they work so well for me. I’m currently working on creating characters for two projects so this has been on my mind a lot.

So the usual introductions, disclaimers. This is character analysis from a writer’s point of view, and with a specific approach. I don’t claim that this is the approach that was used by the original novel writers or tv series writers to create and develop the characters. I use an approach extremely common now in western, English-language fiction, especially genre fiction. Because I do it to help me as a writer, and accuracy isn't the most important thing in that process.

If you've read or watched writing advice you're probably familiar with the idea of a False Belief or Lie, and a character's Fear. After studying a lot of advice and doing a lot of my own writing, I have particular way of understanding these aspects of characters, along with Wants and Needs, that helps me as a writer. So that's what I"m looking at here!

Just to be clear, these things can often be interpreted in well developed, psychologically realistic characters no matter how the writers approached it. I’m also not saying that makes this universal, there’s no such thing, this is just one tool for analysis.

And, one last thing. This is all subjective. I’m bringing my own point of view and experiences to this. There are usually different ways to express similar things. Different ways to break things down. So if this doesn’t feel right to you, that’s cool. I'm basing this on the English translation so there might also nuances that don't match the original intention. If there is anything here that isn't quite right because of language issues I'm sorry for that.

Okay? Let’s get to the fun stuff. Creating characters with a False Belief, a Fear, and Want and Need, and why Vegas and Pete are such fascinating characters to analyze in this way.

First, some definitions.

False Belief

A False Belief is a lie a character believes about themselves and/or the world. This comes from something that happened in their past, or many things that happened in their past, or things they were told about themselves. They come to believe this as the absolute truth.

The false belief is harmful. It’s the thing that will hold them back from a positive character arc. It’s what makes them fail to overcome a lot of obstacles along the way.

The conflict in their story is what forces them to deal with this false belief. 

Fear

The character’s backstory and false belief creates a particular fear. This fear motivates them, it drives them to act in certain ways. Their fear and how they cope with it is why they fail to overcome obstacles.

Want

What the character wants during the story also comes from their false belief and their fear. They want something they believe will prevent what they fear from happening, even though it won’t. What they want is probably bad for them, actually.

Need

What the character actually needs is what will help them overcome their fear and false belief. It is what will give them a better life or make them a better person. It doesn’t have to make them perfect, or a hero, or have huge success. It’s something that, if a character earns it and gets it in the end, the reader will feel satisfied.  Want and Need are often in conflict with each other.

Usually, if a character doesn't overcome their fear and false belief, they don't get what they need.

How does this apply to VegasPete? What can we learn from how they're written?

Vegas

I’m going to start with Vegas because he says many of these things explicitly to Pete, which makes it a lot easier. Still, this is subjective so you might disagree on how I phrased this, or how I broke it down, any of it really, that’s fine!

False Belief

I define Vegas’s False Belief is “I will always fail to take care of the people (and pets) I love.”

You might think, isn’t his False Belief that he will always fail to beat Kinn/The main family? Or that he will never have his father’s approval? And that’s fair. I thought a lot about that. But I think those things are the result of his False Belief and his Fear, not the root of them. In looking at his full character arc, I felt that it was ultimately his lack of trust in himself to take care of others that held him back. I'll explain in some of the other sections, but this False Belief actually keeps him tied emotionally to his father, who doesn't need to be taken care of.

The choice to tell the story about the hedgehogs dying is important. We know that he's been reprimanded for failing in his mafia responsibilities. But the hedgehog story is older. It's backstory. If we're using this particular approach to create a character, we want an event that creates the False Belief in the first place. It stands in for the many events that probably also happened, the other people Vegas lost, that led to such a strong belief.

It's important that the False Belief is FALSE. It is a lie. It's like depression brain telling you you're worthless. It's like anxiety brain telling you terrible things will happen if you go outside. So it's important that the audience or reader understands that it's false. So the pet is a hedgehog, which only lives a few years so of COURSE they're going to die! It has nothing to do with how well Vegas has cared for them.

we see glimpses of the truth that Vegas is actually good at taking care of others. Once he decides to do it, he's diligent and gentle about bandaging Pete's wounds. He takes a lot of time to make Pete food that he likes. He takes pride in it. Early on, he's the one who's going to take Macau to get his head wound taken care of.

The False Belief is contrary to the Truth. In this case, that Vegas is (or can be) good at taking care of others. It's a core part of him that has been damaged through trauma.

The False Belief hurts so much because we see what the character can be when they can let go of it.

Fear

Vegas is afraid that everyone he loves will leave him. (“Everyone I love will leave me” can also be a False Belief but I think here it's best expressed as Vegas's Fear).

People always have more than one fear. But in creating a character, we're talking about the fear that is deepest, the kind that will drive someone to do almost anything to avoid facing it. Vegas’s story is very strong in my opinion because in the end, it’s easy to see how everything he does can be traced back to this fear.

How does this fear come from Vegas's False Belief? If he believes he will always fail to take care of the people (or pets) he loves, then he will always be losing them, whether that means someone leaves him or dies as a result of Vegas's failure.

This is where Vegas’s need for his father’s love and approval and his need to beat Kinn and the main family come in. These are how he copes with his fear. He is terrified that his father, one of the maybe two people he actually loves (until Pete), will leave him (either literally or emotionally). He is motivated to do anything to keep his father from leaving, which is what ultimately drives him to want to beat Kinn and the main family. Because this is the price his father has placed on his approval and love. He has some other coping mechanisms as well that stem from his false belief and fear, and this is part of what starts to make a character unique. False Beliefs and Fears can be pretty generic before all these other layers are added.

For example, not only do we not see Vegas develop any meaningful relationships, he goes out of his way to actively hurt people he doesn't love. Acceptable targets that the mafia life gives him. This could feel very freeing in the moment because it releases him from the responsibility to take care of that person at all.

There should be multiple times a character is given the chance to overcome their fear, and they fail. They're not ready. One of the big moments for Vegas in his relationship with Pete is when he is willing to let him go from the cuffs, but he still begs Pete to promise not to leave him. It is a slight step forward, but his demands aren't fair. There's no reason Pete can trust Vegas yet. (Pete similarly has a moment of failure here while also doing the right thing, i love it when shit's complicated). It's partly because Vegas is NOT ready to overcome his fear that Pete needs to leave, which causes what Vegas fears to happen. It's all so beautifully tragic.

Want

Vegas wants his father’s love and approval. It is something that is unattainable. He never had it because his father was incapable of giving it to him in any way that is good for Vegas. In the end, he will never achieve it because his father is dead.

It's really great when what the character wants is

what they think will make them feel safe from their fear AND

does not challenge their false belief. It’s definitely the case with Vegas. I think it makes for a cohesive character.

As a writer, it helps to identify this because it will keep a character active in a story. Withholding this thing the character wants from them can help drive them to act. We see this 100% in Vegas. All of his schemes, all his actions (until Pete) are motivated by Vegas trying to get what he wants: his father’s approval. And it all goes back to how he copes with his Fear. The story keeps preventing Vegas from getting what he wants and so he keeps acting in ways that are absolutely TERRIBLE for him and fantastic for the story.

Some of his schemes weren’t approved by his father, but they were attempts to beat the main family and that was entirely motivated by trying to earn his father’s love and approval. (As a writer, this reminds me that sometimes what people do isn’t a logical A to B step, people are complicated. The obvious thing to do for a character who wants to win their parent’s approval is for them to obey their parent in everything. There are other things going on with Vegas that lead him to take more initiative and that makes him more interesting).

Going back to the False Belief, Vegas can want his father's love without challenging his false belief. Vegas's father doesn't need to be taken care of. This makes it feel safer than wanting love from anyone else.

Need

What Vegas actually needs isn’t his father’s love. It’s Pete’s love, because Pete loves Vegas for Vegas. Vegas doesn’t have to jump through hoops to earn it. It’s freely given. Narratively, Vegas earns Pete’s love just by accepting it (though there's nothing simple about that acceptance).

It feels satisfying and earned to readers when a character gets what they need by overcoming their False Belief and their Fear, and often by giving up the thing they wanted. In the end, Vegas thinks he has nothing.  His false belief, that he will fail to take care of people he loves, is compounded by the fact that now, he has nothing to offer, no power, no protection. He has nothing but himself. If he can’t take care of Pete, Pete will leave, just like everyone else he loves (possibly even through death).

And when he turns around to face Pete, when he starts to accept that he, himself, is enough, he is overcoming his Fear and his False Belief. (He is, in turn, Pete’s need as well and that’s what makes this especially good food for the audience).

He believes that he will always fail to take care of people he loves and now he has none of his crutches like power or authority. His own fate is in the hands of the person he holds responsible for making his life a misery in the first place. How could he take care of anyone else?

Remember when I said that Gun feels safe because he's not someone Vegas has to take care of? Well that person he thought he didn't have to take care of has just, actually, died because of his failure to win this battle. It's all proof to him that his False Belief is true! But here is Pete, asking to be taken care of. That only Vegas can take care of him the way he needs.

That's why Pete asking to be taken care of finally breaks through to Vegas.

Vegas is confronting all of that and facing his deepest fear to accept Pete's love here. The brilliance of the writing is that this makes us want to root for him because we understand how hard that is even if we don’t share the same fears.

This is why the climax of Vegas’s story is this scene with Pete, not a confrontation with his father. This is why Vegas doesn’t need to be the one who kills his father, in a narrative sense. His big moment to decide whether he will succeed in overcoming his Fear is whether he will accept Pete’s love and trust that Pete won’t leave him. And finally, he accepts the risk that he might lose Pete someday because what he gets (PETE’S LOVE) is worth it.

This simple act kills the old Vegas, allowing him to be reborn as someone who has learned this particular lesson, a common trope in heroic arcs.

So that's it for Vegas (for now). If anyone reads this far, thank you lol. If people like this I'll continue with Pete. Otherwise it will stay locked away in my story journal for eternity.

#VegasPete #kinnporsche meta #character analysis #i'm so scared to post this #vegas kornwit theerapanyakun #pete phongsakorn #i'm obsessed with their character arcs #and how well they work with their romance plot #VegasPete romance is the strongest writing in the whole series #you can't convince me otherwise #kinnporsche the series

[quinloki]

I’mma muse about some stuff and it’s going to get a little lot dark so please tread carefully.

Topics will include assault, trauma, trauma processing, projection, and messy healing.

And oddly enough, it all started with realizing what defining moment it was that made Marco my #1 blorbo over Eustass Kid.

I love Eustass Kid - from canonical character to head canon king, I just love him. He is, as I’ve said, to me the quintessential dom - the quintessential Kinkster. Maybe it’s the aesthetic, or the misfits of the misfits vibe his entire crew has going on, or maybe I’m just projecting my own ideal onto a big beef cake.

Of all the mental/emotional deep dives I could go on, I’m not here to muse on that.

I realized Marco had overtaken Kid for me when I found myself craving dark fics with Marco. Not the kind where he’s being dark, the kind where Teach has his face in the dirt and his ass in the air and is threatening to slaughter all the survivors if Marco struggles against him.

And I realized that one of the biggest reasons for that - and I think most dark content - is the validation it provides. That the things I survived weren’t as avoidable as I used to believe, they were neither my fault nor within my control.

It’s a validation that even strong people can be victims and being one doesn’t make you weak or worth less.

It provides a way to navigate the healing after ward, and because we see the darkest parts of the trauma we can see the messiest parts of that healing too. The good days that weave between the neutral ones that are tied down by the awful ones.

The validation that healing is messy. For our heroes as much as for us, for the people we admire and disdain.

And fiction, fan fiction especially with the added layer of connection I feel that exists, let’s us apply those traumas not just from the hands of villains, but also heroes, such as they may exist in the original world. Good guys can do bad things - the person your community exalts Can be the villain who hurt you. The delinquent who broke your nose can also be the one who pulls you from a burning building.

We are complex.

It’s easier to process that complexity on the canvas of fictional characters sometimes than to face it directly. And I think that’s okay. I honestly think it’s wonderful - a beautiful, if not often misunderstood side effect of creativity.

And sometimes? Sometimes we break those beloved characters and end the story with them shattered. Because that could have been our end. That is the What If we hadn’t survived.

And I don’t think we’re always aware of this - I know a few people who don’t even realize how traumatized they are. They’re flippant, coping with humor, about things that make your blood run cold when you hear them. Sometimes denial fuels people, and they’re okay because they’re too strong to be a victim, too functional to be broken.

So we don’t realize why that drive is there. Why we want to see certain events presented in fiction. Why it feels like relief, or why we cry at parts we wouldn’t expect to prompt tears.

But kink, fic, bdsm, etc. as long as you aren’t exploiting or harming someone real, then I don’t think there’s a single thing wrong with how dark your content gets.

(If you start actually wanting to harm someone though, please seek professional help. Your fantasy/coping lines are blurring with reality and you’re gonna need external assistance carving that line back into place.)

But, odd as it is, to me, bad things don’t happen to Kid (I mean the canon material beats him up enough as well). Kid’s the rock that weathers everything so his crew stays protected. So *I* stay protected. Even if he was broken he’d never admit to it, not in any way that would lead to processing it and healing from it.

But to me, he doesn’t break.

Marco can. But Marco can also heal from it, and I’m not talking about his Devil fruit. I’m talking about wounds you can’t just bandage or regenerate. He’s strong, so strong, but he’s been through the ringer, and you only need to apply a little more pressure… and then heal with him afterward.

That makes him, to me personally, more relatable. And thus back to the seemingly innocuous reason for this - that’s why he’s my #1.

#quin muses #mentions of assault #trauma #trauma processing #projecting #musing on the need for and important of dark content

[thedawningofthehour]

for the dvd commentary thing - im not sure if it fits under 500 words or if u can even remember what u were thinking since u wrote it like last year , but the scene in arc 1 chapter 8 where draxum n donnie talk abt sun tzu n mythology n names ?

That is...yes, that's quite a bit longer, about 1300, but lucky for you I'm very narcissist and love talking about my shit. (and nobody else sent one in)

“You’ve read Sun Tzu.” Draxum is just looking at him, with a quirked eyebrow and a small smile on his face. For some reason, Donnie’s face flushes. “Well, yeah.” He looks down. “I’ve always loved reading, and it’s not that long. What, did you know him or something?” “He was a bit before my time.” Okay, he’s actually smiling now. It’s creepy. “But his work is quite illuminating.” “I’m surprised you’ve read it. He was a human, after all. A warring human. Aren’t you against that?” “Only fools believe they have nothing to learn from their opponents.” “So you’ll apply that to a two-thousand-year-old book, but not to modern humans?” Donnie tugs on his cuffs. “You know you missed, like, the entire point Sun Tzu was trying to make, right? His entire philosophy was that using violence is rarely the best way to get what you want and conflicts are better solved diplomatically.” “And he also said that when you do draw your bow, to draw your strongest arrow.” “Yes, but only if-” “Do you not think there have been attempts to address our conflict with the humans diplomatically?” Draxum says shortly. “You think you’ve seen the extent of this war. This has gone on much longer than you. Longer than me, even.”

So that took influence from a podcast I enjoy:

The whole thing is a fake talk show radio program from a fictional city with sort a sort of surreal-absurdist vibe going on. (one episode depicts a political debate that devolves into an argument over whether the crawdad people would vote for them and one candidate's treatment of the alligator king, for example) Also not the only reference to this podcast in this fic; this is where Tubby Dan's Barbecue and its various trials Bella mentions are from. He actually has a commercial later on in this episode.

I also have not been able to find the exact quote he uses. This guy might just be trolling me. But I figured, Donnie's fifteen, even if it is a fake quote that's the kind of mistake a fifteen-year-old would make.

“I’m just saying-” “No, you will listen to me on this occasion. Look around you, boy. Think of where we are, think of who we are.” “We’re a turtle and a goat-man in your lab. I can’t really look at much else.” The slap takes him by surprise. It doesn’t particularly hurt, but he feels quite confident by now in how far he can push Draxum before he uses physical force, and he hadn’t reached that point. “The Hidden City is under New York City,” Draxum says quietly. “You have more experience with the world above than I do, so let me ask. Does it feel like New York City?” Donnie shakes his head, his cheek still stinging. “Why do you think that is?” “I assumed it was because the Hidden City is a lot older? New York is only about three hundred years old, and almost everything up there was built in the last century,”

(noooo a typo)

(I literally just went back and edited a nearly year-old chapter right now, it's all fixed dw)

But for real, New York is an infant of a city. I know the Hidden City is under New York because the turtles live in New York, they've always lived in New York-but I wanted it to make sense why.

So my idea was that the Hidden City isn't so much under New York, but that New York was built on top of the Hidden City. They weren't even hidden at first-they just fucking lived there, cohabitating with the indigenous Lenape people, (or at the very least they left each other alone) and adapted when Europeans started their colonizing bullshit, gradually moving underground as more humans showed up and clashed with the Yokai, not understanding what they were. (The Lenape and the original colonizers didn't really know either, but there was an understanding of bro just don't ask questions that was gradually lost as more and more people settled there) Part of the reason it became 'gestures to all of New York' is because of the presence of the Yokai and all their nonsense. So basically-the chicken came before the egg, and the Hidden City is that chicken. Or one of them. You can decide whether they did the fucking or laid the egg.

“You are…correct in that observation, yes. The Hidden City is much older.” Draxum glances off to the side. “But think of what is here. Think of where it came from.” “Well, yes, the culture here is heavily East Asian. Even the name Yokai originated in Japan.” “Think about that. Why are so many Yokai from that area? New York is on the other side of this continent. It is not a simple journey.” “I assumed there was some portal.” “There was, but by design. Why did they come here?” “I’ve met Yokai that are definitely European.” “Very few. Think about why that is.” Donnie glances up. “Fewer Yokai in other parts of the world.” “We were actually more widespread in some areas. Why do you think you do not see our brothers and sisters from the Horn of Africa? The Maghreb? From the islands of the great Pacific? They existed, my boy. Ask me why they are not here.” Donnie is silent. Draxum looks over him, his eyes narrowed and cold. “The Hidden City is the last of its kind. There are no other communities like this elsewhere in the world, not anymore. So I will ask you again, boy. Why are there so many Yokai here from Asia? And why are the Yokai of the rest of the world not here?” Donnie remains silent. “Answer me, boy.” “I understand.” “I want you to say it.” “Humans killed them.” Donnie focuses on the ceiling. 

Another one of those 'try to make the lore of the fucking ninja turtles show realistic' decisions. I know the reason they're called Yokai and why there's so much East Asian influence is because they are Ninja and this is a show about Ninjas and the writers wanted to harp on that, but it doesn't really make sense from a lore perspective.

I mean, think of where New York is. Pre flying, pre Panama Canal, the Far East and New York couldn't have really been more far apart. To get from Japan to New York by ship, you had to sail across the Pacific, down the west coast of both north and south America, around Cape Horn, back up the east coast all the way from Argentina to the fucking northeastern tip of the United States. Or land in Washington and cross the entire continent on foot. (I know they have portals but that's not the point, okay?) Like, unless there was a really big, heavy traffic natural portal from the Hidden City to Japan it just doesn't make sense for that to be the primarily culture. Especially considering the Crying Titan, canonical father of all Yokai, is under New York. If there was going to be a higher concentration of Yokai in any peoples, it would be the native people of North America. Because that's where the goddamn empyrean is flowing.

But we see pretty much no obvious First Nations influence. We get some East Asian and some European, all under a heavily Americanized umbrella. I mean, yes, they did this because this is a show marketed to American children and that's what's recognizable to them, but still. I needed it to make sense.

And it gave me the perfect frame to hang a blood-soaked backdrop.

“So you do understand.” Donnie presses his lips together. “I don’t think all humans deserve to die for it.” “I don’t think so either.” He must look surprised, because Draxum looks down at him, amused. “What? Deserve is a rather heavy word. I’m not speaking of deserving. I’m speaking of survival. Humans and Yokai cannot coexist. One of us will destroy the other. I do not intend to allow my people to languish in the dark while the humans choke us out.”

This is really the cornerstone of Draxum's beliefs. Yes, he's acting out of hatred and anger, but I didn't want that to be his whole thing. That's not as compelling, and Draxum's intelligent enough to need a concrete reason. And I mean...from his perspective, relations with humans have always gone sour eventually. And his people end up paying the price for that in blood.

“What makes you so sure?” “It has been foretold.” “What, like a prophecy?” “Exactly. There is a prophecy that predicts-” “You haven’t read much Greek literature, have you?” Donnie shifts in his binds. “Oedipus? Cronos? Or are those guys too old for you too? Let’s see, we have the Mahabharata. Macbeth. Sun, Moon, and Talia. Have you read Harry Potter?” “What-” Draxum closes his eyes. “Child, what in the world are you talking about?” “Those are all stories of self-fulfilling prophecies. In every one of those stories, the actions taken to avoid the prophecy cause it to come to fruition. Cronos eats his kids because he was told one of them would overthrow him, but that just makes his kid angry enough to do it. Talia is foretold to be killed by a splinter of flax, so her father bans flax from the house. The first time she sees someone spinning flax, she doesn’t know what it is and pricks her finger due to her curiosity and inexperience.” “...Why would a splinter of flax kill her?” “I always assumed there was some context lost in the translation, because that part never really made sense. Anyway, the point is that trying to prevent the prophecy just made things worse. It likely never would have come true, if people had simply done nothing.”

I'd like to call back to Draxum's speech to the Shredder in the finale. He does his big dramatic betrayal because he realizes that the prophecy foretelling the destruction of the Yokai was not the humans, but Shredder himself.

But he conveniently leaves out his own role in that. Draxum brought the Shredder back. Even before factoring in the orb he gave Big Mama, pulling Karai from her hell dimension, even without the work he did recovering the cursed metal-like, even if the Foot got every piece of armor the could get their hands on without him, they still wouldn't have finished it because Splinter had the last piece. And there's no way Splinter would have allowed it to be taken. Even Draxum couldn't defeat him in combat. The only reason Splinter gave it up was to save his sons-the sons that were shown kicking the Foot's ass all episode. If it was just them, they couldn't have captured the turtles. No Draxum, no Shredder.

Which makes the entirety of Rise a self-fulfilling prophecy in itself. In trying to destroy what he thought was the greatest threat to his people, Draxum created the very thing that could end them.

“No, it would have been a regular prophecy, like Cassandra predicting the fall of Troy.” “So you do know your Greek literature!” Donnie almost smiles at that. “Potentially. But far more likely that the prophecy simply doesn’t come to pass, like the thousands of other prophecies that are forgotten. We only hear about the ones that come true, after all. And from a simply mathematical standpoint, some of them must come true.” “I understand what you’re trying to do, and I understand your point. But you are a child playing at war.”

Yeah, he doesn't have a good answer here. So he just dismisses Donnie's point. Reminds me of my own dad!

“Well, maybe you need a child’s point of view,” Donnie huffs, rolling his eyes. “Have you ever thought maybe you’re too far into this to see what you’re doing?” He expects Draxum to call him names again, but he’s quiet for an uncharacteristic amount of time. Donnie turns his head, seeing Draxum leaning against his desk, a very far-away look in his eyes. “I know I was,” he finally says, so softly Donnie almost doesn’t hear him. “But I realized my mistake. I pulled out of it before it was too late.” He turns back to Donnie. “That’s why you’re here.”

A callback to Cass telling Draxum that the armor would kill him. Because really, Draxum's plan was stupid. He barely knew anything about this armor, the Foot, why they were so willing to give him this power. Yet he didn't ask questions. He didn't do any research. He trusted the Foot-humans, who had no love for his people and no reason to help him. Yet he plunged in. He was so enamored with the dark armor's power, so obsessed and blinded by bloodlust that he didn't stop to think about any of this. Not until Cass basically slapped him across the face and told him to snap out of.

And then he realized. He'd almost died-and died horribly, feeding a leashless monster. That was how lost he was in his bid for power. He had a whole-ass personal crisis before deciding to take up kidnapping as a hobby.

Donnie raises an eyebrow. “Kidnapping me was the less extreme option.” “Correct.” “I mean, yes, kidnapping one turtle isn’t as bad as unleashing a literal demon, but like…you couldn’t have found some middle ground?” “You’re my strongest arrow,” he replies simply. And it feels like someone’s dumped ice water over him. “Don’t be angry. I tried to compromise with you. I would have let you keep your name and your family, but you’re the one who refused to meet me in the middle.” Donnie just looks off to the side. “Think about it.” Draxum approaches his table, reaching out and grasping Donnie’s shackled hand, fingers curling around him like a claw. “You’re going to help me protect Yokai and mutants alike. We will do great work together, and when I lead my people into the sun with you by my side, your name will go down in history.” He does a little smile at that, like it’s a pleasant thought. “You just have to tell me what you want that name to be.”

I was kind of hoping someone would catch onto this. At this point, Draxum is still considering Donnie (or rather, his fantasy son who doesn't have a name yet) to be an accessory to his power. Like yeah, he wants him to be revered and rewarded after the fighting is done, but when the history books are written he'd be a chapter in Draxum's book. The next time he mentions the whole 'lead our people into the sun' thing, he says they'll do it 'side-by-side' because he now considers Galois an equal, and as time goes on he will eventually see himself as the person meant to help Galois on his path and set him up as the true savior of the Yokai.

#doth asks #donatello #baron draxum

[louiskechi]

alright let’s get this over with

here is a basic summary of all you could possibly need to know about me before you go starting something with me (this will be updated as i see fit)

-trans rights are human rights. this is not up for debate and is a block on sight if you disagree. same goes for black lives matter, and any other basic human rights that people somehow take offense to.

-xenogenders, lesboys/girl gays, mspec lesbians/gays, and all other non traditional or contradictory labels are valid. you can continue being angry that you aren’t allowed to fit queer people into strictly confined boxes all you want, but the long term goal of the queer movement should always be to break down restrictive labels and emphasize being who you are. this applies to neopronouns as well, obviously. all good faith identities are valid. full stop.

-transandrophobia is real. to deny that transmasculine people experience a unique type of transphobia tailored by bigots to specifically target our experiences is complacency. if you engage in hierarchical structures to organize the oppression marginalized people experience (i.e. saying things like “tme people need to shut up for once” when discussing transphobia) is reductive and only divides the community.

-self diagnosing is valid. not everyone has access to psychiatrists, let alone ones who will give a proper assessment. it’s also worth mentioning that both the medical field and the government have a lot of ingrained ableism, which can bar you from access to jobs, and can cause you to lose legal rights and bodily autonomy. (did you know getting an autism diagnosis can prevent you from getting a visa to most countries? it can even get you placed on a mandatory DNR!) accompanying this, i do not care what a system’s origin is. as a plural person, i couldn’t give less of a shit. if you say what you’re experiencing is plurality, i will believe you. trying to determine who “is and isn’t actually plural” does nothing but give fuel to those who will fake-claim us no matter how much proof we provide. you are helping divide our community and prevent mentally ill people from getting support that could save their lives.

-proshippers are annoying as fuck and i hate you all. no, you are not “just anti harassment,” in fact it’s a favorite hobby for quite a few of you. i do not identify as “anti ship” but having an integral part of your identity being that you think shipping a grown man with a child is fine tells me something about you that you somehow haven’t realized about yourselves. and no, you being a trauma survivor does not absolve you of abhorrent behavior. at this point it’s not even the content itself that worries me, it’s the relationship you people have with it. you can’t even handle the most mild criticism or discomfort about it. quit bragging about how uncomfortable you make everyone and really evaluate yourself.

-lolicon/shotacon is pedophilia. if you have some sort of objection to that you should really be looking up direct translations of the words you choose to identify yourselves with. terminology aside, no matter how much you try to insist “fiction doesn’t always effect reality,” that fictitious drawing of child rape is certainly effecting the reality of your now-erect cock. consider checking yourself before you get checked into a correctional facility.

-paraphiles deserve understanding and recovery. you are not going to eliminate things like pedophilia and zoophilia by arresting them, or worse, killing them, for feelings they can’t control. the solution to these things is easy access to therapy so they can work through those feelings and hopefully be rid of them one day, or at least no longer be a threat. most paraphiles do not want their paraphilia much less to act on them, and even those who do will not benefit from incarceration.

-the way some of you engage with fictional characters is disgusting. no, vriska serket was not a “girlboss” for telling the person she physically disabled to “apologize for being cr*ppled.” no, you do not think valentino is “just a really interesting villain” when i can see you talking about how sexy he is in the scene where he rapes the protag, followed by woobifying him and never addressing his actions at all. please get off the internet. it is genuinely disturbing the way you talk about these characters and it makes me deeply concerned about how you would act if you ever learned to shut off your computer. and yes, it is that deep.

#trans rights #black lives matter #xenogenders are valid #etc #im too tired to write it all out again #fuck proshippers #argue with me if you want

[mareenavee]

Counter-counter-custom ask. Let's do something a little off the beaten path. What sort of reader are you? Are you on the "read omnivorously, time and spoons allowing" bandwagon, or do you find that you gravitate towards specific things? What do you read for, when you're reading for Not Work (however defined)? Can be fanfic or original, fiction or not, or a little bit of everything <3 Optional Bonus: what do you tend to avoid, if anything (genres, tropes, styles, or in your flavor)? Same parameters as above. Optional Bonus, Extra Special Edition: What's the relationship between reading and writing for you?

Ohhh reading questions <3 Thank you, my friend. I always appreciate your custom asks. They are a joy to answer!

I am a read everything kind of person, for sure, within parameters which are parts of the next couple questions lol. I frequently have more spoons for reading than for anything else at the end of my day, and reading is still productive enough for my brain to forgive me my idleness lol. (I do loudly protest hustle culture but I have a soul-deep perhaps even genetic inability to sit still with nothing productive to do, especially now that I am feeling marginally better injury-wise than I have over the last few years.)

I like fantasy genre best of all, but do like a good sci-fi story once in a while. Sometimes creative non-fiction. Occasionally poetry collections. Infrequently contemporary. I tend not to read horror because I'm a chicken lol Well, I'm an editor, which I've mentioned a humble amount of times. Here and there, perhaps infrequently lol so reading is work, too, but it's different. When I read for just the sheer joy of reading, I'm not reading for anything except a good story. Applies to fic, too. I ask "What makes this a good story?" and "What about this is working?" "What can I forgive not working if the story itself is still compelling?" and things like that, so that I can figure that out for myself when I'm writing, which I suppose translates back to the end of this question, so I'll scoot it up here.

I believe making the time to invest in what you're reading is the greatest gift you can give yourself as a writer besides actually sitting down to write and defending your writing time. Ask yourself why story beats and characters are working for you to create an entertaining experience. If a book leaves something to be desired, allow yourself the time to be critical of why. If you seem to frequently be unable to find the story you want to read, again, be critical of how these books are falling short -- and also what elements have the most potential, even if the author didn't follow through in a way you expected. Enjoy the process anyway -- allow yourself to like books that are imperfect. This attitude translates back to your work, too. Things don't have to be perfect, especially out of the gate. Having an understanding of what you'd like to see/improve is different than expecting your first draft to be perfect. Mindset matters here, too. So enjoy books and read widely. That translates back to writing in more ways than I can explain.

I am very forgiving when I'm reading outside of work. (Those I've beta read for or have edited before will know I am gentle in my advice, but still push the author to bring out the best in their work.) I am a lot more willing to overlook glaring structural problems especially in fic if the characters are well written. I am willing to overlook a lack of characterization if the action scenes are unputdownable.

I think the only things I avoid at all costs these days are pwp fic, really and romance as a genre by itself. It's boring to me, doesn't affect me, and really doesn't bring that element of having a good story to the table generally speaking. Sometimes it does? I suppose? But at least with romance novels it's more formulaic, and I'm already bored by the premise of simply romance with nothing else outside of it and doesn't risk much from what I've been able to stomach of the years. (This doesn't mean I don't like drama with a dash of romance or stories that have threads of romance! That's different and not what I mean here.)

And pwp for me is like... well I've said this before in complete jest but it's true. Trying to get me to read it and have an opinion on it for you is like trying to defeat a Ghost Type Pokémon with a Normal type Pokémon or vice versa. It just isn't the right material and I'm not the right audience and the whole point of the thing is lost on me. (:

#PARA ASKS THE BEST STUFF!!! #AskMareena #on writing #on reading #writing tips #writing advice

[evelhak]

KnB 30-day challenge

1. Favourite Male Character

Okay, I'm sure this isn't a surprise to anyone who actively follows me, but...

It's going to have to be Kuroko. Years ago, I originally felt like someone else would have to be my favourite, because the reason why he's my favourite is that no other character ever in any media has made me feel so understood. And that's a pretty self-centred reason. (Dear younger me, if you're going to have a complex about something, at least pick something that makes even a little bit of sense.) Luckily, I'm over it now.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this post, so I'm going to ramble about this character's meaning to me. I've said this somewhere before, but this feeling of being understood because of the kind of character Kuroko is, is why I started writing KnB fanfiction. I was so overwhelmed that I felt like I had to give back somehow. Obviously I couldn't give back to the original creator in any meaningful way apart from buying the manga. And then there was this thing the creator said somewhere... that he had no idea what was going on in Kuroko's head for most of the time, that he was the hardest character for him to understand. And I nearly couldn't believe it. I was like... well then, mister, you have done a fabulous job fooling me. And at some point I started feeling like that was something I could do, I could show what was going on in Kuroko's head, and in that way I would get to not only give back to the character but the community, the other fans who felt deeply about this series.

Obviously, I didn't know if anyone was going to actually like my interpretation of Kuroko (or the other characters for that matter), but I've felt deeply lucky and humbled, by the readers finding my fics, who have told me my characterizations really resonate with them. (Even though the ones telling me my Kuroko is their favourite or that they consider my work canon in their head still make me want to run and hide a little. But I won't.)

Kuroko is really special to me, because I dislike writing about characters I relate to on that level. For some reason I can't write self-inserts, I can't even read stories where you're supposed to insert yourself into it. That's fine. But. It also means that there are some issues that I never get to write about in a way that I personally truly relate to. But... a lot of those things were already in canon Kuroko by accident. I didn't put them there, and that's why in this one instance I was able to persuade my tricky head into using my own life experience to make some of those things that were already in Kuroko, a little deeper, a little more significant to the story, and in some cases just let go of my inhibitions and interpret something in a way it was definitely not meant in canon, simply because it would be meaningful to me to see it that way.

Anyone who is up to date with my fics will know how far I have come from my fear of exercising too much freedom of interpretation, haha... I will literally do anything I want at this point. Still needs to be canon-based to satisfy my head, (like, there has to be at least one scene in canon that in my head, believably supports my interpretation) but I have definitely learned to not hold back. After all, it's just fanfiction, it's not that serious. (Even though I take it as seriously as my original writing.) I can do my thing and other people can do theirs. I'm so excited about all the things I'm still yet to write about this character. I know that a lot of people think that you should write the stuff that is the most important to you in your original fiction, but there are things I literally can't write through any other character than Kuroko. Same has started to apply to other characters through writing in this fandom too, because I can't separate these ideas I've gotten through writing, from their sources. They would lose so much meaning and detail if I tried, they are just too organic to the story.

I still can't give my actual lived experience to a fictional character, because that will feel disingenuous to me no matter what, but what I can give them is the abstract, theoretical knowledge I've gathered from those life experiences, and I will continue to use that to write Kuroko in a way that feels satisfying and honest to me. Sometimes it means I relate to the storyline I write for Kuroko, sometimes it means it's the literal opposite of what I would relate to, and sometimes it has no relation to me whatsoever. I just don't know how to stop at this point and being able to use myself in any way to enhance a character who essentially did the same to me, is a really unique experience. And knowing what has been meaningful to me has been meaningful to other people too, continues to inspire me.

Wish me luck trying to shorten the amount of time it takes me in real life to cover one year in the fic, because if I don't, it's going to get way more ridiculous than a few seconds in their games being ten minutes in an episode.

#knb #30-day challenge #favourite male character #kuroko #writing

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

You know, I used to assume pretty much everything a comedian says is in character, it’s not real. I think that originally came from knowing my brother, who started stand-up thirteen years ago. In his early years, I used to go see him perform a lot, and none of his stories were true. He didn’t really claim they were true, but he also wasn’t doing character comedy or something obviously fictional like that. He was just making up shit that he thought was funny. So I assumed all comedians did that.

Lee Mack has a part in his autobiography where he says before you start comedy, when a comedian says something happened “the other day”, you think it really did happen the other day. Once you start comedy, you know it really happened months ago, but they say “the other day” every night. Once you’ve been doing comedy for a while, you know it never happened at all. I was on that third stage years ago. Since then, I’ve changed my stance a bit, I know a lot of the stand-up stories that are presented as true probably did happen in some form, we’re just maybe getting an exaggerated and edited version. But they did never happen the other day – unless it’s Daniel Kitson and he says “the other day”, because he does very carefully fact check himself on that and will sometimes stop during a routine to make sure he’s accurate about exactly how many weeks ago something happened. Well enough so I’ve sometimes heard him do routines a few days or weeks or months apart, in different cities and to different audiences so he has no reason to worry about the timelines matching up because these people won’t catch his error, but he gets it right anyway. It’s airtight, something described as “three weeks ago” in one show becomes “six weeks ago” at another show three weeks later. If he's making his stories up "for the bit", that is a fucking elaborate con.

But that’s not, you know, normal. Most comedians don't do that shit. Most comedians move timelines, and any other details, around as it suits them.

I’ve understood for a while now know that most stand-up stories probably at least have a grain of truth in them, behind some editing (of the ones that are presented as true, anyway, not the character or surreal stuff). But I definitely used to think that most stuff about relationship problems isn’t true. I used to assume that if someone complains about a bad relationship situation on stage, that means they’re probably actually doing well in that department. Because why would you put that shit out there if it were honest? If you’re really having relationship problems, you don’t announce it in public. What if it gets back to your partner/sort-of partner/recent ex?

A few things made me realize that that isn’t always the case, the main one being when I heard some of the material Sara Pascoe and John Robins were doing in late 2016. That shit would have made me assume their relationship was fucking fantastic, if we apply the rule that someone would only complain about a relationship on stage if they really are secure in their actual relationship. Except that we know they had a very messy breakup just after that, because John Robins won an award for it.

Anyway, I just got back from a stand-up thing tonight. At this pub near my house, where I’ve been a bunch of times in the last few months. My brother was hosting the night, and… yeah, I can definitely confirm that sometimes, when a comedian has a breakdown on stage because of romantic problems, that shit’s real. He is having an actual breakdown. And he had a breakdown on stage. And he told the audience that his breakdown was related to a recent breakup. And that was true. Though the fact that he said it in public is unlikely to get back to her, because 1) it was a small pub, and 2) she lives in Mexico. Or possibly Scotland. Sometimes she's in one and sometimes she's in the other. Not in Canada, though. I believe that was a factor in the breakup. It was a weird situation.

I mean, he didn’t start crying on stage or anything (also, “stage” is the wrong word for the area of the pub where the comedians stand). But I think it counts as a breakdown. If I didn’t know the comedian personally, I’m pretty sure I’d have assumed the breakup wasn’t real, it was just a construct he’d created for a bit. Because he made something amusing out of it. A sort of unhinged performance where he talked about being too sad to make jokes, and he called up a couple of members of the crowd to have them talk instead, and then he created a Tinder profile live on stage and had the audience workshop it with him, and he made it quite fun. Afterward, I asked him how much of that he’d done before, or at least planned. He said absolutely none of it – he just really was too sad to make jokes, so this is what he made up on the spot to do instead. Sometimes it’s not a bit, apparently. I assume these things are always a bit, but I know the real person behind that one and it was real.

I also ended up doing a spot on this bill, and it was shit. Which is 95% my fault and 5% my brother. It was 95% my fault because, you know, I was the one up there and responsible for my own actions. However, it did not fucking help that he’d called all these audience members to right in front of the stage (the comedian area), specifically targeting ones who were least likely to enjoy his weird material, because he thought that would be funny. And he was right – it was quite funny, to the rest of the audience, to watch some people who did not look like the sort of people who’d like that shit (I’m trying to think of a polite way to say this, a way that doesn’t sound horribly judgmental, what I mean is they were well dressed and looked too cool to be at open mic comedy) get drawn into it. It worked less well when I had them five feet in front of me and they didn’t like me either.

Also, I’d been rehearsing my set over and over in my head before the gig started, I’d planned to keep doing that until I got called up, but then I got so drawn into whatever the fuck my brother was doing that I forgot all my own stuff. I stopped rehearsing, I just got so fascinated/mildly horrified/at times entertained by my brother that I forgot I had to focus on myself. So when I did get called up, my mind went blank, I could not remember a single thought I’d ever had.

I managed to recover enough to say most of my stuff, though I left some out and said some in the wrong order and kept stuttering and having to restart sentences and correct myself. I’d made all these edits to the set I did last time and I was excited to try them out, and none of that came through. I barely managed to get through the material at all, so I certainly did not manage to remember the intricacies of specific changes to the wording that I’d wanted to make. I just tried to remember what the next bit was, and then tried to say it with as little stuttering and hesitating and filler words as possible.

It felt, internally, like a complete fucking mess where I absolutely died out there. My brother told me at the end of the night that it wasn’t as bad as I thought, I got some laughs, it was obvious that I was nervous and that wasn’t good, but I did fine, I said funny stuff and people laughed sometimes, so this wasn’t dying. Which sucks, because that was my third time doing a comedy set, I think the first two went relatively well (I mean, they went all right relative to the circumstances of them being my first and second comedy gigs), so this thing called “dying” that happens to everyone who does comedy is still a scary idea that I’ve not experienced yet. Whatever I did tonight felt terrible, so if dying is worse than that – then that’s not great. Which I realize is a pretty impressive way for me to turn my brother’s positive comment into something negative.

Maybe I wasn’t that bad. I won’t know, because I recorded myself, just like I did last time, but unlike last time, I deleted the recording the moment I got off stage (out of the comedian area of the pub). I was so upset about how it had gone that I wanted to instantly delete any evidence. No one needs to know, except the people who were there. And they won’t remember, because they’ll look back on this night as the time the guy hosting the comedy gig spent all his time talking about his breakup and got audience members to come up and help him make dating profiles.

After the show I went outside and hung out with the comedians, mainly because I felt so shitty about how I'd done in my set that I knew if I went straight home I'd just be upset, thought some socializing would cheer me up.

The socializing was a bit awkward, but all right. I wouldn't go so far as to say it cheered me up, but it did make me feel less bad. Another guy who'd gone on that night, and had done relatively well, I'd thought, also admonished my brother for fucking up the energy in that gig, and ruining his set as well. My brother was sad about the breakup. The others were people I've only met a handful of times. They were all smoking (not in the pub, I joined them outside). Apparently pretty much all the comedians around here smoke, and specifically they smoke outside after gigs. I very much do not smoke, and do not love being around smoke, and even now as I lie in bed and write this about an hour after getting home, I feel like my lungs are a bit tight from all the second hand smoke I breathed in. But I'm also quite sure that's psychosomatic, and just feels that way because I hate being around smoking and now I'm paranoid that it's burned my lungs. But I did it anyway because I wanted to hang out with comedians. Some of the comedians were cool.

Anyway, that's been my night. What's up with everyone else? How are all your nights going?

[kittymeow180]

I'm not saying it's physically impossible for people to be weird about gnc people and assume they're trans but "i want their gender!!" and "what gender is this? i want it" are not substantial examples of that nor a genuine representation of what transgenderism is. these seem like positive verbal responses I would see in a comment section where people resonate with someone's gender ~expression~ and find it appealing to them. that's normal, people talk like that about aesthetics, which gender expression is. "no cis explanation for this" sounds equally harmless but as a phrase is unfamiliar to me so im not sure what people say that about. people apply their own meaning to other's vibes all the time. they'll headcanon a fictional character as gay or something or look at a couple they don't know and be like "I want what they have" or joke that something is "[any kind of thing]" just based on vibe.

random tiktok/tumblr comment sections are often a bad place to go for broad political analysis.

this is going to sound really crazy but my original post was about my experiences living as a teenage girl. from my experience i have felt pressured into thinking i should identify in one way due to me not aligning perfectly with the one dimensional ideas of how a girl should be. therefore giving me the idea that if you showed yourself in a way that wasn't expected that made you not a female. i identified as genderfluid because i believed me wanting to dress feminine and other times more masc and boyish made me an other, and when id talk to people over this it was agreed upon. it was normalized in the same spaces i was in.

i feel like you missed the point of my original post because i was simply talking about my experiences and my self acceptance.

you came to me to be like " actually no trans person thinks that " so i showed examples then you said " forms of gender non-conformity being a common side of being trans doesnt mean it confirms being trans! " then you said " well yeaaah its not impossible for it to be seen that way but also thats not a genuine representation of what being trans is!! " as if the conversation was a debate on what transgenderism was??? and not about how gnc girls are treated as less female???

you were not debating me on broad political analysis, i really hate to break it to you. you came to me debating me over my own experiences.

#ask

[al-hekima-madara-blog]

lol, the fandom does make super feminine and "weak" (sweet, kind, nice...) female character into dom. Normally, or they make them lesbian or they make them peg the male character in the ship or girlbossfy them, changing the more feminine traits and making them more aggressive, more powerful and independent, in other words more 'masculine coded'. So while it's annoying in male characters (and more prevalent since male characters are used more frequently in fics) it's also annoying in female characters because it makes it very clear how shallow and vapid their interpretation of weakness and strength is.

What annoys me is how unrecognizable the characters end up in this process. In the end they only retain their names and specific characteristics, and sometimes not even that.

Yeah I agree, even if I feel the very masculine character is more likely to fall into this inversion than his female counterpart. And paradoxically it's done in the name of creative freedom, diversity and subversion while actually it's creating oversimplified and lazy tropes, and applying the most sexist and narrow-minded definition of what is masculine and what is feminine. As bakenekobaa said before BDSM is a specific niche to specific public with there own code. It doesn't encapsulate all nuances of how every people interact with one an other unless they believe that masculine/feminine is equivalent to master/slave relationship? And aside from fanfic, I write as well my own original stories I'll be so sick if someone took a character I've carefully crafted, but devitalized him from everything who makes him special and relevant to the story. Nobody here in tumblr like when someone photoshops someone else drawing, adding colour, erasing details, it's so disrespectful! That's the same in writing a character from fiction, if you disrespect his creator you won't be respected in return. I think that's why fanfictions are rarely acknowledge by original authors. And that's a shame, there is so much fantastic fanfics out there who gives more explanation to what was missing in the canon or put some character in a different AU or crossover with other universe, or dive into romances when it was not the centrepiece like in a shonen or even show you a different ending, what if X happened instead? There is so much things ! But if you can't recognize the character anymore bc it's so OOC, what's the point to expand on...void? an empty shell with a similar name? No thanks, it's annoying and people can't take it seriously. So I might repeat myself but if people have so much imagination, I seriously think why not create an original character with a different name instead of imposing a fanon in someone else 's hardwork? Who knows, maybe they gonna create an original masterpiece and they can be the next Kishimoto.

[seriouslydidijustdothat]

Hello!! For the ask game, how about 1 and 29? I hope you're having a great day!! :D

Hello friend! Having a great day now, thank you :D

You sure know how to pick 'em xD (from this post)

Let's seeeee~

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

I don't usually care, my default is Liberation Serif (bc I use LibreOffice and not Word, I think it's closest to Times New Roman? But that one looks yuckier somehow). However... I do switch some drafts to Calibri if I'm stuck and that, shockingly and as advertised, helps somehow?? Witchcraft!

(Fallen King fans will be pleased to hear that bc it's unstuck me and I'm closing on ch6, Liability fans up next)

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

Whaaaaaaat an excellent question! I was wondering that myself recently trying to remember how I ever got inspired for Fallen King specifically. I wish I had an actual answer but every time I try it feels wishy-washy and a cop out. But. I'll try again (to the best of my recollection).

For fanfic it's easier because the inspiration comes from canon, questions that are left unanswered or concepts that would be amazing to watch but aren't so if I want to enjoy it I gotta create it (rude). I.e, got really curious about Hyeok-u in Fallen King and filled in his backstory, somehow got a story idea from it all; Liability is much older but I remember talking to a friend about the idea and him going "Kakashi would absolutely hate it" and I ran with it.

For original fiction... hmm. Rather than me drawing inspiration, it feels more like inspiration strikes me. Whether that's observing something and that thought connecting to a (possibly random) tangent, which I just now call my writer brain because everything can be a story, really. Writing prompts, sometimes, though not very often.

When the inspiration well runs dry! As in, me for the last... 4+ years? Well, that's partially untrue, I was inspired but usually not by my WIPs (much to my own (and my readers') chagrin).

If I'm stuck in a story it's generally because:

I don't know how to get to the part I really wanna get to, and applying the "just write the next part and connect scenes later" has been working decently well

my perfectionist gets in the way and let's me believe what I want to write isn't good enough (whatever that means)

I'm afraid of something (readers' reactions, not living up to the standards I impose on myself, the story not being as good) - this is heavily related to the perfectionism

I feel disconnected from the story (if it's fanfic, re-immersing myself in canon will get me back in that world; for both fanfic and original, rereading what I've already written will help get me back in that headspace)

If I'm stuck before a (new) story or in between WIPs (never happens, the WIPs just multiply like rabbits), well...

I typically get unstuck by watching/reading/observing something new (change of environment helps with that)

I'll get randomly inspired by something someone says to me and my writer brain transforms into a story, like magic ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Prompt can be helpful here (or entering a writing contest or something)

So that's how my brain works on writing, in short. f(^-^);;

Thanks for the ask! Have a great hump day! :D

#answers #asks and replies #asks #quartz-candles #af11 answers

[star-scripts]

Hoping to finally write again, so hello there! 💖

Made this post at 2am initially, in hopes that I'll be more inclined to write something sooner if I have this out there, even if no one responds.

About me:

My name: On this account feel free to call me Star/Scribe/Oh Most Sparse Writer When Are You Gonna Actually Post™. Friends coming over might call me by my other blog too so if you see that feel free to check that side of my work too.

Age: I'm an adult, early 20s is all you're getting for numbers though. 🤣 That does mean I may delve into 18+ works, but I'll sort out if I'll make another blog or cap the age on this one when we get there.

Pronouns: I go by she/her preferably? Not super opposed to anything else though I think?

Background: Lifelong art student, went for creative writing in a specialized HS, and now attending an Art College with dreams of becoming a concept artist in the future.

How I got into Writing: Parents let me watch LoTR as soon as I was old enough and they regret it everyday/j (it's the reason I got obsessed with fantasy, mythology, etc.)

Other obsessions: Also obsessed with Star Wars, so uh... Expect a bit of a range and a bit of whiplash every few months when my interests change. 😅 (Particularly Clone Troopers, Mandalorians, and the SWTOR era).

Additional little Fun Fact™: I've never broken a bone!

Everything else is under a read-more for ease and length! Please enjoy reading if you're interested!!

Edit: Here's the link to my current Progress List!

Current genres I write in:

Fantasy (from general, to niches like urban fantasy and Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy)

Sci-Fi

LOTS of romance, I'm a starved lil hopeless romantic so forewarning.

Probably some Historical Fiction in there eventually?

Current fandoms I write for:

The Hobbit/LoTR/The Silmarillion

Star Wars (SWTOR/Prequels/TCW/Mando/BoBF)

Dragon Age (All games)

Might write for Elder Scrolls? But likely more to fill the void for Mer-centric fics than any of the usual figures?

Hopefully I'll get to Mass Effect again, so I can write for that too!

Tropes I love/Trope Warning:

Modern [Person] In [World]

Love this trope and always have, the culture clash plus the tragedy of knowing the future of each person you come to love? The danger of knowing all their secrets? How does the protag fix the story with this? What do the Powers That Be do in order to damper this?

The REVERSAL of "Modern [Person] In [World]"!

Literally so good and there is NOTHING out there. Gotta come up with a tag for it so people might use it some day. Similar reasons, the culture clashes and the Tragedy Of Knowing ™, but put on its head as the character(s) try and navigate a world so foreign to them, but so mundane to us?

Opposites Attract

This may be more of a warning, but I'm also a fan of this particular trope. So, as a short woman, this tends to lead to a lot of tol/smol dynamics with men leaning on the taller side of it? Unlikeky to change outside of specific requests and also because so many characters I love are like... Literally nearing 7ft. so no one is ever much taller. 🤣

Inhuman/Human Couples

I love this stuff a bunch, but also loath how modern media continues to put feminine people as the "ethereal beauty" in these sorts of couples. Is it truly too much to want a very handsome elf/fae/alien man to find a human such as myself to be attractive? Gonna probably write a bunch for this because I can't throttle the modern movie/TV industry.

Liminal Spaces

I grew up moving a LOT, so I grew very well aquatinted with the Target Parking At 2am feel, and the Driving Through Corn Through The Night vibe. Hopefully I'll be able to bring that original writing back to get to work with this again! In fact, there's a short story of mine I did for HS that I'd love to fix up to put here that deals with this.

"Slightly To The Left"

Similar to Liminal Spaces, though this trope more applies to objects, animals, and people. Waking up to your phone on your nightstand, but it's the wrong shade, and the ringtone sounds fuzzy. You want to believe that the person you met at the edge of your camp site is normal, human—but their eyes dont shine, their smiles never show teeth, and why does their voice sound like two at once?

Other tropes, and other info, to be added eventually as I realize or run into them!

#writing #writblr #new writers on tumblr #new blog #its 3am now #fanfic #fan fiction #original writing #original character #fan character #fanworks #original works #new writing project #new writing blog #star wars #lotr #dragon age #character centric #but also some x readers or blank protags eventually??