#bsd lit

[sh1nsoukoku]

“I am lonely. I feel terribly lonely. I feel as if I were standing alone on a lonely star, staring at the night of the pitch black, cold, empty world. Stars have always made me think of eternity or infinity, so while I cannot avoid looking at the stars, I find it hard to deal with my feelings.”

- Nakajima Atsushi, “On Admiration: Notes by the Monk Wujing” from The Moon over the Mountain and Other Stories

Quote sourced from @bsd-bibliophile

[creantzy]

I hate them.

[eclipsed-saleena]

Why is it a sin for me to feel brotherly compassion for your sorrow?...

~Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

[yuzu-all-the-way]

The way I understand Fyodor's Crime and Punishment ability:

-> crime: person kills Fyodor aka commits capital crime against Fyodor

-> punishment: the person is punished by being killed/body-snatched by Fyodor

And Fyodor Dostoevsky goes off into the sunset to be a pesky rat

[yumaisbored]

if the relationship isn’t at least a little bit sacreligious what’s the point

[autumnsartblog]

Guys guys have you noticed the difference on the way Dracula refers to his bites.

He specifically refers to the ones he wants to give Jonathan as kisses (going as far as blowing him a kiss to communicate that). Kissing is a way of showing love, and giving affection. It sounds sweet — he refers to it as that even when he doesn’t think Jonathan is listening, so he believes it to be ‘kisses’ himself, he isn’t just trying to sugarcoat it for Jonathan.

Then the ones to Mina are just called bites. Or, more a way to quench his thirst. There is no love in it. It sounds brutal and violent. There is no care. He views Mina as below him and simply a way to advance himself. Unlike Jonathan, he sees Mina as ‘(useful) food’.

It shows a difference in the way he sees things. He sees the ones to Jonathan as intimate and out of affection. The ones to Mina are just a way to satiate hunger, and his anger.

It’s an interesting detail I haven’t seen anyone point out.

[carbonateds-oda]

dazai sending msgs to ango from mersault via heart beat

[woodencrows]

i forget i have this blog, perfect crime trio be upon ye

[magnussohn]

trying to draw them

[rdamxq]

When your heart is hollow, even sorrow echoes like laughter.

[anti-dazai-blog]

back by popular demand (3 people are interested :D)

classic lit authors and what abilities I think they should have

(I have a very clear preference for psychological abilities)

-abilities can be based on the plot, themes, or just the title itself. not gonna clarify which it is, but it should be self explanatory enough

Jane Austin -- Pride and Prejudice -- cupid-esque, makes people fall in love.

John Knowles -- A Separate Peace -- reads people's emotions. cannot do anything useful with the info he gets from this.

Charles Dickens -- Great Expectations -- midas-esque, turns what he touches into gold. (I think it would be cool if he could also turn things into liquid gold, which can harden to trap a target. however iirc gold is not very strong so... but also it's magic so anything can happen)

Miguel de Cervantes -- Don Quixote -- tells one lie a day that one listener (intended target) will believe. It wears off the following day. Third parties are not predisposed to believe the lie.

Edith Wharton -- The Age of Innocence -- temporarily removes all ill-intent from a target. ALL includes both intent towards her and towards anyone else.

Ray Bradbury -- Fahrenheit 451 -- literally just fire. classic elemental fire ability.

Willa Cather -- My Antonia -- one way telepathy: can talk directly into people's minds but cannot receive mental messages back. this is entirely because I hated this book so much that I wished it could just be zapped into my brain so I wouldn't have to torture myself by reading it.

George Bernard Shaw -- Pygmalion -- medusa-esque, turns people to stone through eye contact

Homer -- The Odyssey -- basically geoguesser. teleports people into a random location anywhere in the world. cannot choose where he's sending them. (all I'm imagining is him trying to use it in a fight and the person teleports like 2 inches to the left. then punches him.)

Sophocles -- Oedipus Rex -- gives people random personalized prophecies. never makes sense until after it's fulfilled.

Eugene O'Neil -- Long Day's Journey into Night -- I'd like to imagine this guy's got that 'illness personified' aesthetic. the ability should be something to do with disease and decay. but I care more about the visual portrayal of the character as something physically rotting. (visually distinct character design my beloved <3)

Baroness Emma Orczy -- The Scarlet Pimpernel -- shapeshifter. I've posted about her on my main too,, I really think bsd could use a shapeshifter. That's a much more grounded sort of chaos that could lead to higher stakes situations without this whole "world ending vampires whatever fyodor's got going on."

-in all seriousness I think if Asagiri would make use of more psychological abilities or psychological threats he could have as many high stakes stories as he wants without power scaling/power creep. but that would involve writing actual mysteries in the detective story. so.-

-I'm so sorry asagiri :( -

Franz Kafka -- The Metamorphosis -- turns into a bug. same way Natsume turns into a cat.

Alexandre Dumas -- The Count of Monte Cristo -- deflects attacks. Any attack that hits him inflicts that damage onto the attacker instead.

Lewis Carroll -- Alice in Wonderland -- shrinks and grows things (including himself).

William Golding -- Lord of the Flies -- causes conflict among groups. I'd like to think the mechanics of it could be interesting-- like it shows him different dialogue options [video game style!], indicating which line would cause the most conflict.

There would often be no context for why that line would cause conflict, and he has no way of knowing if the conflict will be directed at him, or just within the group as a whole. He can choose a more harmless option, or he could risk it on the big conflict option in an attempt to eliminate enemies.

George Orwell -- 1984 -- spies on set target, like a camera trained on one person. can only spy on one person at a time.

Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird -- frames a target for a crime. the reverse of Mushitaro's-- generates fake evidence for a crimes instead of removing real evidence.

Oscar Wild -- The Picture of Dorian Gray -- essentially immortality so long as one designated item doesn't get destroyed.

Niccolò Machiavelli -- The Prince -- influences targets. not strong enough to truly be considered mind control, but fairly strong persuasion. see my The Prince post where I explain so much in the tags.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -- The Little Prince -- allows him to understand people. thoroughly. please please go see my the prince/the little prince post, I explain so much in the tags. I have so many thoughts about these two.

Robert Louis Stevenson -- Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde -- compels people to act on their temptations and impulses. cannot convince people to do things they would have no desire to do otherwise.

Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables -- I think it would be very funny if it just made them unrecognizable to law enforcement. not shapeshifting, just all cops cannot recognize this guy's face. (they could recognize his muscles though, as per lore accurate les mis.)

William Shakespeare -- To Be or Not To Be (I am not naming this Hamlet. strictly for vibes.) -- gives people existential crises. If they have existential crises regularly already, it doesn't do anything.

I'd like to imagine he'd use it on a character who usually comes across as relatively well adjusted and. nothing happens. Like if atsushi/kunikida/chuuya were to be targeted they'd just be like "yeah idk nothing happened... sorry man. better luck next time."

Issac Asimov -- The Feeling of Power -- ability allows him to do any math- no matter how difficult or complex- without a calculator. I'd like to think he's insist that he doesn't have an ability, he's just really good at math. basically the opposite of ranpo.

Reginald Rose -- Twelve Angry Men -- the antithesis to Harper Lee, finds evidence proving anyone innocent. or at least can prove plausible deniability.

Arthur Conan Doyle -- Sherlock Holmes -- understand in full what anyone's ability is, and what its limits, strengths and weaknesses are.

we don't have enough ability-related abilities in bsd. too much offense and defense, not enough middle ground stuff.

Tennessee Williams -- The Glass Menagerie -- turns people into 'glass', or drastically decreases their durability. doesn't harm the target in and of itself, but the target needs to leave any combat because now they can be killed in one hit.

Arthur Miller -- Death of a Salesman -- communicates with the dead. We're gonna need something like this if Asagiri keeps killing off characters at the rate he's currently going.

[neo--queen--serenity]

I can’t believe I only just now noticed this.

But when Francis is using his ability, which is named after the irl Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, he glows GREEN.

The GREEN LIGHT was a central narrative tool used throughout The Great Gatsby novel. It was a huge deal to Gatsby, and was a consistent metaphor for his love for his romance interest, Daisy.

Fitzgerald, whose character in BSD is meant to directly mimic Gatsby, has a wife and child he would commit atrocities for. He believes what Gatsby believes: that only through money and power can he can live happily with the people he loves.

He embodies the Green Light and everything it stands for when he activates his ability, and that’s so fucking cool to me.

[thebookdragonshoard]

okay let’s talk about this.

lately, i’ve been seeing a lot of posts across various platforms talking down on people who picked up a book because of the characters in the anime Bungou Stray Dogs. whether it’s No Longer Human by Dazai Osamu or Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, does it really matter why they decided to pick up the book??

i think as readers, we should be happy that they found a reason to get interested in these authors that they most likely wouldn’t have gotten interested in their own. we should be encouraging the fact they’re excited to read, not admonishing them for their reason for doing so.

as a reader who personally picked up No Longer Human because of Dazai’s character in Bungou Stray Dogs, i’m so glad that the show got me interested in his writing because i get to discover an author that i’m coming to genuinely enjoy that i wouldn’t have found on my own otherwise. No Longer Human was a novel i thoroughly enjoyed and has become one of my top 5 books. and i’m finding myself enjoying The Setting Sun just as much!

i never would have ordered books by Dostoevsky or Ryuunosuke Akutagawa without finding BSD and i, for one, can say i’m genuinely excited to read them.

moral of the story, don’t shit on people for their reasonings behind reading and instead be happy that they are reading.

[autumnsartblog]

Incorrect vs correct way of thinking /j

Referencing this post of mine

[carbonateds-oda]

everyone shut the fuck up for a second I need a moment

oh my fucking god. im gonna explode look at them

[rashomon-vu]

"Who has made me a judge to decide who is to live and who is not to live?"

"Crime and Punishment", Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)