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While the title is off-putting, this video, which appears to be the only BSD Steinbeck-centric analysis on YouTube, is one of my favorite things I've ever encountered online

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Fanart of Akutagawa and Rashomon like those cartoon villains petting their evil cats lmaoo

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Why does everyone all of a sudden have to become this super duper 'intellectual' to be a part of the BSD fandom???? Why's everyone all pretentious all of a sudden????

I remember when I joined the fandom. I wasn't the classical English Student critically analysing works of Japanese authors. I was a dumb kid. And I found this anime which seemed cool enough.

It was way more that cool enough.

I fell heads over heels.

But I still wasn't this genius literary messiah.

Still a dumb kid.

Went cookoo over Soukoku (still am), read dumb fics, some really great ones too. Then, little by little, the more I loved this piece of art, the more I wanted to know about this piece of art.

AND that was when, after a year and a half, I got into the works of the original authors. Into the light novels. It was a slow process. Its still a process.

But Holy shit the way this manga BLEW APART my worldview. Holy shit. I loved the classics. My god. AND I loved connecting them to the manga. It made the experience of BSD so much more... my god.

But my point is, it's after I discovered BSD that I became engrossed with the authors, the themes, literary criticism, and all that.

And that's what Asagiri wanted. To spread this love for the masterful works of Japanese authors by this medium. And it worked. It works.

So why have we all of a sudden begun shaming people for not being intelle- sorry, pseudo intellectuals? Why are we shaming them for having fun with memes and crackpot humour, which is pretty fucking funny? For SHIPPING LEGAL SHIPS????

I'm sorry, what?

There's been an all time rise of pseudo intellectuals in this fandom, and it's getting annoying. I'd love to discuss the actual works of authors. I'd love to talk to you about 55 minutes and how horribly underrated it is. What I'm not going to do is shame people who are trying to find their footing in this fandom.

See, mischaracterizing is a problem. A huge one too in our fandom. And it is GOOD to acknowledge that, and speak against it. Important even.

What it's not good to do is to shit on fanfic writers cause it's a fucking fic.

So, to the people running around tooting horns and telling people they aren't smart enough, get off your high horse. You'll realise the horse you thought you were on was an ass.

To the people getting shamed for that, and the ones who JUST started the wonderful amd life changing piece of media called Bungo Stray Dogs, don't pay heed to these people. Go at your own pace. You'll fall into the literary rabbit hole sooner or later, and you'll love it. Even then, have fun.

Yes, and my English sucks ass.

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In The Forest, Under Cherries In Full Bloom by Ango Sakaguchi

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ango sakaguchi what the hell

i have no words left for this story. beautiful, haunting, horrifying, terrible, the best piece of prose i've maybe read in my life ever. the tension that builds up like a string, the horror in what is typically considered beautiful, the horror within an idea of infinity, endlessness...

there is a strange sort of hollowness after reading this that seems to take space and have it's own pull at the same time. hollowness like a black hole.

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My best guess is that they're metaphorically wringing him dry, but I'm really not sure either

Actually could someone explain to me what's going on in this panel? I never figured it out

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Last night, I had a dream where Piano Man hit his head and had his mind replaced by the isekai'd consciousness of Carl Jung

About half the Flags were there at one point. I almost never remember dreaming, but that's at least the second time I've had a dream with BSD characters in it, after one with Higuchi

I have no idea why Carl Jung ended up in the dream, but I'm sure he'd have an opinion about it

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haven’t used tumblr in actual years and have like. completely forgotten how it works so anyways first bsd doodle here!!!!! :) second ver was solely because the pose reference was the demolition lovers LOL

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Thank you! I do plan to share more of my analyses, though I might hold off on posting the writing-focused Lippmann ones until I finish a couple more of his works (I've only read Cold War and part of Public Opinion). Please keep in mind that I currently have no post-high school education and am therefore a less than stellar source for anything scholarly. I hope you continue to share your analyses as well, because they are very interesting! That's the sort of stuff I live for, too.

You have a point about great authors. Walter Lippmann was in a particularly weird position as "the Prince of Journalists", and it could sort of shove the worst bits of him to the forefront. He had one big private scandal—while married, he had an affair with the wife of his closest friend, who was the editor of a journal he was involved with, which was titled, of all things, Foreign Affairs—but the biggest marks on his legacy are the things which, as one of the most respected and influential sources of information in the US, he could have spoken out about and didn't.

Despite being a journalist before, during, and after it, he said absolutely nothing about the Holocaust, apart from making vague references to Europe's "surplus population" beforehand. He was Jewish himself but tried to hide it as much as possible, which sometimes led to him throwing other Jews under the bus for being who they were or where they were. This was probably influenced by the now-dead American German Jewish Reform intelligentsia subculture he grew up in, a subculture which in my experience is mostly disliked or outright despised by modern Jews regardless of branch because its members had a reputation for doing the sort of thing Walter Lippmann did in an effort to escape systematic oppression themselves at a time when most Jews apart from them were very poor and had extremely little power in society, thereby leaving the rest of their community in the muck and betraying their cultural and religious values, but that could be an entire thesis paper on its own.

It's possible that if he had written something, or said something to one of his politician friends (who by modern standards of journalism he shouldn't have had, though it was common then), then he could have changed something. The quotas, for example, which led to many Jewish refugees who had sought asylum in America being turned away and sent back to be murdered. It's possible that he would have changed absolutely nothing. He's in a Schrödinger state, but instead of it being whether a cat is alive or dead, it's whether he's part of the reason why a lot of other people died.

He also was blatantly antisemitic in some of his writings, considering Jewish culture inferior and encouraging college admissions practices which discriminated against Jews. It's ironic, perhaps, that someone who wrote so much about the baselessness of stereotypes would stereotype his own ethnic group so harshly, but self-hatred is a powerful thing.

That's not the only case in which he could have used his powers for good and resoundingly didn't. He also said very little* about the Civil Rights movement, despite seeming respectful in his individual interactions with Black people.

He said in a 1967 interview that the country couldn't simultaneously manage having a war going on and having societal progress, and by that point, he was putting a lot of effort into opposing the Vietnam War. He had been against the war in the first place and seems to have thought that if people had taken his advice years ago, it wouldn't have happened. (He might have been right about that, though it's impossible to know what ripple effect Cold War would have had on the Cold War if his policy suggestions were implemented). He staked himself on that cause and at tremendous personal cost.

By saving up his reputation for situations when he felt best-equipped and most strongly about the fight, by focusing on one controversial issue, he hoped to make the maximum difference. That is a logical course of action. The question is whether it is too immoral a course of action when it means standing by and saying nothing in the face of other injustices one may have the power to help combat, and at that point, the discussion is too philosophical and subjective to have a definitive answer, so I'll leave off there.

The last famous controversial Lippmann thing I can think of, apart from the affair, and his apparent indifference to others' suffering, and his possible involvement in a politics-motivated murder cover-up or at least poor handling of the investigation committee he was heading, and his elitism, is his friends and connections in high places. For example, he was an advisor to Woodrow Wilson and helped draft the Fourteen Points speech after being shown the European Allies' secret treaties by the Secretary of War. Later on, JFK's speech writer Ted Sorensen gave Lippmann JFK's inaugural address to read over beforehand. Lippmann did, and on his advice, one word was changed. Lippmann then praised the speech in his newspaper column, making no mention that he had been consulted about the speech before it was delivered. Having such direct ties to the political establishment is considered unethical journalism protocol today; however, it was common practice at the time, so he probably shouldn't be judged for it by current standards.

Walter Lippmann had a positive influence, too. He wrote thoughtfully and accurately most of the time. He spoke out against imperialism. He coined the current sense of the word stereotype, and his discussions of how biases and communication breakdowns affect individuals and society were immensely influential and are still relevant today. He was quite possibly right that if people had listened to him earlier, the Vietnam War wouldn't have happened and a large number of people wouldn't have died. I've asked a few senior citizens how they felt about him, and all who remembered reading his columns described him as wise and insightful, a person they had immense respect for. He's been called the Father of Modern Journalism and is sometimes considered the most influential journalist of the 20th century. That level of influence and public expectation—to the point where his silences could have been as impactful as many other people's speech—would be difficult for anyone, and I can't imagine anyone in such a position not making at least a few major blunders. Some of his choices may be hard to swallow, but generally speaking, he seems to have tried his best, and at the very least, he wasn't an H.P. Lovecraft.

And now, on to Baudelaire and his ability to be controversial on pretty much everything

*and analyzing the little he said would take much more knowledge of 1960s social justice discourse than I possess

Who was gonna tell me that BSD Lippmann is essentially the Port Mafia’s PR guy because one of irl Lippmann’s works is called Public Opinion

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If I had a nickel for every BSD ship between a criminal with a dark bob, bad physical health, and a very unusual approach to religion and a criminal with lighter hair worn partly short and partly in a braid, a bubbly, raucous personality, and a connection to birds, I would have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice

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I'm glad you find it interesting because I've become sort of obsessed with him but haven't shared much of my analysis since I wasn't sure if anyone else would find it interesting. He was an excellent writer with a very complicated legacy, and the more I read of his work and about him, the more I ping-pong back and forth between admiring his talent, detesting him as a person, and seeing him as a product of his time who was in personality an average guy but had more insight and influence than most and thus could do more good and more bad and most often did the latter by saying nothing at all

I'm also struck by how much thought it seems like was put into BSD Lippmann, since he's only there for a moment but is such a fascinating reflection of Walter Lippmann's life and works. It's hard to say which writings or aspects of the writer led the character to be the way he is, not because there aren't many potential connections but because there are too many of them

Also, this is irrelevant to everything, but Piano Man would've loved his sense of humor. The interview where he said that medieval monks were the hippies of their time haunts me

Who was gonna tell me that BSD Lippmann is essentially the Port Mafia’s PR guy because one of irl Lippmann’s works is called Public Opinion

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Walter Lippmann also is sometimes accused of having been part of the journalistic cover-up of a murder, which seems very Port Mafia of him. I don't know whether that got factored into BSD Lippmann or not, but it well could have

Who was gonna tell me that BSD Lippmann is essentially the Port Mafia’s PR guy because one of irl Lippmann’s works is called Public Opinion

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I just checked the unofficial BSD updates site and I really hope it's wrong because it says the Stormbringer manga is on a break. The site is usually reliable, but I can't find any other source for that. Can anyone confirm/deny it?

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Just throwing it out there that if Doc was in fact inspired by Michael Crichton, then he's modeled after someone who was one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in the World one year and was married five times. No one would've described Crichton as sickly-looking, at least not for most of his life, but I like to think Doc has some of that rizz in his own unsettling, endearing, cryptid-ish way

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So, you're telling me Akutagawa Ryūnosuke wrote fanfiction about dead authors

—from Borrowed elements of Russian literature in Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's works, a master's thesis by Vladimir Pavlov

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Imagine: a mysterious newcomer shows up, one vaguely connected to the Order of the Clocktower, possibly a disgruntled ex-member. It is Oscar Wilde, and he is wearing an excellent coat, because he is a BSD character and also Oscar Wilde. By the power of The Picture of Dorian Gray, he has kept himself alive through aeons. He is sad to hear of Bram's death, since they were on good terms during the times when Bram was awake despite the fact that he, like the real Oscar Wilde, once courted Bram's wife. He says he's there to dispose of another old flame, Fyodor Dostoevsky, who he spent a really nice summer in Greece with in 24 CE. He might be lying about all of it. He might be lying about none of it. No one can tell. He's Oscar Wilde.

Sooo when is Oscar Wilde debuting in BSD and what would his ability be?

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And then there are moments where it seems like they're connecting, but somehow or other they never can stay on the same page...

I wonder if Fitzgerald realized how similar they are, even a little—if him telling Steinbeck that he worked hard to save up for a gun as a child but it wasn't enough so he killed people to get it instead was Francis's subtler version of Mori telling Dazai Dazai reminds him of his younger self. It comes after John compliments Francis' shooting, and John smiles widely through the whole scene, but his eyes are very wide and very blank and he may be dissembling without paying attention to what Francis is saying at all, or at least without sympathizing....

Auggh

Steinbeck & Fitzgerald: a BSD Relationship Analysis

Steinbeck and Fitzgerald’s relationship in BSD makes me sick /vpos. What do you mean Steinbeck hates him??? What do you mean Steinbeck doesn’t know that Fitzgerald is doing this for the sake of his own family??? They’re literally two sides of the same coin and they can’t even see it!!! 

What do you MEAN Steinbeck has a large, loving family but no money, and Fitzgerald has all the money he could want but his family is falling apart? And they’re both doing terrible things to save their families: Fitzgerald is willing to burn down an entire city to get the book so he can revive his daughter, and Steinbeck is willing to kill as many people as it takes to ensure his family is fed. 

And don’t even get me started on the comparison between their real life works. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Gatsby is incredibly wealthy, but because of this fact he doesn’t have any true friends who can see him beyond his wealth, including the woman he loves!!! Meanwhile in Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie are two poor migrant workers but they’re best friends. They may not have any money, but they have companionship, and that fact is continually contrasted with the other primarily friendless characters in the novel. 

ALSO: it makes me absolutely insane that Fitzgerald’s most famous novel was set in the roaring 20’s and Steinbeck’s most famous novel, the Grapes of Wrath, covers the time period right after that, the Great Depression. They’re two halves of the same whole. Ambition brought to fruition through shady deals, and hard, honest work that never ends up being enough. It’s lavish parties and drinking and booze followed by the dirty aftermath. A city man and a country boy. The owners vs the farmers. 

It’s how when Fitzgerald crashes, (kinda like the stock market in 1929) Steinbeck rises to take his place. It’s how Fitzgerald would give anything to have his family together like Steinbeck’s, and how Steinbeck would do anything to be able to support his family like Fitzgerald… 

They’re both so similar, so ambitious, and so willing to do whatever it takes to help the ones they love, but in the end they’re on opposite sides, and I can’t wait to see how this (mostly one-sided) rivalry ends. 

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i love Haruno so much cause she’s just some regular ass lady who loves her cat dearly. and she has no fucking clue that said cat is actually some middle aged man with a cane and bowler hat who looks over and orchestrates the entirety of Yokohama, and chose to live with her because her boss is one of the people he looks over. and she works for a detective agency full of detectives with actual superpowers who have stopped the destruction of the city multiple times over, and she’s a loved and appreciated employee because she does all of the typical assistant/secretary things that are super important to keeping things running. and she’s the one who brews the agency president’s tea or brings him his lunch and such, and she also gets the marbles out of the ramune bottle for his son. and she’s pretty good friends with the part-time secretary who’s ≈17 years old and also the sister of one of the detectives with superpowers. and she’s gotten the everliving shit beaten out of her by one of the detectives once because of some freak mind control incident and then she totally forgave him for it.

Haruno is genuinely the only normal person there is in that agency and she is absolutely wonderful