#also irl but in media it's easier bc we've got the fourth wall protecting us from things getting too Raw

[daz4i]

tbh i’d argue discussions of good and bad aren’t what matters in bsd. like morality isn’t the topic here

the main characters don’t quite have concrete goals beyond surviving, and the antagonists all have thoroughly explored motives for their actions that you can even easily justify. but because we view the story through the lenses of the detective agency - who are being put at direct risk by said actions - we view said actions as antagonistic

and while some of these actions are Not Great, the story of bsd doesn’t shy away from showing our protagonists do awful things as well. honestly the best way i’ve seen someone put it was ironically in a joke post of atsushi saying smth along the lines of “akutagawa don’t kill these people that’s awful. we should only maim them instead”

i don’t think bsd sets out to say some great message about morality and the greatness of it, at least not as its core theme. i think everyone is morally grey because they’re just... human, and humans are naturally not purely good or purely bad. even the most horrendous acts in history were done for a reason, to the people who did them.

this is why the story is like that. it doesn’t seem exactly purposeful, sort of? like, again, i don’t think it’s meant to be a core theme, more like. this is how the story is because it’s simply well written, and you’re meant to engage with it through the lens of someone who can look past titles like “good” and “bad” and see the people instead. 

while i wouldn’t say it’s exactly pointless to discuss morality in the context of bsd, it’s more like... there’s just better, more relevant things to discuss. even under this topic, i’d say it’s more relevant to go at it from the direction of “why do people do the awful things they do and what does that say about us” rather than “does this person’s reasoning justify their actions”