#and my god what a ramble this is

[daz4i]

your last line in the theory ask got me thinking (the "why else are we following his story like this?")

do you think there's a reason atsushi, the protagonist, is kept so passive (until recently, someone was pretty much always there to help/save him in different ways), and dazai, arguably a secondary protagonist, is kept at the center?

a theory i saw is that atsushi being in the spotlight/not in the spotlight aligns with when the book is in the spotlight/not in the spotlight, and he'll be the center piece to actually locating the book

it's always fascinated me how we're repeatedly being Told he's the protagonist, but very rarely shown it past the first chapters/first season of the anime. it's a relationship between story and protagonist i've not really seen anywhere else.

OH THIS IS SO INTERESTING TBH

so. i have a few thoughts abt this lemme number them bc it's just easier for me to organize them this way hehe

1. oooooooh love that theory abt atsushi being more in the spotlight for locating the book (and after it will be found i assume :?). it does make sense! but then it's still strange just how long it took to get there, given we're over 100 chapters, technically 5 seasons of the anime, and multiple light novels into the story and not there yet. i wonder if the story/its formatting will change to accommodate that somehow :0

2. this is more abt the last part of your ask, and this concept in general! i think something that changes bsd and the context and role of atsushi in it is to see him more as a narrator (albeit an active one) rather than the actual main character whom the story is about, like. i wanna say nick in the great gatsby (<- hasn't actually read it so don't take my word on that one specifically, but like. it's been done before is what i wanna say! just mainly in books. but that does work with bsd at the end of the day! if any manga would mimic the style of books it'd be bsd hehe), and then the main character is dazai

this does align with the light novels more, imo. while he's not the main character of most of them, he is definitely present and moving the story along, same as he is in the main story. despite that, we never see his thoughts or read anything from his pov (i've seen people describe him as "a force" bc of that before, which is interesting, but i find it sort of... dehumanizing? and therefore kinda missing the point of his arc, imo). reading bsd with this thought in mind - that the main character is actually dazai - changes the context of things a lot

[ok this next part is a very crackheaded theory on why that may be that i wrote with the expectation to later add another theory. and then i couldn't come up with another theory to fit the topic i was talking about. so i'm just gonna make it indented and if the grammar/syntax(?) doesn't make a lot of sense. this is why. sorry]

it might've been done as a vague sort of homage to no longer human and the way it's written - the novel opens and closes with the pov of another character, who found yozo's journals years after he wrote them, likely after his death too. right from the start, our view of yozo can be distorted by the way he's described by this unnamed character. in a way, they are the narrator of his story. yes, we read most of it from his own pov, but we step in and out of it through an external view of him. the way we approach him, and the way we leave him, is affected both by the "narrator" and the inn owner who knew him in his life.

if we consider dazai to be the main character of bsd, it's not that out of the question that elements of no longer human will affect it beyond dazai's character alone, and that it might slip into the meta level as well. we view dazai from an outsider's perspective - not just atsushi's, but in the light novels as well - like we technically do with yozo.

it is a bit of a stretch lol i don't know if i actually fully believe that, but it's interesting to think about it that way imo :3

3. it puts a bigger focus on the generational trauma theme of bsd. the story was dazai's, and we're just watching as atsushi "inherits" it. so the light novels describe the background of our current story - the past generation, in a sense - and the manga is the new generation, building upon what's laid out already. but, like in real life, non-metaphorical generations, just because there's a new one doesn't mean the previous gen is dead yet. you can view it as dazai being like a father and atsushi as a son, in a way. just because somehow has a kid doesn't mean their life or their own stories stop, so we get to see it. and since atsushi is like a metaphorical kid, he can't do that much yet, and still has to learn how the world works before he can

yeah i have no idea if that makes sense or if that analogy is clear or not askdjfglkh i'm sorry. this post also ended up being more messy than i thought. hope you enjoyed it anyway tho!

[karda]

i miss science class bro. we dont put things under microscopes as much as we should

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.

and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.

...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.

see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.

while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.

especially if the president of the united states is on board.

yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.

and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."

but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.

...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.

not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.

yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.

but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire

[isjasz]

🌕Total Eclipse🌑

Writer: @zipzapzooooooom Editor: @onawhimsicot

Assistance: @gingermaple @kunehokki @corvidaearts @/mybrotherjoso7

and THE AMAZING COVER by googly88fancy!!

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NO WAY HERE IT IS part 1 of MY TEAM'S COMIC!! FOR @hotguycomiczine !!!!! :D

I pour my blood sweat and tears into this one fr. HGCZ is the most insane project i've been in and I am so so proud of it <3 Big giant shoutout to everyone that ended up in my team, without any of you I couldn't have done it and ty for putting up with my shit HASHDSAEHEGLP. <333

If you haven't yet checked out the entire monster of this amazing zine, def do so here! 🏹

Part 2 will be posted tmr but if u dont want to left on a cliffhanger. pspsppspssps🪤

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[ MERCH ] [ MISC ]

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[lazylittledragon]

i refuse to believe that boycotting is hard. my favourite thing in the world is ordering maccies after a late night at work/a concert/getting drunk. yes i do miss it sometimes. but the other night i ordered from a small place near my house instead and it was the most orgasmic burger i've ever had in my life. i very rarely say this but fucking suck it up people are DEAD

[cangrellesteponme]

wife

[babacontainsmultitudes]

RIP Will Campos the only person who was murdered this episode.

[chaosinstigator]

[rosefires20]

My brainrot today is thinking about just how incredible for a character Eowyn is.

Genuinely. The series might not have many female characters but the ones we do get go so fucking hard.

To me, Eowyn is literally the definition of defining being a woman for oneself. She rejects the roles she is given despite acknlowdging the importance and its mostly because she knows part of the reason is that she is a woman.

The reason why she is obsessed with Aragorn isn't because she loves him but because she wants what he has. She wants the freedom and courage and bravery that Aragorn has at every turn. She literally has multiple conversations during the Two Towers about how what she fears most is a cage. All this girl wants is the freedom to be and not be forced into a role. The best thing is that she literally gets that.

The segment of Return of the King about Eowyn and Faramir is literally about her piecing together what she truly wants. She doesn't want Aragorn. She wants freedom and the ability to choose. Faramir does nothing but encourage that in her. Their love story is literally one of the healthiest love stories I've seen in a long time because at the heart of it, their love is a place to return home to for both parties. Both go off to lead and help their people for a considerable amount of time before returning to each other but that does not diminish their bond. Even Faramir, I believe, falls in love with her bravery and dedication to her loved ones. The reason she went to Pelenor Fields and Gondor with the troops of Rohan was because she had things she wanted to fight for. She wanted to fight for herself, her people, and her loved ones. She is the one who protects Theoden after he is killed so that his body gets the treatment it deserves. She encourages Merry and helps him go to the battle because she sees her struggle in Merry. They feel helpless standing around when there are things to be doing.

Let's also not forget the fact that she was around Grima Wormtounge just as much as the King was. She was exposed to the same poison and awful words that eroded the king. It's even implied that her care for him is part of the reason why Theoden was savable when Gandalf showed up. She had the same power and bravery as everyone else even if she didn't see it in herself.

Then at the end of the day, SHE decides where she wants to go and what path she wants to walk. She walked the path of a warrior. The path of a princess/ruler. The path of a caretaker. But in the end she decides which elements truly mean something to her outside of gender definitions. That is what makes her character so incredible to me. In this she literally kills one of the biggest enemies in that battle with such a badass line.

[tibli]

magolor is so funny bc its like. here's this wizard guy. he cosplays an ancient civilization because hes basically their equivalent of a fucking weeboo, to the point where his name translates to 'false paradise' in their language. he's deliberately judas-coded. he basically becomes god for about 5 seconds before he gets his ass beat so hard he dies and goes to superhell. he looks like a sopping wet cat in a cardboard box the entire time hes there atoning for his sins. his final fight is against a fucking tree. and then he opens a theme park to say sorry for trying to take over the entire universe. who else is out here doing it like him

[p4nishers]

can't believe tom hiddleston ACTUALLY interrupted the interviewer to say "one last thing, i think mobius is loki's friend and i don't think loki has ever had a friend before" like king. i love how u felt the need to add that truly

[huginsmemory]

As someone whose asexual and a monsterfucker and knowing that there is a large subsection of the monsterfucking community that is Ace or on that spectrum, Ford being very Ace-coded and implied to have fucked a a triangle feels accurate to me. representative, even.

[tarufai]

[neonlazycat]

LDR moon by @spadillelicious

Guys.....I caved in