#bungou stray soup

[sensitiveheartless]

Surprise! This will henceforth be a soup-posting blog, where I post about nothing but soup! What ingredients taste best together, how to chop carrots, how to very chaotically add spices, how to not to get caught while making secret soup, how to avoid people reading too much into your secret soup-making, and all those normal soup things! :D

(…I am 100% kidding, just to be clear. Happy April Fools everybody!)

[rimbaud-fan-page]

Guys, men can have long hair

This is a general problem in SocietyTM, but every time a man has long hair, he gets rampantly feminised, particularly in fandom spaces.

And I'm not talking about transfem headcanons, or calling a man your "wife" or anything like that, I mean when his personality is fundamentally changed to be more meek and "feminine", with often happens in concordance with shipping, specifically with another man.

This is gross fetishization and exceedingly irritating, and despite the near total lack of people who even acknowledge Rimbaud, I still see constant feminisation of him.

I find this both deeply annoying and a tad ironic, mainly because it contradicts Rimbaud's personality as far as we've seen it. He's not shy and weak and blushy, he's cold (*cymbal crash*) and detached and strong, he has killed many people and he's a determined fighter. The man was a Spy and a Transcendent, for christ's sake, he trained Verlaine, the Assassin King.

Not only that but if you look at the appearances of Rimbaud and Verlaine, Rimbaud has more stereotypically masculine features, with a wider face, a squarer jaw and broader shoulders, whereas Verlaine's face is slimmer, and his jawline is more rounded without some of the harsher lines associated with masculine faces.

In the long run this means nothing except that I stare at Rimbaud and Verlaine a little too much, but I do find it ironic that Rimbaud has a more stereotypically masculine appearance, considering he is also the one being feminised.

Overall, the feminisation and fetishization of male characters in mlm ships is really weird (no duh)!! And my autistic brain throws seven separate tantrums when it happens to Rimbaud because i love him too much.

[sh1nsoukoku]

atsushi continuously realizing he is surrounded by absolute freaks

[kokoasci]

sketch from @soupthatistohot’s recent fic!! it was so good read it

[kyouka-supremacy]

Queen and king of subtly and not so subtly bragging about their salary with their crush

[soupthatistohot]

BSD: An Absurdist Analysis - Ch. 114

My thoughts on "Crime and Punishment"

[BSD Absurdism Masterpost]

Okay, so! Fyodor probably isn't dead.

And my theory for what his ability is would tie into Asagiri's absurdist storytelling thus far.

In Sigma's flashback, we see Fyodor get impaled in a manner that is eerily similar to how he dies in the helicopter, a way that pratically guarantees his death. Yet, as Sigma observes, he must have escaped the execution in order for him to still be alive.

My theory, put simply, is that when someone successfully kills Fyodor, he takes their place.

His ability is called Crime and Punishment, right? And if the ultimate crime (sin) is murder, then the punishment would be death. So, then, perhaps when someone is able to kill Fyodor, it causes their death, and somehow Fyodor takes on their lifeforce (for lack of a better term) and is able to keep living.

This would also explain why he has been able to live for such a long time. If he keeps getting killed by people whose lifeforce he assumes, then he can theoretically live forever as long as people keep attempting to murder him.

This would explain the end of the chapter where the body is shown to clearly not be Fyodor's. The helicopter pilot would have paid the consequence for Fyodor's murder, and thus been the one to die. For whatever reason, I suppose this means he and Fyodor switched likenesses? This is further supported by the panel in the flashback/memory where something seems to be happening to the man who impaled Fyodor after he does so. This part I cannot explain as well, but I think y'all can understand what I'm getting at with this.

Additionally, this theory of Crime and Punishment explains the purpose of the prison-break game, he's been trying to goad Dazai into killing him all along so he can die in turn, and finally be rid of his rival.

(Edit: the above point is likely rendered invalid because No Longer Human would very likely protect Dazai from death by Fyodor’s ability. That being said, it further explains why Fyodor is so determined to kill Dazai — not only is he his match in wits, but he might be the only one capable of killing him for good.)

Further, it could possibly explain Nikolai's desire to kill Fyodor. Perhaps Nikolai knows the nature of Fyodor's ability, and is the only one who does, which is why he considers them to be so close. He idolizes Fyodor, and so he desires to one day kill him, because he knows it will kill him in turn and Fyodor will get to continue living on. This one's a bit of a reach, but I do think it's a potential explanation if my theory about Crime and Punishment is correct.

And now for how this all fits into absurdism!

Fyodor has been the main antagonist for a really long time, basically for half of the manga's run. Up until this point we've had little to no clues about the nature of his ability and if my theory turns out to be correct, wouldn't that just be the greatest absurdity of all time? A villain that literally cannot die because when someone kills him, they actually die instead of him? How do you even defeat such a person?

I'm fairly confident about this theory, my only question would be why he would reveal this now? Surely, he knows that Dazai would figure it out, both from Sigma and from the corpse clearly not being him, so what benefit does Fyodor gain from revealing not only that he's survived, but what his ability is?

[sableeira]

poor Sigma shouldn’t even be here

[petitesmafia]

let him cook ?! (inspired on by this tweet)

[thatyogoguy]

drew the sillies! ^-^

[evilkaeya]

meursault arc good ending: the poison kicks in

[sensitiveheartless]

hi, I just wanted to drop in and say that I don’t know what it is about your art and writing but on my absolute worst days it seems to be the only thing that makes me feel the slightest bit warmer. maybe not better exactly but warm, idk how to explain it. uh. the point is I don’t know what special ingredient you put in your works but. it’s working. please keep doing it! you’re really awesome and I hope you’re doing ok, at least compared to earlier.

(also maybe a bit of a weird note, but I tried making soup from scratch a few months ago when I didn’t know what to do with myself. it turned out absolutely terribly which was disappointing and surprising seeing as everything else I’ve tried to make has come out decently well. After a dramatic month where I swore I would never touch soup again, I kept experimenting and a few days ago I made one that was half decent - a nice spicy broth with lots of vegetables. I probably wouldn’t have tried to make it if it hadn’t come up so often in your works, which I know is a bit silly but the idea of making soup as a comfort thing got stuck in my head and what do you know? it was comforting. and a bit rewarding too haha. I already decided I’m making more tonight.)

god sorry this is so long and probably way more to throw at you, a stranger really, than I should have, but I guess I just wanted to let you know? as much of a cliché as it is, sometimes little things really do hit in all the right ways.

I’m going to be so embarrassed after I send this lol

quick! send it send it!

Anon you will make me cry (in a good way!), this is so sweet and honestly really encouraging to hear ;; I’m really happy the stuff I make has helped you in any small way, and I will continue to do my best! :D

I have been slower with making things lately than I’d prefer — I have a couple chronic health issues that’ve been flaring up and making things difficult, especially energy-wise. But drawing and writing always help keep me going, so I’m absolutely gonna keep on keepin’ on! And I hope the stuff I make can keep helping you in little ways <3

(Also congrats on the soup success!! Making it from scratch isn’t easy alskdjfj I still get a bit paranoid I’m gonna mess it up when I’m making it by myself, particularly the spices — like I’m gonna put in way too much or too little and ruin the whole thing, but luckily it’s always a bit more forgiving than I expect. More to the point, I’m so glad your efforts paid off! My comfort-soup fixation encouraging you to keep experimenting is so fun alsksjdjfj that is not something I was expecting to ever come out of the stuff I make but it’s awesome! :D)

(Also here is a soupkoku doodle channeling my weird thing with worrying about spices)

Hope you have a lovely day today, anon!✨

[sh1nsoukoku]

local fail boy and his hot goth wife

[jounosparticles]

they have never been serious.

[kyouka-supremacy]

[soupthatistohot]

BSD 109 Spoilers!!!

I will always always ALWAYS come back to this panel when talking about Asagiri’s storytelling.

At its very core, BSD is an absurdist text, Kafka Asagiri having been inspired by many absurdist authors. Franz Kafka, who he took his pseudonym from is one of them. Albert Camus, basically the most well-known absurdist is referenced with the Mersault prison, the name of which comes from a character in his most famous absurdist work, The Stranger. 

Absurdism is the belief that the world around us is irrational and inherently absurd and that explicitly seeking meaning is pointless. In his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus explains, that there is value in the act of rebellion, though. Sisyphus, who has been doomed to roll a boulder up a mountain only for the boulder to tumble back down each time he reaches the peak, finds meaning in the act of continuing to push the boulder. Even though he will continue this cycle for all of eternity, he doesn’t just lay down and give up, he rebels against the absurdity of his situation by continuing to push the boulder, despite the seemingly futile nature of the act. 

As I said earlier, BSD is an absurdist text. All of the animanga’s main characters are on a journey of discovering their meaning in life, and their place in the world, and they do this by rebelling against its absurdity — especially Dazai. 

Dazai sees the absurd world for what it is, and when he was in the PM, he hated it. Thus, he sought suicide as a solution. I will note here that absurdists generally view suicide as a failure to rebel against the absurd, just giving up and giving into hopelessness. But ever since Dazai left the PM and took Oda’s advice, he’s been rebelling against this, doing good despite his inherent beliefs about morality and the world, and he’s absolutely gotten better for it. 

Other characters embody this idea of rebelling against the absurd, hell, that’s kinda what this whole arc is about. The world is literally ending, and things seem to be at their absolute worst, but someone like Atsushi still has hope that he can change the minds of the hunting dogs and save reality as we know it. He even has hope that he can get through to a vampiric Akutagawa when the guy is literally brainwashed and attacking him. Aya as the “last hope” right now embodies this, too, deciding that she can’t just sit around and do nothing and then trying to remove the sword from Bram even though the effort appears futile. 

But everything is going wrong right now. Fukuzawa is bleeding out, Dazai has just been shot through the forehead and appears to have died, Atsushi’s had his limbs ripped off and is at Akutagawa’s mercy, and Fukuchi is literally going to end the world! How can we have hope?!

Think about BSD. Think about the story that’s been told so far. Surely Asagiri isn’t killing everyone right now, surely the world isn’t gonna actually end. I’m not entirely convinced Aya’s plan is gonna work— but please consider that the point of absurdist storytelling is that even when everything seems to be at its worst, even when life seems completely meaningless, there is inherent meaning in still continuing to fight against this. 

BSD has never been a story where the villains win, and I don’t think it’s gonna start being one. I think, as usual, Asagiri wants to scare us, to make us feel hopeless about the situation, only for someone to pull through and completely turn the tides.

Dazai laying down and accepting his death at Chuuya’s hands is not going to be the end of his story, because it goes against everything Asagiri seems to stand for. Dazai wouldn’t just give up in his fight against Fyodor, because he needs to prove he’s right about what he says in this panel:

"The ones who actually make the world turn are those who scream within the storm of uncertainty and run with flowing blood."

I think this reflects Asagiri's own beliefs and is also the reason why he is not going to let Dazai die like this, because in a way, that would be proving that Fyodor is right. From a storytelling perspective, it’d be saying “everything I’ve communicated up to this point actually means nothing and life is truly hopeless!” 

Dazai has cheated death before, as has basically everyone else in danger right now. I promise you, something is going to happen and they’re all going to survive, because BSD is not trauma porn, for lack of a better term. It’s a story about how a group of people fight against the absurdity of their reality, even when everything seems completely and utterly hopeless. 

There’s a lot of theories circulating about how things could work out, especially Dazai’s “death,” and I’m not here to repeat all of them, but I will say that a lot of them have credence, especially because Asagiri isn’t the type of author to make mistakes, every single detail has a distinct reason. 

So even though I don't know how things are going to work out, I have full faith that they will, including Dazai's current situation. None of these characters are done just yet, they've got too much fight left in them to just give up.

[original twt thread]