#the tripartite framework

[kishiqo]

I've never felt more like natsume-sensei than when a fic makes the agency and port mafia actually have a conflict that would result in the end of one or both organizations.

[kaurwreck]

I'm certain now that bsd!Sigma is Yukio Mishima. (Although, that his character design parallels Shibusawa's was reason enough.)

In math, sigma is the symbol Σ, which indicates the summation of numbers. The kanji in Yukio Mishima's (三島 由紀夫) name translates literally to three islands + cause/reason for, chronicle/record, man.

Sigma, who has only three years of memories, chose his reason for existing to be the sky casino, a floating island. He's also lonely, an island unto himself, with only three years of memories. In other words, Sigma is the base sum of his parts.

(Of course, Sigma wasn't born three years ago because, aside from being nonsense, Dazai can touch him, and Dazai hinted at the absurdity when he teased Sigma. Never mind that it doesn't make sense with reality narratively, thus violating the "rules" of the Page, and that Fyodor has performed lobotomies before, with Ivan.)

[kyouka-supremacy]

i haven't read the light novels, or i might have missed something in the timeline, but would yosano and kouyou know each other? (obviously not a prerequisite for shipping at all lol i just got curious) since yosano left the port mafia when she was so young

I mean, this is not the answer I was going for initially, but after thinking about it for a while, very technically speaking they must be aware of each other's existence on canon basis. It's implied Yosano healed Kouyou when she was taken hostage by the ada: it's logic that she would have never allowed the ada to capture her unless she couldn't fight, yet she was doing fine once she woke up, meaning someone must have healed her up in the meantime– and the ada only has one doctor lol. Additionally, at the end of the cannibalism arc all the major ada and pm members were brought together in the same place, so according to these panels we can say for sure the two existed together in the same place at some point

I haven't read the vast majority of the novels either, but for what I know I think I can fairly confidently affirm they never interacted in any of them. Though you know, in the end it depends on what you mean by “knowing each other”: are they are aware of each other existence, yes; did they ever interact or ever even talk, eh, as far as we know, no.

[starlightshadowsworld]

Bungou stray dogs except the Agency never get a Special Abilities Buisness License.

For whatever reason they never get the license that every special ability organisation needs to have to operate.

But they still operate anyway and frankly no ones going to stop them. What are the police going to do? Arrest them? Take them to court?

No one in their right mind wants to debate Ranpo on a regular day, nevermind in front of a judge.

The fact the police wouldn't want to shut down the Agency anyway. Because their whole thing is taking cases the police can't solve.

The local gangs of Yokohama are terrified of the Agency. Mori and the Port Mafia will continue to feud them but not destroy them because Tripartite Framework.

The Agency just becomes the embodiment of "we're glad their on our side." All the weapons they have for being the "ARMED Detective Agency" are all illegal.

Everytime Kunikida pulls out a gun or a grenade everyone just looks the other way.

Makes the beginning of the Guild arc fucking hilarious because Fitzgerald comes to the Agency to get their licence. Talking about how important it is to have one.

And Fukuzawa just sips his tea like "oh we don't have one."

Fitzgerald is completely caught off guard, because their goes his plan because not even Alcott could predict this.

Naomi is trying not to laugh and Fukuzawa smiles to himself all innocent like. "I can't say how to acquire one. But I do know a local neighbourhood physician who has one, maybe give him a call."

[nihilo-sensei]

In function, the Armed Detective Agency and the Port Mafia, considered together, are two-thirds of the Tripartite Framework dedicated to defending Yokohama and, recently, the world.

In spirit, they’re a Waffle House that serves world-famous homoerotic rivalry-partnerships. The defense of Yokohama is a popular side dish.

[bsd-fan]

Soukoku and the mafia

After a million years, I’m finally back with an analysis. I’ve already kind of analyzed Dazai and Chuuya as individual characters but I purposefully left behind something that was fundamental for both of their characterizations and that played a big role in molding their actual personalities. Yes, I’m talking about the environment they grew up in: The mafia.

Because the length and the complexity of the topic, I decided to make an entire post just about this. Obviously there will be spoilers of the anime, manga and light novels so be aware of that.

*Also a friendly reminder that english is not my native language, so I apologize if there’s any grammar or ortographic mistake or if something is worded in a weird way, I just hope is not bad enough that you can’t make sense of it at all. This is also extremely self indulgent and extremely long.

I’m gonna start by establishing the main premise of this analysis and the idea I will be defending in the next parragraphs:

The mafia is literally the worst place for skk to be in (and yes, I’m talking about BOTH of them)

Now this is a bold sentence because the immediate response would probably be something among the lines of “well duh, the mafia is a horrible place for everyone” and yes but also no. The mafia affects soukoku in a special way that is vastly different to how it affects the other characters in the mafia.

I’ve found that the mafia is one of the most misunderstood points in the series (Cycle of abuse, I’m looking at you) so I’m gonna talk about it. Back in chuuya’ analysis, I talked about how he shouldn’t be in the mafia. I wasn’t talking about this in terms of “Chuuya is majorly speaking a good person” and “The mafia is a morally bad place”, that’s pure bullshit and certainly not what I was referring to.

When the fandom talks about the mafia there are two major points of view. Either they saw it as hell incarnate or they see it as the “bad” protectors of the city, kind of a twisted family. And while both of this opinions are not /completely/ wrong, they’re also NOT right. Once again, the problem is that the fandom /still/ insists on assigning a moral category to something that is far more complicated than that. Yes, it’s the mafia, it’s literally a place of crime, it’s /obvious/ they’re gonna do morally bad things but they are also an important part in the tripartite framework and a major reason of why the city is still standing, this are not mutually exclusive. And that’s because the mafia is not a morally oriented organization.

The next biggest mistake when it comes to this topic is thinking of Mori and the Mafia as synonyms. People loves to blame Mori for every single thing that happens, there is always an entire section of comments that always claim “Normalize blaming Mori for everything” and that’s just /plainly/ wrong. I need you to understand that the mafia existed before Mori and will exist after Mori and it still will require of a leader that have certain type of characteristics. The reason Mori is the perfect leader for this organization is because he perfectly represents the mafia ideology NOT the opposite. Is Mori who adapts himself to the mafia, not the mafia adapting to him. Obviously he is in charge and he gets to influence and dictate the actions of the organization, the same way the old boss did (and he made a shit hole out of it) but the mafia as it core exists as a concept that can not be altered not matter who is in charge of it. And that’s what we have to understand.

Let’s start by defining it:

“An economic body that uses violence as it’s currency” -Mori

And that’s it, that’s the first and most important thing you gotta understand about the mafia. It’s not about bad people doing bad things for the sake of it. It’s not about morally grey people saving the city because of the good in their hearts. The mafia as it core is about money, is about benefits, is about gaining the most. It’s an economic body.

They will kill, kidnap and torture? Yes but they won’t do it because they’re bad, they will do it only if there’s something to gain out of it. They save the city and stop the other criminal groups? Yes, but it’s not because they are secretly good people. It’s to maintain the monopoly of the crime in the city and protect their territory where they have all the money and where they do their negotiations. There /are/ people in the mafia who genuinely care about the city like Mori, Chuuya, Tachihara or Hirotsu, I don’t doubt there are other people as well who cares about it but those are personal motivations that have absolutely nothing to do with the mafia as an institution. Because the mafia as it’s own entity only cares about the gains and losses.

So when we talk about the main difference between the Mafia and the ADA is not about morality. Both organizations are full of morally grey people, both of this organizations are ready to do criminal activities if required. The main difference is the objectives behind them. The ADA is a organization of people for people.

“There is no agency more valuable than human life”- fukuzawa about the ADA, first light novel

The ADA is about doing their best to help people, is about prioritizing human life above everything else. And when they do criminal acts? It’s because it was the only way to preserve as many lives as possible.

The mafia on the other hand is about gaining money and resources and it’s about securing the survival of it as as Institution doing whatever is necessary to achieve it.

“These magical stones always led to violence and bloodshed, and the only thing that could stop this violence and maintain a stable system was even more violence”— Chuuya, stormbringer.

In the last chapters we realize that even though the ADA as an organization technically doesn’t exist anymore (because they were seen as a terrorist group) they still can perfectly exist as long as the members are alive. They can make another organization but they can’t just replace one of their members, that would be a critical hit for them. That’s abysmally different to how the mafia conduces itself. It doesn’t matter how many people die, they can be easily replaced but if the mafia as an institution falls? Then they lose everything. So this means, that the ADA will sacrifice the organization as many times as necessary if by doing it, they can protect it’s members meanwhile the mafia will sacrifice as many people as necessary if by doing it they assure the survival of the mafia as an institution. And this has been shown again and again and again. It’s because of this main objective that the mafia by definition and independently of Mori, needs to be: Extremely Rational, utilitarian and deeply Machiavellian because if not, then it wouldn’t be able to survive. The mafia as an institution requires someone who will put the needs of the organization over personal feelings and even over the members of the institution if that’s the best option..

And that’s why Mori is the perfect leader of the organization, because he is the textbook ideal of what a Mafia boss should be. Mori is not known for being the cruelest or the evilest. He is known for being the most logical, not matter what. For always being cold and rational.

“Dazai, Do you know why I’m the boss? (…) I don’t posess an incredible skill like you or chuuya. Instead, however, I am a little better at something than the two of you. I can always predict exactly how many men I need to send into battle”- Mori, stormbringer.

To illustrate this better let’s talk about the death of the old boss and Odasaku.

First thing to understand is that people is not stupid, they always /knew/ that Mori killed the old boss. For fuck’s sake even the sheep who were a group of literal /kids/ that weren’t even part of the mafia knew that there was no way that the old boss died of naturally causes and casually left the mafia to Mori who coincidentally happened to be his doctor. They all knew but they are collectively playing pretend. Why? Because they recognize that Mori is the best option, because they know that Mori won’t sacrifice them without reason, he won’t ask them to do useless things. Every single action that Mori takes is for the benefit of the organization, is logical and can be defended using rational arguments and when he decides to sacrifice someone there’s also a reason behind it. And that’s the best option possible for a place like the Mafia. The mafiosos chose him because of it, but make no mistakes, if the time comes where Mori is more a liability than an asset then someone will most likely kill him and take his place exactly the way he did. That’s the way of the mafia. Just like Mori says, even in the top, everyone’s is a slave of the organization including himself.

Odasaku’s death was carefully planned and I’m not denying that there were personal reasons there, I’m not denying that part of it was to specifically aim to Dazai, being as part of training him to become the next boss of out of fear of Dazai killing him, Mori did this move knowing that Dazai was gonna be affected by it. But as much as all of you would hate to listen to it, it was also the most logical course of action. Just stop to think about it. You have this incredibly powerful asset, someone who is extremely competent, someone who is insanely strong but you can’t use him because he refuses to do any important task, he refuses to kill. He is basically wasted talent. But then there’s an opportunity to gain something extremely valuable (the ability’s permission) and you just have to eliminate one powerful group of people and hey, your liability happens to be the /perfect/ person for the job, so what do you do? What Mori did may be horrible but also was a genius move. He destroyed an entire organization while sacrificing one single person who was useless to him anyway. He gained something that was vital for the organization with basically no losses. Yes, he sacrificed the children and that’s fucking sick and horrible but they weren’t his responsibility, the organization was. The kids weren’t part of the organization, sacrificing them doesn’t translate to any significant losses to the mafia. That’s why Dazai is so frustrated by the end, because he lost his best friend, he is suffering but he can’t deny that Mori was logical about it, he can’t deny that that was rational. Even in beast there’s this whole part explaining how difficult it was to defeat mimic without oda, do you know what does that mean? Dazai probably sacrificed a large number of people to do it and even if he didn’t why would you as the Leander of the organization would take the most difficult path when there’s other that is far easier and cheaper? And just like that, every single one of Mori’s actions can be explained with a logical process behind it.

I feel like the biggest argument to understand that even though Mori represents the Mafia ideals, the mafia is still an independent organization of Mori is Beast. He is not the mafia boss in beast but the mafia basically remains exactly the same organization, akutagawa is not suffering but Atsushi is. People are suffering exactly the same, the only different thing is /who/are the ones suffering. Sure, someone can argument that Dazai was not trying to be the best leader, just to save Odasaku but the whole point is that generally speaking he had to make enough of a decent job to maintain the order in the city. Under Dazai’s command the mafia was more powerful than they were with Mori in charge. And it’s horrible, but that’s the only way to rule it. Otherwise the whole organization would fall apart. So to summarize the horrible environment of the mafia is NOT because of mori. We already saw the mafia in charge of the old boss, of Mori and of Dazai and the environment is kind of the same with slightly worse or better differences and that’s because again there are parts of the mafia that can’t be altered independently of who is in charge.

“A leader is simultaneously at the top of the organization and still a slave to it as a whole. You need to be willing to get your hands dirty to keep the organization afloat and thriving. A leader develops their subordinates and places them wherever they best fit and disposed of them if necessary. I will gladly perform the most heinous acts for the sake of this organization. That’s what it means to be a leader”- Mori, fifteen

Mori is far from perfect, he is horrible and sick and also have lots of personal interests, he also uses the organization to a certain degree to achieve them. But this is not fake. He will put the organization over everything else. That’s what it means to be the boss of the mafia.

So now that we got that out of the way and we learn to differentiate Mori from the mafia and we now understand that the mafia is not a moral organization but an economic body, we can start explaining why the mafia is such a terrible place for Dazai and Chuuya especifically. Let’s start with Dazai. We already discussed it but for the mafia to accomplish it’s main objective it needs to have certain characteristics.

Rational

Utilitarian

Machiavellian

Do this words remind you of someone?

“Your blood is mafia black”

Have you ever wondered why even though chuuya is the one with the greatest body count, Dazai is the one that always seems to be like the worse of them? Why Dazai is the first one to come to mind when they talk about the next mafia boss?

It’s because just like Mori he perfectly embodies the ideals of the mafia as an institution. He is brilliant, kind of apathetic, cold, rational, manipulative and he is naturally an utilitarian (philosophy that believes that the best action is the one that produces happiness to the most people) and Machiavellian (ideology that puts one’s goals over everything else, discarding the moral consequences and the ethics qualifications) this can be summarized to one simply sentence: Dazai is the type of person who is result oriented, it doesn’t matter the means, just the final result and that’s exactly the kind of ideology that the mafia needs to exist. And that’s just part of his natural personality.

So why the mafia is such a bad place for him if it seems like it’s the most natural place for him to be?

If this is the first thing that came to your mind:

Then you’re wrong and I’m here to spit in this idea of cycle of abuse.

Okay so first of all, people refer to “cycle of abuse” to the wrong thing. You’re actually referring to intergenerational abuse and even more than that you are all thinking about the /individualized/ abuse of one person to other than then replicates the same thing in someone else. Thing is, if we make this cycle we will arrive to Mori and I just wrote half a bible of why this is factually incorrect, so don’t make me say it again. Then, there’s the second biggest issue here, this is /incredibly/ reductionist. There /are/ parallelisms in this relationships, yes. But I need you to understand that even though they were indeed abused to a certain degree, they are all part of the mafia which is an abusive place to begin with and by definition. There was no way for them to not suffer this and they weren’t the only ones, everyone in the mafia was abused one way or another and it came from different places not just one specific person . Now let me start with the thing that bugs me the most of this cycle.

It obligates me to defend Mori

See, I can perfectly understand Dazai and Akutagawa being here because even though Aku was manipulated and used for more people in the mafia than just Dazai is a fact that he was the main abuser. It’s true that is was a target abuse and that was repetitive and degrading every single time. Akutagawa is now basically a glorified Pavlovian experiment thanks to Dazai. Yes, Dazai cares for him, yes Dazai actually was trying to teach him and to make him stronger. The intention here is secondary, akutagawa still ended up deeply traumatized and with a pathological need of recognition to survive.

Now akutagawa and kyouka? This one is more questionable because we know that Kouyou and Akutagawa had kind of a twisted version of shared custody when it came to her. So kyouka was abused for more than one person and not necessarily in an intergenerational abuse so the cycle is no longer a cycle right? But okay let’s go with it. We have actual canon proof that akutagawa abused her replicating Dazai’s methods with him so it can still qualify.

But Dazai and Mori? WHERE?

In all the story there’s no proof that Dazai was abused in this way by Mori.

It simply doesn’t exist, it’s just a headcanon that became so popular that everyone started to believe it. Yes, Mori exposed Dazai to a murder when he was fourteen and that’s a form of abuse, true. But have you noticed that most of the mafiosos got into the mafia when they were teenagers or even literal kids (Q was six, gin was also younger than Dazai) they were ALL exposed to this form of abuse. This doesn’t make it okay, of course but it’s not the kind of individualized abuse that you all love to talk about. “He manipulated him” true, he also manipulated oda, Ango, Chuuya, Q, etc. Again it certainly wasn’t personal or out of place for a mafia boss. And again IT’S NOT A CYCLE. We also have absolutely no evidence of Mori being physically or sexually abusive towards Dazai. He psychologically abused of him? Yes but once again there’s no evidence of it being worse than it was with other people. It’s plausible of course, because Dazai worked directly under him but for the most part it doesn’t seem like he was specifically horrible towards Dazai. You want to talk about Mori being horrible with someone? At least choose the right person because yosano is right there. Dazai had most of this personality traits before meeting Mori, so it’s not like Dazai was a perfectly sane and happy kid that would’ve been normal of he was picked up by a good person, he was not ranpo or yosano. Let’s also add that Dazai seemed to be incredibly desensitized to violence even at fourteen. We can’t blame Mori for his character traits but we can certainly blame him because he made them worse.

So if not for this, then why Dazai shouldn’t be in the mafia? Is not for the abuse, is not for the moral implications, then why?

Easy, the real reason it’s because of Dazai’s core as character. Dazai doesn’t care for the mafia, he doesn’t care for power and even though he naturally seeks the benefits out of every situation that also is not his core as a character. His core is and always be: Humanity. That’s what Dazai is looking for, that’s his nucleus as a character and that’s the reason the mafia is the worst place Dazai can be in, regardless of his abilities.

Dazai gets into the mafia trying to find a reason to live, trying to understand humanity so that would make him close to his own and it really seemed like the perfect plan, it was logical. The mafia certainly is a place where death is part of life, emotions are raw and most often than not genuine. Then why It didn’t work? Why his mental stake kept deteriorating more and more? Because it took him farther away from his humanity. I’ve said it before but the reason Dazai felt inhuman is because of a permanent sense of alienation and isolation. Dazai already has certain characteristics that make it harder for him to establish emotional bonds with people. His brain also moves faster than everyone’s else’s, so for him is so /easy/ to stop looking people as individuals and look at them as pieces to use and discard. The mafia is the worst place for him to be because it enhance this characteristics, the mafia impulses him to use them because that makes him the best asset but that also makes him incredibly miserable because it worsens the alienation thus increasing the deshumanization. Also the mafia makes him intellectualize as a coping mechanism which worsens his self awareness that to begin with is pretty poor. That’s not all, because of the nature of the mafia Dazai who already has trust issues ends up even worse so it isolates him even more. The only moments he seems to be closer to his humanity is with people like chuuya or Oda, and the hilarious thing about it is that they both are basically the opposite of what the mafia represents. More than that, Chuuya actually obligates him to go back to earth and start acting less as a god and more as a human being.

Which also explains why the ADA is better for Dazai than the mafia. Is not because of morality, is because is an organization that revolves around people so it obligates him to interact and create relationships with people, and even if they’re not 100% honest. It still decrease his alienation and isolation and being him closer to his humanity. That’s the reason the ADA is the best place for him.

Similarly but in a completely different way there’s chuuya, except that he is a thousand times more tragic than Dazai and every time I stop to think about him I want to sob, scream, throw up.

Dazai has the characteristics to be the perfect mafioso but his nucleus make it impossible for him to be one. Chuuya doesn’t have the characteristics to be a mafioso and also has the same nucleus as Dazai.

So the premise is: The mafia and chuuya are irreconciliable ideas and it’s a miracle that it’s still working.

We already went through everything that the mafia represents, we already know that by /definition/ the mafia is a place where you have to deshumanize other people and yourself in order to survive. It’s not a surprise that is the WORSE place in the world for the two people whose whole characterizations revolves around humanity.

But in chuuya’s case, his whole personality and ideological system directly clash with the mafia. Is fucking tragic. Let me remind you that chuuya gain his whole sense of humanity and identity out of the relationships he makes with people. Chuuya /cares/ for people, that’s just the kind of person he is. You CAN’T ask him to start viewing this people that are /everything/ to him just like chess pieces that can be sacrificed at any moment. That would be the equivalent of spitting in his sense of humanity, to take away his reason to live and his identity. That would completely break him. So chuuya keeps making bonds with people and suffering Every. Single. Loss. Because the mafia is a place of sacrifice and he can’t stop it not matter how hard he tries. And that it’s also devastating in a whole new way.

“His eyes were tainted with Darkness just like everyone in the mafia. It was a murky darkness-one that viewed human lives as mere numbers”- about Arthur, fifteen

This is the mafia, this is the mindset needed to be there. This is also precisely the opposite of everything that chuuya is. Chuuya survives because he can’t view human as numbers. People are the most precious thing in the world for him.

This is chuuya Nakahara:

You value your friendships and make decisions accordingly. I suppose you could call this human nature- Adam, stormbringer

Chuuya is in a place where people die and no one cares, because they were simply numbers, because they don’t exist as individuals not really.

“Countless people died, but the incident hardly remained in anyone’s memory”- stormbringer

The flags died and no one aside from him cared, after that he made new friends that were also killed in the same fucking year and once again nobody stopped, just him. The mafia just replaced them and acted like it was nothing. And meanwhile:

“-Chuuya you smell like incense. Did you go visiting those graves again?- shirase about chuuya, stormbringer

Chuuya keeps visiting those graves because even when no one remembers them, he does, because they were his friends, they were individuals. Hell, leave alone his friends, Chuuya fucking goes to talk to Arthur’s grave. That’s the type of person he is

Chuuya is emotional, he is straightforward, he is honest, he /cares/. Chuuya’s so opposite to the mafia ideals that it would be funny if it didn’t make me want to eat glass. In order to be in this organization he has to go against his personality, against his values and against his moral code. Do you have an idea of how tiring that is? Of how much that affects him? Even if he refuses to notice? So chuuya solved his conflict, he found his humanity but he did it in a place that constantly tries to take it away from him.

Now, how has he survived this long then? Because he has developed coping mechanisms but this only slow his downfall. It won’t stop it.

His first coping mechanism is one that I find /incredibly/ interesting. And I’ve never seen anyone talking about it: Selective deshumanization

This existed before the mafia but Chuuya made it stronger after becoming a mafioso. I’ve said it before, even though chuuya has so many hero like characteristics the reason he is a morally grey character is that he chooses. He decides that certain people are more important than others, he knows that he can’t protect everyone, he knows that in order to protect his people, he will have to sacrifice other people. So chuuya deshumanize that group of people as a defense mechanism, he needs to stop himself from looking at them as individuals. If you want examples of it, there’s Dazai, Randou, Addam and Verlaine. At first I really thought that it was a coincidence but it happens enough to be an identificable pattern. When skk met, Dazai got obsessed really fast, chuuya didn’t. Chuuya tried to keep his distance as much as possible because he knew that Dazai was an enemy. He didn’t make personal questions even though it was obvious that he found Dazai’s behavior weird, he refused as much as possible to give him personal information and more subtle but more important, Chuuya absolutely refused to call him by his name. He used lots of insults but never his name even when it was clear that he knew it, that was him trying to keep as much emotional distance as possible. And the moment he used it? It was over for him, because from there it doesn’t matter how much he tried he could never stop himself from looking at Dazai as a human being, worse than that, he ended up understanding him even against his wishes. Same happened with Arthur, he was just another crazy man obsessed with Arahabaki but the moment he talked about Verlaine? About how he was doing everything for his friend? He became a real person, he could identify with. Addam? Was just a bothersome machine, he also refused to call him by his name but by the end of it chuuya was using corruption because he considered Addam a friend that he loved regardless of his origin. Verlaine fucking ruined his life and killed the most important people in his life but once chuuya understood his reasons and his past, he empathized with him and defended that he indeed was a human being at the end of the day. What I’m trying to say is that chuuya tries to keep his emotional distance by deshumanizing people but he kinda fails. A LOT.

The second one is the anger. Chuuya can’t express his emotions easily, a lot of it came from the fact that he always had to be the strongest so it was impossible for him to express vulnerability and then he went into the mafia and if there’s a bad place to be vulnerable, this is it. Chuuya deals with every strong emotion transforming it into anger because that’s an emotional he can control. The devastating thing is that It doesn’t only apply for bad emotions, even when he is happy or grateful he feels like he can’t express it and that makes me want to jump from a very tall something.

The third one is evasion. I find this particularly funny because in almost every fanfic Dazai is the one that evades his feelings and just decides to stop thinking about certain stuff when in canon the one that does that is chuuya. Dazai intellectualize as a way of dealing with feelings because he doesn’t know how to process them, and he overthinks a lot because he can’t stop himself from doing it. That is why his brain is his worse enemy. Chuuya, on the other hand, just evades. He supress all the emotions that he can’t exteriorize as anger, he supress his worst fears and his biggest insecurities, he put all of it into a mental box and throws away the key. But they are still pretty much there, lurking in the dark. Most of his “instinctual” actions are in reality guided by all of this things that he is trying so hard to hide.

And the last one? Is probably the worse one. We already establish that Chuuya can’t deshumanize the people in his group so he tries so absurdly /hard/ to protect them. He is always ready to sacrifice himself if by doing it he can save the people he loves, he carries too much, so the rest won’t have to do it, he takes the worse jobs, he is in the front lines, he is always ALWAYS the one to be hurt first. It may seem different but he is basically in the same situation as he was with the sheep. Except that now is not his people that are asking for his sacrifice, now he is doing it himself. Because he knows that the people he loves can be stolen from him in any moment, so he over compensates by doing everything he can to avoid it.

“The moment you get your hands on something worth going after, you lose it”- Dazai, Dark era.

Not in the same way, never in the same way because that would be sacrificing his humanity but chuuya’s thought process is not that different from Dazai. He doesn’t avoid relationships, though, he does everything in his power to avoid losing them JUST LIKE DAZAI DOES. Dazai knows that he can’t control everything, he knows that the world is absurd and full of irregularities but it’s terrifying to live in this kind of world, so he tries to predict everything, he tries to be three steps ahead of everyone else even if that make him feel less of a human being, because maybe then he can make a difference, maybe then he can protect what he has. Chuuya does basically the same thing, in order to protect his people, he will be the strongest, he won’t fall, he won’t ask for help, he will be the one carrying everything. Do you have an idea of how lonesome that is? To know that you can’t depend on anyone? Chuuya is a people’s person but he is so incredibly /lonely/. He can never be their equal because he is too busy trying to protect them. And this happens because the mafia is just like this, a place of sacrifices. A place of losses. It’s not a place for long lasting relationships.

At least two of this coping mechanisms lead him to deshumanization even when he tries his best to avoid precisely that. So chuuya basically lives in the worst dilemma in earth and this much contradiction will kill him one day.

The only reason he is still able to be there is because in his position as executive he had never been in a position in which he had to choose between his friends and the major benefit of the organization.

Chuuya as the next mafia boss? is laughable

The whole organization would crumble in DAYS. And that’s because chuuya goes against the single most important principle of the organization.

He is loyal to the people in the mafia, not to the organization

Chuuya will sacrifice the whole organization in a minute for its members, that’s literally the OPPOSITE of what the mafia stands by. He can’t sacrifice in cold blood a friend, he just can’t do it, that goes against everything that he is. He refused to sacrifice Adam even though at that moment that seemed like the only option to save the city and the mafia and he still REFUSED. Because he simply can’t sacrifice a friend. It’s impossible to him. Q is another good example of how much of a terrible leader chuuya would be. Believe it or not killing Yumeno was the opposite of what a proper mafioso should’ve done. There’s a reason Mori ordered to bring Q alive and that’s because rationally speaking yumeno is a weapon, killing him won’t bring back the people that already died and honestly speaking Q’s life is far more valuable than most of the mafiosos but for chuuya? It wasn’t the case, he couldn���t be rational because /his/ people died because of Q because for him was more important to prevent this from ever happening again than to use Q.

So to summarize chuuya is stuck, he can’t leave the mafia because that could be to go against his identity and sense of humanity but staying there is slowly killing him because it obligates him to go against everything he is and to be completely lonely in a place that is dead on deshumanization. So he basically lives in a state of pressure and constant stress while feeling trapped and saying to himself that he is where he should be. The ideal place for chuuya, funnily enough would be the ADA. And I’m not saying this for Dazai but because of the objectives of the ADA. A place that is oriented to people, a place that values relationships, a place that revolves around protection. It drives me mad everytime I think about how ridiculous ADA coded chuuya is only to be in the mafia.

Okay so basically that is the end of the rant, if you read all the way to here, congratulations and thank you for your time.

[anti-dazai-blog]

The three generations of Double Black and their purpose, or lack thereof

In honor of my birthday, I was planning on making an analysis of whichever character has a birthday closest to mine. However, it seems like my birthday falls directly in between Natsume’s and Mori’s birthday (February 9th and 17th respectively, with my birthday being February 13th).

Which means I gotta combine the two and turn this into a closer look at the three generations of Double Black.

[for the sake of clarity I’ve decided to use “double black” here instead of soukoku, since soukoku is used more in reference to the ship than the duo]

Please note that I’m getting a lot of information from the bsd wiki, which I know isn’t always so accurate, but going through every chapter and light novel with Natsume or mention of the original framework he set up would not be a doable amount of work for me to complete today.

Natsume is still a figure of mystery in the BSD universe. We don’t know much about him—although he’s seen as some ultimate “good” in the sense that anything he says or does is considered “correct” by the characters he has interacted with. Although it may sound extreme, he’s practically deified. Both Fukuzawa and Mori, two characters who are strong leaders and do not often take orders from others, would readily abide by Natusme’s wishes. 

The framework he created—the tripartite framework—is something that they both agree MUST be abided by. The framework itself is questionable—the basis of it was to handle the issue of the extreme rise in criminal activity post-war. Rather than working towards curbing crime in any more standard way, his solution is having a guy working for him in the criminal underworld, and attempt to put a stop to the worst kinds of crimes through him. 

Fukuzawa, being a former assassin himself, most likely is familiar with and agrees with the concept of some crimes being worse than others, and some people being enough of an evil in the world and enough of a threat that they need to be killed. Remember, he didn’t quit his job as an assassin due to feeling it’s morally wrong to kill; he quit because it’s morally wrong to kill just for the sake of killing. So it’s reasonable enough that he’d find the tripartite framework to be a valid way of handling things, and have no problem with Mori working from the criminal underworld to keep things under control from there. 

Regardless of how unheard of this method of crime-stopping is, and how Fukuzawa and Mori’s blind faith in him could be dangerous if he were to be misguided or more morally grey, this method seems to be effective in the bsd world. We see that the mafia has the criminal underground under control, while the agency deals with crime that comes up to the surface, and the government dealing with civilian issues. And regardless of what conflict Mori and Fukuzawa have currently, the tripartite framework is something that they’re both equally invested in and consider necessary. 

Out of the (so-called) “three generations,” they are the most successful. They have been working together and fulfilling their shared goal for many, many years. No matter what conflict may come up, the framework is their top priority. They will ensure Yokohama is safe, and they will oversee their respective segments of it. They are both aware of their own roles and have a mutual respect for the other’s role.

Which brings us onto the duo Mori created—double black. As Mori said, he’s forcing them to work together in an attempt to duplicate something Natsume explained to him. Double Black is, at first, Mori’s pet-project or side hobby. It’s formed for nothing more than curiosity at first, but with Chuuya and Dazai’s individual skillsets and abilities, they ended up working together as the feared mafia duo we know them as. This duo works as an extension of Mori’s role in the framework, and because of that it’s certainly not the next part of the tripartite framework. Or rather, it wasn’t when Mori made it, and it wasn’t made with that intention. 

After Dazai left the mafia, double black changed. Now it’s no longer a mafia subgroup, because half of it is no longer in the mafia. From an external view, it acts as a dangerous last resort—a final defense against major threats. The people of Yokohama can rest easy, since if everything were to go very wrong, all hope is not lost unless double black is defeated—something that will probably never happen. 

But Dazai and Chuuya themselves don’t share the same sentiment. Unlike the original heads of the framework, these two aren’t on the same page about what they’re doing or their duo’s current status. To each of them, it’s just a job. They both want to protect Yokohama, and recognize that Yokohama’s safety is a byproduct of their work—but they don’t see “protecting Yokohama” as their job. It seems like they see each job as a one-off commission work. Their job isn’t “protect Yokohama,” it’s “defeat this one specific enemy and then go home.” 

And additionally, they’re on different pages regarding double black’s current status. It seems that Dazai views double black’s inactivity as something that happened due to his absence rather than him defecting—and now that he’s back, so is double black—hence, him referring to Chuuya as his partner. On the other hand, Chuuya views double black’s inactivity as something that happened due to Dazai defecting—double black was a mafia subgroup, after all, so it makes sense that if half of the duo isn’t under mafia employment, the duo cannot be currently active. Hence, him declaring Dazai his “ex-partner.”

As things stand, they’re working more closely to the tripartite framework’s successors, since now they’re (1) positioned at opposite ends of the criminal underworld, and (2) working towards a common goal of protecting Yokohama. However, until they both realize that their official job and duty is protecting Yokohama (rather than that just being a biproduct of their work) and until they both mutually agree to work towards that shared goal together—each on their respective sides of things—they won’t be able to truly be the inheritors of the tripartite framework.

Now for Dazai’s “new generation of double black.” Whether or not Dazai’s fully aware of the tripartite framework, its origins and its purpose is up for debate. And whether he views himself and Chuuya as an extension of that is even more unlikely. So since we can assume he’s basing this “new generation of double black” off of an incomplete picture of what double black was and what it currently is, we know right off the bat it’s going to be flawed. 

There’s truly no reason for a “new generation,” especially when the “old” generation is around two years older than them, and significantly more capable and powerful. It’s clear from Dazai’s interactions with them that creating this new generation is both a fun hobby of his, and possibly a way for him to get other people to do jobs he’d be assigned to otherwise. It serves no real greater purpose than that. They’re convenient sometimes, but there are always other ability users who could easily do what they’ve done, but better. 

Only half of this new duo even has any idea of what they’re trying to replicate. Akutagawa has a vague idea of what double black was, and strives to mimic what he thinks they do. He doesn’t have a very complete or thorough understanding of them—as he tries to explain to Atsushi, to his knowledge, double black worked as “Dazai is Smart Guy, Chuuya is Strong Guy, they win by being Brain and Brawn.” We see that this isn’t really the case—both Dazai and Chuuya are well-rounded and each are individually capable of both physical combat and strategy. Yet all the new generation has to work off of is this game of broken telephone passed through mafia rumors, to Akutagawa, to Atsushi. 

And even so, neither of them understand any real greater purpose to what they’re doing—and it’s unclear if there truly is any purpose to it. They too see it as individual fights rather than a grander purpose, but in their case, they’re right. 

And to take it a step further, they aren’t a formal duo in the first place. They never officially formed. They’re just miming the roles that Dazai told them to play with no real understanding of what’d going on. “The new generation of double black” isn’t a title they’ve ever officially been given—sure they’ve been called that by Dazai, but it’s not something that would even go on any paperwork. Their opponents don’t see them as some feared duo, they see them as an unfortunate collaboration they now must deal with. Akutagawa’s outright ditching work to go do these jobs—at least with double black Dazai clearly has some contact through the agency for when he’s assigned to double black/ mafia collaboration missions. 

In short, no one outside of Dazai (and possibly Akutagawa) sees any connect between Akutagawa and Atsushi to any former well-known duos. 

In summary—the three “generations of double black” were formed for vastly different purposes, and even though double black is converging to align with the tripartite framework, the newest variant of it is way off base. 

Natsume will need to step in and sort this out if the newest generation aligns with his wishes, and if not, I think he should step in and sort stuff out anyway—things in the bsd universe have been getting pretty messy for a while now, and it would be nice to have a leader around who both Fukuzawa and Mori would listen to.

[rosalinesurvived]

First it was Natsume pushing Fukuzawa into the Tripartite Framework

Now its Fukuchi pushing Fukuzawa into becoming the dictator of the entire world

[vendettasfanfictioning]

This was one of the scenes I'd been dying to see animated. It's these two groups defying the great, unconventional, untested laws of the elusive (and supposedly all-powerful) Book. They really fucking beat the OP artifact with the power of trust. It's astounding. I love it so, so much.

The story so far has been a build up of partnerships between the Armed Detective Agency and the Port Mafia. It started with Fukuzawa and Mori's agreement, long before they had the title of Boss from either group. It was in Dazai and Chuuya's bond even long after Dazai defected. It is in Akutagawa keeping his promise to Atsushi.

The Tripartite Framework, Dead Apple, teaming up to beat the Guild. It's the symbolism, it's the "there's good amongst the evil crowd and vice versa." It's the way the good guys and the bad guys balance each other out to defeat the even worse guys who are threatening their home.

[softbeanofexistentialcrisis]

also. can we talk about how the time of day assigned for the tripartite framework explains each of their methods so INCREDIBLY:

Day for the Special Division: An indiscrete government organisation, along with the military police. They work in the light, in the brighter, legally paved ways. Supposedly uses the morally good ways to protect, at least mostly.

Night for the Port Mafia: I'm sure you know where this is going; generously follows the darkness for protection. A path paved in the shadows of the city. Does not give a shit about being morally good, not by a long shot.

Twilight for the ADA: very interesting assignment; their path is still paved with light, but it's not as bright or disclosed as the special division's. Methods of protection loosely in the area of morality, although ultimately they do end up saving a lot more lives than they lose. Essentially follows a morally gray way of journey.

bear in mind though, while it COULD be more fitting to take it as more of a legal alignment than a moral one, especially if you compared this with people like ango, kyouka, odasaku, and dazai, this is more to explain the entire organisation itself, not their individual morality.

[kishiqo]

man, Yokohama's partnership registry must be insane

[kaurwreck]

bsd doesn't have a dichotomy; it's explicitly a trichotomy.

[discourse-on-decadence]

MR. NATSUME ORCHESTRATED THIS BULLSHIT?

WELL THE TRIPARTITE FRAMEWORK WAS HIS IDEA SO.

and why are we yelling I have a headache and I miss my fiance can we calm down???

[starlightshadowsworld]

Gotta love how Natsume showed up to scold Mori and Fukuzawa when they were trying to kill each other.

And yet when the Agency, the Port Mafia and the Special Abilities Division go down. You know the organisations belonging to the tripartite framework he created.

Then he’s suddenly nowhere to be found and the page goes missing.

What’s your deal old man? Because you showed up during that 48 squabble but not when the entire city almost got wiped out.

[dqzaiie]

what are your thoughts on mori?

thank you for the question, anon!

i think mori is a very compelling character. while i (obviously) don’t condone his actions, i feel that he’s incredibly well written and integral to the plot.

personally, i don’t think i have the intellect required to give a thorough analysis on him, especially because he’s so mysterious, but here are some posts i found helpful if you are looking to know more about him: originalaccountname, bluemoonietxt, popopretty, & king-in-yellow

i think he’s such a complex character, and there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye. the idea of a character possessing such a resolve to uphold a particular structure (the tripartite framework of natsume’s creation), even at his own expense, is so interesting to me. he believes that the ends justify the means, and that his own reservations towards whatever those means may be are irrelevant, which fosters a lot of regret that he seems to be constantly repressing. (for example, obtaining the gifted business permit at the cost of dazai leaving the port mafia).

at the same time, i think he’s a slimy bastard, and the only universe in which i trust him even the slightest amount is beast.

[arda-marred]

And so we come again, as so many discussions of fantasy inevitably do, to J. R. R. Tolkien. As a writer of fantasy, Tolkien hardly needs an introduction. Even before the success of the film adaptations of his work transformed him into a household name, he had won first the hearts of children with The Hobbit in 1937 and, some twenty years later, the hearts and minds of adult readers with The Lord of the Rings. But, like Coleridge and MacDonald before him, Tolkien thought deeply about his craft as a writer and creator, and it is largely by virtue of this thought that his art has achieved such timeless success. His 1939 lecture “On Fairy-Stories,” subsequently published as an essay in the 1964 book Tree and Leaf, is, as the editors of the recent authoritative edition of the essay put it, “Tolkien’s defining study of and the centre-point in his thinking about the genre [of fantasy], as well as being the theoretical basis for his fiction” (Flinger and Anderson 9). In this seminal work, he addresses all the points about the imagination raised by Coleridge and, following MacDonald, defends their application in the literary arts. We have already explored the other facets of Tolkien’s theory of fantasy as it contributes to the fantastic sublime, but I have saved his thoughts on the imagination for last, because I feel they serve as a linchpin for the fantastic sublime as a whole.

At first glance it would appear that Tolkien dispenses altogether with Coleridge’s whole tripartite scheme of primary imagination, secondary imagination, and fancy. Indeed, he takes issue with the desynonymization of imagination and fancy, though he does not single out Coleridge directly. A philologist of the highest order and sometime editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, Tolkien may be displaying false modesty when he ventures that, “[r]idiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate” (OFS 59). Having deconstructed Coleridge’s framework, Tolkien then counters with his own, which is, by his own admission, just as arbitrary as Coleridge’s imagination/fancy divide.

The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. . . The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) the inner consistency of reality, is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression. . . I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose. (OFS 59-60)

But the advantage to this approach as both a theoretical model and a critical framework is that it separates out and clearly labels the writer’s mind (Imagination), the creative process itself (Art), and the finished product (Sub-creation). Fantasy is the end result.

Although Tolkien’s theory dispenses with Coleridge’s distinction between imagination and fancy, however, it preserves and even strengthens Coleridge’s assertions regarding the qualitative similarities between primary and secondary imagination. This isn’t immediately obvious, though the term “Sub-creation” gives us a telling hint. But to fully understand Tolkien’s debt to Coleridge, we must travel back to 1931, eight years before Tolkien delivered his lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” In that year, following a latenight conversation with his friend C. S. Lewis in which he defended the truths of Pagan myth even in a Christian world, he crystalized his thoughts into a poem called “Mythopoeia.” He quotes several lines from the poem in his lecture, and they are worth quoting here as well, for they cut to the heart of the similarity between primary and secondary imagination:

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right. (Mythopoeia 61-8)

The metaphor of light that Tolkien employs here and elsewhere for the imaginative process is more vivid than Coleridge’s original distinction, but it nonetheless conveys exactly the same sense. In fact, the verbs Coleridge uses to describe the process of the secondary imagination—dissolves, diffuses, dissipates—suggest he was thinking along the same metaphorical lines. But Tolkien, usually so careful to avoid overt religious reference, here actually makes the religious and spiritual implications of the imagination more explicit than Coleridge’s “infinite I AM.” While, as we saw, George MacDonald is uncomfortable with ascribing to man the power of creation, Tolkien actually revels in man’s creative power. As in Coleridge, man’s creative power differs from that of God only in degree, hence the word “sub-creator.”

Tolkien’s vision of man as sub-creator leads him to openly challenge Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief. Like MacDonald, he argues that a secondary world, or sub-creation, must be governed by a certain consistency if it is to hold an audience’s attention. To him, “this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed” (OFS 52). The true aim of fantasy, for Tolkien, is to draw the audience into a state of “Secondary Belief” similar to the sustained participative imagination argued for by MacDonald. The real change from Coleridge, and even MacDonald, here is that it places the burden of proof, so to speak, on the artist rather than the audience. When confronted with a good work of fantasy, the audience should not have to voluntarily suspend disbelief. Rather, “the story-maker proves a successful 'subcreator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside” (OFS 52). I can’t help but think that Coleridge would have admired the symmetry of this idea of primary and secondary belief with his own idea of primary and secondary imagination, and would have conceded the point to Tolkien. And it is here that the fantastic sublime comes into full flower.

Tolkien’s language here reflects many of the writings on the sublime, from Longinus all the way up to present critics like Robert Doran. There is a certain inexorable, inevitable, magnetic pull that surrounds works of the sublime like a gravitational field. The sublime grabs hold of readers and doesn’t let them go. It turns their gaze upward and pushes their minds and spirits to see and experience things they could not have otherwise imagined. And at the same time, it makes audiences see themselves from those same heights, see their own mortality and frailty, and want to climb higher, be greater, do better. But while traditional conceptions of the sublime see this process as occurring in flashes, as lightning during a tumultuous storm, Tolkien insists we can have more than that. In his view, we can actually live in a world, if only for a little while, where the sublime is made manifest, where it is as real as rain.

And like Coleridge and MacDonald before him, he insists that these sublime worlds are not merely the playgrounds of children, but the kingdoms of all readers, of any age. He is in agreement with Coleridge about the educational value of fairy-stories. While tepidly approving of fairy tales written specifically for children, he urges that “it may be better for them to read some things, especially fairy-stories, that are beyond their measure rather than short of it. Their books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it.” But Tolkien is adamant that fantasy or fairy stories (he uses the terms more or less interchangeably) should be read by everyone. “If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults,” he says, for “they will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can.” (OFS 58).

Tolkien delivered this lecture about two years after publishing The Hobbit, and just as he was beginning to work in earnest on The Lord of the Rings. While the former book is clearly a book for children, the latter effort “grew in the telling,” as he notes in the foreword to the second edition. Fortunately for the reading world, he practiced what he preached in “On Fairy-Stories.” But he did not build this world on sand. Tolkien scholars point to the medieval sources for Tolkien’s world, and rightly so, for these are indeed his secondary world’s bones and sinews. But its life-blood is, I would argue, the imaginative laws... that both create and sustain it. He took his own advice to heart and created a secondary world, Middle Earth, that has captivated and captured the imagination of millions of readers, drawing them into a state of secondary belief that, in some cases, lasts long past the reading of the books.