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Today

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Baby we ain't even famous.

A discussion about Nikolai's vs Dazai's clown face;D

I. Similar

1, Deflection of True Emotion

Both Dazai and Nikolai use humor, absurdity, or lightness as a way to deflect pain or depth. Their “clown face” hides something darker:

- Dazai hides melancholy, nihilism, and deep trauma behind his lazy smiles and jokes.

- Nikolai hides sadism, chaos, and philosophical despair behind a façade of silliness and circus-like theatrics.

2, Performance

They both perform. Their personas are crafted shows, manipulations of how others see them.

- Dazai does this to manipulate situations, gain insight, or to control outcomes.

- Nikolai does this to upend order, to make people uncomfortable, and to destabilize meaning itself.

3, Detachment

Neither clown is what they seem:

- Both have an intellectual detachment from morality.

- Both see the world as a kind of stage, where roles can be reversed and truths distorted.

II. Different

1, Purpose

They have different purposes and intentions when putting on the clown mask.

For Dazai:

His mask is strategic:

- Used to conceal his emotions and both for staying low or intimidating others.

- It’s also a tool to test, gather information or protect those around him—like Atsushi, Sigma, Kunikida or even Chuuya.

He still believes in redemption (for others, not himself):

- Underneath his facade is a man who studies people intensely and cares enough to push them in the right direction—he’s just too damaged to say so openly.

- Or if we were to talk about PM!Dazai then destroys and pushes them to surpass their limit.

For Nikolai:

His mask is doctrine:

- The clown act is the belief. It’s a rejection of meaning, morality, and emotion.

- His madness is not just a cover—it’s from his ideology: freedom unchained from law, feeling, or consequence.

Freedom meant no attachment:

- He wants to destroy attachments, identities, and rules because he sees them as chains. (I did talk about it in my short analyze about Nikolai “freedom”)

- His clowning mocks not only others—but the concept, the idea, the structure of it.

In the end, they’re both two sides of a coin—one facing toward redemption, the other toward ruin.

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she will never be balling, they said

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Got your line art Kel :3

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#this was the angel equivalent of instastalking your crush

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Thinking about how in the anime Atsushi was perfectly unimpressed by spooky, horror settings that had even Kunikida feeling uneasy. Now I can't help but picture the scenario of Atsushi/Akutagawa movie nights where they pick a horror movie, but it's just both of them watching it with a straight face for the whole duration of the movie 😭😭😭

Atsushi drops the occasional “gross” with a perfectly monotonous and uneffected tone. A couple of times Akutagawa comments “bodies don't do that when they get slashed. I would know.” Atsushi going “we used to have a similar torture chamber at the orphanage.”

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It suddenly makes sense to me why Asagiri made Atsushi’s ability capable of reversion rather than regeneration.

Regeneration is to make a new thing while reversion is to return something to its original state.

For Atsushi that means that his ability is able to reverse whatever damage he’s taken to the point it’s like it never happened.

And I never really got why that distinction was made until chapter 124.

Because you know what else does that? Time travel.

Like Atsushi rewinding time in order to reverse whatever damage Akutagawa had taken.

To the point it was as if Akutagwa was never hurt at all because he wasn’t.

And thats why Atsushi knew he could do it because he’s been doing it the whole time.

He could traverse the space because as we learn in Bsd Beast all these other worlds are created by the Book. And Atsushi was the only one in there connected to the Book he was the one exception to it.

It’s why he knew intuitively that he could roam free within it.

The tiger knew it and so did he, he just needed someone to guide him to an answer he had always known.

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What do you MEAN they killed god

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sskk and skk got their hands full

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my guy does NOT look as happy or pleased as he did in the anime 👀

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redraw

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angel <3