Say You Know Someone, But You Lost Contact With Them For A While. For A Decade. For A Year, Or A Month,

re: anime: well, Asagiri has been on board so everything that was added does provide extra data points.

re: Nikolai: ha, out respective brainrots got in the way. the focus on Nikolai w/ hand imo kind of signals the author gets a free setup to rewrite him into basically anything.

upside: dialogue (and the way the main panel is... "shot", hiding the mask) implies that now he has no reason for murderclown routine. alternatively: he's completely written out of the plot, either in Alcott-esque fashion (as pure satellite character), or permamently, as an used up plot device. Either way we forget.

downside: orrrr because it's not as upfront as Odasaku pulling Dazais bandages off, he can just double down on the mask. alternatively: the monkey paw curls and the genuine side is not to your taste.(or what happens is a synthesis of his face and mask, so to speak.)

So at this point i'm kind of afraid to ask: what result would you consider return to (better) form? keeping in mind that whatever research Asagiri did it pales in comparison to yours

re: re: scheduled Dostoy pivot: nonsense trust speech -> adapts strats and THIS being the rough CnP pivot (as opposed to Sigma :|)

can we form a coup against asagiri and make you the writer instead? genuinely... I am not taking the Fyodor immortal information well.. please help............................ ( ´，_ゝ` )

Oh, I would absolutely not do BSD well either. I just wish Asagiri had stuck to his roots more. He was a great comedy writer, and the beginning of the story was great for it. It's the action and Death Note stuff he can't seem to get mastery of. But for the immortal part: I'm not entirely sold that Fyodor's immortal, yet. It seems like yet another twists that will twist to reveal oh, shocker, he faked his memories to confuse Sigma/the ADA... or something. Could very well be immortal, but not 100% guaranteed.

TL;DR plans are useless but planning is indespensable (Eisenhower)

i think you're bedazzled by the smoke and mirrors characters are pulling on each other.

Dostoy and deathtouch: now we know dostoy gets part of his host's ability. If you were in his shoes, why wouldn't you fuck around with it for maximum confusion? He is an international terrorist, and so benefits for multiple conflicting reports about what he can do. As for deathtouch thing: he was already using the thing in his introduction, so why not have more 'ammo' on hand? + i suspect it's NOT how Dazai explains it (having ridicious control over Hawthorne's ablity Because Reasons), but because his then-host had roughly that ability. Besides, way back when speculation about dostoy's plot armor churned, there were people going "bailed out by yet-unknown party", so that's always on the table. He planned to die in Meursault, but Nikolai was a suprise - without him, Yokohama Airport Battlefield crew would eventually reach Bram (as set up by Fukuchi as planned by Dostoy), who is already pretty depressed and so would be willing to divulge pulling out Soluz Levni would kill him. How does he know about this? Most likely Fukuchi (of HD) told him way back he was impaled upon it, i.e. keikaku goes brrr. As additional incentive, Bram does mention not wanting to create vampires - so if that's not persuasive feel free to season with psychological torture to taste.

Dostoy pulled Mushitarou out of Seventh Agency's cell. Because Ango set it up, HG had no knowledge of it. As for "why not just shoot [Dazai]"? The only answer that makes sense IMO is "because he's a terrible simp". How did he know Mushi's the one responsible? this is the part where being Old As Fuck + Rats (spies) in every corner + character established as hackerman more or less covers it. Once more, this isn't something that requires some specific goal in mind - you'd kind of want to keep a database of evidence-destroying ability users (both the govt and dostoy), and Seventh Agency has to be keeping it's records of which user is suppressing what, if only for blackmail purposes.

>how can Fyodor expect to be killed by a vampire to become Bram??? How does this make sense if he did not know that Gogol would plan this at all?

he didn't. As Dazai put it: "this is why he was so desperate - if he died by poison it wouldn't work". So! From Dostoy's perspective Meursault was already infested by vampires. Fukuchi was controlling them the entire time. This part of the plan was most likely presented to Fukuchi as "and then you take over Meursault so i can have tea and give orders to the outside so that everything will go smoothly" - to prompt him to go hell naw, guaranteeing Fukuchi will take over Meursault with vampires, to keep an eye on him/make sure to vamp any underlings that might already be planted there. But with Nikolai, this becomes: - step 1: win (naturally) - step 2: grab the antidote (and it is the antidote because if Nikolai wanted him dead he 1) done so already 2) wouldn't have done so by proxy to prove Dostoy is just victim 617) and leave (cold and wet and whiny lel) - step 3: inject the antidote and wait for Bram to assume direct control -> keikaku flows back to the main plot (also: this always synces him to events in Yokohama. No matter what, he will be yeeted to the part where anyone from the agency is talking to Bram, so Soluz Levni should be nearby*). If that doesn't happen during the ride, then simply find another vamp. He had plenty of time to research Dracula. - step 4: ??? - step 5: JACKPOT

alright, enough squeeing.

re: baying for blood: i wanted to spring this vid on BSD fandom, congratulations!

YouTube

Harlan Ellison interview | Science Fiction Writer | Good Afternoon | 1976

Two extracts from a fascinating interview with celebrated and controversial author Harlan Ellison. In these extracts noted journalist Mavis

but also, frame flip: it's well established by this point that the manga's gimmick is that noone relevant dies, ever. Why this bothers you? Why there have to be stakes, beyond mere enablers for character interaction and growth (and fanfics, and getting people to read IS Asagiri's agenda…)? Aren't you curious what side effects of surviving would the characters have, if they survived? Also: outside of full reality rewrite, the global stance on ability users will change for the worse. With reality rewrite you still have everyone remembering what they did do during The NotApocalypse(tm) which at the very least will lead to revealing existence of ability users to the general populace.

re: criticism 3: there has been an entire hivemind of fangirls percolating all the cherry-picked intel other characters were not privy to.

re: critisism 4: you got me there, starting from "wdym Fukuchi has a sign for 'there will be a war in twenty(?) years'". ….the thing is, technically each time Fukuchi sees the sign and passes it to the past, the timeline in which he did so ultimately ceases to be, as the main-plot-Fukuchi immediately goes to save the world. In other words, there are three states here: initial timeline, in which Dostoyevsky, through any and all means (lazy answer: raw persuation/whatever he did to Goncharov/YOLO with page and time travel) makes Fukuchi write a mark in the past using Amenogozen. So how does the sword work into this? ch87p23 suggests Fukuchi had the sword throughout the war. To make it easy on planning and to foreshadow possible future revelations, both Sigma and Tokoyami island could have been created by Dostoy using a different page, earlier in time. Why the meatgrinder island? to pull gacha for traumatized war vets + make ability users look like a threat to the public. And he got Fukuchi, with a very OP combo of his own and desperate need for hope and to (possibly) reframe his experiences as necessary to shape him into someone who will do what is needed to prevent even greater evils for all future generations and blah blah blah (there is even an advantage to taking the blame - everyone wants Dostoy dead which while inconvinient would also make fighting Fukumon very hard on morale)

That is the boring version. The deranged version - or rather, yolo with time travel - is that Sigma was written on this page, meaning: he assisted in stealing the page from which he would be written into. Given that page stops working only for parts that paradox themselves out of it's text (i.e. only 40% of the police force listened to Ranpo, instead of being an all-or-nothing affair), it would mean he keeps existing at least until the loop loses the last opportunity to close itself. This is how Dostoy could get to use Sigma before DoA arc itself (the bit with a church in the middle of a desert NOT being set in roughly-now, but in the past, as a bamboozle from Asagiri). Then it's just the matter of spotting a circumstance where Fukuchi would ask something predictable of Sigma. Then all they would need is a brush at the same time Sigma answers his question (if Sigma ends up being suspicious they're just going to detain him cause intel ability good), presumably after some light mentalism (read: a full-blown Production) for Fukuchi to form a coherent design in his head, so to speak. After that point, Dostoy through Sigma should have enough knowledge to make a sufficently educated guess for it to work.

re: poison injection: i still do not get why he didn't just close & flood the corridor soukoku was in, just to be sure/because why not. I guess this is our evidence for Dostoy being sufficently cocksure to play along. Besides, what other moves he had? Dazai is right there.

re: long-term BSD: Fyodor -> Christie -> book endgame? like, does the big picture have to be forseeable to be amusing?

*while he should have the momentum to find it out of sheer element of surprise, THIS is the real #improvise

You know what? Im going to vent about how annoyed I am abt bsd atm and put it in the tags bcuz I also want to debate it. I enjoy bsd but I am struggling to understand what exactly Asagiri is trying to do here esp when this arc is so long that the arc itself has mini arcs in it.

If anyone reads this I would love, LOVE to discuss this because I am yanking my hair in frusteration

I am putting it under a cut so that ppl who dont want to see criticism abt bsd dont have to see it

Am i being an asshole? Yes

Am i going to warn ppl before hand and remind them that they can curate their internet experience by simply not reading something that is going to criticize something they love? And the block button exists for a reason???????Also yes

That being said i dont often go off about things i dont like about media i enjoy because well i understand everything i like has pros and cons

Also i still read bsd bcuz there r other things i DO like about it

Anywayssss

The thing that is bothering me about bsd is that I dont think I can tell what any character is doing EVER. Perhaps thats just my taste and I like having some idea of whats going to happen.

The characters arcs are excellent, their actions make sense for the personalities that they have yes.

The problem i do have w bsd is that the characters are apparently constantly always somehow predicting whats going on

How in the goddamn world do you expect me to believe that Fyodor let Dazai see him kill someone through touch so that Dazai would come up w a plan like Mersault? Fyodor didn’t expect Dazai to catch him at the end of the whole virus thing so like how is that enough time for him to find a way to kill that guard by just touching his hand? Why do that unless you planned the Mersault fake death from the start?

I forget but didn’t the Hunting Dogs get Mushitaro to bring up Dazai’s crimes to get Dazai into Mersault? Was this all to get Dazai away from the agency? Extremely likely but that tells me Fyodor planned to fake his death from the star(again) WHICH IN TURN MEANS HE HAD TO HAVE FKING KNOWN SO MUCH AHEAD OF TIME which only makes sense if he had access to some type of future telling ability because some characters actions WERE random eg: below

If Gogol randomly decided to break Fyodor out of Mersault with his race against death game, how can Fyodor expect to be killed by a vampire to become Bram??? How does this make sense if he did not know that Gogol would plan this at all?

There is the panel of Fyodor fallin through the Mersault room correctly as he says its time to escape so maybe he knew Gogol would that? HOW if Gogol just came up with that plan without any of Fyodor’s input?? Alright then maybe he was acting so Dazai won’t catch on but even then how was he expecting to die so that he can become Bram?? What was his alternate plan?

Alright maybe he simply predicted Gogol to do that which I think is a bit sad for Gogol since I think his whole character arc is about how he doesn’t want to be shackled by anything and I would argue being manipulated by someone is a shackle

Criticism 2: the fact absolutely no one of importance has died in bsd manga except for in the light novels(i am including Odasaku in this) please PLEASE correct me if I missed a death

Im not counting Fukuchi as dead because jury’s still out on that given the whole thing w God!Fukuchi/Amenogozen

Esp as we have Dead Apple where whats his names ability outlived him and i think also in 55 minutes

Because well, how do you expect me to take any of the stakes in this manga seriously if no one of name dies ever, I would not have this issue if death wasnt faked out as many times as it has

Maybe Bram will actually stay dead but I doubt it

The fact Kunikida was killed this chapter just tells me that yet again, death is not a serious consequence in this manga. Esp as the book has not been used yet. Even fking HP Lovecraft is alive ffs.

If Kunikida stays dead I will HAPPILY eat my words and state that Asagiri is a master writer for fooling my reading of bsd that well.( i am obviously not saying only my interpretation of bsd is correct so pls dont come at me)

Criticism 3: why didn’t Dazai literally just kill off Fyodor w Chuuya once they got Sigma to get the info from Fyodor

I understand thats a much more author did that because thats what the writing needed and characters are only as intelligent as the story needs so … fineeeee thats on me

Criticism 4: the whole Amenogozen thing about how the war isn’t real

How can Fyodor fake the sign on the wall unless he knew what sign meant world ending to Fukuchi???

Not sure if this is a criticism but if Chuuya was sent by Mori…how did Fyodor expect him to show up? Unless Fyodor and Mori discussed that earlier together in which case Mori is doing an excellent job at pretending like he’s not inleague with Fyodor

This plan of Fyodor’s to become Bram is just so batshit insane and so reliant on people doing random things at the right time eg: Gogol and the death game, Chuuya not being used to kill Fyodor in any form, Sigma not waking up in time to warn the agency, Dazai not fking shooting Fyodor w a gun

Imagine if Gogol’s poison succeeded then well ig Fyodor would just stay in his body since he injected the poison in his own veins which hey doesn’t that mean there was no risk of Fyodor dying in that game? I am likely wrong but it is kinda funny

Unrelated but wow tumblr does NOT want to make writing this on mobile easy bruh

I think the reason I’m so frusterated with this is that bsd is so unpredictable that for me it feels like its going beyond the suspension of disbelief i have

Its breaking the intelligence scale that they set with Fyodor, Dazai and Ranpo that it feels too much to believe

My other issue is I dont know what the whole long term thing w BSD is, and I am a bit tired of that. That might be my personal taste where I like to know what kind of ending or long term things I hope to see in a series but this is a bit too absured for me which might be the point

If anyone reads this entire nonsensical essay you have my respect

I just read this reddit comment about yesterday's staff post and ... 100%

People in the notes of the post don't seem to understand how massive of a move this is. Sure, this is not the Tuileries palace storming, nor the execution of Louis XVI, but it very well could be Tumblr's storming of the Bastille.

See, what happened yesterday was a bunch of trans staffers very politely saying "our boss is full of crap, what he is doing is absolutely not ok", and also "the official line he had been posting narrative of everything being peachy with moderation is bullshit, we acknowledge the systemic problem, and we demand addressing it ASAP".

Now, this has probably been possible just because of the exceptional circumstances: Louis XVI (Matt) is on vacation on his summer palace, and the person who he had left in charge of the court has refused to order the army to quell the internal strife... so they have stormed the Bastille to ask for the abolition of the ancient regime. Mind you, that doesn't mean we are at a point where they are in the middle of a revolutionary coup to create the Paris Commune: that's not in the cards right now. This is more about the people rioting to demand the king powers to have checks and balances. this is about demanding a constitutional monarchy instead of the current absolute king.

The people in the notes don't seem to understand the exceptional situation that the post creates. We are at a point where Matt Mullenweg has been called out by his own employees. His company, in his absence, had allowed his employees to break with the unified PR narrative that usually is forced to follow whatever path the CEO points to.

Now Louis XVI is in a peculiar position. His Authority had not only been questioned by the Paris rabble (us), but now he also had a regiment of elite grenadiers (1er Régiment du Trans Guards) openly in revolt and siding with the people of Paris. They are not firing at the royal palace, but they are saying "you know what? The people in the streets are right. We are not firing at them, your majesty". So Matt's next move is crucial. As I see it, there are several possibilities:

- the king / Matt acknowledges he had been in the wrong (either honestly or just because he doesn't feel powerful enough to win a civil war), accepts to get his powers limited, and allows some partial reform to address people's demands. This is obviously the best option for my friends still working for Tumblr. That doesn't mean tumblr would become a queer communist paradise, but at least we would see things improving.

- the king refuses to engage: he moves the court to another city (names a new Tumblr CEO reporting to him) and move the army to Paris to repress the rebellion (fires the people behind the post, double down in the current moderation policies). Things keep being the same, but without the people who asked for improvements.

- the king gets fed up of having to deal with ungrateful rabble and decides to just make an example out of Paris and orders the army to reprise the St. Bartholomew night, but on Paris population this time. This would be Matt firing everyone involved and closing Tumblr two months from now.

Right now, I wouldn't know which of these three options is more probable. Matt has been very quiet since yesterday, and whatever he posts next would be a big signal of how he is going to react to this development of The Situation.

mmm we could still be like "Dostoy had a shot perfectly lined up, and instead of offing Dazai right there merely uses it to force cannibalism arc to go brr", and then course-correct with 'because Reasons Dazai is crucial to whatever plan to erase ability users is being cooked', and THEN course-correct with 'not that easy to abduct', and then course-correct with...

the point is: you are reading a manga. The authorial intent is to keep Dazai alive and to showcase that normies can do stuff too. (the latter was mentioned in interviews, but you can work it out asking 'why is this the author-approved outcome, what themes/ideas does it reinforce'). How exactly this happens is razzle dazzle and willing suspension of disbelief, most likely induced by the plot being engaging in the moment.

Wouldn't be surprised is that for all our whining we're sticking around due to logic underpinning these two decisions.

also notice Fukuchi didn't Amenogozen Aya to pieces either and use the 10s window to cover to cutting down Bram. Because otherwise a) Aya would have no agency in the plot, see above b) we wouldn't get zonked by Tachihara vs Fukuchi (which happened to enable more character building and to slowly raise threat level. Without the slowdown the readerbase would go "this is OP bullshit" even harder. As is, the bootstrap paradox is framed more as a logical extension of what was already known - we just didn't sit down and try to break it Jojo-style)

You know who would've been a perfect person to be in prison with Fyodor? Ranpo.

Give Ranpo an earpiece, use Ango's influence, and Ranpo can easily communicated in Morse code or something. It doesn't need to be that secret because Ranpo can figure out Fyodor's plans just by looking at him.

Because that puts Dazai on the outside. Everyone's still using Ranpo's genius, but now they have No Longer Human, and that changes everything.

Time-traveling sword? Nullified, Fukichi loses. Vampires? All Dazai needs to do is touch the sword in Bram. One Order? Dazai destroys it. Dazai just needs to touch the Page and it's gone. Seriously, Dazai's ability was so perfect for all of the problems in the series and he just wasted away in prison playing mind games with Fyodor. I love Ranpo, but he doesn't have a fighting ability, and he literally stayed in one room the whole time anyways.

YES SOMEONE ELSE NOTICED IT.

You cannot have Fyodor's entire fucking plan hinge on the vampires, over which only Bram and the person who has possession of Bram have any control, and then try and tell me that Fyodor lost because he didn't have faith in people.

it's long but go read it

P sure it's supposed to be Fyodor who writes down on the page, as iirc the handwriting is shown to be quite shaky? (unless it's alcohol tremors kek).

re: pilots: doesn't anime implicitly cover that by a shot of him bleeding himself out into a chalice (drama queen)? This would foreshadow pilots and signal C&P can be used remotely by blood.

Meursault could have been taken over preemptively, but then: why not just vamp everyone instead of Chuuya murdering a bunch of guards? As for communication, previous speculation came up with various book-based explanations. As for how information was passed inside - with food selection, presumably? The reader's attention was brought to it for seemingly no reason.

as for Fukuchi and Fyodor not being friends/allies: this completely disregards the angle that Fyodor is willing to risk being permanently stuck in Meursault to establish world government, meaning: one way of accomplishing Fukuchi's goal (to end all wars) would be good enough to give up his own. Also: 500 deaths' limit is something Fyodor just… kept to? This would explain why he had a bead on Dazai - percieved equal - and didn't get him shot. (the other option is being perfectly normal about Dazai for fujoshi-approved reasons, which in this context is rather weak; see above.)

ech Meursault was super fun but Chuuya not being a vampire the entire time retroactively sours the entire bit, along with the speech underscoring how the entire time both demons were framed as roughly equal, but the arc resolved by uncertainty working solely in Dazai's favor, making contrivance glaring (= willing suspension if disbelief breaks).

at it's heart, the problem is importing the anime, which notoriously dumbed things down and removed the quiet bits. As a consequence, Fyodor had to be rewritten from Johan Liebert knockoff (a gift that keeps on giving, speculation-wise) to Light Yagami knockoff (who doesn't work as an antagonist). The other problem with adapting the anime is that last time we see Dazai in the manga it looks quite gory - but anime can't show that, so it carries on with a broken leg. If one counts wounded hand in the anime as a 2nd-improved-take on the sequence, both work with what anime already has going for it - hiding in broadcast norms for the former and A LOT of foreshadowing for the latter. Like, Asagiri is perfectly aware that there are bits that anime will do better via color and motion, so why not take the L and write it out for static panels of the manga that has already been written?

As a result, we got this speech to the scene's detriment, instead of doing more show-don't-tell. ranted about this as well earlier (lel), but how about: Dazai - dumbfounded, incredulously - asking the vampire wtf, and him answering that Lord Bram ordered so (they can hide in the populace, so why not). To which Dazai murmurs - but close enough to hear - that Ranpo must have figured it out. Then be like 'i leave keeping an eye on the rat to you~' and just go talk to (freshly unvampirized) Chuuya/inject antidote, without care in the world. Leaving Fyodor to think/die mad about it.

It would work better to underscore the difference in manipulation style: Dazai hides his behind seemingly harmless/beneficial actions, Dostoy runs on FUD. Yes, Sigma bit is there - but they survive solely due to Fyodor deciding to be a good sport about it (this man routinely offs underlings, but someone with ALL HIS SECRETS is k?).

It's like there is an entire 'Fyodor not going to do the efficient thing because then only Deus Ex Machina could bail the protagonists out doing a suicidal life's goal wouldn't be fun for the character carrying it out.' thoughtline that makes sense only with the portrayal anime went for.

@peachymoriarty

imo not even that - the angle to reach that conclusion would be by referencing 'diamonds polishing diamonds' concept, and/or straight up scrimming for practice on the side, and/or showcasing where this works - mostly with Ranpo, ex: - having the motive to pull a Ranpo Ex Machina that just so happens to have the delayed side-effect of saving the world - early on him and Dazai iterating on plans, so now he can scheme on his own

But since both demons are already Peerless Anime Geniuses(tm), that ain't happening.

BSD 111.5: A Complaint (again)

All right. So.

I have criticized the S5 finale extensively, and now that the manga is following the same storyline almost exactly, I feel I want to air my grievances one last time, because it's just so bad. At least in my humble yet correct opinion (to quote Fyodor from the BSD dub). And it only gets worse the more I think about it. 

The writing here is...not good. I’m talking about the big “Chuuya was never a vampire to begin with” reveal, the retconned hand injury and what absolute contrived nonsense that is - and most of all, I’m talking about Dazai’s speech about why he “won” the "game," and how it makes no actual sense because what he says happened is not what actually happened. 

All of this is stuff I've talked about in other posts (I'll be repeating myself a lot here), but I really want to focus on Dazai's speech and why I just. Don't like it.

"You don't trust anything you can't control," Dazai tells Fyodor.

This is supposed to be the reason Dazai "wins": because he trusts people, and Fyodor does not. He relies on others he considers friends; Fyodor just uses others that he considers pawns.

And this is fine in theory. Indeed, it's been heavily foreshadowed. Personally, I think "Dazai wins because he has friends, Fyodor loses because he doesn't" is a super boring way to go with both Fyodor's character and with the conflict between him and Dazai, but whatever, we all knew something like this would be the reason for the ADA's victory over the DOA. Theoretically, it makes sense.

Except, it doesn't actually work the way they did it. It doesn't work because Fyodor's plan apparently hinges on the vampires, and Fyodor does not actually have control over the vampires.

In fact, Fyodor does not have direct control over any aspect of the Decay of Angels plot.

Fukuchi does.

First of all, the Decay of Angels plot doesn't begin until after Fyodor is already in prison. Fyodor is not the one who writes on the Page, and Fyodor is not the one in possession of the Page. Fyodor is also not the one who is in possession of Bram. All of this falls to Fukuchi.

Now, there is one interesting scene where Fyodor tells Dazai that he "added a line to the page":

But - unless I have my timeline mixed up - since the Page was not stolen and used until after Fyodor was sent to prison, this only suggests he told Fukuchi what to write. There is still no point where he actually had possession of the Page himself.

Fyodor is the one who set up the entire plot and arranged for all the pieces to be in place, but once it actually starts to unfold, he is no longer in a position to directly manipulate his pawns, because he's locked up underground thousands of miles away.

Of course, this does not mean he has been removed from play entirely; he is still communicating with the outside, and he is still able to manipulate the course of events to some extent, as we see when he (somehow; it's never explained) killed the pilots so Fukuchi could get his hands on the One Order:

But how is this any different from what Dazai is doing? Dazai lets himself be captured and locked away, too, to keep an eye on Fyodor and read his moves as things unfold on the outside. He is also in communication with his allies, and he is also able to do some string-pulling, as we see when he stops Fyodor's assassination attempt on Fitzgerald and the neutralization of the Eyes of God:

Basically, both Fyodor and Dazai have the same level of control over what is happening.

Dazai being superior to Fyodor because he "simply had faith" in Ranpo (and the rest of the ADA) implies that Fyodor did not have faith in Fukuchi. But that implies that Fyodor had some means of direct control over Fukuchi throughout the unfolding of the DOA plan and therefore did not have to leave anything solely in Fukuchi's hands. Or it implies that Fyodor had a plan independent of Fukuchi. Except he didn't. On both accounts. At least not that we know of.

In fact, in the anime (which I assume will be repeated in the manga in later chapters), Fukuchi says that Fyodor didn't have any direct control. Fukuchi tells Fukuzawa that he had Fyodor sent to prison for the purpose of preventing him from interfering in Fukuchi's actual plan. And Fyodor agreed to this. He got himself arrested on purpose. The reason he does this is suggested to be that the prison is essentially the safest hideout in the world. Except Fukuchi tells us that this action also severely hindered - though not outright neutralized - Fyodor's ability to influence events.

And I'm not trying to downplay Fyodor as the spider at the center of a complex web of manipulation, not at all. I'm simply pointing out that: a) Dazai is exactly the same, and is countering Fyodor move-for-move, and b) the plan still heavily relies on Fukuchi's independent actions.

As I mentioned, the DOA plot doesn't begin until after Fyodor is arrested and sent to Meursault. Fyodor was using vampires planted as guards as his means of communication (which doesn't even make sense itself, because when exactly would this have happened? When does Fyodor communicate with these vamps? Why did Dazai not notice this?), but Fyodor himself is not controlling those guards, Fukuchi is. Because Fukuchi is the one in control of Bram, and the vampires can only be controlled through Bram. It is certainly conceivable that Fyodor might have had these guards planted before his arrest, but the vampires are only usable as pawns as long as Fukuchi has control of Bram, or at least as long as Bram isn't in control of himself.

Using Chuuya as a pawn also requires Fukuchi to be in control of Bram. Therefore, Fyodor's entire escape plan relies on Fukuchi.

Fyodor literally cannot do anything with the vampires without Fukuchi. And if his entire plan rested on the vampires, that means his entire plan rested on Fukuchi.

In other words, Fyodor's entire plan rests on him having faith in Fukuchi.

It doesn't matter that Fyodor and Fukuchi are not "friends"; it doesn't matter that Fyodor thinks of Fukuchi as a "pawn" instead of an "ally" (although I should note we've been given no evidence of this, because we have never actually seen them interact and we don't know their relationship; we're just meant to assume this). The point is that Fyodor structured this plan of his to be centered around the actions of someone else. This is no different from Dazai. In fact, this is how the both of them usually operate. They just tend to have different ways of going about manipulating their "pawns"/"allies."

Then there's the "hand full of uncertainties" line:

How, exactly, was Dazai's hand "full of uncertainties" in a way that Fyodor's wasn't? How exactly did Fyodor have "the world in the palm of his hand" in a way that Dazai didn't? How exactly was Fyodor in more control of what was happening than Dazai was? As I've already pointed out, what we've been shown suggests they both had equal measures of influence on the outside, and therefore equal levels of manipulative power and equal amounts of uncertainties.

In fact, if we are to believe that Fyodor was surprised by Nikolai and Sigma, that was a whole hell of a lot of uncertainties being thrown at him. And just like Dazai, he just ran with it.

And the reality is that Dazai actually had a whole hell of a lot less uncertainties than Fyodor did, and a whole hell of a lot more control, because Chuuya was never a vampire to begin with. The moment Chuuya arrived, Dazai had the upper hand. It's not like he was ever in any actual danger from the point Chuuya showed up. He was in full control of the situation from that point on.

And you can say that's the whole point, Dazai was in control because he had an ally, but the point I'm making is that the only control Fyodor thought he had over the situation was also because of an ally that he believed he had. If he believed he was controlling Chuuya, he also had to believe that Fukuchi still had Bram and was still on his side. He was operating on faith in pretty much the exact same way Dazai was.

You can also argue that Chuuya showing up was proof for Fyodor that Fukuchi was still in control of Bram (even though he wasn't by that point) and that things were going according to plan. But I'd counter-argue that if at any point before Fyodor managed to escape Bram had had his will restored, Fyodor would have been fucked (had Chuuya actually been a vampire). The very act of using Chuuya as a pawn was a huge act of faith on Fyodor's part.

It's important to stress here that Fukuchi was not under Fyodor's "control" at any point, at least not so far as we've been shown. He is not brainwashed like Nathaniel. He is also not a throwaway piece. He is vital to the plan. And he has his own motivations. We aren't quite there yet in the manga, but we know from the anime what Fukuchi actually wanted, and we also know from the anime that Fyodor approached Fukuchi and propositioned him. They made a deal. Of course, Fyodor always had his own plan, but he knew what Fukuchi's real motivations were. Even so, he trusted that Fukuchi would carry out the plan as he instructed, at least so far as we've been shown.

The argument can be made that Fyodor doesn’t actually have any trust in Fukuchi, he simply trusts that he knows exactly how Fukuchi will act and that everything will go as he predicted. But how is that any different from Dazai? Ranpo negotiating with Bram and Bram ordering the vampires to attack Fyodor might not have been something Dazai and Ranpo set up beforehand, but it is certainly something Dazai planned for, because he purposefully set Fyodor up to be in a vulnerable position, anticipating that exact scenario. Again, they are both operating in the same exact way: not directly controlling their allies, but assuming that their allies will act as they expect. The only difference is that Fyodor’s “allies” did not meet his expectations and Dazai’s did.

I get that the point of this is supposed to be that Fyodor is undone by his cruel manipulation of others and his ruthless attempts to impose his own order upon the world. And that's fine. It's good, even!

The problem is...that's not what happened. Fyodor lost because he relied on something that was outside of his direct control: the vampires. Fyodor lost because he put too much control in the hands of Fukuchi.

And this in itself is a problem, because Fyodor should not have so heavily relied on Fukuchi. All of this would work for me just fine if everything didn't revolve around the goddamn vampires. You cannot have Fyodor's entire fucking plan hinge on the vampires, over which only Bram and the person who has possession of Bram have any control, and then try and tell me that Fyodor lost because he didn't have faith in people. Why would he use the vampires at all if he had no faith in Fukuchi?? Why would he get into a helicopter with the vampires piloting if he had no faith Fukuchi was still his ally and Bram was still under Fukuchi's control?? Why would he have agreed to go to prison in the first place if he had no trust in Fukuchi????? It doesn't make any sense.

And don’t try to tell me, “Well, Fyodor’s just arrogant.” That is the laziest fucking excuse you could possibly give to justify why Fyodor’s IQ points have been cut in half this arc. And, for the thousandth time I ask—how is this any different from Dazai, who also just assumed everything would go his way? Why is it "faith" when it's Dazai but it's arrogance when it's Fyodor?

Personally, I think BSD made a massive narrative mistake in putting Fyodor and Dazai in Meursault in the first place. It's over-complicated things.

Also, one thing that really bothers me about all this is that it's supposed to be a big character moment for Dazai, but...I don't see how this is any different from how he usually operates. Hell, this ruse Dazai and Chuuya set up is even something that SKK did before when they were a team in the Mafia. We've seen Dazai do this shit a thousand times. What's supposed to be the big deal here? The fact that he made a friendship speech this time?

It's just fallen really flat to me, and that's a bummer because I think Dazai is one of the most well-written and interesting characters I've ever come across, and I want to see great character development for him.

I've complained endlessly about Chuuya being in a Halloween costume the entire time so I'll just say here that it's really fucking dumb that Fyodor just. Didn't notice. That he was fooled by fake fangs and contact lenses. Dazai would have noticed, if their roles were reversed. Ranpo would have noticed. It really is just a case of Fyodor being made stupid out of nowhere so Dazai could win.

The retconned hand injury is also incredibly dumb, because first of all, in the manga it didn't exist until the last two chapters when it needed to exist. And second of all, the hand is clearly shown to be usable after the incident that is supposed to have injured it so severely that Fyodor needs the vampires - who, again, are not under his direct control - to pilot the helicopter so he can escape, and this is true for both the manga and the anime. It conveniently only becomes a problem when Dazai needs it to. Because plot, I guess. Because the universe is chaos unless Dazai is pulling another deus ex machina.

I really hate being so critical and so negative, especially about BSD, because it's been my favorite series for years now. But ever since the S5 finale I've been finding more and more things about this arc and it's conclusion (?) that make no sense to me. And considering that Fyodor and Dazai are my favorite characters and a large part of the reason I'm invested in this story, to see them both so poorly handled has left a very bad taste in my mouth.

In conclusion:

Vladimir Nabokov predicted emoticons in an 1969 interview and little recently has excited me as much as this tidbit.

(p.114, Strong Opinions, Nabokov)

good enough to boost.

Very Brief Guide to [tumblr], for Reddit refugees

Shit You Must Do Right Fucking Now:

Change your profile picture, blog header, and title to something other than the defaults. Do it right now. You will be mistaken for a bot otherwise, and blocked.

Go into Settings -> Dashboard, scroll down to Preferences, and turn off the options in the picture. This will get rid of most of the algorithmic stuff.

Turn off Tumblr Live. You have to snooze it once every 7 days for some stupid reason. It's hosted through another company and will steal your data if you use it.

Go to your blog settings (under the little person menu) and turn off these two settings:

Turn off infinite scroll (lags the site) and turn on timestamps on posts, in the same menu as Preferences.

Basic Features of the Site:

Reblogs drive the entire site. If you'd upvote something on Reddit, you'd reblog it on Tumblr. You can add text, images, or tags to a reblog, but you're not required to.

The dashboard is the equivalent to your Reddit feed, and contains the posts of all the people you follow, with the newest at the top

You can send an ask to someone, and it'll appear in their askbox for them to answer. You can receive them too, or turn off the settings if you don't want.

Tags aren't actually used for finding stuff (search function is dogshit), but are more for categorizing. People also talk in tags. Because Tumblr is weird, you can't use quotation marks (") or commas in them without fucking it up

You can filter both tags and phrases under Account Settings; doing this will put a filter over a post that contains them, which you'll have to click through to see the post itself. Useful for avoiding hate speech or blocking out annoying stuff

You can make polls in posts. Here's one now.

Likes are useless. They literally do fuck-all except send a notification to the OP.

Stuff Tumblr Does That Other Sites Don't:

Very old posts (I'm talking from like 2012) often circulate on this site. There's no such thing as a post being "too old" to reblog

Blocking is highly encouraged; you can block someone for any reason. Even for just being annoying.

If you and someone else are following each other, you are mutuals. Mutuals are fucking awesome and are treasured like friends. Mutuals are a thing on other sites but Tumblr treats em differently.

You can screenshot someone's tags if you like them and add them to a reblog. This is called "peer review"

Sometimes someone will find a blog and go through it and like/reblog a bunch of posts. This is totally fine and not "creepy" like it is seen as on other sites.

Tumblr jokes often rely on Continuing The Bit and a "yes, and?" attitude. Goncharov is probably the best example of this.

We are fucking infested with bots. They will either have totally blank profiles or be filled with porn. Block and report on sight.

Censorship is pretty lax here. I can say "I want to brutally stab Elon Musk to death and watch him bleed out in front of a crowd" and nobody gives a shit.

General Etiquette:

Don't try to do epic clapbacks here, you'll probably just get laughed at or blocked. If someone is bugging you or spouting bigoted bullshit, block them.

Reblog art!!! Artists often struggle to gain traction on here; reblogging will give them a boost.

Not every reblog needs a comment or tag in it

You can go all out with tagging your stuff to organize it, or you can just leave it all blank. Someone might ask "hey, can you tag these posts as [x]?" and you can decide if you want to do that or not. It's generally polite to oblige, but "no" is still reasonable.

Avoid discourse like the plague. Filter it, block people who start it, scroll past it when you see it. Just don't get involved in it. Ever.

Don't put fandom tags or jokes on someone's posts about serious matters or personal shit

You're responsible for curating your own dashboard; if you complain about constantly seeing stuff you don't like, that's probably on you. Don't be afraid to unfollow.

Follower count doesn't matter much here and you don't have to make yours known if you don't want to.

Reblog, don't repost. Reblogging keeps the credit and doesn't "steal" engagement like Twitter retweets.

If someone likes something a LOT, they might reblog it like 30 times in a row. This is normal

Having a post blow up is actually kinda a bad thing, since it floods your notifications. There's a sort of in-joke about how having a big post is awful and people jokingly try to stop their own posts from blowing up, often in vain.

Tips:

Get XKit Rewritten if you're on desktop, it's a really helpful extension

In the little drop-down menu next to the 'Post now' button you can either save a draft, schedule a post, or add it to your queue. The queue lets you post things in order at a certain interval, which you can change. It's good for spreading stuff out over time.

You can use Shift+R to quickly reblog stuff and Shift+Q to queue!

Filter your notifications under Activity - you can also see some neat graphs

Find each other! If you want your old Reddit communities to stick together, seek out other refugees and follow them.

Have fun on [tumblr], everyone!

they must really have feared fyodor's power

Ever think - most of that last bit in Muersault didn't need to happen? Because if Chuuya is never a vampire and Dazai knows that, then once Chuuya's THERE, the rest is a pantomime. Chuuya had more than enough power to hail bullets into Fyodor the moment Gogol's 'game' began.

So why didn't they?

I think they had to be really afraid of Fyodor's power. All they know is that it works by touch, and it's lethal. Chuuya's power also requires him to touch things to exert control over them. They must've been afraid that the powers would cancel each other out if used directly that way, which would introduce too many unknowns to 'can we kill fyodor now'.

I think that's why they saved the finishing blow for "when we have control of the vampires". Because then, if it was an always-on kind of power like Dazai's, whatever it was would activate when the Random Vampire Mook attacked.

Of course, they couldn't KNOW they'd get control of the vampires, but really, if they didn't they were screwed anyway? So I guess they figured eh, in that event we leave Chuuya around as some kind of secret double agent and wait for the next clear shot. Or something.

Desire (lust) to wait (sloth) so that curses (gloom) accumulate to cause more damage (wrath)? Nonsense straight out of Persona 5, with biding one's time specifically so that revenge will be sweeter. Also lol that mechanically he's what is labeled as buddha murti but what looks like khakkhara. Imagery of Heathcliff looking like a guy but being merely a staff to bonk the deserving(?).

The corrosion line kind of reinforces the 'playing the long game' take: "The wheel of samsara turns once." As in, it turns and the target is dead - but with it, there is no long game to play anymore, so (the reason to continue) Heathcliff is not more as well.

"I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine."

is the quote that comes to mind, tho i'm sure someone who actually read it can pull out something much better ;^) Does that mean the quote is/will be a feather Cathy?

as for resistances: the pattern of weak-to-envy continues, in that someone else would have to sit his ass down and explain that this notion makes the world worse (instead of being to the point about it). Lust resist because it's the sort of harebrained plan that's less do-gooding and more feel-good (partially about one's inaction/inability to act). Light sloth resist as most of the time this mindset is in snooze mode ;D ...and also, why are they're equal? balancing aside maybe because if proportions are off, the behavior/vibe changes? Gloom it up too hard and it's just whining without doing anything at all. Wrath it up and retaliation is immediate. Lust it up and it's less karma themed and more just pummeling the target. Sloth it up and one ignores the opportunity to take revenge, blinded by despondency?

Oh this Sin Cost for Heathcliff's Ya Śūnyatā Tad Rūpam is juicy. I don't have the brainpower for in-depth analysis right now but.

The pairs of opposites in Wrath-Sloth and Lust-Gloom. The sheer addition of Wrath and Gloom compared to Outis's. The lack of Pride compared to Outis's. It's just so.