Lastminuteaction - Lastminuteaction

atsushi with more cat/tiger behaviors but some lesser discussed ones:

he scratches all the doorways of the agency building and his dorm. kunikida scolds him for damaging property for over an hour but while he apologizes he’s strangely uncontrite (at least for atsushi who tends to overapologize) about it

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a mostly nocturnal sleep schedule feels the most natural to him but since his orphanage’s schedule was (quite literally) beaten into him, he regularly wakes up early, though after a long mission or multiple in a row, he tends to sleep through the day instead.

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when really frustrated (usually during an argument with akutagawa) he has a tendency to stomp his feet. it tends to break the tension, and atsushi finds its super embarrassing. akutagawa finds it cute

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he’s constantly fighting the urge to sit on his coworkers desks while they’re working and distract them. same with knocking things off their desks.

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head bunting!!!! he first starts doing it to kyouka after the end of the guild plot. just does it to her one morning while they’re cooking breakfast without realizing. he’s mortified for a moment until kyouka does it back, equally shy yet earnest about it. slowly he catches himself doing it to the rest of the agency: when kenji gives him a hug after a mission, when yosano buys him something he was looking at during a shopping trip, while sharing lunch with the tanizakis, to ranpo after atsushi solves his first mystery on own, to kunikida and dazai after a dangerous mission. he hasn’t worked himself up to doing it to the president yet (and fukuzawas kind of sad about it). dazai and kunikida are the most flustered by it, kenji and kyouka do it back to him the most.

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as much as he hates being locked up or confined against his will (and he really hates it), he genuinely loves being in small spaces. he sleeps in the closest for kyoukas privacy but he does geniunely feel comfortable there. sometimes he eats lunch under his desk or in the supply room if he’s feeling stressed. dazai did give him a giant box once to see if he’d sit in it and he totally did.

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he tends to suck on the corners of blankets and things like his shirts or sweaters when he’s asleep or distracted. dazai used to tease him for it until he read that it was often found cats taken to soon from their mothers. he didn’t really find it funny after that

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he will just Stare at people. agency members look up from their work and will see him looking directly at them. he usually snaps out of it right after and apologizes but just like slow blinks and winks and closing his eyes, he starts doing it more and more as he gets in tune with his ability.

i like to thimk atsushi bumps his head onto people out of affection (like a cat)

but whenever he does it to akutagawa he gets all huffy and puffy bc he thinks atsushi is trying to insult him or smth

Do you like boxes? (I've been watching big cat videos and a lot of them like boxes. Big cats really are just cats, but big.)

much to think about

Portrait Of a Father(?)

I think we can all agree that this is the most controversial chapter in the whole manga. We can’t agree on what its message is, if we are supposed to agree with it, what Asagiri wanted us to think about the characters involved … So, I finally decided to jump in the lion pit and put forward my opinions on it.

I’ll start with a brief recap: Atsushi finds out that the Headmaster of his orphanage, the one who tormented him, is dead. His reaction is … well, if he had been legal for drinking, he would have rushed to buy champagne. A fitting reaction, considering what we have already seen of the Headmaster at this point.

But then we get a shocking revelation: the Headmaster died in a car accident while going to buy flowers for Atsushi, to congratulate him on his successes with the Agency and his great work in saving the whole city. Atsushi is shocked, because … seriously? Eighteen years of abuse, and now he acts like he has always cared about him?

And he expresses his conflicted emotions with a likewise erratic behavior: he runs off from Tanizaki, tries to have a cathartic fight with Akutagawa (who ignores him exactly because of his state of mind), goes to his old orphanage to attend the funeral from a distance, and lastly wanders off to see some conveniently placed families with attentive fathers and young sons.

At this point, Dazai reaches him. And here starts the really controversial part.

They examine together the Headmaster’s background: he appearently grew up in the same orphanage, but at a time when it had even worse conditions, enough to make Atsushi’s time under his education ‘look like heaven’ in comparison. When he got out alongside some other orphans, he quickly fell into a life of crime; then they all got drafted into the Great War, and saw his friends die one by one, until he was the only one left standing. 

This left him with an huge unaddressed trauma and the convinction that his determination and will to live, acquired in spite of hardships, were the only reasons he survived; so he decided to dedicate himself to raising the next generation of orphans according to these principles, creating a system where the priority would have been survival at all costs. 

And the narration, through Dazai, sorts of portrays him positively for that. Attention is brought to how he was tortured worse than Atsushi did, how the fierce mindset underneath Atsushi’s meekness was grown by his treatment of him. If the Headmaster never did so, would Atsushi be so attached to life? Would he have not succumbed to self-loathing?

To answer this, I’ll take the liberty to give first my own analysis, and then consider what the manga probably wants me to answer.

Yes, if the Headmaster had not been abusive, Atsushi would have survived. Much better, I’d add. It is mentioned that Atsushi was nearly killed at his orphanage, more that one time, and let’s remember that he has one hell of an healing factor. If he had been a normal kid, chances are that he wouldn’t have survived … which, besides begging the question of how on earth the Headmaster’s own time at the orphanage could have been worse than attempted and nearly successful murder, makes one wonder how exactly it’s supposed to be formative for the kid.  

Then, the Headmaster is given the credit to have prevented Atsushi’s self-loathing for being a tiger, by becoming himself the object of his hatred. What a martyr. The problem with his reasoning is, that is all the damn story that we see Atsushi have an huge issue with self-loathing! And it isn’t even related to the tiger, most of the times! There are moments where he’s shocked and scared after he went overboard with his power, but the main sources of his problems, the flashbacks that plague him? They’re about his time at the orphanage. 

He regularly remembers, and even has allucinations of, the Headmaster and the other members of the staff calling him worthless, good for nothing, pathetic, unworthy to live, and all sorts of pleasantries of this kind. When he allucinates the Headmaster, that nasty voice in his head is the one who tells him to quit, to give up, that he’s not good enough and he shouldn’t even try to do something with his life. 

Of course, at this point we could rigirare la frittata saying that it’s what the Headmaster meant, to make Atsushi stronger by giving him someone to rebel against … but honestly? There are thousands of better, different ways to teach someone to value their own life. If the Headmaster, given his traumas, couldn’t think of one, then it’s his own damn fault for not realizing that he couldn’t be a good teacher or caretaker before a lot of therapy, and not taking a different life path. 

The one who gives his all despite his insecurities is Atsushi. The one who is willing to face down powerful enemies in desperate battles for the sake of a city he has come to love is Atsushi. The one that didn’t wield to despair and self loathing, pushing forward each and every time, that’s Atsushi. The Headmaster doesn’t have a shred of merit in this. 

Now, time to take a guess at authorial intent. And this is … tricky, that is, for the very simple reason that I can’t get into Asagiri’s head and extract the intended correct interpretations from the multiple possibilities. All I can do is propose the most likely, based on what I can read.

The first possible interpretation: the most obvious. We are meant to take that scene and its message as it is. The Headmaster did terrible things, but he also helped Atsushi in his growth. Our boy wouldn’t be half as strong if he hadn’t already experienced severe abuse, and he’s really got to cry the death of his father figure. Bacia la mano che ruppe il tuo naso perchè le chiedevi un boccone. 

Another possible interpretation is that it’s an acknowledgement of the fact that people are complicated, and it’s fine to have complicated feelings towards them. Warped as he was, the Headmaster truly believed that he was doing what was better for Atsushi. Isn’t it horrible to confront the fact that the person who abused you is not a cardboard villain with nothing inside, but instead a very complex human being who had a ‘benevolent’, if not logically sound, reasoning behind them? Atsushi is not in a good situation: on the one hand, he can’t forgive the Headmaster for what he did to him, but on the other, he can’t ignore the fact that he did it out of “care” for him (wheter of not it did him any good). He, who had repeatedly been told that he was worthless and undeserving, he had been the object of care all along! What’s one to do in such a situation?

Atsushi doesn’t know either. There is no manual with the instruction for the right emotions and reactions to have. 'Quando a mio padre si fermò il cuore' ... magari avessi semplicemente non provato dolore. He ends up looking at Dazai with that face, a very forced smile in the uncertainty about how else to react. And Dazai just gives his comment about people crying when their father dies, and Atsushi does exactly that. This is already a kinder interpretation: Dazai made it clear that Atsushi could react however he felt better, but he understood that the kid felt like crying, and gave him an implicit okay to do so. It was a way to help Atsushi express his emotions, bypassing the blocks that the Headmaster himself had put on the road. And personally, I suspect that it gets the closest to authorial intent, because of the emphasis on ‘finding a will to live despite one’s trauma’ has already been established as a central theme of the manga.

A third interpretation put as much focus on Dazai as it does on Atsushi. Dazai is the one who reaches to Atsushi and all but call the Headmaster’s violence ‘necessary’, defining him as Atsushi’s ‘father’. And we already know that Dazai is no stranger to violence as a teaching method; just ask Akutagawa. His treatment of the young mafioso - beatings, calling him worthless, even an attempted execution - is strikingly similar to how the Headmaster raised Atsushi.

And sure, Dazai’s got his promise to Odasaku, be a better person, stay on the path that protects the weak, but these are the ideals he picked up in his formative years in the mafia. It’s likely that he can recognize that his treatment of Akutagawa was wrong, but on some level, he thinks himself as justified: it was how you taught a kid to live in a cruel world, the same reasoning of the Headmaster. He still has his violent tendencies: remember the famous slap he gave Atsushi?

I’m not sure whether he still stands by this ‘educational system’ or not. He hasn’t expressed any explicit regret over how he treated Akutagawa, but he made a point of treating Atsushi in a very different way. He still gave that slap, but that could have been a moment of ‘regression’: a situation in which he needed an Atsushi on top of his game ASAP, couldn’t figure out how to calm him down properly, and fell back on doing what he knew: teaching through violence and harsh words. He expresses no regret over this thing either … but there actually might be, Dazai is a character defined by the fact that he lies to everybody (to his mentees, to his colleagues, to the enemies, to the readers) and so pinning down his true thoughts is very difficult. 

With his answer, he might have projected more than a little in the Headmaster. Maybe what he told Atsushi was a covert way to explain his own actions, to present the point of view of ‘a person who does these things’. Maybe prepare him for an absolution; maybe prepare him to handle disappointment over his mentor’s true nature. Maybe prepare him to recognize himself in Akutagawa, and thus sympathize with him and improving the Shin Soukoku dynamic! Bungou Stray Dogs has pulled bigger levels of insane planning after all. 

Anyway, I find this a pretty interesting interpretation; even if it could have been elaborated upon better, if this is the case. It would show the situation not strictly as a message to the readers, but an analysis of the characters.

Thanks to anyone who bothered to read my ramblings!

hc that atsushi finds the nearest soft item and starts kneading it with his hands when stressed because it calms him

dazai voice: pspspspsps

the ada has to shut off the lights on their christmas tree in the office during working hours because atsushi will just stare at it for ages if they don't

Get ready for a slew of Bungo Stray Dogs hcs because I'm so fucking hyped from the trailer. I'm not sure if I've done this before and Tumblr's search function sucks ass but here are some Catboy Atsushi hcs (With some Shin Soukoku) because I am a firm believer that if there's an animal-type character then they should have animal traits

-When he cares about someone he'll do the slow blink, but all the other person can see is Atsushi staring at them kind of intently, blinking slowly, and then returning to his work like nothing happened

-He purrs when he feels comfortable and safe. This could be if someone plays with his hair, curled up before he goes to sleep, situations like that. But it was something the orphanage punished him for so he tries to repress it as hard as he can. When the agency finds out they think it's the cutest thing possible and always try to elicit that response

-He bunts, the thing where cats drag their jawline against something they care about. The first time he does it to Akutagawa they both freeze and Akutagawa just kind of stares at him for a moment. Atsushi promptly realizes what he did and starts panicking and apologizing profusely. Akutagawa's not entirely sure what happened but he thought it was cute, not that he'd ever tell him that of course

-If completely left alone his nails will naturally grow into claws but they were always cut by the headmaster, often cut back so short his nail beds would start bleeding. He still cuts them back

Rewatching Bungo Stray Dogs (can’t remember where I got to in the anime, but I stopped reading during blimp arc) and. Yeah. Two episodes in and I’m just like, ‘Does Atsushi scent mark people or the office. Does Dazai slow blink at him, making Atsushi both confused but also calms him down? Atsushi struggling with if he doesn’t remember last night because he transformed, or because he drank. Or possibly being affected more by alcohol. Can Atsushi even HAVE a lot of alcohol or does that affect him more? (But if cats can’t eat onions or garlic, he would have probably noticed by now, unless he just figures he’s got a sensitive stomach and/or he’s just not used to non-orphanage food).’

Yeah. It’s very clear there’s a certain character trope that just activates my brain, pffft.