Reunion/Smile

Hrm hrm today I’m having thoughts about Kuina and her overwhelming Lost Boy vibes and how like. You NEVER GET Lost Girls like that. Narratively, she is The Girl Who Didn’t Grow Up. She will always be eleven and perfect, immortalized in memory. In Zoro’s mind, she is forever just a little bit older and a little bit taller than him. Even now when he remembers her, he pictures her face from an upward angle. She will ALWAYS be “older” and yet she will NEVER be more than eleven. I want to know what was happening in Zoro’s head when he turned 12 and realized he was older than she would ever get to be. I just. All the vibes, give them to me. This is one of the things that just gets me every fucking time!!!

(Sabo is also positioned like this, and is a fairly straightforward example up until it gets subverted by him ACTUALLY GROWING UP. Sabo is what happens when the lost boy grows up and it’s fucking FASCINATING.)

I think the key thing is, in order to be a "lost boy" narrative and not just a tragically dead child character, there needs to have been an expectation of greatness. It's not that little girls don't die in fiction, or that they aren't mourned. But this particular type of narrative emphasizes the specific grief of the loss of incredible potential, which isn't a thing dead little girl characters usually get. They're usually narratives about the loss of innocence or the fragility of life and the injustice of mortality, and Kuina has a little of that - how unfair it is for her life to be cut short. But it's also the bit of, if you'll let me get lyrical for a moment, you could have done so much more if you only had time.

as people grow up, one of the things we have to deal with is the loss of the possibilities of what we could have been, because we can only become one of our possible selves. Even if you become great, even if you're happy, even if you made the best possible choice, you still have to make that decision that to become this I must give up on becoming that. Lost Boys don't ever get to become, so they are enshrined with all that potential still in them. All of the people they could have been, all of the paths they might have taken.

(A thing that drives me crazy: balancing the grief of growing up with the grief of not-growing-up. The tragedy of becoming and the tragedy of never getting to become. The dozens of ghosts of possible selves that every adult carries around with them. Not relevant to the current discussion, but still, a thing to think about!)

There's also the fact that she gets set up with a projected character arc - we can see how she might've grown and dealt with her insecurities and overcome the obstacles in her path, but she'll never get to do it. And Zoro can take their shared dream on himself and make that his responsibility, but he can't resolve her emotional baggage for her, because that's not how that works. And we don't know! Maybe she wouldn't ever have managed it! But Kuina-the-confident-adult is just one of the many possible people she'll never get to be.

BSD chapter 121 – SPOILER / "THEORY"

Something i haven't seen anyone else point out, is that in the last pannel of the chapter, "Dazais" clothes clearly don't fit him

For comparison, both from the same chapter

His coat is clearly too big for him. The sleeves hang too low, usually just below the elbow, now down to his wrists.

His pants don't fit him either, although the coat hides it pretty well.

Overall his clothes are significally more baggy.

His hair is also parted diffrently. Dazais hair is almost always parted down the middle. First I thought his hair was being blown by the wind – thusly messing the parting – but one look at the hem of the coat proved me wrong.

The right side of his hair is instead longer then the left side.

He also seems to not have his neck bandage. The longer then usual sleeves concealing his arm bandages (or the lack thereoff).

"Dazai" is morphing into someone else. Which brings me to:

Atsushi is shorter then Dazai, making Dazais clothes most likely too big for him.

The longer side of Atsushis hair is the right one. The parting of hair – while not exact – seems to also match our resident tiger lad.

The illusion of Dazai is being torn apart, as Atsushi realizes its true nature. His own thoughts, fleelings, and conclusions wearing a Dazai themed Halloween mask.

When Atsushi says he 'knows who you are, he's not talking about Dazai or the hallucination, but *himself.*

Atsushi has never needed someone else to tell him to live, but he has always felt like he does.

To be less extra 'bout it, i think Atsushi groked what he is and is going use that to save Akutagawa / kick Fyodors ass.

If i missed or got smt wrong feel free to tell me

I don't think Akutagawa has lost his memories, neither do I think he's faking it, or doing it as a way to get Atsushi to react and get back on his feet.

In chapter 117, when Bram saves Aya from the airport wreckage, he says that he transferred his consciousness into Akutagawa's body when Fyodor's ability took over his own body, and that his ability would also die with him, his consciousness disappearing as a consequence. . The question is: we don't know what happens to a vampire who turns back into a human, nor whether all vampires were transformed back, or just Akutagawa, because Bram took his body. I don't believe that all vampires have become human, as Fyodor mentions that as long as he has Bram's body, the echoes of his ability would still exist, and he can still control everyone who has been turned into a vampire around the world, so it is likely that only Akutagawa was transformed into a human again (vampirism having disappeared along with Bram's consciousness), even if remnants of his transformation are still present in his body, like a vampire's durability. It is these vampiric remnants and characteristics that make me think that Akutagawa's sudden amnesia was caused by traces of Bram's soul/consciousness in his body.

When Bram dies, we see Akutagawa accepting his mission to protect Aya. Everything in the manga suggested that this was Akutagawa's own decision, and to a certain extent, it is, but it is quite likely that Bram's traits and characteristics remained in Akutagawa's body even after his death. This whole role of a "noble knight" was a striking characteristic of Bram, who always saw the current world as if it were still his time, and used terms from that same time to refer to everyone. Part of Bram's consciousness may have remained in Akutagawa's body along with the vampire characteristics, causing his consciousness to mix with Bram's consciousness, or be overwhelmed by it, which perhaps could have been the cause of his lack of consciousness, and memory. Something I found curious is that Akutagawa not only has protecting Aya (or the princess) as his mission, but also the commoners, something that was not included in Bram's order/request.

So where did the part about protecting the commoners come from? Is it something caused by Bram's influence? A part of Akutagawa's new (and probably temporary) knight persona? Or a wish of his own? His own desire to protect people?

Well, I don't know, but if that's the case, I can see a lot of ways this memory loss could really add something to Akutagawa's character arc. We know that he is someone who is truly true to his promises, and when Bram's consciousness and influence begin to dissipate from his mind, he will probably still remind that he promised to protect Aya, and will commit to fulfilling his promise. Being placed in the role of protecting someone, for Akutagawa, would be something really good, it would help him understand that he doesn't need to kill for his life to have meaning, that there is also value in protecting other people, that this is not necessarily linked to a failure (the last time he protected someone, they all got killed), and that there is something good about protecting and helping people. Finding a new reason to live would also help him get rid of the idea that the value of his life is linked to Dazai's approval of him. It's clear how he was using rashomon in a much more effective way in the last chapter compared to his other fights, so much that even Atsushi seems surprised. I believe this comes from the fact that Akutagawa learned (due to his life both on the slums and in the mafia) to use rashomon as a weapon, not as an extension of his own body, as a part of himself, in addition to that he does not need to use rashomon to fortify his body, which allows him to use rashomon more freely.

Other things that I think could have caused Akutagawa's amnesia are his transformation back into a human (dying, being turned into a vampire, and then back into a human again could definitely do some damage to anyone's brain), and Bram's promise to Aya to protect her, as we know that in Bsd promises can be kept even after someone has turned into a vampire (as we see with Akutagawa and his promise not to kill anyone). Bram's promise to Aya surpassed Dostoevsky's ability, causing Fyodor to create a great will to protect Aya, so it is not so impossible that it also surpassed Bram's death.

In the catzai au, is Fyodor an actual rat and Nikolai a dove?

perhaps

Yk, with the eventual sskk reunion, them hugging is 100% a real possiblity

Right after Ranpo and Poe kidnapped Kunikida from the hospital and brought him back, Atsushi literally leaped and hugged Kuni

I think he'd hug Akutagawa when he sees him again (or maybe vice versa if Akutagawa really is that emotional now)

Both sides of sskk can't even deny their feelings now, it's amazing development

If we ever do get blessed with a sskk hug in the future, I will have a heart attack from happiness

I love how Akutugawa goes from taking Dazai’s words and then Fitzgerald’s account of Atsushi’s backstory and running with it to make his own assumptions on him.

To insisting on hearing it from Atsushi himself. Akutagawa wants to know why Atsushi is here, why he fights etc.

And he wants to hear it from Atsushi and no one else.

Your past isn’t who you are now, and that’s the person I wish to know.

Which makes Akutugawa revealing his illness hit so much harder to me because he wants Atsushi to know him too.

the kny concept art was better

I miss her dearly

In case anybody needs another reason to ship frobin: she's the only straw hat who's name he's never forgotten