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Fyodor and the Devil: Analysis of Fyodor's motives and role in the narrative

Asagiri has stated that he based Fyodor not on Dostoyevsky the author but on a specific scene from one of his books The Brothers Karamazov where Ivan Karamazov confronts “the devil” in his room.

(It's a really good book, you should read it if you have time. Also. fun fact, Fyodor and the devil wear the same hat, “His soft fluffy white hat was out of keeping with the season.”)

Having read the book and gone over this scene, I realized that this could be used to find out a lot more about Fyodor as a character than we see in the story, including a potential glimpse at his real motivations.

A bit of context for the scene. Ivan Kramazov is a clever but deeply trouble man who has struggling with the concept of God and rationalising him with the cruelty of humanity, at one point while very sick, Ivan starts seeing a man in his room who claims to be “the devil”. Their conversation is a fascinating look at morality and why evil exists in the world, and if you look at it closely it reveals a lot about the role of a “villain” in a story.

This line from “the devil” is really interesting to me, and seems to explain a lot about Fyodor’s character, as well as align perfectly with how Asagiri has described Fyodor in interviews:

Before time was, by some decree which I could never make out, I

was predestined 'to deny' and yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not at all inclined to negation.

'No, you must go and deny, without denial there's no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of criticism?' 

Without criticism it would be nothing but one 'hosannah.' But nothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don't meddle in that, I didn't  create it, I am not answerable for it. Well, they've chosen their scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism and so life was made possible.

Basically the devil is saying that he was created because without evil then good means nothing, if everything was perfect then nothing would happen or change, life couldn’t exist, so he was forced to be that evil even though he never wanted to be.

This is so similar to how Fyodor is described in the BSD exposition 2020:

Fyodor is the antagonist, he is the villain of the story, that is the role he plays. This explains why he chooses to commit so many atrocities in the name of  “following God's plan”. It even connects to his line in The Dead Apple, and his ability name. He is both crime and punishment, as “crime” or sin originates with the devil, but it's also the devil who punishes sinners.

(I mean the title of the episode he is introduced in is literally “My Ill Deeds Are the Work of God” by committing evil acts he is fulfilling God's purpose for him.)

And if Fyodor is really based on “the devil” it's very likely he also either does or used to wish for release from this role that was assigned to him, but he knows that he cannot stray from his path or the story will cease to exist. My evidence for Fyodor wanting to be free of his mission is just one interaction, when he kills Karma.

Look at Fyodor's expression here, this is the only time in the entire series where we see him look truly sad. This isn't an act, there is no one there for him to trick, he simply says a quiet prayer for the life of a boy who's only purpose was to suffer and die.

This next part of “the devils” speech actually seems to fit very well for Dazai, it's interesting since he is the narrative foil to Fyodor and clearly is a very similar character.

We understand that comedy; I, for instance, simply ask for annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there'd be nothing without you.

If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen. There would be no events without you, and there must be events. So against the grain I serve to produce events and do what's irrational because I am commanded to.

For all their indisputable intelligence,men take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but tedious. But what about me? I suffer, but still, I don't live. I am x in an indeterminate equation. I am a sort of phantom in life who has lost all beginning and end, and who has even forgotten his own name. 

This ties perfectly into Dazai and Fyodor’s debate on the nature of God in the sky casino arc.

Dazai here points out that it's not perfection and harmony that make the world move, it's the irrational, it's the foolishness and stupidity of humans who charges into life making a million mistakes but always finding ways to fight on through it. Here Dazai and Fyodor represent the conflicting sides of “the devil” with Fyodor embodying his mission to drive the world and Dazai embodying his secret love for, and wish to join, humanity.

“I love men genuinely, I've been greatly calumniated! Here when I stay withyou from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality and that's what I like most of all. Yousee, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I love the realism of earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed, here all is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming. Besides, on earth I become superstitious. Please don't laugh, that's just what I like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your habits here: I've grown fond of going to the public baths, would you believe it?

And I go and steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becoming incarnate once for all and irrevocably in the form of some merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone, and of believing all she believes. My ideal is to go to church and offer a candle in simple-hearted faith, upon my word it is. Then there would be an end to my sufferings.”

“"Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I take the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto."*

* I am Satan, and deem nothing human alien to me.”

This piece from the devil feels like it could be a description of Dazai’s character, his wish above all else to find happiness and love as a human despite believing he is a demon. Both Dazai and Fyodor have strong ties to the Devil, both of them are often described as demonic or inhuman, with emphasis placed on the darkness of their souls and the isolation they feel due to their minds.

But the difference between them is how they dealt with it, Fyodor chose to embrace it and fully commit to his role in the story as the ultimate evil for the greater good, but Dazai has always shown a fasciation with humans and has spent his life trying to connect to them and find meaning in his existence.

Finally, let's look at what we can learn about Fyodor’s motivation. Fyodor is the villain, he is the final obstacle the protagonist has to overcome, he is the driving force behind so much of Atsushi’s life and the reason so much of the series has played out at all. He sent Shibusawa to torture Atsushi as a child, he was an informant to the guild who put the bounty on Atsushi making the mafia turn on him, he was involved in the guild invasion, and obviously he was the master mind behind cannibalism and Decay of Angles.

If he is aware of his position as the antagonist, then he also is probably aware Atsushi is the protagonist, he knew he was the “envy of all ability users” after all, so he knows Atsushi has some significance to the world as a whole.

Atsushi is also the “guide to the book” which is seemingly Fyodor’s end goal, so even though Fyodor doesn’t seem to be focused on Atsushi, he has been indirectly influencing his whole journey up to this point. This also explains why Fyodor is only moving actively now, because the protagonist has appeared and his role as the villain can finally be fulfilled and he, like “the devil” can finally get the “annihilation” he asked for. Hence, Fyodor’s true goal is to erase himself from the narrative.

There is actually quite a lot of evidence for this. The obvious part is that Fyodor wants to rid the world of ability users while he himself is an ability user, he cannot exist in his perfect world. 

Then there’s the fact that in the Dead Apple, Fyodor calls himself “crime” if Fyodor is “crime” or “sin” then a world free of sin would not contain him at all

Even when Fyodor talks about sin, he says how humans are easily manipulated into killing each other, while he constantly manipulates characters into killing each other, he is the cause of the sin he fights.

A really strong bit of evidence is this interview with Asagiri and Harukawa

Not only does Asagiri reiterate Fyodors role as the person who moves the story, Harukawa specifically mentions that Fyodor might be trying to create a world without ability users because he thought it was a “bad thing to do” aka the action a villain would take that would lead to a hero stopping them.

“Dos-san is the biggest villain in the story so far, but I have continued to draw him with spaced out eyes that are neither righteous nor evil for a long time. The only time I drew his eyes completely white was when he said he would create a world without skill users. It was because, in reality, we would decide what is evil or not by our own scales, but I wasn't sure if he himself was doing it because he thought that was a bad thing to do.”

This also connects to how Fyodor was able to understand Gogol when no one else could, Gogol is chooses to fight against the way the world is to prove to himself that he truly is free. Fyodor, who is bound to play a part in a narrative, would understand that feeling and that longing to be truly free.

To be clear, I don’t think that Fyodor is really a good person whose just been trapped in an awful position against his will, we see many times that Fyodor revels in his cruelty and enjoys killing and torturing others. Its the same with “the devil” in the book, although he hates the job he was given, he tells Ivan stories of the people he’s corrupted and seems very proud of himself for it.

My personal interpretation is that the sadistic zelot personality Fyodor displays is a mixture of a mask and a coping mechanism, kind of similar to Yosano developing a sadistic side to help her deal with the guilt of half killing people in order to heal them. I think it makes sense that after centuries of cruelty and manipulation a person would become detached and stop really caring about the lives he destroys.

This analysis is partially unfinshed but I wanted to post it now and see what other people think of it.

I often hear the argument that Luffy is dumb, and I can't help but be ticked off every time I hear someone say it, because Luffy isn't dumb, he's simply carefree. And I mean that in the literal sense of the word. Luffy truly does not have a care in the world. Luffy chooses not to complicate things. He does things for the simple fact of wanting to and he purposely refuses to learn about people, situations, and the nuances involved with both because the nuance just pollutes the true nature of the subjects. Luffy doesn't choose to do these things out of ignorance or selfishness, but because in the grand scheme of things, all the information that he chooses to ignore is wholly unimportant both by Luffy's own standards and to the development of the story as well. What Luffy deems unimportant does not matter at all to how things play out in the anime.

Luffy, at his core, is an incredible judge of character. Luffy's relationship with Tama is a perfect example of this. By all accounts Luffy's first impression of Tama should have been negative. She came off as a little bit mean and stand-offish. However, Luffy in his natural Luffy-fashion is unbothered. He didn't need Tama to tell him or show him explicitly the kind of person she was to understand her as a person. Despite the fact that she was a little girl, Luffy treated her with basic respect right off the bat. Luffy didn't see her as child, but rather as the self-sufficient human she was. Of course his fondness for her was only furthered by the food that Tama gave him. Luffy didn't need to know anything more about Tama after he heard that she had given him her last shares of food. He didn't need to hear Tama's sad story to understand her. She treated him with kindness, like she would a friend, even though they had just met. Luffy would go to the ends of the earth for her over that simple fact. He had no desire to learn of Wano's history to better understand how Tama got to this point in her life. All he needed to do and all thay he wanted to do was return a kindness. And that he did.

The same can be said for the part Luffy plays in Nami's story. When Nami 'betrayed' Luffy, he'd simply brushed it off. Once again, Luffy knew who Nami was without having to ask and without her having to show him explicitly. Luffy saw her 'betrayal' yet did not take it at face value. Luffy refuses to leave her behind because everything Nami had said/done in that situation muddled Luffy's inherent and instinctive understanding of her character. This next bit is ironic to say because Luffy often makes decisions with his stomach rather than his head, but its clear that Luffy would rather trust his gut feeling than try to understand Nami's actions which appeared entirely contradictory to Luffy's perception of her personality/character.

This theme rings true throughout the whole anime. This happens when Luffy chooses to trust Law on Punk Hazard over Law's rather dubious choices without needing or wanting an explanation from him. This happens when he rescues Zoro at the very beginning of the anime and he simply trusts this well-known pirate hunter not to cut him down right of the post. I beg of you all, please do not dilute Luffy's complex character design down to something so trivial as him simply "being stupid".

Sorry for the tangent, I have just always felt people who say this about Luffy sell him and his whole character design short. There is so much more that I could say about this too. I could go into detail about the ways in which Luffy is as smart as the rest of the crew (in different ways than them obviously), but that would call for several more paragraphs, so I'll just cut it here I think.

Anyways tell me what y'all think, I'm curious.

Thinking abt young Shakky

Last year I made a post headcanoning that Chuuya was the one to bring Kajii into the mafia after the Laughing Lemon incident and now I am back with evidence.

It's tradition in the Port Mafia to give a new recruit an article of your own clothing when inviting them into the mafia. Famous example being Mori gives Dazai his coat, and Dazai gives Akutagawa his coat in turn.

So with that in mind, if Chuuya brought Kajii in, he would have given him something as well. Only Kajii 5'11" and Chuuya is 5'2", so Chuuya's clothes wouldn't exactly fit Kajii.

But do you know what they both wear?

That's right! Stupid fashion belts that serve no actual purpose!

I rest my case!

one piece new chapter not as big as last two but huge to me cus this old man just stirred up a new theory i wont let go of

hey thats an interesting tattoo is it the mark to traverse the abyss as this new kirin character says?

Ah could it be that Shanks got his arm bitten off on purpose to remove a mark that can call him or bring Imu and their knights anywhere?

Cutting a tether to his celestial dragon family and betting any power he has left on the new generation of piracy. An additional reason he hadn't left for the One Piece until now and why he didn't go with Roger, being a liability that can hand a secret over to Imu. Idk anything is possible!!

Their designs are so good I almost forgot they are horrible people

Asagiri reminds us of Akutagawa, Atsushi and Dazai's past and expects us to be fine after that??

their combined level of freak is unmatched

WHAT IS YOUR SECRET BROOK???

We really can't have even a single peaceful chapter in this damn manga