mar's digital sketchbook

Understanding Nikolai

Nikolai is not simply “insane,” as he often appears.

He is a highly intelligent, philosophically tormented man whose madness is a deliberate performance: a mask designed to sever attachments and blur the boundary between self and spectacle.

Every gesture he makes is laced with calculation, irony, and a desperate yearning to annihilate the self in pursuit of true freedom.

His flamboyance is not mindless chaos; it is a form of spiritual rebellion. (Nikolai is, undoubtedly, an interesting human chaos.)

Even his ability—The Overcoat—reflects this. It is not just spatial trickery; it is a rejection of physical law itself. He slips through the world like someone who does not believe in it.

His gift is a metaphor for his worldview: no walls, no weight, no rules. An exit strategy written into the fabric of space.

He claims to seek “freedom.” But what is freedom to him?

He clarifies that it is the absence of emotional bonds, the absence of morality, the absence of identity.

I believe that to him, freedom equals emptiness. He might think the self is not truly free until it is unshackled from all meaning, suffering, and attachment.

But this comes with a paradox. In order to sever emotional ties, one must first have them.

And so, every act of violence or betrayal he commits becomes proof that something still binds him to life. He must feel pain to prove there was something there worth destroying.

That is why killing Fyodor matters. That is why killing him is a ritual. It must hurt. Otherwise, it is meaningless.

This made me think of DC’s Joker, who is often interpreted not as insane, but in a hyper-aware state of reality—in other words, “hyper-sane.”

Asagiri recently revealed that Nikolai did not experience any specific traumatic event that made him the way he is. He developed his philosophy of his own accord.

Nikolai is not afraid of abandonment in the traditional sense. He is afraid of attachment itself. Of being held in place, seen too clearly, bound by emotional gravity. His entire philosophy is a war against precisely that kind of tethering. He fights God for this very reason.

Nikolai’s war is not just against emotional tethering. It is against cosmic structure itself. In fighting God, he fights the very idea that life has order, morality, or meaning. His freedom requires total metaphysical sabotage. Not just of society, but of the architecture of reality.

I am going to assert a wild, radical theory: Nikolai is philosophically suicidal. At least as suicidal as Dazai; possibly, and very likely, worse than Dazai. In other words, he does not want liberation from oppression; he wants liberation from existence itself.

This makes his “suicidal ideation” radically different from Dazai’s. Where Dazai plays with death to feel alive, Nikolai kills parts of himself to be dead while still breathing. Intriguing, is it not?

His desire to kill Fyodor—whom he calls his best friend—is not born from hatred. It is not even born from a belief in justice. It is likely born from the knowledge that Fyodor anchors him to something.

Killing Fyodor becomes a symbolic murder of the self. It is the last thread. “When I kill him, I will be free.” This is a suicide note in motion. The murder of the self.

Nikolai and Dazai

Nikolai performs theatricality. In this, he resembles Dazai.

But Dazai’s performance is a shield; Nikolai’s is an attack. Dazai hides his vulnerability beneath a façade of indifference. Nikolai parades his emptiness to break himself and likely others.

He wants others to recoil, to be confused, to laugh, probably because laughter is a weapon against suffering and logic. And his “madness” is a crucifixion of meaning.

And yet, there is something else. His theatrics are also a test. He does not only want to repel; he wants to see who survives the performance. That could be the very reason he asked Atsushi if he happens to like birds. He is enthusiastic to share his philosophy with others.

Will you flinch? Will you play along? Will you run?He is not looking for comfort. He is looking for someone who cannot be broken by the joke.

Nikolai’s ideal type

Given all of this, what kind of woman could captivate, complement, or unravel Nikolai, you ask?

Asagiri himself told us that even he does not know what Nikolai would gift his darling for Valentine’s Day.

And that might be the very key to understanding what kind of person his darling would be.

On that note, let us consider what we could expect from him on Valentine’s Day.

Severed hands? Tongues? Eyes? A heart?

Perhaps a torture chamber, or a guillotine.

“The French freed themselves from the shackles of inequality with this, dove!” he would say.

This might seem random, but it actually tells us a lot about his ideal type.

Someone who would not be disheartened (or straight-up scared, violated, and disgusted) by gifts like those, of course!

I have thought long and hard about this, and I have come to the conclusion that she would definitely not be soft and nurturing, like Dazai’s or Fyodor’s ideal type of woman.

Nikolai would absolutely feel threatened and bored to death by that.

I believe that what he needs is a spiritual equal: someone capable of confronting the same chaos and dancing in it without flinching.

Nikolai does not want to be mothered. He wants to be understood and challenged in his own wild and twisted ways.

He needs someone who can play his games better than he does, and outsmart his philosophical approach by twisting everything worse than he does, just to surprise and engage him.

In other words, he needs to be kept on his toes.

His ideal partner would be someone who understands his philosophy of freedom.

Someone who also questions morality, existence, and identity, yet is not swallowed by them.

She would be his mirror, but with self-possession: someone who dances with madness but does not drown in it.

This way, she could “fixate” him on the sane side.

And that is the paradox again: she must be detached enough to understand him, but not so detached that she dissolves entirely.

Seriously, try to obviously steady him or stabilise him and he will get bored of you. I cannot stress this enough.

If you ever tried to do that, it would mean you are one of the people who do not understand his philosophy, and the importance of “true freedom.”

He cannot love someone too grounded in reality. A kind, practical woman would either try to “fix” him or suffer under the weight of his chaos. Not his taste.

Instead, his partner would need to be elusive, strange, and surreal in her own right.

She might speak in riddles, drift through life like a dream, and surprise him with her emotional unpredictability.

This unpredictability is key: he needs stimulation and uncertainty. Someone entirely stable would make him feel caged.

Masochistic tendencies—not in a purely physical way, but emotionally and philosophically.

She would be able to tolerate, even relish, the pain of loving him.

She would not turn away from his breakdowns. She would observe them with quiet fascination. Maybe even join in.

She would understand that love is not about saving him. It is about witnessing his destruction and still choosing to remain.

His darling would likely be artistic, performative: someone who uses her body, words, or presence as a form of expression. Not for attention, but because life is a stage.

She might be into acting, dance, experimental poetry, or performance art.

He would love someone who plays with her identity and who can be multiple things at once.

A sense of moral purity would repel Nikolai. His ideal woman would operate in ambiguity. Not evil, but not bound by conventional ethics.

She could kill if she had to. She would not blink at a broken corpse or cry over the fall of a nation.

But she would not be heartless. Just disillusioned. Like him.

There is a mythic quality to the figure he desires. She is not the healer, but the trickster’s match. A chaos agent, not a counterbalance.

Someone who might kiss him and then pull a coin from behind his ear, soaked in blood.

Regarding physical traits: I would say that he is one of the BSD men who does not care about his darling’s appearance.

We do not have any evidence regarding his preferences, unfortunately.

Writing this for Fyodor, Dazai, and Chuuya was much easier, because there is enough evidence regarding their specific likes and needs.

But for Nikolai, I sadly have to rely on free imagination more than evidence, unlike with the others.

The problem is this: it is clear that he needs someone who can stomach his playful cruelties, and someone who would not bore him.

But what he truly wants deep down (or what he truly needs in the most deep, human sense) is not yet clearly laid out.

I could see him having a flair for foreigners, for instance.

Despite likely not being Japanese, and probably not having lived in Japan for long, he speaks Japanese fluently.

He likely speaks other languages too. So I could see him having a taste for foreigners in general, through cultural interest.

I could also see him having specific likes. I believe he is someone—

Oh… I forgot to tell you. If you are this darling, he will kill you.💚

He must kill you in order to prove his human will, and that he is free from all his shackles, after all.💚