#bsd chapter 129

asagiri wouldn’t do it…

SO I DID.

when i catch you asagiri…..

maybe a younger Dazai could've understood, when he was still with the mafia and didn't care if the city burned to the ground, but it's also a reflection that Dazai's changed and Fyodor feels entirely alone in his thought process now because he has not changed

Guys friendly reminder that Sigma is still exploring Fyodor's memories. Thus we will definitely get his backstory in the second part. I can't wait to see what has been done to him for him to hate ability users so much.

Nostalgia

fyodor's mission overlaps with raskolnikov's philosophy on the extraordinary man in crime and punishment, and if someone had seen the similarities before, fyodor being unable to achieve his ideal world would've been not much of a surprise at all.

and here's why.

fyodor wanted to instigate a world war between the ability users and the normal civilians. he wanted to do so for the greater good — to wipe out the ones who could wreck violence easily, unnaturally, in the way the unabilitied couldn't. in the absence of the abilitied, i believe he wanted to control the strings of the world from behind the scenes, in a manner which would make crime more difficult to be committed — a more authoritarian world, in my opinion. to ensure punishment would always follow crime adequately. to make society moral, less sinful, in their actions, at least — even if it represses human nature. after all, human nature is the root of all sins. it needs to be suppressed, to some extent, to eradicate crime.

his mission could've stemmed from a philosophy similar to raskolnikov's — the main character of crime and punishment (dostoevsky's magnum opus).

skip the next two paragraphs if you're already acquainted with raskolnikov's theory of the extraordinary man.

according to raskolnikov, by the law of nature, society is divided into two — the ordinary man, and the extraordinary man. the inferior ordinary ones, "who serve only to reproduce its kind", are men who go by what they have been taught in life — regurgitating it in newer ways still, but unable to do, say, or discover something wholly new of its kind. they are law-abiding, conservative in temperament, and "live under control and love to be controlled". it is natural for them, and they are often unrealizing of their subservience to the social norms, customs, institutions, etc. they do not have the conscious right to transgress the law. any attempt at it will lead to retribution — legal, psychological, or both. note that if the ordinary man does break the law, raskolnikov stated that he must accept his suffering, as it is morally wrong, since they do not have ideas that justify their crime.

the extraordinary, on the other hand, are "men who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word" — that is, the ability to develop something entirely new (not a mere regurgitation of what is already known in different ways). one in thousands, perhaps, has a "spark of independence". "one in ten thousand... is born with greater independence, and with still greater independence one in a hundred thousand. the man of genius is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity, appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions". raskolnikov tied it to men like lycurgus, salon, mahomet, and napoleon (especially napoleon). such men had the conscious right to transgress the law. they are unarguably criminals, stopping not even at bloodshed. he maintained that the extraordinary have to be without exception criminals, "otherwise it's hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to remain in the common rut is what they cannot submit to". their ideas for the greater good justifies their crime — their courage to go beyond what is accepted in society is what makes them extraordinary. in a nutshell, their ends justify their means.

now that i have established raskolnikov's theory in the best way i could without turning it into a lecture, it can be clearly tied to fyodor's worldview and mission.

undoubtedly, fyodor saw himself in some sense similar to such men like napoleon. (i don't say it arbitrarily — napoleon wanted to conquer europe and reformed france by ensuring equality of men, based status on merit, not birth, protected private property, etc. though there were indeed downsides like him undermining the equality of women and excessive censorship. he caused bloodshed for his idea of a greater good.) such men didn't cease at carnage in order to bring the world to their idea of a better change — "moving the world and leading it to its goal". fyodor wanted to do the same — causing a war to eliminate the abilitied users, and bring the rest under control and order to ensure peace — a more moral society, that is. even if he didn't devop a philosophy similar to raskolnikov's (which is highly improbable), he did believe himself to be akin to the extraordinary types in some shape or manner. raskolnikov's theory also states that the ordinary men are inferior to the extraordinary — maybe fyodor's belief in the same caused why he looked down upon the rest.

but fyodor's end was the same as raskolnikov's, when it came to deploying this theory.

raskolnikov, after murdering an old pawnbroker and her sister, was unable to deal with his guilt and paranoia, and confessed eventually to the crime. he found that, after all, he fell into the ordinary rut at the end of the day — something that almost drove him to madness.

though in bungo stray dogs, fyodor did have new ideas (akin to raskolnikov's) — at the end, he was unable to bring them about. maybe, fyodor too, was ordinary — a man with an inability to bring a greater good to the world in any significant manner. despite being a man of genius.

it is undeniable, from this quote in crime and punishment — "one in ten thousand... is born with greater independence, and with still greater independence one in a hundred thousand. the man of genius is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity, appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions" — that fyodor aimed to be the crown of humanity. altering the world requires a status of that importance, after all. and he failed to achieve such a status.

i cannot rule whether fyodor was extraordinary or ordinary, because it is entirely subjective. maybe he will come back to life, somehow, and prove us wrong; maybe he never died. perhaps it was a shapeshifter who did. perhaps it was merely a trick once more.

but if he is dead for sure, his end was foreshadowed from the start to anyone who realised the similarities in the philosophy.

one thing is for sure — fyodor will either never come back or will control the world.

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I did once say that death in BSD is usually a tragedy and not a punishment, which is why I didn't want Fyodor to just be killed off, but his death being labelled a double suicide (debatable) does make it feel like one.

He was imprisoned, his power was taken from him, limbs cut off, mouth gagged, doomed to live out his days locked away, and Atsushi still extended a hand to him. Still wanted to understand.

That signature BSD redemption was offered to him.

And Fyodor rejected that.

He didn't want to be saved, he didn't want to be changed.

He chose to keep being their enemy, to keep killing and hurting people. His escape came at the literal cost of other people's lives. His death was the only way he was going to be stopped.

And Fukuchi had to reject his chance to live again to do it. Having already accepted his death and his guilt for everything he brought about Fukuchi took Fyodor down with him.