The Attempted Zuko

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

Ya'll couldn't even handle HER.

Starting off strong with Dazai. Um. He was groomed. It's not just that he was abused. Dazai was 14, he was taken in by a man who manipulated him into the mafia when he was 14, and groomed for violence and brutality. You cannot discuss Dazai's character or his mafia days without leaving out that fact. And you say Dazai had the choice. You're right. He did. He had a choice, and he chose to leave the mafia and become a better person. It became his purpose in life, despite not having a clear view of good or evil. He left the mafia when he was 18. The entire time he was there, he was a child, and his adult life has been dedicated to helping others. He was a bad person who did terrible things, who abused Akutagawa, tortured, murdered, but you cannot separate the fact that he was groomed and a child.

I'm also going to skip to Akutagawa here and talk about Chuuya last because he's a totally different situation. Akutagawa spent his whole life on the streets, and he became violent by necessity even as an extremely young child to protect himself and his friends. Dazai took him in after everyone he knew was slaughtered, and tried to tame that part of him. Now there's nuance here in Dazai's actions as well. Dazai does respect Akutagawa and his abilities, he was attempting to teach Akutagawa self control so it wouldn't destroy him. The issue was his methods, obviously, which were overly cruel. Something Dazai himself acknowledges. Akutagawa was left with such a gaping hole by Dazai's training that he became so consumed in it, it ate him alive. Now with Kyouka, he was attempting to give her what Dazai never gave him, what he thought he needed. With both Dazai and Akutagawa's abuse, it isn't mindless cruelty because these are characters with nuances.

Just like Dazai, Akutagawa eventually tries to become better with his promise to Atsushi. He's still in a dark place and a bad situation, absolutely, but he is recovering, he is making efforts to be better. He was a kid who grew up in violence, had that part of him nurtured, and still made the conscious effort to make a change. He just had a whole arc of coming to peace with himself and Dazai. You absolutely cannot separate these characters from their past. And what's the point of trying to?

On top of that, why would you not mention Oda? Or Fukuzawa, Kyouka, etc?

Oda was an assassin from a very young age for money, to get by as a child. He felt no emotion for who he killed, he didn't care who the victim was, and he "didn't even mind killing". He was desensitized to it very young. Just like Dazai, just like Akutagawa. And just like Dazai, he made the choice to leave it behind. He did everything he could to move on and make a better life for himself until he was pushed to his limit and snapped.

Fukuzawa started killing as an adult, and he didn't just "not mind it", he enjoyed it. He liked the thrill. That's what scared him, and he too left it behind by choice and made the change to become a better person. He was wracked with guilt and despair over his past, sure, but he still enjoyed killing.

Kyouka was just as young and Dazai and Akutagawa. She was taken in and used as a tool for killing. She struggles with seeing right and wrong like Dazai was, and she left that world like Dazai did. What is your view of "forced" here? I assume you think she was more forced than Dazai was, and to an extent, I'd agree, but you are removing the psychological aspect of manipulation. Kids are affected by these things. Sometimes, they turn out badly because of it.

It's not about justifying their actions or blaming someone else. You can recognize someones actions as bad and still understand where they came from and how they ended up like that, and see that it does not make them, to their core, a bad person. BSD has such heavy themes of recovery, through Atsushi, Dazai, Yosano, Oda, Akutagawa, etc, etc. To ignore their past and their efforts to change you're missing such a fundamental piece of what makes BSD. There is nuance in every single character that you're just missing by writing them off to be evil.

Now I've read Stormbringer five times and just finished my second reread of Dark Era, so I clocked that pretty quick.

Why is the only example that all 3 of them use the user who can always find the truth, and the skill user who can always deceive? From Well's description, the other situation could be Dazai vs Chuuya's original ability. From N's, its obviously Gide and Oda. I'm not sure about Ango's second description.

When I say this, I don't mean "Wow he's so wacky, he's insane for killing Chuuya's friends cuz who would do that". I mean it in the most clinical sense of the word. There has been a genuine, tangible decline in his mental state from the Verlaine nine years ago to the Verlaine we see in Stormbringer.

Verlaine's goal before being separated from Rimbaud was clear. He was going to raise Chuuya away from his past, not to end his loneliness, but because "I want to save the other me". He wanted to protect Chuuya from going through what he did. He states upfront that he will not give Chuuya to the government because "imagine how it feels to be told you weren't born with God's love, that you are nothing more than a character set someone suddenly came up with. Imagine the depths of a person's heart pierced by those words. It's a pitch-black abyss where the moon can't be seen. There is no hope. There is no salvation." He refuses to let someone else, the other him, grow up with that.

His stated intention when he returns, however, is completely antithetical to this original goal. It is no longer about protecting Chuuya, though he deludes himself that it is, it is about he loneliness and desperation and he is willing to become what he hated to hurt Chuuya into feeling the despair he feels so someone else can experience it with him. He never wanted Chuuya to know what he was, and yet he was the one who became so insistent about Chuuya's humanity that it almost causes Chuuya to fall down the same path. Why was this different? He'd had the trauma with Pan and his humanity, what he didn't have was the isolation.

I want to emphasize how much his goal has shifted to be about his loneliness. I do not think it can be understated how much nine years of total solitude can affect a person's mind. Humans, including artificially created ones, are a social species. Social species experience severe cognitive decline when isolated. Though he'd resented him, he once had Rimbaud. That isolation allowed his resentment and trauma to fester into delusion and obsession and caused his sanity to slip.

Throughout Stormbringer, we see that decline. Particularly in Code 3 and 4. Even the way he talks slowly shifts from cocky and arrogant to desperate and fearful. Fear of himself, of confronting Rimbaud, and even what he did to Chuuya. He is not well, that much is obvious, and I think it's hugely in part to those nine years.

You sent me in a spiral with that one comment I'm still reeling. Is that where you were going with it???

hehehe

Tbh I need to reread the manga because I totally forgot about Mori's theory on weponizing abilities until you reminded me but it sure as hell is adding fuel to my theory, huh?

Basically I read a post about how real life Nakahara Chuuya had ties to Mori Ougai through his family, to the point where the poet spread rumors that he was named "Chuuya" because of Mori (he wasn't). Here's the post if you're interested.

But basically it points out that "N" could be referring to "Nakamura", instead of "Nakahara" like N claimed in Stormbringer. N lied about Chuuya being a copy instead of the original, so why would he not lie about this, too?

Real life Nakamura and Chuuya's father served in the military under RL Mori Ougai's command. In the Light Novel, it's mentioned that Chuuya's father had a high military rank, and not only that, he was also a doctor.

My theory is this.

In the world of BSD, N, Mori, and the man we learn to be Chuuya's father all served together during the War(tm) and became close. Both N and Mori were interested in harnessing abilities for military warfare. They learn about Nakaraha's son, a kid who just so happens to have an ability that could be manipulated into a singularity and conspire to take him away (the video and N's speech in the LN implies Chuuya's original ability might have been? Amplifying other abilities?? Which is super interesting, considering, y'know, Dazai's nullification ability).

N implies that the original ability user died in the creation of the singularity, but we know that's not the case. Also, here's an interesting tidbit from N's monologue: "The Arahabaki Project was, more or less, a highly classified state secret after all. Only one person was granted insight authorization."

He couldn't be referring to himself, he was one of the researchers. So why is this an important tidbit to mention?

What if Mori is the person who was offered insight authorization. This makes sense timeline-wise, considering that by the end of the project Mori would have still been in the military and Yosano would have still been under his command.

Mori knew the whole time who Chuuya was. He also knew Chuuya was human the entire time, hence why he so easily pointed out the graphite scar at the end, how he knew who Chuuya's parents were. And at some point in the future, this is gonna be revealed, and Chuuya is gonna find out.