#(main reason why im not on bsdtwt bc they don’t know how to have fun or how to talk about anything other that s/kk)

[rivalmelty]

one (1) person asked (@saltasaurus-loricatus) so i’m gonna ramble about my ranpo and fyodor narrative foils brainworms

possible spoiler warning under the cut

you’ll have to forgive the jumbled nature of my thoughts and if i forget anything bc i don’t have the manga/light novels/anime pulled up right this second to double check specifics these are more broad thoughts that ive been reiterating to friends over the years

okay so it’s not a detail in ln3 that’s explicitly stated but in the anime adaptation of untold origins, V is something to do with one fyodor dostoevsky and the way its place timeline wise the story of the play is a hell of a lot more in line with fyodor’s whole methodology even going as far as to “kidnap” (in quotations bc ranpo planned for it) ranpo simply because he was loudly parading around his own ability

now asagiri probably set this up as a way to show how the agency and fyodor have been both intertwined and diametrically opposed to each other since the beginning but To Me with the nature of the agency hinging on ranpo almost exclusively (you need a detective to have a detective agency) i took the first sentence of this paragraph and swapped out ‘the agency’ for ‘ranpo’

there’s also these four seconds in the s5 anime opening and when i tell you the psychological damage i took seeing fyodor and ranpo in the rainstorm while dazai was in the light i have a whole powerpoint presentation of the symbolisms and understanding of just these four seconds istg it has to mean something or anything especially when we know asagiri is at least somewhat involved in the anime scripts but i digress ill just say that fyodor facing the storm with his back to the audience vs ranpo facing the audience with his back to the storm is once again showing just how similar they are as characters even as opposing figureheads of their own organizations (fighting back the worms in my brain that want me to only talk about the significance of four seconds)

we know fyodor main motivation in bsd that being to eliminate ability users as they are a sin on mankind or whatever this is my main talking point with these two bc there’s only been two instances (i think) where fyodor and ranpo are within the same vicinity: the end of untold origins and right before the creation of amenogozen godman (which there is also a whole tangent for my. hm. como se dice frustration around that which might or might not end up in here idk) only two despite how ranpo aligns perfectly in fyodor’s motivations let me elaborate

in untold origins we know that V has a thing against ability users it falls in line with fyodor’s ideals still he watches ranpo (now idk if fyodor is aware this early on that ranpo doesn’t have an ability but we know dazai mentions it in prison that ranpo surpasses even ability users implying his lack of one) bc at this point we as an audience know ranpo isn’t gifted and if fyodor is successful, he would be the only main member of the ada to survive the wiping out of all ability users and even then ranpo could continue natsume’s wishes in retrieving the book and fixing everything single-handedly since we know ranpo would go to any lengths for his family (this would be where i would tangent again and yap about demon ranpo to my friends)

last year i said to my friend “if asagiri reveals that fyodor’s motives all stem from ranpo because if he wants a world without abilities and ranpo is like some all perfect man without an ability as god intended or something like that then like ranpo is proof that the world would be better without abilities thus resulting in the beginning of v into the doa i will explode” now i no longer think that his whole way of thinking stems from ranpo since now we know his ability however i would not be surprised if the creation of the doa was because of ranpo and fukuzawa since i dont think we ever got a why as to their origins and bc of fukuchi’s involvement a sort of tether to the agency and by extension ranpo

here’s another quote i’ve said to my friend about ranpo fyodor “the other man (ranpo) who is greatness personified and without an ability as [fyodor] so desires, surrounds himself with ability users and would risk anything for their safety ‘ranpo is everything the world could be’” and yet ranpo runs head first into a tripolar singularity to save the one man who he trusts wholeheartedly even if that man has placed his trust in the wrong hands leaving ranpo to have to pick up the pieces. ranpo still runs towards fukuzawa as a man without an ability as a kid with only one person to look out for him ranpo still runs even if he won’t survive to see an after and that’s where we are today

ranpo and fyodor being narrative foils yet ranpo has all but disappeared from the airport from fyodor’s line of sight from the narrative and i don’t understand but for the sake of holding myself off from yet another tangent i’ll leave it at that

sorry if that’s all over the place and incoherent i’m just not normal about them and the possibilities and everything that there is and that there is not i just find them so interesting and unexpected as foils considering their irl works but also i can’t really read irl dostoevsky i just didn’t click with it but im gonna be done with this if yall want to talk more about this please i would love to i love talking bsd theory sm