#And you only pass if you’re Very.

[anti-dazai-blog]

36- Playing dead (and other complaints)

Welcome back to the Anti-Dazai Series!! Please be proud of me, I’m sticking to my self-imposed once a week schedule. 

________________________________________

When We last left off, Akutagawa and Atsushi were fighting Francis on top of the Moby Dick. Meanwhile, Kyoka is trapped as a captive in a small government plane. Things are not looking good for our protagonists.

If you’re reading this, you already know what happens afterwards: Akutagawa and Atsushi defeat Francis, retrieve the control device for the airship, and manage to stop the countdown. Some mysterious person from the shadows hacks the device and the airship nearly crashes, but Kyoka is willing to sacrifice herself by crashing the military plane she’s on into the airship. 

She goes through with her plan, and Akutagawa and Atsushi make it safely back to shore.

Naturally Atsushi is traumatized. Not so much from the fight with Francis, but rather from the one person he managed to save killing herself for his sake. 

When he first met Kyoka, she was about to sacrifice herself for the sake of the mafia, and then for the sake of the civilians on the train. Atsushi managed to talk her out of the former and protect her from the latter. Then, the agency was going to hand her over to the police, who would execute her for her crimes. Atsushi begged them to give her a chance and allow her to stay in the agency. Even Kyoka herself tried to turn herself in for her crimes. Then she was captured by Akutagawa, and tried to sacrifice herself for the fourth time in two days by trying to blow the ship up with explosives. (This girl is one of the most suicidal characters in the series, and Atsushi and Kunikida are close behind her.) Going against Kunikida’s orders, Atsushi went back and saved her.

And after all of that. After Atsushi has devoted himself to trying to save this one person—to try and do whatever it takes to show her that life is worth living and there is no need to sacrifice herself when she has the agency to rely on—she goes and sacrifices herself.

And Dazai—knowing full well about Atsushi’s past, knowing full well of Atsushi’s devotion to saving Kyoka, and knowing full well that Kyoka survived—shows up and says “It was all for the best, Atsushi-kun. Kyoka-chan conquered herself and saved the city.” He looks Atsushi dead in the eye and says “It was a painful way to end it, yes. But there was a reason why it had to go this way.”

He knows that Kyoka’s alive. For the sake of amusement, or a dramatic reveal, he finds it necessary to say “lmao yeah that sure is a painful way to die. Sucks it had to end like this but y’know. It do be like that sometimes.”

Regardless of whether or not Kyoka died, playing along with it for even a second would cause lasting trauma. There’s a reason the American government is beginning to look into what laws to pass surrounding lockdown drills [for non-Americans: practice drills in case of a school shooting]. There’s a reason why the state of California is trying to ban schools playing gunfire sounds during lockdowns—the students are unaware if the drill is real or fake, and by making it appear real, it will form as the same trauma that an actual school shooter would give them. Telling those students afterwards that it was all fake doesn’t mitigate any of that.

Likewise, pretending someone is dead, even for a second, doesn’t mitigate the trauma caused by it. Atsushi will permanently have this trauma of losing Kyoka. This is not something that will easily be brushed off. 

And now that Dazai’s done traumatizing one half of the duo that defeated the guild’s leader, he has to get started on the other half. 

Akutagawa fought hard. Akutagawa could desperately use some reassurance from a certain former mentor of his—and logically, that mentor has every reason to give it. Akutagawa fulfilled what he was set up to do—he partnered with Atsushi and worked together to combine their abilities and defeat an enemy leader. 

Akuatagwa tries to present himself to Dazai as a stronger person than he was when they last spoke. Akutagawa says that he’ll show Dazai his strength. Yet Dazai’s first words are “will you now? Aren’t you at your limit?” The first words out of his mouth are a petty insult—after everything Akutagawa has done— and the only thing he get is mocked by his former mentor. 

Of course the next words out of Dazai mouth are “you’ve gotten stronger, huh?”

In flirting terms, this would be called negging. 

For those unfamiliar, negging is “an act of emotional manipulation whereby a person makes a deliberate backhanded compliment […] to another person to undermine their confidence and attempt to engender in them a need for the manipulator’s approval.” [Wikipedia, also I hate citing sources, this is not an academic paper, leave me alone]. 

Dazai first makes a backhanded comment about Akutagawa’s current (weaker) state, before giving him a halfhearted compliment on his strength. This is like saying “eh, you’ve done well this time, but could be better. I’m sure some people (like Atsushi, for example) could fight an overpowered ability user, win, and then NOTnearly pass out afterwards. Maybe if you were like that, I could give you a real compliment”

This is another move to drive Akutagawa to push himself harder (harder than he needs to. Harder than he should. [especially given his lung condition]), and to have him devote himself and his life to winning Dazai’s approval. Which, of course, he’s already doing. But it never hurts to increase your disciple’s devotion tenfold, right?

After all of that, Akutagawa does in fact pass out. For funsies, Dazai moves out of the way (we can’t be catching our formers mentees in front of our current mentee—how scandalous!), and allows Akutagawa to slam into the concrete.

If this were more medically accurate, Akutagawa may have lasting brain damage from hitting his head like that. Luckily we’re playing by manga logic here (we weren’t when Akutagawa lost his fight to Atsushi in season 1 and had a hundred broken bones, but we’re nothing if not inconsistent). So we won’t hold Dazai to such a high standard of trying to mitigate brain damage, since brain damage might not even exist in the bsd world. 

_______________________________________________

And that’s that for this week’s entry!! Join me again next week to get right back into the Kyoka content (I’m pretty sure that’ll be the main thing in next week’s chapter). Writing this one has made me think about Kyoka more than I ever had in the past and I’m pretty concerned about how self-destructive she is. This girl would take any opportunity to die.

[merakiui]

Siscon rollo is all fun and games until he gives you a surprise virginity check only to find you stuffed full of dragon cum 🤷‍♀️

Pulling your panties aside to check if your hymen is still intact and if you’re still tight as a virgin, but he’s greeted to the obscene sight of cum drooling from your pussy, sticky and stringing from your folds to the fabric of your panties and ohhhhh!!!! OTL Malleus who literally just came inside you fifteen minutes ago. This is unacceptable behavior. >:( how dare you parade around with that monster’s seed inside you!!!

The only logical course of action is to pin you down and scrape all the cum out of you with his fingers until you’re clean again, all while lecturing you on how imperative it is that you steer clear of foul mages, especially Malleus himself. :) he will not allow his dear sister to fall into the clutches of that beastly mage!!!

[spitblaze]

You know I probably would have figured out something was up with me genderwise sooner if people assigned female at birth were not conditioned from a young age to absolutely loathe their bodies in order to sell beauty products and diets and unattainable standards

[supernova2395]

Not going to lie, I think the worst thing you can do to your narrative is build up to something and then not deliver it. It just devalues the rest of your story and leaves people going, “Then what was even the point of introducing this???”

[rist-ix]

https://www.tumblr.com/rist-ix/749015401700229120 not you reblogging this when you ship bloom with the man who murdered her family 😭

Bloom's into ppl who slay! Hope this helps :3

[themoonunderstoodmydadjokes]

…

[james-spooky]

this is a test

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

they call me the griever because halfway through a thing I enjoy I’m already sad that it’s closer to being over

[flippedorbit]

it pisses me off how differently my mother treated me when i was my sister’s age compared to how she treats my sister currently

[clowningcrows]

accidentally took a fairly objective step away from myself today and went. oh shit. i’m like REALLY hard on myself aren’t i?

[moxymaxing]

dead mom gang rise up

[r0semultiverse]

A message to the recent & future transgender pick-mes.

If you’re a trans pick-me (no matter where you align with gender) there’s a special place in Hell just for you & I don’t even believe in Hell. Having trauma isn’t excusing your actions of going out of your way to hurt other people actively. It explains that it comes from a place of hurt potentially or you’re just turning into a rage-bait influencer because it makes you money. Either way you come after trans people who don’t do being trans exactly like you so they “aren’t really trans.” You get a taste of the right-wing rage-bait money pot & you wanna keep going because money & maybe some weird part of you thinks this will save you from transphobic attacks? Honey, we’re all just fags to them no matter how we look or act. Even if you’re a cis person not following the norm or unaware of the politics of it all, you’re still just a faggot to them who they will eventually want to snuff out. I’m saying this as a tranny fag just to be clear! You can’t be playing these exclusion games & thinking it’s going to make you powerful! Even Milo Yionnapolis or whatever that fucker’s name was got dropped by the Trump Administration! They do not like us & they never will like us! Democrat, republican, whatever it is; if it’s capitalist, it doesn’t like us! No matter how much you lick those boots, it’ll do you no good. You’re a faggot/tranny just like me & the rest of us, that’s how these suits see it & always will see it no matter how much you try to prove “I’m one of the good ones.” They aren’t going to save you, we’re all on the chopping block to them no matter what our politics are. These government folks don’t see any of us as “one of the good ones.” Get over yourself, grow the fuck up, and stand side-by-side with your transsexual siblings! All we have is each other, these cis people aren’t shit! 💜 Down with cis! 💜

[cuteniarose]

It’s almost 6 a.m and I can’t sleep because I’m being plagued by thoughts of The Latest OC

[theriverdalereviewer]

obsessed with the way the republican party’s two biggest platforms (pro police and anti gun control) literally led to its presidential candidate getting shot at

[quietwingsinthesky]

funniest thing about even is that if ten had taken them to a pride parade, because of their whole. Everything. they would have no idea what is being celebrated or why. but they would be so happy to be included

[idk-my-aesthetic]

Respectfully if you are on a train and take up a table seat and don’t even use it I am eating your phone