#HOWLING LIKE A RABID DOG. THIS IS THE BEST WAY THEY COULD HAVE ADAPTED IT

[ludinusdaleth]

(un)holy SHIT you guys

J'mon Sa Ord (making me gasp) in The Legend of Vox Machina Season 3, Episode 2, "Prisoners of Ank'Harel"

[yourwinedarksea]

i would literally read anything you write but consider this: self-loathing what-percent-human am i prompt

If I tell you, Witcher, that I can neither forgive Stregobor nor renounce my revenge, is that it?

I admit I’m a monster?

He leaves her in the muck and the blood of Blaviken. Leaves her bloodied and dirtied and dead.

But she follows him still, in the taste of cheap ale at the back of his mouth, in his dreams where she’s being cut open, picked apart and cut into pieces. A thing to be labelled and sectioned and studied.

A jar on a shelf.

No more princess.

It’s only in the after of leaving her in the muck, with her slit-throat drying bloody and brutal, and the stones being pelted at him, that he thinks about her words. Stregobor’s words.

You made a choice and you’ll never know if it’s the right one.

And he won’t, he realises, not ever.

.

.

               It’s in an apothecary he visits that he finds Renfri first. A jar on a shelf, a bit of a monster, no more than skin or blood or ground-up bone.

It’s not really her, he knows, these shelves are no homes for a princess, but he looks at the pieces floating inside and wonders just how small she ended up. Wonders how much monster a girl can have inside of her, how many pieces Stregobor saw fit to cut out. Ten percent? Twenty? If he took her tongue and her eyes and her liver. If her blood darkens on a shelf as the months pass.

If her heart, floating, suspended in brine, gathers dust.

What percent is enough to make someone monstrous?

They made you. Just as they made me.

Not quite, he thinks, but is it better to be mutated, better to have been a little boy forced to become something else— or is better to have been born wrong, to have never known the difference in your body, to have never seen your own face change?

But that’s all fucking wrong anyway.

When I cut my finger, I bleed. That’s human, right? When I overeat, my stomach aches. When I’m happy, I laugh. When I’m upset, I swear.

And when I hate someone, for stealing my whole life from me, I kill him.

And this is the worst of it, Geralt knows, that whatever Renfri was, whether Princess or Shrike or Monster… she was a girl first. And no matter what grew inside of her, no matter what tainted her. No matter what sun or moon she first drew breath beneath…

She was a girl first.

(And like him, she saw her body change, saw her face change, saw blood on her hands and tasted it in her mouth… a mutation of a different kind. But a mutation all the same. Forced to adapt. Forced to learn. Forced to go out into a world that could find them no home

but for the dirt, eventually.)

.

(Or a jar on a shelf.)

.

.

                 But still, Renfri is an apparition. His own personal haunting. A thing lingering at his back like the swords he carries, strapped and bound for use.

But she’s not so quiet as a ghost. She’s the spit from a merchant’s mouth, the curled lip of a man in the street, the tightening hand of a woman on her child’s shoulder.

They made me. Just as they made you.

Renfri is, he thinks, that moment between Geralt being a not-quite man moving through the motions of the life chosen for him and the moments where he is Witcher and Demon and Mutant and Butcher.

She’s always there in his head, with her cut throat and her bloody skin, asking him what he’s going to do if they come after him. How many stones can you take, she asks, how much spit and spite and spewed curses?

How heavy is your sword, Geralt?

Too heavy, he thinks, to lift it for so little a thing as a curled lip.

He isn’t sure he ever heard her really laugh, but she said she did, and he knows she bled (out in the muck) and so when she laughs at him in his head, he takes it as a true sound, a spoiled (rotting) princess with a laugh like a broken chime.

You’re a fool, Geralt.

It won’t be stones, next time.

 .

.

               As the years pass, Renfri fades into a voice in his head, into images behind his eyelids, no girl, no princess, just a phantom he knew once. But in her place, like chains on a floor, like a howling spirit cursed to roam, Butcher rises and spreads and Geralt of Rivia is less and less a thing to hire and more and more a rabid dog, frothing at the chain that holds him, waiting to be put down.

Butcher, they say, you’re not welcome here.

Butcher, they whisper, slaughtered a whole village.

Butcher, they spit, you’re the Butcher of Blaviken, aren’t you?

In his head, Renfri laughs.

You’ll be next, you know, she says, there’s a nice jar waiting, we’ll label it together.

 .

.

                 The Butcher of Blaviken—

And his fist is in the bard’s stomach before he really thinks it through, only knows that for a moment, when the bard had first called him Geralt of Rivia, it had been a moment where he’d forgotten Renfri.

There was no spit, no curled lip, no tightening hand on a child’s shoulder. Just a bard and his eager, awkward smile that grates at Geralt like a hacksaw. It reminds him, stupidly, of Marilka.

But for some reason, the bard doesn’t leave. He talks on and on and on like a song echoing through a cavern but—

 For a moment. For awhile. He forgets about jars and shelves and percentages. For a moment, for awhile, he lets the bard stay.

 .

.

               There’s a dead Witcher in a coffin of salt. He wants to ask the witch if she took any parts or if the monster only took the best bits to eat and left nothing worthwhile behind.

Is a Witcher body worth more or less? Does it taste different? Did the Striga taste her own kind on her tongue?

Autopsy, Stregobor had called it, and he wonders what the witch do with the parts left behind. If she’ll cut him open more, split the cavity of his chest-wound wider until she can peel him open the same way Geralt knows Renfri was. If this Wticher will find a home in a jar in a shelf, labelled, tucked away to gather dust.

How much of him is no different than the men already left half-eaten by the Striga? How much of him is mutated? How much monster hides inside a body so well formed to match a mans’?

Forty? Sixty?

Too much, he thinks, or maybe too little. Too little of both, caught in between like bit of sinew in between his teeth.  Too monstrous for man and too human for monsters.

 .

Or maybe it’s just that you’re more human than you want to be, Renfri says, as his blood surges up beneath his hand and the Striga is nothing but a half-feral girl-child, fearful of the monster that saved her. Black-eyed and armoured, black-eyed and pulling her into consciousness and out of the dark where everything is so much easier—

Maybe you’d like to be less human, wouldn’t that be easier?

And yes, he thinks, maybe, as the darkness takes him and all there is is the girl and the dawn chasing out the shadows of the rotting castle, chasing out the stench of a girl trapped in a body that wasn’t quite right, made of hunger and rage and a weak, jealous man’s obsessive love.

 He wonders what they’ll do with his body.

.

                 The princess? He asks, because he pulled her out of the dark of her own body, cut the mutated umbilical cord binding her to her mother’s corpse and let the girl slip free, six years too late.

I’ve arranged for her to stay with the Sisters of Melitele for awhile, Triss says. And the room smells like blood and death and magic. Like herbs and bandages soaked in his own blood.

(And Renfri, he thinks, like blood and muck and her eyes, wide— that final breath—)

Who’s Renfri? Hers was the only name you uttered, over and over again in your sleep.

Jars. He thinks. Labels. Dusty parts on a shelf.

My humanity, he thinks, like a stitch I can’t stop picking at.

(And he wonders then, if he could unwind himself, pick at the stitches that hold him together until he can see his own insides. Until he can jar himself up, label his own pieces and parts and weigh them out, find out how much he’s worth. How much coin his blood would fetch.

How much monster makes up Geralt.

My coin, he says instead and he can tell Triss is waiting for more, that she wants to open him up in a different way, to understand him without looking at his bones, but—

Is that all life is to you? Monsters and money?

But what is a Witcher without their body? What is Geralt if not Witcher, if not Mutant, if not Butcher?

It’s all it needs to be, he says.

[violentruin]

Okay, so I was thinking about how Dazai treated/trained Atsushi vs. Akutagawa. And it got really long.

Akutagawa

The Port Mafia is based on taking. Snatching something, even people’s lives, and making it your own, no matter what the cost is. They are violent people.

Dazai was brought up in an environment like this and wasn’t taught to be warm and loving. He wasn’t trained to be so towards others, either.

When he sees Akutagawa, he knows he’ll belong in the Port Mafia perfectly because of his nature. Akutagawa lived in the slums, at the bottom of the bottom, was vicious and stopped at nothing to get what he needed for himself and those around him.

To get someone like Akutagawa to join the Port Mafia, Dazai knows violence as reparations is best. So he kills the men that murdered Akutagawa’s friends (which what kind of oddly murderous-romantic-gesture is that?) to coerce Akutagawa into being his subordinate.

In all honesty, Dazai could have forced Akutagawa, he has the power, but he doesn’t.

Maybe Dazai saw part of himself in Aku?

Anyway, being nice in the Port Mafia doesn’t fucking fly. But he does give Akutagawa the chance to turn him down, and even warns him that there will be days where Aku will wish he was back in the slums. Akutagawa agrees in the weirdest but most fitting way (apparently he howls? Akutagawa didn’t see himself as human until he felt hatred).

A tip-top executive takes the time, goes out of his way, kills people meant to be under the Port Mafia’s protection, just to please Akutagawa. That and of itself from Dazai is a feat. (You might usually just buy a gotdamn gift or some food for a normal person? Murder would not be necessary??).

Akutagawa was called The Silent Rabid Dog for a reason. Coddling him wouldn’t have worked, speaking to him in niceties for training would have been futile, and Akutagawa wouldn’t have respected him.

In A Heartless Dog, Aku says Dazai gives him his second feeling that he’s ever had, and it’s respect. You can see that Akutagawa uses some of the same words to describe Dazai that have been used to describe himself: bottomless eyes, demonic, heartless, ruthless. Dazai is the embodiment of what Akutagawa wants to be.

Dazai is promoted the same day he goes looking for Akutagawa because as an executive he can take on any subordinate he chooses. He chooses Akutagawa as his first. So, of course, there are many experimental mistakes (as we see it) Dazai makes.

Dazai was only about a year or two older than Akutagawa, Aku describes him as a boy when he sees him. He says Dazai is thin and calls him a youth. Don’t forget that Akutagawa was going to kill Dazai, if not for the nullification ability he has.

Give a young boy who’s ready to die without blinking a reason to live, he’ll see nothing else but the person who saved him. He sees Dazai has some sort of demonic holiness, not even a god would cross his path.

Fast-forward to training. Dazai shoots, kicks, and punches Akutagawa, like really does the kid in. Akutagawa has been warned. I’m sure Dazai has done so more than just that first time they met. But! Dazai does all these things to strengthen Akutagawa because, as Dazai says in one scene, the enemy won’t wait for Akutagawa to get up or recover. He has to learn how to take some really fucking hard hits.

Dazai had to have undergone the same training, seeing that his ability can’t be used to attack. He’s using what he’s learned and what he knows is best. Dazai has a strange knack for knowing what will and won’t work.

When Akutagawa gets back up from every attack Dazai lays on him, you can see that he’s pleased, and he might even tell him “good.” Praise wasn’t a spoken factor, which probably wasn’t a part of Dazai’s training either.

Praise is reflected in the amount of fear inflicted upon enemies and the reputation given to you throughout Yokohama. When you look at it, Dazai broke and shaped Akutagawa into someone who could disobey Mori’s orders and get away with it because it benefited the Port Mafia in the end, even though most of Akutagawa’s motives were for himself.

Akutagawa becomes a mirror of Dazai, maybe stronger. The most feared man in Yokohama, even the Agency likes to steer clear of him.

For all the pain Dazai inflicts on him, it’s for good reason. He wants his first subordinate to survive, so he grinds Akutagawa into dust and builds him back up from the ashes. If it’s going to be anyone, it’ll be him doing it so no one else will be able to. The Port Mafia is a dog-eat-dog world and Dazai intends for his dog to prevail (and he does).

For dogs the most vital aspect of their lives is the person who takes them in, gives them reason to live. Dazai is that person to Akutagawa, the Port Mafia’s dog. Without all that ruthless training and showcasing of violence, Akutagawa wouldn’t have respected (loved) Dazai at all. He wouldn’t be at the height he is.

Atsushi  

The Agency is about giving, helping out those in need. They don’t use violence unless it’s needed. The complete opposite of the Port Mafia.

Here, Dazai does a complete 360. In the sense that he isn’t as serious and savage. He does have his times when people notice that look in his eye.

I like to assume that Dazai knew that Atsushi was the tiger way before he physically encountered him. Dazai has had to track people down before, for sure, and he has that strange knack for knowing things.

Dazai lures Atsushi in with the promise of food (like normal people). He’s eccentrically goofy in front of Atsushi, giving the boy a sense of security to let his guard down completely.

Dazai probably had it in the works to take on the tiger before he even said it aloud after nullifying Atsushi’s ability.

Onto training and how Dazai treats Atsushi. He doesn’t get physical the same way he did with Akutagawa because the Agency isn’t that type of organization.

He does let Atsushi go on that, seemingly, small mission with Naomi and Tanizaki. Dazai knows Higuchi isn’t who she says she is, knows who she works for, and knows Akutagawa would be out to get Atsushi. Dazai knows how violent it could get, is going to get, but let’s Atsushi get a taste of what it’s like out there.

Letting him see his new companions possibly die (like Aku did) and having to fight off someone like Akutagawa is a warning within itself, unsaid. There will be days when you wish you were back in the slums. Even though the Agency is unlike the Port Mafia, Atsushi will encounter gruesome fights (his leg gets torn off) and barbaric people.

Dazai’s training for Atsushi is to let him waddle off into the the world and experience it for himself, while keeping an eye on him, or someone else from the Agency to do so. (In the Port Mafia he had to keep Akutagawa in check all on his own for various reasons).

He is gentler with Atsushi because the tactics he used with Akutagawa won’t fly, not only because that’s not how it works in the Agency, but because it won’t work correctly. Atsushi is an anxious mess already because the people in the orphanage belittled him at every turn, Dazai can’t use that.

He might also be learning from his mistakes with Akutagawa (he’s dependent and his loyalty to Dazai is a weakness, as seen when he jumped for the earpiece just to speak to him). Dazai doesn’t want Atsushi to become entangled so deeply with him like that and become a liability.

Dazai does throw Atsushi’s limp body away in the first episode (as Dazai also leaves Chuuya behind after using Corruption because maybe after Oda, anything akin to a dead male body? He doesn’t want to hold it). And he slaps Atsushi to knock him out of his self-pity trance after Q uses his ability on him.

Dazai isn’t one to show affection to his subordinates and the slap he delivers to Atsushi is one of the first traces of like…his past self in a way? He’s never laid a hand on Atsushi that way before and his demeanor in that moment reminds me of his Dark Era days. If Akutagawa had broken down like that, Dazai might have punched him. But, once again, he takes a different route that both suits Atsushi’s soft nature and gets his point across.

Dazai lets Atsushi take baby steps and the community in the Agency also “raises” him.

With Akutagawa, Dazai was young with other troubling responsibilities and had to quickly teach his subordinate for use, all at the same time. Also, the Port Mafia is about being ruthless, so he had to keep nurturing that part within Akutagawa.

Overall, Akutagawa was taken in by Dazai at a crucial time in his youth, and formed an attachment to Dazai because of it. They were both too young for what they were going through, and Dazai could have gone lighter on Akutagawa, but Akutagawa wouldn’t have wanted him to, Dazai’s brutality is one of the reasons Akutagawa looks up to him.

All he wants is recognition, not a lighter kick to the gut, and Dazai knew this. If he had been gentle with Akutagawa, he wouldn’t have survived in the Port Mafia, probably would have been killed. Dazai knew what he was doing and knew it needed to be done if he wanted Akutagawa to survive and hone his skill.

I’d say Dazai approved of Akutagawa before he met him. He just wanted to sharpen his skills and being gentle wasn’t the way to do that, or to earn Akutagawa’s respect. Dazai was impressed with Akutagawa from the first time they met, a second too late and Akutagawa might have just killed, or maimed, Dazai. Atsushi tells him that his mentor recognized Akutagawa a long time ago. Dazai would have killed him otherwise.

But Dazai being Dazai, he doesn’t know how to be affectionate. He didn’t grow up around affectionate people. Reading A Heartless Dog,  it seems to be heavily implied that Akutagawa is a younger, mirror image of Dazai. I mean, how cute (and sad) is that?

Atsushi lived his life in a cold home, berated each day. He’s timid because he had structure and rules, but grew without seeing his own worth. Dazai adapts to this, and I don’t think Fukuzawa (or Oda because he loved orphans) would approve of him training Atsushi the way he did Aku (which Oda probably told him to go easy on the kid at some point), and because of Fukuzawa, Atsushi can control his abilities. He just needed to believe in himself. Akutagawa had to learn how to hone and control his own ability through himself and Dazai’s rigid structure.

I love Akutagawa and Atsushi lots and lots, and I just wanted to study this. I didn’t read the manga. I’ve only watched the anime and read Akutagawa’s side story, A Heartless Dog. Feel free to correct me on certain things or if I need to add stuff.