#and needing to be like Crime and Punishment (which is so complex but also Fyodor isn't in the same position as Raskolnikov)

[kikizoshi]

I've spent so much time outlining that in years I've written barely anything, and yet I'm still so far from ever being able to write... I have to be going about this wrong, but idk what else to do. It's this viscous spiral of not being able to write without a goal, but not being able to develop the goal properly.

[disabledstraydogs]

OMG BSD SAW AU....pls infodump if u wish. Sawtism twinsies

(Shakes your paw) Sawtism.....

The details of the AU are as follows

TW for typical saw things ie gore (although we haven't described anything), death, and some weird dynamic relationship stuff between Dazai and Chuuya (by this I mean they have complex feelings and have tried to kill each other miltiple times)

Natsume is the OG Jigsaw... Kinda? He had the idea while killing someone and was like 'wouldn't it be fucked it this happened on a regular basis' and Mori took that way too seriously

So I guess the OG jigsaw is Mori (everything in this AU is his fault) but he claims that it's Natsume who 'inspired him on the divine path of righteousness' (he's a shitty jigsaw though and claims to have morals but like. Doesn't. As in he punishes Chuuya for setting up the bathroom incorrectly but also does inescapeable saw traps for people he really doesn't like).

Mori's first victim was possibly Tachihara? I'm unsure about the characer but the trap was successful in killing him so Mori kinda rolled with from there. Next is Chuuya, who is put into the reverse beartrap, survives and becomes an apprentice.

Dazai is next. He's been poking around as a journalist and getting a bit too close to Mori for his liking so he has Chuuya kidnap him and put him in the bathroom trap alongside Fyodor, who's role I'm not too sure of. He's probably killed someone (or a few people) and Mori is all 'killing is distasteful' type of thing.

The trap goes like saw does and in the end Dazai and Fyodor have this scene (which could happen in canon if Asagiri wasn't a fucking coward)

Dazai makes it out, fully intending on saving Fyodor and killing himself in the process. But in the end Fyodor dies on the bathroom floor and he survives, then is recruited by Mori as a jigsaw apprentice.

Dazai accepts (he has no other choice) but doesn't know at first that Chuuya is the one who set up the bathroom trap 'insufficiently' which leads to Fyodor dying (which he heavily blames himself for- Idk if he knows about Fyodor's crimes or even cares about them at this point because like. Killing a few people normally is better than torturing them).

It's only during one of Mori's other games that Dazai finds out Chuuya's role and then sets up a trap for them (although Dazai has feelings for Chuuya but they're very deeply messed up because it's like 'you killed my homoerrotic bathroom buddy but not me. Why? Why do I deserve to live? Why do you deserve to live? I'm good you're bad and need to be punished. You're sick but so am I.' type of thing)

Anyway Dazai kills Mori and becomes the next Jigsaw (Chuuya survives but probably only with one eye and less limbs than before) and because of this Dazai goes onto recrut Akutagawa (who was probably a cop working on the case) and then stuff happens with Atsushi (idk what. Maybe he's Aku's first 'project').

That's where we're at with the AU so far... Thinking of killing a few more BSD characters (specifically Nikolai who's arc probably ties into Fyodor's) but the details are not fully fleshed out yet.... If you have any imput then feel free to lmk.

[blue-howlite]

Right so now we rambling on Fyodor because that bitch really is something else.

I need to put order in my head but it's not easy when all I have is parallels between Dostoevskij's books and BSD Fyodor's actions.

Let's start by the latter.

So, one of the latest chapters basically confirmed that he can't kill ability users and so his ability only allows him to kill 'normal' people. This alone contains probably the biggest reference to the book Crime and Punishment, where the protagonist believes in a separation between people: the super humans and the mass, the insects. Super humans' actions are always justified (one example of super human the protagonist proposed was Napoleone Bonaparte, someone everyone in Europe at the time knew about) even when they involve killing. In particular the protagonist tries to find out if he's one of the super humans by killing someone he determined was from the mass, an old woman he defines a "pest".

So you can clearly see the parallel here: Fyodor's ability can't kill other 'superhumans' but he can kill 'insects'.

But what were Dostoevskij's thoughts on this idea, the concept of super humans?

As someone who read some of his books I can say: he didn't believe in that.

Every time a character from Dostoevskij's stories tries to be above others, they end up badly. Crime and Punishment is the clearest example, but The brothers Karamazov can also be considered an example of that (Ivan suggests that in a world with no God everything is allowed, which is basically putting humans above divinity; then one of his brothers thinks of putting his idea into action and things go not so well for him, not just as punishment for a murder but also, if you will, as a punishment for thinking he was above the person he killed and had the right to do so; this might sound like a stretch but once you rotate the idea in your head for a bit you'll see what I'm talking about). In The Idiot, the protagonist, even though in a positive way, acts and behaves in a way that puts him above others, and if you read the story you know it doesn't end well. Even in White nights (is that the English title? I hope so) the protagonist isolates himself by daydreaming and says things that make you understand that he puts himself on a different plane from others; again, he doesn't have his happy ending.

So Dostoevskij really didn't believe in the idea of someone being above others.

We, in Bungou Stray Dogs, find this concept in Fyodor's desire to rid the world of abilities. It might seem like an action dictated by his god complex (and it probably is), but it's in fact how Fyodor thinks things should be. Even if it means not having his ability as an advantage against normal humans, Fyodor wants a world where no human is born superior to others, where no super humans exist. Super humans in fact don't exist in his vision and he wants to make that vision effective.

Of course this is also a plot device to make Atsushi (we keep forgetting he is the protagonist) think about his ability once again and the possibility to get rid of it. Because come on that's where this is pointing plot wise.

[im-a-chunky-potato]

IM SO SORRY I'VE BEEN SLEEPING!

No clue if you still want to continue this after... 9 hours of silence but oh well.

Dazai is certainly something. I think an anti ability is the best way to describe what he has but it's so complicated.

My guess is that all men are equal wouldn't affect him? Because that in itself is a problem. If you gain control over an anti ability using an ability that would create a singularity I guess?

However this also means he can never touch fukuzawa, which is kind of sad.

ooh my guess is that it's always active not because it has to be but as a reflex from the port mafia. So even when he's asleep it's always at hand.

And it is a full body thing! When he was in the dungeon and encountered rashouman I believe it was deactivated after touching his neck.

As for if he can stop abilities mid start, my guess is yes? I'm mostly thinking about q's doll but I think he could.

It seems some abilities he can only attack at the source too. Q's ability could only be deactivated by touching the doll, and he couldn't deactivate Rimbauds ability by touching the old boss, even though it was being controlled by his ability. But I wonder why it's only some this relates too.

It seems space related abilities can affect him as long as he's not touching them. It also seems like his ability can spread through clothing, which is really interesting. (Thinking about how they beat Rimbaud in the 15 ln)

I need to find the scene but the in the dead apple movie during the op we got a scene where fog covered the ground and we got a look at both pm and Ada dazai. I wonder if that was the manifestation of his ability... it'd be wonderfully ironic, no longer human took the form of his younger self.

I could go on about dead apple for hours. What on earth was that??? It was perfectly described when they said nobody would ever be able to fully understand this because of the complexity of the 3 people at its center.

(Also what on earth was that scene with fyodor? The whole I am crime and I am punishment speech. So confusing.)

Youre so right! I could ramble on like this for hours and still not get anywhere.

Okay, this will probably be worded poorly but wouldn't it be interesting if Atsushi could sense special abilities using his full tiger form?

Like let's say one day he fully learns to control his tiger... if he could maintain that form and be in control he would technically be both human and special ability, merged into one.

Whicj should give his already heightened senses a huge boost.

Maybe he would be able to sniff out special abilities or people who have them?

So he would be able to sense the book or where it is...

Edit: ooh @caffeiiine would love to hear your thoughts on this. If you don't mind me asking ofc!

[fyodcrs]

So, let me get into my Fyodor and Sigma theory, since Dazai choosing Sigma as the thing he thinks is going to win him victory has gotten me thinking again. 

When I said a couple chapters ago that Sigma is going to be the reason for Fyodor’s downfall, I didn’t necessarily mean that Sigma is going to be the cause of Fyodor’s death. What I meant is that Sigma is the key to Fyodor’s redemption.

Whether or not Fyodor dies in the end, I think he’s going to go through a redemption arc of some sort, like Fitzgerald - and more importantly, like Dazai. I think he’ll start to doubt. And this will either cause him to make a fatal mistake, or it will lead to him completely forfeiting this deadly chess game between him and Dazai. In fact, I think this is the only way he’s going to be defeated. Not only is this what usually happens with villains in BSD - Fitzgerald, Akutagawa - but redemption is what the real Dostoevsky’s novel is all about. 

Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, which Fyodor’s character is based on - as well as his novel House of the Dead, which Fyodor’s character also references - is all about a character that commits a terrible act but finds redemption and undergoes a spiritual reawakening. I think this is very likely what’ll happen with Fyodor, in some fashion. And if it does, it won’t be because he’s influenced by Dazai’s beliefs (frankly, Dazai’s misconception of God is even worse than Fyodor’s, and a hell of a lot more depressing), nor will it be because of Nikolai trying to kill him (Fyodor predicted this all along, let’s not kid ourselves). It’ll be because of Sigma.

In Crime and Punishment, the main character is Raskolnikov, a young man who is highly intelligent and well educated but unemployed and desperately poor. He murders an old woman in cold blood. The reasons he kills her are complex, but essentially he targets her because he sees her as evil, and he sees himself as having a right to kill her because his education and intelligence put him above other people. He’s ultimately brought to justice, but not because he’s caught; rather, he turns himself in. Through a large portion of the book, there’s a little cat-and-mouse game going on between him and the clever detective assigned to the murder case, Porfiry. But the vast majority of the book isn’t about this; it’s about Raskolnikov’s moral struggle with what he’s done. Raskolnikov doesn’t turn himself in because he cracks under the pressure; he turns himself in because of Sonia, the young woman he falls in love with, and to whom he first confesses his guilt. Sonia is in the same position Raskolnikov is in, living in abject poverty. Raskolnikov tells her that her situation will drive her to misery - as his situation has driven him - but Sonia finds hope and strength in her Christian faith. Her kindness and purity are a stark contrast to Raskolnikov’s despair, rage, and alienation from the world. It’s because of her that instead of being destroyed by his guilt, Raskolnikov is able to face what he’s done and redeem himself. And that’s the whole point of the novel - not that Raskolnikov has fallen into the deepest pit of despair, but that in the end he’s starting to crawl out of it. Sonia’s faith not only keeps her from being ruined by her own hardships, it also allows her to save Raskolnikov. The theme of the novel is finding strength and redemption through love and religious faith (specifically Christian). 

If Fyodor’s character is meant to follow a kind of similar path to the character of Raskolnikov (and to be fair, the characters in BSD only loosely tie into their respective novels), he’ll need a Sonia-like figure to contrast his despair and condemnation of the world with hope, faith, the strength of will to accept the world for what it is, and an equally strong desire to live. This is quite obviously not Dazai (though the way they contrast each other is equally interesting). 

So who better for this role than Sigma?

I’ve said this before - I believe that Fyodor is seeking salvation for his own soul. He’s convinced that erasing abilities and ability-users (including himself) from the world is the only way to save all of humanity, and to save himself. Dazai might have already planted the seeds of doubt in Fyodor’s mind as to whether or not he’s right about this. But Sigma, I think, is the only one that could really change his mind, or make him doubt to the point that he loses his conviction.

And that’s because Sigma is different. Fyodor at first says that Sigma is an “ordinary man,” and that he’s “the strongest” because there’s nothing deadlier than an ordinary man pushed to his limits. But when Dazai calls him out on his bullshit and says that he’s figured out that the Sky Casino had been created by the Book, Fyodor flips the script and drops the bombshell: Sigma, too, was created by the Book. And then he says this about Sigma:

He puts Sigma even above himself and Dazai. He explicitly separates Sigma from the rest of humanity, from the entirety of the world he condemns. 

I think it’s very important that Fyodor sees Sigma this way, because maybe it means that something in him actually cares for Sigma. That he doesn’t see Sigma as deserving of “punishment,” the way he sees everyone else.

And if he has to actually confront Sigma, as a weapon being used against him, maybe he’ll hesitate.

The way Sonia, who is above the world’s misery, is able to save Raskolnikov from himself, maybe Sigma, who is “the ultimate outsider” in this world of sinful and foolish people, can save Fyodor from himself. In the world of Crime and Punishment, Sonia is “the strongest” because of her faith, purity, and goodness. In a word, she’s a saint. I think Sigma will turn out to be “the strongest,” which in this case means being stronger than Fyodor, because he’s simply a good person. He’s like Atsushi - he just wants to live, and to have a reason for living. 

I could see a similar sort of situation to what there is with Dazai and Atsushi happening with Sigma and Fyodor. The relationship between Atsushi and Dazai is a complex one, but both of them bring out the best in each other. Whenever Atsushi is in doubt about himself or what choice to make, he thinks of Dazai; that Dazai saved him gives him purpose, compels him to want to do the same for others, like Kyouka, and no doubt, like Sigma. In many ways, Dazai is the center of Atsushi’s world. And Atsushi appears to be the only other person besides Odasaku that Dazai has formed a genuine emotional bond with. Dazai is not a kind person, but he’s far kinder to Atsushi than he’s ever been to anyone else (in particular Akutagawa). He seems to actually care about Atsushi. 

I could see something similar being the case with Sigma and Fyodor - that Fyodor becomes central to Sigma’s understanding of himself and his purpose, while Sigma might be someone Fyodor is able to develop a real emotional bond to, something he might never have had with anyone else, even Nikolai (especially Nikolai).  

There’s also the fact that Fyodor is responsible for creating Sigma. This could be a very interesting dynamic for the both of them, if explored. 

This is all speculation and I might be putting way too much emphasis on the real Dostoevsky’s novel. Fyodor’s character could very well take a more traditional villain path and all my talk about redemption arcs turn out to be wishful thinking. And we still don’t know who Sigma is supposed to represent, so I can’t speculate much about his character beyond the fact that he’s pretty much guaranteed to become a part of the ADA found family (I think we all agree on that, lol).

Either way, though, I feel like Sigma is going to be central to what happens with Fyodor from this point on, even more so than Nikolai. Because, let’s be honest with ourselves, both Fyodor and Dazai are going to outwit Nikolai and survive this little game of his. Fyodor just outsmarted Ranpo, for Heaven’s sake. And Fyodor and Dazai have been shown to be so evenly matched that I’m hard-pressed to believe that this is going to end simply because Dazai outmaneuvers Fyodor. Something more needs to happen. And I think Sigma is the key.

The fact is, I think Fyodor will only lose if he starts to question himself. And I believe Sigma is the only one who could make him question himself.  

[shepherds-of-haven]

What would be each character’s favorite classic book if they had to choose? As a bonus, what are your favorite classic books Lena?

This question came to me because I just finished Great Expectations and I am forever ruined🥲Looking for some recommendations!

Hi there, thank you for your interesting questions! I'll start with some of my favorite classics in the hopes that some of them might strike your fancy, and then move on to the characters!

Note: I should put a disclaimer that, as is the case for many classics, some of these examples are quite dark or may contain disturbing themes or content matter, so just letting you know that you may have to look up content warnings for some of these titles if you feel the need to! 

Also, the ones with an asterisk (*) are ones I think you might particularly enjoy if you liked Great Expectations!

Some of my favorite classics:

East of Eden by John Steinbeck - my absolute favorite "classic" novel and a brilliant masterpiece in my opinion! Can't emphasize strongly enough how great the prose, narrative themes, emotions, and characters are, and it's definitely Steinbeck's best novel!

Germinal by Emile Zola * - an incredible work and magnum opus by Zola, this details the harsh conditions of a coal miners' strike in Northern France and is similar in its gritty depiction of poverty to Great Expectations. Warning: it is uncompromisingly brutal and was praised at the time for its shocking realism, so be aware that it has quite a darkness to it!

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky * - I love Crime and Punishment as a pairing to East of Eden, and I also think it's the best of Dostoevsky's novels (a bone of contention between me and my partner, who insists it's actually The Brothers Karamazov) and an incredible character study; I think if you like the characters in Great Expectations, you might feel similarly while reading Crime and Punishment, though it also covers dark subject matter!

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - both Dracula and Frankenstein are absolutely wonderful stories on their own, but also incredibly important lenses into the Victorian era and its culture and beliefs! Also, the beginnings of monster fiction! How could you say no to that?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - If you read Jane Eyre, you absolutely must read Wide Sargasso Sea, which is a postcolonial and feminist rebuttal to Jane Eyre told from the perspective of Mr. Rochester's "insane wife" in the attic!

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens * - Actually my favorite of Dickens' novels (even moreso than Great Expectations) and a must-read if you haven't already read it!

Greek classics - My favorites include The Oresteia, The Iliad (I particularly enjoy Caroline Alexander's translation), and The Aeneid.

Japanese classics - There are a few of these, but the one that's stuck the most with me was The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Although it provides a fascinating look at the court life of Japanese nobles at the time (and is thought to be the world's first true novel, or at least the world's earliest classic novel), it is notoriously wily when it comes to its descriptions, complex language and grammar, and difficulties with translations, so something to be aware of!

Shakespeare - My favorites include Hamlet, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Coriolanus.

Finally, let's move on to what classics would be the characters' favorites!

Blade: The Iliad, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Count of Monte Cristo

Trouble: The Three Musketeers, War of the Worlds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Dracula

Tallys: Tess of the D'Ubervilles, The Scarlet Letter

Shery: Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Little Women

Riel: Crime and Punishment, Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost

Chase: The Great Gatsby, Candide

Red: Gulliver's Travels, Through the Looking-Glass, The Island of Dr. Moreau

Ayla: Pygmalion, A Doll's House

Briony: Anne of Green Gables, The Once and Future King, Le Morte d'Arthur

Lavinet: Madame Bovary, Gone with the Wind

Halek: A Farewell to Arms, Ask the Dust, The Big Sleep

[hamliet]

Pain, Fear, Death, and God: Fyodor and Gogol as Two Halves of Kirillov

God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.

-Alexei Kirillov, Demons

So remember how when I first read Bungou Stray Dogs I started screeching incoherently and turned those screeches into a somewhat-coherent meta on how Fyodor in BSD was modeled after Alexei Kirillov from Dostoyesvky’s Demons? 

Well, here’s the follow up.

As I said in my previous meta, Demons is (tied with Crime and Punishment) my favorite novel of all time, and Alexei Kirillov is my very favorite character of all time, in any fictional medium, ever. He’s a walking bundle of paradoxes, existential angst and stunning compassion. But Demons is not necessarily a popular novel by Dostoyevsky standards and so Kirillov, despite being written about by literary critics and Camus, is somewhat obscure. That Asagiri is so clearly inspired by his character is shocking and thrilling for me; I’m pinching myself. 

The tl;dr version of Kirillov is that his whole schtick is that he wants to kill himself to prove that he is free and thereby can escape. It’s far more nuanced and complex, as I’ll go into, but essentially both Gogol and Fyodor’s philosophies and goals reflect this.

Gogol does not want to kill Fyodor because he hates Fyodor; rather, it’s because Gogol and Fyodor are two halves of a whole. They are a paradox together, embodying Kirillov’s complexity. Like Kirillov, they are suicidal, because killing one of them is like killing themselves. To achieve their goals, they both need to die. 

Fyodor reminds Gogol that he is human and can connect; therefore, Gogol wants to kill him to assert his free will, as he views connections as a cage. Similarly, while we haven’t gotten much insight into Fyodor’s thoughts on Gogol, I think it’s highly likely Fyodor allowed Gogol to kill himself (he thought) because he clings to his beliefs at the expense of his (very much there) empathy, and it’s better for his goals if people who provoke his empathy die. Basically: Fyodor allowed Gogol to “die” not because he doesn’t care about him, but because he does. 

For a brief background: Demons itself is an allegory about how people who become consumed by their ideas become possessed by said ideas; thus, they become devils or demons. The actual title of the novel, Бесы, is difficult to translate, hence why it has three different titles in English: The Possessed, The Devils, and Demons. The word “Бесы” in Russian refers to the ones doing the possessing, which is why the latter two are generally considered to be more accurate translations of the title. In particular, the novel demonstrates the tragic consequences of Russian nihilism and singles out moral nihilism. (It’s also looked to as a rather eerie novel, because almost everything it wrote about happening in a--then fictional--political revolution is exactly what happened in Russia a few decades later.) 

As I wrote in my previous meta, Fyodor, like Kirillov, is “consumed” by his ideas, something Kirillov laments in Demons. Fyodor’s consumption with his ideals means that he is willing to sacrifice everything for his goals. Gogol, too, shares this trait. 

Where they differ is in motivations for their respective plans, motives they share with Kirillov. Kirillov’s master plan is to commit suicide for two reasons: firstly, that he has free will and will thereby inspire society to live freely, and secondly, because he sees life as nonsensically painful and thereby not worth living. The first reflects Gogol’s personal aims, and the second Fyodor’s.

Let’s discuss Kirillov and Fyodor first. Kirillov believes that mankind invented God (keep in mind the context this was written in; God=Russian Orthodox Christianity) to go on living because of the absurdity of life. 

Listen: this man was the highest on all the earth, he constituted what it was to live for. Without this man the whole planet with everything on it is--madness only. There has not been one like Him before or since, not ever, even to the point of miracle. This is the miracle, that there has not been and never will be such a one. And if so, if the laws of nature did not pity even This One, did not pity even their own miracle, but made Him, too, live amidst a lie and die for a lie, then the whole planet is a lie, and stands upon a lie and a stupid mockery. Then the very laws of the planet are a lie and a devil's vaudeville. Why live then, answer me, if you're a man.”

Fyodor's disgust for the world and determination to save it from the sin of abilities reflects this same attitude. Life is wrong, so it should cease to exist. Abilities are wrong, so everyone with one should cease to exist. The reason is, most likely, strongly based in how painful Fyodor’s ability has been for him.

Kirillov laments:

“God is necessary and so must exist… But I know He doesn’t and can���t… Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas can’t go on living?”

...

“If there is no God, then I am God.”

If Kirillov is god, then he is the ultimate master of his fate. Kirillov is very aware of his own limits, and so he thinks this absurd and life pointless. 

That conversation continues (Kirillov’s responses are bolded):

“There, I could never understand that point of yours: why are you God?”

“If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it’s all my will and I am bound to show self-will.”

“Self-will? But why are you bound?”

“Because all will has become mine. Can it be that no one in the whole planet, after making an end of God and believing in his own will, will dare to express his self-will on the most vital point? It’s like a beggar inheriting a fortune and being afraid of it and not daring to approach the bag of gold, thinking himself too weak to own it. I want to manifest my self-will. I may be the only one, but I’ll do it.”

This very much reflects Gogol: killing his high moral power (connection and empathy) through the man who identifies himself as a god (Fyodor) to prove his independence and freedom. 

But we’ve kind of already seen where this ends:

Gogol you’ve literally shown yourself terrified of dying (which Kirillov is as well). I know Gogol was likely acting in this scene, but given the themes of BSD and Gogol’s character, plus the fact that he did, in fact, choose not to die, I think this is likely somewhat reflective of his true feelings.  

But again, Kirillov asserts:

“I am awfully unhappy, for I’m awfully afraid. Terror is the curse of man.… But I will assert my will, I am bound to believe that I don’t believe. I will begin and will make an end of it and open the door, and will save. That’s the only thing that will save mankind and will re-create the next generation physically; for with his present physical nature man can’t get on without his former God, I believe. For three years I’ve been seeking for the attribute of my godhead and I’ve found it; the attribute of my godhead is self-will! That’s all I can do to prove in the highest point my independence and my new terrible freedom. For it is very terrible. I am killing myself to prove my independence and my new terrible freedom.”

As Gogol outlined, what disrupted his plans was Fyodor’s empathy for him, and his empathy for Fyodor. Their connection literally saved his life (hence I kind of doubt their connection will kill them in the end). He cannot die without killing that connection. 

Two things almost disrupt Kirillov’s plans. Firstly, and chiefly, it’s his empathy for others. Kirillov is noted to be a character who is extremely kind, good with children, and unafraid to risk himself to help others. When Kirillov finds out his friend betrayed him and is planning to use Kirillov’s suicide to get away with the murder of a third friend, Kirillov is horrified. He refuses to go through with his suicide at first, screaming in horror that his friend is dead and that he unwittingly enabled his killer to end his life. When he does ultimately go through with it, he states that it is because “I want to kill myself now: all are scoundrels.” He goes through with it because his human connections are failing. 

Even the novel’s most villainous character concludes “I agree” when Kirillov is called “good.” Kirillov will stop at nothing to help his friends, and he believes all people are good and will become good if they are just told they are. However, the tragic irony of this scene is that the person speaking to Kirillov--Nikolai Stavrogin--is very much a literary example of a psychopath. (Those of you who follow me know I don’t use that word lightly.) However, Stavrogin does not want to be this way; he wants to feel, he wants to be bothered by the terrible sins he’s committed. What he’s asking Kirillov, essentially, is to understand this and call him wrong for what he did, which absolutely no one does in the novel:

“Everything’s good.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that. That’s all, that’s all! If anyone finds out he’ll become happy at once...

“And if anyone dies of hunger, and if anyone insults and outrages the little girl, is that good?”

“Yes! ...They’re bad because they don’t know they’re good. When they find out, they won’t outrage a little girl. They’ll find out that they’re good and they’ll all become good, every one of them.”

“Here you’ve found it out, so have you become good then?”

“I am good.”

“That I agree with, though,” Stavrogin muttered, frowning.

“He who teaches that all are good will end the world.”

“He who taught it was crucified.”

“He will come, and his name will be the man-god.”

“The god-man?”

“The man-god. That’s the difference.”

Stavrogin’s examples are based on things he’s done. Kirillov isn’t aware of these deeds, but he does know his friend’s mind better than most of their other friends. The problem is that Kirillov refuses to truly act on this empathy, to accept that men can be scoundrels and good, because he wants what he believes (that all are good) to be so. Kirillov’s too consumed with his desire to end the world (hello Fyodor) to save mankind via proving himself free to actually use his empathy to help his friends. In fact, the murderer points out to Kirillov that if he’d focused more on his friend, he might have been able to prevent the murder. 

A similar attitude is reflected in Fyodor’s desire to destroy ability-users (i.e. end the world) and in his interactions with people. He doesn’t put his empathy into forming actual connections, and those he has he deliberately does not invest in (such as when he kills the kid in his introductory chapter). He kills ability users paradoxically because he cares about them and about other people. I wrote about it a bit in this meta here:

Fyodor... lives very much in a world of black and white. He makes Goncharov happy all the time, unable to experience pain or negative emotions. He believes all ability users are a sin and should be destroyed. He’s an idealist in a lot of ways, believing in absolutes (which is also a hallmark of a childish perspective...).  he wants to... force every single ability user to feel his pain (that their abilities are a sin) by wiping them out. In short, Fyodor wants empathy despite refusing to listen to the feelings of others. (He understands their feelings; he just chooses to emphasize his pain over theirs.) 

Unlike Kirillov, however, whose last scene is renowned as “the most harrowing in all of literature” (I can’t even describe it; it has to be read) I think there’s pretty good reason to hope that Fyodor and Gogol will not end up taking each other out. Because the thing about Kirillov, the reason his character resonates so much with me, is the second reason his plans are almost disrupted: it’s how desperately he wants to live. He just wants to know that his life matters. The way Kirillov expresses these desires is absurd in a lot of ways and certainly hyperbolic, but it’s a desire reflected in most of BSD’s characters, and in, well, a lot of us in real life, too. 

Empathy and genuine human connection are the greatest powers in BSD’s world, as we saw recently through Atsushi getting the location of the page from empathizing with Sigma by telling him what he most wanted to know: that he mattered. 

Sigma now knows, to an extent, that he matters. At least, he’s been told as much.  

Gogol states that Sigma is key to his plans succeeding: Sigma’s ability can tell him Fyodor’s ability, which will enable Gogol to kill Fyodor. Except... Sigma’s ability might just work in an way that cultivates empathy post-connection with Atsushi. If Sigma can trust that he matters, despite having been created by the page and having been abused and subjected to all manner of lies and exploitation, he might be key to Fyodor and Gogol’s conflict resolution rather than to them actually killing each other.

Fyodor matters despite having an ability that seems to make him unable to touch people--because he can touch people with his empathy. (His empathy is, of course, literally what draws Gogol to want to kill him.) Fyodor’s empathy with Gogol has already physically saved Gogol.

Gogol matters even if he is understood by someone, because empathy is a strength and not a weakness. Someone understanding him doesn’t make him matter less, and being bound by feelings isn’t actually a bad thing. His connection with Fyodor has already saved his life.

Both Fyodor and Gogol have now saved Sigma at some point. Sigma’s design, of course, is literally split with two different colored halves of his hair, indicating that the artist likely means to symbolize the clash of two halves (see: Q, who represents how soukoku (Dazai and Chuuya) are two halves of a whole in terms of their best and worst traits). However, they exist in one person, and Sigma seems reasonably stable for someone with his situation. 

Additionally, Fyodor and Gogol both are also somewhat modeled after Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, whose name literally means “split” in Russian. (Actually, Kirillov is very much a more internal, tragic version of Raskolnikov.) Like Kirillov, Raskolnikov is a paradox embodied: he’s stunningly empathetic and kind (rushing into a burning building to save orphans), but his philosophy is that it’s fine for him to kill others because he’s a “Napoleon” (special figure; “man-god,” to use Kirillov’s term). 

But what is split is ultimately made whole in Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov meditates on the raising of Lazarus from the dead and essentially resurrects himself, redeems himself. 

I highly doubt Gogol and Fyodor’s story will end with them dead because:

It’s BSD and nobody stays dead unless you’re Oda or a red shirt; 

Gogol and Sigma have already served us fake-out deaths, so it’s a lot to ask your audience to buy another death from the same character (killing Fyodor is essentially Gogol killing himself);

them surviving and having Fitzgerald-esque redemption arcs very much fits with the themes of Dostoyevsky’s works and specifically with the book after which Fyodor’s ability is named;

resurrection seems to be a motif with everything involving Fyodor, from Cannibalism to this current arc.

[shachihata]

ok i am *checks watch* two years late to the party but i just watched dead apple and i’m having thoughts about it everything below the cut because it’s a goddamn essaypost

ok so basically i had to rewatch fyodor’s speech scene a couple times because of how hard i was thinking about it. he implies that shibusawa’s fog separates users from their abilities and makes the abilities try to kill the user with the caveat that this is only allowed to happen if the ability user, in some form or another, has rejected their ability as a part of themselves -- the ability users that have accepted their abilities/their role in the world might be separated from their abilities, but the ability doesn’t attack them at all. it’s an ability entirely based on the individual’s personal feelings towards their ability (which is pretty ironic, considering that shibusawa is desperately searching for his own reason to live by living through other people). if there’s any conflict at all, then the fog essentially amplifies those negative feelings and turns the user against their own ability -- and, in extension, against themselves.

which... honestly makes a lot of sense! ability users are relatively rare in the world of bsd, and so it makes sense that most of them would be attacked by their own abilities because they feel ostracized from the world because they’re not truly “human” like everyone else, or something along those lines. atsushi is the most obvious example of this -- even though he manages to defeat his own ability, he’s only able to use it again once he fully accepts that the tiger isn’t a curse, it’s meant to protect him. atsushi feels guilty all the time over the orphanage director and for killing shibusawa, even though those people were literally his abusers; he has to realize that he wasn’t the one at fault for defending himself against them, in order to fully manifest his ability and kill shibusawa without feeling guilt, the way he did at the beginning of dead apple when he planned on just capturing shibusawa even though kyouka literally told him “we have to kill him that’s our mission he’s going to destroy all of yokohama if we don’t.”

we can put akutagawa and kyouka under similar analysis. akutagawa originally didn’t accept rashoumon because he felt that dazai was only ever praising rashoumon, instead of acknowledging akutagawa’s existence; once he accepts that he is the one controlling rashoumon and he doesn’t need dazai’s direct praise to know that he’s validated for existing (he visits and bows to chuuya in the epilogue, rather than seeking out dazai), rashoumon comes under his control again. kyouka didn’t accept demon snow because she hated the fact that she cared so much for demon snow as a protector/mother figure even though she blames it for killing her parents; she has to learn that demon snow isn’t her enemy, and, like atsushi, has only ever attempted to protect her. she can use demon snow to do good in the world, twisting it away from its original purpose of assassination, because it’s her power. basically, they’re all conquering their powers and accepting that even though they’re ability users, they still have the ability to be, essentially, human and pick the side that saves people -- the way dazai does at the end, seeing how “beautiful” the world is because atsushi and kyouka are alive, the way sakunosuke wanted him to. their ability is just as much of a part of themselves as any other internal conflict they have. they aren’t separate from their abilities -- they are one and the same.

which is a really interesting implication when we loop it all back around and start talking about fyodor himself. like fyodor says, he doesn’t get separated from his ability because he has accepted his ability in the first place -- “crime and punishment are close friends,” after all. fyodor knows and accepts himself as both the “crime” (being an ability user) and the “punishment” (using his ability to rid the world of ability users), which, honestly, is incredibly remniscient of raskolnikov’s entire speech about the “extraordinary man” in the original crime and punishment -- raskolnikov’s entire philosophy in the first half of the book was based around the idea that certain “extraordinary men” had the “right” to transgress against the laws of humanity/society in order to fulfill their own “higher purposes.” and i mean, that’s basically exactly what fyodor implies about himself: he thinks of himself as a god, and so even though he’s committing the ultimate sin, he’s doing it for the greater good. stupid god complex motherfucker.

when fyodor said that he was using shibusawa as entertainment, he wasn’t even joking. i genuinely don’t think that there was any greater purpose to it other than to basically prove his own points to himself. shibusawa, the conglomeration of hundreds and hundreds of abilities, becomes nothing more than an animalistic, violent, unthinking dragon -- exactly why fyodor sees abilities as the “ultimate sin,” because they do nothing more than wreak chaos and destruction in his eyes. he used shibusawa as an example of just how low ability users can sink -- completely ignoring ability users like atsushi or kyouka, who have chosen to seek the “light” of existence/life by literally just accepting their abilities as something to be used for good!

fyodor, ironically, is doing the same thing as atsushi and kyouka -- except he’s twisted it around so that he only sees his own ability as something to be used for “humanity’s good.” he sees himself as a hero and every other ability user as a villain, completely blinding himself to the fact that other ability users are also making individual choices, every day, to use their abilities for the sake of protecting other humans rather than destroying them, the way shibusawa does (because he’d lost sight of his own identity and reason to live, not because of his collection of abilities). it implies that he sees himself as a god because he’s the only one with free choice; he believes that everyone else has to bend to the “natural urges” of their abilities, impulses, and so on. it implies that the entire reason he looks down on humanity is because he doesn’t think they have free will.

...and so, as it always is with me, it comes down to “man what the hell was fyodor and nikolai’s relationship” i’m DESPERATE to know more about it. does fyodor see nikolai as a god, like him, because nikolai is so purposefully “defying god” and working towards his own death -- he, like fyodor, is both the crime and his own punishment? at the same time, though, does fyodor see nikolai as actually having free will, or just as a bird who recognizes that they’re in the cage -- while still submitting to the whims and orders of higher powers, like himself and fukuchi -- and has thus bent nikolai’s desires for his own hidden purposes? when will the sigma, nikolai, and fyodor subplot come back from the fucking war? asagiri kafka i am on my knees BEGGING to know

[hihoneyimdead]

a dissection of anime nathaniel hawthorne in relation to the scarlet letter

In Which I’m Bored and Want to Talk About Anime Nathaniel Hawthorne and Why He’s More Interesting Than the Fandom Wants to Admit, and Also About Arthur Dimmesdale And Shit

This is going to be long. Fuck. 

(spoilers through the manga, which i have not read all the way through, so take everything i say with a grain of salt. same goes for the scarlet letter, which i haven’t read in nearly four years. ripperoni bro)

Above is the topic of today’s procrastination, Anime Nathaniel Hawthorne from Bungo Stray Dogs. He is a member of an American organization called the Guild, he’s a preacher, and he has a superpower/ability called The Scarlet Letter that allows him to manipulate his own blood into scripture that can either harm or defend via spears and shit and then shields and shit. 

He’s also a simp for Anime Margaret Mitchell, but I’ll be getting into that in a moment. 

Anyway, here’s a better picture of our lovely reverend, this time with his ability:

Funny, right? But that’s what I’m gonna talk about today simply because I’m bored and I should be writing but I’m currently not and I really have a soft spot for this bitch of a preacher. Hawthorne here has a lot more to his character than a lot of people give him credit for, which makes sense because he is a relatively-minor character and all he’s been doing recently is getting cucked by Anime Fyodor Dostoevsky, and while he may currently be Comrade Assassin, he’s still a complex character if you look past what our favorite Russian pimp has been up to. 

So a bit more about Hawthorne before I crack open my copy of his most famous book:

He is a preacher, not a priest, as shown by his choice in clothing. Priests don’t wear that, take it from a former Catholic. His clothes resemble the robes worn by classic Puritan preachers (such as the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, but we’ll get to him in a minute.) Whether that was on purpose or not I don’t know, but I’m aiming for a yes because Margaret Mitchell, his partner, wears a Southern belle-style outfit that Scarlett O’Hara (the main character of Mitchell’s most famous work, Gone With the Wind) wears, and John Steinbeck wears clothes reminiscent of Tom Joad (the main character of Steinbeck’s most famous work, The Grapes of Wrath.) It’s kind of a thing with the Guild. Edgar Allan Poe wears clothes that a goth around the time of Poe’s life would’ve worn. Same goes for Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, and H. P. Lovecraft. Meanwhile characters such as Lucy Maud Montgomery, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Herman Melville wear clothes that their characters (Anne from Anne of Green Gables, Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, and whoever the fuck was in Moby Dick, respectively.) Hawthorne fits in with that last set of characters, which is funny considering the real life Hawthorne’s works.

In reality, Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American author in the early-to-mid-1800s who wrote many short stories, novels, and poems and shit, usually Romantic in nature. He started off, though, as a big member of the Transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism, if you don’t know, is kind of like the 1800s equivalent of hippies. They were pretty anti-government and anti-religion, usually specifically anti-Christianity. These institutions corrupted the basis of mankind. Hawthorne himself helped form a utopian commune up in New England (it didn’t last long, don’t worry.) As he grew older, he grew out of that kind of writing and lifestyle and into the works we know him for today, such as his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. It, like many of his other works, contains allusions to religion and exists as a sort of criticism on it. 

The Scarlet Letter is set in the middle of the 1600s in Puritan New England. The Puritans were known for being Super Christian. They did not pass the vibe check. The main character is Hester Prynne, a young woman convicted of adultery with an unknown father. After being “released” from prison after the birth of her daughter, Pearl, Hester is allowed to move around outside of prison. But to signify her “evilness”, she must have a red letter ‘A’ on the front of her dress at all times (the eponymous and extremely metaphoric scarlet letter.) Besides Hester and Peal, main characters include Roger Chillingsworth, a doctor and Hester’s ex-husband from England who has vowed to track down the father and have him punished as well, and the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, who is sick All of the Time For No Apparent reason. By the end of the novel it’s revealed that Dimmesdale’s illness is actually a manifestation of his guilt because he was Pearl’s father despite him being a reverend and all and Hester being an unmarried woman. He ends up dying in the end after professing his guilt and showing the town the red letter ‘A’ that God supposedly engraved upon the skin on his chest. 

So let’s start here with a brief summary of Dimmesdale’s actions in the book as recalled by someone who hasn’t read it in four years but who is looking at the Wikipedia article right now. 

We first meet him when he and another minister, John Wilson, question Hester as to who the father of her child was. She doesn’t answer. The next time we see him in person is when Hester goes to the governor to ask if she can keep Pearl. She pleads with Dimmesdale and Wilson (who is there too for some reason), and he manages to persuade the governor to let her keep her child. At some point soon after, his health really begins to decline, and Chillingsworth moves in as a physician. Chillingsworth discovers a weird symbol of guilt on Dimmesdale’s chest while the poor guy sleeps after suspecting that the preacher’s illness is a manifestation of an unknown guilt. Dimmesdale, filled with guilt, goes to the town square in the middle of the night one day and screams his guilt to the heavens, but he can’t make himself do it during the day. Hester, shocked by the poor guy’s whole deal, decides to break her vow of silence. She calls Dimmesdale outside of town and tells him that they’re going to move to Europe together and start a new life with Pearl. He agrees and seems reinvigorated. They go back to town, and all’s fine until he gives a really good sermon on Election Day. After that, he professes his guilt and dies in Hester’s arms. People there claim to see a “stigma” in the shape of a letter ‘A’ on his chest, though others say there’s nothing there. 

Dimmesdale is a man consumed by his guilt. He physically and mentally declines because of his guilt and his unwillingness to expose himself for the sinner he really is, though, through it all, he supports Hester and Pearl as best he can considering his station as the town minister. He’s supposed to be the beacon of mortality, the person everyone should look up to and respect and learn from. And here he is, an adulterer, and a liar. And when he finally grows past his guilt and decides to let it out in favor of leaving and starting life anew, he dies, consumed, supposedly, by the wrath of God. He “falls” as a sinner, struck down by the very flames of Hell themselves. Or, more likely, a regular heart attack. He died of shock, poor guy. 

Compare that to Anime Nathaniel Hawthorne. He starts out as a member of a secret association who, according to its leader, Fitzgerald, doesn’t do good, but does what needs to be done. That’s probably why Hawthorne joined it in the first place. While his main goal has always been eradicating sinners from the face of the Earth, he probably started out as a regular old minister. Eradicating doesn’t always mean killing, and this is shown as he only attacks those who threaten his work, his partner (wink), and himself. This changes after the woman he loves throws herself in the way of an attack and nearly gets herself killed saving him. In canon, she’s still in a coma. In canon, he gave himself completely into sin because of his guilt and love for her. And that’s where the similarities between Hawthorne and Dimmesdale really start.

Let’s start with the obvious guilt complex. This goes along with what I believe Dostoevsky’s ability, Crime and Punishment, does. I believe it feeds off of an individual’s guilt, manipulating it and their mind in the process. We see this with Karma, a young man Dostoevsky kills. Karma, in his last moments, goes through all he went wrong with in his life (you know, or as much as a manga page or two can have) and dies knowing that he’ll never achieve his dream. That’s a more extreme example, I think, and not one I should really be using as evidence for anything considering it’s the only example of this really happening. Every other person that Dostoevsky kills with his ability just drops dead without the audience seeing into their thoughts. He’s got an insta-kill ability, but my theory builds off the idea that he can control living or dying. Hawthorne came to Dostoevsky to work for Dostoevsky’s organization, the Rats in the House of the Dead, in exchange for Mitchell getting “revived”. He might look cool on the outside, but he left the Guild, his friends, because Mitchell got hurt. He loves her, and he says as much in the manga (the anime didn’t say so, but left it unsaid and obvious to those looking.) The next time we see Hawthorne, he’s a mindless assassin who really only remembers Mitchell from his past, and the assassin who nearly killed her. His guilt twisted him into someone completely different from how he was before, even looking physically leaner and as different a brief appearance in a manga and anime can make someone look. He’s even lost his glasses, and any normal look in his eye. It’s kinda like the main character of Crime and Punishment from what I can tell, but I also haven’t read that book so take what I say on that with a gain of salt.) He’s consumed by his guilt (thanks, Fyodor.) Guilt is a big part of his character (as much of a character as he has currently, anyway.) The same can be said for Dimmesdale, who, as I’ve said before was consumed by his own guilt and sin until his death. 

I hope that Hawthorne doesn’t end up as dead as Dimmesdale did when he reunites with his supposed love interest (love interests aren’t really a thing in this series, which makes Hawthorne and Mitchell even more interesting to me.) I hope he gets a happy ending, but... that probably won’t happen unless Dostoevsky dies, which seems like an end-game thing to me. He’s a bad dude with slight plot armor. 

Anyway, past the guilt, their relationship with the respective women in their lives is another important and interesting parallel. Dimmesdale, even through Hester’s punishment, more or less treats her as he would’ve before Pearl. I believe that he did truly love her in his own pitiful way, though not as much as he loved his relationship with God, as seen by his continued guilt and shit. But it’s important to note that he seemed to admit his own love for Hester by agreeing to run away to Europe with her, and he did so in little ways throughout the story by helping her keep Pearl and by really just giving her a lighter sentence than a lot of women would’ve gotten. Puritan ministers were up there with government officials in the law (look at the witch trials, for example), so he would’ve definitely had input on her punishment. Most women would’ve been stoned or banished from the town or colony. Hester, notably, was let off relatively easy with just the emblem and the vague banishment to living in a house outside of town alone with her daughter. Hawthorne’s partner was Margaret Mitchell, and from the very beginning until the assassin skewered them, the two of them argued. Honestly, they bickered a lot like an old married couple. It was kinda cute in a weird way. Neither of them would obviously admit their feelings for each other. Both are proud people, Mitchell coming from a disgraced rich family and Hawthorne being a man of God. But his concern for her becomes evident the moment she gets stabbed clean through and impaled a dozen feet above the ground. That’s when he really gets on the offensive, and when she’s destroyed (image below), he calls her by her first name for the first, and only, time, looking completely destroyed (image also below.) He nearly manages to kill the assassin. And when he wakes up and sees that she isn’t going to wake up, he leaves those he cares about to fix his mistake of letting her get this hurt.

When we see Hawthorne next, he is willing to do anything to redeem himself for his mistake. When we meet him as an assassin for the first time, in the manga he says something along the lines of “I, for the revival of the one I love, will fulfill the contract of death”. Which is... not normal, I’ll admit. Poor guy. In the anime, he says something different that I don’t remember, but that was similar if not slightly different (again, the anime isn’t as explicit with their relationship as the manga.) Meanwhile she’s in a coma and is likely not to be revived by those Hawthorne pledged his allegiance to, but those he left behind. 

The two ministers here follow generally the same path of sin. They start out as the badass ministers they really are, men of God. Then, one way or another, they fall deeper and deeper into sin as they go. For Dimmesdale, that was boning Hester Prynne and hiding it from the town and corrupting himself with his guilt. For Hawthorne, that was ‘allowing’ his partner to ‘die’ and surrendering himself to a higher power to try and get her back, losing himself in the process. In the end, both men are shells of their former selves. Dimmesdale dies sick. Hawthorne is a brainwashed assassin. Dimmesdale’s higher power, God, is ultimately what killed him, and his devotion is what really did him in. Hawthorne is probably gonna die or get otherwise written out, I have a feeling (several villains in this show have, just look at Pushkin and Mark Twain and even Mitchell herself.) If he is, it’ll be Dostoevsky or one of his weird Russian friends doing him in or taking him out of the picture. He’ll likely never see Mitchell again and he will die due to his newfound devotion to a “god” who is willing to punish him for going to far. 

And guys, Hawthorne’s ability is literally the titular scarlet letter. What else can I say?

Honestly, I’m not sure what this post was, only that I killed a good three hours writing it and that it gave me yet again a newfound appreciation for something I used to hate. It was Anime Hawthorne, but before that it was IRL Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter. Thank you American public school system. 

[felinevomitus]

Sebastian Melmoth: Imaginary Futures

Sebastian Melmoth l-r: Laura Michelle Smith, Peter Jordan, Ilia Rogatchevski, Tomoko Matsumoto. Photo: Artem Barkhin.

Sebastian Melmoth has seen various stages of activity since I established the project back in 2006. Intended to operate as a conceptual antithesis to popular music, to begin with, the group existed in name only. At the time, I was mildly obsessed with the life and work of Oscar Wilde and, upon discovering that Wilde took up the pseudonym of Sebastian Melmoth during his self-imposed exile in France (1897-1900), decided to call my imaginary band in his honour. 

The name is referential. It is a combination of Saint Sebastian and Melmoth the Wanderer. The former was an icon for the underground gay community in Victorian England and the latter, a Gothic novel by Wilde’s great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin, first published in 1820. Due to his own castigation by polite society, it is likely that Wilde greatly empathised with both Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom and Maturin’s central antagonist (a man who takes to wandering the Earth after selling his soul to the Devil in return for immortality). 

The literary nature of Sebastian Melmoth was the project’s founding principle. The first few years were littered with attempts at writing sincere songs that pointed towards literary hallmarks. Sunshine Blues, for example, namedrops Rodion Raskolnikov, the anguished protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment (1866), while Manskinner references a peripheral character from Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1994). 

This way of working was typical for us. Books were read in parallel to the creation of the music, lyrics and visual artwork. Each activity informed the other, creating a fluid symbiotic network of overlapping information. Like is often said of Sonic Youth, I wanted Sebastian Melmoth to operate as an obscure gateway drug to other works of literature, pop culture and art with each release having a tight conceptual idea supporting it.  

Sebastian Melmoth began life in earnest as a high school four-piece, with myself on rhythm guitar and vocals, Miranda Collett on lead guitar, Joe Dibb on keys and Elias Razak on drums. Peter Jacobs replaced Elias after a while, but before long the group downsized to an acoustic anti-folk duo in the vein of the Moldy Peaches. The underlying theme of our debut album, Insanity’s Insanity (self-released, 2010), was the absurd nature of everyday reality. This is evidenced by the title, which was lifted out of Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 play Rhinoceros.

While looking for a job on Gumtree, I came across a psychedelic indie outfit called Clinker (at that time a quartet, but now a duo consisting of Peter Jordan and Tomoko Matsumoto). They were advertising for extras to cast in their new music video So We Say (Dir. Ambrose Yalley, 2009). We became friends and eventually started making music together. They produced Insanity’s Insanity and even remixed a few of the tracks from that album, but our collaboration didn’t realise its full potential until a little later.

Sebastian Melmoth - Sunshine Blues (DTT Mix)

Our next releases, In der Tiefe (self-released, 2011) and The Nausea of Being (self-released, 2012), were at the same time more ambitious and conceptual than our first long player. Pointing their fingers at the works of Carl Jung and Jean-Paul Sartre respectively, these companion albums broadly concerned themselves with existentialism. In der Tiefe (German, in the depths) took drug psychosis as its principal theme. Not unlike Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void (2009) the central protagonist uses psychedelic drugs to delve deep into the rabbit hole of his psyche in an attempt to capture and control his ‘shadow self’. The German title was appropriated from Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi classic Metropolis (1927) and, in its original context, referred to the bottom level of the titular tiered city: the domicile of the working classes.

The Nausea of Being expanded on these ideas, rising, as it were, from the depths and surfacing on a desolate landscape of social destitution, political corruption, alcoholism, murder and religious dogma. Sartre, Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett all greatly influenced me around this time. I remember reading Sarte’s 1938 novel Nausea, where the narrator experienced crippling anxiety in the face of everyday interactions, and thinking that his experiences were not far from my own. Tracks such as Waiting for Godot, Paintstripper Blues and Godemiché echoed the work of the authors above and attempted to illustrate what I saw, at the time, as the core elements of the human condition: alienation, despair, lust, self-destruction. 

Peter programmed the drums, played bass and, along with Tomoko, pretty much moulded our sound on these two albums, but the next couple of years saw a period of transition, both in terms of lineup and musical direction. Laura Michelle Smith joined us on drums, adding much needed rhythmic power to the live band dynamic, while Miranda left a short time after that to pursue other interests. Her parting contributions can be heard on Emetophobia (self-released, 2013). This eight-track EP was recorded entirely on GarageBand using drum presets and the inbuilt laptop mic for live instrumentation. Stylistically drawing from Atlas Sound’s Bedroom Databank series and the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s more lo-fi output, Emetophobia is still one of my favourite Sebastian Melmoth albums. The lyrics may be a touch naive and the sound imperfect, but these elements contribute to the album’s overall charm. 

Being now in the business of making difficult music we found a couple of labels sympathetic to our way of thinking. After listening to an unsolicited copy of The Nausea of Being, Thomas Martin Ekelund commissioned us to compose thirty minutes of new music for his tape label. The result was In Ruins (Beläten, 2014), which is probably our best and most consistent work. It was described in one review as sounding “like a Britpop version of the Velvet Underground filtered through everything rock saw during the 70s, 80s and 90s”. 

Sebastian Melmoth - Miet Mitzvah

While on the surface In Ruins may appear to be a breakup album, at its core, it is actually a complex study of fanaticism, personality cults and terrorism. Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s account of the Manson Family murders, Helter Skelter (1974), and Stefan Aust’s The Baader-Meinhof Complex (1985) both fed into the album’s sense of isolation. The latter book, which recounted the history of the Red Army Faction - a far-left West German militant organisation - was particularly influential. 

After becoming increasingly fascinated with their story, I rechristened each of us after the main Baader-Meinhof members: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin & Jan-Carl Raspe. At concerts we wore all black, save for a red armband adorned with an inverted white triangle, and performed theatrical psychedelic noise rock to the general bewilderment of all. While playing Wrong Side of the Sun, for example, I would typically invade the crowd and strangle myself with the microphone cable. This performance had roots in Viennese Actionism, but also functioned as an extension of Guy Debord’s push for the Construction of Situations. What we were trying to say was that all forms of fanaticism are dangerous, irrespective of their ideological origins, but I’m not certain whether this came across particularly well. 

By this time we were regularly rehearsing in a garage underneath the A104 in east London. It was a cold, dark and unforgiving place. Apparently, the space had been an illicit marijuana farm before it became a rehearsal room. With notable latency, this knowledge trickled down to the local gangsters and the garage was broken into on a few occasions. Finding nothing but piles of cheap guitars, broken amplifiers and no marijuana our new friends left the place alone, but not before holding our besieged landlord up at knifepoint. Tensions in the band were also on the rise. Laura and myself were becoming more interested in musique concrète, graphic scores and improvisation, while Peter didn’t like this new direction at all, feeling that our strengths lay in songwriting and the traditional band dynamic. 

It was against this background that our last two full length albums were recorded: Felix Culpa (OKVLT, 2015) and Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta (Must Die Records, 2016). We worked on these projects in parallel in an attempt to appease our diverging interests. 

Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta is a garage rock record that nodded to our punk rock influences while also including elements of surf, psych and noise. The record title is a reference to a council of Senior Aboriginal Women from the town of Coober Pedy, South Australia who protested against the Australian government dumping radioactive waste on their land. Coober Pedy, which translates from the local Aboriginal language as “white man’s hole”, is not only famous for its opal, but also the fact that many of its residents live underground to escape the scorching daytime heat. Having spent our fair share of time writing music underground, we felt companionship with these people. Peter wanted an accurate reflection of the band as a live unit and, I suppose, the album manages to achieve that (some of the drum tracks were actually multitrack recordings from our concerts). The production is far from perfect, but the energy is there, which, in the context of a garage rock album, is probably more important than fidelity. 

Sebastian Melmoth - Rooftop Surfing

Felix Culpa (Latin, happy fall) took on a slightly different approach. The majority of these songs were created during intense and heated sessions. Improvisation played a key role in its construction, but so did William Burroughs style cut-ups, digital manipulations and field recordings. At its heart, Felix Culpa explored the nature of the Fall: a condition of living in a permanent state of exposure; of opening oneself up to the Other. According to Slavoj Žižek, "the ultimate Event is the Fall itself, the loss of some primordial unity and harmony which never existed, which is just a retroactive illusion" (Event, 2014). Just like Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, this project also served to reflect what the band was at that particular moment in time: fractured, vulnerable and on the brink of disbanding. The album cover shows Gerhard Halbritter’s photograph of Andreas Baader’s death mask, which hints to the viewer that the creative drive behind Sebastian Melmoth had largely ceased to operate. 

Each of our studio releases aimed to depart from the last. Not repeating ourselves was another key principle of the band. Towards the end, however, I began to feel that we were doing just that. I also felt that my songwriting had become contrived and breaking out of that mould was not an option supported by everyone. Additionally, I became uncomfortable with some of the characters in my lyrics. Songs such as Prosopagnosia or Foedi Oculi employ elements of sexism, sadism, oppression and violence in order to highlight the abhorrence of such actions. Even though I saw the explorations of these themes as a contemporary take on Maturin’s gothic horror, as time went on, it became increasingly difficult for me to justify them. 

Our last show was at a tiny Clapton bar called Biddle Bros, in the summer of 2017. In my opinion, the show went better than expected. At that point we hadn’t rehearsed much or played live in a while. Peter disagreed. He felt that we lost something crucial along the way. Where once we had been theatrical, now we were just plodding along. I wasn’t convinced. Theatre is an open-ended format that can allow for modest gestures as well as flamboyant ones. We were coming from different directions and refusing to meet each other halfway. Peter was citing David Bowie and I was referencing Fluxus and Bertolt Brecht. At its core, this argument - not our first or last, but certainly our most public one - was saturated by our personal and professional expectations of one another. These expectations weren’t always met and neither of us were open to what the other person wanted. Whatever odd bits we had recorded around this time were self-released as an outtakes compilation called Devotional Songs for the Digital Age, in late 2018.

Not long after all of this, Olf van Elden aka Interstellar Funk reached out with a proposal to compile our more electronic cuts together on vinyl. We christened this new album The Dynamics of Vanity (Artificial Dance, 2019). The title is both a comment on culture's obsession with rehashing the past - the subject matter of Simon Reynolds's book Retromania (2010) - and our own personal navel-gazing. The title references a collage I had made as an art student that mocked the fashion industry's depiction of male underwear models. To my mind, they resembled intricate amphorae paintings and Hellenistic bronzes of Greek antiquity.

Sebastian Melmoth - Icarus

Although The Dynamics of Vanity is not a studio album, we approached its production with the same attention to detail as we would any other record. For the cover, we wanted to get across the stark, archaic beauty of the human body in motion. Stripped, Rammstein’s appropriation of Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938) was the main reference point, but so too were Andy Stott’s album covers, namely Luxury Problems and Too Many Voices. After some initial back and forth, the Amsterdam-based Australian designer Steele Bonus rendered these ideas in a post-punk fashion suited to our sound and aesthetic.    

As we dug through our hard drives compiling the album, we unearthed a few unreleased remixes made by Peter and Tomoko. We decided to weave these rediscovered tracks into a new project, Imaginary Futures (MFZ Records, 2020), a record that reimagined our back catalogue as a suite of rave-ready dancefloor fillers.  

While the album title, which alludes to the lost potential of disparate creative outcomes, was borrowed from Richard Barbrook’s 2007 book charting the emergence of the internet, it was the production, remix and DJ work of Andrew Weatherall that was the key inspiration for the our approach. The album’s flow and concept loosely mirrors Weatherall’s treatment of Primal Scream’s source material for Screamadelica, which itself resulted in their pivotal marriage of rock and acid house. The idea for the album was set before Weatherall’s passing, but his departure helped to calcify the direction of the mix. 

Musically, our last two albums are pretty cohesive, despite the fact that they are both compilations and the material on them isn’t strictly new. They are collections of snapshots, taken over our decade-long recording history, that are bridged together by new contexts. The Dynamics of Vanity was curated by Olf and the bulk of Imaginary Futures was remixed by Peter and Tomoko, and my personal contributions to these projects was limited to administrative tasks, design and artwork consultation. That being said, they are fair representations of who we were: not ‘Best Ofs’ or ‘Worst Ofs’, but ‘Sort Ofs’. 

Sebastian Melmoth - Accidentally Grotesque (DTT Mix)

Much like the albums described above, this essay is merely a rendering of our story and far from the whole picture. The text is not intended to be canonical. Many events, people and releases have been omitted for the benefit of readability. What I hope the text does is provide some background of our origins, processes and motivations.  

As mentioned before, we haven’t played live or recorded anything new since 2017 and I doubt that we will do either of those things again. After fourteen years of nurturing the same idea, it has come to a point where I have said everything there is to say in this particular format. I have enjoyed developing this band with my many friends, and seeing it change over the years, but it’s finally time for us all to move on to other projects and for Sebastian Melmoth to cease his aimless wandering. 

The Dynamics of Vanity is out now on Artificial Dance. Imaginary Futures is available via MFZ Records. Follow Sebastian Melmoth on Facebook and Instagram.

Ilia Rogatchevski

[mimosaeyes]

Stuff I’ve been reading in 2017

The third annual reading list! (Here’s 2015 in two parts, and 2016.) School was killing my love of reading but I refused to let it. And so here we are, three years and 280 books later.

I’ve taken the liberty of bolding my favourite reads this year, and including some background about how I came to read what I did. Here we go:

I pseudo-resolved to read slower this year, and savour books that need time to seep in. Longer books tend to fit that profile for me, so I went and read the longest book in my home library.

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, translated from the Russian by Rosemary Edmonds (reflections here)

Don’t know how I zeroed in on this gem in a Kinokuniya bookstore, but I love it and you should definitely read it. Go. Go now. I was two years slow on the uptake for Pulley’s debut, but when her second novel came out this year, I literally ordered it online in 0.0002 seconds. It’s number 51 on this list.

2. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

I can’t summarise how I feel about this next one. It just gets to me. After reading it, I went on to watch the film as well as its 20-years-later sequel. I might read some more by Welsh, but gosh the Scottish accent is hard to decipher.

3. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

Perfect for bringing along on my first semester studying overseas.

4. Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord

And then the school texts start! As does leisure/procrastination reading: all the Neruda and Sexton poetry, plus Dostoevsky. Only novels, novellas, plays, and anthologies are listed here; this semester I studied many isolated short stories and poems. Books I read twice are the ones I happened to write essays on – it doesn’t necessarily mean I liked them a lot. (In fact, if I really like a book, sometimes I deliberately avoid writing about it, because analysing something too much can ruin it.) I read all the poetry aloud, because poetry, but I worry also in part because the silence in my room was getting oppressively lonely.

5. Joe Cinque’s Consolation by Helen Garner 6. Bereft by Chris Womersley (twice, actually) 7. Melanctha by Gertrude Stein 8. Breath by Tim Winton (twice, actually) 9. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 10. Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems edited by Nathaniel Tarn, translated from the Spanish by Anthony Kerrigan, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, and Nathaniel Tarn 11. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 12. Carpentaria by Alexis Wright (out loud just because) 13. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky 14. To Bedlam and Part Way Back by Anne Sexton 15. All My Pretty Ones by Anne Sexton 16. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (twice, actually; pseudo-thrice) 17. Live Or Die by Anne Sexton 18. Love Poems by Anne Sexton 19. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde 20. Transformations by Anne Sexton 21. The Book of Folly by Anne Sexton 22. Sorry by Gail Jones 23. The Death Notebooks by Anne Sexton 24. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (her second novel is number 79) 25. The Awful Rowing Toward God by Anne Sexton 26. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent 27. 45 Mercy Street by Anne Sexton 28. Words for Dr. Y. by Anne Sexton

In the break between semesters, I marathoned several TV shows (oops) and revisited a book series from my childhood. (Which, incidentally, ends in a greatly upsetting way?) That series is bookended by two novels which are companions to each other.

29. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce 30. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer 31. Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer 32. Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer 33. Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer 34. Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer 35. Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer 36. Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer 37. Artemis Fowl and the Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer 38. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce

Back to school! Again, quite a few short stories and poems not reflected here. 42, 48, 49, 51, and 57 for leisure; the rest were for my courses.

39. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (twice, actually; making it thrice in two years, dammit) 40. The Hunter by Julia Leigh (twice, actually) 41. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney 42. Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller 43. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 44. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin 45. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (twice, actually) 46. Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz 47. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 48. My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin 49. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz 50. Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill 51. The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley 52. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon 53. The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead 54. Simulations by Jean Baudrillard, translated from the French by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman 55. Frisk by Dennis Cooper 56. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (twice, actually) 57.《边城》沈从文 著 58. Motion Sickness by Lynne Tillman 59. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk (twice, actually) 60. Affinity by Sarah Waters 61. The Lost Stradivarius by John Meade Falkner 62. The Twyborn Affair by Patrick White (twice, actually)

The school year concluded, while still in Australia I read books I’d been given or chose on whims. I bought number 65 in Cairns Airport because I had nothing to read for the rest of a five-day trip; I’d started and finished number 63 during my domestic flight on day one. Clearly I’d underestimated how much I still wanted to read, having overloaded during the semester.

63. Mãn by Kim Thúy, translated from the French by Sheila Fischman 64. The Arrival by Shaun Tan (no words, only illustrations; please, please experience it for yourself) 65. And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave (it’s a Bible reference; think Southern Gothic)

Back home once more, I had access to my personal library, as well our national libraries! Although I’d embarked on a big crochet project as a Christmas present for some close family friends, I went pretty hard in the rest of my free time, which was abundant, because unemployment.

Some of these books just caught my eye on the shelf. Some have been on my To Read list for ages, because of friends’ recommendations (76 and 77, for instance) or because I figured I needed to see what the hype was all about (81 through 83, and 85 through 87). On the subject of YA fiction: no offence if you’re a fan of the genre, or indeed of these two series in particular, but to me it tends to feel like the literary equivalent of empty calories — easy reading that makes for a change of pace from books like 79, or 76. I read each trilogy in a day. Also, yes I realise I’m very late to the party; I haven’t watched the movies, either. Heh.

66. The Great and Calamitous Tale of Johan Thoms by Ian Thornton 67. The Borrowers by Mary Norton (on which Studio Ghibli’s The Borrower Arrietty is based) 68. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (before I went to watch the movie) 69. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka 70. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (on which Studio Ghibli’s film of the same name is based) 71. Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories by Mikhail Shishkin, translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz, Leo Shtutin, Sylvia Maizell, and Mariya Bashkatova 72. The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe 73. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman 74. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom 75. The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez 76. White Teeth by Zadie Smith 77. Uprooted by Naomi Novik 78. How To Be Both by Ali Smith 79. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt (her first novel is number 24; I’ll read her third in the new year, as it demands slow enjoyment) 80. The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff 81. The Maze Runner by James Dashner 82. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner 83. The Death Cure by James Dasher 84. Jip by Katherine Paterson 85. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 86. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins 87. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins 88. Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

And that’s it: another year in books! Do note that thanks to my new theme, I now put updates in the sidebar about what I’m currently reading and watching, respectively. So if you’re ever curious, mosey on over, I guess.

In the new year, I’ll be creating a Goodreads account specially to complement my (admittedly infrequent) postings here. I haven’t gotten an account there previously because the star rating system seemed so reductive, but I have since realised that if professional movie critics can do it, I ought to stop being so high and mighty. Besides, I’m curious about the Goodreads community, and might want to try my hand at writing a couple of reviews, if I find the time and energy.

See you in 2018, everyone!

(Update: here is my Goodreads profile!)

[ol-razzle-dazazzle]

The World (and Copious Amounts of Vodka) at Your Fingertips

For my darling @perfect-murderer / @angel-of-murder who’s OTP is Fyodor x Oguri (The latter account is for Oguri and the former for Ivan, so if you love RP blogs of classy rat bois check her the heck out) 

I haven’t really gotten up to date with the BSD manga so I flicked through some summaries of the wikia and made up what lil gaps I had with my own interpretations (particularly that for Oguri, considering he is relatively new) so I hope I did these two justice! If not feel free to Crime and Punish(ment) me

TW for alcohol obv, someone being murdered and covered up, sensual situations (not inherently NSFW but like, if you were at work and someone saw you shipping authors I’d be fucking confused too) God complexes

It was a dim lit night, another job. Information scattered, people silenced, the usual. Despite the slimy depraved sense of the bar, a dapper man with combed hair perches On a barstool, adjusting his tie and signalling the barkeep for a glass of vodka.

A woman is sobbing, face pressed into the wood, about her fiancée, being dead. She lets out a wail, and falls to the floor. Can't have any witnesses now.

Emotions are such strange things. Even if he could erase the crime and any traces, with the white spirits that soak up the blood, there was always some crying and grief to be accounted for.

The white spirits leave her lingering, settled on the floor with a bottle in her hand. "Honestly, people should learn to hold their alcohol..." He scoffs, the white will o wisps getting pat before they disperse. How impulsive...he can't just kill off anybody like nothing. Hmph, it's all pitiful anyway. The hand holding the glass held an impossibly priced ring, and irregular dots along her arms.

"Another glass, sir."

Hmm?  Now don't falter. Nothing has happened after all.

"Good evening, you must be Oguri Mushitarou, right?" That was rare, for someone to know his name. He liked the sound of it off the other man's lips.

"Ah, and who might you be?" Oguri brushed aside his bangs, hands shaking slightly as he took another sip.

"Why I was the one who contacted you, well...The Rats in the House of the Dead." Oguri raised an eyebrow. Could be a spy, after all.

"I have n-no such recollection."

"Now, now- we are drinking together-"

"You have only but held a glass to your lips." Oguri sneers.

"Very well." The other man downs the shot, "I also must add, that you seem rather undisturbed for killing someone before an entire audience's eyes."

Oguri beams for but a moment. "Hmm? No one saw anything. I'm perplexed."

"Don't act so defensive, just because I have 'Crime and Punishment', doesn't mean I shall assert it on you."

"Well this is a cordial way to introduce yourself to me, Doestovesky." Ah, so it is him. Perched Ushanka, gratuitous coats, and red lines on his hands.

"You are a very collected man Oguri, perfect for what I need you to do for me..." Fyodor hums, the buzz of alcohol is making this whole situation of murder a lot less stilted. Perhaps Oguri should have such meetings here often.

"You know what I'm here to do, correct?" Fyodor murmured, a hand settling on Oguri's shoulder.

He reeled back suddenly, causing Fyodor to withdraw. "Ah, my apologies, I realise that with my ability you would be nervous..." That wasn't entirely it...but one shouldn't divulge such weaknesses.

"It doesn't matter to me." Oguri cleared his throat. "I'm just here to do what you require of me."

"..." Fyodor sighs, "That's a pity."

"How so?"

"This is an organisation, to purge the world." Fyodor smiles, "I think that this would be cause for us to become...comrades."

"I prefer to be...professional." Oguri mumbled. "Besides, I wouldn't think it would be best to be acquainted with God."

"I'm not God yet." Fyodor laughs, "Besides, drinks are much nicer with company."

"Perhaps, you shouldn't go around throwing your ideas of comrades to a murderer." Oguri hissed. "We tend not to make very good 'company'.

"You forget who you are talking to, remember?" Fyodor snickers, clinking his glass with Oguri's own. "...You don't particularly like being close to people, do you?"

"In this city, now why should I?" Oguri's hands clutch the glass, knuckles turning white.

"Ah, I shouldn't push for it, right?" A raised eyebrow.

"You haven't even bought me a drink or taken me to dinner yet." Oguri snickers.

"Shall I change that? Barkeep, if you please." Fyodor smiled, pouring the two glasses before with a smirk.

"...You don't hesitate do you?" Oguri mumbles, a hint of a grin on his face. The two drink once more.

"Your eyes are...fascinating."

"Ah yes, a regular pick up line."

"Well, Oguri, I can't say I get lost in them." Fyodor stifles his laughter. "They're lovely."

"The eyes of a crazy 'sociopath' and a 'psycho', I'm sure." Oguri dismisses the compliment.

"I don't believe your body count influences your eyes." Fyodor muses. "After all, you haven't done anything, correct?"

"I have never murdered a soul." Oguri winks.

"Of course..." Fyodor coughs.

"You better watch how much you drink..." "Or else I'll end up like her?" Fyodor points to the 'collapsed' body.

"Precisely."

"You shrink at a touch and  yet dismiss a murder." Fyodor's hand trails the glass.

"Isn't that precisely what you would want, Dostoevsky?" Oguri raises an eyebrow.

"I could think of other things..."

Oguri tinged a slight red at the thought, "Perhaps you should watch your liquor."

"Nonsense, I may be anemic but I am Russian."

"I would've figured someone like you would be anything but stereotypical." Oguri tilts his head.

"Under the influence of alcohol we are all equal and unable to be differentiated."

"Well I won't care for you too much if you go overboard."

"I'll keep that in mind, my dear Oguri."

"Oh? I'm 'dear' to you so quickly?"

"I did buy you a drink."

The two laugh, "I suppose so."

The slight haze started to affect the two, Oguri fiddling with his fringe as glasses were refilled.

"Someone's rather hypocritical..." Fyodor smirks at Oguri's more frazzled state.

"N-Nonsense! I'm perfectly...fine." Oguri tries to save face, eyes flickering between shut and open.

"I'm sure you are." Fyodor settles the glass further away, snickering. "Are you going to be okay? It doesn't seem like you drink a lot..."

But Oguri's muffled, mumbling into the wood.

"Hmm? What was that?"

"I...said I'll look forward to working with you." Oguri murmurs, plucking himself up as he tries not to lean on Fyodor's shoulder.

"Shall we leave?"

"...Perhaps."

"You're being rather inconvenient, making me carry you like this..." Fyodor pouts, "It seems you enjoy being in my arms..."

*****

The morning was hazy with the aftereffects of murder and liquor, only the latter of which Oguri was rather inexperienced with. While he was one to drink to avoid talking such strategy was usually done with water, and he rarely recognised the consequences of vodka.

Still despite waking up in a home that wasn't his, in a bed that wasn't his, he felt rather calm. The turning to further cocoon himself in sheets made him suddenly aware that he wasn't wearing his jacket- nor his shirt or pants.

A glance over his shoulder in slight panic meeting Fyodor's own eyes. "I trust you slept well?"

"...Was all I did sleep?"

"Ah, well you divulged the secret to your murders, I have it in a tape recorder. Guilt claims the conscience of every man I suppose."

Oguri felt his blood run cold in that smile.

"Just kidding." And warm again.

"...Anything else?" His eyes gestured to his clothes, rather, lack thereof (aside from briefs).

"Without your begging me to do so? Oh goodness no." Fyodor waves a hand dismissively.

Oguri stared at the other's exposed skin, grazes and the remnants of a bullet would on his shoulder.

"You normally open the curtains to stare at the view, don't you?" Fyodor raises and eyebrow, drinking in Oguri's subtle dusting of pink.

"You can't blame me for catching a glimpse of God, can you?" Oguri turns over to him, catching Fyodor's as to set a kiss on his lips.

"Hm, I guess you can't..." Fyodor stifles his laughter, returning the favour.

"Though I do admit the professionalism could do with a bit of work." Oguri chuckles, "One has to wonder if you do this often.

"We haven't done anything yet, have we?"

"I suppose we haven't." Oguri brought Fyodor's hand to his lips, kissing along the red marks chastely.

"But isn't it more exciting this way?" With his free hand Fyodor swept his fingers through the other's slightly messed fringe. "It feels like we have the whole world at our fingertips."

"Am I your whole world now?" Oguri smiles into his skin.

"Well we are 'partners' now, no?"

[goatcultleader]

well if im doin it then so are you: 1-99

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most?I’m going to interpret this as 6 of my favorite songs, which are:Take Me Away – BleachersDoomsday – LovelifeScum – Peta & The WolvesCome Say Hello – SuperhumanoidsYou Haunt Me – Sir SlyStargazer – Elektrik People(I realized while deciding these songs that I have so many more songs that are my favorites)2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anyone I want to meet3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.“her knees. She was whispering to the boy to soothe him and”Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment4: What do you think about most?Just my life in general, I guess5: What does your latest text message from someone else say?“Probably the worst thing about Glar is how overpriced it is”6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on?I sleep with clothes on. I’m not some kind of animal7: What’s your strangest talent?I have no talents8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence)Girls are good and pure. Boys are wonderful beings.9: Ever had a poem or song written about you?No10: When is the last time you played the air guitar?Never????11: Do you have any strange phobias?Ok the closest thing I have to a phobia is teeth mutilation and it makes me feel very gross and uncomfortable12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?Probably as a small child13: What’s your religion?Atheist14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?Going inside15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?Behind the camera16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?I’m changing this to favorite artist, which makes it much easier, and that is Lana Del Rey17: What was the last lie you told?Ummm… I’m not sure. I tell little lies all the time18: Do you believe in karma?Not really19: What does your URL mean?It’s John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt and my name20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?My greatest weakness is probably my lack of self-confidence/need for validation, and my greatest strength is probably that I’m smart21: Who is your celebrity crush?I don’t have one22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping?No23: How do you vent your anger?I’ll talk to someone, maybe cry, or just think about it for a while24: Do you have a collection of anything?No25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?I hate both. I just want people to text me26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become?Not entirely, but I’m much happier with myself than I used to be27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?I have no idea28: What’s your biggest “what if”?What if I was the person I want to be?29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe in aliens30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.My desk with both of my arms (or if I’m counting my laptop as a thing, it would be that)31: Smell the air. What do you smell?I think I smell my mom making food?32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to?One time I went to Pittsburgh and it was so depressing and I had the vague desire to die (more than I usually do)33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast?East Coast34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?I don’t know35: To you, what is the meaning of life?To have a good time. Just to fill your life with as many good memories as possible36: Define Art.Something you find pleasing to the senses37: Do you believe in luck?Not exactly, because I think luck is more a perception of results than an actual phenomenon38: What’s the weather like right now?It’s cloudy but kind of bright and it’s cold39: What time is it?12:28 PM40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?I drive, but I’ve never crashed41: What was the last book you read?I read Macbeth for one of my classes42: Do you like the smell of gasoline?Yes43: Do you have any nicknames?“Johnny” is a nickname, but that’s what I go by. Different people call me different things44: What was the last film you saw?I’m pretty sure it was Don’t Breathe45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?One time I cut my thumb by accidentally smashing a glass and that was pretty bad46: Have you ever caught a butterfly?I’m sure I have as a child47: Do you have any obsessions right now?No48: What’s your sexual orientation?Bisexual49: Ever had a rumor spread about you?I don’t know. Maybe50: Do you believe in magic?No, but I do wonder how my friends do their magic tricks51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?In most cases no, but if they truly hurt me, or repeatedly hurt me, I will hold a grudge52: What is your astrological sign?Gemini53: Do you save money or spend it?I save money, but since college started, I’ve spent a lot (college is expensive, kids)54: What’s the last thing you purchased?Donuts55: Love or lust?Love56: In a relationship?No57: How many relationships have you had?358: Can you touch your nose with your tongue?No59: Where were you yesterday?At college, at a grocery store, back at college, and then at home for the rest of the day60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you?Yes (the closest things are a pen, markers, and colored pencils)61: Are you wearing socks right now?Yes62: What’s your favorite animal?Cats63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?If I had a secret weapon, then people would actually like me, so obviously I have no secret weapon to get someone to like me64: Where is your best friend?Her house I think?65: Give me your top 5 favorite blogs on Tumblr.@longing4urbottom @the-great-uniter @chasingstallionduckswiththerev @a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles @flanflantheicecreamman66: What is your heritage?I don’t know. White people67: What were you doing last night at 12AM?Sleeping, because I hadn’t slept the night before68: What do you think is Satan’s last name?I have no idea69: Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off?Yikes70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?I think so? I know I’m garbage but I also think I’m a good friend71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?I have to rescue the dog because it’s a dog and I have to72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?I’d tell people I care about, and I guess I’d try to make the most of the time I have left, and I think I’d be afraid73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love.I need both. One is worthless without the other74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?I don’t know. Really any song that I like makes me happy75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number?187576: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?Love, trust, common interest, mutual support, time together77: How can I win your heart?If you show an interest in me I will like you. That’s just how it works78: Can insanity bring on more creativity?I guess, because you would think differently if you were insane, which would make you more “creative”79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?To go to the college that I go to80: What size shoes do you wear?10 I think. Maybe 10 ½, i’m not sure81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone?“Finally”82: What is your favorite word?“Quality”83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart.Love???84: What is a saying you say a lot?“Quality”85: What’s the last song you listened to?Easier - Mansionair86: Basic question; what’s your favorite color/colors?Teal87: What is your current desktop picture?A teal-ish design88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?Myself89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?I’m not answering this, because it’ll pretty much give away the answer to the question90: One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren’t really doing anything; they’re just standing around your bed. What do you do?I’d probably be super scared, cry a little, then get away from the mummies91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?Shapeshifting92: You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?I’m sure there’s some good times I want to experience again, but I’m fine with just not reliving any part of my past93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?Can I just erase all of my life before high school, or maybe as far as until three years ago?94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?Ugggghhhh I don’t know95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?I don’t know. I don’t have a desire to go anywhere96: Do you have any relatives in jail?Not that I know of97: Have you ever thrown up in the car?No98: Ever been on a plane?No99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say?“I think some people are eavesdropping”