#ghhh the easy answer is that dazai just nullified the fog.. but idk i feel like that's a cheap way out of character analysis

[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