#he's my top bsd kin for a reason afterall

[bungobble-my-balls]

You bring up some interesting points! I was originally just leaving this post and the replies to it, but I can tell this subject is close to you so I just wanted to clear some things up.

(Also I technically did say 'correct me if I'm wrong' at the start, so you were just holding me accountable to that lol)

I think you might have misunderstood what I'm saying here. It definitely might be from a matter of wording though. Tbh I was just writing as I thought of it (even if these have been my thoughts for a long time) and I was expecting this post to get like, 5 or 15 notes. I wasn't expecting it to blow up like it did, and if I had intended that I would've definitely more carefully made some things clear.

My main motivation for writing this post, was because of the very common fanon misconception that Atsushi is like any other 'kind hearted, always willing to help others' shonen MC, especially in regards to his relationship with Akutagawa. A lot of people seem to see their 'yin/yang' symbolism to mean 'Atsushi is good but can be secretly bad and Akutagawa is bad but can be secretly good'. While I can see how some people could read it that way, I think it's very far from their actual dynamic, and I don't think any bsd character can be put so easily into 'good and bad' categories. A big part of the series is how grey all of the cast are. I made this post to offer the alternative to the symbolism that I thought was more accurate to their characters.

(I'm guessing that we're on the same page at least in that regard. You don't seem like the type of person who agrees with the fanon misconception I stated above).

Atsushi is someone who acts for good reasons and does good things, yes, but I wanted to point out how Atsushi does have a selfish side that is often ignored by the fandom. He's not some innocent, sweet, heroic MC. He's a lot more complicated than that, and I see him more as someone that doesn't automatically go for the most kindhearted route but chooses to, similar to how Dazai chose to help people to honour his friend even if that's not what he would've done initially. Bsd has a lot of focus on characters who do good things not because it's just 'how they are', but because its how they choose to be. It's why Akutagawa, who was a villain at first, was initially the reverse. Someone who initially had kind intentions towards people who CHOSE to hurt people (even if it was a result of his environment). It doesn't even have to be saving people to show someone as 'kind', it could've been anything, but Asagiri chose to have 'saving people' as a tool to show how his characters develop.

In this sense, I also don't think it's accurate to say 'Atsushi is bad and Akutagawa is good'. My post wasn't meant to offer a role reversal of the dynamic, it was meant to offer a deconstruction of it and a different way to analyse WHY Asagiri gave this symbolism to these two in the first place.

To me, the 'yin yang' symbolism isn't about strict categories, it's more like a guide Asagiri uses for Atsushi and Akutagawa to show how they contrast eachother. These guides can of course be broken, and the two can act in ways that contrast it, but when together or put into similar situations, the symbolism shows to the audience more and shows what's different between these two characters. That's how I view all symbolism tbh, not as strict rules for the characters but as guides to help the audience analyse them.

You're right when you say it's not selfish to not help people, no one should have to put the weight of everyone else on their shoulders, but we should also consider Atsushi's character from a writing standpoint rather than just a standpoint of him as a person. Bungou stray dogs is a series that centres around saving people, so to show how a character might be selfish, Asagiri writes this character to be someone who doesn't initially save people just for the sake of saving them.

Atsushi isn't wrong to want to leave, to not save everyone. Him being selfish isn't a bad thing, people need to be selfish sometimes to live healthily. The problem for him is WHY he's selfish, that his reasons for wanting to save people are UNHEALTHY for him. He initially tries to save people out of a lack of self worth, and a belief that his only purpose is to die in order to keep others safe because the director made him think that. He's not acting out of kindness, he's acting out of seeing a lack of worth in himself. As the series progresses, Atsushi is able to shift his reason for saving people more into something healthy. He has more trust in himself, trust in his comrades, and he starts saving people not from a lack of self worth, but out of empathy and a want to help these people reach a better life too. It's not that his initial reasons are 'bad' because they're bad for others, they're 'bad' because they're bad for HIM. It's wrong because he's hurting HIMSELF.

As a character in this series, Atsushi will always save people. Every character in the ADA and others in this series are written to be characters who save people. So while it's definitely OK and more healthy to not save everyone because it's not your responsibility as a person, that's just not what this series is about. So Asagiri instead focused on Atsushi's motivations for saving, rather than if he should be trying to save everyone. It goes from his self loathing and him being stuck in his own head, to trusting himself more and allowing his empathy to shine better. Atsushi is complicated, but he's not a bad person. And him being selfish and rude and not immediately thinking to go the 'nicest' route doesn't make him such either.

Now I don't think Asagiri gets the message completely across everytime, but even when he doesn't do it right I try to think of it more from a point of 'OK, what was the writer INTENDING to write in the text' rather than just analysing it from what's actually written in the text.

You might still disagree with me, but I at least hope I was able to get my thoughts across better on this subject. I mean I hope it made some sense at least, there's a lot here so it might just come across as me rambling nonsense a bunch lol.

I completely understand where you're coming from. I have the same issue you mentioned, having a 'Martyr complex' and burning myself out trying to help people. I actually think Atsushi has this too. I just think his initial motivations behind his Martyr complex started not from empathy but from 'I need to save them because that's the only useful thing I can do with my life'. So Atsushi went the sacrificial route with it and later starts to go into believing that he can help the person WITHOUT needing to hurt/kill himself in the process. He learns to trust himself and his allies rather than projecting onto the people who need saving to prove that he deserves to exist

I still hold my belief about how Atsushi contrasts Akutagawa with the 'yin yang' symbolism, but I don't think his character should be entirely viewed from within the barriers of this, and I especially don't think Atsushi is a bad person for thinking and acting how he does.

Thank you for your response though! Even if we might disagree in some cases I'm glad I was given a chance to put more of my thoughts out there.

Additional edit: (I'm basically just talking more about the difference with sskk and with other characters)

The point of showing if these characters are selfish isn't meant to entirely be based on whether or not they save people. The story device of 'saving people' is just a tool Asagiri uses to get this message across.

Akutagawa was bad at first because he fully had the capability to do kind things, he always had that part himself in him. But he chose not to. He chose to hurt people.

It's one thing to have an antagonist that was rotten to the core, but it's worse to have an antagonist that is kind at heart and STILL chooses to hurt people. It's like how Nikolai is scarier because he actually DOES feel empathy for the people he kills, but he chooses to kill them anyway.

(Dazai can also be an example of a contrast to this. He never had that desire to save people, but he chose to because of a wish from his dying friend. He ends up liking the feeling of doing good, but he was always just as capable of going back to hurting people. His development isn't based on him 'saving' people, but his connections to those close to him. He chose to help people because he cared about Oda, and in the current arc he put himself at risk not to save the world but because he cared about the ADA. I believe this connection between Dazai and Atsushi is purposeful for their mentor-student role).

Bsd shows a large amount of characters that could roughly fit into this 'yin yang' dynamic tbh, I don't see it as exclusive to sskk even if they're at the centre of it.

Atsushi is different to Akutagawa here, because his childhood didn't require him growing into a protector, he was isolated and abused. He never had a personal connection, and he only saw himself as lesser than other people. He was something that could only be useful by dying to protect others. Initially, his instinct to protect others was based on his own insecurities.

Atsushi didn't have that starting point of having the instinct to see other people's problems. He was self pitying and was focused on proving his own worth over actually thinking about what other people might be going through.

Kyouka was the first person that Atsushi truly saw in this way, the first time he saw that someone other than himself was hurting. She plays a big role in his character and how he actively starts to realise that he's not alone in his insecurities. Rather than focusing on his own lack self worth, he wants to help people find their own. Through helping people like this and gaining connections with those around him, he actually improves his self worth a lot more than when he was trying to self-sacrifice.

THAT'S how Atsushi develops. He wasn't in the wrong for not wanting to help people. However, helping people is how he’s able to help himself, but he wasn't going about it in the right way because he didn't know how at first. He didn't have that shonen protagonist 'heroic at heart' thing. He had to learn himself.

OK correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the main 'yin/yang' parallel with Atsushi and Akutagawa is not something like 'this one is bad but secretly has a good side and this one is good but secretly has a bad side'.

I feel like it's more about 'who they are at their core vs who they choose to be'.

At his core Akutagawa is kind and at his core Atsushi is not. But despite this Atsushi tries every day to make the kinder choices and I love him so much for it. He has to work so hard to be good.

He wants to be a bitch SO bad I know he does but he tries his best to help people and be nice (sometimes he fails but that's OK <3)

Atsushi doesn't always WANT to help people, a lot of the time he's selfish and scared, but he does help people anyway. He keeps helping people over and over again. There's still some selfish motivation to it, and his initial motivation for helping people was because the headmaster told him that's all he was worth, but overall he does care about the people he helps and it weighs on him if he fails to save them. And of course, as the series goes on he starts helping people more because he can rather than because he feels like he needs to.

In Akutagawa's case, he's still capable of being kind but his environment led him into being someone who chooses to hurt people. But he's always been a protector at heart. In the start he was bad compared to Atsushi because he was choosing to hurt people and keep the cycle of abuse going. Just like how Atsushi developed in why he saved people, Akutagawa starts to get redeemed when he chooses to not just act on his rage. Not only does he start to spare people, but he speaks more kindly to them (apologising to Higuchi and telling Kyouka he's proud of her). It all culminates into the moment he chooses to help Atsushi and sacrifice himself for him, going back to his core value of being a protector. Even when he's finally revived, he keeps this role in his new position as Aya's Knight.

I kind of see the streaks of white in Akutagawa and the streaks of black in Atsushi not as their 'hidden sides' but as their fundamental selfs. That's who they are at their core, and their main colours (black for Akutagawa and white for Atsushi) are how they're presented to everyone else and how they try to have people see them as.