#im actually very anxious about posting these

[a-whispering-echo]

hello. below is me rambling about my new au - the ancient city one - and what i have down for it all right now. its just me rambling, and i tend to talk like im actually TELLING people about my ideas? like im sitting across from someone explaining it, and i try to imagine im speaking to someone who knows nothing about the sanses to try and like, GRIP the characters right, yknow? so yeah - lol

uh gore warning ig? its only descriptions for now, but i WILL be drawing them at some point!

oh yeah its bsp too lol

Story starts with Cross, who was disowned by his father after the death of his brother, which happened slightly after a very large argument between Cross and said brother. this is set in an old-ish setting. not quite modern day, not quite old timey. more fantasy set time - anyway yeah, Cross gets kicked out and shamed . oh hes human too here, you'll see later-

Cross is supposed to read as slightly unlikable, not fully, but with enough character flaws to balance out his good traits. Hes cold, very ambitious, but quite selfish too. he finds it hard to put himself in others shoes, and is focused, at first, in his own self interest. at the same time, he can be incredibly sweet, and self sacrificing when he wants to be. a hero truly. hes adaptable, and strong willed, even if he can sometimes break down in an anxious mess.

Cus Cross has been disowned, he decides to set out on his own path, alone, with not much on his other than his own survival skills - as all men from his town are trained for war and go through mandatory service, as he decides to treck and explore the world, figuring maybe, if he was luckily, he'd find a NEW home and family..

Eventually, one night, Cross is attacked by wolved while out setting up camp for the night. they destroy everything he'd worked for, and would him near fatally,

One of the wolves got a bit to his head, biting right into his right eye, leaving an awful bite mark over it that forces his eye shut forever. he isnt TECNICALLY blind, but he cant really open it without massive pain, ( it will eventually get infected and need to be removed. but thats WAYY in the future.)

Cross in his mad bid for safety, managed to scale a slight cliff edge, and find a very tight cave on a said cliff edge, managing to climb up over this ledge covered in lichen and algae, and sneaking into the gap that the wolves cannot reach. unfortunately, Cross wasnt expecting the drop.

When Cross wakes up, hes in what can only be described as the ruins of an old settlement, a… city? he thinks? the stone buildings are all destroyed, looking like a bomb has gone off through it, the stone in rubble, but miraculously, there are these glowing blue lanterns handing off posts that make up bridges connecting the little 'islands' of rubble to another in a pattern, those lanterns dim, but glowing faintly enough he can see his way… hes lying in a small pond, or a well or somthing, glowing blue algae covering the water, and HIM by extension, the water cold and soaking him to the bone.

What the hell happened here?

its as Cross is trying to right himself and fugure out where the HELL he is that he sees three figure in the distance...

They move, they walk, but theyre… theyre skeletons...

.... mostly. a couple of them look like they have a LITTLE flesh covering them, but its all mouldy and rotten. theres three of them, and all of them are dressed in dark robes, and covered in that ALGAE-lichen stuff, all that glowing cyan and black colour, spreading over their limbs like a plague. they seem all slightly confused on Cross entering their domain, the shortest one looks at his suspiciously under their cowl, and the tallest, with his awful head wound, pokes and prods at Cross and his broken body with fascination. the other one, with pitch black oozing eye sockets, seems FACINATED with him, excited even, theyre rubbing up against Cross like a cat and getting that black/cyan stuff all over him, Cross to scared and in pain to push it away from him

are they… inhabitants of the past settlement, maybe?

Turns out they can, mostly, speak english. they speak with an accent like no other, one Cross cant place, and use what Cross can only describe as odd and outdated words sometimes, but they seem to be able to understand him, at least. and they understand hes hurt, and needs help..

theyre kinda… well, theyre creepy as shit, no doubt bout it, but theyre not��� TRYING to be? theyre curious and weird and a bit gross, but theyre almost CAT like? they purr, they nuzzle, they even fucking SNIFF him at first, and dunk his head under the water when they find his scent distressing. - thats Killer to note - they have fucking TAILS - he sees them when Goopy turns to chirp at his friends-

theyre in different states of decay… though the flesh they DO have is little, and covered by that lichen stuff holding it to their bones like stitches, theyre not ACTIVLY rotting anymore? nor do they really smell?

The smallest one seems to speak for them, not really out of any leadership, but because Goopy doesnt seem to really understand, and Head Wound seems to only make rumbling chirping noises - they ALL make those noises, but… Scarf seems to understand him best, even it they CLEARLY dont trust Cross…

they work for their Master, and lover, a Creature named Nightmare. a being made from that black/cyan stuff, and the one who destroyed this previous kingdom entirely, killing all residents

well all, bar three? are.. well, are they dead or..?

Killer mostly moves on all fours, close to the ground, almost like a spider. he CAN stand upright, but its painful for him, and hes quicker lower to the floor. Dust is the shortest and has these glowing red spots that act like pupils in his eyes, one of them corrupted by the cyan stuff. Horror has an actual EYEBALL still in his left socket - the side with the big wound - while the other is empty. Dust is the least 'decomposed' and still has slight bits of pale tinged-purple-blue skin held to his bones with the algae stuff, but he seems to try and hide it under his layers of clothes. both Killer and Horror have claws, while Dust has his filled down and softer, though still SHARP! Killer is much more intelligent than he appears.

all three of the skeletons used to be human! theyre of a different race to any Cross would know, and mostly lived in caves and hollowed out mountains - theyre usually small people - Horror being what the kingdom would call 'a giant', with a range of skin tones but most being a soft brown, and hair that stems from black to dark red and oranges - they mostly all have dark eyes better suited to dark environment, and good senses

Dust is the most 'intelligent' of the three, seemingly knowing an array of languages and seems to know how to heal. Killer has spikes and bone shards and teeth sticking from his clothes and has a dagger attached to his belt - maybe some kind of warrior? Horror carries a spear with him that he leans on as he walks. he seems to be able to walk fine without it, but uses it almost as a cane - maybe a pain condition over physically not being able to move? with the head wound.. well, does that even MATTER anymore?

Anyways, yeah, noot noot-

Nightmare used to be a spirit of protecting for the city, until a disagreement with his Other Half, quite literally, his twin brother Dream - two beings born of the same soul, which caused Nightmare to corrupt.

Nightmare doesnt show up until at LEAST halfway through the story!

this story will eventually conclude with Cross joining them, and them all falling in love, Cross getting the answers he wants about them, and getting his FAMILY that he desperately craves.

im still working on this obs, but im gonna be doing some drawings of them not lol - obviously theres gonna be a bit of a gore warning -

[leon-on-the-froggy-chair]

AAAAAA big deterence from my usual postings

Flexing the multifandom brain cells and dropping these studies I did of stinky mask man:

Seemed seasonally appropriate

[freaky-flawless]

I really wish Venus's doll had sneakers similar to Clawdeen's original core doll. Still with the mouth detail, and maybe vine-like laces, and a leaf shaped tongue.

[sea-buns]

Holy fuck, man. What a trip Fearne has been on, huh?

You tell her how grateful you are to have her in your life, you flatter her, you tell her you need her, that you have to do this together. You have her make a promise that has this woman, born of chaos and fey, agreeing through shaking hands and a trembling voice.

You make her deceive your friends; you make her follow where they cannot know; you make her help you into this contraption; you make her feed this thing into you despite the fact that you both have been warned extensively of the risks. You make her watch you crumble and splinter and shatter and fracture and burst and implode. You make her watch you die, over and over and over and over, for a minute in agonizing bullet time.

You make her do all these things, because when she tries to back out, when she tries to not be the one who let you do this—how could you do this—

you tell her, "YOU PROMISED."

Because if there's one thing you know, it's that the fey do not break a promise.

[dreamsy990]

have some alastors (ft: unrequited radiostatic)

[dawnthefluffyduck]

*peeks behind corner*

*leaves*

...of course, I should mention that this was only possible with the help of @patchwork-crow-writes; he helped me with the final stage of writing and gave me a ton of good feedback+writing tips, and was just super encouraging during the entire writing process. It'd never get done, much less posted, without his help, so thank you again Mr. Crow!

[dimension20stuff]

I feel like I've grown so much as a person the past couple years but not in like...quantifiable ways. I am very proud of myself.

[minhmynchi]

man i wanna ramble about my fic to someone so much

into the tags i go

[squuote]

I think people should be allowed to share their distaste for certain headcanons n such without people making posts about how they’re ‘gatekeeping’. for as much as I’m a ‘do what you want’ kinda dude, I do think that includes allowing people to express why they don’t enjoy something. like most people are pretty civil bout it until you antagonize them by pointing and saying they’re ‘policing’ spaces.

[thepartyishere]

This is long winded rant about Cogwheels by Akutagawa

I wrote this a while back in a fit of obsession over the irl Akutagawa (that will never go away). I'd consider it vague analysis/ summary and not 100% focused on the BSD character if that's what you're looking for. Tbh I'm practicing my analysis/ writing skills and I'm not very confident in them yet. All this warning, it's not actually that bad I think (hope), I just have high standards for myself.

Anyways this is for @twinksintrees who asked about it

PDF of Cogwheels by Akutagawa Ryunosuke that I used:

https://documents.pub/document/ryunosuke-akutagawa-cogwheels.html?page=1

Cogwheels is a fictional work by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, but it’s widely acknowledged to be a thinly veiled autobiography. It was written in 1927, the same year the author commits suicide. 

 The story follows the main character’s thought processes in his day to day life. The events that occur aren’t what captivates me, but the emotions and thought patterns described. The mood is consistently very alone, different, and other from the population. This feeling of otherness is furthered by the paranoia the main character is experiencing, which drives him away from the few people he knows and the various physical illnesses he struggles with. His thought patterns feel disjointed to the reader, containing lots of logical leaps. He'll notice a recurring theme or object, like seeing an airplane several times in different situations and become paranoid and obsessive over the meaning of it. Throughout the work these varying recurring themes seem random and unimportant to the reader until the climax in which the character goes on a walk and encounters each of the subjects of those recurring themes, which he had been perceiving as premonitions of insanity and death. The culmination of all the foreshadowed repetition and the subsequent breakdown he has as he believes he is dying breaks down the distance the reader feels to the illogical fears and thoughts. The paranoia becomes justified to an outside observer when it all comes together.

Cogwheels reflects Akutagawa’s deteriorating mental state, as he successfully committed suicide the same year it was written. According to his Wikipedia page, he had intensifying and persistent visual hallucinations throughout his life as well as anxiety. We’ll never know the specifics of his mental illness, but I believe liberties can be taken to apply the experiences of the main character in Cogwheels to its author as the story is mostly autobiographical. The main character’s thought patterns revealed what I interpreted as compulsions and possibly OCD (but I am not particularly knowledgeable on the subject), depression, paranoia and other symptoms I may not be able to diagnose. The way in which these experiences are written and the feelings the descriptions invoke could not have been done by someone who wasn’t experiencing those exact things. 

The story feels like a very honest look into how Akutagawa thought and his worldview. This was written as his struggles and illnesses (mental and physical) were coming to climax. Another detail that may be Akutagawa’s thoughts projected is that multiple times in the story the character wants to admit himself to a mental hospital, but, "to go there meant death to me." Akutagawa’s life was plagued by fear of inheriting his mother’s madness. She was admitted to a mental institution when he was very young. Toward the end of his life that fear only grew as well as, "a vague sense of anxiety about my own future," which is one main reason for his suicide, given in his suicide note.

Regarding suicide, I can't help but think of how Dazai and Akutagawa's roles are reversed in BSD as they are in real life. The author Dazai greatly looked up to Akutagawa and I wonder what he may have thought and felt reading the works of a similarly depressed author. He was very affected by Akutagawa's death, being around 18 when it happened (Akutagawa was 35). The authors really are very similar, their works known for being bleak. It’s as if everyone else can't see how horrible things are and they are uniquely miserable in the world. As I continue to learn about the two authors I hope to compare their similarities in writing style and lifestyle in more depth. 

Akutagawa also had connections to Junichiro, with whom he publicly disagreed over whether the content or the structure of a story is more important in writing. Akutagawa argued that structure, or how the story is told, is more important. Any relationships between the real life inspirations for the Bungou Stray Dogs characters interests me, and I find this opinion held by Akutagawa relevant to Cogwheels. The content of the story is the quite mundane and sad life of the character, while the descriptions of declining sanity and the emotions conveyed are what I believe make the work so compelling. I’d be interested in reading Junichiro’s work to compare how his preference for the content and plot of a story impacts his writing.

In Cogwheels, the character’s emotions are constantly being influenced by anything he may perceive as or relate to something negative. His “normal” thought patterns or casual day will be interrupted once he makes any sort of negative connection or suspicious observation. He will obsess over the meaning of it, spiraling into distress and anxiety. 

This is my favorite example of that:

""Asylum" was precisely what it was. I somehow felt something soothing in the rosy tint of the wall and relaxed at a table. Fortunately there were only a few other customers there. I sipped a cup of cocoa and started to drag on a cigarette, as usual. The smoke rose in a faint blue stream up the rosy wall. The harmonious mingling of the soft colors was agreeable to me. But after a time I discovered a portrait of Napoleon on the wall to my left and began to feel uneasy again. When Napoleon was only a student, he had written on the last page of his geography notebook: "Saint Akutagawa Helena, a small island." lt might have been, as we say, only a coincidence. But it must have made even Napoleon shiver eventually . . . Gazing at Napoleon, I thought about my own work. And there burst upon me certain phrases in A Fool's Life. (Especially the words, "Life is more hellish than hell itself.") And also the hero's fate in my Hell Screen-a painter called Yoshihide. Then.. smoking I looked around the cafe trying to escape such memories. I had taken shelter here no more than five minutes earlier. Already the place had undergone a complete change. What made me most uncomfortable was the fact that the chairs and tables of imitation mahogany did not go with the rosy walls. Afraid I should fall into an agony imperceptible to others, I tried to get out of the cafe by quickly tossing down a silver coin."

This passage shows how one thing (a painting of Napoleon) will remind him of something negative and cause a downward spiral that seems to contain leaps between subjects, and he becomes distressed. As a fan of the writing style, I especially notice and admire the way Akutagawa describes the color of the wall as soothing in the beginning, with pleasant imagery, then cites the colors of the furniture and walls as his greatest source of discomfort in the end of the passage. The character feels as though the very environment around him has turned against him, changing with his shifting moods. What was pleasant has become hostile, the outside mirroring his inner state.

The last paragraph of Cogwheels is something that has struck me since the first time I read it. It’s the character’s reaction to the climax of the story, in which he went on a walk and had a breakdown over the culmination of the recurring premonitions:

“It was the most frightening experience in my life- l haven't the strength to go on writing. lt is inexpressibly painful to live in such a frame of mind. lsn't there anyone to come and strangle me quietly in my sleep?”

I am reminded of what Asagiri said in an interview: “This story (Bungou Stray Dogs) is not for people who are good at living.” Akutagawa was also arguably not good at living, which creates a connection between the inspiration for the manga character and its reader that fascinates me. 

As much as I describe the thought patterns and paranoia in Cogwheels as something somewhat foreign, something experienced by someone who was nearing the end and reaching the height of their lifelong mental illness, I find some familiarity in it. Akutagawa was far from good at living and the lack of control and fear I sense in his life and in this story resonate with me. I’m drawn to the hopeless tone of his works and the tragedies of his life. 

Sources and Further Info:

Akutagawa’s Wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%ABnosuke_Akutagawa

Some of his childhood and analysis/ comparison to Edgar Allen Poe

https://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Akutagawa.html

BSD Wiki for some of the relationship between author Dazai and Akutagawa

https://bungostraydogs.fandom.com/wiki/Real-life_References

A partial translation of the Asagiri interview  (@Popopretty1 on Twitter)

https://twitter.com/Popopretty1/status/16634469970163916

[yanderespamton78]

Time for my favourite game: Do I Have A Crush On This Person Or Have I Just Never Had A Friend This Close And Also Never Had A Crush Therefore I Am Interpretating My Affection For This Person As Romantic Attraction

[normalcannibalism]

i feel weird and self conscious about my art again. sigh

the entire post ended up in thw tags ohb my god

[godzexperiment]

~going to be mushy an moment~ okay but like i'm so glad i made this blog; like holy fuck I adore everybody so much. like i love the writing styles, vast arrays of kickass muses and just aaaaa

[loverboybitch]

hi i would just like to report that getting out of my house and being a member of society is cool and kind of rules even when its scary yeah.//.

[coridallasmultipass]

If it's okay for me to add something related because I first saw this on Tumblr: In the mid-2010s, I heard about there being a gay Filipino deity romance (from one culture in the Philippines - there are many different cultures and beliefs) here on Tumblr. It wasn't until years later when researching Philippine deities for fun while trying to broadly connect with my culture that I found a deep dive where someone found that the Bulan and Sidapa love story originated from the same fictional blog source, and had been circulating from new sources and fan art claiming it was historical for years before the author tried to find a non-modern historical source for the rumour, creating a kind of Berenstain/Berenstein effect on the people he asked, claiming they'd heard about the love story from a forgotten source much earlier than the 2010s, but unable to give a specific name, or the source cited claimed they didn't actually know about the romance.

While I think in this instance, a shift in narrative is obviously okay when you consider it is still a living Filipino culture, and people from that clearly find identity with this modern take (which should be asked of people from the cultures directly affected by misinfo), it should also be important not to rewrite it as 'historical fact' particularly when it has a fictional modern source that someone can directly point to as the origin when they question and search down the telephone line (like the game).

(I use the word 'fictional' only in reference to the originating blog, because the blog was unable or unwilling to provide any sources that mentioned that relationship to the deep dive author. I'm not implying said gods can't be/aren't gay. I'm not from that specific Philippine culture, and I don't have enough background knowledge to make any claims of my own. There's also no like, singular religious text/'bible' that pre-Hispanic Philippine beliefs followed as a rule/that can be consulted about this - it's not like a translation debate. There's just no textual source pre-dating the blog making the claim of the romance, and historians/oral historians aren't making the claim either.)

I get variations on this comment on my post about history misinformation all the time: "why does it matter?" Why does it matter that people believe falsehoods about history? Why does it matter if people spread history misinformation? Why does it matter if people on tumblr believe that those bronze dodecahedra were used for knitting, or that Persephone had a daughter named Mespyrian? It's not the kind of misinformation that actually hurts people, like anti-vaxx propaganda or climate change denial. It doesn't hurt anyone to believe something false about the past.

Which, one, thanks for letting me know on my post that you think my job doesn't matter and what I do is pointless, if it doesn't really matter if we know the truth or make up lies about history because lies don't hurt anyone. But two, there are lots of reasons that it matters.

It encourages us to distrust historians when they talk about other aspects of history. You might think it's harmless to believe that Pharaoh Hatshepsut was trans. It's less harmless when you're espousing that the Holocaust wasn't really about Jews because the Nazis "came for trans people first." You might think it's harmless to believe that the French royalty of Versailles pooped and urinated on the floor of the palace all the time, because they were asshole rich people anyway, who cares, we hate the rich here; it's rather less harmless when you decide that the USSR was the communist ideal and Good, Actually, and that reports of its genocidal oppression are actually lies.

It encourages anti-intellectualism in other areas of scholarship. Deciding based on your own gut that the experts don't know what they're talking about and are either too stupid to realize the truth, or maliciously hiding the truth, is how you get to anti-vaxxers and climate change denial. It is also how you come to discount housing-first solutions for homelessness or the idea that long-term sustained weight loss is both biologically unlikely and health-wise unnecessary for the majority of fat people - because they conflict with what you feel should be true. Believing what you want to be true about history, because you want to believe it, and discounting fact-based corrections because you don't want them to be true, can then bleed over into how you approach other sociological and scientific topics.

How we think about history informs how we think about the present. A lot of people want certain things to be true - this famous person from history was gay or trans, this sexist story was actually feminist in its origin - because we want proof that gay people, trans people, and women deserve to be respected, and this gives evidence to prove we once were and deserve to be. But let me tell you a different story: on Thanksgiving of 2016, I was at a family friend's house and listening to their drunk conservative relative rant, and he told me, confidently, that the Roman Empire fell because they instituted universal healthcare, which was proof that Obama was destroying America. Of course that's nonsense. But projecting what we think is true about the world back onto history, and then using that as recursive proof that that is how the world is... is shoddy scholarship, and gets used for topics you don't agree with just as much as the ones you do. We should not be encouraging this, because our politics should be informed by the truth and material reality, not how we wish the past proved us right.

It frequently reinforces "Good vs. Bad" dichotomies that are at best unhelpful and at worst victim-blaming. A very common thread of historical misinformation on tumblr is about the innocence or benevolence of oppressed groups, slandered by oppressors who were far worse. This very frequently has truth to it - but makes the lies hard to separate out. It often simplifies the narrative, and implies that the reason that colonialism and oppression were bad was because the victims were Good and didn't deserve it... not because colonialism and oppression are bad. You see this sometimes with radical feminist mother goddess Neolithic feminist utopia stuff, but you also see it a lot regarding Native American and African history. I have seen people earnestly argue that Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice, that that was a lie made up by the Spanish to slander them. That is not true. Human sacrifice was part of Aztec, Maya, and many Central American war/religious practices. They are significantly more complex than often presented, and came from a captive-based system of warfare that significantly reduced the number of people who got killed in war compared to European styles of war that primarily killed people on the battlefield rather than taking them captive for sacrifice... but the human sacrifice was real and did happen. This can often come off with the implications of a 'noble savage' or an 'innocent victim' that implies that the bad things the Spanish conquistadors did were bad because the victims were innocent or good. This is a very easy trap to fall into; if the victims were good, they didn't deserve it. Right? This logic is dangerous when you are presented with a person or group who did something bad... you're caught in a bind. Did they deserve their injustice or oppression because they did something bad? This kind of logic drives a lot of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and defenses of Kyle Rittenhouse today. The answer to a colonialist logic of "The Aztecs deserved to be conquered because they did human sacrifice and that's bad" is not "The Aztecs didn't do human sacrifice actually, that's just Spanish propaganda" (which is a lie) it should be "We Americans do human sacrifice all the god damn time with our forever wars in the Middle East, we just don't call it that. We use bullets and bombs rather than obsidian knives but we kill way, way more people in the name of our country. What does that make us? Maybe genocide is not okay regardless of if you think the people are weird and scary." It becomes hard to square your ethics of the Innocent Victim and Lying Perpetrator when you see real, complicated, individual-level and group-level interactions, where no group is made up of members who are all completely pure and good, and they don't deserve to be oppressed anyway.

It makes you an unwitting tool of the oppressor. The favorite, favorite allegation transphobes level at trans people, and conservatives at queer people, is that we're lying to push the Gay Agenda. We're liars or deluded fools. If you say something about queer or trans history that's easy to debunk as false, you have permanently hurt your credibility - and the cause of queer history. It makes you easy to write off as a liar or a deluded fool who needs misinformation to make your case. If you say Louisa May Alcott was trans, that's easy to counter with "there is literally no evidence of that, and lots of evidence that she was fine being a woman," and instantly tanks your credibility going forward, so when you then say James Barry was trans and push back against a novel or biopic that treats James Barry as a woman, you get "you don't know what you're talking about, didn't you say Louisa May Alcott was trans too?" TERFs love to call trans people liars - do not hand them ammunition, not even a single bullet. Make sure you can back up what you say with facts and evidence. This is true of homophobes, of racists, of sexists. Be confident of your facts, and have facts to give to the hopeful and questioning learners who you are relating this story to, or the bigots who you are telling off, because misinformation can only hurt you and your cause.

It makes the queer, female, POC, or other marginalized listeners hurt, sad, and betrayed when something they thought was a reflection of their own experiences turns out not to be real. This is a good response to a performance art piece purporting to tell a real story of gay WWI soldiers, until the author revealed it as fiction. Why would you want to set yourself up for disappointment like that? Why would you want to risk inflicting that disappointment and betrayal on anyone else?

It makes it harder to learn the actual truth.

Historical misinformation has consequences, and those consequences are best avoided - by checking your facts, citing your sources, and taking the time and effort to make sure you are actually telling the truth.

[zackcharine]

i need a walking around aimlessly tag so bad and i also. Need to stop my brain from fucking with what the ep actually representsJXHXBD