#moris says shit

[moris-i-cant-move-it-anymore]

Some doodles for @thatluckyboi

@ericvelseb there's also a tiny Eric :33

[lotus-pear]

i think skk should totally take a brief vacation in paris post-meursault since they're already in france before going home to yokohama

[whathas4letters]

Blue period 74 is absolutely batshit insane wtf. I can never emotionally recover from this fucking part.

[i-eat-mold]

Frames from a short video I posted on insta because this little kid is so doomed by the narrative and something about miserable children in fiction makes me go apeshit

[coweggomelet]

gorthalax: you all said the name. that means i'm not covered by oblivati mori right now

me: HOLY SHIT *does a full three laps around my apartment* HOLY FUCK

[hopefull-mindset]

Finally understanding Beast Mori (as Asagiri intended)

Hello everyone, I am hoping you’ll be nice about me talking about Mori for two seconds and express my thoughts about such a guy like this. This isn’t going to be some fancy analysis picking apart stuff like I’d usually want to or even me addressing every trait he has because I definitely don’t go into everything. This is me finally being at peace with Mori’s humanity.

Before you say anything, I’d just like to share my own peace of comprehension. So if you were similarly confused the way I was, I think you’d appreciate this (Or if you’re looking for a different approach on Mori).

Im sure most of you have read the manga adaptation, so just to let you know, I am going to be using passages from the official Light Novel translation and if anyone needs it, I can send it to them!

For anyone who’s decided to read, hello! Nice to meet you. I’m sure we’ve all shared the same confusion when confronted with Beast Mori’s difference in personality and approach. Thoughts like “Why is he so much nicer?” Or “Why does he care much more about how kids are treated, when he himself has treated kids the same way he describes in the past?”

How could this person be the same guy who was Mori the Port Mafia Boss? The war veteran who used Yosano the way he did? So we came up with many idea of why he’s different to justify it, but here’s the thing: Mori is the same person he always was, this is a universe where everything is the same, but different where Dazai chooses to intervene.

After a few days, I was able to recognize it but I couldn’t hold myself to acknowledge it. It’s hard to see a man who represents the dark, the Port Mafia, to the Armed Detective Agency’s light. I couldn’t wrap my head that such a controlling, manipulative man could have humanity like the rest of the characters.

Why was this so hard for me to see? Well two reasons— the fandom and how the anime cuts down Mori’s emotions when adapting canon material. This happens to Dazai too, but people are much more willing to talk about it compared to Mori. Now the fandom really does love blaming everything on Mori and that’s not the most constructive thing to do when talking about abuse narratives. I can’t blame anyone for taking this route when it came to Mori because of Asagiri’s poorly thought out choice with him…. we all know what I’m talking about. Elise.

However, I need some of you to understand that abuse narratives are never as simple as “oh, it’s all this persons fault because they’re a horrible person, so [character] is resolved from any guilt or responsibility”. This not only dumbs down the situation and seriousness of it, by mischaracterizing the abuser, you’re also mischaracterizing the victim as well and what they’ve gone through. You’re putting their story in jeopardy.

Bungou Stray Dogs is a story about human beings, morality, and what it all means. Mori, and in turn Fukuzawa, are important to understand Bungou Stray Dogs because they are in two pinochle positions that start this discussion of Morality. I am baffled that a story like this, one that approaches these topics with so much appreciation for humanity and nuance, has a fandom that doesn’t want to talk about what it has to offer.

Asagiri’s poorly thought out writing decision of a joke is going to have lasting effects with how Mori is going to be approached forever and I see this, but I think the little girl jokes are the least important thing to talk about because they have as much impact as the Tanizaki siblings do. He’s also written to be not a good person either, so you can dislike him easily, but how many of these characters are traditionally good people? Kouyou, for example, is not a “good person” and emotionally abusive in example to how she treated Kyouka. That doesn’t stop people from liking her friendship with Chuuya and making content with her.

So this attitude toward Mori had me lost when it came to him because I could see how much thought Asagiri puts into writing him the same way he does with so many, but I’ve seen so many disregard his humanity that I had no way to express any of my thoughts to sort out what to think about through anyone else when faced with Beast Mori. Everyone was as lost I was, and the people that weren’t never explained it in a way I could break that barrier.

So what finally made me wrap my head around Mori? It was exactly one conversation I had with a friend and it wasn’t even about Beast Mori in particular, it was just about Mori and his poor humanity while navigating how to lead. Everything just clicked with that.

(Dazai, Chuuya, age Fifteen)

This right here is where Mori tells us what he thinks his position means after the struggling we visibly see him go through. Is it an inherently correct conclusion to make? No, but does it make sense as someone who’s a leader of a huge, dangerous underground criminal organization? Yes, it does.

We have no backstory on Mori, but his poor humanity is easy to explain when he’s been in positions that require him to disregard his own and everyone else’s humanity for years now. As someone who’s seen war up close and a physician, these jobs require him to take control of the other person. Well in his mind at least, he sees these jobs and chooses to the route that’s most efficient.

It’s never positioned to be for himself though, he doesn’t take glee in what he does for self serving purposes, it’s always for the country, the city, the organization. His thought process is never the power hungry yearning we see everyone mistake it for. It’s never that he wants it, it’s that he needs it for everything to go well.

That’s exactly how he treats Yosano because even though it’s creepy to base your abilities looks on a little girl, that doesn’t stop him from seeing her use before her age and humanity.

His clinical utilitarianism is his core trait but also most disliked one from what I can tell in the fandom, and people tend to misinterpret it to make the more non-favorable view of him. But again, he’s not supposed to be the greatest guy ever and you can understand where these traits started forming. And again, to paraphrase another’s words: he’s cunning, but not power hungry.

He’s also not disliked by his subordinates and actually respected, he respectively enjoys the company, but there’s a mixed answer to that and that it is… nobody is going to listen to you if you don’t treat them with decency. Why would you expect a tool to work if you break them? One of his earliest lessons he learned with Yosano and leadership.

(Dazai, Chuuya, Age Fifteen)

For example, we all know this scene is manipulation. He’s baiting Chuuya with information while still treating the teenager with respect and enough honesty to form a bond. Chuuya is perfectly aware that he’s being used in the present and in the past, but he respects Mori as a leader objectively after his own considered failure and lack of control over the sheep, even if he didn’t consider himself one. I don’t think this honesty comes from nowhere because that quote, “only a Diamond can polish a Diamond”, came from Natsume in reference to himself and Fukuzawa.

He sees himself and Fukuzawa in Soukoku fondly, but I tend to rethink this quote time to time because at first it comes off as a quote about partnership and building off of each other’s good qualities to perfect their own, but the way Mori uses it here feels as though it’s positioned to mean that one of them comes out perfected and the other weared down. Pretty competitive if you think about it.

(Bungou Stray Dogs BEAST)

We’re finally at the part you’ve been waiting for guys! So what was my point for analyzing canonverse Mori? So as I said before, these are the exact same guy and all that word jumble? That was an extended version of what was communicated with me to finally get what was going on with Mori in this universe and why he’s suddenly in an orphanage.

Now I couldn’t tell what was going through Beast Dazai’s mind and where this decision came from instead of actually killing him like the rumor’s implied, but I can come close. I think that Beast Dazai recognized this potential of change either from the multitude of universes he was able to witness or recognized it in his own considering canonverse Dazai never does anything against Mori (even if he visibly dislikes him).

Possibility is one thing, the why is another. It was either that he saw potential and good that could come out of this in the long run, Mori’s intelligence and expertise still proves usefulness, less dangerous for Oda in the long run if he let Mori stay there instead of the Mafia, or all three.

I can say for sure though that this is better for Mori because after the years of being in atmospheres that require so much of him intelligently and exempt of any emotion involved for the sake of efficiency, being able to rekindle his humanity where nothing is expected of him except to raise kids in a non-exploitative context sounds really freeing to me. Considering he’s been there for 4 years, I find the development understandable.

Okay I’m hearing what you guys are saying again, “What about him saying he wanted to save Dazai? That doesn’t seem like typical Mori.” And I’m gonna say something really controversial: Well maybe he did.

Really though, I think he did care about Dazai and not because he saw a child struggling (think about Yosano and Q for 3 seconds), but because he saw himself in Dazai, which ultimately changed way more about their relationship than you guys think. There’s a lot of comparisons to Yosano and I understand where they come from because I think there’s a lot you can see similarities in, but Dazai is not purely a tool for Mori the way she was.

The avoidance of letting him die do come from his use and overall importance to the original plan of becoming the new boss, but I don’t think he would’ve left Dazai alone like that for 4 whole years after leaving the mafia if he didn’t care in some way way. What strikes me the most is how Asagiri decided to add “the man who raised Dazai”.

For Beast Mori, I think he’s had enough time to actually feel guilt and regret for Dazai as a person like a normal human being does. Oh I guess Elise is important too. Her aging up just meant that Mori has become less controlling and not like the little girl who he literally sees as a tool since kids are easier to manipulate. Can’t bring that energy to an orphanage, nope!

There’s better stuff out there about Mori that I think if you’re more open to thinking about Mori after this, you should check it out, these are just my thoughts recently. To end this off, here are two links to Asagiri’s own thoughts on Mori.

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

I did a quick drawing for ch 3 a while back (the first image), and recently I decided to add more to the story 😊

[nonuggetshere]

I've had these guys for a good few months now and finally decided to bite the bullet and design them

Looking for a female adult bagworm photos was. Unreasonably hard tbh

[mizukagami-takamagahara]

Jin was obtainable as a 5⭐ unit in BBDW.

A NOL Uniform costume was released for his unit during the ending campaign of the game.  A costume based on his appearance in Spiral Shift was created, but never released.

During BBDW’s run, costumes were typically released during special events, for characters integral to the event’s story.

I’d assume the Spiral Shift costume had been saved for an eventual Spiral Shift event.  Events had been typically releasing with a new 5⭐ and 4⭐ character; had we gotten that event, I imagine we would have seen 5⭐ Grimwood and 4⭐ Karenjina.

Though I wonder what the NOL uniform would have been for.  It seems to be the same uniform we see him in during one of the CGs in Central Fiction.  Kagura got a similar uniform during his launch, obtainable as a reward for rolling multiples of him.  I wonder if that’s how we would have gotten that costume, or if there would have been another event with him as a focus.

[moris-i-cant-move-it-anymore]

I guess I am back and feeling a bit better

Also Fake collab with @angxlnet :3

And I gotta thank @tazova for making my mental health a bit better

[wrenisflying]

i see what they were trying to do with memento mori, right, but i think it falls just a little short; death is so hard to conceptualize and no one can agree on what it actually means (plus memento mori is mostly for the catholics, and like. yeah your saints died but so did jesus?? so??) but what’s a humbling experience we can all not only conceptualize but also relate to? taking a fat shit. nothing will help you bring your fav down from the pedestal like knowing they’ve had diarrhea. and you know who probably never had diarrhea? jesus. so i present: memento poopi.

[starmage-constellar]

hi posting this to say if you give people shit for their music taste do not engage w me. like in the most respectful way possible i dont need your negativity

[lnkedmyheart]

people are saying chuuya didn't know dazai orchestrated the flags deaths and that he and mori planned their deaths for the benefit of the mafia.

Who even are these people? Where are they getting this info from? Is it the same people who think Chuuya is too peanut brained to function? Cause canonically Chuuya would be the first person to figure out every little detail of Dazai's plan within minutes.

[exxos-orphan-program]

Rowing on Paper boats

welcome ladies and gentlemen, here we discuss my broken dreams of writing a book about me and my friends running away from our fucked up families, that turned into a very weird, toxic codependent queerbaiting relationship by accidentally joining a Mafia.

[deltaz-but-they-just-call-me-taz]

Daily dose of: me and sis :D

*3AM*

Sister: Jellie died!

Me: What!

Sis: *bawling her eyes out*

Me: Okay, watch something happy- Ranboo out of context or something- and forget about it and grieve in the morning.

Sis: He lost his best friend- *bawling*

Me, panicing: Turn on some whacky kazoo music and go to sleep!

Sis: Ohh- a baby rabbit *sniffling*

Me: Yes, watch the video about the baby rabbit... and don't think about how it'll inevitably die someday-

Sis: Taz!

Me: What?! I'm soulless at this point- memento mori, baby.

Sis: Ah, here- *shows me phone*- Tango's a happy man, right?

[kaurwreck]

#finally someone who explores mori in a proper way

I think most of the barriers to understanding Mori, Mori and Dazai's relationship, and the Port Mafia generally is that readers are applying standards regarding social roles and violence that have limited applicability in any setting, but which are especially absurd in a setting like bsd's, which is explicitly volatile, chaotic, and at the precipice of disaster.

bsd!Yokohama looks like a modern, developed city, so it's easy to forget, but Yokohama is canonically not stable. It is a sliced up mess caught in the jaws of foreign militaries, a civilian government, Japan's national military, and multiple, violent ex-military or paramilitary gangs driven from Europe to Japan in the aftermath of the Great War. Further, the Guild, which in its greater whole is an American espionage network that has infilitrated multiple spheres of influence, has been coalescing in Yokohama for at least two years, to do something. Ango further implies that the Guild has thoroughly infiltrated the Japanese government, and he urges Dazai and the Agency to fucking flee.

(Then, Dazai gets him t-boned by a car, so. We didn't get very much follow-up on that ominous plea. I'm sure they talked about it further off-screen, and I have an inkling that Ango poaching Melville at the end of the Guild arc might relate to his and Dazai's efforts to address that implied conflict — considering Melville formerly led the Guild, and Melville's implied sentiments regarding the Guild.)

This is to say, it's not particularly useful to apply frameworks of idealized, healthy dynamics to an environment that cannot accomodate them. Nevertheless, bsd fanon tends to force the fit by:

Retconning or ignoring entirely the canonical reality,

Dismissing the characters' explicit movitations,

Selectively imposing victimhood to strip characters of their autonomy,

Presuming irrationality instead of incomplete information,

Applying concepts like "inherent badness" to people and institutions. (Including the Port Mafia, which is WILD considering (i) explicit exposition that the Port Mafia under Mori is a stabilizing pillar of Yokohama focused on harm reduction in the informal economy which supplements the city's public services and (ii) the characters keep looking at the camera and promising they love Mori and want to be there, and then demonstrating that in action over and over), and

Stripping love and sincerity from the characters' relationships.

Applying standards that are not achievable within the context they're being applied blunts the fandom's understanding of the characters and, paradoxically, makes the story so much more cruel and flat than it is — which is unfortunate when the heart of the narrative is that we can make choices that give the world meaning and wonder even in chaotic, dynamic, tragic, and complex circumstances.

Rereading the early Guild Arc is incredible because it's Fukuzawa and Mori engaging in viciously nasty and personal threats to one another's closest loved ones and allies that wildly escalates beyond their implicitly agreed upon tension, which comes to a head because Dazai petulantly mischaracterizes Mori as pathologically mathematical (because he isn't over that Mori could do what he did to Dazai) and intentionally triggers the paranoia and obsessive compulsive betrayal sensitivity that he'd clocked in Mori at fifteen, causing Mori to irrationally lash out and release Q (and then self flagellate because the consequences of this were wildly amplified by the Guild's seizure of Q), by which point Dazai realizes he'd gone too far and now has to get Ango hit by a car about it.

And Francis is just like. There.

(He's also going through it, but because Louisa isn't in underground son protection jail like Ranpo or hashing out unresolved grief like Dazai and Mori, she's keeping Francis rational with decision trees and focused tasks within the realm of his control.)

This is why there's a chapter called "The Conflict of Strategies." The Strategy of Conflicts by Thomas Schelling is about coordination between mutually dependent parties in conflicts. Unlike zero-sum games (in which one person's gain is equivalent to another's loss), mutually dependent parties rely on each other and so can't draw blood without harming themselves in the process.

The Agency and the Port Mafia are both pillars maintaining Yokohama's tenuous stability; if one falls, the whole city could devolve into a warzone. Thus, their mutual dependence is part of the logical structure of any strategy and demands some kind of collaboration or mutual accommodation, even if only in the avoidance of mutual disaster.

Mori often uses a strategy of irrationality, i.e. he acts volatile and whimsically sociopathic, where he's actually very controlled and rational, which Dazai knows. But, as Dazai reveals to Mori's horror in Fifteen, Dazai also knows where Mori is vulnerable to emotional provocation. This is because Mori, like everyone else, isn't completely rational or completely irrational; it's not a one-dimensional scale. But, "everyone else" includes Dazai.

Dazai characterizes Mori as a math equation because he's still reeling from the betrayal he feels over Mori sacrificing Oda despite knowing how much Dazai loved Oda, and despite Mori knowing it would drive Dazai away from him— because he and Mori also love each other. Even though Dazai probably understands logically that Mori made the decision despite his love for Dazai (and not in the absence of it) because Mimic was an existential threat on Yokohama, Dazai cannot shake the irrational and emotional thought, "If you could do that to me, of all people, you really are as coldly logical as a math equation."

This is irrational because Dazai knows that's not true; he demonstrated in Fifteen that he knows that Mori is terrified of, more than anything else, chaos, and that the threat of chaos is enough to trigger Mori into decisions he does not want to make and otherwise would not make. That's what he was trying to do in Mori's office in the first chapter of Fifteen— goad Mori into killing him by invoking a fear response.

But, Dazai is hurt and so he treats Mori as coldly rational and approaches him with vicious disregard for Mori's betrayal sensitivity, loneliness, and fear by taking Kouyou and leveraging Kyouka to keep Kouyou from returning to Mori. Mori, having lost Kyouka and thus Kouyou's incentive for staying in the Port Mafia, was already afraid he'd lost Kouyou's loyalty and support— and she's one of the four people he depends on. He also depends on Dazai, and although he's aware he drove Dazai away, that still hurts him. Further, Dazai demonstrating that he can and will use what he knows about Mori against him is terrifying to Mori because Dazai is one of the very few people capable of emotionally manipulating Mori. Dazai has Mori's nerves pinched between his fingers while telling Atsushi it's just an electrical wire.

Anyway, then Q is seized, hundreds of Port Mafia members and affiliates are killed, and Mori is wracked with shame and the fear that he behaved like the old boss. That's why Hirotsu and Chuuya are so gentle with him, and why, despite their agreement that Kouyou would stay with Dazai until Dazai saved Kyouka, Dazai asks her to return to Mori. It's also why the Agency and Port Mafia call a truce to collaborate against the Guild, without blaming Mori for what happened. They forgive because the cost of fighting is, as just demonstrated, too high, but also, they recognize that the escalation was mutually cultivated.

It's also why, at the very end, Mori asks Kouyou why she stays when she could leave. He knows he doesn't have Kyouka anymore, and he's still grappling with his guilt for those entrusted to his care that were killed because of his lapse in rationality. But, Kouyou assures him that this is a version of the Port Mafia she wants to protect. Because, even as Mori was spiraling and releasing Q, Kouyou was realizing that, unlike what happened to her, Kyouka could leave and decide for herself where and with whom she feels safe and has purpose. She could do that because Mori and the Agency have helped to create spaces and community and stability where there wasn't before. He's helped create a world where Kyouka can be a flower born in darkness and yet still make the choice to bloom in the light without being rejected or burned by it.

(And also because Kyouka left, and Mori didn't go after her to force Kouyou to stay. Because he would never do that.)

She wants to nurture that world with him, and she trusts him. The conflict may have escalated, but as soon as the cost was felt by the city and their own people, the Port Mafia and Agency were able to mutually deescalate and collaborate to contain the chaos and defuse it before it spread.

Mori isn't the old boss, and the humanity and love in him is reflected in his stewardship of their city. His humanity and love also mean he's capable of being hurt and will sometimes act emotionally and irrationally. But, it's okay for him to not always be rational; that's why Kouyou and Chuuya (and Hirotsu, who was goddamn MVP in the Guild Arc) are there to support him.