#re:tachihara to me it's like
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blackwaves · 10 days ago
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further onto the fun part: the fic is 1. very intently focused on quiet moments, using the concept of gin as dazai's ex-secretary moved out of the sphere of action the pm-ada dwell in into being someone running from the past via mundane office job 2. making so many extrapolations about her relationship with the rest of the port mafia, primarily tachihara.
there is. something to me about the lonely man you've been the shadow of for years killing himself after promising to kill you as a machination in his plan (hollow, empty promise, but you pleaded with him for it— how much did she know it was a lie?). there is something to me about seeing your brother who you believe was born to do evil and whom you put a knife through the stomach of and left twice over.
quiet moments: cutting your hair in the bathroom afterwards, scrubbing yourself clean of the past, dropping off the girl who your brother hurt with her adoptive brother— the past lingering behind you anyway.
obligatory note to stream the fic i wrote about post-canon beast!gin (due to finding her sibling issues extremely compelling etc) but— the beast version of the akutagawa siblings is incredibly, incredibly interesting to me. gin is central to beast, and it is equally central that she's on-page for so little time.
the first time akutagawa sees her, the narration calls her a painting come to life; the metaphor took me aback the first time i read the beast ln as opposed to the manga because of how fitting it is to how akutagawa sees her: a static, 1-dimensional image and ideal; a child stolen away by his man in black. it's an illusion she shatters cleanly and all at once.
gin getting a knife into akutagawa's gut and telling him he hasn't gotten her back, that he's pursuing destruction and using her as an excuse, that the mafia's violence is rational whereas his violence is an aoe attack that destroys everything in its proximity is:
one: extremely funny to me. sorry gin. sometimes you call your brother inherently evil for his glorified suicide attempt (-> this is, in practice, my view of him leaving gin alone pre-meeting dazai in both canon and beast. do i think it is unfair to gin to leave her abandoned and alone, and that it reflects on the way he is associated with destruction-despite-the-cost and similarly on the way dazai in beast canon addresses him? yes absolutely. do i also think it is unfair to say the suicidal twelve year is inherently evil for semi-explicitly trying to kill himself via extremely abrupt vengeance quest? yeah. sorryyyyyy)
two: not incorrect re:destructiveness. we see time and time again in both canon and beast that akutagawa moves in a straight line to action without consideration for consequences or the deaths that follow. it's the tendency that both canon dazai and canon atsushi object to— atsushi primarily for the fact that he places no inherent value on life and his actions put that on display, dazai primarily for the lack of strategy and rationality in how he operates. he's more feral and uncivilized in beast (/affectionate), but the point stands? (skimming over sections of beast for this and: interesting to me that when he's getting his stamp from kunikida, it's explicitly said: "To make a long story short, destruction was his go-to answer for everything. [...] It appeared to be more of an innate trait of his rather than something he learned from his environment or experience." similarly, it's interesting to me that the way he gets his stamp from kunikida is through the channeling of that destructive energy into a purposeful violence. the concept of mindless destruction vs rationality is the core internal conflict in beast which (relatedly) is why i think it's so fundamental to the trajectory of his arc in canon, but i digress)
three: not fully incorrect re:using gin as an excuse. this is actually the most important point to me, because: akutagawa cares about gin and cares about the ideal of his younger sister stolen away, regrets deeply his initial abandonment of her and hates himself for it, but his actions with regards to "saving" her are fundamentally undermined both by his pursuit of dazai and his own impulsiveness. he repeatedly prioritizes vengeance and impulse over the actions that would actually put him face-to-face with him, and he doesn't consider her as a person with her own agency. when he collects oda's stamp (via threatening to kill himself in front of a child. etc.) there's a point made about him viewing anger as the center of his world. when he is a child facing dazai for the first time, it's said the first clear emotion he feels is hatred. this is without getting into the events of the final sequence, in which he is repeatedly called out for prioritizing his anger over finding gin.
okay! at the fun part now, which is to say. how does this reflect on gin herself.
basic facts we know about gin in the present are that
she's dazai's secretary who's always with him, and she views him as lonely (the implication given is that this was also her first impression of him, when she went with him willingly)
she's highly protected because of her position of secretary and anyone who asks about her should be attacked immediately (this may be a set-up for an sskk meetcute via dazai, but presumably it comes into affect via how she's treated by others)
atsushi believes she has no family, which is either 1. again, set-up for the sskk meetcute, or 2. what the pm as a whole usually believes
she's quiet and very observant (presumably, reflected in canon)
she believes in rationality placed over emotion (fascinating contrast. obviously) and doesn't object to the port mafia's violence because of how its violence is impersonal
atsushi refers to her and akutagawa as having bloodstained hands, which may be solely a jab at akutagawa, but in equal measure may be a reference to her position in the pm? she stabs akutagawa easily and respects the violence of the pm, so it's possible/probable that it also refers to how she's associated with the pm.
she was convinced by dazai to enter the port mafia because she didn't feel safe remaining solely with akutagawa
she pleaded with dazai to sacrifice her life instead of killing akutagawa (which indicates that despite it being a ploy and bait, it's real to her. alternatively, she could be in on it being a ploy and maintaining the lie with akutagawa, but i think that's less likely context-wise.)
she disappears post-lightnovel, according to akutagawa because she can't return to his side. akutagawa doesn't go after her because he thinks rushing after her would drive her away once more.
the majority of what we know about her is her emotions towards akutagawa: she thinks he uses her as an excuse to commit violence, and she wants to think he functions more rationally than he does. she thinks he was born to do evil and she cares about him anyway. she thinks he's incapable of keeping the people he loves safe from himself, and she wants him alive anyway.
i am always, always thinking about o-gin in relation to beast!gin, but particularly when she is saying "I don't care what kind of person you are. All I want is for you to live." o-gin is the story of a girl who renounces her beliefs and the idea of heaven for the sake of living in heaven so that she may meet her family again in hell. gestures incredibly wildly. you know.
sorry for the recap i just think. they're so so interesting. i just think they're insane. i want to lock them together in a room and make them argue with one another.
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