#to specify: when i say 'themes' i mean like. when they're ghosts. those are themes they have as ghosts. we ain't getting into pre-death atm

[daandyli0n]

fuck it.

y'all are getting the Symbolism And Whatnot of the "Blurred Lenses" kids (MCI + Charlie)

this will be in the order of their deaths.

Charlie:

General Color Palette: green, white, black, with various splashes of color depending on accessories.

Symbols/Associated Items: stars, music/music boxes, dolls/teddy bears, stripes, daffodils, soft glowing lights, softness in general, stickers, sparkles, bugs, chaos.

Themes Surrounding Them: having a savior complex, "you can't help people swim/float while you yourself are drowning," "never mistake kindness for weakness."

Susie:

General Color Palette: lavender/pale purple, bright orange, pale blue.

Symbols/Associated Items: stars, hearts, flowers (particularly daisies), sweet things (candies, desserts, etc.), dogs, oranges (as in the fruit).

Themes Surrounding Them: emptiness, loss of identity (after a while, Susie is unable to tell where she ends and where Chica begins), loss of childhood innocence (Susie was rather sheltered, even if not to an extreme degree).

Fritz (Jr.):

General Color Palette: reds, oranges, light/pale blues, browns.

Symbols/Associated Items: pirates, foxes, coyotes, vultures, patches, bandages, running.

Themes Surrounding Them: loneliness/isolation, "no one's coming to save me, so i'll save myself," hopelessness, desiring vengeance/karma.

Gabi ("Gabriel"):

General Color Palette: bright oranges, bright and pale yellows, various shades of teal.

Symbols/Associated Items: the sun, clouds, sunflowers, dandelions, softness, joy/happiness, teddy bears/baby bears, smiley faces, balloons.

Themes Surrounding Them: confusion, fear, and lashing out due to both emotions.

Mimi ("Jeremy"):

General Color Palette: dark/navy blues, indigo, blueish purples, dark reds.

Symbols/Associated Items: nighttime, the moon, stars, planets, just space in general really, books, neon lights, rain, quietness, nature.

Themes Surrounding Them: anger, distrust, protectiveness to the point of self-sacrifice.

David:

General Color Palette: pretty much the entire rainbow, but with dark reds and golden yellows being some more consistent colors.

Symbols/Associated Items: just general weirdcore imagery (eyes, spirals/swirls, etc.), Christian Religious Imagery/Trauma, liminal spaces, Reality Fuckery/Bending, obscured/blurred pictures, masks, teeth, colorful band-aids, forests, lakes.

Themes Surrounding Them: having a god complex, vengeance, being forgotten.

( @that-darn-clown i've already showed this to you but. here's an updated version with Charlie. @hello-there-world)

(here's a drawing of The Babies for anyone who wants to know what they look like)

[fleurdelumiere]

Dazai and humanity

WARNING: THIS IS ALL SPECULATION, SO DON'T TAKE THIS AS AN UNIVERSAL TRUTH OR ANYTHING CANON, THANKS.

Alright, so, we all know that the characters are inspired by the real life authors and their abilities by their books. Dazai's ability (and the book) is called "No Longer Human".

The name already gives us a hint of a characteristic of his personality in correlation to his ability aka nullifying others' abilities with a touch.

My high on drugs thoughts instantly run towards some of the book's sentences. My mind went "what if his nullifying ability is a metaphor to his alienation of humanity, as if he "nullifies" it?"

To explain it I'll first take some quotes from Dazai in BSD and then others in the book No Longer Human.

"If you place yourself somewhere close to raw emotions where you're exposed to violence and death, you can brush against man's true nature. I thought I could find a reason to live somehow."

The closer Dazai gets to death, the closer he believes he can understand human nature. That's the key point of it all: he struggles to understand humans, a race that he should be part of but this quote makes us understand that in fact, he doesn't feel human at all. He probably always felt so alienated from humans and his surroundings obviously influenced his view of their nature. Violence and death. These two elements are what he connects the most to the concept of humanity. People often become their truest self when exposed to these themes, they can be heartbreaking and blowing for the mind and the emotional sphere. It's when people are the closest to emotions or that's what he thinks at least. So, he doesn't feel close to emotions at all, he can't find a value in life if he can't even feel like a human or feel at all. This doesn't mean he can't care for people, we can see that with the death of his friend Oda and exactly in that moment we can notice how he gets the closest to raw emotions. In my opinion that moment is one of the few ones where he felt like a person as anyone else. His pain is obvious and real, he can feel emotions even though they're not pleasant ones. If he didn't care at all then BSD BEAST is trash :D. Because come on.

So if anyone comes to me saying he can never feel I'm going to throw hands. What I think, instead, is that he can't always feel and that's one of the elements that makes him struggle with humanity.

Some other sentences that in my opinion relate to this topic, but from the book:

"And yet somehow it is not the smile of a human being: it utterly lacks substance,all of what we might call the "heaviness of blood"or perhaps the "solidity of human life""

"Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess what it must be to live the life of a human being"

"I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others"

"Disqualified as a human being. I had now ceased utterly to be a human being"

“(...) Did not treat me like a full human being. he could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost"

I don't know how to make it clearer honestly.

I'll use an actual example from experience too. My English died, but anyway.

I suffer from disorders that make this view hard to clarify or understand or just empathize with, I will not specify which ones for my own comfort. What I noticed with other people who share the same disorder (s) as me, though, is that we struggle with the same concept of humanity as Dazai does. Not saying he has a (certain) disorder, of course, it could be as it could be not. But as someone who has one, I felt highly taken in cause by his character. I personally have a very limited range of emotions, as in in a scale from 1 to 10 if people commonly feel 7 or 8, I feel 2 or 3 at best and usually it's a plain 0 or 1. Now, emotions are an integral part of what nowadays society thinks makes a person human and often for those who can't feel much or at all or can't feel empathy and compassion, it can result in thinking that you're not human at all, because you end up not relating to anything or anyone under the social mask you must present to people (think of the playful and childish way he presents and how he was in the Dark Era instead).

So, I think this could be a possible explanation to his alienation from his own race and society.

What does this inability give him? Hidden suffering and unworthiness.

In my view his hopelessness brought him to despise life itself, he could never find a solution to his condition, he probably thought he's doomed to be that inadequate and that could be one of the reasons that make him that suicidal.

"Anything I would never want to lose is always lost. It is a given that is worth wanting for will be lost the moment I obtain it. There's nothing worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a life of suffering."

That sentence is the peak of his hopelessness. He'd never want to lose his humanity but he feels like he already did. He never wanted to lose Oda and he lost him and with that one of his closest experience to feel adequate for being a human being.

"Man fears death and yet, at the same time, man is drawn to death. Death is endlessly consumed by men in cities and in literature. It is a singular event in one's life that none may reverse. That is what I desire."

Here is another reason why I think he's so attracted to suicide. As I said, he sees in death the closest concept of human nature. Death is what belongs to every human and thaf makes someone human. It is said that no matter how many times he tried to suicide he was never able to achieve that. It's like even death is being taken away as his only chance to gain humanity. He already can't "live", he can't feel (as anyone else can), he can't even die; is he worthy of being called human, then?

Alright thanks for reading until this point and having put up with my gone mind, highly appreciating it. If anyone has any thoughts or criticisms they're more than welcomed as long as it's done with politeness <3.