#what is BSD even about at this point

[entertxinmyfaith]

The fact that bungou stray dogs readers were confronted with a semi-graphic panel of a character being impaled in the eye via a sword through the back of his skull this week but, rather than being horrified, everyone just breathed a collective sigh of relief cause at least the panel also finally confirmed that the character being skewered was in fact just a regular sex freak all along and not an incestuous one…

Really makes you think.

[zinniapetals]

seeing how Atsushi was in the orphanage his whole life, I bet he went absolutely crazy for train stamps; like taking Ranpo out to the train and noticing the stamp booth and asking 'whats that?' and Ranpo explaining the system and Atsushi immediately buying a notebook to get his first stamp! (he downloads the app for the local line stamps which offer digital stamps) then him freaking out that the metro does stamps as well?? cue him always agreeing to go out with Ranpo and the other Agency members taking him along and bringing a page of the train stamp if they ever leave Yokohama without him

[sadlynotthevoid]

Since I saw that post about og!Cale solving a murder crime in Alberu's noble meeting, I've been obsessed with detective!ogCale, who solves crimes on his free time because he's too fucking bored.

Hence: bungo stray dogs crossover AU where, while a transmigrated RokSoo and company go around doing the usual "let's mess with white star" stuff, og!Cale got basically adopted by a bunch of weird professional detectives.

I'm talking about an AU where bsd happens in the world of tboah/tcf. So, while a member of the agency was going through the county for reasons, they witness og!Cale stealthy dropping a hint about a mystery to a near knight. Then he leaves, pretending to be drunk all the way to his home.

What everyone else sees is the local drunkard ready to cause trouble at the minor inconvenience.

What the detective in question sees is a very bright teen, good at solving crimes, who has nothing to do but pretend to be drunk. Needless to say, they take Cale back with them.

(It could be anyone, but it's most likely to be Dazai if they just take Cale with them and don't tell anyone. Though, I think it would be funny if it was Kenji the one who did it. Double-way adoption ensues)

Og!Cale is puzzled at how he ended up at the Armed Detective Agency as a recruit, but he doesn't complain. He even likes his job and his coworkers, even if Dazai keeps trying to unalive himself.

Besides, he doesn't have to keep with his trash act here. Everyone here is smart enough to tell he's acting. They're detectives, damn it. It would be strange if they didn't notice.

So, freedom.

And the ADA people like him too. This quite quirky, smart, witty and creative teen fits just right with them.

At some point, Ranpo has to tell him that "no, you're not smart. You're really smart. Not as much as me, although" because og!Cale's hypercompetence is normalized for him and sometimes he doesn't realize that "everyone else hasn't reach to that conclusion yet" when talking with normal people.

Fukuzawa looks at this sassy child and is like "I guess I got yet another son". Because, why would the hella rich son of some noble be so happy to join a group of strangers and do all this hard job? You can say he obviously loves his family from the way he talks about them, but he also brights up at the minor genuine act of care. It's concerning. Not urgent, but still concerning. He's keeping him. He's eighteen, legally an adult, and came on his own will. So, It's not a kidnapping.

[kyouka-supremacy]

That time I was showing my cousin the Oda death scene and as a light-hearted, thoughtless question she asked me why Dazai threw away his coat and I answered without hesitation “that's to symbolize how he's repudiating everything he's ever known for Oda”. I still stand by that

[dazais-guardian-angel]

this torture we're going through with the anime must be divine karma for slandering Bones all this time...... they said "oh, you don't like how we adapt things? you say the manga does it better?? okay then, well now there is no more manga. it's Bones or bust, bitches."

[doctorweebmd]

the ‘why would anyone entrust Akutagawa with Aya remember what happened the last time he took care of a young girl 🤔’ is such a dogshit take. like bro are we gonna just forget his whole-ass younger sister who he dotes on or, idk, perhaps literally the fact that his villain origin story is that he COULDNT PROTECT HIS FRIENDS IN THE SLUMS i am killing all of you with hammers

[lady-shadow-and-darkness]

Listen, Listen, I'm aware that Chuuya is an amazing character and doesn't get enough screentime in the manga, but : we quite literally haven't seen characters like Kouyou, Gin, Lucy, Naomi, Yosano in ages. And Chuuya has an entire light novel dedicated to him, not to mention he is a part of the main plot of fifteen.

Aside from Naomi and Yosano, who are ADA members (who we haven't seen in a while as well), the other three are locked in Asagiri's basement and no one is talking about them.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

ok so there's a lot I could comment on here but honestly just.

what the fuck.

(From BSD Fifteen light novel)

[zukkaoru]

i think. everyone should stop reading my most popular fics that aren't really that good and start reading the ones with 18 kudos that are significantly better

[nemomo]

just noticed dazai 2k24 and greeny (the old oc in my profile pic which i drew circa 2019) have quite similar haircut. funny thing, the expression is also almost the same

[keithbutgay]

ok this is totally random and a complete guess

but

dazai has bandages over his eye when hes working for the port mafia

but not at the ada

so

um

i assume theres like a plot reason why

my only guess is that at some point before season 1 he got injured badly while working for the ada and yosano used her ability on him and that healed it?

and if so

how far does her ability go?

like

that would mean it can heal old wounds

can it fully like regenerate limbs and stuff like that?

OOH OKAY

so. this is never actually explained. we know he started wearing bandages (over his eye and also all over his body) after a suicide attempt that mori saved him from, and we only see the eye bandages when he's in the mafia (explained in the manga and also in beast)

we also know that it's taken as a metaphor (when oda dies he pulls off dazai's eye bandages, and this is to represent him being taken out of the dark and into the light aka the agency)

and for some background on yosano and dazai- yosano can regenerate limbs as far as we know however she doesn't fix scars and other various older wounds for plot reasons so it's unclear whether or not she can do that

also, since dazai's ability nullifies hers, she doesn't heal him like ever because she would have to fully kill him first. this does happen once canonically in one of the light novels but his heart had stopped and she had like a fraction of a second to bring him back

now for my personal headcanon: dazai is blind in one eye from an old injury from the very attempt that brought him into the mafia. my reasoning:

1. whenever he fights with someone he trusts, they're always on his blind side and people he doesn't trust are not

2. since most of his bandages presumably hide scars (not confirmed, but based on placement and what we know about him we can assume)

3. i mean... mori was his doctor. it wasn't as if he was actually going to fix him without messing him up further for funsies

anyways, long story short nothing is confirmed but there are many many many theories. technically the direct implication of the show is that the bandages are nothing but a fashion statement and also that the eye bandages are just a metaphor but. i and most people disagree--

[kyouka-supremacy]

Well.

[dazaistabletop]

So....was Dazai intending to let Chuuya die?

Translation by @popopretty

[anti-dazai-blog]

Got the most baffling ask from [redacted] about an hour ago saying that I should “stop judging Dazai for past actions” and I’m still thinking about it.

What. what does that mean.

[damiemontclair]

Me: *gets back into bsd fandom through the anime after years away*

Tumblr posts suggestions: hello yes your favourite character apparently just died in one of the most recent chapters of the manga, have fun!

[dazais-guardian-angel]

new BSD chapter is almost here and i still haven't gathered my thoughts on 117 yet, so i'm doing that now. My..... extremely frustrated thoughts, to say the least. kinda been numb to it all for weeks now which is why it took me this long to ramble about it, meh. incoherent negativity and spoilers belowwwww

I'm... really not happy with Bram's death, to put it lightly. and yes you can say I'm just grieving, I'm in the denial/depression stage. but I'm not just sad because he died. I wish that was all it was. I wish I could just be devastated in a normal, well-meaning, bittersweet way. but I can't.

Because this is BSD. And that means there's a chance he could come back. And I know, I know, I hear you: "that was so final, so conclusive, more than any other named character death in the manga so far; there's no way he would be brought back after dying peacefully and having been reunited with his wife and daughter." And you're absolutely right! For all intents and purposes, this was Bram's permanent sendoff! And I would 100% believe that with absolutely no room for doubt.... if this wasn't bungou stray dogs!! Where people drop dead and then come back to life as casually and rapidly as going in and out a revolving door (cue that one Simpsons door gif)! If this was any other manga, I wouldn't for a single second question the permanence of his death. And yet..... because it's BSD, there's a 1% chance, as low as that is, as final as that sendoff felt, that he might still be back one day, against all logic. And that's the most aggravating part of all this.

Because I can't just be sad. I have to be sad while having hope. I have to be sad, all the while wondering if my grief will all be for nothing in a few months. If my feelings are being played with, yet again. I can't just grieve here and now and accept it and that's the end of it; I have to go on still hoping, because this manga has trained me to not believe that ANY death of a named character will be for real.

While it was much more obvious compared to Bram that say Chuuya and Dazai weren't going to stay dead after chapters 101/109 (because they're popular characters lol, but especially because their arcs aren't finished yet if Chuuya even gets one, which I despairingly doubt more and more every day), I felt for everyone extremely distraught by their deaths at the time. I mean, Dazai is one of my favorites as well, and regardless of whether or not I thought his death would stick, it was incredibly painful to see him in that state. Just like it was painful to see Fukuzawa get fatally stabbed 34596 times multiple chapters within the same fight, and painful to see Mushitarou's initial fakeout death after his arc, and Kunikida's when he exploded himself on the helicopter. It hurts, and you go through the grief, only for "whoops they're fine actually!" just a few chapters later, meaning that none of your grief ever mattered and that you never needed to go through all that in the first place; it was just for shock value, just to extort strong emotions from you in the moment that weren't meant to actually hold any meaning, because soon after it would be like the angst never even happened. And that's exhausting. It's not fair. It makes future deaths hold less and less weight and become harder to believe in/take seriously, as many people have said, but on the other hand, if a large part of you does believe in it, if that's your fave and you're grieving over their death, prior experience tells you that you might just be having your emotions played with; that you might spend all that time being sad ultimately for no reason at all, that you have to keep hoping for god knows how long. The rational side of you says "don't be affected by it, because it won't last" (which is shitty in of itself if you succeed in that, because imagine seeing your fave die and just instinctively not feeling anything???), but the irrational side of you that IS scared and upset because we're humans and we can't help but react strongly to something like this, has to contend with the thought of "but how many months am I going to have to wrestle with "will they or won't they"? How long am I going to have to be strung along with the possibility that this might not be permanent, like no death ever is in this series? How long will I be forced to have HOPE, until it's crushed even harder than it is right now?"

Again, everyone is going to have a different response to a character death, based on the person and based on the character and the circumstances of their death. But the objective fact remains that we haven't had a single permanent named character death in the manga so far (except for... Ace, I guess? lol that's the only one I can think of. And Fukuchi, I guess, for now lol), so it follows that anyone would have at least some small degree of doubt, even with the most damning of circumstances like how Bram went out here — I mean, in a sense, he already had one fakeout death before he came back to Aya here briefly (the end of the last chapter literally cliffhanger'd on his revival lol, the opposite of what it normally does), and his death here happens in the same fucking chapter as another death that is 100% not going to stick, which just makes it even more laughable and harder to take seriously!!!

But there's another side of this, too, that makes all this even worse. Let's say that Bram's death is permanent, that this is indeed no fakeout, no take-backsies ten chapters from now. Why is Bram the first time plot armor has no effect? Why is HE the first character who has to die for real? After so many instances of characters getting to come back from literally anything, it doesn't feel like him being the first one to actually stay dead is because there's something significant about him, or about everyone else inversely compared to him, but simply because Asagiri chose to finally go against his formula and lift the plot armor at random just this once. AND THAT DOESN'T FUCKING FEEL GOOD!!!! Not that having your body taken over by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (god what is this series) is something I'd expect someone to just shrug off, but literally all these other characters shrug off getting stabbed, shot, EXPLODED, etc, so why is it only Bram that can't get off just as easily, just because the writing said so? Hell, Asagiri literally went out of his way to have Bram come BACK in another body one last time, so that was even MORE reason to assume he could have found a way to permanently stay alive not in Aku's body though obviously, with how powerful he is — I mean, supernatural rules are made up by the writer, Asagiri could have made it so that Bram could come back and stay back if he wanted to lmao, versus actual physical wounds that you can't just magically survive (again without supernatural interference). But he didn't do that, because Bram needed to die, because he's the unlucky one in a series where you can survive literally anything. Okay then. Sucks to be him and sucks to be a Bram lover, I guess. Sucks to be Aya.

Listen. I love Oda's death. Oda is my favorite character in all of BSD, and his death is my favorite moment in the entire franchise so far — which sounds contradictory, of course, but as devastating as it makes me, his death is so beautiful, and so pivotal and meaningful for the series as a whole, not just for Oda and Dazai themselves. I wouldn't want it to be removed or changed in any way, and I would be perfectly fine with him and a couple other notable light novel characters being the only ones to actually die in this series. BSD is a hopeful series, ultimately, so I don't need deaths everywhere, since it's ultimately about people learning how to live and getting those second chances — Oda being the notable exception to that and catalyst for the entire story (and I do mean the entire story). But what I don't need are the illusion of death and stakes, only to not commit to any of it for that aforementioned message, trying to have your cake and eat it too. Because, as beautiful as Oda's death still is, it looks rather foolish now, because now things have reached a point where I (and others too, I've seen) ask "how is it that he died from just a little bullet, when so many others have since survived similar or worse?" Which is what I'm similarly asking with Bram now, if I'm meant to believe this really is his death, when the only reason we have to believe he couldn't just override Fyodor himself (or at least Akutagawa permanently) being "because Asagiri said so". His death is beautiful too in isolation, just like Oda's is, with everything he says to Aya, and the closure and peace that he gets. But how can I appreciate it or take it seriously when all I can think about is how A) there's absolutely no reason he had to die here, when so many others before him survived, and B) that I could potentially spend months being distraught only for him to come back eventually anyway, and that minuscule amount of fleeting hope just makes it hurt unfairly even more?

I love that he found peace, in the end, and felt like Aya helped him get closure with his daughter. I love that I fucking called it that Aya is going to become a knight for him and save the day (aka beat Fyodor herself, most likely), in his place, because that just makes sense for where her character has been going, and I feel vindicated in seeing him say that to her, as much as the circumstances fucking kill me. I don't MIND the idea of Bram's death in of itself, I can't stress this enough; I love him so goddamn much and I want them to be a family together so much it hurts, but I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine writing him dying to further Aya's character development, and there are a thousand ways it could have been done. But I just........ hate the circumstances leading up to it here. I hate that it feels so sudden, I feel like we still needed so much more time with him, and FAR more than merely two pages of backstory for him and his family. I hate how all the fakeout deaths before it make it feel like a cruel, unfair fucking joke even though it's supposed to be a powerful, moving moment — when Kunikida DIES BY TURNING INTO SPARKLING SOAP BUBBLES LATER IN THE SAME FUCKING CHAPTER, A DEATH PLAYED JUST AS STRAIGHT AS BRAM'S DESPITE HOW RIDICULOUS AND OBVIOUSLY IMPERMANENT IT IS (so if the manga is putting them both on the same level and wants us to take both equally seriously, what does that say about Bram's death???). And if it is indeed permanent, I really hate that even though Bram's last words to Aya were so touching, Aya's last words to him were basically telling him to gtfo — obviously it's a completely reasonable reaction for someone her age in that moment, she doesn't know how to cope, but you're telling me that that's the last thing she'll ever say to him, which we know she'll hate herself forever for??? It just leaves a bad fucking taste in my mouth, ugh.

Idk. I've been pretty disillusioned with the direction of the manga for a while now, and how much its changed from how slower-paced and more thoughtful it used to be, so I know I'm very biased and very tired and that that's clouding my judgement lmao. But I just hate this so much 🫠🫠🫠 I never wanted Bram to die, but worst of all is having him die like this, where i just feel numb and bitter and angry, instead of sad but touched, the way a good character death in the vein of Oda's (which Bram's is very much meant to emulate) should make me feel. It's so rushed, and all the "deaths" around it and before it undermine it so badly it's just pathetic. I'm looking forward to Aya's future development, but I'll always be bitter at how much better she and Bram deserved, and if he does come back I won't be surprised at all lol (and I hope he does, not just because I want him back, but because he deserved a better death than this....)