#''rambling'' you say then what am //I// doing orz

[undercoverxs]

mik09to oh man, i swear, it's like you hopped out of my brain and brought out all the stuff ive been rambling and mulling over to my friend for the past week! it's so cool to see folks with similar thoughts and observations like this, from the imeeji thing to the potential of there being more than just one alter in his system! :D

mik09to also no worries at all, sorry for the confusion! you got the orekoto thing completely correct - my bad for not clarifying!

mik09to would love to know when you think his eyes feel fake, since im super curious on other takes on it 👁 im chewing on the possibility of a third too, since im conflicted between "its just mikoto and orekoto and im overthinking the duality motif" vs "the duality motif is a red herring and meant to make you think theres only 2"; lots of thoughts on this, but im definitely rambling enough as is. sorry for blowing up your notifs!

(( no I’m so happy to be indulged!! I’ve been able to talk with friends about it too, but I feel that it’s s o nice to find people outside the bubble with these thoughts!!

And man y e ah, the duality thing seems....... I don’t know how to take it. From my understandings, it seems way more common to have far more than two in a system. But from a writer’s perspective, especially with such limited screentime, I couldn’t blame them for keeping it minimal, especially if they’re trying to be true to life in other aspects. So the duality aesthetics, calling the next song “Double,” like... are you trying to mislead us or really just doing two......... Or, could... Mikoto and Orekoto be trying to get our attention off the third..?

I have.......... way too many thoughts on the possibilities with this song. I’ll go under readmore to feel a little cleaner

So, my idea of three first came from reading the song as though everyone in the system has a section to themselves. Operating on that, I wanted to separate them by music style--

First comes the heavy metal style, and we watch the murder. Keeping in mind the voice drama, and going with the idea that “Mikoto” is the murderer, this calls the desire to link this style of music to him.

But then we get this music, and we get the pleas to look at him more closely, and just... this doesn’t really match the vibe Orekoto gave off, yknow? But, maybe it’s just an act, by him or mikoto. But-- who exactly would this act be for? And how? With every other prisoner, even if they try to put on airs, it feels more like it’s because they themselves buy into those airs, at least a little. It still reflects something genuine in them. With the nature of extractions, it doesn’t seem like it should be possible, for the songs themselves to purposefully look es/the audience in the eye and say “No, no, that isn’t true.”

I've thought about the possibility that this is still Mikoto, though-- and rather than pleading to reconsider that he’s a killer, the possibility came up that he could be.. unaware that he’s part of a system? And begging “It must be a mistake, take a good look at me”, could instead be denial to that fact? Maybe, it’s on the table for me.

Bu t back to the three person theory-- uhhh I’ll refer to this one as ‘Aokoto’ :>

So. Whoever this is, we don’t get to see their eyes the first time this scene comes up, besides the first time they open them. Hard to read from that. But sort of plays into the added theory at the end of this post--

The second time it goes back to this motif-- my girlfriend jus t pointed this out like last night I love her It follows the mirror scene, and there’s...

One-- who’s in the mirror

Two-- who’s head bows

Three...?

The one in the mirror changed expressions far too quickly, and the one closer to us isn’t making that expression; if it were his reflection, his thumb should be reflected too..?

We come back to blue, and he falls back-- This look of horror feels genuine. Again, maybe it could be Mikoto, simply unaware and being confronted with his DID-- Or could be Aokoto, being confronted with everything.

As the water goes red, if we assume it’s blood/representation of the murder, then.... Well, if Mikoto killed someone, and Orekoto was cleaning up the mess, then they both would be pretty well aware, right? So what’s this expression for?

We cut to him in the bath, washing off the blood. An air around him that reads more like Orekoto to me, but I digress-- We go back to blue.

And here.

These eyes feel fake.

I don’t know what exactly it is about it-- his eyes, expression, movement, but here, all I can read as genuine about him is desperation, to sweep it all under the rug, to convince. Maybe it’s Aokoto trying to convince himself. Maybe it’s Mikoto or Orekoto trying to convince you.

Personally, I feel like it’s Mikoto now, but that’s just personal vibes. I think Mikoto puts on the act, loosely mimicking Aokoto’s sweeter presence

then drops it, issuing a sort of warning,

and Orekoto comes in at the very end, telling us that we’re done now.

.

.

.

Maybe. I don’t know. I wish I knew a single thing about tarot cuz that might help.

But, my friends and I have been toying with the idea that Aokoto may have split off right after the murder-- An alter that’s meant to carry no stress at all, giving the body a few moments to just relax... Maybe? but that part’s not based on anything besides. there’s probably a lot of stress wrapped up in this boy.

-- Ah, I’m also leaning toward the idea that it was Aokoto who spoke for the first part of their interrogation with Es-- There could have been an act there too of course, but at times he just sounded... too genuinely confused, scared? It makes one wonder.

#|[.OOC #|[N으 .09 #mik09to #((SORRY this got. long. #''rambling'' you say then what am //I// doing orz #l o v e this conversation though gosh thank you #I hope this makes sense? it's so late I'm going to bed now #(〃￣︶￣)人(￣︶￣〃) !!

[7000f1]

so-

I didn't know there was a Dunkin Donuts where I live till yesterday and I decided to try it and uh

uuuuuuh

why so much sugar. really. donuts don't need that much sugar. and why does my matcha ALSO have sugar. this is BLASPHEMY

#if you can't drink tea without sugar do you really like tea #i am offended by this #1/10 at least delivery guy was cute idk #maybe i'm becoming too old for sugar orz #ramblings #i sometimes wish i could record myself speaking like this to give more uuuuuh intensity to what i say but am also shy

[aoki553]

GRGRGRGRG FINALLY AN OPPORTUNITY TO INFODUMP ABT HIM!!! tysm @makifishcake and prepare for a long ramble abt best boy ever (to me) and why saijun is real... let's start with an introduction to a canon crossover character only The Loser (me) cares about! this is gonna get messy in writing near the end cuz its like 3 am for me rn.

Kouno Jun is one of the two protagonists of Asou-sensei's older work, Our Hero Studies and is one of Haganeno Ken's students at Holy Lance Academy (a private school that either exists the same town as Saiki or some neighboring one)

The only translated OHS chapters so far show us who Jun and Haganeno are as characters. Kouno Jun's a generic tsukkomi high school student with normal teenage boy interests and crushes... he's baby and a total boyfail.

Jun likes video games (Kaisou Monogatari, an in-universe franchise), ramen, melon soda and Yayumi - the class rep. Pretty normal dude that's just being constantly bothered by his classmates and the teacher he hates...

...and then there's Haganeno Ken - THE delusional cosplayer hero wannabe teacher with huge interest in roleplaying and RPG video games, who immediately takes a liking to Jun, mainly for his name (his name means shield, while Haganeno's mean sword. you see where i'm going?)

most of the ohs panels will be machine translated cuz i have no strength or motivation to continue my actual translation work ngnhnh one day maybe... 😔

He may look like a generic high school shonen manga protagonist, but it's actually really charming to me how adorable he can be despite the boring presentation lolol HIS CRUSH ON YAYUMI IS SO CUTE UGHNHNH

And yeah of course he shows up in Saiki bc WHY WOULDNT HE???

Asou-sensei put him there twice. In the Christmas chapter where he's walking with a girl (MOST LIKELY YAYUMI), sees Kusuo sitting alone and being like "haha that's so sad to be lonely on christmas lmao"... EXCEPT ITS HILARIOUS CUZ HE DOES THE SAME THING IN HIS OWN MANGA'S CHRISTMAS CHAPTER.

and in the Hero Studies crossover chapter, right at the end as an unused character. (wouldn't make sense to have two tsukkomis there tbh so i get it lolol)

Same thing happens in the anime except Jun in the Christmas episode wasn't animated like he's an actual pre-existing character, except just a background character so he looks different but has the same jacket with his initials so its definitely him.

so here's all his screentime:

his terrible sense of style was referenced by Takeru at one point as well. yes, Jun dresses terrible and he has outfits much worse than this. hes a loser and i love him

okay but what's with the saijun thing? orz

basically its a silly ship me and my lovely sweetest gf (@lu-kario ) came up with and it kinda stuck around. "omg haha what if the two protagonists from different manga dated" but yeah it became an actual thing with thought out scenarios between us.

Me saying it'd be like satousai but Kusuo finds someone "normal" with actual personality would be not giving this ship enough justice. I can't tell much rn cuz I forget 90% of the stuff i make up unless i write it down BUT all i'll say is that

I like to imagine Jun and Kusuo having a calm and nice relationship, lots of quality time spent playing video games or going out to get some ramen together. Kusuo gets to have someone more usual by his side and Jun isn't likely to be bothered by Ken when Kusuo is around (:3).

and yeah, they do get another scene together in volume zero! how lovely! the christmas episode is also one of the reasons i find the ship cool but even despite the sillies having canon scenes and illustrations together i like it simply for fun.

canon crossover ships are cool and epic

my final words: go read ohs its fully in japanese online and 5 chapters are in english so far.

seriously go read it the fandom doesn't exist its really lonely.

and if you care abt our hero studies u can motivate me in the ask box, gimme a kick on the butt so i go and translate this work again after like a year or more of hiatus

#alex rambles #our hero studies #saiki kusuo no ψ nan #saiki kusuo no psi nan #saiki k #saiki kusuo #kouno jun #jun kouno #saijun #kusuo saiki #haganeno ken #ken haganeno #kurusu yayumi #yayumi kurusu

[luvring]

Niaaaa //wailing, heaving, rolling around on the floor

I cannot stress enough how much I adore your works and love rereading all of them from time to time

Am here to ask if you have any more touchstarved hcs,, or thoughts,, im dying over here

Literally starved for content

gn!reader | REG!!! //waving both hands, jumping up and down giggling. Thank U. this is an honour and incredible compliment. scary bc my old works are...old... but Thank u. U mean the world 2 Me. i didn't thoroughly check what hcs i've already said so sorry there's repeats orz

i'm not saying the LIs would all go to the barbie movie but if someone does make art of that please let me know and tag me especially if it has the i am kenough shirt

they ruined my life saying kuras doesn't eat how is he going to join my girl dinners now. /j but i'll continue to believe he can appreciate how good a meal looks! & he can still sit with you and try to get his hands on your favourite meals for you to enjoy :-)

that thing where they do push-ups and kiss you when they come down with...leander was the first one i thought of tbh. but if you aren't able to lie underneath him he'd just ask for the same amount once he's done!

leander doing the thing he did in the prologue where he took his glove off with his teeth every so often just to see your reaction. like if you react in an amusing flustered staring at him kind of way. i couldn't relate personally (lying) (liar) (huge lie)

i'm sorry for my leander bias but if one of his favourite things is MASQUERADES and we don't see him at a MASQUERADE well it's so joever like him in a suit and mask and showing off how he knows how to fit in because of his past and also he can waltz now or something I'm dizzy i can't breathe

ais using 0.5 camera on people while they're caught off guard. him asking you to take a video of the fight For him because he's going to be part of it. vere selfie folder. mhin 5 followers no icon no posts gc lurker.

mhin would stick to enough of a routine that they'd have a specific spot to sit at different places,,, like a cafe or the library or bus... corner. it's one of the corners. and when someone's taken the spot they're thrown off then have to walk around for a new one (not happy about this) but take it back once they leave. you spend enough time together and they start keeping the spot next to them open for you

^ also they'd always order the exact same thing at restaurants. wouldn't like going to a new place because now they have to find a new default order. just like me fr

is no one going to talk about the idea that vere doesn't like snow because he's chained outside and it's cold . to be fair it could Totally be for a less sad reason like how it gets his Fur Wet (valid) but i've been thinking about that possible angst

also his gloves are just. like. ? odd. inverse drawing gloves. claws... but why only the 3 fingers.... btw his outfit means a constant thigh holding opportunity

kuras and mhin having long conversations about alchemy and sharing their findings with each other ;; mhin at some point getting just a Little excited about something and kuras choosing not to comment on it but being happy to see them let their walls down a little ;; o(-(

ais coming into your room and wordlessly lying next to you in bed and when asked if he needs something he says no? with a smile. he was just feeling lonely and wanted to find you

saying "you look like you can't swim" or "you are an odd individual" to any and all of them . something about it is amusing to me

if you celebrate christmas or like the idea of kissing underneath some mistletoe,, i think it's a good thought that you hold one over your head and wait for a kiss Or that Some of the LIs would Definitely do that themselves.

who do you guys think has the saddest birthday celebration (/no celebration at all.) who's relating to girls who spend their birthday alone and crying and be honest with me

rambling but i just want to say kuras's monster form looks sick as FUCK and i'm so excited for it. it looks like whatever left the scar on his hand seems to be there.. in his monster form...? i thought it was a claw but the positioning is under/through the hand so like??. do i have to bring up the significance of that if true

also is his outfit (minus his jacket)...like a jumpsuit... or can i just not tell because of his three (?) belts. that's not how you wear belts btw /lh. and is the sheer part Part of the top or is he wearing something sheer underneath the white. his sleeves are also sheer but the neckline means his shoulders are out . take off ur jacket

also mhin !! i want to know how big they get and if the transformation is sickening to watch and if they're still aware of everything around them and !!! THERE IS A SPINE(?) COMING OUT FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE SILHOUETTE THAT I NEED TO SEE NOW! & i'm assuming the senobium is Shit so even if we do get in there and get 'help' there would be another shitty price to pay. possible bad ending...??

scenes with all their monster forms where you're asked if you're scared and you say no / yes but you care about them and they falter because they didn't expect that

true good ending is everyone meeting at the wet wick and making a toast and laughing and saying this truly was our touchstarved before the credits roll

#touchstarved #touchstarved ais #touchstarved leander #touchstarved kuras #touchstarved mhin #touchstarved vere #redspring pls continue to drop lore. gimme. GImemeeme... #not a single one of these birthdays sound good to me btw. closest to happy is how leander would say all drinks on him for the night #but it doesnt change the fact he has no close friends 💀💀 #Im serious about the masquerade scene bc i need to see him in a formal setting. how hes different but still charming/the same in a way etc

[merakiui]

I honest to God need to share this with you cause as a Trey fan...this has me in a chokehold so damn bad >///> (Also why the fuck did I come across this beauty in the morning Dx I'm trying not to squeal like a feral motherfucker!!!)

https://youtu.be/qogqNzo8Hlw?si=L-JQAZrktu-LW3Gp

Trey + Octavinelle uniform 🛐🛐🛐

I hope you love it just as much as I do. I'd help formulate writing ideas for this, but my sleep schedule's been shit the past few days x.x Also, I'm so glad I came across your blog months ago ♡ I first read your Princess AU fic for Azul and holy fucking crap, as if I didn't love this character enough, you sealed it ♡ Android Jade really got me going!! You written him so fucking well, plus it sealed my fate on him being my top tier favorites as well ^^ (I'm lowkey curious on where things would go if you ever write about Android Rollo. May GloMas inspire!!)

I feel bad on saying this >.>, but Floyd was a so-so choice for me at first when going through the game, but because of your fics (and random luck given from receiving both his dorm SSR and Beans Day SSR during the event), damn guy squeezed my heart good ^^ ♡ 100% would have this guy be my designated cuddle buddy.

Thank you for your writing and daily rambles about ideas you've had ^^ they're something I look forward to reading and they get me out from a depression funk ♡ (I hope that's not weird to say ^^;)

I can't wait to read what you have next ♡

(link)

TREY IN THE OCTAVINELLE UNIFORM????? OH MY...... OTL I think he and Jade should switch dorms for the day. <3 seeing them in the different dorm's uniform!!!!! >w< so cool... Jade should just switch dorms whenever he's fed up with Azul and make it his goal to travel to each one as if he's on world tour lol. He's already spent time in Pomefiore. He should make Heartslabyul his next stop hehe!! But omg Trey!!!!!!!!! OTL OTL OTL he would have so much fun using the lounge kitchen to bake all kinds of yummy, sea-themed treats. I volunteer to be his taste-tester. >:D

Also, thank you so much for reading and enjoying those fics!!!!!! I'm always happy to spread Octavinelle love. (˘ ˘ ˘) they are a very wonderful dorm who keep me in a consistent chokehold.

And android!Rollo omg!!!!! GloMas gives me many inspirations and all of them are about Rollo. I love him a lot. T_T <3 android!Rollo is an android who hates all other androids (despite being one himself ;;;) and he's determined to protect you from the influences of other androids. I'd imagine him as a housekeeping android of sorts who handles domestic affairs within the house (cooking, cleaning, etc). It takes a very long time for him to actually embrace his own emotions and humanity, but when he finally does he is a force to be reckoned with.

Floyd is a fun case for me because I also wasn't a very big fan of him initially. Actually, both of the tweels did not catch my attention. ^^;;; I'm not sure when I started liking him or what caused me to like him, but I'm happy to be a Floyd fan. He's so cute and sweet and I would definitely make him my cuddle buddy, too (also he's so so so fun to write for omg!!!!). And Jade... >:( Jade Leech. >:( I am his hater (affectionate means of saying I love him a lot). The grip both eels have on me is so embarrassing because without realizing it I unconsciously started doing that thing Jade does where he covers his mouth with his fist when he laughs... he's infected me with his mannerisms... orz I need to be lobotomized to get the eels out of my brain!!!!!!!! >:(

Thank you for reading my writing and daily rambles!!!! I'm very happy they can be enjoyable and can help you out of depression funks (it's not weird to say at all)!!! I will continue to write yummy meals for you to read and love!!!! (•̀ᴗ•́ )و

#twisted chit chat #pandaforcexd #jade leech is me and i am him <3 #it's like that phenomenon where you watch a movie and then use that as your entire personality for the next week #only this is completely unintentional and i only just realized it LOL

[velkyr]

DUSK QUESTIONS MOMENT. 1, 10, 40, 52!! 👀

ON IT BOSS!!!! o7 (tysmmmm for letting me ramble mwah. I wrote more than I expected as per usual 💖)

(original ask game post here)

I've read more'd this because oops it got so long sorry orz

Why did you pick the race you did for your Tav?

the short answer is always just going to be I love tieflings, I am weak for tieflings, this is a universal unchangeable fact amen 🙏 I think 3 of the... 6(? I might be forgetting some other oneshot-only characters idk) characters I've played at a table have been tiefs or homebrew variants of them! they're very gender to me, I felt that way before I even really knew jackshit about my own gender. absolutely batshit that I still thought I was cis when I started playing d&d lmfao. also horns tails fangs and claws need I say more. I shan't, I don't have to

but yeah specifically for Dusk, I wanted to base them off of my first d&d character in particular, who was a tiefling homebrew to represent an au ra from ffxiv in our homebrew campaign based around the game. so it was important to me they were also a tiefling draconic sorcerer to match!

a lot has changed about them while I've reworked them, but many of the fundamentals have remained the same. gender, motivations, reasoning and general force of personality have been altered towards things that I find more compelling or more fitting, 6 years down the line - but race and class, the idea of them being nobility who left their home(land) and has a bunch of hangups around it, that's all as it was back then.

10. If your Tav didn’t become an adventurer, what else would they be doing?

this is an interesting one, I've been stewing on it a fair bit recently while I've been thinking about what they'd do post-bg3 shenanigans. the thing with Dusk is I've infused them with So Much raw adhd (to the point of it far surpassing my own, oops. this seems to be how I bestow love on my favourite OCs at this point), they Need enough outlets in their day-to-day life or they'll end up in an understimulated mess pretty quickly.

adventuring is obviously a solid option for that need! but without that on the table, I think it needs to be something that caters strongly to their interests and whims. I can see them working well in a profession involving enchantment and/or working with jewels and precious metals. enchanting things would be a good way to siphon off some of that raw sorcerer magic - if they don't use it often enough, there's a build up of sorts. with it being lightning based, it's a bit like having an unstable motor that runs way too fast, and it makes them incredibly irritable.

as for the crafting part of the equation, well, they're already fascinated by shiny things, they're pretty detail oriented and good with their hands, and it's the kind of skilled manual work that requires Just Enough focus to be stimulating. the only thing they'd probably end up hating about either of these would be dealing with noble clientele lmao, but I have no doubt they'd find a way to exploit that anyway. while they may not be the most book smart in the world, they're people smart by necessity. (something something insight proficiency)

and really, as an alternative or perhaps on the side, I don't think they'd be opposed to sex work if it were an environment they felt comfortable in, with a well-vetted set of clientele that they have full autonomy over.

40. What is the biggest mistake your Tav ever made?

welcome to 'pick a struggle' with Dusk, they have their fair share,,,

there's a couple of things that stick out, but I'll stick with one that's pretty fundamental to them. they deeply regret having lashed out at and pushed away the people that tried to help them when they were younger, still stuck living in elturel.

while they can't entirely be blamed for it - they were conditioned to think and feel a certain way, and those patterns were ingrained across a lifetime, all the hallmarks of the abuse they faced - at the end of the day, the friends they'd made after they started sneaking out at night were only trying to help them see how awful their living situation was.

by the time Dusk fled home, they'd burned all the bridges they'd tentatively built over the years. their best friend at the time was the one who made a sort of last ditch attempt to convince them, and it came at the right place, the right time to push them into leaving. but it was outright said that none of them wanted to see them again, after all of the vitriol.

with the distance of years and the gift of hindsight, they regret it all the more. they haven't really forgiven themselves for it.

52. What is your Tav’s worst fear?

oh you already know this one I'm sure 🤠 but I'll elaborate it into something a bit broader that pokes at the Theming more.

they fear being forced back into a gilded cage - whether that's being dragged back home to their family or pushed into a new one. they fear the loss of the autonomy they've carved out for themselves. they fear a loss of identity, and the concept of having it stripped from them, reducing them back into some (feminine) trophy to be given away for material gain.

at its core, it's a loathing of the idea of heteronormativity, really. that's what I always parallel it to, and it's pretty on the nose in that regard.

granted, it's kind of a paradoxical fear for them. they're so thoroughly weary after spending so long living with their guard up, molding themselves into someone who can take on the world alone, that in secret, there's a part of them that just doesn't want to fight anymore. that part would be tempted to give up - to let themselves be reshackled, so to speak - if the circumstances were dire, so long as there were the promise of them being safe and cared for at the end.

as a secondary but very much related thing, they've also come to fear and resent being alone, and the idea of being left behind by people they care about.

#me: oh I can be concise about this obviously #also me over an hour later: wait where did all of these words come from nobody could have predicted this wtf #local brainworm haver has brainworms over their favourite lizard more at 11 #tysm again <3 #dusk

[satsuha]

D V and Z for the ask game? :D

under the cut bc idk if this counts as ship hate and it got really long

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

hika ag... (not putting the eng ship name for search reasons) i already knew the devs were gonna push them the moment i saw the crossed paths illust released but ultimately it felt disappointing to me in the game orz i already don't like the feeling when a certain ship is being pushed if they aren't going to go the whole mile and make it canon but in a game like octopath where the protags have such minimal interaction i don't like that it feels like these two got special attention (they have the most banters together tied with thro/oche) and yet their interactions aren't.... interesting....! some of hikari's story banters with her literally feel like he could be talking to a random npc instead and the things hikari says in agnea's story ring very hollow to me 😞 given like the fact that they both lost their mothers, illusts show hikari dancing with her or playing the flute (even the lyre in a concept art draft), it's disappointing to me that their ingame banters don't touch on this at all... complained about their crossed paths story another time but honestly for all this complaining i don't hate them i just feel very disappointed and sort of like they wasted their interactions together ngrhg

V - Which character do you relate to most?

KINDA dungeon meshi spoilers... completely off topic from what i usually talk about but i like marcille's character arc and her goals arising from her fear of being left behind. i'm gonna keep things vague since dunmeshi just got an anime and is getting bigger and also since i don't want to go too deep into why i relate to her but stories about learning to value the time you have with friends while knowing it will end one day (frieren is another obvious one) are very close to me

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go!

sorry when you say ramble i think it will always be complaining-adjacent with me but after playing agnea ch3 with english voices i got so surprised at the difference between eng and jp giselle that i got compelled to make a comparison of it and it JUST... makes me so sad that certain chars will be more likely to be overlooked or overshadowed, even liked/disliked depending on localization efforts o<-< i know it's unrealistic to ask people to play in multiple languages bc that isn't feasible for everybody but honestly it's jarring sometimes how different certain characters or scenes can come off as... i struggle with interacting in fandom spaces bc i don't always agree with english localizing efforts (and i get it, it really is a difficult job and by no means do i think they did a BAD job at it most of the time) but because so many people who will interact with my posts have only been exposed to that version, i'll feel very... alienated?? by some interpretations that i see. but i mean ultimately interpretation is more subjective and i think localization only nudges you to one side or another, so i still just do the same as i would do otherwise and find people whose content i enjoy... that was a lot of rambling but did you know that in hikari's ch2 banter with castti the english changed his lines quite a bit ?? i've already talked about how i think eng hikari is more expressive in his voice acting but i think it's something that was present in the text first and i... AM VERY MIXED about it bc i do think it works Really nicely in certain scenes, but i still like how restrained jp hikari sounds because i think it suits him more... anyway this is just a small snippet of the kind of thing i think about when looking at localization like in the end it's just Different versions, i guess i do look at the original jp version as more accurate to the creators' intentions but i think having an "official" interpretation in english can be nice and valuable in its own right.. if i didn't think so i just wouldn't play these games in english at all lmao (by comparison i don't play korean games in english bc at least the ones i've gotten into don't have great localizations so i don't think it adds much merit)

crying the last one is so long but you asked me to ramble 😭 LMAO... but ty for leaving an ask!

alphabet asks

#answered #ship hate

[pompompurin1028]

Can you ramble more about Dazai please? I seem to have become addicted to it

Some notes and disclaimers before I begin: this is about Dazai-sensei rather than bsd Dazai. Yes this is about a bsd centric blog but I'd love to talk about his irl counterpart. Secondly, my opinions are by no means professional, and I have limited knowledge regarding Japanese literature in terms of literary studies. Therefore, I will be for a lot of parts quoting and citing research and papers done by people who are actually in these studies to help me and I will also be adding my own observations and comments as well while also referencing Dazai's works. So if you're interested in the subject, I recommend referring to these papers than what I say. Anyways, these are simply my own opinions that I have gained from reading his works, then reading these papers and contemplating further, and coming to my own conclusions. I have also not read all of his works, this author has around 140 works written in his lifetime from what I have read orz.

Warnings: mentions of suicide, mental institutions, mention of substance abuse

But yes I'd love to ramble more about Dazai! This time, I would love to talk about a topic which I had recently gotten quite interested in regarding Dazai's works and that is regarding his narration. Of course, this is still a topic I am diving into and am looking into but I still think it's something interesting to share.

As most people in the fandom probably already knows regarding No Longer Human, and as many online websites have also shown, this novel is generally regarded as semi-autobiographical and an I-novel. Which is not surprising given some of the similarities of Dazai and his character Yozo Oba. Such as his clowning, which seems also to be part of Dazai's demeanor. As this can almost be felt in a few of his works as seen from his work Cherries:

"I’m the joker in the family. Let me put it this way. All I can do is put a jolly face on the huge amount of anxiety and mental anguish I feel. And no, it’s not only at home that I do this. Whenever I come into contact with people, no matter how depressed I am, no matter how much physical pain I am in, I do my frantic best to create a pleasant mood all around. Then, after parting, I reel with fatigue and think only of money, morality and suicide. And no, it’s not only when I have met with people. This happens when I write as well. It’s when I’m sad that I strive to create stories with a light, jolly air. I mean, here I am trying to give people exactly what they want, and they just don’t see it, coming out with contemptuous things like, ‘Dazai’s lost his edge … he’s lightened up too much … he’s trying to attract readers with facile humour’." [1]

In his work 正義與微笑 (Justice and Smile) we were also met with something similar from his main character, in which in the beginning of the novel, the main character remembers this verse from the Bible, which says "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." And after reading this verse, the main character seems to come to an enlightenment, which is the central aim of the novel and the inspiration behind its title, "to practice justice through a smile" through becoming an actor[2].

One can even say this clowning can be traced to Dazai-sensei's writing style and the way he acts in his normal life. According to O'Brien, “Dazai seems to have enjoyed playing clown even during his youth... even as a youth, Dazai intended his clowning as an act of service. Sugimori, for example, suggests that Dazai naturally came to feel he owed people (and eventually his readers) a kind of service as the son in a family paternalistic toward its tenants and the neighboring poor” [3] (from what I have read, his aristocratic background may not have helped with this feeling). And “even after Dazai left Kanagi (A/N: Dazai’s hometown I believe) he continued his career as clown — in his writing if not in his behavior. And during his extended residence in Tokyo, it appears that he became more and more familiar with an art that helped him maintain and develop his comic gift. This art — almost unknown to the West — is a traditional type of storytelling and pantomime known as rakugo” [4]. 

Rakugo, from what I have read about it seems to be a sort of comedy (I don’t know too much about this tradition, forgive me orz). But according to O’brien, “Rakugo storytellers practice their act seated on a cushion before an audience in the “Yose” theater. The storyteller will simultaneously mimic and narrate a comic situation — for example, two old women in a public bathhouse, each of whom insists that the other use the single bar of soap first. Gesturing with his fan and arms and adopting the speech and accent appropriate to his characters, the storyteller develops the situation into a skit. [With] the comedy depend[ing] heavily on punning and rapid-fire speech”[5]. Though Dazai does not seem to go to these theatres regularly, O'Brien quotes Dan Kazuo’s (a friend of Dazai’s who was also a part of the Buraiha) The Story of Dazai Osamu, that “Dazai kept only a small supply of books at home. He read only occasional volumes even of those authors he admired — Ueda Akinari, Saikaku, and Basho especially among Japanese writers. But Dazai collected rakugo texts more thoroughly, including the complete works of the nineteenth-century master Encho, and he read through them with regularity and enthusiasm”[6]. 

It appears that Ango had also described Dazai’s writing with Rakugo, in which he says in an interview: “I hold his works in high esteem, like rakugo. I think it is the greatest, rakugo, and one should not speak ill of this. Rakugo is enjoyable and amusing. If it is a piece that extends joy eternally, then that merits being called on of the greats. Dazai is one of the greatest rakugo authors, therefore he will have a place in history”[7]. But comedy in Dazai’s work is a another discussion (something I'm also still looking into) and I have already mentioned some of this to you before so let's more on...

Of course, the connections of some events in the novel No Longer Human, and his real life experiences also aid in the view of this novel as a semi-biographical novel. One being his double suicide attempt he had with a woman from a bar, which he not only referenced in his novel, but also referenced in some other works, such as his personal essay(?) Female, or even his work The Flowers of Buffoonery (both of these should be early period works, and interestingly enough Dazai has used the character name Yozo Oba in this work as his main character, I believe this is going to be released in English next year I believe [finally... I’ve been looking for an English version and was so surprised to not see any. I have a version of it translated in my native language but I have not read it yet], fun fact, this work of Dazai’s was actually name dropped in bsd during the Lovecraft fight as one of the code names lol). The Flowers of Buffoonery is basically based on Dazai’s double suicide attempt at Kamakura and the succeeding days spent in recuperation at a nearby hospital[8], the version I had bought in its description wrote that Dazai may have wrote it due to the guilt he felt regarding this event (the woman died while he was saved)[9]. But interestingly enough, something which was not done in No Longer Human, is that Dazai, the author, intrudes into the narrative at certain points. 

According to O’Brien, “the manner in which Dazai intrudes to comment within the narrative, however, tends on occasion to emphasize his function as author separate from the work. For example, pretending to an exasperation at his inability to properly develop the plot, Dazai calls The Flowers of Buffoonery “senile” and himself a “third-rate author” (A/N: If I recall, this is probably not the only work he has done that since I remember coming across something similar in his works, but Dazai does take criticism of his works quite seriously). In another passage he conceives of his novel becoming a classic, then labels himself crazy for entertaining such a thought. Dazai begins another of his interruptions purporting to explain the purpose of the intrusions. “I’ll tell everything. In truth, it was just a scheme of mine to thrust this fellow called “I” in between scenes and have him recite things he should have left unsaid. Without letting the reader notice what was afoot, I strove to impart a special nuance to the work with this “I.” I congratulated myself on a grand style hitherto lacking in Japanese letters. But I failed. Why, even this confession of failure I’ve included in my plans. I wanted it in a little later, if possible. And, I think I arranged to say that from the beginning too. Ah … don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to a thing I say.” In a later passage Dazai again declares that involving himself in the work was a mistake. “I’ve said much that should not have been said. Moreover, I’ve a feeling that I’ve overlooked more important matters. This may sound priggish — but, if I pick up this work later, I’ll feel wretched. I’ll tremble in self-disgust even before I finish a page. I’ll close it surely, I don’t even have the heart to read what I’ve done now. Ah, a writer can’t afford to reveal himself. That’s his downfall.” Needless to say, his reader can hardly take Dazai literally. He had already shown that he could destroy manuscripts that did not satisfy him, and if Dazai had in fact despised The Flowers of Buffoonery, the manuscript would have ended up in the backyard fire. Dazai feigns an uncertainty as to how to relate his story until the very end. Recall the final line, which follows immediately Yozo’s contemplation of the sea below: “Then … no … that’s all there is to it.” Dazai, it would appear, is not suggesting that Yozo has transcended his fears. The author, to put it baldly, is unable himself to continue narrating. For he is Yozo, not simply in the sense that he is writing an autobiography of past experience, but, more significantly, in the sense that he as well as Yozo does not know what step to take next”[10] (I just think this is something really interesting, we will also refer to this again later).

Furthermore, the ending of No Longer Human can also be traced back to some of his real life experiences. That would be during the prewar period (still during the early period of Dazai) when Dazai let himself be taken from his pleasant Funabashi home to the Musashino Hospital. Only when he found himself locked alone in a cell did he wake up to the fact that his friends had put him in a mental institution (this was due to Dazai’s addiction and increasing reliance on drugs as his mental health went into increasing decline)... This experience led to Dazai to write a work named “Human Lost” based on this experience, and according to O’Brien, No Longer Human was Dazai feeling moved to write on this event again[11].

In addition to No Longer Human, quite a lot of Dazai’s works (especially in his early period and late period) do not seem to be able to escape from autobiographical experiences. Even his rewrite of Schiller’s The Pledge and the myth Damon and Pythias, Run Melos, also seemed to have suspected to have inspiration from real life experiences of his. It can in fact be seen as anecdote from his experience "from a more turbulent part of Dazai's life is actually similar to the story of the Ancient Greek companions. Just like one of the friends from the legend is taken hostage instead of the other, Dan Kazuo once had to remain at an inn in Atami after Dazai had spent all his money there and promised to return and pay his debts after borrowing from Ibuse. As opposed to the legend, Dazai didn't return for a few days, making Dan pay by himself to be able to leave and search for his friend. He found Dazai at Ibuse's place playing shōgi, too ashamed to ask his mentor for money"[12]. And this had Dazai commenting (translated) "Is it painful to be the person who waits? Or is it more painful to be the person who makes others wait?” and according to my source, Dan believed that the inspiration for the story came from here[13].

Anyways, of course Dazai has distrust for human beings for other reasons, since "Dazai felt he had been disappointed and let down, which affected him greatly. He names many instances of “betrayal” in his life, including his friends putting him into a mental institution and Hatsuyo revealing ‘she was not the pure creature he had thought her’ (A/N: she was Dazai’s first wife, who was a geisha, their relationship is... complicated, they eventually divorced). As he was the betrayed and the betraying one throughout his whole life, Dazai probably could not believe the ideal relationship between two people portrayed in Schiller's ballad could exist"[14] (and I will not further elaborate on the actual story since, again I have rambled on that before to you).

On a side note, I thought it was quite interesting that Bungo to Alchemist decided to have this distrust be related to the betrayal he felt regarding the Akutagawa prize, since Run Melos was a middle period work of Dazai's while the Akutagawa prize incident was something from his early period and I was under the impression that Dazai had given up on the prize during that period due to what I have read (but that is my interpretation of it anyway). Run Melos was written after his marriage to his second wife, in which (at least from Chinese sources I have found) that he wrote to his wife during his marriage that:

「結婚，家庭，我認為都需要努力才能維持。需要嚴肅努力對待，我沒有任何輕浮的意思，即使貧窮，我也一生珍惜。」 [15]

(Translation) "Marriage, family, I think it all takes effort to maintain. It needs to be taken seriously. I have no intention to be frivolous, even if in poverty, I will cherish it all my life."

And in something he wrote after his marriage he writes:

「我想錯了，這場賽跑不是100米短跑，是1000米，5000米，是更加長的馬拉松。」 [16]

(Translation) "I was wrong, this race is not a 100m sprint, it's a 1000m, 5000m, a longer marathon."

There are of course works that seem a lot more autobiographical. Which is aided by, of course his use of 'I', the fact, as Donald Keene had stated that Dazai “returned again and again to incidents in his life, especially those that occured during the period when he was nominally in the French Literature Department of Tokyo University, for his materials for his writings. His descriptions of such incidents has induced some critics to treat him as an ‘I’ novelist”[17]. Of course, some of Dazai’s own comments don’t really help with this image, such as his comment in his middle period work Otogizoshi in which he writes, “I’m a story writer with such feeble imaginative powers that unless I myself have experienced something, I can’t write a line—can’t write a word—about it” [18] (but the question of whether we can take Dazai's words literally is again dubious, but it is quite true that Dazai does rely more on external sources for his sources of inspiration rather than through imagination, such as drawing from his own personal experiences, inspired by writings of others and create his own rewrites and even referencing diaries of others, with permission of course). 

The fact that some of his work feels like Dazai 'confessing his sins', or even illustrating his own weaknesses set a very confiding mood, especially in his “personal essays”. This can be seen in works such as Canis Familiaris, in which he describes his persona as deeply afraid and hating of dogs and when one dog in particular followed him home, he couldn’t get rid of it (it’s actually quite comical, even Dazai described it as that), here is an extract to demonstrate:

“Weak-kneed diplomacy. The dog instinctively detected the fear in my heart and lost no time in capitalizing upon it. The next thing I knew, he had brazenly taken up residence. Throughout March, April, May, June, July, and August he has remained at my house, and even now, with autumn in the air, he has not seen fit to leave. I can't tell you how many times this dog has brought me to grief. I just don't know what to do about him. For the sake of convenience, since he's here and won't go away, I've dubbed the beast "Pochi," but in spite of the fact that we've lived in close conjunction for half a year, I do not consider him one of the family. He is, as far as I'm concerned, an outsider. We don't get on well together. There is a decided lack of harmony. Sparks fly as we struggle to come to grips with each other's psychology. And to relax the tension with a warm, spontaneous smile is something neither of us is capable of doing.”[19]

In other works such as Thinking of Zenzo, Fallen Flowers, Cherries etc, there are elements of weakness he will confess to the readers. Besides, weak characters and their weaknesses are quite constant in Dazai’s works, so when met with these things I, as a reader at least, was not quite suprised when met with these elements. Of course, there are also specific elements which cause the reader to assume that these are personal experiences such as referring to other characters that the reader may know to be in contact with him, such as his wife, children or naming specific people, or sometimes just writing down initials which one could easily substitute if one is well aware enough of Dazai’s background. Sometimes, he also refers to events he had written in previous works again, such as Thinking of Zenzo and 市井喧爭 both refer to this one experience Dazai had with buying roses, events like these recounting the past again, or just the fact that he or his chacaters talk about writing with elements of above one may pertain to making these stories feel personal. These elements makes it feel as if Dazai were recounting the past and almost speaking to the reader directly, and the way he creates these stories make it inappropriate to doubt them[20] (I too, for quite some time, took Dazai's narration quite directly because they really do feel personal and I can almost imagine what he writes). I would imagine that, as McCarthy puts it, Dazai uses an "easy... colloquial style" of writing only adds to this feeling[21] (Dazai’s short stories are always really easy to read imo). And these elements as O'Brien writes is believed to be the reason Dazai’s works mainly appeal to a younger audience[22].

But Dazai is by no means "a faithful chronicler of his own life" as Keene puts it, to say his work is entirely confessional is likely not the case[23]. Besides Keene, McCarthy in his essay "After the Silence" also writes that the "brand[ing of] Dazai [as] a relentlessly 'confessional' writer, the ultimate I-novelist, an author who was basically unconcerned with structure and plot, or more or less incapable of creating characters other than semifictional alter egos... is simply unsatisfactory in terms of producing a balanced appraisal of the artist and his art"[24]. O'Brien also comments that “despite their autobiographical inspiration, few if any of Dazai’s works can be called shishosetsu (A/N: I-novels)... Dazai is not a shishosetsu writer, primarily because he does not attempt a minute and sustained recollection and reconstruction of the past... It is questionable whether Dazai had the determination and perseverance to pursue his past in this fashion. Certain of his remarks on how he composed accounts of his past suggest a very different method. Rather than pursue it, Dazai would allow his past to come to him. Like any other person, Dazai retained a vivid memory of certain striking and important events in his past. And these memories — rather than his entire past — tend to serve his need for story material. For this reason, certain episodes occur again and again in different parts of Dazai’s work, creating in some readers an exasperating sense of déjà vu... In the succeeding periods of his career, Dazai frequently used first-person narration. But the first-person narrator in Dazai seldom becomes a wholly reliable one... At times Dazai seems to mix up objective and personal modes of narration as a means of tantalizing his readers”[25].

Though O’Brien in his book raised his fairy tale collection Otogizoshi as the example of having both objective and personal modes. Having read Cherries after reading most of this book, certain areas of the passage have intrigued me regarding its choice of words and narration. These are of course my own observations though, so you need not to take it too seriously. But I think the change of “I”, and “the husband” and “daddy” to describe himself throughout the short story caught my attention.

“Mummy tries her best to keep her head above water, and daddy’s no different. It wasn’t as if he was the most prolific novelist in the world from the outset. He’s a timid little coward to the core of his being, and his words stutter onto the page, making this as plain as day to the public. It pains him so much to write things down that the only thing that saves him is drowning his sorrows in drink. When you drown your sorrows in drink, you can’t remember what it is you were trying to say. You drink because things are tedious and annoying. The people who are always able to express clearly what’s on their mind never get dead drunk like that. (This explains why women don’t drink much.)

I’ve never known an instance when I’ve won an argument. I’m always the loser. I’m overpowered by the strength of my opponents’ conviction, by the scale of their self-assurance. I just clam up. It does dawn on me on reflection that my opponents might be arguing totally out of selfishness and that I may not always be the one in the wrong, but the thought of insisting on a reopening of the verbal hostilities once I’ve given in is pretty dismal, and, besides, these arguments leave a grudge as horrible as a fist fight, so I just laugh it off even though I’m shaking with rage, shut my mouth and, with my head full of all sorts of things, drown myself in drink.

Let me put it straight. I could beat around the bush like this till the cows come home, but the fact is that this story is about an argument between a married couple.

'The vale of tears’.

That’s what lit the fuse. This married couple, as I have already noted, are an exceedingly civilized pair of people who do not indulge in violence or swearing at each other. And yet, this very thing is what courts danger and leads to an explosive situation, the danger when neither says a word because they are both gathering evidence of the other’s faults, the danger that each is playing their cards close to their chest, stealing a look at one card then another, preparing to get the jump on the other and to lay all their cards triumphantly on the table. That’s what’s behind the coy reserve with which they treat each other, if you must know. I’m not sure about the wife, but I do know that this husband is so full of bulldust that you couldn’t beat it all out of him even if you wanted to.”[26]

Of course, one can say that I am overanalyzing this, but I found the choice of words extremely interesting. Though one can perfectly imagine Dazai as “the husband” and his wife as the wife in the story. Dazai inserts this ‘I’ figure into his story to add to the narrative, creating an abstract narration. Though in the beginning he seems to associate the father with the ‘I’ as seen from “We cram ourselves into a three-mat room in the summer for our raucous, chaotic dinners, as daddy... that’s me... wipes the sweat streaming down his face and grouches under his breath”[27]. But soon that “we” turns to “they”, and “my children” changes to “their children”. And yet later at some points the “the father” changes to “I”. Of course, when one reads it as it is, one easily notes that “the father” is the “I” that is Dazai was even called that in the short story, but the fact that he deliberately changed perspectives, and so smoothly none the less just makes me think. It kind of reminds me of the narrative method from The Flowers of Buffoonery, except this short story is a late period work, through this connection we can actually examine some of the similarities between Dazai's early and late period works.

One of the main similarities one would be able to note from these two periods is the autobiographical quality of his works. Which is in contrast to his middle period works where he breaks his former style of writing and instead opts for a loosely confessional style. According to McCarthy, in a letter to Ibuse (Dazai’s mentor) Dazai wrote, "for the time being I don't feel like writing realistic I-stories anymore. I plan to write only fiction, choosing only cheerful topics"[28]. Scholars tend to look down at his middle period works, McCarthy describes that they believe that they are "too light, too sunny, too entertaining to be of any real significance"[29] (I think it isn't quite fair, even know I understand analytically wise No Longer Human and The Setting Sun which are known as his best works do seem to have more literary value. But even the voice during this period is quite still distinctively Dazai’s, you can even sometimes sense those previously known qualities of Dazai within these works including some rewrites. Maybe people almost feel that Dazai feels like a moralist in these works? But when you compare it to the actual inspirations of this work you can see Dazai actually adds moral complexity to the characters. I think putting them next to one another and comparing them is fascinating... Even in his rewrites of fairy tales in Otogizoshi, though I have yet to read the originals, one can definitely sense that it is more than a simplistic good or evil characterization. I mean in the end of the first tale, "The Stolen Wen", Dazai literally wrote: "Most of our children’s stories end with the perpetuators of evil deeds getting what’s coming to them, but this old gentleman did nothing wrong. He tried to perform a dance that, owing to a case of nerves, turned out rather disturbingly weird. Nor was anyone in his family particularly evil. And the same can be said for the sake-loving Ojii-san and his family, and for the Oni of Mount Tsurugi as well. None of them did anything wrong. And yet, although not a single instance of wrongdoing occurs in the story, people end up unhappy. It’s difficult, therefore, to extract from this tale of the stolen wen a moral lesson for daily life. But were an indignant reader to demand to know why, in that case, I even bothered to write the damn thing, I would have no choice but to reply as follows: It’s a tragicomedy of character. At issue here is an undercurrent that winds through the very heart of human existence”[30]. Anyways, I’m going off on a tangent here, I'll come back to this later).

But even during his early and late periods, when reading his works critically, one cannot take Dazai literally, and that his 'I, Dazai' stories as completely truths or semi-autobiographical stories as truths, McCarthy even wrote that one should merely take it as a fictional technique. Even though he often seems to be encouraging us to draw no dividing line between the author and the teller, but according to McCarthy, in a letter to his lifelong supporter and mentor, Ibuse Masuji, dated September 1936 (early period) -just a month or so before he entered the mental hospital-Dazai had written: "I've always intentionally chosen the most shameful and foolish things for my 'works' and my 'actions.' I've done so in order to force myself into a position where I had no choice but to write stories. There's nothing unconscious about it"[31]. Besides, McCarthy also quotes Dazai's rambling preamble to "Haru no Tōzoku" (A Burglar in Spring, 1940) (from the middle period of Dazai's career), which writes:

"One needs to be extremely prudent when bringing a character called "I" into a story. Since olden times, in any country -- although in this country the tendency seems particularly pronounced readers have had the bad habit of believing works of fiction to be revelations of scandals from the author's life, and to put on a superior air as they censure him or smile pityingly...

When writing I-novels, authors generally paint themselves as "good boys." Has there ever been a main character in an autobiographical novel who wasn't a "good boy"? I seem to remember that Akutagawa Ryūnosuke wrote a similar complaint somewhere or other. It was in fact this sort of suspicion that inspired me to describe my "I" as the most vile-natured, the most demonic of all the characters. This struck me as more gallant and pure than trying to garner sympathy by becoming the queer little "good boy." That was my mistake. There are limits to what you can get away with in this world...

I know full well that to set public opinion straight is no easy task. I have nothing to aid me in this task -- no social standing, no authority, no money, nothing. Armed only with a pen, setting down these thoughts one character at a time in my attempt to correct what's gone awry, I'm in a precarious position indeed. What is burned down in an instant requires a hundred years to rebuild. . . .

But isn't this, once again, the author writing about his private life? ... Aren't you contradicting yourself? No, I'm not. We've already entered the world of fiction.

The reader, too, must proceed with caution. To get back on your feet is, as I've just said, not an easy thing to do. The proof is that, in order to write a tale about a burglar, I've had to first set down this long disclaimer. The scathing criticisms, not so much of my work as of my actual life, my personality, my physical constitution, have left me all but defeated, to the point that merely to write a single piece of fiction I have to exercise all these precautions. Blessed is he who can love fiction as fiction. The world does not consist of such perceptive persons alone, however.

I originally intended to make this a plausible-sounding confession, a tale of how I, finding myself in dire need of cash, acted as a burglar. I'm quite sure it would have been a realistic and fascinating story. I put too much care into my fiction, the upshot of which is that people -- even persons whom one would think should know better -- are forever wondering whether what I've written is not, in fact, the truth. Even I myself have at times begun to wonder.... That's what I get for doing nothing but read useless storybooks for the past twenty years. I must preserve, to some extent, the romanticism that has seeped all the way through to the marrow of my bones in that time. But I also have to learn moderation. I have to become, to some extent, more mediocre.

... Were I to get carried away as usual, filling my scandalous account with fine details, who knows but that people might whisper, "Well, I wouldn't put it past him. He may very well have done a bit of burglary in his time" -- again I'd be smearing my own name with mud. When I've become a bit more respectable, when the world's opinion of my character is not as low as it is now, when my reputation is elevated to the point where I can at least report on my private life just as it is, then I shall show you the bold use of a main character named "I" as a model of all sorts of depravity. But I mustn't do that now. Sad to say, but I mustn't.

The story I'm about to tell you is fiction. A burglar broke into my house last night. And that is a lie. It's all a lie. The absurdity of having to make this disclaimer.

I can't help but laugh to myself."[32]

Dazai most likely had to do this because as McCarthy also wrote in his essay, his works are becoming judged by his private life. Perhaps the best example I could give to this is Dazai's first attempt at winning the Akutagawa prize. Where though Dazai’s short story was nominated for the prize, the reason for his defeat was the opinion of one of the judges on his private life, due to his work The Flowers of Buffoonery. From Dazai’s letter to Kawabata Yusabari he wrote:

“In the September issue of Bungei Shunju you wrote of me disparagingly: “… After all, ‘The Flowers of Buffoonery’ is full of the life and the literary views of its author, but it seems to me that there is an unpleasant cloud surrounding the author’s personal life at present, and, regrettably, this prevents his talent from being expressed as it should be.”

Let us not bandy inept lies. When, standing in the front of a bookshop, I read the words you had written, I was deeply aggrieved. From the way you had written, it was quite as if you alone had decided who should and should not receive the Akutagawa Prize. This was not your writing. Without doubt, someone had made you write this. What is more, you were even exerting yourself to make this obvious.     … at the end of August, I stood in a bookshop, read a copy of Bungei Shunju, and discovered what you had written: “… an unpleasant cloud surrounding the author’s personal life at present…” etc. etc. To tell the truth, I burned with rage. For many nights I found it hard to sleep on this account.      

Is breeding exotic birds and going to see the dance, Mr Kawabata, really such an exemplary lifestyle? I’ll stab him! That is what I thought. The man’s an utter swine, I thought. But then, suddenly, I felt the twisted, hot, passionate love that you bore towards me – a love such as that of Nellie in Dostoyevsky’s The Insulted and the Injured – fill me to my very core. It can’t be! It can’t be! I shook my head in denial. But your love, beneath your affected coldness – violent, deranged, Dostoyevskian love – made my body burn as with fever. And, what’s more, you did not know a thing about it.”[33]

Anyways, in addition to McCarthy’s essay, in Self-Portraits even is Michiko (Dazai’s wife) writes in an essay that "Many of the things Dazai wrote seem to me to have been gross exaggerations or pure inventions that give the impression of being true, but the circumstances of the gathering of Tsugaru artists appear to have been more or less as depicted in "Thinking of Zenzo". ... I remember him coming home by rickshaw that night and telling me how he'd blundered. The part about the rose-seller, too, is about fifty percent the truth as I witnessed it", so it's something to think about when reading Dazai's works[34].

So, even in Dazai’s later novels, for example, The Setting Sun and No Longer Human, one must be careful when examining the narration. Because, I think O’Brien described it really well, that Dazai seemed to be “’dividing’ himself among a number of characters, allowing each of them to represent limited aspects of himself”[35]. I too felt this when reading The Setting Sun for the first time, in which both Naoji and the author in the book reminded me of Dazai, and as time went on, so did Kazuko (slowly I think I have grown to accept that I enjoy The Setting Sun even more than I do No Longer Human, and with my biases, I like to think The Setting Sun is more representative of Dazai’s works). O’Brien also comments that a reader of Dazai’s post-war fiction should always remain vigilant of the stories lenses, for example, how in No Longer Human one must both accept Yozo’s narration of himself and the hostess’ description of Yozo in the epilogue as an “angel” (interesting enough, in different essays about No Longer Human and Chinese translations of the book that had been quoted by people I’ve seen online, the term the hostess uses isn’t merely an angel, she in fact describes Yozo as “he was a good boy. He was like a god”, something interesting to note). 

This reading of the work according to O’Brien is derived from the reading of Dazai’s middle period works, where he seems to avoid putting the bulk of his ego into them. However, when reading some of them, I could definitely still sense some of 'Dazai’s' world views in the characters. For example, in Otogizoshi, in the tale Urashima-san Dazai writes:

“Why can’t people get along without criticizing one another?” Urashima shakes his head as he ponders this rudimentary question. “Never have the bush clover blooming on the beach, nor the little crabs who skitter o’er the sand, nor the wild geese resting their wings in yonder cove found fault with me. Would that human beings too were thus! Each individual has his own way of living. Can we not learn to respect one another’s chosen way? One makes every effort to live in a dignified and proper manner, without harming anyone else, yet people will carp and cavil and try to tear one down. It’s most vexing.”[36]

or in “The Sparrow who lost her tongue”:

“Me? Me, well... I was born to tell the truth.” 

“But you don’t say anything at all.” 

“That’s because the people in this world are all liars. I got sick of talking with them. All they do is lie. And the worst part is that they don’t even realize they’re doing it.”[37]

I think it is also really interesting to note that, like Cherries and The Flowers of Buffoonery, in Otogaizoshi, Dazai, in addition to narrating his version of the fairy tales, also inserts himself into the work as the “I”. At certain points, he even interrupts the narrative to speak on something in the story itself, making the narrative actually really interesting, I feel like some may be annoyed by Dazai for doing so, but I find it quite endearing. It’s nice, its almost familiar and intimate, like he’s not just the author but sitting beside you and telling you the stories. It’s nice, I remember when I got to the A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces which was in the same volume of the Chinese version I read, I was quite sad to not see Dazai’s “I” in it. Anyways, I think the introduction of the book wrote about it really well that “the pleasure of reading Dazai is as much about getting a feeling of being in touch with the author as it is about being drawn into the world of a story, and in these tales Dazai’s distinctive voice is very much in evidence, reaching out and taking us into his confidence in a warm, intimate tone. Far more often than a conventional storyteller might, he persistently provides his own running commentary on the main events of the tales—sometimes trying to extract a meaning, sometimes wandering off on a tangent that relates more to his own preoccupations than it does to any events in the story”[38], for example:

“Excuse me,” says a small voice at his feet. “Urashima-san?” 

This, of course, is our famous and problematic tortoise. 

I say “problematic” because, although I don’t wish to appear pedantic, I feel compelled to point out that turtles come in a great number of varieties, and that fresh-water turtles and salt-water turtles are naturally built to different specifications. The turtle we see in paintings of the goddess Benten, stretched out by the side of the pond drying its shell in the sun, is the creature I believe most of us refer to as a tortoise. And it is this same tortoise upon which in picture books we sometimes see Urashima Taro perched, one hand shading his eyes as he peers off toward the distant Dragon Palace. But were a tortoise of this sort to dive into the ocean, it would in fact choke on the salt water and promptly expire. It is usually this type of land tortoise—and not a sea turtle or soft-shelled turtle or hawksbill —that we find, along with a crane, on those ornamental stands that represent the Isle of Eternal Youth. The crane lives a thousand years, it is said, and the tortoise ten thousand, which accounts for their presence on wedding decorations and what have you, and perhaps it’s the auspicious nature of tortoises that causes illustrators of picture books to assume that Urashima-san’s guide too must have been one of these (the Isle of Eternal Youth and the Dragon Palace being similar sorts of places), but one can’t help but think it’s a bit much to ask us to imagine a land tortoise slashing away at the water with its clumsy, clawed feet, struggling toward the bottom of the sea. No, we definitely need something along the lines of a hawksbill turtle, whose wide, fin-like appendages would permit it to glide a bit more gracefully through the deep.[39]

So why is this narration used here? Based on the stuff I have read about Dazai, one of the reasons why is probably because his narrative voice is there to draw the conclusion of the short story. Some of his stories, without his commentary, one wouldn't quite be able to derive much from it. Like The Stolen Wen, as I mentioned earlier, ends with Dazai's commentary about the tragicomedy of character. Since the rewrite of the fairytale on it's own is almost not enough, because readers would question, why did the person who did nothing wrong got a tragic ending? It applies to some other fairytales as well that he told, it is his commentary that amplifies or actually gives meaning to the stories. But this could make it feel as if Dazai dominates the narrative of the story, I saw someone on tumblr talking about how it felt like Dazai was pushing his views of the stories onto them. Secondly, something that an essay reminded me of, is that it allows a familiarity with the readers. It creates a sense that he is inviting the readers to engage in the story, in multiple points of the story, he addresses the readers with "dear reader", and sometimes just talk about oh the reader must be thinking, or I wanted the readers to... The readers themselves almost have to play a part as part of the story. And I think something that is also interesting that one essay writes is that the narrator, one should not think of as Dazai, even though it certainly feels like Dazai. I actually didn't really notice this, before he writes all the fairytale rewrites, he has a prologue/preface, talking about the 'background' of these stories and creates the narrator 'the father'. Not 'I' but 'the father' so the actual narrator, the 'I' within the story collection should be 'the father' and not 'Dazai' even though it certainly feels like him since it talks about the war, a daughter (which one would know is something that is happening during the period when Dazai wrote this story). Of course, it is quite common to associate Dazai's I with himself, but when we look at the deliberate word choice and after understanding all thd above about his narrative, I think it is fair to take this word choice 'the father' (in Chinese translations it was also refered to as 父親 which is father) seriously. This adds a almost dichotomy of reality and fiction to it. And the fact that it invites readers to engage in the 'fictional world' it seems to almost add more depth.

For an easier understanding, we can refer to this chart from the essay Dazai Osamu's Otogizoshi A Structural and Narratological Analysis[40]:

I hadn't quite finished reading the essay yet, but just judging but this part alone it is very fascinating in terms of narrative. Because, one, the majority of the story we interact with the 3rd domain, but Dazai's I-narrator (the father's interruptions) allows us to interact with the 2nd domain, while also inviting the readers to interact with the narrator. As the reader begins to interact with said narrator, they almost become part of the fictional realm Dazai creates, because these stories cannot quite be read alone without the narrator's narration and interruptions. They often add to how we as readers understand the story (and at least 3 of 4 of these stories end with the narrator's additions which further emplify the 3rd domain stories). The fact that Otogizoshi ends without an epilogue further complicates things (it reminds me of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in terms of structure which I had always found fascinating), I personally like to think Dazai's rewrites which adds moral complexity and a more I guess 'realistic' portrayal of the human condition almost complicates it further in terms of fictionality and reality.

But then you may be asking, Kat you have written a lot about Dazai’s narration (I hadn’t even quite gotten discussing that in his rewrites yet and mainly only focused on his first person perspective narrations... but that’s fine, I hadn’t even gotten there that far yet in research orz) but what does it mean? Honestly, at this point, I am almost tempted to agree with some parts of “Dazai Osamu's Otogizoshi A Structural and Narratological Analysis” (though I am still in the middle of reading it) to an extent that maybe in Dazai’s writings there is a sort of metafiction quality to it, where the author constructs or re-constructs of the concept of "self' in his works. Or maybe it’s like (another essay I recommend reading on the topic) "Art Is Me": Dazai Osamu's Narrative Voice as a Permeable Self” that perhaps “Dazai, undoubtedly to his own personal detriment, invited his readers actively to merge with him, to enter into his mind, as fluids pass through a permeable membrane” (I personally think this is a fascinating argument)[41]. 

Or maybe, there’s a quality an early period Dazai short story element to it (this part of the story has always intrigued me, I didn’t quite know why), from the section Saburo The Liar from “Romanesque”, which is about a diabolical liar, who even wrote a book called In Lies Lies the Truth, which was about “the fascinating and comical life of a cynical young man named Master Misanthropos, who, when visiting the pleasure quarters, would pass himself off as an actor or a millionaire or a nobleman on a secret outing. So rich in versatility were Misanthropos’s deceptions that the geisha and the male entertainers never doubted for a moment that he was who he said he was. His ruses were indistinguishable from reality, and in the end even Misanthropos himself ceased to doubt that it was all true”[42]. And soon, at the funeral of his father he begins to think that “one lies to seek a bit of relief from a ponderous, suffocating reality, but the liar, like the drinker, gradually comes to need larger and larger doses. The lies become blacker and more complex, and they mesh and rub together until in the end they shine with the luster of truth”[43]. 

Though a lot of Dazai’s works outwardly seems autobiographical, perhaps it is better than one should take it as fictional, or as McCarthy puts it “whether [a] story is ‘true’ or not, it is a work of fiction nonetheless. Fiction is not opposite of truth. Fiction is a form of art, and art... is a lie that makes us realize the truth”[44] (and you know, this elusiveness of being able to identify the “true Dazai”, though it is not so important in this case one can say, almost reminds me of bsd Dazai, but that is another discussion).

[1] Dazai, Osamu. Cherries. Tr. Roger Pulvers.

[2] 太宰治, 《正義與微笑》, tr. 高詹燦

[3]  O'Brien, James A.  Dazai Osamu, Twayne Publishers, 1975. Twayne’s World Authors Series 348. Gale Literature: Twayne’s Author Series

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid. 

[6] Ibid.

[7] bsd-bibliophile. “Reporter: what do you think about Dazai?...”. August 13, 2022, https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/bsd-bibliophile/692512807258865664?source=share

[8] O'Brien, James A.  Dazai Osamu, Twayne Publishers, 1975. Twayne’s World Authors Series 348. Gale Literature: Twayne’s Author Series

[9] 太宰治, 小丑之花：太宰治《人間失格》創作原點

道化の華, tr 劉子情. https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010721543

[10]  O'Brien, James A.  Dazai Osamu, Twayne Publishers, 1975. Twayne’s World Authors Series 348. Gale Literature: Twayne’s Author Series

[11] Ibid.

[12] Gantar, Lija. "Ancient Greek Legend in Modern Japanese Literature, 'Run Melos' by Dazai Osamu". University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

[13] 奔跑吧梅洛斯, 百度百科, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%A5%94%E8%B7%91%E5%90%A7%EF%BC%8C%E6%A2%85%E5%8B%92%E6%96%AF/7254876

[14] Gantar, Lija. "Ancient Greek Legend in Modern Japanese Literature, 'Run Melos' by Dazai Osamu". University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

[15] 人間失格之前：帶你走進太宰治內心的罪與罰, 每日頭條, https://kknews.cc/n/zr8x9vg.amp

[16] Ibid.

[17] BSD-Bibliophile, "Dazai returned again and again to...", https://bsd-bibliophile.tumblr.com/post/692040980912848896/dazai-returned-again-and-again-to-incidents-in-his.

[18] Dazai, Osamu, Otogizoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu, tr. Ralph McCarthy, accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[19] Dazai Osamu, Self Portraits, tr. Ralph McCarthy, accessed via BSD-Bibliophile

[20] O'Brien, James A.  Dazai Osamu, Twayne Publishers, 1975. Twayne’s World Authors Series 348. Gale Literature: Twayne’s Author Series

[21] McCarthy, Ralph, "After the Silence", accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[22] O'Brien, James A.  Dazai Osamu, Twayne Publishers, 1975. Twayne’s World Authors Series 348. Gale Literature: Twayne’s Author Series

[23] BSD-Bibliophile, "Dazai returned again and again to...", https://bsd-bibliophile.tumblr.com/post/692040980912848896/dazai-returned-again-and-again-to-incidents-in-his

[24] McCarthy, Ralph, "After the Silence", accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[25] O'Brien, James A.  Dazai Osamu, Twayne Publishers, 1975. Twayne’s World Authors Series 348. Gale Literature: Twayne’s Author Series

[26] Dazai, Osamu. “Cherries”, tr. Roger Pulvers, accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[27] Ibid.

[28] McCarthy, Ralph, "After the Silence", accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Dazai, Osamu, Otogizoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu, tr. Ralph McCarthy, accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[31] McCarthy, Ralph, "After the Silence", accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[32] Ibid.

[33] BSD-Bibliophile . “In the September issue of Bungei Shunju you wrote of me disparagingly...”, https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/bsd-bibliophile/182073929969?source=share

[34] Dazai, Osamu. Self Portraits, tr. Ralph McCarthy, accessed via BSD- Bibliophile.

[35] O'Brien, James A.  Dazai Osamu, Twayne Publishers, 1975. Twayne’s World Authors Series 348. Gale Literature: Twayne’s Author Series

[36] Dazai, Osamu, Otogizoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu, tr. Ralph McCarthy, accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Nagaike, Kazurni. Dazai Osamu's Otogizoshi A Structural and Narratological Analysis, University of Alberta.

[41] Lyons, Phyllis, “Art Is Me": Dazai Osamu's Narrative Voice as a Permeable Self”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies , Jun., 1981, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jun., 1981), pp. 93-110.

[42] Dazai, Osamu, Blue Bamboo, tr. Ralph McCarthy, accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

[43] Ibid.

[44] McCarthy, Ralph, "After the Silence", accessed via BSD-Bibliophile.

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Analysis only:

@ODDEYESIGHT

#this had gotten way longer than I expected it to be orz #sorry for the wait #dazai osamu #japanese literature #kat rambles about dazai sensei #asks💌 #Tairin <3

[askdacast]

a bit of a personal ramble here...actually no I’m about to be really cringe as I kind of rant about the anxieties and issues I’ve been going through lately in a super roundabout way

but in the long ago days (by which I mean like 10 years ago) and when I was an even louder Persona fan, I made a Shadow version of my main OC/blatant self-insert Alyss Baraen and it was therapeutic to some extent

(more under the cut)

Shadow Alyss even had a cringe name and design - Gerhild, the Witch of Destiny (very long story), and was kind of a representation of my suppressed anger issues and general teenage angst at being different. One could say, a manifestation of the Id.

You can actually find that name in the really old posts of this blog but...please don’t “orz

All that was kinda based off the issues that a teenaged me knew of herself, but I feel rather ashamed to say, those issues haven’t 100% gone away, they still ebb and flow and take different forms, and I gotta smash them all the same

What I am saying is that I’ve been gnawing on the idea of re-doing the “Shadow Alyss” idea with the updated knowledge of myself now and the more recent anxieties I’ve had to deal with. And the hilarity is that the motif is completely the opposite of what I did as a teenager while somehow still being thematically the same.

Given the witch/Carmen San Diego design motifs the regular Alyss already has from the red and hat, I couldn’t help but also notice how much like a Spanish Inquisitor (insert Monty Python joke here) she looks like, and the moment I thought of that given Alyss being a very religious character, everything just completely fell into place

(Fun fact: Years ago when I was into imagining what kind of Personas my characters would have, Alyss’ was supposed to be Agustina de Aragon, Spanish folk heroine who is drawn with a big hecking cannon. It all comes full circle.)

(Inquisitor from DFO, danbooru link warning)

The Inquisitor would be all of Alyss’ self-depreciation and anxieties that she isn’t good enough at...well, anything. Mostly not being a good enough person or Christian. It’s not like she resents her faith, but she absolutely does feel like she’s been put under a microscope her whole life and she needs to scrutinize her every action as to whether it is moral or not. Chalk it up to her emotional nature and sensitivities that take her every action as reflecting on her moral character. A mistake or a failure to do “the right thing” isn’t just one bad act - it’s a stain on her very identity as someone who professes to follow God. Or a good daughter. Or a good friend. A good person.

Of course, this is a self-inflicted wound in many ways. She hates being criticized, and the expectation to always be ‘good’ or following the standards of what makes a moral religious person causes a lot of guilt in her when she does wrong, or anxiety that she might do wrong. A lot of what I imagined about The Inquisitor isn’t just the religious motif, but the motif of fear and punishment. The Judge and Executioner who instills the fear of God in sinners. A horribly apt symbol, imo, of what anxiety feels like, of that looming darkness that constantly beats down on you. The voice that says “this is ABSOLUTELY a terrible idea” even before you take a step.

Heck for extra factor on the monster of fear part, throw in the white eyes on a completely shadowed face a la Scarecrow from the later Batman TAS episodes

(this is the least disturbing picture I could find of him)

All these fear motifs are, of course, painfully ironic when you consider that not only this image is Alyss’ exaggerated idea of her faith, it’s also 100% contradictory of what her faith truly stands for. What she herself has constantly told others. That God isn’t an angry God who judges sinners, but a gentle one who forgives, and justifies not by adherence to laws, but faith in a greater power. In fact, the power that forgives and lets people not be punished for what they deserve.

And though this is a totally cheesy idea...I would like to imagine if you face the Inquisitor in a dungeon, in like a medieval-style execution grounds, you would see those crumbling old walls with broken carvings that have the words “Condemnation in Christ” on them, and then noticing the walls were broken, you’d eventually find the missing half of the wall which must be attached before the initial wall, with the words, “There is No”

Look, I’ve already spilled my guts out with this “I have a friend”-type post, I can afford to be cringe about something that means a lot to me

Especially since...it’s very obviously been weighing on my mind a lot lately

No matter whether Alyss Baraen thinks herself a “witch” or feels tormented by an “Inquisitor” the root cause is still the same - she fears that she isn’t worthy or that God possibly is angry at her for whatever sin or failure to be human/good she’s committed. And despite her own beliefs, or the love and support of others, being a clear evidence to the contrary, she finds it hard to trust that that love is real.

Many times, it’s terrifying to trust people you love, or to have any hope at all. Because what if you’re disappointed? Worse, what if you’re just plain wrong? You could say to yourself how much good you’ve done or how much people clearly love and care for you, and have it still mean absolutely nothing. Because the evidence for your imperfection, the world’s imperfection, and the hurts you bear feel so much more real than the idea that you might deserve happiness.

And the more you think that way, the more you inevitably project that idea onto a higher power, like God. Because how could it be true that He offers you all things for nothing? Less than nothing - you’re a “terrible person” who deserves to be punished, and yet He isn’t. In fact, He’s saying all’s good, you just need to do better and keep loving and trusting Him, and He’ll do the rest.

Without any obvious proof, except the life you’ve already lived, and the words He’s said.

A tall order to believe in, isn’t it?

Trust is never easy, and in fact, often seems far less logical than just continuing to remain on guard, always.

To believe in there being good and kindness in your future often seems too good to be true. And soon we start to believe it can never be true.

So I’ve spent a long time rejecting any kind of grace or kindness because I’ve convinced myself there’s no way it’s true. The truth, to me, had to be a harsh revelation of my inherent sinfulness and failure to follow God. Those were obvious ‘proofs’ in my life, after all. It could be nothing else. If I received a kind word, I must have been selfishly trying to avert my eyes from the truth, to what I wanted to hear.

But, you know.

That wasn’t the truth at all.

In my heart of hearts, I KNEW it wasn’t.

Well, no one ever said Faith was easy.

#rant #extremely long #the only reason I'm posting this is because I'm presumptuously hoping there aren't many people who would see this or want to read it #and I'm being somewhat vague enough about my situation #also just creatively I thought the new character idea was sick #but i've clearly been stewing on it for a while now for therapeutic purposes #i might make this post private in the future #please don't worry about me by the way #I am not in physical danger #I just have a lot to get off my chest #and a sincere thank you if you've read the post all the way to the end

[nekomimineurosurgery]

small ramble to say thank you to the couple of people who were able to assist me in getting food recently (+ everybody else who offered kindness and emotional support ♡). it has made a significant difference this past week! while i am still currently struggling, i have things in place for myself to get better - literally have 10 different appointments for things within the next month orz.

im struggling with an episode really bad, fueled by both psychosis related issues and ptsd, and it has made it difficult to stay at my family and or partners house sometimes. it's made it difficult to work, to practice basic self care, to feel like I can feel safe around people I love...

so needless to say, i am sorry if i can sometimes be a little unhinged on here, and i deeply appreciate everybody who has given me grace during this rough period. despite it all, i still have a lot of hope and i have big dreams and a passion for my interests and i hope to post more about that on my blog soon vs. posts about my struggling!

what kind of content would u like me to post more of ?! like what kind of things do you enjoy seeing most on my blog and what are your own interests (even if they are niche and or different from things i post!) ? i have so many pictures and drafts i have never uploaded already ...

[altairs-rambles]

I feel like everyone should have their ocs heard at least once SO DO TELL MORE I haven’t interacted with u that much but I may reveal who I am hehehe

∑(ﾟﾛﾟ〃) someone wants to hear about my OCs? Really?

I have many OCs (kinda) (not really)! I'll only talk about Enstars first bc much to say about each of them so this is gonna be a loooong ramble already!! I apologize in advance for my possibly incoherent essay(s)

First up, Kiyoko!

She used to be a Yuguysona back when I was in the NijiEN rabbithole, but bc I was too attached to her design to toss/scrap him, I brought him into the Enstars Universe! Kiyoko was meant to stay as like- my self insert/persona in Enstars? But they eventually kinda deviated from that and became her own character!

Uhhh as you can see I've been running around she/he/they for Kiyoko, and that's because he's gender fluid! Why? Because I am a mess about my own gender and creating/tweaking Kiyoko was a way for me to explore that area. Now they're my gender goals + I am very down bad for her ✨

Just like my other soon-to-be-rambled-about OCs, this blueberry is a very tragic little creature - she has one or two problems from my life mixed in with the hundreds of problems from the Ensemble Stars Universe. Relatively nice family, once bullied, has a friend in a coma, swings between being compliant to being stubborn, overthinks and overworks, is a very tired child... Yeah! The usual~ A third year student in Yumenosaki, who sneaked in as a male in the first year with the help of some teachers, but now others knowing she's afab doesn't get him kicked out either so 👏👏👏 went solo for a while before the mess in the war, so they picked up a teammate/friend by being weirdly philosophical and whimsical on the roof of the school 👍! Kiyoko is very passionate about the idea of freedom thanks to The War in Enstars aksnksnskd

What's ironic about him is that she's the leader of a unit whose theme is "freedom", yet mentally she's as free as a dove in an undersized cage. Kiyoko keeps going on and on about how people need the freedom to choose (as long as it doesn't harm others) and yet never gives himself that freedom due to fear of making another mistake that would snowball into a devastating consequence (see: friend in coma).

Anyway! We have very similar fashion sense/styles, which is over-the-top-accessorizing! I have no explanation for this other than: I really like earrings and chains and chokers and rings and boots and shiny silver bits and looking good in general! We both really like singing too, just that I have stage fright despite performing on stage for 10years (school). Aaaaand we're both sleepy babies we can and will curl up anywhere on the grass floor cement ground and sleep 😴

All these lead to funny little scenarios between her and other characters, mostly when they randomly trip over him/catch her knocked out in the middle of hallways (all these scenarios happened in my head).

Um. I think that's it for him sorry it's so long for the first one orz

Oh one more thing! I suffer from being a Kiyoko fan bc I'm the only source of art for them but I have little to no motivation to draw 😭

Aaaaand that's a wrap! Next one, Ai!

(apparently her file isn't on my phone so I only have her picrew + pencil drawing)

Sunshine of Kiyoko's unit, Wing5! Formerly a solo idol who failed after debut, she was scouted out by New Di/Kiyoko/Tsumugi to be part of Wing5. She's a strong vocalist, often pairing with Kiyoko to take on the melody of their songs, hence the ship name "Songbirds" (That ship is like fan speculation? It's not entirely canon unless I want it to be)

In terms of appearance, Ai and I look the most similar thanks to our front bangs ✨ Her hair is all purple, she just dyed her side bangs to match her eyes! Also since every OC has a piece of their creator's soul, she has my extroverted side! She's a bumbling 20 year old or so - think "wine aunt" vibes!

Ai's actually very insecure though, due to her failure as a solo idol. She may be cheeky, but she's very sensitive to others' emotions and tries her best not to push them to the limit in case they decide to abandon her because of whatever antics she's up to, or because she's not good enough. Imposter syndrome too, maybe?

I think she needs to be babied more she's always taking care of others... Mom of Wing5™️ old

Next! Uhhhh what was her name... Yurika!!

Resident tryhard emo and chronically online child, her strength lies more in marketing, video editing etc. more than performing onstage! Despite being paired with Akari (who will be rambled about next) due to her dance, Yurika is more widely recognized as Wing5's rapper.

She's the shortest in Wing5! ++ An albino, which is why all Wing5 performances are usually done indoors/at night outdoors to prevent aggravating her condition (I opened so many tabs for this but I've forgotten so much I'm sorry if anything isn't accurate). Her left eye is also affected by... Something which the name I can't remember- it affects albinos and causes their vision to be blurry, even with glasses. Yurika just needs glasses in general bc she has been sitting in front of the PC for so long sknskdnd

Our similarities... Being online like 24/7? She has a worse sleep schedule than me though bwahahaa ✨ We both also melt. Like. Absolutely melt into nothingness whenever we're presented with affection. (At least I think I would...?)

Her ship with Akari is. Canon. I will not hear arguments I created them!! 🙉 They've been traveling/living together for a few years before Wing5, when Yurika was 15 and Akari was 18, bc their families are close friends and Yurika's family decided it was time to kick her out of her dark gloomy room to see the world with Akari, who was going around Japan to look for jobs as a dancer! When Akari landed a job, they had to continue travelling to follow the idol around on his/her concerts as a backup dancer, and Yurika stuck with Akari throughout the years until they landed in Wing5~ it's like the "omg they were roommates" situation! She's very prickly with everyone else aside from Akari, especially Kiyoko bc they have severely clashing opinions from time to time lmao

Bonus: She uses her name as a pun for "Eureka" so it sounds like "this is an Eureka moment!" but it practically means 'this is Yurika's moment!'

I never thought I'd say so much about Yurika but I will speak more about her in the next ramble about her wife girlfriend, Akari!

Heads up, Akari's transfem! She transitioned before + during her travels with Yurika, but doesn't feel completely female? An imbalanced in-between, like a tomboyish girl! And that's why she's the tallest in Wing5, bc hormones- By male standards, she's softer and more feminine, but by female standards she's a little too masculine. Gender who?

Tragically, she doesn't have a family other than her little brother (to be rambled about next), whom she is very protective about. She was taken care of by Yurika's family until 15 when she moved to school dorms while her brother remained with Yurika's family, then after graduation she came back to bring Yurika around Japan at her family's request.

They do return Yurika's feelings towards them, though Akari needed time to sort her own emotions out after Yurika's confession because they had never really thought of having a partner? Akari just felt comfortable and safe and at home with Yurika, that's all. So yeah they were disaster gays at some point before officially starting their relationship as lovers!

Akari is really hostile towards Kiyoko, though she displays it mostly in a passive-aggressive way. Why? Bc they blame Kiyoko for what happened to her little brother 😔 Will be explained soon!

Akari's name used to be Akira! This is a coincidence that it happens to be the Enstars story writer's name, I didn't know until a while after creating Akari 😅

Next, Hikari!

<tbc sorry i gotta go celebrate CNY TwT> I will be back soon~

#ensemble stars oc #enstars oc #oc #ask #ocs #im sorry did i talk too much ;A;

[rueria]

readers and writers (literally just me rambling about whatever, also kinda personal)

the more time passes by, the more i feel that i'm more of a reader than a writer but unlike kdj or mnkm i don't have my personal writer who painstakingly writes stories tailor-made exactly for me so instead i suffer with these ideas in my head orz

"just commission stuff" it's not the same, also i'm scared bc what if i dont like it even tho it's great bc i'm rly picky sghdjsks

anyway, readers and writers. fsr i just recently realized the romance of the connection between a reader and a writer, bc of orv and hshm. bc it's usually like, reader and character, or writer and character right. but like. the innate romantic nature of storytelling yknow? scheherazade extending her life by a day each night she tells a story, and charming the king all the while. people have been telling and taking in stories for as long as humanity has existed.

it's like ughh. like i cringe a little at myself for being addicted to hamilton back then (i still kinda am tbh) and there's a lot of lines i could point out but these specific verses from burn still have got me by the throat:

"you and your words flooded my senses, your sentences left me defenseless"

"you built me palaces out of paragraphs. you built cathedrals"

"i'm rereading the letters you wrote me. i'm searching and scanning for answers in every line, for some kind of sign"

"you and your words, obsessed with your legacy. your sentences border on senseless"

and then later in who lives, who dies, who tells your story:

"i try to make sense of your thousands of pages of writings. you really do write like you're running out of time"

like. writing as an act of love. reading as an act of love. writing hidden messages in the black of the ink and the white of the paper, and sometimes there's nothing there, but reading can give that nothing meaning anyway.

the power of words, man. the desire to communicate and be understood. aghsjdks

stories as sustenance. i remember reading a story of a girl who literally lives through stories, by eating them; i should reread that, i don't think i finished it.

stories made solely for one person. a writer and a reader with the wall of a story between them, the one-sided communication through the words written on that wall. in a way, using that wall makes it easier to communicate with another person than directly talking with them face-to-face.

maybe that's the specific reason why AI used for writing and art just gives me this dread (among many other reasons). the way of communication that i know best would become a lot more meaningless. i'd have to actually talk to people.

i've always loved stories since i was a kid. i've been reading for as long as i can remember. i spent more time with stories than with real people. it didn't matter how shitty it was, how long it was. if it was a story, i read it. because someone wrote it. comics, tv shows, movies, artpieces, music. there's always a story, and behind it, there's a person.

am i making any sense, probably not. idk. i don't really know what this is or how to end it. uh, anyway, writer-reader dynamics will probably always get me. there's probably a lot more out there that i just haven't seen bc as much as i say i read a lot, i really don't. not enough lol.

#shut up eri #i... don't know what this is #a disorganized jumble of memories and thoughts with a bit of self-reflection i guess

[glasseswearingrabbitdetective]

Thinking of Shugo chara at 1am... 😔 I barely remember that show but... it was pretty good tbh?? Like??

#Shugo Chara #Hinamori Aki #rambling #personal #tbh... #I just kinda wanna say what’s on my mind... not too deeply but ... I’m tired :) #yeee I hate the [me]everyone seems to think I am so much:) I wanna change but easier said than done lmao #it’s not like I’m lying but... I’m not brave enough to be completely honest either with some stuff^^’ #nothing bad/worrying ofc just like... hh : #ever just look in the mirror and go [who the heck are you!?]?? me. constantly! like?? #[who am i] idk ... ?? it’s def not the person yall see tho #Shugo Chara was big on showing your true self and honest feelings... -u-‘ hh #I rlyyyy don’t remember the show well but they could’ve done well with that tbh :o lots of ppl just show masks/personas after all.. #hey I do exactly that 😅I barely even know why... #when I made an account here I thought maybe this time I can be more honest and that’d be great... tho literally nothing changed. fail x #orz

[myscprin]

Since you make some cute art, can you tell me what is the hardest thing to draw for you?

And what is the thing you'd like to draw someday? (A fight scene, weapons, etc...)

*gaaassspppppppp* I'm gon ramble, but tl;dr version up here.

Everything. If I had to pick one thing though, I'd probably say faces. I've come to terms with my oven-mitt hands 😅

Hmmm the thing to draw someday? Like something on my to-do list or like an art goal piece? 🤔 My "to-draw" list is so long, but it's mostly just funny memes/incorrect quotes/situations to be redrawn as chibi comics. On a more serious note, art 'goal' pieces would probably be snapshots of fics I looovveee. Sort of as a 'thank you' to fic authors for being able to paint such a vivid image in my pea brain with their amazing words (and hopefully to make up for me not always commenting orz).

Ramble time c:

Drawing used to be a lot easier for me. I would sketch 2-3 pages every night, line/color half of those sketches, and post them along with quick work doodles. Now I think I'm being hard on myself. Since I'm currently obsessed with HOA and the characters are much more realistic, I get pretty demotivated when I can't capture their likeliness. So, Thank you for calling my art cute ;A; I was pretty afraid of posting in the beginning since I oversimplified all the characters' faces (I still do, but potato potathoe).

Fun fact: I have a written and electronic list of my 'to-draws'. AND they both contain different things because why would I make it easy for myself? 😁 My electronic list is actually my tumblr drafts x'D Current count: 240. For the written ones, I grabbed a few scrap pages of the ideas-- theres a small journal at work too. (Yes, I am an absolute creep who writes people screen names down;; In my defense, my memory is absolute garbage and it'll help me give proper credit if/when I do draw and post it). For the fic redraw list, it's just (so far, 88) screenshots of the fic passage.

Thank you for the ask, and thank you to anyone who read all the way through! 💛

#being asked 🥺💜 #behind the mysc

[merakiui]

I love sk!Jade so much its like my meds to make me stay put and all that. I LOVE to always imagine and wonder what it'd be like in this situation with sk!Jade and while im always reading it and something inconvenient happens with Darling im always quick to say "Oh hell nah" Or cuss out at Jade because WTF?!?!!?! But in reality if it were me in there i'd be cowering in fear and already dead😭😭 I'd have the tongue and wittiness that Ace has but the moment he points that blade against my throat im suddenly mute and submissive to his will. Or sometimes i would think Darling would find themself thinking "Okay so what if hes hot and has nice damn muscled arms when hes rolling his sleeves to dismember another victim- wait what am I talking about IM LITERALLY HELD CAPTIVE AS WELL. dude is literally going to kill someone and is holding me captive, now is NOT the time to ogle at his arms (if it isnt obvious enough i am SO DOWN BAD for strong leech arms even in such treacherous situations and conditions ><)"

I also like to think that sometimes for fun Sk!Jade likes to dress Darling in his clothes (Bloodied or not) and let his big collard shirt drape over them without anything under as they give him a pathetic and mortified look. That pathetic and submissive look on their face is absolutely adorable to him that he could just kiss their cheek! (And bite it off a few for a taste hehe)

Fear play is definitely his kink, but he can be so genuine and soft despite that and it has you melting in his big and firm arms (That could literally kill you with one bone crushing squeeze to the throat if he so desired; Its kinda cute if it was a puppy love Floyd though who just loves you so much but accidentally kills you because of his strength 😭poor Darling;;;)

I HAVE SO MUCH IDEAS STEMMING FROM MY BRAIN RN AHHHHHHHHH SK!JADE LITERALLY DOES A NUMBER TO ME IT HAS ME SHAKINGNNGNGNGNGN (I am so sorry for the long ramble😭🙏 Please take care! And also could I be Honey Anon??)

:D hello hello, Honey anon!!!!! Please don't apologize for the ramble. I love reading it hehe. <3 I'm happy to know sk!Jade has all of us in a vicious chokehold. He's just so frustrating. T_T and he knows he's attractive, too, so he uses it to his advantage if he wants you to lower your guard. Omg dressing you in his clothes... he's terrible!!! >:( I imagine he just loves seeing how visibly unsettled you get when he drapes his bloody apron over your shoulders.

Aaaaaa maybe if your ears aren't pierced he offers to do it for you so you can wear the earrings of one of his victims. ;;;;; or if they are pierced, he goes through the collection he has and picks a pair out for you. You can try to be confident, but then you're always reminded of how strong he looks and how brutal he can be and so you'll sit still while he dresses you up.

It's definitely a whiplash when he has his soft and sweet moments, but these aren't nearly enough to fool you. You know what he's like beneath his gentle demeanor. orz although sometimes you can't stop yourself from admiring his body, whether out of fear or appreciation. As scary as he is, at least he makes for pleasant eye candy when you need a distraction from the daily horrors of confinement.

And Jade just has fun being a menace and adding more fuel to your nightmares. <3 it would be arguably worse if he had a puppy crush on you like Floyd might because then his self-restraint would be even more tested than it already is.

#twisted chit chat #serial killer jade #honey anon

[a-little-bit-of-ravioli]

Hia Rav! For the Meta Asks: 20, 22, and 25, please? :)

20. Okay, so my brain is blocking me trying to think coherent thoughts about this one, so I'll come back to it later, I promise! I'l tag you when I do, but I'll get the other two answers out first because I have no idea when that's gonna be orz

22. I absolutely do! If I write something then because it's a story that interests me, and if it interests me why wouldn't I read it again? And usually I don't stop being fascinated by the concepts I write about, so I reread them over and over again. If I don't enjoy my own writing I'd find it hard to believe other people would, so that's always my first concern!

25. So much about writing is fun, but... I'd have to to say building up atmosphere in a scene. Using every linguistic trick in the book from sentence structure to word choice, to splitting paragraphs and bending punctuation to your will until you are certain your readers will pace those lines just right in their mind. I really really enjoy the process of fiddling with those things until they all flow together when I read it over.

It's either that, or, if it counts, getting to talo about what you wrote after the fact! I am absolutely a person that isn't done with a story just because the typing part is done. I will ramble about it for hours on end even after its finished, to anyone interested in it.

#rav rambles