Watching Link Click And I Gotta Say Again How I Adore Doomed Siblings

what i love about Maomao is that she is ALL for the girls like she doesn't judge or look down on the concubines she calls the courtesans she grew up with her sisters and when Lady Lihua looked like she was about to fucking deck Lady Shin she literally giggled and was proud that Lihua was standing up for herself like Maomao is the NUMBER ONE supporter of women and strong women shes a cheerleader for women and i will always love that about her

“Certainly Humans are Sinfully Stupid, but What’s wrong with that?”

Summary: I will be dividing this essay into two main parts to address what Dazai had said in this panel to Dazai-sensei’s writing. Then, in one short part I will attempt to connect some of what I had said back to BSD Dazai as a theory.

A/N: Basically take it as me rambling about my favorite bsd dazai panel and some of my personal take on dazai works which escalated and turned out much longer than I originally imagined…  (by that I mean this became 6k+ words) Also just my contribution to Dazai’s birthday <3 Also note that use of Chinese is present in this, since it’s much easier to find translated works of Dazai in this language, but if I do quote it, I will attempt to translate it

Warnings: Mentions of suicide, (if you’re uncomfortable with it) religious wording, spoilers to some of Dazai’s stories (works discussed [in relatively more detail]: No Longer Human, Otogizoshi, Blue Bamboo, Thinking of Zenzo, 正義與微笑, 思考的蘆葦)

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thoughts on beast!dazai

i have been thinking again recently about beast!dazai and that he was just a kid when he got to see the memories of the og!dazai, so it makes sense that he became so obsessed with saving oda.

just think about it, he was younger than 16, feeling lonely and he has these "vision" of someone that understands him and is by his side, someone he has a connection to and that genuinely enjoys his company and he too does enjoy being around oda (the only adult we have seen treat him like the kid he is)

oda is the closest person he has to a friend and all of it is an illusion of a future that isn't his to live and he knows the ending. oda dies and changes his life (the life of the og!zai) and there is no way to thank him, to show how important oda truly is to og!zai and him.

thanks to oda's words he knows he can find something akin to happiness, find something to appreciate and make life, even if it's just a little, worth

his only way of showing gratitud is trying to manipulate his reality to a universe where oda can live his life by his own principles, pursue his dream and find some kind of value in what he does and his life.

this decision is so full of love for his friend and that makes it so sad, because he abandons entirely the possibility of happiness to give him a life to live.

and the only thing he has to treasure are memories that aren't his. oda isn't his friend in the beast au and he makes it clear that he considers dazai his enemy

as much as he yearns for his frienship with oda, it isn't his, he will never be the other dazai. and that was his choice, because he was just a kid that wanted to do something good for someone that was important for him and abandoned a part of himself as the price.

I loved this episode and the Hanako blushing scene so much

Well, seems like something that was just a theory before has come very close to truth...

Because of this major revelation, I wanted to take a deep dive into what we know about Donovan so far and how hints throughout past chapters could indeed indicate that he can read minds. While we still don't have concrete proof for this other than Melinda's word, I don't believe there's anything that discredits this idea, either. In fact, many things throughout the series support it.

First we have Loid's encounter with Donovan way back in chapter 38. I always found it strange that we never got insight into Donovan's thoughts throughout that whole exchange. We always get to know what characters are thinking, even without Anya's mind-reading support. It's not an uncommon storytelling mechanic in general after all, especially for manga. Yet, Endo chose not to give us any insight into what Donovan was thinking. I figured this was simply to avoid spoiling anything about what his exact plans and motives are for future stories (also why Anya was absent for this). But now it seems like this could have also been to hide the fact that he can read minds. If he can read minds, certain things he said during that exchange take on a more ominous meaning. For example, what he said below about how people can never truly understand each other.

It's been a headcanon of mine that the reason why Anya, and perhaps Donovan, were given mind-reading powers, stemmed from the desire for world peace...the idea being that if people could read each other's minds - in other words, always know what others are thinking and feeling, sympathy and understanding would abound.

We learn later on that Donovan had ideas like this even as a kid when he made a similar comment during his debate competition speech. He said that it's impossible to know the true intentions of others so people will forever doubt each other, thus war is inevitable.

We also have the little detail in today's chapter that Donovan did not have the scars on his head during Melinda's flashback (of course, he didn't have them as a kid in chapter 99 either).

Now this is totally my theory, but if we take Melinda's words as the truth, without any misunderstanding, then sometime in Donovan's adult life after he married and had a child, he was experimented on and was given mind-reading powers, perhaps by force but most likely by choice. Now that he has these powers, his laments about people not being able to understand each other are no longer true, at least not for him. Perhaps the experiments done on Anya were preliminary tests that he put together to perfect the mind-reading implementation science before actually doing it to himself. Again, totally just speculation, but not out of the question.

Then we have Demetrius...we learned in chapter 93 that Anya has trouble reading his mind.

If we put that together with Melinda's comment in today's new chapter, that Demetris also took note of Donovan being able to read minds...

...then perhaps Demetrius conditioned himself to think in ways that would make it difficult for his mind to be read, specifically to thwart the "alien" that's impersonating his father. I mentioned last time that I don't think Donovan is actually an alien, and that this description is the only explanation Melinda could come up with to explain his mind-reading powers. If this is true though, it really does make the Desmond dinner scene all the more telling...that throughout all those panels without dialogue, Donovan was absorbing the deepest inner thoughts of his family members (and again, no insight into his own thoughts, just like in chapter 38).

But if the "Donovan can read minds" theory holds true, then the most disturbing idea of all is that Donovan knows that Twilight is a spy. He knows that he's the target of Twilight's mission, and that Twilight seeks to thwart him. Not only that, but depending on what he's read of Damian and Melinda's minds, he knows that they're fond of Anya and Yor, respectively - people who are close to Twilight. Mind-reading powers in the hands of a child are one thing, but in the hands of a shrewd and power political figure...I'm both excited and anxious to find out what Donovan's next move will be!

Going insane because my first thought at their similarities is that they could have gotten along in a different context, but without that context (Teru being an exorcist and Hanako being dead) they wouldn't even be similar.

sweet nothings

Dazai, do you know about Pétrus? That night you left the organization, I opened an '89 bottle of it to celebrate. That's how fed up with you I was.

I've been thinking about this scene, and about how Chuuya in Storm Bringer seemed to consider himself beyond saving while simultaneously yearning for someone to do save him, and about his eventual resolve and commitment to the Port Mafia, and about how his fate ultimately opposes Dazai's.

GUYS, what if in the next chapter (123) there's other of those time fluctuations and yashiro is able to interact with the amane that's fixing the clock without time traveling and that gives her the info she needs so she doesn't jump with so little clues of what changed in the past