i got a hold of these while z library was still in it’s full glory and thought i’d share! the translation on these is by yen press, if you want a site where you can download them dm me :3 i also recommend checking out @/bsd-bibliophile’s website for fan translations
me, my husband and my son are in a constant cycle of echolalia and nonsense
I once saw a panel from a Popeye comic on here about him having "bonkus of the conkus" (ie hitting his head) and now we all say that phrase constantly, as well as using "bonkers of the conkers" (a natural mutation) to mean something that's wild/crazy
and occasionally a cashier at the supermarket makes small talk about how hot the weather is and I reply, yeah, bonkers of the conkers!
lying to people in positions of power (landlords, rental agencies, employers) to get what u want (a flat, a job, whatever) is cool and u should do it more often.
Doc is Fyodor and Mori's son. He was raised by Fyodor, who got him to follow in his other father's footsteps. After Doc is bisected by Verlaine, his Ability keeps him alive long enough that Fyodor shows up, which is how Fyodor meets Dazai. Fyodor keeps Doc's living severed head in a commemorative box and takes it out on holidays. Mori doesn't know any of this.
*The name of the theory is "The Second Worst BSD Theory of All Time". This name is probably inaccurate.
Meanwhile, in one of the many realms outside of the BSD book, Kafka Asagiri was really contemplating how he would fit every character in literature named “Doc” into his story. So, he took his first Doc, severed his head, and had Fyodor put it in a box that sent his consciousness into every single character named Doc ever. Thus, Fyodor gained a secret Doc army with which he could kill 20 million people.
To Fyodor's chagrin, Doc, unaware of Asagiri's existence, was so angry his father had rendered him unable to enter Heaven (there canonically is some form of afterlife in the BSD world, unless I'm really overthinking that Bram panel, and Bram's done awful things but is in a nice-looking place, so Fyodor condemned Doc to a uniquely awful fate, which is irrelevant because Doc isn't omniscient) that he tried to stage a coup. Fyodor defeated the Doc army, sealed them into one person using a slip of paper cut from the Book, and sent ultra-Doc back in time, where they became Ueda Akinari. So Tales of Moonlight and Rain is Doc's Ability and the paper on Ueda's forehead is from the Book
Back in time, Ueda Akinari managed to acquire a spouse (the irl author was a man, but I don’t think Ueda’s gender has been revealed, and the bsd version could be nonbinary if we included Q.) and had children. Many many many many years later, as a descendant of this original union, Yosano Akiko was born.
Ueda and their fisherman husband's marriage started out happily, but envy of their Ability ate away at his love. One jealousy begat a multitude of others: jealousy of the friends they never stopped speaking of who he had never met, of the renown they had won for their craft, of their magnificent bob. His love soured to resentment and then to a hate so potent it echoed through the cosmos and caught the attention of a Great Old One, who appeared to him and offered him a deal, promising power and vengeance. If he accepted, he too would have an Ability and he and Lovecraft would reunite one day to fight that "Chuuya" whose memory Ueda was preoccupied by. The cost? Even if he were in the same city as they, the fisherman would never have a conversation with one of his descendants again. His children would grow up without a father
Ueda never saw their husband again. Everyone assumed he had capsized and drowned
Almost 1500 years later, he was reborn and named John Steinbeck. Even as a small child, he knew he couldn't let his family down, and that having his Ability made him a monster, but he didn't know the true reason why
After Steinbeck begins to lead The Remnants of The Guild, he soon realizes that starting his own organization is a costly business. So, he finds work as a sommelier at the local “Fancy Restaurant.” One day, a woman with a glorious bob comes in and wants to order some wine, so Steinbeck goes to take her order, and when she opens her mouth he is immediately thrown by some invisible force and blasts through a wall.
Unbeknownst to him, the woman, Yosano Akiko, one of Udea’s and the fisherman’s descendants, is by extension also his descendant. Except because he isn’t able to talk to any of his descendants, seeing as he’s the fisherman reincarnated, the fiasco at the restaurant just went down. <- (This may be verging into AU territory though, and although The Second Worst BSD Theory of All Time is the most implausible thing to ever exist, it’s still a theory, which implies that we are (un)seriously speculating on what has happened/what will happen in BSD canon, which means there’s a 0.00000001% chance that of ALL the possible directions Asagiri could take, this one is still a possibility.)
So if that is too much of an AU, then I raise you:
As a young child Steinbeck had a slightly older best friend/mentor figure (irl age gap was 6 years) named Ed Ricketts. When Ricketts was in college, earning his PhD, he lived in the same vague Steinbeckian version of BSD’s California and was able to go to college while also keeping in touch with Steinbeck. Thus, he got his nickname “Doc” which made him a part of the Doc army. (For meta reasons as well, such as Ricketts being the inspiration for Doc in Cannery Row, and almost every other Steinbeck character named Doc.)
Meanwhile, while Crichton/Doc raged against his father, he tapped into his full potential and began to use the Doc army like you said. (I guess for this reason then, Doc’s consciousness subsumes that of all other Docs only when he needs them/decides to do so. So I suppose every Doc version has a small sliver of Doc’s consciousness in them that lies dormant until it’s activated.) Fyodor, knowing that he would be in hot water if anyone found out what was actually going on, played the event off as what is known in BSD canon as “The Great War.”
A few years before The Great War, Ed Ricketts discovered that he, too, had an ability; Between Pacific Tides. So, along with the rise of ability-based warfare that came with the uprising of the Doc Army, and his own role as a Doc, Ricketts was drafted.
During The Great War which was really just a cover for the Doc Army’s uprising all along, every Doc clone/consciousness was sealed into Ueda as you mentioned earlier, and peace was restored to the lands…
(Almost) nothing is too much of an AU for The Second Worst BSD Theory of All Time, and that is both technically feasible and funny. I think you were wise to put the second part under the cut; this post is getting rather long. I'll do the same
Every proper theory debate contains at least one scholarly disagreement, so I'm going to have to disagree with you on one point. For the purposes of this theory, I don't think BSD Doc is Michael Crichton. I think he's Ed Ricketts, whose Ability, Between Pacific Tides, turns the ground into sand to mimic a beach. Unbeknownst to both of them, Steinbeck grew up for the second time as his hated former spouse's best friend (so for John it was a strangers to spouses to onesided enemies to best friends arc and for Doc it was a friends to strangers to spouses arc)
The Great War part confused me at first, since it took place years before the Doc Army existed, but it's been established (post pt. 3) that Fyodor was cutting slips of paper from the Book, so it's possible that something went wrong with one which catapulted the Doc Army into the past, to the time of the Great War. Younger-Doc, who was roughly somewhere from 8 to 16 at the end of the war, was not possessed by and did not fight alongside his older self and army
Since our theory is so perfectly sound, and fits in perfectly with the bsd timeline, I decided to construct a diagram of it to reaffirm my belief that it would “hold water.” Behold.
(I spent an embarrassingly long amount of time searching for the perfect photo of a pasta strainer. It was like I was searching for the Hole-y Grail.
…
I tried.)
Ok so it turns out Ricketts was actually the Flags Doc / Original Doc all along? So to recap:
Ed Ricketts is Fyodor and Mori’s son, whose head Fyodor keeps in a commemorative box that actually links Ricketts’s consciousness to every character named “Doc”/every character that is a doctor in literature. Ed Ricketts becomes so angry that he cannot enter heaven that he subsumes the consciousness of all the other Docs to wage war against Fyodor. A mishap happens with the book that sends the Doc army back in time which ignites The Great War. Fyodor uses The Great War as an excuse to merge all of the Docs into Ueda, who he sends back in time using a part of the book.
Then, Ueda gains a husband who is jealous of his future friends and exploits. Because of this hatred, the husband makes a deal with Lovecraft that he’ll never have a conversation with his descendants again in exchange for being reincarnated as Steinbeck where he’ll be able to fight Chuuya with the help of Lovecraft.
So in the future, Ed Ricketts/Original Doc was actually born around reincarnated Steinbeck’s time. (But Ed Ricketts is not a reincarnation I guess. His birth was just the ‘next step’ in history.) So Ed Ricketts didn’t actually end up getting drafted because there was no war to be drafted in. The war of the Doc clones happened before his birth. So he lived long enough to go to Japan, get involved with the Port Mafia and the Flags, and then be murdered by Verlaine.
Wait- then how would he be Mori’s son? Eh, Fyodor probably just stole his DNA or something. Wait, so if Ricketts was raised by Fyodor, was Fyodor just vacationing in Monterey Bay during Ricketts’s childhood years lol. And if Fyodor raised Ricketts to follow in his footsteps, how would he have become the person Steinbeck began to know and love… Gah! That’s not the point! Back to the recap! /silly
So Doc Ricketts gets ‘murdered’ by Verlaine as dictated in Stormbringer canon, and then Fyodor places his head in a box which connects his consciousness to that of all other Docs, and the cycle repeats again? Is that right? 😂
My interpretation of a few points in the recap is below the cut
I'm imagining Fyodor being like Eloise's jet-setting mother if she were slightly more involved and a criminal, though it would be funnier if he spent all that time in Monterey. He definitely wasn't an entirely absent father, but he might have left Ricketts with a caretaker for long stretches of time (maybe Nancy Luce because of her life and themes and because why not). Right from the start, Fyodor sowed the seeds for the Doc he would become, but it wasn't until Ricketts was living with Fyodor while going to medical school that Fyodor revealed his vision to his son. Doc didn't fully agree with it but it led him to develop his own, uh, unconventional goals
The length of the Great War is unknown (I think), so Steinbeck and younger-Ricketts may or may not have been born at the start and were alive during at least part of it but weren't near a battle zone. It ended 14 years before the main era, when Steinbeck was about 7. If x = Ricketts' age in years at the end of the war, unless he's younger than Chuuya during Stormbringer, then 8 ≤ x ≤ 16. Ricketts was around that age or slightly older when Fyodor whisked him off for med school, which took much less time than it should have because doctors were in astronomically high demand, after which Fyodor sent him to Yokohama
Ricketts was decapitated around eight years after the end of the war, after which all Docs became imbued with his consciousness. This didn't affect their previous thoughts, so all members of the Doc Army who would have existed in the BSD world during the war had the time travel not happened existed in a younger version and an older, Ricketts-brained version simultaneously
The biggest hole in the theory is that unless more time travel is involved (which it could be) or Fyodor artificially accelerated the first few years of Ricketts' life, Mori is rather young to be his father
Honestly, it would be really funny to me if Fyodor had been a stay-at-home dad for that time. But it makes much more sense for him to have been absent traveling/furthering his evil plots/etc. But imagine with me, for one moment:
News Broadcast: “We’re being attacked by super evil terrorist Fyodor Dostoyevsky! Ah!!!”
*Steinbeck, watching the broadcast*: “Is that Mr. Dostoyevsky who made the really great apple pie!?”
Forget seeing your math teacher as a terrorist on TV, imagine seeing your childhood best friend’s DAD.
Mori doesn’t necessarily have to be Doc’s biological father. He could have adopted him for some reason, though, so he would be his father through the law. Or, as I previously suggested, Fyodor somehow managed to mix his and Mori’s DNA together.
Stay-at-home dad Fyodor would be hilarious. Also, I have discovered the greatest secret of his past
Fyodor would be thrilled to hear that Steinbeck likes his apple pie. In his first life, he never learned how to make food, only coffee, and it took him centuries to become a good baker. You know how I know this? Because Fyodor is an alternate timeline version of the real Walter Lippmann who got isekai'd into the medieval BSD world in his early-mid twenties. You want proof? I have proof
See? They're the same picture
Walter Lippmann had dark hair and was drawn to Catholicism and spirituality at times but ultimately was an atheist. In the absence of a Catholic father figure balanced out by a bitter ex-Catholic second wife and in the presence of early Russian Orthodoxy, maltreatment and danger due to bigotry he had also internalized, and the discovery that he came back to life if killed, his isekai'd alternate self converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity
Obviously, Fyodor and BSD Lippmann are not the same person. Lippmann was shown decapitated in the chapter released after the one where Fyodor was as a hint that Fyodor is Walter Lippmann
As for how Doc-Ricketts-Ueda came to be, I like the mixing-DNA-theory best. It could be compellingly tragic if Mori and Doc have effectively the same Ability but Doc makes his a look like a dinosaur because he thinks dinosaurs are cool and Mori makes his look like a little girl because he wants to be a father, not realizing he has a son—a son he eventually meets and cares about—all along. That leaves the question of what Fyodor wanted to create someone with Mori's Ability for and why he wanted Doc in the Port Mafia. Did he think Doc could influence Mori? Spy on him? Be a successor to him who'd comply with Fyodor's wishes?
Lippman’s love of “the living world” reminds me of Ed Ricketts’s obsession with breaking through in a way:
Except that It’s opposite to Lippman’s love in that Ricketts wanted to go “beyond” the living world and “break through.” The seeds of discontent were always there… Perhaps the head severance and consciousness diffusion was just the cranium that broke the camel’s back 😔
Also, what if instead of a ceremonial box, Doc/Ricketts’s head was actually placed in Ed Ricketts’s safe??? Hear me out:
I’m a little confused about the Doc sharing Mori’s ability thing, because for the purpose of the theory you had said his ability was the sand one to mirror Between Pacific Tides. But, to follow along, what if Doc’s ability is actually evolution? Maybe if he had been able to grow stronger his ability would have evolved and he would have ended up being able to summon very dangerous chickens (partly as an ode to his former caretaker Nancy Luce and because chickens are said to have descended from dinosaurs).
As for why Fyodor would have wanted Doc; he’s the ultimate fail safe. Fyodor probably predicted that Doc would fight back against him with the Doc army, whom he would merge and send back in time as Ueda. So it’s safe to assume that even right now, although Fyodor has “lost” he has another Ueda in the past who is, for lack of a better word, ‘incubating.’ Ueda will probably craft their sword again which will give Fyodor access to Ame-no-gozen and things in the next timeline.
Because I forgot his Ability was Between Pacific Tides and somehow missed it reading back through the post (please forgive me?), Doc has a multicomponent Ability with both sand and a dinosaur
An Ability like Verne's, which has an avatar component, a land component, and a taking-in-the-Abilities-of-the-dead component, would be a somewhat logical combination of Vita Sexualis and Crime and Punishment. So, Fyodor wanted his child to have an Ability similar to The Mysterious Island and Doc ended up with one theoretically less powerful but more versatile, since it isn't geographically confined. I think your evolution theory is a strong one and dearly wish Doc had been able to form his chicken army before he was beheaded and fused and his Ability was altered beyond recognition into Tales of Moonlight and Rain
Exactly how Tales of Moonlight and Rain works hasn't been specified, but I feel like it could be a creation/transformation/imbuing power, an evolution of the evolution Ability into one which affects inanimate objects
I wonder what will happen if Steinbeck encounters any of Doc's old things, particularly the safe, which evidently has fathomless powers. If he recognized it, it could be a useful tool for the Remnants of the Guild... but where is the line between practicality in the present and grief and respect for a lost friend? And does Steinbeck know that Doc is dead?
End of the Second Worst BSD Theory of all Time (Part One)
Hooray! I can’t wait to continue the theory into part two! :D
The two swords Uedoc created were imbued with life-force and time abilities respectively. Those both play into evolution, which follows changes in the compositions of living organisms over time.
If Ed Ricketts/Doc never had the chance to become a marine biologist, I don’t think he would’ve found his safe himself. However Fyodor, in his infinite knowledge, would probably know of it. So that would be why he found it, knew of its powers, and stuck Doc’s head in there. If Steinbeck were to ever stumble upon it I don’t think he’d know what it was or its capabilities. He probably doesn’t know that Doc is dead, either. But if he were to find out what Fyodor did to his best friend, I don’t think Steinbeck would be happy about it.
