Anime reactions I guess. I’ll figure this out later

[originalaccountname]

re: Asagiri saying a lot of people working on bsd have asked him to write about Chuuya from Dazai's point of view yet Asagiri refuses because for all his intent and purposes the answer is "Dazai just doesn't like Chuuya"

Asagiri. Asagiri come sit with me. Asagiri do you realize how much this statement makes Dazai's internal monologue about Chuuya much more intriguing? He doesn't like Chuuya.

In Fifteen, his irritation comes from his perception of Chuuya as a shallow violent guy who's just looking for the biggest enemy (Arahabaki) to beat up. He doesn't like him. Turns out this perception was wrong. He still doesn't like him. Chuuya turns out to be someone who struggles with his humanity in perhaps a more relatable way than Dazai ever expected. And he doesn't like him. Seeing Chuuya and Rimbaud fight inspires Dazai to give a new go at life, and he conspires with everything he has to make Chuuya join the Port Mafia to be his underling. But he doesn't like him.

Then comes Storm Bringer, during which a guy comes along and wants to kill Dazai and take Chuuya away, and Dazai fights tooth and nail to prevent both from happening. He doesn't like him. Dazai vehemently denies the possibility of Chuuya being an artificial human. He doesn't like him. Dazai is uncomfortable for having to tell Chuuya their best course of action would get rid of the last remaining lead they have over his origins, to the point he starts planning for not doing it. And he doesn't like him.

Dazai has contributed to building up years of mutual trust between him and Chuuya. He doesn't like him. Chuuya is always executing Dazai's plans nearly perfectly. He doesn't like him. For a few minutes Dazai considered the possibility he would be drowning Chuuya for real and took the time to reminisce about their good times together. He doesn't like him. He was partnered with Chuuya for a maximum of 3 years, statistically probably a lot less, yet he insists on saying they've known each other for 7 years and still calls Chuuya partner once in a while. But he doesn't like him.

What could possibly be going on inside his head for all of the above to be true at the same time? He's admitted more than once to thinking about Chuuya night and day... but it was of ways to kill Chuuya, so it's fine, obviously, because it means he doesn't like him!!!

Asagiri. I understand your simple words of dismissal as a way to warn your readers you have no intention of pushing that particular thread further in your writing. But Asagiri. Do you not see the monster, this walking mass of contradictions, that you've created? What do you mean he "just doesn't like Chuuya"? Not Chuuya angst this ain't about him I'm holding Dazai up by the scruff and waving him around like a prop. What were his motivations then? Why does he do any of this? What unknown depth of character hides in those cracks, Asagiri?

[live-slug-reactions]

[cookies-over-yonder]

being chronically ill sucks cuz its like no i am actually responsible and not flaky and i care about the things i pursue but my body feels like it's on fire so i have to listen to it and forego every other responsibility i have today please believe me please believe me please believe me

[ettaevie]

I will always find it funny that Bungou Stray Dogs stars a detective agency and gets categorized as mystery because the show is just...so bad at whodunnit mysteries. Like they only ever introduce one suspect.

[apolladay]

Do you or anyone you know share a name with a month?

yes

no

Voting ended onApr 19, 2024

[v2isfuckingdead]

"emotionless robot feels for the first time" trope but instead of it being because of love or compassion its hatred.

[lnkedmyheart]

Chuuya, a street rat with no schooling keeping up with a boy genius since 15, fooling said boy genius, being able to do advanced calculations in his head in split seconds, outsmarting a trained world class assassin, being able to solve a case as fast as said boy genius, being able to make deductions faster than an android, becoming the second youngest pm executive, only staying stuck longer than Ranpo in the book because he was up against RANPO and deciding to punch his way out cause his boss' life was in danger and solving the mystery was taking too long.

Like, that boy is not stupid.

[carrot-onabreak]

You think chuuya's gloves are leather, satin-y, or plain old cotton. I think the latter 2 bc higher dexterity and comfort

[liquidstar]

the thing about doesthedogdie is that its genuinely a great resource to check for triggering subjectmatter in media, and because people can comment you can also see the nuance in how its handled and such. i love it. but its also kind of funny when certain questions are asked about mostly benign shows. like no there werent any 9/11 depictions in k-on but can you fucking image

[live-slug-reactions]

alternatively the inherent humor in checking doesthedogdie for a show called Stabby Stabby Knife Murders just to see what people answered for “does anyone get stabbed with a knife??”

[live-slug-reactions]

What do you MEAN there’s gaslighting in Gaslight??!?

[liquidstar]

the thing about doesthedogdie is that its genuinely a great resource to check for triggering subjectmatter in media, and because people can comment you can also see the nuance in how its handled and such. i love it. but its also kind of funny when certain questions are asked about mostly benign shows. like no there werent any 9/11 depictions in k-on but can you fucking image

[live-slug-reactions]

alternatively the inherent humor in checking doesthedogdie for a show called Stabby Stabby Knife Murders just to see what people answered for “does anyone get stabbed with a knife??”

[live-slug-reactions]

just finished chainsaw man with no prior knowledge of it other than the main character being a perv, and lemme just say my guy Denji is NOT a perv he’s a teenage boy who’s interested in sex. Who gave him this bad reputation.

also iirc he’s never the one instigating sexual/romantic acts with the women around him? Makima keeps encouraging him by promising sexual/romantic favors in return for his work, Himeno’s the one who doubles down on kissing him after he turns down the offer at first, and Power offered to let him touch her chest as a reward, and he had never asked to do that beforehand,, he only said that he’d like to touch boobs one day, not Power’s boobs. Which, again, is a pretty reasonable thing for a teenage boy to want.

[medkitting]

I've heard a lot of theories about who sigma really is. I've seen people suggest he may be Albert Camus, Ian Fleming, and even Sigmund Freud. but hear me out.

What if sigmas real identity was colleen hoover

[probablyasocialecologist]

Spartans Were Losers

The U.S. military’s admiration of a proto-fascist city-state is based on bad history.

Despite Sparta’s reputation for superior fighting, Spartan armies were as likely to lose battles as to win them, especially against peer opponents such as other Greek city-states. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War—but only by accepting Persian money to do it, reopening the door to Persian influence in the Aegean, which Greek victories at Plataea and Salamis nearly a century early had closed. Famous Spartan victories at Plataea and Mantinea were matched by consequential defeats at Pylos, Arginusae, and ultimately Leuctra. That last defeat at Leuctra, delivered by Thebes a mere 33 years after Sparta’s triumph over Athens, broke the back of Spartan power permanently, reducing Sparta to the status of a second-class power from which it never recovered. Sparta was one of the largest Greek city-states in the classical period, yet it struggled to achieve meaningful political objectives; the result of Spartan arms abroad was mostly failure. Sparta was particularly poor at logistics; while Athens could maintain armies across the Eastern Mediterranean, Sparta repeatedly struggled to keep an army in the field even within Greece. Indeed, Sparta spent the entirety of the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War (431-421 B.C.), failing to solve the basic logistical problem of operating long term in Attica, less than 150 miles overland from Sparta and just a few days on foot from the nearest friendly major port and market, Corinth. The Spartans were at best tactically and strategically uncreative. Tactically, Sparta employed the phalanx, a close-order shield and spear formation. But while elements of the hoplite phalanx are often presented in popular culture as uniquely Spartan, the formation and its equipment were common among the Greeks from at least the early fifth century, if not earlier. And beyond the phalanx, the Spartans were not innovators, slow to experiment with new tactics, combined arms, and naval operations. Instead, Spartan leaders consistently tried to solve their military problems with pitched hoplite battles. Spartan efforts to compel friendship by hoplite battle were particularly unsuccessful, as with the failed Spartan efforts to compel Corinth to rejoin the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League by force during the Corinthian War. Sparta’s military mediocrity seems inexplicable given the city-state’s popular reputation as a highly militarized society, but modern scholarship has shown that this, too, is mostly a mirage. The agoge, Sparta’s rearing system for citizen boys, frequently represented in popular culture as akin to an intense military bootcamp, in fact included no arms training or military drills and was primarily designed to instill obedience and conformity rather than skill at arms or tactics. In order to instill that obedience, the older boys were encouraged to police the younger boys with violence, with the result that even in adulthood Spartan citizens were liable to settle disputes with their fists, a tendency that predictably made them poor diplomats. But while Sparta’s military performance was merely mediocre, no better or worse than its Greek neighbors, Spartan politics makes it an exceptionally bad example for citizens or soldiers in a modern free society. Modern scholars continue to debate the degree to which ancient Sparta exercised a unique tyranny of the state over the lives of individual Spartan citizens. However, the Spartan citizenry represented only a tiny minority of people in Sparta, likely never more than 15 percent, including women of citizen status (who could not vote or hold office). Instead, the vast majority of people in Sparta, between 65 and 85 percent, were enslaved helots. (The remainder of the population was confined to Sparta’s bewildering array of noncitizen underclasses.) The figure is staggering, far higher than any other ancient Mediterranean state or, for instance, the antebellum American South, rightly termed a slave society with a third of its people enslaved.

[zenosanalytic]

GEE, I wonder why our media, owned by rich aristocrats, would want us to think Sparta, an aristocratic oligarchy slave-state where only 15 out of 100 residents were considered human and only half of THOSE had political rights, was Awesome???

HMMMMMMMM

[pomrania]

If you want to read more on why Sparta was just terrible on every conceivable level, I highly recommend the ‘This. Isn’t. Sparta’ series of posts by historian Bret Devereaux (also available in audio form). I’ll copy out here the conclusion:

When we started this series, we had two myths, the myth of Spartan equality and the myth of Spartan military excellence.  These two myths dominate the image of Sparta in the popular consciousness, permeating game, film and written representations and discussions of Sparta.  These myths, more than any real society, is what companies like Spartan Race, games like Halo, and – yes – films like 300 are tapping into.

But Sparta was not equal, in fact it was the least equal Greek polis we know of.  It was one of the least equal societies in the ancient Mediterranean, and one which treated its underclasses – who made up to within a rounding error of the entire society by the end – terribly.  You will occasionally see pat replies that Sparta was no more dependent on slave labor than the rest of Greece, but even a basic demographic look makes it clear this is not true.  Moreover our sources are clear that the helots were the worst treated slaves in Greece.  Even among the spartiates, Sparta was not equal and it never was.

And Sparta was not militarily excellent.  Its military was profoundly mediocre, depressingly average.  Even in battle, the one thing they were supposed to be good at, Sparta lost as much as it won.  Judging Sparta as we should – by how well it achieved strategic objects – Sparta’s armies are a comprehensive failure.  The Spartan was no super-soldier and Spartan training was not excellent.  Indeed, far from making him a super-soldier, the agoge made the Spartans inflexible, arrogant and uncreative, and those flaws led directly to Sparta’s decline in power.

And I want to stress this one last time, because I know there are so many people who would pardon all of Sparta’s ills if it meant that it created superlative soldiers: it did not.  Spartan soldiers were average.  The horror of the Spartan system, the nastiness of the agoge, the oppression of the helots, the regimentation of daily life, it was all for nothing.  Worse yet, it created a Spartan leadership class that seemed incapable of thinking its way around even basic problems.  All of that supposedly cool stuff made Sparta weaker, not stronger.

This would be bad enough, but the case for Sparta is worse because it – as a point of pride – provided nothing else.  No innovation in law or government came from Sparta (I hope I have shown, if nothing else, that the Spartan social system is unworthy of emulation).  After 550, Sparta produced no trade goods or material culture of note.  It produced no great art to raise up the human condition, no great literature to inspire.  Despite possessing fairly decent farmland, it was economically underdeveloped, underpopulated and unimportant.

Athens produced great literature and innovative political thinking.   Corinth was economically essential – a crucial port in the heart of Greece.  Thebes gave us Pindar and was in the early fourth century a hotbed of military innovation.  All three cities were adorned by magnificent architecture and supplied great art by great artists.  But Sparta, Sparta gives us almost nothing.

Sparta was – if you will permit the comparison – an ancient North Korea.  An over-militarized, paranoid state which was able only to protect its own systems of internal brutality and which added only oppression to the sum of the human experience.  Little more than an extraordinarily effective prison, metastasized to the level of a state. There is nothing of redeeming value here.

Sparta is not something to be emulated.  It is a cautionary tale.

[fave-fight]

ROUND 1, MATCH 16

NO MAGIC, POWERS, OR WEAPONS

Who would win in a fight? (propaganda under the cut)

Kanatsune Ame

Nana Hiiragi

Voting ended onJul 27, 2023

Kanatsune Ame:

“He’s competent”

“OK SO he canonically a) has training that allows him to disarm a trained polearmist b) can kill with a touch when in a magical environment. he will have a bad time doing all that tho UwU”

“omg hes so silly hes just a guy hes manipulated by his work boss who keeps him in the dark about his disability he has killed with his own hands quite literally and his fashion sense is utterly atrocious. did you know his ef2 design has a three ended scarf. however his future cane is very cool”

“weak ass old man . would probably lose a fight to a 13 year old girl im also submitting here<3”

Nana Hiragii:

“Manages to convince everyone she could read minds when she very much cannot read minds. I think that’s very girlboss of her.”

[live-slug-reactions]

Nana might not win in hand-to-hand combat, but she could definitely convince anyone to (accidentally) kill themself. Sure I’m biased because I love her but Nana’s gotta win.

[obscurecharactershowdown]

Group A Round 3

Nin (Paranatural) vs Itakura Akira (Talentless Nana)

Nin

Itakura Akira

Voting ended onJul 4, 2023

[the first image is of 2 identical anthropomorphized rabbits, both Nin, talking to someone off screen. they are wearing black robes and hoods, with a metal headband. the second image is of a manga panel depicting Itakura Akira, a young man with dark hair and freckles, glaring at the viewer. someone off screen says, "Your name is Itakura, right?" end ID]

Nin

she bnuuy :} she can clone herself and sneaks around in the shadows! member of an evil cult but in her defense she doesnt know its evil. i think. girlie is like a foot tall <3  

Itakura Akira

My guy cannot lie. Like. At all. He literally incriminates himself for a crime he didn’t commit because someone says “it would have been physically impossible for Akira to commit the crime!”, and he goes “no actually I could have done it really easily” and then describes how he would have done it. And it wasn’t to show off how smart he is— he himself doesn’t want to be saying this stuff either! He just. Cannot lie.

[live-slug-reactions]

Itakura my beloved <3

he gets tricked into believing he time traveled when he very much did not.

I think that that’s a very important point to be mentioned in this blorbo competition.

[live-slug-reactions]

Look at my boy incriminating himself for a crime he didn’t commit <3<3

he’s adorable <3

[obscurecharactershowdown]

Group A Round 3

Nin (Paranatural) vs Itakura Akira (Talentless Nana)

Nin

Itakura Akira

Voting ended onJul 4, 2023

[the first image is of 2 identical anthropomorphized rabbits, both Nin, talking to someone off screen. they are wearing black robes and hoods, with a metal headband. the second image is of a manga panel depicting Itakura Akira, a young man with dark hair and freckles, glaring at the viewer. someone off screen says, "Your name is Itakura, right?" end ID]

Nin

she bnuuy :} she can clone herself and sneaks around in the shadows! member of an evil cult but in her defense she doesnt know its evil. i think. girlie is like a foot tall <3  

Itakura Akira

My guy cannot lie. Like. At all. He literally incriminates himself for a crime he didn’t commit because someone says “it would have been physically impossible for Akira to commit the crime!”, and he goes “no actually I could have done it really easily” and then describes how he would have done it. And it wasn’t to show off how smart he is— he himself doesn’t want to be saying this stuff either! He just. Cannot lie.

[live-slug-reactions]

Itakura my beloved <3

he gets tricked into believing he time traveled when he very much did not.

I think that that’s a very important point to be mentioned in this blorbo competition.

[tragic-duo-showdown]

Tragic Duo Preliminary Round: Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera VS Nana Hiiragi and Michiru Inukai

Nana and Kyouya

Nana and Michiru

Voting ended onJun 15, 2023

[soljos2023]

favourite fruit juice

apple juice

orange juice

pear juice

apricot juice

[any] berry juice

grapefruit juice

mango juice

something else (tell me about local fruits please)

a particular mixture of fruits / vegetables

answers

Voting ended onJun 12, 2023