Hi! My name is Ajax (they/he) and I am the creator of this blog!
Links to my writing:
ao3 account
I have a sideblog now for my oc content, which you can find at @monokiri
Feel free to message my ask box with anything you want to ask abt me, my writing or my ocs, and I'll be happy to answer! Just please be constructive and respectful, I would prefer not to wake up to an ask box full of hate messages.
-People who ship incest or pedophilia. Keep that shit away from me pls
-People flinging unconstructive criticism around. I know that my characters or writing won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but please don’t go slinging hate at me without doing the reading first, or without being constructive.
If a post is tagged #ajax’s sins, it means it is content not intended for minors. Please do not interact with these posts if you are under 18.
...We shape our tools and then our tools shape us' -Marshall McLuhan
When Dazai and Fyodor's late-night game gone wrong leaves them trapped inside a mysterious notebook, they're forced to work together to explore the strange world for a way out as the agency and DOA scramble to find their missing members. Together, they have to confront their hidden secrets and fears, and maybe, just maybe, see their rivalry turn into something more along the way...
Read here
Do you kids know how hard it is to hyper fixate on shit as a goddamn adult?? Sorry boss I know you need those files done but I’m too busy giggling like a goddamn school girl over a fictional man
An analysis of the fyozai frames from the s5 opening (lighting edition)
THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5'S OPENING AS WELL AS MILD MANGA SPOILERS. READ WITH CAUTION.
To make this a little easier to read, I'm going to break it down into sections. These sections are: Colour, Direction and The Subjects.
Please note that this is all entirely speculation from my own observations, and don't take anything I say as canon, but I found this whole thing really interesting so maybe there's some wisdom in here, idk.
COLOUR
So in order to show the different colour palettes, I took both images and put them into a colour palette maker, producing 20 colours from each image.
Fyodor's produced this
While Dazai's produced this
Immediately, there's a few things I can notice.
For one, Dazai's colour palette is much more varied than Fyodor's. Now, this is partially by virtue of him being in daylight, where the sky has a very clear difference from the building, but it is interesting, especially in comparison to Fyodor's, which comprises almost entirely of green and blueish tones.
This leads into the other major thing: warm and cool tones. Dazai is lit mostly in warm tones- specifically, he's sunlit. Oftentimes, warmer colours are used in conjunction with positive connotations- happiness, brightness, etc etc. Warm light also is used to make someone look more natural. In contrast, cold tones are often used to show negativity or make things seem unnatural, especially very unnatural colder tones like the dark greenish-blues of Fyodor's colour palette. You're unlikely to go outside and be bathed in sewer light (sorry not sorry) like Fyodor is in that image, thus making it seem more sinister and eerie, and making Dazai seem more like a force of good by contrast.
DIRECTION
In order to show direction better, I have a couple of diagrams to help show my points.
ORANGE represents the direction of the light
YELLOW is the light sources
BLUE is the shadowy areas where (as far as I can tell) there is no light
It was kind of hard to tell on Fyodor's because of how dark it was but. I tried my best.
Starting with Fyodor's, you can see that the light seems to be coming from exactly, but it looks like its coming from a pretty low angle? It seems to be coming pretty straight on rather than from anywhere above/below him, almost like footlights, or very low side/front lighting.
To clear up some terminology here, footlights are, well, lights at foot level. They can be used to create massive, eerie, stylised shadows, and are often used to create a very unsettling effect since its not a very natural lighting angle. Again, Fyodor is being made to seem unnatural by the (speculated) direction of the light. The haze coming from the sides of the image also provides two things here that I don't have a category for so deal with it (/lhj). On one hand, it shouds him in a very literal fog of mystery, showing how he's very mysterious to the point where its hard to tell when he's lying or not (see chapter 108 for a recent example, and everyone's subsequent losing their shit). On the other, it also blocks out parts of the surrounding scenery, drawing the viewer's focus to him quickly. He elucidates himself, even through the fog around him obscures things, visually showing how he makes parts of his motivations and true self visible, but keeps much of it, even on the surface, obscured.
With Dazai, the immediate thing to point out is that his light source is completely different from Fyodor's. He's being backlit from a very high angle, thus obscuring his features while making him stand out against the much lighter background in a 'halo' effect. This kind of lighting isn't typically used on its own because it obscures the face, however, it's highly reminiscient of an angel coming down from above. The lighting angle seems almost holy, and light like this can be found in religious imagery quite a lot. Many paintings of Jesus, especially, will have similar kind of lighting wherein it pours down from the top.
There's a couple things I find intersting about this. Firstly, it's Dazai, not Fyodor, who has this kind of angelic lighting. Fyodor typically sees himself as this 'right hand man of God', and yet his lighting is more befitting of an evil cartoon villain, whereas Dazai, in my opinion, doesn't see himself as much as this religious or even good figure. So then, why the warm, heavenly light?
Personally, I think this is showing the good in the consequences of these characters.
Fyodor, who sees himself as doing something good by ridding the world of ability users, is actively commiting many, many felonies in order to do so, and hurting a lot of people. Dazai, on the other hand, while a bit of a shitty guy, is trying to save people and ensure that ability users don't die. He represents the 'good' side of the conflict, while Fyodor represents the 'bad'
The other thing I find interesting here is the specific use of just the backlight. Because the same effect of light coming down from above could easily be achieved with some sigelight and facelight to show us more of Dazai from the front. So, why not?
Unlike Fyodor, Dazai has no fog obscuring him from the sides. His frame is a lot more open than Fyodor's, and the draw of him is created by the contrasting background, and the shadows of the walls on either side from the light not hitting. I think this shows visually how Dazai is open as a person, willing to let everyone see him, but he himself- his actual self, underneath the clownish acts- won't be so easy to see. The light represents his act and Dazai represents, well... Dazai. His motivations, his past, etc etc.
THE SUBJECTS
Okay so this is going to touch on a bunch of stuff from the previous categories but also a few other, not so light related things.
Firstly, their positions. They're in the same position as one another, in the centre of the image, thus making themselves the focal point. This shows a similarity between them, and puts them kind of on the same level iykwim? Two sides of the same coin kind of deal.
But that's more or less where the similarities end.
In Fyodor's case, he's got his back turned to the camera, and it looks like he's looking up, with his hands oustretched to the sky, as if he's calling down the rain around him. Dazai, on the other hand, is facing the camera head-on, and looking straight ahead/slightly down, standing casually with his hand in his pocket.
Going off of the religious imagery with the direction of light from earlier, and my own speculation, it feels like Fyodor is looking to the heavens- to God, for divine influence, again harking back to his 'right hand of god' character, while Dazai has his back turned on the heavens and is looking down/straight, towards the present, showing his lack of belief in any higher power.
The way they're facing can also show where their focus is. With Fyodor, he's looking out to the wider world, with his back turned on the people closest to him: the audience. Dazai, on the other hand, has his back turned to the wider world, and is looking to the audience, showing his focus on the people rather than any widespread goal. This also could show how Fyodor doesn't see people around him as 'people', but rather as 'stepping stones to his goal'.
There is another half-similarity between them as well, in that you can't see either of their faces. Fyodor has his back fully turned, not showing any vulnerability or traces of himself as a person. Dazai does have his face to the audience, however his eyes are not made visible, again to show that even if you can see 'him', you cannot see his true intentions.
Anyways that's all I got for now. Idk, I might come back to this if anyone wants more random analysis of stuff, or if anyone has any other ideas or comments. My ask box is open anytime if anything here isn't clear or anyone wants me to analyse smth, so feel free to drop by!
hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate
BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard (under My Filters) to get rid of it!
kunikida has the funniest moral compass to me in the entirety of the story because he has very strict rules that he follows and gets upset when other people don’t follow them or coerce him into acting against them, but those rules are entirely of his own creation and he’ll easily break the law otherwise
Do you think they let Verlaine watch Eurovision? Like, does he get a little TV down there for one week a year to watch these gay Europeans and swear frenchly when the jury gives scores he doesn’t like? Bc I like to think he does.
ALSO SIDE NOTE TO ADD: I’m immediately hcing that Fyodor, Nikolai and Ivan all watch Eurovision religiously. On a totally unrelated note I also have an image of Nikolai dressed as Verka Serduchka living rent free in my brain-
Do you think they let Verlaine watch Eurovision? Like, does he get a little TV down there for one week a year to watch these gay Europeans and swear frenchly when the jury gives scores he doesn’t like? Bc I like to think he does.
SO. I don’t know too much about the situation but I remembered hearing about this in a discord server with some friends a couple days ago. Here are the screenshots I’ve been sent about it:
TLDR: japanese fans were either being really haterous or really horny on main without censoring or abbreviating the irl authors names, to the point that it was disrespectful.
(Quick note: I don’t know everything that’s happened, only what friends have told me, so if anyone who knows more or knows different information wants to correct me, please feel free to!)
