the actual thing i wanted to say, and there's an essay about this which i have now lost and so i have to write this post instead of linking the essay. cliches in writing. the essay basically formulated its argument in opposition to the idea that "a writer is making a choice with every single word that they put on the page" in order to say that actually you aren't making a choice about every word, because the language we speak and all the culture that we've ever interacted with predetermines the next best word in a sentence. there are routines, scripts, cliches for sounds, colours, people, situations, emotions. metaphors become so ingrained that they lose touch with the actual heft of the underlying thing and simply become something we say. the weight of the language we've always encountered suppresses the language in which we might express something unique, particular, and peculiarly true.
against this, the writer must arduously discover her own language. which is to say, the "freedom to make choices about your words" which we take for granted, must actually be earned, through identifying and dispelling, purposefully, the imposed ideas that govern your writing. to actually enable oneself to express one's own self in language (rather than expressing the norms of words inherited and become invisible) requires also a close examination and even a sort of clumsy recreation of what associations one could find between objects, what ways of saying things, and also then trying to discover if you got it right, if it feels right, if it moves anyone (even yourself). that is to say that at first the process of writing against cliches or without them feels deeply unnatural because cliches come easily to the mind. in that unnatural space you have to find your own language and really think about what will make it yours.
i tend to avoid discourse because most of it is trite and pointless but just this once i feel like i need to state my opinion: i think everyone should bend to my dark and evil will
Can we be nicer to people who are on the aro/ace spectrum who arenāt aroace please? Aroallos and alloaces and aplatonic folk and cupioromantics and those who want queerplatonic relationships and those who donāt and aros who date and aces who have sex and people who donāt fall on the āsex-favourable to sex-repulsedā line because they feel like it doesnāt describe them well enough and greyromantics and demisexuals and those in polycules and selfshipping communities and those who fight for aro/ace visibility and those who donāt and those who havenāt fully come to terms with their identity yet and this community is such a beautiful place can we see it beyond āuwu innocent aroace doesnāt know what sex isā please god I am begging you
it makes me a little sad sometimes to write fanfic in this day and age bc i am deeply deeply worried that people will think itās ai. i love em dashes and close limited third person and sentence fragments, but all of those are apparently indicative of llms now
I posted this originally on twitter, but it unfortunately didnāt get a lot of traction, so I figured Iād post it on here as well in hopes it would get a little bit more traction and I apologize in advance for the fact I will beĀ āclogging tagsā so to speak to get the word out.
I generally donāt like to flood tags but people who tag Dazai/Ranpo (also known as Daran/Ranzai) asĀ āsouhekiā, please donāt. Yes, it is their team name in the japanese version of 55 minutes, but it not unique to BSD the same wayĀ āsoukokuā is for Dazai and Chuuya.
āSouhekiā in japanese is commonly used to describe an unbeatable pair or duo/matchless people, alternatively referred to as 'two treasuresā or the lit translation 'double jadeā as the japanese for heki is the chinese for jade.
This being said: MANY OTHER SERIESā USE THIS NAME FOR CHARA DUOS!! If you look up souheki, especially in Japanese, you will find everything from the Lan Brothers and Lan Juniors fom MDZS, Ferdibert from FE3H, Haikaveh from Genshin Impact, and even Fukumori FROM BSD. It does not belong exclusively to Dazai and Ranpo, so you are making the search all the more difficult for everyone involved, and you are burying and missing out on amazing, pre-existing content of them that has been around for almost ten years now.
Iāve been a big shipper of Dazai and Ranpo for that same amount of time, and the ship name has always only ever been Daran/Ranzai. The JP fans have never changed it, because ship names and team names are not equal or interchangeable. (Similarly, content intended to be shippy for them is tagged as Dachuu/Chuuda, never SKK.)
Additionally, soukoku was introduced the second Dazai and Chuuya were announced as a duo in bsd. The term souheki towards Dazai and Ranpo was not mentioned at all throughout the series until 55 minutes, which wasnāt written until 4 years after bsd was created and Dazai/Ranpo already had a ship name. (Iāve been here since 2013, trust me it has only ever been this.)
Once a ship name is created, it is not changed, especially in the japanese fandom where we borrow the ship names. (dachuu, kunizai, akuatsu as examples)
The JP fans never even brought much attention to the souheki concept aside from how it catered to the ship itself. The ship name(s) has not changed for ten years.
For further comparison, this is how the google search looks when you search soukoku / double black:
And this is what happens when you search souheki /Ā ādouble jadeāĀ ātwin jadeā:
Edit as of 10/21/25 (Happy birthday, Ranpo!), with date stamps included at the bottom: it is still not being acknowledged at all in any capacity because it is not relevant to them.
This has reached so far that even Japanese fans are seeing this and being confused because, again, āsouhekiā is not unique to just Dazai and Ranpo!! And it has been used for other ships!
If you are posting content for them, please please PLEASE tag it as daran/randaza/ranzai/etc. Please stop using souheki and muddying the waters to find content of these two.
if you want to find content for them, these are their tags in jp:
ä¹±å¤Ŗ / ććć ć / randaza or ranzai (top ranpo content ONLY) (edit note: i have noticed some artists as of editing this on 9/14/25 are also using ä¹±ę²», which is literally the 'ranā in ranpo and 'zaiā in dazai)
å¤Ŗä¹±å¤Ŗ (content that can be translated either way / switch)
Please keep in mind that ships are tagged accordingly for who tops/bottoms or is the one who may have the more confident or dominant personality in jp fandom to filter content and those who dislike one dynamic will not be exposed to it. This is not an argument over top/bottom discourse. Jp fans do not have that problem. When you write/read a fic with top A, their actions/thoughts/etc will differ greatly from reading bottom A content 9/10 times. Some people have a preferred character interpretation like everyone else and are much more consistent with filtering.
While I am certainly happy daran/ranzai are finally canonically confirmed to be the agencyās 'unbeatable duo/two precious treasuresā (souheki), it is misleading and quite frankly incorrect to claim this is their ship name and to please keep tagging them as daran/ranzai so older content doesnāt get brushed under the rug and completely ignored/missed altogether in this attempt to give them a 'special nameā. They dont need to combat skk. They are unique and special as they are!
Please give attention to the content made by fans of Dazai/Ranpo fans that have existed for a long time now! We promise there is actually a TON of content, it is not lacking whatsoever. Youāre just looking under the wrong name!
As a really big fan of Dazai and Ranpo for a very long time, who is friends with a majority of the Dazai/Ranpo fanartists in Japan and has spent a concerningly scary amount of money for content of them over the years, I hope you will consider this advice. I really want fans of Dazai/Ranpo to come together, enjoy content old and new, and make more in the future together.Ā
(ćļ¼ļ¼æļ¼;ć)Ā
iām really struggling to articulate why this bothers me so much, but i really really dislike when, in response to a depiction of an uncoupled aroace person, one of the immediate responses from people is āoh, but aroace people can have relationships/partners/sex too!ā
likeā¦ yeah. logically, thatās correct! but i am sex-repulsed. i am romance-repulsed. i hope one day in me a flip switches and i am suddenly capable of it, because i am so, so terrified of dying alone, but i also know that, as i am, a relationship is just. Not Possible.
now, to reiterate, i know that my revulsion is not universal. i am on the Extreme side of the spectrum. but when the aforementioned response occurs so frequently, it makes me feel like a freak within my own community. itās like, āthe solution is available! all you have to do is be one of the aroace people who dates!ā
i think maybe what bugs me is that it seems less like weāre expanding our depictions of aroace experiences and more like weāre rushing to distance the possibility of aroace people being alone? itās as if an uncoupled aroace person is a misconception that needs correcting rather than a very common and frequently desirable space for aroace people.
i know it comes from a well-meaning place, and sometimes even from other aroaces! but itās so lonely to have people constantly put a caveat on a core part of my experience with romanticism and sexuality, especially when i spend so much of my time isolated by my inability to want the things that iām apparently supposed to want. i just wish that when one of us was depicted the response wasnāt to reassure everyone that some aroaces are closer to the amato-norm.
btw today i read this wonderful comic about the relation between ranpo and dazai, and if you have the ability to read japanese or the patience to screenshot every one of the pages and put them through google translate to get some nonsense words that barely help you parse what's going on, please give it a try. the comic is really, really good.
Naur because I'm very sure Dazai and Ranpo are written to directly mimic each other. Dazai with unhealthy intervention vs Ranpo with a firm ever-present intervention to stand behind. This isn't even speculation I want to say this has even been directly addressed by Asagiri himself. Dazai is Ranpo if he had no one to keep him in check and it's clear.
ooooh yeah, the "dazai, who met mori" and "ranpo, who met fukuzawa" antiparallels are very delicious. the way the red moon/blue moon are framed with 14!dazai+mori in the scene of the old boss's murder/14!ranpo+fukuzawa after ranpo ran off to confront that organisation? chef's kiss. really makes the point stand out even more.
though i wouldn't be too sure about them mimicking each other? parallels, yeah, because of the oppositional circumstances they fell in. but they're still very distinctly separate characters. one thing asagiri does well is that none of his scary-smart characters are ever the same. i really do like that. dazai's the "manipulator" (works with or before the situation) while ranpo's the "interpreter" (works with the aftermath of the situation). of course, now he's gone and decided to emulate fyodor himself, so there's that. since dazai's not around to directly manipulate the situations, he has no choice but to take up that responsibility. (seriously, ranpo's become significantly more of an active force lately, and i can't wait for souheki to make a comeback.)
i would love you forever if you sent me a link for the interview you're referring to, anon. i don't remember asagiri making this statement, which means i'm either forgetful or have missed an interview. (no pressure tho!!!) one thing i do remember from asagiri's latest interview though: left alone, dazai and ranpo will consume the whole story and solve every problem. much to think about.
I realize you're a keen analyzer of oda and dazai's relationship and so i wanted to hear your thoughts on the 'imperfect' aspect of their relationship. particularly, those 2 scenes where its implied oda is scared of Dazai and Dazai acts a little disturbing (for lack of better term)
A: Dazai comes to Oda's place unannounced and then jokes about bringing the kids to the port mafia
When I returned to the restaurant, I heard a new customer's voice - a familiar one at that.
"Whoa! This is spicy, mister! Really spicy! What's your secret ingredient? Lava?!"
"Ha-ha-ha, ya think so? That's what Odasaku always has. Hey, Odasaku, welcome back. How were the kids?"
"It was close, but I remain undefeated," I replied. "However, they predicted where I would grab on to, so they colored it in with crayons to make me slip. I was really worried for a second there. You said they'd be able to hold up a bank if there were ten of them, but I bet they'd be able to pull that off in two more years with their current numbers."
"Maybe I should recruit them..." Dazai smirked while wiping his sweat. "I heard all about it, Odasaku. You're raising five kids, huh? And not only that, they're orphans from the Dragon's Head Conflict."
Even if I tried to hide it, Dazai would've been able to figure it out with just half a day's worth of research.
"Yeah." I nodded.
idk this bit sounds like oda's uncomfortable but just resigned to it because he knows he's no match for Dazai. in the same scene, he says
"Dazai, what are you doing here anyway?" I asked
when Dazai tries to make small talk about curry. which shows he wants to get straight to the point/is anxious about dazai's reason for being there.
ik dazai's the type to make dark jokes with his friends but this didn't come across right to me imo.
B: Dazai threatens Ango and Oda just sounds resigned atp
Ango ought to have known just how horrifying mafia torture was. There was no hope for him to return to the Special Division for Unusual Powers alive. Even if I took Ango's side, nothing would change. There was no way to break out of Dazai's trap around the bar's perimeter, and the orphans at the restaurant would be killed if I betrayed the Mafia.
Oda clearly feels disturbed at the thought of Ango dying in the bar. He asks Dazai, "do you plan on turning this place into a war zone?" and then goes on to consider about what would happen if he tried to help Ango. Ultimately coming to the conclusion that
a. nothing would change
b. the orphans would be killed
These two scenes feel uncomfortable because it shows Oda's fear of dazai and adds an extra layer to his passivity, especially considering how he views their power difference and feels he's not qualified to call Dazai out on anything. It also feels sad because he sounds more confident in TDIPUP compared to the Dark Era. Also, Dazai sounds like a jerk (more on the first scene than the second.)
Additionally, oda did plan on leaving the mafia at one point.
I also had to think about the kids. I planned on quitting the mafia once they became independent enough to live on their own without my help. I didn't know when that would be, but I knew it would come one day.
i wonder if he would have told Dazai? Dazai was still an executive and his loyalties were to the PM. Even before Oda's death, he was already pissed at Ango for betraying the organization.
Knowing Oda's passive personality, fear of dazai and inferior mentality of i-am-worthless-compared-to-my-friends/not worth worrying about, i wonder if he would ask dazai's permission to leave or if he would just book it without saying anything. If he just left, I imagine Dazai's crash out would be something š
What are your thoughts on this? Those two scenes and their relationship flaws truly haunt me sometimes
yesss finally something i can procrastinate my work to!!!
anyway, hm. honestly, i'd say i can't really see oda as "being afraid" of dazai at all. oda's remark of dazai's darker nature is just that, the truth. dazai really was a cut above the rest in the mafia in more ways than one. he never failed, his results were exceptional, his methods scarily inescapable. oda says someone as lowly a member as him "can't even imagine the amount of money that was (referring to dazai being responsible for about 1/2 of the port mafia's profits for 2 years) or how many lives were lost as a result". this is a truth and an observation (and also a paragraph written for audience benefit). let me just try and give my interpretation/explanations for the scenes you've provided to support my beliefs.
i think your interpretation might be reading a little too much into the joke? oda says "in a few years, they might be able to hold up a bank", to which dazai says "maybe i should recruit them, then". i don't really think there was any specific malice from dazai's side here, if that's what you're implying? like, he isn't trying to scare oda or something by coming into the kids' residence and talking about recruiting them? it was just a silly follow-up to oda bragging about the kids' criminal capabilities.
one thing to consider here as a component of reasoning as to why odasaku would be "uncomfortable" regarding dazai knowing about this is the fact that he's a very closed-off guy. he says it so himself in TDIPUD, he's a moody person. he seems to be uncomfortable about people knowing details of his life in general: he doesn't like talking or even mentioning his no kill policy, he stays shut about his past, he's really just. like that.
about him repeatedly diverting the conversation, i'd say it's a culmination of factors that make him anxious: dazai coming somewhere unexpected of him to be + the fact that their case, last he heard of it, was implying that they might lose ango. there had to be something pressing for dazai to have turned up here and he wanted to get to the root of it. so, in my opinion, he isn't anxious about dazai having turned up there, he's anxious about what could have caused him to. he doesn't seem to be in any particular hurry to get dazai out of there either, they do, after all, indulge in this nonsense:
had oda been so wrapped in his fear of dazai, he wouldn't have tried to pry. this also leads me to answer your last point: would oda have just left dazai in the mafia without a word? given this paragraph and his increasing concern for his friend especially after the alley scene, i don't think he would.
Scene B: Lupin Confrontation
okay, with this i think there's a lot of underestimating how angry oda himself was at ango going on, coupled with the reason dazai himself is angry at ango. the points to understand here are: 1) neither oda nor dazai want ango dead, 2) oda doesn't know what dazai wants with ango and 3) it would, in fact, be dazai's duty to capture ango as a traitor; oda knows only this.
he doesn't speak up in ango's defense because betraying the mafia would mean the kids would be killed, and it would be futile anyway. (this is something that is mentioned in fifteen as well, the family of traitors in the Port Mafia also faced retaliation).
i'm not sure how his supposed fear of dazai specifically ties in here? he makes a weighted decision, and then asks dazai if he was going to make their place of relief into a war zone. this isn't oda and ango vs dazai, this is ango vs the port mafia. oda isn't afraid of "going up against dazai", he's the member of a mafia that he can't betray or will be faced with consequences for.
i don't really get the burden of "dazai's just acting like an asshole" aimed at dazai here because wouldn't he just be doing his job though? like, even as a friend, oda can't straight-up tell dazai "hey, i know this is a three-way government spy and you're an executive in the mafia, but can you not take him in?" because dazai would just be fulfilling his duty (a point which is very often levied for ango's betrayal, even though dazai isn't the one that actually goes through with his supposed "duty") and he would have inhibited the actions of an executive that caught a spy. it's very important to understand that they're members of a mafia-a place of violence, loyalty, and strong retaliation. they're not regular citizens roaming about that dazai decided to threaten out of nowhere.
dazai's had to go against oda's wishes in the same novel before (alley scene where they kill the mimic agents), and dazai recognises that oda wouldn't have wanted that and apologises to him even though, again, there genuinely wasn't much else they could've done. oda does ask dazai if the soldiers are dead in a morose tone even though he himself knew that was the only way. so i don't think his fear of dazai was what was playing into his hesistance in the lupin scene here.
the tone of things in this scene doesn't seem to suggest that dazai is, in any way, "at fault" for oda's inferiority complex against him. he always stands before oda humbly and as a friend and equal rather than a figure to respect and fear.
and dazai being simply angry at ango for betraying the port mafia instead of him and oda doesn't explain why oda himself was angry (which he was, he bluntly stops ango from hypothesising about a future where the three of them can be together again). oda doesn't have a fraction of dazai's loyalty to the mafia. i think it's better to conclude here that the factor driving their anger at ango was their betrayal of their friendship more than anything else.
so if oda were to sit down and explain to dazai why he wanted to leave, i don't think dazai would "crash out" about it. and i'm inclined to believe that oda wouldn't just leave without a word. if he did, though, it would be because he doesn't consider himself to be someone dazai ought to worry about or even miss, more than fear of what dazai would do. and if he really did leave like that, then leaving "without saying goodbye to the only man who stayed by his side as a friend" would eat away at him forever.
all of this isn't to imply that their relationship isn't flawed at all, but that the causes of the "flaws" lie more within themselves respectively rather than in the other. oda considers himself someone that isn't qualified to advise others (this is, of course, exacerbated by the fact that dazai is significantly higher up than oda in the mafia and he thinks he should respect that) because of his own inability to see himself as worth anything not because of how dazai treats him or what he fears the repercussions of treating dazai like a friend will be. like in this scene:
or here:
he's the exact same way in BEAST too, calling himself a worn-out man that isn't worth anything.
dazai himself is at an extremely unbalanced state in dark era (more so than you see in any other light novel), swinging wildly from suicidal to homicidal in a desperate bid to cling onto anything that will help him live another day. and they both (in fact, all three of them) follow the mafia's rule of never prying into each others' lives till everything topples and comes crashing down.
what causes oda to break out of his passivity is desperation to save his friend and the fact that his life is over, but with time i think that would've happened anyway. what causes dazai to finally confront that his life was going nowhere that he wanted it to go was his friend's words, but had he said those words in a conversation in which they decided to get personal, i think he would have listened anyway. you're right about TDIPUD, and i do wonder what caused the shift in the dynamic, but that might just be the fact that TDIPUD was conceived long after dark era after all. maybe oda became worn down hearing how much potential he was wasting by not killing, his lowly rank, and the fact that the rules of the organisation demanded he treat dazai differently. dazai seems to have grown fonder of oda since the DHC arc as oda went from "a man he finds really interesting" to "my best friend". there was a lot of imperfection, but nothing that couldn't have been tackled. narratively, oda's death caused the activity that would pushed dazai into the light. this is undeniable. but whether dazai would have just died in the port mafia if oda lived...i personally believe that it wouldn't be like that.
tldr: the problems in their relationship are caused by the individual party's personal issues rather than the result of their interactions or anything like that. i mostly blame circumstance-i believe they just needed time (and maybe just a little push) to deal with things and they never got to do that.
