He put a cigarette in his mouth and was striking a match when he collapsed face-down on his desk and died. It was a truly disappointing way to die. Fortunately, however, society rarely offers critical comment regarding the way a person dies. The way a person lives is what evokes criticism.
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, “Horse Leg” from Rasōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
kind of want to write at least some dazaku for BSD rarepair week... however I do want to write fluff and I'm gonna have to do some serious mental gymnastics to make dazaku fluffy 😭 even in AUs it feels wrong for them to be normal </3
When I’m at home, I’m forever making jokes. Let’s say it’s a case of needing to wear Dante’s ‘mask of merriment’ precisely because there are so many things that trigger the 'anguish in the heart.’ Actually though, it’s not only when I’m home. Whenever I’m with people, no matter how great my mental or physical suffering, I try desperately to create a happy atmosphere. It’s only when I’m with people. It’s the same when I’m writing. When I’m feeling down, I make an effort to write light, enjoyable stories. My only intention in doing so is to render the greatest possible service to my readers, but there are those who don’t understand this. 'That Dazai fellow’s awfully frivolous these days,’ they sneer. 'He tries to garner readers simply by being amusing; he doesn’t put any effort into his writing at all.’ Is there something evil about serving people? Is putting on airs, never cracking a smile, such a virtuous thing?
I am already fed up with Bach and Mozart,
and completely fed up with that happy, easy-going jazz.
I am living like an iron bridge under a cloudy sky after rain.
I am pressed by things forever desolate.
I am not completely quiet in the midst of that desolation.
I am seeking something, always seeking something
in the midst of this terrible immobility, but also terribly impatient.
For the sake of this, my appetites and lusts are as nothing.
- Nakahara Chūya, “The Voice of Life” from The Poems of Nakahara Chūya
au where instead of trying to surpass rad weekend, vbs are birders trying to beat a big year record. vivid bird squad
additional thoughts and context and such below the cut for the interested ✌️🐦🔭
birding has a reputation as a relaxing and chill retirement hobby, but if you're enmeshed in the subculture you will soon come to know the epic highs and lows. the cutthroat drama and betrayal and crashout fights and gossip and grudges and incorrigible, life-ruining, life-saving obsession. the pushing your mind and body and the goodwill of everyone around you to the absolute limit. the property damage and trespassing and run-ins with the law. the exhilarating passion and beauty of it all. joy and idiocy in equal measure. it's extremely easy for me to imagine it as a vbs-appropriate high-octane life calling, lol.
since this is based entirely on north american birding culture, they’re japanese-american and from LA instead of shibuya. sorry. a lot of the specific locations/birds are based off my experiences birding with my gf and friends while visiting california :]
vivid street itself crosses a naturalized strip of the LA river that has colloquially borrowed its name and hosts a passionate naturalist community... i've based it on the willow street estuary - where the concrete encasing the LA river recedes and green things return, great egrets roost on discarded shopping carts and flocks of shorebirds forage along graffiti-lined riverbanks. very resilient and defiant and absolutely brimming with life. ken is a highly-regarded birder who has opened a café-slash-interpretive-centre since completing his own Legendary big year (a Rad year, even) with taiga and nagi 3ish years ago. these days he's mostly left the numbers game behind him but is still an active presence in the community locally.
vivids + bad dogs bird dogs are birding/travel partners, but it's also the nature of the lifestyle that you continually run into the same people as you all orbit the same birds and follow the rhythms of migration, and thusly they increasingly keep winding up in the same places and kinda fully join forces at some point. the order of how everyone meets is directly parallel to canon still, so an and akito have known each other the longest and kohane is pretty new to it all. i think they are a tiny bit older than canon here but not significantly so - probably like late teens or early 20s.
the history / experience / talent dynamics that initially inform a lot of the vbs relationships translate really fluidly to birding in interesting ways, and it was fun imagining which type of birder each of them might be... kohane the motivated, talented amateur with a big camera, an the birder-by-birthright with something to prove, akito the perpetually-in-motion lister with nothing to lose. and to toya, i have given the highest honour of all: the keen-eyed, inscrutable larophile. though obviously they're all listers here which is a particular and hardcore slice of the subculture - remember, all birding (as long as you respect the birds and each other) is good birding no matter if you're “hardcore” or "casual" <3
i have many more ideas I wanna draw (kohane's philosophical development... toyas spark bird and how he met akito.... exploration of akian friendship..... more about the previous generation...), but this is already a kinda hefty post... for now enjoy this glimpse into the funny & chaotic & life-changing & and beautiful world of looking at birds!!! i tried to make it a) entertaining and accessible for people with no knowledge of birding and b) hopefully in-character while still keeping it faithful to the ways birders at this level really act and talk. the intersection is where the fun lies lol
if you're still here thanks for looking at my long post
