honestly i feel the same as you about it, if the characters feel like themselves the t/b is pretty irrelevant to me! i’ll genuinely read just about anything if it’s well written. sometimes i do find myself searching for specific tag but if i do it’s less about me preferring that dynamic and more me preferring how the fandom at large tends to write them? so like as a good example, i really like ayato/thoma from genshin impact and to me t/b doesn’t matter, i’d write them switching if it was me writing the fic, but i tend to dislike the way a lot if the fandom writes top ayato, so if i look for fic i am probably more likely to like a top thoma fic bc that crowd just tends to be more likely to write the characters in a way that aligns with how i see them. but i don’t necessarily have a preference if i’m just sitting there daydreaming about them boinking. does this makes sense? i hope it does.

yeah i get you, i feel personally like dazai is the least interesting thing about chuuya if that makes sense? and vice versa, chuuya is the least interesting thing about dazai to me. i’m just bored by them as a pair. no hate to the shippers but it’s an unsellable ship to me, i cannot be won over. funnily enough tho i WAS on board with vampire chuuya, i did find him being “turned against” dazai/the ada and non-vampire pm very juicy, and the idea of chuuya becoming reduced to a mindless “monster” was really interesting to me thematically for the same reason it was interesting to see akutagawa this way before bram semi-unlocked his brain. the “chuuya was faking it” reveal honestly is my least favorite storytelling decision asagiri has done in all of bsd cdjdjfjdj. like i can get a lil bit of flavor in fyodor’s hubris at not even considering such a ridiculous plan but overall … not a fan of it. bc as you said it DOES kind of turn chuuya into convenient plot armor and i think that is just a bummer. also same, i liked stormbringer a lot, and i like the dazai-centric stuff a lot. 15 honestly is my least favorite bsd ln cjdjjd. i don’t dislike it overall, i think there is good stuff in it, but i remember reading that asagiri was asked to write a chuuya and dazai novel by kadokawa and … it kinda shows a little to me that he is writing it bc he was asked to lol. like that’s true for beast also, he was asked to write a story about sskk, and i love everything there. and it’s also true that ultimately the ask for a skk story led to stormbringer which i love, so overall not mad he wrote 15. just not my fave. i am more interested in dazai’s relationships with … literally everyone else cjdjjdjd.

that pic is real lmao. it’s from the translation of a recent lecture he did! i think the translation from that screenshot was done by dazaiarchives but i believe a similar translation from the same lecture can be found on tumblr altho i don’t know the source offhand, i just saw it on bluesky earlier. but YEAH CHDJHD what a goof. asagiri is so funny lmao. it’s also been kinda funny watching people interpret it to mean that asagiri just feels COMPELLED to write dazai and chuuya together bc of their BOND when imo … it’s a matter of character flexibility lol. chuuya is a much easier “wild card” than kunikida is in this scenario and that’s really just kind of it. also my secret theory is that asagiri brought chuuya there to set up a shirase return but i can recognize that that’s a little bit of wishful thinking on my part, i just really miss my trash son lol

hello! in my humble opinion, i think when they get to the point where they are dating kunikida is already probably a pretty proficient kisser! though i think kunikida is considerably less experienced than dazai, i don’t think he has no experience. generally i think kunikida also picked up kissing pretty quickly, i think he is a very self-disciplined person and so even when he was entirely new at it he does not strike me as someone who has ever been a “shove tongue in mouth” kisser even when things get “heated”. i think he is probably very restrained, maybe a bit too chaste? and so if anything, i think a romantic relationship between kunikida and dazai consists of trying to get kunikida to be less restrained and maybe a LITTLE filthier lol. which i think is less about proficiency and more about connecting with a partner, idk how to explain. and i think that probably takes a while, like maybe dazai starts by trying to rile kunikida up by annoying him but finds that doesn’t work the way he wants it to. i kinda like the idea of kunikida forcing dazai to “slow down” a little bit bc i think a lot of dazai’s usual previous hook-ups/one night stands are not emotional in nature (altho if ln3 is anything to go by maybe his hookups see them as emotional lol), and i think kunikida has a sense of when dazai is phoning it in even though he maybe struggles to put his finger on how he knows. i think kunikida needs a relationship to feel like more than just a hook-up and that requires dazai to open up in a way he finds very uncomfortable. that’s just my personal take!

hello! totally understand the confusion, but what is coming back is the manga adaptation of the light novel, not a new light novel. oyoyo, who is the artist for the adaptation, has had some health problems in recent years so he has taken a few hiatuses. sounds like he is feeling better which is exciting!!

if you have already read the gaiden light novel then i think it’s worth reading the manga. personally i like oyoyo’s art style a lot. like it toes this line between beautiful and grotesque in a way that is very made-for-me and also in a way that i think fits the story. my only warning is that sometimes he does draw tsujimura in a way that can be off-putting to some ppl (altho he also drew ango fully arched back slutty so idk i think lowkey he’s an equal opportunity yassifier lol).

if you haven’t read the ln, i think it is worth reading the ln first! the manga will probably continue to update slowly (not a complaint, just an observation, i think oyoyo’s health is more important). but as a light novel reader it’s fun to see how he interprets some things. particularly how tsujimura’s ability manifests, i’m so obsessed with it, it looks cool as hell.

(i’m so sorry for the slow response) yeah i think environment plays a role!! i think overall, elise’s appearance and mannerisms reflect how mori “needs” or (in the case of current elise) “wants” her to be. to me it starts as an internal projection outward, but i do think environment HAS to play a role in this, so i do agree with you that environment matters! personally, i think the reason why elise is so empty of personality during the great war is it reflects how mori saw abilities as “weapons” of war (thinking about his “immortal regiment”). it makes me wonder what elise was like before the great war. was she a friend to him? a sibling? was she ever a mother to him as a child? idk i think these are interesting concepts that i’d love to see explored.

as for mafia era elise, i am pretty certain elise is intended to be a “copy” of young yosano. there is an art that harukawa drew of elise where her shadow is young yosano, which imo confirms this. it’s soooo interesting, when did he start doing this? i don’t think we see elise’s personality in any flashback chapters with fukuzawa, and i cannot remember offhand if she appears in stormbringer or 15 (i don’t remember her in either one but i could be forgetting a small reference, certainly if she appears in either of these novels it’s offhand mentions). when did she manifest young yosano’s personality? was it after he “lost” yosano to fukuzawa? i have so many questions!!

i have even MORE questions about beast elise, bc i agree that environment seems to be influencing her appearance here but also why not make her one of the “children”? i feel like the overall implication from beast and tdipud is that the beast world is mostly the same as the root universe, just different where dazai manipulated it to be, so i feel like what we are seeing here is a mori that is no longer fixated on yosano, which is extremely fascinating to me bc what changed? is it a loss of power due to dazai booting him from the mafia? is it all because of possible guilt over failing dazai, which he has been forced to face in beast after leaving the mafia? it’s sewww interesting and i think about it a lot.

oh fun!! i love coming up with bsd author oc’s, i have a cs lewis i’ve been sitting on for a while, she’s a mean sad lesbian and i like her so much.

i have read fahrenheit 451 and i liked it very much but it has been a very long time since i’ve read it! i should reread it, i still have a copy sitting on my shelf. i like your idea! his ability is very shigaraki bnha of him gfjgfh love it. love the idea of him being a nerd, i think bradbury was pretty nerdy irl? i thought i remembered seeing somewhere that he was bros with the creator of star trek. as far as ideas - i like to build bsd oc’s off of a character in the story their ability comes from! i think that’s how asagiri writes bsd characters (especially dazai!!) so that’s where i like to draw from!! good luck and i hope you have lots of fun developing your oc!!!