The Marauders Map Becomes A Really Creepy Concept When You Remember It Was Made By A Pack Of Bullies

au where severus goes to fetch harry from petunia’s after years of not feeling right about it. he’s glad he did. part 1.

Happy late Valentine's Day or whatever

Holy fuck Mori analysers are actually insane/pos please keep absolutely COOKING

Thanks for converting me into a Mori enjoyer

Mori Ogai and Regret

Mori in the BSD Manga and Light Novels prides himself in always finding the optimal solution, in pushing his own feelings aside to accomplish the optimal goal for any given situation.

He is a man of logic and carefully wielded cruelty.

We see countless examples of the way he handles things and in the end achieves the best possible solution to his problems.

Killing the old Boss and having Dazai as his witness

Dazai pointing out that he himself is a possible danger to the initial plan

Chuuya remaining a loyal part of the Port Mafia

Driving Dazai away

Getting the Skilled Buisness Permit

The Great War and Yosano

There were all instances where we saw Mori put aside his own emotions and morality to achieve a greater goal. He wielded cruelty, facts and logic as weapons to achieve the in his mind most logical and optimal solution.

But Mori is human. And Humans can not completely disregard and turn off their emotions, no matter how hard they try.

Mori himself says that he has no regrets during the Guild Arc.

But does this like the face of a man void of regrets?

Or this?

In this instance Dazai is choosing the words that will invoke the feeling of Regret in Mori to push him towards choosing a truce with the ADA.

Dazai is aware that Mori has regrets.

But so is Hirotsu.

His inclusion in any conversations Dazai and Mori have regarding the old Boss tells us, as the reader, that Hirotsu knows the full picture.

He isn't just aware that Mori killed the old Boss like other people, but also of Mori's goal from that act.

Hirotsu even goes as far as to tell Mori that Dazai understands why Mori did what he did, implies that Dazai would also understand other actions Mori takes to reach the optimal solution.

But this also shows us something different.

Mori needs reminders.

After Mori killed the old PM Boss Dazai became a constant reminder of why he did what he did. It was inevitable that Dazai would forever remind Mori of the act itself and the initial reasoning behind it, since Dazai was present and Dazai helped him plan it.

Once Dazai left the Mafia Hirotsu transformed into a reminder of it all. In some way Kouyou is also a reminder of what he did and why he did it.

But why these two?

They were there during the reign of the old Boss.

But how does Mori remember the regrets of another part of his past? How does he remind himself of a time where he miscalculated, where he should have taken the emotions of the people he regarded as tools into account?

How is Mori reminded of the mistakes and regrets of the Great War, of Yosano?

Elise.

Elise is Mori's ability, Vita Sexualis. A humanoid puppet to control as he wishes.

But also to shape as he wishes.

During the Great War Elise is nothing more than a robotic being wearing a human skin, void of emotions, thoughts and autonomy.

Mori has always made Elise take the form of a younger girl.

While it is speculated in the fandom that this could be linked to his Lolicon, I believe otherwise.

Elise is for one inspired by the Novel The Dancing Girl from the real life author. But since she is Mori's ability in BSD she will be influenced by his subconcious.

Elise shows us that Mori, even in his twenties, wanted an apprentice. He wanted to impart his knowledge on someone else but until he found Yosano he did not have someone to do this with.

(Im Beast Elise takes the form of a women. Mori already has children to take care of and bestow his knowledge upton, he doesn't need her to fill thie role. But he does need another caretaker, so that is what Elise becomes)

Yosano herself says in the Manga that she respected Mori as a doctor.

Choosing a young and mallable girl as his apprentice did make her easier to manipulate, to create an army that can not die. But young people are also sponges for knowledge.

And here we come to his regret.

Mori does regret how he handled the situation with Yosano.

He liked that strong willed and opinionated young girl he drafted, and he broke her.

We do not see much of Elise until Dark Era, so we can not tell how long it took for Elise to display Yosanos personality after Yosano was redcued by Fukuzawa and Ranpo.

In this official Art we see Yosanos shadow in Elise, a clear indication of teh fact that Mori's impression of Yosano was bleeding into Elise. But we also see her still wearing pigtails.

Her hair and general clothing tells us that this is between loosing Yosano and Dark Era. With time, Elise will resemble Yosano more.

(The bow resembles the butterfly hairpin of Yosano.)

In this scene Mori tries to convince Elise to try on a new dress.

She refuses and clearly displays Yosano's personality in thsi interaction. From the way Mori handles it this isn't knew.

Their dynamic had already shifted into something more like Yosano and Mori instead of the Ability and Mori.

But her hair is different from the last picture.

Elise now has open and wavy hair. Does this remind you of someone?

(For a boy Dazai has always worn his hair longer than traditional seen as boyish, which in turn let's his ends curl and wave more noticable)

But why would Elise take on appearance markers of Dazai?

Simple.

Because there is something Mori regrets.

He only openly mentiones it in Beast but since Beast is a mirror of Canon, that shows us how different choices will change the same people, we can assume this are also the feelings of Canon!Mori.

Mori regrets not being able to really help Dazai.

And his regret will only get deeper as he makes another choice for an optimal solution.

Driving Dazai away and getting Oda killed fulfilled many positives for Mori, what he reached was the optimal solution. He just had to lose his right hand man.

(Light Novel Dark Era)

This is not the behavior of a man not regretting driving away the boy he cared about for 4 years to this point.

To this day Mori leaves Dazai's spot as executive open. He invited Dazai back into the Mafia.

And when we see Elise after Dark Era she has changed once again.

But this time it is not her appearance that changed, it is her attitude.

Elise displays a very much Dazai-like attitude when talking to Mori.

Where Yosano - and until the end of Dark Era Elise - were strong in their oppinion but polite and steadfast in their refusal, Dazai was bargaining. Dazai more often than not wanted something in exchange for doing something he deemed unpleasant/bothersome/boring.

During the recent timeline Elise also does this.

She doesn't just refuse things, she makes deals.

And she doesn't lie during negotiations, just like Dazai.

In the end Elise changes to be more like the people Mori feels a form of regret over. Elise is a constant reminder of his Regrets and Mistakes.

To support this, here are Asagiris words about Mori from the BSD Exhibition:

“He who fell out of the optimal solution”

Mori Ougai’s belief as the boss is described in the novel “Dark Era” and “Dazai, Chuuya, Fifteen”. That is “The boss stands on top of the organization, and at the same time, be the slave of all.” For the sake of the organization, the boss must always take the “logical optimal solution.” That is the duty of the boss.

There is an unspoken additional point to it. “Therefore, no matter how much your heart aches, you have to ignore your personal feelings.” We can catch a glimpse of that in this scene. [the ADA-PM alliance meeting]

Mori’s expressions after “Burnt it.” and “Like what you did to your predecessor”, gave us a glimpse of his true feelings that were made sacrifices for the sake of the “logical optimal solution”.

[Translation by @popopretty here on Tumblr]

A true optimal solution would leave Mori with no regrets. But whenever Elise changes and reminds him of regrets he feels, it is also a reminder of the time he did not truly reach an optimal solution.

Fyolai Duet.

Been listening to birds of death(the one Fyodor perform with his cello) the original piece has a piano duet so I've come to conclusion on drawing Nikolai with piano. :))

TRUCY AND JINXIE?????? OMG THEY ARE SO UNDERRATED

day 2: please be gentle ♡

(femslashfeb prompt list)

Re-read this bit in Half-Blood Prince again and thinking about how blatantly it seems to be telling us that Harry is biased against Snape and our impression of him thus far has been clouded by seeing him through Harry's eyes (emphases mine):

‘The Dark Arts,’ said Snape, ‘are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible.’ Harry stared at Snape. It was surely one thing to respect the Dark Arts as a dangerous enemy, another to speak of them, as Snape was doing, with a loving caress in his voice? . . . ‘He tried to jinx me, in case you didn’t notice!’ fumed Harry. ‘I had enough of that during those Occlumency lessons! Why doesn’t he use another guinea pig for a change? What’s Dumbledore playing at, anyway, letting him teach Defence? Did you hear him talking about the Dark Arts? He loves them! All that unfixed, indestructible stuff -‘ ‘Well,’ said Hermione, ‘I thought he sounded a bit like you.’ ‘Like me?’ ‘Yes, when you were telling us what it’s like to face Voldemort. You said it wasn’t just memorising a bunch of spells, you said it was just you and your brains and your guts - well, wasn’t that what Snape was saying? That it really comes down to being brave and quick-thinking?’ Harry was so disarmed that she had thought his words as well worth memorising as The Standard Book of Spells that he did not argue.

Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 9

There's a direct contrast being drawn from one scene to the next between Harry's perception of Snape and Hermione's less-biased, more critical one. Where Harry hears a "loving caress" for the dark arts in Snape's voice, Hermione hears the passionate, determined explanation that Harry gave a year earlier - one based in a firsthand understanding of what it takes to protect oneself from harm against dark magic.

This is also the first scene in this book where we see Snape teaching a class. The first time he shows up in the book is when he's entrusted by Tonks to deliver Harry safely to the Great Hall from the school gates. So the first encounter with Snape in HBP is as Harry's protector, be it begrudging or not, and the second is one where an immediate parallel is drawn after between him and Harry, Hermione questioning the latter's bias and hinting to the reader that judging him based on Harry's perception may not paint an accurate picture of Snape. Through the rest of the book we see Harry have an increasingly hostile relationship with Snape while developing a great fondness for the Half-Blood Prince, despite it also being Snape, only Harry doesn't know that, so he's able to see his humor and cleverness.

This theme is a dominant one throughout the book, though it doesn't become clear until the end when we find out Snape was the Half-Blood Prince, but by then our impression of the Prince is murky given the unexpectedly violent outcome of Harry trying out Sectumsempra (and it can be argued he's to blame for doing so against another person instead of finding out what the spell does in a safer way), and our impression of Snape is even worse given that he'd just killed Dumbledore. We don't find out until the next book that Snape had been fighting on the same side as Harry the whole time, risking - and eventually losing - his life for the same cause. In retrospect, Rowling (boo, hiss) spends a lot of time in HBP dropping breadcrumbs that Harry's impression of Snape - and thus the reader's - is affected by bias and thus inaccurate.

i think my key issue with the sanitization of death eater characters is that it feels like people do not see their stories as tragic or empathize with the characters until we have a hc that's like "actually they were morally good the whole time!"

regulus black and severus snape are tragic characters and child soldiers no matter what side they were "really" on. even barty crouch jr, who may not have been groomed into being a death eater, is tragic when you spend a second to consider his relationship with his father. there are plenty of death eaters who we know are taking after their fathers in joining the cult. lucius malfoy, who was a prefect when the marauders enter hogwarts, most likely spread the death eater ideology, since the ideology is just a more extreme version/logical endpoint of what already existed in the wizarding world.

to me, these ideas are not headcanons, because they are heavily implied by the text. when jkr mentions malfoy in the deathly hallows that is not for no reason.

mallfoy's acceptance of snape and position of power are both highlighted in this sentence. we can infer that snape felt a sense of community for the first time in Slytherin. with malfoy as a prefect we can infer that the culture of Slytherin house lifted up bigots and those with an important family name.

this is a culture that breeds more bigotry. we know that Dumbledore did not step in to stop this cultural development in the 90s, after already seeing what it could do!!! so we can infer that he did not in the 70s. so a bunch of children were left alone in an echo chamber of hate. of course some of them became fanatics!!!

this doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable. but we cannot expect children to overcome cultural and political hegemony all alone. like.... that's just not how the world works. and it's tragic that children are fodder for fascist's wars, especially when the fact that the children were abused or neglected makes them more vulnerable to be fodder.

regulus and severus weren't treated as people, their humanity was denied by the fascist they served, bc that's how fascism works. exploring their characters as they are in canon, with full humanity, without needing to change their stories to see that humanity, is much more interesting to me. it is much more in the spirit of redemption and restoration.

Aro Ema Skye! 💚 (source: trust me bro)

Forgot I had these lying around in my drafts so I thought I'd post them as a slightly late addition to Ace Attorney Aspec Week! @aspec-ace-attorney

(Feel free to use as an icon with credit!)

cooking is always better with a friend