Why, I Wonder, Couldn’t He Have Mentioned That One Simple Fact… That One Fact Would Probably Have

One thing I love about Kunikida and Dazai's dynamic is Kunikida's ability to still believe in him so much he still falls for his jokes. Like you know this has happened so many times yet still he dutifully will write down Dazai's suggestion in pen no less. But Dazai is also kind enough to not let him carry on with it too long.

Writing a complex character such as Dazai is actually really hard even for people who understand him because he is, as you said, extremely unpredictable. I don't know exactly what to tell you, but I'll try to help a little bit!

The whole thing about Dazai is that he doesn't understand humanity. He understands the basics and why people do what they do because he is analytical and has been studying people's behavior and human connections forever. But he doesn't feel connected with humanity and empathy the same way other people do. He perceives others from like, the other side of a barrier. He studies them carefully. Manages to care about them deeply sometimes. Even deeper when they're able to see him and get to him (Odasaku, Atsushi, Chuuya, the whole agency in fact means something to him). But there's always this layer of disconnection and apathy and emptiness he doesn't know how to get rid of. It's like he cares, but he actually doesn't because he rationalizes everything and turns it into a game of chess, more or less? And I think that frustrates him. He isn't used to caring about people because he doesn't understand them, but he takes an interest in the people he finds amusing to study and once he cares deeply, they're taken away from him (that's why he mourns and regrets Oda's death so much. He feels like the world takes everything away from him the second he manages to feel human). Hence the whole thing about not feeling human (amongst other things). He cares and yet he is realistic. He has regrets and suffers and feels pain and he can care about others (ignore all the people who keep portraying him as an emotionless monster, please) but he doesn't drown in self-pity when it comes to all the people he has killed and his past because he can rationalize that. It was another era. He has moved on. And if it's for the greater good of the mission or his journey to find something to live for, he doesn't care how many random people he has to kill (when he was younger he valued other people's lives way less, of course. Now that has changed because his apathy is something he doesn't turn into cruelty and instead uses to rationalize plans and help the world and the agency. Basically, when he was part of the mafia it was kind of "I don't give a fuck about random people" because he genuinely didn't feel anything for them, but now, even if he doesn't genuinely care for them, he protects even random people because that's what the image of kindness Oda had planned for him). Oda tells him that, if the good side and the bad one are the same and he hasn't found anything to live for yet, why not help the world while he's at it? And it's such a beautiful thought because Dazai has this issue with understanding humanity and making bonds. But he understands, now more than ever after Oda's death, what living and killing means. He might not actually care that much for society and its well-being, but maybe he can find something to live for in the light more than he would in the darkness. He keeps wanting to kill himself, right? He keeps trying. But he doesn't actually want to. It's common sense. If he truly wanted to, he already would've done it. "I don't like pain" is the most common thing to say when you don't actually want to do it. I think that, unlike Nikolai, who actually craves to die as a representation of freedom, Dazai only wants to keep trying and trying to find a reason for living. Chuuya was that thing when he was in the Mafia. Chuuya and Oda, because Chuuya is quite literally his soulmate (in the sense of bringing amusement to his life and also making him feel human, as his ability is the only thing that can help Chuuya. And also Chuuya not being human but being the most empathetic and emotional of all the people Dazai has met in the mafia) and Oda was the first one to actually understand him and see him for who he is, something I don't think he'll ever find again and that's why Oda's death fucked him up so bad. He found a place to belong and somebody to live for, and then he dies and leaves him alone? It's not fair, but he'll try to fight for good and live in the light if that's what Oda wanted for him. As if Oda knew him better than he knows himself because I also think he has a hard time with his own perception and personality.

In simpler words: Dazai has a hard time understanding humanity because he feels disconnected from it by a layer of apathy and the fact that he doesn't understand basic human needs/actions because he doesn't share them. One of the things that makes us human is desires, right? Wanting. Loving. Longing. Dazai rejects all of that because he doesn't know what he wants and nothing he tries ends up making him feel whole. In "No Longer Human", actually, you can read things like "It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people" and "I have never known what it means to be hungry / Eat or die, the saying goes, but to my ears, it sounded like just one more unpleasant threat". So he isn't a monster, his brain just functions in a different way. He sees everything. Analyzes every little thing. He's smarter than everybody else and he's aware of that, but he feels lonely there and only wants somebody to understand or something to fight for. Oda gave him both things, and the agency gave him a reason to keep going because he genuinely cares about doing good and keeping them safe. I don't think Dazai's journey has ended, because he still fights against.... So many things with himself. His past. His future. His desires. But at least now he has a thing to enjoy and bring him happiness. His constant act of being "silly" isn't that much of a facade. I mean, I think it is because if he acts like a clown, nobody will ever see the true self he hides. But I think he ends up having fun with the agency and annoying Chuuya because he sees them respond to his behavior and he finds it amusing. I think being extremely smart and lonely and tormented can coexist with being fun sometimes.

As per writing in his POV.... It depends on what you want to write, really. I think his brain functions differently depending on his mood. I guess the most important thing is to keep in mind his surroundings because he's always hyperaware of every little thing. But it frustrates him not knowing how he's feeling or not understanding what he actually truly needs, often focusing on others instead of looking into himself, because every time he does, he only finds himself empty and craving for something he doesn't know what it is. In his worst moments, I think it's quite obvious he tries to fix things with distractions and impulsive actions like substance abuse. In his more analytical moments, it's when he becomes more apathetic and sees the world as his game of chess and people as only pawns. He knows he's human, he just doesn't feel like it. Fyodor has a sense of superiority Dazai doesn't share. He's smarter because his brain functions differently, but he is no God. He is no entity. He analyzes from the POV of somebody external to humanity but knowing quite well he isn't God. And when he's having genuine fun and feeling some type of care/love? I think he's grateful. The emptiness is always there, though. Always haunting him. In the back of his brain. But he sees hope in Atsushi and a place to keep his promise in the agency and maybe fulfill his heart. He might always have a fucked up perception of himself, but at least he's aware that doing the right thing fills the hole in his chest more than tormenting others. As I said, he likes it there (and Chuuya) because it makes him experience humanity even if he keeps telling himself he isn't human (No Longer Human quote: "You miss her, don't you?" / "Yes." / "That's human nature, I guess").

I don't know if I helped you?? I think it's a bit of a mess, sorry 😭 It's like 3am and I don't know if what I said makes any sense, but I really hope I was able to help you!

holy FUCK it took me fifteen minutes to read all of this and i'm glad i did because this is the most succinct and articulate analysis i have ever seen of dazai's underlying nature and his ambitions in relevance to the plot OP I THINK IF ASIGIRI CANT WRITE ANYMORE YOU SHOULD TAKE OVER BSD MANGA BC I THINK U UNDERSTAND DAZAI BETTER THAN HE DOES SOMETIMES TBH💀💀 aaaa jkjk i digress you were so real for bringing up the yozo/dazai parallels bc there's genuinely so many and if i still had my fucking BOOK :side eye: i could go through the intricate and profound commentary i left in the margins but alas my dear friend insists on keeping it longer. there's nothing more i can say on this topic bc i agree w you on everything wholeheartedly i think you deserve a scholarship to harvard or smth bc god DAMN you would slay as a lit or lang major

Haven't been on social media for so long that socialising became scary on here

Dazai and the ladies

Hey Nonny! Ooh, an excuse to talk about my favourite chapter in BSD! Don’t mind if I do. So the scene you’re talking about is this one, in the Double Black episode.

It’s very much played for humour. Throughout the chapter, they’re constantly dragging each other and this is like the one thing that actually seems to give Dazai pause for a moment. But how much truth is there in it? Now there’s a question.

Dazai the flirt

Dazai is aggressively, vocally into women. It’s one of the first things we ever learn about him.

I’m not, here, gonna go into whether or not the boy doth protest too much, but I don’t think I will shock anyone by saying that he is, when it comes to women he doesn’t know, an incredible flirt. He’s seemingly forever trying to get in the pants of the waitress at their coffee bar, he lays it on super thick with clients, etc.

It’s interesting to note here that most of that is an act.

For one, he only seems to do this to women that are not close to him. We, as readers/viewers, also know that he doesn’t mean it. Any of it. He’s probably already suspicious of Higuchi long before he decides to ‘woo’ her. The same for the waitress. He’s not actually expecting her to go “Oh yes, random weirdo who hangs out here but rarely pays his tab, let’s go drown ourselves together. It’ll be romantic.” We know Dazai as a highly intelligent man, who is very adept at reading moods. No way in hell would he be so unaware as to think his blunt flirtations would ever actually work.

Dazai the womanizer

So where does that flirt/womanizer idea come from? As you say, nonny, a lot of that is down to Dazai’s real life counterpart.

!Historical Dazai ( born Tsushima Shüji) was a pretty tragic figure. He attempted, multiple times, to take his own life, several times in a 'double suicide’ that cost the life of at least two young women, besides his own. To say that !Historical Dazai’s history with women is painful, is to put it mildly. That stuff is straight messed up.

Now, it’s tempting to think of !Maffia Dazai as reflecting the tragedies of !Historical Dazai. It’s fairly obvious that the character is based on the writer, and !Maffia Dazai is certainly… broken enough. Whereas!Agency Dazai mostly jokes about the suicide thing, and has long since given up actually killing, !Maffia Dazai is shown as extremely nihilistic and just downright depressed. He is cold, and cruel, and just… really sad. I wouldn’t put it past him to try and drown his sorrows in women, like he does in liquor. !Historical Dazai didn’t only have several wives, he had a thing for prostitutes, hostesses and geisha’s, which would fit neatly into the maffia persona. It is even possible that he ruined the lives of several of these women, the same way (or worse) as !Historical Dazai did. We are not shown evidence of this in the series (at this point), but it’s certainly a possibility.

If you think of it that way, all those jokes of his do take on a decidedly dark turn. It’s one thing to joke about your own death (we’re on tumblr, people do it all the time), it’s another to talk of double suicides if you’ve actually ruined a young woman’s life. In that sense, Chuuya’s threat is also incredibly bleak. The initial idea when you read that joke is the whole 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ thing, but in this situation, it would rip open some old wounds and guilt on Dazai’s part.

But that is probably reading Too Much into what is essentially a good joke. Let’s assume that Dazai, being a big shot mobster, had a whole bunch of flings with dancing girls or whatever, and that he dumped them like the troll he is.

Dazai the s/o

Headcanon time!

I think it’s safe to say that !Agency Dazai is not the same man as !Maffia Dazai, or !Historical Dazai. Mentally, it seems to me as if Dazai is now in a better place, and the same goes for his relationships with the world around him. His general stance seems to be ‘don’t harm, care if you must, but troll the shit out of everyone’. Please note how much respect he has for Yosano, how he treats Naomi and Kyouka (once she’s inducted). He deeply cares about these people, but he also trolls the shit out of them. The same pretty much goes for the likes of Maffia and Guild members, such as Chuuya, Kouyou, Akutagawa, heck, even Q. He ostensibly hates these people, but he’s not about to truly hurt them. He just trolls the shit out of them. It is like this for pretty much the whole world. Dazai saves lives. It’s what he does, but he’s not exactly a gentleman about it. He protects, but he also trolls. 

So what this means for any s/o he may have, is that at the very least, they will be trolled on a near-daily basis.

The question is: would Dazai even have an s/o. I’m pretty big on the importance of healthy relationships, and I am also fairly certain that Dazai, in his current state, is incapable of having a healthy, loving relationship with any s/o. He cannot love another, because he friggin hates himself. It’s gonna take a very long time to heal that. And I think Dazai, in his current state, is also wise enough to realize when a relationship isn’t healthy, and to avoid it. He may be prone to flirtations, to flitting from one person to the next, to double suicides, even, but at this point he’s also trying very hard to avoid those situations from ever happening. He claims, way near the start of the show, to want a death where there are no victims but himself. To do this, he builds walls around himself, even as he is with people that are close to him.

You can see that in the way he treats someone like Atsushi. He cares deeply about Atsushi, I truly believe this, he wants to guide him and watch him grow, he wants to give him important advice to help that boy heal his wounds, but at the same time, he keeps his distance (see that 'i’m not into guys’ thing up there). His first instinct in any situation is to push people away, to gloss it over with a joke.

He’d do the same thing if he were to actually fall in love.

If he does, as you put it, find that special someone, I believe he wouldn’t even make a move until he’s a hundred percent certain that he can control all his urges, can keep himself in check, so that No One Gets Hurt. Dazai the character may be based on Tsushima, but he’s actively trying to avoid living the same life. He’s a that point in his life where he’s looking for atonement, he’s trying to make up for the hurt he caused, not make more. So unless he meets someone who is ok with open relationships, I doubt he’d cheat on them. He’s a troll, but he’s not heartless. The last thing he wants is another notch on his belt, another life ruined. Especially if it’s someone he truly cares about.

PS: I did a profile on Dazai a while back, that is Even Longer and goes deeper into some of his personality.

Should i take the absurdism or nihlism route, what do yall recommend 😝

I have never been on Tumblr before should I be scared???? Is there something to expect????

I have over 500 tiktok fav folders. Someone give me song or playlist recommendations that last long enough to get these organised PLEASE ITS SO MESSY HELP

Unbelievably relatable

girlhood is a spectrum

...I still wait for someone. Who on earth am I waiting for? For what sort of person? Maybe what I’m waiting for isn’t a human. I dislike humans. No, I fear them. When I meet someone and indifferently exchange such greetings as ‘How are you?’ or ‘It’s become cold,’ greetings I don’t want to make, I somehow get the unpleasant feeling that there is no such horrible liar in the world as I, and I wish I were dead. Also, the other people, too, are unduly wary of me and use diplomatic speech which tries very hard to be harmless and inoffensive, and relate their pompous, false feelings. As I listen to it all, I find their petty cautiousness deplorable, and the world becomes more and more unbearably odious. Are ‘people in the world’, I wonder, creatures that spend their whole lives greeting each other in stiff, formal patterns, being cautious about each other, then growing tired of each other? I hate meeting people.

Dazai Osamu, “Waiting”

Where's Chuuya in the Dadzai AU

ex/situationship/"random" hookup. when dazai tells him he has to take care of the baby he's like "i understand if you want to leave me cause technically we aren't even in a relationship", and chuuya is like "you're crazy for thinking i'm leaving you alone with the baby" but they're actually just very much in love