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oewmo · 3 years ago

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On Young Dazai

So, I recently re-read Stormbringer.

Why would I put myself through that trauma not only once but twice you ask? Well, I couldn’t focus the first time I read it, I was dehydrated from crying and I spent a week in mourning for The Flags.

Leaving that mess aside, I really wanted to write down my thoughts about Teenage Dazai and study his character (or attempt to) from Fifteen up until The Dragon Head Conflict.

P.S : This post is mainly about Dazai, yet there are several mentions of Chuuya too. Their pasts are so tightly linked it’s inevitable. Sorry.

Of childhood and external influences

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Young Dazai was unhinged, homicidal and sadistic. He seemed (and still seems) like a high functionning sociopath with severe depressive and suicidal tendencies.

It’s clear that something was fundamentally wrong with him even before joining The PM, though I don’t consider him as an inherently evil person.

Being taken in by Mori -who exploited his weaknesses to the hilt- definitely played a significant role in the way he turned out. The manipulative tactics and the incessant need to have control over others might have been the result of Dazai not having any say in anything during his childhood. Mori’s cruel teachings coupled with the freedom he was granted in The PM only exacerbated his already negative traits and encouraged his madness to grow.

There’s honestly not much more to say about his mysterious childhood. He most likely had a tough upbringing to be this mentally instable at only 14 years old.

Of honesty and genuineness

Despite all the unsettling things Dazai said and did (that shouldn’t be overlooked), he was unexpectedly geniune at times, times that involved Chuuya and rarely anyone else.

The first scene that comes to mind will always be this one :

This is probably the earliest flashback of Dazai baring his soul for someone else to see. I think he somehow lost control of himself whilst trying to test the waters and figure out what Chuuya was made of.

The answer he got shocked him.

To come face to face with the revelation that not everyone who wields strength revels in violence, bloodshed and death. That not every powerful person is greedy enough to want to climb up the ranks. That even those who commit crimes can still have moral codes they strictly adhere to. That even mafiosi wouldn’t stoop as low as he did in that moment and in the form of what? In the form of a 15y.o half human half God who has known nothing but pain, scolding him for disrespecting the dead was like a harsh slap in the face for Dazai who was fully human yet lacked the insight to feel and act like one.

This was Dazai’s first glimpse of what humanity looks like and how nuanced, not-black-and-white human beings truly are. It was also the first time someone saw his darkness, simply took it in and stopped it without shying away from it or letting it go on for longer.

It left him in awe.

It makes sense when you remember that he was still young and impressionable. He hasn’t fully honed the manipulation skills necessary to make his reactions more subtle, meeting a teenager his age with such a unique story undoubtedly took him by surprise. Judging by his words and his actions (being touchy, doing normal teenager things, throwing tantrums), it’s not hard to see that he was a lonely teen with no understanding of how human relationships work.

Another instance is the Arahabaki reveal.

For a genius like Dazai, failing to piece the puzzle together and come to the conclusion that Chuuya is Arahabaki was very uncharacteristic of him. Truth is, he never once considered that possibility. The unadulterated disturbance he felt but couldn’t hide when he heard the confession is more than proof of that :

Chuuya’s humanity was so concrete and real in his mind that he never felt the need to question it, which was irrational for someone who ran on pure logic and facts.

A third instance is this conversation with Rimbaud :

“Then, I’ll make your corpse my ability and grasp onto the memory of my friend’s existence. To fill the eight years that were lost. To save him.”

“I see… All for the sake of your friend?” Dazai said weakly. “The betrayal of the mafia, the resurrection of the previous boss, this battle… It’s all a bit hard to believe.”

“What don’t you understand, you bastard?” Chuuya said, looking up at Randou. “I’d throw away everything for my friends. It’s a very respectable thing to bet my life on… I don’t leave any mercy for my opponents."

This here shows that Dazai had no grasp on the meaning of human connection. Friendship, sacrifice, love … they didn’t make sense to him, they weren’t logical because they weren’t beneficial. He didn’t even bother with a fake reaction or anything, he genuinely couldn’t understand such notions. Ofcourse it was Chuuya who stepped in yet again and showed him what he was missing out on.

This encounter with Chuuya and Rimbaud left such an impact on Dazai that he decided to live longer. This was the same suicidal Dazai who wanted to join The PM for lethal drugs, mind you.

« If a God of calamity (yes this is a Noragami reference, sue me) can be this human, if he can make other people believe in him this much then perhaps I will learn how to be human too if I stick around. Maybe I can get to see the world the same way Chuuya does.» This is what I imagine was Dazai’s thought process at that time.

To me this is what Fifteen is about : Humanity comes in many forms, even if unexpected, unwelcomed and unusual. Sometimes It takes just one single existence to make warmth and hope bloom in someone else’s empty chest. Rimbaud died feeling warm for he understood this, having been Verlaine’s partner, and made sure to say it out loud for the boys –who would become partners later- to hear it.

Now whether they understood the message or not is still up in the air. But one thing is for sure, Dazai & Chuuya were never the same after that incident as stated at the end.

A fourth instance is Dazai’s unbridled reaction to Chuuya working with Kouyou. You can see it as a childish tantrum or a streak of possessiveness and that’s fair, but to me it says so much more about him. Dazai joined The PM for he knew Chuuya would be there, not because he was personally invested in The PM. He didn’t even care when Mori invited him.

Dazai saw the light for the first time and chased it. Being told he was not to work with Chuuya defied the whole purpose of everything he did in Fifteen. It defied the purpose of taking Chuuya away from his family and having to deal with the hatred Chuuya harbored towards him as a result. It defied the purpose of staying alive.

Instead of being around his Raison d’être while he navigates through life like he expected, Dazai was being isolated from Chuuya and was left to fend for himself in that unforgiving environment under Mori’s command. We all know how that went.

I believe this particular incident to be one the reasons why he said « I want to see The PM burn » only a year after.

We can also squeeze in the entirety of Stormbringer in this section. The wide range of emotions Dazai displayed there from shock to boredom to bewilderment to worry to affection to despair is incredibly important to his character. I’ll put some excerpts showcasing that here :

It goes to show that Dazai wasn’t as empty as he and everyone else initially assumed. With the right people (the likes of Chuuya, Rimbaud, Oda, Ango) and the right circumstances, he might’ve gotten better. And by « better » I don’t mean magically becoming a sane person, Dazai was too mentally ill for that. I mean « better » as in less hollow and suicidal.

These reactions and copious displays of emotions are all painfully authentic and raw. To desire something, to yearn for a meaning, to want to be with someone and to go on a journey to reach them are all achingly human courses of action to take.

Sadly Dazai never knew that and kept rejecting his own humanity instead.

Of emotional expression

While reading the manga and the novels, I noticed a pattern with how Dazai expresses his emotions. He usually says the exact opposite of what he truly means while acting in an exaggerated manner that makes the whole thing seem like an act. He tries to hide his feelings by emphasizing certain traits of his personality, only for this emphasis to come off as overcompensation, making it all backfire on him instead. He isn’t nearly as discreet as he thinks he is.

In psychology, this is a defense mechanism called reaction-formation (You can read Freud’s and Anna’s works if you’re interested in knowing more about it).

The most common example of this is how boys bully girls they are interested in or how a person shows contempt towards someone they like in order to detach themselves from them.

First time Dazai did this was in Fifteen :

Chuuya pressed down on his wound, took a rough breath, and said : "What is…your goal…?” Dazai gave him a pointed look. “Don’t say you found me by chance… Are you saving me, selling some favors…?”

“Favors? Saving? That’s not it at all. I hate you. We’re only here to massacre our enemies.”

He isn’t fooling anyone. He didn’t « hate » Chuuya, at least not in the way he was wanting it to come across. Yet he felt the need to say it out loud as if he was trying to convince himself and not Chuuya.

Another example worthy of mentioning is this one :

I don’t believe for one second that Dazai wanted Chuuya to get severely hurt. Did he want to see the reactions and the expressions Chuuya displayed in different situations? Yes, that’s the whole point of riling up Chuuya after all. Does he love corruption? Does he get high on the destruction it brings? Absolutely. But to have Chuuya tortured and to enjoy watching it? I don’t think that was the case at all.

My best guess is : He was worried. But because this was Dazai who never allowed himself to care or to lose control, he resorted to deflection by blurting out something completely untrue to mask what was really going on inside. Going as far as to keep his vital signs abnormally normal when the situation wasn’t compatible with that is what tells me he was way more affected than he let on.

It’s when people aren’t paying attention that he let his masks fall. He was always his most authentic self when Chuuya was either unconscious or absent. It says a whole lot about how scared and wary Dazai was and is of being around people, of being known and of letting his guard down, thus living in a shipping container in an abandonned land. Being with The PM undoubtedly made him even more paranoid.

Of Jealousy

One thing I haven’t seen people talk about is Teenage Dazai’s subtle jealousy of Chuuya. Let’s take this scene as an example :

What I see here is Dazai being jealous, bitter but also … proud?

There’s also that one scene in Dead Apple where he says « fitting for a tiny human like yourself » to Chuuya. He takes a jab at Chuuya while comforting him in a very roundabout way.

Chuuya, a lab experiment, being the quintessence of everything Dazai has ever wanted to be equally gratified and revolted him. The humanity Chuuya possesses made him want to do better but also served as a painful reminder of what he lacked and could never obtain (according to him).

Knowing Dazai, he probably felt unadequate and undeserving of Chuuya’s company at times. But because his selfishness and his admiration outweighed his insecurities, he stuck around and took what he could get.

It makes for a compelling contradiction that explains why Dazai seems to resent Chuuya even when the latter does absolutely nothing to personally offend him.

Of lessons learnt

Young Dazai went from being a lost, cold teen who couldn’t understand why saving a friend was something worthy of sacrifices to a hard working person who did everything in his power to support his partner. He went as far as to put said friend’s desires above the safety of the city. He had the alternative to avoid the disaster simply by handing Chuuya over to Verlaine but he didn’t. And it wasn’t even his loyalty to The PM that stopped him from doing so because he had no loyalty towards the organisation to begin with. He subconsciously believed that Chuuya was important and acted on that fact.

His unawareness of his own feelings and motivations makes the whole thing more poignant. He fought so hard without fully realizing that his and Chuuya’s lives were too intertwined to be untethered, until Mori of all people, spelled it out for him.

The way he openly consoled Chuuya after using corruption and losing his friends both times in Stormbringer and The Dragon Head Conflict after not batting an eyelid when he orchestrated The Sheep’s betrayal prove that the words Rimbaud said and the kindness Chuuya showed resonated with him and pushed him in a better direction. What’s most important is that Dazai allowed the change to happen, he was willing to learn from other « better » humans and to take a kinder approach when dealing with people he cared about.

This change manifested itself in the way Dazai learnt to trust Chuuya enough to put himself in danger during missions, knowing Chuuya will pick up on hints and make things right and later on in the way he tried to have more friends and forge new connections.

This isn’t to say Dazai suddenly became « good » because he didn’t. His actions still held that manipulative streak to them even when he was being nice. He just mellowed out a bit, which is still a big deal for someone like him.

I have so much more to say but I figured this post was getting too long.

This post is in no way intended to defend or justify Dazai’s questionable actions. You best believe I will talk about how abusive and toxic he is some time in the future.

Oh and a random thought I had while writing this : if you’re a fan of relating songs to characters like I do, you might want to listen to I Was Just A Kid by Nothing But Thieves and The World Is Ugly by My Chemical Romance. Both songs describe Young Dazai impeccably.

Anyway, thanks for reading y’all.

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oewmo · 4 years ago

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For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a transman? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

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