#and i have my own parasocial entanglements with my understanding of the authors | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kaurwreck · 3 months

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hey, really random question: I keep hearing this tiktok rumor being spread that apparently, chuuya’s appearance is really similar to a guy the real life dazai dated/had a crush on at 15??

I don’t buy this, but I was wondering if you had any idea what fact this was based off of/embellished, like if you knew what fact these people were talking about and exaggerating- nowhere I’ve looked has backed this up.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about and don’t feel like researching this that’s totally cool, I just know you do a lot of looking into the real authors and was curious if you’d come across anything like this.

It comes from a passage in Memories (also translated as Recollections) about Dazai walking home together with a boy from his class. There isn't any merit to the comparison.

I have great fun projecting the authors onto the characters, but I'd warn against projecting the characters onto the authors. They were whole people, and fandom's habit of plucking disparate quotes from context to caricature in lieu of literary analysis does a disservice to their wholeness.

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #im glad the characterification of figures has made lit more engaging and accessible #and i have my own parasocial entanglements with my understanding of the authors #so this isnt to patronize anyone #i have a fondness for blue eyed chuuya because of a line from dazai's schoolgirl for example #that isnt entirely fair at all since the line from schoolgirl also reflects projection and the imposition of the west and other things #like the line cant be taken at face value #it slots into a context and is part of the tension and reflective of the character's dissatisfaction #but it's in those layers that i think you can have a lot of fun with what pop culthre does with history #and the way time and contemporary lenses add unintended shades to products of their period #which is to say if youre going to project skk onto dazai's literary body of work at least be interesting about it ya know #(also anon none of this is @ you - it's at the seething mass of oversimplification that made the rumor you mentioned so pervasive #(that even i knew about it despite being a sequestered hermit in the fandom)#but yeah that's where that rumor comes from. people taking a passage of memories out of context.

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