#and the answer to mental illness is to just think of everyone you're inconveniencing/hurting by being mentally ill

[asterdeer]

i can't speak for every mentally ill person but i don't think "don't self-deprecate! it makes everyone around you feel bad :(((" is necessarily the all-encompassing bandaid slam-dunk you think it is.

[transsexualhamlet]

oooh ooh I have MANY thoughts on this!

First of all yes I agree with everything said above, and I think it's really interesting how dazai says he doesn't like pain, cause man if there's one thing he does it's hurt himself on purpose. I think he feels that he has to, and he certainly gets something out of it. But I think honestly the way he thinks of and handles his own life out of all the characters, who are all based off of authors, is the most like a writer's mind.

I think the question that's trying to be answered is not 'is dazai really suicidal or not', but 'how desperate is he to die'. And those are two different things. Being suicidal doesn't mean that you're constantly on the brink of fucking throwing yourself off the nearest bridge at all times. And let me tell you I can speak for that. It's just like. Passively. Wanting to die. Dazai definitely wants to die. He thinks fucking passing away would be great. But he wants to die like I want to write a novel. I definitely wanna do it, it's on my bucket list and the sooner it gets accomplished the better. I want to be an author. But I only ever end up writing one shot fanfiction. It's not for a lack of trying, I have seriously attempted to write a book in the past, but putting pencil to paper is hard, and most of the time I realized I wanted to just *think* about writing more than actually writing.

I apologize for the long winded metaphor, but I think that's the way Dazai feels about death. As someone who is autistic, I honestly think what he has, along with a hearty helping of mental illness, is a special interest in death and suicide?? Genuinely???

Surely, without barely any effort, at nearly any time, Dazai could have ended his life, if that was all he wanted to do. But no, he goes out and fucking buys books about it. He researches the subject, the history, famous ideas about it, thinks about it in his free time, legit infodumps about it to everyone and doesn't seem to care if they Dont Want To Hear About It, finds ways to incorporate it into every aspect of his life in an attempt to make it better, and *aspires* to not only experience it himself but find the best, most impressive and satisfying way to do it. His seratonin settings are calibrated to fucking suicide. It seriously makes him the most happy when he can be thinking about it and doing things based on it and learning more about it. If that isnt a special interest, I don't know what is. (I have a thousand other reasons that I believe dazai is autistic, but this isn't about that)

How desperate he is to actually reach that conclusion clearly varies a lot. I think most of the time his attempts aren't serious, they're just a fun afternoon activity. But he has, especially in the past, been really quite at his limit. I'm not at all saying that he isn't an incredibly depressed person who genuinely sees little value in life, whether it's his or anyone else's. That doesnt change the fact that I don't think he would ever seriously intend to die in any normal way. That wouldn't be good enough for him.

Since he obsesses over and seriously romanticises death, he needs it to be perfect, so he can't just slap together any old death on a whim, even though he constantly wants to do it. The "perfect" way he wants to go clearly changes quite often- (as evidenced by him going "ah yes i want a completely clean suicide where no one is inconvenienced by my death!" one minute and "i wanna double suicide because it would be hot and romantic!" the next.) And he gets separately hyperfixated on those different ideas, working towards something where the goal is safely far away.

The thing about a hyperfixation is, though, you don't ever really want it to end. I love consuming media and I love embarking on big projects and spending all my time on them, but with things like that, I'll intentionally drag them out if it seems like i might reach the end. If I'm hyperfixated on something enough that it is genuinely the meaning of life for me, it's kind of an awful feeling when it's done. It has to be in a constant state of becoming, otherwise there's no fun in it. That's why I think Dazai's like that. He wants to be in a constant state of reaching for death, thinking about it and playing with it and dipping his toes in the water and knowing that he could fall in at any time, because it's the only way he can deal with life.

At any point in time, he would never be disappointed to find himself in a situation where he did actually die. If he made a blunder at any point in all the incredibly risky situations he put himself in, if he ended up getting fucking killed, that would be fine. The universe has decided his fate, and he gets to enjoy it. But he does not make those blunders on purpose- he's playing with death in dead apple, and he sure does have his fun with it, and if he was genuinely bested, that would be a glorious death for him, but he always plans to survive. If he doesn't try his hardest, it wouldn't be a satisfying death. But if he could prevent it himself, then it's no big deal- he has infinite chances to get himself killed, and infinite ways to die. In that way, I think he's comparable to gide when he wanted oda to kill him, it had to be done fairly. Except in this case, the one he's fighting is the whole universe. He wants it to kill him, he does as much as he can to provoke it into doing so, but he won't go until the universe considers him special enough to pull out the big guns.

Yeah, it's a weird way to deal with life, for sure. But I think the one line that really made me understand Dazai's character was the line he said (i think) at the end of the dark age arc where he said "All we can do is waver". He's always half way in between, always trying to straddle that line between life and death.

The reason why it's so difficult to tell if he's trying to die or live at any given time is because of that. Dazai is always desperate to find a meaning in his life and everyone else's. All he wants is to be able to create some kind of story of his own existence that makes sense, that he can understand, that has a satisfying theme with no contradictions of any kind. He's an author, and he can only think of his life in fictional terms. For him there hasn't been proof so far that any god made him for a reason. So he's trying to write it so that he can be something other than apathetic, that something can come out of it that makes him understand the whole point. He wants a comprehensive beginning, middle, and perfectly satisfying end. He's always striving for an end that would tie everyting together, pull every single emotion into one, that would give him the best experience and make everything seem worth it. But Oda got that something like that couldn't ever be achieved in real life.

So that's the reason why Dazai is still alive. He's still trying to get there, but nothing will ever be good enough.

Why is that some people say he's not really wanting to commit suicide and also it's not really a part of him and his personality, if that makes sense.

ah, the million dollar question. is dazai suicidal?

personally, i think he is to some extent. the only reason i say that is because i think he doesn’t truly value his own life in terms of caring about his well being and stuff. the only reason he’s living is for atsushi honestly.

if dazai really wanted to die, he would’ve killed himself long ago. and there are still ways he could do it now. but killing himself would be pointless because that would mean he wouldn’t be able to fulfill oda’s wish (to save people, etc).

i think dazai’s current (comedic relief) suicide attempts are a way for him to test his own body. dazai craves control. in some ways he’s just like kunikida—except he’s more realistic and better at hiding it. testing his body to see how far it can go before dying is a method of gaining control. i also think when he’s trying to “kill himself” he knows he won’t actually die lol.

and just because my brain is angsty and won’t stfu ☺️ i think dazai does these comedic suicide attempts to make the agency get used to him being gone. cuz i feel like he knows he’ll be dead soon—so the less they are attached to him, the less it will hurt 🥲

if anyone wants to add on, feel free to do so !!