#but yeah!! chuuya dazai!humanity denialisms are not quite what people seem to be agreed upon? at least thats not how the scene reads to me

[nyxi-pixie]

okayyyy ive been meaning to talk about this moment forever because i think the way i see it differs from a lot of general fandom opinion.

for context, this is from the dhc section of the dead apple manga. skk are talking about an executive who just died and dazai makes a joke about it, prompting chuuya to deck him in the face and say nobody could believe dazais human. (believe, very importantly. not that he Isnt, just that its unbelievable).

humanity is a key theme to all of bsd, but its Very explicitly central to the skk dynamic. chuuya is an intensely human character in the way that he acts and thinks, and yet! between his ability and ofc the history in the lab, it still gets called into question.

(its pretty solid that our chuuyas the real one, but thats not the point here. sb being an exploration of what it means to be human and whether Actually Being One is all that important to what you are and do, through a Distinctly human character- Thats the point. How you are being more important than what you are.)

then we have dazai on the other hand, where what he is doesnt come into question at all. Even his ability, despite its name, isnt dehumanising to an outside eye, compared to chuuyas corruption or atsushis tiger for example that can take away from their control of themselves. its the how he is, in contrast to chuuya, that comes into question with dazai. he very consistently holds himself outside of humanity both implicitly (through self isolation - shipping container being an extreme example) and explicitly (dead apple dazai talking about humanity as an Outside Observer. he is Not including himself as one of them).

When we are encouraged to doubt his humanity, its dazai Telling us to. he deliberately poses himself as inhuman because he FEELS it. and the dhc moment to me has always felt like chuuya seeing through it and calling his bullshit. Dazais making light of a death to be a dick, to push chuuyas buttons, but also because hes got this constant need to present the worst possible version of himself.

actually if you look at the panels of him when hes talking about the guy being dead, just before he gets dramatic ridiculous exaggerated dazai about it, he doesnt seem to think of it so lightly

(smthn smthn dazai imposter syndrome. the need to deny any of his more human qualities because he feels they dont Fit him. and the links w his questions to atsushi at the beginning and end, his bs 'do i really seem like the type of guy to do x thing'.)

chuuya says hes acting inhuman, that his humanity isnt something people will believe because of the way he ACTS. and then chuuya does an example of his own Chuuya Humanity Act, an act of service for the people he cares about in the form of going to solve the situation himself. AND. ultimately, dazai ends up planning around this later to lead chuuya straight to him so the two of them can deal with it together.

skk pretty consistently ground eo to humanity. dazai through nullification/corruption, but outside of their abilities too (its the thought of dazai - more specifically, not thinking like him - that stops chuuya from killing N in stormbringer and denying verlaines assertion that he shouldnt have been born). and on the flipside, chuuya is part of the reason dazai doesnt khs during or after fifteen. dazais protecting people thing really starts out with chuuya. and again, chuuya makes it his business to call dazai on his shit. (even right the way back in chapter 31 of the main manga, we have that interaction over Q, with dazai saying he spared them only for self serving logical reasons, and chuuya saying he doesnt buy it).

this to me has always felt like part of that. its not 'youre not human', its 'the way you act makes it unbelievable that you are'. its an invitation to prove he is by doing something Real, something worth more than sleeping there til he dies.

and dazai does.