#meanwhile chuuya's journey has been him finding what can fill that hole inside himself and succeeding more or less

[videogamelover99]

you are so galaxy brain, I'm enjoying scrolling through your skk takes so much. I love the depth with which you see them both as individuals and their dynamic. I feel it's something sorely lacking in this fandom (I'm in the process of rage-writing Too Many fics in a fit of "if I want it done right I GUESS I have to do it myself") but I feel like you just Get It 😌😌😌I'm trying to think of a question to ask now so I have an excuse to hear you be right about them some more.

mmm, I've been seeing a lot of fics lately that depict dazai acting on his mental illness and harming himself in some way, and chuuya coming along to ~ save him ~ and being all "don't do it again" "okay I won't!" and it's really grinding my gears, what are your thoughts? How do you think chuuya would actually feel/think/react to witnessing or being acutely aware of dazai indulging his mental illnesses in that way? I think it's a really interesting thing to look at through Chuuya's eyes and I think his responses to it would be very complex.

Lets talk about Fifteen for a second.

It's something I noticed recently, that I immediately had to tell @originalartblog about because it comepletely made me re-think skk's entire relationship as well as their deal with mental illness.

(tw: in-depth talk about suicidal ideation, suicide, depression, you know, the works)

I think the fandom collectively tends to think of Chuuya as the "more stable" one, someone who, while maybe not being compeltely healthy, is still healthy enough to "take care of" other people, to take care of Dazai, specifically. And I kind of fell into that idea too, that while a lot of Chuuya's issues are similar to Dazai's issues, he has enough sense of purpose and companionship from the people around him to not be as bad as Dazai. If Chuuya is portrayed as suicidal, it's in a sacrificial sort of way, you know, the classic "I don't care if I live as long as everybody else gets to" type thing we see in a lot of heroic characters.

But then I reread the final fight in Fifteen and was like wait.

Consider this sequence of events:

Rimbaud reveals his true colors and urges Dazai and Chuuya to give him, Chuuya refuses, and fights the entire time with his hands in his pockets.

Dazai asks for his five minutes of "convincing Chuuya to die", at which Chuuya says "You can't convince me of anything."

Dazai says he changed his mind about dying, and Chuuya demands to know why, at which point Dazai gives his whole "living close to death" speech. They agree to team up.

Immediately after their talk, and Dazai saying "Chuuya convinced me not to die", Chuuya takes his hands out of his pockets.

5. A fight scene later, and Chuuya explains why he keeps his hands in his pockets the whole time, a mystery set up on par with the mystery of Arahabaki. Back in the arcade, Dazai asks why he's deliberately putting himself at risk: "It can't just be lazyness...You know someone stronger is gonna come around at some point, you can't afford to let your guard down in fights."

6. Then they beat Rimbaud. And what last words does he have for Chuuya? A plead for Chuuya to live.

I think Dazai's speech about finding a reason to live didn't just impact Dazai, but Chuuya, too. Chuuya convinced Dazai not to die yet, but the same goes the other way around, with Chuuya finally finding enough will to live to take his hands out of his pockets and finally protect himself properly. The hands in pockets thing (and by extension, the gloves) aren't a show of arrogance or boredom or even Chuuya's doubt of his own humanity - they are a show of how much Chuuya is willing to live at that moment, how much he wants to fight back to survive. And before Dazai urged him to beat Rimbaud? Chuuya was letting Rimbaud win.

By extension, the times when Chuuya uses Corruption are probably the times when he wants to live the most. Since Dazai is the only one alive who knows the reason for the gloves, it's a silent signal of "I trust you to keep me alive because I don't want to die yet".

My point is that passive suicidal ideation is *still* suicidal ideation. "If I don't fight back maybe at some point when I'm close to death I'll feel like I want to" is suicidal ideation. It comes back around in Stormbringer, when Chuuya questions why he should fight back against N when his own existence doesn't mean anything. Each one of his mistakes is treated as another reason he shouldn't exist. Chuuya was never okay and I don't understand why we keep pretending he was.

As for the specifics of the ask: Chuuya wouldn't "indulge" Dazai, because everything he hates about Dazai has to do with Dazai's depression and nihilism, because it is his own depression and nihilism. Honestly, if anything I see Chuuya's response to Dazai's mental illness being way more on the problematic side than people like to portray. He can't offer empathy, because he'll have to put himself in Dazai's shoes and that is actually mentally dangerous for him, because it's a mentality he's desperately fighting against in himself. Of course he lashes out. Of course he's angry. He's tried reaching out to Dazai (again, that phone call scene in SB), and Dazai doesn't want that, anyway, so why should he try?

That doesn't mean he's totally apathetic or cruel. Chuuya's acts of care have always been more on the physical side of things. We have Beast, where Chuuya is adamant about protecting Dazai's life both from others and from his own reckless behavior, but they never talk, and that's why the line "Dazai committed suicide without telling him anything" is so brutal. Chuuya honestly wanted Dazai to come to him and say something, but Dazai never did because they both have so many walls up a genuine conversaion seems impossible.