#anyways this is really just me crying abt not being able to write dazai's past

[chibun-days]

thoughts on my interpretation of dazai + his past in regards to fanfiction writing

this mainly applies to dazai during 15 and his time in the pm, but could work for ada dazai albeit with minor adjustments

see on the one hand i have the urge to write dazai as incomprehensible unfathomable indecipherable. he'll be darkness incarnate pretending at being human, and he can be something colder and crueler than anyone else in the world. he can be something dead. he'll be a living corpse, closer to death than living.

on the other hand i want him to just be a mess of a human being who's a little too smart and a little too empty and little too hurt. he can be someone who's tried desperately to find meaning in life, failed at every turn, and buries himself in darkness instead until it permeates his very being. he chokes on kindness, if that one episode of bsd wan where atsushi gives him flowers is any indication. he can see himself as irredeemable, regardless of how other people perceive him. he can genuinely believe that he can't possibly have positive human relationships not founded on mutual goals or manipulation, as i write in his perception of chuuya at the start of 15.

the issue with both of my interpretations (i am fonder of the second one) is that we haven't gotten any actual backstory for dazai. we know what he was like at fourteen/fifteen—but by then, he'd already established his worldview and opinion that there is no meaning in living. mori literally finds him when he tries to commit suicide; the pm may have encouraged his cruelty and violence, but that was all already there. what happened before that instilled in dazai's mind that he wanted to die? despite being given a frankly massive amount of coverage in light novels, the manga, and the anime, we still know virtually nothing about dazai's past. it's so difficult to properly analyze and understand dazai's character and actions because we don't know the reasoning behind these things. all individuals are dependent on their past experiences—it would be necessary to understand dazai's past in order to get a better picture of his character as a whole.

my first interpretation assumes that dazai has, from birth—similarly to yozo in no longer human—always been "empty". it assumes that dazai has never felt like a human being, never been able to understand them, and never been able to relate to them. the second interpretation, however, assumes that while dazai may have felt alienated as a child, there is a reason for said alienation and the ensuing suicide attempt and worldview.

the key part, however, brings into question what exactly the reason was: bsd follows (very, very lightly) the ramifications of a post-war setting. you see it in fukuzawa and yosano's backstories, as well as fukuchi's motive in villainy. did dazai somehow participate in the war? was it instead abuse by an organization or by family that impacted dazai's understanding of living? it's impossible to guess the canon backstory of dazai, but i think it'd be reasonable to assume that there is at the very least a concrete reason or event in dazai's past that results in his mannerisms and behavior that we see in canon. i would be hesitant to go into government experiment/inhuman territory, however, because that ruins a very important parallel: the one between chuuya and dazai.

i've mentioned it before—essentially, dazai is human but feels/acts inhuman, while chuuya isn't human (though certain evidence suggests otherwise, but the point stands) but feels/acts wildly human. they're eachother's antithesis; however, they wholeheartedly and without a doubt believe that the other is irreplaceably human. if dazai does turn out be some aspect of the book (as theories suggest), that doesn't quite make sense in regards to the consistency of this parallel, which is very important overall to soukoku's dynamic. i have so many more thoughts about this but i'll stop here for today.

in short i am trying to write a cohesive backstory for dazai that actually makes sense in my fic (i am failing)