#ykw at least aku and atsu communicated about their issues with each other

[lucifermeo]

something about the central theme of shin soukoku being "am i worthy of living?" while for soukoku it's actually "is living worth it for me?" is so funny to me like skk said we gotta out-edge our kouhai's existential crisis

aka what happens when your self-esteem is rock-bottom versus what happens when your sense of self is bigger than god. don't get me wrong there's enough of self-hatred to pass around between skk but while they do blame their own inhumanity for why living is so painful, they also know they're the shit and so they turn to judge the worthiness of living (as a human) itself

which is also why dazai being sskk's mentor is so funny. if you think about it he's literally just their personal "person most worthy of living" mascot who doles out 'you did well's like band-aids for their issues. but there's always this disconnect because dazai can't empathise with them so he does nothing for the root of the problem and they have to fix it themselves through each other. which is hilarious because then

everyone: *comes at dazai for being ass at this mentorship thing*

dazai: have you considered our vibes don't match the central themes of our characters are incompatible?

(also there's no chuuya & sskk interaction in the main manga/LNs but if you consider what asagiri himself wrote for adaptations as canon-ish then his interaction with akutagawa has the exact same disconnect that dazai has. like you would think dazai just naturally has low empathy so chuuya would be better right? no. aku was on his usual 'i need dazai-san's approval to prove my worth' in the onsen drama cd and dead apple stageplay and the whole time chuuya's just '??????' not because he doesn't know aku is like that but he doesn't get it. it's even funnier in the DA stageplay because now chuuya suddenly needed aku to defeat rashoumon and get to dazai/the building but he doesn't know how to motivate him and so decided to just....copy dazai AKDJFJFKSSK like taunting aku by saying he doesn't understand dazai at all, calling him worthless without rashoumon??? i mean by the end he did sorta imply he didn't mean it to akutagawa and say dazai already approved of aku since this is chuuya after all, but it shows when it came down to it chuuya truly gets dazai and not at all akutagawa)