Behind the Fic: Once More [Part 2]

[catsbythegreat]

 Part 1 here. The rest of this is just gonna be me reading through the chapters and picking out things that I have to comment on! Picking up on Chapter 5: 

• "The best he could do was brush off Dazai’s constant remarks about death and convince himself that it wasn’t real." This is a flashback, but I always wondered how Chuuya really felt about Dazai's wish to die. I think it would have scared him a lot, but since he couldn't do anything about it, he'd push it away instead of agonizing over it. 
• "He needed to see Dazai, to have him right there and solid to know that Dazai hadn’t gone and offed himself." This line comes from a bit of a personal issue I have about fearing constantly about the death of other people and thinking that they might have died if they haven't been around for a while. 
• When Dazai tells Ango that the kidnapped executive is Chuuya, Ango totally knows what's up. But if he said anything about it, he'd probably end up in another car accident. 
• "He’d been told his whole life, by Dazai, by Kouyou, by Mori, by everyone he’d met before then on the streets, not to depend on other people. Yet the very nature of his Ability demanded that he depend on someone. Life was cruel like that." Honestly this is one of the things I think bothers Chuuya the most, and there's a lot in the fandom about how Chuuya depends on Dazai (and vice versa). One of the biggest struggles in writing SKK is exploring that without making it seem like Chuuya isn't independent. It's an interesting thing to play with, the idea that being dependent on others doesn't mean you aren't independent. 
• Chuuya doesn't know about the book, and I like playing with that. Clearly Yokohama is important to people from all over the world, but to someone who doesn't know why, it must be a bit frustrating. 
• Chapter 6: I really liked writing Atsushi being concerned about Dazai. He doesn't really have the same kind of baggage Dazai has with regards to the politics in the city, and he doesn't know much about Chuuya in canon. This poor kid just wants everyone to be okay. 
• "Anger burned in Akutagawa’s eyes, and Dazai wondered if he felt something like betrayal at learning that someone else he’d looked up to had decided to leave." Okay, okay, I really love thinking about the relationship between Akutagawa and Chuuya. There wasn't much at the time of writing to go off aside from some official art of Chuuya being silly and Akutagawa being taciturn, but I figured that they would know each other and work together based on their rankings. Now that things like the Port Mafia Onsen drama have come out, I know that they actually do have a relationship, and reading back on this is somehow really satisfying knowing that. 
• Again playing with things we all know but Chuuya doesn't, only the people at the Agency seem to know about Fukuzawa's Ability (and Akutagawa probably does, since he was present for Dazai explaining it to Atsushi). I think that to someone like Chuuya, who can't control a hugely useful part of his Ability, Fukuzawa's Ability is like a miracle. He wouldn't have to depend on Dazai anymore to neutralize it. And I think Fyodor, if he's as good as he's meant to be, would have the information on Fukuzawa and would use it. 
• I have a headcanon based on IRL Chuuya that BSD Chuuya likes to write often. He keeps notebooks. Some of them are like journals and some have poetry, and they're the most private thing in the world to him. 
• Chapter 7 starts with a flashback, and Chuuya caring for Dazai's wounds after he's been tortured, because I love the idea of Chuuya being a proper partner and patching Dazai up. I love Chuuya caring despite this being par for the course. 
• "Pain, he didn’t enjoy despite his desire to die." Dazai says this to Atsushi towards the beginning of BSD, which is why I also headcanon that he doesn't self harm. His scars come from attempts at suicide and torture at the hands of other people. 
• "Chuuya’s own scars and injuries would be hidden where people couldn’t see, beneath pants and layers of shirts and jackets, perhaps some days beneath gloves." Another headcanon of mine, because a lot of times people assume that Chuuya had it easy under Kouyou. I think Kouyou would want Chuuya to have the appearance of someone who got it easy, but he would need a lot of the same training and I think her cruelty would be hidden, since she would value the appearance of being strong. It's to Chuuya's advantage to look unaffected at all times, at least physically if he can't emotionally. (I also think that part of the reason Dazai wore excessive bandages was that so people would underestimate him by thinking he was injured. He kind of does this during the Lovecraft fight in Chapter 31 when he wears a fake cast.) 
• Fyodor using bandages against Chuuya as a dig at Dazai might be my weakness. 
• Chapter 8 has Dazai choosing to not let Yosano use her Ability on Chuuya. I think that the Agency in general probably doesn't use Yosano's Ability on prisoners unless they're about to die, because the slow recovery from injury makes it less likely that the prisoner will escape. 
• "He wasn’t going to be the one to break first." Dazai and Chuuya both have this problem, I think, showing weakness to each other. Which leads to bad communication. 
• Dazai says that he wouldn't have invited Chuuya to join the Agency, which I think is kind of true. I don't think that would be his first thought even if Chuuya somehow got out of the Mafia, for a lot of reasons. The Agency was Dazai's out from the Port Mafia. In a way, it's his. Having the past follow him there isn't something he would want, or it would take him a while to get to that point. 
• At the end of Chapter 8, Dazai decides to have Atsushi watch over Chuuya because Atsushi has a lot of hope. I think Atsushi in general is really good at looking after people, because he genuinely wants to help them and make them feel comfortable. He doesn't want them to feel like he's felt in the past. And tbh, I also have a weakness for thinking about how characters who haven't interacted much or at all in canon would interact with each other. 

So that was chapters 5-8! Until next time! 

Comments

[epithalamium]

Having the past follow him there isn't something he would want, or it would take him a while to get to that point.

This is probably one of my fave parts of the fic, and Idk how other people reacted to that but I thought it was incredibly IC for Dazai. Not even for Chuuya, who wasn't empty and actually cared about people's lives. (And there's also the way that Chuuya's loyalty lies with the mafia from the start. Chuuya might have thought of it, but he would never.)

Also Kouyou making sure that the wounds she inflicted weren't noticeable is so damned scary and I can totally see her doing that. She's very precise and a stickler for appearances/etiquette, no matter how strict she actually is.

[catsbythegreat]

People were angry at Dazai but they understood where he was coming from with that.

And yeah that Kouyou headcanon is like dksfjaklfjdslkfas I just --she seems pretty ruthless when it comes down to it and I don't think she would be easy on whoever she was taking care of despite what things may appear to be.

[epithalamium]

Pretty much the expected reaction to canon Dazai tbh :'D

YES like even with Kyouka, whom she was so very protective of, there's that scary steely quality to Kouyou anyway? She's defo a velvet glove over an iron fist kind of person.