The Great Catsby

So I've been commissioned to write a fic where Chuuya and Dazai talk about Oda and friendship in general, and I love the idea, which got me thinking -- I'm a bit shocked I've never written it before. 

I've written Dazai and Chuuya talking about why Dazai left the Mafia, and I've written Oda talking to Chuuya, but not Chuuya and Dazai having a conversation about what the friendship meant. 

In the fandom I noticed there is a tendency for some people to pit Chuuya and Oda against each other in terms of importance to Dazai, and after a while writing about these people and learning more about them I've come to the interpretation that while they were both important to Dazai, Odasaku was more emotionally important, while Chuuya was the first person who showed trust in Dazai in terms of trusting Dazai with his life. Chuuya is probably one of the few people who works extremely well with Dazai -- however, I don't think they were what you could call friends. I think they didn't know what to do with each other. 

I also think, ironically, Dazai has had deeper/more meaningful friendships than Chuuya has. Chuuya's "friends" in the Sheep were using him, and the friends (I'm not sure if they were from the Sheep or not) in the Mafia died. The people he associates with in the Mafia now are kind of on a separate level to him, and quite a few of them want to hold people at arm's length as well. I don't think there's anyone he would deeply trust his emotions to. In fact, I don't think he trusted Dazai with his emotions, either. While he's more open with his emotions and thoughts than a lot of the Mafia characters, I think there's a big part of him that wouldn't want to rely on any of them when he truly needs it, either because he's been taught that people can only depend on themselves or because he isn't sure how they'd react. A lot of the deeper issues he might have about his humanity and Corruption are probably things he wouldn't trust anyone with, except maybe Dazai. Maybe.

After all, Dazai only knows about things because of circumstances Chuuya didn't really anticipate him being part of. 

So I think the concept of love and a real friendship is a bit foreign to Chuuya, who's always had to be the stronger person in his relationships because people were depending on him for something. The only exception to that was Dazai, because they were pretty evenly matched and made up for each others' deficits. But Dazai did manage to find that in Odasaku, which is why he took his words so much to heart. I think whatever conversation they'd have about it would be really insightful to Chuuya, and would teach him not only about friendships but give him a different perspective on the Dazai that he thought he knew back then, and probably would make it easier to reconcile that with who Dazai is trying to be now. 

And it will probably make him long for that sort of thing even more because he realizes he's never had it. 

(Let's try this again): On tumblr a while back I was asked what I found compelling about Dazai and Chuuya as characters and as partners. So I'm crossposting the post here, and I'll probably be crossposting more meta here as I figure out what I want to put on this journal. So, here's my long thoughts on Dazai, Chuuya, and skk:

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