The Great Catsby

Learning Curve ( words) by TheGreatCatsby
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dazai Osamu/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs)
Characters: Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu (Bungou Stray Dogs), Tanizaki Junichirou (Bungou Stray Dogs), Tanizaki Naomi
Additional Tags: figure skating AU, Ice Dancing, twizzles everywhere, those are some nice twizzles, Fluff, oda isn't in this fic but he's still dead
Series: Part 4 of Revival
Summary:

Dazai and Chuuya aren't ice dancers, but they're willing to take lessons from them.

This is a snippet from a Bungo Stray Dogs skk fic that I'll be posting soon about Dazai and Chuuya's first mission: 

He isn’t a dog. He is certainly not stupid.

Because he isn’t stupid, he can see that Dazai doesn’t quite hate him as much as he says he does. Dazai is fascinated. Chuuya can tell in the way Dazai looks at him sometimes like something he can use (like some kind of experiment he’s conducting) and it makes his stomach churn because he wants to be useful, but on his terms. Not because Dazai decided he was useful. Chuuya can decide his own usefulness.

Dazai keeps his distance at first. After being taken from the beach with a knife in his back that he wants to stab Dazai with and poison coursing through his veins, the next time Chuuya sees Dazai is in passing in the hallway of one of the Port Mafia’s skyscrapers. There’s another, younger kid with Dazai who looks a bit lost and scared. As they pass each other, Chuuya feels Dazai’s gaze on him and he turns to look back so that they lock eyes.

The look is fleeting enough that it’s only that — them looking at each other, observing. Chuuya hopes that Dazai will stay with Mori and that kid and do whatever it is that annoying smart kids do. He’s fine training with Kouyou even if learning proper fighting technique hurts, and even if Golden Demon stabs him more often than he’d like to admit.

He still refuses to use his fists on anyone but Dazai, but he won’t hesitate to use them on Kouyou’s Ability or anything that isn’t alive, like walls. The training area gets destroyed that way, but the Mafia apparently has money to build it back up over and over again so it looks like Chuuya was never there at all.

 Previous part. Time for the ADA and Chuuya interactions! 

• "Atsushi had only seen him once before, when falling from the Moby Dick. " Atsushi is thinking about Chuuya here. I constantly think about how Atsushi's decision to collaborate with the Port Mafia during that arc happened because he saw Chuuya ordering his men to protect the city. 
• “Why did you stay in the Mafia?” Atsushi is all of us. TBH. 
• The whole conversation with Atsushi is basically him trying to find some bit of optimism to the whole situation while also trying to understand. Chuuya doesn't push him away like Akutagawa would, but he's still a fairly closed off person despite not being mean about it. I think that Chuuya and Atsushi wouldn't mind each other. But, Chuuya wouldn't really want to disclose anything to Atsushi either. 
• Dazai is listening in because he's always listening in. And he figured Chuuya would be more forthcoming to Atsushi. And ALSO Dazai is the kind of crappy guy who would assign Atsushi to an overnight task that he himself could've done. 
• "So who was the real Dazai, and how did he feel about Chuuya?" One of the big things I try to answer in most of my SKK fics, or at least, that Dazai struggles with. It's one of the few questions he doesn't have an answer to. 
• " Driving happened to be the only area in his life where his ideals were loose." This about Kunikida HAS TO BE CANON. This man in S1 stopped his car across the road in the middle of traffic to take a PHONE CALL. 
• There's a lot of headcanons about the relationship between Chuuya and Kouyou, and Kouyou and Mori. Seeing the lengths Kouyou would go to in order to get Kyouka back, I decided to make her and Chuuya's relationship close but antagonistic. Kouyou would try to manipulate him into accepting a swift death, and Chuuya wouldn't have a problem stabbing her to escape. I think the Mafia is full of weird relationships like these, where two people can be close but have no problem hurting each other when it comes down to it. 
• Chuuya going to Ango is based on something one of the light novels mentioned (I saw this on tumblr) about Chuuya owing Ango a debt. I was like "oh they've met!" and decided to use it. 
• I decided that Ango wouldn't clear Chuuya's files like he did with Dazai because a) they weren't as close friends if at all and b) Chuuya's Ability is far more dangerous than Dazai's and Ango would never get away with somehow losing that information. 
• Dazai "I was going to let Mori torture you but I thought you wouldn't mind because you can handle it" Osamu is not very good with his emotions but he is VERY GOOD at completely disregarding others' emotions for the sake of The Plan™
• Basically, Dazai never thinks about what Chuuya wants. It would be nice if he did, but I feel like Dazai not consulting anyone about the plans he's involved them in is very, well, Dazai. 
• “I just thought,” Atsushi said, “that you talked to him, and, well, asked him how he felt about what was going on.” Catch Atsushi being passive-aggressive and calling Dazai out on his crap. 
• I had to make Yosano more aggressively call Dazai out on his crap because I love her and she would. 
• Re the Fyodor conversation: MANIPULATION!! Fyodor is a manipulative bastard. Also, Chuuya getting captured by Mori is something I thought would happen because Chuuya rushed back into Yokohama without a plan. And if Fyodor knew where Chuuya was, then in all likelihood the Mafia could also find him.

And that's up through chapter 13! More to come! 

 Once More is probably the fic I'm most proud of writing, and the longest fic I've ever completed. It's Bungo Stray Dogs, pairing Soukoku, and the summary is "Chuuya's phone is filled with messages from a partner who seems to want to get back in touch." 

I had this idea back in December, when I was new to the SKK fandom. I'd just made a twitter account for fandom, and was really excited to see what the other fans were doing on Twitter since they seemed more active there than on tumblr. I got into a conversation with a few people while on the bus to work and had this idea of Fyodor texting Chuuya pretending to be Dazai in order to manipulate him. One of the other writers liked the idea and wanted to write it, so we decided to both write a fic with this as the premise. 

So originally, Once More was meant to be a short one-shot. After I got home and started writing, I realized it was probably going to be a short multi-chapter fic. 10,000 words at most. That didn't happen. 

The first chapter is almost entirely text message format. I have a Thing™ for stories told in unconventional ways, and I'd read a few Haikyuu fics that used texts and skype to tell long stories really well. It's an interesting challenge to tell a story like that, but also it gets you inside the head of each character because you're pretending to be them texting. A majority of the fic was supposed to be in text format, but as the plot grew, that didn't happen either. Actually, chapter two already throws away the full text idea. 

Everything until the 1 December texts in the first chapter is Dazai interacting with Chuuya. Everything after that is Fyodor pretending to be Dazai interacting with Chuuya. Fyodor accessed the phone records before, and saw how Dazai interacted with Chuuya enough to be able to mimic it. Still, he's more formal than Dazai because he's Fyodor. I feel like he would be. 

The fic takes place after the whole Mori/Fukuzawa assassination attempt, which back in December hadn't been resolved at all. I had no idea Chuuya would be locked in a book for the entire time! But in a way that's better for how this fic turned out, since it means there's not much Chuuya did that I should have referenced. 

Chapter two also starts where I really wanted to make the story into a character study. (Notice how I didn't know what I wanted with the fic at first.) At that point I'd only written like one fic for Soukoku, but I really liked the idea of exploring their characters and relationship to each other. They have an interesting dynamic, but aside from two scenes in the manga and anime we still don't know much about it. That's what makes it so fun to write. 

Chapter two has this line from Chuuya's pov about Dazai: "He probably had better things to do." This is probably a really important part of my characterization of Chuuya. He wants to stand on his own two feet. He feels resentment that he's had to depend on Dazai. And being Dazai's partner, he felt responsible that he couldn't keep Dazai around. He felt and still feels that he isn't good enough for Dazai's attention, and although it isn't the sort of thing that keeps him from getting on with life, it's still under the surface. 

A few paragraphs later Chuuya thinks this: "But every day after Dazai left Chuuya’s mind kept going back to one thing: that Dazai left because Chuuya himself wasn’t a good enough partner." Even though before that, he goes through all the reasons Dazai probably left, all of them being just as valid as this one, this is the one that sticks in his mind. The next bit about it being nonsensical is also something I feel is important about Chuuya. He's self-aware. He knows that he can't control his emotions well enough and he knows that some of his thoughts concerning Dazai are irrational, and it's frustrating because he can't. And part of him doesn't want to be as detached as Dazai because he finds that kind of behavior...terrible isn't the right word, but it rubs him the wrong way. Chuuya doesn't think caring is a bad thing. 

This: “I’m sick of your shit,'” Chuuya muttered, but he kept staring at the message' sums up how I see Chuuya pretty much. CONFLICTED FEELINGS™. 

Then Chuuya starts thinking of the past, which is where my thoughts about Dazai start to come in. Dazai is really fascinating. He was absolutely horrible in the Mafia, and the only person we see behaving worse than him is Mori. In the Agency, he still retains some of his old questionable ways, but he also tries to be what a good person should be. 

In the past, Dazai says '“As gross as you are, don’t become disgusting like me. It,” Dazai’s smile tensed, “doesn’t suit you.”' It's probably something that frustrates him and scares him, that Chuuya isn't as dark as the Mafia should make him. It probably made him frustrated with Chuuya (in a "why do things affect you so much?" kind of way.) But he also didn't want Chuuya to become like him. I imagine Mafia!Dazai experienced a lot of self loathing, whereas ADA!Dazai feels more at ease with himself (not completely at ease, but more at ease.) 

In Fyodor's part of the chapter, Fyodor infers that Dazai can still feel things about and for other people (whereas Fyodor can't.) I've said this before, but I think Dazai can't do emotions. That doesn't mean he doesn't have them, but he's buried them for so long that a lot of the time he felt/feels nothing. Feeling nothing is unpleasant, but it's preferable to having emotions about people who will probably die or leave. That said, he still has emotions. He just can't process them, let alone deal with other peoples' emotions. He doesn't understand them, even if he's good at manipulating people. It makes Fyodor's job harder, but not impossible, since Fyodor is primarily manipulating Chuuya, who does actively feel his emotions. 

That's why Fyodor decides to give Chuuya info on why Dazai left the Port Mafia. By giving Chuuya the honesty and closeness Dazai never gave him, Fyodor can gain Chuuya's trust and use that against him. 

Chapter 3 is where the fic started developing an actual plot. Fyodor kidnaps Chuuya after luring him out. I kind of struggled with this part, because Dazai wouldn't offer Chuuya a place at the Agency, but Chuuya would be so thrown off by Dazai being open about why he left the Mafia that he'd want to find out what the offer was about. I don't think here that Chuuya is genuinely considering it, but that he wants a reason to see Dazai. Despite Dazai's absence, Chuuya is satisfied with his life in the Mafia and the work he's done. 

Chapter 4 starts with an Agency meeting. I love them, but they're hard to write. I find group things hard to write in general, because I don't want to forget that anyone is there, but it's also hard because not all of them are necessarily important to the conversation. 

At the end of this chapter, Chuuya is in Fyodor's hands, Mori thinks Chuuya is a traitor, and the Agency has to rescue him. Chuuya gets kidnapped a lot in this story, which someone commented on. They said they didn't like the way Chuuya was written because he got kidnapped twice over the course of the fic. I still struggle with whether or not I made the right decision, but I do think that I kept Chuuya strong despite his situation. Chuuya doesn't give Fyodor what he wants in this chapter, even though Fyodor tells him that he has nothing to lose. I find loyalty to be one of Chuuya's strongest driving forces, so it's used a lot in this fic. 

Anyway, that's it for this post! Next post will start with chapter 5. 

 I guess I'll also use this blog to write about the process of fic writing for some fics. At least, the ones that have more interesting backstories. 

So my most recent SKK fic, Do No Harm is a pandemic AU. I say where I got the idea in the notes, but even further than that, this kind of topic of contagious diseases and pandemics is a huge interest to me. Pathology is actually also a huge interest to me. I'm not good at science and I don't know a lot of the science behind a lot of diseases, but I still find it really fascinating. 

The disease in "Do No Harm" is a hemorrhagic fever (rather than the Spanish flu as originally suggested to me.) Hemorrhagic fevers are scary because of the bleeding they cause both inside and out. The most recent outbreak of hemorrhagic fever was Ebola in several countries in Africa, and I'd say that Ebola is the most well-known hemorrhagic fever that crops up. 

There's an excellent book called The Hot Zone by Richard Preston that details incidents of outbreaks involving hemorrhagic fevers. I read this a few years ago (probably around 2012) and it became relevant around the time of the Ebola outbreaks. It provides a good look at what hemorrhagic fevers are and why their outbreaks are so devastating. 

That said, a few liberties were taken for this fic. I based the virus in this fic off Marburg virus (which is very similar to Ebola, but had a major outbreak in Germany). Hemorrhagic fevers are extremely contagious, but they aren't actually easy to spread. These viruses spread through direct contact with bodily fluids, meaning that the bodily fluids of a sick person have to get into your bodily fluids for the virus to take. However, if you do happen to have end up with infected fluids inside of you, chances are you are going to get sick. 

That method of transfer is different from, say, the flu, which is a lot more easy to transfer. Viruses like the flu can be transferred through the air, by coughing and sneezing and by inhaling particles of the virus. That means that being in the same room as someone with the flu can get you sick. Something like the flu is easier to spread, so a flu outbreak could more easily lead to a pandemic than something like Ebola could. 

The flu also lasts longer. Severe hemorrhagic fevers tend to kill off their victims faster, which gives the virus less of a window to spread. People with those viruses are also less mobile once the severe symptoms kick in, which further hinders the virus' movement. 

Hemorrhagic fever viruses can't be spread through air or aerosol (droplets in the air), but for the purposes of this fic I made it so that the virus can be spread via aerosol. Viruses that spread in this way can't travel on the air, and survive for short periods of time in droplets released into the air. It isn't as bad as the flu, but it's easier to spread than a standard hemorrhagic fever. Because the setting is Japan, which has high quality healthcare and medical facilities, I wanted the virus to be easier to spread. Even though I think something like a hemorrhagic fever would be able to spread a bit in Japan simply because they've never seen it before, which could result in delays of treatment and improper handling, I still thought the virus would have to have an easier method of spreading in order for it to have the impact on major urban areas that it did in the fic. 

The title, "Do No Harm," has to do with the promise doctors make upon becoming doctors. It's also a reference to a memoir by Henry Marsh, a British neurosurgeon, which details the complex feelings and decisions and situations that come with being a doctor. I thought that sort of sentiment was relevant to the decisions Dazai and Yosano have to make in the fic. It's surprising how often there isn't a clear-cut right or wrong answer in medicine. 

Resources for those interested in more: 

• The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
• Do No Harm by Henry Marsh
• The World Is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic (Time Magazine Article) 
• The Fight Against Ebola (Vice Documentary)