1.3- There’s no need to act like a detective when there’s no case (and other complaints)
There’s so much to unpack in Chapter 1 Scene 3– Just. So much. Whatever I write really won’t do this scene justice, and whatever words I use won’t properly convey my sheer frustration when watching/reading this scene.
HOWEVER, the same can be said for many, many scenes in the future. This is only the first of MANY “wow there’s a lot to unpack here” scenes. So I’d better get used to analyzing these. I plan on analyzing stuff like The Dark Era and 15, both of which have. Just. So much. Dazai. In Them. Just Dazai Doing Dazai Things.
Anyway.
Moving on.
Let’s start with how he completely ignores Atsushi’s self-deprecation. Atsushi waits in the warehouse with him, waiting for the tiger to show up. Atsushi questions if the tiger will really show up and Dazai reassures him that yes, it will, and not only will it show up, but Dazai himself will be able to easily defeat it. Atsushi responds to this by essentially saying four main points [paraphrased to shorten them—>] 1- “You’re so cool and confident” 2- “Not like me LMAO I suck” 3-“I suck so much that I’m homeless and will probably starve in the street” and 4– “I’d be better off dead”.
Dazai’s response to all of this? He just looks at him. Doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t say “You’ll be ok, I’m sure we can work something out”. At this point, he undeniably plans on recruiting him. Yet he allows him to believe that he’ll probably starve. If Dazai was anyone else, I’d also criticize him allowing Atsushi to be like “I’d be better off dead”, but let’s be real, he was probably thinking “LOL YEAH Wouldn’t we all”. I don’t believe he has the capability at the moment to realize wishing death upon yourself is not a good sign and should be more discouraged than encouraged, so I’ll let him off the hook for this one.
Atsushi hears a noise in the distance and gets scared that it’s the legendary tiger. Dazai completely dismissed Atsushi’s fear by claiming the noise was “just the wind”. Combined with his facial expression, that’s more dismissive than reassuring. But I’ll let that one go too. Maybe he didn’t realize what face he was making. That sometimes happens, right? You say something and don’t really realize you’re making a certain face while you’re saying it. [I hate to forgive him twice in a row like this, but I’m not even up to my first main bullet point for Things Dazai Was An Asshole About in this scene. I really gotta speed through everything I thought was “unimportant”].
AND here we are, Dazai’s first major offense in 1.3– the way he explains his deduction! The way he goes about explaining his thought process always bothered me, but I was never really sure how to put it into words. If I had to though, I’d say the part that bothers me the most is how it comes off an an accusation. It’s as if he’s saying “Aha! Your story doesn’t add up- I found all the holes in it!”. It’s like he’s accusing Atsushi of lying, even though he’s well aware that not only did Atsushi not intentionally lie, but he knows less about “the tiger” than Dazai himself. As the title of this post says, there’s really no need for him to act like a detective when there’s no case.
Dazai goes through Atsushi’s story piece by piece, pointing out and tearing down its flaws, disproving the entire thing (or at least proving that it would be incredibly unlikely for it to have played out the way Atsushi described). He builds the tension in a nearly theatrical way— maybe he was trying to increase Atsushi’s stress on purpose? At first I thought it was the full moon that summoned Atsushi’s tiger form- after all he’s called “Beast Beneath The Moonlight”. But given that that never is the rule for when the tiger form appears again, and given that it wasn’t implied that either the moon’s presence or a full moon summoned the tiger in the past (since the tiger appeared in Yokohama “two weeks ago”, and therefore not during a full moon, and the tiger doesn’t appear every single night— therefore not always during a regular moon.) — since we know it’s not the moon that’s involuntarily bringing out the tiger, we can assume it’s something else, and stress is a reasonable guess.
Given all of that, Dazai’s unnecessarily dramatic reveal of Atsushi’s story being inaccurate can be assumed to be an attempt to cause enough stress to release Atsushi’s top secret tiger fursona. [that’s right I’m making jokes again. I accidentally forgot to be funny for a few paragraphs. Sorry ‘bout that.]. But was any of this truly necessary? There are two things I wonder about the BSD universe. The first one is wouldn’t they logically have some sort of way to determine of someone is or isn’t an ability user? Or at least to find remnants of ability usage? If not then the legal system would suck. It would be completely broken. Imagine trying to hold a trial when everyone’s claiming that they actually were mind-controlled into committing a crime, or that it wasn’t them but simply an illusion of them that committed the crime. There must be some sort of way to determine these things. Assuming there is, there’s no reason for Dazai to force Atsushi to transform- or even to wait for him to transform on his own! He could simply say “hey I think you’re actually the tiger we’re after”, and get him ability-tested with whatever technology (or ability-sensing abilities) exists.
The only reason not to is if you’re worried about Atsushi’s tiger criminal record of all his tiger crimes being used against him when he gets tested for super secret tiger DNA or whatnot. Which leads us to the second thing I wonder about the BSD universe. Surely they have some laws in place to protect first-time ability users, wouldn’t they? People like Hirotsu or Kenji, who have potentially destructive abilities, probably caused significant damage on their very first usage. Surely every single person who was unlucky enough to be born with unfathomable destruction right at their fingertips isn’t stuck sitting in jail for the rest of their lives. So why would Atsushi? There’s got to be some legal clause protecting him, considering he was unaware that he even had an ability in the first place up until now. So because of all that I don’t buy that -
1) It was necessary for Dazai to goad Atsushi into transforming into his tiger form
And
2) Dazai’s later claims about Atsushi being arrested for tiger crimes are, in any way, legit.
But I’ll get back to that second one later, in the next chapter.
All in all,. There was no reason for Dazai to even bring Atsushi to the warehouse in the first place.
But let’s say there was. Let’s say there’s something major I’m overlooking. It was necessary, and Atsushi was going to transform into a tiger anyway, regardless of what Dazai does or says. That’s fine, that’s great, that’s not even remotely close to Dazai’s biggest offense here.
Dazai lets Atsushi rampage around as a tiger for a while. It doesn’t really feel fair to compare this to him allowing Chuuya to use Corruption longer than necessary, since we know (and can easily see) how painful Corruption is. And I doubt Atsushi’s tiger form is anywhere near as painful. I won’t even claim that it’s painful at all. But we can assume it’s at least unpleasant. If not the form itself, the stress of losing yourself to something deep inside you that you can’t control sounds absolutely terrifying. And Dazai should know this. Dazai should know this, if not from it being basic common sense, then at least from working with Chuuya and knowing Q. Both of them have abilities that cause a lot of harm. Both of them are/were treated as a monster that must be dealt with because of their abilities. Both of them have a rocky relationship with their abilities— willing and ready to use them, yet seemingly terrified of them and feel like it makes them less “human”. Atsushi is exactly the same— he checks off all the aforementioned boxes. And Dazai should see that. He has enough firsthand experience to recognize what he’s working with, does he not?
He should recognize Atsushi’s current situation, and, well, he’s trying to be good now, isn’t he? He should know, at least on a logical level, that the “good” thing to do would be to nullify the ability as soon as it activates. But he doesn’t. I guess you can call it a morbid fascination on his part— a sense of curiosity that arises when he’s testing people’s limits. When he wants to see how far he could push them, or how far they’d go on their own if they’re not stopped. But psychological damage isn't the only type of damage occurring here. The warehouse is getting destroyed. It’s getting torn to pieces around him. Atsushi, this child who very clearly probably has some form of anxiety at the mere thought of a tiger being near his location, will not only be forced to face the reality of this feared tiger being none other than himself, but he’ll also have to see with his own two eyes the sheer extent of damage that it he can do in a matter of minutes. If Dazai really needed to watch Atsushi’s rampage then fine, but once all of his surrounding started getting torn to shreds, he really should have realized enough is enough and nullified it instantly.
He does, of course, nullify him once he has no choice, and only increases any pain Atsushi may have suffered in tiger form by promptly tossing him to the ground; a completely unnecessary move, made for the sake of being comedic [ Typical Dazai! *laugh track plays in the background like this is some old sitcom*]. But seriously though. Throwing him to the floor like that was pretty unnecessary. And must have hurt. The floor is literally concrete.
And Dazai strikes once again in his endless “failing to mention important details to his coworkers” crime spree! I’ve already spoke about this in detail in 1.1, but I’ll reiterate here: Dazai wastes everyone’s time (but Kunikida’s most often) by intentionally messing with their work schedules and causing them to do more work than necessary— either because he already completed the job he sent them to do, or because he’s intentionally hiding crucial information regarding the job they’ve been sent on.
So now Kunikida, Kenji, Yosano, and Ranpo all have to work overtime, in the middle of the night, because Dazai decided he was in one of his Silly Goofy Moods.
Initially this would be around where I’d end this section, but @travalerray’s tags from part 1.1 are relevant to this part and it would be a shame to ignore them
THIS IS A VERY GOOD POINT AND SHOULD BE DISCUSSED MORE OFTEN
Listen. I was initially going to focus more on this in regards to Chuuya, because of all people, Dazai really seems to shove it in Chuuya’s face the most. Most of the time, Dazai doesn’t bring up or explain his ability unless 1- He’s meeting someone who doesn’t know his ability yet, or 2– it’s relevant to the conversation ( Something like ”how will you defeat him?” “Oh I’ll nullify his ability”).
It seems a bit.. disproportionate- the amount of times he finds ways to “casually” mention to Chuuya “Oh yeah you know how my ability is nullification?” “Remember how I nullify abilities” “I’m the only person who could deal with Q. Y’know. Because I can nullify his ability” “Guess you can’t fight me with your ability, because. Guess what. I can nullify it.” But that’s all something I’ll unpack later. Probably when I get up to talking about that Double Black chapter.
But you’re right, @travalerray, and he does do a lot of theatrics when dealing with pretty much everyone around him (specifically Atsushi, Akutagawa, Kunikida, Chuuya, and any enemy).
And as you said, it’s a manipulation tactic. He does it to show that he’s always in control- that nothing that happens is a surprise to him- or furthermore— that half the stuff that happens is stuff that he intentionally caused, and it’s all part of some top secret grand plan he has.
He portrays himself to the people around him (or more specifically, to people he considers naive or gullible enough to fall for it [ie Akutagawa and Atsushi]) as practically “all-knowing” and “all-powerful”. I mean, people often use puppet-master symbolism for him. And they’re not wrong.
But that’s all I’m gonna analyze this time.
Come back next week (or whenever, idk) for another exiting chapter of “Dazai Was An Asshole All Along?? What A Shock! If Only There Were Plenty Of Red Flags To Warn Us!!”
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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