Breadstickcat

"Where are we going?" Phoebe asked, quickly catching up to Atsushi. Kyouka runs up on his other side, grabbing his hand so she didn't get left behind.

"You'll see," Akutagawa grumbles, keeping a brisk pace as they wove through downtown Yokohama.

Atsushi is colorblind. Red-green, to be specific. Which is one of the reasons he is not allowed to drive. Ever.

He can imitate voices really well. (You know, how cats can imitate their prey?) Yeah. He can do that too.

His eyes reflect light in the dark! This has nearly given Kyouka heart attack multiple times!

Standing ovation to this one. Imagine he only finds out about his colourblindness at the agency, like hey dude you kind of have this condition... How did you get this far in life without knowing

when dazai smacks akutagawa around in canon, they're running drills. dazai is not hitting him in misdirected anger or because he is venting his own suffering on him. akutagawa does not instinctually protect himself. in his fits of hyperviolence, he seeks to kill and be killed, and nearly is in beast, and in the course of his initial pursuit of atsushi.

he does not have the reflex or will or instinct to defend himself, and he is slow because he is having to consciously process the effort. his automatic reflex is to attack, but that will not stop him from being shot or overwhelmed or blindsided.

what they are doing in those scenes, what dazai is uniquely able to practice with him since rashomon can't pierce him, is not unlike cognitive behavioral therapy interventions. akutagawa is wired such that when he is triggered, he develops tunnel vision, pressing forward relentlessly without registering danger or responding to negative stimuli. this is a pattern developed from when he deemed dearh inevitable, and one which is liable to get him killed regardless of whether he has a reason to live.

he needs to consciously retrain his instinctual response, and he has to consciously and consistently reinforce it against his existing, much quicker instinct. he has to do it before he has the conviction or will to do it. and he has to do it over and over again, even when it isn't immediately life or death, because the instinct is self reinforcing, and the pattern he is trying to supplant it with is not yet.

skills are part of their users' framework for responding to their environment. jun'ichiro is anxious, but he can hide within light snow. kunikida has his notebook, but it has rigid limitations that he adapts to, similarly to how he works within the limitations of reality to keep from becoming consumed by his ideals.

akutagawa's skill, meanwhile, is wildly fucking disproportionate to akutagawa's constitution which is a problem when akutagawa wont react defensively. akutagawa is canonically frail, chronically ill, thin, and short (he's 5'8", but asagiri insists he's itty bitty every time he describes him in prose). rashomon, meanwhile, is monstrously powerful and hungry. it lends a false sense of untouchable violence when akutagawa himself is weak, and also is just really difficult to focus and control such that using it brings akutagawa into coughing fits. rashomon is also terrifying even in visage; it invites others to react with violence proportionate to their terror against the spectre of rashomon — but akutagawa is small, sick, and human; what is proportionate to rashomon is IMMENSE overkill if aimed at akutagawa. which is especially egregious because akutagawa will let them.

in other words, when dazai meets akutagawa, rashomon is as dangerous to its user as to anyone else. skills should not get their users killed. dazai is right. it's a shit skill.

akutagawa is vulnerable and self-destructive, and he and dazai are working to rewire his instinctual evaluation of his stakes. even when dazai punches akutagawa after akutagawa kills the mimic soldier, it's not a random act of violence or unregulated anger. the mimic soldier was not going to lead them to gide, there was no reality where they restrained him before he bit his cyanide, and he'd attacked dazai. but instead of reacting defensively at the opportunity, akutagawa fell to the former instinct, leaving himself wide open.

dazai reacts how he does because:

they are supplanting an ingrained instinct that is self reinforcing, the correction needs to be consistent to change the pattern and the former instinct needs to be discouraged with the same severity as the threat it poses;

by punching akutagawa first, dazai gave him notice and time to consciously muster the defense reaction theyre working on;

akutagawa needs to build an association between the defensive reaction and the triggering stimulus for this to work;

the context in which this happens is the exact sort of threat that rashomon is then ill equipped to handle— gide can see into the future, like oda, and mimic are military trained gunmen.

when dazai tells akutagawa that he couldn't ever defeat oda, he's not taunting him, he's right. akutagawa is relying on swift killing blows, but against someone who can see into the future, akutagawa is as vulnerable as a baby. and then, shortly after, that's what happens: gide wrecks his shit and is about to murder him dead when oda swoops in to grab dazai's dumb horrible baby kouhai who's trying to kill himself with the ambitious gusto of a horse.

as long as akutagawa fails to seek self-preservation, he is remarkably vulnerable. he's weak, and he's going to get himself killed. dazai doesn't coddle him about it for the same reason fukuzawa slaps ranpo for scampering into a police car with a murderer. you dont get praise for self endangerment.

dazai is not going to affirm a version of akutagawa that is trying to kill the boy dazai promised to save.

***

the argument of my post is that he did not. abuse implies maltreatment and intentional harm, taking advantage of a relationship to extert control and force, etc. i am suggesting that they have a mutual understanding and that this is an effort they are undertaking together; we do not see those negotiations or conversations, but we see very little of their relationship except for glimpses, and I am asserting that those glimpses of respect, understanding, and affection elucidate the details of the rest. none of this is to say it isn't violent. but they exist in violence, and akutagawa communicates in violence.

I am not holding them to the standard of behavior, communication, and pedagogy applicable outside of the context of genre fiction, and then I am further operating within their circumstances, personalities, environment, and narrative arcs.

thus, in impact, intent, and the characters' perceptions, I am suggesting that dazai did not abuse akutagawa, and that, rather, their dynamic, while not without tension, is not one of cyclical trauma, but of saving oneself through the other.

the crux of my argument and the framework i used to explore this analysis is that when you cut away presumption and artifice, the effect and details of their interactions don't align with abuse. and that when you shift to that lens, there emerges another story, one which, for me, untangled knots that had formed when I'd attempted to understand them through my assumptions of who they should be rather than who they are.

this is a layer that i think exists where they are sparring, and in those moments akutagawa is petulant and throws fits at dazai when changing patterns gets hard, and whenever dazai and akutagawa are so much like each other that they communicate less in words and more in withering glares over how embarassing and violating it is when someone understands you that well. 

(btw i love when akutagawa glares at dazai; he's done it a few times and he always aims to kill.)

anyway the fandom does this knee jerk thing where they decide something that is a core part of a character is deeply unhealthy and not the right way to live -- like when people frame kunikida's ideals and rigidity as unhealthy or burdensome. but the thesis of the overarching narrative is that there is no right way to live. so, you find what works for you and you chase it.

the illustration of this i always return to is his arc with kyouka: how akutagawa tries to do for kyouka what dazai did for him, and then IMMEDIATELY backs off when he realizes (i) the degree to which it wasnt helping and that (ii) she found her reason to live elsewhere. his relationship with kyouka just doesnt speak cyclical abuse to me; it speaks to something that worked for him for a long time even if now he's ready for something different with atsushi.

because atsushi really was what dazai was promising him. he told akutagawa that he would give him a reason to live, a path towards a meaningful life. everything before atsushi was triage, a lifeline, a stopgap, something for akutagawa to hold onto while dazai worked out what it would take to save him the way he was then beginning to think he could be saved too.

they understand the dark, ugly parts of each other implicitly. it's why he knew dazai was alive and somewhere in the city during dazai's four year sabbatical from his past. the degree to which what looks like violence objectively is experienced subjectively by akutagawa as affection is made evident by his immediate relapse when dazai resurfaced; by his attempts to slip back into his prior pattern of inverting his self destruction so that dazai would become angry at him over it. not unlike how easy it is to fall into childishness around a nurturing figure, or an older sibling.

but he's too grown and healed for that behavior; which is why dazai did not respond to akutagawa's tantrums. not to hurt him, or to be callous, or as an act of even unintentional abuse. but because akutagawa knew better and was regressing. dazai was well aware his overt attention would have only encouraged that regression. but he didn't withold his affection for akutagawa either; he nudged and maneuvered and brought akutagawa to where akutagawa needed to be to see where he belonged in their maturing, evolving dynamic.

and, if there were any doubt for me that they are communicating in a language to which the rest of us aren't privy, it's resolved by how the above framework makes sense of their conversation below.

Recently finish a commission for my beloved @breadstickcat !!

We really have the same brain cells because this meme has been in my head for a hot minute lol