Tw for discussion about suicide ideation
Begging the Bungou Stray Dogs fandom to recognise that Dazai is not the only suicidal character in the series and that the “people find it hard to live” narrative isn’t just about him.
Atsushi has contemplated multiple times whether or not he has earned the right to live. This includes but is not limited to; the first time he met Akutagawa, the train bombing incident in S1 and being freed from Q ability.
He also was fully going to let Gozen behead him before Fyodor stopped him, simply saying at least now I’ll be reunited with my friends…who he believed at that point were dead.
Kyouka asked Akutagawa to kill her when she met him. She voluntarily went to the police station knowing she’d be executed for her crimes. She’s alive only because Dazai convinced her that she deserved another chance at life.
Similar to Yosano who Ranpo had to convince deserved to live even after what she had done during the war. Not to mention the instances where she’s almost died to use her ability.
Every time Chuuya willingly uses Corruption knowing it could kill him but specifically within Dead Apple. Telling Dazai not to stop him in the Dragons Head Incident and using it when Dazai was believed to be dead in the Gifted Suicide Incident.
Also that one time in Stormbringer when he’s being tortured and almost gives up on everything. And of course most notably Kunikida who has almost gotten himself killed on multiple occasions and is very reckless with his own life.
Cause he believes that fulfilling his ideals matters more than his own life. He hugs Aya when there’s a bomb strapped to her so if she dies she won’t die afraid. He throws himself out of a helicopter with a bomb to buy his friends more time. He had to be dragged away from a cage filling with poisonous gas in Dazai’s entrance exam because he refused to leave those imprisoned to die.
And those are all just off the top of my head but it’s not all of them.
I don’t say all of this to try and dimmish Dazai’s trauma and him being suicidal. I say it because a lot of the time in discussions and fandom content he’s made out to be the only one struggling like this. With people going so far as to say no one else understands him because of that.
When many characters have and do struggle with kind of thing, be it past or present. And not recognising that leads to these characters having their struggles overshadowed or seen as less important because they’re not “as bad as Dazai’s.”
Which is a bad mentality to have in general and quite frankly is not the way we should be looking at any of this.
Also not for nothing but many, many characters in this series have walked straight into the fog in Dead Apple. You know the one they all thought had the power to make gifted to kill themselves without any safety precautions whatsoever…so there’s also that.
