silly little headcanon that got way too long and detailed as i typed it out alert:
basically pre-being picked up by mori, dazai, who was bored and lonely, got into the habit of reading every single dystopia/post-apocalypse book he could get his hands on, no matter the actual quality, and strategize his way through thinking how he'd survive that wasteland and/or overthrow that government in the unlikely event it happened and he didn't kill himself immediately (he accidentally invented several methods that would go straight onto the geneva convention if he told anyone about it... he was just being a little silly <3). once he got into the pm and even afterward, one of his primary Bonding Methods was just randomly throwing out the question, "if you were living in an apocalypse with an environment like x and a government like y and you had z amount of supplies, how would you survive them?". he and mori got really into this (mori was extremely kind of sad when chuuya came into the picture and dazai became more invested in playing this game with him). no abilities allowed because that makes it too easy.
anyway. very silly. dazai was pathologically unable to stop himself from laughing at chuuya's face whenever he debunked one of his ideas. he even did this with akutagawa for reasons that remain unknown, though he never failed to use this as a 'learning opportunity' and ruthlessly criticize aku's lack of strategic thinking.
to dazai's eternal resentment ango is actually one of the best people to play it with, and oda was... not that good. he's a himbo, your honor, he doesn't get this stuff.
ANYWAY. in the ada he uses it to teach the kiddos tactics and also have fun/be nostalgic. fyodor is vaguely offended dazai never offered to play with HIM. kunikida and ranpo love it but kuni will never admit it (he's kind of bitter that he can't use doppo poet to cheat code his way through everything). fukuzawa got weirdly invested the one time he played it. yosano doesn't really like it because the idea of treating injuries in such unsanitary conditions gives her hives, but naomi is actually pretty good at it! etc etc
hey did you dig into my childhood inner psyche bc planning what i'd do in apocalypse scenarios was one of my hobbies as a child. except mine usually ended in leading a biker gang so they were rather fantastical.
anyway. i really really like this hc and your takes on how good the other characters are at dazai's game. he was exactly the right type of weird little kid for this. dazai 100% would have played this with hirotsu while they were walking into suribachi. I think gramps would have been pretty good at it, too. he's survived many mafia bosses now, i think an apocalypse goes with his morning tea.
i agree with ango being really good at it too, and oda... not as much. the man is meant to exist around other people whether he likes it or not.
funnily enough i think ranpo would be painfully bad at it. he can read other people, but as far as actual survival skills? someone help him. please.
little thought games like this kind of go in line with Dazai being based off the No Longer Human novel, as well. one of the things that stuck with me the most from that novel are some of the word games Yozo played with his acquaintances, namely the game of opposites. (If you haven't read it-essentially, it was a debate over what the true 'opposite' of a concept was. ex. what is the opposite of a flower? you could say rock, but that's still an element of nature, where metal is something man-made, and is not so delicate, so the opposite of a flower could be a metal block, etc. i've played it with friends before, its quite fun). i could see Dazai (character) himself playing that as well. Weird kid inclined towards thought experiment games. I like this a lot
