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hopefull-mindset · 5 months

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Labeling it as Abuse Doesn’t Make Sense, Sorry

(Had to unfortunately repost because Tumblr was broken)

In my huge overview of the abuse in BSD, I went over the relationships between the director and Atsushi in both Beast and the main story, as well as Dazai and Akutagawa. Then I went over the Port Mafia’s environment and Kyouka’s abuse being more than just Akutagawa’s doing, fundamentally being structural abuse within a community that condones abuse as a way to teach their subordinates. I went into that frustrated and fed up with how people view abuse, trying my best to go over things people misunderstood the most about how the narrative handled them.

There was one outlier in this discussion, one I was absolutely prepared to have more to speak about, but went out of it confused and underwhelmed because it ended up not being an abusive dynamic. You noticed, right? I didn't mention Mori and Dazai because there was barely anything there to say it was abusive. I still, of course, went over it in my post because still, the point was to go over the misunderstandings. Looking back at that section though, I think I did a poor job really explaining why abuse as a label here doesn't work.

I kept saying that I “didn’t understand why people thought this” and that it “didn't make logical sense for Mori to do certain things” because I thought it was incredibly obvious as someone who has went back and read their scenes together again. I thought that my explanation was enough after all my points I made before that section, but maybe I've underestimated how much this fandom conflated how much evidence they have to say this after reading posts about it.

Do not conflate me saying “its not abusive” to “it didn't have any psychological effect on Dazai”. You can have a messed up relationship with an adult and is not fit to be labeled abusive. I don't regret how I talked about it, I regret not going over how fanon this actually is and expressing my confusion deeper. It's been eating at me and I don't want to overuse the talking point of abuse, but I felt like it. I needed a break from the Oda Sakunosuke research exhaustion.

I don’t want to be a pity party, but as a victim myself, I’m a little aggravated at how loosely “abuse” has been used. I already went over what abuse is in the original post, and I just don’t get what people are seeing when they claim Mori abused him. I'm curious as to why fans are so quick to the take. Is it because they want some unconscious reason as to why Dazai chose to abuse Akutagawa? Is it because since they see the narrative parallels between them and Kyouka, then that must mean Mori had abused Dazai? Strange.

It's popular to compare Yosano’s past circumstances to Dazai’s, and you can see why at a glance. Both are brought into circumstances that are not ideal for a child by Mori, the opposite Demon/Angel motif, have some similarities to Mori himself, and… that's kind of it? Because Mori doesn't treat them the same way and that changes way more than you think it really does about how you label this. Circumstantially, she has more in common with Kyouka and Chuuya, back when he was in the clutches of N.

Yosano was drafted by Mori to utilize her ability in the great war. He dehumanizes her by reducing her to a tool and disregards her feelings for the greater cause he's trying to contribute to. Mori forces her to keep using her ability by shooting Tachihara’s brother and intimidating her to keep doing her job. He installs fear into what could happen if she doesn't heal them, but is further damaged by what happens when she does. While we don't see a lot of what happened during then, we can assume this kept happening until the war ended.

You can pinpoint what makes this situation abusive quite easily:

Disregarding the autonomy of the victim

Uses fear and intimidation tactics

Psychological power dynamic that weighs on the victim

(Assuming so) is repeatedly forced to keep repeating something that causes psychological harm

Though I can absolutely say Yosano is just as much of a victim to the structural abuse of Ability users being targets of the country, like Chuuya, there is primarily one person we can pin her abuse on: Mori, because he was in charge of her and was his primary target. Mori resorts to using abuse because Yosano had too much of a will of her own and was not doing what he needed of her.

That’s Yosano’s situation, now what about Dazai?

As recounted in the Fifteen LN, they met by chance. Someone brought Dazai in after a suicide attempt into his clinic and, for an unknown reason since we don’t actually know anything about the plan itself, Mori asked him to be apart of his new plan to assassinate the old boss that took about maybe a year or so. He was a witness and accomplice to his death, a death that was necessary to the safety of Yokohama. He hadn’t became an official member until he had teamed up with Chuuya and was convinced that maybe he could find a reason to live by joining because of this experience.

As Dazai is pretty much a blank slate with potential in Mori’s eyes, Mori had decided to teach him tactical theory to put his mind to use and had him team up with Chuuya to develop him further with a good influence as Fukuzawa was to him (“A diamond can only polish a diamond”). Mori sees himself in Dazai and wants him to become someone who will be a great right-hand man, but ultimately lets him loose in Dark Era because of his irrational human fears of Dazai killing him one day like he did to the old boss. There could be more reasons to why he did it (Dazai not being a good potential future leader or maybe having to do with the revelation that he did care about Dazai in Beast), but this is what canon has offered us currently.

Already, do you see how differently I summarize their dynamic with Mori? Not because I have any bias views, but because he treats them differently. If I can’t apply even one of the points I brought up that made Yosano’s situation abusive, then I can’t call it that. I’m already struggling to think of a way as to how it could be abusive because that’s all the information we have. It’s not great that Mori taught a child to think like he does, but he’s never conditioned him in a way I’d call abusive like he did to Yosano.

There was no way for him to use fear and intimidation on Dazai without being seen through. It’s not like Dazai had anything he gave worth except Oda and Ango, and he’s never used them as a threat on Dazai. He does not treat Dazai like a tool or ignore his feelings consistently, Dazai has no feelings to any terrible actions he does. He’s Amoral and could care less. He has no psychological control on Dazai, on the contrary, he’s treated as an equal and has not made any attempt to exact any power on him except a professional role as his boss.

Again, listen to me when I say this is not me saying that Dazai isn’t effected by his time in the PM or that Mori treated him like an equal suddenly means that being treated like an adult for the majority of your teenage years is not that bad. It’s incredibly fucked up, but you can’t use abuse to describe it. I didn’t add manipulation or “brought into an endangering environment” to the list because they are points emphasized way too often in the conversation of Dazai being abused. That’s not because I don’t think abuser can’t also do that, but they are tactics that can be used in various situations that aren’t abuse.

Don’t you think it’d be silly for me to say that Dazai is abusing the ADA because he manipulates them into playing their roles or that Kenji is being abused because he’s a kid in an agency that deals with murders and government jobs? Or even apply that logic to most other animes. That’s why I don’t take it seriously when all of a sudden, people are saying Kouyou and Chuuya are victims of Mori. They are absolutely victims of abuse, but Mori?? Just because he’s casually manipulative while also being someone who will use abuse if he thinks it’s necessary? Way to ignore he has genuine bonds with his 2 executives.

The point of what makes what he did to Yosano abusive is that it installed distress into her repetitively. Individually the actions he took weren't abusive by itself, it was the accumulation of what it made her feel. That's why Mori killing the boss in front of Dazai wasn't abusive, it's just fucked. If you were to claim that maybe Mori did something off-screen, then I would have to ask why because the only reason Mori resorted to using abuse was because he needed to snuff out her will and make her into a good tool.

That's the thing, Dazai has no will and is not the way he is because he dislikes the mafia or that Mori tore him down, he's always been that way before meeting him. Unfortunately, he's perfect for the mafia and Mori didn’t need to do crap in this situation. That’s why I genuinely could not say Mori was abusing Chuuya either in my last post.

And before it’s said, It is not a gotcha to say “well he’s a child in a violent environment, so by proxy he’s being abused”. I hope you realize that’s a totally different statement from mori abusing him and claims he’s also a victim of structural abuse Iike Kyouka was, because again, he was like this before the mafia and there would be no need to take action.

Anyway, I just needed to get this off of my chest. Anything I didn’t say was in the original overview. This was not that short, but I felt like ranting a bit. I just really had nothing to talk about regarding any potential abuse happening to Dazai by Mori and I hope this expresses this better? I think their relationship is pretty interesting if you don’t only focus on fan inflated angst that doesn’t exist. The next time I post, I hope it to be an actual analysis and not me ranting in disguise of an analytical breakdown.

There are much more interesting things people can say about the clear development Mori has went through in where he used Yosano like this to how he treats people in the Mafia, and that’s absolutely because of the partnership he had with Fukuzawa. Just, read my original overview okay? I like it better than this one.

#bsd #Bungou stray dogs #mori ougai #osamu dazai #yosano akiko #bsd meta #(?) kind of #it’s just me ranting #okay next post is not an the analysis #I actually felt like doing a one shot!#I think you’re all very silly when you say things about Mori abusing people #when all that’s happening is you taking Mori’s intentions with his manipulation and saying that’s abusive itself #what’s next? Is Beast Dazai abusing everyone???#I have my thoughts about his relationship with Atsushi #but that’s just silly

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