somnia app

[unaliveyourself]

PLAYER INFO

Name: Batty
Preferred Contact: goodluckmodes.plurk
Age: 33
Invite Link: mod invite!

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Osamu Dazai
Canon: Bungo Stray Dogs (Beast)
Age: 22
If Under 16, why is this character a good thematic fit for Somnia?: n/a
Canon Point: Post-death
Wiki Link(s): https://bungostraydogs.fandom.com/wiki/BEAST_Osamu_Dazai

SOMNIA-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS


cw: suicide/suicidal ideation referenced throughout
1. Dreams are how Sleep chooses you. What might draw your character into Somnia— a wound, a wish, a weakness? Would they follow the dream, or run from it?

Dazai as he exists in the Beast universe is singularly defined by one purpose – to ensure the existence of a universe in which Sakunosuke Oda is alive and writing a novel. To this end, he willingly throws away any chance at happiness he might have had in his memories of the original timeline or in the future, sacrificing even the brief time they would've shared together as friends. It's all worth it to him because if Oda hates the mafia, he'll stay away from it, so he can't be killed as a pawn in a larger game, even if that ends up meaning he'll hate him, too. Despite all this, Dazai is still desperately fixated on a moment in time that belonged to another person entirely, yearning for it as if it were his own; he wants nothing more than to live those days with Odasaku and Ango in Bar Lupin that the original Dazai had. Yet if he did, Odasaku would die, which is the one thing he could never allow. At the end of the story, when he jumps from the roof, he states his only regret is that he'll never have the chance to read Odasaku's novel. The dream, then, would be having it both ways – for those memories from a different life to be real in a world where Odasaku gets to live and write, too. It's something he would chase – arguably, did chase, in his penultimate scene before he faces the rejection that seals his decision to end his role in the story he'd rewritten. Yet, in the state of mind he will be in at his canonpoint, ultimately it's this choice that's more likely to draw him Somnia than having his greatest dream fulfilled – the promise of rest, silence, an ending as offered by the blackness beyond blackness of the TDM, the chance to stay in the dark. It was what his original self most sought, after all, having only continued onward in honor of that lost, beloved friend's last wishes. With no need to fulfill such a request for a dying man, he would desire that ending no other version of himself ever reached most of all.

2. Somnia is a slow unraveling—of worlds, and of selves. How does your character respond to fear, transformation, and losing control? Do they fight, adapt, collapse?

This Dazai has already been through a splintering, of sorts; the creation of the singularity that connected the worlds' fragments has made him aware of the existence of infinite timelines and versions of a life lived, infinite versions of the same loss and choices to make differently to prevent it. In that sense, he is almost uniquely prepared to encounter that same unraveling in Somnia – and yet in another, he is much less so than his original self, because this is a version of the man who sought to remake the world in the image he desired and succeeded, pulling every string until it vibrated to the correct tune. This is a man who accomplished his goal, and, upon experiencing the rejection of the man he did it for, chose to consider his story completed, rather than to strike out into the unknown and see where the next chapter took him. He may collapse, he may build himself anew, may see his time in Somnia as an epilogue rather than a sequel – yet if the threat of Sleep comes to extend beyond the bounds of some liminal space between existence into their own worlds, threatens the universe in which Sakunosuke Oda is able to live and write, She will find the most vicious and ruthless enemy possible in Dazai, who will stop at absolutely nothing to obliterate Her.

3. Connection is the only constant. What kind of bonds does your character form— fast and burning, slow and wary, deep and desperate? How might that shape their time in this world?

At his core, Dazai is a person who feels fundamentally disconnected from humanity as a whole and struggles to form any sort of meaningful connection as a result, heavily implied to be a significant contributing factor to his depression and lack of interest in living. His attitude in this regard is best encapsulated by a comment he makes in the original timeline:

"I always lose the things I don't want to lose the most. That's why I don't feel anything anymore. The moment you get your hands on something worth going after, you lose it. That's just how things are. There is nothing worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a life of suffering."

Dazai struggles to find connection, keep it, feel fulfilled by it while he has it. He is akin to a man attempting to fill a bucket with water while it has a hole in the bottom, consigned to watching the contents leak out with limited ability to patch it at best.

The flip side of this coin, however, is the fact that when someone does manage to reach him in a meaningful way, it irreversibly alters the landscape of his heart. Dazai does not hold people at arm's length – once someone is close enough to hold at all, he will not let go except by force. His connections are like spider's thread – simultaneously fragile, easy to tear apart, yet stronger than steel. Mori, for instance, was the man who brought Dazai into the mafia, gave him a new avenue to seek out a reason to live or one not to die, yet was ultimately the architect of Odasaku's destruction, in the original world. Dazai's resentment will never cool; he is a man who does not re-offer trust when it is broken once, yet – when he takes over the mafia in his own universe, he finds a "happy ending" for Mori as well, faking his death and setting him up as an orphanage director knowing that he never wanted to be the boss in the first place. Ango is not forgiven, yet he is left unharmed in his universe, despite his knowledge of the man's status as a double agent. He goes out of his way to give Odasaku reason to resent the mafia, yet when all his plans come to fruition expects, almost childishly, to be able to pick up where his original self left off, chattering away eagerly about unexploded bombs and hard tofu, as though any of those memories would have meaning to the Odasaku who never became his friend in the timeline he created.

Dazai in the Beast universe is the only Dazai in any version of canon that never talks about suicide – unlike the others, he is someone who found a reason for living: giving Odasaku a chance to survive and fulfill his dream of being a writer. Yet, he is also the only version of himself that actually commits it; the marks on his soul from that connection in another life are so profound they subsume anything and anyone else he could've ever been. He willingly, happily, throws away his life for the love of a ghost he never met.

In Somnia, having seen all that through, he will be adrift – disconnected again, yet more vulnerable than he has ever been, and the existence of the Murmur will bring that tension to its natural crossroads. When he is brought forcibly in proximity of others' hearts, which he has always struggled to reach, he may throw himself into the deep readily, or he may find himself overwhelmed, drowning in an ocean when he has always been dying of thirst.

4. What are two major forces in your character’s personality that are often in conflict? (Ex: logic vs emotion, power vs guilt, obedience vs rage, etc.)

In the original timeline, Dazai was largely defined by the conflict of wanting genuinely to die, yet still seeking a reason to live. He talks about having joined the mafia due to the desperate hope that living in a world of death and violence where people were led to fulfill their darkest urges and desires, he might be able to learn something about the nature of humanity that would give him reason to keep living. As Odasaku tells him at the end of his own life, no such reason will manifest out of the ether – he will "wander the darkness for eternity" – and so to place himself on the side of saving lives rather than taking them, if it makes no difference to him otherwise. Following this path brings Dazai no closer to a reason to live, but ultimately gives him a few not to die. Beast Dazai, ultimately, shares this core conflict. However, the form it takes is different – where Dazai's original self seeks something unknowable and impossible to define, in the Beast universe, Dazai has found a specific purpose to live and die for – Sakunosuke Oda's survival and happiness. But despite that, despite being willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve his goal, he's desperately, crushingly lonely – a fact that's commented on more than once by others in the narrative. By the time the story opens, he has held a combined total of at least twelve years of love and grief in his heart, notwithstanding the potential of memories of thousands of other possible universes, as a man who is himself only twenty-two. He wants to save Odasaku, even if it means he is hated, but he wants to be by Odasaku's side. Wants to (re)live the golden moments in memories that don't belong to him, yet he can't, because he destroyed any possibility for those moments with his own hands. He destroys it because he loves him, but he cannot receive that love he craves because he destroyed it.

VESSEL SELECTION
Which Vessel Type are you choosing: Token or Offering? Token
Why does this Vessel type feel appropriate for your character? Dazai, especially in Beast, is a person who takes the threads of fate into his own hands to weave a tapestry of his liking; he is not someone who is passively shaped by the forces that surround him. Even those who manage to reach him do not do so one-sidedly; those that are successful in knowing him carve the shape of themselves into each other mutually.

Choose one OR list three subclass options within your chosen Vessel type that you think would suit them: Illusionist