unsolicited and unnecessary continuation of my skk rant post from a few days ago um bc i haven’t dropped the topic and i was absolutely not coherent enough to voice all my opinions at 3am:
i think a big part of the chronic misconception of soukoku (and just of bsd characters in general) comes from the growing need for consumers of media to tropify everything. there’s so much emphasis now on “friends/enemies to lovers” or “type a personality x type b personality” and it’s getting to the point where a large part of media consumers have lost the ability to perceive media individually and as unique works of art.
when it comes to soukoku, their relationship is extremely complex and requires a lot of faceted unpacking in order to be properly understood. i myself don’t have them perfectly characterized, since i’ve only been a part of the bsd fandom for about a year or so (and a large part of that year has been spent worrying about school), but i can at least pick out obvious aspects of their relationship that exist canonically in bsd.
to say that calling soukoku’s relationship romantic is “watering it down” is such a shallow-minded and illiterate take on media in general. to label anything as anything waters it down. that is quite literally the purpose of a label. labels aren’t meant to communicate individuality, they’re meant to organize things into categories.
to say that “platonic skk” is better than “romantic skk” because the romantic label takes away from the deepness of their relationship is. is just. for example:
take a large jar filled to the brim with rainbow beads, each singular bead a slightly different colour than the next. then, explain to me how labelling the jar as “beads” is any better than labeling the jar as “craft supplies.” it’s just not. you’re not doing anything different, you’re just changing the way the jar is being organized.
inherently, labels take away from the individualism that exists in every INDIVIDUAL thing. this obviously isn’t to say that labels are bad. labels are very helpful in many cases, but that doesn’t mean they have a large capacity for communicating the unique experiences that exist in every single person, every single character, every single relationship. they only give you a general idea, never the full picture. okay BACK TO SOUKOKU.
i could type up a pages-long document about why soukoku are a “romantic” pairing. i am also capable of hearing out and accepting many points that i believe can be made for them as a “platonic” pairing, but that’s only because i don’t really think either of those two labels have anything to do with the complexity of their relationship. even if i ship them and enjoy working with that interpretation, it’s not about romance or the lack of it. it’s about the history they have, the implicit trust they place in each other, the ways in which they work so fluidly with one another.
i’m all for unique headcanons and different ways to perceive media, and am not really bothered too much by fanon interpretations, especially when i do engage with them from time to time, just bc i find it fun. however. if you have the audacity to make a baseless claim (baseless, as in a claim without providing evidence to support) like “skk are platonic and you’re doing them a disservice if you call them romantic,” then i have every right to say you’re wrong, and say it as a fact. you can argue whatever you want, believe whatever you want, but if you’re going to tell me i’m wrong with so much confidence, you can’t do it without supporting your claim (well, you can, but like, just don’t come at skk shippers then????).
some of the disdain for their relationship comes from either a hatred of dazai or of chuuya as characters. i can understand disliking certain characters — i dislike many characters, too — but most of the hatred i see for either of them in the bsd fandom is. just. for the wrong reasons?? like calling them inherently bad people, some saying that dazai is incapable of kindness or care while others say that chuuya is a heartless, cold-blooded murderer. are you stupid. have you missed point after point after point in either the manga, novels or anime? away with the ironic presence of moral absolutism in the bsd fandom. AWAY WITH IT. go read kant or smth idk.
another thing to note is that things don’t need to be explicitly stated in a piece of media for them to be valid perceptions of said media. if that were the case, then my essay on why hamlet was the true victim of the play wouldn’t have received the high grade it did from the picky teacher i had. it’s not something shakespeare explicitly stated, but i was able to gather enough evidence and argue my points with enough coherence that i made a strong argument. because media is meant to be analyzed outside of its surface-level appearance. okay back to skk again bc i keep going off track, but:
i mentioned this in my previous (shorter) rant, but relationships exist outside of standard conventions, especially in fiction where a huge part of storytelling involves symbolism and reading between the lines. we’re talking about two young adults, raised alongside violence and made to work in the literal MAFIA as teenagers, both having suffered various and extreme traumas. their relationship isn’t going to be conventional, no matter what category you want to file it into.
i understand that a large portion of fic or fan content in general regarding soukoku as a ship works within standard conventions, and i understand how that could contribute to the idea that soukoku shippers are watering down their relationship. but that has nothing to do with romance or sex, nothing to do with the general idea that they’re not platonic. it comes from the fact that, in the same way anti-romance skk people misunderstand their relationship, a lot of skk shippers also misunderstand their relationship. or, maybe, they just don’t want to write or create content outside of those conventions, which is ALSO FINE.
soukoku are very much everything to each other. and i mean that so literally. their relationship is filled to the brim with emotions and behaviours on both ends of every spectrum. there’s love and hate, there’s an intense desire for intimacy while also a strong need to protect vulnerability at all costs. they’re caring at some points and toxic at others, and there’s the existence of both autonomy and a lack thereof. because of their individual histories and personalities, i don’t really think they’d have it any other way.
functioning in a relationship that's entirely conventional (soft, romantic, domestic) would be off-putting, to say the least, especially for dazai. that’s not to say those aspects don’t or can’t exist (they can, and definitely do), but they need to be shrouded, they need to be fleeting and less frequent than would be considered appropriate for a normal relationship. i wouldn’t call them boyfriends. like. that label just. doesn’t do it for me, and i don’t think it would do it for them, either. it implies conventions (can i pls stop using that word) and it implies affectionate ones. i could argue these points for so long.
i said this before, but i genuinely could go on such a long rant about multiple aspects of their relationship. i could talk for sosososo long about why they’re a “romantic” pairing, and i could go on and on about specific arguments for that general premise. but i will not. for now, at least, bc this is getting too long and um. im tired.
moral of the story. i don't want to be mean but. stupidity epidemic is here and near. pls take literacy classes. learn literacy and. be happy. heart!
