Origin
humble beginnings
shortly after meeting my fiancée Twelve, she told me Bungou Stray Dogs was her current obsession. in order to get closer to her, i promptly watched all 36 episodes of the anime and full motion picture. each night after a viewing session, i gave her updates on my favourite characters. i relentlessly mocked Dazai for being an overpowered scumbag, yet he was always in my top 5. Chuuya, on the other hand, didn't have enough screentime to consistently make the cut.
based on first impressions i was mostly indifferent to their pairing. sure, the height difference is cute, but who cares? after all, Dazai may be a smoke show but he is as unstable as he hot, and all in all he makes for a terrible boyfriend. of course, this is how i like my anime boys. but i wanted to appear relatively sane, correct, and in well-taste for Twelve, the first girl to truly intrigue and delight me in years, so i pretended to hate Soukoku.
ultimately, the facade was not only short-lived but wholly unnecessary. eventually i discovered we have the same unhealthy impeccable taste in ship dynamics, the type into which Soukoku slots perfectly. but before that, she asked me to fake-kindate. i agreed. within the same evening, as i scoured pixiv for matching icons and she secured in-character blog URLs, the level of irony had dropped dangerously low. Twelve later informed me that it was all an elaborate flirting tactic.
i can hardly believe that a year and a half later, i'm chronicling the hilarity of our early days as she sleeps beside me. her breath is warm and even and i love her. without her, this Soukoku dissertation wouldn't exist— this whole website wouldn't— so if you're looking for someone to blame for the thousands of words of autistic rambling, pick her. but keep in mind that you'll have to go through me first!
back to the topic on hand. on my very first trip into the Soukoku mines, i encountered a little fan-comic so delightful that i dropped all pretense. please, have a look.
in retrospect, while the scenario is exceedingly cute, it is rather generic. it doesn't explore or re-interpret their relationship. i can't even read hangul. obviously, these are not criticisms— far from it. it simply points to the fact that there is no argument being made, no evidence to present to the court in Soukoku v. The People. that leads me to believe that i already knew the verdict, if only subconsciously. it just took some domestic fanart to finally accept my life sentence.
