forreal tho the whole Point of durarara as a work of art is thhat nobody is wholly good (obviously) OR wholly bad, people are complicated and their relationships with each other and the world are complicated as well
izaya as the closest thing to an antagonist the series has, ALSO serves as mikado's foil- he's the bad end to mikado's story, explicitly becoming that way because he had no true friends- shinra only cared about celty and his parents were never around and thats kind of all he had. he was a young boy with clear mental problems, to the point where his father instilled that people love into him in order to prevent a worse outcome and help him be more normal. the way this is framed, as a young boy exhibiting a concerning disconnect from other people to a point where it scares a usually neglectful father into acting- is very reminiscent of media depictions (and real life examples) of parents worrying that their child is a sociopath. this could very well have been intentional, and narita EXPLICITLY makes a POINT to state that izaya is the way that he is because he has a fragile heart- any sort of genuine effection and a betrayal of it could shatter him. i really dont think the takeaway here was "lolllll hes suchhh a loser" OR "omggg hes so scary hes iredeemable." it's another piece of the central theme that humans are nuanced and messy and conplicated and oftentimes in very unglamorous ways that make them unsympathetic to most people. durarara AS A SHOW is about shining a light onto these people and inviting the viewer to sympathize with them, and if someone doesnt get that and is just disgusted by most of the characters then durarara is not the show for them
also vis a vis izaya and mikado being foils- the reason mikado got a happy ending was because of his friends- because of the connections he has with other people. izaya did not have those connections, hence his own instability drove him farther and farther down into a death spiral that culminated in his CRIPPLING, a major loss of freedom from someone who valued it so much, and i'm saying that as a disabled person
important note: its fun to justify their actions if and only if ur going on the wildly insane and biased internal logic of the character in question bc the justifications i come up with under this framework range from "not the best course of action but understandable given the situation" to "you need to be shot"
the amount of times i Do This must be a joke at this point but here i am. doing it once more. izaya's highschool videogame SCREAMS "i just found out i have aspd and i am NOT taking it well." and i shall explain how
a preface: wrt "how did he know in high school, don't you have to be 18?" you do.... with the dsm guidelines. japan, iirc, uses a conbination of the dsm and icd to diagnose mental illnesses, and the age stipulation isn't in the icd. also, shinra could have told him, and lbr shinra wouldnt care about strictly adhering to the age thing
anyway i went thru and highlighted different parts of the videogame's text, so i can easier explain which part means what. i'll primarily be focusing on the chronic boredom associated with aspd- since izaya's game deals with patience, most musings in it will be related to that boredom. but the boredom, especially izaya's, IS important, as its the boredom that drives him to do what he does. to be what he is.
(shoutout to miyukiwinter for the scan)
so... the red bit. this relates to izaya's worldview of the need to keep evolving to escape the mundane, and it not mattering if you aim high or low. now at this point, izaya was solidly in some shady shit and clearly on the path of the low aim. but the thing is, about aspd... the boredom is all consuming. you'll do ANYTHING to not be bored. i've seen people say they developed substance abuse problems to escape the boredom, and i confess... i've done it too. it truly is THAT bad
i say all this because... izaya will never be able to stop going lower, and lower, and lower. he's fated to fall forever. maybe he wouldve been able to brush his behavior off as teenage craziness, but with a diagnosis like aspd it becomes increadingly obvious that there is no "oh, i'll mellow out once i reach my 20s." it's not going to happen, at least, not without great effort. and lets be real, nobody has any faith in aspd's recovery rates, less so in the early 2010s, so izaya upon diagnosis would see NO FUTURE for himself. no escape from the cycle. he's trapped.
the blue bits are a bit more vauge, but the undertainty turning to loss evokes the next stage after the initial shock of diagnosis: grief. and make no mistake, there IS a grieving process with mental health diagnoses. you go from being shocked and scared, to being depressed and numb.
but there's... another layer to this, with aspd. you see it with cluster b disorders in general, but aspd is HUGE in the pop culture zeitgeist
the layer is, the idea that People Like That don't feel emotions. that any emotional display is false and an explicit ploy to mainpulate someone
and when this inevitably ends up untrue, you might start to feel... odd... about feeling those emotions people say you can't feel. and one of the biggest emotions aspd gets that with, is fear and by extension, anxiety.
some aspd people genuinely do feel reduced fear! but it's far from being a diagnostic criteria, and aspd can actually be comorbid with anxiety disorders. but scientific facts and wider culture rarely match up, so the idea persists
so izaya might have started to think.... was he ever truly anxious? or worried? was he really more rotten than people thought; was he just mainpulating people the whole time? does he really not feel anxiety? was his nervousness over things like shinra leaving him or hell, this diagnosis, rendered null and void?
and then we reach the teal portion.... despair
(just a sidenote, tumblr has no teal color option so it'll just be blue)
in this sense, "the hole" refers to the endless downward spiral, and his diagnosis- but not just having it. no, "the hole" most likely refers to the moment izaya developed it in the first place.
who are you, if you thought you were in control your whole life, but you found out that the reason you do the things you do were because of foeces beyond your control? who are you now, having a label you know will cause everyone to see you as nothing but a stereotype?
why was he still alive, suffering like this? what point is it to be alive, controlled by something you can't fight, forced to make your life worse and worse and worse, until you die young?
so now what? who did this to him?
in the game, the hatred is towards "the player." and honestly this could have multiple different meanings when applied to izaya's own life
does he hate god? was he raised religious, his father being a christian, and was this what made him lose faith? what loving god would condemn someone to suffer like this?
does he hate his parents? after all, it was their genetics that passed this down, their upbringing that nurtured it, their neglect that made him the way he was. is it their fault?
or... does he hate himself, for being the way that he is? for having it in the first place, for not being able to overcome it, for having such a bad reaction to it?
for being too cowardly to kill himself?
which brings us to the final segment. awareness.
he says outright, the game is depicting the player's life. in the game itself, this ties into his mockery of players, but in a meta sense, it could be a hidden admission that it's depicting his life
especially the talk of meaningless games- fooling around with nakura creating small gangs, betting pools, and his eventual adult pastimes of messing with people. is his life enriched? no, it's merely occupied, and he knows it. he might have repressed it as an adult, but here, in high school, at this moment, he knows.
and if he can never truly alleviate his boredom, never truly be fufilled, then he can act like he's in control all he wants, but he's no better than a man falling in a hole.
> make a bad post misinterperting and generally shitting on a character
> puts it in the character's tags, which is generally regarded as in poor taste when hating
> fans respond to it, since it is in the tags of the character they like, not even being mean about it, just saying that you might have misinterperted him
> get pissy about someone responding to you on your public post that allows replies
> make another post shitting on them
> put THAT post in the tags as well
masterful gambit ma'am. you are absolutely not the target of mockery right now, your takes are so true and real and i am giving you my english degree because clearly your masterful analysis proves you deserve it more than i
haha hey remember that whole speech izaya gave to masaomi about how his guilt over getting saki hurt "will be [his] god" and how it mirrors izaya's role in shinra's stabbing and how he STILL has nakura under his thumb because of it, partly because of his own guilt in the matter. haha did you know that if youre unaccustomed to feeling guilt for whatever reason- either you repress it constantly or just straight up can't feel guilt- when you DO end up feeling it full-force, you have absolutely no coping skills in place to deal with it because.... well... when have you ever? when could you have learned? haha did you know that this can lead you to repressing guilt even further because of how distressing the act of Feeling It is?
haha do you ever think about izaya- not the person himself but his name, a different reading of "rinya," named after the biblical isaiah, his father a Christian, growing up in a religion that heralded guilt as not only an absolver of oneself but as a necessity to eternal life? do you ever think about how growing up seemingly unable to feel guilt would do to someone in this environment? this horrible feeling as you realize you lack the inate ability to feel something so crucial to life, to the afterlife? to being remembered? to continuing on? and what happened the first time he ever felt guilt over something? he was just a child, dealing with an emotion he'd never felt before- did he repress it? it seems like he did. imagine trying to repress guilt then feeling more guilt over your repression of it, because not being able to feel it is one thing but actively turning away from it is another, but god, it hurt, and you have sisters to feed and a life to live and hurt compounding in on itself and you know human beings have limits and you can't go on feeling guilt and reach yours. you have sisters and they need you and you know you would never shed your cowardice long enough to kill yourself, so whatever hell you were in, you'd be stuck there, so best not make it worse.
you can go through your life thinking that your lack of guilt was because you don't really do anything that necessitates guilt- you don't do much of anything at all, really, you just watch, but then you meet a boy and you do things and you do more things and a floodgate opens and things get riskier and riskier and your only friend gets stabbed and that, that necessitates guilt and it comes in droves- overwhelming, horrible, and you're completely unequipped to deal with it.
you know you're rotten, now, but there's nothing you can really do about it. so you continue on being rotten and repressing any guilt you feel because the thrill of doing what you do outweighs the guilt anyway, and it's not like you can stop- not like you want to stop, more like, because you're in control of everything. and most of all, you're in control of yourself. and all the while that guilt lingers behind you.
watching.
judging.
you may have become an athiest but you've created your own god, ready to condemn you to your own Hell.
i find it really interesting that the theme of drrr is twisted love, and we love all these characters despite them being terrible people- its like we're included in the theme simply by virtrue of interacting with the work. its rly cool!!
[Note: okay, here you go. i don't want this on ao3 for reasons (mainly i might try and get this one published, idk) but yall expressed interest so here it is! it's just shy of 1.3k words, so it shouldn't take too long to read. anyway i hope you guys like it!]
Your new assistant wants something from you.
He's a psychologist, he says, and he wanted a job— and you gave it to him and you don't know why. Perhaps to get away from your other assistant. You don't quite like her but she does her job well and you keep her around as a show of dominance, an example to be made of, as if to say look what could happen to you, if I saw fit.
He says you're a part of the control group. He observes people in their natural states, watches them go about their days. It yields the best results, he said once. You're inclined to agree.
¤
There is a loneliness inside of you, and it's been there since you were born.
You watch the psychologist smoke on your balcony. Humans can feel when they're being watched, but he doesn't turn around, no matter how much you stare at him. You wonder if you want him to or not.
¤
"What do you study?" You ask, one day.
He hesitates before answering: "Sociopaths."
That's not the whole answer, and you know it.
¤
"There was a bit of miscommunication."
You turn to him, but not too much. It's calculated, like everything else you do. "Hm?"
"I was told there was a doctor studying sociopaths around here. I talked to him and it turns out, he's not a sociopath doctor, he's a sociopath doctor."
He's referring to your friend.
"Anyway, he gave me your card." You think the psychologist would be smoking, if he wasn't indoors. "So I came."
"All this for a control variable?" You ask, a smile glimmering on your lips. You taste the inauthenticity in this man— it entertains you more than stillness, than an assistant who shows up, does the work, then leaves.
"Control variables are important," he says. "Without them, you'd have no idea what the threshold of normalcy is."
"Is there a threshold of normalcy, though?" You love people, and you love their variances.
"Not broadly, not really. But in little microcosms, there can be."
You relax into your couch, spreading out next to him. Look at me, you implicitly say. I live here and you don't. I can do whatever I please and you have to make sure you barely take up a single cushion.
"So," you say, "you're really trying to tell the sociopaths from the non-sociopaths."
He laughs. "Don't be so crass about it."
"But you are!" You nearly kick him, that playful kind of kick between friends. "Say, which group do I fall into?"
He gives you one of those coy little smiles. "What do you think?"
¤
"They're not actually called sociopaths anymore."
You're on the balcony with him, and smoke is blowing into your face, and you pretend it isn't.
"Oh," you say, and you don't say anything else.
¤
You look up "what are sociopaths called now" the very next day.
It's got one of those four-letter acronyms now, almost like it's a real disorder with defined terms, and not just a word people shout at you, or your parents whisper late at night about you, when they think you've gone to bed, but you haven't because you needed to know what they thought of you, because your need to know things was your downfall and it always has been.
The website starts listing criteria and you go back to your work without ever reading them.
¤
Your assistant— the psychologist— doesn't have work for two days straight.
You wonder why the time seems to go by slower when he's not in. It's probably because he's so interesting, you reason. You needed this kind of push-and-pull in your life, something that sparks the flame of intrigue that burns away the mundane, and leaves you scarred but alive.
You reason that's all there is to it.
¤
"Are you qualified to diagnose?"
"No." This time, it's him sprawled out on your couch. "I never got licensed and I never will— peoples' problems bore me, and I'm not very compassionate."
You hesitate. "If someone asked you, would you diagnose them anyway?"
"It depends on the person. It depends if I like them enough to try."
"How well do you like me?"
The man on your couch has an air of carefree-ness to him. "Well, I'm still here, aren't I?"
¤
He's going to go back to America eventually.
At some point, you found yourself switching from Japanese to English for him.
He's been fun. You'll miss him dearly, but your work is your work and he's just your assistant.
¤
"Why do you have to go back so soon?"
Neither of you acknowledge that it hasn't been soon at all.
"I got accepted into the PhD program."
"Japan has very good PhD programs, you know."
"I don't know the language well enough to learn complex things in it."
"Well, learn! You've been here a while, haven't you picked up on some more of it?"
You've broken the just-established social contract. Shame on you.
"Not enough," he says.
"Will you ever come back?"
"Of course." Another one of those coy little smiles. "You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd almost say you didn't want me to leave."
You smile back. "And what makes you think you know better?"
"They say sociopaths can't love."
"Oh?" You loom over him. "So much for my being in the control group, liar."
He grins up at you, as if the thought of you hurting him in any way is incomprehensible to him. "You caught me."
¤
There is a psychologist in your bed and he might miss his flight because of you.
"A shame you waited so long," he mutters against your chest.
"I think there's two people in this equation here, don't you?"
"Maybe so." He traces little nonsense-patterns right where your heart is.
¤
You followed him as far as security would allow you to go.
You look at him, in his most comfortable clothes, and you imagine that he lives with you and he's sprawled out on your couch, feet up and eyes closed and all the airports are closed forever.
"Don't you want to say something to me before you go?"
He presses his lips on yours. "You're not evil, despite what people might say. And don't call yourself a sociopath. It'll make you cruel."
"Cruel towards whom, exactly?"
"Yourself." There was no smile, and you catch a glimpse of intimate familiarity with a phenomenon you're unaware of.
"Is there anything you want to say to me?" He asks.
This time, it's you that kisses him. I love you, is what you want to say, but the final boarding call speaks before you do.
"I will see you again," is what you say, and you hope he understands.
¤
Your assistant— the one you don't quite like— is at work today.
Your attention is split between your work and your phone. You call yourself a sociopath, in private, because you want to understand him. To know. To know is to connect and perhaps if you knew enough, you'd have enough facts to coax him back to Japan sooner.
There are three tabs open on your laptop. One is work. The second is his Instagram— you comment your congratulations on his acceptance post. You write that soon he'll be a sociopath doctor— there are no italics and no slight tilts to the voice in a single comment, but you know he'll understand.
The final tab is a first-class ticket booking to JFK International. He replies to your comment and your finger hovers over BOOK FLIGHT, taut and trembling, and you worry that your twitches will eventually mistap the touchpad, and book your flight, and you don't wonder if you want it to or not.
