#again the intent is not to label Seb as having npd just saying what the words Yana used may mean

[plague-of-insomnia]

Is Sebastian a Narcissist?

Recently, I came across a series of old posts translating some things from Yana’s now lost blog, in which she did an exercise to draw 30 different facial expressions for Sebastian.

The “shy” one particularly caught my eye because the translation describes Sebastian as “ultra narcissistic” and therefore he can’t really be shy.

[begin screenshot]

[end screenshot]

Now Yana does indeed use the word “narcissist” here (“narushisuto”), but keep in mind that loan words often have slightly different meanings/connotations in Japanese than they do in their original source language.

I do not have a loan word dictionary handy unfortunately, but I did do some investigating in one of my fave online Japanese-language dictionaries (it basically lets you see definitions from various sources at once).

The top definition describes a narcissist as someone who is so in love with themselves they’re “drunk” off of it.

The definition does not use the exact term, but there is a phrase in Japanese that essentially has this meaning. It’s a kind of phrase called “yojijukugo,” and these are always made up of four kanji.

In this case, they are 自己陶酔, which literally means “oneself, self, pottery, drunk,” or less literally, self-intoxication. In other words, extreme vanity.

Additionally, the words weblio includes as synonyms mean things like “pretentious,” “conceited,” acting “full of oneself.” It has a negative connotation and is probably intended as the opposite of the Japanese cultural ideal of the group before the individual.

Put this together with how Yana explains that it’s difficult/impossible to flatter him because he’s such a “narcissist,” and I think we have to assume that Yana isn’t meaning it the way we might here in the West when we use that word. Instead, I think what she means is that Sebastian is self absorbed and overly-vain, which makes sense based on what we’ve seen of him in the manga.

Now, ofc we can use narcissist in a similar way in English, as dictionary.com says:

[begin screen shot]

[end sceeen shot]

But, often it has more of an association with the second one, and I think we definitely need to steer clear of that connotation when we look at Yana’s intent. (As far as I could see, that word is not used for the disorder in Japanese, but as I am not an expert on medical Japanese I could definitely be wrong, there.)

Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that Sebastian is vain and self absorbed, though I do think he’s changed significantly over the four years he’s been working with Ciel, and it will be interesting to see if he overcomes this “flaw” before the manga ends.

(I personally don’t feel you can apply a disorder to a nonhuman like Sebastian, but that is not really the point of this post and I would prefer not to get into discourse. I am not trying to say people with NPD are demonic or anything like that. Simply analyzing what Yana said and what that might mean.)