#waposts

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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

anyway yeah

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i feel like this about izaya but i cant put it into words, i guess like because. i see him as a guy with aspd who doesnt know how to manage a disorder he doesnt know he has, or he's learned somewhat but the alternative was less miserable?

because, see the thing about aspd is. when you're first learning how to manage it, it's miserable! aspd is kind of like, an addiction to dopamine. in aspd your brain produces like. 4x the amount it should. and a lot of times, aspd and adhd are both there, and with adhd the dopamine is very very low. see? these two work in tandem! you don't WANT to recover, because being ill feels better. you're happier, you're entertained, you get rushes of dopamine all the time... but you're horrible, probably. like izaya says, in order to be entertained you have to keep evolving. you have to do worse and worse things to satisfy yourself. that's when it changes from acceptable to A Problem. because one day you're a writer satisfied by making their friends squirm and cry from angst, and the next you're actively triggering people for a reaction. and its hard to stop because the dopamine, there's just so much of it.

what i'm saying is, it's a mental disorder that feels very good to have. like the mania of bipolar- like when you're manic, you suddenly feel invincible and so so so so good, until you crash? like that feeling. it doesn't WANT you to recover, and you also don't want to recover, it feels so good to have. but it also doesnt because youre lonely on account of the aforementioned Sucking. studies show that theres a correlation between "people with aspd who recovered" and "people with aspd who are married," but did the marriage fix them or is them attracting a partner indicative of their aspd being "less severe?" and therefore more likely to recover? ah if only we had a person with aspd here we could ask them-

PSYCHE MOTHAFUCKAAAA THATS ME!!!! it's probably the first one. lol. i started improving symptomatically once someone came into my life and actually STAYED there. he didn't "fix me" but he did help! and i wouldnt say i'm "recovered" wrt the aspd- it still is a disorder that feels very good to have.

but what i'm saying is- izaya. if he has all this. this, "inescapable negative outcome" is. yeah. he either "recovers" and regresses back into a depressed ball of boredom, surpressing every single impulse or emotion because "what if it's the one that makes me lose control?" and being terrified of becoming a monster like everyone says People Like Him should be.... OR he leans more into the behaviors and urges he knows suck, spiraling into a domapine-addiction that slowly makes him into a worse and worse person and remaining lonely? like. he's already lonely!!! neither outcome actually promises real happiness, so at some point you;d be tempted to lose control, just to get SOMETHING. and i think that's what happened to izaya. and this isnt to be like "oooooo baby nothing is his fault," we can talk about how all this IS his fault like, mental illness and addiction do not excempt someone from consequece and douchebaggery. but it IS something to think about- like, those suicidal girls fell down a spiral of mental illness, and so did izaya. like, he sucks, but also, you can kinda see how him being neglected all his life means there was no other way this couldve gone, especially with knowing shinra. like, he sucks now, but he never really had an oppurtunity to be anything other that that. there was nothing else that would've happened, because of every other inevitable thing.

and how do i know that someone w aspd would eventually choose the willing mental spiral? i am ACTIVELY developing a drug problem right now, i know my chance of becoming addicted is VERY high and possibly am showing early signs like cravings and stuff. i know. but i'm still taking the drug because it's doing exactly what drugs do to people- make them trmporarily happy and get rid of the boredom and sadness of repression. i know what's going to happen to me but i was eventually tempted into it. you would be too if you had my life.

People think "gray morality" in fiction is about Both Sides Are Partly Right Actually but so much more often it's about choices having inescapable negative outcomes that have to be weighed against the benefits, or it's about having to choose between a series of bad options, or it's about making hard decisions about what you are willing to sacrifice to achieve the outcome you believe is good.

So often, I seem to see people angry that a story in a video game didn't present a Good Option with no collateral damage and no negative outcomes whatsoever, and if there are any downsides it's seen as the writers punishing you for the decision, because they see the primary purpose of stories to be moralizing rather than exploring the complexities of human experience. Or they argue that the collateral damage didn't really happen, or that the negative outcomes weren't really that bad actually, and thus miss the point altogether.

And I feel like it's important to remember that a narrative telling you a decision is difficult is not the same thing as the narrative telling you it is wrong.

[frasermints]

eventually your love for humanity must supersede your fear of "islamic terrorists" or "hamas militants" or whatever you want to call the palestinians being murdered rn. i don't care how much fearmongering has been done, how much propaganda has been shoved down your throat. you need to unlearn it. you need to force it out of yourself. you need to do the work. the lives of these people don't need to be justified by playing to your sympathies - it doesn't matter that you have arab or muslim or palestinian neighbors or classmates or coworkers or whatever. they are people. that's all that matters.

[beemovieerotica]

ngl I am very concerned when I see people on here declaring CNN, NBC, BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc etc all irredeemable propaganda with the same broad brushstrokes as a right-wing MAGA would

so conservatives are getting their news from Fox, what is everyone on here doing? because it does feel like unsourced tiktok and twitter and tumblr and reddit threads from anonymous internet people have replaced that??

like there has to be some way to read news from actual journalists and be able to parse those stories yourself and conscientiously weigh reporter biases (this is what reading comprehension is) rather than covering your eyes every time you see a particular news logo you've decided is Fake News

there's a post floating around of everyone clowning on the headline of a WaPost article (rightly or not) but the full text of the article itself is fully readable in the screenshot and just...it's so painfully obvious that no one is reading beyond headlines anymore, because the actual text is fully calling out the IDF for horrifying crimes - but the comments are all like "look at them covering up for israel" ?? no they're not???

I'm honestly reeling from this because it was one of the most heartbreaking and condemning stories I've read recently, and it ends with "what did these infants ever do?" like this is exactly the type of story that needs to be seen!! and everyone who is supposedly in support of Palestine is passing it around without even reading it and saying that it's propaganda!! I'm losing my mind

[nothasanabi]

Fr0gan for WAPost <3

[wawawawawawawawawawawawawa]

hey guys how dya feel about shizaya double hanahaki

theyre both in love with the other but dont do anything for their own reasons- izaya because he's scared of vunerability, shizuo because he can't trust izaya. and if izaya stopped doubling down on His Bullshit as a way to be less vunerable, shizuo might trust him more. and if shizuo didnt keep up the front of hating izaya, izaya might be coaxed to be more vunerable. theyre both enabling each others' hanahaki. they're hating each other into early graves.

A concept in my head that been rolling around a lot:

Hanahaki, but instead of it being triggered by unrequited love, it's triggered because all the love you have for a person turns inwards because you're too afraid to show it.

So it kills you, not because someone doesn't love you back, but because you don't let it out and all that love you have stored, that could grow into something beautiful, turns on you and turns your insides beautiful.

Love is growth, and without any place for it to grow outside, it grows in. If you confess, reciprocated or not, the disease goes away because it's no longer trapped. It gives self-destruction a new meaning.

[fionaapplerocks]

Fiona Apple and Carmen Johnson on promoting courtroom transparency. via Washington Post Live [archive of wapost article]

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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"

[davidblaska]

Madison schools: where sunlight never penetrates

When will voters demand accountability? As impenetrable as a galactic black hole, the Madison Metropolitan School District guards its secrets. What is the WaPost motto? “Democracy Dies In Darkness.” After being denied access to public records for a year now, our good government allies at Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty are are bringing lawsuit against MMSD.  WILL wants access to a…

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i havent read the novels yet but i have been thinking about shizuo a lot as of late so i wonder- does he see thru izayas facade and think its stupid that izaya has it? like, shizuo didnt CHOOSE to be how he is, hes incredibly honest- anger bubbles up quickly and he doesnt hold back on it, and he even dyed his hair to mark himself as Different. he doesnt hide what he is and doesnt want to. meanwhile izaya is a facade under a facade under another facade- one wonders if shizuo looks at all this and thinks, what's the point? why do something like that? why condemn yourself to this life based on a lie?

and then, "why hurt me based on false pretenses that YOU fabricated?"

which is why izaya gets him so pissed off. shizuo sees himself as having no choice and izaya as having a choice but choosing misery regardless

i so desperately want to read more of the light novels to get a better grasp on Shizuo. granted i've only read one light novel and some quotes for the Izaya ones, but it's so crazy to me that he does seem to see behind the disguise that Izaya always has up. the way he calls the both of them similar in their loneliness, and how (in the Izaya one after the time skip) he seems to feel a lot of pity for him. it's so fascinating and i'd love to do a character study on him once I read more

[alliluyevas]

damn apparently it’s been 20 years since the beltway sniper attacks

[reddogapparel]

WWG1WGA -Where We Go One, We Go All Hat. Are you part of the movement? You know Q, but are you spreading the word? If you wear your WWG1WGA hat, folks are going to ask you what it means and then you can 'red pill' them with Q and what's really happening. Be a proud support with a Redddog Apparel WWG1WGA hat. Tag your political friends! Visit our website and enter to win free apparel. #fakenews #trump #newyorktimes #wapost #altright #altleft #msm #thetruth #therussiansdidit #politics #maga #america #usa #patriots #military #reddog #reddogapparel #california #venezuela #funnyshirts #magahat #wwg1wga https://www.instagram.com/p/BunGCSsB0vx/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1oqwdgxrv4stw

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ANOTHER really sad thing about izaya is that he's lying to everyone around him and also himself that the clear signs of mental illness he has are all intentional choices he makes that he doesn't suffer from and in fact actively desires having

which is why i personally think that ASPD makes The Most Sense (PERSONALLY) for him to have, because people treat the disorder as inherently Worse Than practically every other mental illness out there, just like how everyone sees izaya as uniquely worse than everyone else in drr's cast despite them ALL being fucked up

also because pretty much everyone (including, dissapointingly, wide swaths of psychologists) believes that people with ASPD don't suffer from their symptoms and that the symptoms of ASPD only hurt those around the person with it, and never the person themselves. so if you HAVE ASPD and have the gall to suffer at all, there arises this.... phenominon, where you either deny that you have ASPD or deny that you're suffering. usually, one will lead to the other: first, you'll deny the suffering, and therefore act like its less that your whims are being influenced by an illness and more that they're conscious choices on your part. and then, since they're all conscious on your part, well, can you even be sure you have ASPD? you're choosing to be like this! therefore it's not ASPD, that implies it's something that you're fighting against, not something you like!

and from there it just feeds off itself in perpetuity.

so idk it seems like whats going on with izaya. now ofc ASPD isnt the only mental illness that can cause this rationalization, but it's one of very few that i consider to be uniquely set up for it, since practically fucking EVERYBODY buys into the worldview to make it possible

Got back into Durarara!! recently, and it's really funny to me that everything that seemed cool/kind of sinister about Izaya when I watched it in highschool vs. as an adult just seems really funny now.

Like, this is a 23 year old man with an untreated mental illness who runs around the city in a giant fur coat meddling with people's lives in the most destructive way possible while trying to avoid a debt collector who throws the nearest traffic sign at him every time they get within 5 miles of each other. He will not shut up about the gang war he's been setting up but nobody takes him seriously. His only friends are an borderline-yandere doctor who literally hung up on him when he got stabbed and the most unhinged high school student to ever exist who for some reason has not figured out that he maybe shouldn't trust this guy even though everyone around him is shouting it at him 24/7. He knows Russian for some reason and risks getting murdered to buy his favorite food.

Like, somebody get this man a prescription and stop trusting everything he says instead of letting him run around unsupervised

[hamletthedane]

Some KEY reporting here from WaPost

[andytfish]

Newspapers stop having agendas or keep losing readers! #wapost should be ashamed! https://www.instagram.com/p/B4LHQqmnpJm/?igshid=1fogrgfvf1ceg

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hi i loved these so much i put a different one as my icon in different discord servers i'm in + my main icon (flexes in nitro)

proof, ft. the most deranged messages i could find with each one

this was the picture in my wallet btw

♡ aspd izaya being cute and goofy icon set ♡