not to continue beating a dead horse but i saw the og post earlier ( got curious when i saw your posts ) and the line about the comparison with shizuo is so funny to me. like yeah it is absolutely true that shizuo is doing his best to carry on with his day and people keep fucking with him etc etc BUT. unclear how to phrase this but the underlying implication that shizuo is "better" less so because of his actions themselves and more so because the "negative" things about him ( his anger issues obvi ) are beyond his control and therefore not to be held against him entirely whereas izaya's action are entirely in his control and of his own volition ( which does such a disservice to both characters imo ) no sir absolutely no impulsive poorly calculated decisions that have consequences for him later. you fell for the character's facade meant to be dismantled by the viewer etc
we love beating dead horses in this house. say something stupid and we get to clown on you forever. those are the rules
ALSO YEAH LITERALLY TEXUALLY IZAYAS ISSUES ARE OUT OF HIS CONTROL. like.
literally right there. and you cant even be like "uuuhjffnfnbut in the anime" LOOK CLOSELY. duarara rewards reading between the lines and izaya as a character starts off with a facade that slowly crumbles and if you still believe the facade by the end then you're stupid point blank.
which like, its Fine to not be able to analyze a show, its whatever, its not a thing everyone can do ESPECIALLY as they watch a show in real time for the first time. but dont act like you had some kind of Grand Revalation about the show and then talk down to people who have been here for YEARS, decades even, because they disagree with you, and then insult shit like their age! this guy just made something up about izaya and then "dunked" on his fans because of this imagined attribute
and yeah treating shizuo as Absolved bc he Didnt Mean To does a huge disservice to him as well, wether or not he Meant To, things still happened and people were still hurt, the NUANCE behind it is whats important!! i do strongly believe that if you want to truly understand this show you need to do away with the idea of "good people" and "bad people." novody is a wholly Good Person and nobody is a wholly Bad Person and people are COMPLICATED, especially the people in durarara, and if you try to slot them into Good Person and Bad Person categorization then all youll do is do a disservice to the characters and the writing itself
and i have talked about this EXTENSIVELY on here but izaya is important to me because he seems to be intentionally coded to be a sociopath. like, i said this in my other post:
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.
and it means a lot to me that in a show full of subverting Tropes About Bad People, "the sociopath" as a trope was one of them and it ended up making an incredibly raw and honest portrayal of what having aspd is like- both in the hurting other people sense AND the suffering of the person actually with the disorder, which is something not really explored at ALL in Media About Sociopaths. i talk a lot more about izaya's possible coding HERE if youre curious, but izaya as a character is very important to me because its a kind of portrayal not really seen. so it sucks when people completely disregard any and all nuance behind him bc he makes them ~uncomfy~ and then has the audacity to make it our problem as well
also this is just an aside based on my own dislike of him at age 16, plus i earned the right to be a jackass tbh: a lot of people hate izaya bc on some level they know theyd be one of those suicide girls that has no real answer to why they want to kill themselves and flouder when asked about it, not understanding the weight of suicide in the slightest and yet still saying that theyll do it
(know or at least THINK; i was pretty insecure back then but i really wasnt Like That, i knew full well what suicide meant. but i wanna be mean so im built different. just me)
anyway yeah fuck that hater ass bitch
ALSO the idea that shizuo is in the clear bc "people keep fucking with him" is LAUGHABLE bc that includes people like. asking him a question or being mildly annoying or in the wrong place at the wrong time. dumb to the fucking ass!!!!