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Ramble-y essays on how I play Mairu, because Duet wanted.

First a bit about how I see Mairu in Emerald vs canon to start us off. Mairu is hyper focused on Kururi in canon. It's not like other people don't exist in her world, she does like others, and is fine with liking others. She's outgoing and friendly, for all her weird mannerisms she really is just cheerful and a bit manic, so if people don't mind her quirks she gets along with them fine. She doesn't have many friends because of her own oddities but not because she doesn't want friends or can't like people. However, no matter how much she seems to happily like various people she meets, none of them rank with her sister in importance. Kururi is her other half and she is not a person without Kururi. They are "perfect" and they are a unit and they can be apart but they belong together. No one else means as much to Mairu as Kururi does, and despite Mairu having the more outgoing personality and general slight sadism that mirrors Izaya's, Kururi is actually the leader in their relationship.

Yep. Mairu is the follower. She takes her cues from Kuru's lead. She isn't incapable of her own initiative, she certainly can operate independent of her sister with no problem, but when Kururi makes a decision Mairu follows her. That's how they work. Kururi decides she likes someone, Mairu likes them too--Aoba being an excellent example of someone Mairu wasn't even aware of but was willing to kiss on meeting simply because Kururi liked him. And to Mairu it is as simple as any decision Kururi makes being like her own decision as well. It's not like she's making an independent decision to like someone Kururi likes, to Mairu if Kururi likes someone than Mairu also likes them. There's no extra step of deciding to like (or dislike) someone or in other circumstances, no thought about whether or not to follow Kururi's lead--they are the same person to Mairu, so their decisions are the same, so their choices are the same, so in a way Mairu psychologically can't allow herself to even think of the possibility of opposing Kururi (and this might be the same for Kururi to Mairu, but Kururi has the dominance in this, that's just how the dice rolled). This is simply how Mairu's mind operates and how she has taught it to operate.

Now a little wandering into a tangent of headcanon involving sexuality, because it's somewhat related--it might be that they rolled for stats about which of them was more attracted to females and which to males. In which case, Mairu rolled the higher lesbianism score and Kururi the higher het score, but they both decided on bi and twincestual because, splitting stats etc etc. I am aware sexuality doesn't work like this, but no one ever told THEM that, and they have already fucked up their own personalities to the extent that I have no doubt that if their leanings weren't already aligned with their rolled sexuality stats, than they would convince themselves completely that it was the case. So while Mairu's the outgoing and perverted bisexual with fairly obvious lesbian preference but who never actually follows through with her dirty declarations, Kururi's the quiet and sexually aggressive one with the eye on the guys--as far as I can tell from hints in the novels they decided on wanting to date Yuuhei because he was perfect, but the one with the real interest in him is Kururi. Likewise, Aoba is their toy because Kururi liked him standing up for her, in both these things Mairu just followed because there's no concept of not liking anyone Kururi likes. Mostly just a ramble on how completely dependent they are on each other and how they completely see one another as themselves.

So moving on to Emerald. Kururi isn't here. This is pretty much the root of everything wrong with Mairu in Emerald. The game wouldn't have to be Lovecraftian horror, it could be fluffy bunnies and shoujo and that one fact alone would fuck up Mairu's whole life.

Quite simply she's operating like someone who is half a person. She is lost as fuck and she is lonely as hell and she is in a constant and unending state of feeling displaced and unsure. She is not separated from her twin, to her mind she is quite literally separated from her other half. She is convinced of it, and so she is trying to compensate by being two people, only she really is only one person and has been one person all along. The problem is trying to operate as one person by herself is something she's never done. She's always been two people being one person, but now being one person trying to be one person who was two people--it's confusing just writing that, and it's even worse in her head. There is no sense. There is no direction. Everything is chaos. She acts pretty normal, for her, but she has no focus. The one stable element in her world, her sister/other half, is not in Emerald.

She lacks stability. She is lonely, because back in Ikebukuro even if the whole world hated them and they didn't have any of the friends they have, than she and Kururi would still be together. In Emerald she has nothing she can say will be there when she needs it. Her brother? That's a whole essay in itself, but for this topic we can simply say she has no confidence he loves her, sees her as important, or would even be there if she needed him. She still relies on him heavily, but it's a scared reliance, because of course, she can't count on him being there to catch her if she falls--relying on that would be very stupid and she more than anyone knows how fickle he is, and so believing in Izaya isn't something she can do (even if she kind of does anyway).

So actually let us go a bit more into her and her brother, since we're here.

She loves Izaya. Mairu may deny it and call him horrible, because he is horrible, and the worst kind of person, but he is her older brother and she loves him. She can't really help it and mostly is in denial about it, but sometimes she's also just fine with it, because, well, even if she's completely sure he sees her as just another experiment, he's her family. So she loves him. And she also distrusts and tries to hate him because let us face it, her brother is a scary person and caring for him is a bad idea. He's going to meet a bad end, EVERYONE knows this, and Mairu is smart. She doesn't want to be used, and she doesn't want to be hurt, and as far as she knows he doesn't really care about her, so why should she care about him? Despite all the many and good reasons not to trust or love Izaya though, she takes his word on things, gets mad at him, harasses him, and accepts anything he says pretty easily.

In short, Mairu and Kururi do care about their brother in canon, even when they try not to. They also accept that he is a horrible person, but considering they don't seem to have much by way of ethical standards themselves, this is probably not what prevents them from admitting they love Izaya--it's much more a mixture of, well, they are siblings, siblings get on each other's nerves. And also he is Izaya, he's a jerk, why would they admit to loving a guy they're pretty sure would only manipulate and use that love as he's almost certainly done to some extent to them in the past, but even if he hasn't they've seen him do it to others and they have watched him enough to be entirely wary of being used by him. No one wants to be used the way Izaya uses people. So, naturally, with those feelings for her brother in canon, Mairu feels even more attachment to Izaya in Emerald. He is the replacement for her stable element, and yet Mairu knows more than anyone that Izaya is the most unstable element of them all--he's the one that when you need him most of all and everything is collapsing, he disappears. That is who her brother is to others, and she has little reason to believe he'd be there for her any more than he is for his other beloved humans. Even if she can kind of see that he sees her differently, she isn't convinced of it, because the idea of relying on Izaya and trusting him like that is just really scary, and for good reason.

Because really. Izaya. So the one person Mairu should be able to find comfort and stability in while in Emerald, her brother, is the worst candidate for comfort or stability.

So she's ended up with Ange and Kida instead. Neither of them have replaced Kururi for her, though Ange is sort of an older sister figure to Mairu in a comforting way Mairu's never had. But the fact is Mairu hasn't had people she trusts not to leave her side that aren't Kururi. She's never had to. She had Kururi, who was her other half and therefore they couldn't ever leave each other, so investing that much trust in another human was never necessary. There was no need to get sad if attachment didn't stick, because she'd always have Kururi.

Well, now she doesn't have Kururi, and she has no idea how to do this attachment and trust deal. She can make friends and have fun and be cheerful and herself, and she is, but when it comes to being sure that, no matter what, if she needs them Ange and Kida will be there, she has no such certainty with them. She just doesn't know. She doesn't know if they'd abandon her if they didn't like her or if she hurt them or if they got bored with her. She doesn't actively dwell on this, but it's this thing in the back of her mind that it's unstable, that at any moment she can turn around and they won't be there, and they won't look back at her and, because of course she can't be sure Izaya will ever be reliable, there is than the constant and ever present weight of the idea that at any time she might end up alone.

This is a girl used to constantly being in the company of her twin, and she is in the constant belief that she will, sooner or later, be alone in Emerald. It's not even a remote possibility to Mairu, though again it's not something she actively thinks over, but there is almost a certainty in her mind that this will happen sooner or later. It's a certainty to her, because she doesn't know how to trust someone who isn't Kururi to simply stick around for her (and I think this is mostly because of Izaya and his be your best friend until you REALLY need him act that she's seen again and again), and so she doesn't trust, and so instead of trust in Ange and Kida, she trusts the 'inevitable' time they won't be there. And though she may not be fully conscious of it, this scares the ever-living shit out of her.

There's also all the problems with her on-going existential crisis, but that's another tangent.

So Kida and Ange. Ange is a nurturing person who treats Mairu gently. She's like a sister type without being like Kururi too much, though still kind of gloomy and linefaced. So Mairu feels really comfortable around her, but like I said earlier, she can't just trust, so she doesn't quite. She does really like Ange though, and as far as trusting someone to tell the truth, she trusts Ange. If Ange reassures her, Mairu's pretty likely to calm down, because she doesn't judge Ange's nature to be malicious or deceitful, and so in that sense Ange is trustworthy. But she's just unable to trust that Ange will stick around, because she doesn't know why Ange would. That's okay though (it really isn't) because it's fun for now and it'll be fine when Ange moves on (it would not be remotely fine, and Mairu would be devastated).

Kida--Kida is the first friend Mairu's had that's a lot like her in many ways. Perverted, fun loving, ridiculous--except Kida is pretty false. Mairu recognizes this and doesn't mind it. Because his falseness isn't like Izaya's, it's more protective of himself. She doesn't mind, but it puts even more barriers in her ability to trust Kida than she has for trusting Ange. Mairu sometimes entertains the vague idea that Ange might stick around, but Mairu is dead certain that some day Kida will just not be there. If she's right about that or not isn't the issue, she's just absolutely sure of it. Kida will disappear one day, without warning, possibly when she needs him most. So the only solution is to not need him. Not need Kida, not need Ange, not need anyone, and therefor she's safe. Except she's wrong of course, because obviously she needs people. She's a social and outgoing person, tactile and extroverted--she needs someone to rely on and trust as much as anyone does.

But she doesn't know how.

And this is why slowly but surely she is sabotaging her ability to both form stable attachments and her own sanity at the same time. I don't really write this out tagging with her, because most of it is so deeply subconscious she isn't aware of it. She's a very straightforward and surprisingly honest person in many ways. So even she doesn't notice how crippling her own trust and attachment and friendship issues are.

tl;dr Mairu sucks at friends and is screwed up in the head.