me, starting d gray man and seeing Allen: what a nice, polite young man :)
me, seeing Allen gamble: what a… nice?… polite young man :)
me, seeing Allen get into arguments and fight with Kanda and Cross: what a… nice?… polite?… young man :)
me, finding out more about the 14th situation: what a… nice?… polite?… young?… man :)
personally, I’m not the biggest fan of modern aus (the more distance from real life the better lmao), but in particular the significant traumas of the characters don’t always translate well (which… maybe the point actually). But seeing how the author does is always interesting! that said, here’s how the closest I can think of for a dgm modern au:
Allen: if you cut out the whole past self and possession situation, up until the Order, it’s pretty one to one. As a child, he had a limb difference and was trafficked. He met Mana and Allen the dog, the dog died, the place he was trafficked to burns(? maybe attacked and he was spared out of pity?) Due to the trauma of the incident, Mana gets worse, thinks Allen is Allen the dog and then they live on the streets until Mana’s death. Occasionally Mana mistakes him for Nea to keep that aspect of the trauma. Allen is attacked shortly after, survives, and is eventually taken in by Cross (and his debts). He gets a few stalkers or already has them and finds out later.
Lenalee: once again, the fighting is a bit tricky for a plain old modern au, but I can make some things work! After her parents died in an attack, she was adopted out of China into England to an abusive family. Eventually Komui was able to get custody of her… I’m unsure/doubtful he would actually be able to do this with the systems in place, so maybe foster care would work better?
Kanda: A cult??? I guess? And Alma died setting a fire maybe? Unless you want unethical government experiments in your modern au!
Lavi: … I don’t know about this one. A very emotionally distant family that shamed any expression of emotion or connection as weakness? But it doesn’t have quite the same implications, I think.
Miranda: Pretty easy! She’s still miserable and can’t keep a job. Poor Miranda.
Alistar: A bigoted, isolated small town? Very tough on this one. Maybe such a small town that superstition still runs strong and he was run out of town during a series of disappearances (actually caused by his girlfriend, Eliade).
Timothy: Pretty much the same. Abusive father who was eventually jailed for thieving, the orphanage where he lived had money trouble and he started stealing himself. Not sure where the trauma from the orphanage being attacked could fit in.
Mana: A crime family/mafia?? His brother (for reasons we aren’t sure of yet) went on a rampage and managed to take out most of the family, forcing Mana to kill him.
Link: he and his siblings/friends from the streets are adopted by a corrupt government official.
do I think these dgm characters would survive the wilderness (barring immortality lmao)
Allen: of course. I’m almost sure he’s had to do it before (cross *cough cough*)
Link: no? The streets sure, but the true wilderness? Probably not, unless the crows get that kind of training
Kanda: no. He’ll survive a fight, but he’s not going to be able to scavenge or he’ll eat something poisonous lmao. If the order had wilderness survival training, he probably did everything wrong on purpose
Lenalee: no. She’ll also survive a fight, but she doesn’t strike me as someone who was taught those skills. If anything, I think the order would have intentionally kept her vulnerable in that way to further prevent any running
Lavi: probably. The bookman clan has to have training for that.
Miranda: FUCK no lmao (I’m so sorry, my love)
Alistar: Nope
Timothy: no, sadly. Any education he was given on the subject went in one ear and out the other.
Cross: Yes.
Mother: Yes, she gives old woman who mysteriously survives everything vibes
Klaud: yes… even though she seems like a lady accustomed to finer things
Tiedoll: no… maybe? He seems like a prepared man.
Road: yes. She’s older than she looks, and I think she figured it out because she was bored.
Tyki: yeah, but not because of any actual skill. He survives as a comedy gag.
Sheryl: no, richboy
Apocryphos: unfortunately, yes.
the Earl/Adam: yes. That is one OLD motherfucker.
Mana (no, I’m not explaining): he’s either like Tyki or he absolutely thrives. You go looking for him, and you find him with a fully functional cabin and a garden. It’s been only two days. He didn’t make either, nor did he find them.
Neah: I feel like the answer is no.
gotta be infuriating to be one of the people involved in the plotting/secrets of the Holy War in dgm.
you picked random guy one to be the Guy Who Dies (he even agreed!) and he’s just… so hard to kill. Everything that you’ve done to kill him has backfired and he’s harder to kill now.
your choice to use him as your memory vessel extended his life temporarily. that other guy’s attempt at killing for this decision failed miserably, now he has a weapon and is years younger. the weapon is no longer responding to commands and won’t kill him. yet another person tries to kill him, but because he’s a kid now, he feels bad and spares him. you feel bad when you try to kill him, even after he’s grown up a bit—he’s just so nice!
when he tries to die on his own, he’s super durable.
now you’re just waiting him out, but he’s making everything so difficult. you think you’re getting somewhere, and then he comes back, clinging to life and sanity by the skin of his teeth.
he’s dying at a rapid, unstoppable rate and he’s unkillable.
big fan of characters whose first and greatest indicator of something being deeply wrong with them is how chill they are and how quickly they rebound
allen is better than me because if that many people apologized or expressed remorse for trying to kill me and/or fucking me over royally and then continued to try to kill me/fuck me over, I would have a body count. I’d be swinging. all the time.
I haven’t read the alma karma arc recently, so I could be entirely off base, but does anyone else think that the second exorcist experiments might have been trying to recreate what happened with past!allen? like I don’t remember if there was a given reason/inspiration beyond “need more soldiers, why not revive old ones,” but the basics seem rather similar to me.
a person is revived after being killed (or as good as) in the body of a child with no concrete memory of who they were before (or so I assume in allen's case but that could have happened later).
injuries are unnaturally healed by using the helix of life—in the second exorcists’ case by taking it from their future/lifespan and for allen using someone else’s life.
I think the timeline might match up, too. I don’t know exactly how old allen starts out as, but we do know that present!lavi is older by like 3 years. I think allen looked between 5-8 (terrible at estimating…), so if we go short, that’s ~8 years for the final result to be revealed to apocryphos. And kanda’s been alive for 9 years chronologically, which would put allen’s age at like 6-7. That seems like adequate time to get weird fantasy sci-fi experiments up and running.
and with the way apocryphos was looking at that light cocoon allen was in, I wouldn’t be surprised if he took some inspiration, one way or another.
modern (no powers) au where crowned clown is a tapeworm that Allen formed an emotional attachment to
god rest his soul. he’s not dead, he just needs a break and only god can get him out of that shituation.
please god, put him down (for a nap)
allen: what’s with all this “chosen one” bullshit? Chosen by who? Why me??
allen, upon regaining his memories:
allen: son of a bitch
can’t imagine how Allen’s conversation with the Bookman clan is going to go upon waking up. They’re pissed at him because they couldn’t find past!lavi’s body. Past!lavi didn’t leave a body because he basically absorbed it into past!allen’s.
Imagine having to explain that. How do possibly explain that.
*actively attempting murder*: his compassionate nature and aura of tragedy have captivated me
shout out to past!Allen Walker for being some unfortunate rando who came into contact with the narrative and then almost instantly became doomed by it