Reading Dgm Truly Is An Experience (tm)

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)

I’ve changed my mind, I’m not Sisyphus anymore. I’d rather the boulder just fuck me than push it up hill.

Allen, on the verge of death again: I’m tired of this Crowned Clown

Crowned Clown: That’s too damn bad! You keep going!

with the knowledge that innocence is an parasitic entity that basically eats misery, I want someone to know that I think of Crowned Clown refusing to let Allen be killed/die or be separated as a kid throwing a tantrum because someone took away their candy.

like Apocryphos is desperately trying to get this piece of candy away because “it’s not good for you!” and Crowned Crown is kicking screaming crying about losing this food.

I enjoy this so very much because I’ve already been making jokes that Allen is somehow his own father in such a convoluted way.

Like his adoptive father is Mana, whose brother is Nea. Nea is possessing Allen, thus inhabiting the same body and making it not only his, but also his uncles body; you might think this is where it ends. But Mana and Nea are two halves of the same individual. So Allen is possessed by half of his adoptive father’s soul. Thus he is his own father.

If I integrate this new, fresh theory, I can now joke that Allen is both his own biological and adoptive father.

If past!Allen and past!Lavi got orbed to make Allen, does that make them Allen's biological parents? Since Bookman is past!Lavi's father, does that make him Allen's grandfather?

mdzs au where everything is the same except jiang cheng calls wei wuxian “edge lord” during his yiling patriarch era

I know we all make fun of Cale for sabotaging his own slacker life, but honestly given his life experiences, it kind of makes sense.

Beyond the obvious fact that he’s a good person who’s going to help where help is needed, it was also his responsibility to do so for around a decade.

Like, I’m pretty sure one of the reasons he gives for why he needs to do all this is because conflict would inevitably reach his doorstep and cause issues for him. In the shelter before he joins team 1, he wasn’t actively involved in the fighting… then the fighting came to him, destroying the shelter with massive amounts of casualties.

And unless I’m misremembering the side chapter, he did try to take a day off as team leader krs (for cjs and lsh’s death anniversary)—and then the company called him in to deal with a crisis.

So his life experiences do kind of align with the “I have to fix everything before I can have a day off” mentality

modern (no powers) au where crowned clown is a tapeworm that Allen formed an emotional attachment to

I think if Allen makes it out of this alive and sanity intact, he’s gonna have a rock solid sense of identity. Fuck an identity crisis after all that nonsense. If I went through that, you can bet your ass I would be unshakable in who I am. I may not know exactly who I am, but this is it. Fuck you, this identity was made for me and by me. Yes it’s comprised of multiple others and manipulated for nefarious purposes, but it’s what we’re rocking with. Mind your own business.

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.

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.