#desfraisespartout

#14: BIRDMEN AU

Arg I'm almost CERTAIN I've told you about this but it's good you asked again because as I get a better understanding of Durarara!! the more I feel compelled to expand to this AU and the page count is low key blowing up in a scary way. I fear I have to start making this just so it doesn't get any bigger.

The overarching arc of the narrative is: Celty and Shinra grow up together in EDEN's HQ. Shinra is the son of the EDEN director, while Celty takes Eva's place in BIRDMEN's narrative as the sole survivor of the first birdmen. After Shinra tries to become a birdman by drinking Celty's blood and failing, he resolves to try to keep Celty tied down at any cost. It ends when the birdmen inevitably come for Celty, and Shinra asks her to kill him, because he can't live with her, but he can't live without her either. So she does that and then lives her beautiful bird life without him LMAOOOO

I actually thought about posting the outline but that requires me to actually make the outline which I think would take too long. have some beautiful thoughts about the characters instead!

This post is informative about the themes present about Celty and Shinra's relationship in this AU. I highly recommend reading it.

Celty Sturluson as Eva Oulu

The protagonist... my diva... in this AU she basically like. IS eva if that makes sense. Like Eva, she has a pair of researcher parents who were exiled from EDEN, and a flock that was terminated. In fact I think it makes MORE sense that she's the only one left-- Shinra's favoritism could have easily saved her, with the justification that she retained her verbal communication skills being only there for the formal paperwork.

I thiunk she still deserves a beautiful black scythe so I will indulgently draw her fighting blackouts with out. #myIndulgence and also shinra's bc he did say one time that "you looked cool with a scythe so you should keep doing it for the swag"

I think she's fond of Shinra but it's like that tweet that's like "I'm probably nonbinary but I got a day job I don't have time to worry about that". I think for her it's like "I'm probably in love with Shinra but I'm trying to break birdmankind free of the shackles of humanity so I don't have time to worry about that".

I'm a bit troubled because I know Celty's got a bit of a jealous personality but that doesn't feel quite right for her in this AU on account of her being more aloof due to her being a birdman but I bet it could work. I think she should be jealous of Izaya at least a little bit. That would be fun for me personally.

Shinra Kishitani as Shinjin, But Frankly Doing His Own Damn Thing

I put him down as being the Shinjin of BIRDMEN but frankly only the people who are wired the fuck into the mainframe can even recognize the guy on the right. He was the priest guy who was in charge of looking after Eva, but genuinely I changed so much about what Shinra was doing and the place he occupied in EDEN he's just doing his own thing now. That's right! I like Shinra so much I carved out a place for him in the BIRDMEN canon! A hole just for him! Where he will die gorgeously and tragically!!

One time Shinra was featured on a your fav is a nepo baby blog and it changed the way I viewed him forever. like damn… he low key kind of is… so I made him the director's son. It just makes sense! I very sincerely believe it when I say that I think he could be the greatest reactionary force on earth if he wanted to and this story is all about that.

I think he has some Namie-like and Mika-like tendencies to him, but we never really get to see it in DRRR because he tends to get what he wants in canon LOL. I would like to see him angry! I would like the warmth he shows to Celty to feel unsettling the way Namie's affection towards Seiji is unsettling... I think it could be so great. He'd make an incredibly antagonist... sigh...

Izaya Orihara as SKY/Bluebell

Izaya... or, because it's already so conveniently close to the Adam naming scheme in BIRDMEN, Isaiah! He's an Adam around Shinra's age, and when Celty told Shinra to go make some friends Isaiah was his top pick.

He's still fascinated with humans, but I think in the context of him only having lived in EDEN's HQ and being surrounded by artificial humans it strikes a bit of a different chord. I think he's deeply jealous of how "free" the humans outside of EDEN are, and I think his attempts to mess with those outside of EDEN are rooted in a desire to show like. Haha, you might be free but I can control you so easily with my beautiful information. something like that.

Because he's an Adam he's like. a white boy here. But I'm attached to Izaya's black hair look so I'll probably have him dye his blonde hair black for #individuality LMAOOO...

Leena mentioned that something she really likes about Shinzaya in general is how both Shinra and Izaya's characters are turned on their heads within their dynamic and I absolutely agree. When I said I wanted Shinra to get mad, I want him to get mad at Isaiah LOL.

I picked SKY here as his BIRDMEN counterpart because there's this part where SKY attempts to help a flock of birdmen break free from EDEN in the US, and does so by feeding them information, until she's found out and the flock is exterminated. Isaiah does this too in his own free time but Shinra finds out and is furious. Isaiah is scared out of his wits and basically kills 30 people because he thought it would make shinra less mad at him lmaooo

it's insane because like. I will say it right now. I don't ship Celty and Izaya. But I feel like with the way I end this, with Celty reaching out to Isaiah over Shinra's dead body and going "you are coming with me to the new world" might read as romantic. Izacelty and shinzaya fans will randomly feast despite the fact that this is first and foremost a shincelty fanwork LMAO

Vorona as the Eves

It shouldn't just be Vorona but the other white women of drrr elude me. I feel like there are more but I can't think of them right now. whatever! for my intents and purposes Vorona suits this role just fine...

I chose Vorona specifically because she has this fixation on Celty that I think the Eves also have with the birdmen. Vorona sees Celty as a test of her own personal limits, and in a similar way birdmen as the experiments of the Adams and Eves are a test of their limits as well. I like what the Eves said about it being their wish that the birdmen they worked on would have wings. I think such a speech makes sense from a character like Vorona...

She's going to be Celty's main accomplice when it comes to sneaking Celty out of EDEN! I picture her as being a little older than Celty, but the moving timeline and the fact that a lot of worldbuilding in BIRDMEN is extremely age-sensitive means this is really subject to change. Like, for example, I want Izaya to be young enough to be turned into a birdman at the end, but I also want Vorona to be young enough to see the finale... and so on.

Mikado Ryuugamine as Takayama Sou

Again every single casting choice is made in service of how this character relates to our beautiful protagonist Celty and I really do think Celty and Mikado's relationship is quite similar to Eva and Takayama's in the sense that even though their encounters with each other are extremely brief but also completely life-changing. To use the words of BIRDMEN, I think they really helped spread each others' wings.

Even though I think from a personality standpoint Mikado is more similar to Karasuma I fear it may be a Takayama and Karasuma were meant to be two sides of the same coin anyways situation and there's just going to be one of them. It's not even particularly relevant anyways, aside from the fact that Mikado is the one heading the EDEN break-in in the finale.

Masaomi Kida and Saki Mikajima as Arthur C. Phoenix and Robin Howard

ok now I'm starting to feel a bit silly because so many of my casting choices seem like I'm only doing it because the character designs are similar but I'm so serious when I say that I've spent so long deliberating about these and this is one of the minor details which I won't really be able to go into much detail about but is very dear to me...

I do think Masaomi and Arthur have quite similar personalities. I think they are both charismatic and cheerful in a similar way and I can absolutely see Masaomi ending up as a bellwether like Arthur. But more importantly I am SUCH a sucker for stories which take out Masaomi and Saki ends up having to fill in his space in the narrative. I say this as though this is a well-known trope regarding Saki and Masaomi but mostly I'm talking about my own personal perfect resolution to the Yellow Scarves arc, in which Masaomi gets put into a coma after the confrontation at the warehouse and now Saki kind of has to like. Explain everything to Mikado and Anri.

AT ANY RATE I don't even think it's going to come up BUT Masaomi's flock was the one that Isaiah was in contact with and the entire flock basically gets killed over, again, Isaiah not wanting Shinra to be mad at him LMAO. Saki is one of the few survivors but even so I don't think she hates Isaiah for that... and hey. I didn't even notice the implications of this until right this moment but this means that Masaomi floated across the Pacific Ocean to join consciousnesses with his boy best friend Mikado... though they didn't know each other... how nice for Masaomi...!

Shingen Kishitani as Viktor Ivanovich Baranoff

Well, Shinra's the director's son, so the director is obviously Shingen. Even though characters like Seitarou Yagiri fits the bill much better than Shingen, I have ideas regarding nepotism that I'm too invested in to give up on LMAO

Throughout the course of DRRR many characters compare Shinra to his father, though rarely to his face. I don't think he actually thinks too badly of his own father in the sense that I don't think he'd take much offense if someone told him that he was similar to his father, even if he thinks having Shingen around is lowkey a pain in the ass. One thing that REALLY gets me though, is the fact Shinra definitely seems to disapprove of Shingen's remarriage to Emilia. which. agree. why are you marrying someone younger than your son.

In this AU Emilia is an Eve (Camellia could be her name, perhaps!) and like in DRRR canon she's slightly younger than Shinra. She caught Shingen's fancy, and after marrying her, she no longer works as a researcher in EDEN HQ. She's no longer just a factory clone, but a real person, with legal documents, citizenship and everything.

This post is required reading to understand the next bit, which is basically: if we take Shinra's obsession with marrying Celty in canon as a sort of chauvinistic savior complex, where he seeks to grant personhood to someone unpersoned by society via connections to himself, then Shingen marrying one of the Eves is exactly the same thing as Shinra trying to marry Celty, who like the Eves are part of an oppressed underclass within EDEN.

I looove the contradiction of Shinra disapproving of what Shingen is doing but then also doing like. the same thing. I think Isaiah should make jabs at him about it. I still can't decide if shinra should lose his cool during this conversation.

Marcin is a gloomy silly lad who likes listening to goth music, being mysterious and loves everything involving paranormal! Especially ghosts! He'd love to document ghosts from his local area (wasn't really successful so far). He has a younger sister :))

His parents have trouble connecting with him and wish Marcin could get some 'more productive' hobby. He's very insecure because of that obviously and it reflects badly on his self worth. Dad tried to get him into photography (his own hobby) once but it backfired horribly so now Marcin is a photography hater out of spite >:[

He was really isolated throughout elementary school and made his very first friends now, in middle school. Those friends being Nadia and Jacek c:

Nadia is a nerdy emo girl who writes pretty successful paranormal blog. She and Marcin obviously connected over their shared interest in that. She likes bad poetry and fashion. Nadia's kind of shy when ineracting with people but often comes across as sarcastic. She has a mysterious boyfriend with whom she often breaks up and gets back together, but neither Marcin nor Jacek had ever seen him (does he even exist? ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯)

When faced with real ghosts she's very enthusiastic about it. Would like to help people having ghost problems, even if mostly to just be a 'ghost detective'.

She's also been isolated because of her dad's frequent job changes. She's seen by her peers as a weird emo kid and she doesn't do anything to challenge their views on her.

Jacek is a cheerful and straightforward guy. He loves to skate. He's a bit older than the other two, having skipped a year. He often can't keep up with homework on top of his chores and helping his mom at home. Jacek has a lot of siblings and is one of the oldest, so he often looks after the younger ones. His grandmother also helps them, so they spend a lot of time together c: he gets the hottest area gossip from her.

He doesn't seem like it but Jacek is really perceptive. He's the first one to pick up that Marcin was hiding something. And what was he hiding? Well.. Here's where Adam comes into play. (Here's more about the story itself than the character, but it's just context)

Adam was a boy who loved photography. He was a promising member of a photo club both in his elementary and middle school. He often participated in various competitions and even got first place in some. One of them was this really big competition (for all the schools in the country), but for this one he got first place post mortem. Adam died in an accident in an abandoned house, before they announced the winners.

Marcin was in his first year in the same middle school as Adam. They didn't know eachother, Marcin only knew of him because they were talking about his death all over at school. He didn't care that much, but got pretty envious over Adam's passion to do things he liked and being rewarded for it.

During vacation after Adam's death, Marcin was isolated once again. Jacek was helping at home at all times and Nadia went overseas to see her grandparents. Marcin sat alone in his room, only sometimes hearing his parent's worried complaints. Being in a really dark place he came up with and idea: to get a ghost take over his body, so that someone can get a better use of his life for him. And the first candidate for this was Adam. However, during the summoning something went wrong and instead of being trapped within Marcin's body, Adam got trapped in a camera that was being used as a lure for his soul.

From then their weird acquaintance begins. They don't really like eachother at first. Marcin is self centered and doesn't really care about Adam himself, and Adam is very angry about his situation. They are trying to undo this mess and in the meantime discover that the camera that Adam is possessing can take ghost photos. Because of that, passions of both boys combine and they have some common ground for friendship to begin.

Marcin is hiding everything about Adam from his friends. He's not really ready to face them about the summer he almost lost his life or the ghost of one talented boy.