I CAME BACK TO THIS LAST SO I COULD GIVE MYSELF TIME TO THINK well okay I left Vincent's too, but she's a hooker who asked more than one.
RIGHT NOW--Allen mostly thinks of himself as "Red," still. It's acknowledging his remembered past as a child who was hated and abused because of his arm while reclaiming it as a big F U to those people! YOU WERE TRYING TO USE IT TO MAKE ME A NON-ENTITY BUT HA HA I HAVE MADE IT A NAME! It also distances him from being "Winter," which most people probably don't remember at this point, but for Allen it's like ... it sort of gave him a mini-complex about people expecting something out of him that he wasn't, especially since the more he heard about Winter, the less he really felt like he was the same person as this guy. (Recently he's come more to terms with that, but it's not something he'll concretely decide or say aloud.)
And then hilariously one of his first memories recovered gave him back the name "Allen"--and right now he (I will just use Red to differentiate at this point) has a lot of the same feelings towards Allen as he does Winter. He let Sion see it and Sion has since been super awkward about calling him "Allen" and sometimes insisting on it and being weird about him using the name "Red" still, which in turn sort of severely drove down trust points in Sion! At this point Red only trusts the name "Allen" to Rabi and Lenalee because they're his most important people and he loev them and that is how they know him. He doesn't think of it as like, "I will be Red forever and Allen never again," though--he's not 100% comfortable accepting yet that he is Allen; he needs more time and more space to adjust, as well as more memories to help cement himself.
So right now it's like RED |--------------------------------------| ALLEN and every memory he regains and every time he thinks about it and accepts little more pieces of himself, that gap gets shorter. There will probably come a point where he'll acknowledge that he's "Allen [Walker]" (he hasn't gotten back the 'Walker' part yet, hilariously) and start gently trying to get people to use that for himself. FOR NOW THOUGH, he identifies as Red, and that is how he wants other people to see him--he wants to be judged for who and what he is in Aather and nothing else (Rabi and Lenalee get free pass, of course). Even if he's an asshole, even if he's a jerk, at least these are his actions and he can own them! And that's what he wants people to see when they look at him--"Red the Sapphire," not "Allen Walker." IN TIME "Red" and "Allen" will be the same person even in his own mind, but until then! UNTIL THEN! He will keep them separate.
I really hope that his sigpos of becoming Allen Walker is sharable too, so he can share it with the people he's tried to explain this to ICly.
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RIGHT NOW--Allen mostly thinks of himself as "Red," still. It's acknowledging his remembered past as a child who was hated and abused because of his arm while reclaiming it as a big F U to those people! YOU WERE TRYING TO USE IT TO MAKE ME A NON-ENTITY BUT HA HA I HAVE MADE IT A NAME! It also distances him from being "Winter," which most people probably don't remember at this point, but for Allen it's like ... it sort of gave him a mini-complex about people expecting something out of him that he wasn't, especially since the more he heard about Winter, the less he really felt like he was the same person as this guy. (Recently he's come more to terms with that, but it's not something he'll concretely decide or say aloud.)
And then hilariously one of his first memories recovered gave him back the name "Allen"--and right now he (I will just use Red to differentiate at this point) has a lot of the same feelings towards Allen as he does Winter. He let Sion see it and Sion has since been super awkward about calling him "Allen" and sometimes insisting on it and being weird about him using the name "Red" still, which in turn sort of severely drove down trust points in Sion! At this point Red only trusts the name "Allen" to Rabi and Lenalee because they're his most important people and he loev them and that is how they know him. He doesn't think of it as like, "I will be Red forever and Allen never again," though--he's not 100% comfortable accepting yet that he is Allen; he needs more time and more space to adjust, as well as more memories to help cement himself.
So right now it's like RED |--------------------------------------| ALLEN and every memory he regains and every time he thinks about it and accepts little more pieces of himself, that gap gets shorter. There will probably come a point where he'll acknowledge that he's "Allen [Walker]" (he hasn't gotten back the 'Walker' part yet, hilariously) and start gently trying to get people to use that for himself. FOR NOW THOUGH, he identifies as Red, and that is how he wants other people to see him--he wants to be judged for who and what he is in Aather and nothing else (Rabi and Lenalee get free pass, of course). Even if he's an asshole, even if he's a jerk, at least these are his actions and he can own them! And that's what he wants people to see when they look at him--"Red the Sapphire," not "Allen Walker." IN TIME "Red" and "Allen" will be the same person even in his own mind, but until then! UNTIL THEN! He will keep them separate.
I really hope that his sigpos of becoming Allen Walker is sharable too, so he can share it with the people he's tried to explain this to ICly.
HOW IS LLOYD DOING!!