Imagine him tearfully telling Zane when they were kids, because he was too scared to tell their parents.
Imagine Garte finding out, and saying that if he's going to 'pretend' to be a man, he might as well serve the town like one, and that's how the engagement starts.
Imagine all those years later, Zane finding him, and still calling him brother.
'I was the one person you could trust. Now watch me burn down your whole goddamn world for leaving me with that monster.'
Mcd except all the shadowknights are talking skeletons
Okay this is just a delightful AU idea!
Fun fact you didn't know, in my DND game we actually just brought one of our older party members back because he was just a skull for a while, but we finally got him a body last session. So it's very cool that we're talking about this now.
I think Vylad and Zenix would LOVE being skeletons. They would have so much fun being little freaks.
Laurance seems like he'd be disturbed for a while, but once he got used to it, he's cracking every joke. Every single bone joke, much to the dismay of Cadenza. He tries to drink stuff sometimes just because he thinks it looks cool to watch liquid pour down his spine or ribcage. He learns to have fun with it.
Vincent is ambivalent about being a skeleton.
Sasha would be so fuckin done. She comes back as a skeleton and just throws herself into the lava before the calling is even a whisper.
Gene would be a menace of a skeleton. While everyone else is being silly or whatever, Gene figures out how to use this form to be the best fighter possible. I mean this man is detaching his limb and throwing it at another enemy while he attacks a different one. He's removing parts of his body and attaching them elsewhere to get a range advantage. He's throwing smaller inconsequential bones from his feet at people's eyes to blind them. He's fucking insane.
you know how irene didn't die, but her friends were continuously reborn?
what if it was inversed? they didn't die, until irene did. everyone was shattered. at some point, they parted ways. eventually, irene became aphmau with the whole hyria and vylad situation, and they all made their ways back to each other when she did. they didn't know about that because she asked hyria to keep it a secret - a big point of contention throughout the story.
they've had to take up different identities over time to avoid their fame getting invthe way of what they needed to do. they're nowhere near as strong apart as they are together, but they don't know where eachother are, much less how to get there, and they were never the same after irene's death.
and so, when the story starts, they've taken up their current identities - the people who, in the original series, were their incarnations. aphmau ends up bringing them back together over time, unintentionally at first, but she starts trying ro after finding out she's irene.
how irene died could be something she didn't intend, somehow cutting through her immortality. it could also be her choice like in canon, life having lost its meaning. i don't know.
it's unlikely i'll ever do anything with this, but it's a neat concept!
Forever ago I was extremely hyperfixated on both Spirit Farer and the Aphverse at the same time and made a Spirit Fare au for jt, I think Imma go back to that au and make shit sad again, cause that game breaks me but I love it.
Brainrot over my own au rn guys, but!! The prince!Laurance au is great to me because the way I'm organizing events, Garroth just keeps going to the woods, finding unconscious people and bringing them home with him
Song lyrics from ponyphonic’s “Feed Me With Your Heart” because it’s a perfect fit
I feel like you could put all of my MCD AUs on a sliding scale of “good shadow knight Laurance, does no harm” to “very evil shadow knight Laurance, does all of the harm,” and what I’m dubbing the “Judas AU” goes all the way to the right. In this, Laurance is the one chosen as the Shadow Lord’s vessel, not Aaron, because of how close he is to Irene. He’s her permanent bodyguard and one of her dearest allies. It’s like Irene was delivered to him on a silver platter, really. Now all that’s left for him to do, is to have some fun.
Laurance ends up becoming the main supervillain of the series, more so than Zane or Gene, as the Goddess’s most trusted and beloved companion stabs her in the back and gleefully wages a bloody, interdimensional war against her as if it were his favorite dance.
(They get him back, eventually, when The Shadow Lord is dead)
WAIT THAT ACTUALLY HAS POTENTIAL. Like the shadowknights but they're talking skeletons ask. Their flesh is gone. They're talking skeletons.
EXCEPT.
They have fake doll parts resembling their alive self. That they put on. In order to seem alive.
OH FUCK OH MY GOD WAIT NO THAT'S AMAZING!!
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I LOVE THIS IDEA
Building on it, I think not only do they have stuff they put on, but their skeletal bodies are still doll like.
Zenix has strings dangling from some parts of his body that he can use in a fight, but are also used to control him probably by Gene or Araphel.
Vylad's elbows don't bend well because they're infused with the wooden and metal joints of his body. His head can never stay up, it always lolls one direction because of the weight of the parts of his face that are wooden instead of bone.
Parts of Sasha are wooden. Or a mix of wood and bone. When she splinters it's always both. But she does get more physical items to remember. A ring that Laurance gave her when they were kids, so it's actually small enough to fit her bony fingers. A necklace from Kenmur that she can wear around her spinal column and let hang in her ribcage. It's a heart shaped locket with a picture of them inside of it. The closest thing she has to a beating heart.
Laurance has a layer of padding that he can only keep on with clothing fit to a skeleton and what amounts to stuffing. Luckily he has Cadenza. It makes him feel more human than anything, and she makes him multiple outfits and would provide this same service to any Shadow Knight she grew an attachment to (cough Vincent).
Oh my fucking God holy fucking shit Gene with the porcelain face mask?? Are you kidding me?? I'm gonna apply that to normal MCD somehow because that's making me feel feral. I need that. In my life. Right now. Holy fuck Gene taking the mask on or off depending on who he's talking to. He uses it to hide away from people, or to disguise himself. To appear as a passable human under the robes he wears, or to hide from those he refuses to let see his weaknesses.
Zenix still makes that crack in it too. He still destroys Gene's perfect little facade, leaving a permanent scar on the one piece of humanity he had left.