#mcd meta

And Vylad isn't even the only guy we've ever seen with a bow, he's not even the only SHADOWKNIGHT to use a bow in early S1. Not only does Zenix use one multiple times and canonically has better luck with it (the "bad at archery" thing being a purposeful fakeout/ruse, because we know he successfully shoots Garroth later, and yet i still see people seeing hes bad at archery because ???? you fell for the facade bro), but Sasha canonically used a bow to kill Joh, which we also learn about in early S1.

Dante is fresh out of guard training, wandering aimlessly trying to find a purpose when he stumbles upon trouble helping Donna and Logan out. While we don’t have a real basis for what the average age a person undergoes guard trading, based on what Garroth says about his past and relationship with Asura, we can assume it’s performed quite young (Early 20s maybe)

So when Dante meets with the other guards for the first time, he’s impressed to meet the legendary Laurence and Garroth - the heads of their respective classes (which raises the question - is there only one guard academy?????). Based on their reputation and the fact that both have been guards for a long time before meeting Aphmau, it is safe to assume that they’re older than Dante by at least a substantial amount.

Look at Laurence and his backstory! A lot of time has past from his initial guard hood and the death of Sasha! And even more time between then and his appointment of head guard of Metelli!

Whether this is exactly a 15 year age gap or not doesn’t matter, point is when Garroth and Laurence return from the Irene Dimension, not only are they closer in age to Dante than they were prior, Dante might even be older than them now - which is tragic.

Here’s this kid, inexperienced and naive, kind and traumatized thrown into a harsh world, guided by the one consistent calm (debatable) in Aphmau, only to then have everything ripped from him in an instant as the only people he has to look up to disappear for a decade and a half.

Been thinking a lot about Dante and how truly noble he is. Being the only main guard not intended as Aph’s love interest allows Dante’s screen time to be used to explore more of Aph’s platonic relationships, and I think he’s neat.

So under that post I reblogged from aphtwt confessions saying they hated Laurance, I mentioned in the tags (before I changed them) about how Laurance sees Aphmau during the pregnancy “arc” (it was literally in the 97th episode so I’m not sure how much of an arc is really is) and I wanted to explain it further since I feel like I did a bad job doing it originally.

Disclaimer before I start: I don’t like the pregnancy subplot lol. I don’t think that’s necessarily unpopular either. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen so I’m going to to analyze it anyway, especially because what spawned this post specifically mentions it.

the main reason why is because it’s legit was made with their personalities in mind, not:

> because they had a 2 second scene of physical contact > because they were romantic rivals > because they had this tension people mistake as something romantic or sexual fueled > because of the sake for pairing the spares

and I just like the way they’re each other solid opposites but in a complementary way? a little salt to bring out the sweetness; vylad operates by feelings being a burden and humanity, by extension, is too though you know he has a solid foot with good morals, with his method of living is repress and control. you verse this with laurance’s passion– he a righteous person with emotion on his sleeve, clings to his humanity and will brute force his way into making his shadow knight side stay in line.

it just strikes because vylad is a loner and while will gravitate to people, him being attentive to laurance felt unique– as if he was invested? i’ll be down for if it was platonic but because of the lack with lgbta+ relationships as well as ships like garrance smacked with a “brothers” label, there’s a nuance that comes out if it’s romantic?

because:

a) brings the issue of if laurance found himself falling for vylad, what happens to his love/fixation to aph since there is the issue he, on a subconscious level, wants to kill her because shadow knights ultimately do– it would be interesting if laurance develops a resentment in a way because he’s stuck in this mindset a dying love that is dead weight on his psyche and his being vs a new one he feels if he pursue, is unfair because his attachments to the other

b) vylad and the whole battle of his emotions; he makes exceptions, his mother and garroth, but ultimately the only love is familial love and he never entertain the idea of something else. his control is nearly perfect, to the point he starts thinking “friends aren’t necessary” but just imagine moments when he wishes to indulge in something deemed natural for humans and by proxy, kinda-humans category that SKs inhabit… I mean a lot of shadow knights might have their lives robbed but vylad is particular gruesome because he was back-stabbed. trust is a serious thing, so trust in a person is one thing, making a friend is another and then the dawning realization this friendship deeper…

and like that *snaps* laurance is gone

you see!!! there’s a story to be told because it’s all about internal battles of wants vs what they need to operate as

laurance, wilting as he realize his love is dangerous and unfair and how much it kills him since he’s a loving person by nature

vylad, slowly opening up and considering the concept that he deserve to have emotions, he’s more than just a shadow knight

there’s no betrayal, brotherhood, etc.

them genuinely finding each other at a low point, laurance’s obvious while vylad’s start questioning his own philosophy

There's probably something that explicitly disproves this in canon but the thought that Zianna was somehow set up or made to kill Vylad would be so interesting to me.

His comment about being stabbed in the back seemed like it had double meaning that doesn't entirely make sense with what we know of his relationship with Zane and Garte. He refused to tell Garroth who it was when asked, which, once again, never fully made sense to me with Zane (or Garte).

Vylad wasn't sure if she would want to see him again. Maybe there was more to that than the monster he saw himself as becoming. Maybe it was somehow an accident. Maybe Vylad's last moments were his mother realizing what she had done. Maybe he died before that could happen. Maybe he died thinking his mother, the one person other than Garroth who seemed to care about him, had decided to get rid of him.

(It's been far too long since my last rewatch lol. I've also had Zane as my primary suspect for the last 9 years. I have NO idea how she'd get into a situation where she'd do it, but I feel like Garte and Zane are very good at manipulating situations and getting rid of people indirectly.)

I don't think there's anything explicitly Disproving all that aside from the "Everyone told her that Vylad was dead but she always believed he was alive" thing, and the fact that nothing comes up between them when they reunite/get a chance to talk in the s2 finale.

Which could hypothetically be excused away by the fact that there were other people around and you wouldn't want to bring that up while Garroth is Right There probably. But also simultaneously I'd expect Zianna to be at least a little more awkward towards him than immediately accepting and welcoming as she is in canon. So who's to say.

Hard agree that it definitely feels like a situation she could hypothetically find herself in, i think the real thing I'd get stuck on is why her vs anyone else. I don't think it could be Zane putting her in that position (or at least not in a way that she Knows its him putting her in that position, considering her lingering desire/belief for Zane to be a good person in the S2 finale), so it'd probably have to be Garte (or some other force???).

Which then leads me to think like "what would Garte get out of engineering this to happen." With Garte setting Zane up for murder, he not only gets a dead Vylad out of it (which is a positive for him) but also gets a more complacent Zane out of it, grooming him to follow in his footsteps and such. I do wonder what the motive would be for making Zianna do it instead, although I'm sure there's plenty of plausible reasons someone could come up with.

Complacency doesn't matter as much in Zianna's situation, given Zane has a lot more power/agency than her, but that doesn't mean it's not viable at all. Maybe even just blackmail for blackmail's sake could be a reason. The possibilities are endless, really.

Lore-Breaking Assumption: Despite going through all the hassle of Faking His Death, Running Away Across The Region, and Never Revealing His Face (something the average country bumpkin of Phoenix Drop probably would not recognize even remotely), the idea of using a fake name or moniker did not occur to him. Despite the name "Garroth Romeave" being much more widely recognizable than his face.

Generous Assumption: “Garroth” is a common enough first name in the region of Ru’aun that he didn’t see a point in using a false one. He’s not entirely stupid, he just didn’t see a reason to change it.

now stick with me here.

Knowledge We Are Given In Canon: Azura has known Garroth since they were in guard training together, which is likely when she developed a crush on him.

Lore-Breaking Assumption: Azura for some reason has determined Garroth’s true identity, despite the fact that he literally faked his own death in order to get away from the responsibilities that came with his name and status. (And she’s awesome and cool so she just never ratted him out about it.)

Really Funny Assumption: Azura actually developed a crush on some other guy named Garroth (common name) and lost touch with him after guard academy, and then falsely believes our Garroth (the one obscuring his face and true identity so he can’t cleanly explain to her the truth) to be the one she developed a crush on.

And the first time she sees him without his helmet, shes like. “What thefuck is that. Who the hell are you.”

jkjk

17 and 27?

17. any headcanons you're attached to?

BOY DO I HAVE SOME HEADCANONS IM ATTACHED TO. First off this post is required reading. its over a year old and its all stuff i stand by pretty strongly in regards to vylad. lets just start there.

ok hmmmmmmm see now this is hard for me because you could ask me about any specific like character or location or concept within mcd and i could give you headcanons for them immediately i have too many options. here's what I'm going to do I'm going to open the aphmau wiki and randomize a page on the mcd characters section and whatever I land on is what I'm going to talk about here i go.

I GOT KENMUR OK ITS KENMUR TIME. Well first off he's bi4bi and t4t with emmalyn so jot that down. Emmalyn is more on the history and literature side of things, but Kenmur is much more on the science side, he likes reverse-engineering things and he likes understanding how things work. He doesn't usually get as visibly excited over findings as Emmalyn does, but they are still very much equal in nerdiness.

Despite him going to the Irene Dimension, we don't get a lot of his thoughts about the weird stuff that happens to/around him in canon. I think he'd be very interested in Irene's Dimension, not necessarily because it's Irene's, but because it's a weird weird place with weird rules about how you enter and leave and how time flows while you're there and that's fascinating to him. He would've loved talking about the process of Zoey's portal activation with her if she wasn't so cagey about it.

I'm not big on the whole "Sasha was his fiancee thing" but I do like the idea of them being friends :) And I ESPECIALLY like the idea of him trying to figure out how to cope with the fact that a lot of the people he knew and grew up with turned into Shadowknights. Sasha, Laurance, even Hayden's guard, these were people he knew who all just died around him, some of which becoming much worse people for it. Shadowknights are so poorly understood that nobody (not even Shadowknights!) seems to really understand how it works or why it happens, and that frustrates him deeply. I think he'd be very interested in studying Shadowknights, but also feels very weird about asking Laurance to essentially be his lab rat. So he just quietly makes notes whenever he notices something weird and moves on. World's First Shadowknight Scholar!

27. what's something really interesting that you wished canon decided to explore more? alternatively, what's something interesting that you wished the fandom acknowledged more?

this question is fun because its actually two questions in one which means i get to spend more time talking heehee. there's pleeeenty of stuff in canon, not to go Kenmur-mode but we still barely have anything on how Shadowknights actually work aside from "you died oh noooo now you have to kill someone." This is not helped by how much conflicting information we get.

We ALSO also don't get a lot on how the magicks system works??? Oh everyone has magicks but not really but also kinda but you have to find it and some abilities are passive (Kiki can talk to animals all the time) but also most are active (KC animates dolls, gets tired when she uses it too much, its a big ordeal she has to work up to) and also some are so well-documented that there are entire categories for them (WHAT THE HELL IS BARRIER MAGICKS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THATS JUST A WELL-KNOWN THING. EVERYONE ELSE HAS UNIQUE ABILITIES AND THEN THERES JUST "BARRIER MAGICKS" WHAT DOES THIS MEAN) and also maybe magicks are passed on by blood but also maybe not and also theres WITCHES now fuck you. And they hate magicks users for noooo reason despite "magick" being incredibly poorly defined at best. What is a curse? How do potions work??? Cursed Objects???? Cursed AMULETS????? WHY????????????? At least they tried to explain things about Shadowknights, when it came to magicks they just fucking gave up. I know its like this because they just used magicks as the macguffin of the week and had no plans on actually developing how it works, but i would literally kill to see plans on how they intended for this to work.

Interesting things Fandom should acknowledge is also fun. There are many. There are so many. I think the politics side of mcd is VERY interesting and very rarely looked at by fans, which is shocking to me considering how central it is to mcd's plot. Because despite the title of "Lord" there IS no active monarchy in Ru'aun, and that's BECAUSE of Irene (which was incredibly based of her), which changes the definition of Lord entirely. ITS REALLY NEAT!! O'khasis has a council!! Who the fucks on it? I don't know!!! But they have a council!!! Isn't that exciting?? This is not a joke I mean this so genuinely. Do you ever wonder if maybe the High Priest is on that council and thats why Zane got the job. Do you ever wonder if there's a reason someone so young and literally THE SON OF THE LORD got put into a position so early? Do you think having that extra vote on Garte's side helped things crumble at a quicker rate than it had been previously?? I do. I wonder these things. And you should too. please.

And SPEAKING of Irene being incredibly based, she did in fact do some things that are incredibly based!!! I know most people like to write her as a Secretly Malevolent God™, which like fair whatever I like to give her some evils too, but I really wish people would take more of a look at what was established about her in S1. There is a reason she is worshipped so widely by the people of Ru'aun and it's because she Literally Is a hero of the people. I think people are generally blinded by how she was portrayed in MCD S3 and in Mystreet that they forget that she was a person for a very long time before she lost it. Go back and look at some of the earlier Irene lore!!! I promise its much more complex and fun than "oooo your goddess is secretly evil and was never good and there is no hope or joy in the world ooooo."