#I'm so serious when I say I need a design of vincent with those scars

[xerith-42]

pls talk more about doll shadowknight headcanons i love hearing about them

Hey council, I uhh, I may have cooked something up @gonedreaminggg @cinnamontoastcroonch @laurencezvahlslefteyebrow I'm gonna mash my two favorite headcanons together watch this--

Shadow Knight Musician Struggle Time!!

Laurance trying to play the lyre after the doll effects start kicking in and his hand just goes limp mid song. He can't do anything about it and just feels so ill about the whole situation. Garroth tells him that it's okay, that his playing before was great, but it's still kinda a cowabummer.

Vylad practicing his ocarina along and suddenly their lips get stuck around it as Vylad's body just freezes. He's on his own at this point, but it still sucks. He had a real jam going.

Hatsune help me, what if Sasha was a musician before her death? I could totally see Sasha playing the violin when she was younger, giving up on it so she could become a guard or whatever, but when she comes across an abandoned violin, she decides to take it and practice it again. And while she's playing one day, her hand stops moving, as does her arm. Just frozen in place. Her grip on the bow was loose in the first place, and in the silence left by the sudden stop of her music, the bow clatters to the ground.

If she's unlucky, it could even fall from the roof of the fortress she's playing on and land in the lava pools below. Then again if that happened, the instant Sasha got control of her body again she would go beat the fuck out of the Shadow King with her bare hands. It's hard to get musical instruments when you're literally stuck in hell and it's one of the few things that brings her solace.

Just had a wicked and evil thought, we characterized Gene with his porcelain scar, but what if we applied that same idea to someone else? Zenix is like a puppet on his strings, right? What if one day he glanced down at his wrists and found red lines wrapped around them? As if the strings are digging into his skin. And this is after he's already "cut himself free" from the Shadow King's control and is killing Shadow Knights. A chilling reminder that he still isn't in control.

After a bad fight his healing powers come into play, but it leaves a permanent stitch mark where his flesh came back together. Not the way a scar from stitching normally looks, but like a rushed stitch you did on a piece of fabric to get it functional but not pretty. It never goes away, nobody can see it from under his armor, but Zenix knows. He knows it's there.

I know before I said Vylad has compeltely limp states like Laurance, and that's still a thing, but I want to tweak the flavor. I'm imagining Vylad as like a

This fucking thing. That's Vylad. Sometimes only one of his joints stops working instead of the entire limb. Bro will be climbing trees and then their left elbow just goes backwards. Whoops it's not supposed to do that! Vylad is honestly not too bothered by this after the third time it happens, bro just gets used to it.

Everyone else (especially Garroth) is understandably very thrown off by this suddenly happening. Like it's one thing for Laurance's arm to go numb and act like it's out of socket, it's another thing for Vylad's arm to be able to bend backwards with seemingly no physical pain caused to him. He keeps trying to assure everyone that this is just ab symptom of being a shadow knight, and it's only Laurance who really gets it. The phrase "all dolled up" might as well be a universal trigger of Shadow Knights. Cadenza says it in reference to Laurance while she's helping him get ready for Kenmur's wedding, and while she instantly knows she fucked up and Laurance can see that, it still makes him stiff. His hands twitch as if to make sure it didn't start just from her saying the phrase. References to dolls start to fade out of the vocabulary of the alliance and its members over time. Largely because everyone has respect for either Vylad, Laurance, or Vincent and doesn't want to potentially upset them. The whole doll thing is a pretty sensitive subject.

Speaking of Vincent, as we've established, the doll stuff happens regardless of whether they're premature or not. I think that it happens less if you've answered the calling, but it still happens. Vincent gives me the vibes of like a voodoo doll almost. So he definitely gets the randomly limp limbs sometimes, but sometimes he just can't open his mouth, as if it were sewn shut. Oh that's awful oh my Irene this headcanon has caused so much pain.

I have other stuff to say on the Vincent as a voodoo doll thing but... Wow what the fuck that's horrifying. Like the first time that happens is maybe after he's answered the calling but still doesn't fully understand what he is. He's trying to explain it, nearly screaming to try and fight against it, clawing at his face to try and tear it off-- Wowie Minecraft Diaries really lends itself to body horror. I didn't even plan to write that sentence but as I was writing it I remembered the very popular headcanon about Shadow Knights having claws or at least sharper nails that could easily tear skin and yeah wow what the actual fuck.

Uhm, on a better (??) note, I think this means Vincent sometimes just gets random stabbing pains in his body with seemingly no cause. I feel like this might be connected to the Shadow King, but then also could somehow connect to the other divine? Idk about that part I just think the idea of Aph growing her angel wings causing Vincent to feel some form of pain in his back as a response would be weird and net. Vincent is weird and neat, sorry for low key mutilating him.

Have fun incorporating those scars into your next redesign!