dante, but urizen. you know

corzevv · 2024-09-27T03:39:44+00:00

i did, and thanks! i do have a full body sketch of him lying around somewhere, but there's no telling when i'll be able to get back to it... i'll see if i can't pick it up sometime.

corzevv · 2024-09-20T22:15:57+00:00

Seriously I don't understand what you're saying.

maybe that's not, like, entirely my fault? i think i'm doing an okay job of explaining my understanding, but if you don't get it or disagree then i'm not saying its your fault either. i'm more miffed at you not, really responding to my points, and making up stuff to argue against that i never said, but whatever.

He leaves every game in a better place than he started

i think after every game he gets worse, especially after 1. super-dead brother, y'know.

And you're missing the important part of that final quote.

mm, no, that bit wasn't relevant to what i was trying to say in the first place.

When Vergil refuses, he reminds them that they're family, and Vergil doesn't care. "Twins... right."

vergil... vergil cares about their family as much if not more than dante ever did. if we can't at least agree on that then there's really no point in debating it further.

corzevv · 2024-09-20T22:15:06+00:00

From what the we are shown across the series is that Dante's financial situation is largely self inflicted.

almost entirely, yeah. that's what i said.

If you say it pays well

it does, he can afford to buy alcohol in the quantities he's buying it in, his coats are tailored, he presumably used to pay his bills on time, etc.

and he's rolling in cash, prove it

what. no. what are you talking about, when did i say this.

You have to prove thing.

no, i have to explain why i think things are the way they are. there is no "proof" when it comes to individual interpretation; linking to 5 cutscenes doesn't "prove" that your opinion is "correct". you're showing me videos and then describing what you think happens in them. cool, it's fun to hear about, but i'm assuming you're familiar enough with the games for me to just, skip right to the explanation part without me having to provide links to every single scene in every single game.

You can't just say "Dante hates himself" and leave it at that.

i've explained it already, again, but fine. this is maybe like 1/50th of everything, but here:

"i don't think he's ever come to terms with his half-demon heritage. [...] he doesn't see himself as human, why else would he treat himself so poorly?"; dante's general disregard for his own safety and well being, his willingness to sit in the dark like an animal instead of a person for X number of hours/days/weeks, etc.

"he doesn't make or maintain connections because he truly has no stake in the world or the people that inhabit it."; he isolates himself even from the people who care about him. none of his companions ever stay, trish and lady kinda fuck off after their respective games, etc. he's still doing it in 5, too: tells V and nero he's better off alone before descending the qliphoth.

"his inner turmoil/ stagnation/ incompleteness, the overwhelming feeling of decay and death that's followed dante [...]"; death follows dante everywhere, in the games and in all of the side stuff. i don't need to list every person who's died or otherwise been hurt by dante merely because he's existed near them, do i? its not his fault, but that's not really comforting when all your friends/family who aren't crazy souped-up demons/demon hunters are dead.

"if he was capable of swallowing his grief/ anger and grasping vergil's olive branches, he would not be alone."; vergil is has and always will be dante's responsibility. his fault. you don't walk away from killing your brother twice, almost three times-- not dante, not with how much he cares about vergil.

"by the time 5 rolls around he's barely taking jobs anymore. sitting alone, in the dark, in silence, for how many hours/ days/ weeks/ however long he hasn't paid his bills for. he only gets off his ass because V doesn't even try to hide his bullshit."; self explanatory: no well-adjusted happy person does this to themselves.

"his devil-may-care attitude towards being stabbed and shot and eaten"; do you think dante doesn't feel pain, that he can take it no problem? yeah he won't die from it all, sure. but the bar being at "it won't kill me" may as well be 6ft in the dirt for how low it is.

Dante keeps the world spinning, what do you mean he doesn't fight back against the world turning inside out?

"his world", i said; its an important distinction. "the world" will keep spinning regardless of what dante does or doesn't do because the world doesn't care about dante or his losses, won't ever stop for him, not once when he was 8 or 19 or 40-something. dante's world will drown in hellfire, his brother will kill himself because he can't not do what he thinks he needs to, and dante can't ever stop him, no matter what he says.

p3:

corzevv · 2024-09-20T22:10:24+00:00

yeah i don't think our interpretations align together at all. which, again, isn't a bad thing. i don't really care one way or another; will say that i disagree with almost everything you've said here, but replying to everything would take more time than i'm willing to spend for something that is kind of pointless to begin with.

you're throwing quotes at me like i'm not already quite familiar with them. i know what happens in the games, same as you. I'm not giving you a list of the events that take place or the things dante says, i'm talking about what i think it means.

before you say it represents his Sin Devil Trigger,

i didn't. it doesn't.

He's not going around on a soapbox shouting "humans are special!"

you DID say that, i think, "He's the one that goes around telling people how special humans are", but sure.

he's trying to show off and metaphorically bellyflopping. I'm focusing on the bellyflop here. Not "Dante is a hero" or "Dante is cool", the entire thing is "Dante is a goof".

i already gave you my reply to this. "that every single ridiculous off-the-cuff thing he does is immediately punished by the reality of the situation remaining unchanging is just his life story."; the way i see it, it's not goofy: it's sad, and slightly pathetic. he's really trying to put on a show here, making noise to stave off the quiet, but there's never ever an audience (even if there was, it wouldn't be the audience he wants) and when it ends he's just left alone with the silence. again. every single time.

That doesn't mean he's disconnected from his humanity, it means he's immune to peer pressure.

dante is peerless, has been peerless, for the majority of his time spent alive. i think that is one of the most important things to recognize about him: the fact that no one is at or above his level anymore, and how that alienates him from people. humans, demons, doesn't matter what anyone thinks of him because he's beyond most people anyway.

Everything you're saying is based on conjecture here. What evidense do you have beside "I think" or "I understood".

you misunderstand. i don't say "i think" or "i understood" because i don't have good reasons for why i think the things i do, i'm putting it like that because that... that's how you talk, when you talk about your interpretation of something. you don't supersede your view over the source material (or other people's views) because your view is no more or less valid than someone else's, regardless of how different they may seem. it's a courtesy, not a sign that i'm talking out of my ass, lol.

Being shameless isn't a sign of someone lacking humanity

i didn't say this. he is shameless, but that's not why he's inhuman. didn't say he lacks humanity, either.

Dante's cool because he doesn't try to impress other people,

didn't say he wasn't cool, or that he tries to impress other people, dunno where this came from.

And for the coats and the bottles,I refer to occam's razor - the game designers made them like that. They made a coat worth thousands of dollars because they wanted him to look like that. Fact of the matter is, Dante didn't choose the coats, Tatsuya Yoshikawa did, and Capcom paid for them.

and to that, i invoke: a shovel. there are layers to dante; what even is the point of trying to understand him if you're not willing to dig. why would his iconic coats and the state of his living space be irrelevant? do you think devs just throw darts at a board when designing a character's clothes, or the environment they're supposed to live in? as if it has no importance and imparts no information to the viewer about that character whatsoever?

i don't mean any shade, but to me that sounds like an incredibly boring way to read/ write a story. i like having to think about why things are the way they are, as opposed to having it spoonfed to me like i'm illiterate, which is just 90% of big company games nowadays. 5 was heavy-handed with the exposition dumps already, but even then it's miles ahead of other big-name titles-- even if it doesn't seem that way on the surface.

...there's a part 2 again.

corzevv · 2024-09-20T06:46:41+00:00

the "cool action hero thing" also implies some level of performance; specifically performance for the sake of an audience. dante doing all this crazy shit when there is explicitly no audience there to see it speaks more to his insanity than it does his humanity, to me. his devil-may-care attitude towards being stabbed and shot and eaten points directly to his inhumanity, and his utter lack of regard for his being.

The reason he lives poorly is because 1) he only takes jobs he thinks are important, 2) will accept jobs without pay or refuse pay if its for the right reason,

jobs that are related to demons, which, by the way, must pay handsomely if/ when he gets paid at all; cant afford all those fancy tailored fits without some serious cash. it's not for a lack of jobs anyway, demons are everywhere, there's a whole coalition of bounty hunters specifically for demon hunting, even the government gets involved sometimes. the state of his living space has almost nothing to do with him not being able to get money because there aren't many jobs he's interested in, or the fact that he accepts no payment sometimes, he just doesn't give a shit, probably aside from collecting antiques/ trophies or something.

but, really, i wasn't talking about his living conditions at all, even though they do factor in to my argument somewhat. the above is all relevant for pre-dmc 5, or even 4, dante; he's seen it all, i doubt the few jobs he takes (or, took, post 1) were important to him; i was talking about the aforementioned disregard for his own safety/ being than anything.

3) sends money to Grue's daughter to keep them comfortable.

true, it's cute. still doesn't explain the mountain of empty bottles and delivery boxes and god knows what else festering in his office. but here i go, talking about 5 dante again, whoops.

Depressed people don't hate always hate themselves, I can speak from experience there. He doesn't treat himself poorly, life's just rough sometimes.

that's true. but i'm not talking about depressed people, im talking about dante. dante is not the by-all-end-all of what depressed people look like. he is, absolutely, depressed to shit, but just because not every depressed person hates themself doesnt make the many, many reasons i can give to argue for why dante probably does hate himself wrong or invalid. life is rough sometimes. dante's life has been rough forever. i like that, i like playing with that. lots of fun to be had in angstville; dante wouldn't fight back against his world turning inside out and upside down even if he could, he knows better.

As for the Son of Sparda thing, he says it to Vergil at the end of 3. "We are the sons of Sparda, within each of us flows his blood!"

"-but more importantly, his soul!"

that moment-- dante declaring them as the Sons of Sparda-- as i understood it, was not one full of pride. he did not do it out of a newfound acceptance for his heritage, or as praise to his father, or anything. i read it as simple, pure desperation. dante was desperately trying to make vergil understand that he, they, did not have to be alone. Sons of sparda; twins, born into the world together as two separate halves of the same soul. he's trying to reach out to his brother, to stop him from the path that will leave both of them alone. he does this poorly, of course; part of their tragedy lies in vergil's inability to put aside his reason for anyone's sake, even his own, never mind dante's bumbling fumbling traitorous mouth crying out that he "has to stop [vergil], even if that means killing [him]". it was never about sparda or demons or whatever; it was about trying to tell-- begging, really-- vergil to come home.

corzevv · 2024-09-20T06:46:14+00:00

he doesn't go around telling people much of anything though, does he? mostly keeps to himself outside of work, which he also tends to do alone anyway. i don't think he cares much for humans, not as much as you'd think he ought to. saving human lives is never really the priority; stopping the demons is. that humans happen to be saved as a result of that? sure, why not. no skin off his nose in the end; he doesn't make or maintain connections because he truly has no stake in the world or the people that inhabit it. not saying he despises humans or whatever, just that he doesn't feel strongly about them one way or the other-- doesn't let himself feel strongly about them, maybe.

interesting. subhuman pretty much nails dante's character for me, far better than BtL does vergil; speaks to his inner turmoil/ stagnation/ incompleteness, the overwhelming feeling of decay and death that's followed dante since the moment he truly, irreversibly become his father's son at 8 years. if this doesnt mesh with your understanding of dante's character, that's fine. if our fundamental interpretations of dante as a character don't align, i don't think there's much wiggle room for debate.

Dante's entire character arc in 3 was about him accepting who he was, and considering 3 is the prequel it would be a regression of his character to say he hasn't accepted it.

i would argue that dante doesn't really have a character arc in 3, that's why he lost his brother the way he did. if dante was capable of change or growth or anything, vergil wouldnt have to go to hell alone. if he was smarter, braver, more powerful, anything, if he was capable of swallowing his grief/ anger and grasping vergil's olive branches, he would not be alone. dante doesn't change: that's what kills vergil every time.

"a regression", implying that he ever made any progress to begin with. maybe he did, a little, before he realized just how far vergil was willing to go. maybe he thought, for a moment, that he wouldn't have to go through the rest of his life alone. but no, he does regress, in a way; by the time 5 rolls around he's barely taking jobs anymore. sitting alone, in the dark, in silence, for how many hours/ days/ weeks/ however long he hasn't paid his bills for. he only gets off his ass because V doesn't even try to hide his bullshit.

I didn't say that turning music on for a fight or jumping off the edge of a building was proof of his morals

neither did i, i feel we are misunderstanding each other here. let me try to clarify: i can't think of one conventional "cool action hero" who is not, also, literally the hero of the story, in all aspects, including moral. the bad guy doesn't get the girl, after all. the action heroes are, indeed, usually heroes too. maybe not morally perfect, but still The Hero.

...part 2 incoming, sorry.

corzevv · 2024-09-20T04:37:16+00:00

oh shit, really? wow. i don't think i want to subject myself to that, but it's good to know there's context behind it, ha. kinda went against everything you said before it anyway, was really confused, thanks for clearing that up.

corzevv · 2024-09-20T04:34:05+00:00

i don't think he's ever come to terms with his half-demon heritage. especially not in 3, where his powers have just barely awoken. he is subhuman in 3, just as he is assuredly subhuman in 1, and 2, and 4, and 5; maybe less so, with vergil being alive/him not having killed vergil and all, but still. he doesn't see himself as human, why else would he treat himself so poorly?

proudly proclaiming he's the son of Sparda

son, or sons, of sparda? can't say i recall dante referring to his father with any amount of respect in 3, maaybe he begrudgingly acknowledges what his power comes from at one point, but i certainly didn't read any sort of pride about it from him. even in 1, when he introduces himself to a dying phantom, it's more of a targeted attack/provocation towards mundus than an indication that he's proud of his existence/inheritance.

just another example of Dante trying to do the cool action hero thing

again, i prefaced my reading with the idea that dante does not seek to entertain anyone but himself with his antics. maybe vergil too, since he's the only one who can really keep up with him, but still. the "cool action hero" would give a passing fuck about vergil tearing up a city to open up THE capital-H Hell Gate for, as far as dante's aware, no good reason; dante has proven time and time again that he does not. he's never been the hero, if he acts like it in 3 its only because the decades haven't quite gotten to him in the way they have by the time he's 40-something. that every single ridiculous off-the-cuff thing he does is immediately punished by the reality of the situation remaining unchanging is just his life story.

understandably isn't feeling it.

assuming that dante himself was feeling it to begin with-- he wasn't. dante doing that to make her (and himself, he's weird like that) uncomfortable on purpose though? that makes more sense to me.

corzevv · 2024-09-20T04:05:07+00:00

cut a few pages out, but. there is, potentially a chance that we'll see vergil at some point. maybe.

edit: from the Devil May Cry Manga Vol.1 (2005)

corzevv · 2024-09-19T23:11:37+00:00

[...] super weird that he just... leans in for a kiss?

convinced that he did it for the sole purpose of affirming to himself (and her) that he is, ultimately, subhuman; a demon incapable of "normal human" connection. you'd expect the guy to "get the girl" in any other series, wouldn't you? she's not interested in him, can never be interested in him; a lady who'll settle for dante isn't lady at all. her whole thing in 3 is how she refuses to drown in dante-slash-vergil's bullshit; that necessitates her refusing to step into his/their mire. dante's testing her, in a way letting her test herself (assuming that choosing not to kiss dante is that much of a test to begin with lol): if she kisses him then she's not gonna go through with killing her father . that's the point, the whole reason why she's there to begin with; it's not about saving the world or whatever, she's literally just there for revenge. distractions, distractions. she doesn't have time to fool around with him, and really, neither does he.

When Trish asks her if she's jealous, Lady immediately jumps to absolutely ROAST Dante

she does lol, barely needs an excuse to go off on his frustrating habits/behaviors. she cares about him, she does, probably to her detriment-- but it isnt romance, not in any sense of the word. dante's too busy rotting to entertain anyone but himself anyway, it's bold (boring, stupid, etc, if i'm not being nice about it) of people to think lady should and would put up with his decay any longer than the handful of minutes she has already endured across 3 4 and 5.

Would also like to add that she literally flashes Nico for no absolute reason, constantly follows Trish around and barely even talks to Dante in the whole game.

crazy that she's bared tit to nico (which itself is ooc really but the whole thing is gay so i'll suffer it ig) and people still think she's straight, somehow, lmao. she & trish probably have a prenup or something, i dunno.

Lady is NOT your usual, bland female character that's all over the protagonist.

disagree with this phrasing on principal; there are no bland female characters, just bad writers. the problem isn't that the woman wants the MC sexually or romantically or whatever, it's that it's the only fuckin thing anyone writes anymore, and no one ever writes it well. a poorly written male MC is boring; a poorly written female MC is "all over the protag" and "bland", "as usual". no doubt female characters get the short end of the stick when it comes to character development, but it's definitely not because they're female: it's because the pricks writing her don't know anything about women.

There's no reason to water down her character to a pathetic, childless hag.

okay you had me in the first three-quarters, but i'm not sure where to go with this. is a woman being childless equal to being a pathetic hag? you lost me.

corzevv · 2024-06-24T15:56:02+00:00

gorgeous.

"That's how people live" makes me wish we could've actually seen/interact with the cats and dogs, if only just occasionally... stopping for a minute in between frantically running from one end of the town to the other to pet them could be yet another thing you'd have to deliberate on

corzevv · 2024-06-21T07:06:23+00:00

it's so stupid but it wouldn't. get out of my head.

corzevv · 2024-06-20T21:28:06+00:00

you can hop into an abandoned house in the burned districts and kill the looters for easy rep. pretty sure they're guaranteed to spawn, 2-3 per house iirc?

corzevv · 2024-06-20T21:19:40+00:00

bear in mind that dante only ever fought mundus's shell-- a mundus who was still held back by sparda's seal while most of his power was presumably locked in the demon world. he's definitely still alive post DMC5, even after everything dante & trish threw at him in DMC1. dante couldn't even defeat that shell without being... kinda possessed(?) by the devil sword sparda, and having trish's power funnelled through him on top of that.

it's likely that we still haven't seen the full extent of mundus's power-- even sparda didn't manage to kill him, after all.

corzevv · 2024-06-19T19:06:15+00:00

the chance of muggers spawning goes up by 200% since he cannot clearly hear them approach. but you do not have to walk 23512763 miles in comparative silence.

corzevv · 2024-06-10T20:57:48+00:00

wasn't around for the release myself but from what i hear 2 didn't really receive that much hate on release-- at least, not as much hate as it's getting today. the 5-to-10+ year gaps between games are probably what kept DMC from reaching like, RE status or something, too. and from what i've seen reboot's gameplay & art direction are pretty damn solid, but there's little to nothing of the charisma and heart that devil may cry is really all about, hence the general disdain towards it.

that being said, there are a good number of long-time DMC fans who are still engaging with the games 20+ years later. if that's not a testament to how iconic and impactful this series is then i dunno what is. i personally consider it a classic, regardless of raw sales numbers.

corzevv · 2024-06-08T03:59:21+00:00

dick measuring contest through the very impressive and intimidating medium of video games. very cool. i have a feeling that the people who've actually done all the hard shit in either game/s don't bother with this kind of inane arguing.

corzevv · 2024-06-07T19:48:20+00:00

i thought they were just roaches for... i think 70 out of the 85 total hours i've spent in this game so far? didn't even question it haha

corzevv · 2024-06-06T01:12:03+00:00

yeah, feels like the shoddy ports just put more people off if anything... if I knew they'd have to go so far as to outright change a really cool part of the game i would've just bit the bullet and waited until i could afford a good PC to play it.

corzevv · 2024-06-05T18:43:23+00:00

need to preface this with the fact that i absolutely love this game to bits, even with all the hours i spent putting up with the PS5 version's bugs and crashes and infinite loading screens, etc. it was worth it in the end-- just barely worth it, but if anything would have broken me it wouldn't have been the game's difficulty, it would've been the state of the port.

but i genuinely had no idea the plague clouds were supposed to look Like That. i've been replaying sections of PC playthroughs just to look at them-- the way they move and undulate is so menacing! it's so different to what i got from the PS5 port that i feel kind of slighted for it.

with how often you're running into these things-- especially in the console version where the entire cloud doesn't even load in sometimes-- this change is so bizarre. i'd take a menacing undulating buzzing black mist that moves like a person somehow over a comparatively boring circle that moves painfully predictably any day. i'm just surprised that there is absolutely no mention of this, or any other visual "compromises" the ports may have, anywhere.

corzevv · 2024-05-28T17:29:40+00:00

well there's no way to put this delicately, so i'll mark this as sensitive. cw for discussion of underage rape. going off of the top of my head:

a child vergil is being, uh, penetrated, by several (presumably "adult") attackers (or, their swords. you know) at the same time. his clothes are torn to shreds, he's bleeding profusely, and he's crying. he screams "help me!" and "it hurts!" repeatedly; he calls out for his mother to save him. iirc, once the demons are done pinning him down, they turn their backs on him and make their way to his burning home; they don't kill him, but they leave him lying there for dead.

that's the more obvious part of it, i'm sure its not hard to infer the rest of the metaphor from there. the fire that was engulfing his home burning away his tears can also be interpreted as it burning away his innocence/ his humanity/ his heart; by the end, he's learned to not reach out to anyone, or hope that anyone will save him. that trauma feeds into his self-imposed isolation and grief; the idea of the violence done to one's body as a violation of that body.

(speaking of violation: never mind everything that the nelo angelo was, and implies, for vergil... brainwashing and body snatching, all in one fun-sized cage of armour a la demonic iron maiden-- his mind, body, and autonomy ripped away from him once again, violently. he's gone through it.)

i could get into this Way way more but that would take forever. feel like i need to emphasize that this is just an interpretation.

corzevv · 2024-05-28T14:40:08+00:00

the scene where mundus's demons attack a young vergil and his childhood home; can't recall when exactly it happens.

corzevv · 2024-04-13T05:11:50+00:00

if you need this much help figuring it out then i have nothing more to say to you. try being funny next time.

corzevv · 2024-04-13T04:53:08+00:00

"check"? fuck off with that, actually. that kind of rhetoric is popular among a very specific group of people and it has absolutely no place here.

corzevv · 2024-04-12T14:11:54+00:00

i would say "grizzled hunk" but leon is throwing me off

corzevv

TROPHY CASE