#eruhcs

[mariyekos]

I've mentioned it here and there but one of my HCs is that the reason Dante looks so much older than Vergil in DMC5 is that their appearance mirrors their self perception to an extent, and he thinks of himself as older than Vergil does. Dante thinks he's a worn out old man, so he looks old(er). Vergil on the other hand sees himself as powerful and thus in good shape- and may have a skewed sense of time given how long he was in Hell, which I'd like to say is also evidenced by how young V looks- so while he's not 19, he looks somewhat younger. Or not as worn, really.

The extension of this headcanon is Dante and Vergil essentially aging out of their humanity to an extent, where maintaining their human form becomes an active thing. If Dante thought of himself as younger and put effort into it, he could look younger, and it's probably what would end up happening once he got old enough that a human would die (assuming he wanted to do so at that point). Just like how his demon side is a projection, the human side could be too. Sparda's human form wasn't his natural state. He put that up. So Dante and Vergil could probably do the same. Probably not to the extent of looking 19 again, but they could probably keep themselves looking like they were in their late 20s/early 30s for a long while if they were so inclined.

[mariyekos]

Can't remember if I've talked about it here or just in fic wips, but I like to HC that Dante is Actually Cursed levels of unlucky. Like, it isn't just that he *seems* kind of unlucky based on his circumstances, he's "loses 85% of the time on a 50% chance" kind of unlucky. He *will* consistently get tails 8 or 9 times out of 10 when flipping a coin and trying to get heads, or rolll a 1 or 2 five times in a row when playing a game where you want to high roll (reasons to destroy the DMC4 Dice, anyone?)

Lady and Trish actually discretely kept track a few times and did the math to come up with this number before telling him. They noticed it mostly applied to things that depend on pure luck/random chance like games with draws and rolls and so on, but he's had enough weird cases of being dealt a bad hand by fate that they're pretty sure it impacts everything to some extent. Dante mostly takes it in stride though, deciding that there's nothing he can do about it so he'll just do as he pleases. So what if he has crummy luck; he'll make up for it with skill. Or just take advantage of it. Maybe at some point he and the ladies go to a bar where they egg him into joining a game where they bet against him because it's pretty much guaranteed he'll lose and they'll profit big time. (Unless of course the "bad luck" comes in the form of him doing uncharacteristically well to the point that Lady and Trish lose their money because Dante suddenly couldn't stop rolling 6s. Bad luck comes in many forms, and some of them can seem good on the surface!)

Nero, on the other hand, is a "wins 70% of the time on a 50% chance" kind of guy because a ton of his skills are named after gambling stuff. Yes Dante has the Jackpot phrase, but otherwise he doesn't have the same sort of skill list so I think it would be hilarious if both Dante and Vergil have terrible luck while Nero's somehow wraps around to being pretty lucky. I think Dante would find it funny while Vergil would (not-so-) secretly be jealous.

[mariyekos]

I like to think that Dante and Vergil are basically made up of four halves of the same two souls, mixed and matched to make two people.

The idea is that in the womb, both a human and demon soul tried to develop, but since one being couldn't contain two souls, it split into two, resulting in twins. Yet since the genetic material was also made of both sides, rather than one twin getting the human soul and the other getting the demon soul, instead the souls themselves split in two, with each twin getting half of one. One half demon, one half human. By the time Dante and Vergil were born, the two half-souls each twin had had merged into single souls, so essentially they each have one whole soul, but those souls are blends of two half souls and match each other at that.

It ends up creating some interesting effects. Blood magic is something that sometimes works for both members of a set of identical twins- being most effective closest to birth and often lessening in effectiveness with age- but there are also magicks which resonate with the soul instead, and thus don't work for identical twins, who normally have independent souls despite shared blood.

Except they do for Dante and Vergil. Because even though they're separate people and should have different souls, they register as being the same.

Because they are, in a way. Two base souls, four identical halves, two once-identical people. With pure humans, the soul doesn't develop until much later in gestation, long after the zygote has split in two. This means that human twins have separate souls despite shared blood. But add a demon into the mix and things get funky, the soul beginning to develop almost instantly after conception. And while Dante and Vergil may have diverged appearance-wise with age and differences in life experience, their souls stay the same. So soul magic which should only work on an individual level works on both, which can be both a boon and bane. It all depends on the context.

[This is perfect for both fluff (Vergil can get into Dante's locked rooms because the seals think he's Dante) and angst (a spell meant to trap one either successfully traps the other, or manages to get both, pleasantly surprising the one who set it and proving bad for our protagonists who mean to fight them). Context!]

[mariyekos]

Okay so a while back I made a post about a potential DMC6/post-DMC5 scenario in which Dante, in having absorbed the Sparda (and thus the Force Edge + Amulet that were key to the split between worlds), ends up inadvertently making himself into a living Seal.

One thing that hasn't left my mind since then is the concept of Dante ending up extra "connected" to the world because of it. Or even just because he's Sparda's son, if you want to extend it, but it'd definitely go up post-DMC5 Sword Absorption ordeal.

When Sparda split the worlds, he sealed away his own power. In this scenario, I imagine thay in doing so, he ended up connected to the Human World in a way beyond what any human or demonic should've been, leaving to him getting a sort of...awareness of the going ons of the world. He helped shape the Human World into what it was by sealing it off from the Demon World, and so the Human World filters some information back to him.

It's a passive thing. He can't turn it off. He learns to ignore it for the most part, because he doesn't need or want a lot of the information that's suddenly pinging his brain and impacting his senses, but it never truly goes away, it just gets quieter. A lot of it is vague, senses of "something happened" or the occasional better-than-normal read of a human where he has a general idea of what they're feeling or desire because the world picks up on it and, due to their proximity, passes the information along. There are certain things that tend to register more often than others; natural disasters that result in hundreds or thousands of deaths almost always register to him, as do demon summonings/portals of certain magnitudes. It's not that the world is trying to notify him to get him to do anything, or because it considers him a protector or anything (the Human World has no feelings; it's an ambient, consciousless entity with no real thoughts or desires). It does it because the world registers when extreme events of "damage" occur and Sparda's connection to it means he occasionally picks up on what it experiences.

So, back to Dante-

With Dante having absorbed the Sparda and thus the parts that helped split the worlds, he'd end up on the receiving end of all of this information. His experience might even be stronger, both due to the extra compatibility of being part human himself, and because the Seal being used to maintain the split between worlds is actively a part of himself, unlike the Force Edge which Sparda left on the other side of the barrier.

I imagine it would be incredibly overwhelming. Disturbing. Suddenly Dante's feeling and knowing all these things he has absolutely no reason to feel or know, and it's freaking him out. He wouldn't know why at first, either. I think he's have to start by realizing he'd made himself into a Seal, which would be an ordeal by itself, and then he'd have to go along a pretty long, pretty complicated train ride to arrive at the destination of "the weird, vague things that are suddenly pinging in my head for no discernible reason aren't just some sort of hallucinations but factual occurrences that I am now aware of due to my existence as a Seal who is suddenly receiving the world's general knowledge because I've made myself into a key part of its continuing existence."

Sparda had the benefit of years of lived experience and less going on at the time to help him deal with everything. He made the Seals (most of which Vergil destroyed raising the Temen-ni-gru, which is how Dante ends up as the last one), then got to live in the relatively Demon-free human world for a while without many issues. I headcanon that the barrier between worlds actually didn't need that much maintenance at first because the wound of the split was so deep it took a while before it could start to so much as attempt to heal, at which point Sparda had to step up his game and start instituting extra processes and putting in more of his own power to keep the worlds split. Thanks to this, Sparda could devote a lot of time to figuring things out. Plus there were way fewer humans doing things back then.

Dante though? Not only is he actively being drained by virtue of being the only remaining Seal- which again, is an active part of himself in the DSD unlike the Force Edge which Sparda left behind-, but demons are crossing over and causing issues, there are way more humans, and Dante's probably in a way worse spot mentally than Sparda was, even if he has a better support group now than he did in the past. Years of issues don't just dissolve because Vergil showed up.

So! What's the point of this?

....I don't know. Just fun to share an idea. And it's a very long way of saying "here's my justification for how Dante could be Even More OP (and unnerving to outsiders) for funsies." Connection to the world giving him extra awareness of what's going on. It's hard to get past him, because he just Knows Stuff even when he shouldn't. Even pre-DMC5, if we assume some residual connection between Sparda and the world has been passed on to Dante, it allows for that extra awareness throughout his life. Some of it is just the result of having enhanced senses thanks to the demon blood, but some of it is Definitely More.

[mariyekos]

Thinking about Eva experiencing wild health swings during pregnancy due to a mix of the twins' demonic heritage causing them to attempt to draw things she doesn't have, and the return stream from them essentially injecting her with demonic essence. Some days she feels stronger than she ever has, while others she can hardly move and has to rely on Sparda for almost everything.

[mariyekos]

Guys help me another quick post has ended up in the 1000+ word range-

Will I actually finish this today? Who knows. I just. Wanted to share a little headcanon and then it got long again.

[mariyekos]

I HC the boys were born premature, but that they didn't really *seem* premature, physically. They had a constant supply of human blood feeding them, which allowed them to develop at an accelerated pace, even if they didn't reach normal human gestation time. They were demonic enough that Eva's body got to the point it essentially 'rejected' them at 7 months in, and she went into labor early. The boys still ended up on the lighter side, but they were fine without needing hospital care. They just got a lot of attention from a very exhausted mom and dad.

Thinking about Eva experiencing wild health swings during pregnancy due to a mix of the twins' demonic heritage causing them to attempt to draw things she doesn't have, and the return stream from them essentially injecting her with demonic essence. Some days she feels stronger than she ever has, while others she can hardly move and has to rely on Sparda for almost everything.

[mariyekos]

I think it'd also be interesting if there were lasting effects for Eva post-pregnancy. Once the exhaustion of labor (and months of slightly-parasitic fetuses) wore off, maybe she noticed she was just a little bit stronger than before. Her senses were a little more intense. Nothing crazy, but enough to be different. A little, inadvertent "gift" from the boys after months of draining her while also infusing her with something of their essence.

Thinking about Eva experiencing wild health swings during pregnancy due to a mix of the twins' demonic heritage causing them to attempt to draw things she doesn't have, and the return stream from them essentially injecting her with demonic essence. Some days she feels stronger than she ever has, while others she can hardly move and has to rely on Sparda for almost everything.