kicks a rock down the road... 3D5V and 5D3V.... so epic and awesome sauce....
solving the problem of "how do you have an age gap and twincest at the same time" with ease
5V (ESPECIALLY post DMC5) looking at this absolute baby, looking at the amulet against his chest, hearing that bravado... Seeing him as he had all those years ago, the very boy he worked against before they teamed up together. The face he has in his mind before the large blank period of Nelo Angelos existence.
5D (especially PRE DMC5) jumping at the idea that his older brother is somehow here, healed. Not dead as Nelo Angelo, not in hell with his sword shattered, standing here before him as if he'd never let him fall in the first place.
3V staring up at this scruffy, older version of his brother, envious, hungry for the power he wields. Needing to prove himself, to conquer Dante, to stare into the sun that is the legendary devil hunter. Hungry for the secret that allows him to be strong.
3D poking and prodding at his older brother, now much older, almost whining at how Vergil won't verbally spar with him as much, but he'd have the time of his life trying to fight him. Vergil, who he hasn't seen in ages, but somehow this one is... lighter? This one won't snark back so openly but his jabs are delivered softly, with almost a smile.
and i say DV because of course it is. I would say that 5V3D could be VD, and 5D3V could be a "Dante letting his older brother rail him but realistically Dante is the one in charge here" sort of VD, but I very much adore an enthusiastic 3D rabbiting away at an almost bemused 5V.
I just think that for all of their roughness, dante and vergil really like to hold hands.
it’s a small intimacy that you wouldn’t necessarily expect between them, but when they’ve finally somewhat repaired their relationship post-dmc5, they both find themselves reaching out for the other like a lifeline. a simple palm-to-palm is enough skin contact sometimes to ground either of them.
vergil’s far less comfortable with physical touch, and he especially can’t deal with public displays of affection. he finally comes around when he realizes how much it means to dante, and how much he needs it, too. he even held his brother’s hand once while the were riding in the van with nero and nico, much to dante’s glee. the barely perceptible blush on vergil’s cheeks was gold, but nobody was foolish enough to comment on it.
one day, after they’ve been sparring for hours and they’re both bloody and dirty from scrambling on the forest floor, dante has him pinned, victorious. the ensuing fuck is brutal as he mounts him from behind, but vergil wouldn’t have it any other way. he has this weird thing about not being able to relinquish control, not being able to let dante take this from him unless he’s thoroughly earned it.
so, dante’s shocked to look down mid-fuck and see vergil’s left palm facing up towards the sky. he can’t see his twin’s face like this, but he can read the blatant begging there in the display— the way vergil’s hand reaches up blindly for his. dante closes the loop, intertwines their fingers and palms— and holds the right hand, too for good measure.
(CW more sentient sort of pet play?? idk what to describe this as tbh)
Dante is all too eager when Vergil agrees to wearing a collar with his! name! on! it! and the address on the back of the name tag is straight to Devil May Cry, no where else.
And Vergil, in turn… he finds he likes this kind of care, though he'd never admit it.
So his demon form does it for him in all sorts of sounds, purrs, rumbles, warbles, you name it, stretching into his hands and headbutting him gently, licking him, all sorts of small comforts he had been holding back in human form.
(He's completely conscious for it all and it is all him but he says his demon simply takes over when the collar is on, but it is so unabashedly him and Dante knows this, Vergil also knows that Dante knows this, but they keep up their little game anyhow.
It becomes especially more relevant when Dante coos at him and asks if his demon is feeling up for a special treat - and accidentally, he falls into some form of demonic pet play, and this accidentally unlocks his final sin trigger in the form of a dragon (which I still hc Sparda's lineage to form from) in a very, very passionate session in which Vergil makes the room shake with the noise it drags out when it hits.)
The collar stays on 24/7 after this, and the leash is always in Dante's pocket just as a nice little reminder - or should they steal away from prying eyes.
(Sometimes, he does have a sort of 'pet regression', just not your standard type.)
Top5 popular danver opinion/headcanons you disagree with
Ok, thing is, basically whenever I run into a DV fic/trope where I'm like "nah son, skip", it's almost always specifically a "he would not say that" reaction. My objection over portrayals of their joint synthesis most often stem from objections over their individual characterisations. Therefore I can't really answer this question without first (or I guess, primarily) answering the question "what are fandom characterisations of Dante and Vergil that I disagree with"
Dante
- I don't think Dante is a happy guy. I think his disposition trends towards introspective/introversion as a natural state, but the piles of trauma life has thrown on him have crushed him straight through to just, a default state of black melancholy. Like, I think he spends most of his days shut up, alone, disinterested, and waiting.
- I lean very heavily into Dante's alienation from the humanity he's trying to protect. He had a realisation that, compared to human beings, he is basically a demigod, and it is fully unethical for him to stand by and let hell run riot over essentially defenceless creatures. But he is no shepherd to a flock; humanity neither trusts nor loves him and he's not here for his morality. He found an ethical point to stand on and he means to stand on it, but they don't want him and neither is he one of them.
- Dante. Doesn't. Divulge. Anything. To anybody. He's got no confidants to whom he bares his soul. Nearly nobody knows anything about him because honestly, he doesn't want them to know. He gets angry about prying. It's like he's not just holding onto pain, but he's holding onto fear as well
- Dante is holding onto fear. Not just the usual fears of death and time and pain, but one specific fear that he can't talk about: that when he lost Vergil, he didn't just lose his brother, he lost his lover. I believe in Dante's isolation, because that's what you need to have a man fall in love with his brother and stay in love with him his entire life: not just the feeling, but the lived experience of being alone in this world and in this life. Like you don't come to somebody with a normal psychology and propose a lifelong incestuous obsession: Dante is immensely fucked up in a way that can't be unravelled. I like to depict this as horrific because it is. I like to depict this as romantic because it is.
- I believe in Dante's complex imagination. Nothing ever happened between the two of them, just a less than happy childhood, tragedy, and violence, but Dante spends a lot of time in his head, composing for them a life they could have had, a life he would have liked for them to have. He has a Vergil in his dreams that is more real than the real thing sometimes, based on the real one, just like the real one, except for the parts he's made up. He believes in their symmetry, one of the only things he has to hold onto. They were the same, before they lost one another; they used to move together in exact and commensurate circles. He believes in a Vergil who is everything he himself isn't, and conjectures about the parts of him that are everything he is. He lost half of himself and now he only has himself to go on. In his dreams they are not always happy but they are together.
Vergil
- Vergil's primary motivator isn't pride or anger, it's fear. It looks like ambition from the outside, because by all accounts, he is not a man who lets himself settle. But he doesn't want just to want; he doesn't climb just to climb. He wants the security that comes with being at the top. He wants to be able to look at the world from a high, untouchable place, and know that every threat and danger is beneath his feet.
- If he could, he would never experience pain or threat of pain again. He doesn't like pain, either giving or receiving it. He's had enough of it in his life, enough so that sometimes it feels like it lives in his body, like a secret poison, something vital to his system like an organ. He is afraid of it; he is afraid of his body and its capacity for endurance, the fact that he knows it will subsist and subsist forever if it is allowed to, that he will know eternal pain before he is allowed an eternal cessation.
- He hates being touched. He dresses like that, he comports himself like that to stop things from touching him. He is as near a distance fighter as he can be, wielding a sword. Almost every touch he's known has been hostile, and now touch makes him angry; touch reminds him of violation, that he isn't in total control of who or what has access to him, of who or what can take him away from himself. He despises a cage, and he can't stand the fact that things are allowed to rattle his bars.
- He was a compliant child, earnest and eager to please, and under the auspices of his father's protection, he put himself very easily into order, sequence, correctness. Sparda was pleased to have twin sons, but he was most pleased with the cold distance with which Vergil held himself. He did mean for his sons to succeed him, and Vergil did not flinch from reprimand.
- In hell he thinks about his father, the way his father wanted him to be. Sparda was alone in the world -- singular and the only one of his kind. Vergil could never be that; there would always be two of them, him and his brother, him and Dante. His father had a wholeness to himself Vergil recognised and admired and aspired to, but then the loneliness would seep through. If his father had wanted a singular son, he should have made one thus. But there are two of them, and to be without his brother is to be without the best part of himself.
Dante/Vergil
- I don't think, canonically, it makes sense for them to leave hell. I think the narrative intention at the end of 5 is that they stay in hell where they reign as the most powerful beings in the realm, and that itself is a form of simplicity. It's just the two of them. That's how they've always wanted it
- Dante is his own right arm, brilliant and keen. He plays with his prey but he's also a quiet killer when he needs to be. He brings back tokens of his kills, the heads of Vergil's enemies, to show the cowards who do not rebel what happens to those who do. Vergil lets him do whatever he wants. The realm is his playground. Vergil let's him do what he likes. He likes him happy
- Vergil touches Dante first. It's an expression of trust as much as it is reconciliation, longing, invitation. Dante is so careful and gentle in his response that this proves his instinct correct, that though for all intents and purposes, this man is a stranger to him, that they are strangers to each other, the years apart and the lifetime of hostility do not erase the fact that Dante loves him, Dante would not hurt him.
- Dante would have waited for him forever if he had to. He would have waited for nothing and have been content. But Vergil intiates and it is the best thing that has happened to him. He's been holding on to assumptions and speculation, and the real thing is everything he couldn't have concatenated for himself. Love is a human thing and it is kinder than anything has a right to be in hell
- There are so few lines between them, it makes sense to maintain one: they stay brothers. That's what they missed out on, and they will make up for it. But the rest of it. My god the rest of it
Listen, the fact of the matter is, if Dante loved a single member of the entire DMC cast more than he loved Vergil, he would have stayed. He had the opportunity. He could have turned back. He could have said goodbye. He could have let his brother go and closed out that chapter of his life in good conscience. That could have been an acceptable, even appropriate ending to his story: Dante gets closure; he moves on.
But instead, he fucking chooses Vergil. In the cosmic balance of every good he has ever done, every relationship he has ever built, residence on the earth itself, his brother outweighs them all. He chooses Vergil. He chooses Vergil for what he understands to be forever.
That's bonkers. That's a death knell for any other ship, man. Like how do you get past that in a relationship? How do you get past the indisputable fact that Dante would happily and without a second glance abandon your entire life together because he just doesn't love you nearly enough?
You weren't real. Nothing you had was real. You were just there to pass the time, man.
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