#erudmc

[mariyekos]

I really do like the idea of Vergil ending up with a black cat post-DMC5.

There's this one stray cat that has hung around the shop for a year or two pre-DMC5 that Dante's been feeding, and when they get back, it's still around. Dante picks up on how Vergil kind of wistfully stares at it when it comes by, but he doesn't say anything, just continues to put out cat food for it when it comes by.

Then a couple days go by where the food isn't eaten. A raccoon shows up at one point to eat it, but Vergil shooes it away before it can eat too much. After almost a week the cat finally comes back, but it's clearly injured and not doing well. Neither Dante nor Vergil are animal experts but it kind of looks like it might have an infected wound, so they end up taking it to the vet where it's confirmed that the cat is on its last legs. Vergil, despite insisting he's fine and it's just a random cat, looks so upset that Dante ends up shelling out a hefty amount of his savings to get the cat the treatment it needs. And when the vet asks if the cat had a name, Vergil, creative man he is, calls it Shadow, which is pretty much what seals the deal to Dante and has him accepting the fact that they're probably going to have a cat now.

Once Shadow is well enough to leave the vet, they do end up officially adopting Shadow and taking it home with them. Shadow's recovery wasn't perfect and it's probably going to be pretty wobbly for a long time if not for the rest of its life, so Shadow becomes an indoor cat that gets to live in DMC. It loves curling up next to Vergil when he's reading on the couch, and Vergil ends up setting up a little bed for it in his room so it can sleep with him at night. Dante thinks it's helping both of them. For all Vergil said V's familiars were just convenient tools made of unwanted memories, it's pretty obvious that he misses them, and Dante's glad to see Vergil has something to fill the void.

[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]

Unpopular(?) opinion but. I don't think Vergil would actually be interested in acting like Nero's father or trying to "make up for lost time" or anything like that Post-DMC5. I think he'd care about him as a positive acquaintance or a general relative, sure, but as a father? Nah. He wasn't really interested in being a father in the first place and his own father left his life when he was a child. Vergil has nothing fatherly to offer Nero. They can be on good terms without any of that baggage.

[mariyekos]

And I got the Mission 3 DMD S-rank too!!! I can't believe I forgot Nero could buster bosses when they're down. Once I remembered that, chunking her became way easier. Made for a cool ending too xD

Now on to Mission 8...

[mariyekos]

I'll make a longer post about this later, but I just realized one of the biggest differences between Netflix DMC and non-Netflix/OG DMC:

OG DMC is about how being good is a choice.

Netflix DMC is about how being bad is a choice.

Now, I wouldnt say either theme is necessarily better or worse than the other, but they are different, and I think that's what puts a lot of people off from the show. Both are about how it's our choices that define us, not our nature, they just execute this idea in very different ways.

[mariyekos]

It's come up in a few fics of mine but I HC that Dante and Vergil have really weird internal anatomy even in their human forms, caused by the demon bit of their heritage going haywire and just. Giving them extra bones/organs that probably shouldn't be there. Like the dril budget tweet, but with body parts! Their bodies are like "hey humans have spleens right? How many? Uhhhh. 3? Sounds right." It's like their bodies know what parts make up a human, but not necessarily the precise number or place. That information got scrambled. So while they look pretty normal on the outside, internally they're a complete mess that maybe wouldn't function properly without demonic power ensuring things worked.

(It leads to some very freaked out doctors when one of Dante's Foster parents insists on taking him to the doctor because he's always running a "low grade fever" (i.e. his standard body temperature is around 100.1F/37.8C) and the person running the tests sees this strange white haired child is apparently missing some organs and making up for it with duplicates and/or things he shouldn't have that also shouldn't make up for it but clearly do given the kid hasn't keeled over and died. The blood tests are unreadable and the x-rays/MRIs just don't make sense. In the end they basically shove Dante out of the hospital saying he's been possessed by a demon and that he needs to be exorcised. The records are burned. They don't want to mess with whatever's going on with the creepy kid. Dante doesn't stay with those parents much longer anyway.)

[mariyekos]

Following my last post, insert joke from Lady asking whether Vergil would've named Nero "Dante" or "Vergil Jr." if he'd stuck around, no other options given because knowing him, it would've been one or the other.

(Nico and Lady vote for Dante, Dante votes for Vergil Jr., Trish votes for Vergil II/the second, and Nero refuses to vote because what kind of question is that!? Surely Vergil would've come up with something more creative for his Actual Kid. To which Lady raises the point that he named his cover V, took Urizen's name from the first book he found, and named the black cat he found post DMC5 Shadow.

...which then has her going okay, yeah, maybe he would've named you William. Nico adds "or Blake!". Nero is done with the conversation and storms out while the rest laugh. Vergil walks in and doesn't understand what's going on but decides he doesn't like it and leaves too.)

[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.