#To have a chance to be not just on the guys level

[msflora-lynn]

Rating the fanbase of every Primarch & their legions.

This is my opinion, I love all of you ㅤ♡ྀི ₊

Lion'El Johnson & Dark Angels fans (8/10): I like the fanarts they make, also 100 points for portraying Lion like a rouge kitty cat sometimes. Oh I also like how the Lion fans are embracing the 'our primarch is obviously neurodivergent and we love him for it'

Fulgrim & E.Children fans (10/10): This part of the group always produce the best fanart?? Or at least a lot of artworks for E.Children in general. Though browsing his fanart must be done with caution cause 20% chance I might see schlongous or booty.

Perturabo & I.W fans (8/10): I'm sorry about your favorite character. Not many of them are around though :( But so far their fanart production have been solid. I like how they kinda just chill and embrace the 'neurodivergent manchild' persona for Bo and makes no attempt to refute it.

Jaghatai Khan & W.Scars fans (8/10): Surprisingly not many of them. I'm kinda bummed out about it since I like this character. Though his fanarts are mostly adorable! They're always chill, I'm happy to see them on my feed -`♡´-

Leman Russ & S.W fans (7/10): I would rate it 8/10 but I hate stimky wolf grrrr so -1 point (msflora found dead in fenris more at news 6). Anyways fanart-wise, they're so good!! I like how they always draw Leman like a scrunkly lil guy. I also love to read their fanfictions.

Rogal Dorn & I.Fists fans (6/10): WHERE ARE YOU PEOPLE?! I CAN'T FIND YOU!! I RATE IT LOW BECAUSE I'M SCRAPING THE GROUND FOR ROGAL DORN CONTENT! But in all seriousness, loving how they embrace the 'fortify' meme. I don't like the weird Black Templar larpers from twitter, but that's just a 1% of the fanbase

Konrad Curze & Night Lord fans (8/10): Your fanfictions scares me, most of the hashtags are nowhere written in the bible, but I read them all so who am I to judge. I love how this side of the fandom just embrace the 'we are bad and disturbing and creepy' schtick and go ball. I blame this side of the fandom for making me love Jago Sevatar tho.

Sanguinius & Blood Angels fans (10/10): Insane artworks from this side of the fandom, always impress me. A lot of vampire and angelic stuff, I love you guys. Sorry about your primarch tho.

Ferrus Manus & I.H fans (all six of them) (7/10): I'm sorry about your primarch, I'm sorry he get crumbs in the lore. I rate it low because I'm scraping for any IH/Ferrus content here....

Angron & World Eaters fans (8/10): Loving the contents you guys made here! A lot of red, so many red, oh god. I'm sorry about the sinking ship of Argel Tal x Kharn though.

Roboute Guilliman & Ultramarine fans (9/10): Spoiled, well-fed, their favorite guys have insane plot armor and I'm jealous >:(. Keep the bulky half-naked Rob fanarts coming tho I have them all liked & downloaded.

Mortarion & D.Guards fans (6/10): I do not like Nurgle stuff so I rarely go there... But my god most fanfictions yall made for Mortarion x reader is heartbreaking. Rating it low because I get scared of some fanarts they make, but pre-heresy Mortarion is kinda baddddddd👅

Magnus the Red & Thousand Sons fans (100 Tzaangors/10): We are so cool and awesome, not a biased rating. In all seriousness we Tsons fans r eating GOOODDD this year (thx SM2). Though we suffer from a disease called 'inconsistent writing of our favorite primarch's power levels' and it's not getting better.

Horus & L.Wolves fans (9/10): Guys I understand, Horus is big daddy, a father, he's an icon, you guys made it clear with the abundant of breeding tags in your fanfics. Sorry that the way he's corrupted into chaos is kinda bootycheeks tho :( Wishing they explore more into his corruption.

Lorgar & WB fans (Where Are You Guys/10): While being small, they make the best artworks for Lorgar. Questionable fanfic tags, but I love yall regardless. They kinda eats with all the Word Bearer fanarts tho I've seen. Sadly, Erebus is from here and everyone hates him.

Vulkan & Salamander fans (8/10): I would like to pet them. In all seriousness I'm happy to see the majority of Vulkan fanarts are created with African features in mind ♥︎!! Everyone from this fanbase are cute and sweet!!

Corvus Corax & RG fans (Birds/10): I love all the raven aesthetics often seen in their fanworks. Corvus having wings is so cool, and often I see amazing OCs spawning from this legion.

Alpharius Omegon & A.L fans (What are you guys doing/10): I can't find much about them but I fw with the entire 'we dont know what our primarch is doing so we just ball it'. BUT HEY CONGRATS ON YOUR PRIMARCH COMING BACK!!!

:3 And I love all of you... Thank you for reading this nonsense of a post.

[maxdibert]

Why do you think Snape still became "friends" with death eater wannabes at school when he had a good influence on his side - Lily a muggleborn who wasn't afraid to stand up for her beliefs? He did have someone to influence him to the good side so why did he still choose the bad guys?

Because, basically, he was alone in a house full of purebloods who, at that time, had an enormous level of influence, where you either adapted or perished. It was better for him to adapt because outside of that, all he had were a bunch of idiots bullying him all day. Lily could have been a good influence, but:

Lily had no responsibility whatsoever to "rescue" anyone, especially being a child/teen herself. The system failed Severus. The Muggle world system condemned him to poverty and left him in the hands of an abusive father. The Magical world system failed him by allowing the bullying to happen, by not preventing it, by not protecting him, and even forcing him to stay silent about the bullying. Ultimately, they had no control over what was happening within the school walls. But Lily? She had nothing to do with this because we’re not going to place the responsibility of pulling a friend out of the abyss on the shoulders of a teenager (a girl, no less).

Lily doesn’t seem to have taken Severus’s situation very seriously either. In Snape’s memories, she downplays the things the Marauders did to him, and when she eventually cuts ties with him, she even suggests that their bullying wasn’t that bad because “at least they didn’t use dark magic.” Lily’s value system seems to have been somewhat convenient in that sense.

One person alone cannot handle the weight of a toxic social ecosystem. Lily was supposedly very popular and had her own friendships. Obviously, she wasn’t spending all her time with Severus (understandably, she wasn’t his babysitter), and it wasn’t her responsibility or duty to keep him away from bad influences.

The future Death Eaters offered Severus several things: acceptance for the first time, despite his background, his lack of a notable name, and the social ostracism caused by James and Sirius. They offered him a sense of belonging, a chance to be part of something. They offered him a perspective for the future, the possibility of social mobility, and the hope of rising above living in a dusty shack in a miserable Muggle neighborhood. For someone in his context, with his traumas of abandonment and violence, this wasn’t just tempting—it was an easy sell. So it’s not much of a mystery why he did it. Severus is like many other vulnerable boys from low-income families and dysfunctional homes who end up in gangs, cults, or extremist religious or political groups. He had the perfect profile to be dazzled by certain ideas if they came with the promise of a future he couldn’t even dream of as a child.

[kalinara]

(All-New X-Men #6)

I've kind of blogged something about this before but I never get tired of seeing posts about Logan/Scott/Jean as a throuple (I will literally die of spite before I use a portmanteau) that talk about them as two godlike, immortal beings and "just some guy".

Because on some level, of course, it's absolutely true. Jean is the living embodiment of a Universal Cosmic Force. She can sneeze and wipe out entire star systems.

And Logan is basically immortal. There are a good number of timelines that go forward hundreds, if not thousands of years (see: Powers of X in the Krakoa era) that still show Logan at the prime of his life, always fighting and surviving.

Scott, is, by that standard, just some guy. He's got lasers coming out of his eyes, which is kind of cool admittedly. You could do some interesting analysis on the fact that they seem to be infinite - the only time we see them give out is when HE gives out. Or doesn't get enough sunlight or whatever. But for practical purposes, they've got one real use, the guy's just a very decorative portable cannon.

But what makes Scott special, and on level with the other two, isn't what he is, but what he does.

This is a dude who's led the X-Men since he was a teenager. And as a teenager once talked an entire fleet of Sentinels into attacking the goddamn sun.

This is a dude who co-led a guerilla war against Apocalypse in the future for 10-12 years (admittedly with his goddess wife), then came back as though nothing happened.

He's also the reason for his own last name, because in ANOTHER time traveling bout with the goddess wife, he managed to inspire his own orphaned ancestor to take the name "Summers" in his and Jean's honor.

This is a dude who got possessed by Apocalypse, and repressed him to the point of amnesia, got a sliver of the Void stuck in his head, and repressed that too. Even Phoenix possession took a while to shake that guy.

This is a dude who became the "Boy King of Utopia", uniting the entirety of the mutant race under one banner. Magneto KNELT to him and named him Caesar.

There's also that time he stared down Dracula. Was it a bluff? Dracula thinks so. But he still backed the fuck down. And for a brief period of time, even Namor followed this guy's lead. NAMOR.

This is a dude who, after becoming possessed and ostracized, led a "mutant revolution", becoming a household name among bitter college students everywhere.

He's the kangaroo trial symbol of the entire mutant race, sentenced to death, and his only response is a call to arms published through his lawyer, She-Hulk.

This is a man who's slept with Jean Grey, the Phoenix (back when they were considered separate entities), the Goblin Queen, Emma Frost, and Frenzy, and every single one came back wanting to fuck him again.

Speaking of Frenzy? That dude's sub game redeemed a fucking acolyte!

"God took less time than that to make the world!". Okay, take a fucking breath, Joanna. (X-Men Legacy #248)

His kids are practically gods in their own right, and he was only involved in the conception of one of them. The others just kind of showed up one day with a DNA test and got invited in for dinner.

The closest thing he has to a hobby is plotting how to kill dinosaurs:

(Uncanny X-Men #495 - and he's fought a LOT of dinosaurs.

Sinister's been obsessed with this man's DNA for years, and yeah, if you're just looking at it in terms of powers, it doesn't make a lot of sense. There are much more powerful mutants out there after all. But when you start thinking about the rest of this, yeah, I kind of want to put him in a petrie dish too.

Heck, he's even argued with the narrator! In another timeline, he could have become an incredibly boring variation of Deadpool!

(Uncanny X-Men #96).

I'm just saying, yes, by one point of view the Moon Throuple is two godlike immortal beings and dude who is "just some guy".

But on the other hand, if you had a chance to fuck the unholy combination of Mr. Rogers, Alexander the Great, and the Death Star wouldn't you?

[tanadrin]

@siliquasquama

"State capacity stopping abruptly above the local level relevant to 75% of the population" feels a lot like the U.S. right now

they really could not be more different! ca. 1900 tsarist russia had a tiny state state apparatus; the holdover feudal structure of government meant that the most local authorities were often land captains (literally just one guy) or the zemstva (functionally powerless occasional get-togethers of local notables who sometimes tried to raise money for useful stuff like building a new school, sort of like the Rotary Club). peasant communities were almost entirely self-governing, outside occasional levies of grain and drafts for the army by the state

meanwhile the United States has a federal government workforce of ~3 million, and a state and local workforce of ~20 million. around 7% of the country works for the government! you pay taxes every year (state, local, and federal), if you speed or punch somebody in the street there's an excellent chance the cops will notice, and do something about it, you can't build so much as a shed in your backyard in many locales without getting building permits from the city, and you have entire departments of the federal government devoted to recording massive quantities of statistics on every aspect of american life just so policymakers have an accurate overview of what's going on in the country. you have municipal trash pickup and water services. federal standards regulate the quality of the food you eat and the medicines you buy. state and federal law regulates all aspects of commerce you engage in.

the United States has phenomenal quantities of state capacity. so much that i suppose it is inevitable that to the modern American it is impossible to imagine what living in a country without enormous state capacity is like. and indeed, most sovereign states in the world today probably have significantly more state capacity than almost any country that existed in the 19th century. certainly than tsarist russia, which was weak and underdeveloped even by the standards of european states at the time.

I know there are only so many ways to phrase the insight "Tsar Nicholas II has no idea what he was doing" in a way that makes it interesting, but I do wonder what the endgame of Nicholas and the reactionaries really was in Russia in the 1900s and 1910s. Let's say he's right about everything: let's say orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality can work as an ideology, that the Tsarist state isn't a creaking old half-rotted machine that has embarrassingly poor capacity (and stops abruptly above the local level relevant to 75% of the population), let's say all your loyal-but-reformist-ministers like Witte and Stolypin are wrong, conditions are fine, this agitation really is the pernicious influence of foreigners and Jews, and "true Russians" (whatever that means) really do love you.

You still got your ass kicked by the Japanese, you still rule a country which is embarrassingly poor given its size and population, your tiny middle class still has very little capital to invest in industry because all the surplus is getting hoovered up by your nobles and you, personally. Russia, as a military and economic engine to which your family's fortunes are irrevocably yoked (unless you abdicate and go into exile, which we all know you won't), is still well behind other European great powers, and the next big war you fight against a peer nation is going to go even worse than the one with Japan, if it happens in your backyard--which is inevitable, because you are playing great power politics like you are the German Kaiser, and not the Russian Tsar.

So what is your endgame? Stagnate forever? I guess this is demanding too much from a man who genuinely thought God was on his side, who was totally out of touch with the events of the day, and whose interest in the affairs of state far outstripped his understanding of those affairs. But there were a lot of reactionaries in Russia in those days, who seemed to share Nicholas's passion for stasis and autocracy. And no matter how many anti-semitic conspiracies you fund in occupied Poland, it's not gonna keep the Prussians at bay come 1914! And it's not like he didn't have a ton of loyal ministers who were 1000% on board with a strong monarchy and who also had clever ideas on how to improve state capacity and expand industry.

[blueishspace]

Hero, Villain God 19

(Prev) (Next) (First)

*Grian's pov*

The final interview ends up being really boring and long, even more then the literal test, you might have lived for billions of years but you have not felt such levels of unfun ever before... You have to give it to them, this is definitely impressive.

All about law and respectability and rules, things you understand are important for an hero to know but are so uninteresting to you...

... In contrast the questions created by Hotguy are a shift in tone that's for you, you don't even need the interviewer to tell you Hotguy wrote these because It's so blatantly obvious to you... They are also somehow much more thought invoking then the previous ones... Less...cut and dry...they are also phrased in a way that's not just prose and proper nouns and all that stuff.

You can tell that Hotguy really cares about this, you suppose he has every reason to... Then is another complete vibe chance as the last question comes, this one has Hero Association written all over it so much that it might as well count as an autograph.

"Do you believe you can fit in with the Hotguy brand?"

You know the god of heroes, you have talked once or twice or maybe a few hundred times, he would absolutely cringe at the thought of the profession being considered a brand. From what you have seen of HotGuy he probably does the same.

"Yes."

"How?"

You would make a joke about being very hpr but that would be equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot...Well, you have planned the perfect twist for this.

"Hotguy is the first hero with two powers."

"Indeed"

The interviewer is clearly not getting what you are trying to say, good. Surprises are always welcome.

You generate an arrow in your hand while spreading your wings.

"Hopefully, I'll be the second"

The interviewer is shocked, you tend to have that effect on people it seems... You silently say goodbye, now you just need to wait for an answer.

*Scar's pov*

You are called by the council, you don't really know why. You are sure you sent your questions, were they bad or something?

"We have found the perfect candidate."

Oh!...Wait, what?

"A-Already? It's been less then-"

"Yes, this one is special"

That's uh... Usually not good when they are the one to say it. Who did they pick?

"Special...? How?"

"He's like you."

Like... You...??

"... Uh?"

"Two powers. Wings like that of Sheriff and an ability to summon weapons at will... Has a fascination with arrows much like you."

"Oh...oh! . . . Oh I didn't expect that to ever happen... heh"

... You aren't the only one anymore...if he's better will you be replaced? ... No, no! They wouldn't...they wouldn't.

You should meet him then, if he's going to work with you then you are going to have to get along.

Well, if he answered your question at least mostly correctly then you are sure you are going to get along well... You'll have to ask Cub for his score.

"HE GOT ALL MY QUESTIONS WRONG!?!"

"Don't shout in my lab Scar"

"... Sorry Cub... I just... I just can't believe he got all my questions wrong and still got a 98% in the interview."

"I can, your questions were the last ten out of five hundred made by the association. You should have really written more."

"Oh...well maybe they should have written less... five hundred questions for an interview is insane."

"Can't argue with that"

Ok, so maybe you and the sidekick think nothing alike, that's fine, you can still be friendly... You are sure you can trust the association... It's not like they have ever...well, not too often... not always.

You open the door and-

"Coffee guy???"

[shinakazami1]

Late night Rhys thoughts but -

He never idolises Jack, at least not fully. He cared about the guy, was inspired, a fan, wanted to be him. But he called him out on being a maniac. He kept on calling out the man's behaviour. He could be scared of him, but at no point did he make him into what he wasn't. Only what he was made to believe.

Jack is great at crafting his image. Charismatic, probably unconsciously awkward, but he knows that brings him strength. After all, he needs to be in some way relatable. He can read a person so well, and if you follow him, its because he speaks to goals Rhys wants to go to. But he learns to respect the guy, to some extend at least. He knows the kid is smart, he knows he can give him snark remarks and get something he rarely got - just as snarky comeback.

They both see each other's flaws and try to use them. To different amount of success.

[leonw4nter]

Hi everyone!! Due to me being really busy with school and there being barely any time for me to write, I'm going in another indefinite hiatus because I'm not sure how long I'll be gone since everything is so fast-paced and confusing. It sucks that I have like, several ideas on what I wanna write but my time just refuses to let me focus on something other than academics which SUCKS, especially since... one of my fic ideas happened to me IRL and I have no one to scream about it to. Anyway, that's all and I hope you guys are going to be all fine and dandy while I'm gone :3 also fuck trump :3

[godsfavoritescientist]

well hold on, if we define a character flaw as any limitation a character deals with, regardless of whether it's something Morally Wrong With Them or not, then Ford's paranoia counts as a character flaw since it does in fact negatively impact him and the people around him. Let me use better wording here: I will die on the hill that Ford's paranoia is not a moral failing.

[ilottthepilot]

having many thoughts about "natural talent" vs growth and development and how that manifests differently in f1 vs other sports

[front-facing-pokemon]

[hauntingblue]

Rewatching act 2.... yeah ISHA WATCH OUT FOR THE CYCLE ISHA!!!!! NOOOOO

[arolesbianism]

I caved and made them real. Obverse me losing more and more motivation to draw as I made each of these back to back lol

[sparky-is-spiders]

Y’know the whole “Peter and Elias are constantly marrying and divorcing” thing well consider: Jonpeter on-again off-again toxic affair.

[victimized-martyr]

Do you think Kenny actually likes cartman? I’m not so sure since the reading of his will in s9e4 (https://youtu.be/QGx92r8NLIM)

I feel like nobody likes him but Kyle is the only one who thinks he can possibly get better at all.

I agree on some level with that last statement. Due to Kyle's morals and complicated attachment to Cartman, he would be the only one willing to nurture the potential Cartman has, though I'd say Cartman isn't universally hated as one would assume. I think Kenny and Cartman's friendship deepened off screen since s9. It shows itself strongly in the covid specials and post-covid (not post covid the special, I mean like.. after the actual irl covid and.. ARGH mattrey u make my life so difficult)     

      Kenny was the one to approach Cartman about the fragility of the broship and inspires Cartman to be the one to make sure the gang stays together. That's a level of openness and vulnerability that frankly, I haven't seen him share with Stan or Kyle. Quite the opposite in fact-- When Kenny finally admits he's immortal, Stan and Kyle dismiss him in their own way. Neither have made the move to sympathize with him since, especially at the level Cartman does in the covid episodes. Now, Cartman's "sympathetic" method of coddling Kenny wasn't the best thing to do I'd say, the show was clear  Stan, Kyle and Cartman weren’t handling the broship fallout well, but Cartman definitely proved himself as the “best friend” the show has claimed he’s been in prioritizing Kenny during Covid. We even get a verbal reminder from Cartman and Kyle in Post-Covid that despite it being the literal worst future for everyone, Cartman and Kenny’s friendship thrived. With the opposite lives they lead, it's astounding they remained best friends for forty years.

That level of loyalty is kicking Stan and Kyle in the dirt and laughing rn. Look at Dikinbaus! Cartman and Kenny had a blast “planning the business” (ie living it up as owners and mutually taking advantage of Butters to just pal around) and Cartman once again concedes to Kenny when he lets him work from home. It’s a gag first and foremost, but still, I think it works as part of character analysis lolol. I’m analyzing this a lot from Cartman’s perspective, or at least his actions, but I don’t rlly have much to go by on Kenny’s end and I hope y’all can see why lol. excluding the Mysterion arc and the s22 Halloween episode, he’s a passive character. things rly just are happening to this dude. 

Cartman's attachment to Kenny has grown exponentially since the early seasons ("I hate yew guys/ specially kinny/ ah hate em the most/") whereas we've heard directly from Kenny what he thought of Cartman at the time s9 was written but we don't really know what he thinks of Cartman presently. Now, mattrey have written Kenny's quietness and frequent disappearances as part of the charm of his character--the mysteriousness with a pinch of hidden sadness, maybe a dash of loneliness--and not like, a serious writing pitfall of not knowing what to do with one of your main characters, not giving them the chance to let the audience see their motivations. So the uncertainty surrounding Kenny's true opinions, in this case of his friendship with Cartman, isn't by accident. I'd say it's fair to assume Kenny now views Cartman as a best friend, given how much Cartman has done for him.

I’d also say it’s fair to assume the pity for Cartman hasn’t changed.

[rug-glitch]

Alright now I'm thinking about Malistaire and Sylvia specifically like the information we get about Sylvia in the BOXES event

Because if anything I feel like that event just made it very clear they were such a perfect match like you are telling me if Sylvia and Malistaire hadn't made up she would of been such a successful general she would of basically conquered the spiral despite being pushed into this position way too fast?? AND despite that not happening she ends up with the guy that would go to the ends of the spiral to any measure necessary to bring her back ???

There is something about their extreme drive and passion and being able to conqueror the spiral that makes me feel like they are a perfect match on top of already being like canonly together

[mariyekos]

One day I want to write an AU where Dante and Vergil were actually born a few hundred/thousand years pre-story, which is something Dante tries to hide while Vergil doesn't. I have 2 main ideas for it- DMC1/3 Fusion AU and DMC4 AU. These got long, so I'm putting them under the cut!

In the DMC1 AU, it'd be sort of like a combination of the anime, DMC3, and what you see in DMC1. Dante'd look like he's in his late 20s for this one. He and Lady would meet because they've both been hired for the same job, then encounter each other on some odd jobs before they end up working together on a big one. Maybe Arkham killed Kalina Ann when Lady was a teenager, but didn't manage to enact the rest of his plans right away so Lady's been chasing him for a decade, hunting demons in hopes of finding a lead. Dante meanwhile just likes the human world, so he goes from place to place hunting demons until it gets too suspicious he's not aging and he has to leave. This AU'd have branching paths at the big job they take take together: the Temen-ni-gru or Mallet Island. In both cases Dante and Vergil haven't spoken for a while. Vergil's gone silent for years or even a decade or two in the past, but he'll have a bad feeling about this particular silence (for good reason).

The main difference between the two would be who Arkham allies with. In both cases, Lady isn't aware of how old Dante is, or just *who* he is until partway through. She knows he's part demon, but with the way he acts she assumes he's actually in his late twenties and the kid of a demon that was probably fairly powerful, but unknown. But the truth would come out partway through, which...would maybe change things, maybe not. It would be a shock regardless.

Back to the branches though, in Mallet you could go with the plot where Arkham is trying to revive Mundus, so Dante intervenes. This one would have a Nelo Angelo bit (making Dante feel terrible because he'd just allowed Mundus to do whatever he wanted with Vergil for who knows how long, all because he hadn't bofhered to check up on his unusually silent brother). I might have a sort of B-plot involving Lady, Arkham, and Trish to accompany the Dante, Mundus, and Vergil angle.

With the Temen-ni-gru, it would be your classic Arkham+Vergil relationship, but with a much older Vergil he wouldn't be tricked by Arkham this time. Arkham would think he has Vergil in the palm of his hand until he clearly doesn't and Vergil deals a fatal blow as soon as Arkham pulls off his betrayal. I think Lady would be pissed Vergil stole her kill, but ultimately have to back down for the Dante vs Vergil fight because with that many extra years under their belts, she'd be no match. Seeing them would be an interesting contrast though, because Vergil so clearly clings to the past (he'd be in a more Renaissance style than Dante) while Dante's all about the present and human world. This one...I think would be harder to resolve than the other one, because I'm not sure how Dante would convince someone so set in his ways (again, hundreds of years old at a minimum) to change, but it could be fun to play with.

As for the DMC4 AU, this one would be a case where Nero is still a teenager, and Dante's really surprised because oh boy, who in the *world* managed to convince Vergil to sleep with them when he'd been so uptight for centuries? And Dante's excited to have a family member and can't help but mess with them.

I think in this one it might also be fun if Fortuna was aware that Sparda had children because then you'd have a case where people potentially worship said children, whether or not they realize it's Dante. Maybe Vergil ruled Fortuna for a little while after Sparda left and that meant people knew he existed. Dante hadn't been aware he'd apparently come back, but Nero's proof enough so he's really going to have to have a talk with Vergil the next time he returns from his travels. I'm not set on whether the people of Fortuna would know that Sparda had twins, or if they'd just know about Vergil and thus be in denial that Dante could possibly be the son of Sparda because he's *so* different. In either case eventually people (or at least Nero and Kyrie) would have to reconcile Dante with the figure they'd been worshipping and that would be hard (and for Dante, hilarious). I think in this one I might make Lady part of a bloodline that has fought alongside Sparda since he split the Human and Demon worlds, sort of like the Castlevania series with Alucard and the Belmonts, while Trish would be someone Dante recruited a few decades to centuries ago (importantly, she's younger than him).

In this one I think part of the driving force would be that Dante wants humanity to be able to protect itself/prove its worth, or for Nero to protect them/prove his worth, because if they/Nero don't then Dante's worried Vergil might instead deem humanity a scourge and do something bad.

The plot of DMC4 revolves around humans using demons to fuel their own power, and in this case I think Dante will have found out about what Fortuna was doing too late to erase what they've done, so it's a case where humans need to prove that there are more good humans than bad humans so Vergil doesn't slam down the hammer. Dante can encourage them in the right direction, but he can't carry them the whole way. If he does then Vergil will deem his interference proof of humanity's weakness and do...Dante isn't totally sure what, but he doesn't like how Vergil's been the past few decades and he's increasingly been feeling like Vergil might decide he's had enough of the human world and side with the members of the demon world Dante *knows* have been slipping through the border to speak to Vergil. And while Dante doesn't think he'd *lose* to Vergil, the battle would lead to immense destruction and would weaken them enough that Dante's fairly sure Mundus or some other demon would take advantage of the chance to invade the human world while they're in no state to defend it.

...Anyway! That's two/three ideas for first that I will...maybe get to, one day, once I finish the million other fic ideas I have. I just really like the concept of "totally goofy guy is actually super old" or "frustratingly unserious guy is actually one of the guys you grew up worshipping, somehow." I think there's a lot of room for fun there.