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perfectwitchcrown · 2 months ago

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Dante and Betrayal in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love

Ok so now that chapter 79 has come out I really want to discuss something I think is kind of interesting as a through line between Dante's Inferno and Dante in Make The Exorcist Fall in Love. This is mostly just word vomit haha. Also, asterisks indicate footnotes that I've left towards the bottom of the post!

Cw: discussion of sexual violence, victim blaming, and homophobia. Also, image of cartoon gore (when priest pulled out his eye in the first chapter) after the read more

In the Divine Comedy, the closer Dante the pilgrim moves to the center of hell, the more intense Dante the poet is casting the sins being punished there are. So, Dante starts in Limbo, which he presents as containing the least serious of sins, then continues on through a variety of different sins. The ninth and final circle of hell, containing what Dante the poet felt was the most serious of sins, is treachery. In the notes to their translation of the Inferno, Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander write that "The three most gravely punished sinners of the poem are Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus (founder of the Church), as well as Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Julius Caesar (the first ruler of the empire" (639).

Dante Alighieri presents betrayal then as the worst sin possible, which I think has been carried through into Ekuoto Dante's perception of whatever happened with Vergilius in the past.

Specifically, I’m thinking of their conversation in chapter 20. Verge identifies Dante’s powers as relating to Lot’s wife turning to a pillar of salt when fleeing Sodom.

I think Dante’s response is pretty interesting for several reasons. For one, based on the paneling and what we see, he’s identifying Sodom with the church, not with Verge. Verge, as someone who fled then is Lot, and Dante positions himself as Lot’s wife, which is both fascinating in the way he’s presenting their relationship and that it implies that he views his decision to stay with the church as a decision of weakness, just as Lot’s wife turning to look back at Sodom is considered spiritual weakness.

It was his betrayal of Verge then that he considers his sin.

Frankly though I wonder if there’s an element of miscommunication between the two of them as well in regard to this.

This is the part where I get super speculative, because we still don’t know what happened in the panel depicted (although I wonder if we’ll be finding out soon). But, just based on the few things we’ve seen, there’s a couple things I’d like to propose.

I don’t think Dante and Vergilius in have ever explicitly told each other that they love each other. I could be totally wrong about this, but based on Dante’s reactions in this chapter, both to the homophobia he experienced and not wanting to talk about it with Verge, and his shyness around romantically charged physical contact with him (it’s Verge who holds his hand, Dante doesn’t hold it back), and just based on the fact that they were kids, I think whatever splintering in their relationship occurred it was before either of them had actually been able to verbally express what they meant to each other. They reaaaaally read to me as having still been in that first gay crush where you’re sort of together but also not really acknowledging it stage of their relationship.*

I wonder if Verge may have been victim blamed in some regard for what happened with that priest we see. I could see Arima Aruma making commentary on the way victims of sexual exploitation can be blamed if they’re “imperfect” victims. Personally, I don’t trust Abbott Nicholas like even a little bit in how he handles situations, and just based on the expression Dante has as a kid looking back at him, I wonder if he may have said something pretty fucked. Or, at the very least, not helpful at all towards Verge, and tinged in some way, by homophobia. Like, ultimately, at his age Verge was not capable of consenting whatsoever to what was happening. I wonder if because Verge was accepting money in return, Abbott Nicholas may have blamed him partially for what happened**

All of these proposals in consideration, then, I think potentially color Verge’s comment when he says “how cruel” in chapter 20. I wonder if Dante’s betrayal may have also been a deeper betrayal of their relationship -> not just that he didn’t go with him, but that he may have not acknowledged the relationship they had. In other words, if Abbott Nicholas may have victim blamed Verge in a way that also centered his queerness and Dante froze.

Returning to the conversation in chapter 20 then, if, from Verge’s perspective, Dante’s powers reference sexual intercourse between men, and Dante may have never fully communicated how he felt for Verge, that how cruel may have been because he was taking it as further shaming him for his own assault -> if the sin is having had sex with a man, and if Verge may have been blamed for his rape, then Dante’s powers may come across as further victim blaming towards Verge, that because Verge was sexually abused by a man as a form of survival sex work (not that he could have ever consented to that at his age), Verge has “committed sin,” whereas Dante has not (presuming that Dante has never had sex with a man, which like, idk but idk if Verge knows either).

Dante’s response, “that’s not my sin” then, wouldn’t actually refute that to Verge. It would just tie into that. “No, I’ve never had sex with a man, that’s not my sin” -> which also would function as a further rejection of the feelings they held for each other.

On the other hand, I don’t think that’s how Dante meant it. I think Dante’s perspective on it not having been his sin, especially with how he follows it up, and with what he said towards the beginning of the series about love, is that he doesn’t view his feelings towards Verge as sin at all. Rather, it was his failure to take his side that he views as his sin. His response he may have meant both as a “what I felt for you wasn’t sin” and a “what happened to you wasn’t your fault.” The panel frames the church as Sodom, so the sin of what occurred to Verge is not homosexuality, but rape, and Dante clearly places the blame with the priest.

And to tie into this, I think it’s significant that it’s not Dante’s personal money he uses to pay women at brothels to offer them the financial means to leave sex work should they choose, it’s church funds.***

TL;DR

To sum all this up, I think Dante and Verge may both have skewed understandings of what went wrong in their relationship and how they felt towards each other, but I think the idea that Dante betrayed Verge is central to it. I’m not sure that Vergilius thinks that Dante betrayed him though. I think this is Dante’s perspective of whatever happened that we still don’t know about. I am interested in seeing if we get any further information about their past in the next chapter or if we won’t be seeing anymore for a while.

Footnotes

*I think further in support of this is Verge’s reaction at the bowling alley when Priest falsely confirms that Dante is having sex with women in brothels. He teases Dante in their fight in chapters 20-21 for being worked up over him, but honestly, I don’t think he has confidence that his feelings for him in childhood were reciprocated in the same way.

**In support of this I think we should consider Dante’s reaction following Priest’s assault in the first chapter. Priest blames himself for his assault—“I looked upon a woman with lust. I am deserving of this punishment”—and Dante immediately thinks of Abbott Nicholas, and then immediately tries to impress upon Priest that consensual sexual desire isn’t wrong.

***Dante seems to consider his position within the church as one that enables him to decrease exploitation the most. Daniel, in one of the files, refers to the policy (that he instituted) post Mother Rosa death of banning the weak from serving as exorcists, as having resulted in the exploitation of children, who now make up the bulk of the exorcists. If Dante leaves the church at this point, he would be doing so as one of the remaining adult exorcists, leaving the work to the rest of the children

Random Extra Thoughts:

I’ve seen speculation that shit may have gone down between the two of them in-between the four year timeskip after the first chapter since Dante has become noticeably more pessimistic. Personally, based on Verge knowing about Dante going to brothels, and based on Dante knowing to look for Verge by speaking to sex workers at brothels, I wonder if they may have seen each other at a brothel. Vergilius would’ve been a witch by this point. I’ve had to go through parts of the manga again, but he’s been a witch for at least ten years at this point. Which is an interesting timeline, since Dante and Mother Rosa were both present 11 years ago at the fight against Beelzebub. Much to consider

Also, Dante and Verge keep referencing each other’s respective ages (that Dante has been aging and Verge is still young) and tying it not just to appearance but also behavior. With the potential miscommunication in regards to their feelings with each other, I sort of also wonder if Verge associates their relationship with their youth as well, and may assume that the romantic element to their love for each other is something Dante considers himself to have grown out of.

Tying into the above, I think it’s significant that we the audience haven’t yet seen an ordinary adult who is openly gay. Verge and the other witches who are queer (Erskine and Cyril based on their presence sharing a broom naked in the background of the witch’s sabbath, other various witches who’ve been similarly paired off) have all frozen themselves in time. Dante is gay, but based on his behavior at the brothels, not out. Also, and this could just be early series wonkiness, but when Abbott Nicholas tells Dante in the first chapter not to introduce Priest to a variety of vices, womanizing comes up as one of them. So, like, whatever happened in the past, I don’t think Dante has ever acknowledged himself as gay to Abbott Nicholas or the larger community.

#ekuoto #make the exorcist fall in love #exorcist wo otosenai #meta #mtefil #Also completely unrelated but god I hope we find out more about mother rosa #I also really want to know who in the one file called Dante to warn him off from going to collect her body #was it Nicholas?#We know that Beelzebub puppeted her remains in 2020 and Leah destroyed them so I guess he didn't give up #Also I am dying to know who Imuri's friend Cass is #Also I wonder if we’ll ever find out Verge’s name before he was a witch my money is on Beato

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