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madartiste · 5 years

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Deadly Fortune, Book 2, Chapter 00-1 - 15

The chapter numbering for the second book is a little weird because there are a couple 00 numbered chapters that take place before the game starts. It’s mainly stuff for Lady and what she was up to that led her to encounter the Order of the Sword.

Everything is under the cut again.

Link to the translation: https://originaldmc.github.io/DivinityStatue/Downloads.html

Link to the previous section of Notes: https://madartiste.tumblr.com/post/186824600040/deadly-fortune-book-1-chapters-6-11

Stage 00-1 (Before the game -- Lady encounters the Order)

We get some Lady! She's hunting a demon (naturally). She hears a weird noise that sounds more like a machine than a human or a demon. Lady calls out a warning because she doesn't want to accidentally shoot a person. They don't respond to her, so she decides to shoot anyway, and one of the Bianco Angelos blocks the rocket with its shield. She asks if they got lost on their way to a costume party. Though they don't answer, their posture tells Lady they're definitely listening to her. Interestingly, they don't attack her even though she attacked first, but they're still insanely strange and refuse to say or do anything to respond to her.

So she shoots them again. They scuffle a bit, she notices they've got some good gear since the armor can fly and they have motorized spears. She lands a hit and notices there is no blood. Apparently there are sometimes demons with no bodies, though it's very rare, and they can possess things -- 'Like old dolls or torture instruments' (wow). Items with significant emotional attachment to humans are their favorite shells. Lady considers that while medieval armor could possibly be possessed, this armor seems like it is far too new in construction. She also thinks that she's seen the crest that the knights are wearing before but can't remember.

Lady beats the first Bianco Angelo, noticing the blue-white lights that dissipate out of it, and is about to take some of the armor when more show up and surround her. There's a nice part where she thinks that when she was younger, she'd probably pick a fight with them, but now that she's more experienced, she understands her limitations better. She also notices they caught the demon she was after -- it has wings and a face like a dog according to her. Deciding that she doesn't like her odds, Lady hops on her bike after distracting the knights with her rocket launcher. She finds the situation strange, since they definitely could give chase but don't, and wonders why these demons possessing the armor are hunting other demons.

Stage 12 (Credo dies)

Nero is starting to lose himself inside the Savior. At first he feels completely calm and comfortable, but he can't remember who he is and can't move. After a moment, he remembers that he has to save someone.

Dante thinks of Mundus when he sees the Savior fly off. He comments that the bad guys have similar patterns.

Credo wakes up, and Dante does not care about his condition -- which seems harsh, but Dante further ruminates that Credo is a proud guy who wouldn't want sympathy from his enemy. He also is pretty sure Credo is dying. Dante correctly realizes that the plan is to open the gate to the underworld so that Sanctus can play hero. He's not impressed.

Dante thinks this is just like Temen-ni-gru, though that was built by humans. He's not overly concerned about the whole thing because 'the passage to the devil world is only a little longer.' (Not sure exactly what that means.) He also expresses that he doesn't like it when people tell him what to do or try to give him tasks, though he admires Credo's resolve and that he's managed to hold on to his humanity despite becoming a demon.

The way Credo dissolves when he dies isn't typical for a demon, and Dante thinks it's because of Credo's convictions. He thinks 'This must be the way angels sacrificed.'

Dante and Trish only took this job for entertainment which is why they didn't take it seriously. But now they feel obligated to fulfill Credo's dying request. Dante particularly finds humans who use demons to be abhorrent, and he wants to put an end to the Order. There's a line about him not being young anymore and that he's seen a lot of stuff, but Credo's death touched his heart.

Stage 00-2 (Before the game -- Lady learns about the Order)

Lady goes to a collector of supernatural items named John. It seems she doesn't like him much, and his smile creeps her out. There's a note that 'John swayed like a bald-headed man.' Whatever that means. She shows them the coat of arms (the Order's symbol). He says he knows what it is, but doesn't tell her, so Lady bribes him with some 'devil's blood.' She dislikes all the collectors because they try to flaunt their knowledge to her. Also hey remind her of Arkham.

John scoffs at her 'demon blood' because it shouldn't remain in liquid form. It either evaporates quickly after being spilled or crystallizes. But she knows better and tells him to "Forget it." He changes his tune and asks if the blood is real and how it could be liquid. She explains that if demon blood is poured onto a stone statue in a ritual, it can create a liquid demon called a Blood Bat. When the Bat is hit with high heat, it turns back into a stone statue, and that what she's got in her vial is part of the Blood Bat. She offers to let him set fire to the blood since it will turn to stone. And after a while, it will turn back into a liquid.

John tries out the trick and is super stoked. He grabs her hand in his excitement -- which she doesn't care for. John digs into his collection and brings back a book which has the Order's coat of arms on it: "The Teaching Code of the Order of the Sword." Ooooh, Lady saw the symbol in her father's study when she was a little kid. The book is about 4-500 years old, though the Order existed before that.

There's a 'Demon Sociology Group'???

John asks her if she wants a more recent book of their teachings, though it'll be a bit hard to get. He's very, very pleased with her gift, so he's willing to go the extra mile for her this time. Lady thinks there's something seriously shady happening, so she says yes.

Stage 13 (Dante vs the Blitz)

Agnus has been in the Savior during all this, so he visits Sanctus in the control room. The Savior has some automatic functions, but needs a human to do the more complex stuff. He's disappointed in how little Sanctus changed with his transformation, wondering if it's because Sanctus is so old. (There's a good translator's note that says that Angus considers switching between human and devil forms to be a 'passage to heaven.')

Agnus actually finds himself afraid of Sanctus and realizes it's because the old geezer is juiced full of powerful energy. He's ashamed of doubting Sanctus. He thinks that the power of the devil forms is related to the strength of the person's spirit. Interestingly, Agnus admits he is not a devout believer in Sparda. He's more interested in studying devils than he is in following Sparda and mainly used his position to satisfy his scientific curiosity. But seeing Sanctus… he's filled with awe and believes in his vision.

Angus thinks that Sanctus needs a new title because he should rule over not just the human world but the underworld too. (Good luck with that.) He calls him "Emperor of the Devil." Sanctus just laughs and gives him Yamato to go unlock the Hell Gate. Agnus pauses and asks what Sanctus will do about Dante -- which Sanctus thinks should be easy with the Savior.

Sanctus also seems to plan to blame all the insanity that's about to happen on Dante. Dante is unpredictable, Agnus worries that they'll be in trouble if they underestimate him. Aha, Agnus thinks that with Yamato he will have enough strength to beat Dante. (Is there something about Yamato and making people feel powerful??) Now that Credo is dead and he is Sanctus' most trusted confidant, Agnus is feeling pretty ballsy.

Back to Dante: Dante clearly smells demons afoot. There are some funky dark clouds gathering that shoot lightning at a demon. Oh, the Blitz. Interesting note: In Dante's experience, if a demon doesn't have eyes or a nose, it usually has some kind of organ that replaces those functions. Demons without eyes are rare, though the Blitz has really good hearing.

He uses Ebony and Ivory and thinks of Nell Goldstein (awww), remembering her saying that a normal person can't fire their guns like a machine gun -- which is why she designed his guns to handle being fired at an inhuman rate. Dante considers his guns to be partners. He also doesn't normally bring other weapons besides the pistols and Rebellion, but he brought along Coyote-A this time.

Rebellion is the first weapon Dante got, and Sparda trained him to fight with a sword. There's a line about how the sword symbolizes the power to protect a loved one.

Fighting the Blitz, Dante considers that a dying demon's only instinct is destruction, essentially wanting to kill everything around it when it goes. Hence the Blitz blowing itself up.

Stage 00-3 (Lady hires Dante and Trish)

Lady is considering what to do about the Bianco Angelos. They are obviously collecting demons for something, but they don't attack her unless she attacks them first. She debates about going to Fortuna, but isn't keen on the idea, though if the Angelos keep interfering with her hunts, she's losing money and reputation. She's chillin' on the sofa in her own room, thinking about what to do. Demon hunters are pretty rare and scattered around the country, but she knows a few people. Obviously, the person she thinks can deal with this is Dante.

She actually wonders if Dante is his real name because some people call him Tony -- though she knows this was an old alias. She heads out to his place, calls his area of town a 'slum.' Lady strolls into the office without knocking. She thinks that Dante would eat pizza or drink if he has nothing better to do, and that he eats sundaes like a little kid.

Lady doesn't know too much about Trish, only that she used to be Dante's partner and that she's not human. Trish is apparently traveling the world right now, but sometimes swings by Devil May Cry.

Dante turns her job down because he's suspicious of Lady's methods -- she sticks him with the damage fees all the time -- but Lady knows he doesn't really take jobs for the money. He just wants to kill demons. Apparently Trish knows about the Order of the Sword but doesn't say anything.

Lady has her doubts about Dante really being the son of Sparda, and when she asks him how much he knows, Dante says who can know everything about their dad? Lady finds the answer strange even for Dante. He gets his interest hooked at the point that Lady says they worship Sparda like a god on Fortuna. Despite what he'd like, Dante still wants to know about his father.

While she's talking, Trish is picking up the Sparda and some Devil Arms, but Dante doesn't notice. Lady doesn't care who takes the job.

Stage 14 (Dante vs. Echidna)

Agnus is in the Opera House. Only a few people know how to get to the Hell Gate under the building. The secret passage was built way before the Opera House, and Sanctus ordered Agnus to figure out where it was. The Hell Gate directly under the center of the city. Apparently the space is very creepy. He's excited to see the culmination of his research.

The original Hell Gate developed over time, caused by the 'magical difference between the human world and the underworld.' The little Hell Gates Agnus made concentrated magical energy in the area, allowing them to open the the Real Hell Gate all at once.

Back to Dante: He sees all the demons spilling out of the big Hell Gate and says "That's… not good." (Hah!) Even he is apprehensive about dealing with that many demons at once. He also is worried that they won't be able to save all the people.

Dante doesn't usually hang on to his Devil Arms. In fact, he sells them to pay his debts.

He's counting on the Order knights to protect the citizens, so he's focusing on getting back his Devil Arms and closing the small Hell Gates. Dante is confident he can win, but he knows he can't destroy the Savior with Nero inside since that could kill the poor kid.

In Mitis Forest, the air is so dense with demon energy that a normal person would just pass right out. Dante literally is looking forward to 'playing' with some tough demons.

He banters with Echidna, and there's a note that demons who can speak human languages are always chatty and show off. Dante grabs his Devil Arm before the fight in this. I guess there's a question if Gilgamesh is a true Devil Arm (which makes a bit of sense since DMC5 says it's actually a special kind of metal from the Underworld.). Dante Rising Dragon's Echidna and is a bit disappointed that she gets taken out so fast. It sounds like he gets intensely bored fighting demons and does all his showy moves mainly to entertain himself.

Stage 15 (Dante vs. Dagon)

Lady POV: She's on a boat on her way to Fortuna. The sailors can't believe she wants to go there with all the crazy stuff going on. She tells one of them that when she gets there, she'll put a stop to it… probably (she doesn't let them hear that last part). Three days after she left, Trish sent Lady a letter asking her to come by Fortuna in a month to pick her and Dante up. Lady gets attacked by a Mephisto. The sailor's name is Ben, and Lady tries to protect him and the ship.

She beats the demon but a ton more show up. She suggests Ben run to the lifeboat.

Back to Dante: He tries to get frisky with Dagon's ladies who tease him and dart away -- though he's already aware the frog demon is there thanks to the smell. Dagon has similarly poor human speech, like Bael, that Dante can barely understand. He also doesn't know who Dante is -- and Dante's disappointed by that. He asks if Dagon is "from the country."

The demon frogs come out of the hell gate before Dante kills Dagon. He Enemy Steps his way over to the Hell Gate to grab Pandora. To use Pandora's different forms, Dante just has to picture them in his mind. It was either built by or WAS an 'ordinance worker in the demon world.' I'm thinking built by because this demon also built a bunch of other guns. (Was it Machiavelli? Same guy who made Artemis?) Pandora can read the 'memory and the imagination' of the user to change into many shapes. When Trish first saw the Argument form for Pandora, she said Dante is just a big kid. He admits that he probably got the idea from a comic book or movie but still thinks it's cool. Also he got hit with the Omen transformation on accident before. He refers to that as 'tragic consequences.'

Link to the next section of notes: https://madartiste.tumblr.com/post/186847847540/deadly-fortune-book-2-chapters-16-20

#Devil May Cry #DMC4 #Deadly Fortune #My notes

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spidersmiceandeverythingnice · 5 years

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Gonna write my scatterbrained Spicy Hot Takes on Agartha before the news is stale and I delete this annoying and boring chapter from my mental landscape, so bear with me:

I think Agartha’s main issue was just straight up poor writing. The Japanese direct translations being as downright offensive as they were is one thing - but overall, the chapter is just one plot contrivance after another. It tries so, so hard to go for a certain tone but can’t seem to stick to any one thing or idea. Disregarding themes about sexuality probably would have been the very best way to go about this chapter, since I think the most interesting part was the theme about storytelling and in-authenticity - we all know that That Line was annoying af in a game like FGO, but it CAN work in a series like Fate as a whole. I had a helluva long day at work so allow me to explain in the least scatter-brained way I can manage right now:

Here’s what I’m thinking: Scheherazade, whose name I guarantee I will spell wrong/differently every time I write it even though I’ve been able to pronounce it properly since I was thirteen (I was in a speaking competition and told some of the Thousand and One Nights using her framework as the opening monologue, long story short ANYWAY -) is traumatized by her ordeal with the king. This is a really good and interesting thing to explore! Fitting it in with the theme of storytelling - Scheherazade is deeply afraid of dying and will do whatever it takes to live, so she makes a fantasy world and fills it with legends, and feeds their energy to a Holy Grail. With this, and the power of a Demon God at her side, she plans to reveal magic to the human world in the most destructive fashion possible, allowing the fantastic to become ordinary, and destroying the Throne of Heroes itself in the process. Fate is a series were stories have power - but Scheherazade survived basically by telling the most fantastical, interesting tales she could and never finishing them. She always would pause in the middle, and say, “That’s all for tonight.” I think this is the kind of thing we can run with in terms of setting.

Dahut is the weirdest example because it’s the one story in the chapter that I know next to nothing about. At one point it’s mentioned that Dahut is impossible to summon as a Servant, and so Drake was “forced” into the role of the Pirate Princess. Ys is probably the weakest part of the chapter for that, but I did like the idea of her being “Drake Alter,” where Drake vibrantly pursues her goals and desires but takes nothing for granted; Dahut gives into her every whim and takes absolutely everything for granted. The conflict between “Drake” and “Dahut” should have been emphasized more instead of having the player/Da Vinci dismiss her as “Oh, it’s not Drake, except when she conveniently comes back to delivery us the MacGuffins Ex Machina in the eleventh hour.” Dahut has little connection to Drake - it’s not her story, but a role she was forced into because Scheherazade was building a very specific kind of world. Therefore it is inauthentic. Perhaps that’s all it needs to be in this context.

This can also work with the Amazons. Scheherazade never told stories of the Amazons, but she has access to basically all stories in the world through her Noble Phantasm - she learns that they are a society of warrior women who live without men, and so decides that they will be a society which oppresses men due to her fear/bitterness towards men after the ordeal she suffered through. The “oppressing men” plotline was honestly dumb all around but using the Amazons as a mechanism to explore Scheherazade's trauma would’ve been more interesting than just having them be the Big Bad before the Big Bad Columbus Reveal: Scheherazade doesn’t like fighting, but wishes that she had been strong enough to protect herself. Because she views herself as a coward and her ordeal with the king has complicated her view of sexuality - “I’m better suited to a bedchamber than a battlefield” - she uses the Amazons of Agartha as a mechanism to cope.

This brings us to Wu, whose design I’m still not happy about even though I think the in-story justification is somewhat fair. (Let Helena and Wu be gray-haired grannies together or so help me!) Wu was absolutely an authoritarian ruler who did, in fact, invade and conquer several nations and institute a terrifying network of secret police. In her later life, she was given to decadence - but her tenure on the throne showed her to be a highly competent administrator. Notably, she ruled over an era of religious tension and balanced matters quite well, and though she was accused of undoing meritocracy to put her supporters into power, many of the men she appointed held positions in government long after she’d died because they were actually good at their jobs. Wu has been heavily mythologized over the years - later Tang emperors and Neo-Confucian scholars wrote her off (Wu founded her own dynasty under her own name, so they kind of had to legitimize it somehow), she became associated the nine-tailed fox spirit thanks to a few popular novels and poems, etc., etc., etc. The crazy thing is that Wu actually left very few records of herself behind, apart from some poems. Even the inscription on her tomb is blank! People can say whatever they want about her - it’s extremely difficult to know the full truth of the matter without any objective observers in the field (and without Wu’s own words to give context/another story), especially if you don’t read any Chinese.

BTW - the first thing I learned history class is that when you’re dealing with primary sources, you must always remember that translators have agendas. Every word is a deliberate choice, and it changes the meaning from the original text. When dealing with historical documents, this is not always a good thing.

Scheherazade reads some, but not all of these stories, and integrates Wu into her world as the sadist empress with an iron grip on her decadent mythical city.

Do you see what I’m getting at here? It’s a lot, but I’m not done. Now we have to deal with Columbus - there’s “In Defense of Columbus” video is floating around in the Agartha tag, but I haven’t watched it in full and haven’t done like, any intensive research on Columbus in particular, so I’m going to apologize right now for any historical inaccuracies/misconceptions that I’m about to write. The point I want to make here mainly is that Columbus, like Wu, has been heavily, heavily mythologized for both good and evil at various points. The thing about Columbus that is also interesting is that the authenticity of his journals is or was apparently a subject of debate. The man who published most of them actually happened to be Bartolomew de las Casas - one of the founders/first vocal supporters of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The reason de la Casas supported this is because he believed that using African labor would be an improvement over enslaving the native populations of the New World. Soon after, he had a change of heart and devoted the rest of his life to fighting against slavery in all forms. De la Casas went on to be named a saint, and was possibly the first person in history to propose the idea of universal human rights - which is how I had heard of him until literally just this afternoon; I had no idea he’d ever supported the slave trade until I was looking up basic info about Columbus’s writings so I could write this long-ass post. History is full of complicated people.

But as I mentioned in Wu’s bit, it’s very important to note that in many ways, Columbus is literally just whatever people decide he is. Like, he never even set foot in any land that would become the United States, and yet he’s a huge symbol here! Along these lines, his amnesia would fit the theme of inauthentic storytelling, choosing what to read and what to believe in. Columbus regaining his memories was an understated moment, which is actually fucking fantastic because it could be used to really emphasize the choice that is being made here. He’s a Heroic Spirit who can choose to be whatever he wants. He can choose to be the simple hero-explorer that schoolchildren sing about, or he can choose to be the Big Bad, the first and perhaps most infamous conquistador. And he chooses to be the bad guy. That is so fuckin’ fantastic, y’all! I honest to God love that not only did FGO portray Columbus as a villain of history but that the bad reputation is something he chooses to maintain! I can write a list of Servants who were less than stellar people and got a makeover for Fate. Nero is probably one of the worst examples but like - Ozymandias absolutely owned slaves in his life as a pharaoh. Hercules and Medea murdered their own children. Asterios literally ate humans as the Minotaur. Gilles de Rais exists as a playable character. Jack the Ripper is your daughter. Hell, Nobunaga burned temples with the monks still inside - but she feels bad about it now! Enough digressing but I a hundred percent get why Japanese fans found Columbus “refreshing” at his introduction. He owns his cruelty, his desire to exploit others - he challenges the narrative that everyone is redeemable because he doesn’t even want to be redeemed, he just wants to get rich and famous, and he doesn’t give a shit who he steps over in the process! Like, Columbus said, “I’m just doing what comes naturally,” at one point when he still had amnesia, so when he got his memory back and turned on the player, I really would’ve liked for him to say is something like, “You’ve already decided that I’m the bad guy, right? You know my story, and I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”

These kinds of questions/debates could have been used to emphasize the themes of Agartha. Legends are what people decide they are. People make choices and history decides whether they were good or evil or important retroactively. Can you know what someone is like by reading a translation of their poetry? Can you judge a king’s reign by the words of their successors or their rivals? Does the context of a story matter? This all could have been super interesting to explore!

Like I said, the main theme of Agartha being “inauthentic storytelling” could have been hella, hella good considering that this is a world created by Scheherazade’s fears and trauma feeding into her escapist desires. But Minase’s incompetence as a writer made everything so hamfisted and awkward that everything just suffered under his desire to insert his fetishes at every moment. It was so obvious that he didn’t read any material for old Fate characters - like Astolfo you poor sweet thing, you deserved so much better! - and even the new characters that he clearly did research on, like Columbus, fell flat because he couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say beyond mildly-to-extra offensive sex jokes.

#i'm tired so i may not reply to any responses but i had to get this out of my system because it's been nagging at me #like... it could've been good #it could've been at least decent if minase just... knew how to deal with a theme and read up on some fate character materials #but he didn't do that and so now we have This Mess #fate grand order #agartha nonsense #also disclaimer i did the baaaare minimum of research for parts and didn't even dig up my Empress Wu Research Paper docs #but like now that i've got this off my chest i'm gonna be done wasting time thinking about agartha since it was just so....#not even like that it was especially bad it was just... lifeless and insipid #thank goodness holmes told us it wasn't even canon lmao

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