Reflecting on Dante

This is a reflection on the writing that I've done for mainly the HRP. I will mainly focus on the character named "Draco" or Dante Faulkner and his secondary personality known as Zayne. First off I want to say that while I did enjoy writing for Dante for the most part, he was such a bad character. This was when I was first really getting into any form of writing so I never had any real lessons taught to me. At the time, I had only watched anime but never payed it any attention while doing so. What essentially came out of Dante, and by extension my other characters, were things that I just thought were cool. Also, mimicking other people on here because I thought y'all were great. Dante was, essentially, a Gary Stu. Especially when he had the arc where he split off from the group to go on his own adventure. I never had a plan for him. I just wrote dumb shit. I guess I should start at the beginning and break down why he was so bad.

The beginning chapters saw him as this very joyful guy, but with a dark past that he'd rather keep hidden. That's fine. That's a decent enough setup for a character. I didn't put any more thought into this, unfortunately. It should have either been a longer period before he would finally let the horrors catch up to him in order to have the personality shift or had him start being a dour fool of a man desperately seeking to die in order to pay back what he had done. Looking back, I feel as though "Zayne" should have been an entirely different entity that Dante was hunting in order to clear his name. Perhaps keep Zayne also in his head as a PTSD horror that would have taken him over in an attempt to show that Dante doesn't really know if the person he was hunting was in his head or not. I was really only trying to be edgy now that I think about it.

At some point I introduced the "Guardian Demons". wew lad. The edgy boy in me just couldn't stop. These characters shouldn't have been made. They were wasted potential. The idea, I believe, was to have them exist to recount what Dante was like during training. I could have done that without them tbh. We had a few decent moments with Lynn, though. Essentially, they were made to get everyone out of bad situations or put them into bad situations, much like how Zayne was. The last two members of the GD along with Dante to ultimately survive were Lynn and Grace. I don't remember much about Grace at all other than she was the medic of the group who had her sight taken from her and Lynn was Dante's childhood friend. Again, anime shit. I should have just let Grace die seeing as how she really didn't do anything. Overall, I could have done better with them.

There was the "Juggernaut Program" and I'll be honest. I only pulled this out of my ass because Garth had his character, Dormii, be part of a super secret Spartan program. What can I say about this other than it was made to try to give Dante big dick status. This shouldn't have been put into the story in any capacity. It was originally put in to try to show how fucked up Dante got while in training. If I remember correctly, he failed the regular training course but another character named Steel "saw his potential" and threw him into the Juggernaut course. Anime shit. It was overall just bad and let me have an excuse to let Dante have super armor.

While there were a lot of decent moments with Ash, I shouldn't have enabled half the shit I did between those two characters. They should have just stayed as friends or had a longer time between meeting and becoming involved. Most of the "romances" were not great in any capacity tbh. Just a bunch of horny kids making their dolls fuck each other.

Let's talk a bit about Dante's small adventure. Now, I remember bits and pieces about this but the biggest issue I had was the ice planet. Now, the ice planet was something that I had tried to begin a plot line for, but ultimately scrapped much too late. I believe it was going to lead Dante into ancient Forerunner tech and give him another power boost. Luckily, I had enough sense to not continue with it because that would have been dumb. However, I still did dumb things like giving him Sangheli tech instead iirc. Then there was the adventure with Sarah and Angel. I don't remember much about Sarah's brother but I do remember me not knowing what the hell I was doing during that time. I do remember that there were zombies at some point. Well, "zombies". People infected by the flood. I think I remember enjoying myself during this section because "horror" is an element I like, but it was so cliche and ultimately just ended with Dante obtaining a motorcycle to make him look more badass.

The relationship with Sarah, to me, was fairly interesting. Dante, being a man who had lost Ash and had lost faith that he and Lynn would ever be together again tried to not see Sarah as anything other than a friend. He didn't want his heart broken again. It was another internal battle but instead of with his head, it was with his heart. Not like any of it mattered when everything was said and done since he did get back with Lynn and also had a brief "relationship" with Skippy. That one was... strange and out of left field. The relationship with Sarah culminating in him owning half of a planet to rule over as King. Fuck me that's horrible. By that point he has an entire fleet. Just go ahead and give him half a planet too.

The "Revolution of Zephyr" was so bad I don't want to talk about it. By this point I was tired and wanted Dante's story to conclude. It was bad. Really fucking bad.

So he had a modified Jackal Shield that could also double as a bubble shield. He had a motorcycle. An entire fleet. A planet. I will say that at the very least it didn't just come to him all at once. There was a gradual increase... except towards the end. I could have done better with all of this. I'm not counting the Saber he had because that thing was wrecked from the very first post. The second one he had, however, I will count. Could someone stop this man? Holy shit.

Dante was a bad character with too many toys and not a whole lot of substance. He was a prime example of an amateur not knowing what he was doing. At least it was fun.