Dent/Personality and Relationships

Personality
Having been raised by one of the "grouchy old sailor" archetype and taught all he knows about the world (before, of course, meeting his future captain and First Mate) by him, Dent has taken on a variety of the old man's habits. Foremost among them is his tendency to swear, well, like a sailor. While most of his repertoire is of the everyday variety ("fuck", "piss", "shit", "cunt", "bastard", etc), several more exotic insults have snuck their way in (such as "sodomizing", "slime sucking", etc). Dent tends to string these together, creating colorful chains of profanity. However, there is rarely any actual malice in his swearing; it is simply how he learned to speak, and he can at times use terms that would demean others as terms of endearment for those close to him. His serious swearing is often fully capitalized in order to distinguish it from his more casual, everyday profanity. Swearing being dropped from his vocabulary can also be seen as another sign of him being angry; the more light his heart, the more dirty words spill from his beak. A part of the bird seems to take pride from the different ways he can string words together, and he will often attempt to impress others with it.

While he was raised as a human, Dent very much still functions mentally as a bird, and thus displays several of their most notable characteristics. He is a remarkably curious little fellow, speeding to speak to strangers without any hesitation or provocation and badgering them with questions at an incomprehensible pace. When his attention is directed at objects he tends to inspect them with his beak, often accidentally breaking them apart. Depending on the object in question, he responds by acting either excessively guilty or as innocent as a babe. Ironically, Dent is also quite territorial when it comes to his own possessions, becoming irate and attempting to drive others away if they approach without permission. While the bird has little to no concept of wealth (requiring an explanation as to why bounty hunters were hounding the crew and what their bounties actually meant aside from prestige), he is often described as being simultaneously greedy and spendthriftish. Befitting his curious streak, Dent is easily attracted to any object that shines brightly, proving easy to separate from the crew on several occasions (when he doesn't abandon the group of his own volition). In this regard he has a notoriously short memory, tending to forget directions regarding the crew's current path and desire to stay together not long after being given them. While he is quite clingy about living in the "parrot's nest", the brave souls who venture up there have discovered that Dent is a rather poor housekeeper. Indeed, cleaning seems odd to him, and he initially tended to poop randomly on the ship (save for truly important places) before being specifically asked to stop. However, the occasional droplet can still be found, often a sign of excited and sudden movement on his part.

His general attitude also exposes more of his avian side. Dent tends to act as something of the crew clone, dressing up in made-to-order silly outfits and tending to take part in visual enactments of puns. He is the most accomplished prankster in the crew (Silve's mere existence managing to rival him ever-so-slightly), and will often set traps of this nature around the shape for his own amusement, commonly perching somewhere nearby once he detects a crewmember coming. While he isn't afraid to laugh at the pratfalls and goofs of his fellow pirates, none of his tricks are especially malevolent and the worst they inflict is a temporary humiliation. He is not especially bothered when pranked himself, often laughing along with the offender. His enjoyment of such things is more based on the merriment they give him rather than any negative emotion towards his target; as such, him falling for a practical joke every once in awhile is nothing more than a matter of course.

He tends to take pride in his more human side, especially his intelligence and ability to speak fluently. This leads Dent to look down on other birds on numerous occasions, as well as to revere Zoan-type Devil Fruit users for their prowess over speech while in their Beast forms. Unlike several other members, Dent expresses no special desire to learn more of his specialized field, being content with his current mental accomplishments. He refuses to speak 'regular bird' most of the time, only doing so when communication with other birds is necessary.

Dent views the Pride Pirates as his current "flock", and therefore showcases a tremendous amount of loyalty, so much so that several have been surprised at the amount of devotion a mere animal can show towards people. While he gets along with all of them, he has become especially attached to several of them, most notably the original five members that gathered in the West Blue. An easy sign of this affection is his tendency to perch on their shoulders more than any other. This easy loyalty to his crew, however, also makes him incredibly weak to peer pressure, and he can be easily convinced to aid the others (especially his most preferred among them) in whatever hairbrained schemes they have come up with. He is the most reliable accomplice for such things currently on their ship (until his position was rivaled by Reiko).

He is easily among the most idealistic among the Prides, believing in values like "justice" that are often foreign to pirates (and that many of his crewmates are skeptical about). As such, he has little beef with the Marines and will only fight them as necessary. His dream is based upon this facet of his personality; even though such a places as the "four corners of the world" likely do not exist, he believes firmly that the strength of those who dreamed of them can make them real. Indeed, the idea of "believing in something that you know doesn't exist", in a way, makes his dream one of the most "pure" among the Pride Pirates.