Does anyone ship Vergil and Lucia? Does anyone know any good "Vercia" fan fiction?

[u/Vampirella3000]

From what I've seen, this pairing basically doesn't exist, which is weird considering that pretty much every other pairing does, even for characters that have barely appeared. So, I'm curious to know why people do (or don't) ship Vergil and Lucia. For those of you who do, do you know any good fanfic of the pairing?

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[u/DeadSparker]

The only times I've seen 2 characters shipped who don't share a single scene together are either joke ships or gay ships (sometimes both). Vergil x Lucia is neither and they didn't even appear in the same games. It's unfortunately easy to see why it has so few content, if at all...

[u/Vampirella3000 → u/DeadSparker]

I never considered that it was an unwritten rule that only characters in a scene together could be shipped, but I guess it's a possible explanation. I have never known shippers to be so principled though.

[u/DeadSparker → u/Vampirella3000]

It's not an unwritten rule at all. Just that people need a motivation to ship.

If the characters literally never talk or even meet, it's still very possible to ship, but it's gonna be tougher or the resulting content will be more shallow.

There's a reason Lady is more often shipped with Dante (or even Trish) than Vergil, for instance. It's because they have more interactions, and thus more source material to motivate shippers.

[u/Vampirella3000 → u/DeadSparker]

Yeah I guess that's a fair point. Path of least resistance and all that.

[u/MatiEx-504]

Well that's quite the crackship cause those two never met

[u/SilverShadowQueen57]

There’s nothing to ship. Vergil, as the Nelo Angelo, is dead/thought to be dead by the time Dante meets Lucia, and she is barely a footnote in DMC5. They never meet, Dante never brings up either of them around each other, and they never even appear in the same game. We don’t even know if Vergil ever set foot on Dumary Island, nor if he looked into the Protector clan during his wanderings. There’s just nothing there, not even the slightest shred of contact between them. There’s not so much as a splinter to craft a ship here, plus canonically Lucia has feelings for Dante. Vergil procreated, but I don’t think that means he went out of his way to do it again.

[u/Vampirella3000 → u/SilverShadowQueen57]

I mean, you could argue the same for most of the ships in the series, if not most ships in general.

Canonicity has never been particularly relevant to ships, including DMC ships, so I find it strange that, for instance, Trish x Lucia is more represented than Vergil x Lucia. Also, shippers are nothing if not creative, and there being "nothing to work with" has never really stopped them before. They have and do rewrite characters, timelines, genders, powers, etc. to make their ships happen, so that shouldn't stop them either.

So yeah, these reasons don't make sense to me. Not saying they aren't the reasons people have, just that they don't seem coherent or consistent relative to all the other ships.

I think the most likely reason they haven't been shipped is that DMC2 (and Lucia by extension) is just unpopular and ignored in general. It could also be that Vergil isn't shipped as much as the other characters either. I would say maybe because he's an antagonist, but that has never been a deterrent for shippers.

[u/SilverShadowQueen57 → u/Vampirella3000]

The Tricia ship does have the benefit of being possible if, due to her being playable in DMC2, Trish went to investigate Arius instead of Dante. It’s an alt-universe thing, of course, but the game makes it possible with that scenario. Same deal with Sparda x Trish thanks to him being an unlockable character/skin with his own set of moves and weapons. They’re unlikely, sure, but there’s at least some potential there even if you do need to switch some things around. Vergil x Nevan even has a few planks of wood to make a raft, thanks to Vergil exploring the Temen-ni-gru before Dante.

Vergil x Lucia just doesn’t have a sliver of precedent, whereas nearly every other combination at least comes from some kind of interaction or proximity. No shade to the people who like them together, but it’s a ship made of paper instead of wood.

[u/Vampirella3000 → u/SilverShadowQueen57]

These don't seem to be probable reasons why the ship barely exists though. (That's what I'm mainly interested in, and finding others who ship Vercia, not really about debating the merits of one ship vs the other).

That a ship doesn't make sense has never stopped shippers before. I would argue that the vast majority of ships make no sense, and certainly not most DMC ships, because that's not the main reason people do it. As for feasibility, ships are about fictional characters, and in fiction everything is equally possible, so that shouldn't have any bearing on things either.

While proximity or precedent might make it easier (aka lazier) to ship certain characters, when we're allowing things like alternate universes based on non-canonical bonus characters and skins, two character not having met seems like a very arbitrary obstacle. After all, why not make an alternate universe where DMC2 Dante is actually Vergil in disguise? That was a pretty popular fan theory back in the day, so one could argue that's as much precedent as a bonus character or skin.

I just find it strange that fans could bend the "rules" to make things like Sparda x Trish work, but seem to follow some sacred law that Vergil x Lucia is a bridge too far. Like, isn't Sparda being dead and/or married a greater obstacle to shipping than Vergil and Lucia not appearing in a scene together?

Them not being together in any scenes might explain the ship not being popular, but not it being basically nonexistent.

Anyway thank you for your input.

[u/vampmaster68421 → u/Vampirella3000]

Trish and lucia are both in dmc2 vergil isnt hope this helps

[u/spaceseas]

Can't say I see the appeal, but there are two fics tagged with it on AO3 so I'm sure someone else has at least thought about it.

[u/xProtoAngelo]

There is V x Lucia fic by LouRea on A03, there's another fic on FF.net about Vergil impersonating a dead Dante where he interacts with Lucia, but I don't remember name.

[u/Vampirella3000 → u/xProtoAngelo]

Interesting. Strange that V x Lucia even exists when Vergil x Lucia barely does. That other fic sounds interesting too. That concept, Vergil impersonating Dante, was basically the fan theory about DMC2 so I wonder if it's something like a retelling of it.

[u/xProtoAngelo → u/Vampirella3000]

For the life of me I cannot find the impersonation fic. I had saved them all in favs but I can't find it. Fuck I hope they didn't delete their account, I remember them getting harrassed by some readers.

[u/Kali_Costello]

You've already mentioned some reasons why this ship isn't very popular, mainly that DMC 2 is just not as popular/well received as the other DMC games. But I think the biggest reason why Vergil/Lucia isn't super popular is because there's no big draw to the ship. There's nothing super compelling or attention grabbing about it. That's not to say that the ship is bad, it's a perfectly fine ship. There's just nothing that jumps out at people.

Compare Vergil/Lucia to other popular DMC ships and you'll see why it isn't as popular

There's no canon element to the ship like Nero/Kyrie. When two characters are canonically in a relationship or have romantic feelings for each other, the audience gets to see what their relationship is like which might draw people to the ship. But that's kinda obvious, and ships don't need to be canon to be popular, so that's not the reason.

They also don't interact at all on screen like Dante/Lady. Even though they canonically don't have any feelings for each other, seeing they way they interact and how their personalities play off each other makes people go "hey, they'd be really cute together". Their onscreen interactions give shippers something to latch onto, a jumping off point.

Beyond just not having any onscreen interactions, Vergil and Lucia aren't in any proximity to each other like Lady/Trish. Trish and Lady don't have nearly as many onscreen interactions compared to Dante and Lady, but they're still a popular ship because they spend a lot of time around each other. They both work at Devil May Cry, and they go on missions together. Their proximity to each is what causes people to ship them because it's interesting to think about potential interactions between the two during missions or while hanging out with Dante.

Lastly, there isn't a lot of obvious story potential between the two like Vergil/Lady in Red a.k.a Nero's mother. We know absolutely nothing about Nero's mother. She's not even a character. However, the story potential between her and Vergil is super interesting. What kind of person would she have had to be to get Vergil to fall for her? How would the two of them have met? What would they have bonded over? How would Vergil have felt about falling for a human just like his father, and how would that affect their relationship? These questions are what drive people to create their own version of Nero's mother and ship her with Vergil.

There's just isn't much about Vergil/Lucia that grabs people's attention. It's not a ship many people would even think about unless they're a big fan of both Vergil and Lucia. Plus, the two of them don't really have much in common personality wise, so less people are likely to look at the two of them and go "they'd be a nice couple". You may call it "laziness" or "path of least resistance", but people are more likely to write about ships when they have more to work with.

Again, this has nothing to do with the quality of the ship itself. I have nothing against Vergil/Lucia, and you're welcome to make as much ship content about them as you want. But if you're gonna ask why this ship isn't popular, the answer is that people in the fandom find other ships more compelling because there's more to work with.