Are there any specific reasons as to why you prefer VD over DV? Just curious, I'm a VD fan myself, but I just like to hear from different sparda bro shippers why they prefer certain dynamics :)
yes. too many to list here. i will try, though you'll have to deal with my arguments being haphazard and somewhat incomplete, in lieu of the 753737-page essay the topic deserves.
vergil is, canonically, in every thing he has said and done (and not), a doer. he is the instigator, the driver. he is the unstoppable force: a taker of direct action. not always because he wants to be, mind--because the more you think about his and Dante's situation in 3 and 5 the more it should become apparent that he often doesn't have any or many options available to him besides the one he must "choose"; he is willing to suffocate his wants for his needs, to the point where the line between them blurs--but definitely of his own volition. a vergil who does not have or take control of the situation is a dead vergil, an enslaved vergil. his will forced to break to another; angelo.
so. what does this have to do with topping. this is where dante's role is important. dante who waits, dante who endures. passive. the immovable object--he is sessile, he does not instigate. he waits and waits for things to happen To him; he needs to be spurred into action. vergil happens to be the only thing that properly lights a fire under his ass. already he is more aligned with the penetratee than the penetrator--he even jokes about it in 5, lol.
(side note: it drives me crazy when i see fanstuff of vergil & dante's fight on top of the temen-ni-gru where dante's the one stabbing vergil with yamato /the rebellion. for some reason. like, no, hey, the fact that that did not happen, that it was decidedly the other way around, is important! both to the story and the characters--dante never stabbed vergil through with the rebellion because he never even got the chance! or had an actual reason-cum-motivation to do so, like vergil did. the closest dante got was when he cut though him after he their final fight--a crude, clumsy, ultimately aimless thing [which vergil Allowed him, mind: dante surely torments himself about it later and for ever] compared to vergil's careful, direct precision when forcing dante to awaken his powers. i can't wrap my head around it, reversing their roles as if it doesn't completely upend them as characters, too)
dante also embodies "the home" in many ways: the DMC office is a grounded, established, permanent "base" (unlike vergil, who likely got by sleeping outdoors in defensible hovels and holes and damp alleyways, no home or semblance of it to his name after the fire; no attempt to reclaim what he knows to be lost, unlike dante, who drowns himself in effigies); his resemblance & adherence to his mother and her wishes: her association with red, the responsibility/ burden she cosigned him to when she told him he should "be strong, like a man". the home, aside from the obvious associations with domesticity and femininity (the "receiver", the "nurturer", etc), is the thing which the hero must reclaim and return to, at the end of an epic journey. the home suffers in the hero's absence: it is taken advantage of, it is defiled, derelict; loses its glory when untended. if dmc5 and the events that happen before it (DMC as a whole, really) were told strictly from vergil's perspective, it'd be one big odyssey. dante is vergil's penelope: the person who has endured his absence to whom he must return to and reunite with, and most importantly, be accepted by. a role that is, by definition and necessity, distinctly passive; where any action taken is always an indirect one. there's lots of fun to be had with this idea, in general. overall the story makes more sense when you read vergil as the one who must return to dante, and dante as the one who must wait for him. again, more of the active/passive dichotomy.
another thing, perhaps more directly tied to DMC than the obvious literary allusions (even though DMC is full of those and they absolutely shouldn't be dismissed because "it's not that deep", or whatever excuses people have for not wanting to use their brains when it comes to discussing a given text these days) (not to mention the divine comedy. Virgil the Guide, etc etc etc) is dante's bleeding, bloody guilt over basically every aspect of his existence. he has proven time and time and again that he does not give a shit about his health or well being, or life, or the lives of humans or demons or whatever. that the guilt does not appear at the forefront of the story or his dialogue ought to clue you in to just how immensely it weighs on him; the devil's cry "sounds" (fuckkk nero) like deathless silence, dante's lips mouthing out vergil's name after the rain. that guilt simply cannot allow dante to take control away from vergil (him being a force of nature, for whom cessation would equal to death or imprisonment; that is, vergil's control over his body, his mobility: the maintenance of self when putting himself into someone else's body rather than the surrender of it when allowing someone into his; his freedom) and, more critically, to put that control into his own hands--we know what happens when dante has the upper hand on vergil. "you can do better than that", blood and dust and barbed words spilling from his tongue when the only thing he is in that moment is desperate, clumsy. he is crass, indelicate, because he is, at his core, hollow, and thus fragile--takes to false bravado and levity more than he does the sheer, honest truth to which vergil dooms himself to live by. the mere thought might turn him off so much he wouldn't be able to get it up, nevermind fuck with it.
there is more to say here, especially with regard to dante taking on a more assertive/dominant role, and vergil a more submissive one. that is: they'd both very much be into it--dante pushing back, which is what he'd do even when being submissive. vergil might try to bend dante to his will, but part of what makes dante Dante is his stubbornness(/rebellion, ha)--vergil knows this, depends on it; trusts it with his life. but ultimately their dynamic remains constant. vergil needs to be the one calling the shots, for himself and for dante, and not necessarily entirely for his own sake; dante cannot trust himself enough to do so for either of them (at least, not to the extent which vergil can, and does). only one of them is truly practiced at being gentle with his brother.
the only thing i'll say about DV is that, fundamentally, i don't think vergil & dante can remain in character with that kind of relationship dynamic. and while all fanstuff is inherently a deviation from the source material, i'd rather not start overwriting canon, or at least my understanding of it, with ideas that completely ignore or go against it. dante being able or willing to top vergil is one of those ideas; vergil needs dante, but only at his absolute lowest and weakest and worst (i.e. when he's literally dying or already dead) is he ever truly at his mercy. dante would need to be in a position where he Could, even, take that "power" away from vergil--vergil's will would have to break under his, and. well. only one demon has managed that, and i cannot fathom that kind of relationship existing between them. forgetting vergil for a moment--dante himself can't handle it.
