The DioPucci Manifesto
Mar. 9th, 2025 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stardust_rifleDioPucci is probably, at least on even-numbered days, my absolute favorite Jojo's Bizarre Adventure ship. Despite the fact that Dio and Pucci are only shown interacting in flashbacks, their relationship is infinitely compelling and interesting (not to mention just being a delicious combination of a lot of shippy tropes that I love) If it’s possible for a ship to haunt a narrative, then they do, without question. I have written this in an attempt to compile their history, appeal, and maybe possibly convert some of my readers into shippers themselves! Without further ado, on with the manifesto!
(Note: I won’t be addressing the age gap because A: Dio’s a 120-year-old vampire, he’d have an age gap with everyone, B: I just don’t see it as being foundational to their relationship dynamic or appeal.)
Introducing Dio
Dio Brando is quite possibly one of the most iconic (and memorable) Japanese pop culture villains you could possibly come across. He came from humble beginnings as an abused teenager in Victorian England, and murdered, experimented, bodysnatched, and fucked his way into becoming an Evil Overlord supreme, with power over time itself and a veritable army of devoted followers.
From his very introduction, Araki pulls no punches in establishing Dio as a comically evil man. He kicks (and then burns alive) innocent hero Jonathan Joestar’s dog, turns everyone against him, and when Jonathan’s crush Erina Pendleton stands by his side in spite of all this, he kisses her in front of Jonathan.
(She washes her mouth out with dirty pond water. This is one of the many reasons that Erina Is Awesome.)
Eventually, he poisons Jonathan’s father and turns himself into a vampire, announcing that he REJECTS HIS HUMANITY, JOJO!!!!!, and goes on to set himself up as a vampire overlord with his army of zombies in a town in bumfuck nowhere, Victorian England. (It’s a start.) Continuing on his path of cartoonish supervillainy, heroic ally Speedwagon proclaims that Dio is pure evil, and when asked how many people he’s killed, Dio simply responds with “Can you remember how many loaves of bread you've eaten in your entire life?”
Stone. Fucking. Cold.
Eventually Dio is defeated, and all seems to be well as Jonathan and Erina set out on their honeymoon, but Dio returns as a severed head and kills Jonathan, but not before Jonathan pulls a Taking You With Me and sends Dio and himself to the bottom of the ocean, where they stay for the next hundred years. Eventually, Dio (now attached to Jonathan’s body) shows up in 1988, having gained new power, a new, slightly more philosophical personality, and a desire to create Heaven on Earth.
However, one should not be fooled, as he’s still an absolute monster, killing and eating women without any remorse, abusing his time-stopping powers in order to put dead animals in people’s food (entirely for the hell of it), and just being kind of The Absolute Worst (affectionate) to literally everyone that he comes across, with one exception…
(Also, he is Word of God bisexual, a fact which I have made sure everyone in my vicinity is aware of. Quoth Araki, Eureka Magazine, November 2007, “Whether it be women or men, he can go for both.”)
Introducing Pucci
The Scene
While it is possible for me to systemically describe and analyze every single scene featuring Dio and Pucci together, considering the extreme dearth of scenes they have, for the sake of time, I'm largely going to be just discussing this one. This scene is one that I consider insanely pivotal to the development of their relationship and what I largely base my understanding of their dynamic off of. I’ll describe the scene below, and
(Just, don't read the comments...)
Dio and Pucci are lounging around on a bed, talking philosophical in a very sort of “Tell me, Will” manner” (In a stunning act of homophobia and bigotry against Me, Specifically, the anime changed Pucci’s attire during this scene from a crop top to a normal shirt.). Then, Dio sits up, grabs Pucci’s hand, and half asks/half goads Pucci into betraying him. After all, Dio is helpless during the day as a vampire, and Pucci could use his ability to steal his (Dio’s) soul and powers, and rule the world with them. From Dio’s perspective, this is completely reasonable- he is utterly ruthless, willing to manipulate anyone and take any advantage he can get in order to achieve his goals- why wouldn’t Pucci take this opportunity?
Pucci doesn’t see it that way, though. He acts confused at the very idea of betraying Dio, expressing that he genuinely wants to support him in his various endeavors, that he respects him immensely as someone who’s supported his growth as a person, and then he drops the gayest No-Homo line in history.
“I love you as I love God.”
Dio still isn’t convinced, so he forces Pucci to use his power to manifest Dio’s own powers directly into his hand. Pucci’s fingers penetrate Dio’s forehead, and Dio’s ability is manifested as a disc, which rests over Pucci’s fingertips. They sit like that, Dio and Pucci both looking at each other, Dio almost daring Pucci to go and rip the disk out of his forehead, go on and defeat him and become king of the world, while Pucci sits there, holding Dio’s soul in his hands, probably thinking something along the lines of Do you really think I’m going to do this to you? For such a smart man, you really are quite stupid.
Eventually, Dio breaks their little staring contest and confesses that he obviously insulted Pucci and he’s sorry, and that he’d never before met someone who put him at ease like Pucci did. As an apology, he gives Pucci one of his bones, saying that “No matter where you will be, you can always be secure in knowing that I’ll always give you power.”
To me, this scene demonstrates a lot of things, but firstly it demonstrates a great deal of trust. Not only in the “I’m going to make you manifest my soul/powers and literally put it in your hand bit”, but also in the implication- Pucci knows about Dio’s ability, something which canon establishes that he keeps very secret from basically everyone. Then, Dio physically weakens himself by pulling out one of his bones *wiggles eyebrows* out of his body and giving it to Pucci, giving up his own power so that Pucci can have more of it.
It also demonstrates that, unlike basically every single Dio ship besides DioJona/JonaDio, Pucci and Dio are equals. Pucci could kill Dio if he wanted, and Dio is perfectly willing to give up a portion of his own body (yes he’s a vampire, yes he heals from it, but still), a portion of his own power, for Pucci to use. And Pucci doesn’t see himself as a simple servant of Dio, but sees Dio as a friend, someone who he looks up to, someone who supports his growth in his own right (and in the end, Dio does support his growth into becoming the Big Bad of Stone Ocean from beyond the grave). For someone like Dio, who basically sees everyone else as his inferiors, this is a Big Fucking Deal.
(oh god have i given myself an equality fetish? I STILL LIKE BDSM AND POWER DYNAMICS I PROMISE)
I’m going to close off this section by discussing two topics. The first is summing up what I see as the emotional throughline of this scene. I originally just dumped these down as part of an outline, but I quite like them, so I’m keeping them in the final product.
I will give you the power to hurt me because I am convinced that you will and I want to get that out of the way before I fall too deep, too hard (and I’m already falling…)
I will hold your very soul in my own hands as I swear my allegiance to you. Did you really think I would be so selfish as to hurt you?
You are mine, and I am yours. You could hurt me in a thousand different ways and I would let you. But you will not, even when you have my very soul in your hands, and this is why I love you.
Secondly, I’ve seen people say that this whole scene was just a complete ploy to test Pucci’s loyalty/get him to become even more attached to Dio, and while I can see where they’re coming from, I don’t particularly like this interpretation because I feel it makes Dio and Pucci come off as more simplistic characters- Dio is Perpetually Evil, Pucci is Perpetually The Victim. But, even if we’re interpreting this as a shit test and Dio was intentionally trying to manipulate Pucci, I still think that this scene demonstrates an extreme amount of trust and faith that Dio puts in Pucci. Again, he got Pucci to manifest his (Dio’s) own soul and put it directly into his (Pucci’s) hands, knowing that if Pucci wanted he could render Dio a complete vegetable and steal everything he’d worked so hard to build out from under him. There’s an unbelievable level of trust there that Dio never shows to anyone else (probably the most similar encounter he has in canon is when Hol Horse attempts to kill him, but the tone of that scene is more “Oh, so you really do have a backbone”/”I’m so powerful your puny abilities can’t do jack shit to me”, which, lol, I’m really trying not to bring anything pseudocanonical into this analysis but Dio does seem to respect Pucci’s abilities a lot, even ignoring Over Heaven)
I’m going to quote a post I made on the topic like eight billion years ago: “dio's feelings for pucci (and my feelings about their relationship) kind of remind me of that post (i think a reptile owner made it?) about how yes, your reptile physically can't bond with you in the same way you do with it, but isn't it remarkable that it tolerates your presence without fear? isn't that in itself special?”
Dio might be a completely pure evil sociopath who can’t bond with anyone and whose every action is a perfectly calculated manipulation, (Note: I do not actually believe this now, my DioPucci Takes have evolved a great deal from when I made the post I just quoted) but he does trust Pucci more than he trusts anyone else. That, I think, is worth quite a great deal in the grand scheme of things.
(and, of course, if you believe that dio was being completely honest, then this scene is such a perfect demonstration of the amount of trust that dio puts in pucci and their genuine bond...)
Describing The Ways They’re Murder Soulmates (canon)
- When asking “hey did you want to come to Egypt with me to help with the Heaven Plan”, did Dio have to lean in insanely close to Pucci and whisper seductively into his ear?
- Did Dio have to, upon their first meeting and every other time he thinks about and discusses Pucci, wax philosophical about how they were probably fated to meet?
- Did Pucci have to unbirth/fuse with the Green Baby, which is at least 1/38th Dio? I know people like to ignore this part for some reason, but, like. Come on. That’s gotta be some type of gay, right?
- Did Pucci have to strike Dio’s most iconic pose on the cover of Weekly Shonen Jump/in the Heaven’s Falling Down OP?
- This is probably just Pucci being a Horrible, Horrible Opportunist, but did he have to use the Iconic Time Stop Knife Storm move against Jotaro that Dio previously used against Jotaro? [Two possibilities here- we know that Pucci’s read Jotaro’s memories, so he could have seen and remembered this attack (if he wasn’t fast-forwarding to get to Jotaro reading Dio’s diary) and decided to use it Just Because, or if he didn’t see/forgot it, then by the sheer power of fate/gravity/love/gay sex, he independently came up with the exact same idea for how to attack someone in stopped time. Like I said, murder soulmates!]
- A lot of people describe them as a god/worshiper pairing and while they do kind of start off as that (again, "I love you as I love God"), that's not where I feel they end up? Pucci achieves an apotheosis that Dio never managed to get- by the end of Stone Ocean I'd argue he's pretty damn godlike, he initiated a fucking Big Crunch for fuck's sake, which is a level of power that Dio only achieves in alternate universes (you don't really see High Voltage Dio and New Moon Pucci being shipped together, despite them both being the canon final-act power-ups, instead you mostly see NM Pucci go with Heaven Ascension Dio, despite the non-canon nature of the latter). Their relationship is a case where the worshiper also claimed godhood for himself, a godhood that surpasses what his previous god was able to achieve. While we don't see Dio's canon reaction to this, considering that part of the original Heaven Plan did involve mutating The World and giving Pucci some level of control over it, I think he'd alright with this, if not a bit delighted. Ruling Couple Energy!
Describing All The Ways They’re Murder Soulmates (pseudocanon)
- Okay, yay, now I get to talk about Over Heaven! (Yes. I like Over Heaven. Please feel free to throw tomatoes at me.) In this pseudocanonical novel (which is in-universe- it’s Dio’s diary), Dio seems to genuinely like Pucci as a person beyond his usefulness to the Heaven Plan, saying that as opposed to Pucci accompanying Dio to heaven, Dio might accompany Pucci, being “wait what is this feeling i am experiencing?!?!?!!?” (the feeling is genuine affection for another sapient being), reiterating the gravity/”we were fated to meet” motif that already exists in canon between them, there’s a bit where Dio writes directly to Pucci on the assumption that he’d be reading the diary, and Dio gets so emotional that he has to skip completely to a different page, Dio assigns Pucci a bodyguard… it might just be because I’m reading this with fujo glasses on but this novel seems to argue that Dio did genuinely have some kind of affection for and trust with Pucci.
- I am like 90% sure someone on the Eyes of Heaven (non-canon fighting game spinoff) writing team was based and fujopilled.
Exhibit A for the audience:
Exhibit B for the audience:
Finally, Dio’s reaction when Pucci dies is basically the only one he has where he isn’t like “hmph, pathetic”. I might be reading too hard into tone of voice, but he does sound genuinely broken up and like he’s trying to hide it. (it's
here, at 16:11.)
Recs
(i didn't want to repost someone's art for the fanworks section. You Are Not Immune To otp picrew) (this is the picrew in question)
While we are a small shipdom, we are mighty in our creative endeavors! I'll finish this manifesto off by describing some DioPucci fan content that I really like.
When it comes to DioPucci fic, I can’t recommend
conceptofzero on Ao3 highly enough. They’re basically the CEO of DioPucci, and I love their characterization so so much. Dio is an evil bastard, but he genuinely loves Pucci, Pucci is equally hinged but better at hiding it, and they love each other so so so much. Largely Pucci POV, my personal favorites are Bedwarmer [technically Dio/Pucci/Vanilla Ice (the Jojo character, not the real human man), but the emotional core of the fic is definitely DioPucci. Very smutty.], Foreign Body (mpreg body horror, Pucci gives birth to the Green Baby), Meet Me By The Gates (Dio wants to turn Pucci into a vampire), and As Blue As They Say (Bluebeard AU), but basically everything they’ve ever written is great.
Art-wise, lusticars
and brightgoat on Tumblr both have really great catalogs of DioPucci art even if they aren’t currently creating for the ship, and as for JPN fanartists, this is a really gorgeous log on Pixiv with a nice combination of humor, cute, and horny.
Vid-wise, conceptofzero has also made a DioPucci AMV set to This Tornado Loves you by Neko Case- they’ve done a really great job considering the dearth of footage of them interacting and the song choice really highlights how dedicated and in love Pucci is with Dio. (CW for blood/body horror/violence) and FemurO has multiple really great DioPucci animatics on both Youtube and Bilibili. Very horny for blood and bodies combining, as well as really great usage of 2D and 3D animation. I adore them giving DioPucci sun/moon motifs respectively, their mind holy shit. With regards to Bilibili exclusives, this AMV set to Therefore You and Me has some delightful and thought-provoking imagery (CW: blood), and this one set to Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey has some weird cuts but makes my heart hurt.
(Note: I won’t be addressing the age gap because A: Dio’s a 120-year-old vampire, he’d have an age gap with everyone, B: I just don’t see it as being foundational to their relationship dynamic or appeal.)
Introducing Dio
Dio Brando is quite possibly one of the most iconic (and memorable) Japanese pop culture villains you could possibly come across. He came from humble beginnings as an abused teenager in Victorian England, and murdered, experimented, bodysnatched, and fucked his way into becoming an Evil Overlord supreme, with power over time itself and a veritable army of devoted followers.
From his very introduction, Araki pulls no punches in establishing Dio as a comically evil man. He kicks (and then burns alive) innocent hero Jonathan Joestar’s dog, turns everyone against him, and when Jonathan’s crush Erina Pendleton stands by his side in spite of all this, he kisses her in front of Jonathan.
(She washes her mouth out with dirty pond water. This is one of the many reasons that Erina Is Awesome.)
Eventually, he poisons Jonathan’s father and turns himself into a vampire, announcing that he REJECTS HIS HUMANITY, JOJO!!!!!, and goes on to set himself up as a vampire overlord with his army of zombies in a town in bumfuck nowhere, Victorian England. (It’s a start.) Continuing on his path of cartoonish supervillainy, heroic ally Speedwagon proclaims that Dio is pure evil, and when asked how many people he’s killed, Dio simply responds with “Can you remember how many loaves of bread you've eaten in your entire life?”
Stone. Fucking. Cold.
Eventually Dio is defeated, and all seems to be well as Jonathan and Erina set out on their honeymoon, but Dio returns as a severed head and kills Jonathan, but not before Jonathan pulls a Taking You With Me and sends Dio and himself to the bottom of the ocean, where they stay for the next hundred years. Eventually, Dio (now attached to Jonathan’s body) shows up in 1988, having gained new power, a new, slightly more philosophical personality, and a desire to create Heaven on Earth.
However, one should not be fooled, as he’s still an absolute monster, killing and eating women without any remorse, abusing his time-stopping powers in order to put dead animals in people’s food (entirely for the hell of it), and just being kind of The Absolute Worst (affectionate) to literally everyone that he comes across, with one exception…
(Also, he is Word of God bisexual, a fact which I have made sure everyone in my vicinity is aware of. Quoth Araki, Eureka Magazine, November 2007, “Whether it be women or men, he can go for both.”)
Introducing Pucci
Enrico Pucci was born into a wealthy Catholic family in 1972, and from a very young age had an interest in concepts of fate and destiny, due to living while his own twin brother died shortly after birth. These interests eventually led him towards the path of priesthood, where he met Dio for the first time (Dio was taking shelter in a church to avoid the sunlight). Originally, Pucci thought nothing of his encounter with the strange man allergic to sunlight, but after a tragedy that left his beloved younger sister dead by suicide and actually-not-dead twin brother an amnesiac rotting in jail, he fell back into Dio’s orbit, and the two became very, very close, with Pucci being entrusted to carry out important chunks of Dio’s Heaven Plan (i refuse to explain the heaven plan because I am a normal human with a normal brain, if you really care you can read this wiki page or watch
this hamon beat video).
In terms of personality, Pucci very obviously has Takes Ideas Seriously Disease, he’s a bit of a megalomaniac, and he’s just so…comically serious and constantly monologuing (even while his head is being crushed) I love him so much. While he is just as capable of cruelty as Dio Brando, every cruel or evil act he does is very obviously calculated to achieve a specific goal, and oh God is he motivated by his goals. His entire ideology is basically one big screaming trauma response of “everyone should know every single detail about their fate so they can achieve peace, and I am going to drag the world kicking and screaming towards this goal, no matter how much people don’t want it, because I know what’s best, everyone should listen to me” that he papers over in pretty philosophical language.
Also, he once turned a dude into a living speaker just so he could listen to Handel’s Messiah. Have I told you I love him?
The Scene
While it is possible for me to systemically describe and analyze every single scene featuring Dio and Pucci together, considering the extreme dearth of scenes they have, for the sake of time, I'm largely going to be just discussing this one. This scene is one that I consider insanely pivotal to the development of their relationship and what I largely base my understanding of their dynamic off of. I’ll describe the scene below, and
Dio and Pucci are lounging around on a bed, talking philosophical in a very sort of “Tell me, Will” manner” (In a stunning act of homophobia and bigotry against Me, Specifically, the anime changed Pucci’s attire during this scene from a crop top to a normal shirt.). Then, Dio sits up, grabs Pucci’s hand, and half asks/half goads Pucci into betraying him. After all, Dio is helpless during the day as a vampire, and Pucci could use his ability to steal his (Dio’s) soul and powers, and rule the world with them. From Dio’s perspective, this is completely reasonable- he is utterly ruthless, willing to manipulate anyone and take any advantage he can get in order to achieve his goals- why wouldn’t Pucci take this opportunity?
Pucci doesn’t see it that way, though. He acts confused at the very idea of betraying Dio, expressing that he genuinely wants to support him in his various endeavors, that he respects him immensely as someone who’s supported his growth as a person, and then he drops the gayest No-Homo line in history.
“I love you as I love God.”
Dio still isn’t convinced, so he forces Pucci to use his power to manifest Dio’s own powers directly into his hand. Pucci’s fingers penetrate Dio’s forehead, and Dio’s ability is manifested as a disc, which rests over Pucci’s fingertips. They sit like that, Dio and Pucci both looking at each other, Dio almost daring Pucci to go and rip the disk out of his forehead, go on and defeat him and become king of the world, while Pucci sits there, holding Dio’s soul in his hands, probably thinking something along the lines of Do you really think I’m going to do this to you? For such a smart man, you really are quite stupid.
Eventually, Dio breaks their little staring contest and confesses that he obviously insulted Pucci and he’s sorry, and that he’d never before met someone who put him at ease like Pucci did. As an apology, he gives Pucci one of his bones, saying that “No matter where you will be, you can always be secure in knowing that I’ll always give you power.”
To me, this scene demonstrates a lot of things, but firstly it demonstrates a great deal of trust. Not only in the “I’m going to make you manifest my soul/powers and literally put it in your hand bit”, but also in the implication- Pucci knows about Dio’s ability, something which canon establishes that he keeps very secret from basically everyone. Then, Dio physically weakens himself by pulling out one of his bones *wiggles eyebrows* out of his body and giving it to Pucci, giving up his own power so that Pucci can have more of it.
It also demonstrates that, unlike basically every single Dio ship besides DioJona/JonaDio, Pucci and Dio are equals. Pucci could kill Dio if he wanted, and Dio is perfectly willing to give up a portion of his own body (yes he’s a vampire, yes he heals from it, but still), a portion of his own power, for Pucci to use. And Pucci doesn’t see himself as a simple servant of Dio, but sees Dio as a friend, someone who he looks up to, someone who supports his growth in his own right (and in the end, Dio does support his growth into becoming the Big Bad of Stone Ocean from beyond the grave). For someone like Dio, who basically sees everyone else as his inferiors, this is a Big Fucking Deal.
(oh god have i given myself an equality fetish? I STILL LIKE BDSM AND POWER DYNAMICS I PROMISE)
I’m going to close off this section by discussing two topics. The first is summing up what I see as the emotional throughline of this scene. I originally just dumped these down as part of an outline, but I quite like them, so I’m keeping them in the final product.
I will give you the power to hurt me because I am convinced that you will and I want to get that out of the way before I fall too deep, too hard (and I’m already falling…)
I will hold your very soul in my own hands as I swear my allegiance to you. Did you really think I would be so selfish as to hurt you?
You are mine, and I am yours. You could hurt me in a thousand different ways and I would let you. But you will not, even when you have my very soul in your hands, and this is why I love you.
Secondly, I’ve seen people say that this whole scene was just a complete ploy to test Pucci’s loyalty/get him to become even more attached to Dio, and while I can see where they’re coming from, I don’t particularly like this interpretation because I feel it makes Dio and Pucci come off as more simplistic characters- Dio is Perpetually Evil, Pucci is Perpetually The Victim. But, even if we’re interpreting this as a shit test and Dio was intentionally trying to manipulate Pucci, I still think that this scene demonstrates an extreme amount of trust and faith that Dio puts in Pucci. Again, he got Pucci to manifest his (Dio’s) own soul and put it directly into his (Pucci’s) hands, knowing that if Pucci wanted he could render Dio a complete vegetable and steal everything he’d worked so hard to build out from under him. There’s an unbelievable level of trust there that Dio never shows to anyone else (probably the most similar encounter he has in canon is when Hol Horse attempts to kill him, but the tone of that scene is more “Oh, so you really do have a backbone”/”I’m so powerful your puny abilities can’t do jack shit to me”, which, lol, I’m really trying not to bring anything pseudocanonical into this analysis but Dio does seem to respect Pucci’s abilities a lot, even ignoring Over Heaven)
I’m going to quote a post I made on the topic like eight billion years ago: “dio's feelings for pucci (and my feelings about their relationship) kind of remind me of that post (i think a reptile owner made it?) about how yes, your reptile physically can't bond with you in the same way you do with it, but isn't it remarkable that it tolerates your presence without fear? isn't that in itself special?”
Dio might be a completely pure evil sociopath who can’t bond with anyone and whose every action is a perfectly calculated manipulation, (Note: I do not actually believe this now, my DioPucci Takes have evolved a great deal from when I made the post I just quoted) but he does trust Pucci more than he trusts anyone else. That, I think, is worth quite a great deal in the grand scheme of things.
(and, of course, if you believe that dio was being completely honest, then this scene is such a perfect demonstration of the amount of trust that dio puts in pucci and their genuine bond...)
Describing The Ways They’re Murder Soulmates (canon)
- When asking “hey did you want to come to Egypt with me to help with the Heaven Plan”, did Dio have to lean in insanely close to Pucci and whisper seductively into his ear?
- Did Dio have to, upon their first meeting and every other time he thinks about and discusses Pucci, wax philosophical about how they were probably fated to meet?
- Did Pucci have to unbirth/fuse with the Green Baby, which is at least 1/38th Dio? I know people like to ignore this part for some reason, but, like. Come on. That’s gotta be some type of gay, right?
- Did Pucci have to strike Dio’s most iconic pose on the cover of Weekly Shonen Jump/in the Heaven’s Falling Down OP?
- This is probably just Pucci being a Horrible, Horrible Opportunist, but did he have to use the Iconic Time Stop Knife Storm move against Jotaro that Dio previously used against Jotaro? [Two possibilities here- we know that Pucci’s read Jotaro’s memories, so he could have seen and remembered this attack (if he wasn’t fast-forwarding to get to Jotaro reading Dio’s diary) and decided to use it Just Because, or if he didn’t see/forgot it, then by the sheer power of fate/gravity/love/gay sex, he independently came up with the exact same idea for how to attack someone in stopped time. Like I said, murder soulmates!]
- A lot of people describe them as a god/worshiper pairing and while they do kind of start off as that (again, "I love you as I love God"), that's not where I feel they end up? Pucci achieves an apotheosis that Dio never managed to get- by the end of Stone Ocean I'd argue he's pretty damn godlike, he initiated a fucking Big Crunch for fuck's sake, which is a level of power that Dio only achieves in alternate universes (you don't really see High Voltage Dio and New Moon Pucci being shipped together, despite them both being the canon final-act power-ups, instead you mostly see NM Pucci go with Heaven Ascension Dio, despite the non-canon nature of the latter). Their relationship is a case where the worshiper also claimed godhood for himself, a godhood that surpasses what his previous god was able to achieve. While we don't see Dio's canon reaction to this, considering that part of the original Heaven Plan did involve mutating The World and giving Pucci some level of control over it, I think he'd alright with this, if not a bit delighted. Ruling Couple Energy!
Describing All The Ways They’re Murder Soulmates (pseudocanon)
- Okay, yay, now I get to talk about Over Heaven! (Yes. I like Over Heaven. Please feel free to throw tomatoes at me.) In this pseudocanonical novel (which is in-universe- it’s Dio’s diary), Dio seems to genuinely like Pucci as a person beyond his usefulness to the Heaven Plan, saying that as opposed to Pucci accompanying Dio to heaven, Dio might accompany Pucci, being “wait what is this feeling i am experiencing?!?!?!!?” (the feeling is genuine affection for another sapient being), reiterating the gravity/”we were fated to meet” motif that already exists in canon between them, there’s a bit where Dio writes directly to Pucci on the assumption that he’d be reading the diary, and Dio gets so emotional that he has to skip completely to a different page, Dio assigns Pucci a bodyguard… it might just be because I’m reading this with fujo glasses on but this novel seems to argue that Dio did genuinely have some kind of affection for and trust with Pucci.
- I am like 90% sure someone on the Eyes of Heaven (non-canon fighting game spinoff) writing team was based and fujopilled.
Exhibit A for the audience:
Exhibit B for the audience:
Finally, Dio’s reaction when Pucci dies is basically the only one he has where he isn’t like “hmph, pathetic”. I might be reading too hard into tone of voice, but he does sound genuinely broken up and like he’s trying to hide it. (it's
here, at 16:11.)
Recs
(i didn't want to repost someone's art for the fanworks section. You Are Not Immune To otp picrew) (this is the picrew in question)
While we are a small shipdom, we are mighty in our creative endeavors! I'll finish this manifesto off by describing some DioPucci fan content that I really like.
When it comes to DioPucci fic, I can’t recommend
conceptofzero on Ao3 highly enough. They’re basically the CEO of DioPucci, and I love their characterization so so much. Dio is an evil bastard, but he genuinely loves Pucci, Pucci is equally hinged but better at hiding it, and they love each other so so so much. Largely Pucci POV, my personal favorites are Bedwarmer [technically Dio/Pucci/Vanilla Ice (the Jojo character, not the real human man), but the emotional core of the fic is definitely DioPucci. Very smutty.], Foreign Body (mpreg body horror, Pucci gives birth to the Green Baby), Meet Me By The Gates (Dio wants to turn Pucci into a vampire), and As Blue As They Say (Bluebeard AU), but basically everything they’ve ever written is great.
Art-wise, lusticars
and brightgoat on Tumblr both have really great catalogs of DioPucci art even if they aren’t currently creating for the ship, and as for JPN fanartists, this is a really gorgeous log on Pixiv with a nice combination of humor, cute, and horny.
Vid-wise, conceptofzero has also made a DioPucci AMV set to This Tornado Loves you by Neko Case- they’ve done a really great job considering the dearth of footage of them interacting and the song choice really highlights how dedicated and in love Pucci is with Dio. (CW for blood/body horror/violence) and FemurO has multiple really great DioPucci animatics on both Youtube and Bilibili. Very horny for blood and bodies combining, as well as really great usage of 2D and 3D animation. I adore them giving DioPucci sun/moon motifs respectively, their mind holy shit. With regards to Bilibili exclusives, this AMV set to Therefore You and Me has some delightful and thought-provoking imagery (CW: blood), and this one set to Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey has some weird cuts but makes my heart hurt.
