#late reply!

[tracer85s]

Happy birthday! Wish you lots of blessings and Have a ❤️💚 filled day!

ahh thank you thank you!!

[highdio]

Your insight on Dio is wonderful I was wondering if you had any on Jonathan. I notice a tendency to infantilize him by making him overly naive and innocent, essentially a large child. Which in turn makes him too much a victim. His compassion and dedication to justice amidst hardship is what makes him admirable. I do think he believed Dio was evil and needed to be stopped but still loved him. It takes a lot to recognize evil and offer forgiveness when it isn’t easy to.

I agree with that. I know from your follow-up you’d like a detailed reply so here’s some thoughts:

Re: the fanon version of Jonathan, imo the TV anime can sort of screw up people’s perceptions of Jonathan and Dio. The anime has a mostly-deserved reputation for being manga-consistent, but Phantom Blood - and especially the first part with Dio and Jonathan’s childhoods - is not. Some of that’s understandable since they had to condense Part 1 to fit the allotted number of episodes, but some character-developing details re: Jonathan are omitted, sometimes completely. Along the same lines, changes/additions to Dio’s intro set him up to be more of an adjunct to Jonathan rather than the parallel protagonist Araki intended.

The result - for Jonathan - is his anime version becomes more wooden, more one-note. A lot of the emotionality that made him relatable and normal in those first chapters

gets left out, replaced with what’s sometimes a deer-in-the-headlights complacency 

Tsuda (the director) probably did this to try to make Jonathan seem saintly from the start (with his heroic nature more of a throughline rather than a role he needs to grow into), but like you said, it can make him seem too much like a victim.

That last part of your ask - about “forgiveness” - is important.

You use ‘naive’ as a negative in your ask - and as a trait it’s usually seen this way - but imo naivete is one of Jonathan’s most important character traits. Jonathan quite literally inherits naivete from his father (Araki uses variations on the word ‘甘さ’), there’s an entire Speedwagon monologue devoted to this. But it’s tied to intentionality. What I mean is that Jonathan chooses to forgive when it would best serve him not to, when it means that the path will be much harder, and when he understands the nature of the person he’s forgiving (like you said, he ‘recognizes Evil’). This is entirely different than the type of naivete where someone forgives because they’ve been fooled into thinking a person has (or can be) changed. imo it’s one of the things about Jonathan’s personality that’s the most complicated.

Fans eager to cinnamon roll-ify Jonathan can miss that intentionality part to his forgiving nature. This happens especially when people mistake Jonathan for the passive object of Dio’s pursuit. I’ve talked about this before but if you look at how Araki wrote Phantom Blood, Dio’s much less of a pursuer than the havoc he causes would have you assume. The flip side to this is that most often it’s Jonathan who pursues Dio, as he says, through Hell and back. 

Araki’s spelled this out in interviews: Dio waits for opponents to come to him - and in Phantom Blood there’s even times where he just assumes Jonathan’s been killed … only to have Jonathan show back up, alive and even stronger thanks to what he’s endured.  The fanon meme where a version of Dio endlessly pursues an unwilling Jonathan is great as a joke but it’s an inversion of what Araki actually wrote. Taking that meme too seriously comes at the price of accepting a version of Jonathan who’s the victim you described in your ask.

[study-like-you-mean-it]

Hi! I just received an interview at Cambridge and I was wondering if you had any tips? Love your blog 🥰

Hi! I’m so so sorry that I’ve only just seen this! Tumblr has been playing up a bit recently and not letting me know if I get new messages in my inbox and I completely missed this! I hope the interview went well! In all honesty, there’s only so much that other people can tell you about interviews (I made a post here of all the advice I can offer), since interviews are one of those things that are different for everyone.

 All I can say now that you’ve done your interview (again sorry about that) is I hope you at least enjoyed the day, or some of it. Going up for interview is absolutely terrifying, but as long as you personally feel that the experience was worthwhile and in some way enjoyable, then that’s what really matters.

 General note to everyone- if you have time-sensitive questions like this going forwards, don’t be scared of popping me a direct message, as those come up in my notifications and I’ll be able to answer them before you need them answered instead of after (sorry!)

[highdio]

i got two questions that i desire to know from you because you seem to have a handle of Dio's personality: what kind of dystonia would he create if he ruled the world, if he won in Part I or Part III? would young vampire Dio's rule be different from this older and wiser part III counterpart?

Kind of tough to answer since unlike a lot of the other Jojo villains (Pucci, Valentine, Kars to an extent), Dio isn’t motivated by reshaping the world. He’s a selfish villain driven by his desire to expand his own power and transcend all limits. So the shape of the world that would be left in his wake is more of an afterthought to him. 

(And even though Pucci was enacting Dio’s formula for “heaven,” to me it felt like the Heaven that Pucci arrived at in Stone Ocean - with everyone knowing their own fates in advance - was less Dio’s vision than Pucci’s own … and I liked how EoH reframed the Heaven thing so that it meant that Dio got resurrected as a god, because honestly that’s so much closer to Dio’s own idea of heaven).

Araki’s talked about how Dio’s way of living is actually correct from the perspective of the natural world, it’s like survival of the fittest where the weak get eaten by the strong. So maybe factor that in and also look at what he had going on at Windknight Lots for cues to what his dystopia would look like.

I actually think Pt.1 Dio’s got a lot in common with his Pt.3 self, Pt.3 Dio is maybe more subtle than Pt.1 who enjoys exploring the more grotesque aspects to his power. Some of that comes down to Pt.3 being used to having those powers while Pt.1’s still having a good time figuring out how to use them.  So Pt.3 Dio’s world would be just as bleak for the rest of humanity but maybe not as openly horrific.

[fourthcupofrice]

Firstly, when you get this, you have to answer with 5 things you like about yourself, publicly. Then send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers!!!

well alrighty!

I like it when my hair curls in the humidity

I like that I can help people with anything, like just call me up and I’m ready to do some chores with you.

i like my moles!

I like learning new things and absorb new knowledge easily, it may not stay forever but I take in new information well.

I mess around in different kinds of arts, and I think it’s given me so much good experience to make art in different mediums!

alrighty everybody you know the drill!!! What’s 5 things you like about yourself?

@rrainydaydreams

@sunny-porridge

@cake-and-biscuits

@doofuss16

@needfantasticstories

@nightyraven-art

@myfoxmoon270

@lovingempress

[mpxhephaestus]

❛ are you always this straightforward with strangers ? ❜

First meeting starters || Closed

The Greek God looked at the girl in his shop. He had heard of her but this was his first time actually meeting the famed goddess of the dead in the norse pantheon. The Greek lowered his sunglasses and laughed. "Usually! I'm always straightforward with strangers and even not strangers. Besides, the sass and annoyance straightforwardness comes out to my fellow Greeks. Other pantheon God's, I respect," he stated, flipping his sunglasses back up as he gazed at the death goddess.

"But my question is, what brings a death goddess here? Surely you have quite the array of weapons and weapons makers to choose from? Is this an order for the Pits?" He asked, looking at all the daggers on the wall. "If it is, wise to come to me, since you know that I'd decline it automatically," he laughed.

[dragon-kazansky]

Also i was busy (being sick) yesterday. Could i request a short valentine's day with Makkari if you're okay with writing one?

Hope you're feeling better 🥺 sorry this is very late!

Not the flower type.

Will get you chocolates too.

And probably jewelry that she definitely did not steal.

How does a walk along the beach sound?

Hand holding.

Bare foot in the soft sand.

Sun setting slowly.

Makkari brought snacks.

She wants to stay out and look at the stars with you.

Kisses 💕

Not a word has to be uttered to know you love her.

Dancing to the music only you two can hear.

She wants to do this again sometime.

[cigarettes-n-daisies]

™

Feine:“Ablack sheep, that has ever been my impression of Sun’ra. …Though no matterhow fair their wool, or how wicked their mind—he is a sheep and ever fit for the wolf’sappetite.”