13 KiB
Jojo's Bizarre Adventures
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Author: u/None *
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URL:
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Score: 9
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Created: 2018-04-07T12:39:59
Post:
[deleted]
Comments:
u/fiirofa [+10] (an hour later)
Hmm...
- Hamon/ripple could definitely be standardized. You'd need to justify the masquerade.
- Ditto for why vampires/pillarmen haven't taken over the world.
- Dio's charm is his hammy, over-the-top evil. I'm not sure how rational!Dio keeps that.
- IIRC, Jonathan is pretty sane.
- Joseph's schemes would have MASSIVE potential.
- Mecha!Stroheim and the SS need to be dialed back to actual WW2 tech.
Alright, I think these are all doable--minus rational!Dio--so I can see the case for phantom blood and battle tendency.
Now, stands? My gut says no. Maybe you could get a rational!DiU.
u/Noumero [+8] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (4 hours later)
Dio's charm is his hammy, over-the-top evil. I'm not sure how rational!Dio keeps that.
Rational!Dio is infuriatingly irrational and constantly wrong all the time, but is so good at that one thing he is doing (e.g., social manipulations, goldberg-machine plans, combat, survival), and has a Stand so powerful, he constantly wins anyway, staying around to annoy the audience with his bad epistemology, confused beliefs, and warped reasoning. Oh, and he is also totally convinced all of his atrocities are morally justified! I'd read that.
Or something along these lines, anyway. ^^^I've ^^^never ^^^read/watched ^^^JoJo. ^^Don't ^^mind ^^me.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+4] Dai-Gurren Brigade (22 hours later)
That actually sounds pretty close to actual Dio. He's both very clever and very stupid. In the ending of Stardust Crusaders, he's one of the few villains who ever shows having learned from his previous experiences. He doesn't just go cackling happy that he defeated his enemy, oh, no. He's suspicious. He's careful. He knows that guy is probably still alive and tries to make sure he positively, absolutely, without a doubt kills him. The extents Jotaro has to go to avoid being defeated are ridiculous, realistically he should have just died.
But then of course Dio is also completely unable to get over his own world-taking ambitions and just lay low. Or simply not act like a raging psychopath, which is what gets him into all this trouble to begin with. Well, in Stardust Crusaders he also poses a threat to the protagonist's mother life because of reasons out of his own control, but at least "should we kill this good person to save this other good person?" would be a moral dilemma. "Should we kill this murderous, psychopathic vampire with ESP powers who wants to take over the world and is potentially an extinction level threat to save this other good person?" really isn't.
u/trekie140 [+6] (2 hours later)
I think rational!Dio can work, he’s just a sadistic psychopath who takes pleasure in making people feel pain and powerlessness. It’s his plans to kill the heroes that don’t make much sense given how smart he’s supposed to be.
The biggest hurdle I’ve had in making a rational headcannon for JoJo are vampires and the Pillarmen. The masks and red stone are never really explained, but if they were the plot wouldn’t have that many holes.
My biggest problem I have with Stroheim is that there is no reason for him to be a Nazi once he starts helping the heroes, so I’d say he was rebuilt by the Speedwagon Foundation and all his troops after that were from the SF.
I don’t think Stands need to be explained any more than the mutants from X-Men, but what does need explaining is how and why Dio’s return gives Stands to Jonathan’s descendents.
u/fiirofa [+5] (3 hours later)
On Dio, I think I agree. I'm just worried Dio with less... absurd plans might lose his charm.
Also agree fully on Stroheim, although I'm not sure what rational!Speedwagon looks like.
Honestly, I'm okay with the masks and red stone being handwaved. I just keep coming back to why vampires/pillarmen haven't taken over the world. I mean, one vampire can create like a thousand zombies in a few days, and the Pillarmen are just... better.
As for Stands... as you say, they're just superpowers, BUT:
- They're way too easy to obtain.
- The way stand-users are drawn to each other all but guarantees conspicuous fighting.
I fail to see how they stay hidden.
Still, I agree now--SC and DiU are definitely doable.
u/None [+8] (4 hours later)
For the vampires, like I wrote below, the Hamon clan can be given a boost in competency and resources. I think though, all stone masks would have to be destroyed at one point before SDC, otherwise their absence in relation to the plot would raise too many questions.
Also, given the invisibility of stands, as well as their power, they could have been spotted before but given religious context as a explanation ( Demonic possession, witches, saints). I mean, they're literally impossible to explain with science.
u/trekie140 [+4] (6 hours later)
Stands are supposed to be a manifestation of a person’s will, so the people who develop them naturally are supposed to have a lot of fighting spirit. People who have Stands “forced out” can die if they don’t have the willpower for it, like Holly. It is a very shonen, very masculine-centered idea.
u/None [+2] (16 hours later)
What I think would be hard to rationalize, is the variations. Some stands can stop time, some are just good at attacking, some are bugs, some are humanlike, some are giant chicken men that throw fire. What would someone attempting to make sense of stands and their nature think? I can see rational!Jotaro being the one to make all of stand stat charts,
u/trekie140 [+2] (a day later)
I would actually suggest giving traits like that to other characters to give them more things that define them. Jotaro is based on Clint Eastwood’s stoic badass characters, and the times we see him out think his enemies it’s by manipulating them. The thing I want improved is the group dynamic.
Joseph was done a grave injustice in SC by almost never outsmarting people, Avdol was supposed to be the new Zeppeli but never had as much rapport with the others, and I still have no idea what Kakyoin’s personality was. Polanaraff at least had consistent tragic and comedic moments.
u/nick012000 [+1] (a day later)
What would someone attempting to make sense of stands and their nature think?
They're basically psychic powers. Telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, etc.
u/FlameDragonSlayer [+2] (14 hours later)
It was explained clearly in the anime that because Dio was using the body of the first Jojo, with Dios head on there, so as Dio gets the Stand powers, the new Jojo and his descendents gained their Stand powers due to their biological connection with Dios body
u/trekie140 [+4] (14 hours later)
Oh, well now it makes perfect sense. /s
I already knew that, I just thought it was a really obvious set of handwaves. Dio wakes up and has a Stand, which means Jonathan’s descendents get a Stand, which means Jotaro can save his mother from her Stand without effecting anyone else’s by killing Dio, and Jotaro’s Stand just happens to have the same powers as Dio’s.
u/FlameDragonSlayer [+2] (15 hours later)
Well, yea it wasn't that rational but it's not completely hand wavey, there's some thought put into it even if it isn't completely rational
u/SkyTroupe [+6] (2 hours later)
Rational Josuke or Koichi would be amazing with their powers.
u/None [+5] (3 hours later)
The masquerade's a pretty simple thing to solve. With it, stone masks are cool looking but ultimately common artifacts that are unlikely to ever be activated outside of a freak coincidence. Without it, they become easily activated superweapons everyone knows about. Also, the vampires are a secret for this very reason, as the Hamon clan would be a big organization that researches biology of both vampires and hamon users, as well as hiding the existence of vampires , instead of a couple of monks in a mountain.
u/fiirofa [+3] (3 hours later)
as the Hamon clan would be a big organization that researches biology of both vampires and hamon users
Yep--that'll fix it. Makes things almost SCP-like. =D
u/trekie140 [+5] (3 hours later)
I think this could work too. All the character motivations and abilities are there, with a plot that follows a clear internal logic. It’s all the inconsistencies, weird character decisions, and obsession with one-on-one fights that keeps the story from being rational.
I think the way to go for a fic like this would be to keep all the madcap ideas and hammy characters, but throw out the plot’s structure. All the important stuff still happens and leads to the same conclusion, but the way it gets there is different and suits the medium better.
I think a good example of this might be the Aladdin fic The Rules or Wishing. The characters have (mostly) the same personalities and motives, they’re just more critical thinkers so the conflict happened in a completely different way. However, I don’t see the point in writing a JoJo fic that isn’t still over the top and melodramatic.
Phantom Blood can go down pretty much the same way given how it’s a more personal conflict. At his strongest Dio is basically a cult leader, but can only be killed by people who know how to fight vampires and only a handful were in the country. Maybe change the climax to be in London so Speedwagon’s background is relevant and Jack the Ripper isn’t out of place.
Battle Tendency‘s villains don’t have a much larger scale, Straizo and the Pillarmen were both traveling the world in order to find what they wanted and weren’t afraid of anyone. The pre-volcano climax was the heroes idea since they already had the maguffin, which let them lay a trap for with the Speedwagon Foundation.
Personally, I would change Stardust Crusaders so that they‘re continuously chasing leads on Dio and unraveling the organization he’s created instead of just fighting one minion after another on their way to his house. Making Dio a crime lord on the move justifies the trip better and gives the Speedwagon Foundation something useful to do.
I have not yet watched Diamond is Unbreakable.
u/None [+3] (4 hours later)
What would you change about the main JoJo's to make them more rationalist? Do they need to be changed at all?
u/trekie140 [+4] (6 hours later)
I don’t think any of them need to be changed, just extrapolated upon from their defining traits. The author admits to being forgetful and making up the plot as he goes along, so there are a lot of inconsistencies and character arcs are mostly Fridge Logic. Writing a rational fic would require making the characters more consistent and filling in blanks.
Jonathan is the most consistent as the chivalrous gentleman who learns how to fight evil, Joseph goes from a annoying street swindler to guile hero in BT but becomes the new Speedwagon in SC, and Jotaro is supposed to be a delinquent with a heart of gold but all he does is punch evil.
u/None [+1] (16 hours later)
Say, I just realized. What does DIO's criminal organization actually do?
u/trekie140 [+2] (a day later)
They never once explain it in the show. All we know is that he has a lot of money, a lot of Stand users at his command, and that he is training for the fight with the heroes before he does anything else. I think it’s fair to assume he was out to take over the world, which was his plan in Phantom Blood.
I think you could rationalize his organization as being a conspiracy infiltrating power centers so Dio can rule the world from the shadows and do as he pleases. His flesh buds can indoctrinate people, we see he has new vampire minions, and he likes terrifying people into submission with his other powers.
That expanding sphere of influence would explain how he found all those Stand users to work for him. The Speedwagon Foundation could have more hamon users who can fight Dio’s minions, they were researching the supernatural in BT, and even in SC we see them acting as a spy agency to help the heroes. However, Stands are invisible to most people.
u/nick012000 [+1] (a day later)
Spoilers for part 6 and Eyes of Heaven: spoiler