APPLICATION

[goldenspirit]

Name: Delitan
Contact Info: manly.cactus at gmail.com (email) / guardiandeity (plurk)
Other Characters Played: None
Requested apartment: N/A

Character Name: Josuke Higashikata
Canon: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
Canon Point: End Series ( Vol. 47 Ch. 439 Goodbye, Morioh Cho - The Golden Heart )
Background/History: Here is a wiki link for Jojo’s Part 4, but it doesn’t exactly give a complete picture, so I’m going to try and give a summary as brief as I can possibly can for what's more or less relevant for this app.

Long, long ago, earth was populated by powerful, almost immortal creatures that roamed the night and fed off of the energy of other living beings. Presumably they lived just fine, chilling and minding their own business for a while, until a genius was born among them and changed -- well, everything. Kars, that was his name, was powerful, intelligent and ambitious, and above everything he wanted to defeat the one weakness his kind had: their inability to go out in the sun. With his incredible talents he developed a way to awaken one's hidden powers, a Stone Mask that pretty much would turn living beings into vampires, but his invention wasn't quite complete: it required a perfect stone that could activate with the sun and turn him into the Ultimate Being.

The rest of Kars' kind, however, wasn't exactly on board with the plan -- and they very quickly begun to fear him and his Stone Masks. There was a huge struggle as a result, with Kars emerging victorious alongside his one ally, AC/DC. The two of them and two infants were the sole survivors of that struggle, and then … years passed? Canon doesn't really get into anything else backstory wise, but at some point all of them got stuck into stone pillars together with the masks, and just chilled and waited 2000 years to wake up.

But that doesn't happen until part 2, of course, and so we have to take a bit of a step back and pay attention to the masks again. At some point during the 1860s, Mary Joestar, an archeology, finds one of the mysterious Stone Masks and takes it with her to study it. Unfortunately she never quite manages to -- as she ends up losing her life during a carriage accident that involves her, his husband and her son. Although she ends up dead, both her son and her husband survive, "rescued" by a thief who was just about to loot their corpses: Dario Brando.

Years pass and Jonathan Joestar, Mary's son, lives a normal and happy life as a little rich kid until the past catches up to his family in the form of Dio Brando, Dario's ambitious son who, after having poisoned his father until his death, seeks to steal the Joestars' entire fortune and make Jonathan's life total hell for no particular reasons other than that he hates him. Because of his debt of gratitude toward Dario Brando, George -- Jonathan's father -- happily accepts Dio into his home as part of his family, and urges his son to treat Dio as a brother from then onward.

Things initially go terribly, but the two eventually manage to pretend to be on friendly enough terms for years -- until Jonathan finds out Dio has been poisoning his father the same way he had with Dario. After gathering proofs of his wrong-doings, Jonathan confronts Dio with the intention of forcing him to turn himself in -- only things don't go as expected and Dio uses the Stone Mask that Jonathan's mother found so many years ago and becomes a vampire and manages to run away. Lots of things happen after that, Jonathan meets a man named Will A. Zeppeli who's been trying to get rid of the Stone Mask once and for all, who teaches him how to use and control the "Ripple" in order to defeat Dio. Which he does manage to! More or less -- Dio actually survives as a severed head (hey, he's an immortal vampire), and since he didn't ruin Jonathan's life nearly enough so far, he crashes his honeymoon with the intention of stealing his body. Jonathan ends up dying right there, but manages to save his wife, Erina, and a newborn baby girl before bringing Dio to the bottom of the ocean with him.

At the time, Erina was pregnant with Jonathan's son, George Joestar II, who later on ends up marrying the newborn girl that was saved on that ship many years ago, thus continuing the "Joestar Bloodline" with Joseph Joestar -- hero of part 2, who ends up dealing with and defeating Kars and the other pillar men we talked about earlier.

Cut to around 50 years later, and Dio shows up all over again, after having been dug up from the bottom of the ocean and having successfully stolen Jonathan's body … somehow. What's the big deal, Joseph defeated the HEAD of the vampires fifty years before, right? Well, the big deal is that Dio isn't just a vampire anymore -- he acquired a mysterious power called "Stand" (a manifestation of its user fighting spirit) and is now more dangerous than ever before.

Lucky for our heroes, him doing so with Jonathan's body activated the very same power down the entire Joestar family line -- unfortunately for them, that includes Holly Joestar, Joseph's daughter, whose Stand ends up being an active threat against her life, and the only way to make sure she won't die is to take care of Dio once and for all. But the hero of Part 3 is neither Holly nor Joseph, but Holly's own son, Jotaro Kujo -- who possesses an immensely powerful Stand that is eventually revealed to be "the same type" as Dio's, right down to the ability to stop time. Although there are some casualties, Jotaro manages to successfully defeat his nemesis and save his mother that way.

Ten years after the events of Part 3, and the Joestar family receives quite the surprise upon trying to sort inheritance on behalf of the now aging Joseph: there is a child conceived with a Japanese woman Joseph had an affair with sixteen years prior. The news of an illegitimate child comes as a surprise for everyone, including Joseph, who tries to use his Stand to "see" him (Hermit Purple, Joseph's Stand, allows him to take pictures of whatever he wishes to see). Instead, he ends up taking a picture of a dangerous criminal residing right in Morioh (the city where this newly-found child happens to be living in), who is revealed to be a Stand user. As Joseph is now too old to travel from the States and fight, Jotaro is sent to Morioh in his stead in order to both sort the inheritance deal, and to protect his -- well, uncle: Higashikata Josuke, who is the hero of Part 4.

After a somewhat rough first meeting due to Jotaro inadvertently insulting Josuke's hair (a sure way to get him furious), Josuke is revealed to be a Stand user as well -- in fact, just like Holly, during the events of part 3 when he was just a child, he'd been suffering high fevers and was on the verge of death for about 50 days. Later on in the manga it's revealed that sometime during those days Josuke's life was saved by a "mysterious student with a pompadour", who helped his mother when her car was stuck in the snow -- thus making it possible for her to take him to the nearest hospital. Though he didn't quite lock eyes with his saviour, as a child Josuke managed to catch a glimpse of his hairdo, and from then on decided to style his hair the same way as a tribute to his hero: which is exactly why insulting his hair makes him furious, he sees it as an insult to him.

Once it's confirmed that Josuke has a stand of his own, Jotaro talks to him about the criminal Joseph managed to take a picture of, and warns him to be careful. Unfortunately, not even a hour later Josuke ends up having a run-in with him, and Angelo (the criminal in question) decides to target him and his family both for that and because Josuke's own grandfather happened to be the man who threw him in prison.

Although neither Josuke nor his mother end up getting harmed by him, Ryohei, Josuke's grandfather, isn't as lucky -- and ends up dying under Angelo's Stand attack. Josuke vows to protect Morioh in his stead, and starts right with Angelo -- confronting him and eventually getting so angry that he uses his Stand to permanently fuse him with a rock, rather than killing him. But before that, Angelo reveals how he got his Stand: he was approached by someone while he was in prison, who pierced him with a peculiar arrow precisely to turn him into a Stand user. Later on it's revealed that the arrow is exactly how Dio himself (and thus the entire Joestar bloodline with him) got his Stand many years prior, and Jotaro and Josuke start looking for the culprits in order to stop them.

The culprits happen to be the Nijimura siblings, sons of a man who used to be Dio's underling, who inherited the mysterious arrow from him. The Nijimura siblings, Okuyasu and Keicho, are apparently looking for a Stand user who can kill their constantly-regenerating, rotting father, who's been turned into a monster after Dio's death. Josuke offers to instead help them look for a Stand user that can fully heal him and bring him back to human form, but another enemy Stand, "Red Hot Chilli Peppers", shows up -- killing Keicho and stealing the arrow in the process.

Now turned ally, Okuyasu swears he'll avenge his brother, and the part 4 gang is now on the lookout for Akira Otoishi, Chilli Pepper's Stand user. Eventually they manage to confront him, right when Joseph is heading to Morioh to help with identifying him, and Josuke finds himself in the position of having to fight to protect the father he's never met. But hey, all's well what ends well, and not only does he manage, but he and Joseph finally get to meet and talk for the first time. Although things end up being tense and awkward with the two for a while, after a peculiar bonding experience in which they have to take care of and save a baby who happens to be invisible due to her own Stand powers, the two manage to connect on some level.

But although the arrow is now secured, troubles aren't quite over, and things get even weirder with the appearance of "Reimi", a ghost who has been living in a realm between life and death in order to one day catch the man who killed not just her -- but is apparently responsible for countless other "disappearances" of young girls in Morioh. In other words, now the gang is after another serial killer who happens to be a Stand User.

Part 4 being mostly wacky slice of life, lots of stuff happens during this search, but eventually Josuke and his friends (and family) do manage to run into the killer and identify him as "Kira Yoshikage". Unfortunately Kira is as tenacious as he's lucky, and right when it seems he's about to be defeated, he manages to miraculously escape and force another Stand user to change his appearance before killing her as well. Kira's new appearance and disguise is that of "Kosaku Kawajiri", and he more-or-less successfully infiltrates the life and family of his new namesake. "More or less", because Kawajiri's son, Hayato, realizes something is wrong and eventually manages to gather evidence that the man is not is father, and eventually even ends up filming him right as he commits a murder.

Panicking, Kira ends up killing Hayato -- but thanks to having accidentally triggered a new power for his Stand, Killer Queen, he goes back in time and fix that little mistake. Killer Queen's new power, "Bites The Dust", doesn't just allow him to go back in time however -- it actively uses Hayato as the trigger of a new bomb that explodes and kills anyone who poses a threat to Kira by questioning him. Because of this, Josuke and his friends end up dying in several time loops when they come to question Hayato after having noticed him stalking Kawajiri in several photos the group had been taking.

Refusing to resign himself to that, however, Hayato eventually manages to use his knowledge of the many loops he's been through against Kira, successfully breaking "Bites the Dust" by having Kira say his name right as Josuke shows up. A final battle between Kira and Josuke ensues, and luck finally abandons Kira's side in the form of a truck that runs him over before he can cause any more damage, right after his battle with Josuke. It's Reimi that takes her revenge after that, ensuing Kira won't come back to kill people as a ghost by having him dragged into the afterlife once and for all.

With Morioh now (hopefully) safe from any more weirdos or serial killers, Joseph and Jotaro bid farewell to Josuke and leave the town. Josuke, on his part, repeats his vow and intention of protecting Morioh from there onwards.

Previous Game History: N/A

Personality: Don't let the punk look and thuggish attitude fool you -- underneath a rough exterior, Josuke is a sweet, gentle and caring boy who truly goes out of his way to protect people and make sure they're safe and sound. He isn't the type who would hesitate to put his life down the line in order to ensure just that either -- a trait that seems to be partly inherited with the Joestar bloodline and partly directly influenced by his maternal grandfather, a policemen whose goal has always been to protect Morioh and its citizens, and who Josuke looks up to. All in all, he's a fairly polite kid who tries (tries being an important keyword here, because if he's angry or hates someone, that's a different situation entirely) to be respectful toward those who are older than him and generally be helpful -- albeit in somewhat unconventional ways from time to time (after all, he tends to be a bit drastic and unorthodox in his methods).

Despite his fundamentally kind nature, however, Josuke is anything but a pushover, and though he might try to "keep out of trouble", that doesn't mean he's ready to let people trample all over him. He's assertive, confident, and ready to crack a punch or two if someone pushes the wrong buttons or messes with friends and family. Generally, he's the kind of guy who doesn't bother with second guessing and self-doubts, and prefers to let his actions speak for him. Although he isn't ashamed of doing "good actions", so to speak, he tends to have a generally flippant attitude toward it, without putting much weight into them. This is seen especially with how easily he's been using his Stand to heal people since he was a child (generally without explanation, seeing as normal people can't actually see Stands), or how he heals an enemy who's just tried to kill him, reasoning that he just doesn't want to see anyone die upon being questioned about it. He's the kind of guy who'd have no trouble befriending a former enemy (and in fact, much of the part 4 gang is made up of former-enemies that Josuke befriended), but is just as likely to heal them fully only to beat the hell out of them "fair and square".

Having grown up with just her, Josuke is extremely attached to his mother, to the point where the biggest hung-up he has over his father disappearing for sixteen years has all to do with him breaking his mother's heart, rather than never having been there for him. In fact, Josuke mentions more than once that his mother is still in love with Joseph in canon, and that he knows just how much she suffered because of his absence. Perhaps also because of this, Josuke claims to be a "love kinda guy" and a romantic who doesn't really try to hit on girls and try to get lucky, and instead believes in "true love". In general, though, family and friends are extremely important to him, even when he's not particularly close to them. Two good examples of this are how he takes care of his old father when they spend time together for the first time, even though he proves to be a handful and a burden and Josuke feels all sorts of awkward about the situation, or how he still doesn't hesitate to help and save Rohan from a life or death situation even though they don't get along and dick each other around all the time.

Though he can be mature when the situation calls for it, in the end Josuke is a goofy teenager who is not above petty arguments or silly shenanigans of all kinds, be it trying to earn quick and easy money or just get back at some guy he dislikes. Expressive, energetic, dynamic and savvy, he's a pretty friendly person and his personality makes it easy for him to make allies and enemies alike: after all, he is the kind of person who wears his heart to his sleeve and rarely hides how he truly feels about someone, or something -- provided that he isn't in a situation in which he has to be polite. Though he's generally honest, Josuke is absolutely willing to lie to hell and back in order to get what he wants, and has been shown to be capable of being quite mischievous (especially when money is involved).

While he may not be a super genius, Josuke displays fluid intelligence and quick-thinking that allows him to perform a variety of feats -- be it during everyday life, allowing him to come up with various schemes, or in the middle of battles against other Stand users, making full of use of the impressive range of actions his own Stand, Crazy Diamond, grants him.

Generally chill and laid-back, nevertheless Josuke is capable of getting embarrassed easily, or getting nervous when facing famous people or someone of higher standing-- something which he is aware of and thus tries to avoid whenever possible. He's somewhat worried about things like "his image" and "reputation", paying great attention to his hairstyle especially, partly due to it being a "tribute" to a childhood hero who saved his life when he was a child. In fact, his hair is so important to him that he automatically goes into a blind, violent rage should anyone insults it -- something which he can't control no matter who it is. In addition to taking great care of his hair, Josuke seem to have an interest in fashion, or at the very least expensive, brand-name footwear.

But his hair trigger isn't the only thing that makes Josuke angry, and though he's much, much more reasonable about pretty much anything else, he's still a rather quick-tempered kid who gets irritated and annoyed quite easily, and for better or worse, tends to react to it just as easily -- violently, in the worst case scenario. Though he isn't a sarcastic person, per se, he enjoys riling up and making fun of opponents, often saying things like "we're no geniuses after all, eh?" and just openly mocking them.

Abilities/Powers: I'm going to start with a fair disclaimer that Josuke's power has quite a lot of potential of being pretty game-breaking, as it allows him to fix and restore pretty much anything (more details to come of course), and so should I have him engage with game settings or objects I will either automatically assume his powers aren't fully working because he needs MORE SEX!!!, or make an effort to contact the mod team for go ahead or denial, though if you want to place firmer limitations that's fine by me!

By the same token, since Josuke's power works with people as well, I won't actually have him heal anyone before asking the players if they're fine with it (since people might want to play with being injured!). I would also imagine limitations are in place here too so maybe one day he would be able to like heal that one guy who just lost his arm, but the next day he wouldn't be able to because he's out of energy! THAT SAID! Here is a proper breakdown of Josuke's abilities.

Ordinary: - Stand abilities aside, Josuke is, on his own, already quite strong and well built. Other than raw and brute strength, he's shown possessing impressive athletic ability and stamina (he's able to catch up with a bus just running after it), and he's shown to be able to endure significant amount of pain and damage. In addition to this, Josuke is a quick thinker and tends to use that to come up with different courses of action during battle.

Supernatural: - As said before in the application, Josuke possesses a "Stand", a manifestation of his fighting spirit that grants him particular strength and abilities. Stands powers vary from type to type, with "short-ranged" ones being amongst the most powerful (if severely limited by their short range of action) -- Crazy Diamond, Josuke's Stand, falls under this category. Fast and powerful, it's given fairly high stats in various fields (most notably destructive power, speed, durability and precision) in Jojo's Stands cards.

Aside from that, Crazy Diamond's most notable feature is its special restoring ability. Taken directly from the Jojo wikia:

Restoration: Crazy Diamond's unique ability is to restore or revert objects or organisms to any previous state in their history. It can repair damage, heal injury, revert chemical changes and complex structures to their raw components (e.g. a table into its constituent timber). It may also fuse objects, such a person with a rock (as with villain Angelo). Other feats include trapping an enemy by restoring pieces of a broken crate around him; exposing a Stand formerly bound to an object; and tracking, by restoring a torn piece of clothing, forcing it to seek out and attach itself to its native article of clothing. If this ability is used while Josuke is in a foul mood, its target may be warped, improperly restored. Crazy Diamond cannot heal its master, retrieve things erased by The Hand (a Stand whose special ability is to send things, including "space", into another dimension), or restore life to an organism.

Basically, its ability is to "restore and fix", and Josuke applies his own ingenuity in a variety of ways in order to make full use of his Stand. Should you need further clarifications and details, please let me know!

Sample Entry:
[ He isn't slow with technology, not quite, but still it's difficult to use a device he's never fiddled with before, and though the communicators aren't too hard to understand, days later he still hasn't been able to make a video like he wanted. Now -- it's not like he has any special communication to make, or anything important to announce, but really, letting himself get defeated by some weird piece of technology? Yeah, that ain't happening. So for the last last thirty minutes or so, he's been playing with the settings, trying to understand how the damn thing works and how to make a public video. Text option is easy-- he thinks to himself as he checks out the video options for the millionth time -- but the damn camera never seem to fucking work.

But just as he's about to give up (for no more than twenty seconds -- after all, he's too stubborn to really do that), there it is: the camera finally starts working, and he can see it's recording. ]

Holy shit, it's working! GREAT!

[ His tone of voice is surprised -- of course it is, but there's a dumb, huge goofy grin on his face, showing just how satisfied he is about having managed to figure this out. Josuke 1, Strange Device 0. Take that.

But he's got a video to make and an entire feed of people to talk to, and so this isn't the time to take joy in small victories like that. He clears his throat -- and the first order of business is fix his hair as he looks right into camera, making sure his look's going to be perfect. ]

—All right! took me forever to get this damn thing working, so let's make it worth it. Anyone got anything cool to share or whatever? I mean, come on, just any story will do -- I'm kinda bored here, so give me a hand.

Sample Entry Two:

He never had trouble sleeping before. Well -- maybe not never, but it had never been something recurring enough to be considered a problem. He didn't think of himself as the kind of guy who would stew over things, or keep thinking and thinking about stuff he couldn't do anything about anymore, and yet here he was: wide awake at 2 A.M., stuck thinking about fucking Kira Yoshikage days after everything had been taken care of.

It wasn't nightmares — not quite, but still sometimes he'd lay on his bed and start thinking about "what if?" and be entirely unable to fall asleep from there on. It was a pain in the ass, and he didn't like it. He liked the fact that those thought routinely centered over things like "What if Okuyasu had died back there? What if he had managed to kill him?" even less.

Now, logically, he knew everything was over and there was absolutely nothing to worry about. But when it's your best friend's life on the line it's difficult to just shrug things off and forget about them. After all, back then, if he'd been even just one second later what would have happened? Those were the kind of "what ifs" he was stuck on tonight.

After a bit more of tossing and turning, he decided there was no use continuing to lay down on the bed -- he wasn't getting any sleep, anyway, so what was the point of staying in bed? He turned on the light on the bedside table, got up from the bed, and then glanced first at the clock, and then at his cellphone.

Okuyasu was fine, he knew that, just as much as he knew that unlike him, he probably was sleeping at this hour. But still he grabbed his phone and quickly started to type on it -- nothing special, just a simple "'sup" -- and sent it to him. Simple stuff, like he'd sent him hundreds of times before -- only usually it wasn't in the middle of the night. And though he didn't expect it, Okuyasu ended up writing back pretty much right away.

"Woah. What the hell is he even up for?"

He wondered that out loud, as if anyone could actually respond to him. Legs crossing on the bed and eyebrow raised, with a few clicks on the buttons of his phone he checked for the reply -- and what was in there managed to both surprise him and finally calm him down at the same time.

It wasn't anything great, just a simple "What's wrong Josuke?", but it was touching in its own right. Okuyasu was dense, not exactly the brightest guy he knew, but he was sweet and earnest and truly cared for his friends. And Josuke could just picture him waking up because of that text, checking the sender, and deciding not to ignore it just on account of it being from his best friend, at 2 A.M.

"Can't sleep 'cause I'm worried for ya. Wait for me out of your door tomorrow morning, got it?"

With a huge grin on his face, he flopped right back on the bed and started writing back that short reply, deciding to wait for Okuyasu's response before attempting to sleep again. Or hey, maybe they could just be texting back and forth, or even call each other. He felt a little bad for waking Okuyasu up, but the knowledge he had a friend he could do this with, just text in the middle of the night when something was on his mind, was precious and comforting all on its own. And, of course, the fact that said friend was safe and sound and alive just made it all better.