'yeehaw' but said dejectedly into a cup of coffee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
surrounding) wrote2020-12-13 10:28 pm
surrounding) wrote2020-12-13 10:28 pm
{ slumscape } application
CHARACTER
NAME: Jonathan "Johnny" Joestar
CANON: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run (part 7) (Note: this part of the manga has no official English translation, but is easily available via fan translation online)
CANON POINT: Midway through chapter 48, "Tubular Bells Part 1". Johnny has just made a choice to give away something very important to him in order to save an ally character's life (and boy, did Johnny cry about it).
BACKGROUND: Wiki link.
SUITABILITY: Johnny is someone who has gone back and forth from highs to lows. Born as one of two sons to an aristocratic family, Johnny was raised with wealth but a very firm, unloving hand by his father. While younger, a choice of Johnny's indirectly caused the death of his older brother - and his father's favorite son - and this left Johnny with a neverending guilt and a sense that fate would catch up him eventually. He became briefly famous and independently wealthy by being an amazing jockey/horse racer as a young teen, but his combination of inflated ego and impressionable nature lead to him disrespecting the wrong random person...who shot Johnny in the back, injuring his spine and paralyzing Johnny from the waist down. Johnny subsequently lost all his 'friends' from when he was a celebrated racer, as they were merely along for the ride of money and fame.
Alone for two years and at this point kicked out of his father's house, Johnny is a very embittered nineteen year old. Unwilling to trust others, rude, and demanding, he's nonetheless got an inner stubbornness to him that lets him latch onto the first thing he's cared about in years - a mystery in the form of weird powers a man he meets has. Johnny's story from then on becomes one of wrestling with his own resolution versus his own sense that he's doomed, and one of learning what his real values actually are. Which brings us to his suitability - Johnny's entire canon is a coming of age story. He's on the cusp of decisions that could save or lose what's left of himself.
For a game that hinges on survival, and the morality of either banding together or trying to do things on his own (and with the help of his singular youkai), Johnny struck me as a fitting choice. He is at a crossroads of development in his own canon, just barely beginning to relearn how to rely on others and feel compassion for them again, after years of feeling bitter (and other, earlier years of being a bit of an entitled and easily-influenced brat). Johnny could swing either way for a lot of moral choices, both because his sense of trust in others is so skewed that he will preemptively be unkind, and because the lure of something that could 'cure' his paralyzed legs tempts him even in canon to do some amazingly determined, risky things (and with a Kotengu, once he learns they can fly...he will have a similar lure to do brash things on behalf of this youkai). The thrust of his storyline is of someone gradually discovering themselves (and his possible bonds with others). I'm very interested to see how the extreme, unusual events in this game would affect his choices - he's going to lose everything he had, once again, but gain new possibilities he didn't have back home.
QUESTIONNAIRE:
YOUKAI: Kotengu
INVENTORY: 1. A duffel bag containing 2. a foldable wheelchair and 3. his revolver and its remaining single bullet, along with 4. one more round of 6 bullets, 5. a tube of blue lipstick and 6. bags of a mix of freshly-picked and dried herbs, specifically chamomile and mint.
SAMPLES:
SAMPLE 1
SAMPLE 2
NAME: Jonathan "Johnny" Joestar
CANON: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run (part 7) (Note: this part of the manga has no official English translation, but is easily available via fan translation online)
CANON POINT: Midway through chapter 48, "Tubular Bells Part 1". Johnny has just made a choice to give away something very important to him in order to save an ally character's life (and boy, did Johnny cry about it).
BACKGROUND: Wiki link.
SUITABILITY: Johnny is someone who has gone back and forth from highs to lows. Born as one of two sons to an aristocratic family, Johnny was raised with wealth but a very firm, unloving hand by his father. While younger, a choice of Johnny's indirectly caused the death of his older brother - and his father's favorite son - and this left Johnny with a neverending guilt and a sense that fate would catch up him eventually. He became briefly famous and independently wealthy by being an amazing jockey/horse racer as a young teen, but his combination of inflated ego and impressionable nature lead to him disrespecting the wrong random person...who shot Johnny in the back, injuring his spine and paralyzing Johnny from the waist down. Johnny subsequently lost all his 'friends' from when he was a celebrated racer, as they were merely along for the ride of money and fame.
Alone for two years and at this point kicked out of his father's house, Johnny is a very embittered nineteen year old. Unwilling to trust others, rude, and demanding, he's nonetheless got an inner stubbornness to him that lets him latch onto the first thing he's cared about in years - a mystery in the form of weird powers a man he meets has. Johnny's story from then on becomes one of wrestling with his own resolution versus his own sense that he's doomed, and one of learning what his real values actually are. Which brings us to his suitability - Johnny's entire canon is a coming of age story. He's on the cusp of decisions that could save or lose what's left of himself.
For a game that hinges on survival, and the morality of either banding together or trying to do things on his own (and with the help of his singular youkai), Johnny struck me as a fitting choice. He is at a crossroads of development in his own canon, just barely beginning to relearn how to rely on others and feel compassion for them again, after years of feeling bitter (and other, earlier years of being a bit of an entitled and easily-influenced brat). Johnny could swing either way for a lot of moral choices, both because his sense of trust in others is so skewed that he will preemptively be unkind, and because the lure of something that could 'cure' his paralyzed legs tempts him even in canon to do some amazingly determined, risky things (and with a Kotengu, once he learns they can fly...he will have a similar lure to do brash things on behalf of this youkai). The thrust of his storyline is of someone gradually discovering themselves (and his possible bonds with others). I'm very interested to see how the extreme, unusual events in this game would affect his choices - he's going to lose everything he had, once again, but gain new possibilities he didn't have back home.
QUESTIONNAIRE:
● Your character finds an injured okami deep in the woods. Its leg is broken, trapped under a fallen tree, but it’s clearly in good health otherwise. They know this type of youkai is able to discern the morality of their past actions, and can turn hostile to them based off that judgment. What do they do?
Johnny is very nervous to approach this okami, because he thinks of himself as someone who has done a terrible thing (indirectly causing the death of his older brother years prior) and who is just awaiting fate to catch up with him. He considers previous misfortune as being because his mistakes caused the 'wrong son' of his father's to be killed. He would be very concerned the okami would 'correctly' read him as a bad person and punish him accordingly - and yes, when faced with an injured and suffering okami, Johnny would first think of his own reasoning to help or not. He would linger with inaction for a while...and even try to leave. He'd likely get partway through abandoning it before realizing that this helpless creature doesn't deserve to be left alone, and he would help - expecting eventual retribution the entire time.
Johnny is also shown multiple times in canon to only feel instinctive protectiveness towards things younger, smaller, or weaker than himself (a 14 year old girl he briefly meets, animals, and a stranger who is visibly injured), and he would be swayed by that as well, especially for a choice involving a youkai shaped like a wolf/dog.
● Your character's worst enemy asks to meet alone by moonlight in a remote location, to discuss temporarily banding together against a larger threat. How do they respond to the invitation?
Funnily enough, a similar situation happens in his canon with a 'worst enemy' in the form of a fellow past racer named Diego Brando. Johnny would initially refuse to meet with someone he despised and felt hurt by in the past, even if this was a sensible option and there was an enormous risk to be taken in not banding together. However - if he had met anyone whom he trusted by this point in the game, he would likely tell them about it (likely worded along the lines of 'Can you believe they thought I'd-') and then depending on his friend's response, he may be convinced to change his mind...it's just that on his own, he would refuse to work together in any planned way. (During the heat of an actual fight might go differently, however, as Johnny is surprisingly willing to demand help from strangers and even people he's otherwise working against, if he's cornered. The need to 'win' would have to be stronger than his need to avoid someone he felt he couldn't trust, so the stakes would need to be higher than simply planning an attack ahead of time.)
● Your character has the option to lead a rampaging oni away from path where it would find and attack a lone, inhabited farmhouse. However, the only road they can distract it down leads to the city, where it will inevitably do more damage. What do they choose to do?
Johnny chooses to very much get caught up in the morality of this choice, because as something devoid of reflecting on himself - there's no past enemies to get mad at, or judgment for him to be fearing - he's going to panic over the bad sides of both choices... But he will commit to a choice.
Johnny's from 1890 and sure hasn't heard of the 'bystander effect', but he's very much concerned with where people get their resolve and their motivation to win from, and he would feel strongly that people defending their home would fight back more. He'd pick the farmhouse, because he thinks that the inhabitants there would have a better chance of winning than random people called to arms in a city. Johnny would follow the oni towards the farmhouse and attempt to warn the inhabitants as early as he could (depending on the terrain involved, he may or may not be able to keep pace with the oni, considering his reliance on assistive devices/animals to move with any speed), and he would certainly involve himself in the fight afterwards. Johnny could (and should) be described as 'selfish' in many ways, but after his brief period of being metaphorically shaken awake back in his own canon, seeing others in immediate danger would bring him to act. He's slowly gotten used to fighting and even stripped of the powers he'd acquired back home, he would try to help against an obvious, violent opponent.
● A shrine of a powerful god offers your character a unique boon crafted to overcome the biggest challenge they’re currently facing. In return, it only asks to be able to possess your character for a 24 hour span of its choosing, which they will not necessarily get warning for. How do they feel about the exchange, and more importantly, do they accept it?
If the boon is 'the use of his legs', Johnny will say yes. He will not hesitate very much, either, and he'll likely say 'yes' before the terms are even wholly specified, and certainly before he's thought through the consequences. In his canon, his desire to walk again propels him to get on a horse again for the first time in two years and enter a months-long racing competition; it prompts him to say several morally questionable things about what he will do to get to what he believes has just a chance of letting him walk again; Johnny has literally killed people by this point in his canon in his quest to get to something that he thinks might 'heal' him. Johnny states outright that he will betray allies for this chance and is in fact shown to not honor promises in favor of pursuing this goal. To say that his common sense and kindness can be momentarily overridden by being offered something that could overcome his greatest challenge is to...unfortunately undersell it.
As mentioned in his canon point - Johnny actually gives up something that he thinks may be able to restore his ability to walk, in favor of saving his friend. This is presented as a very hard choice for him to make, and he actually initially refuses and his friend is well on his way to being trapped in a tree for eternity (Jojo's is a strange canon). It's only the weeks of bonding and character growth that means Johnny chooses his friend's life in that exact moment. If he were presented with a more ambiguous 'just give up your will for 24 hours, to something that may or may not do bad things', he wouldn't hesitate.
YOUKAI: Kotengu
INVENTORY: 1. A duffel bag containing 2. a foldable wheelchair and 3. his revolver and its remaining single bullet, along with 4. one more round of 6 bullets, 5. a tube of blue lipstick and 6. bags of a mix of freshly-picked and dried herbs, specifically chamomile and mint.
SAMPLES:
SAMPLE 1
SAMPLE 2