application ( ruby city )

[digiorno]

PLAYER
Name: Anne
Age: 24!
Personal Journal: trustme_imthe
E-mail: tavrosno(at)gmail(dot)com
AIM/MSN/etc: My AIM is private, so I'd prefer to be contacted over Plurk if that's all right! porphyrogene

CHARACTER
Name: Giorno Giovanna
Canon: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure ( Part V : Vento Aureo )
Age: 16
Timeline: Two months post-canon, so mid-June 2001, after Giorno has become Don of Passione
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: N/A!

Personality:

An important baseline piece of information to note about Giorno Giovanna is that he is a case of wasted potential - and I mean that in the best way possible. Giorno had the potential to be an absolutely awful, supervillain-caliber, ripping-people-apart-for-the-fun-of-it total bastard, and it's honestly a huge stroke of luck that he didn't end up going that route. While he may be the most morally dubious JJBA protagonist up to Vento Aureo, he is not actually a bad person, despite everything in his background not-so-gently nudging him in that direction.

For completion's sake, let's take a moment to look at his childhood influences. First and foremost, there's Giorno's biological father, Dio Brando, or DIO if you're nasty, a lean mean people-eating machine, a century-old vampire with a hankering for world domination and just killing people all the time for fun and very little profit. Dio was a malignant narcissist, sadist, and sociopath who spent almost a decade of his life plotting and poisoning his way into a wealthy family's fortune, and this was before he left his humanity behind and got to blood-snacking - things honestly only got worse from there. It's explicitly stated in canon that, while Dio had many sexual encounters with everyone women during his time in Egypt where he met Giorno's mother, he killed almost all of them, treating them as entirely disposable. It's a fluke that Giorno's mother survived, a fluke that Giorno lived past infancy, and Giorno knows this. His information about Dio is admittedly limited and skewed by his mother's perspective, but the facts remain that 1) he is aware his continued existence is basically due to random chance, poor planning, maybe laziness, but definitely not any kind of desire to bring a child into the world; and 2) that his mother regretted having him and had no interest at all in raising him.

Because, oh yeah, that's a thing too. Mama Shiobana openly did not give a damn about her son. When he was an infant, she'd leave him alone at home to go out partying because she didn't want to be "limited" by her "mistakes"; later she married an Italian man and uprooted Giorno from Japan to Italy, forcing him to leave his entire life behind and thrusting him into further insecurity. Mr. Giovanna was, naturally, cruel and abusive towards Giorno; it's no surprise, then, that as a kid Giorno had zero self-esteem. It was around this point that things could have gone one of two ways: Giorno could have completely lost his way and compensated by developing the kind of cruelty he was genetically and environmentally predisposed towards, or, by some stroke of luck, he could go completely in the opposite direction.

Which is what ended up happening, fortunately for everyone involved. Giorno saved a prominent gangster's life, and in return he was given protection, safety, security, and positive regard - all things that he had no previous experience with. All of this convoluted rehashing of backstory serves to impress the following point: Giorno came to associate negative experiences with his civilian existence and positive experiences with the power and privilege of gang life. With that in mind, it's really no surprise that Giorno Giovanna developed a dream to become a Gang-Star.

(Get it? Gangster + superstar? No?)

Giorno's story focuses heavily on his desire to rule and reform the Neopolitan gang known as Passione. The goal of becoming don is, of course, quite clear-cut: Giorno never had much power as a child, and to him, power connotes invincibility. In this way, he's not terribly different from Dio after all. Further, though, Giorno wants to restore Passione to his criminal ideal, an organization that improves people's lives even while necessarily working outside the law. It's not just about ruling, but about creating a perfect criminal society, one that protects people rather than hurting them, just as he was protected by the unnamed gangster of his youth.

Originally Giorno's goal was to achieve this goal more or less on his own - which is an impractical but not incomprehensible thought. After all, Giorno never really had any friends; he was ostracized as a child, and people only really started talking to him after his gangster patron strongly encouraged them to. Why would he assume that he would be able to build trustworthy allies within an organization he was hoping to overthrow? But somewhere along the way, starting with his work with Bruno Buccellati's gang, he became deeply invested not only in the societal but the familial structure of Passione, and this is where Giorno really begins to blossom as a leader.

Because he knew that he wanted to lead - had to lead, if he was going to reform Passione in his ideal image - but he didn't know what leadership actually entailed. How would he? He was at that point a socially maladjusted 15-year-old kid with big dreams and a bafflingly weird superpower. It was only through the influence of Buccellati's gang - a found-family structure full of orphans and rejects, collected by Bruno and kept safe, sound, and something like happy in exchange for loyalty - that Giorno learned how to really lead. Buccellati's gang taught him that leadership means supporting, encouraging, and valuing subordinates for their individual strengths while staying aware of their weaknesses, learning to mesh your people together as a team, and, above all, valuing their safety and security, just as Giorno's patron gangster valued his.

Buccellati's gang also taught him the invaluable skill of diplomacy, also known as "dealing with assholes". To get an idea of the dynamics of the gang, consider this: Giorno came into the gang after it was fully-formed and firmly established, essentially an outsider being foisted upon a very tight-knit and naturally suspicious group of young men. Nobody was thrilled about this. One guy shat on him constantly for being so young; another guy peed in a teapot and dared him to drink it. So what did Giorno do about it? Well, beyond drinking the piss tea, he did what he had to do - he adapted. He learned how to handle a number of different kinds of tense situations - when to be deferential and when to push his authority, when to cooperate and when to insist that he be listened to. He learned, in other words, how to gain the support of others, even if they're hostile, without driving them away. He learned how to be a diplomat, a skill which he uses heavily as don.

All of which is not to say that Giorno would be a good PTA mom. His moral compass is pretty seriously skewed; he never 100% learned how to fit into law-abiding society. And honestly? That's fine with him. He never wanted to or tried to, because law-abiding society never did anything for him. He has a strict moral code, but it doesn't align even slightly with the law. For example, things that are okay: theft, bribes, threats, murder under certain circumstances (for revenge, or if the murderee harmed someone innocent), swift and brutal revenge. Things that are not okay: crimes that prey on the weak and vulnerable (such as drug trafficking, and especially drug trafficking to children, which is a universal hot-button issue among Buccellati's gang).

Some of his less-than-lawful traits could honestly be attributed directly to Dio. Giorno possesses an intense ruthlessness that verges into the terrifying at times. He's also deeply charismatic; in fact, his charisma is often the first thing people notice about him, as it's strong enough to almost be equitable to a physical force. He uses his charisma as a tool, seeing no problem with using it as a way to further his (quite ruthless) goals. This is directly in line with Dio's tactics, especially in Stardust Crusaders, which could also be titled Dio Seduces Hundreds of People, Plus a Priest.

Unlike Dio, Giorno is in good control of his emotions most of the time. He doesn't fall prey to his own emotional reactions to even the most extreme situations and is very level-headed and analytical, with excellent problem-solving skills. However, when he gets mad - really mad - there's no containing his anger. He will find you, and he will hurt you, and you probably won't recover from his rage anytime soon. The prime example of this is Diavolo, the former boss of Passione, who hunted down Buccellati's gang and annihilated half of them. It wasn't enough for Giorno to disable him; it wasn't even enough for Giorno to kill him. No - Giorno hit him with Gold Experience Requiem's reset-to-zero ability, which means that Diavolo will keep dying over and over and over again until the end of time. In other words: do not fuck with Giorno Giovanna or his people. You will regret it.

On the other hand . . . well, obviously Giorno isn't all bad, even if he doesn't act like a law-abiding citizen. But there are a few things about Giorno that are unequivocally good, things that tip him over from being an antihero to a true hero despite his criminal tendencies - and almost all of these traits could be traced back to Jonathan Joestar (whose relationship to Giorno is complicated; let's just say body-snatching and leave it at that).

While Giorno is too complicated to really boil down to one aspect - good or bad, light or dark, kind or cruel - he is, ultimately, a force of life, like Jonathan, rather than a bringer of death, like Dio. This is reflected quite unsubtly in the nature of Gold Experience, which creates life. Gold Experience, in other words, frames Giorno as a creator rather than a destroyer, one who brings instead of taking away. It's telling that Giorno not only has a deep (if often concealed) kindness and compassion for people, but for animals, too - even the ones Gold Experience creates; he defends one of Gold Experience's frogs from Leaky-Eye Luca, a gangster who's threatening his life. Laying everything on the line for a frog: the Giorno Giovanna story.

Along his journey, Giorno also discovers a tendency to get attached to people quickly and deeply. It's maybe thirty minutes into a very fraught acquaintance with Bruno (who, again, is trying to kill him) that Giorno declares that Bruno is a) a good person and b) going to become his ally. And the crazy thing is that Giorno is right. His quick attachment, in combination with his self-confidence, his big dreams, and his charisma make it easy for people to trust him, to follow him, to believe that he will take care of them. And he does. He's good at taking care of people in a way that he himself was never really taken care of, giving them guidance and structure and boundaries and love, protecting them from danger while allowing them to make mistakes. It's what makes him a good don; it's what makes him a good friend.

Above all, Giorno is defined by his desire to make the world a better place. Admittedly, he goes about this in a different way than most people would, but honestly? If he were normal, he wouldn't be a goddamn Jojo. Giorno's story is about overcoming cruel legacies and making your destiny your own, and sure, he does this a little bit obliquely - but in the end, he succeeds, and at the tender age of 16, he's in a position not only to reform Passione, but to reach out to kids like him who never had any support and influence them in a (mostly) positive way. He's not blameless, he's not innocent, and he's certainly not nice, but he's driven by the belief that people have limitless potential to change their fates and the desire to give everyone the same chance that he got.

Background:

➥ Giorno "I Have A Dream" Giovanna
➥ What the Heck is a Stand?
➥ Gold Experience & Gold Experience Requiem
➥ Part V : Vento Aureo

Abilities:

➥ CHARISMA. One of Giorno's preeminent characteristics, and one of the first things most people notice about him, is that he's intensely, effortlessly charismatic - a trait quite possibly inherited from his douchecanoe of a dad, although he tends to use his power more for good than for evil. Despite his youth and relative inexperience, he's usually able to charm people into taking him seriously, as evidenced by the fact that he's managed to become don of an organization that in some ways leads an entire country at the tender age of 16.

➥ LEADERSHIP ABILITY. Linked inextricably to the above: Giorno is a very good leader, although this isn't as natural an ability as his charisma. He learns quite a bit about how to lead effectively throughout Vento, but the seeds of success were always there; he manages a good, instinctive balance between listening, directing, and delegating, and utilizes his natural skills to offset his inexperience.

➥ CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING. Giorno will do pretty much any weird goddamn thing to get himself or his friends out of a fix. Part of this is attributable to the "bizarre" in "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure", a canon where large burly men squeeze themselves into ventilator shafts and bubbles are a strategic weapon, but even for JJBA, Giorno's strategies tend to be a lot. He's able to work together well with others, especially Bruno and Mista, to come up with creative solutions to dilemmas, but he's especially adept at using his Stand powers in unique ways to track enemies, isolate danger, create escape routes, regrow body parts, et cetera and so forth.

➥ STREET SAVVY. Giorno can be a suave motherfucker when he wants to be, but it's also worth pointing out that not only was he a criminal from a young age, he aspired to be the Greatest Criminal Ever, a goddamn Gang-Star. As such, he knows what he's doing in the criminal underworld: he's an excellent pickpocket, an adept car- and plane-thief, and perfectly comfortable with, say, engineering an operative's death and making it look like a suicide. He's also familiar with arms, drug, and human trafficking, although he's pretty stridently against all of the above. Basically anything the mob can do, he can do better.

➥ BILINGUAL. Giorno's mother is Japanese, and he lived in Japan until he was about four; therefore I assume he still has some limited grasp of the Japanese language, although he's probably nothing like fluent anymore.

➥ AND FOR GOOD MEASURE: Giorno can stuff his entire ear into his head. Why? We just don't know.

➥ GOLD EXPERIENCE ( REQUIEM ). Gold Experience is Giorno's personal spiritual buddy, his Stand, described variously as a person's fighting spirit or a representation of their psyche. In Giorno's case, Gold Experience could easily be linked directly to his desires and dreams, his "fighting spirit" a manifestation of his desire to end the destructive reign of Diavolo over Passione and, by extension, to end the legacy of his father and disconnect himself entirely from Dio. Because Diavolo is a killer, and Dio is a mass murderer, but Giorno's power is life - the sustaining and creation of it - which makes him an entirely different creature altogether.

Metatextual analysis aside, before breaking down what exactly Gold Experience can do at Giorno's canon point, it's further important to note that Giorno's Stand has ~*~evolved~*~ from its original powerset, thanks to a complicated set of circumstances that is, unsurprisingly, partially Dio's fault. The exact string of events is detailed further in the above background links, but in short form, what happened was that Gold Experience was pierced by the Stand Arrow, causing its power to grow and change drastically. More on this below.

Gold Experience's Abilities:

✘ LIFE GIVER. Gold Experience's most basic ability: it is capable of changing any inorganic matter into a living organism. Giorno most frequently creates small animals like lizards, frogs, birds, et cetera, although there seems to be no hard upper limit as to what he can create. He's also capable of creating plant matter and, presumably, bacteria, fungi, and protists as well. Once they are created, Giorno has control over his organisms, controlling how they move and grow. Additionally, when these organisms are attacked, the attacks are reflected back on the attacker, even to the point of death. Giorno does not suffer animal cruelty lightly.

✘ TRACKING. If Giorno obtains a piece of inorganic material that can be linked to a person, he can change that material into an animal that will then function as a tracker for that person. For example, if somebody dropped an earring on the ground, he could change the earring into a ladybug and it would lead him to them.

✘ LIFE SHOT. When Gold Experience's ability is used on the already-living, it has the effect of a) stretching out the perception of time inside a person's body and mind and b) magnifying sensory experiences within the body. For example, under the influence of Life Shot, one might experience accelerated thought processes, extreme disorientation due to the mind moving faster than the body, and heightened pain reception.

✘ TRANSFORMATION. Gold Experience can not only create whole organisms, but can replicate fragments of a larger organism when it is damaged or destroyed. This ability is most often used in a healing capacity, in order to replace or re-form damaged tissue, and kept a lot of really tragic deaths from happening (for a while). However, there are strict limits to Gold Experience's transformation ability. It cannot bring someone back to life once they're dead; it can, however, bind someone's spirit to their dead body, with fairly catastrophic effect. They will be able to continue functioning and be essentially impervious to pain and injury, but will lose body heat, heartbeat, and senses and deteriorate quite quickly. So in other words, Giorno can make zombies.

✘ VERSATILITY / DEV POTENTIAL. Gold Experience has development potential of A, which basically means the sky's the fucking limit. Even throughout Vento Aureo, Giorno hasn't really begun a thorough trial-and-error of what Gold Experience can do, and as such he's likely to continue playing and experimenting with its limits, since he has a curious mind and is a bit of a perfectionist. Some examples of Gold Experience's development thus far are listed here.

✘ STAND CRY. This isn't actually important, but it's cute: Giorno's Stand cry is "muda muda muda (useless, useless, useless)," just like his daddy's. Sometimes he yells it, sometimes Gold Experience does. Sometimes he wry's, just for the heck of it.

Gold Experience Requiem's Abilities:

✘ ALL OF THE ABOVE; PLUS:

✘ RESET TO ZERO. Pretty much what it sounds like: after being pierced by the Stand Arrow, Gold Experience Requiem has the ability to "reset an opponent to zero", or, to put it another way, nixing the effect while keeping the cause; the opponent will in essence start an action over and over again, only to be blocked from completing it. This makes Gold Experience Requiem insanely powerful and essentially capable of blocking any attack as long as Giorno has the wherewithal to use his Stand properly. It also taps into some of his more ruthless impulses, because among other things, when Gold Experience Requiem kills someone, they keep dying. Forever. Their death is constantly reset until the end of time. So, yeah, Giorno Giovanna can send you to hell. This reset ability is, however, extremely untested, and so Giorno isn't adept at using it yet.

Network/Actionspam Sample: don't do the dio smile, sweetie. just don't do it.

Prose Log Sample:

All in all, there are many similarities between day-to-day life in the city and in Napoli. This is, of course, because Giorno has made a concerted effort to draw lines of commonality between here and there, to smooth over the transition, to make it seem less wrenching. The view from his window is wildly dissimilar, with too few churches and no too-modern skyscrapers, no piazzas or palazzos, the backdrop of work-eat-play-sleep that he's become so used to. He didn't used to love Napoli - isn't even sure if he does now - but he loves what Napoli has become for him, the place his family rests. Home, more or less, for better or for worse.

This is not home - but there is a room above the coffee shop that is his for the moment, and he has set it up in the exact same way he set up his home at headquarters. The furniture is different, but otherwise everything is the same, neat and clean and precisely ordered, his hairbrush set straight on the dresser, what few clothes he has folded sharp in drawers or hung flat in the closet. He makes his bed the same way he did at home, hospital corners, and leaves the window cracked just a little bit before he leaves, even though the weather in the city is different and the sounds outside aren't even remotely similar.

Every morning is a routine, every evening the same routine in reverse: pinning and unpinning his hair, pulling it back into a tight braid and letting it fall loose over his shoulders, defining the lines of eyes and lips and wiping his face clean at the end of the day, pulling the lapels of his suit straight on his body and on the hanger, sliding his feet into stiff shoes and toeing them off with a sigh at the end of the day. These are all things he would do at home, and so, even without Trish's presence at his side or Mista's voice in his ear, he can convince himself that he is, if not happy, then at least safe.

In the light of day, he walks through the streets with a smile on his face. He greets everyone; acquaintances get a wave, strangers get a nod of acknowledgment, his eyes always sparkling as though the two of them are sharing a particularly juicy secret. (There is no third category; he doesn't have friends here, isn't sure how he'd make them outside of the context of Passione, or what he would do with them if he had them.)

He never returns to his room until after midnight, though, and in the dark of the night he's a different creature entirely. His movements are swift and quiet, predatory, his gaze cutting, lips a taut, flat line. In dark alleys, Gold Experience walks in his footsteps like a too-bright shadow, its eyes as bright as Giorno's, and unblinking. There is something here for him - he knows there is - there has to be. There is corruption everywhere. There is always something to fix.

He has worked too hard, lost too much, gotten too far to give up now. For the bloody trail he left behind him, for the faces he'll never see again, for himself, his pride and the legacy he has chosen to create, he will dig his claws into this city and pull out its black heart, reform it in his image. It's really only a matter of time.