application ( ryslig )

[digiorno]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Anne
Contact: porphyrogene
Other Characters: Lila Zacharov (gitanes)

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Giorno Giovanna
Age: 16
Canon: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure ( Part V : Vento Aureo )
Canon Point: Two months after the conclusion of Vento Aureo - mid-June 2001.
Character Information: History @ JJBA Wiki

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.

5-10 Key Character Traits:

➥ ambitious
➥ controlled
➥ cunning
➥ loyal
➥ principled
➥ forward-thinking
➥ determined
➥ nurturing
➥ charismatic
➥ vengeful

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs:

➥ gargoyle
➥ kelpie
➥ troll
➥ manticore
➥ minotaur
➥ shade ( lila )

Roleplay Sample: tfw you balance pudding cups on your kinda-great-grandson's head.

Comments

REVISIONS

[digiorno]

forward-thinking.

Essentially the entire basis of Giorno's character, and indeed the plot of Vento Aureo, is that Giorno has had the same goal from a very young age. He saved his gangster patron when he was apparently still in elementary school, and the comparatively significant positive attention he received after doing so is what spurred him on to his dream of taking over and reforming Passione, and in turn reforming Napoli and Italy as a whole. The implication here, therefore, is that since before he was ten, Giorno pretty much had the goal not only of taking over an incredibly dangerous crime family, but reforming it such that it reflects the culturally beneficial "criminal ideal" that I discussed previously in my application. These two goals respectively reflect his ambition and his forward-thinkingness. As a child - even more of a child than he technically is now - he was considering long-term political and social reform in his home country, which is exceptional by any metric, even if he weren't trying to accomplish the goal 1) criminally and 2) by age 16.

controlled.

Giorno is controlled both in his emotions and in his actions. This trait can be traced back to his very early childhood, when he was neglected and abused to the point that he internalized his emotional responses in an effort not to get in trouble - essentially desiring to stay unnoticed. It manifests as an older teenager in that he has a tendency to be very perceptive about his own emotions and desires (as with the entire gangstar dream thing; he is very aware both of what he wants and how he wants to accomplish it), as well as those of others (as when he understands that Mista is trying to sacrifice himself for the good of the gang in "White Album", to pick one example of many). Overall, Giorno's demeanor presents as startlingly controlled in contrast to the often-volatile combination of the rest of the members of Buccellati's gang, who tend to be loud, quick to anger, and quick to violence, with the single exception of Bruno himself.

principled.

Giorno operates by a certain set of principles which are decently entrenched at the beginning of Vento Aureo and very firmly set by the end. Each of these is explicitly stated at one time or another throughout canon. Some of these principles include: protecting civilian bystanders (revealed during "Black Sabbath" when the janitor is killed); protecting children and destroying the drug trade, especially to children (revealed during "Buccellati's Coming"); and protecting his own subordinates from sacrificing themselves for the cause if there is literally any other alternative (revealed at the end of "White Album"). His principles do not include anything about letting his enemies survive or not torturing them, because he is a realistic young man and he knows shit needs to happen sometimes. Overall, though, he's dedicated to keeping crime in the crime family and, on a more broad note, protecting those who are uninvolved, especially children and unaffiliated civilians.

samples.
good person. ( controlled )
currency. ( forward-thinking / determined )
apologize. ( principled / nurturing / controlled / loyal )
deplorable. ( cunning / controlled )
sandwich. ( nurturing / charismatic )

[digiorno]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Anne
Contact: porphyrogene
Other Characters: Lila Zacharov (gitanes); Abigail Hobbs (versusnurture)

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Giorno Giovanna
Age: 16
Canon: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure ( Part V : Vento Aureo + Purple Haze Feedback )
Canon Point: Immediately after the conclusion of Purple Haze Feedback — mid-October 2001.
Character Information: History @ JJBA Wiki | Purple Haze Feedback @ JJBA Wiki

➥ NB: Purple Haze Feedback was not written by Araki, but it was greenlit and illustrated by him and is accepted as JJBA canon. It largely follows Fugo's journey to redeem himself in the eyes of Passione post-Diavolo, but Giorno orchestrates the entire plot of the light novel in the background and plays a prominent role in the conclusion.

Personality:

xx

5-10 Key Character Traits:

➥

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits, please!
Opt-Outs:

➥ shade ( lila )
➥ goblin ( abigail )

Roleplay Sample: