application ( the last voyages )

[superstringtheory]

User Name/Nick: Anne
User DW: trustme_imthe
AIM/IM: N/A; porphyrogene
E-mail: tavrosno@gmail.com
Other Characters: Cassel Sharpe, Mello, Roderick



Character Name: Jolyne Cujoh
Series: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure ( Part VI: Stone Ocean )
Age: 19
From When?: Chapter 155, just after her death and universe reset

Inmate/Warden:

Warden. Jolyne is admittedly not the straightest arrow in the quiver or anything. She was a juvenile delinquent, stealing a motorcycle at the tender age of fourteen, and joining a carjacking gang as soon as she got out of juvie. She's also pretty ruthless for someone who's ostensibly the hero of the piece, as exemplified when she kills the mess out of the lawyer who double-crossed her and got her thrown in prison, even though it bought her nothing, tactically-speaking. Even so, she's a deeply principled person with a pretty good understanding of her own strengths and weaknesses, someone who in recent months has been through a crash course in leadership and role modeling on her quest to save her father (and, of course, the world). She understands instinctively how to tailor her attentions to different people based on their needs and personality types, and, despite the fact that she's obviously very rough around the edges, she's also a very nurturing person with a drive to push people to be their best selves.

Item: A nonfunctional replica of her father's disc containing Star Platinum, hung on a string around her neck.

Abilities/Powers:

Jolyne is a Stand user! What the hell is a Stand user? That's a great question, because a lot of times it seems like the series itself has no idea. Described variously as a manifestation of one's psyche or as one's fighting spirit, a Stand is basically a big (sentient-ish, sometimes) ghost thing that has special powers and punches stuff. You can be born with a Stand, develop it later in life, or, if your dad's a fucking asshole, get poked with a magic arrow and develop one mysteriously with no explanation even though he could totally tell you what's going on, but no, that would be too easy. Thanks, Jotaro.

Anyway. Jolyne's Stand is called Stone Free. She named it this, because she is a huge nerd. Basically what Stone Free does, besides wear sunglasses indoors, is allow Jolyne to turn into string - which sounds like a garbage power until you remember that Joestars are genetically weirdly creative people, and Jolyne is completely capable of using her stupid string power to fuck people up six ways from Sunday. She can unravel 70% of her body and reach up to 24 meters away from her body with her weird body horror string, which means she can set traps, ball herself up really small and climb into people's mouths, hang from the ceiling like Spider-Man, play cat's cradle with herself, et cetera.

Other weird shit Stone Free can do: stitch up wounds, enable Jolyne to hear conversations at a long distance, and turn her into a möbius strip (this is actually tactically advantageous at one point, I shit you not). Finally, of course, her punchghost is good at punching. According to the wiki linked above, "When Stone Free's string is completely wound or compacted . . . the destructive force of its punch is roughly equivalent to that exerted by a small, extremely fast meteor." So, in layman's terms, it punches really fucking hard.

Personality:

Jolyne Cujoh is metal as fuck.

Which is not a good personality section, but functions as a decent thesis statement. A better one might be: Jolyne Cujoh ends up metal as fuck, in the finest tradition of protagonists in this canon, but as is similarly typical, she starts out a hot mess. Her very first appearance in Stone Ocean is her showing a somewhat depressing amount of surprise at being caught masturbating by a guard in her incredibly-public prison cell. This is pretty indicative of her initial immaturity overall. She's shown to be bad at making independent decisions, hugely naive (especially with men), and volatile when upset, with a tendency to act out in a criminal capacity despite her basically moral tendencies.

This immaturity never completely goes away. Big damn hero or not, the fact remains that Jolyne is nineteen and sometimes nineteen-year-old levels of ridiculous. Like pretty much every Joestar or descendant thereof, but especially her great-grandfather Joseph and her father Jotaro, she elevates bullshittery to a fine art. She has a tendency to horse around with her friends, especially Hermes and FF, and postures a good bit when she's comfortable in her surroundings, using masculine or "macho" language rather than feminine. She tends to yell a lot and is very expressive and exuberant. She also displays a tendency to use misogynistic and homophobic language without apparent thought to the consequences. What's unclear about these and other almost frat boy-esque qualities is whether they're simple acting out, a result of her time in a motorcycle gang as a young teenager, or a survival mechanism for life in a co-ed and essentially lawless prison run by an insane priest who's trying to end the world. Safe bet is on all of the above.

Jolyne's more subtle traits become clear much more slowly throughout the course of canon. The first to pop up is another Joestar favorite. Remember the fine art of bullshittery? Well, extend that a little further and you get Jolyne's astonishing talent for improvisation. She is almost defiantly not book smart, but she's got a Macgyver-esque ability to pull any kind of ridiculous bullshit together in the spur of the moment in order to solve a problem. Combined with both the swagger of Joseph and the stoicism of Jotaro, she's a ridiculously competent problem-solver and a serious opponent in a fight, despite her relatively weak Stand. She even sets herself on fire one time as a battle strategy. Like literally every other Jojo. Ever.

Where she differs a little from other members of the bloodline is in how far she's willing to carry her trust. A tendency to make allies and friends quickly, especially in the heat of battle, is a trademark of series protagonists, but Jolyne takes her faith in near-strangers almost too far, sometimes to the point of open manipulation. An excellent example of this is when she and Hermes first encounter FF and have to fight her in order to retrieve a plot-important artifact. It's down to the wire, Jolyne is gravely injured, and she has to put the burden of dangerous action on Hermes's shoulders; however, Hermes isn't willing to put Jolyne's life on the line, worried about Jolyne's safety and her own possibility of failure. That doesn't stop Jolyne, though - she forces Hermes's hand by starting the play, while yelling over her shoulder that it's the "only way". It all turns out more or less fine in the end - nobody dies, Hermes learns to trust Jolyne's judgment implicitly, FF becomes an ally - but that doesn't change the fact that it was a damn manipulative move, whether or not it was interpreted as such.

In a similar vein, Jolyne can be remarkably ruthless for a girl who's so ~zany on the surface. There are countless examples of this, but a few in particular stand out. The first one pops up in the first few chapters. One of Jolyne's first priorities after discovering her Stand powers is to get rid of the corrupt lawyer who set up her frame job, conviction, and imprisonment to fifteen years. Keep in mind that "get rid of" does not, in this case, mean disable, humiliate, or in any way leave alive. No, Jolyne straight up kills him in cold blood, and while this isn't a wholly terrible act because the guy is very clearly a massive criminal dick, it's also not a completely above-board move. Similarly, when Jolyne and her crew escape from prison, they make a beeline for Romeo Jisso, Jolyne's ex-boyfriend and another party culpable for her false imprisonment. Jolyne's concern seems to be that he won't give anything away to the cops when they find out that she's escaped - but even after she hears him lie to the police and tell them that she's crossing the border into Mexico, she rips out his tongue anyway. You know. Just in case.

This tendency towards ruthlessness doesn't only manifest as random acts of violent revenge, though. In fact, it tends to be a positive survival trait the vast majority of the time. Just like her father, she's almost supernaturally cool under pressure. Everybody else freaks out; it's Jolyne's role to be the chill in the party. It's also notable that this tendency doesn't emerge until after she's seen her father fight; despite her largely negative feelings towards him, she seems to take his attitude in crisis as an example and is very eager to imitate and perfect it. Further, as briefly mentioned above (and as is also depressingly typical of this bloodline, because self-sacrifice appears to be genetic), Jolyne is willing to take huge risks, especially with her own safety. A great example of this is when she's fighting Pucci and he turns her fingers inside-out. It is super gross, and Emporio is screaming bloody murder over this, like a normal person, but Jolyne just looks at him and calmly reassures: "Don't panic, Emporio. If I start turning inside-out when he hits me, then I'll just let him hit me again so I can flip myself back." No big deal?

Jolyne's compassion comes into the spotlight a little more slowly. Because of the frantic nature of her time in Green Dolphin Street Prison, during which she's almost constantly under enemy attack, it takes her a while to really come into herself as a caring leader, but she does get there, and when she does, she's absolutely spectacular. She seems to instinctively understand how to approach each person, tailoring interactions to fit their needs. Appropriately enough, the first really obvious compassion moment is at the tail end of the conflict with FF; Hermes urges Jolyne to let FF die, but instead Jolyne saves her, because she believes this former enemy deserves a second chance. From that moment on, FF is loyal to Jolyne and Hermes above all and eventually gives her life to protect them. Another example can be found in Jolyne's relationship to her friend named (I shit you not) Weather Report. Weather is somehow simultaneously annoyingly mysterious and obnoxiously rude, and that's before his (legitimately) tragic backstory is revealed and he gets his memory back, after which he turns into a bitter, murder-suicidal asshole. However, Jolyne never judges him. Not once. She loves him like family, tries desperately to save him, refuses to believe he's dead, and grieves him as well as she possibly can in the limited time available to her. She's able to separate his actions from his character, which is honestly a remarkable amount of development when you consider where she started at the beginning of the series.

Maybe most significant to Jolyne's character, though, is the way she treats Emporio. A little background is necessary here: Emporio Alniño is trapped in Green Dolphin Street Prison just like Jolyne is - except he's an eleven-year-old boy whose mother bore him in prison and then was probably killed by Pucci. He's timid and slow to action, literally living in the walls of GDSP; his entire life until he meets Jolyne has been hiding like a fugitive. Now you might not expect Jolyne to be a terrifically nurturing person, given Bad Dad Jotaro Kujo (trust me: I'll get there), but she did have one quite functional parent: her mother, who was always there, always forgiving, maybe sometimes a little too lenient but overall did the best she could. It's her mother that Jolyne takes after in this case, because although it does take her a while, she does eventually take on a very maternal and protective role towards Emporio. In contrast to her infrequent non-horseplay-related physical touch with the adults in her life, she's remarkably gentle with Emporio, even hugging him a time or two. In the end, when it comes down to the wire, she not only dies to protect him, but gives him the confidence and the power to ultimately destroy Pucci. If we're continuing the extant motif, Emporio came to her a caterpillar and emerged from her arms a butterfly, ready and willing to flap his wings and start a big damn storm.

And so here we are with Jolyne Cujoh, the little girl who turned into a big damn hero in the space of a rough few months on Araki's wild ride. How she got there, though, her journey, that's the skeleton of Jolyne; everything else is just muscle and skin. She didn't get where she is because of Pucci - fuck that guy - or because of her friends - although they're great. No, her motivation has always been centered around one person: her father, Jotaro Kujo.

The fact is that Jolyne started out an incredibly, dysfunctionally insecure person, and the responsibility for that rests squarely on her father's shoulders. He was never a consistent figure in her life or her mother's; he traveled often for school and then work, sometimes being away for months at a time. He literally wouldn't talk to her desperate mother when Jolyne stole a car and ended up in jail at fourteen. After her parents divorced, Jolyne didn't see Jotaro for years. The end result of all of this was a combo platter of resentment towards Jotaro and an extreme craving for his affection, which led her to do some magnificently stupid shit - acting out, committing grand theft auto, joining a motorcycle gang, dating Romeo . . . you get the picture.

Her resentment continues through Jotaro's attempt to break her out of prison but comes to an abrupt, screeching halt when Jotaro sacrifices his soul and Stand to save her. That action doesn't fit at all with her perception of him as an uncaring father, and it throws her so much that she's forced to reevaluate her outlook very quickly. The decision she ultimately makes is to follow the purpose that's been handed to her by, well, probably destiny: to save her father's soul, punch a priest, and save the world. This is the catalyst for her growth into a clever and compassionate leader, and so, paradoxically, without Jotaro she would neither have been insecure nor pushed to greatness. Probably she'd have rather had a normal childhood with a dad who went to school plays and shit, but you know, this is okay too.

It takes a long, long time and a lot of work, and honestly her insecurity will never completely go away, but she does get to a place by the end of Stone Ocean where she's capable of trusting Jotaro again. After his soul is restored and in a moment of extreme crisis, she calls out to him with complete certainty that he'll come for her. If they'd both lived, if they'd been victorious, it would have been possible, albeit difficult, for them to start building a healthy relationship. Unfortunately . . . well, things happen. You know how it is.

A final note: as is probably obvious by now, this canon is in very large part a story about legacy, about blood, about the power of family and fate. Jolyne's story is a little more narrowly focused than that, though. The Joestar legacy is important in that it drives the story, every action in Stone Ocean built on actions enacted by Jolyne's predecessors in previous arcs, and in how the trauma of the legacy informs Jotaro's actions. However, Jolyne is, at least to some extent, more a Cujoh than a Joestar. She's driven to protect her father; she's driven to protect her friends, her found prison family. Her conception of belonging and togetherness is not traditional, but cobbled together from the people who are willing and able to put their trust in her and earn her trust back. Family is flexible. What she wants more than anything is to be loved, to belong, and to protect her people.

Also to kick some ass. Because like I said: she's metal as fuck.

Barge Reactions:

Honestly, the Barge itself is not going to be that big of a problem for Jolyne. In the finest traditions of her canon, she is absurdly used to weird-ass supernatural bullshit. The only two things that might throw her a little are people from a far-distant future and aliens. Otherwise it's kind of, you know, whatever.

She will be pretty curious about floods, ports, and breaches especially! She has experience with at least the theory of alternate universes, as well as kind of a morbid curiosity about them, so there's a decent chance that she'll be thoughtful rather than fucked up about most alternate-self-type experiences.

What will give her trouble is adjusting to what might very loosely be termed a normal life again. Her life has always been kind of a shitshow, but the last few months have been especially, uh, bizarre, a long drawn-out fight against a really crafty enemy that ultimately ended in a truly devastating loss. She's gonna be carrying around a fuckton of trauma and guilt and confusion and guilt and also, incidentally, some guilt, and trying to deal with the part of Barge life that is essentially a prison sitcom will be. Weird. Very weird. She's probably going to be hypervigilant for a while. She is also probably going to come off as an inmate for a while. Like, it's gonna be kind of a mess. But she'll adapt. That's what Joestars do, okay.

Deal: Jolyne's deal will be to keep Pucci from resetting the universe and effectively killing everyone on Earth by doing so. Subsequent deals will probably be for the Admiral to punch Pucci in the face a thousand times.

History: enjoy the ridiculous nonsense that is this canon sorry dudes

Sample Journal Entry: ARE THE MUFFINS A STAND & the pros + cons of dolphin fucking

Sample RP:

Okay, so: Jolyne has determined that there are no alligators in the pool.

Which is a good thing. She's collecting good things. It seems like the kind of crap to do on the first day in a new job, focus on the positive. Not that she has a ton of experience, but trying to make the best of something kind of overwhelming - that's what normal people do. Right? Probably.

She's less weirded out than she thought she'd be, overall. Sure there's some wacky bullshit going on, and she's already had to break up one fistfight in the hallway, but honestly that's not any different from Green Dolphin (which she has to struggle really hard not to think of as home) and at least this time she actually has the authority to do something about it.

Although, wait, no. Having the authority to do something about it is not a good thing. It's a weird thing. She's not going to collect that one.

No, instead she's going to go up on the deck, which is at one and the same time the most and least normal part of this whole place. Most because it looks kind of like it's got a sky if you squint at it funny instead of just being a bunch of boxes stuck in a boat, less because if you don't squint it's very obviously Literally Space, and that's not too weird but it's edging pretty close.

So she just doesn't look. Instead, she immediately starts up the grand tradition of fucking around like an idiot with superpowers. When she lets out a jet of string from the tips of her fingers to cling to the railing, it's necessary to focus on the fore- rather than the background - that is, the wood rather than the endless void of stars - and besides, this is something she knows how to do. Something she's confident in.

It's totally gonna be fine. Totally absolutely positively fine. What's the worst that could happen?

Probably somebody on deck having a heart attack, she considers dispassionately, and hops over the rail to swing overboard and jet along the outside of the ship, her toes dangling in the empty air above the vacuum of everything-ness. Whatever. What's Stone Free for if not being Spider-Man? Besides, it makes her feel kind of alive.

Hilarious.

Special Notes: Because this section of canon is fucked up even for jojos, I will be putting up a permissions post with an opt-out for discussion of body horror, incest, statutory rape, and racism (including lynching and some really egregious tragic mulatto bullshit).