{application | empatheias}

[malignans]

WARNING: THIS APP CONTAINS MENTIONS OF CHILD ABUSE (PHYSICAL & EMOTIONAL), NEGLECT (PHYSICAL & EMOTIONAL), AND ALCOHOLISM!

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Crystal
Contact: maledictions
Age: 26
Current Characters: n/a


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Dio Brando
Age: ~120 years, but appears 20
Canon: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part III: Stardust Crusaders
Canon Point: Post-Stardust Crusaders ("Long Travels, Goodbye My Friend")

Background: Wiki

Personality:

If one were to try and summarize Dio in a single word, it would unquestionably be survivor. To call upon an old cliche, survivors often have their strength forged from fire and that's true for Dio as well. His ambition and everything else that he's been able to use in order to advance himself certainly came from what he faced as a child. But for Dio, he also possesses great deficits in his ability to empathize with and be kind towards others because of his early childhood experiences. It is unknown definitively when Dio discarded genuine kindness in favor of ruthlessness, but it seems likely that the process at least began with the death of his mother. Her death was not only the loss of the only person Dio ever cared about, it also left him alone with his abusive, neglectful, and alcoholic father. Naturally, Dio resented his father for the abuse and neglect, but he also blamed him for the death of his mother and their squalor living conditions. He resented him so much so that even after his death, Dio both hated him as well as any traits he recognized to be like his father that he noticed within himself such as his own relationship with alcohol. This resentment coupled with the seemingly unending nature of his situation gave birth to Dio's ambition and ruthlessness because of both implicit and explicit messages relayed to him by his father.

Dio learned quickly from his father that no one else was ever going to care for him after the death of his mother. Dio and Dio alone would have to meet even his most basic needs because the only thing his father could be relied upon for were physical and emotional abuse, and long periods of neglect. Dio's father also believed himself deserving of more than his lot in life, which is why he did anything and everything he could to try and advance himself. The problem was that Dio's father was impatient and wanted the immediate gratification. Dio, on the other hand, learned to possess a surprising amount of patience for his rewards. His time on the streets taught him that sometimes delaying the reward would actually increase the gains, and so, he planned and enacted a slow poisoning of his father by the age of twelve. By poisoning him slowly, it gave Dio the satisfaction of returning some of the abuse and neglect he suffered while also still giving him his freedom.

In addition to patience, it was on the streets/in his father's "care" that Dio learned the importance of wit and cunning. Although he certainly learned to be an efficient fighter and most likely picked up other unsavory skills, he came to realize that being intelligent made it ultimately less work. In other words, he learned the value of working smarter rather than harder. Coupling this with his father's implicit messages about material and social gains trumping the well-being of others, Dio grew increasingly ruthless. Through having to survive the abuse of his father as well as outwit others he was competing with on the streets, Dio became adept at reading other people in terms of their desires and weaknesses, and mastered the art of careful manipulation to produce his desired responses. The lessons of ambition and ruthlessness that his father passed along combined with Dio's strong will to survive is also what ultimately drove him to become a vampire rather than choosing to die upon arrest or while rotting in jail. While in the moment, desperation is what drove Dio to make that snap decision, it also fits with his overall pattern of seeking more for himself and not caring who has to pay the price for him to continue reaching those heights.

But Dio doesn't expose those pieces of his past to anyone. Nothing in the way he carries himself would give any indication that he'd ever experienced beatings, or that there had been nights when he went to bed without any food in his belly. What Dio projects instead is a charming, well-educated aristocrat who has grown up far away from the streets. And it's not entirely a lie because like most of Dio's lies, it omits and stretches the truth. Dio is exceptionally intelligent and clever as demonstrated by his ability to outwit adults at chess and his fondness for books. Dio was also taken in and raised by the aristocratic Joestar family as though he were related by blood from the age of twelve until around the age of twenty when he would become a vampire. But he grew upon the streets and in poverty, and the abuse he suffered shows greatly in his paranoia and possessive behaviors.

In terms of his paranoia, Dio does not trust anyone by default. While he uses his charm and carefully crafted image to seduce others (sometimes literally) into doing his bidding, he does not trust them to not betray him. As arrogant as he is, Dio obviously recognizes his own talents and capabilities for obtaining near-infinite power, and he's clever enough to mask, compensate, or control most of his weaknesses. But he knows that others are enticed by him because of their own ambitions. It stands to reason then that they will, indeed, eventually betray him. And yet, Dio cannot stand the idea of being alone. He cannot take the idea that people do not want him or his approval. So, while others may appear to be anywhere to loyal to even in love with Dio, he also controls them through fear both in terms of what he might do to them if they should betray him as well as the potential loss of his "friendship" and "kindness." There are only two known exceptions to this rule of isolated connectedness that Dio maintains and sparks his possessiveness. The first is Jonathan Joestar and the second is Father Enrico Pucci.

Jonathan and Dio grew up together, and during most of that time, Dio made Jonathan's life a living hell. He stole his friends, tried to steal/ruined Jonathan's relationship with his girl, killed his dog, and even tried to kill Jonathan's father. And those are just the things canon shows, but it's pretty heavily implied that Dio did everything he could to try and steal everything from Jonathan. In making Jonathan the thing to compare himself to, Dio came to elevate Jonathan almost as much as he denigrated him. And it is "thing" rather than "person" because a lot of Dio's initial beef with Jonathan really originated from simultaneously hating and coveting what Jonathan was rather than who he was. Who Jonathan was eventually earned Dio's (twisted) respect due to his tenacious bravery in standing up and fighting against (and nearly destroying) Dio even when all hope appears to be lost. Therefore, Dio felt that he was the only person who had the right to kill Jonathan and that Jonathan had the only body that was worthy of Dio taking to replace his old one when he, Dio, was a disembodied head. (There's also the fact that Jonathan still loved and respected Dio despite all of the hell Dio put him through, but Dio never acknowledges this, and it's likely if one attempted to confront him on it, he'd dismiss it as weak human sentimentality.) But this relationship still matters even one hundred years after Jonathan's death because in some ways, Dio still hasn't let their rivalry go. He still believes that unless he defeats and eradicates the whole Joestar bloodline, he has not achieved all that he possibly can.

That rivalry, however, was unique to Jonathan as Pucci had a different sort of bond with Dio. Pucci was someone that Dio lured in close because he needed a back-up plan in case the Joestars won. Like it was with the rest, it was easy for Dio to manipulate Pucci when he was in a vulnerable place to put all of his trust and faith in Dio over even God. (Yes. Yes, he did seduce a priest into heresy.) What was not so easy for Dio was maintaining his own trust in Pucci. However, given what he designed for Pucci to enact would only come to necessary upon his death, he more or less had to trust him. Dio was able to do something remarkable and actually build emotional closeness with Pucci to the point he felt calmer around him, but he never could quite resist the urge to test his loyalty and devotion because it just wasn't safe to leave things as they were. In other words, he let Pucci in genuinely as he likely didn't intend, but he could never fully discard his paranoia entirely.

Dio's relationships to Jonathan and Pucci both represent Dio's possessiveness given his need to isolate them down to their relationship with him (as well as his need to be important to each), but his true possessiveness is over power. Above all else, Dio desires nothing more than to rule over all, and he believes himself deserving of that responsibility because everyone else is a minor obstacle at best. Therefore, whoever he has to step on and destroy in his conquest for power matters little to him, even when it's his allies. Obviously it feeds into his previously mentioned paranoia as he is not wont to share his power with anyone, but it also feeds directly into Dio's greatest weakness: his anger.

It goes almost without saying that Dio's sense of entitlement comes with a heaping amount of arrogance. Dio believes himself impervious, and assumes it's a given that he will destroy Jotaro and end the Joestar bloodline. Even after the creation of a fail-safe with Pucci, he still believes that he's going to win because in his mind, he clearly has all of the power. But it's not really hubris that leaves Dio blind. Instead, whenever there's a challenge to his power — whether it's a verbal barb, a demonstration, or a direct attack — Dio loses complete and utter control over himself. Rather than acting like a contained, civilized aristocrat, he becomes near-savage in his response. He's impulsive and brutish, reacting with violence and with the sole intent of destroying the offending party. One would make the assumption that he's quite effective when that happens, and they're not entirely wrong. Dio's temper truly is equivalent to a bomb going off. The problem is that he becomes blind with his rage, and he misses obvious details that would serve as the difference between victory and defeat. Dio becomes a hurricane when he's angry, but he's easily directed towards his own destruction once his temper escapes his control.

So, as was stated in the beginning, Dio is a survivor. At an early age, he sacrificed his ability for genuine connections to other people in order to survive the abuse and neglect he experienced at the hands of his father and in poverty. From that, Dio's ambition and ruthlessness grew so that when opportunities such as the Joestar fortune or becoming a vampire (or Stand user) presented themselves to him, Dio didn't hesitate. He sees these things as natural and deserved ascensions on his part. Dio further divorces himself from what he once was by presenting the qualities he wishes in order to charm and manipulate others, but by manipulating others, he loses the ability to ever trust them. He's then forced to rely upon his own power and cunning, which he believes to be superior to all others. But any challenges to that belief and he ultimately falls prey to his own anger due to creating more blind spots than he knows how to manage.

Abilities:

I have written a brief summary here, but you can read more details information on the wiki about Stands, The World, Jonathan's Stand, and vampires.

I have a couple modifications as far as his vampirism is concerned to make him easier to play. The first is that Dio will no longer require blood consumption for nourishment. If he wants to kick his accelerated healing up a notch, he'll still need to consume blood, but for his day-to-day, he can be satisfied by eating regular food. The second modification is that instead of burning up in the sunlight, Dio gets nasty sunburns easily in direct sunlight. In addition, exposure to direct sunlight weakens him down closer to a baseline human being over time. The longer he's exposed, the weaker he gets. However, if he stays in the shade, he'll be fine with no burning and maintaining his super abilities.

I think it's also important to mention that with regard to his flesh bud/hypnosis abilities, that's not something that I'll just spring on people if it ever comes into play, but I'll also have an opt-out for it on his permissions.

Alignment:

Sosyne. Dio has the potential to be an unstoppable force except for one thing: his trademark, uncontrollable temper. And even he realizes that because, you know, twelve years old and he says to himself, "Boy, I should really learn control my temper." Except even with over a century to get it together, he doesn't. At all.

Other:

As with the issue of mind control, I plan on having an overall/general opt-out given some of the nature of Dio's past. It will allow players to either avoid those subjects or avoid playing with Dio altogether (if that's easier for the player!) with no questions asked as I know some of them can certainly be triggering for folks.

⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample: Here!


Questions: None!