Josuke Higashikata

PLAYER INFORMATION

NAME: Eric
CONTACT: overbringer
OTHER CHARACTER(S) IN GAME: Kohaku Yuhara, Bai Lin

CANON INFORMATION

CHARACTER NAME: Josuke Higashikata
CANON: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable
HISTORY: JJBA Wiki on Diamond is Unbreakable and JJBA Wiki on Josuke himself

STRENGTHS: Charismatic - Aside from being described as good looking, Josuke is just generally pretty likeable, which is especially impressive considering how much of a mess the rest of his family is. He's friendly and personable and described as popular with his classmates. Jotaro "Flighty broads piss me off" Kujo is ALSO described as popular with his classmates, but with Josuke it's actually believable.
Fearless - When things get scary, a switch flips in Josuke head and he essentially turns hard as steel. He rarely gives in to panic and keeps a cool head no matter how much it seems like he's in over his head. Even when greviously injured, he keeps on thinking quickly and clearly.
Clever - I wouldn't call Josuke SMART or WISE, but he is observant and quick thinking and while he often makes stupid mistakes, he is good a pulling a technically functional plan out of his ass at the last moment, whether that's trapping an electric themed stand in a rubber tire or immitating a ghost's voice to guide a remote control bomb away from him. Josuke may not always come up with a GOOD plan, but he will come up with SOMETHING to do, at least.
FLAWS: Vain - Josuke takes a great deal of pride in his personal appearance. He buys designer clothes, he spends a lot of time styling his hair, and probably buys lots of expensive soaps. He worries a lot about how he looks and complains loudly when he has to compromise his looks for practicality. And he will beat the shit out of anyone who makes fun of his hair.
Short tempered - Most of the Joestars have fairly explosive tempers, and Josuke is no exception. The thing that sets him apart is that while his temper flare ups are common, they're also short lived. He'll yell at you over some petty argument, but then it only takes a minute or two for him to get it out of his system and calm down. It's hard to actually earn Josuke's long term enmity (unless you diss the hair), but it's also NOT hard to get him to explode in your face.
Bottles shit up - Josuke does NOT like to talk about his own problems beyond the most superficial levels. He will complain about not having enough money, or go on the record as saying that yes serial killers are in fact bad, but most of his hopes and dreams he keeps to himself, to an almost compulsive level. One of the biggest characterization moments we get of Josuke is when we find out WHY he gets so angry when people insult his hair, and we don't even get the story straight from him. We get it from one of his friends who heard it somewhere, because god forbid Josuke himself ever share his own thought processes. He is obsessed with trying to seem like he has no hidden depths despite obviously having them.

CANON ABILITIES: Josuke is a Stand User. A Stand is a manifestation of the user's will, ego, and psychic power, and (usually) takes the form of some manner of humanoid figure that can emerge from the user's body to act on their behalf. They usually have bizarre and powerful abilities. As a general rule, the more powerful a Stand is, the closer it has to stay to its master. Any damage dealt to the Stand is dealt to its owner as well, and vice versa. Stands are invisible to anyone who isn't a stand user themself. The final property of stands is that stand users tend to be subconsciously drawn to each other. If there are two stand users in a city of thousands, they are fated to cross paths even if they have nothing to do with each other.

Josuke's stand in particular is called Crazy Diamond. It is a very powerful stand, but as such can only interact with things within about two meters of Josuke himself. Within that radius, however, it can move with lightning speed and punch down walls or shatter stone with little difficulty. It's main power, however, is restoration. Crazy Diamond can repair damage dealt to anything it can touch as long as the damage was recent. There are only two main limitations to this: It cannot repair damage to Josuke himself, and while it can repair the bodies of dead people, it can't bring them back to life; their corpse is returned to mint condition, but it remains dead. If Josuke so wishes, Crazy Diamond can restore things improperly, resulting in distortions in the final product (in his opening scene, Josuke breaks a guy's nose, then repairs it wrong so it looks weird.)

AU INFORMATION

AU CHARACTER NAME: Josuke Higashikata
AGE: 26
GRADE: Grad Student
AU BACKSTORY: Starts out more or less the same as canon
- Josuke's mother had an affair with Joseph Joestar, a wealthy real estate agent from America, despite being WAAAAAY younger than him. He grew up not knowing who his father was.
- Josuke got very sick at age 4, and almost died. His mother only was able to get him to the hospital because of the help of some random street punk with a pompadour who clearly had his own shit going on but decided to help out even so.
- Josuke was touched by the guy's willingness to help out a total stranger, and started wearing his hair in a pompadour as a symbol of his own willingness to help others in a bind.
- Shortly after, Josuke first started manifesting his Stand, a kind of familiar common in his family.
- In his mid teens, Josuke was involved with a hunt for a serial killer in his home town which resulted in the death of his grandfather. He also learned about his father and the rest of his side of the family from his nephew Jotaro Kujo (who is twelve years older than him because Joseph is gross.).
- During the serieal killer incident, Josuke got his hands on a winning lottery ticket and ended up getting 5,000,000 yen (~$50,000) that he split three ways with two friends who had been involved, so he has a nice little nest egg.

That's where Diamond is Unbreakable ends, and also where I start making stuff up for the AU:

- Josuke went on to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and went to police academy himself, after graduating high school. His experience with the supernatural ended up with him on a very short list for the Japanese Government's Supernatural Advisory Unit. There he was perpetually underfunded and no one listened to him or his peers until the Herald Xelvak arrived and KILLED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE, forcing the UN to acknowledge that they didn't know what they were doing.
- A bunch of member nations sent agents to Daybreak Academy to study from the people who had actually defeated the Herald, so as to hopefully avoid this tragedy repeating itself. Josuke was sent with them as someone who already sort of knew his way around this stuff to be a guide of sorts and make sure they didn't get in trouble. This whole plan probably won't amount to much, but at the very least, the people the government ignores will at least be better informed.

AU PERSONALITY DEVIATION: Josuke's early life is shockingly similar to his OU's counterpart. But this version is several years older (to make the ages still line up right since Jolyne is apparently 19 now.). As such, he's gained a modicum of maturity and experience that his canon self didn't have. He's still kind of a goofball, though.

RACE: Human
SECRET SOCIETY: Speedwagon Foundation. Josuke's entire family has close ties to this organization based out of the United States, which is known for supplying a lot of hunter guilds with the equipment necessary for hunting their prey, and for doing scientific research on various monsters. They're generally pretty well regarded in Earth's supernatural community, unless you're a monster that preys on humans.

POWERS: Josuke is a candle who can summon a special kind of familiar called a Stand.

Josuke's stand in particular is called Crazy Diamond. It is a very powerful stand, but as such can only interact with things within about two meters of Josuke himself. Within that radius, however, it can move with lightning speed and punch down walls or shatter stone with little difficulty. It's main power, however, is restoration. Crazy Diamond can repair damage dealt to anything it can touch as long as the damage was recent. There are only two main limitations to this: It cannot repair damage to Josuke himself, and while it can repair the bodies of dead people, it can't bring them back to life; their corpse is returned to mint condition, but it remains dead. If Josuke so wishes, Crazy Diamond can restore things improperly, resulting in distortions in the final product (in his opening scene, Josuke breaks a guy's nose, then repairs it wrong so it looks weird.)

They are, essentially, identical to canon save that they aren't invisible to non-stand users.

HOUSING: I feel like Josuke would have arranged for off-campus housing in an apartment in Soleil somewhere. He doesn't want a roommate because that kind of cramped living would cramp his style and also he's a grownup with a job.

INTERVIEW SAMPLE PROMPT
(The following scenario is available to all characters who are apping in and is considered canon - all returning graduates are assessed by staff members to catch up on their lives and to assess whether they’re suited to work at the academy.)

1. TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES SINCE GRADUATING.
It hasn't been great, I'll tell you. Sure I got a job and all but we're the laughing stock of the police force. "Supernatural Advisory Unit?" No one takes us seriously at all! If anything good is gonna come out of the whole mess in Perth, it's that maybe we'll get a little funding now.

2. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO RETURN TO DAYBREAK ACADEMY?
I never went here to begin with, you know. I just picked this stuff up over the years. SPW helped.

I guess I'm here because you guys were the ones that killed the Herald while the UN did fuck all. To make sure we're not as unprepared next time something like this happens.

Also I heard you guys have my niece here.

[LIE, sort of. Jolyne is his grandniece despite only being a few years younger than him due to a confusing family tree.]

3. WHAT KIND OF TASKS DO YOU WANT OR EXPECT TO DO HERE?
I came here with a bunch of guys who want to learn about the supernatural but only like half of them actually KNOW anything about it? I guess it's my job to make sure they don't get eaten by daemons or something. Like the UN didn't trust you guys to do it.

Nothing personal. Just doing my job.

5. WOULD YOU BE COMFORTABLE WITH MENTORING CURRENT STUDENTS OR ACTING IN AN ADVISORY ROLE?
Me in a teaching role!? No no no no no I wouldn't be comfortable with that at all! I guess maybe if the student was cute? No forget I said that, that would but super skeevy.

Yeah, I think I'd be a TERRIBLE choice of a mentor. Best to leave that to the professionals

6. WHAT, IN YOUR OPINION, IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR A SCHOOL TO PROVIDE TO ITS STUDENTS?
Chances to have fun! Like sure everyone should learn stuff but you're only a teenager once. You gotta make the most of it! Go on dates! Get in fights! Pull all nighters! Doing stupid shit like that is just as important to growing up as studying for tests and being a diligent student, you know.

8. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE STUDENTS WHO ARE STRUGGLING OR DEPRESSED?
Lotta pressure there! God, uh...

I'd probably try to distract them and make them forget they were depressed for a while, you know? There's lots of fun stuff out there that you can do, so there's no need to be depressed!

Unless they're struggling because they're TOO distracted. Man this is harder than I thought!

10. WHAT, IN YOUR OPINION, IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WERE TAUGHT BEFORE YOU GRADUATED?
As much as he's a stick in the mud, it was Jotaro Kujo who taught me a lot about dealing with big problems. If you're going to do something you can't half-ass it, you gotta put ALL your guts on the line and face it head on! Pussy footing around when you're not sure if you're gonna do something just makes you look indecisive and makes people think they can't rely on you.

13. DESCRIBE ONE OF THE NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES YOU HAD AFTER GRADUATION.
The absolute worse thing that happened to me was in police academy when they made me get a haircut. Fortunately I've been able to grow it out again since then.

14. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS YOUR GREATEST STRENGTH? IS IT DIFFERENT TO WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS AS A STUDENT?
I've always kept cool under pressure. What's the point of getting scared just because you're up against tough odds?

16. ONE OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF ACADEMY FACULTY IS PROTECTING STUDENTS FROM THAT WHICH MIGHT DO THEM HARM. THIS APPLIES TO GRADUATES AND ASSISTANTS AS WELL. TELL US HOW EQUIPPED YOU ARE TO DO THIS.
I'm a Stand User! Doesn't it say that in your file? Crazy Diamond is the best! It can shatter any defense, fix any wound, and deflect any attack! As long as I'm around, I guarantee you everyone will come out okay.

17. WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE TO PROTECT CURRENT STUDENTS?
I'm not the kind of guy who makes the heroic sacrifice. I'm the kind who figures out a way to get everyone through!

But I guess I might give up an arm or something if I REALLY needed to? It's not like it'd effect me too much when I have a stand.

OOC Information

Player name: Eric
Player age and gender: 34, he/his
Player Contact: overbringer Discord: Overbringer#2743
Any other characters in game? Bai Lin

[THIS IS THE END OF YOUR FIRST COMMENT. EVERYTHING AFTER THIS GOES IN REPLIES TO THE FIRST COMMENT.]

IC Information

Character name: Josuke Higashikata
Character canon: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable
Canon point: Post-canon. 1999, December 31, 11:59pm
Physical Description: POSE.

Josuke is a Japanese teenager (though genetically, his father's side of the family is British.). He stands six feet tall (185cm) and has a beefy build on top of that. The only reason he doesn't look like a goddamn giant is that he's in the same series as Jotaro Kujo who is even taller. He favors high quality and fashionable clothes, and always styles his hair into an elaborate pompadour.
About the Character: Josuke Higashikata has a bizarre family. He is the illegitimate child of Tomoko Higashikata, an ordinary woman from Japan, and Joseph Joestar, a wealthy globe trotting adventurer (notably some 40 years older than Tomoko, which is kinda gross but life does that kind of thing sometimes). Josuke grew up with his mother in the town of Morioh, Japan, knowing nothing about his father save that his mother still loved him and that he had walked out on her. The Joestar family still heavily influenced his childhood, though. When Josuke was four years old, Joseph and his allies did battle with a powerful vampire in Egypt named DIO. Though Josuke was far too young to be part of this battle, he did get deeply sick as a side effect of it all (All the Joestars who weren't strong enough started getting sick, and Josuke was a toddler so...). For several weeks, no one was sure if he would live or die. When he got really bad, Tomoko decided that even though there was a blizzard going on, she was going to drive her son to the damn hospital.

This was a formative moment for the young Josuke. When they were half way there, her car got stuck on an empty stretch of country road. They were in severe danger of freezing to death, and were only saved by the sudden arrival of some random street punk. Josuke was in a daze from his fever, but he remembered two things about the guy: He was willing to help a pair of total strangers despite apparently being stuck in the middle of a blizzard as well, and he had a huge pompadour. Josuke decided that he wanted to be someone like that, someone who would help others in need regardless of his own problems.

DIO was defeated, and Josuke recovered, but he was very different afterwards. Josuke sort of modeled himself after his unknown hero, most notably by styling his hair in an identical pompadour. That pompadour was the symbol to him of the kind of man he wanted to be, and so from that day forwards anyone who insulted his kind of silly looking hair was insulting his entire way of life. Insulting Josuke's pompadour is a sure way to earn his explosive wrath. Though it isn't directly stated, I think, it's implied that this is also when Josuke started learning to control his stand, Crazy Diamond. Regarless of when that happened, Josuke was fully proficient with it by the time he was sixteen, which is when the bulk of the story takes place.

On the way to his first day of High School, Josuke met Jotaro Kujo, who introduced himself as Joseph's grandson, technically making him Josuke's nephew despite being older than him by twelve years. Jotaro explained that Josuke was one of the heirs of the Joestar fortune, much to the consternation of the rest of the family. He also revealed that he was another stand user, and that he had reason to believe that more were in town, some of them with evil intent.

The next few weeks were a whirlwind of strange encounters, as the stand users of all sorts started entering Josuke's life. Some of them were friendly, some of them were dangerous, some of them were just unrelated bystanders who had their own things going on. A few were more significant than others. Koichi Hirose and Okuyasu Nijimura were two of Josuke's classmates who became his friends and helped him out. Rohan Kisuke, a manga artist who lived in the area, became and ally of sorts but he and Josuke hated each other's guts so they avoided each other whenever they could. The elderly Joseph Joestar even arrived to help hunt down some particularly dangerous stand users.

The most dangerous of them all was Yoshikage Kira. On the surface he was an unremarkable accountant who had no outstanding strengths or flaws. Utterly ordinary, mundane, and boring. In secret, he was a serial killer with an obsession with hands who had been hunting women around Morioh for the last fifteen years. It was only luck that let Josuke and his friends stumble upon Kira's trail. What followed was a desperate hunt to find and catch Kira before he killed anyone else, the culminated in a stand battle between him and Josuke in an abandoned house (Kira's stand, Killer Queen, was a thematic opposite of Josuke's. Crazy Diamond could repair anything it touched, Killer Queen could cause anything it touched to self destruct like a bomb.), which ended in Kira's defeat and accidental death.

With justice delivered to a seriously creepy and dangerous dude, Josuke was able to continue is ordinary life and Morioh was able to recover from the terrible things that had been happening there.

Josuke is quite clever, though you might not guess it if you met him casually. He's not necessarily SMART, but he is quick thinking and not given to panicking under pressure. Even if he puts it towards small scale ambitions, Josuke can usually come up with a plan to get what he wants. Someone who knew of stands and the constant life and death battles Josuke had been taking place in might be surprised at how normal he seems. Josuke spends his free time worrying about the kind of things you'd expect a teenager to worry about: looking cool, getting spending money, getting a girlfriend, maintaining a cool reputation, getting free food. Small things that we've all worried about at some point or another. He argues with his mom about homework and video games and generally doesn't seem to have any grand ambitions or larger than life qualities. He just wants to kick back and have fun. He keeps his supernatural abilities secret not because of some grand conspiracy as because it would probably be a pain if everyone knew about them.

When something serious is going on, though, a switch flips in his head and he becomes laser focused on tactics and survival. His quick thinking turns from schemes to scam a free lunch to schemes to stay alive. He is perfectly willing to let himself and other around him get injured if he judges it the only way to get everyone out the other side alive, putting up with pain with stoic determination. The fact that his powers let him heal others mean that he's especially cavalier about letting his friends get injured, since he can just put them back together the as soon as he has a few moments to catch his breath and focus. He's a bit more cautious about letting himself get injured. That's not selfishiness, though, that's practicality. Crazy Diamond's healing abilities don't work on himself, after all. If he dies or gets to badly injured to do anything, he can't heal anyone else.

He's consistently shown to be kind of squeamish and forgetful. He finds reptiles, bugs, and other creepy crawlies unnerving and does his best to avoid touching them, he's very fastidious about keeping his clothes clean, and it's a bit of a running gag for people with injuries to have to remind him that they need healing.

Character abilities: Josuke is a Stand User. A Stand is a manifestation of the user's will, ego, and psychic power, and (usually) takes the form of some manner of humanoid figure that can emerge from the user's body to act on their behalf. They usually have bizarre and powerful abilities. As a general rule, the more powerful a Stand is, the closer it has to stay to its master. Any damage dealt to the Stand is dealt to its owner as well, and vice versa. In canon only stand users can see other stands, but for RP purposes I'm going to say anyone who can see ghosts or otherwise has a general spiritual sensitivity will be able to see stands just fine. The final property of stands is that stand users tend to be subconsciously drawn to each other. If there are two stand users in a city of thousands, they are fated to cross paths even if they have nothing to do with each other.

Josuke's stand in particular is called Crazy Diamond. It is a very powerful stand, but as such can only interact with things within about two meters of Josuke himself. Within that radius, however, it can move with lightning speed and punch down walls or shatter stone with little difficulty. It's main power, however, is restoration. Crazy Diamond can repair damage dealt to anything it can touch as long as the damage was recent. There are only two main limitations to this: It cannot repair damage to Josuke himself, and while it can repair the bodies of dead people, it can't bring them back to life; their corpse is returned to mint condition, but it remains dead. If Josuke so wishes, Crazy Diamond can restore things improperly, resulting in distortions in the final product (in his opening scene, Josuke breaks a guy's nose, then repairs it wrong so it looks weird.)
Inventory: The clothes on his back (fancy school uniform). Wallet. Nothing else.

Samples: TDM toplevel