#dawg im mourning it years later still

[cassyapper]

bless you @bisexyofficial

i’ll put a cut so ppl who dont wanna see it dont have to wade through my ramblings but

jonathan joestar’s whole life was a tragedy nd im tired of pretending it’s not

tw suicide btw

i have been thinking abt this for so long and i only recently figured out how to word it so let’s go

first things first;;; he’s in a carriage accident as a child, in which his mother dies while protecting him from the brunt of impact. i have no doubt in my MIND george kinda blames jonathan for his wife’s death because of this (ill get back to why i think so in a minute). but even if george didn’t, it seems like it’s in jonathan’s nature to blame himself as well

i think that’s why he tries so hard to be the hero (for example, when he steps in to help erina even though he was no match at all for the bullies). he wants to pay it forward if you will; he thinks he’s living on borrowed time, and he doesn’t want to carry that debt longer than he must, which in this case would mean...dying for the good of someone else asap. not good!

so frankly already i think he was never in the best place mentally but he was like okay relative to how bad it would get.

but then dio ~the invader~

dio comes in with the life mission of making jonathan so miserable he kills himself so that he can have all the joestar inheritance. jonathan no doubt picked up on this, considering dio was never subtle about it lol

i think the only reason he didnt go along with it is because, especially in western christain culture at the time, suicide was seen as the easy way out/a sin/something selfish, which wasnt how jonathan wanted to go. he wanted to kill himself sure but he wanted the benefit of the doubt regarding it and he wanted it to be because he was saving someone else

my proof of this line of thinking is all very subtle but it is there and it’s all in the fact that jonathan does nothing to stop dio from tormenting HIM. when he lashes out a dio, it’s only when dio drags others into their feud, like erina and danny and later george and eventually windknights lot. but when it was just him? jonathan took it and swallowed it and did nothing in retaliation. because he though he deserved it

this lack of action is echoed in how he just takes his father’s abuse as well; george jumped on the opportunity to belittle jonathan (such as the dinner table manners bs/otherwise always comparing jonathan to dio in a way “why cant you be more like him” way) and always believed dio over jonathan when they squabbled bc, as mentioned earlier, he blames jonathan for his wife’s death and he loves having some reason to be mad at jonathan. jonathan just takes it and accepts the unfair punishments (such as when george literally STARVED HIM, A GROWING PRETEEN BOY) because again, he believes he deserves it. he believes he is inherently bad

this line of thinking would also explain why he never tries to reconnect with erina until theyre adults and erina initiates it; he doesnt want her to be targeted because of HIM again. he wont drag her back into his messes for the selfish reason of him wanting her company

so. jonathan doesnt like himself. he is perfectly fine with others using him as their emotional/physical punching bag but he will get upset if others get involved

jonathan is selfless to a fault and it really really hurts, u guys. it’s born out of love for others but also a disdain for himself and that hurts

but anyway

then george dies when jonathan is only 19 and even though george was abusive to jonathan, jonathan still mourns him because he felt like he deserved that abuse. and to add salt to the wound, george dies in jonathan’s place iirc so jonathan just feels. awful. fuck god fuck. especially bc he died cause dio got obsessed with a mask JONATHAN left where he could find. obviously it’s not jonathan’s fault for real but this man will perform mental gymnastics to make himself out to be the one to blame because it’s how he’s lived his whole life and it’s how he stomached pain his whole life. it’s easier to take things if u think u deserve them

anyway anyway then part 1 main events. zeppeli, the only real father figure in jonathan’s life, dies, also in place of jonathan. i have no doubt in my mind jonathan feels like he’s a curse onto his loved ones at this point, if he hadn’t thought so earlier; a bad luck charm. after all, the later generations of joestar gotta get it from somewhere-

anyway this death does fuel jonathan enough to kill dio rather than any notions he mightve had of just dying heroically in the fight. esp because dio was gonna continue hurting people if he wasn’t stopped. so jonathan kills him rather than falling into a self-destructive fate

we see, when jonathan weeps over dio’s “death”, that he is sad over this death. most of this is bc dio was a brother in some measure to him since dio changed tactics of how he’d swipe the joestar fortune and became a little more amicable toward jonathan for a handful of years, as well as the fact that he now had time to properly mourn zeppeli/his father now. but i feel like another death he was mourning in this instance was less dio/his father/zeppeli, and more the death of his self-blame line of thought

 killing dio, a man who had become a symbol for jonathan’s self-blame and self-disdain, was a big stepping stone in jonathan’s healing i feel like. he’s gotta work on it obviously but i think at this point, when he had the guts to kill dio while also being self-preservative, he was ready to start trying to live for himself in addition to his loved ones. he was ready to unshoulder the guilt he had felt his whole life. he was ready to heal, because erina, speedwagon, and zeppeli showed him he had something inside him that was worth loving. and he might not have gotten it then but with time...maybe he would

he finally starts piecing a life together, a real life. he marries erina, he’s besties with speedwagon, he gets a new home, it’s good, it’s good, he is starting to become happy in life and happy he’s alive for the first time since he can remember

but then it turns out dio is not actually dead and he infiltrated jonathan’s honeymoon ship specifically because it was jonathan’s and he kills almost everyone on board while he’s there. erina is in danger again. a child is in danger. and much like dio was never actually dead, neither was his tendency to shoulder blame and self-disdain

basically, as a result of this jarring situation on a day that was supposed to be one of the happiest of his life, jonathan is thrown back to his 12 year old mindset; it was fine if it was just him. he can die heroically via fighting someone as vile as dio (which in my opinion is why dio even got the jump on him via the laser eyes in the first place; jonathan shouldve been able to dodge that........but w/e). but he can’t let this happen to the world. he can’t let this happen to erina. he needs her to get away from him and thus, the danger

and well, we know how part one ends. jonathan gets his wish. he dies alone with the person he hates most, having relapsed all the healing he had done. he dies a heroic death rather than a “shameful” one of suicide. he dies blaming himself for this mess, just how he had lived most of his life

jonathan is a tragedy. he is shouldered blame unfairly given to him from his father, dio, and he himself his whole fucking life. when he finally, finally has the chance to start healing and making peace with himself, dio kills him, and in addition to that, jonathan’s last acts are the results of a mental rebound from a healthier mindset to a unhealthy one, that culminates in his death. he is alone with the person who is representative of all that made his life shit when he dies

and dawg...it hurts so bad. fucking jonathan joestar

anyway this is why comments abt how nice he is make me so sad sumtimes, especially when it’s re how forgiving/”gentlemanly” he is. it’s bc he felt he deserved that hurt in the first place so of course he wouldn’t hold it against them. he’s kinda shocked someone would feel guilty over it in the first place, but he’s happy to forgive because he doesnt think a slight occured because he thinks he deserved it, which we can see in speedwagon’s introduction

anyway jonathan is as much of a tragedy as the rest of the joestars i need people to acknowledge this. im in tears