REBLOG IF ITS OKAY TO TALK TO YOU.

For me the key to understanding SBR was to read it as a narrative instead of a jojo part. I feel like with the rest of jojo you can almost read each part as less as a narrative and more as a series of fights with a loosely connected story. When I first read Part 7, I was reading it through the same lens I do other parts; namely, the story occurs around the fights. What I mean is that I feel with most of the previous parts, the story was a vehicle for the fights, not the other way around.

It’s easy to say SBR is a fresh start / reboot but I think I just so strongly associated it with the rest of jjba that it took forever to me feel like I actually ‘got it’. With other jojo parts I feel most everything is surface-level (I don’t mean this in the bad way, just that, like the rest of the series, it’s very ‘in your face’). But Part 7 is unique to me in that it’s a narrative where I can keep digging and finding new things.

All this to say that it took me several re-reads to feel like I actually caught on to some of the subtext and other things going on. For example, while there’s blatant references to religion throughout SBR, I hadn’t realized how ingrained it was in the story proper until I went back and did the religious analysis of the text, which in turn better informed my understanding of the characters. So much flies over your head the first time you read it. For another example, it took a lot of time and revisiting the text for me to even begin understanding the True Man’s World, and I hadn’t even thought to seriously consider the cultural context of SBR’s setting until someone else pointed out how Ringo’s ideas would have tied in with Jeffersonian rhetoric about American Individualism. Maybe that was my problem: I wasn’t taking SBR on its own terms, and frankly I think I might have dismissed a lot of what Araki was trying to say with this piece by considering as Part 7 instead of Steel Ball Run.

Parts 1-6 are very enjoyable for what they are, but to be quite honest I don’t think they had a larger message besides fate and possibly abuse of power. They had themes, obviously - family and legacy as an overarching one; love comes to mind for Part 1, friendship for Part 2, the journey / friendship for Part 3, etc - but I don’t think Araki had something he was trying to say with them. He wrote Parts 1-6 because he had ideas he wanted to express, and most of those were action-oriented stand battles. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just an observation. The story functioned around the stand battles.

In contrast, with SBR I feel the fights are part of the story, and help inform the greater whole. Lucy’s whole character, as a non-combatant who does important things to keep the plot moving, reflects this change in approach. Sugar Mountain is dedicated to highlighting Gyro and Johnny’s evolving relationship. Compare Bohemian Rhapsody with Diego & Hot Pants vs Valentine. As a narrative SBR demands consideration of values and reflection on what we hold important. It encourages you to think deeply and pull it apart to see what it’s trying to say.

Again, this isn’t to dismiss any of the other Parts, and in no way is this an attack on them. Furthermore, SBR is longer and was afforded a monthly publishing timescale; perhaps there’s an argument for Araki simply having more time to do things. However, I also think the comment from Araki about feeling as though he’d hit his creative limit with Part 6 is reflective on his mindset at the time of writing Stone Ocean. Steel Ball Run was his chance to start fresh as a more experienced writer with a message he wanted to share.

This post is mostly just a reflection for how I want to approach other works in the future.

Fireflies photograph in trees with long time exposure.

it’s okay if it takes you longer than it did everybody else. trust your own process and timing. you still have your whole life ahead of you. you’re not running out of time and you’re getting there ♡

the name "theresa" is so funny like. theres a what

Yes I like fictional characters a very normal amount. Don’t look at my blog.

ₒ︎08Ɩ ʌǝɹd ǝʇɐʇoɹ oʇ ƃoןqǝɹ

Shonen authors writing a hetero romance: They bicker... But... They KISS?!?!?! Revolutionary.

Shonen authors writing two male "best friends": They are friends, partners, family. They complete each-other. They've been together for so long it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, and they know each-other so intimately that they can predict every action the other will take. They're opposites and yet they go together like a pair of gloves, they're yin and yang, they fill each-other's weaknesses and boost each-other's strength. They wouldn't be alive without one another, they wouldn't want to be alive without one another. Even when they're on different paths, they trust each-other blindly. Even as enemies they are willing to put their lives in each-other's hands. Their life goals involve one-another, all the roads in their life lead to their partner. A part of one will always be with the other, no matter how far apart the fates carry them.

I think one of the biggest reasons I enjoy jjba is because I envy this level of confidence and sincerity in storytelling. See, I would not have just said something as fucking stupid as "bullet-deflecting oil." I would've come up with some kind of Watsonian bullshit magic-science explanation that at least squared with the logic of the story instead of just saying "Oh, it's an oil that deflects bullets" and moving on to the next thing. But that is not because I am a better storyteller, no, quite the opposite. It's because I'm a coward.

Sbr is only mildly morally ambiguous and that’s okay

okay so the title is misleading 🫣 this is just a short examination of Johnny v Valentine (and Johnny & Valentine) with a little analysis of the confrontation.

for me valentine’s defining character trait isn’t his patriotism but that’s he’s a massive fucking liar. excellent writing for a politician. the only promise he ever kept was the one he made to lucy not to harm steven. and even then valentine is also super vindictive, so even though he didn’t kill him he made sure to torture him a little. Valentine is not at all the magnanimous man he presents himself to be and the constant discrepancy between his words and his actions proves that. when he’s trying to trick johnny into ending the rotation he hits all correct appeals but johnny knows in his gut that this man is a liar.

sometimes ppl act like sbr proposes a huge moral quandary about valentine’s intentions and whether he was the one “walking the righteous path” all along. but there’s really not. that’s Johnny’s internal battle. Since nick’s death johnny believed himself to be a curse / burden / bad person, but through the race he undergoes several trials that end in self-improvement and learning to have grace with himself. by the end of the narrative Johnny has evolved into someone who does have the strength of character and integrity necessary to judge the actions of someone else, whether he believes it or not, and regardless of whether he feels the right to. So yes, johnny was right to kill valentine. there’s no ifs or buts about it. the true brutality and cruelty of Valentine’s ideal world was very clearly portrayed in the way D4C Love Train functions. the corpse appeared to ‘choose’ Valentine by granting him Love Train, but at the same time it was also healing Johnny. if we look at the corpse through the lens of it primarily being a tool used to achieve the collector’s desires, we see that it empowered both Valentine and Johnny and indirectly or not set them on a collision course with each other. Perhaps there was a question of who was ‘righteous’ for the corpse itself, but the narrative itself tells us over and over again that it’s Johnny.

look at it this way. Johnny, who for most of his life believed he was spiritually and later physically damaged beyond hope, was empowered through the corpse and ended the narrative with a new chance at life. Valentine, who desired a world where not just America would prosper, but where he would be the head of said prospering state, and embody the power behind it, was granted the ability to achieve that world. Yet during their confrontation, the callous cruelty and negative consequences of Valentine’s vision is made apparent over and over again. First with Lucy, then with the innocents killed ‘somewhere else’, and lastly with Gyro and Johnny. Valentine’s actions always betray the truth of his intentions; once he proposed the deal, should Johnny have accepted, he intended to backstab Johnny and kill him the moment he got what he wanted. If he had truly been the ‘righteous one’, he would have kept his word and left Johnny alone once the rotation was reversed. But leaving Johnny alive would have meant he was no longer the most powerful man in the room, and that idea is something Valentine can’t stand.

Valentine is not a good person with good intentions. He claims to care about America, yet throughout the story discards his men and citizens like bugs (consider the train engineer). His actions continually demonstrate the reality: Valentine is power-hungry, petty, vindictive, ruthless, and above all else, a manipulative liar.

Valentine’s patriotism is the motivation behind his actions, but his brutality and deceptiveness defines those actions and is evident in everything he does. The implicit reason Alt!Diego failed was because he believed Valentine. By the end of the story there shouldn’t be a question on whether Valentine or Johnny was in the right. Valentine was the villain and he needed to be defeated. His ‘righteous’ world was, unequivocally, wrong.

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver