THE PHRASE I HATE THE MOST IS "HARD WORK!"

maledictions

On the surface, there doesn't seem to be much going on with Joseph Joestar. At best, he has the tendency to be more playful than others and can sometimes take a joke a little too far. At worst, he's completely tone deaf to situations and ends up offending the people around him to the point a serious argument breaks out. This pattern of behavior comes from the fact that Joseph has lived a life of privilege. His privilege does not just come from the fact that he's an affluent White male, but also because the truth abouts his parents was kept from him. As such, Joseph was allowed to grow up relatively normal compared to many of the titular Jojos, and develop expectations that he can do anything and that he will be given everything that he wants. But as mentioned, the downside to this spoiled/sheltered upbringing is that despite Joseph being perceptive of others to the point he can even predict what they're going to say/do, it has to be an active choice on his part to adopt another's perspective. If there is little to no motivation to understand, Joseph has the tendency to interpret events where things don't go his way/people don't act in ways that make sense to him to personalize it as an attack on himself. He becomes easily frustrated and pushes the limits of what other people are willing to tolerate, or even goes so far as to instigate physical fights.

Joseph's aware that this is a problem. Although it comes with outside prompting from his grandmother, she raised him to know right from wrong, and he knows that his reactions of anger and violence are not always warranted. He just has a hard time slowing himself down once his anger's been triggered and only makes the attempt to figure out why the other person was so upset after he's had time away from them to cool down. And despite the way Joseph acts at times, he's not a total asshole. While on the whole, Joseph has a somewhat narrow category of people he'd go to hell and back again for (family and family friends), he will stick up for people who can't do so for themselves. For example, Joseph goes out of his way to try and keep people who aren't involved in his fights out of harm's way.

But Joseph puts people before himself in more subtle ways on a regular basis than just protecting their physical well-being. As mentioned earlier, Joseph has a strong sense of humor and his light-hearted approach to life is motivated by his sheltered upbringing. And Joseph also certainly benefits from it because he's able to take his mind off things that make him feel Not Good. But his optimism and goofing off is also motivated by a desire to keep others from feeling sad or at the very least worried about him. He reacts with almost excessive amounts of enthusiasm at the success and talents of others, and minimizes whatever the anxiety-provoking element in the present or future happens to be as a way of lifting the spirits of the people around him. In the end, Joseph is genuinely not the sort of person who can turn his back on the suffering of others after all, and he wouldn't really like it if he was the source of it.

Some of Joseph's consideration for others even extends to his foes. For example, although he should hate the Pillar Men given all the harm and destruction that's followed in their wake, Joseph respects them in their defeat through open acknowledgment of the lives they've led/the spirits they fought with or even demonstrating mercy by easing Wamuu's passing. Some of this respect for his opponents, however, is more of a recent development. As mentioned before, Joseph has a sense of humor that can sometimes go too far, which in the context of confronting his foes means Joseph seems to treat the fights much more like a game in the beginning. Joseph's attitude towards the struggle against the Pillar Men is not as simple as taking it seriously or not.

While it's true that Joseph uses humor as a coping mechanism and that his life has not been without loss, Joseph tended to view the fight against the Pillar Men similar to the way he viewed getting into a fight on the street. He understands the concept of justice. He understands there are winners and losers, and that losses are bad. But prior to the death of another kid who got roped into this nonsense before Joseph named Caesar, Joseph had never really experienced direct or severe loss before. Prior to Caesar's death, his most significant loss was that of his parents, but because they both vanished from his life when he was still an infant, he never had to navigate grief and loss. With Caesar, however, he had the security of a partner he could rely on to have his back, which enabled Joseph to continue skirting around fully responsibility because Caesar could and would always pick up that slack.

Then Caesar was no longer there.

More than that, Caesar's death came on the heels of an argument about the greater implications of the fight against the Pillar Men with Joseph continuing to shrug the responsibility of his family's legacy. Needless to say, Caesar's death was a hard lesson for Joseph — shifting loss from the abstract past to the concrete present — and presented Joseph with two options: either he bury his head in the sand further and tap out, or grow up and accept the fully responsibilities laid before him. Joseph chose the latter and finally fought not just for his survival, but for the bigger picture and the legacy of those who had come before him.

And that's really a succinct way of putting it when it comes to Joseph Joestar. He certainly still carries with him a great deal of privilege from being so sheltered and protected from the reality of the world and his family. It afforded him a childhood that was filled with luxury and free of concerns, and his grandmother certainly did her best to raise Joseph to know right from wrong, but he was still spoiled and unprepared for what was coming. As a result, he has a nasty temper that's easily triggered when he feels he's under personal attack (either through legitimate insults or because he didn't get his way), and he can be a little tone deaf about his humor. He's struggled to get along with others because of his limited perspective, coming from a lack of motivation to try rather than ability. But deep down, Joseph does have a pretty good heart. He uses his humor to take some of the edge off for others. He also isn't the type of person to sit idly by when he sees someone being wronged, and he is able to find it within himself to hold respect even for his opponents. But some of that growth came as a result of a loss that forced Joseph to take in the bigger picture finally.

Joseph has had a month-long crash course on hamon, a martial art based upon regulating one's breathing. Hamon is energy that is created from life/the sun, meaning that it's highly effective against undead creatures. For living creatures, it has the tendency to just be like a bad static shock, or it can even be used to heal injuries/slow aging! However, Joseph's only had a month's worth of training. Despite his natural talent, Joseph really does not know a whole lot about what the heck he's doing with hamon. He's able to send large pulses of hamon energy through objects or himself (Overdrive/Ripple Overdrive/Ripple Beat), retaliate with hamon energy by concentrating it in part of his body (Rebuff Overdrive), and extend his range by dislocating his shoulder and arm (Zoom Punch). Joseph's clever though, so he's learned a few tricks with clackers where he charged them with hamon and throws them at his opponent (Clacker Volley) or tricks them into thinking he's missed and hitting them when they boomerange back (Clacker Boomerang).

Joseph's cleverness also lends itself to his ability to trick his opponents. He often plays mind games with them by doing things like predicting what they're going to say next verbatim, or frustrating them with his attitudes so that they miss him setting up some fairly impressive traps and tricks.

Joseph's ultimate weapon, however, is the Joestar family's secret technique. This is where Joseph runs like hell away from a fight like a huge coward. Except he's not actually being all that cowardly. Sometimes he's luring an enemy away from others to protect them. Many times he's stalling for time to come up with a plan to best his opponent.

It should also be noted that Joseph has the potential to be a Stand user. Stand users are people with spirits who fight for them with special abilities. Well. Typically. Joseph's future Stand, Hermit Purple, has plenty of abilities (psychic photography, transmit hamon through, and use the vines like ropes to swing with) but is actually just vines. However, as it stands (ha!) right now, Hermit Purple is dormant.

Finally, despite how many times he's crashed them, Joseph's actually a fairly talented airplane pilot!