info | Dio Brando

[bloodsoakedworld]

Fandom: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Parts I, III, VI)
Orientation: Pansexual.
Appearance: The only real problem with his face is that he usually has a sadistic look on it. Other than that, he's infamously beautiful, with sharp reddish eyes and long, wild blond (or "spun gold" if you want to believe the OVA subtitles) hair. He's also quite pale, being a vampire. Even before his body swap with Jonathon Joestar, Dio was tall and well-built, but to call Jonathon's body an upgrade in that regard is a pretty big understatement. Thanks to JoJo's "donation," Dio towers over most people at around 6'4" to 6'5" tall and has a physique more readily compared to a Mr. Universe candidate than anything else.

Dio has an extremely flamboyant style of dress - somewhere between fetish gear, punk rocker and supervillain. He like his clothes shredded, brightly colored (often with black accents) and possibly sporting feathers or hearts. That is, when he bothers to get fully dressed, since he often walks around shirtless and barefoot. He is frequently seen wearing jewelry, and also appears to wear lipstick and paint his (rather long and well-manicured) nails. Whatever, Dio.

He has a scar around his neck where his head is joined to Jonathon's body, which he often covers with fetishy collars. He also has three black dots on his ear (a birthmark signifying that he will live a long life) and a birthmark in the shape of a star on the upper back of his shoulder, near his neck (a mark common to all Joestars, so basically it came with Jonathon's body.)

Personality:
The thing one needs to understand about Dio Brando is this: he was, as described by Speedwagon, "born bad."

That isn't to say he would have necessarily grown into exactly the same person he is if he had been raised by a less problematic father during his formative years. Dario Brando was belittling, alcoholic, bitter at life and both physically and mentally abusive, which can be said to have had a definite effect on Dio's development. Indeed, as a young man, pre-vampirism, Dio is repulsed by the knowledge that Dario's blood flows through his veins, even as he displays many of Dario's worst personality traits - violent tempers, for example, and a predisposition toward alcoholism. His inability to trust/have faith in others is likely founded on his unstable childhood environment as well. Therefore, you could call his personality a result of the interaction of unfortunate factors: a personality prone to psychopathy as exposed to circumstances that tend to encourage, rather than discourage, antisocial behavior and personal dyfunction.

It can be said that Dio's primary defining trait is... rage. Indeed, even once he realizes his anger is his greatest weakness and strives to overcome it, he only does so on the surface... and his seething rage can still be sensed beneath his thin veneer of calm by any who cares to look. And indeed, Dio's rage continues to be his primary downfall: he is extremely intelligent and more than capable of forming a long-term plan and carrying it out. But Dio is, even at his most calm, at best considered a powderkeg - as soon as someone stumbles onto one of his triggers, the temper blows and hellfire starts raining down on everything.

Even so, Dio is also incredibly charming and attractive, exuding confidence and sex appeal. He plays up both as well, openly displaying his extraordinary beauty and enhancing it with all manner of extravagant clothing, jewellry and cosmetics. His outfits vary from shredded black leather and high heeled boots with feathered coats to skintight black spandex paired with bright yellow crotchless pants but whatever he's wearing, he does so without any self-consciousness at all. He can often be found admiring himself in the mirror, as well.

His charm also allows him to be quite manipulative, and he's not adverse to using any means necessary to bring useful agents under his control, whether that means sex, violence, bribery, threats, even mind-control. His limits in this area are... foggy, at best - it can be easily speculated that his relationship with Enrico Pucci amounted to pederasty on some level, considering the sexual undertones of their interactions (which were semi-confirmed by the mangaka), and that Pucci was a teenager at the time of their friendship. It helps that Dio is amoral at best, and hedonistic on an extreme level. He can regularly be found lounging around with beautiful women (living one moment, dead the next). Hol Horse notes that his victims are often volunteers that he charmed into sacrificing their lives for him, which can be seen as a kindness I suppose... however it also implies a level of power over people (and an attraction to using it) that can only be described as unfortunate in the hands of someone like Dio Brando.

Dio is... violent. Even as a human, he was violent and often without cause. He kills whenever he likes andhe kills whatever he likes - humans, animals and everything in between. He can be said to view lives as toys to some degree, as he simply moves things around and kills things and remakes them at his own pleasure. For example, he's been known to translant the heads of his followers onto animals for the fun of it, and he once knocked the head off a cat for no reason whatsoever.

Dio is also prideful on a level rarely encountered... anywhere. He can't tolerate being looked down on, or insulted. Part of this is a reaction to his previous experience with emotional abuse - a defense mechanism, one might say - and the one time Dio is shown crying, it is over his bruised ego when Jonathon Joestar defeats him in a fight. In that sense, one could consider some of his arrogance to be bluster surrounding a sometimes fragile self-image. However, as time has gone on, that part of him has faded out a bit, replaced by the more genuine arrogance of his own perceived invincibility.

And Dio is extraordinarily sadistic, seemingly taking pleasure in the pain and fear of others. As such, his sexuality is somewhat warped as well - he's quite promiscuous but given to consuming his partners after finishing with them, which means he's frequently shown with highly objectified and sexualized corpses. Indeed, his AU counterpart (who is less horrifying than Dio himself, but basically built from the same cloth) even suggests that he'll rape and torture a 14 year old girl and then, when she's brought as low as a person can possibly be, kill her while still raping her.

However, after all that, it should be said that he isn't pure evil... though he's about as close as most characters can come to it. He shows respect and love for the memory of his late mother, for example, and is implied to have genuine feelings for Pucci - though of what sort is unknown, and that relationship seems to have started with an intention to make use of him, as well.

Indeed, it can be said that Dio shows a vague tendency to become emotionally involved with certain "types" of person when he tries to use them - starting with Jonathon Joestar who, like Pucci, was open-hearted and naive at the time of their initial meeting, as well as intellectual with academic inclinations. However, due largely to circumstances, these fondnesses manifested very differently.

In the case of Jonathon Joestar, Dio was troubled by his attachment to his childhood "friend" and tried to work around it by pursuing his death as planned... but through indirect rather than direct means, which resulted in Jonathon's survival and permitted him to grow strong enough to fight Dio on relatively equal footing. Dio knew and acknowledged this as a weakness, but never quite overcame it and his desire to have Jonathon join his army instead of simply dying ultimately led to his defeat. Afterwards, rather than becoming angry with Jonathon for ruining his plans, he found that his respect deepened. By the time he met with JoJo for the last time, he had become defensive of Jonathon's honor (getting angry when JoJo was insulted). You could say that his understanding of his relationship with Jonathon is... strange. He believes that they are two people that make one, and that their destinies are inextricably linked. He also considers Jonathon to be his one true equal - it's this rather strange logic that leads to him decapitating Jonathon and claiming his body for his own. In Dio's mind, this is more or less a compliment, as he's declared Jonathon to be the only one worthy of sustaining him. Furthermore, it's an extension of the relationship he perceives between them to begin with: if they are two who make one, then it's only logical that they literally become one being. Once raised from the ocean, Dio continues his war with Jonathon's descendents, and indeed only ever sees them as exactly that. In his mind, his war with the Joestar bloodline is, in effect, a continued battle against the specter of his counterpart. You could call it love, if you wanted to, but it isn't love by any normal standard. In any case, to Dio, the Joestars are his enemies, but JoJo was his only true rival.

Pucci, on the other hand, was originally a means to an end rather than an obstacle on his path. As such, Dio was not forced to fight his growing affection, and instead ended up valuing and caring for the young priest in a much less destructive way. Ultimately, he even admitted that Pucci's company calmed his rage, and that he feared losing him. He also allowed Pucci to see sides of him that he hadn't shown to others - his moments of calm, his philosophical thoughts, his frustrations and his plans. Even so, he found it difficult to release the paranoid feeling that Pucci would betray him.

Which brings us to another thing - Dio has a great deal of difficulty trusting others. He expects nothing but the worst from most people, even those he likes and cares for... or perhaps more them than others, really. It's likely a reaction to his abusive background, as well as a case of projection - he expect treachery because he, himself, is trecherous. That said, those who overcome his suspicious nature with their loyalty are, in return, rewarded with his loyalty and protection. For example, he had a particularly loyal follower called Vanilla Ice who, when Dio mentioned being in need of one more person's blood, prompty lopped his own head off to feed his master. Rather than take the blood, to his own benefit, Dio resurrected Ice by bleeding on his wounds.

And despite Dio's general disdain for people, you could say he shows an almost reluctant need for them - every time he establishes a power base, even as a human boy, the first thing he does is surround himself with people. First, school boys, then undead minions, and then stand users. In general, he enjoys being surrounded by people or creatures who love and adore him, as he enjoys the feeling of being respected and worshipped, and yet whenever he has developed a respect or attachment to someone, it has been someone who spoke freely to him. It isn't necessarily a yearning for an equal - Pucci was clearly the beta to Dio's alpha - but he does seem to appreciate a willingness to think for oneself and express one's own thoughts. Similarly, his respect can be earned by internal and external strength and the will to use it independently more than anything else, as Dio has a deep disdain for anything with a servile attitude... including domesticated animals.

Now that I've convered the extremes of his personality, there is also a mid-line. There is a side of him that's highly introspective and thoughtful - he's frequently shown questioning the nature of fate and the meaning of abstract concepts like happiness or victory. Dio is a firm believer in the power of destiny to shape the world, and when he meets someone who happens to stand out to him, he's inclined to question whether that person is meant to play a significant part in his life, and investigate whether or not they are. He sometimes calls this 'gravity' - the force that draws people into one another's orbit when they could have easily spun off in another direction. He also has a great love of reading, and is often found tending to his library or lounging with a book. He collects trivia in his mind, eg. the number of daily visitors to the Louvre or attendees at a music concert, and occasionally these facts will cause his mind to travel down odd, unconnected paths and reach strange conclusions that seem only tangentially, if at all, related to the subject matter. He also has other quiet hobbies - he enjoys constructing model ships, for example, and probably model planes etc, as well. He's also familiar with tarot cards (indeed, his stand, The World, is named after one). As a human, he studied law.

In some ways, Dio's personality can be compared to that of a stunted child - he also uses his powers to prank people, for example, to just generally to mess with their heads for the fun of it. He acts as a bit of a bully, but cracks when the pressure is too intense.

Finally, it should be noted that there's a significant personality difference between young Dio and Dio as he emerged from his sleep. Dio is more than likely psychotic in addition to his psychopathy. His moods tend to swing violently and rapidly, and he's prone to paranoia and violent outbursts, sometimes aimed at himself (e.g. he shoves a finger into his own brain at one point). He's also even more erratic than he originally was. It seems likely that the prolonged stress of solitary confinement for... a century... may have had lingering effects on his mental state. Which wasn't really that great to begin with.

History:
Dio was born in the late 1800s, the son of an english couple of the underclass. Shortly after Dio's birth, his father Dario happened to encounter an overturned carriage containing a woman, a baby, and a man. Originally assuming all three to be dead, Dario went to rob the corpses, only to find that the man was alive. That man, Lord George Joestar, mistook Dario Brando for a good Samaritan trying to rescue his family, which Dario took advantage of by actually rescuing the Joestars - though not without stealing the deceased wife's ring. In thanks for his help, George gave Dario a generous contribution, allowing him to start a hotel... and had him released from prison when he was caught trying to pawn Lady Joestar's ring.

This should have allowed for a comfortable life for Dio growing up. However, Dario proved to be a poor businessman and his hotel failed, leaving the Brandos impoverished once more. Dario's wife, Dio's mother, began working to support the family while Dario grew increasingly malicious and embittered and began self-medicating with alcohol and violence. Indeed, he is implied to have been physically and mentaly abusive toward his wife and son. Eventually, the harshness of her life drove Dio's mother into poor health and finally death. Dio, who had loved his mother, became angry at his father, and then at the world - and that was a rage that never subsided.

Indeed, it was that hatred for his father that drove Dio, at around age 13, to travel to London's infamous Ogre Street and secure poison from a foreign vendor. He used this poison to kill his father, thus giving him an opening to travel to Joestar's mansion as an orphan.

Arriving there, he was immediately accepted by lord Joestar as a second son. He also made met his "other half" and fated rival for the first time - Lord Joestar's only son, Jonathon (JoJo).

Jonathon initially attempted to befriend Dio - attempts Dio repeatedly (and often violently) rebuffed. Dio, as it happens, had decided that his path to success was simple: drive Jonathon insane and get him disinherited, all the while playing the perfect son to George Joestar, and thus supplanting Jonathon as the heir to the Joestar fortune. In his attempts to achieve this, he abused Jonathon's dog, seriously injured him during a supposedly friendly boxing match, assaulted his girlfriend (Erina) and, when Jonathon retaliated for the attack on Erina, Dio ultimately burned the dog alive as revenge for his bruised ego. However, it was also around this time that Dio realized that, despite his great intelligence, his anger was his weakness. From that point forward, he began to cultivate the image of a Nice Person.

For the next seven years, he continued that act - presenting himself as a good guy, generous and friendly. He and Jonathon became, at least on the surface, close friends - and he even took to calling Lord Joestar "Father." Despite this, Jonathon was never able to shake his viscerally negative first impression. Dio, meanwhile, apparently grew somewhat attached to Jonathon - though he did not allow any emotional ties to affect his behavior, or his plans. And when the time came that he reached the age of majority and would therefore be able to inherit, he repeated the same trick with Lord Joestar that he had with his own father, securing poison from Ogre Street and making his new "father" become progressively ill.

It didn't work out as well for him the second time around. Jonathon discovered his plan and ventured into Ogre Street himself to bring home an antidote. Now, as it happens, Dio had recently witnessed Jonathon's research into a particular Stone Mask that hung on the wall of the Joestar manor, and had come to realize that the mask would, when activated by blood, produce spikes which would penetrate the skull of anyone wearing it. Dio therefore followed him with the mask, intending to kill Jonathon and make it look like an accident produced during his own research. However, along the way, he discovered that someone "attacked" by the mask would not die, but would instead be transformed into an eternally young superbeing - a vampire.

Dio therefore returned to the manor only to find Jonathon waiting, already having administer the antidote to his father. Dio admitted to his crime. He pretended to submit for arrest, but instead donned the mask and attempted to stab Jonathon to activate it. The recently cured Lord Joestar tossed himself in his son's path, however, and was mortally wounded. His blood awakened the stone mask, and so Dio became a vampire. In the battle that followed, Dio killed most of those present, and the Joestar mansion burned down with Dio inside it. Jonathon barely managed to escape, and was placed in hospice care. Dio, meanwhile, survived but was seriously wounded.

In the months that followed, Dio drained the blood of many humans in an attempt to restore himself to full health. Ultimately, he began gathering an army of zombies made from the cruelest and angriest of men, including Jack the Ripper himself and two legendary knights. Jonathon, meanwhile, became an expert in the use of the Ripple, an equally supernatural power that could be see as the perfect opposing force to vampirism.

Though Dio was aware that Jonathon had been tracking him, he found himself reluctant to battle and kill his old "friend" (well I did say he had some feelings for him, albeit mixed with resentment and rage). Even so, he realized that Jonathon was dangerous, or at least annoying, and so he sent his minions to do the job for him. Each of them failed, and each of them fell. By the time Jonathon and his allies caught up with Dio, he'd taken over a small village in the mountains, turning the villagers into zombies as the first step in his plan to take over... everything, more or less. It was there that Dio and Jonathon finally defeated Dio, infecting his vampiric flesh with a ripple that disintegrated his body.

However, Dio was not so easily killed - at the last moment, he lopped his own head off, managing to save his mind before the ripple reached his brain. A minion found him there and cared for him, but the battle had left Dio with one truth in his mind: Jonathon was the only man he admired, his other half - as he put it himself, they were two who made one. As such, he decided that Jonathon's was the only body worthy of housing him. With that in mind, Dio and his minion boarded the ship where Jonathon and Erina were celebrating their honeymoon. Dio turned the passengers and crew to zombies before confronting Jonathon belowdeck and announcing both his admiration for Jonathon and his intent to "acquire the body of the one man (he) admires, and live gorgeously forever." In the ensuing struggle, Jonathon chose to destroy the ship rather than permit Dio and his minions to come back into the world, and the ship sank with Jonathon and Dio on it - Jonathon clutching Dio's head in a deathgrip to assure they would "disappear together." Erina survived, and became the mother of the Joestar lineage, which would eventually included five heroes in Jonathon's mold.

But Dio's story does not stop there. Because, while Jonathon died on that ship, Dio did not. His disembodied head managed to break free and sever Jonathon's head from his body. Subsequently, he took control of Jonathon's corpse, and lay trapped beneath the ocean for around 100 years.

In the late 1980s, Dio's coffin was recovered, and the man himself was freed. For the next four years, Dio traveled the world, fathering at least four children (who would therefore be Jonathon's children as well), and even making what was perhaps his only true friend (or whatever) in either lifetime - Enrico Pucci, a Catholic Priest who revered and adored him. Dio also came into contact with a bow and arrow that awakened the full potential of the Dio-Jonathon fuse, unleashing The World, a pseudo-psychic power that dwarfed any other power on earth - and had the broken ability to completely stop time.

This should have made him happy - and perhaps it did to some degree - but his century below the ocean had left Dio sobered and introspective. He realized that attaining money or physical and political power had never managed to please him, and began contemplating another path. He determined that the true route to happiness was to see "Heaven," in a metaphorical sense - a heaven on Earth, or a paradise. And, through research, he determined a way to transform his stand into one that would allow him to do so. It was a plan shared between himself and Pucci, with whom he entrusted a bone from his body to bring him power and protection regardless of what might happen.

However, Dio's return and the awakening of The World also trigged stand awakenings in all of Jonathon's descendents - which was fine enough in the majority of cases, but nearly killed Jonathon's great-granddaughter, Holly - the daughter of Joseph, who had been the second heroic JoJo. With Holly dying, Joseph and his grandson, Jotaro Kujo, determined that the only way to save her was to kill Dio, thus allowing the stand in Holly to go dormant. In order to do this they began a long trek from Japan to Egypt, where Dio was living at the time. Dio, meanwhile, had long since learned to stop underestimating Joestars, and began sending other stand users to kill them.

Much as it had 100 years earlier with Jonathon, it failed and they ultimately arrived at his doorstep. The confrontation killed Dio's most loyal follower, Vanilla Ice, and ultimately brought Dio himself out of the manor. He quickly killed two of Jotaro Kujo's allies, including Joseph Joestar (although he got better), before ending up in a confrontation with Jotaro. It was that which ultimately cost him his life, as Jotaro's Stand possessed the same powers as The World, and Jotaro used it against Dio, trapping him long enough for Jotaro to break his body apart. And while that would not have actually killed him... it did slow his regeneration sufficiently for the sun to rise.

Even after Dio's death, however, his legacy remained strong. Many of his minions still revered him and held a grudge against the Joestar line, going on to make trouble for them for decades to come. Furthermore, once Stands had come to the world, they would prove impossible to contain. Dio's own children grew to adulthood and possessed stands of their own - many extremely powerful. And most notably, Pucci remained in the world, still harboring the plans he and Dio had formed, and still intending to carry them out with the use of the bone Dio had left in his care.


Abilities:
Well, this should be a mess. So, Dio starts as a human, becomes a vampire and then, upon emerging from the ocean, develops arguably the most powerful "normal" Stand in the series (if you can call it normal, see below). Starting from the beginning and going through the end....

Human Level Abilities:

Hand-to-hand combat: Dio spent time as an adolescent and teenager boxing - first in illicit underground boxing rings and then in more legitimate contests. He was quite good, and remains a formidable hand-to-hand combatant.

Intelligence: Dio is highly intelligent, and beyond that he's also crafty and cunning. He's quite capable of planning for, and carrying out, a long game... provided he can keep hold on that nasty temper of his. He's also highly educated by 19th century standards, having attended the best schools and universities during his time with the Joestars.

Scholar: He has a great love of learning, and spends most of his free time reading to feed his insatiable thirst for greater knowledge and advantages.

Knives knives: Dio carries a lot of knives. A lot. Primarily because he throws them at you while time is stopped.

Vampire Abilities:

JoJo's vampires have bodies and powers that run entirely on willpower. This is notable for two primary reasons: first, they don't actually require blood to survive, although it does help them and they do crave/enjoy it. And, second, Dio's will and determination to survive is virtually bottomless... which explains why his vampire abilities are so strong compared to other vampires in the series.

Superhuman strength: Exactly how strong he is has never been stated. However, he does casually toss around steamrollers and crush skulls with a literal flick of his finger, so Dio's physical power is not to be ignored or taken lightly. It also allows him to jump around a lot, e.g. jumping three or so stories upward.

Superhuman speed: Again, exact speed is unknown. His general movement speed is compared to that of a cheetah in Phantom Blood, but it's just sort of a metaphor - it wasn't measured, just a visual observation that he was very fast. More recently, Dio is shown casually deflecting projectiles that come at him with greater-than-machine-gun-fire speeds. Suffice to say, he's much faster than a human.

Superhuman physical endurance and regeneration: Dio either doesn't feel pain the way people normally do or, at least, isn't bothered by pain. It's Dio so it may well be the latter. Either way, he happily allows himself to be shot, carved up, punched, etc and keeps smiling. He continues to regenerate even when entirely dismembered - as long as his will remains largely intact and there's some physical portion of him left, he'll always come back together or regrow his missing parts. This does not have the standard head exception: at one point his head and neck are chopped in half vertically from crown to clavicle and he 1. keeps talking despite his head and throat being, well, vertically separated and then 2. pushes them back together and moves on with his life.

It is possible to overpower his regeneration: you essentially have to find a way to cause a high level of damage on an ongoing basis for at least several minutes without pause and without permitting him to escape. Also, his regeneration rate varies according to his blood supply (if he's recently gorged it can be more or less instantaneous... especially if he gorged on a Joestar), and healing burns blood, so the more damage he takes the slower his recovery. That said, it is nearly impossible to actually kill him this way - he's far more likely to end up trapped or weakened than dead. The problem is that his will is his lifeforce, and so he'll just keep coming back if there's any part of him left at all, unless his will is somehow disrupted. Additionally, it should be noted that even if he hasn't fed, he'll still regenerate... just more slowly than normal. (It can be very slow, though - it can take weeks or even years.)

Doesn't need to eat or rest: Clear enough. He spent 100years in a box at the bottom of the ocean with no food, after all. Furthermore, he does not fatigue... at all, as long as he's not injured. Essentially, if he lives a peaceful life and doesn't get into trouble (lol), he'll never tire and never starve.

Liquid eye-beams: This is kind of gross, but he can open his pupils and shoot liquid from his eyes with sufficient force to carve through flesh, bone and, well, steel. It's rather quick.

Evaporating liquids/Freezing things instantaneously: He can instantaneously evaporate fluids and freeze liquids or organic tissue on contact - instantly. And not just the part he's touching - he can instantly turn someone's entire forearm to ice with one hand, for example.

Walks on walls: Not crawls up them. Walks on them as though he's standing on the ground. Presumably he can do this on ceiling as well.

Organic Mind Control Spore Things: Dio can create fleshy buds that attach themselves to people and control their minds, basically turning them into Dio-loyalists until such a time as the buds are removed.

Blood draining: He can drain blood through various parts of his body, most particularly through tentacles that emerge from his fingertips (despite his having fangs, idk). This is a surprisingly quick process and reduces his victim to dried out husk that appears to have aged a few centuries... but only for a while, see ghoul and vampire creation below.

Creation of Zombies: Any animal or human who dies as a result of Dio's draining their blood will rise again as a Zombie in his service. Zombies vary in power level, but the strongest of them are quite strong, e.g. Tarkus and Bruford, two knights he resurrected (oh yeah more on that later). Also, unlike most zombies in pop culture, Dio's zombies retain their personality and intelligence - they seem to be undead in theory more than anything else. They do seem "darkened," which is to say turned toward evil, however.

Creation of Vampires: Dio can also create new vampires by "donating" his blood. Whether there's a difference between vampires as created by a vampire and vampires as created by the Stone Mask is up for debate.

Limited resurrection: Connected to the previous two powers, Dio has been known to resurrect corpses, sometimes hundreds of years old. It's not always shown, so it's not totally clear how he does this with, for example, the knights who died back in the 16th century. But in the case of one of his servants, Vanilla Ice, who lopped his own head off... Dio did this by bleeding over Ice's severed neck and then reattaching the head. Ice was thereafter raised as a vampire, whereas the knights were raised as Zombies - it's not known how he decides. Presumably, he can only raise a person as an undead.

Random misc. biological powers: This is sort of hard to describe but - he has odd powers over organic things. For example, he corrects a skeletal deformity in Father Pucci's foot effortlessly and painlessly (and without Pucci noticing), and creates vampiric plants (??). He removes his own bones from his body on at least one occasion. He can connect his head to whatever other body he likes and merge with it as though he were born with it (although the healing does take some time) - similarly, he's been known to fuse animals together or move their parts around (e.g. putting a human's head on a dog's body, whatever). Also stated to manipulate his own body temperature.

Weird Powers he has because he's a Joestar now:

Basically just that he can sense when there are Joestars around him, and when he drinks Joestar blood, he gains a supermega powerup. Yeah, IDK. Also, in theory, his stand may become more powerful due to the existence of other Joestar stand users, see below.

I think that's it for the vampire powers........ next up, Dio's Stand.

The World
Dio's stand is called The World, and it is... probably actually the stand that Jonathon, father of the Joestar lineage, would have had if he had lived and activated his stand powers. In any case, it is arguably the strongest "normal" stand and in theory only outclassed by Stairway to Heaven an the Requiem stands.

The way stands work is a bit complicated - they are pseudo-physical projections of one's spirit, and their strength is determined by the user's will to fight (physically or metaphorically). Dio's love for conflict, much like Dio's willpower, is fathomless. Ergo, the World is insanely powerful, but that comes with a drawback, as the more powerful a stand is, the shorter its battle range. The end result is that The World can only remain at full power within 10 meters (about 30 feet) of Dio - after that, it begins losing strength as it moves farther from him. It can affect the physical world, but can only be seen by others who have a Stand (or equivalent spiritual sight).

The World appears as a massive humanoid male in yellow armor. It is only semi-independent, and is ultimately controlled by Dio's will but it acts to defend him on instinct. When it is injured, he suffers the same injury. When he is injured, it is injured, too. If either dies, the other goes with it.

Finally, Dio can enhance himself by doing SOMETHING, I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW WHAT, with The World, thus giving himself a few extra powers, listed below the powers the World itself has. Sob. Okay. The World's powers are as follows:

Extraordinary physical prowess: Arguably the most physically powerful force in JoJo's - The World is stronger and faster than Jotaro Kujo's Stand, Star Platinum, which I note because the latter is shown deflecting bullet sprays and shattering several feet of material of diamond-level hardness with one punch. The World almost never punches once, though, tending to attack dozens, hundreds or even or thousands of times in a second or two. Ouch. Usually does this while shrieking "Muda" (Useless) over and over.

Vines: Produces thorny vines. In theory, this could be use to ensnare things, swing on things, etc, or form a protective barrier around oneself. However, it's primary purpose is to locate people, which it does by piercing a camera (or other image projecting device) and producing a photograph of that person no matter where they are. The camera is destroyed after such a use. This is Joseph Joestar's stand power, though Dio's version also seems to have the ability to show an image from someone's heart in a crystal ball or video/camera device.

Time Stop: The power to end all killer powers. Dio literally pulls reality to a screeching halt - this is not a lame "time stop" with a range of a few yards. It's not the kind of time stop that's only CALLED time stop but is actually just making a certain area freeze. No, this is no joke timestop with an infinite range - time ceases to move. Period. The period he can do this with is currently the equivalent of 11 seconds, but it grows longer with practice, and in theory could become indefinite over time. Furthermore, Dio can chain timestops one after another without fatigue (though he does need to wait a second or two between goes). During the time that time is... stopped, Dio is free to move and do whatever he likes while everyone else is stuck and completely unaware. The only exception to this in canon is Jotaro Kujo, who is first aware and then capable of moving within timestop - which is a result of his having the same power, himself.

It should be noted that the period in which Dio can move while time is stopped is equivalent to the period for which he can stop it, himself. In other words, if someone else stops time, he can move in that stopped state for around 11 seconds. This is one of his weaknesses, because if someone stops time directly after him, without giving him his second or two of "recharge" time, he is as helpless as those he normally uses this power against. In any case, he is aware of what's happening when time is stopped, even if he can't move.

In theory, other Joestar stands: It's implied (never outright stated, but people mostly believe) that Dio's stand, being Jonathon's, actually can take on the characteristics of any Joestar stand that has awakened. Which means, as of his writing, he has acquired Joseph's Hermit purple power and Jotaro's time manipulation and physical power because those were the powers that had awakened. If this is the case, then The World has still more growth potential - if he had survived until Josuke's power awakened, for example, The World would then acquire Crazy Diamond's fixing ability.

Finally, enhancements from the World

Dio sometimes uses The World to give himself a power boost without fully summoning it. This allows him to do things like jump to the top of skyscrapers. And fly.

A Kind of Weird Note

Dio's body parts, even when Dio is dead, have a certain kind of weird power - a result of his vampirism and the power of the Joestar line, one supposes. Not totally clear what the power IS, but it should be noted that when a Stand user with the power to create invisible zombies used his stand on Dio's bone, it began to independently move, despite not having resurrected Dio himself. Additionally, the bone, once merged with Pucci, created a Joestar birthmark on both Pucci and his twin brother and added his power to Pucci's, thus permitting Pucci to become the vessel for their plan to achieve Heaven - which, presumably, one needed Dio's spiritual strength to do.

The Big Weakness

If you want to kill Dio, you really have exactly two ways to do it: throw him in the sunlight or hit him with Ripples (or an equivalent power if you're not a JoJo). This disrupts his will and allows his body to rapidly disintegrate. Without his will to drive them, any other pieces of Dio in the world (e.g. the bone he left to Pucci) will cease to regenerate and become normal body parts (mostly).

That said, it should be noted that it's always a good idea to confirm that Dio is really truly dead - if he has a chance, he'll knock his head off his body and roll it into a shady corner.