YES YES YES U GET IT
also oh hello uh. hi! my friend sent me this post and they were right to do so. This is amongst my favorite topics to discuss with my jojo friends because it’s SO intriquing to think abt; i agree with u (though i’m interested in what you mean by catholic imagery) and want to offer some thoughts/recs/etc of my own!
For starters, the opposites thing is hilarious because it’s basically, like, they’re either opposite OR identical in their qualities and its combined in exactly the way where it makes sure they’ll repel each other like magnets turned to each other by the identical poles. like they’re both very proud ppl (proud and certain, at some level, of their worldview and way of thinking being correct n justified) who happen to have almost opposite morals and that makes them utterly incapable of really wanting to bother with each other imo. It’s not only the sorta clash a rational sceptic might face when trying to debate an optimist, because, whoops this time the optimist will Not wave it off.
To explain this, I want to point out something about Mista I feel like many people never like...notice or think about? Which is the fact that he seems to me like an incredibly moral person at the core and devoted to that--saving the woman in the flashback without a second thought, risking his life over and over for others, joining bucciarati on the boat with pretty much a a grin-- it reads to me like the actions of someone who has a crystallized moral core that they follow, however much it may differ from the morals of an “ordinary” person and however much it seems to lead Mista to disregard his own health in the process. He seems to me like a person whose morals are strongly tied to action in the moment, to helping however you can and preserving life even at the justified cost of taking another, which is why I think him and Giorno click so well; Giorno’s morality being a more ruthless version of this in my opinion, but identically aligned. The sort of thinking you would get if you examined the idea of determined fate and free will and came to the conclusion they can and do coexist; a belief in doing what’s right at any moment at any cost because it makes sense to do so and is in some way your responsibility as a fellow human being capable of providing that help.
Then...take Fugo. Fugo, with a moral code that seems to VASTLY prefer self-preservation and choosing inaction in the case of uncertain or vastly negative odds; a guy who’d rather take time to know how to min-max this stuff, even at the cost of a life (Trish’s life, for example), than to risk something he deems a certain failure. And this is a kind of strong morality too tbh! Like fugo lacks the drive that Mista has, being a more reactive kinda person than proactive-- which is what I think made him an excellent first member for 17yo!Bruno when he was learning how to do this whole team thing because, well, bruno is a moral idealist, and if fugo’s excellent at anything it’s curbing the new wild ideas that guy’s mind makes up and offering constructive critique-- and PHF definitely shows his aimlessness and tendecy to kind-of just accept stuff (take the “yeah yeah drugs are bad” legendary moment) but even with all this, sticking to inaction is still a way of being; a moral attachment to the idea that preservation IS the rational thing to do and irresponsibly throwing urself to some new situation you JUST found about only wastes life and resources.
(My friend in fact brought up one excellent point that show-cases the difference in thinking and morality, that being a direct comparison of Fugo & Abbacchio in the Man in the Mirror arc vs Mista & Giorno in the White Album arc; in both of these, they are proactive, but while in the former there’s a ruthless kind of cold, rational energy that states “it doesn’t matter that your teammates die as long as you finish the mission”, in the latter, Mista and Giorno keep constantly trying to help and save each other and you get the exact opposite feeling from them, the thinking of “finishing the mission means nothing if your teammate dies and should never come first”. I want to point this out also because of how well it aligns with PHF’s idea of Abbacchio & Fugo doing missions together, which perfectly fits to me.)
So. you can SEE the rift here like a rupe cracking over Mercury’s surface; both of them are willing to make sacrifices in their respective worldviews but those sacrifices are the complete opposite and would deeply infuriate the other, and that’s the thing about proud and moral people; neither of them are going to step down completely, EVER. and we haven’t even started talking about personalities; how fugo’s kinda stuck-up overthinky hesitant realist Takes-Himself-Very-Seriously self is almost perfectly primed to just constantly mildly annoy the hell out of mista, who’s a very chill common-sense optimist just kinda letting the universe take him to wherever he’s supposed to go, which in turn would definitely confuse and infuriate the overthinking-central going on in fugo’s brain at all times. like they are almost perfectly posed to not understand each other at all to the point it gets genuinely hilarious when you think about it and watch mista’s cannibalism rant with it in mind; these two people are pretty much each other’s worst debate opponent and it shows. they are coming at life and any topic of it from the opposite angle. it says a lot that i can definitely imagine mista trolling fugo (for fun and entertainment) by the smooth sharks argument and fugo having a similar meltdown as so so many people did when that debate actually happened.
Another interesting thing I want to point out is the difference between their lives; Fugo as a kid of VERY rich parents, awarded a place at a prestigious university (which imo he didn’t even want) and surviving based on his intellect and knowledge, most likely developing like 11 separate anxiety complexes, compared to mista who’s the only one whose family we know nothing about and only know he’s been living on his own pretty much on the street and would most likely just laugh at the concept of something IntellectualTM. I do not agree with how most people perceive the “simple-minded” thing with Mista given a lot of people seem to assume it just means dumb instead of something like a conscious preference to focus on the present and the simple qualities and pleasures of life and, in some way, common sense; he’s not a guy to bother himself with stuff that he feels doesn’t really matter that much and instead appreciates the little things, like warmth and the sun and good food and company. Fugo doesn’t have that ability; he’s exactly the type to ThinkTM about everything ever and constantly evaluate every little thing and worry about the long-run and the far-off futures, and both of these ways of life have their pros and cons, but to our ends, they both show how just...impossible it is to put these guys in a situation where they agree.
Add to this the context of the group; both of them being very good friends to Narancia and this friendship in my eyes either being a temporary truce for their friend’s sake or an active and fertile ground for all kinds of one-upping contests, the fact that they’re both most likely struggling with their own issues around usefulness in the team (Fugo having a Stand that makes him near-useless to the team as a fighter and having to compensate for that in every field he can, especially with his knowledge, while Mista’s Stand makes him incredibly useful unless something incapacitates him even slightly as it’s use it actually kinda narrow and dependent on lots of little things, which I for example explored in a fic where he got blinded by an enemy Stand effect), Fugo having seniority and experience in the mafia over Mista (making them, ironically, both stand on kinda equal ground given to Mista’s prominence and Bruno’s trust in him, which may definitely cause all kinds of little grievances), etc. and you get, well, a MessTM, which is most likely functioning only because Fugo can--most of the time--keep stuff to himself or complain only slightly and Mista probably considers arguing with him a pointless activity that’d only distract him from his goal of having a good time instead. Like Mista is too chill to really bother arguing with him so he’s bound to try his hardest to just sort-of lightly ignore him or assume a truce, and Fugo accepts this because, well, HE’s not exactly going to want to be proactive abt this and get himself recklessly into a position he can’t backpedal/rationalize/argue himself out of easily.
But, yeah, this works only when stuff is okay. So as soon as you get Fugo’s moment of “cowardice” (I hate calling it that and am VERY capable of writing a whole essay about why calling it that is really off to me, and incorrect, and what that says about how we see media and history alike) and then the finalle and THEN phf, yeah. all of the worst comes to light, and you end up with a gun pointed at fugo’s forehead and mista telling him, pretty much, in no uncertain terms, to Do Better. As to how the relationship would develop post-canon, that’s...a whole another essay, but I think a very excellent job of it-- that is also way more entertaining to read than my uhhh five-years of pent-up unused pretentious meta-writing energy-- does my friend’s post-canon long-fic Canary, which focuses on Fugo’s view of the post-canon post-PHF reality in which Giorno wasn’t as perfect as PHF portrayed him and everything is kinda crumbling apart, but isn’t unfixable; Mista and Fugo’s relations are only one of the many many interwoven parts of the whole there, but I think they do an excellent job at portraying how they would look and develop to an eventual true allyship and understanding, at last.
Also, yes, Mista absolutely pulled a smooth sharks on Fugo at LEAST twice. I think fugo’s chihuahua tendencies are hilarious and incredibly (and unfortunately, for fugo) easy to exploit, and bullying fugo is something of a hobby in my writing too. poor guy is just...he’s just so bully-able man cvgdhvsgchgds
