Stand

A Stand is a psychic figure generated by its owner, most often manifesting near the user and wielding abilities that ordinary people cannot match, whether for good or for evil. The concept debuts in Stardust Crusaders, where Joseph Joestar names the phenomenon: because these apparitions tend to stand ready at their user's side, he calls them Stands. In the original Japanese the word is written with characters that literally read as Ghostly Ripple, with the pronunciation altered to the loanword.

A Stand embodies its owner's fighting spirit and psyche, which is why they vary as wildly as human minds do, appearing as humanoids, animals, tools, or nothing visible at all and obeying only loose rules. Their abilities span enhancement of the body, elemental attacks, weather control, and even the bending of time and space, with the one flat impossibility being resurrection of the dead. The power traces back to an alien virus carried in a meteorite that fell at Cape York, Greenland, which kills most people it infects but awakens a Stand in the rare survivor, an effect a specially crafted Arrow can also trigger.

Most Stands stay tethered to their user's body, so a wound to one shows up on the other, though automatic and bound types often break that link. When a user dies their Stand usually vanishes with them, and destroying a Stand normally kills the user, apart from rare cases like Notorious B.I.G that outlive their owner. A single person may hold only one true Stand at a time. Since Stands are invisible to ordinary people yet can still touch the physical world, it is generally only another Stand User who can fight one. Outside the story, six lettered parameters, destructive power, speed, range, persistence, precision, and developmental potential, grade a Stand from A down to E.

A Stand User is anyone whose psyche projects a Stand, a group that spans humans and even animals. Not everyone controls the gift: a user without the fighting spirit to master it, like Holly Kujo, can sicken and fall into a fatal coma, while automatic Stands such as Super Fly act on their own regardless of their owner. Naming has shifted across the series, moving from Tarot cards and Egyptian gods early in Stardust Crusaders to a lasting tradition of references to bands, albums, and songs, and every Higashikata family Stand in JoJolion carries the word King.