Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1739368-20121205124732/@comment-28139722-20160406002547

Nabukun wrote: The way I see it, there are two big questions about KC: Can Diavolo interact with stuff during the erased time? Can stuff actually "happen" to Diavolo during the erased time?

The answer to the first question is NO. There's a big reason Diavolo has to position himself for the kill everytime we see him during the erased time. If you look at every time something has "disappeared" or "appeared" suddenly or that something was "moved", time isn't erased, nothing else save the interacted object has suddenly moved. We can see it as KC being sufficiently fast and sneaky to be able to pull off these things, much like Star Platinum could steal stuff without being seen. Moreover, there always was an unwritten fact that Stand users are to a degree immune to their own Stands. DIO can move even when time stops, Prosciutto can toggle the aging on himself, Vanilla Ice isn't disintegrated by Cream, Josuke can't fix himself... If Diavolo can't interact with other stuff, it is reasonable to think he can still interact with himself during the erased time so he can cut himself and blind people with his blood.

About the second question, it is important to know that what's actually shown during the erased time doesn't happen. It doesn't exist it never happened and has no consequence. However, as talented Araki is, showing something that doesn't exist is hard, so he draws everything that doesn't happen with a black background to significate their nonexistence. It's also important to know the mechanisms of Fate in JoJo. Fate is put it simply the certainty of any event happening given every past parameter, everything is at the same time already certain and uncertain. If during a coin flip, you knew every parameter, you could predict for sure if it will heads or tails. At instant T, given everything that has happened before, it is logical that Character C would do Action A1, then at instant T+1, given everything that has happened before, it is only logical that C would do Action A2. Fate takes everything into account to deduce what the universe will look like at any given time, but when time is erased, the parameters within that erased timeframe aren't taken into account even though we are shown what would have happened during the erased time. Let's remember the infamous "bullets fly through Diavolo" time erasure. At instant T time is erased and it reappears at instant T+1. Fate has calculated that given the bullets and their trajectory, they would eventually hit Risotto at T+1. However Diavolo erases time when bullets enter him and fly through him. These events didn't happen, thus at T+1, the bullets never entered Diavolo's body and never flew through him, why would he be hurt, then? However, at T+1 the bullets must have flewn, so the bullets are hitting Risotto. This raises the question of how Diavolo can do stuff during the erased time. Well again, Diavolo is an exception. He can modify the parameters within the erased time. If during the erased time, Diavolo cut himself and launched some blood, at the end of the time erasure, there would be blood in midair, launched a certain way, thus it would fly a certain way.

I like the way you described it as fate. Diavolo himself has said "only the results remain". So him holding Trish would be "the result". Let's say for a second that KC broke in, Buccalati noticed, but KC moved to fast for him to do anything about, then the event of Bucacalati noticing was erased but "the result" is that Diavolo is still holding trish. Being able to remember and move within the erased time gives him more sway over that fate. I'm going with your answer because it feeds both the logical and poetic sides enough for me.