Application for capeandcowl
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Nil
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: nil_nova
IM: little gay jesus
E-MAIL: liljuunanadroid@yahoo.com
RETURNING: Leon Magus - bittersweetooth
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu
FANDOM: The World Ends With You - "TWEWY"
CHRONOLOGY: Post game & secret ending
CLASS: Neither - despite being an antagonist in canon, he's half-and-half chaotic neutral and lawful neutral. He'll do horrible things if he thinks the outcome will be beneficial in light of the "bigger picture". His motives are generally based in good intentions, but when he gets bored he's also inclined to mischief. When it comes to deals and promises he's made, however, he is always true to his word.
Basically, he's a mischievous anti-hero posing intentionally as a villain for fun. ...He'll also keep his tags because he's lazy like that.
SUPERHERO NAME: The Composer
ALTER EGO: Joshua, the smug and arrogant foreign exchange student. :D
BACKGROUND:
Glossary of Terms because it's necessary okay
RG: "RealGround"; plane of the living; oblivious to the existence of the UG
UG: "UnderGround"; a ghost-like plane at a higher frequency vibration than the RG; playing field for the Game; Composer's home domain
The Game: something you just lost; a series of challenges over a 7-day period of time, created and run by the Composer, carried out by the Reapers, and 'played' by the Players.
Composer: acts as the all-powerful "god" of a UG district; can switch planes to the RG at will, at the expense of a portion of his or her powers and a change of appearance; position held by Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu
Players: people, generally youths, that have recently died suddenly or tragically, and are participating in the Game for a second chance at life
Reapers: former Players that decided to be employed by the Composer instead of Erased. Arranged in ranks depending on responsibilities.
GM: Game Master; a Reaper appointed on a week-by-week basis that gives out the challenges for the Game
Conductor: highest ranking Reaper; acts as the go-between between the Reapers as a whole and the Composer; position held by Megumi Kitaniji
Officers: high ranking Reapers that work under the Conductor; (characters such as Mitsuki Konishi and Sho Minamimoto)
Harriers, Support: low-ranking Reapers (characters such as Uzuki Yashiro, Koki Kariya, 777...)
Angel: beings of a plane even higher than the UG; do not directly interact with the RG or UG (with a few exceptions), but are constantly observing; the next step of ascension after Composer
Producer: an Angel appointed to assist a Composer in their Game; of a higher rank but operates under the Composer's orders; position held by Sanae Hanekoma
Imagination: creative psychic energy that determines an individual's power in the UG
Erase, Erasure, etc.: to be completely wiped from existence
Joshua is the "spoiler character" of his canon, and as such we are given very little information about him beyond the events that happen in the game. No age is given, nor any information about his family, nor where he was born, nor... You get the idea. The little information he does give about himself in canon is when he's posing as someone he's not, so even those bits may not be true. However, I SHALL DO MY BEST TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING I CAN TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY.
So. Josh is, basically, God. Sort of. He's God in a little part of Tokyo, Japan known as the Shibuya district, which in the game is pretty damn close to the real thing in our world, only with some slight name tweaks (the 104 department store instead of 109, for example) due to copyright. He's pretty much all-powerful within his realm of jurisdiction, and his position is referred to as "Composer". He resides in the UG, which is a parallel plane to the RG. These two planes are basically a ghost plane and the living plane, respectively, with the UG being a higher "frequency" than the RG. This means that anyone that exists in the UG can see but not interact with the RG, while everything on the RG is oblivious to the existence of the UG. The purpose of the UG's existence is to provide a playing field for the Game (which, again, you just lost), a challenge each Composer creates to give Players a second chance at life.
For the sake of brevity, this is why I have that glossary up there. Reference at will.
Each Composer has different rules and setups for their Game, and also have different objectives. In Joshua's, he takes an entry fee from each Player - whatever it is they hold most dear (memories, appearance, skills, xyz) - for the duration of the Game, and requires that all Players team up in pairs in order to survive each challenge for a week - one challenge per day for seven days. The purpose of this is to see which Players improve themselves and realize what all they'd been missing out on or took for granted when they were alive. Those that survive the week and become better people in Joshua's eyes are brought back to life. Those that survive but don't improve are given the option to either play again or become Reapers. Some Reapers exist just to do simple grunt work, others try to Erase players, others are Officers, and each week the Game's challenges are given out by a Game Master, which changes with each Game. The highest ranking Reaper is the Conductor - Megumi Kitaniji, in TWEWY - who acts as the go-between between the Reapers as a whole and the Composer.
...Oh, and. The Players that don't survive the Game simply cease to exist. Sucks, don’t it.
The game happens regularly, and even though it's literally a matter of life and death, for Josh and his staff it's always been pretty routine. After some time as Composer, however, (as it's never mentioned how long he's been in the position), Joshua begins to tire of Shibuya's self-centered and stagnant population as a whole - even the living population. This leads right into TWEWY's events. 9 days before the game's events, Joshua relays to Kitaniji that he's "decided to wash his hands of [Shibuya]" and intends to destroy it. Kitaniji, respected Conductor that he is, begs the Composer to reconsider and thus Joshua suggests a special month-long Game: Kitaniji has 30 days to change the people of Shibuya or he and the district will both be Erased. The Composer will select a Player to represent him during the game while he remains in the RG, as Kitaniji wouldn’t have a chance of winning otherwise. Joshua's Producer, Sanae Hanekoma, hears of Joshua's intentions and starts working on a backup plan to keep Shibuya from getting wrecked, offering some tips to Sho Minamimoto. Sho's a rogue Officer looking to off the Composer and take his position, so basically Hanekoma's setting up an underhanded assassination that won't come back to bite him in the ass if Sho fails.
So Josh goes to the RG to pick his proxy, coming across our main character, Neku Sakuraba. Not only does the kid have alot of untapped Imagination, he’s also a perfect example of the closed-off and selfish people Joshua intends to destroy should he win this Game. So... he shoots the kid in the head, after a minor altercation with Sho, and dumps him in the Game with no memory of how he died.
With 21 days left and counting, Joshua spends his first week watching things progress from the RG, keeping an eye both on Neku as well as looking for any evidence of what Kitaniji’s tactics may be. Neku’s first entry fee is all of his other memories, and thus begins the Game with a bad attitude and an unsettled mental state, partnered with the girl Shiki Misaki. As the week goes on, however, Neku softens up a bit, and when the end of the week comes around and Kitaniji claims that the Composer has chosen Shiki as the one that will be revived, Neku tells her to go ahead and decides to replay the Game. JUST AS PLANNED... but then, since Kitaniji is fudging around the fact that the Composer isn’t around to revive Shiki, he returns Neku’s memories and takes Shiki as his second entry fee.
Since entry fees are Erased right along with their Player should they fail during the game, Neku is extra-motivated to win the second week. Unfortunately for him, Josh decides to be a dick for the sake of his own strategic plan and nabs Neku as his partner, posing as a living kid that can see the UG and acts like a total snobby prick. With a little bit of gay on the side. It’s barely there, really.
Cough cough so anyway, counting down with 14 days to go and with Sho Minamimoto now the Game Master, Josh drags Neku everywhere with a phone tracker given to him by Hanekoma, claiming to be looking for the Composer so he can take over Shibuya. During this time, Josh plants a couple disjointed flashbacks into Neku’s head of Neku’s death at convenient intervals, speaking ambiguously when Neku starts accusing him of being his killer. As they clear challenges and kill time on the days when Sho fails at being GM (since he’s off doing his own crap involving special killer noise-monster-things god i’m getting sick of explaining this gaaaame), Joshua’s blistering cynicism of people starts making Neku realize that he kind of doesn’t hate people as much as he used to, but also - even though he’s suspicious of Josh like whoa - starts feeling a kinship with his partner.
And then Joshua takes advantage of this on the final day of the week when they fight Sho, giving Neku one last flashback of his death in which it seems that Sho was the one that killed him, right before Josh supposedly is Erased by Sho using SELF-DESTRUCT or a leveli flare, but whatever.
Even though Josh actually just hopped dimensions to a creepy alternate Shibuya where everything is a bad fanfic, the trick is SUPER EFFECTIVE! Neku feels Guilt! And Neku is squishy for the third week, but Josh sits around in the other dimension waiting for Hanekoma to come pick him up and doesn’t see this behavior.
He finally returns to his own Shibuya with barely half an hour left of the Game, in time to absolutely owninate Sho and see Neku fighting Kitaniji with his other two partners in tow (Shiki Misaki and Daisukenojo “Beat” Biito - aka yo yo yo bro not appearing in this app). Smugly implying that Kitaniji has lost, his Conductor makes one last attempt at destroying Joshua’s proxy for the sake of Shibuya by becoming GIANT SUPER DRAGON CREATURE, borrowing Joshua’s Composer powers in the process. Neku... still defeats him anyway, and thus Kitaniji has no hope of winning the Game and graciously admits defeat. With his timer at zero, Joshua erases him.
Neku, understandably, is confused, since he thinks that the partner he’d wrongly accused of many horrible things and then died for him is now standing in front of him totally fine. Joshua quickly sets him straight in a cruel montage of exposition, in which he explains how he is the Composer, and how he’d intended to destroy Shibuya from the start, and how Neku had done a “bang-up job” to help him achieve that. Neku also gets to see the full version of that flash back, in which Joshua is obviously the one that shot him.
He gives Neku one last chance to “fix” everything, giving him a gun and keeping one for himself. Whoever shoots first gets to be Composer and do whatever they want with Shibuya. As Joshua counts down from ten, he watches neutrally to see whether or not Neku can bring himself to shoot someone who’d so obviously betrayed his trust - something the kid would have easily done before entering the Game - but Neku is unable to do it.
So Joshua shoots him again, and the next thing you know...
Everything is back to normal, since even though Kitaniji had failed, Neku had proven that even the worst sort of person in Shibuya could change to be someone who, in many respects, was a better person than even Joshua himself.
A week later, Neku meets up with his partners and new friends, his closing monologue implying that he was expecting Joshua to show up at their meeting place. Josh, however, sits on top of the 104 building with Hanekoma and sulks until his Producer points out his behavior and he goes flying off in a blink of light.
...And that’s it. Sorry for making you sit through all that. D:
PERSONALITY:
Joshua’s personality functions on multiple levels, as a by-product of formerly being a normal human being and then climbing to a position of godlike power that separates him from almost everyone he observes. It’s implied in canon that the only two people he has really interacted with over the course of his time as Composer are Hanekoma and Kitaniji, and possibly any previous Conductors he’s had.
Because of this, depending on the situation, Joshua may switch between two different sub-personalities he puts on for show, all the while denying the existence of his squishy human insides (sub-personality #3).
1.) SOCIALLY - This is the main portion of how he acts in the game. He’s smug, mischievous, and mocking - an ideal troll. He acts the devil’s advocate for the sake of making people question themselves, a side-effect of being the Composer, though he also does it just for fun. He attempts, and often succeeds in, dominating conversations using off-putting comments, patronizing*, and not-so-subtle inappropriate innuendo. Incredibly mercurial, he prides himself on his self-sufficiency while relying on others to do the dirty work for him. He will talk around things to avoid admitting that he’s wrong or at fault, being deliberately antagonizing and sparking conflict for his own enjoyment, ignoring any feelings of guilt in the rare case that he has them.
(*In Japanese, he refers to everyone as firstname-kun or -chan, and with pronouns that imply a skin-crawly kind of closeness.)
2.) PROFESSIONALLY - His professional qualities are mostly implied by his actions determining the ending of the game (not destroying Shibuya), the brief flashback conversation with Kitaniji where he suggests the month-long game and wishes his Conductor "nothing but success", and through Hanekoma’s secret reports. This is Joshua’s Composer persona, otherwise known as his Serious Business Face. When situation calls for it, Joshua will abruptly become much more serious and direct, but also more brutal, though to kinder ends. He tends to start speculating about human nature and social psychology, whether it be the meaning of life (/death) or a TV Trope. No, seriously.
Despite being more likely to speak without ambiguity, this is also his hands-off observer mode. He hides behind this aspect of his personality - being the Composer - in order to easily separate himself from others, a cop-out justification for his particularly Schizoid personality.
3.) INTERNALLY - The hardest aspect of his personality to pick up on, as he tends to ignore it’s even there. Evidenced by his cynicism that closely mirrors Neku’s early on in the game, Hanekoma’s description of him in Week 2, brief moments where he loses control of the situation and/or conversation throughout canon, and, of course, the necessary link between the other two sub-personalities he switches between. Hanekoma describes him as "prickly" and "aloof", but "not a bad kid". He denies any feelings of loneliness, hiding behind his position as Composer, ignoring his hypocrisy in not being able to trust others or get close to them. He covers for all of this by acting repulsive outwardly, as if to falsely justify his insecurities to avoid actual rejection. (These feelings of isolation may possibly be rooted in the implications that he could see the UG and the Game when he was still alive. "I See Dead People," indeed.) Though sharp and people-smart when not directly involved, he doesn’t know how to interact honestly with others, instead attempting to make them act the way he wants them to. He’s incredibly perceptive and sensitive, but oftentimes this is sabotaged by his ego and childish nature.
Prior to the game, he is convinced he’s already living his dreams, and is completely self-confident in his plans and designs as Composer. He feels he is afraid of nothing. By the end of the game, however, he is starting to recognize his own inability to change. Josh, ironically, would lose at his own Game - and in a way, he does. He’s torn between the fact that he knows a change in himself is needed in order to maintain his district, and the fact that he cannot bring himself to admit it.
POWER:
--Passive telepathy: reading other people's surface thoughts fairly easily, digging deeper requiring more effort and at the expense of the individual noticing, earnest denial works as a mental block, and unable to speak into other people's heads.
--Memory manipulation: scaled down from his canon capabilities - being able to "hold onto" specific memories or facts out of other people's heads, making them unable to recall the information until he returns it to them. The more memories he's holding from other people / the bigger the span of time, the more difficult it is for him to hold it.
--Ability to switch to his Composer form: The Composer's UG form, only on the normal plane at Cape and Cowl. Appears older than his normal form, and is comprised of solid energy. Allows him to fly and teleport, and is more difficult to damage (due to the lack of physical make up). Obviously won't be used in front of most people, if he's to keep his cover as a harmless kid.
I'll definitely be making a permissions post and dialoguing with players OOC to make sure no godmod issues arise.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[The audio feed clicks on to a mutter, spoken in Japanese but unfortunately translated for all to hear.]
This is hardly a gracious Game, dragging a foreign associate into your district at such short notice, Manhattan. Or whoever-- Hm, this doesn't seem right.
[A small clear of the throat and a thoughtful noise, as the speaker intentionally switches to English.]
My, my. "Hero," really~? I'm afraid this all seems rather shady, considering so much is being asked of me by a being who refuses to show their face. Your screening process needs a little work - you didn't even ask for my passport! I'm not sure I can work for someone who is clearly so lax in their judgment of qualifications; it's making my self-esteem drop even as we speak~
Not to mention that, really, it's very flattering of you to imply, but I don't think gaudy tights are really my thing.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
Happy endings were, in a way, utterly not worth it. At least not for those that worked behind the scenes, undoing his former Conductor's work over the past few weeks, not to mention having a record number of Players to transfer back to the RG. Altered memories all around, funerals erased, and so forth. Rather morbid, if one thought about it from a living perspective...
And then there was the issue regarding the Taboo Noise, but the moment Sanae caught him lurking on the top of 104, the Composer wrote the thought right out of his mind before the Angel could pick up on any evidence of it. Business had been business, he understood, and his Producer had in the end caused more trouble for himself than anyone else involved. If the higher-ups traced the information back to him, well. He certainly didn't want to be Sanae, if that happened.
He wasn't sure if Sanae tracked him down by searching out his frequency or just assumed he'd be here, watching his Proxy and the boy's friends meet up at Hachiko while deliberately keeping his distance on the UG. His suspicion leaned towards the latter, which didn't help to sweeten his mood. Taking a moment's rest amidst replenishing his staff and fixing all the dissonance in the UG was completely warranted - it was the most work he'd actively done in years, for such a small period of time. The fact that Neku-kun's thoughts, sharp to his ears in the din of Shibuya's afternoon, seemed to expect his presence... That was irrelevant.
If anything, the Composer's presence as it was simply underlined the fact that he hardly sought to get involved any further. Sanae could imply whatever he wished; it wouldn't change reality.
Besides, there was more work to be done, and the Players' part in it was over.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
This app has been a party.
NAME: Nil
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: nil_nova
IM: little gay jesus
E-MAIL: liljuunanadroid@yahoo.com
RETURNING: Leon Magus - bittersweetooth
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu
FANDOM: The World Ends With You - "TWEWY"
CHRONOLOGY: Post game & secret ending
CLASS: Neither - despite being an antagonist in canon, he's half-and-half chaotic neutral and lawful neutral. He'll do horrible things if he thinks the outcome will be beneficial in light of the "bigger picture". His motives are generally based in good intentions, but when he gets bored he's also inclined to mischief. When it comes to deals and promises he's made, however, he is always true to his word.
Basically, he's a mischievous anti-hero posing intentionally as a villain for fun. ...He'll also keep his tags because he's lazy like that.
SUPERHERO NAME: The Composer
ALTER EGO: Joshua, the smug and arrogant foreign exchange student. :D
BACKGROUND:
Glossary of Terms because it's necessary okay
RG: "RealGround"; plane of the living; oblivious to the existence of the UG
UG: "UnderGround"; a ghost-like plane at a higher frequency vibration than the RG; playing field for the Game; Composer's home domain
The Game: something you just lost; a series of challenges over a 7-day period of time, created and run by the Composer, carried out by the Reapers, and 'played' by the Players.
Composer: acts as the all-powerful "god" of a UG district; can switch planes to the RG at will, at the expense of a portion of his or her powers and a change of appearance; position held by Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu
Players: people, generally youths, that have recently died suddenly or tragically, and are participating in the Game for a second chance at life
Reapers: former Players that decided to be employed by the Composer instead of Erased. Arranged in ranks depending on responsibilities.
GM: Game Master; a Reaper appointed on a week-by-week basis that gives out the challenges for the Game
Conductor: highest ranking Reaper; acts as the go-between between the Reapers as a whole and the Composer; position held by Megumi Kitaniji
Officers: high ranking Reapers that work under the Conductor; (characters such as Mitsuki Konishi and Sho Minamimoto)
Harriers, Support: low-ranking Reapers (characters such as Uzuki Yashiro, Koki Kariya, 777...)
Angel: beings of a plane even higher than the UG; do not directly interact with the RG or UG (with a few exceptions), but are constantly observing; the next step of ascension after Composer
Producer: an Angel appointed to assist a Composer in their Game; of a higher rank but operates under the Composer's orders; position held by Sanae Hanekoma
Imagination: creative psychic energy that determines an individual's power in the UG
Erase, Erasure, etc.: to be completely wiped from existence
Joshua is the "spoiler character" of his canon, and as such we are given very little information about him beyond the events that happen in the game. No age is given, nor any information about his family, nor where he was born, nor... You get the idea. The little information he does give about himself in canon is when he's posing as someone he's not, so even those bits may not be true. However, I SHALL DO MY BEST TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING I CAN TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY.
So. Josh is, basically, God. Sort of. He's God in a little part of Tokyo, Japan known as the Shibuya district, which in the game is pretty damn close to the real thing in our world, only with some slight name tweaks (the 104 department store instead of 109, for example) due to copyright. He's pretty much all-powerful within his realm of jurisdiction, and his position is referred to as "Composer". He resides in the UG, which is a parallel plane to the RG. These two planes are basically a ghost plane and the living plane, respectively, with the UG being a higher "frequency" than the RG. This means that anyone that exists in the UG can see but not interact with the RG, while everything on the RG is oblivious to the existence of the UG. The purpose of the UG's existence is to provide a playing field for the Game (which, again, you just lost), a challenge each Composer creates to give Players a second chance at life.
For the sake of brevity, this is why I have that glossary up there. Reference at will.
Each Composer has different rules and setups for their Game, and also have different objectives. In Joshua's, he takes an entry fee from each Player - whatever it is they hold most dear (memories, appearance, skills, xyz) - for the duration of the Game, and requires that all Players team up in pairs in order to survive each challenge for a week - one challenge per day for seven days. The purpose of this is to see which Players improve themselves and realize what all they'd been missing out on or took for granted when they were alive. Those that survive the week and become better people in Joshua's eyes are brought back to life. Those that survive but don't improve are given the option to either play again or become Reapers. Some Reapers exist just to do simple grunt work, others try to Erase players, others are Officers, and each week the Game's challenges are given out by a Game Master, which changes with each Game. The highest ranking Reaper is the Conductor - Megumi Kitaniji, in TWEWY - who acts as the go-between between the Reapers as a whole and the Composer.
...Oh, and. The Players that don't survive the Game simply cease to exist. Sucks, don’t it.
The game happens regularly, and even though it's literally a matter of life and death, for Josh and his staff it's always been pretty routine. After some time as Composer, however, (as it's never mentioned how long he's been in the position), Joshua begins to tire of Shibuya's self-centered and stagnant population as a whole - even the living population. This leads right into TWEWY's events. 9 days before the game's events, Joshua relays to Kitaniji that he's "decided to wash his hands of [Shibuya]" and intends to destroy it. Kitaniji, respected Conductor that he is, begs the Composer to reconsider and thus Joshua suggests a special month-long Game: Kitaniji has 30 days to change the people of Shibuya or he and the district will both be Erased. The Composer will select a Player to represent him during the game while he remains in the RG, as Kitaniji wouldn’t have a chance of winning otherwise. Joshua's Producer, Sanae Hanekoma, hears of Joshua's intentions and starts working on a backup plan to keep Shibuya from getting wrecked, offering some tips to Sho Minamimoto. Sho's a rogue Officer looking to off the Composer and take his position, so basically Hanekoma's setting up an underhanded assassination that won't come back to bite him in the ass if Sho fails.
So Josh goes to the RG to pick his proxy, coming across our main character, Neku Sakuraba. Not only does the kid have alot of untapped Imagination, he’s also a perfect example of the closed-off and selfish people Joshua intends to destroy should he win this Game. So... he shoots the kid in the head, after a minor altercation with Sho, and dumps him in the Game with no memory of how he died.
With 21 days left and counting, Joshua spends his first week watching things progress from the RG, keeping an eye both on Neku as well as looking for any evidence of what Kitaniji’s tactics may be. Neku’s first entry fee is all of his other memories, and thus begins the Game with a bad attitude and an unsettled mental state, partnered with the girl Shiki Misaki. As the week goes on, however, Neku softens up a bit, and when the end of the week comes around and Kitaniji claims that the Composer has chosen Shiki as the one that will be revived, Neku tells her to go ahead and decides to replay the Game. JUST AS PLANNED... but then, since Kitaniji is fudging around the fact that the Composer isn’t around to revive Shiki, he returns Neku’s memories and takes Shiki as his second entry fee.
Since entry fees are Erased right along with their Player should they fail during the game, Neku is extra-motivated to win the second week. Unfortunately for him, Josh decides to be a dick for the sake of his own strategic plan and nabs Neku as his partner, posing as a living kid that can see the UG and acts like a total snobby prick. With a little bit of gay on the side. It’s barely there, really.
Cough cough so anyway, counting down with 14 days to go and with Sho Minamimoto now the Game Master, Josh drags Neku everywhere with a phone tracker given to him by Hanekoma, claiming to be looking for the Composer so he can take over Shibuya. During this time, Josh plants a couple disjointed flashbacks into Neku’s head of Neku’s death at convenient intervals, speaking ambiguously when Neku starts accusing him of being his killer. As they clear challenges and kill time on the days when Sho fails at being GM (since he’s off doing his own crap involving special killer noise-monster-things god i’m getting sick of explaining this gaaaame), Joshua’s blistering cynicism of people starts making Neku realize that he kind of doesn’t hate people as much as he used to, but also - even though he’s suspicious of Josh like whoa - starts feeling a kinship with his partner.
And then Joshua takes advantage of this on the final day of the week when they fight Sho, giving Neku one last flashback of his death in which it seems that Sho was the one that killed him, right before Josh supposedly is Erased by Sho using SELF-DESTRUCT or a leveli flare, but whatever.
Even though Josh actually just hopped dimensions to a creepy alternate Shibuya where everything is a bad fanfic, the trick is SUPER EFFECTIVE! Neku feels Guilt! And Neku is squishy for the third week, but Josh sits around in the other dimension waiting for Hanekoma to come pick him up and doesn’t see this behavior.
He finally returns to his own Shibuya with barely half an hour left of the Game, in time to absolutely owninate Sho and see Neku fighting Kitaniji with his other two partners in tow (Shiki Misaki and Daisukenojo “Beat” Biito - aka yo yo yo bro not appearing in this app). Smugly implying that Kitaniji has lost, his Conductor makes one last attempt at destroying Joshua’s proxy for the sake of Shibuya by becoming GIANT SUPER DRAGON CREATURE, borrowing Joshua’s Composer powers in the process. Neku... still defeats him anyway, and thus Kitaniji has no hope of winning the Game and graciously admits defeat. With his timer at zero, Joshua erases him.
Neku, understandably, is confused, since he thinks that the partner he’d wrongly accused of many horrible things and then died for him is now standing in front of him totally fine. Joshua quickly sets him straight in a cruel montage of exposition, in which he explains how he is the Composer, and how he’d intended to destroy Shibuya from the start, and how Neku had done a “bang-up job” to help him achieve that. Neku also gets to see the full version of that flash back, in which Joshua is obviously the one that shot him.
He gives Neku one last chance to “fix” everything, giving him a gun and keeping one for himself. Whoever shoots first gets to be Composer and do whatever they want with Shibuya. As Joshua counts down from ten, he watches neutrally to see whether or not Neku can bring himself to shoot someone who’d so obviously betrayed his trust - something the kid would have easily done before entering the Game - but Neku is unable to do it.
So Joshua shoots him again, and the next thing you know...
Everything is back to normal, since even though Kitaniji had failed, Neku had proven that even the worst sort of person in Shibuya could change to be someone who, in many respects, was a better person than even Joshua himself.
A week later, Neku meets up with his partners and new friends, his closing monologue implying that he was expecting Joshua to show up at their meeting place. Josh, however, sits on top of the 104 building with Hanekoma and sulks until his Producer points out his behavior and he goes flying off in a blink of light.
...And that’s it. Sorry for making you sit through all that. D:
PERSONALITY:
Joshua’s personality functions on multiple levels, as a by-product of formerly being a normal human being and then climbing to a position of godlike power that separates him from almost everyone he observes. It’s implied in canon that the only two people he has really interacted with over the course of his time as Composer are Hanekoma and Kitaniji, and possibly any previous Conductors he’s had.
Because of this, depending on the situation, Joshua may switch between two different sub-personalities he puts on for show, all the while denying the existence of his squishy human insides (sub-personality #3).
1.) SOCIALLY - This is the main portion of how he acts in the game. He’s smug, mischievous, and mocking - an ideal troll. He acts the devil’s advocate for the sake of making people question themselves, a side-effect of being the Composer, though he also does it just for fun. He attempts, and often succeeds in, dominating conversations using off-putting comments, patronizing*, and not-so-subtle inappropriate innuendo. Incredibly mercurial, he prides himself on his self-sufficiency while relying on others to do the dirty work for him. He will talk around things to avoid admitting that he’s wrong or at fault, being deliberately antagonizing and sparking conflict for his own enjoyment, ignoring any feelings of guilt in the rare case that he has them.
(*In Japanese, he refers to everyone as firstname-kun or -chan, and with pronouns that imply a skin-crawly kind of closeness.)
2.) PROFESSIONALLY - His professional qualities are mostly implied by his actions determining the ending of the game (not destroying Shibuya), the brief flashback conversation with Kitaniji where he suggests the month-long game and wishes his Conductor "nothing but success", and through Hanekoma’s secret reports. This is Joshua’s Composer persona, otherwise known as his Serious Business Face. When situation calls for it, Joshua will abruptly become much more serious and direct, but also more brutal, though to kinder ends. He tends to start speculating about human nature and social psychology, whether it be the meaning of life (/death) or a TV Trope. No, seriously.
Despite being more likely to speak without ambiguity, this is also his hands-off observer mode. He hides behind this aspect of his personality - being the Composer - in order to easily separate himself from others, a cop-out justification for his particularly Schizoid personality.
3.) INTERNALLY - The hardest aspect of his personality to pick up on, as he tends to ignore it’s even there. Evidenced by his cynicism that closely mirrors Neku’s early on in the game, Hanekoma’s description of him in Week 2, brief moments where he loses control of the situation and/or conversation throughout canon, and, of course, the necessary link between the other two sub-personalities he switches between. Hanekoma describes him as "prickly" and "aloof", but "not a bad kid". He denies any feelings of loneliness, hiding behind his position as Composer, ignoring his hypocrisy in not being able to trust others or get close to them. He covers for all of this by acting repulsive outwardly, as if to falsely justify his insecurities to avoid actual rejection. (These feelings of isolation may possibly be rooted in the implications that he could see the UG and the Game when he was still alive. "I See Dead People," indeed.) Though sharp and people-smart when not directly involved, he doesn’t know how to interact honestly with others, instead attempting to make them act the way he wants them to. He’s incredibly perceptive and sensitive, but oftentimes this is sabotaged by his ego and childish nature.
Prior to the game, he is convinced he’s already living his dreams, and is completely self-confident in his plans and designs as Composer. He feels he is afraid of nothing. By the end of the game, however, he is starting to recognize his own inability to change. Josh, ironically, would lose at his own Game - and in a way, he does. He’s torn between the fact that he knows a change in himself is needed in order to maintain his district, and the fact that he cannot bring himself to admit it.
POWER:
--Passive telepathy: reading other people's surface thoughts fairly easily, digging deeper requiring more effort and at the expense of the individual noticing, earnest denial works as a mental block, and unable to speak into other people's heads.
--Memory manipulation: scaled down from his canon capabilities - being able to "hold onto" specific memories or facts out of other people's heads, making them unable to recall the information until he returns it to them. The more memories he's holding from other people / the bigger the span of time, the more difficult it is for him to hold it.
--Ability to switch to his Composer form: The Composer's UG form, only on the normal plane at Cape and Cowl. Appears older than his normal form, and is comprised of solid energy. Allows him to fly and teleport, and is more difficult to damage (due to the lack of physical make up). Obviously won't be used in front of most people, if he's to keep his cover as a harmless kid.
I'll definitely be making a permissions post and dialoguing with players OOC to make sure no godmod issues arise.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[The audio feed clicks on to a mutter, spoken in Japanese but unfortunately translated for all to hear.]
This is hardly a gracious Game, dragging a foreign associate into your district at such short notice, Manhattan. Or whoever-- Hm, this doesn't seem right.
[A small clear of the throat and a thoughtful noise, as the speaker intentionally switches to English.]
My, my. "Hero," really~? I'm afraid this all seems rather shady, considering so much is being asked of me by a being who refuses to show their face. Your screening process needs a little work - you didn't even ask for my passport! I'm not sure I can work for someone who is clearly so lax in their judgment of qualifications; it's making my self-esteem drop even as we speak~
Not to mention that, really, it's very flattering of you to imply, but I don't think gaudy tights are really my thing.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
Happy endings were, in a way, utterly not worth it. At least not for those that worked behind the scenes, undoing his former Conductor's work over the past few weeks, not to mention having a record number of Players to transfer back to the RG. Altered memories all around, funerals erased, and so forth. Rather morbid, if one thought about it from a living perspective...
And then there was the issue regarding the Taboo Noise, but the moment Sanae caught him lurking on the top of 104, the Composer wrote the thought right out of his mind before the Angel could pick up on any evidence of it. Business had been business, he understood, and his Producer had in the end caused more trouble for himself than anyone else involved. If the higher-ups traced the information back to him, well. He certainly didn't want to be Sanae, if that happened.
He wasn't sure if Sanae tracked him down by searching out his frequency or just assumed he'd be here, watching his Proxy and the boy's friends meet up at Hachiko while deliberately keeping his distance on the UG. His suspicion leaned towards the latter, which didn't help to sweeten his mood. Taking a moment's rest amidst replenishing his staff and fixing all the dissonance in the UG was completely warranted - it was the most work he'd actively done in years, for such a small period of time. The fact that Neku-kun's thoughts, sharp to his ears in the din of Shibuya's afternoon, seemed to expect his presence... That was irrelevant.
If anything, the Composer's presence as it was simply underlined the fact that he hardly sought to get involved any further. Sanae could imply whatever he wished; it wouldn't change reality.
Besides, there was more work to be done, and the Players' part in it was over.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
This app has been a party.