(no subject)
This is an essay about Joshua. It’s been a long time coming, as I haven’t actually written about Joshua in a very long time. But before I start!
I want to do carryover from the CFUW game that ended last night. I got an excessive amount of development on Joshua’s part, and though I’ve gone through multiple attempts of Jesusing, it took him seeing someone much like himself to change. Jesusing Bastien was also Jesusing himself at the same time, though I don’t know if that was clear. (Joshua sounded like he was trolling.) If you would rather Joshua not remember you from this game, I fully understand! But you are free to remember him basically being a giant godmode and all things involved with that, as it reveals some things about him and that gives me more to play with. I’m carrying it over as a “fuzzy dream,” obviously, but the changes made to Joshua (which will be detailed in this essay) will be there. Because I’ve been looking for this development for months.
Now on to the actual essay.
I keep a few things in mind when I play Joshua. They’re mostly head canon and interpretation things and I understand that not everyone would see it that way, but they’re important notes about my characterization.
- Canon says Joshua might be fifteen or he might be older than fifteen, as he seems wise beyond his years. I think he’s older than fifteen in actual years, but when he became Composer, he was fifteen years old. I don’t think his mentality has really moved past that. Though he can see into the minds of people and see what’s most important to them, there’s this detached way of handling them.
- Joshua was a prodigy. A genius. He could see ghosts and found out about the UG and singlehandedly went in, took over, and killed the guy in charge. That’s how he became God: killing the previous God. Mr. Hanekoma spoke about him like he was a God, and his wording toward him is actually very pleasant. But the thing about Joshua is that he never really had friends. He didn’t go to a proper school-he was home-schooled by a tutor because he was well beyond his years in intelligence-and so he didn’t have the same interaction as other people. People were ideas and theories and scientific. Joshua’s mind works scientifically, psychologically, but not in a way that actually makes him come across as a normal thinking human being.
- Thusly, Joshua is actually emotionally stunted. Severely. He doesn’t realize when he truly loves someone or cares about them. He can (he loves Neku because of things that happened in camp while we had one and he loves Miharu, and it’s hopeless on both those ends) but he doesn’t understand what’s going on when he does. So he acts kind of like an idiot and like they’re his possessions or subordinates because that makes sense!
- Joshua might mock your character or make them blush but he is not interested in them. Joshua only likes Neku and Miharu that way. He finds the Oaks (and now David) attractive, but it’s like … in that detached, appreciating attractive people way. He’s also gay! But in a weird, borderline asexual way. I don’t think he thinks about sex, though if Miharu or Neku wanted it with him, he’d be all over that.
- Joshua is a dick and doesn’t hide it. He is a troll. I don’t think he really cares if you think he’s a troll. He’s better than you and there’s really nothing that’s going to change that mindset. He’s a FUCKING GENIUS, man.
- At the end of canon, Joshua was not pleased to hand over Shibuya to Neku and regrets not erasing it. This is how I read the final scene (it’s a special scene you get when you get all the Secret Reports). Mr. H has to tell him that things have to be like that and he continues to pout like a bitchy pouty thing.
- Joshua plays people. His side is the only one that counts. See: superiority complex. Joshua is fucking smooth and while being a dick he can also seem to be Jesusing you. It’s why Neku becomes so attached to him. Joshua is a broken fucked up person and can appeal to you because he knows how to handle people even while being an emotional retard.
- Trust is actually important to Joshua, only it’s a twisted sort of trust. You trust him because he’s better than you. You trust him because he’ll do the right thing in the end, but if you don’t think he will, if you start faltering in that trust, then he gets cranky and angry.
All that said, let’s get to some things.
Joshua and the Last Year (and a halfish) in Camp
Miharu, Neku, Losing Neku, and How He Hates Yoi-Te, Hakuren, and Trust
There’s more than those elements here, but I think those are really the key things. Basically, Joshua wanted to destroy Shibuya. He thought people were too negative and backwards minded. They were greedy. They were negative. So he thought he would “wash [his] hands of it.” He wanted to be done with Shibuya because the people weren’t giving in to his whims. His game was actually supposed to make people appreciate life more. People were meant to win the game, rather than come out being more negative. They were meant to appreciate life more.
But then that stopped happening!
Joshua sees himself as a pretty benevolent God, but he’ll never understand why playing games with people’s lives is a bad thing. He was helping them! The angels seemed to understand why Joshua was doing this, but as anyone knows, angels aren’t exactly the greatest people ever. They’re soldiers and they play with people. This isn’t different in most canons, as it’s actually a pretty consistent note. If you’re going to make someone look ambiguous, you play with angels, because they’re actually fucked up little warriors playing in the lives of people.
Cue: Coming to camp. Elizabeth Sayre is playing a game with people’s lives, isn’t she? In camp, people get to find people that they haven’t seen in a while … or you have circumstances like Miharu, where he gets to be away from the people using him.
Joshua and Miharu attached to one another from the get-go. It’s funny because it’s a pair of Gods, but they just clicked. Their first thread was them basically agreeing to be boyfriends right off the bat. It was a complete and utter joke, but somehow, the two kept being friends, kept being that way. As more people from Miharu’s world showed up, Joshua started realizing that he was surrounded by terrible, negative people who just wanted him for his power and Miharu should’ve been over them. Yoi-te wanted him to grant his wish, and Yoi-te was a dumbfuck with that power. Raimei wanted to use him. Shijima and Kouichi wanted to use him. Basically, Nabari no Ou is about people wanting someone to make their wishes come true, but at the same time, Miharu might die if he grants those people their wishes.
As a result of that, Joshua started growing more and more attached to Miharu while messing with him bad. He mindfucked him during a CFUW game that carried over. He made played with Miharu’s loyalty and made him really attached to him while continuing to fuck with him. Miharu was a God. He deserved a better place. And Joshua had him. But Joshua didn’t truly understand what he was doing because he was looking at it through the scope of meticulous calculations and how things should be rather than “I am a boy who likes another boy.”
Because sometimes, Joshua is fucking dumb.
While he was growing increasingly attached to Miharu, he found Hakuren interesting. I’ve essayed on this before but basically, he thought Hakuren had a lot of potential. He was smart. He was open-minded. But Hakuren started dating someone who was genocidal and that was a problem! Joshua and Devit have never gotten along and in Joshua’s eyes, Devit is this pointless little toy that should die. If it was up to him, he would kill all the Noahs. It’s funny because the Noahs and Joshua both have craved genocide at one time (the Noah desire being a little more constant than Joshua’s). Joshua supposedly got better about that. The problem is, Joshua wasn’t going to stop asserting his authority over Devit. Of course, that started to make the 07 Ghost cast hate Joshua a little more as days went by.
On top of all this, Neku comes to camp and while Joshua is able to do some of the same things with Neku, and the two sort of are together for a while, Neku makes things difficult because Joshua basically tells Neku, “I’ve changed. I left you Shibuya. Please forgive me.” But being Joshua, he didn’t say it in those words. So basically, Neku and Joshua go back and forth for a while, with Hakuren basically making it that Joshua was the one making things difficult. But then Neku left, and things never really got worked out. There was some closure there, but Joshua is sort of attached to Neku. Because, after all, while Neku never really had friends, neither did Joshua. He had Mr. H who looked out for him, but outside of him? Joshua’s friends were his subordinates, and look: they all plotted to take over his position (and then were defeated because … that’s what Joshua does). And when I say “sort of attached” I mean Joshua is really fucking stuck on him. He just doesn’t realize it.
So, yeah, Neku left. Neku left and Shiki showed up. Shiki showing up pissed him off because if anyone from his world was supposed to show up, it shouldn’t be her. It’s why he avoided her for months. She shouldn’t be in camp. It should be Mr. H or even Megumi and most certainly Neku but never her. He doesn’t care about her, really. And his apathy just made him ignore her. If we had a Neku, it would be different, but we don’t.
Joshua was already verging on instability because of the things that happened with Neku, but he restored some of that when Yoi-te left and Joshua removed his existence from camp. No one remembered him, but Miharu was missing half of his being. Joshua didn’t see this as a problem, because Yoi-te was negative, and one day, he would get better. This went on a lot longer than I suspected, so Joshua didn’t have a reason to fuck with people. He had Miharu, everything was in order.
But then Yoi-te returned. And camp forced Joshua’s actions to be basically null and void.
Remember that Joshua hates Yoi-te. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember because being Joshua, the things Joshua hates Yoi-te for happened at home (and from what I understand of what Rikuou has told me, Yoi-te understands that Joshua has a point).
Leading up to this point, Joshua was cocky. He didn’t care if he played with the trust people gave him. He had Miharu. He burned all of his bridges in the months while he possessed Miharu because it didn’t matter to him. People didn’t trust him, and they never wanted to trust him. So, why bother? People were going to be negative. They weren’t going to appreciate camp (he got into a pretty intense thread with Yuta about this once and he got pretty angry about it). They weren’t going to do anything that would be moving their lives forward. He could erase them all, but … he had Miharu. Of course, Joshua can’t erase camp, but let’s just handwave that.
Anyway, so: Joshua loses Miharu.
Joshua essentially has no one left except for Shuri, who’s passingly fond of him. And Joshua doesn’t like Shuri in return because he’s selfish and stupid, but! BUT! Shuri’s been changing a lot, too.
Joshua hates camp a little. Because of the people there. He doesn’t have anyone who really counts. It’s a shitty little place and he’d like to wash his hands of it. The genocidal notions are back in full force.
Interlude Period
AKA Wanting to Kill Devit, Yoi-te, and Generally Hiding and Being Unstable and How Joshua is Forcibly Static or Wants to Regress
Yes, for a while there, we had two Joshuas in camp hiding out. Joshua left the cabin he lived in for a year and he’s been floating around. I don’t know where. Maybe he stayed with the Sleeping Forest base for a week that has an indeterminate location. WHO KNOWS. Unlike Joshua Christopher, Joshua was getting around. He would come out once in a while and even if he wasn’t trolling someone, he generally knew the gist of what was going on in camp. It didn’t change his mindset much.
There’s really nothing to say on the Yoi-te or Devit situation. Joshua wants them dead and gone and erased and he would make it happen if he could.
The more important part of this section is that Joshua doesn’t know how to deal with things, so he sticks to his guns and sometimes that pushes him back in his development. My ideal position for Joshua has always been for him to realize that handing Shibuya over to Neku was a good idea. But that was never truly settled between them in camp, so he could never realize or be completely okay with his decisions there. It was just one block in a lot that made him generally see humanity under that light. Honestly, Joshua sees humanity worse than it is. Camp is a place where people survive and come to love one another and though there are negative people, the overall place is surprisingly positive. But Joshua regressed back into genocidal mode. This is bad!
Prior to the game starting (for the sake of my mind wrapping around interactions), he had important threads where he tried to kill Devit, he and Miharu talked about him being a retard, he messed with Shuri, and he was generally just … Joshua about things.
Normally, this behavior was supposed to lead to Joshua running a game in camp. That’s why I pinned a time for Yoi-te to be picked up, but it took forever to get one and Joshua was too far gone. He had no bridges by time we got one, and I am really not equipped for running that kind of event in camp. Fortunately, CFUZazzle came around.
A Brief Note Before I Dive into That
On Jesusing Joshua
I looked for months for the right person to throw Joshua at to Jesus him, but I think I ultimately decided on no one for a number of reasons. But mostly, I realize the problem now: Joshua needed to Jesus himself. He’d already been Jesus’d by Neku, but he was still standing on that threshold at deciding where to go from there.
CFUZazzle and Joshua Jesusing Himself
Joshua’s changes and motivations and his actions as a wolf
This is split into two sections, because there was a lot going on that I couldn’t show. Only Zazzle knew what Joshua was doing the entire game because I was babbling at her and she did a lot of >DDDD at me. I think if I didn’t have someone to go THIS IS WHAT JOSHUA IS DOING WHAT A DOUCHE I would have gone mad. Because he was really, really playing people. Anyway, the “how he changed” section first and then the other half of it, which was his actions, and even explaining myself a little.
I.
Basically, Joshua decided it was a kill game right off. The setting, the time of the year, and things that were going on. How couldn’t it be a kill game? What annoyed him is that Bastien repressed his powers throughout the game, so it limited him a bit. At the start, Joshua didn’t care about any of it-people were going to look for clues for them (and they were coming up with nothing, much to his amusement) and he was going to be a brat. When he hurt Bel to take Death, it wasn’t because Bel was a sheep. I should declare that. It was because Joshua is insanely, insanely unstable right now, and what right does Bel have to taking something that belongs to him? He’s Death, and he doesn’t deserve any of those horrible titles. Especially in a game he has already determined as a kill game.
Now, skipping “time wasting” and all that aside, there were a few key things he did in the game:
- He was a jackass, but he appealed to people. He was there for Shuri, but that was honestly just to keep Shuri wrapped around his finger. He never bothered doing it with Bel, though.
- He basically did the same thing with David. Only Kayashima mostly had David handled.
- He got pissed off at the shepherd at one point.
Joshua started the game thinking he would play for himself to win and the other wolves could maybe get a win with him-but if they were a casualty, they would be a casualty. He did actually mean to secure Kayashima and Sera’s safety by voting for them, as he thought someone (mostly Risa or Jack) would ask everyone how they voted! Anyway, this logic was how he played his last wolf game and he pissed off the wolves and they got rid of him for being a dick. (When they could’ve easily voted to save him. Ha ha.)
In the wolves’ post, he basically told Bastien that he would kill everyone if he let him, but Bastien told him that it would have to wait. That he would have to agree to the game. Joshua agreed and thus, the game went on.
As things went from there, people kept trying, but Joshua was Joshua and was appealing and doing his thing. He turned on Jack because … why wouldn’t he turn on Jack? He voted early enough that it didn’t seem like a wolf vote and if anyone argued that it was, then it would seem unusual, wouldn’t it? They would just be scapegoating themselves. Even Jack’s comment couldn’t exactly convince someone because it’s a game. Joshua wasn’t a last minute decision in that ousting. Joshua betrays people and doesn’t care.
That night, the shepherd was a dick to him and unappreciative and Joshua is a fucking brat. And then the next day, the letter about there being no ghost? This was about when Joshua started playing for the wolves and decided he would win this game, with the wolves (who were surprisingly competent-go figure! … this is an IC way of looking at things, not me, for the record) and he would end up figuring out Bastien’s little mystery. Joshua wants to know things that are going on and he wants to solve mysteries and be in the know. Somewhere along the way, people appreciating him boosted him up, because he’s an egotistic maniac, but they were all trying their best to survive. The benevolent, caring, let’s make people play a game to appreciate life part of Joshua was touched.
He just didn’t know it. Hell, even as I played it, I didn’t know it. I think something actually clicked when David handed Joshua his coat.
Fast forward to the ending of the game. I actually did not know how Joshua was going to respond, and he only wanted to find people so he could get Miharu back. Prior to that, he was already sympathizing with Bastien pretty bad, but there was some jarring parallels between Bastien and Joshua, in that they’re both desperate people who do stupid things and think they’re in the right. Only Bastien is better about it because he doesn’t think he’s still right ninety-percent of the time.
Basically, Joshua realized that everyone tried. His crap to Shuri about staying strong and not letting Bastien win … I don’t know, Shuri kept trying. This was a huge fucking surprise for Joshua. He expected Shuri to wallow selfishly and give up, but he did his best to connect with Christian.
So this:
But isn't that what you want? It'd prove quite the point. I wouldn't have minded erasing all of them, but haven't they all fought quite valiantly? Even if a few of them are idiots. They still played the game and came to value their lives, and many of them want to do this ...
No, I'm afraid we'll just have to stick to our guns and forgive you. That's not what you want, right?
That was genuine. Joshua has always wanted Neku to forgive him and he’s always wanted to be okay with his own decisions, even if they were sometimes faulty and he wants to feel that it was a good idea to give up Shibuya. And in forgiving Bastien, he was … feeling okay with that, like he was willing to realize that he, too, made mistakes and he needed to stop making dumb mistakes. It wouldn’t be easy, but whatever, that’s how life works.
This doesn’t mean he’s going to change immediately or be less hurtful, but … he can change now. He can move forward. It’s a big deal.
II.
Bullet points!
- Joshua’s inactivity the first night was actually because I had a hard time keeping up with what was going on. He wouldn’t have done jack to help others (lol typing that is funny, since there was Jack in game … anyway), but he wouldn’t have been so below the radar (in my opinion, he was). His actions taken were to serve himself.
- Note that if Joshua played as a sheep, he wouldn’t have been any different. Joshua is out for himself. Basically, what people found to be “wolf-like behavior” was Joshua being a douche. Even Bel’s argument against Joshua, in my opinion, wasn’t very strong. Joshua and Sera both voted on Momoko, but so did two other people. And one vote went to Bel. I don’t know who did that, but hey. Joshua could’ve easily tied things up (and he wouldn’t care about the tie rule-the last person who mattered to him was probably dead) to try and get two sheep up, and he didn’t.
- Joshua wasted time, yes, but so did a LOT OF OTHER PEOPLE. And all his time wasting turned out to be relevant, except for when he was eating sushi instead of busting open the extra doors (but as we know, that hallway wasn’t very important, anyway). The books were necessary and breaking the gramophone actually seemed necessary at the time. He genuinely thought there might be something inside of it.
- When Risa wouldn’t let Joshua walk off with the diary or a page from the diary, he decided to eat her. It didn’t matter what she did from there on out, because that pissed him off. It was her way of showing that she didn’t trust him. She was active and capable of getting people to listen to her and that meant she needed to go.
- He wanted to eat Turkey because they socialized on the first day and Joshua was helpful and Turkey still wanted him gone. GUYS. THE SAFE SHEEP NEVER GOT EATEN THOUGH. THIS IS HILARIOUS TO ME.
- He turned on Jack because Jack started seeing the handwriting thing as a waste of time. He would have tossed Ashton to the wind, but Jack would have been able to pinpoint that. Turkey wasn’t proactive enough to keep up with it, and the remaining individuals bought Joshua’s bullshit that it was necessary. (It was, but. Not very.)
- Germany and Prussia both didn’t continue to reply to him, so he was glad to see them go. He’s a brat. They were the remaining people in the clue and thus confirmed safe. (And the wolves never found out the safe sheep, haha.)
- Joshua fully expected to go out when he was in a clue. I am still surprised about this. It helped that Bel really didn’t have a solid reason for believing in him (he had Joshua’s actions all wrong).
Future Plans
- Trust post.
- That one post Dante and Emiri know about that I’ve been putting off because it’ll take me all day to do.
- Mindfucking Joshua Christopher. Of course, this is still going to happen.
I want to do carryover from the CFUW game that ended last night. I got an excessive amount of development on Joshua’s part, and though I’ve gone through multiple attempts of Jesusing, it took him seeing someone much like himself to change. Jesusing Bastien was also Jesusing himself at the same time, though I don’t know if that was clear. (Joshua sounded like he was trolling.) If you would rather Joshua not remember you from this game, I fully understand! But you are free to remember him basically being a giant godmode and all things involved with that, as it reveals some things about him and that gives me more to play with. I’m carrying it over as a “fuzzy dream,” obviously, but the changes made to Joshua (which will be detailed in this essay) will be there. Because I’ve been looking for this development for months.
Now on to the actual essay.
I keep a few things in mind when I play Joshua. They’re mostly head canon and interpretation things and I understand that not everyone would see it that way, but they’re important notes about my characterization.
- Canon says Joshua might be fifteen or he might be older than fifteen, as he seems wise beyond his years. I think he’s older than fifteen in actual years, but when he became Composer, he was fifteen years old. I don’t think his mentality has really moved past that. Though he can see into the minds of people and see what’s most important to them, there’s this detached way of handling them.
- Joshua was a prodigy. A genius. He could see ghosts and found out about the UG and singlehandedly went in, took over, and killed the guy in charge. That’s how he became God: killing the previous God. Mr. Hanekoma spoke about him like he was a God, and his wording toward him is actually very pleasant. But the thing about Joshua is that he never really had friends. He didn’t go to a proper school-he was home-schooled by a tutor because he was well beyond his years in intelligence-and so he didn’t have the same interaction as other people. People were ideas and theories and scientific. Joshua’s mind works scientifically, psychologically, but not in a way that actually makes him come across as a normal thinking human being.
- Thusly, Joshua is actually emotionally stunted. Severely. He doesn’t realize when he truly loves someone or cares about them. He can (he loves Neku because of things that happened in camp while we had one and he loves Miharu, and it’s hopeless on both those ends) but he doesn’t understand what’s going on when he does. So he acts kind of like an idiot and like they’re his possessions or subordinates because that makes sense!
- Joshua might mock your character or make them blush but he is not interested in them. Joshua only likes Neku and Miharu that way. He finds the Oaks (and now David) attractive, but it’s like … in that detached, appreciating attractive people way. He’s also gay! But in a weird, borderline asexual way. I don’t think he thinks about sex, though if Miharu or Neku wanted it with him, he’d be all over that.
- Joshua is a dick and doesn’t hide it. He is a troll. I don’t think he really cares if you think he’s a troll. He’s better than you and there’s really nothing that’s going to change that mindset. He’s a FUCKING GENIUS, man.
- At the end of canon, Joshua was not pleased to hand over Shibuya to Neku and regrets not erasing it. This is how I read the final scene (it’s a special scene you get when you get all the Secret Reports). Mr. H has to tell him that things have to be like that and he continues to pout like a bitchy pouty thing.
- Joshua plays people. His side is the only one that counts. See: superiority complex. Joshua is fucking smooth and while being a dick he can also seem to be Jesusing you. It’s why Neku becomes so attached to him. Joshua is a broken fucked up person and can appeal to you because he knows how to handle people even while being an emotional retard.
- Trust is actually important to Joshua, only it’s a twisted sort of trust. You trust him because he’s better than you. You trust him because he’ll do the right thing in the end, but if you don’t think he will, if you start faltering in that trust, then he gets cranky and angry.
All that said, let’s get to some things.
Joshua and the Last Year (and a halfish) in Camp
Miharu, Neku, Losing Neku, and How He Hates Yoi-Te, Hakuren, and Trust
There’s more than those elements here, but I think those are really the key things. Basically, Joshua wanted to destroy Shibuya. He thought people were too negative and backwards minded. They were greedy. They were negative. So he thought he would “wash [his] hands of it.” He wanted to be done with Shibuya because the people weren’t giving in to his whims. His game was actually supposed to make people appreciate life more. People were meant to win the game, rather than come out being more negative. They were meant to appreciate life more.
But then that stopped happening!
Joshua sees himself as a pretty benevolent God, but he’ll never understand why playing games with people’s lives is a bad thing. He was helping them! The angels seemed to understand why Joshua was doing this, but as anyone knows, angels aren’t exactly the greatest people ever. They’re soldiers and they play with people. This isn’t different in most canons, as it’s actually a pretty consistent note. If you’re going to make someone look ambiguous, you play with angels, because they’re actually fucked up little warriors playing in the lives of people.
Cue: Coming to camp. Elizabeth Sayre is playing a game with people’s lives, isn’t she? In camp, people get to find people that they haven’t seen in a while … or you have circumstances like Miharu, where he gets to be away from the people using him.
Joshua and Miharu attached to one another from the get-go. It’s funny because it’s a pair of Gods, but they just clicked. Their first thread was them basically agreeing to be boyfriends right off the bat. It was a complete and utter joke, but somehow, the two kept being friends, kept being that way. As more people from Miharu’s world showed up, Joshua started realizing that he was surrounded by terrible, negative people who just wanted him for his power and Miharu should’ve been over them. Yoi-te wanted him to grant his wish, and Yoi-te was a dumbfuck with that power. Raimei wanted to use him. Shijima and Kouichi wanted to use him. Basically, Nabari no Ou is about people wanting someone to make their wishes come true, but at the same time, Miharu might die if he grants those people their wishes.
As a result of that, Joshua started growing more and more attached to Miharu while messing with him bad. He mindfucked him during a CFUW game that carried over. He made played with Miharu’s loyalty and made him really attached to him while continuing to fuck with him. Miharu was a God. He deserved a better place. And Joshua had him. But Joshua didn’t truly understand what he was doing because he was looking at it through the scope of meticulous calculations and how things should be rather than “I am a boy who likes another boy.”
Because sometimes, Joshua is fucking dumb.
While he was growing increasingly attached to Miharu, he found Hakuren interesting. I’ve essayed on this before but basically, he thought Hakuren had a lot of potential. He was smart. He was open-minded. But Hakuren started dating someone who was genocidal and that was a problem! Joshua and Devit have never gotten along and in Joshua’s eyes, Devit is this pointless little toy that should die. If it was up to him, he would kill all the Noahs. It’s funny because the Noahs and Joshua both have craved genocide at one time (the Noah desire being a little more constant than Joshua’s). Joshua supposedly got better about that. The problem is, Joshua wasn’t going to stop asserting his authority over Devit. Of course, that started to make the 07 Ghost cast hate Joshua a little more as days went by.
On top of all this, Neku comes to camp and while Joshua is able to do some of the same things with Neku, and the two sort of are together for a while, Neku makes things difficult because Joshua basically tells Neku, “I’ve changed. I left you Shibuya. Please forgive me.” But being Joshua, he didn’t say it in those words. So basically, Neku and Joshua go back and forth for a while, with Hakuren basically making it that Joshua was the one making things difficult. But then Neku left, and things never really got worked out. There was some closure there, but Joshua is sort of attached to Neku. Because, after all, while Neku never really had friends, neither did Joshua. He had Mr. H who looked out for him, but outside of him? Joshua’s friends were his subordinates, and look: they all plotted to take over his position (and then were defeated because … that’s what Joshua does). And when I say “sort of attached” I mean Joshua is really fucking stuck on him. He just doesn’t realize it.
So, yeah, Neku left. Neku left and Shiki showed up. Shiki showing up pissed him off because if anyone from his world was supposed to show up, it shouldn’t be her. It’s why he avoided her for months. She shouldn’t be in camp. It should be Mr. H or even Megumi and most certainly Neku but never her. He doesn’t care about her, really. And his apathy just made him ignore her. If we had a Neku, it would be different, but we don’t.
Joshua was already verging on instability because of the things that happened with Neku, but he restored some of that when Yoi-te left and Joshua removed his existence from camp. No one remembered him, but Miharu was missing half of his being. Joshua didn’t see this as a problem, because Yoi-te was negative, and one day, he would get better. This went on a lot longer than I suspected, so Joshua didn’t have a reason to fuck with people. He had Miharu, everything was in order.
But then Yoi-te returned. And camp forced Joshua’s actions to be basically null and void.
Remember that Joshua hates Yoi-te. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember because being Joshua, the things Joshua hates Yoi-te for happened at home (and from what I understand of what Rikuou has told me, Yoi-te understands that Joshua has a point).
Leading up to this point, Joshua was cocky. He didn’t care if he played with the trust people gave him. He had Miharu. He burned all of his bridges in the months while he possessed Miharu because it didn’t matter to him. People didn’t trust him, and they never wanted to trust him. So, why bother? People were going to be negative. They weren’t going to appreciate camp (he got into a pretty intense thread with Yuta about this once and he got pretty angry about it). They weren’t going to do anything that would be moving their lives forward. He could erase them all, but … he had Miharu. Of course, Joshua can’t erase camp, but let’s just handwave that.
Anyway, so: Joshua loses Miharu.
Joshua essentially has no one left except for Shuri, who’s passingly fond of him. And Joshua doesn’t like Shuri in return because he’s selfish and stupid, but! BUT! Shuri’s been changing a lot, too.
Joshua hates camp a little. Because of the people there. He doesn’t have anyone who really counts. It’s a shitty little place and he’d like to wash his hands of it. The genocidal notions are back in full force.
Interlude Period
AKA Wanting to Kill Devit, Yoi-te, and Generally Hiding and Being Unstable and How Joshua is Forcibly Static or Wants to Regress
Yes, for a while there, we had two Joshuas in camp hiding out. Joshua left the cabin he lived in for a year and he’s been floating around. I don’t know where. Maybe he stayed with the Sleeping Forest base for a week that has an indeterminate location. WHO KNOWS. Unlike Joshua Christopher, Joshua was getting around. He would come out once in a while and even if he wasn’t trolling someone, he generally knew the gist of what was going on in camp. It didn’t change his mindset much.
There’s really nothing to say on the Yoi-te or Devit situation. Joshua wants them dead and gone and erased and he would make it happen if he could.
The more important part of this section is that Joshua doesn’t know how to deal with things, so he sticks to his guns and sometimes that pushes him back in his development. My ideal position for Joshua has always been for him to realize that handing Shibuya over to Neku was a good idea. But that was never truly settled between them in camp, so he could never realize or be completely okay with his decisions there. It was just one block in a lot that made him generally see humanity under that light. Honestly, Joshua sees humanity worse than it is. Camp is a place where people survive and come to love one another and though there are negative people, the overall place is surprisingly positive. But Joshua regressed back into genocidal mode. This is bad!
Prior to the game starting (for the sake of my mind wrapping around interactions), he had important threads where he tried to kill Devit, he and Miharu talked about him being a retard, he messed with Shuri, and he was generally just … Joshua about things.
Normally, this behavior was supposed to lead to Joshua running a game in camp. That’s why I pinned a time for Yoi-te to be picked up, but it took forever to get one and Joshua was too far gone. He had no bridges by time we got one, and I am really not equipped for running that kind of event in camp. Fortunately, CFUZazzle came around.
A Brief Note Before I Dive into That
On Jesusing Joshua
I looked for months for the right person to throw Joshua at to Jesus him, but I think I ultimately decided on no one for a number of reasons. But mostly, I realize the problem now: Joshua needed to Jesus himself. He’d already been Jesus’d by Neku, but he was still standing on that threshold at deciding where to go from there.
CFUZazzle and Joshua Jesusing Himself
Joshua’s changes and motivations and his actions as a wolf
This is split into two sections, because there was a lot going on that I couldn’t show. Only Zazzle knew what Joshua was doing the entire game because I was babbling at her and she did a lot of >DDDD at me. I think if I didn’t have someone to go THIS IS WHAT JOSHUA IS DOING WHAT A DOUCHE I would have gone mad. Because he was really, really playing people. Anyway, the “how he changed” section first and then the other half of it, which was his actions, and even explaining myself a little.
I.
Basically, Joshua decided it was a kill game right off. The setting, the time of the year, and things that were going on. How couldn’t it be a kill game? What annoyed him is that Bastien repressed his powers throughout the game, so it limited him a bit. At the start, Joshua didn’t care about any of it-people were going to look for clues for them (and they were coming up with nothing, much to his amusement) and he was going to be a brat. When he hurt Bel to take Death, it wasn’t because Bel was a sheep. I should declare that. It was because Joshua is insanely, insanely unstable right now, and what right does Bel have to taking something that belongs to him? He’s Death, and he doesn’t deserve any of those horrible titles. Especially in a game he has already determined as a kill game.
Now, skipping “time wasting” and all that aside, there were a few key things he did in the game:
- He was a jackass, but he appealed to people. He was there for Shuri, but that was honestly just to keep Shuri wrapped around his finger. He never bothered doing it with Bel, though.
- He basically did the same thing with David. Only Kayashima mostly had David handled.
- He got pissed off at the shepherd at one point.
Joshua started the game thinking he would play for himself to win and the other wolves could maybe get a win with him-but if they were a casualty, they would be a casualty. He did actually mean to secure Kayashima and Sera’s safety by voting for them, as he thought someone (mostly Risa or Jack) would ask everyone how they voted! Anyway, this logic was how he played his last wolf game and he pissed off the wolves and they got rid of him for being a dick. (When they could’ve easily voted to save him. Ha ha.)
In the wolves’ post, he basically told Bastien that he would kill everyone if he let him, but Bastien told him that it would have to wait. That he would have to agree to the game. Joshua agreed and thus, the game went on.
As things went from there, people kept trying, but Joshua was Joshua and was appealing and doing his thing. He turned on Jack because … why wouldn’t he turn on Jack? He voted early enough that it didn’t seem like a wolf vote and if anyone argued that it was, then it would seem unusual, wouldn’t it? They would just be scapegoating themselves. Even Jack’s comment couldn’t exactly convince someone because it’s a game. Joshua wasn’t a last minute decision in that ousting. Joshua betrays people and doesn’t care.
That night, the shepherd was a dick to him and unappreciative and Joshua is a fucking brat. And then the next day, the letter about there being no ghost? This was about when Joshua started playing for the wolves and decided he would win this game, with the wolves (who were surprisingly competent-go figure! … this is an IC way of looking at things, not me, for the record) and he would end up figuring out Bastien’s little mystery. Joshua wants to know things that are going on and he wants to solve mysteries and be in the know. Somewhere along the way, people appreciating him boosted him up, because he’s an egotistic maniac, but they were all trying their best to survive. The benevolent, caring, let’s make people play a game to appreciate life part of Joshua was touched.
He just didn’t know it. Hell, even as I played it, I didn’t know it. I think something actually clicked when David handed Joshua his coat.
Fast forward to the ending of the game. I actually did not know how Joshua was going to respond, and he only wanted to find people so he could get Miharu back. Prior to that, he was already sympathizing with Bastien pretty bad, but there was some jarring parallels between Bastien and Joshua, in that they’re both desperate people who do stupid things and think they’re in the right. Only Bastien is better about it because he doesn’t think he’s still right ninety-percent of the time.
Basically, Joshua realized that everyone tried. His crap to Shuri about staying strong and not letting Bastien win … I don’t know, Shuri kept trying. This was a huge fucking surprise for Joshua. He expected Shuri to wallow selfishly and give up, but he did his best to connect with Christian.
So this:
But isn't that what you want? It'd prove quite the point. I wouldn't have minded erasing all of them, but haven't they all fought quite valiantly? Even if a few of them are idiots. They still played the game and came to value their lives, and many of them want to do this ...
No, I'm afraid we'll just have to stick to our guns and forgive you. That's not what you want, right?
That was genuine. Joshua has always wanted Neku to forgive him and he’s always wanted to be okay with his own decisions, even if they were sometimes faulty and he wants to feel that it was a good idea to give up Shibuya. And in forgiving Bastien, he was … feeling okay with that, like he was willing to realize that he, too, made mistakes and he needed to stop making dumb mistakes. It wouldn’t be easy, but whatever, that’s how life works.
This doesn’t mean he’s going to change immediately or be less hurtful, but … he can change now. He can move forward. It’s a big deal.
II.
Bullet points!
- Joshua’s inactivity the first night was actually because I had a hard time keeping up with what was going on. He wouldn’t have done jack to help others (lol typing that is funny, since there was Jack in game … anyway), but he wouldn’t have been so below the radar (in my opinion, he was). His actions taken were to serve himself.
- Note that if Joshua played as a sheep, he wouldn’t have been any different. Joshua is out for himself. Basically, what people found to be “wolf-like behavior” was Joshua being a douche. Even Bel’s argument against Joshua, in my opinion, wasn’t very strong. Joshua and Sera both voted on Momoko, but so did two other people. And one vote went to Bel. I don’t know who did that, but hey. Joshua could’ve easily tied things up (and he wouldn’t care about the tie rule-the last person who mattered to him was probably dead) to try and get two sheep up, and he didn’t.
- Joshua wasted time, yes, but so did a LOT OF OTHER PEOPLE. And all his time wasting turned out to be relevant, except for when he was eating sushi instead of busting open the extra doors (but as we know, that hallway wasn’t very important, anyway). The books were necessary and breaking the gramophone actually seemed necessary at the time. He genuinely thought there might be something inside of it.
- When Risa wouldn’t let Joshua walk off with the diary or a page from the diary, he decided to eat her. It didn’t matter what she did from there on out, because that pissed him off. It was her way of showing that she didn’t trust him. She was active and capable of getting people to listen to her and that meant she needed to go.
- He wanted to eat Turkey because they socialized on the first day and Joshua was helpful and Turkey still wanted him gone. GUYS. THE SAFE SHEEP NEVER GOT EATEN THOUGH. THIS IS HILARIOUS TO ME.
- He turned on Jack because Jack started seeing the handwriting thing as a waste of time. He would have tossed Ashton to the wind, but Jack would have been able to pinpoint that. Turkey wasn’t proactive enough to keep up with it, and the remaining individuals bought Joshua’s bullshit that it was necessary. (It was, but. Not very.)
- Germany and Prussia both didn’t continue to reply to him, so he was glad to see them go. He’s a brat. They were the remaining people in the clue and thus confirmed safe. (And the wolves never found out the safe sheep, haha.)
- Joshua fully expected to go out when he was in a clue. I am still surprised about this. It helped that Bel really didn’t have a solid reason for believing in him (he had Joshua’s actions all wrong).
Future Plans
- Trust post.
- That one post Dante and Emiri know about that I’ve been putting off because it’ll take me all day to do.
- Mindfucking Joshua Christopher. Of course, this is still going to happen.