TWEWY, "Song of the Lonely"

[unedited]

Warnings: Spoilers up to the end credits. Indirect death, lots of theorying, and stubbornness. The gen beast strikes! Canonical to the Red Queen's Evolution series.
"Hmm...something Joshua centric? Maybe something to do with his death? [...] Or...you know. Something to do with Joshua's death *hit*."

.song of the lonely.
for qarbaqe for the thewewyfanfic exchange

Comments

[ms_fallingjunk]

asdkljfs;asdf...Why can everyone render me speechless in this fandom? F this ♥

[unedited]

♥ Yay, speechless! The best compliment someone can [not] give. :D

[lazzchan]

I absolutely love you right now.

I mean, ... I can't actually express how very awesome you are. This is just a wonderful peek at Joshua-as-he-was-alive and much better than my version and Sanae and the Game and how it was different.

Just amazing.

[unedited]

Ahaha, I'm glad you liked it. XD It was a strangely difficult piece to get written, but it turned out pretty well, I think. ♥

[crysiana]

Oooh. I like this bit. Though now I wonder if the other bit from the Red Queen universe applies - was his independence always his entry fee?

[unedited]

Yes, although it's not underlined here. Joshua is already recognizing that if he dies and enters the Game, the thing that he values the most would be stolen away by the very nature of the Game -- he'd have to be dependent on someone else, because he can't stay "alive" without his partner. Hence why he thinks, it's almost worth it to not play the Game, because I'd lose my independence.

His dependence on Mr. H here is kind of illusory; he's almost more talking to himself out loud, at someone who understands and doesn't think he's crazy, but the "connection" to Mr. H doesn't exist [yet].

But of course, he came very close to having the Game itself be his entry fee, and it's possible that if his Imagination hadn't fixed things for him, and he'd survived longer, he would've gotten impatient with the life that he hated. So it's kind of a questionable issue -- every time he has played the Game (his first Game and his game with Kitaniji) his entry fee was his independence, but it was a very close call.

[crysiana]

Well, and I still haven't finished my first playthrough (mostly due to my bloodyminded need to pretend that my playing at doing nothing for five hours will frustrate Joshua, even though it doesn't impact in-game time.) I did start to consider the differentiation between "winning" and "surviving the week" since obviously they aren't the same thing, or at least aren't the same thing in practice. Megumi /probably/ had to give back Neku's original entrance fee, but I do wonder if that was in fact a requirement, since Neku hadn't "won." On the other hand, I still don't know how much Megumi was lying, so there you go. (Rather, I wonder if the intention there was to screw up Joshua's partnering with Neku, only to find that Joshua was already a few steps ahead of him.)

[twilit_memories]

Aww, you're amazing. =D I hope you keep writing things like this! I like how we get some detail on not only his death, but how he lived as well. Hah... it'd be kinda neat if someone wrote a fic detailing just how Josh found out about the Game from Hanekoma... *hint hint* X3 Anyhow, good work!

[unedited]

Ahaha, that's definitely something I wanted to do -- capture his death from a slightly different perspective, but also showing why his death was really what he was drawn to, much more than his life. X3 Glad you liked~

[claudine]

Amazing as always!
I love your characterization.

[unedited]

Thank you! I'm so happy you enjoyed. :3