A Little Dreaming [The World Ends With You; Rhyme-centric; Neku, Joshua]

[xtwilightzx]

Title: A Little Dreaming
Fandom: The World Ends With You
Character/Pairings: Rhyme-centric; Neku and Joshua
Word Count: 1,981
Warnings: Spoilers for the ending and possibly the Secret Reports
Summary: So she doesn't have her dreams and she's still barely tuned in to another world and it's neither here nor there. Rhyme, after surviving the Game

Comments

[kupodesu]

Rhyme's 'ending' has always left me heartbroken, the poor girl. Like a resilient birdling indeed, she is. The image of the scraps of poetry and art that are now meaningless to her is absolutely bawww, for lack of better words.

And um, Joshua kind of. Stole the show ahaha. I really love the way you write him, morbid imagery and ambiguous words and everything. The underlying strangeness & mystery in him comes off well, and he is ~so graceful~, landing like a gazelle indeed.

"And my proxy stood outside the Underpass and talked at me for thirty-two minutes straight. He's loud. I can hear him no matter where he is. Now that's cacophony."

Teehee, this amuses me to no end, for some reason.

MOVING AWAY FROM JOSHUA, Rhyme totally, totally deserves this ending of building new dreams for herself.

[xtwilightzx]

I was really happy to see Rhyme in the ending video until I realized she would have lost her entry fee permanently. Then it occurred to me that she'd have probably lost her current dreams but not the ability to make new ones, and then I felt better. Just a bit.

And Joshua~ It's his fault that the whole entry fees system exists anyway, so he had to take responsibility for bringing Rhyme back, so to speak. I think he enjoys talking to Rhyme because she has that strangeness within her as well, the Noise part, and she's got the intelligence and personality to keep up with his smug morbidness.

It's amusing whenever someone stands up against Joshua and wins XDDD

FEEL FREE TO TALK ABOUT JOSHUA ANY TIME ♥ can you tell who my favorite character is yet?

[kupodesu]

I think the Secret Reports mention it too, don't they? That Rhyme's entry fee can't be returned because she lost the Game 8( I've seen some takes on it where she can't even build new dreams - that her ability to have hopes and dreams was completely gone. Aaaand that sends me on "what if" mind trips where she plays for the stakes of winning her old entry fee back but then that just veers off into the realm of the alarmingly implausible.

I'd never much considered Joshua & Rhyme interaction before, but you're right and this fic proved it. And also I'm a sucker for Joshua interaction with ANYONE just because it's Joshua and he turns every conversation interesting.

Ohohoho ♥ anything and everything I can say about Joshua is all summed up by 'Magnificent Bastard'. And a glorious one at that. While replaying the game, I was simultaneously cursing him out for being the biggest douchebag and rediscovering my love for him. What a jerk ♥

/such an unproductive comment what

[xtwilightzx]

That's an intriguing "what if" -- you should write about it, if the inspiration hits you! Joshua pretty much bends the rules of the Game any time he wants, so it would be like him to set up a Game for Rhyme to win her fee back; he'd treat it as a test for human resilience or something. Knowing Joshua, he'd charge her another fee to play >: double the stakes, twice the fun, something glib like that.

I think it's easy to overlook Rhyme because she's simply not there for much of the Game (I almost forgot her when I stopped playing the game for a couple of months). It was one of the Secret Reports - when Hanekoma names her sacrifice as one of the things that made Shibuya a perfect ground - that I went back and really considered her story. I bet Joshua would go and bother her at some point, because he's curious like that.

"Glorious Magnificent Bastard" indeed XD With the caps, too. I mean, there Neku is battling his way up to the Composer to avenge him, and Joshua's there playing Tin Pin. Even his Another Day self is that way ♥