#I wish I could extrapolate this mentality to my actual life lol

[turbocao]

I started my very first sewing project two days ago. I think it's going to be a complete disaster but I kinda don't care. At least so far. This shit is so therapeutic. Idk if it's because I'm a beginner but it requires my full focus in a way knitting doesn't. Every moment I have to concentrate on what I'm doing and it doesn't leave my brain any space to think about anything else. I love it. And it's so fun too. Even when I fuck up it's fun. I had to stop because I couldn't get the zigzag stitch right even after lots of tries and I wasn't even mad. It's just fun.

[composeregg]

5hcs AUs : how about one in which Neku becomes Composer ? starting from "how did it happen ?" and then going wherever you want to take it

Send me an AU and I’ll give you 5+ HCs about it! (accepting)

Okay I’m getting to this first but rest assured the ask/essay about Hanekoma is gonna happen

SO twewy spoilers obvs lol, and also suicide tw

Also this got long it’s basically a bulletpoint fic OOPS

I have multiple fics where he becomes Composer!!! The series Feels More Like a Memory has a bunch of Composer Neku hijinks and more planned! Alternatives a 400 word one-shot Take Your Place Dear which is what this is gonna expand on!!

“How did it happen?” With the duel. Neku pulled the trigger. He didn’t mean to pull the trigger. He was going to lower the gun, but thoughts pound in his head, he’s tired, and the force of a Composer’s strongest Imprints hit him as he starts to drop his arm. He flinches. The gun goes off. And Josh does not stop it. Josh lets it hit him, lets Neku kill him, as he always intended.

He’s absolutely distraught over this. He didn’t mean to shoot, but there’s always a part of him that thinks “you wanted that. You wanted to do that. Him Imprinting me is just an excuse. I shot him and it’s my fault.”

He actually has to cope with becoming Composer first, though. It takes a toll, becoming connected to a city. Mentally, it exhausts him, becoming everywhere at once.

But he deals, and he brings his friends back to life. His Entry Fee was his friends, yes, but he won. The winner becomes Composer, he gets his fee back. Josh, in the canon, just gets to decide what to do with it in canon and doesn’t hold onto it.

So he has a meltdown, this autistic boy, breaks down and is overwhelmed and screams, but he manages to get it together enough to do that. And then he passes out for three days.

He manages to drag his ass to Hachiko, and he tries to keep it from his friends. Hanekoma says he shouldn’t go at all, he’s Composer after all now, that requires secrecy, isolation. That’s just how it’s done. But Neku insists, and goes, and keeps his Composer Title secret.

It works, kinda. Rhyme knows something is up, they can tell it instantly. They sense it, residual Noise instinct. Beat and Shiki don’t quite realize, but they know something is wrong with Neku. Eri is there too but she doesn’t know shit.

Rhyme asks, one day, about a month after the Game. Neku breaks down, and explains. The first Game week he’s overseen has just ended, no Players made it to the end of the week, and he s h a t t e r s. 

In front of Rhyme, and Shiki, and Beat. 

He breaks. He cries. He tells them everything, tells them about Josh, about what he did. What he doesn’t know if it was his own will or not. He’s so terrified that they’ll reject him, freak out because he’s still tied to the Game, and what if they’re afraid of getting dragged back in?

They all just fuckin pile on top of him and hug him and comfort him and give him all the love and affection he deserves, he needs.

“Neku, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. You said he was imprinting on you, you didn’t want to do it.”

The thing is.

Josh lingers.

His soul. It still exists. The code is strewn through Shibuya, but sometimes. It whispers.

Neku can feel the impulse, Josh’s thoughts and feelings, or at least what he would’ve felt, thought, and he doesn’t know if he’s imagining it or if it’s there.

He also never realized a city could be sentient, or that he’d never get to sleep again. It takes a bit to deal with that. But Shibuya loves him. She loved Josh, so much, even under the threat of Erasure she loved him, was sad for him, but accepted his choice for his replacement. But she. Holds onto him too.

Neku learns, and grows as a Composer. He’s so powerful, but he refuses to be recruited by the HG. He’s no Angel. He can shape the Game here, make it better, heal the broken cracks. Find himself in Shibuya, her power, his friends adding to his own power. He expands his world, pushes those horizons as far as they’ll go.

Decides to believe the that Joshua whispering in the back of his mind might be something more than just wishful thinking, when it shares facts about Josh he never knew. Little details, at first.

“Hey, you’ve got more friends than I’ve ever had.” Makes sense, he could extrapolate that.

“Oh, that game came out the year before I died.” Does not, especially not when it’s whatever pokemon game was just 3 or 4 years old at the time of the Long Game.

Another Josh visits from a different universe, and between the infuriating conversation and a breakdown, and finding out a lot.

Neku realizes. that these Notes, this Music strewn through Shibuya, the tune stuck in his head, is actually Joshua.

Long story short he finds a way to bring Josh back by reconstructing that Music into being a person, using Alt!Josh as a basis. 

And Joshua is alive again. He’s a living, breathing, human being. he sees the UG, but he has life. A second shot. 

Josh moves into the back of WildKat and gets to try being a normal boy! Who has friends!

Shiki throws something at him the first time she meets him, Beat threatens to wreck his shit if he ever pulls anything so fucked up ever again. But Neku wanted this. So they respect that choice. And grow to care about him

Neku is also big pissed at Hanekoma for the Taboo Noise thing. And gets Uzuki to be his Conductor. Josh may take that role from her later but that is unknown.