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ctrl-alt-cel · 1 year

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when i was 13 i wrote an essay explaining the rationale of puppyshipping to some guy in a skype chatroom. found the essay again. wanted to rewrite it. without further ado:

HERE’S HOW PUPPYSHIPPING CAN STILL WIN: THE SEQUEL: 2 PUPPY 2 SHIPPING (4.3k words)

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kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship stands at an awkwardly undefinable place in canon: they're not on good terms, but they're not enemies either. they know each other too well to be called passing acquaintances, but kaiba hardly acknowledges jounouchi as a duelist, let alone a potential rival. at best? they're mutual nuisances.

or, that's how jounouchi and kaiba choose to define it. both of them would love if their dynamic were that simple, nothing more than a back-and-forth of petty insults—but that’s not the truth. and they'll dance around the truth for five whole seasons, purposefully downplaying why they’re so obsessed with provoking each other whenever they’re in the same place.

they're foils.

—but the term "foils" is so dulled within fandom lexicon now that it can mean literally anything from two guys who just disagree with each other sometimes, so i'll sharpen this further. jounouchi and kaiba see their counterpart less as an individual person but more a representation of who they could have become if they had respectively, in their eyes, never learned the lessons they needed to. they project their own ideals onto the other and come away thinking they already know how the other operates, and the fun thing is, even when working from conjecture, their assumptions of one another happen to hit far closer to home than they have any right to.

so really, they can't leave each other alone because they can't stop seeing their failures reflected back at them. the other is a defective version of themselves that they need to correct because they can't stand constantly acknowledging who they used to be, so they try to bend the other to be more like their own image—an "i can fix him (by dragging him down to my level)".

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jounouchi and kaiba’s parallels run down to their origins, both set up against abysmal family situations they have no choice but to make the best of. seto and mokuba are orphaned at a young age until seto gets them adopted, while katsuya is separated from his sister and stuck with a deadbeat father who can't carry his own weight. trapped in an environment where nobody expects anything worthwhile from him, katsuya joins a gang and lives out a self-admittedly miserable existence before befriending yugi, while seto is in a battlefield of his own, faced with protecting mokuba while enduring against the nightmare that is gozaburo kaiba’s parenting.

what they do to survive those conditions determines the outlooks they carry for the rest of their lives: jounouchi learns that losing is inescapable and the best you can do is learn how to cope with it, whereas kaiba learns that losing is something you must protect yourself from because there's only so much you can afford to lose.

jounouchi is positioned as the underdog, fighting tooth-and-nail for every victory he can manage, while kaiba has power in excess and holds to the belief that it’s all he really needs. one would argue that they have the perspective the other lacks—they argue that they have the perspective the other lacks. but in my opinion? it doesn't actually matter. what interests me is how they treat each other as a result.

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side: seto kaiba

kaiba degrades jounouchi a lot. like, to an uncomfortable extent. you know that one post that’s like “why does bullying exist? why are you mad that i’m ugly?” why is kaiba so mad over the fact that jounouchi loses so much?

it’s projection. he’s just holding jounouchi to the same standard he holds himself to. you need to be powerful if you want to play the same games as kaiba, and seeing jounouchi so openly lean on his friends, ask for help, and have the audacity to lose sets kaiba off because he’s not playing the way he’s supposed to. kaiba rubs jounouchi's losses in his face because he believes that's what loss is supposed to look like, and that it’s jounouchi’s fault for not understanding that yet. kaiba is trying to teach him. to kaiba, this degradation might as well be an act of generosity.

while kaiba stayed true to his own ambitions, seizing kaibacorp from gozaburo and turning it into a children's entertainment company, he beat gozaburo at his own game not by inventing new rules but by playing it better than his adoptive father ever could. and as impressive as that is, it’s not sustainable. gozaburo kills himself when faced with his own defeat, and kaiba internalizes this lesson: that all losses are final, and it’s better to die than adapt to the consequences of a defeat. gozaburo’s death was a suicide, but in the context of their game, kaiba might as well have killed him regardless.

he mirrors this when he threatens to kill himself in duelist kingdom, his heightened emotions catastrophizing losing the duel to immediately equal failing mokuba and coming to the conclusion that if he loses mokuba he’d rather be dead. being someone so fervently self-reliant, any alternate solution, a possibility that he can lose here and still find a different way to rescue mokuba never crosses his mind. and, look, this isn’t his fault. this is the only way of living he’s ever been taught. he’s never learned how to cope in the event of failure because he’s never had the luxury to fail to begin with.

he's burned and rebuilt himself over and over again to survive in the world he operates in, and that’s why jounouchi pisses kaiba off so personally. jounouchi loses so much and so messily, and kaiba tries to show him that if he doesn’t start reinventing himself from the broken pieces of his defeats until all that’s left of him are jagged edges the same way he has, he’s never going to win. but jounouchi…does win. and keeps winning. and even when he does lose, it’s as if he creates new victories for himself, like there’s still value to playing a game with someone when you don’t win it—power of friendship bullshit and whatever. jounouchi is still here, a competitor that kaiba can no longer write off as much as he desperately wants to. (and, yeah, it is pretty ironic how jounouchi will jump through a million hoops to get kaiba to look at him, but he doesn't realize that he doesn't need to do anything to keep kaiba’s attention, only continue being himself.)

jounouchi refuses to compromise who he is and still manages to get far when in kaiba’s mind, that shouldn’t be possible; he’s supposed to be punished the way kaiba was. jounouchi is proof that you can take a devastating blow and move on from it, that even when you do fuck up spectacularly, there’s still something worthwhile in starting again tomorrow.

so kaiba constantly needs to prove that he’s better than jounouchi, that jounouchi isn’t even worth his time in order to justify his worldview. because if kaiba isn’t right, then he'll have no choice but to confront the fact that the war is over. that his circumstances aren’t instant life or death anymore and that even though he’s freed himself from gozaburo’s influence, there’s still further growth as a person he could stand to undergo, now divorced from the harsh conditions of his upbringing. jounouchi is a testament to how it’s possible to make peace and move on from the past without constantly bleeding for closure, that maybe, kaiba’s headlong quest to get the last word on his rivalry with yami yugi may not actually be as fulfilling as he thinks.

but admitting that you might need to change the way you live feels like a defeat in and of itself—it’s infuriating to hear that after everything you’ve had to learn, the way you live now isn’t good enough. that surviving insurmountable trauma doesn’t inherently make you better or more worthy than other people—it just traumatizes you, and is something you must heal from. so, instead of reflecting on these revelations, it’s so much easier for kaiba to tell himself that jounouchi is only ever graceful when he’s dead.

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side: katsuya jounouchi

jounouchi is very stuck on this idea that he needs to be useful. his dad is an alcoholic with a gambling addiction and he believes it's not only his duty to pay his father's debts, but to be the household's sole source of income. his sister needs eye surgery and he believes it's his responsibility as an older brother not only to pay for it, but to act as her primary emotional support to get the surgery and throughout her recovery process. haga throws yugi's exodia into the ocean and jounouchi blames himself for not stopping it. jounouchi gets mind-controlled by malik and blames himself for causing his friends anguish from it. mai literally gets jounounchi’s soul stolen and he apologizes to her for messing up and making her sad. it's habitual, jounouchi doesn't know how to stop taking on the burdens of other people.

if you live with the mentality that you’re inevitably going to fail for long enough, you’ll come away with the belief that caring about your own wellbeing isn’t worth the effort. it depends on how pessimistic you want to read it, if it’s just his love language or jounouchi compensating for the damning act of being himself, but jounouchi quantifies his worth by how much he provides for other people. he’s always jumping in the line of fire for the sake of others because if you constantly undervalue your own wellbeing, you always have less to lose. as the underdog, he may not be as overtly powerful as kaiba or yugi, but he can still give himself away, and he’s convinced himself that it’s what he’s supposed to do. jounouchi is still new to this whole friendship thing. after a lifetime of supporting himself by himself, he doesn't know when he's allowed to ask for help yet—he’s supposed to be the help, dammit.

a key distinction between jounouchi and kaiba’s upbringings is that while kaiba’s biological parents died in an accident, jounouchi’s parents are still alive and they choose not to be responsible for him. jounouchi is conditioned to fend for himself by himself because having a parental figure actually present in his life isn’t a luxury he gets to have. to jounouchi, there has to be a reason why his mother only takes shizuka and never goes back for him in the six years he’s left with his father, and he rationalizes this with his notions of masculinity: he’s a strong man who can handle it. jounouchi is not delicate, he can endure it. men are responsible for their own circumstances. kaiba is hyperindependent out of a mixture of spite, paranoia, and self-defense. jounouchi is hyperindependent because he believes he deserves it. it’s the reason why he believes he’ll finally have a good relationship with his father if he just wins enough money to pay off his gambling debts—jounouchi can fix everything if only he were man enough to, and he can get people to stay if he demonstrates himself useful enough.

so death doesn’t carry nearly as much weight to jounouchi as it does to kaiba. in kaiba’s eyes, death is the punishment for failure, but to jounouchi, death is just the natural consequence for the kind of life he leads. he can't stop himself from fighting for the people he loves until he’s spent everything and forced to stop (read: dies), so during the several times jounouchi is confronted with his own death, he meets it with a solemn acceptance. like, yeah, it sucks, but he doesn’t regret the actions he took to end up here—he’d do it all over again, frankly. it’s better to die than not give everything he can, and at least he was able to give his life in service to someone else. it’s not necessarily good to die, but it doesn’t matter as much if he does.

so where kaiba is afraid of losing, jounouchi is afraid of outliving his usefulness (and being abandoned as a result), and kaiba disrupts jounouchi’s worldview specifically because he puts his ideology on the defensive. to jounouchi, kaiba’s presence never demands a question of “what can you do for me?” (nothing, kaiba doesn’t want jounouchi to do anything for him, and frankly, he’d be insulted if jounouchi even tried) but “what makes you worthy of standing on the same level as me?”, and jounouchi can’t sacrificial lamb get set on fire die a billion times into getting kaiba into seeing it his way (rather, that would only prove him right: kaiba would love nothing more than for jounouchi to lose the ability to fight and finally align with his preconceived notions of how the world works), and he can’t argue that his value is in how much he provides for others because that’s a non-answer. kaiba doesn’t care.

kaiba’s presence forces jounouchi into a position of self-reflection: jounouchi works so hard to preserve the friendships he’s created, but who is he—what does he value about himself in the absence of it? jounouchi needs to acknowledge something inherently valuable about himself if he wants to counter kaiba in any meaningful way, and it’s not like he doesn’t have valuable qualities either: he’s tenacious, he’s resourceful, he’s a quick learner—it takes intelligence to rank as high as he does in tournaments, but he undervalues all of it. these traits are all to be expected, they don’t actually count as extraordinary when it’s him. they’re only remarkable when they’re being applied to something greater. jounouchi believes he has the potential to become strong (and valuable by extension), only with the stipulation that he’s never actually there yet. he focuses too much on his inadequacies, constantly pontificating on how he needs to become a “true duelist”, but by the way he speaks about the title, the only way to be a true duelist is be named yugi muto, i guess.

so it’s very jounouchi-esque for him to miss this point with near deliberate precision and try to make himself useful to kaiba anyway. while kaiba is bent on seeing jounouchi fail to prove that his cynicism is superior to jounouchi’s altruism, the inverse is that jounouchi sees his old self in kaiba and he’s dying to teach kaiba a lesson. during battle for bronze, jounouchi states that they used to be the same, people who only relied on themselves and thought they’d be fine living like that. the argument jounouchi makes is that living that way is fucking miserable. he calls kaiba out: you’re supposed to be having fun. why are you playing duel monsters if you’re not having fun? he’s trying to show kaiba that he can be useful and teach kaiba things if kaiba would just let him, but for reasons mentioned in both of their sections, kaiba isn’t interested in being taught anything.

while less malicious in display, it's important to note that jounouchi’s method of trying to teach kaiba doesn't make him the better person here. jounouchi isn’t coming from a place of understanding when he lectures kaiba, he’s coming from a place of misdirected self-flagellation. and from kaiba's perspective, jounouchi is just dispensing unwarranted advice for the sake of his own ego. the most egregious example is when jounouchi picks a fight with kaiba in duelist kingdom, demanding they duel when kaiba is clearly not in the mood, busy with more pressing matters like, i don’t know, trying to rescue his abducted brother? so, okay, maybe a little bit inconsiderate on jounouchi’s part.

they're two ideological extremes: kaiba lashes out at the world while jounouchi gives himself to it, and jounouchi will keep barging in on kaiba with his life lessons because it’s the only way he wants to engage with kaiba’s arguments otherwise. jounouchi interprets kaiba’s rejection of his ideals as the equivalent of the stubbornness jounouchi had before befriending yugi, and he uses it as a reason to keep pushing, not understanding that while he may have found the most honorable path for himself, you can imagine how constantly burning yourself for others isn’t very…appealing. or sustainable. and that maybe it’s something you need to work on, actually.

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conclusion: how i WIN

what’s fun about jounouchi and kaiba is how wrong they are. they genuinely can't live the way the other demands them to, their respective environments won’t allow it. if jounouchi chased victory with the same cutthroat relentlessness as kaiba, he probably never would have left his gang. or, at least, he’d lose the selfless devotion and consideration he has for others, traits that helped him build his support system, and he never would have found the friendships he values in his life—his willingness to change and start again was how he was able to befriend yugi to begin with. (and if you wanted to get really extreme with hypotheticals, his self-destructive tendencies could have grown so severe in the absence of a support system that he probably would wind up getting himself killed somewhere. lol.) inversely, if kaiba granted himself the freedom to worry less about the outcome as long as he enjoyed himself, he’d put mokuba’s safety at constant risk. kaiba’s guarded nature isn’t without reason, there are powerful corporate executives who would love to see him fail, and there are very real consequences if kaiba slips up for even a second and gives his opposition any leeway. the way they live works for them because it’s theirs. it’s not so much that either of their lifestyles are in dire need of correction, but that the other represents the possibility that they could be living better.

and this is fantastic because it means that, despite what they think, neither of them are in the “wrong” and must learn to change their idiot ways or that the solution is to strong-arm each other into some kind of compromise. it’s a battle of perceived weakness. they need to, naturally and individually, accept that the traits they’ve always deemed immature and beneath them can be just as vital for survival, even when it’s not necessarily their own.

jounouchi and kaiba are essentially the most extreme example of two people who want what’s best for each other (gone wrong!) and puppyshipping is appealing because them getting together requires that they stop punishing themselves for who they used to be. they expect too much out of themselves and then inflict those demands onto each other, but if they’re not wrong for the ways they’ve overcome the circumstances they were left in, then it’s equally true that the ideals they abandoned to survive weren’t inherently naïve just because they weren’t given the space to utilize them. sometimes life will push you to your limits in the hope that you fail, and there’s no deeper meaning to it. it’s not life’s way of teaching you a necessary lesson to make you stronger or a test to see if you deserve to live, or that it’s your fault when it breaks you. sometimes there’s no great meaning to suffering. things happen, and you will adjust to it in order to live. when kaiba and jounouchi believe they know each other as much as they know themselves, pairing them is the hope that they’ll respect themselves enough to respect each other, that they’ll one day be able to embrace the parts of themselves they’re the most ashamed of.

(or, you know, for the alternative crowd, they most definitely can make each other worse.)

for two men who claim to be so self-assured in their own lifestyles, jounouchi and kaiba are fascinating because there’s so many layers of denial at play: the denial that they see anything in each other, denial that there may be aspects of the other that they’ve come to envy, denial that they even care, and it's so tempting to imagine if all of it was forced open. jounouchi and kaiba choose to maintain this delicate equilibrium where they never actually confront anything because the idea of admitting vulnerability viscerally disgusts them, and it begs what would happen if the balance irrevocably tipped for once. watching them is like watching a pencil teetering on the edge of a desk, always this close to some kind of breakthrough. i won’t even lie to you puppyshipping pisses me off half the time because i just want to shake them around until something metaphorically breaks.

kaiba and jounouchi never let each other become complacent in their pasts: whenever their personal tragedies and childhoods are brought up in the context of one another, it’s never because they are being vindicated for continuing to dwell in them, but because they are being contested on how much the mindsets they’ve carried over from their pasts should be allowed to determine their futures.

returning to canon, kaijou operates through the language of competition. jounouchi tries to prove himself as a competitor so remarkable that kaiba can no longer deny him, while kaiba already knows he’s remarkable, and that is precisely why acknowledging it pisses him off so much. so they’ll play their game: jounouchi will provoke kaiba into fighting him because he enjoys going up against challenging opponents in the hopes of becoming stronger, whereas kaiba keeps trying to set up situations where jounouchi will lose to the point of letting him die because he wants so badly to believe that losing does equal death and jounouchi’s existence is the most inconvenient counterargument of all. and obviously, jounouchi keeps not dying. and it's endlessly infuriating—almost slapstick at this point, that much to kaiba's frustration, no matter what he does, he can never make jounouchi submit for very long.

jounouchi and kaiba spur each other on to a ridiculous extent: kaiba enjoys pushing jounouchi past the breaking point, whereas jounouchi enjoys getting pushed to his limits to test his own capabilities. whether that’s necessarily a good thing though is…well…hmm. anyways.

their dynamic is the type of messiness only two prideful high schoolers can get up to. maybe it’s just kaiba's repression and jounouchi's recklessness, but there is a fascination with each other that they’re incapable of leaving alone. there’s intimacy in knowing someone so well and fearing that fact, but kaiba and jounouchi never respond to this fear by avoiding it—they’re engaging with it time and time again. they infuriate each other with a passion that never sits still. kaiba and jounouchi seek a validation from their counterpart while simultaneously denying each other from it, and it’s mean, but invigoratingly so.

at some point, it’s not even about wanting validation anymore, but point-blank wanting its keeper by any capacity: wanting a visible reaction to their effort as proof of reciprocation, proof that says “i’ve finally affected you just as much as you affect me.” because kaiba and jounouchi want to leave a mark on each other, they want their counterpart to fully understand how much they’ve affected them, and they want to witness that reaction themselves. it’s no longer this big, nebulous ideological debate with a reflection: the pull between them is made both physical and personal. so, like, not to go the trite route of arguing that two men who can’t stand each other were ~secretly attracted to each other this whole time~, but how else are you supposed to word this?

in some hypothetical universe where they do come together, even the ways they love manage to compliment each other in its own clumsy way. seto kaiba never does anything in moderation: if he hates something he will destroy it, if he loves something he will possess it, and if he is obsessed with something, he will single-mindedly pursue it at the expense of everything else. his repression manifests itself in a passion so pressurized it’s all-consuming against everything it comes to contact with. inversely, katsuya jounouchi loves freely and transparently: showing affection comes as naturally as breathing to him. he embodies the belief that love is not only about the grand gestures, but the day-to-day acts of warmth and casual acknowledgments that it's there. a man who wants to be wanted by someone so badly it aches paired with someone who makes no reservations as to what he's committed to, capable of a love so overwhelmingly insatiable that it is neither fickle nor delicate, and a man who finds the act of trusting others with his affection so unthinkably humiliating that he’s convinced himself it’s something beneath him paired with someone who makes it look infuriatingly easy. they are going to invent a new language to love each other with. i believe in them. i would not write two separate essays titled “here’s how puppyshipping can still win” if i did not believe in them.

ultimately, it feels cheap to build kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship off what life lessons they could "teach" each other reformation-style when they already have a legitimate dynamic in play. they can be good for each other, or they can tear into each other in ways they’d never expect to be capable of. there’s something exhilarating in knowing there’s someone who has that kind of power and wanting to keep them within your reach, a buzzing excitement in knowing someone who can not only withstand you at your worst, but fight back at you with twice as much vigor. sure, there’s potential for growth here, but that’s because there’s potential for literally anything.

kaiba and jounouchi inspire reinvention and self-determination from each other at the best of times and enable each other’s most self-destructive tendencies at their worst. so i think. puppyshipping is the most fun. when you ship them the same way you leave a fork in the microwave to watch it explode. the end.

TL;DR: me x the guy who keeps breaking my worldview and forces me to reevaluate myself every time i see him which i hate so much that i just want him to DIE

#puppyshipping #violetshipping #seto kaiba #joey wheeler #ship analysis #character study #not intended to convince anyone of anything this was a silly project to do on the side for MEEE #also i genuinely dont think any of the points i make are new #in my quest to be as holistic as possible and read every puppyshipping-adjacent meta analysis i could get my hands on #defense essays. criticism. livejournal blogposts #ive found several times that every point i make has already been made before in some kaijou 200k longfic posted in like 2011 #so if this essay is for ANYONE who isnt me.#its for the kaijou fic authors who have put in the work. god's strongest soldiers etc etc #actually. might reblog with an actual afterword citing my favorite ygo analysis i read in prep for this lol #i allude to a few of them in certain sections but i think youd have to be REALLY chronically online to notice #(coughing)#anyways special thanks to the friends who kindly beta read a document titled 'YAOI THESIS FINAL.docx'#fer + voski + cherry + sully + eric + cleo + gabby + chris + clover + vio #dear god i have inflicted this essay onto so many people #i love you.#you have enabled me and now we're all paying the price #yugioh

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nenya85 · 2 months

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Ficlet: Relative Losses

I wrote a ficlet a while back about the Kaiba brothers and the relatives who'd abandoned them in the orphanage and realized I’d never posted it here.

Relative Losses

Kaiba’s end of the conversation was brief. Just a couple of grunts, a sharp, “Are you sure?”, followed by another grunt and a click as he hung up the phone. Mokuba didn’t bother to look up until his older brother pushed himself away from his desk and strode to the office window.

“Is something wrong?” Mokuba asked.

It was a question that rarely got an answer.

Mokuba tried again. “Is there a problem at Kaiba Corporation?”

“No,” Kaiba answered without turning around. He drew in a breath and abandoned his post at the window to pace back and forth, until he finally came to a halt in front of Mokuba.

“Do you remember our former aunt and uncle?” he asked abruptly.

“Not really. Why?” Mokuba asked.

“They’re dead. They were in the Japan Airlines flight that crashed into the Tsushima Strait after takeoff.”

“What? How did you find out?” Mokuba asked.

“They wrote me once after Gozaburo died and they realized we were billionaires.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in Kaiba’s voice.

“They did what?” Mokuba yelled.

Kaiba shrugged. “I ignored it, of course. But I had a security team keep tabs on them in case they caused trouble. The team just notified me and confirmed their deaths. The names will be released officially later today.” He paused. “Our adoption records are sealed and I changed or deleted any personal data I could get to, but it’s possible that a reporter will dig out the connection and call.” Kaiba paused again. “I thought you should know, just in case.”

Mokuba stared at his brother. Kaiba had never forgiven their aunt and uncle for abandoning them. But Mokuba didn’t remember them and it’s hard to hate an abstraction. It was equally impossible for Mokuba to mourn one or to feel anything but a blank emptiness where he knew that some elusive, unknown emotion should be.

But before Mokuba could sort through his thoughts and pick out a response, Kaiba pivoted, returned to the window and resumed his contemplation of the view outside. Mokuba wondered what he was seeing.

“I thought you should know.” There was a clue in his brother’s words. Mokuba was sure of it. He discounted the nonsense about reporters that his brother had tossed off with trademark glibness. There was no way anyone was ever digging up anything that Seto Kaiba had decided he wanted to keep hidden. But maybe the truth was simpler, as plain and easy to understand as his last sentence.

Mokuba joined his brother at the window. “How are you?” Mokuba asked hesitantly.

“Fine.”

It was the expected answer. It might or might not have been true. Either way it meant that the conversation – or his brother’s part in it at any rate – was over.

Kaiba rested his hand briefly on his brother’s shoulder. He was glad of Mokuba’s presence and even more grateful for his silence. He’d devoted years to forgetting only to find that there were some things that even death couldn’t erase. His aunt and uncle had been his first hatred. He’d buried their shared family name defiantly, glad to leave it behind and forget it forever, even though it had once been his parents’ name as well.

He’d resented them every time he’d lain awake in his orphanage bed, plotting how to free himself and Mokuba. He’d blamed them in those first months with Gozaburo for every sleepless night, for every impossible assignment. Now all he could think was that he was seventeen. Even if his aunt and uncle had kept them, the result would have been the same. He and Mokuba would have ended up in an orphanage. It didn’t lessen his anger – an anger that suddenly had no prey – but for the first time he realized just how accurate he’d been when he’d seen their abandonment as a chance at escape.

And if they’d been the first ones to treat him like a stray dog from the gutter, they’d also, inadvertently, been the ones to push him into proving he was so much more. Kaiba stood with Mokuba at his side and gazed upon his city. Somewhere in the distance, 70 stories down and miles away, his aunt and uncle’s now empty house lay, too small and insignificant to be seen.

#seto kaiba #mokuba kaiba #kaiba brothers #ficlet #my writing

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braziliancat2015 · 11 days

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Next part of my "Yu-Gi-Oh as a American cartoon of the early 2000s" project, this time with Kaiba's family! (part one here)

I imagine Seto wouldn't have a personality all that different from the YGO dub, but would fit more into a "rich bully from school" role, while Mokuba is more similar to the early manga/season 0 as a little spoiled kid, but they both become nicer over time.

Gozaburo and Noah are the ones i imagine being more different: for starters, Gozaburo's still alive! I can't imagine them just allowing Seto and Mokuba to live alone, so he would still be around being a very unpleasant person, and even worse parent (not sure if he would still have adopted them or if his their biological parent here). Noah would be 100% AI here, created by Gozaburo to replace Seto as his successor after he starts disobeying him.

#my art #yugioh #yu gi oh #ygo #seto kaiba #noah kaiba #gozaburo kaiba #mokuba kaiba #kaiba brothers #cartoon art #2000s aesthetic #2000s cartoons #digital art

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gx-gameon · 2 months

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More about Jaden growing up with Yugi and the DM crew

He doesn’t have favorites in his family but he has different relationships with each of them.

Yugi

is his Dad and his hero.

The king of game!

The one who saved him from the orphanage.

He’s also super kind and teaches Jaden how to take care of himself and his friends.

Seto

is his Oto-san.

He’s more strict, way more strict than Dad. But he obviously cares for Jaden.

He’s so protective and isn’t great at showing his emotions.

But he loves hard and deep. He’d rip the moon from the sky if Jaden, Yugi, or Mokuba asked.

Jaden likes superhero’s? And he really loves the Elemental hero cards? But theirs only four of them, and they’re super weak? That won’t do. He reaches out to Pegasus about making more hero cards.

At first he tries to make them a private collection just for Jaden but Yugi finds out and scolds him. He can’t give Jaden his own archetype! (Especially when Jaden already made his own) so the cards are realeased to the public. But you best believe Seto got three copies of every Hero card for his son.

The Destiny hero’s infuriate him. “How come that kid (Aster Phoenix) gets his own private set of hero’s but our son can’t, Yugi?”

In actually he feels a lot of guilt over sending Jaden’s cards to space. Jaden doesn’t remember, but they found the records of it. Seto sent Jaden’s soul monster and defender (neo spacians and Yubel) to space and has been trying to get them back ever since. Until he can get his son’s cards back to him the least he can do is make sure Jaden has cards he can trust. (His idea, not Jaden’s or Yugi’s)

He couldn’t imagine someone sending his blue eyes away from him forever. He has the records of Jaden’s powers lashing out after they took Yubel from him. (He needs to get those cards back for his son)

Atem

Atem adores Jaden. And Jaden adores his uncle Atem.

Atem has always dotted on Jaden. He’s truly grateful for this second chance at life and the opportunity to be part of Yugi’s family.

He’s also very protective of Yugi and his son. Yugi and their friends fought so hard for the world. They deserve to have a peaceful life now. And Atem will defend them the same way they defended and helped him.

Once they find out about Jaden’s powers and blocked memories, Atem becomes even more protective then he was before.

He feels a lot of camaraderie with Jaden. Not just the missing memories, but also the shadow powers. Though Jaden’s comes from the Gentle Darkness and Arems from his time wilding the millennium items.

Atem always shows Jaden little magic tricks and uses his powers to play with Jaden. Even being duel spirits to life. Jaden can’t see spirits until his entrance exam but he grew up with someone who could. So he doesn’t feel like he’s going crazy when he starts seeing and hearing spirits.

Atem wanted to try and unblock Jaden’s powers but Yugi had been worried. His boy was so young and what happens if his powers lash out again. He doesn’t want Jaden to blame himself if anyone gets hurt because he’s a little kid who had a tantrum. Atem agrees but still works with Jaden. His powers will unlock one day. It’s best he’s prepared and knows that he doesn’t have to fear himself. Yugi agrees, Atem would never go against Yugi’s will.

Joey

Don’t tell the others but… Joey is Jaden’s favorite uncle. (Mainly don’t tell Seto, Atem, or Mokuba)

Joey is so fun for Jaden. He’s silly and energetic and matches Jaden’s energy.

He duels Jaden and it’s so fun. Seto can’t bring himself to go easy on any one. Yugi and Atem go easy on him, but they won’t give him the game, he learns a lot from all three, but Joey? Joey’s crazy.

Joey will pick up booster packs and they will make random decks and duel. Just for fun. Just to learn. Just for fun. Yes your deck is your heart, but theirs a lot to learn from quickly cobbling together a deck.

When Jaden’s older, Joey is the first one to break out his real deck on him (well besides Seto, who knows no chill) when Jaden beats Joey’s real deck for the first time he’s so pumped, and so is Joey. His littlest buddy is an amazing duelist!

Joey is so laid back. He loves dueling and he’s serious about it. But he remembers it’s a game. It’s fun. Something Seto’s never been good at. Atem struggles with (trauma) Yugi knows but his deck is almost unbeatable. All three of them love the game for the strategy, Joey’s here for fun and chaos. Yes he’s strategic but he also chaotic and a risk taker.

Jaden takes after him in a lot of ways. Jaden love’s strategy to, he’s learned form the best. But at duel academy? If he was like either of his father’s his identical would be blown so fast. So it’s a good thing he takes after Joey. No one thinks the prince of games to be a laid back slacker. But he learned from the best, Joey. (If Seto ever heard that statement he’d set the city on fire.

#joey wheeler #yugioh gx #judai yuki #yugi moto #jaden yuki #yugi mutou #yami yugi #yugioh #atem #pharaoh atem #seto kaiba #Yugi raises Jaden #rivalshipping

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angeat · 10 months

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@arcvmonth day 18

"an earnest unrequited love, wanting to make it bear a little happiness" reference

i have posted about my au a couple of times, it's not specific to arc v though it involves yuya and yuri so i shall take this chance to ramble

to introduce. an excerpt of a ramble about my au: "i have my focus sort of split between yuri and yuya's yanhomo weirdness pov v.s. bakura trying to not kill punch beat the shit out of worship marry johan while anzu takes an irritated drag from her cigarette pov" so it's a whole Every Yugioh Crossover and a part of the premise is everyone is at least mildly to severely out of character johan and mokuba are quite different for instance. there aren't relevant arc v characters aside from the aforementioned two but i can mention some. also little extra designs

yugo is yuya's older half brother on yoko's side (likes motorcycles per her influence), they don’t visit each other often but they do talk regularly, yugo tries supporting yuya and being a proper big brother as much as he can. yuto is yuri's estranged older brother but yuri has no memory of him because he was too young when they were separated and yuri was adopted by leo (yes reiji and reira are his siblings. the akabas continue to be the most dysfunctional family ever) yuzu and gongenzaka are yuya's best friends per usual. yuri ran away with yuya for their survival since it's no good to stay in the same spot with a billionaire ceo guy (seto kaiba) tracking them and a jail escapee (kyosuke kiryu) but also just because he wants to have yuya alone

(yuzu and gongenzaka look about the same so just the yu’s and yo)

i frame my au yuri with a lot of yandere shit just because i think it's fun and he does stalk yuya + sometimes treats him like something of a boyfriend but he isn't really in love with yuya? yuri loves and admires himself above all but he sees himself in yuya. literally physically because he thinks they have similar faces and yuri has always unconsciously wanted something of a normal life and family so seeing yuya have that meant projecting on yuya became his favorite hobby. and now because of their situation they're in he uses this new forced closeness with someone for the first time to act out everything he's never experienced (a friend, a parent, a lover)

despite how much yuya might be creeped out or uncomfortable, since yuri has been the real reason he's been able to survive, he feels like he doesn't really have the right to reject yuri in any sense, by all means he's dependent on him in this situation and he can't just leave and go to anyone else unless he wants to put them in danger. also helps that he's scared shitless of him both because yuri is armed, merciless, and he would hurt yuya himself if he wanted to as he only needs yuya alive beyond that yuri doesn't really care how he is physically or mentally. the arrangement is a bit of a nightmare though coming to understand the way he thinks and acts, yuya genuinely pities yuri for the way that he is so he wants to help him be more normal and genuinely befriend him in return for everything he's done to protect him and starts to treats this as something of an obligation but yuri makes it hard to do anything nice for him

(since yuri is a solider baby and views socialization through a power hierarchy he sees these attempts of being kind and friendly as yuya acting above yuri, which he obviously doesn't take very well since he refuses to be below anyone except for leo, his dad. the only reason yuri acts the familiar way he does with yuya is because he sees them on equal footing since in his perspective yuya is essentially an extension him but he still by default treats yuya as someone below him, so yuya can't reciprocate acts of familiarity without yuri being the one to initiate them)

also the au is a future diary au. forgot to mention. yuya and yuri are two of twelve people trying to kill each other and have diaries that tell the future. it follows nothing about future diary outside of that basic premise, yuya and yuri are not the main characters.

clothes concept + notes + etc because you know. i might as well while i’m at it i doubt i’m sharing these any other time

this is test thing of a noncanon scene i had in my head there's the rest of it in script because i could not be damned

#arcvmonth2023 #yuri arc v #yugo arc v #yoko sakaki #yuto arc v #yugioh #ygo #digital art #traditional art #fanart

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amazingferret · 6 months

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"That disaster centuries ago virtually wiped them out, Gozaburo. As much as one would want to reconstruct, you can't do so with so few survivors. And at this point their descendants quite likely married into whatever population their joined."

"And how many survived, exactly? The records say it was not more than a handful of families, but both you and I know records are just as truthful as the people who write them!"

"Pray forgive the discourtesy of my words, but I can't help calling you paranoid. And I believe this little girl knows nothing about it."

"I am the one who's been the guardian of those boys for the last 8 years, Pegasus. I know what I'm talking about. For all I care, she was drilled on how to cover it up."

"If you won't relent, may I suggest another approach, then? You get more flies with honey than with vinegar, and children tend not to be great secret-keepers if the company is right..."

---

"Young Master-boy!"

Mokuba shuddered at the sound of the familiar mannerism as its owner entered his private sitting room. It was at times like these where he turned off his brain and let the etiquette lessons take over. "Lord Pegasus, how wonderful of you to visit me. We haven't seen each other for a while," he said through a forced smile as he turned around to face the man.

The little girl in a neat dress beside the councillor caught Mokuba off-guard. Pegasus had no living relatives that he knew of, both the death of his parents and fiancée being of a well-know tale among the court.

"My lord-boy, this is Serenity, and she will be living in the palace with us for a while. She is related to the unfortunate disappearance of your brother, but seems to be quite overcome with shock. I'd like to ask you to watch over her and provide a friendly presence for her. She might be crucial in finding him." Pegasus informed, as he pulled the girl closer.

Not a relative, not a noble, not even the daughter of a good family, a reluctance to speak, and the resistance on her step - Ah, was this a hostage, perhaps? It wouldn't be the first time the rats in the court tried mindgames with the princes.

Was Pegasus trying to get information out of her? Information could come in many forms - it could be important, useful... even falsified, if you managed to convince a messenger well enough. Not to mention his own unavoidable curiosity about Seto's whereabouts. Pegasus might just have given him his best card without knowing...

#the dragons au #not adding any main tags bc it's just a bunch of text really #probably would look like nonsense out of context #no extra drawing under the read me its just blah blah blah hidden to save your scroll button #extreme card enthusiasts

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iced-blood · 4 months

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Sugar, Spice, and Everything Ice.

I’ve been quiet this year.

This isn’t to say I haven’t been doing anything, as folks may have noticed. I’ve put up a whole mess of links to the work I’ve been doing in 2023—a grand total of 105 chapters—and that’s what I want to touch base on, at this tail-end of the year.

I found out early on in January that a dear friend of mine, my creative partner and the reason for my Paved with Good Intentions series, passed away in 2021. I’m not sure what it was, but that news hit me in a particular way. I realized that two of the projects in that aforementioned series, Blue Eyes, Violet Eyes and Lightbringer, were unfinished.

That didn’t sit right with me.

I set out to fix that.

There are many projects I’ve started that I never finished, and have been left languishing for . . . ten years? Yeah. Ten years.

That’s just ridiculous.

I decided that 2023 was going to cooperate with me whether it wanted to or not.

So, I bought a day-planner and set to work. Let’s go over the list, shall we?

Coronam Crepusculum

This was first on my list because it was a work that I owed a good friend of mine, who is no longer a regular user of Tumblr. It’s a take on the Soulsborne universe, built around a series of personal interviews with relevant characters conducted by an OC I created specifically for this purpose, Wandulfin of Vinheim.

(the latin title translates, hopefully, to “crown of twilight”)

51,377 words.

Paved with Good Intentions: Blue Eyes, Violet Eyes

The first of the two stories I knew I needed to finish in memory of my departed friend, I resolved to write the 19 chapters required to reach a clean finish line for this one-shot collection of 100 installments. It felt like the right way to go about things, and I think I worked out a lot of important elements of the Kaiba brothers through those 19 chapters.

165,386 words.

Paved with Good Intentions: Lightbringer

The second of the two stories written in my friend’s memory, this is still being published every Saturday. I wrote what amounted to the second half of this story, 55 chapters to be exact, for a grand total of 110 (of which 98 are published as of this post). I think it’s some of my best work to date, and I can only hope my partner would have appreciated what became of it. Have you ever wondered how Seto and Mokuba would react to meeting their parents again? If so, this is the story for you.

Published + Rough Draft: 159,930 words.

The City That Wouldn’t Die

The first full storyline of my personal take on World of Warcraft and my main character’s place in it, this story has undergone a lot of changes since I last touched it. This year, I resolved to end it at a part that made at least some amount of sense, but I won’t pretend that it’s entirely satisfactory. All I can say at this point is that I do intend to come back to Azeroth eventually. And this time, I hope to give my characters the story they deserve.

41,890 words.

Cult of the Dragon King

I’m pretty sure this is the one that’s been left alone the longest; if it isn’t, it’s close. The basic thrust of this story is that Atem failed in his quest to gather the Millennium Items and put them to rest properly, and so it falls to Seto Kaiba to try this time. I could go into detail why I picked Seto to be Atem’s successor, but I think y’all know what to expect here. I picked Seto because he’s my favorite. Anyway, this one isn’t ready to resume publishing, but it has been drafted. Anyone who’s been waiting for this one to continue will want to pay attention to this blog in 2024.

Published + Rough Draft: 175,246 words.

The Lost Dragon's Lullaby

Another AU centered around the Kaiba family (what can I say? I'm a creature of habit), this story wonders what it would have been like if Noa had lived. What if Seto and Mokuba had another brother when they were adopted? What if they had a mother? What would the Kaiba family look like if it were whole?

Approx. 62,609 words.

Watching the Lights Go Down

One of two stories I revived this year, and will resume publication in the new year. Do you Blueship? Do you wonder how Seto and Kisara might interact in the modern world, regardless of romantic intentions? This is the story for you. I took a set of 100 words to use as prompts to build this story, and through these 100 snapshots I think you’ll get a pretty clear picture of how I imagine Seto’s relationship with his favorite dragon would unfold if said dragon was a woman. And his bodyguard.

Approx. 52,789 words.

Letting the Cables Sleep

This is a sister story to the one I just outlined. Taking place concurrently with Lights, this story explores the relationship between Noa Kaiba and Ryo Bakura. Why these two? Why not? I don’t really have an answer, except to say that I found their dynamic interesting. Unlike its other half, Cables is explicitly romantic. So if you’re interested in Domino City’s resident white-haired cryptid hooking up with an android, well, here’s where you wanna go. I used the same list of 100 words, but in reverse order, to build this story.

Approx. 52,708 words.

Butterflies and Hurricanes

The other contender for “story Ice left to languish for the longest time,” I’m not sure I have to explain to anyone reading this why I might have stopped working on a Harry Potter story. Put basically, this story is an exploration into what would happen if a fae prince took an interest in taking down Lord Voldemort, and then settled on Sirius Black as his instrument. It’s a time travel story at its core, with all the nonsense you might expect from such a thing.

Regardless of anything this series’ author might have to say on the matter, my writing this story does not in any way endorse or condone transphobia or any of her other myriad bigotries. I have not given this woman money in 20 years. I do not support her in any way, shape, or form. This story’s completion is for my own satisfaction, and for the interest of anyone who might want to read it. That is all.

Published + Rough Draft: 80,506 words.

The Whitest Lace of Light

A continuation of my pet take on the Bleach setting, focused again on Toshiro Hitsugaya and Rangiku Matsumoto and their Tenth Division. Throughout the 50 chapters of this story, they face off with a new threat to Soul Society as they try their hardest to rebuild after the Thousand-Year Blood War. Throughout this . . . suspense? Thriller? Thing. They come across new faces and old, and might just learn some things along the way. Or something. Look, I just wanted to write one of my favorite ships again.

Rough Draft: 30,033 words.

At Sixes and Sevens: A Prince for His Kingdom

The shortest work I completed this year, but certainly not the least important. This is a continuation of my pet take on the “Kaiba Bros Age Swap AU” as first shown to me by my dear friend @kintatsujo. How might Seto have handled an invitation to Duelist Kingdom if he’d been 9 years old when it took place? What about Mokuba, if he was 15? Shenanigans abound. I hope you like where I took this one, Kinta.

5,000 words.

Last but not least, I resolved to break my record for my longest NaNoWriMo project this year, because I’m ridiculous and don’t know when to quit.

Much like I approached World of Warcraft,I take every MMORPG I play as an excuse to build a story. Nowhere is this more obvious than Final Fantasy XIV. My take on Eorzea and its various magical idiosyncrasies—which I call The Song That God Forgot—set me on a road to 125,000 words this past November.

These projects, alongside various redrafts of my older stories in preparation for what I hope to be 2024’s migration from Fanfiction.Net to AO3, netted me a grand total of 902,580 words written in 2023.

I don’t say this to brag or to pat myself on the back (okay, maybe a bit), but to say . . . just hold on. Keep going. You’ll hit your stride eventually, even if it doesn’t seem like it. I’ve struggled to write regularly and with consistency for a decade now, and here I’ve got nearly a million words in a single year.

I believed in me this year, and I believe in you too.

Keep on truckin’. You’ll get there.

Happy New Year, y’all. I love you.

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laquilasse · 1 year

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I'm so super glad you're into Yugioh now!! I've loved your art forever and seeing you draw the Kaiba bros is a dream come true, you draw them so well! I'm curious though, do you have any ships??

I’m glad you’re liking the yugioh stuff!!! Kaiba bros were meant for me I swear lmao. And in terms of ships, not particularly? To me yugioh is a show about siblings. Seto and Mokuba (and Noa). Ishizu Marik and Odion. Trinity and Joey. And I know not everyone sees it this way but I also see Yugi and Atem as like… siblings isn’t entirely the right word even though I think their interactions give SOOO much older and younger brother energy. But more like they’re two halves of the same soul that were separated and then grew in different ways if that makes sense. But regardless their interactions are more familial to me than anything (though I realize that’s not everyone’s take). (This is also just me playing in the space but I loooooove the idea of Seto and Kisara having the same kind of deal. They’re part of the same soul but her soul is sealed in a stone tablet, and even then she found her way back. Then Kaiba pulls out his 3 blue eyes and it’s like ✌️😜 me n the girliepoos!!!)

The only thing I could say for ships personally is that I’m living in an au in my head where Atem refuses the afterlife and gets to stay in a body of his own, and him and Kaiba have a thing. And then at some point there’s a failed marriage proposal Pride and Prejudice style where kaiba’s like “I am SICK I am ILL I can’t stop thinking about you, I’ve tried, I can’t, it makes me so fucking pissed that I’m obsessed with some broke dweeb that was living in the brain of the dweeb in chief, so just MARRY ME.” And Atem just kind of looks at him like uh huh….ok….and….you thought this phrasing would make me say yes. Well I can’t say I’m surprised that you are once again back on your bullshit.

I also think it’s very funny if Kaiba and Ishizu have a thing specifically because my friend sent me a manga panel of Ishizu saying she was prepared to die if she couldn’t save her younger brother and kaiba’s like “holy shit she’s just like me fr….” But again that exists in a mind palace where Ishizu and Atem are like. Friends with benefits who are both dating Kaiba and he schedules quarterly reviews with both of them wrt The Relationship. So all the shippy stuff to me is purely for comedic effect essentially. Also if all disagreements between the three of them are handled immediately with a duel and smartass comments which I think would be particularly fun to see with Ishizu, because it’s a crime we only got to see her duel once (though she did make Kaiba sweat which was so real of her). I also think that Kaiba deserves to be smacked in the mouth but I like mean people so I wouldn’t want anyone to do it—EXCEPT Ishizu because of all the shit he talked about Marik (even though he was yami Marik at the time). He knows the rules about messing with younger siblings so if she smacks him in the mouth he had it coming.

Anyways tl;dr - all of this to say that the ships aren’t too serious to me, it’s the family relationships that really hooked me on yugioh!!!

#THAT WAS LONG LMAO SORRY #I’m obsessed with ishizu though and it kills me that we didn’t see baby her kicking marik’s ass in duel monsters #clown-k1ng #ask #anyways disclaimer the ship stuff is not at all serious to me #instead please please please talk to me about seto having empty nest syndrome when mokuba goes to college #Nii-sama stop being a moping diva I’m going to get a business degree so I can help more as kaibacorp VP

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kaibacorpintern · 3 days

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Some beast notes bc I'm in some beast mode

- Jounouchi, Mai, and Malik all love doing the press circuit; Rishid and Honda tag along, indifferently; Amelda uses it for political soapboxing so they don't let him and Valon do it anymore; Kaiba flatly refuses and no one tries to make him. Mokuba and Yuugi would be great at doing press but again the Kaiba "i'm not your show pony I won't do tricks" factor prevents them

- Rishid and Kaiba are the only Rangers who have been formally paired with two other people (Isis and Malik, Mokuba and Yuugi/Yami.) Jounouchi and Yuugi technically as well but they were never the primary Ranger pair for their Jaeger. As a result Rishid's kaiju kill count is one or two behind Kaiba's bc of his battles with Isis and his battles with Malik. Unlike Kaiba, he's the supporting Ranger for his more take-charge siblings, playing the same role Mokuba played for Kaiba.

- Rangers don't get to choose their Jaeger names or color schemes; Pegasus chooses for them, and is weirdly good (👁️) at choosing things they love

- Kaiba is stationed in Domino not bc he's from Domino but bc Pegasus is the only Marshal equipped (👁️) to handle him. The former is the official reason and the latter is the "lol we manipulated/strong-armed this guy and he's not happy about it" reason

- the Rangers invariably set the tone for their Shatterdomes. As a result, Lima is permissive, indulgent, and indifferent to rule-breaking; Anchorage and Hong Kong are social, friendly, and fun; Sydney is fiery and principled; Domino is all work, no play. Not so much gloomy as intense. San Francisco WAS known for being eccentric and gleefully nerdy.

- Ranger candidates generally train in the Honolulu or Anchorage Shatterdomes. How many candidates there are at one time, and how many actually become Rangers, is an ongoing battle of wills between Pegasus (more) and Dartz (only the best)

- Rangers generally undergo some kind of "couples/family" therapy regimen together in order to make the stresses and anxieties of Drift easier to manage, and it was effective for most Rangers. On the other hand, Kaiba was, you know, defiantly immune.

#some beast #an indulgence #intern memo #writing notes

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enemyoflactose · 16 days

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I finished Noah's Arc

My descent into villainy begins.

@lostsomewhereinthegarden wanted to be tagged in this one 💕

Voice acting:

I have no clue what any new characters sound like in the sub, so this 4kids performance only.

Noah: round of applause he sounds fantastic.

Gozuburo: he needs to sound more like he smokes

The Deep Sea Warrior guy: I forgot what he sounded like

Crump: he sounds weird

Johnson: Why is his voice so deep? Why is it so deep? He sounds like a big scary monster.

The robot: I wasn't paying attention to him

Lector: nice. I like his voice.

Dark Magician Girl: it's really annoying for some reason.

Flame Swordsman: hot voice

Serenity's deck master: I don't like it.

Characters:

Yugi: that sure is Yugi. He gets more screentime than usual and that's a nice change. I love his interactions with Téa after her duel, he's so sweet it makes my dumb shipper brain go crazy.

Yami: he sure does duel. He insults Noah a few times, and is mean to Kuriboh in his first duel.

Téa: QUEEN. If Kaiba didn't exist this would have been her season.

Joey: That sure is Joey. It killed me every time he thought of Mai. Bro wants her back so badly.

Tristan: he was robbed. He deserved to duel again.

Duke: this man is so fucking rude like what the hell? I love him tho he's funny and silly.

Serenity: this poor girl blames herself so much. It was not her fault that Tristan died. It was 100% Duke's.

Seto Kaiba: why is he like this? He's so cool.

Mokuba: precious baby wanted to forgive Noah so badly. He said they were family. He said Kaibacorp would help build him a robot body and they could be twins. I'm crying.

Noah: Why was his backstory handled better than the Ishtar's? Why? This is a filler character and I felt worse for him than Marik. Maybe it's because he's a better duelist idk.

The big five: they exist

Gozuburo: his love for Noah was so conditional, I hate this man. I'm glad he's dead.

Important note

Deck Masters are a thing. I like the idea of them.

Duels

Duel 1 - Yugi vs Gansly

Yugi chooses Kuriboh as his deck master and is upset about it because it was an accident.

Gansly is his own deck master.

Most of the duel is Gansly explaining the rules to Yugi and using cards that either don't exist, or are really bad.

Yuugi wins using Kuriboh, Rainbow Bridge, and Gaia the Fierce Knight to attack Gansly directly.

Duel 2 - Téa vs Crump

There was so much Téa fan service in this duel and before this and after this duel. It would have been distracting if this duel wasn't hype.

Téa picks Dark Magician Girl as her deck master, and Crump uses himself/Nightmare Penguin as a deck master.

Crump uses Penguin cards and cards like Cold Wave (Rest in Peace King) to gradually turn Téa into an ice sculpture.

Téa uses cards like Maha Vailo, some equip spells, and Mirror force to help herself, but due to still being a beginner mirror force gets destroyed.

Téa is getting guidance from Dark Magician Girl on how to duel, and ends up using Sage's Stone to special summon Dark Magician.

Téa wins the duel.

Also, Crump wanted to build a penguin themed amusement park, but that's not important.

Duel 3 - Joey vs Johnson

Joey stumbled into a court room after thinking he found his way back to the blimp. He was tricked by Johnson who was pretending to be Mai.

Joey's deck master is Flame Swordsman and Johnson's is Judge Man.

During this duel, Joey is using his deck master's special ability to raise his monsters attack points, but then they all get destroyed.

Now Joey is putting his faith in his gambling cards, but Johnson is cheating and making it so Joey can't use them

Noah catches this and calls out Johnson, but Joey says it's fine as long as he doesn't cheat anymore.

Joey ends up winning.

Duel 4 - Tristan, Duke, and Serenity vs Nezbit

I wasn't paying attention to this duel until Tristan died.

I still wasn't paying attention after he died.

Duke and Serenity win, but Nezbit got to take control of Tristan's body and now Tristan is Robot Monkey Tristan.

Duel 5: Kaiba vs Lector

This duel was too short.

Lector's deck master is Jinzo and Kaiba's is Lord of D.

During this duel, Lector is using cards like Jinzo and Imperial Order to make sure Kaiba can't use spells or traps. He also uses Injection Fairy Lily. I miss her. I miss my Lily.

Kaiba catches on to Lector's plan and makes him lose too many life points to keep Lily and Imperial Order on the field, then he summons Blue Eyes White Dragon and destroys a Satellite. I'm pretty sure 4kids censored this scene, because there was a weird jump cut from Blue Eyes attacking, to the debris falling.

Duel 6 - Joey and Yugi vs The Big Five

The big five are using Tristan's body to duel, and they're doing alright with early Umi Control. Then Johnson ruins it.

Yugi and Joey fuse their deck masters The Big Five fuse their deck masters.

Uhhhhhh

Yugi and Joey win and we never see the Big Five again.

Important stuff that happened

Mokuba got kidnapped and brainwashed.

Kaiba and the gang found out that Noah was Kaiba's step brother.

Noah is being really creepy to Mokuba.

Duel 7 - Yugi and Kaiba vs Noah

This duel is so long

Kaiba is really trying his best and is kind of winning, but Noah is reciting the Bible and using Mokuba as a shield so Kaiba loses because he is a hardcore reddit atheist and loves Mokuba.

Yugi calls Noah a hypocrite and combines his and Kaiba's deck.

Kaiba and Mokuba are turned to stone at this point.

Yuugi keeps talking shit and then Duke gets turned to stone. Nothing of value was lost.

Noah has to activate his deck master's second ability because Yugi destroyed the first one, and now Yugi has to fave Shinatu or whatever his name was.

Noah keeps raising his life points and he's using Spirit Monsters

My honest reaction to spirit monsters.

At least we saw Yatagurasu.

Noah is turning Yugi's friends to stone every turn, but Téa gets to stay alive for one more turn because she's just cool like that.

Yami summons all three Dark Magicians that he has ,but Noah destroyed all of them.

Then Yami summons Blue eyes and wipes out Noah's life points.

Yugi won and Kaiba wasn't happy that Yugi used his deck.

Duel 8 - Kaiba vs Gozuburo

This duel was also too short.

Gozuburo has Exodia and it gave Kaiba PTSD.

Kaiba has to send all 5 pieces of Exodia to the graveyard so that Gozuburo can summon Exodia Necros.

Necros is invincible and Kaiba's all like "You still take damage dumbass"

Gozuburo raises the attack of Necros, and Kaiba banishes (or puts them back in the deck I forgot) the Exodia pieces that were in the graveyard.

Kaiba wins and Gozuburo tries to take over his body anyway, but Yugi saves him.

Important stuff that happened

The squad was looking for an exit with Noah

Noah was told he was disappoinment so many times.

Mokuba accepted Noah as part of his family

Noah went to the real world to help the gang get their bodies back.

The island is about to explode.

Téa, Tristan and Serenity get their bodies back first

Then Duke and Joey

Then the rest of them.

Noah traps Gozuburo in Cyber space.

The island exploded

The End

#yugioh #Noah's Arc ygo #yami yugi #yugi mutou #tea gardner #tristan taylor #duke devlin #joey wheeler #serenity wheeler #seto kaiba #noah kaiba #mokuba kaiba #gozuburo kaiba #the big five

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bestygogirl · 3 months

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BEST YGO GIRL: FINAL ROUND

please use this as an opportunity to say why you like a character, not why you don't.

Propaganda under the cut!

Isis Ishtar

gorgeous, very caring sister, strong duelist, and the only woman to ever make Seto Kaiba squirm

anyways. not only as mentioned above is she the first woman to make kaiba squirm, but she was by all means going to beat him if not for the millennium rod's millennium interference. yami marik admits that she's a strong duelist with a strategy that's been working for literal years-- and given that she's not like, a professional duelist, thats pretty impressive

she also recently got some really cool meta bumps and let me point out that an "ishizu deck" now includes obelisk the tormentor-- which we knew she had prior to giving it to kaiba, but i think it only solidifies my opinion that she very much could wield an Egyptian God Card, an exclusive little club for top tier duelists

as a character she presents herself with an amazing amount of poise and grace, shes compassionate and kind and stays with mai and serenity even though she only just met them. shes struggling through living the past 5 years of her life drowning in guilt for her family's tragedy just because she wanted to make her little brother happy and shadi is a fucking liar. shes foretold her own death and marches towards it grimly but with so much love in her heart. and even then shes 20 years old and holds an important position in the egyptian government that typically requires a doctorate degree AND has been dealing with mariks off-and-on bullshit entirely by her lonesome. she also likes to flex her fortunetelling a little which is awesome i think she should do that more that scene where she tells the guy exactly how the stele is being transported was so everything

speaking of shes got such an attitude. "is it your destiny to waste my time?" iconic. never seen before will never be seen again. watch the duel between her va and joeys its so fucking funny

shes excult. shes doesnt flinch in the face of god nor death. seto kaiba and yami marik respect her. shes so sad and so sweet and battle city couldnt have happened without her.

also her parallels with kaiba are what motivate kaiba to give yugi the card he needed to beat marik.

kaiba, in duelist kingdom, was ready to jump off a ledge if yugi didnt let him through to face pegasus while trying to save mokuba out of sheer desperation to save his little brother. he KNOWS what that dedication feels like and the iron kind of will you need to have to make that kind of gamble. isis is being so fucking legit with what shes saying and he respects that and her judgement enough to change his mind and not only watch the duel, but give yugi a card that eventually helps him win, even if he has no real confidence in the odds. but theres a CHANCE, which is the same thing he taught her when he beat her in a duel. the layers its her faith that moves him to act. which is so crazy

anyway vote isis shes my best friend forever and a real rep for all the 20 year olds who honest to god did not sign up for this bullshit

Yuzu Hiragi

The entire show would not work if the cast wasn't obsessed with her, and they're all right to stan her, literally gets Sora and Serena to defect from Academia with her sheer charisma, beat Masumi at their gay little rivalry, Yugo spends a few days with her and is ready to die for her, Yuya is simply just the loudest about adoring her And why not? She is so clever and determined, doing the most work out of anyone to figure out the myth plot. Actively trains to keep up with the rest of cast. Even when the universe is conspiring against her and trying to keep her down, she fucking headbutts Roger and tells him off or manifests to help save the world in the ultimate girlboss team-up that was the Arc V finale. Truly any dimension without her is worth upending.

The mysterious magical bracelet that isekai's her to different worlds, the Can-Do attitude, the cool poses (fusion summoning), the ADORABLE character design, AND she was 1/4 of a world-saving hero in the past?? If it weren't for the meddling writers, she would have been the main character

yuzu is everything. literally the plot of arc v hinges on the fact everyone who meets her become just as obsessed with her. and they are totally right to do so

#best ygo girl poll #final round #yugioh duel monsters #isis ishtar #ishizu ishtar #yugioh arc v #yuzu hiiragi #zuzu boyle

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rosalind-hawkins · 3 months

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Mastershipping Musings ft. Pegasus

Pegasus is obviously a point of contention between Duke and Kaiba.

Pegasus and Kaiba still have to be business partners after Duelist Kingdom in anime canon, and that's the primary canon I follow because I'm still working on the manga. (side-note: Pegasus probably makes Kaiba pay through the nose for BEWD royalty rights, don't ya think?) Anytime they encounter each other, in business meetings and gaming conventions and tournaments, they have to play (mostly) polite in front of the cameras, but Kaiba can't stand him. That said, he's built his entire company based on Duel Monsters, so he has no choice but to put up with him. I imagine that Kaiba keeps Mokuba away from Pegasus as much as possible, to the point of making sure they're never ever in the same room together and trying to just never mention Pegasus to Mokuba if he can help it. Mokuba doesn't act outwardly traumatized after DK, but he's not taking any risks and not putting his brother in harm's way. Pegasus is a dangerous man, and Kaiba learned that lesson the hard way.

{Long post, rest under cut}

Duke idolized Pegasus as an artist and creator, and was basically the sole inspiration for Dungeon Dice Monsters. Once he finds out about what Pegasus did to the Kaibros in Duelist Kingdom, he's going to feel so conflicted. I think the internet's been around for long enough that we've all had a creator that we liked get outed for something awful they've done (I feel like it's happened a lot) and then we have that uncomfortable feeling afterwards of "but their art/content is so good" "but I shouldn't support them" "but you can separate the art from the artist" "but not when consuming the art is giving them money." Duke is gonna have a whole crisis about it when he finds out. When.

I don't think Kaiba feels a need to explain to Duke what Pegasus did, as he really doesn't come up too often as a topic of conversation between them, but also because he doesn't want to deal with the memory of it.

This gets a little bit into something that's fun for me: the different histories that Duke and Ryou have with Kaiba. Ryou experienced Duelist Kingdom (complete with the Kaiba bros getting their souls stolen by Pegasus) and Duke knows nothing about that. There's no reason for anybody in the friend group to tell Duke about what Pegasus did to Kaiba, or that Pegasus even had a Millennium Item (I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that never even comes up around Duke in season four). Ryou has no reason to talk to him about Pegasus because Ryou never thinks about Pegasus. Just forgets about the dude most of the time. And it also slips his mind that Duke doesn't know about that.

On the flip side, Ryou knows nothing about the Noah Kaiba virtual world adventure (I imagine Duke calls it the Battle City Bonus Round) because he was in the Shadow Realm, so he doesn't know about the KaibaCorp missiles that still exist btw (that's something important from that arc that I think it's easy to forget about, but yeah, Kaiba still owns all the weapons that KC had when he took over) and he didn't meet Noah or Gozaburo or find out how screwed up the Kaiba family is from that. He gets told or finds out later that Seto and Mokuba are adopted, but that's about it.

It's also entirely possible that at some point these three—Pegasus, Duke, and Kaiba—will sit down to a business meeting together because of the deals between their three companies. Just imagine Duke going into this meeting with no idea of the personal history between Pegasus and the Kaibas, all he knows is the professional stuff between their companies, and he assumes that they're on friendly terms with each other. Boy oh boy, is he in for a surprise (yes, this is a scene that I have planned for Power of Three). Duke goes in clueless with his boyfriend and the artist he adores, and then they're both going for the jugular, and he's just in shock. One of the few things that can leave Duke truly speechless, but he's got words for Kaiba after the meeting, you can count on that!

Power of Three snippet/preview below, because this scene won't be getting published for a looooong time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You were so much cuter when we first met," Pegasus sighed. "Fifteen and full of hope, and so terribly naïve."

"You've always been an opportunist,” Kaiba scoffed. “I wasn't nearly as naïve as you thought I was."

"You were naïve enough, dear boy. After all, you trusted me."

"At least you admit that you're untrustworthy."

Pegasus smiled.

Again, Duke was at a loss.

"Have you seen the pictures of when we first met?" Pegasus asked Duke, his smile smooth and charming. "He was downright adorable."

The way he stressed that last word made Seto's skin crawl.

"I'm not sure that's relevant to the topic of royalties," was Duke's tactful response. Seto had told him to keep the conversation on-topic; he’d thought Seto meant for him not to get distracted, not to keep the other two on track.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I'm not the one luring children to my private island in international waters,” Kaiba sneered, and Duke couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him look so angry.

"Children are delightful, and they have such vivid imaginations." Pegasus laughed, his relaxed posture a sharp contrast to Kaiba's tension. "I can only imagine what Mokuba invented about his visit with me that makes you so resentful."

"You call that a visit?"

"Of course it was a visit. He even had his own little room." Pegasus's single brown eye twinkled. "And so did you, for that matter."

Kaiba stood sharply, glaring down at Pegasus, who simply leaned back in his chair and met his gaze. Duke held his breath, too confused to know what to say at this point. The silence stretched out, the clock on the wall audibly ticking down every second that passed.

"You're a damn lucky man that I can't cut ties with you," Seto finally said, releasing the fists that had been clenched at his sides.

"I'm a damn clever man for making things that way."

The air felt heavy in Duke's lungs and on his shoulders as he looked between the man he loved and the man he idolized.

"As long as you're damned, I'm content." Kaiba carefully sat back down.

"You're never content, but that's alright. I like you that way." Pegasus leaned forward again. "Back to the contracts?"

"Yes."

#seto kaiba #kaiba seto #maximillion pegasus #pegasus j crawford #duke devlin #ryuji otogi #otogi ryuji #mastershipping #fanfic preview #snippet #my writing #mumbleshipping #Power of Three (fic)#ryou bakura #mokuba kaiba #don't tag as toonshipping

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bibookdemon · 7 months

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"Purples and blues, here, have another bruise!" A common rhyme Kaiba had heard every day in the orphanage, quickly followed by a swift fist to the face. He knew he was different. He was smart, and ambitious, and a heck of a lot better than any of the others here. That's why they targeted him. That, and his skinny build. His metabolism was too fast to let him put on any weight, especially at the young age he was.

But whatever. He could deal with it. At the end of the day, everyone was brought in for a warm, homemade meal - something he knew was a privilege in this cruel world of orphans - and a bed with never too many and never too few blankets. There was also his little brother, who got along well with the younger children. Kaiba was so proud of that tiny floof of hair. He was going to make many friends in life. He would be kind. He would be good. He would find a family soon. The only reason he hadn't was because of his annoying insistence that Kaiba stay with him. It was endearing but...Mokuba needed a place where he could get proper love. Not the love of an older brother who probably wouldn't even be able to protect him if he tried.

The Next Day

The sun was bright, birds were chirping, and everyone was going on a field trip. Well, a hike. Walk? Whatever they might consider it to be, the children were being guided on a mysterious journey - the orphanage owners' words, not his - through the surrounding forest. Kaiba couldn't say he was excited, but Moki was, and that was enough for him to gather a small smile and some sort of shred of interest.

"You ready big brother?" Moki called him over, bouncing excitedly from foot to foot. "I hope we find unicorns!"

Kaiba chuckled. "I hope so too, Moki." He ruffled the floofy hair - soft and adorable as always.

"Oh! They're going! Come on, come on!" Despite the fact that the group was moving slowly, his little brother still tugged insistently until they were well in the middle of the group. Sudden gazes landed on his shoulders, so Kaiba ushered his brother onward toward the front. No need for him to become clued in to the hatred of the others. "I'll get some dragon scales just for you!"

"Ok, you do that." He grinned, but it dropped as soon as Moki was out of eyesight. The adults were all up the front, leading, so he was stuck with no potential protection. Not that he wanted it anyway. He would never let it be said that Seto Kaiba was a snitch.

"Well, lookie here." One of the largest kids bumped his shoulder roughly. "If it isn't sir royal buttface himself. Have anything new to tell me about the world? Have you discovered that dragons exist yet?" He burst out laughing.

"Yes, in fact." Kaiba's voice was enough to stop that ridiculous noise, leaving the boy with a stupid look on his face. "I've discovered that your breath smells like something a dragon would puke up after seeing your face."

"What did you just say to me?" He stepped in front of Kaiba, stopping him. A few of his cronies crowded in a circle around the two of them, snickering.

"You heard me, pukeface."

"You little...!" His words were accentuated with a punch, then another, and another. Soon, Kaiba was cowering on the ground, a pathetic dog humiliated by a master without love or mercy. "Hah, loser. I bet you die out here like that, huh?" They all laughed once again, then started sprinting to catch up with the group.

For a long while, Kaiba laid there, silent and panting. He probably had a broken rib at best, multiple broken ribs and a concussion at worst. The way his head spun when he opened his eyes led him to believe the latter. Then, suddenly, a soothing touch.

"Are you ok?" Kaiba whipped his head around - a painful choice - to see warm brown eyes and freckled cheeks staring at him in concern. A young boy, about his age. And...a gap where his two front teeth should've been. "Hey. Can you please answer? Father wants me back before the sun falls, and it's already starting to set."

"Yes." He closed his eyes. "I'm fine." The words made pain reverberate through his body.

"No, you're not. I can tell a lie when I hear one. Alright, up you go." And then he was hoisted up into chunky arms, his gangly limbs splayed in awkward ways.

"Hey! Put me down!" He was furious, but also...was this boy kinda cute? No, no. It was the concussion. Right? The concussion? But he looked like...an angel.

"No can do. You're coming with me."

Many Years Later

"And dat, kids, is how I met ya father!" Jou grinned and patted Kaiba's back roughly, causing the man to choke on his food.

"Can you not tell this story while we're eating?" He grumbled. It was the millionth recount, the least Jou could do was tell it to the kids for a bedtime story. It wasn't even a great story! Well...it was practically a fairy tale. So he supposed it was.

"I can tell it whenever I want!" He ruffled Kaiba's hair, looking back to their children. Two of them, two beautiful children they'd had together. A boy and a girl. Jou's crazy hair and freckles, Kaiba's gangly limbs and sharp nose. Adorable.

"Then I suppose you won't mind me telling them the story of how you confessed?"

Jou's face went pale. "Dat's embarrassin'! They don't wanna hear dat!"

"We do, we do!" Little Annabelle giggled and looked to Kaiba expectantly.

"Well, your father was still very young, and very daft..."

#yugioh #ygo #fanfic #fanfiction #duel monsters #jounouchi katsuya #seto kaiba #joey wheeler #violetshipping #puppyshipping #children #childhood #tw bullying #tw bullies

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