Bakura has always been a fascinating character to me, and I tend to feel that he gets a bit abused in current fandom (mostly, apparently, thanks to the Abridged Series, but the character abuse has always been there.) Throughout the series, the man was living a horror story, but it's kind of a different one from the abuse-slash that ran rampant in the fiction lines for a while there (I'm sure it still does, but I stopped reading it a while ago.) So I try to handle him with a bit more respect than that. What I wanted, with this scene, was to really strike the readers with the pain and horror of his story, and contrast it with the quiet dignity and anger he has while he's telling it.
I also wanted to point out that he's not really the weak sissy-boy that people think of him as being. XD I don't think any of us would have fared much better in his position.
Yes, he did sort of cut off a friendship speech on page 22, although I don't think it was a friendship speech that was going to run on for more than a sentence. One of the other things I happen to like about Bakura is that something about his voice lets me wax more poetic than I usually get to in comics; Joey gets surprisingly poetic sometimes too, but most of the time, for most characters, poetic descriptions and musings sound odd in regular dialogue. Maybe that's also why I enjoy writing Japanese people in general.
Bakura's also quite a bit worried here that there's some specific reason that the Ring kept teleporting back to him, and that it's a reason he doesn't want to know about. I'll sort of spoil it by saying that he discovers most of the truth by the end of Little Voices.
Also, the black bird from page 21 is gone in 22.
Page 23 starts one of my favorite scenes in Little Voices. The girl in the first panel replaced a different character in the precomic: Green, from my original webcomic The Law of Purple. I replaced him because it didn't make any sense for an alien to be dueling Yugi in Game of Dreams, and enough of the people who read YnY also read LOP. XD (Unfortunately, that's also why I couldn't use anyone that got sent in: Green's voice is too uniquely his own, and wouldn't have worked for anyone in the handful of characters I have in the pool.) I kind of wish now that I had drawn Green's Frog Shirt on her, though.
I have a short skit in my head of what happened right before Joey ran up to Yugi, for the interested:
Joey and Serenity see Kaiba sleeping on a bench in an out of the way corner.
Joey: What the hell?
They lean over him.
Serenity: (slightly pink, because Kaiba is a cute sleeper) Maybe we should wake him up.
Joey: Nah, let him sleep. We need to find Mokuba.
Serenity: We can't leave him here by himself!
Joey: So, you stay with him and watch him!
Serenity: (blushing madly) JO-EEY!
But Joey is already gone.
He was tucked beside a vending machine, btw, that somehow never got drawn. I'll probably do gimme art of it later. Also, I love how Serenity gets almost comfortable with teasing him, then switches into Mom Mode on page 24. The Kuriboh Bag was inspired by Aaliyan, who also, by the by, has done some gift art for me featuring Yukai and her character Kipacha. :3
I've had the idea of Kaiba coming down with the flu for years. It was in all the very earliest versions of Game of Dreams, including the version that wasn't actually part of YnY as a story. (In a couple of them, Serenity had to deal with him all by her poor little self. Weep for her.) I like how it brings him down without involving a crapload of drama, which to be frank a lot of fanfiction could do with less of. (I prefer craploads of drama to be used in cautious amounts.)
And since this scene deals with Serenity seeing a little more past the Kaiba Ultimate to the vulnerable Seto, I had to let Seto see a little bit of Tough Girl Serenity on page 25. She's still embarrassed as hell, and not as sure of herself as she was in Magic Light when she was hitting her father upside the head with a turkey, but she absolutely refuses to fail at what she's been charged with doing, and Kaiba can respect that.
Also, page 26 totally proves Serenity right and Kaiba wrong, when he passes out just like she said he would. Take that, boy. XD I think Joey's Duel Disk looks more like a spaceship glued to his arm in the first panel, but somehow that amuses me more than it annoys me.
Yugi's laughing mainly because, when I was first writing all this, I had to express how hard I was laughing somehow. There aren't words for how pleased I am with that expression. Serenity's little girl act gets me going pretty badly too. X3
Poor Joey. His legs are still hurting him, and now he has to carry Kaiba around. (You must really care, Joey, if you're still willing to put up with this.)
I did several inked versions of panel three as practice, because I was worried Kaiba passing out wouldn't look quite right. I think it paid off. Second panel's "What's going on with you" feels kind of clunky, but it's for a good reason: Joey knows Kaiba well enough to know "What's going on" and "What's wrong with you" would both be taken in completely the wrong way, so he phrases it in a very deliberate way, so that Kaiba understands him.
There were two extra pages that would have gone next, but they were, despite amusing, slightly tedious and messy with the flow. (I might post sketchy versions of them later.) The first one mainly featured things like Mokuba declaring that he was going to do a paparazzi check, Yugi taking both Joey and Kaiba's Duel Disks (because Kaiba by himself is heavy enough) while Joey shifted him into a better position, Serenity arranging some benches for them to lay Kaiba down on (so he wouldn't be on the floor, you know), and Kaiba muttering utter nonsense through his fever. (At one point snuggling into Joey and smiling in his sleep, which weirded Joey out more than just a bit. XD) The second page mostly covered them putting Kaiba on the bench (Yugi is helping Joey with all the more awkward parts of moving Kaiba around, btw, like making sure his head doesn't flop back violently).
And of course he wakes up on page 27, because Serenity got something cold for his head. This scene is, as a matter of fact, the exact and only reason I designed that bulky, poofy leather jacket for Yugi to wear in this storyline: It was designed to look good, yes, but it was designed first and foremost to double as a decent pillow for this scene. Their Duel Disks are all underneath the bench, and Yugi, Serenity and Joey are all sitting on the floor because they're hoping to shield him from view a little more. (I doubt it's really working.)
I like the one-liner scolding from Mokuba while Serenity's making a relieved face in the background. I also like that, while Joey's scolding Kaiba and Kaiba's snarking back at him, Kaiba is also noticing where Joey's coat is and is practically hugging the thing when he tells Joey not to touch him. (I'm not entirely sure he's aware that he's doing it.) It's another one of those nice things about comics; doing one thing with the dialogue and another with the imagery, and also just doing two things at once. (Kaiba started shivering violently when Joey put him down; that's why Joey gave him the jacket.)
I'm also very amused at Joey calling Kaiba an idiot. When Kaiba does things like running off without seeking help or refusing to accept help, Joey's reaction to me always says "Kaiba, you are an idiot!" And while Joey has plenty of his own idiotic moments, it's pretty well a fact that Kaiba can be a real idiot himself. I just sort of like watching them call each other idiots. I had a lot of male friends in high school who interacted exactly like this.
Kaiba's facial expressions turned out a lot more little-kid vulnerable than I had originally planned here, but it's something that I'm happy with. Joey's all "Don't you DARE get up" and he looks totally docile in response, whereas in the sketch he looked more like a wet cat. I basically decided, factoring the exhaustion and the sickness with the fact that he totally had no idea where he was for a moment there, that he probably doesn't have enough energy to look like a wet cat quite yet. XD
Kaiba just has one of those character designs that looks quite childlike and youthful as soon as he stops yelling and looking fierce. So drawing that vulnerability out of him is really pretty easy, even to do by accident. :P
There's a little hint of the direction I'm going with Mokuba in this page, too, which is basically that he's going to be as awesome as an adult as he is as a little kid. 83 I've always felt there's a strong undercurrent in Mokuba and Seto's relationship in which Mokuba is taking care of Seto as much as Seto is taking care of Mokuba, and I certainly know I'm not alone in that opinion. And since this (Mokuba as caretaker) began sometime in the series and got stronger as time went by, I like to take the opportunity to play with it here. (Of course, Seto doesn't always realize he's being taken care of, but that's his problem.)
Oh, let's see, what's coming next... Next few pages, this problem gets resolved, and then we discover where Duke and Tristan have been this entire time. Then I believe it's back to Bakura, which is as it should be. XD
