Thanks for the warning!

I seem to abuse Kaiba a lot in these, eh?

Character Study: Téa

Character Study: Téa Gardner

Approximate Age: (by the Japanese anime) Fifteen to seventeen
Character Archetype: The Sensible Love Interest (XD), The Childhood Friend, the Diplomat
Probable Element and Alignment: Air/Wind, Neutral Good
Most Obvious Vocal Quirks: She usually speaks in a way that rises above all the other voices in a room, without actually shouting. (Btw, I don't want to hear any wisecracks about that description, people, because that's also how I talk... when I actually talk at all.)

Oh, Téa. Why does such a large chunk of the fandom hate you? Is it because of the friendship dialogue getting so dialed up in the dub? Then why don't they hate Yugi? He was worse. Is it because they're just not paying attention? One hopes not, when they spend so much energy on you. Or is it just because you're an incredibly sexy woman, and they rather perversely see you as a threat?

Téa is not that girl that picked on you in high school. She may dress like that girl, she may have a figure rather like that girl's, she may even have cut her hair to exactly the same length. But she does not act like that girl. She hangs out mainly with that punk delinquent Joey and that screwy little nerd Yugi, who happens to be the school punching bag. She's the girl I wish I knew when the girl that picked on ME in high school was at her worst, because Téa's the girl that steps in, stands up for you, and makes you feel like you're worth more than shoe gum.

Téa is golden. I'm not saying she's a flawless person. But she's definitely not the person I keep hearing she is. The person that Téa bashers say they hate is a "bitch," a "slut," a "whore." That person supposedly is trying to "seduce" Atem, or Yugi, depending on who you ask. That person is "weak," she's a "shrew," she's "nasty." That person is not the character I know and love.

Téa could seriously use some better press, is all I'm saying.

First of all, I have to ask if any Téa bashers who call Téa a slut actually know what a "slut" IS. Do you? I'll explain, for our younger peeps. A "slut" is a person who is very sexually active, and not very sexually discerning. A slut, by the end of the series, would have at least tried to sleep with most of the male members of the cast, which would have given Téa plenty of opportunity to be one, with so many men around. (Yet we can't PROVE she slept with ANYONE.) A slut would not have latched on to one man, declared that she had "fallen in love" with him, and then followed him, supportive and uncomplaining, into some of the most dangerous situations she'd ever been in in her life.

And a whore would have been actively hitting the male characters up for money in exchange for sexual favors.

As Yugi would say, Téa's "not that kind of girl!!" She'd rather get a job at Burger World.

Then there's the accusations of weakness and cowardice. And here I have to ask, "What the hell do you want, Supergirl?" Because then she would have been criticized as a Mary Sue, for one thing. Téa hits people with globes, bites creepy gym teachers twice her size in the arm, kicks mummies' heads off, and will stand up and scream to Yugi to run away after a guy with a gun tells her to be quiet. Examples appear in every single different sub-continuity. Téa kicks ass. She ain't Supergirl, but she doesn't let that stop her. If a situation needs a crowbar, she'll use the crowbar, whether it means for prying or cracking heads.

Is Téa trying to "seduce" anyone? Ehhh, I'm not sure, and even if I was, I wouldn't be sure that's such a bad thing. What difference is there between seduction and expressing love, when you're trying to get a man to love you back? More importantly, she goes from trying to get Atem to stay with her, spend time with her, to giving him the key that sends him out of her reach forever. Téa, like most of the core cast, is dynamic and grows up as the story progresses.

She begins, in the manga, as an over-righteous "good girl" who plays big sister to Yugi, is intoxicated by the mystery and dangerous allure of Atem, and as the sort of girl who believes true love means happily ever after. Her main character flaws are, quite simply, that she's a little too quick to correct, and that she's got something of a Pandora complex (Pandora the Greek chick, not Pandora/Arkana.) You can see the Pandora complex several places besides her crush on a guy she doesn't know, by the way: directly after being told "Opening this jar will either get your soul eaten or all of Japan will be destroyed," what does she want? To open the jar, of course. She had no interest in the thing until she knew it was dangerous. (She's also a bit reckless early on, just in general.)

She has absolutely no sexual interest in Yugi at all at this point, even when she finds out he's possessed by the being she's "in love with." He's her "little brother," a little brother who needs her protection. She simply isn't attracted to him. Atem, on the other hand, saves her life several times, becomes her protector and defender of her honor. She thinks of him as her superhero, or her knight in shining armor (there was a picture in her soul room at one point before she realized who he was in which Atem was represented as a faceless man with a suspiciously Superman-like costume. XD)

And here she is, with a "little brother" and a knight in shining armor, and they happen to be two different people cohabiting one body. Talk about frustrating. However, she's genuinely happy for Yugi when he starts to stand up for himself ("He's not a scared little boy anymore!" *happy tears*), and decides eventually that it doesn't matter, that Yugi and the other Yugi are close enough to the same person, and she's close enough to him, that it's okay for now.

This is where she is when Battle City starts, and she discovers that her knight in shining armor is actually an amnesiac pharaoh, not just a shadow that crosses her friend's face. And suddenly everything is thrown into confusion again. Does she love the pharaoh, or does she love what he brings out in Yugi? And what will she do when Yugi-- Atem?!-- has to face his destiny?

Because she doesn't know what else to do, Téa chooses to support both of them. After all, whether she loves them this way or that way, they are her friends, and one thing Téa knows is that friendship means supporting someone, no matter how hard it is.

And I think that's when something new about the relationship between love and friendship enters Téa's head and begins to solidify: Sometimes when you are in love with someone, you think about what's best for that person, not what's best for you. She slowly begins to transition from girl to adult once this enters her mind.

During the Waking the Dragons arc, Téa finds herself dealing with Atem alone for the first time. Not only that, but he's in a bad way. Suddenly, she's seeing him at his absolute lowest. And she finds she still loves him. She learns what hurting for your man's pain feels like. That superhero-worship kind of dies, falls by the wayside in the face of the fact that Atem, for all his godlike power, is human. In the anime at least, her love for Yugi softens back into the background of her heart for a while. As far as she's concerned, she's figured it out. Personally I suspect she's got it less figured out than she thinks she does, but that's life. XD

And then comes the Memory arc, and Atem facing his destiny. Téa knows the purpose of this is finding his name. She probably has a feeling of what's coming after that, that he's going to essentially die. But instead of sabotaging what she knows will take him away from her, she buys him a gift: A cartouche, to carve his name on. So he'll never forget it again, so he can keep it with him.

That's a long way away from the girl who'd hop into a potentially bomb-ridden carousel to make him be with her, and a long way away from the girl who longed for something dangerous to happen so that she could hear that voice again. This is the woman who, knowing that goodbye is soon, chooses to do something meaningful for him, and to help him face his destiny in any way she can. It's pretty beautiful, and I'm sorry all you bashers are missing it.

By the way, that over-righteous streak sticks around. Kaiba gets the brunt of it (which is hilarious), although she does let up a little after Duelist Kingdom's "What do you have at the end of the DAY?!" speech (shortly after giving it, you know, she finds out she was totally off-base in yelling at him. XD) although she also yells at Joey during Battle City for not "just saying Mai was in your dream." She's a little too eager to explain other people's motivations (Joey stops her from telling Kaiba about Serenity, and you can bet if she'd been anywhere near Alister during Doma Kaiba would have had to tackle her to get her to shut up about how Gozaburo treated his own sons...)

Téa is always the person in the back ready to tell the villain why his behavior isn't kosher. It settles down a bit into simple vocal righteousness, but she continues to feel strongly about everything, and she continues to be very willing to say so. She's a lady that speaks her mind, and most of the time, it works out for her, so she's not going to stop doing it any time soon. (And in most cases, it's not really that much of a FLAW, just a TRAIT.)

Outside of her love for Atem, which shifts from selfish to selfless, Téa is generally just a very kind sort of person, although quite a bit less self-crucifying than Yugi. Her first inclination at meeting someone new is to make them feel welcome in her life. (Except women who throw themselves on Yugi and go on about being awesomer duelists than him. XD) Even when she has a bad first impression with someone, she doesn't necessarily give up on that person; she's willing to be friends with Rebecca and comforts her when she needs comfort, she does similar for Mai, and she becomes an "irritated mother" figure in Kaiba's general direction, calling him "Kaiba-kun" in the Japanese (for those of you unfamiliar, that's a friendly/familiar-to-a-male suffix, and more importantly, she's one of the only characters who bothers calling him "kun," including his own brother, who uses the highly respectful "sama") and trying very hard to rein him into the rest of the group, not caring that he'll bristle and wanting very much to help him when he needs it. I think she's too abrasive to be quite the right person to drag him into the group, but it helps that Mokuba likes her.

(In my humble opinion, Mokuba probably likes her because she DOES speak her mind, and also possibly because he's just about that age, ha ha. That doesn't mean I think he has a crush on her. O_o)

Besides telling Kaiba off, she also treats herself as the "mama" within the group in general. She gives Joey relationship advice. She provides comfort where she sees it needed. She tries to provide a reasonable and cool voice when things get heated. (She doesn't always succeed.) (Okay, she doesn't USUALLY succeed, but this is Yu-Gi-Oh!, AKA Testosterone Land for Nerds.) Téa probably would make a good (although somewhat authoritarian) mother. XD

I have one final thing to say, and that's that if you're going to hate a character, hate them for traits they actually have, and don't let it affect how you write them. (Maybe it sounds hard to YOU, but if I can do it, you can. I ain't THAT amazing.) Your story will be more enjoyable to more people for the effort, whether you're working with Téa or anyone else.

Final Distillation:
Téa changes from loving selfishly to selflessly.
She's unafraid to use whatever force a situation needs.
She feels strongly about right and wrong and is unafraid to speak her mind.
She is kind, and willing to extend her kindness to people she doesn't necessarily like.
When she says "Friends help each other," she MEANS it.
Which means she'll end up mothering most of her friends some way or another.
She's mostly reasonable, most of the time.
But she will totally kick your ass if she thinks it needs to be kicked.
She's got a touch of Pandora complex, although she can rein it in if necessary.
She's not afraid to hang out with the unpopular guys.

As always, comments can be made here, at the DA journal, or through the G-mail.

Disclaimer: In case you my readers have not yet noticed, I often tackle the character studies beginning with the way that a large portion of the fandom reacts to a character. I am not accusing any one fan in particular of anything regarding any character, especially not Téa. But it is an inarguable fact that, especially in the early days of English speaking fandom, and even now, there were a lot of fans who absolutely demonized this particular character, in the general way that I have described and for those general reasons. It is that nebulous creature that I address, not any one person, even though I admit to having encountered more than a few people who did, word for word, say such things, and even a smaller number of people who admitted to the reasons.

So I'd appreciate not getting a dozen defensive comments about how you never said anything like that, whether you liked her or not. I understand. Please approach the essay as what it is, which is not a criticism of any one real person, but an evaluation of one fictional person and, to a lesser extent, of the fandom that she finds herself in.

(To be quite frank, I'm actually horribly fond of Téa bashers. They're like a milling horde of annoying kid siblings, and this essay wouldn't have had much direction without them. I wrote a large section of it by going into a basher forum and poking the hive until they all started buzzing at me. XD)

Therapy, Joey Style

Lines taken from "Rescuers: Down Under." Man it's been a long time since I watched that movie.

Little Voices: Page 15-19

So I said I needed to write the commentary more often, an' that's what I'm doing.

I was mildly concerned about picking up on page 15 with yet another scene featuring Yugi, but hell, the last time he was only on the phone with Pegasus. XD As I mentioned in the original comments, I love Yugi's mom. Yes, she appeared in both the manga and series, yes, if you blink you miss it. But her first appearance was great, because it really encapsulated her relationship with her son: "Mom! Don't talk to me right now!! I'm training my brain for gaming!" "Why don't you train your brain for SCHOOL first?" KLONG. (That was the sound of a ladel hitting Yugi upside the head.) The fact that his own mother really doesn't know what to make of Yugi sometimes, and actually does get frustrated with the whole "I'm gonna play games my whole life" thing... (laughs) it's just very, very real. I deliberately wrote their conversation as calmer here, adding the dynamic that Yugi's done a lot of growing up lately and his mother isn't quite used to it yet.

Yugi's mom is having a girl's day out with several friends. Who these friends ARE and what they're like is something best left to another fanfictionist: This story isn't about Yugi's mom. XD

The girls in the crowd here are all, as I noted before, based on characters from GX, most gender-bended, and several actually from the manga (which I like marginally better than the anime.) From left to right they are: Chazz/Manjoumi, Sho/Syrus, Miss Hibiki (in the back), Jaden/Judai (rather obviously, and sporting her positively adorable Winged Kuriboh top), Reggie (yes, that Reggie), and a little girl who started out as a short Alexis/Asuka and didn't quite end up there. The only one with a given-by-me nickname is the Girl!Jaden, christened off-handedly as "Judi." Feel free to name the rest. :)

On page 16, I got to draw the outside of the Turtle Game Shop again. XD Every time I have to draw an established locale it turns into a treasure hunt, chasing through manga, DVDs and the internet to get there. Fortunately the shop is easy to find in manga (the I2 building absolutely killed me.) But I don't mind THAT much, because Takahashi draws some of the most interesting and crazy buildings I've ever seen. I really feel it forces me to stretch outward.

The "step" panel was actually mildly inspired by another fancomic artist, Duel-Monsters (Sweet Osiris, how'd he get that username?). He does a lot of these short, mostly excuse-plot type comics in MS Paint (it's way better than it sounds-- some of it looks like screenshots.) He's especially fond of Téa, and dressing her in clothes she wouldn't be caught dead in (and that Yugi would absolutely love to see her in, IMO, since it's mostly punk goth rocker stuff, especially of a British bent.) (No offense if you're reading this, man, but she IS a preppy girl, and it would take all of Yugi's puppy eyes and pleading to get her to wear some of what you put her in, no matter how much either you or I like it. XD) One of the things he's given to doing in his early works is step-by-step panels: Téa lights the cigarette, Téa puts it in her mouth, Téa inhales, Téa blows the smoke out through her pursed lips. All from the same angle.

The step panel of page 16 is modeled after one of these pages where the step-by-step method becomes really effective. Except, of course, that my Téa dresses more like she does in the show. I mentioned that I looked through my catalogues to find something for her to wear, failed, and made something up; that's because all of it looked more like something Serenity would wear or was ugly. I like the boat-neck sweater pretty well though, as it shows off her shoulders, so I'm not fussing. (Although you can't see it in any of the pages the outfit's appeared in yet, she's also wearing shorts, dark socks that reach halfway up her calf, and of course those little booties. XD)

Here's a spoiler for the next full length story, by the way: Yugi will look older. This is only six months after the series (and several of the characters have already gotten taller, like Bakura), but the next will be two years after the end of the series (a year and a half after this.) Because drawing Yugi's huge eyes still gives me trouble, even though it turns out looking nice more than it used to.

Something you can only hear in the next to last panel of this page: Téa is totally bulldozing through that crowd. XD

On page 17, Yugi shows himself to be a normal teenage boy in the way that his smooth confidence with his mother flies out the window as soon as Téa walks up. XD The crowd saying stuff like "You can do it Téa!" and "Shut up, Yugi's MINE!" in panel three was added at the last second, because of some of the comments people made on page 16. I like to have background characters who act as the "voices" of the readers. X3

Also, I'm probably going to have to let the GX girls follow Yugi around more in the future.

The way I created the background for the past few pages is this: I use the lineart to create a white backing behind the characters, so that I can add grey tones behind them without lots of erasing. With the past few pages, I cut and pasted that white backing without the lineart in several different panels, so that the girls' faces wouldn't distract from the main subject of each panel. I think I did a better job on some pages than on others, but in the end it worked pretty well.

I think Judi is mildly fascinated by Téa.

On page 18, I had Yugi take off his hoodie mainly because I forgot to draw his ankh, decided "what the heck, maybe he's got it under his hoodie," and then had him remove the hoodie just to prove it. XD You can see it on that stool behind Téa in the first panel, even though it looks more like a purse.

I was pretty pleased with the expressions on this page, and from the sound of things, I was right to be. :3 So thank you guys for saying so. Also, usually I'd have tried to find a reference for the kitchen, but Invid and I couldn't think of any time a room with a sink inside Yugi's house ever appeared, so I decided to risk winging it, and made it look vaguely like the typical kitchens I've seen in anime. (Clean and compact.) They probably eat at that table sometimes, but when they do, it has a tablecloth on it. XD

As I noted on the DA comments, I had to kind of poke at the whole "I will never duel AGAIN" drama that you'll see in both the dub, GX-onward, and fandom. Even 5Ds is guilty of this nonsense. It's like in Pokémon- "This Pokémon wishes not to fight!! The DRAMA!" Right now, Yugi would much rather hear "I need a break from this game" over "I was in love with Atem." There's nothing wrong with grieving and being tired and wanting to lay down your sword for a while, as long as you don't shut yourself away from life completely.

Giving your sword to another, on the other hand, does mean something. I chose Magician of Faith for page 19 mainly because I knew everyone would be likely to recognize it, even if my handwriting turned out to be illegible. (The art is instant-recog for anyone who sees it.) Technically I think Téa's idea of herself could have changed by the end of the series (Yugi's did) but the Magician of Faith is still very strongly associated with her, so I knew it would work. (It also never fails to be a decent to good card, regardless of the metagame, so long as it's not banned. XD )

I could include the next page in this commentary, but I want to talk about that next scene as a unit. Suffice it to say that I like the scene.

Comic Pairing Bla bla bla

This is an addendum to the FAQs, added by link so that people who don't want spoilers have a lowered risk of getting them.

It was suggested that I put together a quick list of the pairings for Game of Dreams. I don't really like doing that, because dammit it spoils the story, but people keep asking, so yeah, here you go... a not-very-quick-at-all list of pairings involving canon characters in YnY. I may edit this as time goes by.

Be warned, I like convoluted pairing bunches. (And be reminded, GDG, the person who wrote most of this part of the plot, is bisexual, so if you're bothered by some of these pairings I'm sorry but I'm not changing it. Also I get kinda touchy about gay bashing, so watch your step.)

Red highlights indicate that offspring resulted from the pairing, more specifically, offspring characters who will definitely play a role in the post Game of Dreams comic. (Some of them I haven't actually decided yet.)

Yugi/Téa- Yukai, the titular character of Yukai no Yugi, is a result of this. So is his 'orrible ikkle sister, Anna.

Yugi/Rebecca- Rather one-sided.

Bakura/Téa- Short lived.

Marik/Téa- Also rather short lived, and mildly convoluted.

Atem/Téa- Totally one-sided, because he's dead.

Bakura/Somebody Else- Well, he DOES end up with a daughter, and it kinda takes two to do that.

Bakura/Atem- Heavy undertones.

Marik/Somebody Téa Introduced Him To- Marik has two kids from this, although one is adopted.

Pegasus/Ishizu- In turns handled with maturity and childish enthusiasm.

Pegasus/Cecelia- Well duh. Not heavily touched on for obvious reasons.

Seto/Serenity- Kira, whom Yukai is madly in love with, is a result of this.

Joey/Seto- Heavy undertones that Kaiba would never, ever admit to anyone, ever. Also perhaps a touch one-sided. (That does not mean he isn't in love with Serenity, mind you.) (Also you could ignore the undertones if you wanted, but why would you want to?)

Joey/Mai- They have five kids in YnY proper, one of whom, Ken, is in Yukai's grade.

Alister/Seto- Lightly touched on, although whether it's one-sided or not is... vague.

Mokuba/Rebecca- Mostly in the form of leering.

Leon/Rebecca- Not so much in the form of leering.

Mokuba/A Chick From His Class- "Bad Mokuba! Stop staring at the skirts!!"

Zigfried/Somebody- I'm not spoiling how they meet, sorry.

Tristan/Serenity- One sided and short-lived within the story itself.

Duke/Serenity- Smashed to pieces.

Tristan/You'll Never Guess Who- And they have a kid together, too.

Duke/Someone I Borrowed- Amber, with whom he has a daughter, Jade. (I know the Japanese anime hints that he might be gay. I don't care; remember what I said before the list.)

Mako Tsunami/That Lady From The Aquarium Show- They have triplets. =3 Pretty much background fluff.

Yami Bakura/Mildly To Very Abusive Persons- I was looking through the backstory and the future plot notes and was amazed at how many different people physically or psychically abuse him in this. Including a tall but very skinny woman and her twin brother. O_O

Yami Marik/You Won't Drag It Out Of Me Until It Happens- Yami Marik appears in YnY?! Wtf? (But not in Game of Dreams, so you can relax.)

Okay, so some of you might have gotten through this and are now going "Oh, Ra, she's screwing with us again." No. This is the most candid I am ever going to be about the pairings. Like I've said many times, I don't like telling pairings because I find it spoils stuff for a lot of people. But I also appreciate that some people prefer the spoilers, much as I hate doing it.

Keep in mind that Game of Dreams is intended to set things up for a next generational fancomic, so certain of these pairings were chosen as much for the offspring they potentially produce as for the pairing itself. Kira and the Wheeler kids are a prime example of this: if I had paired differently there, Kaiba and Joey's kids wouldn't be cousins, which is hilarious enough that I'd have done it even if I didn't already adore silentshipping. The mother of Bakura's child was designed specifically so that his daughter could logically look like a female version of his Series 0 color scheme. Yukai, in his own perverse way, takes very heavily in personality after Téa, and not as much after Yugi.

Some of the pairings will not last very long within the story. I've always thought it rather odd how many people want all the pairings in a story to be sustained the whole way through; I find it boring myself. Relationships change. Sometimes a crush stays a crush, and sometimes you break your heart instead of going after someone because you know they simply can't want the same thing you do. Sometimes people fall in love with more than one person at once. And sometimes a combination of those things happens. I've never really been much for traditional fictional romances, certainly I'm no good at writing that kind of romance. Convoluted polygons are what make me happy. (Which is kind of stupid, because they're sure as hell not much fun to actually participate in, but there you go.)

Most of all, once we get out of Game of Dreams and into YnY proper, there'll be a whole new kettle of fish to deal with. This really isn't intended to be the kind of story you read for the pairings. I've said it before; if there's a pairing you'd like to see me play with, hit me up about it and I might post something to my FF.Net or my main DeviantArt account. (Might. I don't take requests anymore, only friendly suggestions and niggling thoughts that won't go away. Requests just seem to get me in trouble.)

You can find a very long but not totally complete list of shipnames at the WikiFic Wikia.

Yes, I totally consider a one-sided crush in a fic to count as a "pairing," even though nothing physical happens.

Kul Elna and Mythology of the Soul

At first blush, Yu-Gi-Oh!'s take on Egyptian mythology (and history) seems about as accurate as ducks giving out candy eggs on Halloween. And it would be stupid to deny that some extreme artistic liberties were taken. But with a closer look (and some research), one starts to realize that, maybe, just maybe, Takahashi did the research, and maybe, just maybe, he actually cared about the mythology when he wrote the series (even if there never were any Lovecraftian kaiju being worshiped as gods-- Zorc was supposed to be a secret, anyhow, so you have to forgive that.)

I'll start with Kul Elna, because after that I'll be trotting right out of historical accuracies and headlong into the messy world of Egyptian mythology, which is a pretty scary place.

Understanding Egyptian culture makes everything about Kul Elna suddenly fall into place much more clearly: the reason Aknadin was so certain everyone there was scum, the reason he knew where it was, and the reason the main person who felt guilt over Kul Elna was Atem's father, a much more compassionate man than Aknadin could ever claim to be.

In ancient Egypt, there was a such thing as villages of exile. While my sources generally agree that the people sent there usually had their noses cut off first, we can forgive the presence of noses on Kul Elna's citizens for the simple fact that noselessness is really nasty to try to draw. Criminals were sent to these villages, usually on the outskirts of civilized society, for crimes ranging from thievery to assault (murderers were usually executed quickly.) They were unallowed to have marriage contracts and other kinds of contracts, but that wouldn't have stopped them from having children or eking out their lives. Shunned from society, these people could easily decide that perhaps, they weren't really a part of their country anymore, which is why Thief King Bakura would have held the country and the royalty in such high contempt.

So why did Aknadin know that everyone in Kul Elna was a criminal? Because he'd probably sent a lot of them there himself. Kul Elna was a village of the exiled.

Moving on to kas, bas and souls. In Yu-Gi-Oh!, of course, a ka is a monster connected to one person, who maybe can summon that monster or who may lose said creature when it gets sealed into a tablet. Kisara's ka was stated as also being her ba, which was why losing her ka would kill her.

Now, the cliff notes version of the actual mythology is essentially this: The ba is the soul that leaves the body at death, the ka hangs around and lives in the body after death. That doesn't sound anything at all like the Yu-Gi-Oh kas, of course, although in Yu-Gi-Oh the ba WAS treated as a life force, so that's okay.

But the kas, despite having obvious liberties taken, are actually much closer to the original mythology than you might think. According to the Book of the Dead (Coming Forth By Day), the ka and ba were both fashioned before birth, and while the ba lived in the physical world, the ka lived in a mirror spirit world, changing and growing alongside the person it belonged to.

So actually, it makes perfect sense that a person's ka would reflect their soul's state of being before death. The manga implies strongly that everyone has a ka, it's just that only some people are magically powerful or talented enough to bring their ka into the physical world. The most probable answer as to why people aren't always summoning ka in Yu-Gi-Oh's modern setting is simply that "the brave pharaoh locked the magic away--" running around in the real world isn't the natural state of a ka, so it can only happen a lot when there's a lot of free-floating magic.

The ka and ba were regarded as two parts to one spiritual body, another part of which, the akh,(described elsewhere as "a combination of the ba and ka," although not in the books I was reading, only online) is considered to be closer to the modern concept of a soul-- not a life force, not a mirror world twin, but rather the "thing" that makes us who we are. Most likely, the part of the soul that both Pegasus and Yami Bakura were given to sealing into cards and game pieces was the akh, and it was probably Atem's and Bakura's akhs that were sealed into the Puzzle and Ring. The ba was fragile, the ka removable and removed from the body during life, but the akh was nigh indestructable.

This is part of why I regard modern Seto Kaiba as being the soul-offspring of Priest Seto and Kisara, by the way-- his ka is most probably a Blue Eyes, and his ka is part of his spiritual body, not a separate thing that follows him around. Whether it was the akh, some fragment of ba, or some other spiritual organ besides that he inherited from Priest Seto, only Takahashi can answer (and to be frank, I'd rather he not, so don't any of you dare ask him.)

Within Yu-Gi-Oh, of course, one assumes that the ka is rather like a spiritual kidney-- you can live without the whole thing, but that doesn't mean you'd want to. It's shown that separation from the ka is mind-numbingly painful. Further, Thief King Bakura's ka, Diabound, changes through his part in the story, from pure in his quest for justice, to tainted and dark as Zorc begins to twist him. Something else that isn't ever stated explicitly in the dub but seems pretty clear in the manga is that people can use the powers that belong to their own ka. Bakura was doing it all the time, showing up where he shouldn't, blasting people when Diabound was nowhere to be seen, getting into places that were supposedly death traps. If that isn't a good argument that the ka is a part of a person, not something that follows a person around, I don't know what would be.

All things considered, a little research into what kas and bas actually were in the original mythology helps Yu-Gi-Oh to make a lot more sense, like, for example, why a soulless body becomes insensate and zombielike instead of simply dying (the ba or life force is still there, it's just the akh or will and personality that's been taken away.) Which is another reason why doing the research is good for fanfiction. (Glares in the fandom's general directon.)

This does beg the question of what exactly was going on with regards to the Oriechalcos. (If you discount the idea that the writers of that arc didn't know about the multiple soul concept.) Obviously, the ba remained in the body, since the bodies became comatose instead of dying. But then how were the souls being used to power the Leviathan, if they were akhs and not bas? They couldn't have been using the akhs to draw on the bas, because a lot of the people Dartz victimized had died a long time ago, their bas leaving with their deaths.

We pondered this question together for a few moments, but it didn't take Invid very long to suggest an answer: The akhs are tied to the kas-- and the Leviathan was feeding off the kas and akhs together. This was why there were a multitude of Duel Monsters, and why the Duel Monster world was in such turmoil and dire danger: it is the world that kas live in, and Duel Monsters are kas. At the time of Atlantis, there would have been a lot of free-floating, positive magic surrounding Atlantis itself, which would have been why you'd see fairies and the like wandering around. When the Oriechalcos arrived, it began twisting that magic, and what happened to people like Dartz's wife could be interpreted as her darkening ka twisting and taking over her body.

I'm going to take a moment to put forth a theory I've had about GX for some time, and since I almost never discuss GX (and don't count it or 5Ds in YnY's canon) you might as well listen up: I strongly suspect that Judai was originally a ka. That is, the weird kingdom that he and Yubel originally hailed from, wherein he was a prince, was actually within the ka-world seen during the Oriechalcos arc, which is why it doesn't resemble anything within real history at all. Whether this has anything to do with his strong sensitivity to spirit creatures (Hey, Rafael could talk to them too, so I'm not complaining about his or Luna's ability to do so) or with Yubel's.... Yubelness, who knows?

Please note; I do not claim to be a professional egyptologist. This essay merely desires to use what I know about the actual mythology, and backtrack what Kazuki Takahashi did with it to see how it might apply to Yu-Gi-Oh! Certain descriptions, including that of the akh, are rather confused in the original mythology, but mainly because they had several millenia to think about the subject. I might have considered labeling that aspect of "soul" the "ib," which Wikipedia does agree was the seat of emotion, but the ib was also the physical heart, and it's rather obvious that Pegasus wasn't ripping people's hearts out. :x There were two other parts of the soul, the "sheut," or shadow, and the "ren," or name. (And since it was considered part of his soul, you can understand why it was so key for Atem to get his name back.)

(Which implies that it's possible that a soulless shell in YGO, despite divested of willpower, might still have faint emotional response to things going on around it. So it's just as well that Kaiba said "no" to dueling Mokuba.)

Character Study: Atem

Character Study: Atem

Approximate age: (by the Japanese anime) Ancient.
Character Archetype: Ancient Evil/gambler/Wise King (Yes, I know that's a lot.)
Probable Element and Alignment: Dark, Lawful Good
Most Obvious Vocal Quirks: The rather bad habit of phrasing requests as orders.

Before we get too deeply into this, know that I consider the names "Yami Yugi," "Mou hitori no Yugi (the other Yugi)," "Atemu," and "Atem" to all refer to the same person. The Pharaoh formerly nameless and the "spirit of the Puzzle" are NOT two different people. For some reason, there are people who think they are. I'm not sure why, although I suspect it's got something to do with the confusing way the Memory storyline was presented in the manga (darnit, Takahashi).

Atem IS a fairly fractured character, however, and this has made him somewhat difficult for many fans to get him in any kind of character (although it's much easier to get close to the mark than with Kaiba. I'm also not sure why THAT is, although maybe I just have an easier time finding good writers that like Atem.)

This is partly because he changes almost as drastically as Kaiba does throughout the series. When he first pops out of the Puzzle, he's utterly insane, probably due to the fact that the thing was shattered into a gazillion pieces, and in turn so was he. He calms down relatively quickly, all things considered, but that might say more about Yugi's good influence on him than anything.

At the beginning of the manga, Atem isn't just a crazy amnesiac-- he's not even human anymore. Why should he be? He doesn't remember having a human body, only that he was part of the Puzzle before possessing Yugi. He's essentially a demon, a malicious soul bent on the defense of his host.

That sounds a bit familiar? Of course it does, Yami Bakura is played that way for a good chunk of the series. One could argue several reasons Atem eventually calms down and rejoins humanity, while Yami Bakura doesn't seem to. My main theory is that Atem is a more fundamentally human soul, while Yami Bakura was too filled with Zorc taint. Zorc is essentially an animal when it comes to its levels of complexity, so it's harder to turn from a particular path.

And here we come to why I like that the Oriechalchos plotline was written into the anime, and why I suspect it was written by someone who felt the manga was sorely missing something: Atem has been going along, slowly regaining his humanity. In the manga, he stops using punishment games after Duelist Kingdom because he doesn't like how similar it makes him to Pegasus (this is never stated directly in the dub, but there's no reason to believe it doesn't happen there, since Atem DOES stop mind crushing and obliviating after Duelist Kingdom, and doesn't deliberately inflict harm on an opponent again until Waking the Dragons.) But the manga never asks the question this so-called "filler arc" asks: "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"

Now, yeah, we're supposed to assume he's a good guy after we see him not punishment gaming anymore. But he only stops, in the manga, because he's seen how it hurts to have it done back. That doesn't make you a good guy, it makes you afeared of Karma. And though I do see him as a good guy, in basic principles, I also recognize that he has one very deadly character flaw, one the Oriechalchos arc exploits to its fullest potential: He's arrogant. He greets the news of "You're supposed to save the world" with "DUH." He's a bit surprised about the idea that he used to be a pharaoh, but probably because he never realized before that he really was human once. He's aware, I think, or thinks of himself as, the main character, and he struts it. Cross his path, and his response is "How DARE you! KNEEL, PEASANT!" (If he's never said the second part aloud, it's because Yugi would die of mortification.) The guy was raised to be a god, and in some deep shadowed part of himself, he's aware of this. His arrogance is the very ugly side of his confidence.

Atem WANTS to be good, make no mistake. I think part of this is wanting to live up to Yugi, and while he was alive, it would have been from wanting to live up to his father. And who doesn't like to think of themselves as being at least partly "good?" The Oriechalchos arc is good because of how it humbles him. Claiming this "filler arc" has no bearing on later story is silly, because the entire Memory arc was rewritten. Atem would not have asked Mana if he was "a good king" if the Oriechalchos arc hadn't made him worry about it.

Many fanfic authors seem to forget about his arrogance, and the ones that don't will often embrace it to the point of it becoming his only trait, aside from his very Egyptian brutality.

Something else that a lot of people tend to overlook about any of the Egyptian characters, from Atem down to Ishizu, is that they come from a different time period's frame of thinking. The people of that time had a certain vicious nobility to them, and the people of Egypt had a deep love of ironic justice-- making the punishment fit the crime. This is why many of the manga's punishment games fit whatever "wrong" the punished had commited; Ushio was blinded with his own greed, a television director blinded with mosaic, and the Kaiba brothers trapped (for a while) in nightmare versions of the games they played. On the other side of this, being from such a brutal time period means that Atem values his honor sometimes more than his life, and this is why he never backs down from a challenge.

Atem considered Yugi and his friends to be his "jurisdiction," so therefore he was justified, if only in his own mind, of the ironic justices that he meted out. There's a certain possessiveness to Atem that probably comes, once again, from his upbringing as pharaoh: He was intended to be god and protector of an entire people, so once he becomes a nameless king in a strange land, he just goes on doing what he'd always been trained to do, adopting a "kingdom" out of the people around him. (In fact, he's so protective that Joey has to talk him into letting Joey do his own vengeance taking-- although to Atem's credit, once he's promised Joey that it's in Joey's hands, it STAYS in Joey's hands.)

I love the relationships he develops with these people, most especially Yugi and Joey themselves; they become his brothers, and even with his statement to Mahaado that "we are of the same blood," I don't think he ever had people quite that close to him. After all, it was his new friends that made the difference in the Memory Game, not the old ones.

As the series progresses, Yugi and Atem begin to blur toward each other in personality. Yugi, of course, develops the confidence that before only Atem could give him, and proves that he can soldier on alone. Atem learns Yugi's endless compassion. Toward the beginning of the manga, he's cursing and burning and electrocuting his enemies left and right. Yugi stops him when he nearly kills Kaiba, which Atem perhaps has trouble with because "Come ON, Yugi, two chances to change are enough, aren't they?"

For Yugi, forgiveness twice isn't enough; Kaiba needs his compassion, and Yugi has compassion in him to give. This is a foreign concept to Atem; in dynastic Egypt it wasn't about whether you needed forgiveness but about whether you deserved it, and as far as he's concerned, Kaiba's out after three strikes. But he comes to reconsider his position when he sees how it affects Yugi, and is willing to even forgive Pegasus when he hears his story, despite everything that the man's done to him.

And when Marik comes along, compassion isn't even a question. This boy tries multiple times to kill him and nearly succeeds in killing Joey, his "brother." But when Marik needs their help, their compassion, Atem and Yugi give it, as one. This is probably one of the best across the board (that is, it happened in both manga and anime) pieces of character development that Atem gets, and it's in Battle City that he proves his own humanity.

Most of all, Atem truly loves Yugi. This isn't about sexual love or brotherly love; Atem loves Yugi as his son and ALSO as his brother. He is truly happy when Yugi surpasses him, even though it means he has to move on to the afterlife. He accepts his final fate calmly not because "the dead should stay dead" but because he knows Yugi's going to be okay.

The way Atem should be written depends strongly on the time in his life a story takes place in. In Egypt, he was probably very similar to his saner self toward the end of the series, but likely less forgiving and perhaps a bit less sure of himself. Directly after the Puzzle's solving, he's an amnesiac demon, the only parts of himself recognizable being possessive protectiveness and ruthlessness. But toward the end and after the end, Atem becomes the god-king he ideally should be-- brave, wise, confident, and compassionate.

Final Distillation:
Atem changes- from human to demon to human to god.
He is both ruthless and compassionate, in varying measures.
He loves Yugi selflessly.
He is confident to the point of arrogance, but he's working on it.
He is protective to the point of possessive, but he's working on that, too.
He values his honor deeply, not only honoring his word but never backing down.
He's both ancient and young- very wise, but vulnerable to the arrogance and uncertainty of youth.

I'm not as certain I've covered everything on this one as with the previous character studies. (Atem is just a character I have worked with less over the years.) Comments and criticisms are welcome through either here, the DeviantArt, or Gmail.

Not the Chicken Dance!

We watched "Steppin' Out" just last night, actually. It is just as weird an episode as it was the first time I saw it.

A theory on Johnny Steps: Johnny equates being good at games with manliness. He also equates being TALL with manliness. So the reason he freaks out and runs away when he finds out who Yugi really is? All the foundations of his worldview have been utterly shattered.

XD That is the closest to a character study on Johnny ya'll are ever getting out of me. :3

Duel Puzzle

I've been perusing a lot of stuff lately, looking for blog ideas, and naturally, I have run into people who complain about the YGO:DM dub. A lot. Including, most particularly, lots of people who yell "this dub sucks!!" (One of the things that gets me is people who complain they should have dubbed the first series. They didn't and DON'T have the RIGHTS to the first series, you twits, they couldn't have dubbed it if they wanted to!)

Now, I am not going to say that 4Kids did a perfect job dubbing Yugioh. The only "perfect" dub I have ever seen is the dub of GaoGaiGar, which takes you half a minute to realize "Hey, I'm not supposed to understand Japanese!! Hey, they're talking in ENGLISH!" We don't live in a perfect world. The GaoGaiGar dub only lasted about twenty out of fifty episodes (And by the end of this essay, you'll know why.)

But it really cheeses me off when people call the dub by 4Kids of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters "bad."

I grew up on Power Rangers and reruns of Voltron. No one has any right to call the Yu-Gi-Oh! dub "bad." At worst, it's an "average" dub. Invid and I would call it a "much better than average dub." Regardless of who did it, 4Kids or otherwise.

You know why the dub of GX sucks so much? It's because of the idiot thankless masses who made the dubbers hate their job by focusing only on the negative and not ONCE appreciating what they do RIGHT.

So today, I plan on showing my appreciation for the 4Kids dub by pointing out all the things they DIDN'T do, that they COULD have, that older dubbers WOULD have.

1. They bothered to keep a significant portion of the original names, and didn't name anyone anything like "Kaz Kazington." The GX dub did this, possibly out of sheer spite. In a BAD dub, the SERIES wouldn't have kept its own name: They would have called it "Duel Cards" or "Shadow Puzzle" at BEST. Yugi would have been named something like "Danny," Kaiba would have been "Kenny" (to explain the K), and Joey would have been named "Mack." And the Winged Dragon of Ra would have been named "Phoenixtron."

"HA! YOU can't use Phoenixtron, because YOU don't have its ACTIVATION CODES!"

2. Nobody's sex got switched. I have been, time and again, SHOCKED and ecstatic at 4Kids' track record over this. Even One Piece's drag queens stayed their own sexes. Yubel even stayed a transsexual!! In a BAD dub, Bakura would have been named "Anita" and Alister would have been "Regina." They might even have bothered to draw boobs on them. I have a LOT of love for 4Kids when it comes to this. (WHY would a bad dub have made Bakura female? "We need more female characters!" No other reason, unless you like "Well he was VOICED by a woman so why not?")



3. There was pretty minimal fiddling with the plot. Now, I'm sure some fans reading this are going to launch into a long list of all the little things they considered fiddling with the plot, like "Welcome to AMERICA" and the apparent lack of Yugi getting shares of Industrial Illusions (it's not like the Japanese version or even the MANGA ever care about it afterwords, but whatever.) I'm not talking about changes like that. In a BAD dub, Kaiba would be chasing after the other characters because he was in love with Téa (who would be named "Alice.") Bakura-- I mean Anita, would be actively crushing on Yugi, Alister-- I mean Regina, would be mad at Kaiba because he was in love with Téa, and not "her." Pegasus, who, by the way, would have spoken with a very oversexed French accent and laughed like Pepe Le Pew, would have engaged in Duelist Kingdom just to be a jerk. Oh yeah, and Yugi would give up the Face Off duel because Kaiba asks nicely.

"Alice is going to Danny's grandfather's shop!!" [VEEN!]



4. They let Cecelia be dead. In Duelist Kingdom they even let Kaiba's parents be dead. I agree 4Kids did poorly on this later. But I'm more inclined to blame soccer moms writing angry letters than the company, even if it was stupid. At best, in a BAD dub, Cecelia would be in a coma and Pegasus would be trying to revive her by putting other people in comas. She would wake up really late in the series, but we'd never see her. (Also her name would be Patricia.)

"I just got a phone call from the hospital! Patricia finally woke up!"

5. In a BAD dub, Mai would be wearing a turtleneck. In a bad dub, Atem wouldn't have been wearing a horribly drawn shirt, he would have been glowing.


"Aren't you hot in that, Mary Jane?"

6. They kept the lip synch pretty close. Now yeah, part of the reason is because they have better tech for that now, often abused to dub out women's breasts, but it's still something I have to appreciate.

"YUGI I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL HA HA!"

7. In a bad dub, they wouldn't even have let Obelisk (who would be named Titanos the Mighty) punch Marik, much less Joey punch Atem (the latter was a pretty graphic punch, so it's understandable. It was also a friend punching another friend, which the 4Kids people seem to have trouble with. [/sarcasm])

"The AIR PRESSURE of Titanos's fist sent him FLYING!"

8. They bothered getting nice music for it. I DIE every time I hear a rap intro for a kids' show these days. Maybe you don't like all-instrumentals, but at least they didn't take the opportunity to go on about "JO-ey, he's Yugi's friend/ Stands by him to da very END."

"And we're/ and we're/ and we're/ GETTING DOWN WITH THE HEART OF THE CARDS!!!"

9. Nobody had voices like Erica Scheimer's "little boy" voice. I'm sorry, but you wanna complain about Serenity sounding "too old?" Watch He-Man for a few hours straight, you'll just be happy she has a voice that sounds like a normal human being. (Not to knock the talent of the Filmation staff. They worked with what they had.) And what are you on about "they don't sound like teenagers like they did in the Japanese?" Where are you people getting thirteen year olds that sound like four year olds and teenage boys that sound like middle aged women with lung cancer? I WANT TO KNOW.

(I happen to be in love with Serenity's voice, by the way. Not Lisa Ortiz, though she strikes me as pretty cool. Just her voice.)



10. Yes, they dubbed a show aimed at teenagers as though for little kids. But guess what? Shows aimed at teenagers don't MAKE it over here unless they're live action. This is exactly why the Uncut!Dub didn't last very long-- it was a financial sinkhole. I'm not sure why. You'd think teenagers would have enough money to have more power in the market than eight and ten year olds. But those few shows that ARE aimed at teens still have to be SAFE for their younger siblings, because there ARE NO TIME SLOTS in the States for teenage viewers, only for little kids and adults. The Yugioh dub actually was aimed at teens-- it was just being tamed down because little kids were going to watch it anyway. If they hadn't dubbed it the way they did, there would have been no Dan Green screaming "YUGI! IT'S NOT FAIR!!" because the show wouldn't have lasted that long.

And that would be a crying shame.

Little Voices: Cover to Page 14

Just to head off any more of those questions about this and Magic Light, YES, these are directly connected stories. Yeesh.

I am insanely pleased with the cover for this puppy, all except for one thing: The cards in Bakura's hands are "Unity" and "Soul Resurrection," which you can barely see. (I complained about this elsewhere.) Unlike the cover for Magic Light, this thing goes way heavier on the inks (which my art has come to do in the past year or so) and I think it really works. That shadow scar really entertains me for some reason.

Yes, the cards point to bits of plot. Yes, the plot involves Yami Bakura. No, you don't get to get spoilers. That would be silly.

Page one, of course, involves Bakura Ryou chest. XD Now, as ya'll know, I've talked and talked about using the dub names. "Ryou" never gets mentioned as his name in the dub, he's only called Bakura. But for heaven's sake, he needs two names. I spell it "Ryou" instead of "Ryo" (like the manga) for two reasons: the "U" changes the sound, and "Ryou" sounds like what they say in the Japanese. "Ryo" makes me think of Shaman King, and after all these years of reading fanfictions calling him "Ryou," it looks kind of emasculated without that last letter.

There's a lot more CG airbrushed shading on this page. I have to admit, I like my CG shading-- and it does make it look more... uh, night-timey here. But I think what really clinched it was the black page. I totally did that on the compy, not with a marker, although the "Not there" panel did originally have black sharpie all over the background, which is why it now looks like there is no panel border for that panel. Go figure.

When Bakura says "It's been six months," by the by, he means since the end of the Memory Arc. In case anyone WASN'T clear on that. O_o

As I mention in the DeviantArt comments for page two, everybody in the first panel is somebody.

I really enjoy Joey in Little Voices. He cracks me up all over (He was pretty funny in Magic Light, but not like he is here.) His expression in the last panel here wasn't quite as manic as the original sketch, but it still makes me laugh. (And so does Yugi's sympathetic pout in panel five. XD)

Little Voices makes a lot of off-hand references to the final episode's Japanese ending song sequence, which showed a bunch of "what are they doing now" type moments. That first panel of page three is the first, and the later pages with the Schroeders and Pegasus is a longer one.

I chuckle that Joey "always" worries about Kaiba. Kaiba's costume here is intended to enfold him in a somewhat protective way, like armor. Because he's been feeling somewhat vulnerable since he accidentally ran Joey over, you know. As for page four-- Mokuba is chasing around after Serenity for much the same reason he was in Magic Light. Also, HIS costume is intended to emulate Kaiba's Battle City costume, although you can't see much of it.

Rebecca, on page five, is essentially the same bubbly nightmare she was when last we saw her. Her life has been going well since the end of the series. I think she's growing up just a wee bit, though, if only in that now, she's actually trying to KISS Yugi. XD

Page six: Once again, a guest in the first panel. Thistle, incedentally, was the first character that got sent in (not counting the characters that belong to friends of mine who all said "go ahead and use them if you want.") She'll probably appear in several different incarnations, because I did a lot of sketches of her that didn't all look like what was originally sent me. XD

I've always had it in my head that Mai gave Valon Joey's email. I'm not sure WHY Mai would do that, except possibly that she found the idea very amusing.

As for Valon, his emails typically consist of video mails ("Gueass who, Wheelah!!") and porely speld threts to treet mai rite. XD (Considering Valon's background, wouldn't he be somewhat illiterate?)

One of the things I've long tried to do with my craft is tell as much as possible with the pictures, and especially the facial and body expressions, as much if not more than with the dialogue. If your characters stand there and tell the whole story with talking, there's no point to making it a comic; you may as well be writing an online chat. The fourth panel of page six illustrates what I'm talking about-- there may be talking there, but the real story is in Yugi's face and Joey's hand on his shoulder. And I'm pretty happy about that.

Ironically, I had a lot of trouble with Téa and Bakura's scenes, and technically this chapter is about them. (You'd never guess it, considering one of the upcoming scene sets, but that'd be spoiling.) Originally Téa was way more emo on page seven, page eight wasn't even there (and it's pretty silly that it wasn't, because it clarifies a lot) and page nine was... um... gooier. Bakura and Téa are essentially "together" here, but I wanted very much to not let it feel like Bakura was taking advantage of her grief, and at the same time I didn't want it to seem like Téa was taking too much advantage of his kindness or shoving Yugi aside too callously. Some of the original pages made me make "ew gross" faces, if only because I made the mistake of trying to make several of them funny, and I'm actually still in the process of reworking parts of this chapter just because this sort of awkward relationship can be hard to work with.

(And I was in a relationship something like this once, sort of on Bakura's side of it, which only makes it harder.)

All Bakura really wants here is a happy ending for the people who helped him, and it's putting him in an uncomfortable position.

I think of page ten as the coup de grace of this project thus far. You see a lot of Kaiba angst scenes, and a lot of them go too far in one direction or another. His best "angst" moment in the series was probably the Face Off duel, and there he was caught and stripped of his armor right in front of an enemy. (I tend to think the real reason he was such a jerk to Yugi about it later is because he was trying to calm his own self down-- and also because Kaiba really doesn't realize how jerky he sounds sometimes. XD) Here he has chosen the time and place for himself, so I got to let him angst calmly in the rain. XD I actually really enjoy drawing rain, when it turns out right, and sadly touching scenes are my true art, so this page was essentially "GDG spoiling herself."

I think Kaiba's relationship with his biological father is really important to his character, especially since his father was the first formative figure in his life. It's usually overshadowed in fanfic because his screwed up relationship with Gozaburo is so out there and obvious, and most fanfictionists only care about his mother. I prefer a focus on Mokuba's relationship with his mother, since their lives only overlapped in a whisper, and a focus on Seto's relationship with his biological father. (Yes, I'm the author of "Happy Mother's Day," but that's not the point. "Happy Mother's Day" covered all I ever need to write about Seto's relationship with his mom.)

Even in the orphanage, Seto was telling Mokuba to "man up," to "buck up and be strong." He didn't get that attitude from the orphanage staff. I think he saw his father as a very strong and stoic person, and so when he chose to take over as Mokuba's father, he tried to emulate that. Part of what happens in Game of Dreams is that Seto comes to realize that presenting a strong face to someone who needs it isn't the same as never letting that facade slip.

Also, first panel: That is lightning dancing across the clouds. Lightning does that. Roar.

I'm really happy with the effect of non-standard gutter filler (it's not all white, it comes in different shades of gray) on this page, too. Overall, the whole scene was intended to indicate the turmoil of Kaiba's heart, while letting him still stand there looking stoic as possible (he refuses to answer whether those are tears or rain. Make up your own minds. (wink)) And I think I achieved that goal pretty well.

Page 11, of course, starts the other scene of Little Voices that references that ending sequence at the end of the final episode. I had some issues with the silly dialogue here, but it turned out okay even though I felt like I was parodying the series when I wrote parts of it.

Several people have complimented me on how well I write Pegasus. I'll tell ya'll a secret: I've been possessed by his dead wife since I was fourteen. XD I could even tell you some of that really private stuff, like the way he mutters in his sleep, but I won't. (wink) (Actually it's because I really enjoy writing campy, maliciously gleeful people. He's just sort of my Type when it comes to dialogue.)

"Scheiße" (the "ß" is pronounced or can be alternately written as a double "S," for "scheisse," or "shy-sa") is German for "Shit!" Yes, I learned this in German class, in high school. Part of the reason I even bothered including the Schroeders (besides the fact that I love them) is that they give me an excuse to put random German in my fancomics. (Hey, it's why the Japanese made him German too, and you know it.) German class was one of the real joys of my high school experience-- aside from art and choir class it was the only academic thing that I got really excited about, partly because the teacher was like an uncle to me, but also because I really just adore the language. Leon's accent will eventually get much thicker, for exactly this reason.

I like that little Curse of Dragon on page 12. He represents what's really going through Yugi's mind. XD He also wasn't there in the original sketch comic, funnily enough; there were just a bunch of ellipses and Yugi's horrified expression. XD

Yugi's kind of snarky in my comics, have you noticed?

I mentioned in the comments for that page that the idea of Yugioh characters as crime lords really cracks me up. If someone brings a fanfic to me that plays with this, and does it well, I swear I will make you art. You can call me out on this.

I like page 13's first panel. Yugi looks so grown up. XD It was with these pages that I decided to (finally) consider YnY comics to be on a schedule, because apparently treating my hobbies like hobbies means they collect dust in the corner.

The idea of Zigfried being at least a little intimidated by Pegasus has been kicking around the back of my mind for a while now. I think that regardless of what HE says happened regarding the contracts with I2, (he's an unreliable source, you know) that probably what really kept him from getting a contract was a combination of practices Pegasus didn't approve of (like crashing Kaiba's appointed demonstrations) and Pegasus being kind of scary to Ziggy. Pegasus likes Leon, on the other hand, but will only let him push so far. XD

Because a friend asked about it, here's a brief explanation of a standards war, as given to her:

A standards war is essentially this: say Kaiba uses one operating system for the Duel Disks. Now say that Ziggy comes up with a different one that isn't compatible with Kaiba's, for the sole purpose of forcing people to choose one over the other. Now say Ziggy throws a bunch of tournaments that use his operating system only, with lavish prizes (and other marketing ploys, like a lower price, easier maintenance, lighter weight, etc.) Obviously, Kaiba would have to respond to that.

What Yugi did here was essentially force Zigfried to not do that, by insisting that both systems be compatible. Now, Kaiba still has a competitor, but it's not the metaphorical bloodbath Ziggy was suggesting to Pegasus.

And you can see why Yugi would find that more acceptable.

As I mentioned in the original comments, page 14 was going to go up on Valentine's Day originally, but I couldn't get it done in time. I'm happy with it, though, and that's what matters.

Page 14 really shows what I mean by "telling a story with images," and also demonstrates powerfully why Game of Dreams and YnY as a whole are being done as comics instead of prose. This single page would have taken your average fanfictionist (who is admittedly less skilled than I am individually, since the average has to include people wh0 r1te lyk th15) the length of this entire blog post to tell. It packages two relationships and a dozen things about both of them into six images.

When I was a kid, I used to think that giving people happy endings meant you had to give them all exactly what they wanted, and therefore Pegasus couldn't have a happy ending without all sorts of problems. I know better now, of course-- sometimes happy endings have to do with learning and growing to accept what must be accepted. I think Yugioh as a series is a lot about that.

Pegasus will always grieve for Cecelia, but he's no longer cutting himself off from life because of it. And best of all, he's found someone who can understand that.

Happy Valentine's Day?

Since I want to get into the habit of posting once a week, no matter what, and since all my ideas for this week felt uninspired at best, here's a screencap comic.


















Yaaaay.

Fanfiction Peeves

I was looking through some notes for some pairing essays that I did, and MAN, I am rather opinionated, aren't I?

For those of you who follow this blog without following us at DeviantArt, you might have missed that I plan on updating at least once a week here, and probably at least once a week at the DA, from now on. Trust me, I have every determined intention of actually doing this. I'm making my Angry Yugi Face right now. (The little cute guy. I couldn't pull off Atem by any stretch of the imagination.)

So for today, I give you my list of things which, if I see it in the first few paragraphs of a fanfic, I'm liable to close the window and look elsewhere. I don't actually run into them on a regular basis (thank RA), because I now only skim recommended and favorite fanfic lists, but I still find 'em from time to time. There's no accounting for taste. XD

1. Kaiba using the word "mutt" when referring to anything other than an actual dog.
-Kaiba only very rarely uses animals as insults, even in the dub, and he really only ever insults Joey to his face. (Probably because he's going for a reaction, because I don't see him as actually disliking Joey.) I think he's called Joey a "monkey" more than he's called him a dog, so really, we should be calling it "Monkeyshipping" instead. Or "Bonkotsushipping." Maybe "Moneybags-shipping."

2. References in the narration to Téa as a "bitch," "mean girl," or anything else blatantly negative.
-Okay, I get that you don't like her, but good narration is unbiased. This also goes for when a character who is friends with Téa in the show reacts with some form of horror or distaste when they see her coming. I GET that you don't like her, but Yugi DOES. A good fanfic writer accepts that sometimes a character they like gets along with a character they dislike.

3. Taking a character out of a scene from the show due to dislike.
-Yeah.

5. Slavish imitation, in dialogue, of a character's accent.
-So you want the characters to "sound" like themselves. I understand. But Joey's "voice" has little to do with his accent, it has to do with the words he chooses to use. Having him say "da" instead of "the" is one thing. Having him say "Da quick braown fohx jumped ovah da lazy dohg" is quite another. Writing like that hasn't been in fashion since Mark Twain. Stop doing it. (On the other hand, using British spelling, like "colour" instead of "color," is a perfectly acceptable way to imitate a British accent. Why? It's less distracting.)

6. Runtogethersentencesandparagraphswithoutformatting.
-Don't upload with notepad; save it into Word or something first. And if FF.net eats your formatting anyway, keep at it until it's at least sort of readable. Just trust me on this. Don't have any of the acceptable filetypes except for txt? Get them. You're going to need them eventually anyway.

7. Mixing dub names and Japanese names, such as calling Serenity "Shizuka Wheeler."
-Following a mixed continuity? Almost impossible not to do, since the different continuities fill in each others' gaps. Using mixed names? Confusing and weird. I used to put up with this, but my tolerance has gone down the more I've seen it.

8. A character like, say, Tristan, calling Téa "darling," and then you realize a few sentences later it's because he's gay.
-Tristan would be the butchest gay guy ever. Not all gay guys talk like that.

9. Realizing a few sentences in that the character you thought was a canon character is actually an original character who happens to have the same name.
-Curse you all for the confusingness! Make it clear from the outset! Good grief.

10. Author's notes that say anything along the lines of "Marik is the yami, Malik is the hikari, okay?"
-It's not so much that I begrudge you the right to do that, but if you do, you're going to confuse me. It's a difference of one letter that doesn't actually happen to be much difference; the dubbers call him "Marik" because that's what the Japanese VAs sound like they're saying. And I, personally, am very mildly dyslexic: I am going to forget which you said is which, and I am going to get frustrated. Besides that, it's not even accurate to either versions of the show OR to the manga. Call Yami Marik something else in narrative-- if you don't like "Yami Marik" (and there are so many reasons not to) you can call him "Ishtar," or "the Ishtar demon," or whatever else that appeals to you and makes sense. (Yami M himself considers his name to be that of the original Marik Ishtar, because he considers himself to BE his "hikari.")

11. A sex scene between two members of a non canon pairing in the first chapter.
-I love silentshipping, as anyone who knows me should know. I love it to death. But I accept that any fic featuring it needs to nurse it along, to nurture it and let it grow. A good silentshipping story accepts that the "blimp scene" doesn't point to eternal love; Kaiba's reaction to meeting Serenity again would probably run more along the lines of "Oh, it's you. Uh. Hi." Not the first meeting, but it might as well be. Personally, this fanfictionist can't see Kaiba as a "kiss on the first date" kind of guy, much less a "sex after the first walk in the rain when we're not even sort of dating" kind of guy. I mean, yuck.

12. The lyrics of a song, cut and paste verbatim.
-I have no problem with songfics, even though ff.net's management does (obviously, you get around THAT by not posting it on ff.net) but I didn't click into your fic to read a huge block of text that didn't come from you. If you're planning to incorporate the lyrics into the story itself, be a little more creative than that. And if your story is only INSPIRED by a song, all you need to do is point out the song's official video on Yuutube and inform the reader of the relationship. It'll keep you out of trouble AND be less annoying. I didn't used to click out of these right away, but now I don't tend to waste time on them-- because I've spent too much time already reading through the songs in the past, only to find out that the story itself is only two paragraphs long.

13. Overly cute stuff.
-I'm not really talking about fluff here. When I come across a sentence like "Yugi skipped across to Kaiba and stared up at him with enormous puppy eyes," there's something wrong.

14. A character being the wrong gender without explanation.
-If it's an AU (alternate universe), please, please tell us before we start reading. If it's NOT and Kaiba is secretly a woman, please explain in the story WHY she's a crossdresser (and shame on you if Mokuba doesn't know already.) And for heaven's sake, DON'T gender switch someone just because you like a pairing but can't get past the ghey. Pairings don't have to involve sex or romance. Write something where they become brotherly friends and get it out of your system.

15. Male pregnancy with no explanation.
-One time I read this story in which Bakura was "getting really chubby" and the doctor was all "Oops, Marik, you got him preggers!" It was supposed to be funny, but the fact that nobody even batted an eye at the idea of a pregnant man and the only explaination was "gay sex" really killed the humor for me. Even humor has to make SOME sense. When you treat male pregnancy like it's a normal thing, it is not funny absurd, it's just absurd absurd.

16. When the summary of the story is essentially the first paragraph.
-It's a narrative. Not an essay. Take a writing class.

17. Dialogue, in a supposedly serious story, which sounds like chat-room speak. And also narrative that sounds like chat-room speak.
-USE PUNCTUATION. USE IT. USE SPELL CHECK. IT DOES NOT COST MONEY. For that matter, reread your story before putting up for the rest of us to read. The computer, she misses things.

18. Being dumped into a non-canon status quo without any warning, explanation, or reaction on the part of the characters.
-If it's a few years in the future, say so in the narrative. If it's AU, say so in the author's notes (unless it's a case of "AU clashes with Canon Universe," then you can just do it in the narrative.) If the story opens with Pegasus essentially saying "I love you kay?" to somebody we've never met before, there needs to be some explanation of how the characters got to that point, like "ever since they had met several months before" or "Since Joe was the first person Pegasus had laid eyes on after drinking the magic potion...." I mean, seriously.

19. Mokuba needing a babysitter.
-Did we seriously watch the same series, guys? This kid is an awesome little ninja who referees tournaments and is the vice president of Kaiba Corp. And when he's not in school or being Kaiba's ninja messenger and head general, he's hanging out in Kaiba's office, apparently making sure he stops working long enough to eat and sleep. If anybody needs a babysitter, it's Kaiba-- and he's got one: Mokuba. Being able to take care of himself and more mature than he might have been otherwise is one of Mokuba's character traits-- and anyway, at the age of ten, he's already old enough to be left home alone by most countries' laws. The same goes for Mokuba feeling ignored by Kaiba or for Kaiba abusing Mokuba in any way after Duelist Kingdom. This isn't going to happen.

20. Kaiba having a girlfriend that Mokuba doesn't like.
-Unless she has eldritch powers and is controlling Kaiba's mind, this isn't going to happen either. Kaiba places his brother's needs above his own when it comes to this kind of thing. Mokuba doesn't need any help getting Kaiba's brain out of the gutter and the girl out of the house-- all he really needs to do is say "Well, Seto, I hate to say it but she's kind of a bitch" and Kaiba'll respond with "Oh well, sex isn't everything." (My cat has a similar hold on my love life, so I know what I'm talking about.) (On the other hand, if your story actually features this conversation in just the first few paragraphs, I would totally read it.)

21. Yugi being significantly younger than the rest of the cast, or Mai being in high school with the rest of the cast.
-Yugi is shown as being in high school. Mai is explicitly stated as being out of high school even in the dub-- as being IN HER TWENTIES even in the dub. Yugi is not a little kid and Mai is not a teenager; jokes are made right in the series about Yugi looking younger than he is, and a large part of Mai's character is that she's been around the block once or twice. I'd totally read a story about Mai before Duelist Kingdom, but you can't just shove her in a Domino High uniform, plop her in Yugi's class, and expect me to go along for the ride.

I'm stopping here, because these are the main things that kill a fic for me in the first chapter. Ciao for now!

Kaiba Brand

(Hello, YnY blog readers. I am not GDG, but her brother Invid, who as a guest blogger may occasionally post here when I have the urge. The top link in "Linkage" here at this blog is Awesomer Than Thou, my blog. Click it. Click it now.)

Something that GDG talks about (well, complains about) is that the "non-sequel" Yugioh series have turned the characters of the DM series into archetypes to be utilized.

Kaiba, obviously, is one of these; in fact, he's the most obvious of them. To the point where GDG has labelled the various "Kaibas" in somewhat derogatory fashion.

Kaiba is the genuine Kaiba, of course. Whether or not you accept substitutions or imitations no doubt depends on your tastes.

You might, for instance, find Manjyome Jun/Chazz Princeton, Kaiba lite, less filling but more entertaining.

Or you might go for the hearty but bland store-brand Kaiba, Kaiser whatever-the-heck-his-real-name-is, whose only real characterization in the first season was that he was too perfect for his own good. (Be careful, he goes bad after a while.)

There's also Edo/Aster Phoenix, named either for a Yugioh-related Internet personality (there isn't a version of his webpage I know of that isn't five years out of date, hence the Google search) or a flower, who is known as both British Kaiba and diet Kaiba. Because he's British, and can give you brain damage.

Then there's Jack Atlas, who is for obvious reasons known as ghetto Kaiba. The guy does have, unlike his non-genuine Kaiba predecessors, some honest and genuine angst-you have to give him points for that, at least.

Jack is trying for a re-branding, though, having grown tired of the current characterization: Pimp Kaiba.

Only time will tell if he is successful.

Comic FAQ

I've been getting enough attention for the comic that I think it's about time we put together a Frequently Asked Questions List. My definition of Frequently Asked Question is that enough people have asked me enough times that I find it annoying (and to be honest, I like to not telegraph where I'm going with things, so plot directed questions tend to bother me anyway.)

I will add to this as time goes by. Since it'll be the only post with the label "Comic FAQ," you'll only ever have to click on the side to find it. Also, I plan to link it like crazy.

1. What the heck is going on here?
This is a long-term fancomic that builds on the first Yu-Gi-Oh! series (before GX). Game of Dreams is set in the seven years after the series ends, and is seven longer stories with some shorter, supplemental bits thrown in between. It is building up to the birth of Yukai, Yugi and Téa's son. Yukai no Yugi itself follows events that take place when Yukai himself is fifteen, twenty-two years after Atem passes on. Everything posted at the YnY DeviantArt page is part of the same fan continuity.

2. Will Game of Dreams feature X pairing?
I hate, hate, HATE being asked this. Look here, if you want the spoilers (they're not heavy spoilers, I suppose, because I do dance around them, but they're still spoilers). If you're really so sore for some pairing or another that you don't think will show up in GD, email me (through the blog email) and I'll think about posting some art or a comic featuring that pairing at my regular DeviantArt account or here, if I think I'm risking getting banned over it. (Note: second link is definitely NSFW.) If you're nice about it. Like I said, I'm flexible. (The only pairing I can't really figure out is Téa/Hitotsumi Giant, which I HAVE seen. Just don't ask me to try drawing it.)

3. Why don't you update more often/regularly?
This is only frequently asked by people who don't read my other two webcomics. They are both original, in full color, and update three to five times a week. The fancomic is easier to work on, because it's in black and white, but because I'm actually working toward making some kind of living tied to my original comics, they take priority. This is part of why the fancomic is posted on DeviantArt; to make it easier to follow. (Maybe someday I'll start posting it on DrunkDuck or something loony like that. I think they allow fancomics.) My original comics are called The Law of Purple, which has been running since 2004, and Alien Revenant, which I started in January of 2009. If you like my art, and you like my writing, you'll probably enjoy checking them out. (Also, looking at LOP can show you where my art skills were back in 2004 when I started it! Sweet Osiris.)
The other reason is that we have lives that happen to be a bit crazy sometimes, as people often do.

4. What's this about submitting fancharacters?
Look here.

5. Ha ha, Slifelmo is awesome.
Thank you.

6. Wait, are you a guy or a girl?
YnY has two people that write it and one person that reads it ahead of time to see if it's really as entertaining as we think it is. The person you're usually going to be talking to (and who is writing this) is Golden-Dragon-Girl, who (last time I checked) is definitely a girl. She wrote most of Game of Dreams herself, and also does all the art. The person who she co-writes it with is her older brother, who calls himself Invid most of the time, and who is definitely male, so far as I can tell. He at least partially created a lot of the non-offspring characters and also writes most of the duels for YnY. The plot of GD also wouldn't be the same without him. The person who (usually) betas for us is this wonderful lady. Don't bother needling her for plot points, she's not going to tell you. (She does NOT typically look at the art ahead of time, either.) The YnY DeviantArt page insists that he's male, and I'm not about to argue with him. :P

7. Do you take requests?
No, only friendly suggestions and niggling thoughts that won't go away. I'm likelier to do something you ask for if you meet any one of the following conditions: A, if you're nice about it, B, if you really sell it, C, if you're a friend of mine already, and D, if it has anything to do with my OC kids interacting with your OC kids. In case of D, because I happen to love that kind of stuff.

8. Do you mind fanart/if I color something you did?
Please, show me if you do. That kind of stuff makes me feel horribly loved. :3

9. Are you going to do a Character Study for [insert character here]?
The goal, when we started in on the Character Studies, was to cover every one of the original canon characters who would be important in the YnY comics.   There is a very good chance at this point that every character who appeared in the original YGO anime will get at least a little love.  Requests do make a difference in this case; they move certain characters further ahead in the queue.