Little Voices: Pages 28-37

Geez, I let this one go too long. Updating the blog has been a little more difficult lately, due to work.

I had all sorts of issues with the last panel of Page 28-- mostly, I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Early lines included Joey talking about his father (out of character) and Yugi and Joey teasing Kaiba about having been adopted again (addressed in a later scene.) I only hit on the "talking nonsense" line after doing the bonus art mentioned in the last commentary. Kaiba muttering deliriously fixes everything in fanfic.

No, really, it does. Next time you can't figure out where your story's going, just get the man drunk. He will show you the way.

Page 29 is basically just a wrap up of the scene, but it still amuses me horribly. I love those little Calvin and Hobbes style chases, and I don't get to do them often in enough in serious storylines. (Also I got to draw Kaiba snoozing some more, echoing the first page in the sequence. I was pretty happy with that.)

As mentioned on the page, the random bystander lady belongs to My-Oh-Mai, one of our longtime readers who contributed to the open invite I keep mentioning.

I've mentioned in the original comments for page 30 that I love Duke. I say that about a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh characters. This is because it's true. XD

Duke is one of those characters that I draw consistently off-model, mainly because his hair didn't make much sense in the series (Hah, hair making sense in this fandom. Right.) When I talk about a character's hair not making sense, mostly I mean things like the fact that Duke's headband doesn't seem to circle around his head, instead terminating behind his bangs (without even a string to hold it up) and the fact that you really just can't tell where Téa's bangs start or where the part of her hair begins.

Other than that, I like drawing Duke because he dresses in a semi-girlish way-- not unlike the way that I dress, to be honest. (Although I seem to trend toward Atem's jewelry tastes.) This makes him easy for me to dress while keeping his outfits interesting, so drawing him is actually pretty relaxing. (It helps that he has a pretty ponytail. I love drawing hair.)

Tristan's nephew right there appeared in the manga. I like the fact that Tristan has a nephew, and that he gets pressed into watching the kid; it adds a dimension of harrassed younger brother to him that I identify with and am entertained greatly by. I gave Johji some aging up for the simple fact that time has passed and babies grow quickly; Johji will probably make more appearances, and he will look different every time.

Also I totally drew a picture of freaky baby Johji when I was prepping for that page. It makes me feel mildly dirty. XD

As noted pretty much everywhere I've mentioned her so far, Amber, making her introduction on page 31, belongs to SK Dark Dragon, who I asked for permission to use the character some time ago. We used to hang out in the same Yugioh forum back when TV.com was TVTome, and she hosted some of my early fanart on her website before I was allowed to have a DeviantArt account. I became very fond of Amber after reading several stories that featured the character, and asked if I could write a version of her into the future story I was concocting. Obviously, she said yes. (But I asked her again a year or two ago, because we hadn't talked in a while. XD SK still said yes.) (SK now has a blog on BlogSpot, and as she says herself, usually calls herself Little Scarf Girl now.)

Anyway, I liked Amber enough to let Duke chase her around in Game of Dreams. There is some amount of canon that indicates that Duke isn't entirely straight, but anybody who's read The Law of Purple knows I don't give half a damn about that kind of thing. XD Not being entirely straight doesn't disprove any hetero tendencies. (Incedentally, the LOP character Lette was very mildly inspired by SK, although they're absolutely nothing like each other and Lette isn't actually based on her. It's complex.)

Sometimes, YnY being a slightly disjointed online comic requires a scene to wrap quickly. I usually go for humor when this happens.

Also, I was very gratified by the positive response to Amber. Often when you introduce a recurring non-canon character into fanfic, a lot of acid is spat. (And let's be frank, a full-body shot is like the equivilant to a Mary-Sue description page in comics sometimes.) I'm sure it helps that she's not actually mine. XD

Some people were a little confused by Bakura's soul room on page 32. At least one person who was confused by it seemed to have never read the manga; this is where I got a lot of my ideas on what a proper soul room should look like. Téa's, for example, used a dance studio as a starting point, with lots of mirrors to indicate a confident personality, and an open ceiling to indicate an open personality. There was a cute little love seat and a tree in the middle of the floor, and a framed picture of a superhero without a face, which represented Atem (she didn't know who he was at the time.) There was also a portrait of the Statue of Liberty holding a ballet shoe and a soft drink cup. XD Another character, who spent a lot of time with himself and concentrating on ancient knowledge, had a dark soul room which used a library as a starting point.

Ryou's soul room started as a combination between a medieval courtyard and a Japanese garden, to represent, among other things, his love of the fantastic (as manga readers and those familiar with Series 0 will know, he likes to make his own tabletop RPGs.) On the wall directly opposite the viewer is a window hidden by a curtain and obscured by willow trees; behind this shroud is a portrait of his mother and sister, who died prior to the series. Though I doubt we'll ever see the portrait, his sister is slightly more prominent in the image, because he wrote letters to her in the manga, which indicates to me that he took her loss harder than that of his mother.

To the left of the portrait, from our viewpoint, is another arch. In this arch, which is uncovered, you can see a portrait of Yugi, Téa, Tristan and Joey, although the distance involved makes it a smallish picture and therefore obscures exactly who is represented there. These four people are the only friends that Ryou has had that have not abandoned him or rejected him outright when they learned that he was possessed, and who went to great lengths to help him even when they didn't know him that well. Therefore he holds them in a place of great importance, and they get to have a picture in his soul room.

Even more prominent is the statue to the left of that, whose feet can be seen in the side of the panel. This is Atem, who he's given a Theban style monument in his head. I refuse to go very deeply into that, aside from the fact that it started in the same place as the portrait of Yugi-tachi. (I did mention elsewhere that there were going to be undertones of this.)

Somewhere in the soul room, where we cannot see, there is probably a smaller image of his father, whom he doesn't seem to be especially close to. This is understandable, because Ryou's father would appear to be out of the country a lot. On the opposite wall from the viewer, there is another window, but it looks "out."

The pool in the floor handles several jobs. First of all, it represents a deeper emotional and spiritual side to Ryou that he keeps private. Secondly, it divides his soul room into two parts: the "lighter" side, with Atem, his friends, and his father (and his sister and mother hovering in between) and the "darker" side, which features more trees, some ivy on the wall....

And a screen door, which leads us into page 33, and Ryou into a blank room. The screen door was Invid's idea. As anyone who is into this fandom knows, when Atem and Yugi's soul rooms were depicted, we never saw inside Yugi's (except for a few toys scattered on the floor), but there was a hallway dividing the two rooms, and the hallway itself resembled Atem's room more than it did Yugi's (Although Yugi's door had something that looked like metal plating and circuitry on it. Which is awesome.) Invid postulated that this hallway represented the fact that Atem's soul room actually existed within the Millenium Puzzle, and thus if Atem had actually fully inhabited Yugi's body, it would have looked different.

Hence the screen door. Yami Bakura's blank soul room is actually directly a part of Ryou's room, but their souls remain distinct; Yami B is just hiding out in Ryou's head. Since it's a single vessel containing two souls, there's only one soul room, but it's been divided into two by a screen door so as to represent the separation of the actual personalities.

Yami Bakura is currently in a very bad way, as the blankness of his side should indicate. Consider: if everything in Ryou's room means something, and the Escheresque maze in Atem's soul room represented hidden secrets, what does blankness mean? Marik will get to show up later and explain a bit of this to us, and to Ryou.

I was aware that having Yami Bakura turn out to be alive might put certain readers off. I can only say that I had several good reasons for doing it; which can be summed up like so: There is a starting point from the series for this that makes it possible (the fact that several times he shunted part of his own soul into objects other than the Ring.) I like him and want to see him heal. And he plays an important role in later stories, a role that only Yami Bakura can play. (Also Yukai likes him a great deal. I'm not sure why, because Yukai actually has to have a human relationship with him, and I don't, but there you go. They have some weird things in common with each other, and they're both snarky. Maybe that's enough.)

Ryou maybe loses some of those manly points he's been racking up on page 34. I have to admit I kind of giggle when he drops Yami B, even though it's horrible. Mostly he didn't expect Yami B to flop like that, but he's also startled that Yami B doesn't seem to be a figment of his imagination. I dressed Yami B in darker clothes than Ryou to make it simpler to tell them apart. As time goes by, I'll be using varied methods, like shadow scars, actual scars, shadows over the eyes, mascara, and context. I try to draw Yami B's little hair horns that started to show up in Battle City, but somehow that doesn't make them look different enough when I'm the one drawing them.

Do notice that on Yami B's side of the soul room, the screen door appears to be just floating there. XD Aside from that, I am very pleased with Yami B's hair, and the way he looks as Ryou is dropping him. The dropping pose came about in a very natural way and I'm not sure how I did it.

Yami Bakura wants you to help him, Roooo! He is bleeding spiritually! Augghhh!

I don't really have anything else to say about page 35, because I said most of it in the comments. XD

Page 36 features that nice statue of Atem. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, although it seemed to confuse at least one person into thinking Atem was alive in Ryou's head too. O_o He's not. That would be weird. And also he'd be like "Bakura, I don't want that half dead guy on my feet, put him back." Other than that, I'm happy with the progression of the page, and stuff.

On page 37, Ryou once again references time. I may as well mention here that the next storyline is another half a year later, but that it takes three months, and that the next two storylines coexist over a time period of about a year. I'm mildly shaky on exact time within the actual series, but have chosen to assume it covers a time period of maybe a year to a year and a half. The end of the last story will be about seven years after the Ceremonial Duel. :P

Ryou moves Yami B from the "dark" side of his room to the "light" side of his room and puts him at Atem's feet. Make of that what you will.

Let it be known that I have no intention of reviving Atem in the same way. He's conclusively dead. He has every reason to rest in peace. Bringing him back would destroy the point of the series ending, which is "death must be accepted." Yami B's problem is partly an inability to take the moral to heart.

(Despite this, Atem manages to be very present throughout Game of Dreams, as the statue itself indicates.)

This page was the result of a lot of last minute editing, and it was mostly because I suddenly realized I had never made it clear, anywhere in the storyline, that Yami B has amnesia. I'm not sure how that happened, but I like the page.

This situation is not permanent, but won't be changed during Game of Dreams, because it's partly thanks to Yukai that the change happens. There, ya'll have your spoiler for the day. XD

Next up, Ryou goes looking for answers!

Thanks for the warning!

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

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.