#I don’t know enough just a good amount cause my grandpa was a huge fan

[emily-mooon]

They are just like me fr fr

[wherearemyglassesbro]

Mha style quirks for h/etalia characters :) shhh....SHHH...quiet down...SHHH this is a secret

Francis: I think he’d have a quirk similar to Monoma’s where he can copy and use quirks as he fights after touching someone. He can use only one at a time but can ‘store’ five for 5 minutes each. I like to think of him pretending to be hurt in order to touch whoever he’s sparring with *cougharthurcough* to get their quirk. It’s kinda cheating but who cares! The only classmates that can really beat him are those who have quirks where they can shoot things at him or where they can fight from afar to do damage that way otherwise he’ll use their powers against them :0 the worst thing that could happen to him though is that he runs out of time with all of his ‘borrowed’ quirks and now he has nothing to fight with at all...uh oh. If a teammate lets him touch them then he’s fine :)

Alfred: Uhhh Al can hulk out kinda but his quick is called ‘rodeo’ cause he becomes like...a bull. Like his upper half gets huge and he just fuckin bulldozes people down with no mercy. He holds back in training just cause he doesn’t want to hurt his friends cause he WILL cry if he does lmao but if it were a real fight he could easily knock someone out. He can carry his classmates with ease, lift heavy things without breaking a sweat, that kind of stuff! Pretty much the ultimate himbo of his class :) but he isn’t stupid he’s very good at coming up with strategies. You better go see him play football. It almost isn’t fair that he even gets to play cause he’s so strong but he tones it down to ‘play fair’...as fair as it can be :)

Laura: Laura is pretty much made of rubber! If she jumps off of a high surface she’ll bounce, if you hit her she’ll bounce back, if you shoot her she bullet will bounce back too but leave a bruise. She is definitely hero material! She can easily save people from crumbling buildings or from things falling on them cause she absorbs the blow. Her speed and punches arent fantastic but when whoever she’s fighting with gets tired after trying to punch her over and over, she can win with a few well aimed blows! Her weakness is heat for sure, she’ll start to melt kinda which is pretty painful so if fire is involved, she keeps her distance and works on crowd control

Vlad: (tw blood) Vlad can manipulate blood and wounds, which is a very scary quirk to have. If you don’t have wounds he can’t really do much other than lower or raise your blood pressure which is scary either way it if you have a cut or scrape he can manipulate it to turn into a huge gash that’ll bleed out quick. At the same time, he’s good to have on your team cause he can close wounds too and stop bleeding from occurring, it goes both ways. The only downside is that he has to be within a few feet of the person he wants to damage/heal so he has to get a bit too close for comfort. With his friends, he’s very kind and nurturing though!!! If you got a paper cut he’d fix it right up for you!! At the same time, he’s also gotten in trouble for widening other people’s paper cuts or skinned knees on purpose just cause he didn’t like them lmao

Arthur: Art is also dangerous, his quirk is that he can shoot acid out of glands on his wrists. (Yes Spider-Man is my inspiration here). He can shoot it a few meters! And it’s potent too like it’ll give you chemical burns if it touches you. He keeps his wrists bandaged up at all times unless he’s training or fighting just in case acid leaks out by accident. He’d feel terrible if he hurt someone like that, he did it to his mum once and flipped out even though it wasn’t a big deal to her. Art’s little brother Peter made him thick, fabric cuffs for his wrists with minion fabric...he wears them when his family comes to visit. When he fights or spars with classmates he is always annoyed when Francis borrows his quirk cause he’s terrified that he’ll hurt someone by accident. Art himself took a long time to effectively figure his quirk out cause it’s so strange, he knows that that frog slurper has no clue how to use it!!! Ugh!

Michelle: Michelle can essentially melt herself or parts of herself down into a liquidy sludge. She can move around as the sludge too. She can go through cracks in the ground, under doors, through the tiniest crack in a wall to get into a building, through vents, you name it! Her quirk is very helpful!! If an enemy stepped on her while she was in goop form, they’d slip and fall! Or if she gloop-ified her hand and stuck it in their eyes or face they’d be blinded and she could fight like that!! Her quirk isn’t really something she can use for hand to hand fighting but she’s still a useful teammate!! A scary looking side effect of her quirk is when she cries, her tears are just goopy green sludge :0 yuck. I mean- not yuck!!! Cool!! Haaa...

Antonio: Toni is pretty much Mrs Incredible. He’s stretchy and go a big ass so. Uh huh. He is a fantastic fighter, he knows his abilities well and the way he maneuvers himself around in whatever shape he’s taking always looks so practiced even if he’s literally a triangle or a parachute. He tangles enemies in his arms or sucker punches them from meters away (uh huh we’re using meters) and gosh dang!! He’s a hard hitter!! He is excited to be a hero :) he’s also a fantastic friend cause he can reach high places, unlock your car from the inside by sticking his hand in there, he can be a trampoline, dude whatever. His favorite pass time is tapping Arthurs shoulder in the hall from alllll the way down the hall from him with his long elastic arms lol. The amount of pranks this guy can pull is unlimited

Lovino: Lovino inhereted laser eyes from his father. His laser eyes are super powerful, he can cut through metal like cars or a person if he wanted to. He has the potential to be a great hero he’s just afraid of losing his freedom cause as a hero, the public eye is always on you. He joined the hero course with his brother because of the pressure from his grandpa so he’s very cold to his classmates cause he doesn’t really want to be there. Of course there’s a few that grow on him and he makes friends...shocker. Eventually, and you can already see it starting, he’ll have scars around his eyes from his quirk. His grandfather has it and his father had it too. The heat his quirk generates burns his own skin when he uses it so he tries not to use it outside of training and fighting. He wears sunglasses inside so people don’t look at his eyes...He’s a bit self concious about it even though he has very beautiful eyes :(

Feli: Feli did not inherently laser eyes instead he inhereted hypnotism. His quirk is weak compared to Lovi’s but as he’s gotten older, he’s strengthened himself a lot. If you look him in the eyes, he can make you do what he wants for a few minutes. He can only control two people at a time and he has to be close to them to do it but wowie, it can be scary to fight against him cause either you have to close your eyes or you just can’t look at him while you fight. Feli isn’t much of a fighter himself but if he can make others do it, he feels better about it lmao. He also wears sunglasses inside to avoid accidentally hypnotizing someone, he’d feel pretty bad about that

Roma: ^^^ Feli and Lovi’s grandpa who raised them. He was part of an original European pro-hero group. He, and his sons, all have eye related powers. Roma has laser vison, which Lovi inhereted. His other sons had some variant of laser vision amd X-ray vision. Feli’s hypnotizing eyes are a mix of his fathers eye related quirk and his mother’s hypnotizing quirk. Roma trained Lovi a lot but became frustrated with his grandson’s temper so he focused more on Feli. He loves his boys very much because they’re all he has left. All three of his sons are deceased and they didn’t have kids. Feli and Lovi’s dad was the eldest and his wife fled after his death. Roma is always smiling for his boys and the press but inside, he is still grieving. His laser vison is very powerful but it’s given him scars around his eyes, which itll eventually do for Lovi too. Lovi’s power is strong like his grandpas but Roma believes that his grandson is lazy and that he just isn’t training hard enough.

Yao: An original pro-hero who teaches young heroes now. He is more of a college level teacher but he does stop in to highschool level hero academies to substitute teach. His quirk is manipulating the dead. He can bring back three ghosts at a time and get them to use their quirks in a fight however, Yao becomes somewhat powerless as he controls the ghosts and admittedly, it takes a lot out of him to fight. But he’s still insanely popular cause watching him fight is mesmerizing, his skill and technique is so clean and practiced! He does demonstrations at hero academies to encourage students to be confident in their abilities as well as to never hold back in a real fight.

Gilbert: I envision Gil and Lud having quirks similar to Tenya and Tensei Iida. Gilbert has engines in his arms, making his punches bone breakingly hard omfg. He is Ludwig’s biggest fan, he’s always pushing him to be better, to train harder to fight harder. He’s always proud of him no matter what. They’re only 3 years apart and Ludwig is like a foot taller than him but he’s still a big brother!!!! Gil is very reckless so a hero career may not be something attainable for him just because he doesn’t listen and he often makes split second decisions that can/will get himself and others hurt. The plan is to start a hero trio group with Fran and Toni once they graduate but again, who knows how that’ll go

Ludwig: Like his brother, Lud also has engines but his are in his legs, making him insanely fast. He isn’t a fan of fighting hand to hand so he’s more likely to kick the shit out of someone or run around grabbing people to get them out of a dangerous area. Ludwig is only in the hero course because of his brother and he’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that he may not want to be a hero. That’ll change once he gets more experience in the field though! He’s never had so many friends before now, being surrounded by so many wanna-be-heroes encourages him more than anything! As he grows, he gets stronger and TALLER than most of his friends which is a shock to everyone. Ah yes...a growth spurt. Congrats nerd.

[tefanfics]

Okay, I’m gonna share something special to me with y’all.

I do write outside of fan fiction. I have a character who I’ve been writing with for years. Her name is Rose Wesley (which yes that’s where the name comes from). My best friend and I created characters when we were like 10/11 and Rose and Ashe (her character) have been in the works for years.

So I’m going to share two short snippets with them.

1st short- The first is during World War II. Rose and Ashe were there to assist friends of theirs. But this short is focused on Rose and her soulmate. (Long story short: Rose is a vampire with a bit of witch blood- and a curse she’s unaware of yet- so her soulmate process is messed up causing him to come into her life and within two weeks, he’s dead.) Ashe Calliven is a werewolf. The two are fond of disguises to fight with the men early on.

2nd short- This one features Rose and her friend Vincent, a fellow vampire who served in WWII. Rose is the cause of Vincent and his sister being a vampire. This short takes place in 1998 in the local veterans bar in New Jersey where

———

War was messy and brutal. War was hungry and unforgiving. Its thirst for lives could never be quenched.

Standing inside a nurse’s ward, Rose adjusted the white cap on her head. She slid a Bobby pin in place to keep the cap still. She stared longingly outside outside, wishing she could put herself to better use than working as a nurse.

“Wesley, we need you.”

Rose looked over her shoulder and stepped back into the tent as a new wave of soldiers were carried in.

She spotted a familiar face sitting up on a table in the back of the ward. She gave a very small and subtle nod to Ashe as she watched another nurse patch up a bullet hole in Ashe’s arm.

Her attention was pulled to the ones who was injured far worse. She did as she was instructed, mending to the wounds that could be taken care of and trying to ignore the pleads of the men who couldn’t be saved.

As Rose busied herself with a set of soldiers, sewing up the holes from bullets, she could hear the commotion outside.

Bullets flying, men screaming and fighting, and the stench of blood hit her nose. Normally that amount of blood would’ve appealed to a vampire but not like this.

It grew quiet for just a few minutes before the next wave of injured and wounded were ushered in.

“This one!” Someone shouted. “He’s losing a lot of blood!”

Rose turned immediately, her eyes landing on the sergeant who was yelling. She looked to the soldier they had carried in and sat on whatever free space they could find.

Her gaze narrowed as she dropped the needle she was using to sew up one man. She could feel a tightness in her chest as she stepped away.

“Hey miss, you ain’t done, are ya?” The soldier asked with a cigarette in his mouth.

Rose waved him off as she approached the soldier who had just been laid down. Her eyes searched him as the gears began to turn. The sharp jaw, the hazel eyes that kept trying to flutter open and met with hers every so often, the brown hair now matted with blood.

“No,” she whispered. “No it can’t be.” Her hands began to shake as she put her hands over the huge wound in his stomach, pressing down to try and keep some of the blood in. “No, no, no.”

As other nurses began to surround Rose, her emotions started to take over. It was rare for her emotions to control her but this… this was different.

“I can save him,” she said almost too loudly. Another nurse shot her a look. “No I can save him!” She could feel her fangs threatening to poke out as she looked at the man again. “Cooper…”

At the name, Ashe’s head perked up. She jumped off the table and hurried over to the small group of people. She stood back enough so as not to be in the way but as soon as she looked at the man, she knew. Rose was right.

Rose.

Ashe looked up and caught sight of the look on Rose’s face. “Shit,” she muttered. She could hear Rose’s panic, the way she was losing control. She could see the change in her friend’s demeanor. She weaved through people and found Rose.

Rose felt hands on her shoulder as she began to her pulled backward.

“Let me save him!” She screamed as the tent flaps moved around her and she now stood outside. Her body was shaking as she tried to fight her way back inside but Ashe wouldn’t let her go.

“No!” Ashe cut her off. “No you can’t and you know it.”

If she was able to, tears would have been streaming down Rose’s cheeks. “I have to, Ashe. Let me go back.” The was a catch in her throat as she looked back inside. The flaps of the tent were positioned perfectly for Rose to see Cooper’s face. By now her fangs were protruding. “I can save him and he’ll live forever.”

“We don’t know that.” Ashe sighed as she kept a tight grip on her friend. “We don’t even know why he keeps dying or why he keeps coming back. We don’t know how he manages to find you every time. We know nothing, Rose. And we’ve talked about this- if you turn him and he dies-“

“He may never come back,” Rose finished in a whisper. “I didn’t even get to meet him this time…”

Ashe let out a quiet sigh, seeing the pain written across Rose’s face. “I know.”

She kept her gaze on Cooper. His head turned and for a millisecond, his eyes met hers and he managed the slightest of smiles before he went still. Life left his eyes. And once again, Rose was there to witness it.

——————————

“Vincent, you’ve stomached a lot of that already. Maybe time to drink something else to break it up.”

Vincent stared at the glass on the table before him. To the regular eye, it looked like a Bloody Mary. To Vincent and his friend, it was a mixture of absinthe and human blood.

He lifted the glass and swirled it a little, sighing before lifting it to his lips and swallowing another mouthful.

“S’alright, Rose. I’m a big boy. I can handle my liquor.”

Rose sighed, her eyes falling on the empty glass in front of her. “Wanna talk about?”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Vincent, you’ve had the same nightmares for the last 55 years,” Rose answered leaning back in her chair, her arms crossed over her chest. She scanned the room, noting other veterans dotted in the bar. “This is as good a place as any.”

Vincent glared at Rose before polishing off his glass and groaning. “Fine.”

He grew quiet as Rose turned her attention back to him, noting his jacket covered in patches and dawned with his position from his days in the war. She had noticed the looks from other men. Vincent looked no older than 28 but he was bordering on 198.

“Well?” Another sigh escaped from Rose’s red lips. “Vinny, if anyone understands loss… Well you know the stories of Cooper.”

Vincent let his gaze flicker to Rose before standing up, swaying immediately. He ignored the look he knew he was getting for Rose as he approached the bar. “Another please,” he grunted as he stepped between barstools. He looked at the older man a few barstools down. He gave a nod of hello as he waited for the bartender to return.

“Playing dress up?” The man asked.

“‘Scuse me?” Vincent asked. There was a hint of a slur as he spoke, no doubt noticed by the man.

"You here wearing your old man's jacket, kid?"

Vincent smirked. "No, sir, it's mine,” he answered.

The man scoffed as he nudged the other guy beside him, threatening to laugh. "Yeah, sure, like you know what war is,” the man retaliated. “Your hands look pretty clean to me."

"And your face looks too damn blurred, sir."

"Seriously, kid, you can't just waltz into a place like this and play vet. It ain't a good look." The man took a swig of beer as he looked away.

Vincent accept his drink from the bartender but lingered. “I don't like games."

"Me neither. So why don't you get outta here before someone not as nice as me gets mad."

Rose listened carefully from her spot at the table. She could hear every word, every change in tone. And she could hear the slight aggravation in the older man’s voice now as she looked to the bar.

Vinny took a heavy drink of his blood and absinthe mixture. He turned his body to face the man and met his gaze. He stared long and hard until it was as if something clicked in his mind. “You…xl he muttered. "....some asshole threw up on another guy's shoes, and then tried to jump off the boat. Got his head blown off. He was dead before we even hit the beach.”

The older man set his beer bottle down almost too heavily, a loud clank echoing through the mostly quiet bar. His patience had grown thin with Vincent. "Oh yeah? Where was that?"

"Normandy, the day we hit the beach,” Vincent replied simply. “Why do you care?"

The man seemed to hesitate before answering. "It's funny cause I watched the same thing happen. A kid puked on my shoes,” he said. His voice grew softer as he carried on. “Same kid was the first to die on our boat. Guy that was sitting next to him looked like he was trying to help."

"I couldn't, though... He was already gone." Vincent’s voice sounded as though he was in a daydream. His mind began to replay that exact moment, over and over as if it wasn’t already embedded in his mind.

"You say that like you were there,” the man said as his gaze narrows.

"I'm telling you, Andrews, I was."

The man came close to spitting out his beer. "I don't remember telling you my name, kid,” he stammered, eyes wide as he looked Vincent over. Something about him seemed familiar but he could place it.

No more than a few seconds later, a mass of thuds came barreling down the steps in the corner of the bar. Ashe spotted who she was looking for and shook her head. "Vincent!” She called as she approached him. “There you are! Been looking for you all over."

The man perked up as his attention turned to the blonde. "He belong to you?"

Ashe offered a small smile, nodding as she put her arm over his shoulders."Yep. Come on, buddy. I know you miss your grandpa, but you don't need to be hanging around here." She threw a knowing glance at Rose as she spotted her, clenching her jaw.

"Please you're old enough to be my- ow, okay, fine,” Vincent groaned as he felt Ashe pinch him. Reluctantly he set his glass down and started to follow Ashe to the door.

“Go on, Vinny. I’ll be right there.” Ashe looked back to the man, giving him a sympathetic look. "Sorry if he bothered you sir, enjoy the rest of your night."

“Yeah…,” the man managed to get out as he shook his head. He went back to his beer and his friend beside him, still unable to shake off the feeling about Vincent.

Ashe pointed at Rose then to the door. “You? With me.”

Rose rolled her eyes as she slapped cash down on the table and left the table. As she began to walk toward the door, she cast a glance over her shoulder just in time to lock eyes with the man Vincent had talked to. She looked away but could hear his murmurs.

“She… She looks just like that nurse!” He said frantically to his buddy.

Rose could hear the other man leaning back on the barstool to steal a look. Just to appease his curiosity, she turned her head enough for the other man to get a look at her profile. “She does,” he answered, his voice lower. “Must be her granddaughter or something.”

Rose smirked as she pushed the door open and founded Ashe and Vincent around the corner. She noted the way Vincent was leaning against the wall, no doubt too drunk to stand on his own.

“What the hell was that?” Ashe asked, her eyebrows raised. “Vinny about spilled the secret to everyone in that bar. You didn’t think to stop him?”

Rose looked away. She knew she should’ve kept Vincent from going on but she hadn’t even tried. “A man can’t keep those kinds of memories built up,” she answered. “It’ll destroy him from the inside.”

Ashe shut her eyes as she let out a long sigh. She knew and she understood but it was the look in Rose’s eyes that made her agree. “I know.” She turned back to Vincent and took one of his arms, pulling it over her own shoulders. “Come on. Let’s get this meathead home.”

Rose stayed behind for a second, watching the two of them carry on as her own memories flooded back to her. She knew Ashe understood the same pain Vincent was feeling, the same regret and guilt. Ashe and Rose knew better than anyone what war did to a person.

—————

If you read all that, thank you. ❤️ and let me know if you’d be interested in reading more snippets. Also if I need to clear up anything or describe more...(Probably not more on here but my regular account.)

[intothewickedwood]

Once Upon A Time Rewatch: 2x08 Into the Deep

Oh my God this scene with wet!Hook is so hott. Have I mentioned I kinda ship Captain of Hearts romantically? Not like in a serious relationship but ya know, they totally did the do  ;).

I have no idea if Hook is lying to Cora about his intentions being to bring the bean to her.

I love dark scenes. I just love the dark, okay?

Hook, I’m pretty sure Cora could kill you in seconds if she wanted to. She took down a whole bunch of people in the safe haven!

“We can discuss this,” he says giving her the sexy eye. I just know these two did more than just plot revenge!

Wow that’s some powerful magic! She’s holding only one heart and yet she is controlling all of them at once. I forgot just how powerful Cora was. And holy cow, is she bringing the dead “back to life”? That would mean what Whale did could be accomplished by magic alone with the right sorcerer.

I wonder if MM and Emma ever thought they would be stuck in the EF forever.

Holy sugar, I’m so glad I no longer believe in hell because that room scared the sugar out of me before! How awful would it be to be trapped their for an extended length of time? How awful would it be to return their in your nightmares?

Bless David and Regina, watching over Henry as he sleeps to make sure he’s okay. That’s me when my doggy, Happi has nightmares.

Look I’m a vegetarian, but I gotta admit, replace the meet with some veggie burgers and those burgers and huge ass chips look yummy!

I wonder what happened with Granny and Rumple for her to have a complicated relationship with him.  

Ketchup is definitely some powerful magic. Rumples voice: “It can make any food, nasty or otherwise, taste delicious.”

Have I mentioned I love Aurora’s outfit and I love that she has a purple dress ‘cause they mixed pink and blue!

Lol. Aurora is me in a forest getting caught on thinks. Actually never mind a forest, the amount of door handles I’ve been attacked by would frighten you.

You go Aurora! It’s so kind of her to do whatever she can to help MM and Emma.

Mr. Gold: “Once upon a time, Snow White and Prince Charming needed to stun a very powerful magician, long enough to lock him up in a dark dungeon.” Henry: “That was you. They used Cinderella to trap you with a magic quill.” Season one feels! I’m enjoying season two but my god, season one is just so special to me!

Once upon a time having giant squids is so taken from Harry Potter. I recently found out that giant squids aren’t mythical. They actually exist!

Mulan stroking Aurora’s forehead!! My sleeping Warrior heart!! Mulan deserved to be with Aurora. And now she’s tucking her in! Oh my god, help!!!!

The way Aurora spins up from the fire is so scary!

Oh snap! Cora’s minion’s! Seriously how did she do that??! They’re like inferi or something they are invincible. That must have been a really powerful spell!

Mulan crying for Aurora will be the death of me!

Ow! Poor Henry! As someone who got burnt on the foot by scolding hot water as a child, trust me that freaking hurts! I was in and out of hospital for months though. Henry sure healed quick! Oh yeah, magic!

Aurora’s being so brave! I freaking love her development!

Yes Aurora! You step on Cora’s foot with all your might!

“I’m not as stupid as you think, nor are my loyalties so easily bought.” What a gal!

Hey! Don’t hurt Aurora!

Tehe. How does one learn to speak bird. Does MM teach that at the school. Oh my God, imagine school in Storybrooke. Imagine if they teach magic there! Forget Hogwarts! I wanna go to Storybrooke high! So many fan fiction possibilities!

I think Cora is partly based on Maleficent with her black bird.

“I climbed a beanstalk for this, you go get your own!” Emma and Mulan being grown-ass adults.

Oh yeah, Gold healed Henry’s arm super quick! That makes sense.

David knows MM so well. Excuse me while I cry in snowing feels.

Sleeping hook! I shipped this for a while but I prefer Warrior Royals and Sleeping Warrior. I’m still working out my otp for original Hook.

Hook is playing a clever game here. I remember he took Aurora’s heart.

Is Hook being genuine with his message to Emma? I think he was trying to leave his options open.

I love when MM says things like, “if there’s one thing your father’s taught me it’s not to give up.” It reminds me of the family Emma has finally gained after all those years alone.

So that’s how you create a sleeping curse. Why couldn’t Regina have made that instead of stealing it from Maleficent and using that apple.

The EF definitely needed a school for magic. It could have saved Regina from seeking out Rumple.

Aww. Grandpa Charming hug!

It’s true, faith does run in their family.

Wait, I know time runs differently in the EF but is it really a good idea to send MM to sleep in the day?

David in the dark, what more could I ask for? I love the look of this place with the mirrors and the torch, It would be so creepy to be there alone.

Is he really holding that torch?!

Do not put that flame so near to your face!!

David is a clever boy figuring that out. I’d be stuck in that dark room forever. To be honest, the dark room is much more appealing than the fiery one.

Damn! Is the funky necklace broken?! He needed that.

MM angry

David always giving Snow hope <3 I love them so much!

Poor David’s all alone in that fiery room for God knows how long.

Mulan!!

The women are so powerful in this show, which I freaking love! You go Cora!

Cora revealing Hook’s chest with his Hook xD!!

O-oh! Cora’s got control of Aurora!

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball 153

Ox King’s castle is still on fire, and he’s still trying to protect his dead wife’s wedding dress so Chi-Chi can wear it for her wedding ceremony with Goku.

The flames are mystical in nature, so the only way to put them out is to stop them at the source, which happens to be the Eightfold Furnace on the opposite side of the world.  

But it’s not that simple.    The Pyre Keeper, Annin (also known as Tojoro), isn’t too fussed either way, but she doesn’t understand why Goku would be willing to plunge the world into chaos just to save one man.

She offers Goku some noodles...

And Goku’s like “I don’t want any damn noodles!” which is how you know he’s serious about this.  

This whole episode is kind of weird, because it all seems to hinge on miscommunication.   Annin seems to change motivations from one scene to the next.   Sometimes she’s sympathetic to Goku and Chi-Chi’s plight, other times she seems completely aloof.   Through it all, Goku gets more and more impatient with her, despite Gohan’s best efforts to explain the situation to him.   It’s even weirder when you consider that they always have the option of resurrecting Ox King with the Dragon Balls.   Maybe that’s why Toei added the wedding dress to the story, just so there’d be something at stake that couldn’t be so easily restored.

Annin tosses her bowl at Goku, and when he dodges it, she seems impressed.  So I think this might be one of those situations where a godlike being tries to teach the hero a lesson in a roundabout kind of way, but Annin’s a lot harder to read.  

She directs Goku to a shutoff valve that will turn off the furnace, but Gohan begs him to stop.   Goku refuses, and even shoves Gohan away...

...And then Annin steps in and grabs Goku with those orange things on her hat, and flings him up high enough to where he can see the top of the furnace.

Basically, the Eightfold Furnace is responsible for establishing the passageway between the living world and the hereafter.    If Goku shuts off the furnace, that passageway will be closed, which will trap the souls of dead people on Earth, and lead to various horror movie-style complications.   

It sounds a lot like the plot to DBZ Movie 12, and that kicked ass, so I’m with Goku, let’s do it.  

Chi-Chi proposes turning off the furnace for just a little while, long enough to save her dad, but that won’t work, because it would take centuries to rekindle the furnace, so it’d amount to the same problem.

She does offer one other option...

Then she starts attacking Goku out of nowhere.

Like I said, Annin seems to have been taking Goku’s measure this whole time, so maybe she’s not as indifferent as she pretends to be.

Goku manages to score a blow on Annin...

And Gohan gets upset with him.   Dude, she started it.    I think Gohan’s attitude during this episode was what confused me so much about it.   You’d think he’d understand what’s going on here a little better than this, but he’s been dead for a while, so he probably doesn’t see Ox King’s life as that big a deal compared to respectng an important deity like Annin.   Also... well, we’ll get to that.

When Gohan explains that she’s been tending the furnace for thousands of years, Goku remarks that she’s an old lady, and that really annoys her.  

So she gets huge and attacks Goku that way.   Again?   But that trick never works.  

Why do long-lived female anime characters always get uptight about their age?   Annin’s probably immortal, so why does she care if Goku calls her an old lady or not?   And she looks great, so what difference should it make to her what he says?   Then again, she’s only testing Goku, I think, so maybe she’s just feigning outrage.

Annin does this cool think where she swings her cape to make a gust of wind, so Goku whips out the Basho Fan, which he brought along for some reason, and responds in kind.

And that puts an end to the fight.   Once Annin sees the Basho Fan, she tells them that there might be a way to save the Ox King after all.

Okay, so this is confusing.    She acted like there was a chance earlier, when she started attacking Goku, but she didn’t know he had the Basho Fan then, so what was she planning up to that point?    Or was she really just trying to clobber Goku?

Okay, so the short version is this: The fire on Mt. Frypan is being caused by a hole in the Eightfold Furnace that’s allowing some of the fire to spill out.   This is also affecting the quality of Gohan’s noodles, and I assume at some point it would adversely affect the overall function of the furnace as well, so this is Annin’s problem too, whether she admits it or not.  

Wait, that isn’t the short version.    Let me start over. 

Okay, so they have to fix the hole in the furnace, but they can’t shut it off, so Goku will have to use the Basho Fan to part the flames, then jump down to the bottom and replace the missing tile.  

Unfortunately, the repair work will require special materials: a piece of eggshell from a Fire-Eater Bird, and special honey from bees that make octagonal honeycombs.

Turns out Chi-Chi already has all that stuff from their previous adventures, so they’re all set.  

Of course, Goku still has to dive into a blazing hot furnace to make this work, so there’s a ton of risk here.  But Goku gave his archenemy a senzu bean, so this is actually a pretty mild risk he’d be taking here.

Annin pours water on him, then she raises the lid.    Goku swings the Basho fan to part the flames...

He spots the missing tile, glues in the replacement with honey...

And then he jumps back out, using the Nyoibo for a boost.   

And it all works.   The fire at Mt. Frypan goes out, Goku makes it safely out of the furnace, and Annin’s furnace is repaired.    She apologizes to Goku and Chi-Chi, but I’m not really sure what she’s apologizing for.    I wouldn’t say it’s her fault for the furnace getting damaged, and she only attacked Goku to test his mettle.   Or because Goku was kind of being a dick.    Either way, it’s all good, Annin.

Gohan compliments Goku for how well he and Chi-Chi handled this crisis.    It bodes well for their marriage.  

Goku tells Gohan to enjoy his time with Annin.

And this makes Gohan blush, so I think it’s safe to assume that Gohan is only doing this “part time job” thing so he can shack up with his giant girlfriend.   Which is fine, you do you, Gohan.   I just think it’s interesting how Goku managed to pick up on that.   In the dub, it’s not even a little subtle, as Sean Schemmel delivers the line very suggestively.   Goku sounded like he wanted to give his grandpa a high-five or something.  

My point is that Goku knows what’s up.    He’s had a cute girl practically spooning him this whole time he’s been criss-crossing the world on Kinto Un, and he’s getting kind of... anxious, if you know what I mean.

Back at Frypan, Ox King lives, and he saved the dress, so everything’s coming up Goku. 

They do have to hold the wedding ceremony outdoors, though, because the castle is ruined, but it’s a lovely day out, so no worries there.   

Chi-Chi grabs onto Goku one more time, but now he’s a lot more into it than he was at the tournament.   He’s getting the hang of this marriage thing.  

The narrator closes out the show, and Baba addresses the audience, offering to peek at the future to see what’ll happen next. 

But she doesn’t actually show or tell anyone what she sees.    Well, the joke’s on you, lady, I bought the DVDs.  

I’m putting this last screencap here because I wanted to catch the last line of the English dub, which advises the audience to follow Goku’s later adventures in Dragon Ball Z.   I don’t know, I just get really excited whenever I think about that.

So that wraps up the Piccolo Junior Saga, and that also means the end of the original Dragon Ball anime.    I’ll probably take a break, and then we’ll jump into DBZ before you know it.   Doncha dare miss it!

[synthient]

Could you elaborate on what you mean about Death T re stanning and fairness? It sounds interesting and I'd love to hear about it if you don't mind sharing.

ajhfakj hoo boy. Okay.

So some time around the summer before last (judging by the point where the first baffled and frustrated readmores start showing up on this blog), I read Death-T. It made me feel…some kind of way. An…unpleasant kind of way.

Here’s the thing about me: I can’t just let myself have an emotional reaction to a piece of fiction. I have to, first, pick apart my own emotions to figure out why I had that reaction, and second, pick apart the story to figure out how it works and how it made me feel that way.

On the Feelings Front, I’ve isolated two main causes:

1. I have a brain that Needs Things To Be Fair. That doesn’t mean I can’t handle unfairness in a piece of fiction. Unfairness creates conflict, and conflict is what makes for good storytelling. But it does mean that I need the story to be aware of its own unfairness. I need the unfairness to be the point. Otherwise I start vibrating at high speeds and shaking my fist at clouds.

2. I’m a Kaiba stan. I accidentally got emotionally attached to the Funny Card Game Boy from the Funny Card Game Show. 

There’s the feelings part. That leaves the “picking apart the story” side of the equation. And I’ve been trying to do that in nice punchy little one-or-two-paragraph text posts for the past year or so, but I don’t think I’ve ever really done the argument justice that way. So I guess that leaves only one option: writing a giant wordvomit essay on Yugioh (1996-2004).

Why This Is A Death-T Hateblog: The Masterpost

An important note: I like being able to back up my thoughts with Evidence From The Text, but I’m specifically working off the (Viz translated) manga. You can read Cards with Teeth here, Capumon here, and Death-T starting here if you want to check any of my facts or draw your own conclusions. Keep in mind that the Toei anime made pretty huge changes to the s0 Kaiba storyline, and the DM anime skipped most of it entirely–if you’re more familiar with those continuities, there’re some major differences in the manga.

(Also this thing probably reads better on desktop. I think the formatting got screwed up on mobile)

How We Got Here

Before we can actually dig into Death-T, we need to start at the very beginning (♫a very good place to start♫). So that means taking a look at “The Cards with Teeth (Part 1)” and “The Cards with Teeth (Part 2).”

For its first 8 chapters, the Yugioh manga chugs blissfully (if repetitively) along with an episodic, conflict-of-the-week formula. No overarching plot. Next to no sense of continuity. No trading cards in sight.

Then this asshole shows up. 

His name is Seto Kaiba (or “Kaiba,” at least–not sure if this is just a Viz thing, but my copy of CwT never mentions his given name). Not that he bears a whole lot of resemblance to the Seto Kaiba we later come to know and love (and/or love to hate).

Almost none of his most defining traits are there yet. There’s no mention of Mokuba, no mention of Kaibacorp, no indicationthat he’s especially rich (besides the fact that he’s carrying around a wholebriefcase of trading cards), no reason to believe he has a specific obsession with Blue Eyes (he just thinks it’s a strong card and it’d help him win tournaments), and no sign of any special hacking/strategy/hand-to-hand-combat/etc. skills (the kid is hilariously incompetent). 

This dude was never supposed to be a recurring character, and it shows.

But anyway, let’s run through the basic series of events:

- Kaiba wanders into the game shop looking forbooster packs. Yugi recognizes him as an acquaintance from school (not as a famous kid CEO, and not as a recent transfer student)

- Kaiba happens to notice the Blue Eyes card lying out onGrandpa’s counter (in this version of events, he hasn’t been stealing rare cards for months before this, he didn’t creep on Yugi’s conversation and followhim home, he had no idea going in that the Blue Eyes was there, and he didn’t already have the other three)

- He offers to trade all the cards in his briefcasefor the Blue Eyes (although he doesn’t tell Grandpa to name his price—again,the millionaire CEO element isn’t a thing yet)

- Grandpa refuses, so the next day Kaiba comes up with alaughably badly thought-out plan to steal the card

- Shockingly, Yugi notices that the “color copy from the catalog” isn’t the real deal. He gently tries to confront Kaiba about it in private

- Kaiba (without showing an ounce of the cool head you’d think you’d need to take over and run a company) panics, starts stammering and unconvincingly denying it, and then smacks Yugi with his briefcase

Annnd then Part 2 plays out like a standard s0 chapter.

“Yami Yugi” takes over. They play a shadow game. Kaiba cheats by slipping the stolen Blue Eyes out of his sleeve (Atem’s like “That’s my Grandpa’s card!” and Kaiba straight up goes “Whaaat, nooo, that’s my card that I, uh, found on the street just now.” A teen genius criminal mastermind, everybody). The shadow magic gives him a spritz from its metaphorical Karmic Cat-Training Spray Bottle and makes his Blue Eyes dissolve (I’d like to think that was Kisara going “I’m not mad, just disappointed,” and Memory World tries to retroactively make that connection, but it’s pretty abundantly clear that nothing about this series was planned that far ahead). He loses. Yadda yadda yadda.

And then Atem goes in for the penalty game.

To recap: 

Some random 10th grader from Yugi’s school stole a trading card, hit someone, and was generally kind of a jerk. As punishment, he was trapped in a hyper-realistic illusion of being ripped apart and slaughtered by half a dozen monsters at once.

Y…ay…?

Let’s Stop and Reflect for a Sec

In theory, I shouldn’t be that much more upset about Cards with Teeth than I am about any other part of s0, right? It’s not like the manga framed it as horrific and wrong when Atem set off an explosion in some teenage bully’s face a couple chapters ago. Giving us the vicarious pleasure of punishing our bullies in over-the-top, Carrie-style ways without actually exploring any of the consequences is, like, the early manga’s whole thing.

But even taking into account the fact that I already had an attachment to this Nasty Bowl Cut Boy thanks to the anime, I do actually think that there are at least two factors that set CwT apart.

The first is that Atem’s karmic punishments are usually…well, karmic. If he inflicts physical harm on someone, it’s because they already inflicted or tried to inflict roughly the same amount of harm on Yugi & co. If the crime was relatively minor, then he only gives out a minor punishment–like, say, when the homeroom teacher was Just Kinda Mean, all he did was allow the class to see her without her makeup on (…setting aside the Let’s Get Into Gender Politics-ness of that chapter).

There’s even a few cases where you could argue that the punishment is too light to fit the crime. Ushio beat Jonouchi and Honda half to death and tried to murder Yugi with a knife, and all he got was this lousy t-shirt an illusion that made the trash on the ground look like money.

In another chapter, the villain of the week tried to rape Anzu, and the only punishment he faced was having his side business exposed as a scam (Let’s Get Into Gender Politics).

Yet in CwT, we see one of the most harmless villains in all of s0 (no prolonged beatings or attempted murder? unheard of!) receive what’s arguably the most horrifying penalty game in the whole manga. At least when that guy got set on fire, it was over fast.

And that brings us to factor number two: Kaiba is the first penalty game victim in s0 who comes back. 

Capumon: Gotta Catch ‘em All!

Well, technically he doesn’t come back in person, at first. Someone else shows up to fight in his name.

Oh hey Mokie. How’s it going?

Rather understandably (imo), Mokuba wants the guy who tortured his brother last week to face some actual consequences for it.

Now here’s an interesting opportunity that the manga has set up for itself. Is it going to dig deep into the balance between defending yourself vs lashing out and causing undue harm? Is it going to remind us that most of the penalty game victims so far, whatever their crimes,have been children? Is it going to demonstrate that when you take out your anger on someone, you don’t just hurt your immediate target, but their loved ones as well?

Nah, who am I kidding.  

Hurting or inconveniencing the Good Guys in any way is Bad. Anything the Good Guys do is Good and Justified. Using magic to stick an already-hurting eleven-year-old in his own personalized hell? Good and Justified.

Before he’s shoved screaming into the Giant Vending Machine Capsule Where Bad And Naughty Elementary Schoolers Go To Atone For Their Crimes, Mokuba mentions that the other penalty game he heard about “made my brother go crazy!”

He also drops a hint of things to come with all the subtlety of an anvil. So I guess by this point, the numbers had come in and the card game chapter had proved unexpectedly popular enough that a sequel was in the works.

Death-Twink? Death-Tastic?Death-Two: Electric Boogaloo?

I’ve been pretty hard on Cards with Teeth and Capsule Monsters Chess so far. But you want to know the truth?

On their own, they aren’t necessarily that bad.

What really matters in a story isn’t the literal events: it’s how those events are framed. At the moment, we’re only midway through an incomplete storyline. Maybe we’re supposed to be horrified. Maybe we’re supposed to be questioning whether or not the hero is really in the right. It all hangs on what these chapters are building to.

As it turns out–as Mokuba just helpfully clued us in on–they were building to Death-T.

And that’s where the shit hits the fan.

Over a dozen chapters after we first met Kaiba, a whole bunch of completely-unforeshadowed facts about him are suddenly dumped on us all at once. He’s rich! The kind of rich that allows for limo rides, a giant mansion, and flouncing around in a fur-lined cape like feudal European nobility! And he’s the president of a company, even though “Whaa?!! But he’s still in high school!” Speaking of which, apparently Kaiba “hasn’t been at school recently.”

The Death-T arc opens with Yugi and Jonouchi attending the world’s most awkward sleepover–the host never shows up, and they don’t even get to paint each others’ nails or watch movies. Also Mokuba tries to murder them in the night, but you know what? If someone tortured my brother, “made him go crazy,” and left him huddled in the house feverishly working on a bizarre project and refusing to go to school for the next few weeks, I’d probably poison them too.

The morning after the sleepover, we learn another new Kaiba Fact…

Ever since the Experience of Death happened, he’s been having horrible recurring PTSD nightmares about it. As you do. When you get tortured.

(This is why, even though I know intellectually that it’s Not That Deep and people arejust having fun, I still get a little skeeved out when I see jokes about howDeath-T happened “just” because Kaiba was that mad about losing a card game or “just”because he had a crush on Yugi and he didn’t know how to deal with it. I’malways internally like “Nnno, I’m pretty sure it was the torture?”)

So far we’ve been shown in pretty brutal detail that our “hero” psychologically broke a fifteen-year-old for no good reason. The manga’s going to have its work cut out for it if it really wants to do a convincing redemption arc for its protagonist. And there’s no way it could possibly try to spin that random act of torture as an acceptable thing, right?

…right?

Crime and Punishment

That’s one of my first big problems with Death-T: to me, it reads as a way of trying to retroactively justify the Experience of Death.

That seems to be the purpose of suddenly giving Kaiba all this wealth and power that was never hinted at in Cards with Teeth. See, he wasn’t just some random high school kid who had the bad luck of crossing someone with magic powers; he was (however improbable that is, as the story lampshades) a high school-aged CEO. He’s so ludicrously powerful that he can torture an old man in front of a live audience and get away with it. Punching up looks a lot better than punching down, doesn’t it?

And you can’t really fault the hero for torturing someone evil, can you? Kaiba used Grandpa’s sanity as a blackmail chip! He ran experiments on human test subjects! He wants to kill Yugi and everyone he loves! Surely a little torture is no worse than he deserved.

There’s only one one problem with that: the Experience of Death happened before Death-T. There’s no way Atem could have known any of this was coming. The audience couldn’t have known it was coming. Takahashi didn’t know. Chronologically speaking, the Experience of Death wasn’t revenge for Death-T. It’s the other way around.

Best Served Cold

So Death-T is a form of eye-for-an-eye vengeance: “Yugi” beat Kaiba at Duel Monsters and tortured him, so now Kaiba’s gonna beat Yugi and torture him, using his own perfect virtual recreation of “Yugi’s” penalty game (oh yeah, that whole “the average person goes insane in about 10 minutes” thing? Kaiba was able to program that detail from personal experience).

But wait! This isn’t really eye-for-an-eye! Kaiba’s going after Yugi’s loved ones, not just Yugi, and that’s worse than what Yugi did to him! And even if it was proportionate, revenge is bad and wrong. That’s how you get endless back-and-forth chains of vengeance and generational blood feuds and stuff. Two wrongs don’t make a right!

And those could all be reasonable points, except…

This entire story is about how great and badass eye-for-an-eye justice is.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could take everyone who ever hurt you and make them suffer even worse” is practically the thesis of Season 0. You can’t make something look awesome when the protagonist does it and then turn around and make it seem evil and inexcusable coming from anyone else.

And while Kaiba does wind up targeting Yugi’s friends, that wasn’t part of his original plan. He’s surprised when random people start jumping out of the bleachers/the Kaibacorp employee roster and insisting that they won’t let Yugi do this alone. The writing uses his surprise as proof that he just doesn’t understand The Power of Friendship, but it’s also evidence that his original target was just Yugi.

“If you’re gonna side with my torturer, then you can have the same fate as him, I guess.” It’s not even that far outside the logic Atem’s been using all this time. Just because there’s only one main gang member who personally hurt his friend, that doesn’t mean that Atem won’t rope every random mook who gets in his way into the death game too. (Granted, this doesn’t really apply to Kaiba’s treatment of Grandpa. Or the offscreen experimentation/blackmailing. Or Mokuba, but…we’ll get to that).

…But like I said before, the big issue isn’t the events. It’s the framing. Maybe the point will ultimately be that if penalty games are wrong when the bad guy does them, then they’re wrong when the hero does them too. Maybe this is all leading up to a big reexamination of Atem’s moral code and some much-needed character development.

Maybe. Let’s keep going and see.

*Great Gatsby comic voice* Baby? What Baby

Death-T runs for 14 chapters, but Kaiba isn’t actually there for, like…half of them.

I mean, he’s technically there? Occasionally? He’ll show up long enough to dramatically play chess for a panel or so, or to stick his head on a TV monitor and provide some Helpful Death Game Hints. But for all practical purposes, he’s pretty much absent for the entire middle section of the story arc.

And, uh…let’s just say I 100% understand and respect the DM anime’s decisionto go straight from Grandpa’s heart attack to the final duel and skipeverything in between.

If Kaiba’s real goal is to beat Yugi at Duel Monsters, then all the death games leading up to that one are basically filler. And they manage to be just as contrived and nonsensical as any anime filler arc, without a fraction of the fun.

It’s largely a tonal issue. The writing swings wildly between grimdark dramatics, sentimental conversations about friendship where everyone hugs and cries (tbh that’s one of the few redeeming qualities of the arc), and “comic relief” where the “““comedy””” is all either bodily function jokes or sexual assault jokes (L̠̤̯͍̦e̮̪͎̞t's̞̮̳̱̰̦̲ ̲G͖͉̹̻̯͉͖e̜̝̗͓̟͚t̖͚ ͚̰̞̮̝̫͎I͓̜̦̳̭͚͎n̪̪͈t͍̥̰̼o͚͎͇̣̘̝ ̪̼̜̣̳G͈̠̫e̳̝̗̪ṋ͚̞͎ͅd͔̙͓̯̹e̯̺̯̩r͔̣̲͔̳̗ ̘͙P̖̦o̩̺͖͎̞̬l͎̺͕̹i͇̣̼̦t̰i̬̰̝͙̗̝c̜̼̺̪̲̞s).

Honestly, in terms of the “stanning and fairness” argument, there’s not much to talk about here. It just adds insult to injury that not only does Death-T throw my fave under the bus, but it’s really badly written.

The Mokuba Thing

Okay, let’s fast-forward through the filler zone and stoppp…here. 

In the context of the anime, where we know (and see multiple flashbacks demonstrating) that their whole life has been an “us against the world” story, this scene is tragic. Seto’s trust in people has been eroded so much that he even thinks Mokuba is conspiring against him? Their love and support for each other, which has survived through so much hardship, has finally cracked under the weight of this latest trauma? There’s a lot of dramatic and tearjerking potential there.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of us bring our baggage from the anime with us when we read the manga. The vast majority of the western Yugioh fandom did start with DM. 

But if we look at this purely in the context of the manga–if we can pretend, for a second, that none of us have ever heard of the anime–this is the first time we see the two of them interacting onscreen. And none of those touching flashbacks of Seto comforting Mokuba and defending him from bullies and promising to be his father exist here. All we ever really learn about their relationship before this point is “They used to be a little closer when they were younger. Source: one (1) photo of them playing chess.”

So instead of serving as the tragic lowpoint of their relationship, this scene sets the baseline for it: Mokuba desperately wants to make his brother happy and earn his approval, while Seto responds with dismissal and cruelty.

In the anime (and to a certain extent in the later manga), Mokuba’s purpose in the narrative is to humanize Seto. But in Death-T, he serves the opposite function. Every interaction they have is an opportunity for Seto to kick the dog and prove what a monster he is.

And it’s all downhill from here.

………………

…So.

I have…mixed feelings about this.

On one level–a meta level–I think this scene serves the same purpose as taking that random high schooler from CwT and suddenly giving him ridiculous amounts of money and power and mustache-twirling levels of villainy. It’s a way of making the Experience of Death seem retroactively justified (and also a way of making the upcoming penalty game look fair).

On the other hand. It’s. 

Horrific.

This scene is supposed to make us hate Kaiba, and it does it’s job really really well.

Personally speaking? I’m of the opinion that trying to hurt the child under your care as badly as you conceivably can is a “don’t pass go, don’t collect $100″ kind of deal. There’s no coming back from that. There’s no fixing or salvaging this relationship.  

(God, this whole thing is wrapped in so many layers of fantasy that I’m not even sure what the real-world equivalent would be. Trying to beat your child not quite to death?)

Mokuba should not have had to continue living with his brother after this, any more than the Ishtars should have had to stay with their dad or Seto should have had to stay with Gozaburo. Mokuba forgiving Seto for this isn’t touching to me, it’s gut-wrenching. Every “heartwarming” brotherly moment in the later manga (all, like…2 and a half of them) feels hollow and sad.

As far as I’m concerned, this scene doesn’t “complicate” their relationship in any interesting or meaningful way. Their anime relationship already has plenty of complications–their sometimes unhealthy co-dependence, the fact that Seto is still a kid himself and he’s not really equipped to be a parent,Mokuba’s difficulty understanding that Seto can’t just “go back to who he was” before his trauma, the times when Seto is too caught up in his own pain to really be there for Mokuba, the manipulation involved in Seto’s takeover plan, etc. This just makes their relationship outright child abuse.

But hey, they hugged that one time in Duelist Kingdom, so it’s fine, right?

ExODiA iiiIIIIT’s not pAHsible

The final duel happens. The big Blue Eyes vs Exodia showdown.

*Bill Wurtz voice* So that’s pretty nifty, I would say.

It’s..? A genuinely cool and dramatic duel. There’s a reason it’s one of the, like, three Death-T elements the DM anime actually bothered to keep. Not much to say about it.

Sure was a whole lot of buildup just to end things with one (1) deus ex machina instawin card, tho.

The Tragic Backstory

So if all this happened because of a penalty game, what do you think the solution could be?

Did you say “another, even harsher penalty game”?

Ding ding ding!

This time, instead of torturing the fifteen-year-old, our hero puts the fifteen-year-old in a vegetative state as he begs for mercy.

Yaaaayy! 

Some fun facts about the Mind Crush that we don’t actually learn until Duelist Kingdom:

1. It lasted for 6 months

2. Mokuba spent that entire time alone, in the big empty mansion, with no parental guidance or adult supervision except the butlers and maids, caring for his brother’s comatose body 24/7

3. When Atem put Kaiba in that coma, he had absolutely no idea if he’d ever be able to wake up or not. He thought he could, maybe–Kaiba’s pretty strong, right? But he also finds the idea that Kaiba died in his coma and came back to haunt him perfectly believable. “Fixed,” dead…eh, it was kind of a coin toss.

But wait, the story’s not over yet! First we have to find out Why Kaiba Is The Way He Is (“Because your buddy tortured him last month” isn’t enough of an answer, apparently).

This is communicated in the most natural way possible: Mokuba just starts monologuing about all his brother’s deepest darkest traumas to a bunch of strangers his brother hates.

The claim that Kaiba’s backstory is “more complex” in the manga than it is in the anime has always confused me, because this is…it. These three pages are the whole backstory. I mean, in Battle City we do get one more passing line of dialog about how Kaibacorp used to be a weapons manufacturer and Gozaburo “sold Seto’s soul to the military industrial complex,” but other than that… The anime took these bare bones and fleshed them out significantly, but from a pure manga canon standpoint, it’s not a whole lot to work with.

But there’s still enough here to rub me the wrong way.

For one thing, this sequence is almost an exact parallel to two later moments in the manga: Pegasus’s backstory dump at the end of Duelist Kingdom, and Malik’s backstory dump mid-Battle City. In both of those cases, the purpose of the scene is to take a villain whose motives seemed cruel and inexplicable and finally reveal the reasons behind his actions. We’re supposed to be seeing these characters in a sympathetic light for the very first time.

But Kaiba’s motives in Death-T, uh, weren’t exactly a mystery. He already made it pretty explicitly clear that this was about the torture. So as a narrative tool, Mokuba’s monologue:

1. seems a little superfluous

2. seems like a way of taking any responsibility out of the protagonist’s hands. Kaiba didn’t snap because of anything Atem did, he just had a bunch of fucked up baggage that Atem couldn’t possibly have known about or accounted for. Who knew some people take it badly when you torture them??

3. seems to suggest that we weren’t supposed to be sympathizing with Kaiba before this point. If this is the big “oh, now that I know why he did it, I guess I feel a little bad for him :(” moment, then that means the part where he got tortured…wasn’t?

And, as always, there’s the issue of the framing.

The grace note of the monologue–the thought it leaves us with, the intended takeaway–isn’t “If only he hadn’t gone through years of abuse, in circumstances he had no real control over because he was a child.” It’s “If only he hadn’t brought all this upon himself by cheating.”

Even if we ignore the fact that it’s physically impossible to cheat at chess (which seems like kind of a big oversight for a gaming manga, but oh well, That’s Yugioh Babe)…

How can you possibly present a ten-year-old cheating at a board game in a desperate gambit to get himself and his brother out of an orphanage as his start of darkness?

Yet that’s exactly what the writing does. This is a story about how games “reveal the true hearts” of their players and bring karmic retribution down on anyone who doesn’t respect the game and follow the rules. The implication is that the child abuse Seto suffered was karma. He rightfully earned it by cheating at chess, just like he brought the Experience of Death upon himself by cheating at Duel Monsters.

Oh yeah, speaking of which…

Wheel of Morality, Turn Turn Turn, Tell Us The Lesson We Should Learn

What was the outcome of Death-T? What impact did it actually have? 

Did it bring about any big moral reckoning? Any questioning of the heroes’ values? Did Atem learn the difficult but important lesson “torture bad”?

Nnnnope!

Death-T is immediately followed by a series of episodic chapters that take us right back to the status quo like nothing happened. Atem keeps merrily handing out penalty games all the way up to the very end of Duelist Kingdom. When he does finally stop doing them, his decision has nothing to do with Death-T. It takes a comment from Pegasus about the Millennium Items having an “evil intelligence” to make him wonder “wait…I’m from a Millennium Item…I’m an intelligence…could evil…maybe include…torture????”

And even after the manga lukewarmly reverses its position to “torture sort of bad I guess,” it never really does anything with that revelation. None of the past penalty games are ever reexamined. No apologies are made. The Experience of Death is quietly swept under the rug, and the Mind Crush, when it’s brought up at all, is framed as noble act that “fixed” Kaiba (because “if you make someone suffer badly enough, you can hurt them into being a better person” is a great message).

Basically, we learned nothing from Death-T, nothing changed, and our takeaway is supposed to be “Atem was 100% in the right and Kaiba was 100% in the wrong, and also he’s an evil monster who deserved everything he got.”

Guess I Need A Satisfying Conclusion of Some Kind Even Through Death-T Didn’t Really Have One, Huh

Wow.

That was…a whole lot of words of Death-T rage that I apparently had in me zjkghzkkf. 

I tend to feel less justified about constantly harping on Death-T then I do when it comes to, like, the racism in Memory World, or the series’ general Miss O’Gyny. It’s not like “magical vigilantism” is exactly a real-word social issue that’s being reflected in this piece of fiction. I realize a lot of my anger pretty much boils down to “hey,, ! thats…my fave. stopp...being mean to him >:(”

But I also feel like the issues in Death-T aren’t limited to Death-T.

The manga has this…this thing where it wants to be able to pinpoint a few clear, unchanging moral rules (“cheating is bad!” “graverobbing is bad!” “patricide is bad!”) and just apply them neatly to every situation, without having to take into account any of that inconvenient stuff like “what were the circumstances of this specific situation,” or “how many choices were actually open to this person,” or “how much harm was done by this choice compared to its benefits in terms of basic human well-being.” Yet at the same time, that moral absolutism is somehow coupled with a reluctance to apply any moral judgement to its protagonists at all. 

The two points where that becomes clearest are Death-T and Memory World. And I feel like even when people acknowledge the issues with those arcs, they still want to be able to write it off as “oh, that was just a problem with the early chapters, it was fixed as the writing matured,” or “oh, that was just a problem at the end because of the mad rush to finish the story before it got canceled, it was never a thing before then.” But it’s not an isolated problem. It’s there at the beginning of the story, it’s there at the end, and it’s baked into everything in the middle.

…but anyhow. 

hey,, ! thats…my fave. stopp...being mean to him >:(

[riyuyami]

I’m calling the novelist/artist AU In Plain Sight, cause it’s basically how it is throughout this story.

Anyway, here’s a one-shot of the day Atemu moves in next door.

--

“Were you waiting long?”

Heba turned from tending to the ibises that flocked the private gardens, smiling as he looked at the man who had approached him. Atem was dressed down, in the simple dressings of a man about to rest for the evening, though he still wore much of his gold. It looked nice on him, in the lights of the fires that burned in the oil lamps around the gardens.

“I just arrived here not too long ago, are you finally free of your duties for this day, my king?” Heba smiled as he stood up, approaching the living god.

“I am, now I am free to spend the rest of the waking hours with y-”

The sharp, loud ringing of Yugi’s cell phone cut off his current sentence, making the man sigh loudly in annoyance as he dug into his pocket for the phone. He knew who was calling even without looking at the photo of the happy brunette girl on the screen. “Hello Anzu, what’s up?” He asked as he saved his file, quick to look at a different window on his computer screen.

There wasn’t much to do at work here at Kaiba Corp today, so Yugi had decided to work on a bit of his... well... his side fanfiction for his own work. Luckily, no one has figured out that on ao3, he writes erotic Atem/Heba fanfics for his own novel series, Millennium World.

And just as he was working on the latest one-shot, Anzu decided to call, breaking him out of his writing mood.

“Hey Yugi!” She happily replied. “Guess what, we’re getting a new neighbor!”

“A new neighbor?” Yugi raised an eyebrow, smirking. “Bakura’s finally moving out? Good, I’m tired of him stealing my socks from the laundry room.”

“If you actually just sat there and waited for the laundry to finish, you wouldn’t have to buy new ones each month. Anyway, no, he’s still here, but he’s getting a roommate.”

“Is it Marik? Did they finally get hitched?”

“No.” Anzu spoke. “This is a new guy, and... he’s kinda cute.”

Yugi groaned, leaning back in his chair. “Anzu... come on, I don’t need you trying to pair me up with some guy, just cause he’s long, tan, and handsome!”

“Well, you’re right on the last two, but this guy is... kinda on the short side. But he’s adorable, and looks like he works out. He’s in a skin tight shirt...”

“Are you trying to find me a boyfriend, or are you trying to tell me how much you want the guy yourself?” Yugi joked, smiling at the laugh he got from his best friend.

“Maybe both, but he’s pretty dang cute. Want me to describe him?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Okay, as I said, he’s short, but he’s built nice. Looks like he’s in leather pants that... ooooh, that’s a nice butt. Not as nice as yours, but still. His hair is... kinda like yours, oddly enough.”

Yugi raised an eyebrow. “How?”

“Well, it’s black and spiky as all hell, but instead of purple, its tipped in red. I think it’s natural, same with the golden bangs, oooh, he’s got high lights too. And he’s got big dorky glasses on, you know the king that Ryou wears when he’s painting those figures for his games? Those kind. Still, they make him look-OH! He’s looking at me...!”

“Where are you?”

“In the hallway, I’m checking on Ms. Norton’s cat for her while she’s away, remember? Well, I step out and see him, and now he’s looking at-Hello! Sorry, I’m talking on the phone!”

Yugi blushed deeply, feeling so embarrassed for Anzu right now. He kept the phone to his ear though, hearing a rather deep, rich voice speak up.

“Oh, it’s alright, I figured I should introduce myself. But I can wait until you’re done.”

Oooh, he sounds so formal and polite. Is that an accent? Yugi could hear an accent... oh shit, he really liked those, and living in New York was like a smorgasbord of them...

“Oh, it’s fine!” Anzu spoke up. “I’m just talking to my roommate, hey, maybe when you’re done moving in, we can introduce ourselves, I’m sure he’d love to meet you!”

“Ah? Sounds delightful, miss!” Deep Voice said, sounding pleased as peaches. “I shall be looking forward to it!”

Suddenly, Yugi heard the unmistakable voice of his strange neighbor, Bakura, shouting from a distance. “Get your ass back over here! I’m not building your bed set!”

There was a sigh from Deep Voice. “I will see you this evening, you and your friend then. So long.”

It was quiet before Anzu spoke again. “Yugi, if you don’t want him, can I have him?”

--

When Yugi arrived home from work, it was a bit past five in the evening and he had stopped to pick up something from a local bakery. It was a nice little shop, one that Anzu and Yugi frequented, run by a quiet girl with pale hair and blue eyes who adored Yugi. She liked to show him magic tricks when he came to visit.

He had bought a sample plate of pastries and cookies from the bakery, his mother had always taught him to be polite and bring a gift as a house warming treat for new neighbors.

He stood outside of Bakura’s door with Anzu, his face feeling warm. “I kinda wish you had sent me a picture so I know who I’m gonna be dealing with tonight...” He mumbled to her.

“I sent you a picture.”

“His ass is lovely, but not what I wanted to see.”

Anzu rolled her eyes and knocked on the door. “Take what you can get, Yugi.”

Yugi twitched when he heard the muffled voice of the man from the call earlier, before the door opened. Standing there was... well... Yugi had always wondered what his pharaoh character would look like in real life, and no amount of fan cosplay could compare to the sight of this man before him.

The man looked just like the spitting image of Pharaoh Atem, from Yugi’s own novels, albeit covered in what looked to be bits of paint on his cheeks, hands, and skin-tight olive shirt. He was wearing huge glasses, that took up much of his face, but they didn’t hide the smoldering crimson eyes that sat behind them. Yugi suddenly felt the urge to write poetry about this man, to write about him in great detail on his blog or in his stories like the cheesy romance writer that he is.

The man blinked, before his cheeks turned a dark shade of a red, and he smiled brightly. “Ah! You are my new neighbors! Lovely to see you again, miss, and who is this beautiful man?”

Yugi almost dropped the plate in his hands. “B-Beautiful...?!” He squeaked, getting a laugh from the man.

“Sorry, it’s just... you are a rather lovely looking man, and your friend is beautiful as well. Heh, sorry, I’m... an artist of sorts, can’t really turn off the attention to detail and such. I’m Atemu Hakem! And you are?”

“I’m Anzu Mazaki, and my friend here, that you seem to have broken, is Yugi Mutou. We’re your neighbors!”

“Hehe, I can tell. Lucky you came now, Bakura stepped out to grab Chinese, we’re in the middle of setting up my room, but he wanted food. Oh, what’s that?” Atemu asked, looking at the plate in Yugi’s hands.

“A-a gift...! For, uh, you..!” Yugi sputtered out, holding out the plate, mentally kicking his own ass for sounding like such a fool.

Atemu blinked, but smiled as he took it. “Oh, thank you, this is so nice of- Is that Heba’s necklace?!”

This caught Yugi and Anzu off-guard as Atemu reached out, touching the golden triangular necklace that hung from Yugi’s neck. It was a gift Yugi got years ago as a child and he always wore it, it was a protection charm from Egypt (though Yugi thinks that Grandpa didn’t really buy it like he said, and that he got it during his tomb raiding days...). And yes, in Yugi’s novels, he has the character Heba wear this exact necklace, the first gift given to him by his lover.

“Are you... are you a fan of Millennium World?” Atemu asked, his eyes wide and practically sparkling.

Yugi’s cheeks turned pink and he nodded, not sure what to really say.

“That’s amazing! I’ve never met another man who enjoyed the series! Say, you kinda look like Heba, with that hair, wish he had the purple tips like you, haha! I think I’m gonna like being your neighbor, Yugi!”

Yugi just smiled, nodding, he wondered if the floor could just swallow him up right now.