#elfbean | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

anzu-kaiba · 4 years ago

Text

The Seven Labors of Mokuba Kaiba Easter Egg Explainer, Part 7/7!

I peppered The Seven Labors of Mokuba Kaiba, my recent 15-chapter, 60,450+ word Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic (written for YGOME and NaNoWriMo) with all kinds of references. Some of them are just for fun, while others can help you get a sneak peek into future chapters or elements of the world.

READ THE FIC HERE

If it hasn’t been clear from the start of this series, brevity is not my strong suit, and many of these “Easter Eggs” are more like explainers for why I mentioned something a certain way in the fic, or my headcanons and the like. With that in mind...

See how many you spotted in Chapters 13-15!

As previously mentioned in Part 6, I did not expect the conversation about Mokuba questioning Seto’s telling of their biological family dumping them at an orphanage. Since I didn’t expect it, I also didn’t know what to do with it. How would Seto react to Mokuba, for once, questioning him and something so fundamental about their past? Would he just let thoughts whirl in his head and not take action, or would he do something, and if so, what? Since the two weeks until the actual exhibition weren’t as important outside of this unexpected revelation, I figured I could feasibly “time skip” it and work it out from there. Besides, the exhibition is where all the fun would be.

Seto’s dress shirt is supposed to be reminiscent of the one he wore in Duelist Kingdom:

@elfbean is damn talented artist for our fandom, and captures this outfit way better than any anime screen caps I could find. Imagine the tie for his suit in this fit is the color of his jacket here.

Yes, I actually spent a ridiculous amount of time looking up bowtie styles. I came to the conclusion that Mokuba would get a clip-on because actual ties make no sense, even if the whole “draped tie or bowtie around the neck” look is a thing for “after parties.”

So, the way I thought of Seto dealing with the family members that he thought “dumped” him and Mokuba at an orphanage was to throw the proverbial ball back into their court...of course, without having to put much emotion or effort into it, either. Unsurprisingly, Mokuba points out some “flaws” in his brother’s plan. I think as Mokuba ages, they get on more equal footing, regardless of the six-year age gap.

For some reason, I can’t see Seto celebrating his birthday regularly. I don’t imagine it being the kind of thing Gozaburo would have encouraged, either.

I like the idea of everyone needing to consider the importance of memory in this story. Memories aren’t perfect; they’re fallible, as Mokuba and Seto discovered. Memories are personal, but they’re also shared, as we found out from Anzu and Malik. And above all else, they have no meaning if you don’t give them one, if you refuse to think about the bad memories, or if you fail to give context to the good ones. Atem’s overall message about “moving on” is that memories are important, but it’s what you DO WITH THEM that matters most. It’s about who you become as a result of your experiences.

I came up with the name for the exhibition at the last moment. Autumn Glories are my favorite winter apple varietal! 🍎

The exhibition was my one last chance to describe everyone in suits, even if they’d appeared earlier in the story wearing some form of suit. So you get Jounouchi in a tuxedo, Yuugi in his suit, and Otogi in a black suit with a classic scarlet tie and pocket square. Others show up later, because why not? (Also you cannot convince me that Rishid would not look AWESOME in a suit.)

I don’t imagine that Kaiba went to any great pains to keep his birthday secret, but if he never celebrated it and it was never important to any news (outside of his takeover of Kaiba Corporation almost two decades ago at this point), then I think it makes sense that people would be surprised by Mokuba’s announcement that the exhibition coincides with Seto’s birthday.

Okay, who do you imagine screamed “I knew you were a Scorpio” and “Where’s the cake?”

I have no idea what amusing thing Leonhart was whispering to Malik. What do you think he said?

The dialogue in Seto’s speech isn’t important to the plot, and isn’t from Mokuba’s POV, besides. So Chapter 14 begins with a fair bit of exposition. Also I’m not a speechwriter, which is partially why Mokuba throws out his blank index cards and makes up his speech as he goes along, too.

When Seto is looking out at the crowd after he says “I believe if something is important to you, you should prove it,” he is looking to see if anyone unfamiliar is reacting: in other words, he’s looking for his estranged family members. Or maybe that message is meant to go out to others, too. If a dream is important, you should chase it. If relationships are important, you should prioritize them. If emotions are important, you should feel them. And so on.

One of the things I always thought was weird about the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX was the apparent emphasis on dueling only. It’s clearly meant to be a specialized high school, but do we ever see the students take any non-dueling classes, like Algebra, Physics, Home Ec? I haven’t watched enough of the series to be sure, but if we consider the original series, GX, and 5D’s to be in the same universe, clearly dueling becomes more of a hobby and a pastime and more of a world-changing method of interacting with special technology (and, as Arthur C. Clark put it, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”). So if the Academias started including more topics tangentially related to dueling, like Computer Science, Art, Solid Vision, etc., then I could see it being a practical/trade school that would actually be accredited, and people would WANT to send their kids to it.

The “one more thing” line is a reference to Steve Jobs. If there’s any modern CEO who seems close to Seto Kaiba, I’d prefer it be Steve Jobs over someone like Elon Musk. It’s fine to be known as an asshole, but also to be known for changing the world in a positive way. That seems like Seto Kaiba to me.

And since I made one Apple/Steve Jobs reference, why not go all the way, making an iPod nano reference with the new Duel Disks? I suck at drawing though, so the Duel Disk on the “cover” for the fic (see below) is just a regular Duel Disk from the GX/5D’s era. Just imagine it compacts into itself! 😆

I imagine the exhibition as being something like an [American] anime con, with panels, a Dealers’ Hall, a main amphitheater or arena, and scattered information booths and food stalls. But I have a fair bit of experience wandering around classy hotels, so I had to get Mokuba showing off the property somehow, especially if he (and Seto) essentially have a reserved penthouse suite in every Kaiba Hotel around the world.

The name for the fic-verse (the “Schmoozeverse”) is finally dropped. Roooollll credits! I know some Yiddish, but not a ton. I did attempt to teach some Yiddish words to my Japanese students while I lived there, and the results were amusing. Yiddish has syllables that simply don’t exist in Japanese.

The scarlet die used for Otogi’s Studio Dice is represented on the cover on the lower left corner. I tried to make it look “digital” by applying a sort of screen/glitch effect to it.

I didn’t know what the details of Mokuba and Leon’s joint entertainment venture might be, but I imagine they talked about it during their wanderings down the hotel hallways in the conference center.

Some characters in the Yu-Gi-Oh! series get several outfits. Ryou Bakura is one of them, and I based his suit design somewhat off his Duelist Kingdom look:

Imagine a lighter cerulean/teal than Seto’s dress shirt, and paired with a heather gray instead of a cream (since I had Leonhart wearing cream instead).

I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out if Mokuba was present on the yacht going to the Ceremonial Duel, but no: he was not. But I imagine he heard about Ryou eating basically everything on board from somebody.

Initially, I did want to make Bakura a Tarot ViewTuber, but I figured he, like Malik, would want to move away from his past. That means letting go of losing Amane and his mother, and not spending his time wallowing in grief over all the things that Zork did while in his body. But pretending that those memories don’t matter isn’t Bakura’s style, so I had him still value the past in the form of art history. The hard part was figuring out how to make it work with Malik’s baking channel!

This is the color version of the tablet we all know so well. Now, I don’t imagine it would be easy to make a focaccia art bread version of this, but it would sure be fun! Here’s some focaccia bread art so you know what I mean:

This is from Not Quite Nigella, in case you’re interested in trying it for yourself!

Mokuba telling Leon “Us Kaibas... We can do anything” is a nod to another fic of mine, Tremors, where I have a younger version of him saying something similar to Anzu.

Technically Mai is in a skirt suit, so I count it as additional to the suit she wore when Mokuba first met her in Paris. I don’t have an image for this outfit, as I made it up completely, but you can bet I would wear it if it was real!

Mokuba wondering about what matters “at the end of the day” is a nod to the dub line Téa shot towards Kaiba after he defeated Yugi at Pegasus’ castle: “At the end of the day, what do you have?! Tell me!” and he responded (coolly): “I have all that I need.” (Yeah right, KAIBA!) What do you think would be easier for Mokuba: figuring out what he wants his family to be like now and in the future, or finding “the one” for him? What about for Seto?

An explanation for Yuugi’s screen name is given later in the story (similar to Pegasus’s Chirper name), but it’s basically a combination of one of his commonly used Duel Monsters and his birthday: June 4 = 64. Incidentally, it’s kind of geeky, if you think about game systems like the Nintendo 64 or 64-bit software.

I also spent a silly amount of time researching fruit arrangements/edible arrangements, and I figured based on the most commonly used fruits, level stars would be no problem.

The popcorn mix is meant to be a nod to Harry & David’s Moose Munch, one of my favorites:

Mokuba thinking that a Kaiba Hotel without a Duel Arena is “inconceivable!” is, of course, a nod to The Princess Bride.

Mokuba didn’t intend to say something that was a jab at Yuugi in pointing out that Mai isn’t the type to push aside her dreams for someone else’s sake, but this ends up being just why Yuugi no longer has a relationship with Anzu: in refusing to agree to work with her for Millennium, she chose to pursue her dream in the performing arts over continuing to stay friends with Yuugi.

I can understand why some people might think that’s out-of-character for Anzu, but I promise to delve into it further in other future fics in the Schmoozeverse, particularly Love and the Art of Schmoozing.

I may have mentioned it in an earlier chapter, but this fic takes place during Season 2 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, so Edo Phoenix and Jun Manjoume are still at Duel Academia. Edo is already a Pro League duelist, but Jun is now his mentee, since he won the Genex Tournament and is on track to be a Pro Duelist without any interference from his brothers who run the Manjoume Group.

GX is also the series where we finally started seeing Duel Disk models faaaar beyond the Duel Disk Mark II (Battle City) and Chaos Duel Disk (from the Doma arc of the anime) from the original series. I don’t really count the dia’dhanks or whatever they were called from the Egypt arc, though. But in GX, we got multiple colors, all kinds of different shapes, bejeweled Duel Disks... it was a whole thing.

With Jounouchi and Seto discussing the “Special Summon,” I finally reveal that the exhibition serves as the launch point for Synchro Monsters. I hinted at it before, with Pegasus painting what will eventually be named the Stardust Dragon, but by the time of 5D’s, it’s not like anyone acts like Synchro Summoning is NEW. There does seem to be an attitude that people from Satellite (old Domino) shouldn’t have Synchro Monsters, but maybe that was just Ushio?

The other “best dressed” Pro Leaguers are referring to Genex Tournament participants or other well-dressed Duelists from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:

Sommelier Parker:

Edo Phoenix:

Mathematica:

The cards that Jounouchi uses don’t actually exist, but they are based on real Egyptian gods: Aker and Wepwawet. I based the rest of the card names on the format of other Egyptian Gods and Synchro Monsters (e.g., Ra, the Sun God Dragon; Obelisk, the War God; Osiris the Heavenly Sky Dragon; Gaia Knight, Force of Earth).

“Never tell me the odds!” is a nod to Han Solo from Star Wars. It seemed an appropriate line for Jounouchi to say against an opponent who relies on calculations to win games of Duel Monsters, and math isn’t exactly Jounouchi’s strong suit.

I also invented Jounouchi’s Synchro Summoning “spell,” which seems to be a theme of sorts in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s. It’s not exactly a special spell or requirement to Synchro Summon, but something all the main characters do, and I figure it had to originate from somewhere, and why not Jounouchi being a showman?

Destiny Breaker, Stormlight Beast Set is a nod to the Egyptian God Set that both Seto and his Ancient Egyptian counterpart, Priest Seto (or Set) are named for. He’s not an “evil” god, per se: he’s actually associated with storms, chaos, and a mysterious mishmash of animals that archaeologists to this day have not been able to fully identify. Framing it as the one who “breaks Destiny” seems like a very Seto thing, and “Stormlight Beast” just sounds cool to me.

I imagine Asuka from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX would probably admire Mai a lot, and might be one of the duelists asking for her to autograph her Deck Box or similar.

Speaking of Japan elevating food to an art form, I am very much not kidding. Aside from the fake food you might see outside of Japanese restaurants that looks suspiciously real...

...there’s also food that is MEANT to be eaten that looks astonishing:

Chocolates from Nagayoya

Wagashi, sweet treats generally made for use with tea ceremonies. Made with natural ingredients and colors; a sort of culinary haiku, if you will!

I’ve never actually seen anyone make a Duel Monsters bread, but I do think it would be fun if people decided to be innovative with the ingredients based on the dragon in question. Some of them might be a bit challenging, though... (what the heck would be a Stardust Dragon loaf, anyway?!)

As with Mokuba’s speech, I couldn’t come up with an excuse for him to pull Seto away from whatever he was doing at the exhibition after the Synchro Summon reveal and the Duel Disk nano demo, so I just had him be intentionally vague and “surprise” Seto that way. But actual screaming “surprise!” might trigger Seto, so he emphasized NOT doing that, but still throwing a birthday party.

While it’s never really brought up at all in the dub, I’ve always found it strange that some of the characters are great friends, but call each other by their surnames. What would it take for Seto to get to the point of asking others to call him “Seto” and not Kaiba? I figure something like what happened in the car with Mokuba would be one possibility.

In Japan, the honorifics you use with others says a lot about who you respect (and vice-versa). Canonically (in the anime), Mokuba and Seto generally don’t use honorifics with anyone. Yuugi uses “-kun” with Jounouchi and Honda, appropriate for someone in his age group (and typically used with males), but doesn’t use an honorific with Anzu. Jounouchi and Honda typically don’t bother with honorifics at all, especially for people like Kaiba (which is intentionally insulting) or Mai (which implies closeness). Surprisingly, Anzu has always referred to Mokuba and Seto (as Kaiba) with a -kun, implying she has more respect for them than any of her other friends do, or that they do for her. (Actually, of the two brothers, Mokuba is the only one who has ever actually referred to Anzu by name.) Seto asking others to call him by his given name is actually a pretty big deal.

If a book on dragons in art exists, I haven’t found it (yet). But here’s a cool blog post on the topic! There’s also a pretty interesting feature on it from Google Arts & Culture.

The travel guide Yuugi gives to Seto is based on the one Juudai and a few other Duel Academia students used during their visit to Domino during the events of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX during Season 2. It’s written by Sugoroku, which explains why it contains insights into many of the iconic duels of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series, including the unofficial and very dangerous duel between Jounouchi and Yuugi at the docks. The way I see it, Yuugi used it as a template to make a scrapbook of sorts. The second season ending theme for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime, The Afternoon of that Day, as sung by Masami Okui, shows a number of photos collected throughout Yuugi’s adventures, so I thought it made sense for him to give that kind of gift:

youtube

As Mokuba brings Seto up to their hotel room and is thinking about the gifts everyone gave, wrapping up with Yuugi’s gift of the guidebook, I imagine he’s plotting how he can get Anzu and Yuugi to talk again. We’ll see how that works out in Love and the Art of Schmoozing.

Mokuba not knowing what he wants is also a theme of this story; he finds it while also helping others find the things/experiences they want. I have him pose some questions to Seto that he fully doesn’t expect either of them to be answering over the next year, but maybe in the next five years...

Not sure if I actually want there to be a reconnection between Seto, Mokuba and their biological family over the next five years of the stories in the Schmoozeverse, but I feel like it’s too important of an event to happen “off-screen.”

I could have ended the story after Mokuba finally presented the painting and Pegasus’ Synchro Summon card gift for Seto, but I felt like there were still a few things left to wrap up: Malik getting to apologize to Anzu; Mokuba trying to convince Anzu to work for Kaiba Corporation; Anzu getting to punch somebody (one of the prompts), and some epistolary (letter-style) fun regarding the Ishtars’ trip to Germany.

Here’s what the “over-the-top” bouquet Mokuba, Leon, and Malik give to Anzu after her show:

This is the Give Thanks bouquet from Strelitizia Flowers in Davis, CA. It features sunflowers, roses, cremones, safflowers, and Asiatic lilies, all in season during the fall. Incidentally, sunflowers are some of my favorite flowers.

I couldn’t really picture any of the characters holding a grudge against Malik or Bakura —not for long, really. So while it may seem a little too perfect to have Jounouchi, Mai, AND Anzu all fine with him, I did want to make it clear, he had to work for it. He needed to apologize and be clear with what he did, and who he wanted to be in the future, and that includes living up to promises he makes to all of those characters he harmed during Battle City, in ways I imagine are long-lasting.

The “pretty boys” Mokuba is attempting to count are: Malik and Ryou to start, but also himself, and, jokingly, Jounouchi (maybe?)

I imagine Ryou would have a Patreon or a ViewTube Membership for sharing his art history insights, and maybe some of his own original art, preservation techniques, or similar.

I gave Anzu several outfits throughout the story, but here’s the inspiration for her suit at the end, albeit with an added pearl-white blouse and thin gold belt. Understated, but very Anzu, IMO.

I started watching Isekai Izakaya sometime before I finished the final chapters of The Seven Labors of Mokuba Kaiba, so it somewhat influenced my mental image of the restaurant/pub that Anzu and Mokuba ended up at. There are definitely a number of “hole in the wall” eateries throughout Tokyo, even in the fancier parts, and the food is not to be missed! While the “Taisho” in this story doesn’t resemble Nobuyuki of Isekaya fame, he is meant to be this tall, imposing guy you don’t want to mess with. Having a personal relationship with the local authorities meant I could write my way around Mokuba or Anzu needing to go into a police station to explain who/what Jean-Claude Magnum was doing, or Anzu socking Jean-Claude ending up in the media and derailing her career transition.

Writing this story meant I learned quite a bit about the production of a Broadway musical, even if those details would never really make it into this (or even the subsequent) stories. The idea of Anzu acting as a co-writer/producer, choreographer, AND dance captain while also playing her role in the show is amazing, and goes even beyond what Lin-Manuel Miranda did for Hamilton, especially considering none of the original Broadway cast went on tour, let alone adapted the show for other languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese the way I have Anzu in this story. So yeah, no surprise she’s retiring at age 30.

Don’t ask me how Jean-Claude Magnum found them at this hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Tokyo. For the sake of story, he just did. Also he seemed like the most qualified person to need a sock in the face in this story. I couldn’t imagine Anzu socking Malik after everything he’d done, since I can’t picture her being a violent grudge-holder after so long. So who else would piss her off? Someone who has no respect for the performing arts industry, someone who tried to harm her friends... someone like Jean-Claude Magnum, who was never properly dealt with following his one-off duel against Mai during Battle City.

Anzu punching a gold filling out of Magnum’s mouth is inspired by her clocking a zombie professor in the early chapters of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga. With a globe. OUCH.

Originally I thought about Anzu asking Mokuba to chaperone her (secretly) on a blind date that would turn out to be Jean-Claude Magnum (or otherwise interrupted by him), and make the restaurant fancier, but I decided that it would be more trouble than it’s worth. The only way Mokuba could have avoided the scene getting publicized online and causing a scandal for both him and Anzu would be if he somehow hacked every single person’s phone AND whatever security existed in the restaurant, and that just seemed a a bit much for me. So I went with a smaller venue and a neighborhood relationship instead. Too bad, Mokuba, I’ll let you use your CompSci degree in a cool way in another story!

Pretty sure I stole “get set to get decked” from a later Yu-Gi-Oh! character (Yuma from zeXal?) but it was too funny not to include here.

I was worried about different fic archives stripping out the “email addresses” I made up for Malik and Mokuba, or the filenames I wanted to imply as image attachments, so they have some odd spacing in them. I would love to see your fan art rendition of these pictures! A beer bread Malik made; Rishid, Isis, Malik, and Leonhart in the von Schroeder castle’s main hall; them spelunking in a nearby cave; at the top of the tallest mountain in Germany; and probably making some sort of funny face(s) while sampling chocolates on a tour. Rishid is supposedly smiling (fully) in one of these photos, so I’ll let you decide which one that is. It’s a bigger smile than the one Mokuba saw during the exhibition.

The freak snowstorm in Cairo in December of 2013 really happened. It wasn’t enough to blanket the Sphinx in snow, or cover the pyramids in white, but it did leave a significant amount in Cairo proper, and some people did make small snow sculptures.

From The Baltimore Sun’s Darkroom

I don’t think I’d ever have what it takes to be a YouTuber, seeing as just trying to figure out live-streaming almost gave me a headache. But even if someone’s good at one aspect of it doesn’t mean they’re great at the others; it’s definitely a business model now, and I figure a more or less solo operation like Malik’s might encounter some bad actors (multimedia companies that take advantage of solo ViewTubers), much the way some have in the real world. So Mokuba’s interest in the entertainment industry could involve forming an agency to support ViewTubers like Malik.

One of the prompts did mention that Chaseshipping (Otogi x Honda) would make them happy, so I did a “hat tip” to it with Otogi saying he loves Honda. It’s meant in a more close friend/platonic sense, but I can see them as being as close as Jounouchi and Honda were, at one point. In a sense, they were united by their “chase” after Shizuka, but in the eternal words of Princess Jasmine, Shizuka is “not a prize to be won!” So the fact that she ends up with Honda in this story is incidental, and has nothing to do with why Honda and Otogi may have drifted, and certainly will not stop them from reconnecting as friends. I wanted to try and do something similar with Visionshipping (Mai x Isis), but I couldn’t think of a good way to do it, especially if I didn’t want Mai to be a Pro Duelist anymore; she never quite seemed happy pursuing that path, and I wanted her to be able to feel okay going after other opportunities that interested her.

Aaaand... that’s it! You’ve reached the end! 🎉

Thank you for taking the time to read these posts, if not The Seven Labors of Mokuba Kaiba. I hope you’ll join me when I have the chance to add to this “Schmoozeverse” with other fics, including Love and the Art of Schmoozing as inspired by @kaibacorpintern.

Please, please, please comment on the story with your thoughts. They matter so much to me and seriously keep me writing.

I’m still slowly posting the chapters to FFnet over the coming days, and I have some minor edits I’m applying to the chapters on AO3, mostly having to do with weird formatting glitches and misspellings; nothing serious.

Thanks again.

Love always,

Azurite

#azurite #7lmk #fanfiction #yu-gi-oh #ygome20 #nanowrimo #mokuba kaiba #ao3 #archive of our own #schmoozeverse #ygome

2 notes · View notes