"Can a soul cry...?" Because there are ninety-nine of them that have followed him nearly his entire life...
Reupload of this piece (with a barely visible "Do not Repost or Reupload. Thanks!" watermark) because I did some edits and cleaned it up to get it ready for printing. I don't intend to mass print these unless there is a desire for them.
Repost from Feb 18th 2026
Post by @ravij
This is a companion piece for this Ao3 Prose:
Can a Soul Cry? This piece and character have a lot of meaning to me. (About that below the cut)
Ever since I was young and saw TKB on Saturday morning cartoons I thought "Oh man he's so cool! I love him!" He was my first anime crush. Fast forward to today he's become more than just a favorite character. He's become a symbol of my life. In 2024 during the first month alone I lost three people, 2 family members and a good friend passed away.
That following May on Mother's day my mother took her last breath in her battle against cancer. My father might as well be dead with how quickly he has deteriorated after my mother's passing and a TBI he suffered in 2018 that continues to go undiagnosed because -gestures at the American healthcare system-
Like TKB I have lost much in such a short amount of time but I have not let tragedy take me down with it. While I was in turmoil the remainder of 2024, I eventually found a way out. I had always relied on my family to support me pre-2024 but in December of 2024 things changed. I moved out of my family home and through out 2025 I slowly began to become more independent.
In May of 2025 I returned to the YGO fandom and quickly met so many amazing people. I started my long fic series Child of Chaos including writing 131k words in 10 days for the first part: Sacred Game of the Gods. I have since been working on a few additional YGO related fics simultaneously.
To me (TK)Bakura is not a villain, he is a symbol of perseverance. Someone who decided not to sit down or hide away for fear of maybe being the next victim. Someone who wouldn't be broken by the tragedy he was forced to witness and endured despite all odds against him. He may have ultimately lost his life, but if Zorc had never been involved I 100% believe he could have had a better outcome with starting a rebellion as an opposition to the rule of the Pharaohs.
The moon is to hang low tonight. Windows are barred and doors are shut tight to keep safe from the ceaseless wailings and clanging of metal outside. The smell of incense filling the streets signal the start, and the effigies being strung up in every corner herald the worse.
Only a madman would open their door on the night of the hunt.
Bloodborne AU / FIC LINK
(notes under the cut, contains spoilers for the game and fic)
the four dialogues at the start of the fic are actual npc lines in the game. other npc dialogues are woven into the text.
the "many eyes" ryou feels on him as soon as he enters yharnam are the lesser amygdalas infesting the town, watching him. his insight is too low for them to be visible to him at the moment (hes currently at 0 and needs at least 40 or to be at endgame).
there are no lesser amygdalas in central yharnam in the final cut of the game, but theres one in the alpha version. its back there now for the fic 😄
ryous weapons are the saw cleaver and hunter pistol. I initially wrote him using the hunter blunderbuss cuz it looks cooler, but it would be very difficult to miss the rabid dog rushing at him because its shots have a wide spread. sorry ryou, I need you to get quite hurt in this chapter. lore accuracy is my passion!
bakura is where Lonely Old Dear would be in the game.
not sure if I want bakura to be the actual Moon Presence, but he is the one orchestrating everything/backing ryou up with power (the reason why ryou is a dreaming hunter).
bakura is a Great One masquerading as a human. ryou gains insight (the whispers/lightheadedness) as soon as ryou lays eyes on him. this is the in-game sound effect.
bakura is slowly making ryou frenzy. works a bit different in this fic. frenzy only builds up the longer ryou holds eye contact with bakura.
also not sure if I want omegaverse dynamics in this LMAO cuz game lore states Great Ones yearn for surrogate children... well idk if bakura wants children, but he does want ryou for his own, unstated purposes.
this is what the hunter's salutation is supposed to look like, but bakura bastardizes it cuz hes rude.
the screeching ryou hears is the cleric beast.
some roles I assigned to other ygo characters for fun even tho they wont appear in the fic.
yugi as the doll
atem as lady maria
isis as eileen the crow
mai as arianna, woman of pleasure
seto as the bloody crow of cainhurst
yamima as micolash (LMAO)
tkb as orphan of kos
yugi and atem are who they are considering that the doll is based on lady maria.
the horrific raiding of the fishing hamlet mirrors the massacre at kul elna. its lady maria's greatest shame, and she desperately wants to keep what happened there a secret. I thought atem fit the theme pretty well.
with that said, tkb being the orphan of kos lines up. but I still want to keep the yamiba and tkb connection, so Im on the fence on what I want to do with their true identities.
for gameplay reasons, everyone else in bloodborne is taller than the player character. so in this au, please imagine ryou (and bakura since hes borrowed ryous looks) as being towered over by everyone 🤭 to me, its because hes an outsider/yharnam natives are just giants like that. also watch this.
There's an awful trend in reading that's this CinemaSins kind of rejection of abstract concepts and suspension of disbelief, that makes people say it's bad writing when authors use descriptions that aren't immediately one to one with physical reality.
Like it's bad when a "tattoo is undulating" (as opposed to... "drawn in a wave like pattern on the skin"?), or when hair is "wet wheat from a late Summer field" (as opposed to "sort of brownish light yellow that dries lighter, but is not actual wheat stalks growing on someone's head but kind of reminiscent of the color and texture"?), or when when ice cream tastes like midnight at the fair" (as opposed to "ice cream flavour bringing back memories of undefined ice cream flavours that are individually popular but always tied to a memory of late evening at the fair ground and probably smelling vaguely like popcorn and sugar"?).
Please. We have to get back to understanding abstract descriptions that evoke feelings and memories and mental images or things we haven't experienced yet. This hyper utilitarian way of reading and judging text is killing fiction. it's robbing you of experiencing things you haven't actually personally experienced.
The most recent word from @ficwip is foolish. This is from my thiefshipping sport au which I'm currently wrapping up!
That night, Isis waited just outside the chicly curved building. She sat for an hour, then two, a sinking, foolish feeling setting in the pit of her stomach.
That’s when she heard it, the loud growl of a motor revving up from the bowels of the garage. It could’ve been anyone, really, motorcycles being a common form of transportation in Egypt. Nevertheless, she could feel the anticipation rushing through her as the gate opened to reveal the telltale, cherry chrome exterior of what was undoubtedly her brother’s motorcycle.
I wish there were more fanfictions exploring the trauma of the Ishtar siblings—not just Marik's, but Ishizu's and Rishid's as well.
Like, all three of them went through so much, each in a different way. Post-canon, they would still have such a huge amount of internalized trauma to deal with.
I could also see all three of them having actual trouble opening up about how they each feel, especially to each other. With Rishid and Ishizu's tendency to put Marik first, I feel like both of them would be reluctant to confront their own issues (or even admit they exist).
There is so much to explore and imagine with Marik, Ishizu and Rishid's stories, whether it's pre-canon, during the manga, or post-canon. Like, did Marik and Rishid leave Ishizu behind without her knowing after their father's death ? Or did Ishizu refuse to go with them ?
When did they actually leave the underground ? How many years were they separated ? Did Ishizu speedrun her way through university to land such an important job while being only 20 years old ? How close were Rishid and Marik during their time with the Ghouls (like, did they actually have a bit of an actual brotherly relationship or were they mostly pretty formal, like we've seen in the manga ?) What kind of shady things did they have to do to survive ?
Also, how much guilt did Ishizu feel because she helped Marik get out of the underground, ultimately setting in motion the chain of events that led to Yami Marik killing their father?
Also, their dynamic post-canon would be so interesting. They're finally reunited after years apart, but they'd have to learn how to be around each other as a family again. But, like, Marik and Rishid were criminals. Ishizu is the only one with a job. And like I said before, they all have a ton of trauma to deal with.
(I personally also love the idea of Ishizu having to learn how to live without the Millennium Necklace's visions of the future. The uncertainty of it all. And on a lighter note, post-canon Ishizu being bad at mundane things, like time management, is a personal favorite headcanon of mine.)
I don't know, I feel like there's just sooooo much potential with those three (I know, it's been 30 years; i don't care, the fandom is still quite active... right ?).
HAPPY BIRTHDAY @koutone! I promised you a drawing of Bakura in the Baja Blast shirt so here it is for your birthday. I decided to add Malik and make it a thiefshipping beach episode.
Art is by me except for the Baja Blast design which is straight from the actual shirt.
I understand it's because Malik has pushed the emotions and thoughts that he can't handle on his own onto his other self thus partially explaining the following, but there's this interesting contrast of how the base Malik so very deeply loathes the dark and yet he still harbors love for his father who was the one who trapped him there, and then Yami Malik of course embraces and oozes with all the hatred Malik has for his father that Malik can't handle or face yet but Yami Malik also has fondness for being in the dark and feels a sense of place there.
In some way, it's possible that Malik -hates- the part of himself who found some sense of meaning and comfort underground, instead espousing his rebellion with his all and everything, and so those feelings ended up buried and vested into Yami Malik. To admit to those in-some-form nuanced memories and emotions might feel like a betrayal and might be devastating in its own right for the base Malik and Malik's need to exist in the full world is so bright (he could exist in the full world with nuanced feelings but it's so rough - he killed it).
Someone else pointed this out to me, and this is probably a more subtle thing that would require more long-term passionate fans of Yami Malik to notice, but Base Malik is actually a lot more volatile and impulsively angry while Yami Malik does a much better job at staying calm even if he's being such an "edgy" character.
Why is it everyone that sets out to rip off the Souls series fails to include any of the goofiness? Grim as the world of Dark Souls is, it can also at times be completely ridiculous. It's got mimic chests that attack you with fucking Street Fighter hurricane kicks and giant bulging bobble eyed basilisks and whatever the hell Frampt and Kaathe are supposed to be. There's a reason these games are such a rich goldmine of memes.
Even in a dead world devoid of hope there is silliness and whimsy.
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