Some Yami Marik ships, as requested by @ladyhenbane . Everyone is invited to reblog/comment ship propaganda or fic recs!
Eclipseshipping: Yami Marik x Marik Ishtar
Formerly called Bronzeshipping, this is an absolutely angstfilled ship with some serious drama, no matter how you frame it.
Sickleshipping: Yami Marik x Thief King Bakura
I have the feeling that these two would be quite dangerous allies if they ever learned to trust each other. Definitely a power couple.
Fadeshipping: Yami Marik x Joey Wheeler
This one is super interesting in a fucked up away. Yami Marik did kill Joey in that one episode, after all. Imagine being prayed by someone that's already tried to kill you and succeeded?
Deathshipping: Yami Marik x Ryou Bakura
This is my friend Ryou, and this is Ryou's boyfriend, the cryptid. I honestly can't explain why this ship is as popular as it is, but it's one of the most popular Yami Marik ships from what I've seen. Maybe that's just the circles I'm in, though.
Midriffshipping: Marik Ishtar x Alister
Two boys with an affinity for crop tops that have learned how dissatisfying vengeance truly is. This looks like a crack ship, but I've time I wrote it and realized that it actually works really well, because they were both manipulated by cult leaders and had to overcome first the cult's control, then the cult leader's influence because they were acting like them.
Trashshipping: Yami Marik x Yami Bakura
Like Sickleshipping, except you've got more magic and I'm more scared for my safety. They definitely make each other worse.
@rain-love-poetry sent a bunch of their rarepair fics, and though I am suspicious they’re more interested in Malik/everyone, here they are in order of how much I enjoyed them (tho they’re all p. good).
Bubbles - Kaiba/Ryou/Malik
https://archiveofourown.org/works/7707994
powerful sugarbaby vibes coming off of Ryou in this one, but i’m down. besides, what self respecting Kaiba shipfic doesn’t get a little sugary?
Make Love, Not War - Alister/Malik
https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996981
never gave the Orichalcos villains enough thought to consider them in a ship, tbh, but I like Malik’s characterization here.
Desert Rose - Malik/Zigfried von Schroeder
https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996861
bro i’m onto you i know you’re only in this rarepair game to spoil malik using various rich proxys and i dont even care i DONT even CARE
i feel like i want to write zigfreid now, considering how violently german he is
i indentify highly w/ him because my personality is also comprised of taking baths and being Deutsch
@rain-love-poetry also snuck some thiefshipping in, so here’s that!
Characters: Marik Ishtar, Amelda, Ishizu Ishtar, Raphael, Valon
Time Frame: three years post-canon
Summary: Marik thought he knew what to expect when he decided to visit Amelda in the middle of a European winter, but he didn’t expect to be stuck completely by this ridiculous snow.
“What is this utter blasphemy?”
Amelda chuckled.
“Never seen snow, Mr. Desert Lizard?”
Marik growled out the window, which was frosted over so thickly that he couldn’t even see out of it. He didn’t have to in order to know that they were going to be stuck in this house for at least a day or two. The drifts were reaching nearly four feet and rising. Raphael had tried to get out the door earlier that morning and found that it wouldn’t open.
“I’ve seen snow,” he said. “I’m not stupid, I had contacts in Europe in the old days. What I haven’t seen is this ABOMINATION against nature outside the window.”
Amelda just laughed again and kept reading his book, free arm still draped over Marik’s shoulder as Marik leaned against him, wrapped tightly in a blanket to keep out the cold that he was certain was sneaking in through the window to torment him. Amelda had joked that Marik must be a lizard of some kind because he didn’t seem to be able to produce his own body heat. Marik had just told Amelda to shut up and stop moving, he wasn’t allowed to move from the couch when Marik was cold and needed someone to cuddle with.
Valon was currently in the kitchen, trying to convince Raphael to let him go out the window so that he could shovel. Marik could hear his accented tone carrying over into the living room, arguing with Raphael in what was probably Italian. Marik wasn’t completely positive on that language himself; learning Arabic, English, and Japanese in addition to his native Egyptian (a useless dead language by the time he got out of the tombs) was more than enough trouble for him. He was still considering learning Bosnian, though, because he was tired of Amelda saying stuff in his own language and then grinning cross eyed at Marik while Marik struggled to figure out from the context what Amelda was saying about him. Judging by the way Valon laughed every time, it was something annoying.
Marik sighed and burrowed deeper into his blanket.
“You’re going to boil me alive if you don’t get up eventually,” Amelda said.
“Good. Then I’ll finally be warm.”
Ishizu leaned out of the hall briefly, raising an eyebrow at the pair of them.
“Amelda, you know if he bothers you, you can just push him onto the floor.”
“Definitely considering it,” said Amelda.
“Fuck both of you and your cold tolerance,” Marik grumbled.
Amelda just chuckled softly and ran his fingers through Marik’s hair a few times.
“Just go to sleep, you desert lizard,” he said. “The snow will be gone soon.”
Marik rolled his eyes, but he snuggled deeper into the warm pocket on the couch between his blanket and Amelda, and it wasn’t long until the heat from both, and the soothing feeling of Amelda’s fingers in his hair, sent him gently off to sleep.
Too lazy to redraw my Peach kids so you also get an older Anzu and Yugi in the mix
Modern day ship babies! Wheeeee~
First we have the Peach family—sorry, the Mutou family. Oldest is Yua Mutou—and I think I may be the only person with a Mutou baby that doesn't have Yugi's hair XD
Yua is an oddball in the family, because she doesn't really like Duel Monsters. She was enamored with the cards as a kid and she still thinks they look cool, but she's kind of bored by the game itself and would rather be doing something more active and less strategic. She loves sports. Her main one is soccer, but she also plays baseball, volleyball, and is involved in several other sports clubs at school, booking herself out pretty much all the time. She's very driven and intent upon bettering herself all the time. If she finds something that she's not very good at, she'll spend days trying to perfect it, like a true sports anime protagonist (wait what). For example, if she's bad at a certain kind of kick in soccer, she will get to the field at five in the morning to practice for hours every day until she's got it down. Her favorite sports team is the baseball team the Yomiura Giants and literally nothing will get in the way of her watching their games. She's one of those people that wears all the merch on the days they play and stuff. She is also super, super protective and confrontational. You could whisper something about her or her family or her friends that she doesn't like and she'll run in with all guns blazing and fists flying. She's gotten into more than one fight at school since she started. She's one of those “don't worry senpai/oneesan will take care of it!” kind of people, a bit arrogant about her own abilities and cannot turn down even the stupidest challenge. She's super easily embarrassed though when it comes to things like love—that doesn't stop her from awkwardly stuttering advice to her younger sister whenever she thinks little Kaoru needs it (Kaoru doesn't need it. She never needs it). Despite not being much a duelist, story events will require her to take up a Duel Disk and learn how to use it. Her original deck was a somewhat sloppy fire/burn deck based around Ultimate Baseball Kid, with a lot of monsters she threw it because they “looked cool.” When she starts to get better, she uses an archetype that I'm working on making based around the real card Divine Grace Northwemko. It's a ritual deck with the Divine Grace archetype.
Jin and Atem are the middle twins. Jin was named after Yugi's father, and Atem, of course was named after Atem. Jin is a laid-back sort of kid who doesn't take things very seriously. He's very smiley and takes life as it comes. He likes to fiddle with woodworking things and usually occupies his hands with whittling when he's just listening to someone or watching TV, usually making statues or toys or something. If he's not doing that, he'll find something else to do with his hands, like knitting or crocheting, or playing a handheld video game. He's in the home ec club at school and is pretty much the only boy in the club, which he doesn't mind (he may be somewhat gender questioning, actually). He's absolutely wonderful with kids and loves hanging out with them; he's the best kind big brother who carries them around on his back and pushes them on the swings and shows them how to make cool origami things. He uses a Toy deck, which I haven't really figured out yet.
Atem is more reserved than his brother. He kind of keeps to himself, being more of the type to stay close to his family instead of making a lot of friends. He spends a lot of time playing MMORPGs, or designing his own games. He's incredibly intelligent and has the highest grades of all his siblings, usually getting dragged into leading study sessions for his more distractable twin brother and older sister. He's patient, though, and doesn't really mind helping even if sometimes it seems like he's exasperated. He's very, very, very devoted to his family and would probably literally kill you if you hurt them. He likes strategy games and so he's more into Duel Monsters than Yua and Jin. He uses a fusion deck with my fan archetype the Alloy Magicians.
Final Peach baby is Kaoru Mutou, the baby of the family that all of them kind of dote on, much to her embarrassment. She's shy and quiet, but not as much of a crybaby as you might think—she tends to internalize her feelings a lot because she doesn't want to make anyone worry about her. She's in the choir club at school, but her real love is Duel Monsters; she's the most obsessed of her family and likes to spend time with her father making decks. She runs an Enchanted Forest deck, a vaguely Shinto-based fairy deck that focuses on Synchros, one of the first decks to do so (since I headcanon that Synchros begin to become available around this time, but they're somewhat rare). Kaoru has a tiiiiny bit of a brother complex for Atem, the sibling she's closest to, and is often very jealous of his significant others.
Okay and then some Polar kids. Buckle up, it's a little sad. So Jonouchi and Mai weren't married but they were living together, and Mai found out she was pregnant. They were nervous at first about if they would be good enough parents and weren't sure what to do but they started to get excited together about having a kid, but then Mai had a terrible miscarriage which devastated both of them. At this point Jonouchi ended up proposing to Mai and they decided to get actually married while they healed from what had happened. Jonouchi then met Shinju, a punkish sort of girl in an orphanage that reminded him something of himself as a kid. They slowly became friends, and Mai started visiting with Shinju as well, and they decided to adopt her when she was twelve.
Shinju is a little rough around the edges and has trouble understanding affection because she's not used to receiving it. She's still not much of a touchy person and freaks out from surprise hugs. She can be jumpy and nervous around people, but she hides it with irritation and even somewhat tsundere impulses. She's something of a reluctant big sister character, like she would tell you that she's bad with kids but all of the rest of the gang's kids gravitate towards her and she interacts with them awkwardly and stiffly but with a lot of protective feelings towards them. She used to be in and out of gang violence so she's a quick, wild fighter, but she tried to calm down after meeting Jonouchi and Mai. She's 23 but she's still living with Katsuya and Mai while she works at a coffee shop to put herself through college. She's still embarrassed about calling Mai and Katsuya “mom” and “dad”, and it will come out like a mumble with a giant blush. She's not much of a duelist, but she has a “Street Fighter” archetype (no relation to the game Street Fighter).
Mai and Jonouchi later were able to conceive and this pregnancy came to term, and their baby is Yasu Jonouchi. Shinju is super, super protective of the little guy, who's three during the course of the story. Shinju is kind of anal about making sure she knows where he is at all times because he's a very adventurous toddler who will stick things into outlets if you let him. She's more of a worrier than Mai is, Mai is a great mother, of course, but she's more laid back and tries not to take things as seriously, often teasing Shinju for getting herself overly worked up about where her little brother is getting into.
Okay and then there's Andrej Ishtar, my Midriff baby. Andrej was adopted by Marik and Amelda; or rather, Marik found the kid, brought him home and was like “AMELDA CAN WE KEEP HIM” and Amelda was like “please don't make this a habit but yes.” Andrej was adopted when he was six. His dads really don't know what they're doing with kids so they're not really good at ground rules, so Andrej grew up to be a kind of laid-back person that doesn't really see the point of most rules and casually breaks them without thinking about it, like forgetting to turn in homework, or talking in class, or sneaking onto blocked off property just cause he feels like it. He's a very chill person that's hard to get worked up. None of his family have ever really seen him get mad (when he does get mad he gets more smiley). He doesn't talk much and spends most of his time fiddling with mechanical things, like motorcycles and cars and things. He doesn't really see the point of school because he's good at mechanics and plans to do that, so he skips a lot (much to Amelda's frustration but he doesn't really know how to force the kid to go, and Marik doesn't understand the point of formal education himself so he's like 'let him do his thing'). He uses some kind of Machine deck, not sure what specifically yet.
Gonna do a few more groups of ship kids next time :)
*CRASHES INTO YOUR INBOX* DID SOMEONE SAY MIDRIFFSHIPPING
I did in fact say midriffshipping and I’m sorry it took me so long to get a response to this anon!! Midriff is awesome you should totally come and talk to me more about it~
I guess it's because of how similar Isee the two of them. Both of them have come from feelings ofrevenge, you know? I feel like they could help each other out inworking through the lingering effects of devoting most of their livesto revenge on someone that in the end turned out not to deserve thehate they gave them....like, that would be unbalancing. To spend somuch of yourself hating someone, building your life around thathatred, and then finding out that it was all pointless. That persondidn't deserve it. So who are you now, without that hatred andthirst for revenge driving you? They have that in common and I liketo imagine them supporting each other while they try to find out whothey are without their revenge.
Also because can you just imagine thetwo of them in the garage, all messy with motorcycle grease and theirsleeves rolled up working on their rides together? :3
For You~ by starfireelf15 One of my very rare pairs. As far as I know, Egypt celebrates Valentine's Day with lots of heart-shaped balloons and some epic levels of consumerism, so it's possible for Marik to be in on it at this point and want to offer his boyfriend a rose. I headcanon Amelda as being Bosnian, though, and I don't think they celebrate Valentine's, so he's very confused. XD
