The Seven Labors of Mokuba Kaiba - Easter Egg Explainer Pt. 6/7
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 11-12!
I really struggled with coming up with chapter titles for this one, but I knew that something relating to the actual “labors” would have to factor in. However, I didn’t want to include the libretto as one of the labors, despite it being the thing that kicks off the story, because then it wouldn’t be SEVEN labors, and Seven Labors just sounds a lot better than Eight, right? So that’s why some of the chapter titles might seem “off” for what he actually does in that chapter, or why I use some odd verbs to differentiate one task from another. I mean, “finagle,” really?
Joe Fox : Tweaking? A project that needs "tweaking"?
Kathleen Kelly : Yes.
Joe Fox : T-w-e-a-k-i-n-g.
Kathleen Kelly : -i-n-g. That's what he said.
—From one of my favorite movies of all time, You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan
I did consider having one or more things go wrong with Mokuba’s quest, but I wasn’t sure what SHOULD go wrong but still get ultimately resolved and reveal something about him/another character. I figured people insisting on favors rather than money, or being ambiguous, were struggle enough.
I mentioned it in exposition, but if it wasn’t clear: Anzu has not spoken to Yuugi in at least five years, What she’s “lost” is that long friendship she had with him, without the chance to really explain why she went ahead with Millennium and why she felt like she needed to, as opposed to just (selfishly) wanting to further her career.
This is the dress that inspired Anzu’s Laurence Olivier Awards gown; it’s actually an Oscar de la Renta gown, but in the Schmoozeverse, it’s Jacques Mode. ^_~ Imagine instead of the pattern, it’s hieroglyphs instead. This is Tina Fey from the 2014 Tony Awards.
I tried to model the description of Atem on the cover of Anzu’s “homemade” libretto with the one used for the Hamilton musical, with Hamilton pointing up to the sky, forming the top point of a star. You know, this one:
For Atem, I put him in a pose that I thought was more appropriate to Duel Monsters, one of those “comeback card” poses anyone who followed him would recognize. Imagine something like this, but he’s standing instead of jumping:
(Art by Sabina)
The actual Hamilton libretto obviously inspired how I described this one. While I’m a fan of many Broadway musicals, I can’t call myself a proper theatre kid or anything like that; I don’t know how common it is for Broadway shows to release a libretto. I’ve certainly never seen other musical librettos for sale at TARGET, of all places, which is where I got my copy of the Hamilton one. I imagine it was only possible to put together in the first place because Lin-Manuel Miranda and other cast and crew members made sure to document their time putting together the mixtape-turned-musical, and they saved all of those notes, photos, text messages, and so on. I imagine Anzu would do the same for her “first big production.”
A recurring theme in many of my fanfics is the trauma characters like Anzu, Mokuba, Mai, and Jounouchi endured at the hands of other characters, whether it’s temporary villains like Malik and Bakura, or arc-long villains like Pegasus, Dartz, or Noa. Sometimes I imagine Anzu being more forgiving, while other times I imagine her doing her best to not even think about it. In the Schmoozeverse, she’s very reluctant to consider Malik as anything less than the person who kidnapped and brainwashed her, even after she (and the rest of the gang) met him and his family again for the Ceremonial Duel. But Mokuba helps facilitate Malik’s opportunity to finally apologize to her personally, and that makes a huge difference to Anzu.
Anzu and Mokuba’s lines about “familiar faces, far off places” is a reference to the song Mad World by Tears for Fears (though you may have heard any number of cover versions, including one by Adam Lambert). I’m sure there are lots of other songs/iconic lines that rhyme “faces” and “places,” but for some reason, the melancholy of this song seemed to work for the moment.
I find it interesting that Mokuba never actually went to the Memory World with Seto, and I think it would be an interesting story that explores a Mokuba that DID make that trip somehow, whether or not Mokuba has an “Ancient Egyptian” counterpart. As for how he knows what Priest Seto looks like? (How he knows what Seto would look like with a tan) I imagine Seto or Anzu went into lengthy descriptions at some point, and for the sake of Millennium, they definitely made a Solid Vision version of him.
In my original version of the story, I just had Anzu’s ex (Eric) cheat on her without any reason, but if I wanted her to be reluctant to get in contact with him again (but still willing to try, at the end of the day), I had to make him sympathetic somehow. Before I knew it, he had this backstory involving him discovering his true self, and Anzu became something of an accidental victim in that journey. Even if you go to major metropolitan cities where you expect people are more accepting of varying sexual orientations and identities (like New York City), people might still be in the closet and reluctant to come out for any number of reasons. I look forward to the day when that’s not a problem anymore and everyone can be their authentic selves all the time.
Since the above was meant to be my “hat tip” to one of the other requests for the YGOME gift fic (Prideshipping), I did consider trying to work a “fake dating” scenario into the cheating somehow, but ultimately that didn’t work out. I could imagine Eric “fake dating” Anzu so people wouldn’t know he’s gay, but then Anzu would HAVE to know he’s gay, and then there’d be no struggle for her in putting together the libretto.
Mokuba offering Anzu a job is the impetus for the events of Love and the Art of Schmoozing, the first fic I envisioned for this “universe,” but which is actually a sequel (of sorts) to The Seven Labors of Mokuba Kaiba. Stay tuned for it!
I had a really hard time coming up with what Anzu would write as an inscription in the book, knowing it was for Pegasus, someone else (besides Malik) that she would see as having traumatized her. While he didn’t inflict any pain on her personally, I still see her as disliking him intensely, especially for what he did to Sugoroku, Mokuba, and Seto. She’s empathetic and understands Pegasus was doing it (mostly) out of a broken heart, but is frustrated that he had to hurt people to get what he wanted. She never gives up, as Mokuba observes, and that’s because she’s capable of seeing the alternatives that people like Pegasus can’t.
“Unimaginable” is the Millennium counterpart of “It’s Quiet Uptown” from Hamilton. Many of the lines would be the same, except altered for Yu-Gi-Oh! It’s either for when Atem lost Yuugi during the Doma arc or for Yuugi after the Ceremonial Duel. Considering where it falls in the song list in Hamilton (and how much of the musical is left after that song), it might make more sense in the Schmoozeverse if it’s for Atem losing Yuugi during the Doma arc because of his own narrow-minded focus, even if he had “good intentions.”
This story takes place 14 years after the events of Duelist Kingdom, but considering Mokuba’s childhood, I don’t see him “getting over” some of his traumas so easily, even if he did start going to therapy in junior high. Everyone in this story needs to learn how to move on: what that means, what it looks like, and how to take that difficult first step. Sometimes trauma is loss, while other times, it takes a different shape. Many characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! have experienced both.
I explain FB100875 in-story, but to reiterate: it’s Pegasus’ birthday combined with the initials of his all-time favorite comic, “Funny Bunny.” It’s his Chirper (Twitter) account handle.
The surprises Pegasus includes in the boxes are the Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon for Seto and the Azure Eyes Silver Dragon for Mokuba. I chose the latter for Mokuba because he still runs a Dragon-type deck in Duel Links, even if he doesn’t use the Blue-Eyes.
I have to thank my husband for helping me to come up with the name Duel Standby for a duelist blog. Anzu (or rarely another character) says it at the end of every “next episode” preview, and it kind of sounds like a format similar to newspaper names, e.g., Place/Topic Courier/Chronicle/Herald/Examiner/Times/Journal etc. etc. Since it’s a blog, I figure the place doesn’t matter as much as the topic.
I wanted to include a sort of denouement that would make sense, given that Mokuba served as the POV character for the whole story. So I opted to do blog posts and emails that he’s reading.
RHFirePrincess is a nod to none other than Rebecca Hopkins, who used Fire Princess to great effect during the Kaiba Corporation Grand Prix.
Rumors & Secrets is a random nod to a gacha-style game I’ve been playing lately: Mr. Love Queen’s Choice. It’s kind of like an otome mobile game, but it’s got quite a lot of intrigue, which is why I imagine they have special stories that fall under this name.
D.D. Bidder isn’t a real card, of course, but it’s a reference to the Different Dimension archetype in the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game.
I always wondered why Pegasus seemed so involved with the Duel Academia in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX despite his supposed retirement from Industrial Illusions and having no explicit ties to the Academias. So I wrote a reason in!
I alluded a bit to Seto going to some sort of mountain retreat for his vacation, but in reality, I didn’t actually think too much about it. So in-story, I had Mokuba and Seto banter about it, with neither really revealing anything. I might explore just what Seto did in another story in the Schmoozeverse in the future. If Seto HAD let Mokuba speak right now, the events of Love and the Art of Schmoozing would be very different!
I spent far too long looking into men’s formalwear, including “smoking jackets,” which is what Mokuba’s jacket is based on. I didn’t want it to be a regular suit jacket; he wants to stand out from his brother, which means not just having a differently colored tuxedo jacket or suit jacket.
What do you think Jounouchi and Mai talked about on their way back to Jounouchi’s place in Domino? Would you be interested in a side story about that?
The only suits we’ve ever seen Seto wear canonically are white suits with a blue shirt and tie, and a blue suit with a white shirt and turquoise tie (when he was a kid). He strikes me as something of a traditionalist with his formal/everyday wear, compared to what he wears at Duelist Kingdom or his Battle City jacket throughout the remainder of the series. Thank goodness we never saw Seto wearing a maroon suit like Gozaburo wore!
“I’m too sexy for my shirt” is a reference to the song by Right Said Fred.
I didn’t plan on the tense scene between Mokuba and Seto about the Kaiba family name, but I couldn’t just have Mokuba refer to Mai by her given name without Seto noticing and calling him out on it. The only person who refers to Seto as “Seto-sama” is Isono. Everyone else just calls him “Kaiba” or “Kaiba-kun,” even after learning his backstory. But then again, Seto rarely opens up to people, so the name thing ended up being a pivotal character growth opportunity in this story. It also influences later events in Love and the Art of Schmoozing.
At the time when this story takes place, the age of majority (when Mokuba could have legally changed his name if he wanted to) in Japan is still 20.
In 2015, the Japanese Diet enacted a bill to lower the voting age to 18.
In 2018, they added revisions to encompass other things, like getting credit cards and loans, applying for 10-year passports, and marrying without parental consent, but those changes don’t take effect until 2022.
Additionally, the age for smoking, drinking, and gambling remains at 20 due to “health concerns.”
As viewers, we’re supposed to trust that what we see in episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! is what happened. But the show is obviously focused primarily on Yuugi and his friends, and even when we dip into someone else’s point-of-view or get facts about someone else, that doesn’t mean it’s not distorted somehow, either by time, opinion, or any number of other things. So I’m of the opinion that Seto believing his relatives took their inheritance and just dropped Seto and Mokuba at an orphanage is not quite the whole story. Orphanages in Japan aren’t great, and there’s not a high adoption rate. I imagine that it’s not easy to access a child’s inheritance soon after their parents’ death, and it’s certainly not simple to just dump a child off at an orphanage with no issue. So in the Schmoozeverse, there’s more to that story, and Mokuba got motivated enough to look into it, while Seto has never wavered from his belief of what occurred, even if it happened when he was much younger and very impressionable.
Mokuba saying that Seto never even asked about his friends is a way of saying that Seto never really asks Mokuba about private/personal matters. Mokuba felt that there was never a chance to discuss their estranged family, because they never even talked about lighter subjects (like friends). Without an opening, how do you bring something like that up? This conversation wasn’t one Mokuba planned to have, and didn’t go the way Mokuba hoped, but it needed to happen.
If Atem’s lesson to everyone was to “move on,” then Seto’s lesson is to “choose your own path.” You can have a past life but not be dictated by it; you can win or lose a game, but you choose what to do about it afterward. Mokuba’s lesson to Seto is that it’s one thing to choose your path, but you only have so much time to choose, and you also get to decide whether you walk down that path of life WITH others or WITHOUT them.