#team ishtar

[yami-no-kea]

Recently I finally had Ishizu getting the maximum level (45) in Duel Links ! Then here is my top 3 characters in the game... Team Ishtar is still the best !!

[ournumberonequeen]

BE SURE TO VOTE DEMOCRAT TOMORROW

Yeah, I’m posting this in the fire emblem tag. This issue is too big to not try and spread the message. The more power we take away from those monsters they call republicans the better. Let’s start fixing this country’s mistakes

[yami-no-kea]

Team Ishtar is here !! \o/

[kintatsujo]

One of the things about that most recent photoset for Team Ishtar is that I'm just

(oh grief this got long I cut it because characterization for both Marik and Papa Ishtar back here and it wanders a lot into my personal issues)

I don't think Marik is at that age, by the time he's ten (twelve in the dub) that he's capable of thinking of his father as a bad man.  Not yet.  Especially since he's never had to deal with his father's bad side as sharply as his brother (and possibly his sister), and here he hasn't even had to deal with the carving.  (Not that he actually blames his father for that right away; he focuses on the situation he's in and the Pharaoh).

Because you're ten, and your parent is basically the major authority in your world, and it's hard to come to grips with the idea that they're just human beings like you are.  It's a scary thought.

One time a few years ago my kid brother was asked if he ever felt like one of us was being favored over the other children and nodded really enthusiastically.  Like, there's no doubt in his mind.

Mom's like "Woah, wait, which kid do you think is the favorite" and he grinned and jabbed a thumb at his chest.

I started to realize my parents were only human around when he was born.  Not because of favorites, but because I was fourteen, thirteen through most of the pregnancy.  I didn't get to have that illusion that parents don't still have lives after they pop the youngest kid (that had been me at the time), or that they somehow know what they're doing; Mom and Dad didn't even tell us through the first trimester because they were afraid there would be a miscarriage.  (And then went ahead and let us worry in retrospect by explaining that's why they hadn't told us yet.)

And, oh yeah, they CLEARLY had no idea what they were doing because he was not an expected baby.  "We thought I'd started menopause!" Mom says, which turned out to be true, but guess what, you're still fertile during the early stages, ha ha, just like you're hyper fertile right after giving birth.

Aaaand illusions about parents shattered, something that STILL hasn't happened with some people my own age who will go unnamed (but good grief, you guys, you're almost thirty.)

(That said don't ever think he wasn't the best "WTF just happened" in my entire life.)

And yet it still took me some years after that to come to grips with my own relationship with my parents, and some of the things they'd said and done to me over the years that were harmful, whether intentionally or not (Dad, "Don't quit your day job" is the wrong thing to say to be supportive, and so is "for once" attached to the end of anything positive.)

So for Marik, that's why he doesn't want to "punish" his father for being an asshole.  He doesn't even necessarily see him as an asshole.  Not yet.

The other thing is I actually have a fairly detailed characterization in my head for Papa Ishtar that I don't tend to share because he's a gross person and I don't want people to think I sympathize with him that much.  But I think he's given up just as much anyone for his duties, and I think he may well have given up some things that were incredibly important to him, and now he doesn't understand why his child can't manage to do the same. 

And that's why if he may come across as slightly more reasonable in Team Ishtar it's because he's got more options open to him, the situation is completely changed as far as he's concerned compared to where it was in canon, and hey, pretty soon here the guy's gonna be getting more Vitamin D that has to be good for you.

[kintatsujo]

...Team Ishtar is turning out LONGER than I expected now too. :p

[kintatsujo]

Hang on, about the team Ishtar AU... Does Yugi wind up getting the Millennium Rod and Yami Marik?

Not necessarily and no, respectively.

The answer to “does he get the Rod” is “not necessarily” because this isn’t necessarily a full role-swap the way a lot of them are.  You’ll have to read and find out about the rest of it.

No to Yami Marik because Yami Marik was born specifically of Marik.  He’s innate to Marik, not to the Items.

(Now that said, because I had a very long stupid debate about this once, just because YM is innate to Marik doesn’t mean that at the end of Yugi and YM’s duel he’s still around somehow.  He’s not.

This series has Kaiba’s mind-crush and the whole thing with Shadi screwing with people’s soul rooms, the Millennium Items are apparently perfectly capable of correcting psychological disorders, or causing them, and judging by the way that final duel looked by that point YM had become a soul of his own at that point, although when it happened is a matter of question.  When YM is defeated, he dies.  Plain and simple.

That doesn’t mean all psychological disorders are “fixable” by magic in the YGO universe.  I tend to think it has to do with how powerful the Items themselves are.)

Whether there’s an equivalent to Yami Marik in this universe?  You’ll have to wait and see.

[kintatsujo]

Papa Ishtar is turning out 500% more adorable than I expected in this AU.

[kintatsujo]

What do you think would have happened if Malik had inherited the Puzzle instead of Yuugi?

Okay okay I’m gonna do a proper big thing of this all AU August style because this intrigues me and I have something HUGE and all over the place for it (and at this point all it needs is for me to draw it)

But I’m laughing because the first image that popped into my head was THIS

LOOK AT HIM.  LOOK AT PAPA ISHTAR’S FACE.  HE IS HORRIFIED.

Tag for this is gonna be #Team Ishtar and there is a good reason for that but I want to draw more before trying to explain.