1 and 4, because I always like to hear you talk about your favorite characters!
1: what are you currently working on?
Well, I’m currently editing through my BigBang fic. I’m fairly nervous about it, since I’ve gone for a fairly trope-y concept, but I’m trying to play the emotional elements very straight with it, and go as subversive as I can with the tropes--
So we’ll see how well that pays off!
I’m also getting a long-awaited Rishid fic ready for showing. I’m surprised I managed to find my draft after my hard-drive went missing, but luckily it was sitting there, waiting for me on fighter’s block.
Other than that, I’m working on consistent uploads of Aoi Ryuu Ou, and in just over a month, Akhet.
4: describe your favorite character or characters
My favourite Yu-Gi-Oh! characters have changed and shifted a fair bit as I got older, and I figured this is a good time to talk about the faves that I used to have, and now have~!
Age: 8 : Seto Freakin’ Kaiba
I think I wanted to be Seto Kaiba growing up? Rich, flamboyant, and covered in dragon themed clothing...
However, I’ve been rediscovering a lot of my love of him, through the complicated relationship he has with hope. Seto Kaiba is the single, most hopeful character I can think of in the series, and he’s an incredibly unusual rendition of it. He’s sharp, callous with people he dislikes, and remarkably cool with people he does. He cares deeply, but shows finely.
He is an unusual mixture of cool, even icy personality traits, with fiery passion and fierce loyalty.
And then we’ve got Atem, who is prideful, intense, and justified in everything he does. That justified nature of his I find particularly fascinating. Everything he does, he justifies, and I have no doubt of where that came from: growing up, and having to have near-deity levels of justification for what he does.
One can only imagine just how damn anxious Atem is when he is uncertai-- oh wait, that’s right we have a million pictures of Atem’s fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck face during Millennium World.
I adore Atem’s need to justify himself, paralleled against his loneliness, his pride, his loyalty, his affection, his fury-- I adore seeing Atem having to navigate being a human being.
Now, we can sit here all day and quibble about percentages of Zorc, and percentages of TKB, and hell, we can even question is TKB’s backstory is even REAL, since we only ever see it in the final rpg, although everything strongly suggests it is...
Or we can just admit to ourselves that Yami no Bakura as Thief King Bakura, corrupted, possessed, and willingly exploited by the Powers of Darkness is a far more compelling narrative than any of that.
There is something uniquely fascinating in the story of a grief, and loss, transfigured into rage, and anger in the face of-- well a genocide fully allowed by a monarchy with absolute divine right. There is something glorious about a person with the very best of reasons, and very best of justifications, doing something that is objectively and unquestionably wrong.
And then exploring how that someone feels about it? Bakura bullshits himself almost as much as he can bullshit an audience.
Misc: Yami no Malik, Rishid
When Yami no Malik first appeared, he was a pretty WOW moment for me. I was fascinated by him, and upon rewatching the sub, and maybe more important writing a fic that focused strongly on his feeings, I’ve become rather sympathetic to his situation.
I remain convinced that Battle City is him lashing out because of Malik’s fear.
Rishid on the other hand, god, I have never wanted to hug a character so much. There’s his devotion, his loyalty, his pain and jealousy--
The things that can drive a character to first save Malik, then try to murder the child his dying mother charged him to protect... and then in the next moment hold onto Malik and cry. Like-- Rishid is complicated.
I find the concept of Rishid hiding Yami no Malik from Malik over his guilt, and enabling so much-- well shit, fro Malik- for the sake of that guilt and misguided desire to protect fascinating.
