rhodochrosite | Entries tagged with f: yugioh

the funny thing about jaemin is that he is absolutely not Just Any Guy and yet it feels like every second guy in media reminds me of him. i think this is because he is the perfect inverse of Just Any Guy so he ends up being Every Specific Guy instead. this is not really a post describing jaemin's 5 million 2d clones, this is a power scaling post where i arbitrarily assign some stats i made up so i can discover the most jaemin jaeminclone.

here are the stats i'm assessing on:

Handsome Young Man - visual power
Fansign Boyfriend - charm, charisma, flirtatiousness
Stable Society - maintenance of control in all situations (delusionally or not), dislike of change and/or consequences
You Are Not Coming In - hidden "true" self, persona and authenticity issues
I'm Weird I'm A Weirdo - being a silly funny goofy jokesy guy
The Killer - what it says on the tin
Super Seme - also what it says on the tin
[WILD CARD] - bonus criteria

THE CANDIDATES

in no particular order:

OIKAWA TOORU (HAIKYUU)

HANDSOME = 5: speaks for itself. special shoutout to oikawa's beautiful fluffy boyband hair.
BOYFRIEND = 5: insane charm and charisma are two of oikawa's most powerful weapons, i wouldn't necessarily call him flirty (i really think that's more of a fanon trait) but i think his ability to influence others shines mostly in the arena of leadership and performing his on-court role as setter via bringing the best out of others.
STABLE = 2: due to inferiority complex i think he does try to delusionally cling to the idea of being The Best, particularly through middle school and partly through high school. but the key thing about oikawa is that he understands that true growth means change and upheaval and not always winning but rather focusing on what you do and how to improve after you lose, and he does eventually embrace that and that's why he comes out the other end of his character arc so mature and settled. he likes to direct the flow of the situation so much it's his literal job as a setter, and he's obviously extremely deliberate about social interactions including deploying cutesy nicknames to either assert control over wildcard rivals or demonstrate friendly closeness or both, but he knows how to genuinely handle societal destabilisation and learn from it to get better. so in a way he transcends the need for stable society altogether by ultimately winning even when he loses.
NOT COMING IN = 5: king of carefully constructed persona that draws on elements of his "true" personality and emphasises them depending on what is most needed in the situation so that he's never really lying about who he is but you couldn't say that you really knew him. unless you were--
WEIRDO = 5: nerdy alien stanning spacecase... gets affectionately bullied by his friends esp matsuhana who will never fail to point out how strange and offputting he can be particularly his singlemindedness about volleyball... i think it's important that he does have his Fucking Weirdo moments alongside his polished charm because i believe he actually deliberately punctures his Ultimate Leader image by letting his friends theatrically make fun of him as a form of atmosphere management for his team.
KILLER = 0: while it's true that he has the kind of powerful persona control emblematic of The Killer, he isn't really using that for nefarious purposes. like the thing about oikawa is that even though he occupies an antagonistic narrative position he's really a good guy which sort of disqualifies him from killerism.
1+ = 1: for extremely inexplicable reasons i'm a chasteshipper in haikyuu, my sag moon monkey brain just politely averts its eyes and therefore i really don't have 1/0 opinions. like i guess i conceptually prefer oikawaright but i'm not mad about oikawaleft especially now that i'm in my Leaders Are Always Left era. i don't think he couldn't do it, i think oikawa can do anything. but it's definitely hinaoi to me though, haikyuu definitely abides by the rule of protagleft rivalright in this case TO MEEE. but anyway i mostly avoid thinking about it and call it a day but i wouldn't exactly call oikawa a super seme yk.
BONUS = 4: i feel like oikawa is like, the og jaeminclone who is generally known and accepted throughout the dream/haikyuu overlap community even though after assessing him on my invented criteria he isn't really that much of a jaemin but i will ofc be putting respect on the jaemkawa name with a generous bonus score. also oikawa is my haikyuu 1pick and honestly like top 5 characters of all time to me so i'm adding more points because it's myyyyyyy power scaling post.

TOTAL = 27/40

KUROBA KAITO (DETECTIVE CONAN)

HANDSOME = 5: and his phantom thief outfit slayed too!!! and i like his hair.
BOYFRIEND = 5: charmingly rogueish gentleman thief flirtatiousness meter maxed out, he will sweet-talk anyone. he is a very good performer and a very dashing young man.
STABLE = 2: i don't think kaito is super invested in societal stability, in fact as a magician he is kind of all about rapid change and reactiveness, his score here is just because if you think about it he always wins like he always gets away with his heists even when he "loses" to shinichi so he's having a pretty stable society without even trying.
NOT COMING IN = 3: secret identity involves, well, secrecy, and he literally has shapeshifter powers so he's very good at wearing other people's identities as persona. but again i don't think he's super invested in keeping people out due to hatred of showing vulnerability in the way that jaemin is. kaito is mostly performing himself, and that self is a performer, so he's really just doing it for fun.
WEIRDO = 5: his civilian identity is a class clown troublemaker and he's a super theatrical performer so definitely very weird on purpose.
KILLER = 0: like oikawa, kaito's only real killeristic trait is that he's very good at persona management, but kaito notably Does Not Kill so i feel like on principle he should have a 0 score here, he's been framed for murder enough times in canon.
1+ = 2: i personally don't have any bl ships where kaito is left (since i believe girls are always right i guess he's left for aoko and i suppose akako is actually the jaemin to kaito's mark) but i reckon he could do it.
BONUS = 5: jaemin kid is literally canon after all THANK YOU 2019 SMTOWN HALLOWEEN YOU'RE EVERYTHING.

TOTAL = 27/40

HAKUBA SAGURU (DETECTIVE CONAN)

HANDSOME = 5: look i'm just gonna be rating everyone 5/5 on visuals i don't think you can be a jaeminclone without being handsome in-universe.
BOYFRIEND = 5: he's got the british gentleman polite society manners thing going on.
STABLE = 3: i don't think he's really bothered about it but he's not really experiencing much societal destabilisation anyway, like he's on good terms with his rival at home kaito and they're really just tom and jerry style playacting their showdowns, and if anything he's the guy destabilising other people's societies for jokes (the people being heiji, though it really doesn't take that much to set heiji off LOL).
NOT COMING IN = 2: again i don't think he's really that interested in hiding things about himself, he presumably has healthy detective caution due to the nature of his job but he literally introduces himself via character profile including birthday and blood type.
WEIRDO = 3: i think being british automatically gives him weirdo points but also the sherlock cosplay and the pet hawk really complete the eccentricity picture. but i think this is more in a sincere way than purposeful image break so he's like unselfconsciously a weirdo.
KILLER = 3: the points are for being british and being voiced by mamo and having killeristic energy. i know he's a detective so he's supposed to be the anti-killer but like... he has the vibe. like if he weren't a detective he would be such a slayful serial killer.
1+ = 4: for bl shipping i think he's left with kaito and right with heiji but i do think he is generally a 1. he is british after all.
BONUS = 1: i can't really think of anything extra jaeminesque about hakuba but i think it's funny that both halves of the magic kaito rivalry are guys who are jaemin... jaemin truly does contain multitudes.

TOTAL = 25/40

YOO JUNG (CHEESE IN THE TRAP)

HANDSOME = 5: visually one of my favourite love interests everrrr literally ideal shoujo male lead looks.
BOYFRIEND = 5: cultivates aura of polite and generous charm so that people will like him and trust him and he will be able to leverage this to use them to carry out his own ends whenever he needs to enact some revenge plan without getting his own hands dirty.
STABLE = 5: jung is extremelyyyyyy concerned with maintaining a stable society with himself in the dominant position and hates change so much he will try to eliminate any threats to the status quo, he will retaliate 3x as hard in response to all perceived slights (and experience no guilt if he misjudged and harmed an innocent). cheese in the trap is basically a story about all the people who have to die for standing in jung and seol's way (killed on purpose by jung or semi-accidentally by seol) which is why it is the romance of all time <3
NOT COMING IN = 5: since jung is a capricorn sociopath who fundamentally does not understand human emotion, everything about his interaction with the world is constructed for maximum manipulativeness and control and shielding all potential vulnerabilities, absolutely nobody is coming in. even with seol one of the major problems they face is that jung wants to give seol what she wants, which he believes he can achieve by telling her the things he thinks she wants to hear, but seol is too genre-savvy/paranoid to believe him and really seol just wants him to be sincere with her. cried so violently it made me feel ill over the climax where jung finally demonstrates not just Real Human Boyness but genuine vulnerability in front of seol like what the fuck..... love is real.
WEIRDO = 1: i think this is basically the only category jung doesn't match up well with jaemin in because jung is very very attached to his perfect image. ofc he has his cute rich boy struggling to interface with society moments like pretending to know what a voucher is and failing at wrapping convenience store onigiri but those are private and more lowkey, he isn't actively presenting a silly goofy image even though he is a freak. but he does hide the freakness pretty well, he's never wanted to break image on purpose.
KILLER = 5: see my original killer post but jung is literally the sadistic manipulative remorseless sociopath in question. he is trying to be seol's pet sociopath except seol is unhappy about jung outsourcing his moral compass to her, this is truly one of my favourite worldview clashes in couples. not that that is related but i need everyone to know that jungseol is seriously perfect het of ever to me definitely top 5 hets of all time i love them so much.
1+ = 5: obviously i'm 左右相手固定 for jungseol so it doesn't matter but i think jung is objectively a 1 as well!!
BONUS = 5: jung is one of my favourite jaemclones i kind of want to give him more than 5/5 bonus points i truly do think he is the perfect jaemin fictional equivalent. rt myself:
- rich
- generous
- possessive over favourite people
- will sulk if favourite people display favouritism for people who arent him
- does not enjoy change
- literally the killer
- human cosplay sometimes slips up
- sooooo handsome
- watch guy
- mamas boy, daddy issues
- snake gijinka
- attached to material objects
- only likes the people he likes
- seriously so handsome beautiful perfect face did i mention handsome

TOTAL = 36/40

CHAR AZNABLE (GUNDAM)

HANDSOME = 5: char even underwent a handsomeness level up (to me) during his most Going Through It and deprived of presence of favourite people era like i really do think char's counterattack~=make a wish. now jaemin was not experiencing depression to the point of dropping an asteroid on the earth but if he had giant space war machine robot tech available to him who's to say that he wouldn't have...
BOYFRIEND = 4: so charismatic even his old enemies were trying to make him president of the world for some reason even though this is NOT cute, chars only take official leadership positions when they are SEVERELY distressed etc. i don't think he's necessarily actively a schmoozer or even enjoys it, it's just that he seems to have clocked that this is a good way to get other people to do what he wants, especially with girls. he's literally like sure peggle i'll kiss you if you go onto the battlefield for me. he does use fansign boyfriendism as a manipulation tactic, which lalah clocked but was willing to play her half of the couple cosplay for anyway because she loved char so much it was enough for her, and which i think nanai also clocked but is having to actively cognitively restructure herself out of clocking because she doesn't really want to confront it.
STABLE = 3: i'm gonna be honest i'm so invested in one-sidedly stabilising char's society that it does not matter to me that char actually does not really seem to want a stable society himself and kinda implodes it on purposeish. but arguably having such a world shaking impact on the legacy of gundam including having multiple archetypes of gundam characters all based on him is the realest stable society of all. he also loves to dodge and ignore consequences so that counts.
NOT COMING IN = 5: he is also a guy operating under several false identities, but even apart from that char's motives are not only incomprehensible to me but i legitimately think they are also incomprehensible to himself and he is just convincing himself that he has some form of ideology. he does not, he just says he does. char is sort of empty as fuck not even himself is coming in. even when he's trying to be his original identity casval rem deikun he doesn't know who that is or what that person believes in and he's just performing neo zeon cult leader while being totally miserable about it. i think it's notable that he is very uncomfortable playing the role of figurehead leader and describes himself multiple times as feeling like a clown even though he executes it flawlessly, like char doesn't really know who he is but at least he knows who he doesn't want to be but that doesn't help him very much.
WEIRDO = 4: not to be blatantly not following my own criteria but char is so funny to me it doesn't even matter that he isn't doing it on purpose because genuinely who could say what char intends or doesn't intend. like it's just so funny when he just straight up lies like when he said he'd never betrayed anyone in his life, i can't not give him a good score on the jokes axis. Ha Ha axis get it--
KILLER = 5: he did literally attempt genocide, to say nothing of the countless murders and war crimes he committed as a career soldier who finds fulfilment and joy in killing people, and origin straight up paints him as a sociopath initially reined in by sayla but then it got complicated.
1+ = 5: I DON'T CARE. DO NOT ARGUE WITH ME ON THIS ONE, I AM NOT TAKING CRITICISM AT THIS TIME.
BONUS = 5: rt myself: "yes i do think of char as a jaemin clone even though char was allegedly created 21 years before jaemin but as if it's my fault they have so many specific psychological problems in common eg: 1 million control issues, being male manipulators, never saying what they mean or committing to a stance so they can never be destabilised (in theory), being very good at clocking other people's desires and fulfilling these desires even if they don't understand where those desires come from, speaking vaguely so the people they're speaking to can project whatever they want onto it, having very small inner circles, only liking the people they already like, constantly trying to reconstruct the past and/or maintain the status quo, loving to lecture others, hating it when actions have consequences, enjoying power and attention but not the responsibility that comes with, having extremely constructed public-facing personas with no clear boundary between those and their internal selves........... etc." also they both have beloved kiiinda morality chain mentees. also there is the terror i will not name (moriguchi_hiroko_beyond_the_time.mp3). also i think it's really funny that char is also mostly a nevernude to the point of being famous for wearing a mask but when he shows skin it's by having his arms out, Just Like J

TOTAL = 36/40

GRAHAM AKER (GUNDAM 00)

HANDSOME = 5: the most handsome of all the handsome young men in gundam TO MEEEEE.
BOYFRIEND = 3: i think he's kinda more sanada-esque maybe, like he is less concerned with likeability and more concerned with honesty and honour which is what draws people to him over any kind of constructed or deliberate charm but he does also have a random talkative sentimental streak. i personally find that very charming though and this is my post so i'm being generous with the fansign boyfriend points.
STABLE = 3: i don't think he's bothered about trying to maintain societal stability, in fact he enjoys actively facing challenges and handling situations and testing his abilities. but he gets points for managing to be undestabilisable even in the face of a rival who doesn't rival him back, and also for not dying when killed multiple times.
NOT COMING IN = 1: despite the fake identity which he didn't even really bother with i think graham is kind of an open book but i'm giving him a just-in-case point because i was so entranced by his face every time he was onscreen that i don't actually remember much about him.
WEIRDO = 4: As A Sentimental Virgo... also his love interest is literally a gundam.
KILLER = 1: he's handsome enough to be a killer and he certainly has literally killed people as a career soldier but other than that i don't really think he fits the archetype.
1+ = 5: i think this is objective.
BONUS = 5: he literally ends up with jaemin's boom era blond hair with blue bangs after his resurrection as metal alien symbiote!!!

TOTAL = 27/40

MASHIMA TAICHI (CHIHAYAFURU)

HANDSOME = 5: noted popular handsome young man in-universe!!
BOYFRIEND = 4: polite and charming student president type, not actively magnetic or flirty i think. but i could be wrong as it's been a while since i read...
STABLE = 4: see now i kind of feel bad for skewing the scale with all the other insane supernaturally delusional society stability enthusiasts discussed in this post because i really do think taichi is quite invested in this due to his inferiority complex vs his golden boy image, but not quite to like, genocidal proportions.
NOT COMING IN = 4: the image manager in question whose inferiority complex causes him to construct a perfect outward facing persona to cover up his insecurities. i do think the focus for taichi is slightly different than for jaemin because i feel like jaemin is not necessarily image managing and keeping people out due to insecurity but more because he just doesn't like being perceived in ways he can't dictate. like it's not that jaemin fears rejection due to being not good enough if he lets people see who he really is, he just has severe control issues and wants everyone to exist in relation to him on his terms only. sorry tails if this sounds incomprehensible to the viewer, i may be reflexively stabilising jaemin's society here.
WEIRDO = 1: i don't think he's estranged enough from normal society like jung or atobe to be weird nor do i think he cultivates weirdness on purpose, i think he's just like normal guy levels of weirdness. or like, normal guy invested in niche sport levels... like after correcting for the baseline of being a karuta player.
KILLER = 1: point for image management and being rich and he's voiced by mamo so that's basically killerism in law.
1+ = 2: ummmmmm idk i don't even really ship him with anyone, like he's left by default with girls and he is probably capable of lefting with guys i just haven't thought about it. my l/r criteria are currently in an emergency upheaval state so i can't even try to objectively look at his character to determine my stance. like it's true that i think repression and inferiority complex are 0 traits but do i really? who could say ):
BONUS = 4: taichi is more on the oikawa end of the jaeminclone spectrum but he has really long eyelashes and every time i see jaemin's eyelashes i'm reminded of this one quote from transversely's seminal work a nice girl, slightly dilettanteish: "He’s actually sheltered, you know, his eyelashes, they’re like those plants that grow in the dark in the Amazon I think." also their second male lead energy lol

TOTAL = 25/40

AI (YUGIOH VRAINS)

HANDSOME = 5: when he finally gets a human form during his ai's counterattack maw equivalent era in s3 it is a very handsome human form.
BOYFRIEND = 2: it is admittedly harder for him to be charming and flirty when he spends the majority of the series as a little usb gijinka and then when he gets his cyborg android body he's suicidally/omnicidally depressed under the veneer of cheerful arrogance but i guess he's overall usually quite social and chatty and playful and likeable.
STABLE = 5: wrote a whole post about this without realising i was talking about societal stability but he is sooooo bad at handling change or any circumstances out of his control, like genocidally bad at handling things. he has the jaemin trait of wanting everything to go his way all the time and not knowing what to do when it doesn't. he also doesn't die when killed 🙏
NOT COMING IN = 3: i think ai is good at seeming pretty straightforward! and most of the time he really is sincere and feels no need to obscure parts of himself. but i think he could if he wanted to, like he did keep the backup copy of himself stored in roboppy a secret from everyone and he is ofc massively lying through s3, so i would say he is pretty good at lying and concealing and faking.
WEIRDO = 5: he is so annoying <3 he's jokes sidekick mascot mostly played for laughs (sentences typed moments before disaster) and it's really cute and funny contrasted with coolly stoic and laconic yusaku.
KILLER = 5: i actually didn't even clock this because ai is comic relief for most of the show before the grief and ptsd catches up to him and then i was too busy being tails_gets_trolled.png to do any dot connecting but ai is a textbook pet sociopath who would (and does) sacrifice the world to save one person. like s3 is literally him attempting to commit genocide to save the person he loves most so i think he definitely qualifies.
1+ = 5: i also think this is objective!! ai and takeru tied for leftest left in vrains imo.
BONUS = 5: has an eldritch tentacle monster form (this is a jaemin trait to me), cyborg android ai boyfriend who is a demon masquerading as a housecat, enjoys clocking out and engaging in a bit of slackerism, sometimes refers to himself in cutesy third-person diminutive form, selfishly selfless by sacrificing his life to save yusaku's but forcing yusaku to be the one to kill him because he wanted to be with yusaku until the end, na "i am love" jaemin == "it's ai as in to love people." i think ai is most like current meta jaemin, who is mostly embracing his weirdness and jokesiness, but then you remember the terror. but in the end... it was LOVE all along.

TOTAL = 35/40

ATOBE KEIGO (TENIPURI)

HANDSOME = 5: visual king, i'm grateful every day for nats ovas art level up that finally did depict him as handsome as i believe he is supposed to be and also for his tenirabi cards where he always looks slayeristic.
BOYFRIEND = 5: king of charismatic leadership that inspires undying loyalty even from the guys who hate his ass king of slaying yume rankings despite coming from a franchise 20+ years old king of having an in-universe fanclub king of generous fanservice and also generosity in general.
STABLE = 5: KING OF HANDLING SITUATIONS king of never being destabilised king of winning even when he loses and in fact being a really gracious loser and super cool about it king of installing a perfect schoolwide monarchy and maintaining iron but fair and meritocratic control over all things. honestly king of actually for real having a stable society that doesn't even need cognitive restructuring to stabilise, jaemin kind of wishes ngl.
NOT COMING IN = 5: king of image management, king of having a rock solid and undentable self image built on legitimate hard work and skill that is then projected outwards so powerfully it leaves no gaps in the armour. like i feel like atobe maxes out this criteria so hard by fully totally completely inhabiting his invincible king persona that it's really genuinely him and this criteria is not even applicable.
WEIRDO = 4: i don't think he's doing it as purposeful image management so i reluctantly have to dock one point but atobe is so like crazily exaggerated in every single character trait that it qualifies for weirdness by sheer force of personality. king of being fucking insane in such a self-assured way you just believe him and buy wholeheartedly into it. literally everyone is a freak in tennis but atobe is especially an unrepentant freak (extremely positive trait).
KILLER = 5: see also my original killers post king ofドS tendencies and torturing his opponents/love interests.
1+ = 5: objective!!!!!!!!!!! allegedly leftest left in tenipuri though this result came about from much bloodshed and misery but i think i agree. but that doesn't matter anyway because obviously he's a super1 no matter what. KING OF LEFTING.
BONUS = 5: ATOBE THEE GENEROUS i truly believe that atobe is literally jaemin at his best when he's fully clocked in and turning the effortfulness dial up to max. also jaemin is atobe in dreampuri so obviously i think atobe is really guy who is jaemin. i know this has been an even more gripless entry than the others but once again: IT'S MYYYY POST and i think the fact that i'm intensely delusional about atobe and jaemin in the exact same way is actually more evidence in support of jaemtobe.

TOTAL = 39/40

AND THE TOTALLY NOT RIGGED WINNER IS...

ATOBE KEIGO!!!! congratulations to the king of being jaemin in not real life!!!!!

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

ECHIZEN RYOGA (TENIPURI) - because i said so. for personal reasons. and also because i think the first time i ever used the phrase "handsome young man" was about ryoga. and also he's the killer. also i have personal reasons. also the way ryoga rapper girlfriendises himself around byodoin gives me intense flashbacks to how jaemin does like domesticated cat cosplay around mark. i think ryoga has the jaemin trait of liking the freedom to do whatever he wants but not wanting the responsibility that tends to be tied to that kind of power. anyway just trust me bro. i probably should have included him in the main list but i didn't want to for personal reasons as well and now i have to commit to my decision.

INUI SADAHARU (TENIPURI) - they are both nevernudes and super1s who are extremely fucking weird and ever since ciel said that jaemin would definitely wear long trackpants all the time even in summer matches which would piss everyone off just like inui i have been periodically cracking up at the mental image, when jaemin enters his making health juices era then we will realise...

YUKIMURA SEIICHI (TENIPURI) - i realised the other day that yukimura's 2pick is literally his dog (pronounced REAL TRUE LOVE ENDGAME SOULMATE) and his mini-me mentee and i know he is 2pickshipping them and crafting beautiful handmade jokes wedding invitations with pressed flowers from his own garden cordially inviting friends and rivals to the union of 💖Sanada Genichiro & Kirihara Akaya💖. but other than this very funny coincidence i don't think he has anything in common with jaemin (other than being 1-aligned but it's complicated to me i don't want to get into it rn) and i honestly feel like i need to apologise to yukimura for mentioning him in this list at all.

SENGOKU KIYOSUMI (TENIPURI) - yes i do think half the tenipuri cast is Whoops All Jaemins but ummm yeah guy who is handsome and 1+ and actually deeply unhinged and undestabilisable under the goofy charming veneer no problem.

AKAI SHUICHI (DETECTIVE CONAN) - because they are both ultra1 perfect bl tops to me and the left half of my fandom otps. they don't really have anything else in common because the narrative legitimately does bend over backwards to make sure akai always wins and always comes out on top (lol) and never dies even when he is killed and always has a stable society... akai is char wish fulfilment and therefore jaemin wish fulfilment in law.

HARUNA MOTOKI (OOFURI) - so handsome a rival team's coach brought his visuals up while talking about his various baseball powers and stats... i think he's kind of a cross between oikawa and kirihara so he's just a bit too far removed from the oikawa end of the jaeminclone archetype spectrum to really count.

TOM (TOM AND JERRY) - for some reason tom tomandjerry is one of the guys whose societies i am deeply intensely invested in stabilising for them, alongside fellow luminaries such as char and mark and jaemin himself, and i think he is a 1, also not taking criticism at this time.

thank you for reading!! i hope this post is taken in the loving and joking spirit in which it is intended, feel free to let me know if there are any other guys who are jaemin i'm unaware of <3

congratulations to arc v for winning the #1 toxic ex i am most unable to break up with award for the 6th year in a row. as i have my statutory interpretation final due in a couple days i figured it was about time i followed through on all my rageful/despairing/miserable tweets over the past few years about how i could have done arc v better so i am going to explain my vision of how arc v's plot SHOULD have gone, which is objectively the correct way as i guarantee i have spent longer thinking about arc v than the arc v writing team. i am operating off my 5 year old fury and bewilderment skewed memory of s2/s3 so i can't say for sure that i remembered everything in the original plot accurately but it was bad so i don't think it deserves accuracy anyway.

we are going to keep s1 because s1 slayed, and start diverging from canon from s2 onwards:

SEASON 2

SYNCHRO DIMENSION

i'm okay with most of the events that happened in synchro, but i'd focus more on really questioning and digging into yuya's whole duel philosophy because duelling for entertainment takes on such a dark aspect in the friendship cup since the audience is indeed very entertained by spectacularly violent duels, and their complacency with the system can't be shifted with the Duels4Smiles philosophy yuya inherited from yuto alone. because they are smiling! they love brutality! idk/c how exactly this would be resolved but i want to see yuya grapple with how to genuinely reach the synchro residents and make them understand that their society is deeply fucked up and needs to change, while trying to stay true to his belief that duelling should be a instrument for giving others joy. entrenched systems of material inequality can't be fixed with jokes and emotional upliftment (and 5ds literally did manage to tackle this exact topic even via card games so there's no reason why arc v can't address it properly), i want yuya to realise that ideals are not enough to translate into concrete action and that yuto was literally a rebel soldier and the smiles thing was contextual and kinda metaphorical and not like.... Literally the only solution to every problem ever.

not to be a 5ds stan but i'd also touch on jack and crow's ex-friends history because it literally seemed like they didn't know each other in arc v verse and i feel like if their backstory from 5ds where jack seems to be a class traitor but actually isn't was preserved then their presence would be so much more impactful. i think it's fun that arc v jack is settled and on the other side of his character development to 5ds jack so he genuinely can function in a mentor capacity to yuya, so that can stay. shinji is nothing to me, we can get rid of him. or i guess we kinda need him to be the advocate for violence who kickstarts the commons uprising but i feel like crow could have done that in a better and cooler way. sergey was kinda freaky to me though i appreciated the earthbound immortals callbacks even though it was just the aesthetics of nostalgia without any of the substance that made 5ds good, so maybe that duel should have been jack v crow and that's how their arc v universe backstory could be revealed... i do think it's thematically appropriate as well other than the fanservice since it's really relevant to the greater class tensions brewing in synchro. umm also i want <impossible world theory> to be canon but it doesn't have to be directly onscreen in the text but just know that it's real and happened for real To Me.

dennis traitor reveal was perfect, no changes necessary. sora's guilt over betraying yuzu and yuya building and building until he sort-of-not-really betrays academia to rescue yuzu was also perfect, again no changes necessary. jack/reiji/reira diplomatic royalty dinner with free mentorship was very funny and can stay. reiji_slay_fancam.mp4 trapping roget in the infinite loop was pretty good iirc and i love seeing less common duel mechanics get highlighted, so that can stay too. unsure how i feel about yugo v serena, on one hand i am so so glad that my girl reached duel tenimuho, but on the other hand WHY DID SHE HAVE TO LOSE TO YUGO. actually i think i'd change that duel to yuzu v serena because i wouldn't be mad about yuzu beating serena, in fact i would be heart touched as fuckkk and also serenadeshipping reuniting in the duel arena as reluctant rivals would be very interesting to see and i truly believe that yuzu is the person who should have awoken duel tenimuho in serena.

however, serena getting captured after being paralysed by nerve gas was literally such a stupid way to disable her like it was legit infuriating watching her just like lying there while reira tried to fight off academia soldiers to protect her... which i admittedly was very heart touched by like aww inlaws but like. extremely insulting of the show to not even give serena a chance to defend herself!!! i think she should have been duelling the academia soldiers 1 v however many and doing a pretty good job since she is literally an epic prodigy duellist but like one of the academia guys cheats somehow or sneaks up on her and knocks her out, which would also be thematically effective bc serena is very much an Honour And Fairness guy and doesn't necessarily expect dirty play from others. THEN reira could step in to try and stop them from taking serena but is sadly also unsuccessful.

so i think synchro arc should conclude in more or less the same way as canon: synchro in chaos from the rebellion (uhhh i think jack and crow can handle it though. later. fuckass high council promising socialism and equality can still happen so long as it's pretty obvious that's a lie to save their skins and more work and policy building needs to be done but again: i think jack and crow can handle it), serena recaptured by academia, yuzu in fusion, lancers minus serena in xyz.

FUSION DIMENSION

the key thing i want to change is giving ruri and rin actual personalities and character arcs, so i'd give them an entire subplot during s2 intercut with the synchro subplot. the mind control via parasite was extremely lazy so i want to see them being like forcibly integrated into academia and like, manually brainwashed and gaslit into genuine academia believers. now that i've thought about it for several years i think that i don't actually hate the parasite mind control, i just hate the way it was executed in canon, so the disgusting parasite insect thing can still be implanted in them both as a dormant backup plan. but i want ruri and rin to be won over by the academia ideology for real!! ofc i do think that it's going to be much harder to convince ruri than rin, because ruri was an active enemy rebel soldier who watched academia decimate her homeland whereas rin doesn't even know what academia is since they haven't openly started invading synchro yet, so maybe a liiiiitle bit of mindhacking to suppress some of ruri's memories and make her a blanker slate is in order. shamelessly pulling from hypmic nemu here but i also want ruri to be kinda getting swayed for real to academia ideals underneath the brainwashing/memory erasure.

i would really love rinruri classmates ;__; but i think it's unlikely that would be allowed until they were both totally convinced of the righteousness of academia's mission. BUT i do really love the idea of them having adjacent rooms in their exile tower (i think they might have been jailed in separate towers in canon but i don't care) and whispering to each other through a little gap in the wall and the sound of each other's voices being the only anchor keeping them sane in the first few precanon months of captivity before they start getting the whole academia indoctrination package. i think this would make them much more effective villains and give their s3 duels so much more emotional weight, especially bc they would actually exist as characters in their own right and not just as the objects of male characters' desires.

in terms of inventing personalities for rin and ruri, the 1.5 canonical glimpses of precanon rin mostly make her seem like even more violent yuzu, so i think she should be the loudest and bossiest and most straightforward bracelet girl. maybe also the most loyalty>ideals one, i think she really truly prioritises the people she loves above all and occupies the opposite end of the spectrum to serena's heartfelt adherence to ideals and systems. rin is a prodigy mechanic, which makes her popular in academia bc she's so good at tuning up duel disks. probably there's less stigma against synchro than xyz so she has it easier as well. we mostly see ruri in canon from shun's pov where she is [char vc] gentle which is imo obviously biased as fuck, nobody should ever trust shun as a narrator, so i think ruri should be like sayla if sayla were lacus. a kind and empathetic girl with a steel spine and unreal amounts of bravery to like a frankly stupid extent. basically in error/inheritance ruri is canon to me. i literally have such a distinct vision of ruri in my mind i can't really explain it but just understand she is brave bird maiden of the world. TO ME.

SEASON 3

XYZ DIMENSION

first of all, zexal deserves its second cameo!! i suppose shark would be the obvious contender as kaito's counterpoint to mirror jack and crow being the 5ds cameo characters, but it would also be funny/interesting if the other zexal legacy character was like, iv or rio or someone. shark/iv/rio/whoever staying affiliated with the resistance network while kaito is doing his batman vigilante thing would slay, i do think that would be a good thematic callback to zexal as well esp if there's some indication that kaito left the resistance or refused to join because haruto is missing. that's technically more cameos than allowed but zexal is so good though.

i also think being back in heartland should anchor yuto enough to have more of a presence again ala astral or atem. even if he isn't a corporeal spirit that others can see, he should be able to at least take over yuya's body and interact with other characters properly T___T i want shun and yuto to be able to kind of not really reunite in the ruins of their hometown, even though it's without ruri and without yuto's physical body, but it gives them a little bit of peace and closure after the anguish of yuto's death in s1 where shun was prevented from intervening by reiji.

the tyler sisters' three duels and edo v yuya were both extremely badly paced and shouldn't have resulted in fanatical academia commanders switching allegiances at the drop of a hat. it literally didn't matter to the plot whether the tylers changed sides or not, so i think they should have stayed loyal to academia but maybe felt like benevolent enough to let yuya shun et al go, in a cat watching a broken winged bird struggle kind of way. unfortunately edo did need to be swayed to the side of the lancers so i think there needed to be more emphasis on his pre-existing internal turmoil where his heart believes in entertainment duelling but he's been conditioned since childhood into loyalty to academia, so that the duel with yuya is more explicitly his last straw. also i don't remember the specifics but i do remember being really mad about the DuelsWithSmiles philosophy reverting back to its pre-maiami championships developments simplistic nature so we gotta keep the You Can't Save Everyone With Ideals Alone level up from synchro.

i kinda hate yusho so we can just cut all his bits, i really don't care, what did this man do successfully. quickly. dennis's parts once again outsold everything else so i think we can keep his scenes intact, absolutely loved the culmination of his internal guilt but not really arc once he can no longer run any further being the decision to help out the lancers one last time and then kill himself so he doesn't have to commit to choosing between academia or the lancers. really sad but really fitting for dennis i think.

overall i feel like xyz arc was super shortchanged and there was no reason to drag out synchro arc to an entire season just to cram xyz into a handful of eps, so i would be cutting down synchro to give xyz more screentime. i would show more of the daily resistance operations in the same way we got to see daily life with the commons in synchro esp bc i'm really curious about how the resistance is even running like are the adults all dead? there should also be more pre-invasion flashbacks to ground allen and sayaka in the xyz ensemble since they really just come off as random guys who are also there, like sayaka blaming herself for ruri's capture is such an interesting dynamic angle that should have been fleshed out more!! like how close were sayaka and ruri? how does shun feel about this? i also want to see more of ruined heartland city, i think shun should take the lancers to a resistance hideout that he reveals was his old classroom or something. like really drive in the horror and loss.

FUSION DIMENSION

i love that asuka is running a mini shelter for academia escapees within fusion and i loveeeee asuka saving yuzu so that part can stay. i don't love parasite mindhacked serena pretending to reunite with yuzu and then surprise capturing her due to evil brainwashing, i think it's maybe acceptable for serena to be parasite brainwashed due to lack of time to properly recondition her into an academia believer but i'm also deeply annoyed by the bracelet girls getting captured by everyone and their dog like the damsel in distress thing is exceedingly boring. and the damage to serena's reputation due to perceived betrayal kinda landmines me crazily. but sora arriving with reiji and reira to save the day and reconcile with yuya even though they were too late to save yuzu was really good T__T

i think either we keep in the serena trap so sora can finally conclude his heel face turn and confirm his place on the lancer side, or academia uses serena as a hostage to force yuzu to give herself up. yeah tbh this would be worth losing the official sora loyalty switch, which can still be finalised once our heroes reach academia, because it reinforces yuzu's heroine of the world nobility and courage and willingness to sacrifice herself for serena and TRUE CLONES LOVE and gives yuzu back some agency instead of constantly being tossed around from captor to captor and reminds us all that yuzu is the real protagonist of this show. in fact the mind control aspect can still be kept in but in a less landminey way, if the academia guy in charge of this capture mission explains that serena is being mindhacked and basically threatens to force serena to kill herself unless yuzu goes with them.

YUGO v RIN + SHUN v RURI

now that we've done the appropriate setup for turning rin and ruri into real academia soldiers we can have some epic and emotionally meaningful duels against their loved ones!! no real thoughts about yugo v rin except that rin being the most genuinely convinced of academia's ideals and the most tenacious one should lead to extremely heated ideological debate against yugo. rin never saw or knew what academia did to xyz or even to synchro, so i do want to see how she responds to yugo's equally impassioned arguments about academia being war criminals who are also kinda the guys responsible for the crazy class divides in synchro and therefore all of rin and yugo's social problems growing up as commons kids, and whether her new conditioning can hold up against that or if rin will double down and not listen to yugo at all. which i think she will because i think that's kinda what rin is like. rin can win this duel as per original canon as well but she doesn't kill yugo because she does still love yugo and believes he can be brought over to academia's side as well.

kaito v ruri kind of a weird af choice for Ruri Evil Reveal duel but sure peggle. like i don't really know why shun wasn't there from the start and kaito was filling in for shun for a bit, though Me And My Rival At Home's Little Sister is a pretty funny dynamic conceptually. anyway probably the most important or at least top3 most important changes to me personally is KUROSAKIS DUEL... again i'm cribbing from what i've osmosed of aohitsugis showdown but i literally just want that for shun and ruri. like partly mindhacked partly Real Academia Believer ruri facing off against shun who doesn't want to hurt ruri / continues to underestimate ruri but there's no other way to get through to her and it's very angsty Will Love Be Enough? and ruri willingly summons independent nightingale even though it's a fusion monster and she swore never to use the enemy's summoning techniques and this is what drives home to shun that ruri is not the delicate violence-averse little sister he remembers and maybe never was. my god i just got so mad and pressed again thinking about how the message of original canon shun v ruri is that ruri wanting to be "independent" is a sign of deep evil and wrongness and only the ruri who unquestioningly obeys her brother is good and the real ruri.

obviously shun would be like furious and disbelieving and How Dare You Betray Our Fallen Comrades but he is 1) so bad at logical argument because he's way too emotive and angry to engage 2) operating under serious delusional misunderstandings about ruri and her personality like shun is literally under char levels of assumption and misconception, so i really don't think he can change ruri's mind intellectually even without her mindhacking. i think the key to getting ruri on board with academia is for the professor to convince her that everyone who was killed will be brought back to life once the dimensions are reintegrated. that's the kind of hope ruri would cling to and i think that would help her understand academia's vision, because the human cost of the war would not longer really be a cost if it's only temporary. so that's ruri's stance, which has (to her) more solid ideological and practical basis so it's harder to shake off the mindhacking. so they have no choice but to battle it out anguishedly.

instead of the scene where the suppressed Real Ruri inside Parasite Ruri stops her from countering shun's killing blow and allows shun to win i think ruri does need to win this duel. even in canon ruri has been a prodigy duellist who can beat shun since she was a literal toddler and i think winning is necessary to force shun to come to terms with ruri's strength and personhood separate from his love for her. BUT i do still want there to be a scene where shun breaks through the mindhacking with some combination of dealing heavy damage and genuine I Know You're In There Somewhere desperation and ruri has a disoriented Wait Why Am I Fighting My Brother? hesitation moment and love is almosttttt enough but the parasite kicks in again and ruri still wins the duel. ruri then lets shun go as well, i don't think she believes he can be convinced to join academia in the way rin believes yugo can but she does love him too much to kill him.

i really like the concept of ruri/serena v yuya(yuto)/shun tag duel so that can stay, world's most depressing doubles match fr. serena would have to be fully mind controlled ofc and i would like to see ruri acting as control tower and serena acting as weapon. i think yuto needs to have control of the body for this one the whole way through though, like yuya can just take a break, i honestly don't care about the zarc darkness resonance thing. i think this duel needs to be interrupted before anyone wins... maybe by reiji so my ship can be in the same frame? or more realistically by yuri to collect the bracelet girls so the ray reintegration process can begin. i did enjoy reiji's male hysteria daddy issues moment when he chooses to side with yuya over leo so that can stay, i always like to see yugioh protag and yugioh rival working together.

ZARC + RAY + FINALE DUEL

i guess yuya can still lose control despite his and reiji's best efforts to hold zarc back and end up absorbing his counterparts and reawakening zarc, but everyone lining up in dimension order to duel zarc was so stupid so we can just get rid of that, or at the very least condense it, i am aware this is an extended card game advertisement and they do need to be showing the new cards they want to sell. i mostly think it was so sickening that they just had the bracelet girls helplessly trapped in the arc v reactor thing just spectating while everyone fights to save them.

in the same way that the presence of zarc inside yuya is so evil it literally disintegrates the parasite i think that the growing presence of ray inside the bracelet girls should also be powerful enough to disintegrate the parasites so they can all get unbrainwashed on their own. no time to sort out ideology because they need to deal with zarc first, so while all the guys are getting thrashed by zarc the bracelet girls are having a newtype clone empathy link moment where they all come to understand that the only way to stop zarc from destroying the worlds is by relinquishing their individual identities and fusing back together. and this should be treated as a really sad and horrible thing because they ARE different girls and none of them are ray but they are willing to sacrifice themselves to save everyone. so instead of forcible reintegration they do it on purpose, knowing exactly what they're giving up, but facing the prospect of nonexistence calmly and with hope. surely it is a privilege to approach the end etc.

i am not super sure what to do about reira, i kiinda like reira v reiji in principle and think that duel has a lot of delicious angsty brocon potential but the stakes are too impersonal and don't really make sense. like if reira is hearing ray's spirit and believing that fusing the bracelet girls is the only way to stop zarc and explains all this to reiji, canon doesn't really give a reason as to why reiji wouldn't make the For The Greater Good judgment to let it happen, since the pointtttt of akaba brothers drama is that reiji literally does value reira he's just bad at showing that he cares about anyone, and the show dropped the prodigyshipping ship tease threads )': so as the prodigyshipper and text repairer in question i would obviously emphasise reiji's care for serena as the reason why he's so resistant to the idea of sacrificing the bracelet girls to resurrect ray. serena's always been the exception to reiji's usual methodical utilitarian rationality, he always acts irrationally when it comes to protecting her, and it would LITERALLY MAKE ALL OF THIS MAKE SENSE to make prodigyshipping canon like it should be. so this needs to be happening at the same time, which also neatly prevents reiji from joining the zarc fight for a while since he's a bit too op.

anyway zarc kills all the other guys and eats their souls to grow in power. meanwhile, guided by ray, all the bracelet girls agree to combine themselves together inside the reactor and they all slowly disappear into sparkly soul particles and reappear outside of the reactor... but it isn't ray! it's yuzu! but with all the strength and power of the other bracelet girls inside her, because the entire point is that the bracelet girls aren't ray, and leo's plan was always doomed to fail because he didn't understand that and he didn't respect that the bracelet girls weren't just 1/4 of ray, they were each their own person. and it's yuzu's turn to I Know You're In There Somewhere duel zarc in the attempt to bring yuya back so they can all defeat zarc Together. having yuzu duel zarc would also be an excellent bookend to the show, since it starts with yuya v yuzu, and also the role reversal where the protag turns out to be the final boss villain and the main girl turns out to be the protag would be really cool.

so yuzu is duelling zarc, and it's going well at first, but just as ray=/=bracelet girls, zarc also=/=yu4, and zarc begins to make a comeback bc by pure numbers it's 5 (zarc/yuya/yuto/yugo/yuri) against 4 (yuzu/serena/ruri/rin). but it's okay, because ray is also here! reira allows ray's spirit to take over his body as a vessel and ray joins the duel to even out the playing field. and with the support of ray's strength, technique, knowledge of zarc's strategies, and most importantly 風花雪月 cards, yuzu deals the final blow to zarc and there's some cool power visualisations of the 風花雪月 cards backed by the spirits of the bracelet girls trapping zarc in bright golden light and then zarc disappears and the cards flutter down to the ground.

now yuzu and ray are the only two people still alive in the ruined academia hall and it's time for some being girls who are sort of but not completely the same person is the most special thing in the universe newtype mind palace d&ms. ray picks up the cards that are holding zarc and the yu4 and she and yuzu discuss what to do next. ray says that splitting the dimensions apart was like a stopgap measure to hold zarc back and if they're reunited it will free the souls of everyone killed to fuel the arc v reactor and bring everyone back. yuzu says, so yuya and the others can come back? even serena, ruri, rin? ray says, of course. i'm not you, and zarc isn't yuya.

yuzu asks if zarc might ever come back. ray says, not this time. instead of splitting herself and splitting zarc across dimensions, she's going to take zarc away from the dimensions entirely and leave the bracelet girls and yu4 to be their own people and she and zarc will just exist outside of spacetime. i think this would also rehabilitate zarcray in my eyes, it would be pretty funny and romantic for them to do a professional rivals to enemies to newtype ghost lovers checking and balancing each other together for eternity trajectory.

yuzu says, but you'll be gone too. ray says, i already am. ray sacrificed herself to seal zarc away in the first place and leo refused to honour that sacrifice, but ray chose to give up her life and she has no problem sticking to that decision since she knows she is supposed to be dead. their time is over, the universe has been reset, this life belongs to the bracelet girls and the yu4. out of the 風花雪月 cards, ray withdraws a glowing ball of light which is zarc's soul, and then she passes the cards to yuzu. the sleeping forms of the yu4 are vaguely visible inside. ray says, i'll leave the rest to you, yuzu-chan. then she and zarc disappear.

alone but not alone because she has the other bracelet girls with her, creation goddess yuzu resets the universe one last time, freeing all the souls trapped in arc v and bringing everyone back to life and uniting the dimensions--not merging them, in the way that leo tried to merge the bracelet girls into ray, but bridging them together so they retain separation but are connected. burn starts playing over the end credits. the yu4 emerge from the cards. yuzu herself shimmers and separates back out into four different girls who all tearfully but joyfully hug each other. cue montage of scenes from across the four dimensions of people blinking back into existence, ruri and shun and yuto reunite, reiji and serena and reira reunite, yugo and rin, dennis blinking in surprise to find himself alive again and smiling ruefully, and the show ends with yuya and yuzu smiling at each other and together again. i can throw the main canon het a bone i don't mind.

CODA ARC

i don't think we need this. it was already incredibly bad in the show and wouldn't make any sense with my new and improved ending. i still think "we need to make the demon baby laugh by duelling in front of it or else the world will end again" is one of the stupidest plot points i've ever heard of in my life. we literally only need like maybe a short postcredits scene to show the in-progress work of rebuilding infrastructure and governance in the wake of the war but there is a general atmosphere of hope and idealism and idk maybe a camera pan up to two lights in the sky for zarc and ray, still watching over the new generation.

but i also do have thoughts on how i would fix the coda arc without getting rid of it altogether:

no demon baby. non-negotiable. the important duels in the coda arc are all independently motivated anyway. we can keep the premise of the bracelet girls being missing / still trapped inside arc v and the overarching plot of the coda being to hunt down the arc v fragments across the dimensions so the bracelet girls can be freed.
lean more heavily into the lotus eater dream / time loop reset vibes at the start where nobody remembers the whole interdimensional war / zarc and ray / etc thing so it's more of a creeping realisation that wait, something is wrong, something (SOMEONE) is missing rather than tsukikage just randomly announcing it to everyone.
keep the part where yuya shows up in xyz dimension and allen and sayaka are like umm yeah akaba reiji called shun to join his scavenger hunt but shun ghosted him and went to fusion dimension to look for ruri. bc that was really funny.
dennis's redemption duel was perfect showstopping amazing a really well-written and emotionally touching conclusion to his character arc so i would keep that intact. his motive is atonement for his war crimes against xyz and trying to reclaim the entertainment duelling philosophy and realise its potential to bring people together and give joy to others, which works perfectly w/o demon baby thing.
shun's anger and grief over finding out that yuto and ruri might be permanently gone causing him to recklessly challenge yuya to a duel also makes perfect sense, but i really don't believe that he would set the stakes of the duel of If I Lose, I Will Happily Give Up My Entire Primary Driving Motivation This Entire Series so i would just leave that bit out and have shun be like extremely unhinged and destabilised while blocking yuya's access to the arc v fragment in fusion bc he wants to get ruri out of there. i love that shun's last and most powerful ace monster is final fortress falcon, who is geared around protection instead of destruction like all of shun's other monsters... 揺るぎない信念と深き慈愛の心 in the summon chant... it's all love always has been. but also it must be said that ultimate falcon outsold on a stats/utility basis so hard it's not even funny so final fortress falcon was kinda a downgrade in execution, we need to get her better effects and at least 5000 atk like at least make her a crazy beatstick for how hard she is to summon lmfao.
- anyway shun obviously needs to lose this duel and let yuya take the arc v fragment as promised but i think he should still be bitter and grieving and yuya should feel really guilty about it.
i am literally a jack atlas onepicker but HE SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD THE PENULTIMATE DUEL IN ARC V LMAO HE DOESN'T EVEN GO HERE. it was funny when jack yelled at yuya to get a fucking grip but this duel should not have happened.
there's kinda no justification for having a reiji v yuya duel in my version of the coda other than like... ceremonial purposes? but i'm not mad about it being the finale duel, i do think it would have been better if it was penultimate and yuya v yuzu was the finale for bookending purposes like i said before, but the duel was fine i guess, yuto/yugo/yuri regaining some sentience and communicating with yuya was good, the real zarc sealing method was the friends and clones we made along the way or whatever. i do think that it's nice if the yu4 assert their separation from zarc and therapise him from the inside.
i do definitely think that if you're going to have a ""happy"" ending then the bracelet girls and yu4 all need to be resurrected again like no way you're writing 6 entire characters out of existence and being like my job here is done 😂 i also don't like the four dimensions being merged into one dimension, i think that's kind of horrifying and runs counter to what arc v was setting up in s1 re: bracelet girls being different from each other -> similarly the dimensions don't need to be forcibly integrated to be connected.
- I SERIOUSLY HATE IT WHEN GIRLS DIE. like even if they don't all regain corporeality they should at least be sentient and roomsharing in yuzu's body. and same with yu4.
- i just keep getting so heated and smad every time i think about how my all time yugioh onepick, literally my #1 character from my #1 fandom, was batted around as a pawn with no agency for her entire life and then incapacitated for half the show and then fridged and then permanently written out of existence altogether like it's just so sick that someone as fiercely desperate for freedom and selfhood as serena got to experience like 2.5 moments of joy and love and connection and affirmation of individuality and opportunity to take action on her own behalf in the middle of all that misery and loneliness and then she suffered until she died and then she was erased from the text for good just to really drive the injustice home AND I WAS SUPPOSED TO FIND THAT A NICE AND PERFECT AND HAPPY ENDING? KYSSSSSSS

anywayyy if you read all that thank you for staying 🙂💖 this is a topic i have been furiously thinking about for many years and will probably continue to think about for many more years in the future until i die and i request arc v to lower my coffin into the grave so it can let me down one last time. not kidding when i say arc v is the worst anime i have ever seen in my life and indeed the worst story i have ever experienced in my life but it is tragically still my """"""favourite""""""" because 1) fuck my stupid baka life 2) no other show has serena nolastname in it. unfortunately. 😞

going to go through some exemplars of my favourite tropes, this is pretty much just a multifandom fic rec

( wait it's all love... again )

i mentioned in my <t/b criteria post> that my ideal 1 x 0 dynamic is "hostageshipping aka proud/tsundere/resentful bottom is reluctant and embarrassed to admit to what they want and has to be forcibly unrepressed by magnanimous but fully in control top who knows exactly what the bottom wants. and there are power struggles in vain or for plausible deniability reasons" and i wanted to elaborate on that by providing some case studies. this is specifically about 1s and 0s (ie dynamics that i think are sexy) not my favourite ships necessarily. but anyway here is some further elaboration on my ultimate 1 x 0 ship HOSTAGESHIPPING aka zerofalcon aka reiji/shun from yugioh arc v:

the contextual gist of hostageshipping is like... what if you were the son of the guy who sent an army to invade my home dimension / massacre everyone / kidnap my sister so i hunted you down across dimensions intending to take you hostage to trade for my sister but you offered to strike a deal where i work for you while you assemble your own army to strike back at your dad and essentially i became the hostage instead. cue absolutely insane power dynamics. the only problem is that not even hostageshipping fully lives up to the hostageshipping print for reasons i will outline shortly so the perfect 1 x 0 dynamic doesn't actually exist in my knowledge (YET...?)

also obligatory link to my all-time magnum opus from 2017 <compromiseshipping manifesto> which explains everything in more detail (so so much detail)

HOSTAGESHIPPING BLUEPRINT

IDEAL 0 TRAITS

wants to kill the 1
- importantly, is unable to kill the 1, though not for lack of trying
strong sense of pride and independence, very stubborn
repressed
prickly, tsundere, probably a bitch (at least to the 1, may be nice to other people)
- actually it's really funny if they ARE nice to other people but just like extremely a bitch towards the 1 specifically
super competitive and petty about it
competent and proud of their skill
- which is why it's even more frustrating that the 1 is stronger than them
a lot of pent-up anger that doesn't get expressed either because they're repressed or there's some situational factors that prevent them from doing so (eg sense of professionalism, agreement to cooperate)
picky / fussy / otherwise particular or detail oriented
regularly gets injured / beaten up / bloody
desperate but trying not to look like it or otherwise good at hiding it
generally has like massively intense emotions but sublimated to varying degrees of success

IDEAL 1 TRAITS

cool, levelheaded, difficult to faze
confident and self-assured
control issues manifest in the form of magnanimity
- they are so secure in having the upper hand that they can afford to give gifts/concessions/leeway to others (on their terms ofc)
- indulgent but like controllingly
patient and slow to anger, able to handle the 0's moods
stronger, higher ranked, more powerful, older, taller than the 0
megalomaniac asshole (may still be nice)
possessive but exhibitionist streak
generous in manipulative and dubcon way
- i saw a tweet from a jfan joking that the S in SM stands for service and suddenly i understood everything... the energy is "i want to give you what you want, even if you don't know or want to admit that you want it, AND/OR what you want is for me to be the one who wants it instead of you"
- if that makes sense
like just really generous overall. like virgo venus leo mars style
probably the killer / subtype thereof

IDEAL DYNAMIC

no reverse, obviously
extremely fixed power dynamic despite constant and futile attempts from the 0 to subvert it
- but they don't ACTUALLY want to subvert it they just think they do
0 has strong haterism towards 1, 1 finds this cute and charming and will probably tease 0 about it
- like this: 1-❤-><-💢-0
- the haterism should have both ideological elements and personal elements. and also have parts that are justifiable and parts that are just super petty
- one-sided rivalry is so good and funny to me i love the 0 going all out trying to defeat/kill/etc the 1 but the 1 barely registering them as a threat because they are objectively stronger
unnegotiated bdsm and especially d/s elements
it's about the 0 maintaining plausible deniability that they Don't Want This by semi-performatively semi-genuinely struggling or fighting back in a situation they know they can't win so they can be "forced" into submission without having to endure the damage to their pride caused by willingly giving in or the humiliation of admitting to wanting anything. all of which the 1 is fully aware of but happy to indulge (with some teasing)
- this is a big part of why i like strength/power/ability to determine top/bottom positioning because like... if the 0 can easily overpower the 1 there's no more plausible deniability??
- forcible unrepression is so good. intricate rituals...

the original hostageshipping: reiji/shun (yugioh arc v)

ways in which hostageshipping is perfect

absolutely no reverse!!!!
extremely extremely skewed power dynamic where reiji completely has the upper hand in skill, rank hierarchy, bargaining power, resources available, duelling strength, ability......
shun wants to kill reiji so bad first in a war enemy way and then in a personal haterism way but he can't because he agreed to play by reiji's rules in order to save his sister so all he can do is seethe with rage while reluctantly obeying reiji's commands
- every time shun wants to go off on his own to do something (like HELP HIS DYING BEST FRIEND) reiji coolly shuts him down and shun is soooo pissed about having to roll over but he does anyway
shun literally put himself in this position lmfao like due to picking the lesser of two evils since reiji is ostensibly on the same side of the war as him but it's still really funny that he actively chose to give reiji this insane amount of power over him no matter how much he hates it
reiji memorywiped some other LDS students who duelled shun before his recruitment, so shun knows that there's always the threat that he will be memorywiped into compliance if he steps out of line
- memory is especially important to shun because he's lost everything (best friend, sister, hometown) and memory is literally all he has left so this is a very effective implied threat
reiji is very generous in condescending ways seemingly calculated to rub salt into the wound re: reiji's control of him:
- he gifts shun brand new raidraptor pendulum cards he's designed to perfectly synergise with shun's existing deck in order to let him access the powerful new pendulum summoning technique... to highlight that his control of shun can extend even over his duelling
- he sets the duel field during shun's tournament duels to a replica of shun's now-destroyed hometown... to push him to the brink of a grief/rage-fuelled breakdown and make him duel more intensely
- he installs shun as his functional second-in-command... to put him in situations where shun will be forced to acquiesce to reiji's orders in front of other people

ways in which hostageshipping is not perfect

reiji is shorter and younger than shun... height and age isn't that important to me compared to other things but IDEALLY i like my 1s to be larger and older than 0s
hostageshipping is not my favourite ship for either of them, which is peregrineshipping (shun/serena) for shun and prodigyshipping (reiji/serena) for reiji. because SERENA is my onepick and actually i care most about her dynamics with shun and reiji so hostageshipping is really just one arm of compromiseshipping to me. because serena should be there
shun is not really a 0 anyway because peregrineshipping is shun/serena in that order. even if reiji/shun no reverse serenaright no reverse is even more non-negotiable in my heart
and shun barely fits any of my ideal 0 criteria anyway, it's just that his desperation + fury + suffering stats are SO off the charts that the rest of it doesn't matter that much
admittedly i haven't thought much about pendulumshipping but if i apply my default criteria of shounen protags top and shounen rivals bottom then reiji, being the arc v rival, is not really a 1 either
hostageshipping is actually like umm 0.7 x 0.1
serena is not there

OTHER EXAMPLES

jaemin/renjun (nct dream)

PROS

actually 1 x 0 shipping. TO ME
my favourite agenda for both of them and my 2pickshipping
size difference in the right direction
beautiful visual couple of perfectface x perfectface i love to look at them
i really like renjun and i really like jaemin
this exists
i wish i could explain why jmrn has such a grip on me that i needed two extra ao3 accounts to contain the overflow but i literally don't know why. except that i really like both of them
WILD CARD: renjun's paper dollisms add a fun extra angle which is that at some point he might flip from mock violence into total docility

CONS

they literally don't know each other like that. they are coworkers (neutral positive) which as you guys know i am extremely enthusiastic about but it is not conducive to the topic at hand
i made up this version of their dynamic in my head it doesn't exist. or if it did that was back in like 2019
also there's no actual killing intent, understandably, since they are real people, but it does put them at a disadvantage compared to the other ships on this list where the 0 for real is trying to murder the 1
everyone on ao3 (except for my sexy friends) is wrong about them, including me (my views do not represent my views)
i'm allergic to thinking about them for reasons beyond my comprehension i'm literally like WE CAN'T LET THEM KNOW WE L*KE JMRN also i sometimes get seriously haterised for no reason. well for reasons but the reasons might just be seeing the word r3nm1n. Yes i am jaemin renjun otp all time #1 rpf agenda shipper yes i have r3nm1n muted i exist. anyway that makes it hard for me to have up-to-date thoughts because i don't see them on my tl, which narratively mirrors the way that they do not have up-to-date thoughts about each other

atobe/shishido (prince of tennis)

PROS

actually 1 x 0 shipping
size difference in the right direction
atobe is fully aware that shishido has been haterised about him since first sight and it doesn't bother him at all because atobe is indisputably stronger than shishido
shishido is literally functioning as atobe's unofficial third-in-command like atobe has installed him in his executive cabinet despite shishido wanting to kill him because atobe the generous trusts shishido's objective ability and is willing to overlook shishido's murderous intent in the interests of achieving their shared goal of hyotei victory
and when it comes down to it, shishido IS completely loyal to atobe too he just doesn't like to admit it
WILD CARD: libraman4libramanshipping is inherently hysterically funny

CONS

far from my favourite agenda for either of them (oshitari or ryoma for atobe, ootori for shishido)
necessarily precluded after ootori/shishido doubles formation due to their overwhelmingly truelove monogamous marriage and atobe being a generous king who is graciously permitting his subjects to honeymoon outside his kingdom
atobe is kind of more interested in tezuka like that but tezuka is Go Girl Give Us Nothing-ing him. and also in germany

akai/amuro (detective conan)

feels like cheating to put them on here when i haven't even met one half of this ship yet BUT i have it on good authority that they are perfectly positioned to laser snipe me from the international space station so i want to mention them in advance. i'll probably come back at fill out this section in uhhh 3 months when i unlock them for real. actually i'm going to do a preliminary pros and cons, i keep telling myself that fanart of akai fucking amuro is not lore but well it kind of is. TO ME

PROS

actually 1 x 0 shipping. NOMINATIVELY DETERMINISTIC 1 X 0 SHIPPING!!
size and age difference (i think?) in the right direction
beautiful visual couple who i love to see
amuro wants to kill akai so bad he refuses to believe akai can even be physically killed by anyone else (this is the extent of my canon knowledge at this point)
gonna assume they hit most of the criteria on my list because mich and hwa keep 2828'ing at me every time i say anything about it 🧐
WILD CARD: identity theft is the most romantic thing in the world!!!

CONS

i might straight up die when i finally fully understand what is going on here like are they more hostageshipping than hostageshipping??

misc

i would loveeeee to see this dynamic with a het ship (boy 1 x girl 0 to be clear) but despite my pretty extensive knowledge of ya supernatural het romance fiction i can't think of any examples
- this is my vision of alec/renesmee from twilight but they literally do not exist in canon...
vermouth is perfectly positioned to be the 1 in question but the only person with that kind of haterism towards her is jodie?? who i don't think is a 0 they would be more like 1 x 0.4-0.6... and ran is not this type of 0. and bourbon is not this type of 0 for vermouth specifically*

* i don't think vermouth and bourbon are fucking anyway, i think it is platonic workplace power dynamics 1 + 0 mutually beneficial mentorship... bourbon is like vermouth's fancy handbag or poisoned ring, vermouth just loves to antagonise people and flirt with people and flirt with people to antagonise them or to antagonise other people... not to go off on huge tangent but i think the idea of vermouth leveraging bourbon against rye by making it seem like she and bourbon are fucking because bourbon is sweet with vermouth but viciously hateristic towards rye is really funny. she doesn't even dislike rye like that (he's not HER silver bullet) she just likes to stir up drama for fun

** if r63 bourbon i think she and vermouth WOULD be fucking though

*** this is all completely baseless speculation since i haven't met the bourbon in question but fanart of bourbon and vermouth looking blonde and beautiful and expensive and killeristic together can be lore too

**** i think vermouth is less interested in brat taming and more interested in 1. Submission anyway

also this isn't the only type of 1 x 0 dynamic i enjoy it's just my favourite, i am also open to this type of 1 x 0s who don't need to be railroaded into submission (jeno, ran, mori, carly, etc)

to the victorious tomorrow
fandom: prince of tennis, yugioh arc v
ship: niou&/kirihara
rating: g
word count: 2.6k

( tennis emoji card emoji crown emoji )

yes i'm playing fast and loose with the definition of 'canon' but it's my post and i can do what i want. i only included hets where the feelings are at least implied to be requited and/or protag x main girl ships (since most yugioh protags are kind of like... oblivious to girls LOL)

( everyone has the right to wish for happiness )

i do have a soft spot for the yugioh dubs*... the dm dub is an important cultural artifact (and got me into yugioh when i was like 6 watching toasted tv at oosh before school) and the arc v dub got me back into yugioh when i was 16 and happened to catch an ep on channel 99 go. anyway here's a ranking of the best and worst dub name changes based entirely on my personal feelings and arbitrary criteria. some of the changes are fun some of them suck some of them are like But Why Tho some of them are inconsequential but basically if it's funny then it's good and if i don't like it then it's bad. some mild spoilers for various yugiohs bc the dub production team love to beat you over the head with FORESHADOWING via naming

*not zexal

( thanks 4kids )

i've been thinking about how unbearably sad it is that ai out of all the ignis ended up being the last one surviving because he truly is the one least suited to carrying the burden of losing his kin / being alone / remembering everything about cyberse world and its legacy. like if i had to rank the ignis by how well i think they'd deal with being the last i would say:

1. aqua (emotionally mature and well-adjusted, would grieve and then gracefully shoulder the weight of survival alone)
2. flame (indomitable soul dream! his will is unbreakable, he is always looking forward and not backward, trauma is something he can process and bravely overcome)

3. windy (allegedly easygoing pre-lightning reprogramming so i imagine he would deal okay)

4. earth (used to being a loner, but the loss of aqua in particular would really hit him hard)

5. lightning (actively trying to kill off everyone else, but i think once everyone was gone and he came down from his power trip he'd realise actually it REALLY SUCKS to be the only one left)

.
.
.
[5000 pages later]
6. ai (deals with it so badly he orchestrates a plan for the mass destruction of humanity just so he can get yusaku to kill him)

( it's ai as in to love ai T___T )

previously: S1 | S2

( i want to stay with you until the very end )

previously: S1 | next: S3

( eventually, we'll become one // maybe i'll understand how you feel, then )

i did largely watch vrains with revolver goggles on so this may be missing key lines from non-revolver entities but ah well

see also: S2 | S3

( hesitation and regret may be different things... )

it only took me [checks watch] four years but i finally finished yugioh vrains last week and it killed me dead. yugioh protag x yugioh rival will always get me i will never change i will never improve. anyway maybe one day i'll do a full manifesto for yuryo but for now i will just elaborate on this jpn shipping meme i filled out for them the other day 😢😢 BEING NARRATIVE PARALLELS IS THE MOST ROMANTIC THING IN THE UNIVERSE... BEING ENEMIES IS THE MOST ROMANTIC THING IN THE UNIVERSE.... BEING ENEMIES WHO ARE NARRATIVE PARALLELS IS THE MOST ROMANTIC THING IN THE UNIVERSE!!!

please excuse my horrible finger on phone screen drawing skills and also my super elementary jpn:

( you and i are the same! )

here is a list of my fave yugioh ops from each series! ~~vrains erasure sry but i haven't watched it~~. ETA 130521 now with vrains! but no sevens. vrains is very very good tho i'm sorry for previous mistreatment and erasure

i was gonna make this an exhaustive ranking of every yugioh op but it's too hard for me to choose... maybe one day when i'm bothered to load every song into the character sorter code

( we who have life are not eternal... )

actually in between typing out the post subject and creating this post i've decided to just do a ranked list of every official arc v ship name instead. this is an extremely long post but it is approximately 80% objective, i tried not to let my feelings about the actual ships influence my rankings too much. creating yugioh ship names is a very delicate art that requires a perfect balance between clear meaning and appealing sound... the ship name needs to capture the essence of that ship in a single word that can't be easily confused with another ship so it's difficult to do well but when it's done right it's sooo cool. yugioh truly has my favourite ship naming system ever, not even khr/gw number smashes can compare <3

( you vs me competition for the victory... )

maybe one day i'll figure out how to crime these into nct but until then. . . some excerpts from anime wips from 2017, i kind of miss this writing style i'm just too lazy to write like this again T__T

( arc v, compromiseshipping )

( ballroom e youkoso, hyoudou/shizuku )

( zexal, mentorshipping )

( arc v, braceletshipping )

from 16400: nts make post on reiji forcing shun to become complicit in the destruction of his homeland by setting the action field to neo heartland city for his duel against sora + the awful catharsis of seeing heartland aflame and in ruins from his own monsters' attacks + what arendt said in on humanity in dark times re: trauma and art and understanding by reliving <-- tldr

Der Schmerz wird neu, es wiederholt die Klage
Des Lebens labyrinthisch irren Lauf.

Pain arises anew, lament repeats

life’s labyrinthine, erring course.

YES im giving a meta post an epigraph. why? deserve

<SORRY ABOUT HOW INCOHERENT AND EMOTIONAL THIS IS LMAO>

eps 33-34 are the first time shun duels after he makes a deal with reiji to join lds and do as reiji says in return for... the promise of a future duel...? which shun never gets btw but what did he expect from a guy whose duelling technique literally revolves around creating and then terminating/repudiating contracts before he has to provide consideration. im gonna screammm @ this bad bdsm etiquette. ANYWAY shun is now duelling for reiji in the maiami championships bc fuck saving your war torn homeland you have to participate in my duel competition (the way this is a repeated occurrence in a5...... no words). and his opponent just happens to be sora who is an undercover academia soldier ie the very enemy shun is trying to destroy so like... luck of the draw huh. a bunch of plot reveal happens in this duel re: the interdimensional war, academia's invasion + mass killing in xyz, sora's true villainous nature etc etc but im gonna talk about MY SHIP

reiji, who is watching the duel from the control centre / surveillance room in lds tower, decides to set the action field to neo heartland city AKA the war torn homeland shun is trying to save. so shun's first duel for reiji is against an academia duellist in the hollowed-out shell of his home in a fucked up reenactment of the violence he's experienced but this time for entertainment to an audience that knows nothing of what xyz has gone through. WHY DID REIJI DO THIS this is legit so fucked uppp. reiji says it's 'a tiny present' to 'ignite his fighting spirit' as if shun isn't about to have a fucking breakdown right there on the field

but of course shun doesn't have a breakdown bc he would never show that much vulnerability in front of anybody. and reiji's right, it really did Ignite His Fighting Spirit. he wouldn't have duelled quite so viciously and emotionally if he hadn't been in the ghost of heartland city. there's just something sooo awful about the way shun talks about academia's destruction of the city while facing off against an academia soldier knowing the damage the duel will cause to the action field even if it is just a Hologram With Mass or w/e the justification for solid vision is... reiji forcibly positioning shun as an active participant in directly destroying his homeland rather than a victim what the fuckkk the power dynamics

the further along into the duel they go the angrier shun becomes and the more brutal he becomes with his attacks... the first damage the action field suffers is from SHUN'S attack with rise falcon on sora's frightfur bear + fluffal sheep and it only escalates from there. sora's frightfur leo crushes up a building or two but then blaze falcon's burn effects manifest like missiles launched and it's shun who sets the city on fire. yuya says it himself: this is just like a battlefield. once shun summons revolution falcon he starts dropping fucking bombs on the place and even heartland tower is toppled. like this is beyond collateral damage or carelessness, this is deliberate in a way that's like, inflicting the damage is the only way shun can wrest back some form of control over everything he's lost, because all of it was done to him and if regaining agency means redefining the past so the destruction was done by him then at least he wasn't powerless to stop everything from happening. and this must be such a familiar scene, heartland burning, only this time at his own hands, not running anymore but turning the city to rubble himself. if heartland falls because of shun, then it's like that line from blue rotunda - I want it/to be my fault/she said/so I can fix it. almost as if shun can't bear to see this illusion of a whole and untouched heartland when the reality is that the city's in ruins, so he HAS to tear it apart. the emotional masochism of it all...

anyway it reminded me of a part in hannah arendt's on humanity in dark times: thoughts about lessing, which i recently wrote an essay on for class... arendt talks a bit about the past only becoming true once relived and how the only way to understand suffering is to experience it yourself, through the conduit of art. and it IS shun's history but he probably wasn't on the front lines at the start just on account of his age, so reenacting that initial destruction in the first wave of the invasion is what drags that history out into the light and makes it real to him. now he's seen it firsthand, made it happen firsthand. what could be more of an art than the act of duelling as a spectacle for entertainment in the maiami championships, a hilariously mundane purpose, watched by civilian audiences looking for a good show, emcee'd by a bombastic announcer... it must feel like such a farce to shun, who's been duelling for survival ever since the invasion. but he's recreated that trauma now, bridging the past and the present, and the truth of it is undeniable and has its place in the world and he'll never be able to shake it. arendt said we can no more master the past than we can undo it but she also said but we can reconcile ourselves to it. and it really takes shun 150 episodes to get there, and only by virtue of bad writing T___T but the thing is that shun WON against sora... even with the quagmire of complicated emotions and motivations he at least got that much of a personal victory. it might have been pyrrhic but that's pretty much the only kind of victory shun (as arc v's designated loser and punching bag) will ever get to experience in his life. laughing emoji crying emoji

on the plane listening to 8tracks user neeeeeon's seminal kurosaki shun playlist "flight" and thinking about how shun and yuto's deck archetypes are such effective characterisation tools... raidraptors and phantom knights reflect their outlooks on the academia-xyz war so well. once again this is an It Could Be That Deep post

> raidraptors are the perfect cornered underdog deck, relatively low base stats that increase with the activation of effects. the way they gain power when they're outnumbered and outmatched... see: shun powering rise falcon (100 atk without effects) up to 16400 atk in his first onscreen duel when he's battling 1 v 3 and his opponents all had monsters with huge atk out on the field bc rise falcon's effect allows him to take advantage of powerful enemy monsters. after all xyz had no soldiers to fend off academia's overwhelming military strength, only civilians like shun and yuto who duelled for fun and were forced onto the front lines in order to survive

>> a lot of shun's raidraptor monsters can call or rely on monsters in the graveyard... literally drawing strength from Fallen Comrades. academia slaughtering so much of xyz's population -> raidraptors transforming that weakness into a strength. also their efficient swarm capabilities -> safety in numbers that xyz's resistance doesn't have the luxury of anymore among the living. birds flock together after all! then overlay into the individual xyz monsters . . . something to say here (maybe re: rank up magic quick play spells too? importance of the element of surprise in the resistance's guerrilla warfare tactics since there's no way they can win head-to-head? ETA: omggg the way rank up magic spells work by special summoning a monster once it's destroyed and ranking it up to a more powerful monster... you try to kill them but they only come back stronger) but i'm not sure what exactly

>> fury and vengeance are shun's calling cards and his monsters are all like, machine birds of prey who attack by dropping bombs (nts make post on reiji forcing shun to become complicit in the destruction of his homeland by setting the action field to neo heartland city for his duel against sora + the awful catharsis of seeing heartland aflame and in ruins from his own monsters' attacks + what arendt said in on humanity in dark times re: trauma and art and understanding by reliving). and yet his highest ranked most powerful monster is named /final fortress falcon/, explicitly geared towards PROTECTION. iirc the summon chant is uncharacteristically gentle too, no violently crushing enemies or exacting revenge? eta now that i have internet access: falcon of my very soul, with your heart of unwavering conviction and deep affection, become my sturdy last defense and descend! helppp SO IT WAS LOVE ALL ALONG

but what's even left for him to protect? ruri is dead/written out of existence, yuto is dead/written out of existence, his home is razed to the ground. omfg he really is the last living member of xyz trio T___T no more war only defending the legacy you are now the sole inheritor of T____T time to turn to rebuilding what's left. good bay world this is fucking me up so bad shun pisces venus ass could have been capable of so much love if he'd had the opportunity

> phantom knights have a lot of effects including xyz summon capabilities that only activate when they're in the graveyard ie more powerful after death NVM FUCK YOU I CAN'T DO THIS SHIT NO MORE

might as well crosspost on here so it isn't lost to the depths of my gdocs forever... i am NOT recommending this show because i feel actively bad about inflicting it on anyone but it is unfortunately my fave media property ever, so:

( i'll win this duel you can't beat my moves i'm in that groove i know i can't lose your turn your tricks now what will you choose? )

i know this was most likely not intentional since the a5 writing team would never put that much effort into a coherent storyline let alone one for serena but fuck you this is my city now IT COULD BE THAT DEEP

serena's first words to reiji in the maiami stadium basement when they meet again in standard are 'let me go!' (reiji's grabbed her wrist to stop her going after sakuragi yu), which are exactly the same first words she ever said to him when they met as children in academia (reiji helped her up over a wall to escape from security and they were holding hands as they ran through the corridors). i think it's a neat and fitting callback... unorganised thoughts:

so much of serena's central motivation is about escape -- she wants to fight on the front lines in xyz, she wants to strike out into standard to capture the reported xyz fugitives, she wants freedom, she loathes physical restriction, the brainwashing arc was probably the worst thing that could possibly have happened to her short of never managing to escape academia -- but it's with the express purpose of proving herself oh wait IS THIS HOW I CAN FINALLY RECONCILE HER TEXTBOOK CAUTIOUSNESS WITH HER RECKLESSNESS...?
ultimately all of her brash action is because she wants acknowledgement for her skills. she knows she's good but she wants that to be recognised by someone else. she has too much pride for quiet, unseen achievement. serena is kinda preoccupied with fairness, she has the whole Warrior's Honour thing going on and it's why reiji is able to turn her to his side after he/yuzu/shun explain the truth of academia's actions to her, so it isn't fair or right that she should be overlooked despite being probably the best duellist in all of academia... it offends her sense of justice. i don't know where i'm going with this... serena is more umm conformist than she would like to believe but that is okay. really she just wants validation!!
serena tells reiji to let her go and he does, which contrasts reiji with his father who does not, and contrasts serena with SHUN who reiji notably does not let go. like across eps 37-40 or so the entirety of shun and reiji's interaction is reiji calmly telling shun to stay put while shun seethes with rage but acquiesces anyway INCLUDING when reiji goes to meet serena and tells nakajima to make sure shun is kept away
the difference in the way reiji treats serena and shun is really... he claims to consider them both ~assets~ but he clearly respects serena more / exerts more control over shun and maybe it's because reiji holds all the power in his enemy-of-my-enemy bargain with shun but he has to work in order to win serena over... or maybe it's because reiji knows how to best secure their loyalties: he gives them both what they want, which is an opportunity to fight and prove her abilities for serena, and uhhh <gestures at hostageshipping> for shun. andrea said yesterday Well did shun really want that before he got reluctantly locked into the Akaba Reiji Mind Games route? maybe not but you know how repressed bottoms with control issues are
how did i end up at compromiseshipping again. LEGIT serena meta/thoughts pending for another day . . .

recording my birth chart guesses for posterity...

shun: aries sun / scorpio moon / aries mercury / pisces venus / scorpio mars /// scorpio asc. fucked up relationship to emotions and vulnerability + intense aggression and anger that flares up and burns out into a simmer + extreme control issues + strong personal moral code. you are such a disaster <3

serena: capricorn sun / libra moon / capricorn mercury / pisces venus / aries mars /// aries asc. inspires people to risk their lives for her within 3 seconds of meeting her. juggles beautiful but deeply personal idealism with blunt strategic consideration, impulsiveness, pride, risk-averse...ness. peregrineship same venus signs and both mars 1h T__T

reiji: leo sun / capricorn moon / leo mercury / virgo venus / leo mars /// aquarius asc. taoeproducts voice Crowned Head. his brand of idealism is broad and utilitarian... control issuez. virgo venus is so funny in this chart this is why hostageship is Like That. augdfhjkgdfjh the way hostageship is fucked up jmrn this bitch (me) has a type

yuto: virgo sun / leo moon / virgo mercury / libra venus / scorpio mars /// capricorn asc. the doomed idealisms... YUTO YOU WERE TOO GOOD FOR THE WORLD. also i've decided scorp = official xyz placement

yuya: gemini sun / leo moon / taurus mercury / gemini venus / gemini mars /// sagittarius asc. literally a clown... gem stellium showmanship, entertainment duelling whatever... taurus merc for that classic yugioh protag stubborn streak. hang on isn't pendulumship basically nahyuck

yuzu: aries sun / libra moon

i think bracelet girls cardinal sun / libra moon + yu4 mutable sun / leo moon is cute and fitting

---

team 5dsatisfaction actually have canon birthdays so i'll use those for sun signs

yusei: cancer sun / pisces moon / leo mercury / virgo venus / taurus mars /// aquarius asc. selflessness to the point of self destruction... when he told aki to take out all her pain and anger on him bc he could bear it + ofc staying with kiryu... earth placements for stubborn streak + leo merc/aqua asc he is a yugioh protag after all

jack: capricorn sun / aries moon / capricorn mercury / pisces venus / taurus mars /// leo asc. earth dominant stubborn ass but with none of the reliability... also nerfed by that pisces venus lol. leo + cap energy for the whole king thing. aries moon dumb of ass. control issues max

crow: virgo sun / sagittarius moon / virgo mercury / cancer venus / taurus mars /// taurus asc. LOVELY!! independent, brash, stubborn, caring... voice of reason except for when he gets caught up in the competitiveness/intensity/whatever of the others

kiryu: scorpio sun / aquarius moon / scorpio mercury / libra venus / leo mars /// scorpio asc. magnetic fucker, visionary leader, very intense. leo mars exhibitionism... lmfao team satisfaction rising signs all square each other

aki: leo sun / scorpio moon / leo mercury / cancer venus / virgo mars /// cancer asc. cxk cold exterior warm interior effect... faithship sun conjunct venus TT also venus 1h loveliest

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even if i believed in fate

it would only be about meeting you

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Entries tagged with f: yugioh

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even if i believed in fate