#neither Honda nor Otogi have feelings for her in the manga lmao

[sage-nebula]

@em-exceeds-change-zearu --- Hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to respond to your tags in a new post since the original post was long enough as it was, haha!

#also i love all of these picks and the thought that went into them #and that he has a varied team that's flexible and can take on tons of things #ALSO I'M GLAD YOU DIDN'T MENTION ZEKROM #I WAS DREADING A RED EYES BLACK DRAGON REDUX WITH ZEKROM #(even if zekrom and reshiram are huge walking red eyes and blue eyes jokes) 

See, it’s because I put a lot of thought into it that I didn’t mention Zekrom! Zekrom doesn’t work for the Red-Eyes Black Dragon at all (and ditto for Reshiram with the Blue-Eyes White Dragon)!

From a visual standpoint, I get why the comparisons were made. Zekrom is a black dragon with red eyes, and Reshiram is a white dragon with blue eyes. But that’s where the similarities end. While monsters in YGO have only very loose elemental associations, the fact still remains that the Red-Eyes Black Dragon is a fire dragon, while the Blue-Eyes White Dragon is an electric dragon. We see this in their attacks. The Red-Eyes Black Dragon’s attack is Black Fire Bullet (JP) / Inferno Fire Blast (EN), while the Blue-Eyes White Dragon’s attack is Burst Stream of Destruction (JP) / White Lightning (EN). “Burst Stream of Destruction” isn’t specifically electric, but it isn’t fire, either, and the look of it certainly looks electrical whenever it attacks (which is likely what led to 4Kids naming the attack what they did). Either way, these attacks make it clear in both the manga (JP) and the anime (EN) that Red-Eyes is a fire dragon while Blue-Eyes is an electric dragon.

But with Zekrom and Reshiram, that’s reversed. Zekrom is Electric/Dragon, while Reshiram is Fire/Dragon. Their types do not match up with the YGO dragons at all. And while some might say that’s a minor quibble, it really isn’t. Jounouchi is pretty heavily associated with fire, even setting Red-Eyes aside. Just off the top of my head:

The yo-yo he was pictured with in the cover art for chapters 48/49 was a “Fireboy” yo-yo;

He defeated Chopperman by setting him on fire with the candle + oil combo;

One of his most memorable cards is Flame Swordsman (though him saying it was his favorite card was an anime invention, but nonetheless);

He stayed behind with Yuugi during the fire at the Black Crown and made it out with only minor injuries; 

When he got to name an attack during his duel with Malik, he named it “Jounouchi Fire”;

The God card he’s most heavily associated with is Ra, and Ra is the one that uses flames to attack (versus Osiris’ wind and Obelisk’s lightning);

Speaking of, he survived Ra’s flames at first brush (he died a few minutes later, true, but even that was only temporary)

Jounouchi is pretty heavily associated with a fire motif, and so it makes sense that his signature dragon would be a fire dragon, rather than an electric one. And likewise, Kaiba seems to be associated with lightning and electricity far more than he is with fire. Kaiba is all about technological advancement, is always surrounded by computers, robots, and the latest technology that he himself invented. The God card that he’s associated with, Obelisk, is one that has lightning spark around its fists when it attacks. It makes sense that his dragon is an electric one, rather than a fire one. Switching that around by associating Jounouchi with Zekrom and Kaiba with Reshiram is a huge mistake. It doesn’t fit at all.

Moreover, the thing about legendary pokémon is that most of them come with a stronger meaning associated with them. They’re cool looking and have types, yes, but each of them also usually symbolize something, or have something they watch over, protect, or stand for. For Zekrom, that’s ideals (and fighting for one’s ideals), and with Reshiram, that’s truth (and fighting for the truth). While Jounouchi can be an idealistic person, what Zekrom actually looks for in its champion is someone who wants to push their ideals onto others, to lead the world with them, and that’s not Jounouchi. Jounouchi doesn’t want to push his ideals onto others; he lives his own way and that’s that. Likewise, Kaiba’s not really concerned with the truth outside of how it benefits him, and he’s not opposed to flat out ignoring or denying it when it doesn’t, so I don’t think Reshiram would choose him as a champion either, haha.

So yeah, I saw no reason to bring up Zekrom. The Red-Eyes Black Dragon is represented by shiny charizard, and that’s that.

#i also didn't consider sivally/silvuddy at all!!! #but considering that it's literally named...silver buddy... #(gladion you fucking nerd) #it's perfect #the nickanme is perfect #he would approve #maybe silvuddy is something he gets in duelist kingdom? #like. in pegasus' basement or something #but this is pokemon world and you mentioned gladion existing in this crossover canon so HMM. MMM. #I'M STUCK ON HOW HE GETS IT TOO 

I did imagine this as taking place in the Pokémon World, yeah, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t adapt Duelist Kingdom as well. All we have to do is make it pokémon battles instead of Duel Monsters duels. So Pegasus owns an island with a castle, and he decides to host his own battle tournament on his island (that takes place over a more reasonable span of time than just two days). Maybe entrants have to collect star badges instead of star chips, or maybe it is star chips if badges would get him in trouble with the local League. In any case, he has his own unofficial, not-government-sanctioned tournament, and it’s very much like Duelist Kingdom except everyone has real monsters and therefore people like Mai and Bandit Keith have a much harder time cheating than they did in the actual canon.

(Well, Gladion doesn’t have to exist in the crossover canon, haha. It’s just an idea I threw out there. I don’t know if any relationship I could invent for him would be as fun to write as the one I had between him and Alan, so it’s not like I’m very attached to the idea of him existing in this story.)

#...oooh #kaiba imports it into his Tower Of Death scenario because he paid big monies to Aether Foundation #jou ends up taking it back #the same way how in other trials they utilized things that belonged to their enemies against them #(maybe replace the stupid ride of fear part with it BECAUSE HONESTLY THAT WAS THE LOW PART OF THE TOWER. IT WAS STUPID.) 

Hmm, that could work! Although honestly it might make more sense for Kaiba Corporation to have created Type: Null. Kaiba spared absolutely no expense when it came to creating Death-T, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that:

According to the currency converter I use, in 1996 (when this was written / would take place), ¥10,000,000,000 would be $87,989,745.57. Kaiba spent eighty-seven million dollars to build a theme park to kill Yuugi with. Money was not an issue for him whatsoever.

But that said, Type: Null seems like the type of creature Kaiba Corporation would have created, particularly if they existed within the Pokémon world. Maybe not so much once Kaiba takes over and turns it into a gaming company, but back when it was still a company for developing military weapons? The concept of pokémon being created as weapons is not at all foreign to the series (Mewtwo and Genesect being two prime examples), and I could see Gozaburo wanting to top all of them by creating a chimera that replicated the powers of Arceus. So maybe Type: Null had already been created and cryogenically frozen, and Kaiba released one of them in the hopes that they’d be able to kill Yuugi and the others. That could work. That said, I did really like Chopperman as Jounouchi’s personal challenge, particularly since he knows it’s a trap and walks into it anyway because he feels it’s the right thing to do (what a Gryffindor), so yeah, replacing the horror ride would definitely be preferable, particularly since how sexualized that scene was re: how the ride groped Anzu was unnecessary and gross and hands down the worst part of Death-T. :/ 

#(I HATE TRISTAN'S BRAT COUSIN HE HAD NO REASON TO BE THERE AND ONLY EXISTED TO MAKE TROUBLE) #(I APPRECIATED THAT HE VAPORIZED INTO NONEXISTENCE AFTER THAT ARC. BYE BINCH)

Haha, Jouji is his nephew, actually! Honda was on babysitting duty for his big sister that day. I will say that I do like the fact that Jouji exists purely because it lets us know that Honda has a big sister, and I’ve actually utilized that by fleshing her out into a character for a few fics I’ve written (including my magnum opus), which makes me somewhat attached to her. That said, we don’t actually need that, because Honda brings her up again when he brings clothes for Shizuka to wear when he picks her up from the hospital:

(Sorry for the scan quality, it’s the best I can do right now. Also, the “I don’t know if they’ll look good on you” --- that’s VIZ being kind of loose with the translation. In the original Japanese what he says is more like, “I don’t know if they’ll suit you,” which makes sense given Shizuka is far more demure than what Honda’s sister is implied to be like, given her taste in clothes.)

This little mention here is actually part of why I characterized her the way I did when I wrote her; that she wore “loud” clothes when she was younger spoke to a punkish style of dress, and in my mind, attitude therefore. Either way, though, Jouji is the first way we find out that Honda has an older sister, and that happens much earlier than this, so I guess that’s at least a little good he brings to the story.

Still, though, I agree with you overall, haha. I don’t like Jouji as a character at all. I don’t like the toilet humor during the horror game ride (though that still wasn’t as bad as the ride itself groping Anzu), I don’t like how he’s perverted as a baby, and I don’t understand how old he’s supposed to be. He seems like he should only be a year or so old, but if that’s true, how can he talk that well? How can he understand more mature concepts? It feels like he should have been at least five or six, but then I suppose he wouldn’t have been able to be carried around . . . ugh. Either way, he didn’t really bring anything of merit or value to Death-T. The closest we got was that he was the bait to lure Jounouchi in, and I liked that because, again, Jounouchi knew that it was a trap, but he walked into it anyway because he felt it was the Right thing to do, both because Jouji had helped them once before, and because Jouji was a baby. (And there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment right before the games actually start where Honda is trying to get Jouji to shut up, and Jounouchi says, “Don’t make him cry!” Jounouchi really does have a soft spot for kids, aww. It’s the big brother in him, probably.) Plus, the fact that Jounouchi won that literal fight to the death while holding a baby in his arms is nothing short of badass, and I’ll never take any badass moments away from him. ♥

But yeah, Jouji was a worthless trash character, lmao. There’s a reason why, although I’ve written Honda’s older sister, I haven’t actually written Jouji. I’ve no use for that annoying thing.