i meant for this to just be a sketch but i ended up spending a few more hours to make it look pretty

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So a lot of Casteshipping/Kingshipping fanfic tends to focus on Atem providing emotional support for Bakura. Acknowledging Kul Elna, the Millennium Items, Bakura's time being manipulated by Zorc, etc.

And that's all well and good, it's necessary, but very rarely do I see it going the other way. Bakura needs to provide emotional support to Atem as well.

For example, I feel like Bakura would forget from time to time that Atem was alone, for 3000 years. Bakura had a number of hosts before the Ring came to Ryou, but Atem? Atem had no one.

So Bakura might make an off-handed comment about how close Yugi and Atem are, didn't Atem care for any of the others? Only for Atem to respond "Others...? There were no others. The Puzzle was hidden away until Yugi solved it."

I also headcanon that because of his time in the Puzzle, Atem now suffers from claustrophobia. He might not even realize it until he's in the middle of an episode and goes catatonic.

For example, Atem and Bakura are in an elevator together, only to have it stall between floors. Bakura isn't thrilled, but he's not out of action. By contrast, as soon as Atem realizes he's trapped he sinks to the floor, totally unresponsive.

Also, I imagine that the whole "total amnesia" thing was more traumatic than Atem lets on. Bakura constantly makes jokes about it, and Atem tries to take it in stride, but one day one of the jokes hits too close to home and he cracks.

Bakura has to backtrack, offer comfort, and reassess his ideas on Atem's perceived invulnerability.

Absolutely gorgeous and stunning art by @wisyhana who did a wonderful fragileshipping commission for me, with scenes loosely pulled from this fanfic I wrote called what do you want?

It is now my new phone lock screen.

The expressions are perfect, with absolutely wonderful emotions being shown here, and I love the little added details, like the Kuriboh, and the Dark Magician mini that Ryou is painting! I could honestly not ask for a better realization of the commission!

I'm having ygo thoughts again and all I can say is that I think people in the DM universe should be incomprehensibly grateful Yugi got the Millennium Puzzle and not Ryou because can you imagine how codependent those two would be? Ryou, local ghost lover permanently haunted (no pun intended) by the fear of being lonely forever, paired up with Yami Yugi (Yami Ryou?), local ghost who is SO determined to make sure all his friends are happy and suffers from a crippling need to be useful and used? Together? Shadi would have to separate them with a crowbar for the Ceremonial Duel and 5 seconds afterward there would be a 50% chance one or both of them would kill him with the same crowbar for making the other sad. They'd be insufferable. Inseparable. Mostly just insane though.

Height gap romance except the shorter one is frequently depicted in situations where they are contextually taller. The taller one sitting while the shorter one looms over them. Both of them lying in bed with the taller one’s head pressed to the shorter one’s chest. The shorter one straddling the taller one’s lap and leaning down for a kiss. The taller one on their knees as the shorter one tilts their head up. Please, it makes me go feral

Fragileshipping is just "me and the bad bitch I pulled with my nervous autistic + socially anxious swag" but it goes both ways. They both think the other is sooooo cool and likeable and they're lucky to even be near them meanwhile everyone else looks at them and is like wow how have either of those two survived this long in the world. You just know that they are that one couple holding onto each other's hands for dear life at loud parties like a pair of scared baby otters adrift at sea.

this appeared on my fyp and i was delighted

Sooo how about a fragileshipping au for a change? Ryou is depressed since he is really bad at keeping people in his life because his social and emotional batteries can only handle so much, and Atem is slowly drifting away from Yugi because he feels like a burden and he doesn't want to get in the way of Yugi's happiness. The two of them randomly meet by chance, and they sort of hit it off and become actual friends! (They only hung out in the same friend group they weren't all that close.)

Some things happen, they get drunk at Ryou's place one night, their difficulty staying grounded and present in their friends' life come up, Atem admits to a failed relationship with Yugi and Ryou talks about a desperate mistake on his part with an equally desperate and hurting Malik, they cry, grieve together and somehow wake up naked in bed next to each other the next morning. They both try to avoid the subject and not discuss what happened between them until Ryou notices that Atem started drifting away from him, which makes him really sad. But after a while, he decides to confront Atem anyway, and after a very hard tearful conversation, they promise to each other that they won't lose touch no matter what. This sort of makes their relationship stronger and they spend more time together again, until Atem realises that he's falling for Ryou fast and hard and Ryou is trying to hint to him that he feels the same way, but his flirting methods are unfortunately not direct enough for Atem who gets too dumb from his crush's presence.

1863!yoohan post compilation

It runs in the family

I like when people give Atem/Yami textured hair and ethnic features you are doing the work of the gods thank you for your services

the longer i stay in fandom, the longer i think a huge amount of bad takes and discourse come from an... abundance of identifying with a character

to be clear, i don't think it's bad to identify with a character. far from it! i think that's part of what makes fiction so powerful.

and it's only logical people often attach to a blorbo because they're just like me, for real. a person will see some element of themselves-- their race, their gender, their sexuality, their hobbies, their family life, their specific flavour of neurodivergence-- and something just resonates. it gives them a way to explore and name this important part of themselves, a part they maybe didn't even know existed before it.

and everything is well and good until some split between them and the character shows up

because of course, no character, except an explicit self-insert written by yourself, will ever be a perfect 1:1 for your own experiences. so sooner or later-- maybe in canon, maybe in a fanwork-- your blorbo diverges from your lived experience in a huge way.

I think this is why shipping culture in particular gets so toxic. While it is by no means the only way to indulge with shipping, a significant portion is 'if i was in that character's shoes, i would choose X'. the fight becomes for your own self-identity.

but this gets expanded in other ways. a character who is revealed to be black when the majority of the fandom had just assumed they were white. or revealed to be queer, or maybe the 'wrong' flavour of queer. or fuck, even some more innocuous part of their backstory, one that's nonetheless so meaningful for SOMEONE, but now it feels like the story is saying, fuck you, we're doing something else

i don't know. i just feel acknowledging this perceived-attack-on-identity helps me understand why people react it what seems to be such outsized way to canon and fanworks alike.

at the same time, i think it's a really important thing to check in yourself.

it's nice, to see a character who you identify with. who resonates with for being like you. but it's also nice to acknowledge and appreciate the way characters are not like you at All. how great it is to get insight into this totally different lived experience. and to muse on how wonderful that recognition might be for someone who does have that background.

I think Duke, Yugi and Atem should all sit in a circle doing eachother's makeup and go clothes shopping together. We know Atem has ~ opinions ~ about Yugi's clothes so I wanna see what he'd say about Duke's. I want the three of them to bicker over fashion and make the other ones wear increasingly absurd clothing. It would heal me

HAPPY 8TH ANNIVERSARY OF YUGIOH THE DARK SIDE OF DIMENSIONS🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

8 years ago even a few weeks before this game-changing gay movie was out, I knew my life as a longtime Yugioh fan, as well as my life in general, would never be the same. I owe the DSoD a bunch: I drew hundreds of pieces of fan art; I met awesome friends both online and in person; and most importantly, the DSoD was what significantly helped me get through hard times. 🥹🥹

I tried the pixel art style this time. I'm not sure it worked the way I had intended to, but I did my best😆

my desire to see more characters try to self-destruct by vomiting up a deluge of the most damning lies about themselves in a fit of despair and loathing and desire to be punished in some way vs. my knowledge that at least some audiences would take their words at face value and metatextually respond exactly the way they're hoping for

Wing of RA

Draw 11/12/2019

Wing of RA v.2

Draw 20/12/2021

Wing of RA v.3

Draw 13/02/2024

Timeline drawn from 2019 to present.

But I still don't know where to start. I draw OC too. At least gradually.