Sometimes my computer still surprises me. I went to watch Star Wars Episode III with Mom and told it to be downloading McAfee updates in the meantime. I actually don't know whether it succeeded or whether the dumb update program errored, which has happened sometimes. But after the movie, the computer was still on, waiting for me. .___. Extremely surprising, since of late it's been crashing left and right if I leave for two minutes. I often feel like kicking the browser to kingdom come, but I love the computer itself and try not to get mad at it. X3 **hugs it.** It tries so hard.
Been doing more thinking on the fantasy fics. If this ice thing happens, I still need to think how Yami Bakura is captured. And I also finally decided on James' fate. He's captured by Yami Marik, after the devil makes it look like he's been killed. Yami Marik proceeds to torture him, showing him real scenes of Bakura having lost his mind, and making up lies that Yami Bakura abandoned him, when in reality Yami Bakura is trying to find and save him. ;___; But, to keep it from becoming too much like Taming the Darkness, Yami Marik eventually sets James free, wanting him to try to find Bakura and have a confrontation with Yami Bakura.
This is only learned in the second fic, I'm thinking. And when they meet, the Ice Queen is rising to power. Her minions are trying to capture all of them, and Yami Bakura sends Bakura and James away while he tries to hold them off. But there's too many, and he's taken prisoner and badly beaten and tortured. The next day, when the Ice Queen has him pushed off the platform and then encases him in ice, James is with his son and sees it happen. He's horrified and feels responsible, since Yami Bakura was captured while protecting them. And he tries to help Bakura figure out how to save him.
I'm pleased with myself that I managed to keep secret the plot of a weird blurbfic I did for
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31_days's theme Memoirs of an Amnesiac. I wanted to tell the plot several times, but I had the willpower to not. It's a very odd fic, but I'm proud of how it came out. Originally it was supposed to be blurb, and hence, LJ-only, but I liked it so much that I put it on FF.net anyway.
I feel sad that Duke isn't a very popular character. ;__; I think a lot of it is because of how the anime ruined his intro. They made him look *awful.* Haha, the dub actually tried to salvage the mess and make it better. I heard that in the original, he's just upset because Yugi defeated Pegasus/Pegasus disappeared, and he can't get his game going. **headdesk.** My gosh, that's so whiny and immature! But the dub added the element that he thinks Yugi cheated and he wants to expose Yugi as a cheat, which gives him a more noble motive in addition to the other. I can't run the anime version in general completely down, since it gave us "David", and I like the scene at the very end where Duke is apologizing. But overall, the manga intro is so much better. I've ranted on that before, so I won't get into it again.
Instead, I'll muse on how different Duke is in general in the manga. I do need to get into the intro to tell a lot of his personality, however, so I'll try to make it different than what I've said before.
Because of Duke's reaction during the part where his father is hitting him for losing the game against Yugi at school, I don't think that was the first time it happened. ;__; Duke didn't really seem surprised. And his submissiveness is really heartbreaking.
His whole motivation during that arc is really intriguing and so sad. On the one hand, he really wanted the Millennium Puzzle's power. It was a legend he had been chasing all his life, he said. But on the other hand, he wanted to ease his father's pain and he thought that helping him get revenge would do that. He truly loves his father in spite of the abuse he's likely suffered all his life when he didn't do his best in his father's eyes.
He's also likely been indoctrinated by his father all his life. We know his father was telling him that he was the only one worthy of owning the Millennium Puzzle. It's probable that he was also repeatedly lectured against friendship, since his father is so bitter about what happened between himself and Solomon Muto. This may be the source of Duke's apparent derision of Yugi and Joey's friendship, and branch out to explain a lot of his cynicism and specifically his comments in Duelist #12, which indicate he may still think of himself as a lone wolf/that he doesn't need anyone else to give him courage/etc.
During the DDM game, he's angry when his father shatters the Millennium Puzzle and helps Yugi pick up the pieces. His father acknowledges that Duke is kind. Duke wants to play a fair game and tells his father not to interfere any more.
He doesn't hate Yugi; he tells his father when he loses the DDM game that he just couldn't hate Yugi. He also says he couldn't play the game well with the weight of his father's hate on him. When his father goes completely off the deep end and disowns Duke and tries to kill Yugi, Duke pleads with him and says not to show him any more of his ugly heart. When his father drags Yugi off and is going to play the Devil's Boardgame with him, Duke fights hard to rescue him.
The manga also features just about the only interaction of Duke and Bakura (and Yami Bakura, too!). It's not much interaction, but it's interesting. Duke indicates he's spoken to Bakura before, at school; he comments that Bakura doesn't often show his claws and he didn't know Bakura knew about the Millennium Items. (The fact that Duke knows about them is quite intriguing in and of itself.) And Bakura is trying to help Duke rescue Yugi.
At the end of the arc, there's no indication that Duke is a part of Yugi's gang, and indeed, his appearance in Battle City seems to affirm it. The manga version, unfortunately, has no counterpart to the anime scene where Duke apologizes to Yugi and is basically accepted as a friend of his and the others.
Also, even though he does the parlor tricks to make the girls squee, he does not seem to be a Casanova at all. (And of course, that idiocy with the cheerleaders does not exist.) He doesn't even seem to be romantically interested in Serenity. He says he's along because he owes Yugi-tachi a favor, and later on, is thinking that he also came to find out whether you can really get courage from another person. And that element, unfortunately, I don't think Takahashi-sama ever went back to; we never learn what Duke's conclusion is, that I remember. When I think of it, the only time he shows attraction to anyone is I think when they're in Mai's car and he looks rather smitten by her. He's thinking "She's hot!" But he looked more like an innocent boy, interestingly. Just from his expression in that panel, I could honestly picture him being taken in by some crafty femme fatale. XD;
In both the anime and the manga, he's the cynic of Yugi's friends and acquaintances. He's much more that way in the manga, I think, but with his reduced role it's sometimes hard to get a clear picture of him. After his wonderful intro, the manga-ka seemed to kind of forget about him. He pops up here and there in Battle City, but very sporadically and with little dialogue. Overall, however, I can tell he seems very detached from Yugi and the others. I honestly do not think he's really a part of the gang in the manga, nor that he considers himself as such. Unless they became somewhat closer during and after Battle City; he's along during the Ceremonial Battle. Unlike in the anime, he seems to have actually been invited.
My version draws mainly from the manga, but keeps some anime elements. Of course, the events of the anime have happened in my fics, minus the intro. The anime intro is no longer canon to me; the only elements of it kept for my fics are "David" and the apology scene. Oh, and the fact that Duke himself owns the store, not his father. My version of the intro's events don't have the store burn like in the manga.
I'm sure not quite sure how to reconcile my version of things with the part in the anime where Yugi duels Bandit Keith in the warehouse. The warehouse thing drew elements from the manga version of Duke's intro, minus having Duke and his father present. And I actually did like those warehouse episodes, especially Yami Bakura's role. Him freeing Bandit Keith from mind-control was awesome. And I love where he, as Bakura, knocks Keith off the platform, and then where he's clumsy and actually falls off, LOL. Not something I expected Yami Bakura would do. And it seems to really be him all through those episodes, just pretending to be Bakura. But I also like in the manga where Yami Bakura came and Yugi knew it was Yami Bakura and Yami Bakura was trying to encourage Yugi to win DDM against Duke. So I dunno how to reconcile all those elements. For now, I haven't even tried to address them in my fics. XD; I've only described the main parts of my manga-inspired intro for the anime, with Duke's father and no dog costume/national TV humiliation crap, etc.
My version of Duke does flirt with women left and right, but he uses it as one of his many shields. He's also very cynical, tends to keep people at arm's length, and is quite detached from Yugi-tachi. He is also truly in love with Serenity, and more and more, I think he's a better match for her than Tristan. XD; Every time I think I'm leaning towards Tristan/Serenity again, the whole sheltering issue comes up and bugs me. Duke needs some moderation in his bluntness, and he needs to mature (in the anime; in the manga he already seems pretty mature), but overall I keep preferring to put him with Serenity.
And some brief musings on Bakura. In my Alone Again AU, I briefly mention him as a computer programmer. But since he's shown at least in the manga to have skills with making things (RPG figures and the Egyptian diorama), I decided maybe he goes into wood-carving in the main timeline. X3
Also, can you reconcile how he loves grotesque cards/things in the manga with him running around screaming in the anime because a skeleton is on his back? LOL. I dunno, I keep trying to figure out how to merge those elements of his personality and it keeps not working. If he loves grotesque things, I can't imagine why he freaks so bad about the skeleton. I wish I knew if the skeleton incident happened in the manga. That's one volume I don't have yet.
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