Writing Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfiction: tips and comments [E]

[Circ]

I've had this into my head for a long time now. I'm not sure I've integrated everything I wanted as clearly as I expected to and would greatly apreciate criticism.

[QUOTE]This article is aimed at those wanting to produce fairly long, anime-type Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfiction. That is, fanfiction that creates a "new" anime season or story arc, or simply wants to use the same "framework" as the anime.

[I]Notes:
"Mary Sue" also refers to masculine characters.
Most of these rules can easily be applied to roleplaying[/I]

[B]Concepts[/B]

Friendship and honor *are* central themes to Yu-Gi-Oh!, no matter how mushy it sounds. Do not forget that when writing.

[I][B]Characters[/B][/I]

[B]Characters have ties[/B]

Characters in the anime have complex backgrounds and links to secondary characters. When creating a new major character, be it an ally or an enemy to Yugi, make sure to have a small gallery of related characters: a fanfic allows for much more space for secondary characters!

[B]Villain ties[/B]

This is even more important. If you want to make villains which have ties to Yugi, know your ancient egypt and the anime's ancient egypt stuff. A little research never killed anybody and many sites have good manga/anime timelines and summaries.

[B]Characters are not perfect[/B]

This applies to all fiction, but make sure to give your characters flaws, otherwise you have a Mary Sue. But then overly tragic characters (e.g. orphans, loners) don't have any link to other characters! It is a delicate balance.

[B]Out of the blue[/B]

Please, liberate us from odd and forgotten family members appearing out of the blue. Not only is it frequently a way to throw in a Mary Sue but this plot device is overly used and way out.

[B]Motivations[/B]

You should always know precisely why a character wants to beat/duel another or, if that's the case, why he doesn't want to.

[I][B]Cards[/B][/I]

[B]NO god cards[/B]

PLEASE liberate us from new god cards. There were 3 created by Industrial Illusions. If there had been more, we'd have heard of it by now. At the very least, we've seen way too much Anubis god cards.

[B]Real world vs Anime cards[/B]

We have seen little cases were people used duplicates of cards in their decks. Also, the anime and the TCG's idea of a powerful card are DIFFERENT. Remember that cards like Raigeki were banned during Battle City. Also, the anime's equivalent of a 1900 (e.g. a base attacker) stands around 1400-1600 ATK. The only 1900 atk we see is Kaiba's sole Blood Vors.

[I][B]Decks and duels[/B][/I]
[B]
Dueling levels[/B]

NOBODY beats Yugi in a fair duel. And Yugi is the ONLY one who can beat Kaiba in a fair duel. If you can't respect the conventions of canon, don't write for that canon.

[B]Themes[/B]

Give us themes. Give us motifs. Give us a reason to be interested in the duel. We expect o discover new strategies and new themes with each new duelists. A good Anime duelist has a strategy and loads of cards that work together. He also has a signature card that might or might not be very powerful (One of yugi's signature cards is Kuriboh!)

[B]Duels[/B]

A good duel is won by a fairly narrow margin, or saved from the brink of loosing. It i of no interest to us to see duelists being utterly crushed down within 3 turns. We want to see complex strategies, clashing and suspenseful duels.

[B]New cards[/B]

Make sure to reveal a few wholely new cards with each duel. Don't be afraid to have half the cards in a deck be made up. To keep suspense rolling, each and every duel a character fights should reveal to us a few new cards from his deck, unless you want to reveal new uses of previous cards.[/QUOTE]