Author's Notes: From Page 41
First off, hats off to Shirogane: aside from being a wonderful artist, Shiro has a knack for tossing off random comments that contain great ideas (which I am not too proud to pick up and claim as my own.) This epilogue - heck the whole fic - wouldn't have existed without her.
And one more time, I'm grateful to the universe for Dark Rabbit. She's been relentless about challenging me, as well as tossing off fantastic suggestions. Both World's Worst and From Page 41 owe any sleekness they have to her stewardship.
Canon-Juggling
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Oddly the biggest challenge of this chapter was figuring out the timing and placement. If episode 40 is taken as real-time (and not compressed time) then the lapsed time from Pegasus' scream (as YnB takes the Eye) to the time that the Yugi-tachi goes up to Peg's sanctuary and reads his diary is very short: in episode 40 as they run to the stairs they see Croquet overseeing Kemo and goons carrying Pegasus's body out. They then stand around, read the diary, see the soul prison cards, etc.
[In the manga, the final duals are played at a table - no sign of the high-tech arena lowered from the ceiling! -- YnB actually seems to have assaulted pegs at the table (since he's shown sitting there, all bloody and dead) when everyone goes off to look for Mokuba.
Anyhow, for the purpose of this fic - and to accommodate both the manga and the anime version, I've done the following.
- the scream is Pegasus II
- Kemo is carrying out Pegasus I's corpse (though he thinks P is merely unconscious)
- I've spun the fiction that Pegasus intended the "Ties of Friendship" card for Kaiba, but that Croquet gave it to Yugi by accident.
- The other three cards mentioned in the fic don't exist (I hope) - they're just made up. "Lover's Embrace" is actually a card I commissioned art for, because I intended to have it appear in Beholden as a painting that Pegasus does while he's staying with Seto.
Other fun facts from the manga (aka Things I Realized After Looking Through the Manga)
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1. Pegasus and Shadi were in Kul Elna ( derp, I know I'm probably the last perons to twig to this)
2. In the manga, Pegs meets Shadi when he stops a guy from being killed for stealing the ring (from K-E) - which does suggest that at the time Pegasus got the Eye, Ryou didn't yet have the Ring
3. In the manga, Shadi and his gang are looking for hosts for the existing Millenium items - so that they can send these new hosts out to find the missing Items.
Also - in looking at the manga and re-watching ep 40, I think that the dubbers misinterpreted the anime scene of Peg's and Cyndia's wedding.~ I now think that Pegasus never did marry Cyndia - they were 17 after all. I do think they certainly intended to get married, dreamed of it, but then she died. That "wedding" scene where the rose engulfs and destroys her at the moment they become man and wife - that symbolized that Cyndia's death was also the "death" of their dream.
(And this means I'll be going back and adjusting fics - changing references to "his wife" to "his beloved" or "his betrothed")
So, What's the Deal With That Pendant?
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So, for those who weren't sure what to make of the ending, here's the explanation (in spoilerrific-hiding text; highlight to read): Yes, the pendant was meant to echo the one that Kheffrey gave to Pekhasu - which mysteriously disappeared at the end of chapter 6. I know I said in earlier notes that scholars feel that butterflies weren't symbolically significant to the ancient Egyptians, but in this story, yes, most of the butterflies (other than the one that ODs on the mysterious powder) are meant to symbolize Kisara's soul, trying to find a way to give Set some last happiness. ~ The question you may ask then is, was Pekhasu actually Kisara? And ... I have to say I left it sort of vague, so that you can see it however you like. ~ I'd say my own interpretation is that the story is a sort of magical genderbend - Peg's outsides and soul kinda sorta merged with Kisara's insides and soul, but not really going for anything biologically plausible with the m-preg. Conception and birth happened the magical mythological way.
(END OF SPOILER TEXT)
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Female Physicians
Yes, there were some - two that have been recorded are Merit Ptah and Peseshet.
http://ancientstandard.com/2011/03/16/the-female-physicians-of-ancient-egypt/
The diagnosis and treatment scene is a mix of research and fancy. Any anachronisms are my fault.
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Genderbending and m-preg
Yeah, I did it. You may ask why.
I've had this mental list of Fandom Cliches That Are Usually Done Badly, and those were the last two on it. As this is likely to be one of my last fics for the fandom, I decided that if I was going to fit them in, it would be now or never.
But which was it?
I admit that it's not entirely clear even in my own head: to paraphrase Ten, it's a jumbled tangle of wibbly-wobbly ficcy-wiccy bits. Yes, Pekhasu was Pegasus, but in some sense he was also Kisara. Condensing the gestation to a "one hour = 2 weeks" timeline underscored that it was a magical m-preg, not a literal one - which was meant to echo the ancient Egyptian myth of the god Seth's impregnation after eating lettuce with semen on it. (The unposted scene of Set and Pekhasu together worked out how the latter could have inadvertently ingested his own seed as well as Set's.)
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Nafattah and Mihakrates
This subplot - which kept threatening to take over the story - was kept in because I wanted to address, even if only glancingly, the whole question of how the Ishtars came to have the Rod as well as the Torc. (Though of course, it's doubtful that Kaiba would have had any appreciation for the Rod's "occult bullshit"). ~ It was also a tiny proto-theory of why the tombkeepers had two of the items.
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Moth
Butterflies didn't seem to have any religious/mythological meaning in AE - unlike the Greeks, whose name for them, ψυχή (psȳchē) means soul. It is, of course, this latter that's alluded to in this story.
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Mihakrates
As I've mentioned, I intended Mihakrates to be a a sort of proto-Marik. A tiny bit more will be revealed on this in the last chapter, but of course here I'm hinting at the origins of the Tombkeepers ( which probably don't need to be established in this time-line, but I've never satisfactorily sorted out if the Yugi-tachi's time travel changed the past, or was required by the past.)
A hat tip to LadyBlackwell (aka arostine), who read the Mihakrates scene from the perspective of a Marik fangirl.
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Pekhasu's ka
It might seem an odd choice, but from what's been shown in the manga and anime, Pegasus and Kaiba have only three cards in common: Illusionist Faceless Mage (which is not used by Kaiba in any duels, but is seen in his briefcase at DK), and the two magic cards Polymerization and Negate Magical Attack.
Side note: I find it curious that Pegs doesn't have a Monster Reborn card in the manga or anime, (though he does in the video games, according to the YGO wiki.)
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Names of Gods
Technically the names are
- Giant God-Soldier of Obelisk
- Sky Dragon of Osiris
- Winged God-Dragon of Ra.
Each of these names has an oddity: Obelisk isn't a god, both Osiris and Ra are winged/fly and are listed as dragons (though Osiris is more a serpent), etc. ~ So for the sake of poetic symmetry I adjusted the names. Before anyone gets their fur up over Obelisk, let me say that although I resisted for a while, in the end I gave into the scholarly impulse to substitute "Geb" for Obelisk, as that better covers the primal elements (earth, air and fire), thus making the end product:
- God-Soldier of Geb
- God-Dragon of Osiris
- God-Phoenix of Ra
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Set's titles
Most of Set''s titles are either borrowed or made up: I read and liked "the twelfth dynasty Pharaoh Amenemhet I has the throne name Sehet-ib-Re ("satisfied is the heart of Re [Ra]"
( from http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/names-pharaoh.html )
so I nicked it.
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CHAPTER 4
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First off, go here to see the lovely design done by Shirgane777 for the outfit that Pharaoh set wears at the beginning of the chapter:
Second: Though it's not explored in depth, I've always wanted to explore reasons (other than the obvious one of him having total disdain for magic) why Set's modern incarnation doesn't have the Rod. This was my feeble attempt to do so.
I like to slip things in: for Page 41, Mihakrates -- who I wanted to be a sort of "AE version" of Marik / Yalik -- is Greek because the name is the best anagram/best phrase I could construct to describe them (Yalik in particular) - "Marik hates" ...
(and why is there no good on-line equivalent of the scrabble tray? The on-line crosswords make me think that such a thing is possible but the only one I found was tiny and too complicated. ~ The normal anagram sites make phrases out of names - I was looking for names out of phrases.)
... and of course now that I've posted two chapters, I keep thinking of other phrases/names I could have used. Figures.
Finally, though disheartened by the silence that followed chapter 3, I press on. Chapter 5 is outlined and half-drafted: the last few weeks have not provided me with a good environment/headspace for writing
. Yes, I was going to wait until the fic was entirely finished to post the last three chapters, but I ... okay, I have no self-control okay?
But first .. let me burble a bit. I owe the Universe/Karma/Powers That Be/whatever a big wet sloppy kiss for making it possible for Dark Rabbit to be my beta for these last two fics. It's been a truly enjoyable experience to have a beta who won't let me get away with half-assed or inconsistent characterization for Pegasus. By poking me in my lazy spots, DR has lifted these fics above and beyond their initial torpor.
By shirgane777: Pekhasu's "ambassador" outfit (worn when he meets the Guardians in this chapter):
(Bigger version of this, and what Pekhasu wears later (though it's not explicitly mentioned) at Shiro's dA.
Set's Guardians as shown in the manga. Names in square brackets were devised for this story (thanks go to Milly*, Shiro, and Ziven) - but of course they're not canon.
* Milly had originally proposed "Meretseger" for the Guardian of the Eye, and the initial post of chapter 2 used that name. ~ However, as I was working on chapter 3 - and finally got around to actually checking to see if Meretseger was a real name (I figured it was a French artist), I discovered that it's an Egyptian cobra goddess of Justice. Rather important, but it just didn't feel right as a man's name.
To find a new one, I clicked at random on a name in the "List of Egyptian deities" at the bottom of Meretseger's reshafim page (several dozen are listed, most I'd never heard of) and - well, you can read for yourself:
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/religion/duau.htm
The serendipity seemed too good to pass up.
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A tidbit from Reshim that I really wanted to use:
The preferences of ancient Egyptian men were remarkably similar to those of modern Westerners. In a story from the Westcar papyrus Pharaoh Snofru decides to go on an outing: "Indeed, I shall go rowing! Have brought to me twenty ebony oars worked in gold with handles of skeb-wood worked in fine gold. Have brought to me twenty women with beautiful bodies and breasts and hair who have not given birth. And have brought to me twenty nets and give these nets to these women in place of their clothes."
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About Mihakrates' ka:
Regarding Dark Marik's "torture" cards: though Nightmare Wheel is a Trap card, Holding Arms and Holding Legs are both Effect Monsters. (Er, yeah. Mihakrates is an AE amalgam/predecessor of Marik Ishtar/Yalik. This will become clearer in the next chapter.)
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chapter 2
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First off, a huge thanks once again to my beta readers Dark Rabbit and Rroselavy, who poke me with sticks when I get lazy or sloppy (and I luff them muchly for it).
Next up: the canon violations. As in all my fics, I concatenate Pegasus' original and dub name (and with a nod to Sol Chevalsky) give "Jacob" to the J. ~ I also prefer spelling Zorc as "Zorukh" (because every time I see "Zorc" my brain automatically adds and Pals!) ~ On to larger canon violations: Pegasus most likely wasn't aware that Ryou Bakura had the Ring until their showdown, but as I said in the preface, this fic isn't aiming for scrupulous accuracy.
A thank you to omochi and arostine, who took the time to comment in my LiveJournal on what Egyptified name to give to Pegasus, and to lady_sefina, who also helped me see that it was okay to switch to Set instead of Seto. ~ Thank you to Shiro, Ziven, and Milly, who provided suggestions for Set's Guardians.
Finally, special thanks to arostine and sefina for their help in various aspects of Egyptian life. The former's "Egypt Bites" at her LiveJournal have been rich sources to plunder. (Of course, any errors or anachronisms - such as the wax seal on the beer - are my doing, and not the work of the knowledgeable people from whom I shamelessly steal.)
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CHAPTER 1 2011.jan.08
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The title is a reference to the plunnie's birthplace: it was Spec topic 5, page 41, posts 2020 and 2024 of the FFnet YGO Fanfiction Contest forum. ~ We were attempting to guess the characters for round 9 of Season 8 of the fanfiction contest ... which our mod said would include "one new, one repeated" character -
ymilly listed the characters that had been used already and said she supposed that they'd get paired with:
Otogi, Pegasus, either of the contemporary Kaibas or either of the Maliks.
To which Azhdarcho replied:
ToonshippingToonshippingToonshippingToonshippingToonshippingToonshippingToonshippingToonshipping
OR
CEOshippingCEOshippingCEOshippingCEOshippingCEOshippingCEOshippingCEOshippingCEOshipping
Shirogane replied:
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
EDIT: except that none of those characters repeat
OH HEY GUYS PRIEST SET X PEGASUS ANYONE?
Summary: Unable to summon the soul of his wife, unable to win the heart of the man he wants most, Pegasus settles for second best.
Azhdarcho replied:
Unable to bear the loss of Kisara, the newly coronated Pharaoh Set sets himself to bringing her incarnation into the past. However, his spell is ruined by Mana's fumbling, and "silver hair" is the only request that gets through. YAOI, LEMONS, R&R?
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And poof! There it was.
The first chapter pretty much wrote itself from that. I coined "Hieroglyphshipping" as the name for Set/Pegasus, to parallel Toonshipping..
P.S. There will be no lemons.
It's also a very very tiny reference to H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond.
Thank you to my Egyptologist Silver Dragon Golden Dragon.Kheffry was originally meant to be a full-on Haga clone: he's named for Khepri, a dung beetle-headed solar deity. However, the one panel in the manga that shows Pharaoh Set's new Sacred Guardians shows the High Priest as quite a tall-and-large man, so (as much as I want to) I can't bring myself to give him Haga's scurrying shortness.
Finally, a thank-you to sefina, whose discussion with me on LJ convinced me it that, even though the English manga uses "Seto" (and to my ear that's what they're saying in the original anime), it's still probably a good idea to use "Set" instead.
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This entry was originally posted at http://animom.dreamwidth.org/34447.html.