You know the kind of guy whose life’s sucks? The kind where whenever something good happens, something bad occurs to make up for it?

That isn’t me.

My life rocks. Suck it.

So I decided to make a column, where I would let you all bask in my glory. I’m just trying to make myself into an even greater person.
_________________
|My Name is Chaos|


We continue this week with desigining our original duelists for our fan fictions by taking a look at their lives outside of dueling. Lets face it, life isn’t all duels and mystical artifacts allowing children to skip school and play card games all day. Sometimes its filled with…well, school, and chores, and jobs. Hell, even I have a job, slaving away 8 hours a day in a garden center moving trees and bags of mulch.

So…if my articles seem a bit sloppy…blame it on the tulips.

This week, we will look at how fleshing out a character’s life outside of the dueling arena can affect what happens in the arena. And to give you guys an easier time, we will be using Seto Kaiba as our guinea pig.

Why, you ask me?

Well, I would say it is none of your business, cretin! *Pimp slap*

Home/Work Life

Base/Home:

A man’s home is his castle, or atleast, that is what we tell ourselves as our wives and girlfriends make us buy coasters and throw pillows. One moment.

*Puts his fancy throw pillows on his bed*

…my mom bought them for me, of course I am going to have them out!

Anyway, every duelist needs to have a place to live, unless he or she is a bum. Actually, that might be rather interesting…consider making your character a bum.

“I play…hic…that sneaky tranny that stole my watch, in attack…hic…mode.”

Pure gold.

Anyway, the point is, considering where a character lives can help tell the story of the character. Seto Kaiba lives seemingly out of his big, impressive, yet cold and empty office. Says a lot about his style, his emotions, and his life outside the dueling world, huh?

Bases and homes can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Yugi lives in a game shop, in a little room filled with books and other little items. Joey lives in a rather crummy apartment that looks like someone threw up in it (and knowing his dad…)

Then there is one of my original character, Arliss Lockehart. His base is the abandoned dorm on the Duelist Island. At first glance, much like the southern duelist, it is unimpressive: rundown, dull, a little scary but otherwise nothing to worry about. But once inside, you find a posh mansion filled with the finer things in life…and hidden areas for the practicing of the dark arts.

The key to making an interesting home for a character is remembering to keep it just detailed enough that people can get a good idea of the place, while not so detailed that it confuses them completely. In other words, it is good to know that there are couchs and tvs, bad to know the exact number of throw pillows. And even then, use your best judgment, as some of that info may, infact, be useful.

Loyalties:

Another thing to think about with your characters is just who they are loyal too. Lets face it, some characters are not going to be friends with everyone, but who they are friendly with makes all the difference.

Yugi has his friends, Seto has his brother, Geno has his ghostly lover Shima Nephthys, and Arliss Lockehart has his brother Arlen. It is through these people that we can see the softer side of these characters, the more caring side. Or, in Geno’s case, the side that likes to get down with his bad self.

Come on…their both immortal and look 25. And they have three kids. You know what they are doing.

Come on!

Seriously though, it is through friends and those close to a duelist is loyal to that we better see the full range of their character. And let me tell you, a character is better remembered when they are more rounded out, and seem more like a person. Even Dr. Claw had a pet cat, for cripes sake!

Enemies:

The converse of this is to remember who a character hates, and exactly how much. Seto Kaiba dislikes Yugi Moto, but it isn’t as much as he hates Pegasus, and that isn’t as much as he hates his step father and the Big 5. By charting out what I like to call the Tree of Hate (it was the tree right next to the Tree of Life. It too had apples on it, but they were shaped, strangely, like Vice President Cheney’s head.). Tea and Tristan are at the top, merely annoyances. Moving to the larger branches, you get Yugi and Joey. Near the trunk is Pegasus, then there is the turck, aka the Big 5, and finally, at the roots of hate, his father. This means that Seto should be move willing to align with Pegasus then the Big 5, and never with his father against anyone.

Another example is Geno Roads. He is annoyed by Tea, then Tristan, then Joey, then Pegasus, then Yugi Moto, then at the root is the Pharaoh. As such, it is easy to see why he ended up aligning with Tea, ignoring Tristan, bickering with Joey, despising Pegasus and Yugi, and plotting the death of the Pharaoh.

Profession:

The final part of this section is the job. Now, a lot of characters of the show are professional duelists. I think that is stupid. Hot tubs cost a lot of cake. And you need a job to make cake. Rich…creamy…white cake with strawberry ice cream inside…and sweet fluffy icing…mmmm….

*blink*

Sorry.

Anyway, Half the fun of a character can be designing their job. Yes, Seto is a billionaire and so was Geno, but Doc K is a professor at Domino University. Arliss is a con man. Even Superman worked at a newspaper (not well, though. Seriously, if I had super hearing, I’d have broken so many scandals in Washington right now…)

Sometimes, what a character does is more interesting then how they duel. You can have a duelist that has a sucky deck, but make him an architect, and suddenly he gets more interesting. Especially if you name him Art Vandalia.

This also works well with theme duelists. I once had a duelist dul Steve Irwin, who used a croc deck, in a fan fic. Made it very fun.

Plus, if you pick a profession you know a lot about, you can have them drop trivia you know in the story.


Next week we will finish this series up. And the week after that, we will celebrate my first full year as a staff writer…hard to believe I haven’t caused the site to self destruct yet. Hey…what does this button do…

*Presses button…*

BOOM!

…I’m ooooookay!

Another great article. While I haven't been doing much with Yugioh at the moment, I continue to come to the site every week for your articles because they're very useful for fanfiction, and regular fiction alike.

Great article, Chaos. This really does help with story writing. It's allowed me to look at my characters differently. So thanks for writing these articles.

Well, article was quite ok, but you known, someday something is gonna to happen.

Then, I would like to ask, where I can read your fan-fics(I guess in the ff forum, but just asking to make sure.)

I was wondering the same thing, but I didn't ask because I knew I would be too lazy to actually read them.

If you click on Mr.Chaos' name, then click view public profile, it has a link to his homepage that contains all of his fan fiction.

fanfiction.net is the home of all my fics, including the Of the Gods Trilogy, GX Hunters and my critically acclaimed HEROES fic: ELSEWHERE