#stupid freakin watermark

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh Season Zero: The Yo-yo Crimes of Jounouchi Pt 2

OK, last we left off, we were in a different Youtube video. This one I grabbed off of 2 different videos (you’ll see their watermark in the corner change) and it makes me appreciate the quality that our other episodes have been, honestly. A little bit of compression going on in these, just to give you even more of that nostalgic feel of watching a bootleg anime from the 90′s your brother got from his weird high school friend’s Napster account.

Because this is done with subtitles on, it takes more caps to cover it. Part of why I rewrite the dialogue in these recaps is to help abridge stuff, and so consider yourself warned...there’s a lot of caps in this one. For most of you, that’s probably not much of a problem. But I’m just letting you know because...I sure wasn’t expecting it to be over 40 caps for half an episode, and I’ll probably just type less to make up for that. (Tumblr keeps Erasing All My Words anyway, so this is for the best, but that’s a tech issue I already went into in another post.)

(read more under the cut)

So, to start off, Yugioh and co. walk up to a bar like a really weird version of a bar joke and are like “do you know where we can find the yo-yo gang?” And, much like a video game npc, the bartender was like “I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about, and I heard every part of their intimate conversation. Let me give you all the details, children.”

Hey, PS, there’s an entire Wikipedia entry about the bar joke. And that is wild. Apparently the first bar joke was from Ancient Sumeria, and Wikipedia was like “Here is the Sumerian joke, but we Do Not Get it. Please don’t try to get it.”

The joke being: "A dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one'."

Damn. I can’t believe the Sumerians were onto meme humor before we ever invented memes. They were in the Galaxy brain over there in the land before time, holy crap. Depositing their memes knowing that 7,000 years later mankind would look at the world’s first joke and be like “I don’t get it!” while all the millennials and zoomers with our MB of nonsense memes on our phones are like “No. I get it.” Good on you Sumerians, that is freakin the best joke ever made. 7000 years to get to the punch line of confusing the hell out of all us. Bless.

They promptly tell Miho that everything was resolved and that she should go to bed and she was like “Cool!” and exited stage left. Bye, I guess. Anzu also went home, but she didn’t have to be tricked into doing it, she just went the hell to bed.

(PS, I just realized that if I want to write less...I should probably not look up Wikipedia articles about the world’s first ever bar joke. But y’all, habits die so freakin hard, and I just feel like it’s very pertinent to this Yugioh recap, although I know it’s really not.)

Yuugi and Honda decide to visit the warehouse and harass Jounouchi. In the context of the show, they’re going out of their way to pull their best friend out of society’s systemic downward pull of a life of crime and most likely turning into exactly like his Father. But, the way that it’s storyboarded makes it look a lot like these kids just show up out of the corner and this gang was like “Damn it, again? OMG small children, please leave us alone!”

Honda hands over the symbolism sash, to which Jounouchi symbolically says “Nyeh.”

And Honda didn’t take it very well.

After tending to his kidneys for a little while, Honda decided to go back at it again at the Krispy Cream and do some sort of insane parkour over this completely ordinary fence.

Ah, the very first instance of real duel law where you duel over a relationship. In later seasons duel law is invoked for things like Mai’s marriage and the right to date Tea (and then just kind of forgetting you ever won the right to date Tea twice). But to think the very first time was Honda dueling for the right of Jounouchi to be part of nerd gang because Jounouchi had fallen to the dark side yo-yo gang across the street run by some 40 year old man with blue hair.

How many times is Honda gonna fight with a broom? Like are they just magnetized to his location? where are they even coming from?

Freakin janitor powers over here, put him in a Final Fantasy style RPG. I want to see what his limit break would be.

Not like it matters, because Hirotani very quickly explains why these yo-yo’s are at all a threat.

Which honestly shouldn’t be...so lethal? Seems like the weight is all you need, not really the spikes. But it’s at least stronger than Honda’s janitor stuff.

Unfortunate for Honda that he just destroyed an antique.

So with lightning reflexes, Yuugi does what he does most:

The death yo-yo ricochets back and does this little itty bitty scrape to this guy’s face and he’s real bothered by it. Although it’s like...well dude, you’re a 50 year old high schooler, I don’t think people will notice the scrape compared to everything else falling apart in your life.

And so then the Yugioh Season Zero team was like “oh shoot is it time to torture Yuugi???” and they got hella excited.

Like I thought it was just Yuugi’s class that were a bunch of disturbing criminal disasters, but I guess it’s the whole city. Like...was Yuugi’s class the good school?

I mean, it can’t be, there’s no way...

but like...is there a good school in this universe? How does anyone survive till graduation? If you so much as disgrace a yo-yo, you will get the torture treatment that I sure did expect in Yakuza games, but not so much in Yugioh, tbh.

Just a reminder: This is the third time we’ve beat up Yuugi this episode. Within the first meeting of Yuugi and Hirotani, he beat the tar out of Yuugi within eye shot of Jounouchi. So like...Jounouchi was reallllllllllllllllly lax on that deal, right? Like...he took his toot sweet time to realize “yeah this just ain’t ever gonna happen.”

And then the yo-yo wars begin.

Just like Solid Snake crawling through the radiation chamber.

Hirotani throws his Fyper-yoyo, Jounouchi intercepts with his Eireboy, and Hirotani’s completely terrible yo-yo just flies off the string again because Hirotani should have just sticked to using his fists. No wonder they wanted to recruit Jounouchi so badly, their yo-yo game is so off.

We never get a door to darkness in this episode, dipping our enemies into mind horrors. Instead, we get home-alone style traps. But, this makes sense. Not only do the show makers have to make Yuugi avoid solving problems with magic in front of Jounouchi, they also have to make it Jounouchi’s choice to leave Hirotani behind. If Yuugi did it for him in like...some sort of duel law situation...then that sort of leaves out Jounouchi’s choice in the equation.

Not like this ever really comes up in later seasons, since who even follows through with duel law and marries Mai? But like, it does feel like Season Zero calls out the later Seasons a bit in this regard. Honda got beat up because he tried to win Jounouchi back by force (or game, I guess.) That was just another form of coercion on the heels of Hirotani’s. What Jounouchi actually needed was to make his own decision to leave.

...most other anime I’d be like “I’m sure that’s just a translation error” but not this one.

So Yuugi runs to the roof where Jounouchi will never see this.

My audible sigh reading this line about fight club roof.

These stupid gang members went into Yuugi’s native territory, not just a fight club roof, but on a warehouse? They were dead before they arrived.

This was like maybe 3 frames of animation in just rapid succession, it was pretty silly and good.

Reminder that like 4 minutes ago, Yuugi was about to get like executed on a meat hook.

Speaking of getting executed on a meathook:

Hope you like the idea of glass in your eyes, because this anime’s got it.

They chase Yuugi around, in a sequence that was done mostly to conserve frames, so you rarely saw the ground until this shot:

Lots of falling down this episode, but unlike Tea, who fell from a warehouse ceiling once and just kind of rubbed her ass after and was like “ah damn it.” these guys won’t come out of it virtually unscathed.

Also, Honda is here now:

Jumping off of his symbolic sash trapeze, he decides to do in Hirotani for good.

Hey so like...walk the dog is a fairly gentle walk that a yo-yo does slowly on the ground right?

Just pointing out how sensitive Hirotani’s fingies are.

And he...didn’t appear to be dead, so I don’t have to add to the bodycount...but it’s gonna be a real long road for recovery.

And now, with the gang back together Jounouchi is back at school knee deep in make up assignments he’ll probably completely ignore since we know that in a years time, these fools are going to be trapped on Pegasus’ island, and at that point school will be just that place you talk about when you try to remember why you’re friends with Bakura.

---hey aren’t those chairs attached to the desks?

Because...holy crap, Anzu.

Honestly this is what you see before you die, but I guess Jounouchi died off screen after the episode ended, so I don’t have to add him to the deathcount (again). RIP.

Alright! That took like...8 tries to get Tumblr to save this one, but it managed! (well...I guess “managed” isn’t the word you’d use for a typing program that takes 8 tries to save)

Next time, we’ll be back to S5, for an arc I’ve heard is kind of boring. We’ll see. If it truly is, I can condense episodes into fewer posts. Or maybe it’s a secret gem? I guess we shall see.

And if you just got here this is a link to read all the Season Zero recaps from the start:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yuugi-muto/chrono

(there’s also a link to read all the Yugioh posts we wrote from the start in chrono order but straight up, this file won’t freakin save, and I just can’t even will myself to look up that link again. It’s on the home page of this blog on the right.)

#YGO #yugioh #yu gi oh #Yuugi Muto #Jounouchi #Honda #Anzu #Miho #yo yo gang #Hirotani #Yuugi and the gang do serious property damage

[scriptureofashes]

gimme some winteriron like...fluff its my secret weakness (maybe a halloween party and buck has a really dumb old costume or something? go wild)

Ahaaaaa I think I sort of turned fluff into angst but like, it’s STILL THERE SO

Also I just had to include Peter lmao

Send me a prompt!

Buckywas going to kill Steve. No joke, he was. He was going tosteal that top hat of his and shove his stupid walking cane up hisass, see if blond President Lincoln was still smirking then.

“Cometo the party, they said,” he muttered. “It’ll be fun,they said.”

Sufficeto say, Steve wasn’t very happy with his best friend doing nothingwith his life except workout, catch up with the 21st century and dodge any form of socializing– he was not hiding,Steve – with any of his so called new team mates. He had so manydifficulties trying not to mix up English with Russian for a whilethere, or trying to sleep without blood-curdling nightmares assaultinghim every night, or trying not to kill people who accidentally snuckup on him.

So.Eat, sleep, train, repeat.

Also,attend arm maintenance sessions. Which was also a bit of a problem.Not at first, mind you—he was begrudgingly fine with letting HowardStark’s son tamper with his arm if it meant he could stop some ofthe chronic pain that throbbed and burned every day at his shoulderand phantom arm, or ease his every move so that he could punch thebad guys in the face with minimal casualties. Regarding himself, thatis.

Butdon’t think he was leaping at the chance of yet another wackymechanic poking at his arm and reminding him how much of a freak he’sbecome. No, it was because Tony Stark was a wonder. He was theone who noticed, the pain whenever he moved, the rust thatreared its ugly head in battle. And when he asked to take a look, itwas as if he was barely holding back his excitement. As if his armwas something to marvel about.

Stevehad mentioned a therapist to help him, but the already ludicrous ideaturned useless as he adhered to sessions with Tony in the workshop.

Hedidn’t understand or try to help him, no. He just listened. Helistened, and refused to treat him as if he were glass, likesome people. Despite what Bucky did to him, he still talked tohim as himself, talked to him how he would talk to an equal humanbeing.

AndBucky soon found himself lost, lostin those doe brown eyes and clever hands, and he was a God damnidiot, that’s what he was.

Goodjob, pal. You’re gone on Tony Stark. And you killed his parents.

Givingup on yet the third try at picking up his beer, Bucky let Russianslip through his teeth as he cursed his choice of costume. Again. Hereally was going tokill Steve for convincing him into coming to Tony’s Halloweenparty. And he was going to kill himself for coming as werewolf,of all ridiculous things.

He’dasked Sam how he could hide his arm and he’d suggested full-bodycostumes, saying he had the perfect one, but Bucky did not expectthis one. Noteto self: kill Sam too.

“Doyou need help with that?”

Buckyraised one eyebrow at the shorty cloakedin white on the other side of the kitchenisland.

“Whatare you, a spider ghost?”

Spider-Manflailed. “I’m justa ghost! The eyes are so that people know who’s under thedisguise.”

“Doesn’t that go against the point of a disguise?”

Thekid blinked at him – or his specs did.

“Yousir, can lick away the beer fromthe floor.”

Buckysnorted and watched him dash back to the party, beer can on one handand Coke on the other, before settling next to the oneperson he’d obviously only go to. His black tux suited him like asecond skin and his eyes gleamed all the way from across the room ashe spun a tale to the very skeptical Agent Hill.Bucky could hear his laughter, and so could the butterflies in hisstomach, apparently.

Abunny. Tony was dressed as abunny, fluffy whiteears sprouting from his dark hair and nose painted into a pink snout.When he’d turned, Bucky felt blood rushing at the sight of a whitelittle ball just over his backside, nestled in the creasethat joined the tails of his coat. God damnit.

APlayboy bunny, Natasha hadclarified,dressed indark green pants, black gloves, black top, and avariety of weapons beltedalong her hips. Hadn’tSpidey blurted out, “Kim Possible!” right next to him, Buckywould have never remembered the show. Honestly,he’d expected something a lot more high maintenance from her.

He’dalso expected a high maintenance party, knowing Tony, but the Playboybunny in question convincedMs. Potts into dealing with the lavish Halloween party while he hadanother, more intimate party to finally reconnect with his old teammates, after a long way down the mutual apologies path.But Bucky would have paid tosee Clint and his Wonder Woman costume at a black tie event.

Butit wasn’t the party that was the only problem, obviously. Tonyin a bunny costume. Itwas sexy, alright. Damn sexy. But it was also adorable.Bucky had thought Tony was cute from the moment he’d first glancedat him, but this—thiswas almost torture. It fit Tony so well,what with the undying, endearing curiosity that watermarked hispersonality. He made the perfect bunny and Bucky was gonnathrow Steve and Sam out the window, how quick would that laughterdie, he wondered.

Hegrowled in their direction and turned away from the party. He reallyshouldn’t have come. He shouldn’t have lefthis rooms. He shouldn’thave caved to Steve’s begging. He shouldn’t have caved to Tony’sbegging to check on his arm, heshouldn’t have read too much into his stares, he shouldn’t havemoved into the compound. He shouldn’t have left cryo.

Cometo think of it, maybe he should have stayed dead.

“Hey,sour wolf, party’sover there.”

Ifit were anyone else, Bucky would have grabbed them by the scruff andflung them at the wall. As it was, he just frowned at Tony’sconcern. His peripheral vision was jacked because of his costume, sohe heard more than saw the half-empty beer can as it came in contactwith the counter.

“Isit the arm? I could have a quick look.”

Buckywanted to laugh. He really didn’t deserve this man.

“No,it’s not that.” He swallowed back saliva. “I’m just thinkingI wasn’t that ready to do this.”

Tony’shand on his was definitely a surprise, butdefinitely not unwelcome. His pristine white gloves differed starklyfrom the dark fur covering his hand. Bucky turned slightly, just so,and met earnest brown. Tony’s smile was a rueful upturn of hismouth.

“Wenever really are,” he said. Something in his eyes made hope flarein Bucky’s chest. “Now come on, I need someone to laugh at Fury’spirate costume with me.”

“Youfreakin’serious—”

Buckyscanned the room and indeed, lo and behold, there was Nick Fury withhis ever permanent scowl and a blue pirate hat on his bald head. It was clearly shovedon by someone far too drunk and Bucky had never seen anythingfunnier.

Tonygrinned at his guffaw.“I really thought I’d get a treat from you, tonight.”

Buckyfelt his lips mirror his before he could help himself.

“Atreat?”

“Yes,instead I got tricked becauseyou got tricked intoSam’s suggestions. Now all thoughts of slobbering over hot soldierBucky Barnes on a Tarzanthong are out the window.”

Buckylaughed way too loud,feeling far too giddy for someone who hadn’t a single drop of boozeall evening.

“Ididn’t know what to do about the arm. And the hair.”

“Thearm didn’t need anything to be done with, thank you very much,”Tony chastised. He seemed to think for a moment. “You wouldhave rocked theAragorn look. I couldhave supplied a super realistic costume and everything.”

“Idon’t remember any Lord of the Rings characters with murderousmetal arms.”

Tonywaved a hand. “Steampunk. It’s a thing.”

Buckysmirked.

“Doesmy costume really put you off?” He lowered his head and his voice.“Is the little bunny afraid of the big bad wolf?”

Tonylooked more amused than charmed, lips tight like he was trying not tolaugh. His fake whiskersstretched on his cheeks as their eyes met, and his pink nosetwitched. It was cute as hell, too cute. Bucky wanted to steal akiss.

WhenTony beat him to it, he thought that maybe coming to the party wasn’t that much of a bad decision after all.

#winteriron #prompt fill #ashes writes #tony stark #bucky barnes #lowkey-avenger #prompts are open! #marvel #steve rogers #sam wilson #natasha romanoff #halloween party!AU #drabble #fanfic #nick fury is a pirate #the wolf and the bunny hehehHEHE #also Steve and Sam know Bucky's pining for Tony hehehHEHEHE #peter parker #iron man #winter soldier