Rest for a moment. All will be explained in due time, my beloved. My...Dark King.
My Dark King is a Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds Alternate Universe Fic. It leads off from the halfway point of Jack's duel with Carly as a Dark Signer with one very simple question: "What if Jack had lost that duel, died, and fulfilled Carly's vision, becoming a Dark Signer?"
From that one change, events proceed drastically differently, mostly in ways that aren't very good. Yusei winds up not being around to help Aki in her duel with Misty and instead gets severely injured by a load of falling debris, Crow nearly gets his face beaten in by a Brainwashed and Crazy Aki, and then the King of the Underworld gets involved and everything just starts going straight to Hell. Literally! Suffice it to say, this is one fic that takes the already Darker and Edgier plot of the Dark Signer arc and ramps it straight up to eleven.
The story is currently being written by Masterdramon
, and is 19 chapters in. It can be read here. The story's greatest strengths are its familiarity with and respect towards the entirety of the Yu-Gi-Oh! canon, its expert ability to flesh out and develop minor characters, and juggling a lot of viewpoints at once, not to mention just being really damn well-written. The author is a lover of this site and a self-professed believer that TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life , even going so far as to write a one-shot in gratitude to the troper, Lale, who wrote the first recommendation for it.
It's worth noting that the author has also written three one-shots that fit neatly into the same "universe": The Devil and the Star, a story about Takuma Saiou from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX founding the Arcadia Movement and how it was taken from him by Divine; Second Sun, a story elaborating on Rex Goodwin's past; and Heroes of Justice, a story about a young Sherry Leblanc meeting Edo Phoenix. The former two work perfectly well as standalones, not having to read "My Dark King" to really get them and not having to read them to get the main story, but "Heroes of Justice" at least pretty much requires having read "The Devil and the Star" first.
More recently, he's also added an ongoing miniseries running alongside the main story: I Am Become Death, a series of short drabbles featuring each of the original seven Dark Signers.
Provides Examples Of:
- Anyone Can Die: Divine, Goodwin, and like 90% of Neo-Domino City's population.
- Ascended Extra: One of the story's defining traits is how it takes the most minor one-note characters of 5D's and completely fleshes them out.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The card "Sleeping Giant: Zushin." because this fic takes place prior to the second half of 5D's, there has yet to be a single summoning of the monster in an official duel. But since it had such a low chance of happening, of course it happens.
- Backstory: TONS. Pretty much every 5D's minor character that doesn't die gets one.
- Berserk Button:
- Jack's is trying to hurt Carly. Carly's is trying to hurt Jack. Shocker, I know. Divine learns this the hard way.
- Carly also takes rather poorly to the news of Misty's death, eventually swearing revenge on Aki.
- Blessed with Suck: The Dark Signers have massive power which they're able to tap into most easily by concentrating on their worst memories. It's about as good for their emotional state as you'd expect it to be.
- Broken Bird: Aki backslides heavily at the start of the story thanks to Jack becoming a Dark Signer, and the butterflies causing Yusei to never trick Divine into revealing the truth about Toby's death. This causes Aki to kill Misty as the Black Rose Witch and become aware just how deeply Divine's violated her mind, with Misty getting the last laugh.
- Cast Full of Gay: A milder case than some, but the story does have a heck of a lot of characters who are confirmed as gay or bi (Team Unicorn, Leo, Dr. Schmitt, Judai, Sherry, Edo, and Saiou) or have a heck of a lot of subtext associated with them (Demak, Bolger). Oddly enough, the members of Team Satisfaction seem to have been largely exempt.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: In Chapter 14, Yusei gets rather frustrated when Jack decides to interrupt their discussion of the present apocalypse to give him advice on his relationship with Aki.
- Combat Pragmatist: Professor Frank manages to weaponize the energy source lodged in his chest. He does so by chest-bumping his foes.
- Continuity Nod: Ushio is still secretly suffering from the effects of his Penalty Game when the story begins.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Barbara stays true to form, choking Lotten to death when he refuses the Reaper's offer. Hinted at with Wiraqocha Rasca, but It's managed to be a lot more subtle about it so far.
- Damned by Faint Praise: Inverted. Judai's comment that he is a "fair bit" weaker than the Crimson Dragon, only reinforces how powerful he is.
- Darker and Edgier: The Dark Signer arc was already this for 5D's, this story ramps it up even further.
- Dead Fic: The last update was made in 2016 and its spin-off 2017.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The story later introduces a Greater-Scope Villain, who is eventually revealed to be the Light of Destruction from GX. Apparently, everyone from Rex Goodwin to Z-one (except the protagonists) was just a pawn in his plan to destroy all of reality.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Placido, Lucciano and Jose show up just long enough for you to realize it's them, and then head off to watch the ensuing chaos from their pocket dimension.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: A meta example. The earliest chapters of My Dark King were a few thousand words, whereas its current chapters exceed 20,000 apiece.
- Eldritch Abomination:
- The Earthbound Gods, obviously. The King of the Underworld takes this to its logical extreme, eventually leading to an Eldritch Abomination fight between it and the Sangenma.
- Chapter 15 takes it a step even further, positing that the King is in fact a member of an entire species of Eldritch Abominations, which also includes the already-deceased Zorc Necrophades, Leviathan, and Darkness from the previous two series.
- And of course, the eventual reveal of the Light of Ruin.
- Enemy Mine: Yusei tries to invoke this when Jack tells him both Aki and Carly are in danger, but Jack turns down the offer.
- Evil Counterpart:
- Jack's entire deck is based around the "Dark Counterpart" archetype.
- Carly becomes this to Aki. Both of their lives become completely changed by Misty, Carly declares Aki to be her Arch-Enemy for killing Misty, both are women with poor self-esteem until their Superpowered Evil Side arises, both have feelings for The Leader of their team and both are more powerful non-Dueling fighters than their Love Interest. They're also Foils as well. Carly is in an official relationship with Jack as his Dark Queen, while Aki doesn't confess her feelings to Yusei because she thinks he's out of her league.
- The biggest case is Player Killer of Darkness to Ushio. Both have been around since the original series and were petty bullies Yami Yugi judged with Penalty Games, and suffered through them for thirty years. But Ushio accepted his punishment, adapted, turned his life around and went from bully to cop, and is then judged worthy of becoming a Signer and manages to forgive himself, ending his Penalty Game. In contrast, PK has become even worse, going from bully to homeless Serial Killer who only becomes functional after selling his soul to the Dark Signers, while still suffering from his Penalty Game because he refuses to admit he's done wrong. They're complete opposites.
- Evil Is Petty: When Divine realizes he's out of options and probably isn't going to survive the day, he resolves to just be as big a dick as possible before he bites the dust. You gotta respect the commitment, at least.
- Evil Laugh: While Aki is dueling Misty, Divine notes that he hasn't had the opportunity for one in a while and, naturally, indulges himself.
- Family-Unfriendly Death:
- Divine is punched so hard by Jack, his entire upper body is blown off.
- Tempei is disemboweled by demonic birds.
- Fatal Flaw: Yusei's is his inability to understand the Power of Love. While Yusei truly understands and cherishes platonic friendship and bonds he utterly fails to understand Jack and Carly's Mad Love and Aki's desire for unconditional affection leading to him failing to get through to Jack and almost failing to stop Aki's suicide.
- For Want Of A Nail: The entire story is caused by Carly's glasses not falling out of Jack's coat. It's later revealed that this was caused by Clark screwing around with time travel and making his shirt tighter to his chest so he wouldn't have to deal with the minor inconvenience of his own glasses falling out of his shirt when he put them there.
- However, it's later revealed that this was intentionally done by the Man in White (Also known as the Light of Ruin), who planted the idea into Clark's head specifically to cause the story thanks to Yusei's canon defeat of Z-one screwing up his plan to destroy the universe.
- Gambit Roulette: Subverted. Goodwin's falls outside its ridiculously small margin of success, and he ends up having to try something else.
- Gratuitous French: Used by Sherry. Mostly for swearing.
- Gratuitous German: Used by Nicolas, although he's less than fluent himself.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Divine, after Jack is through with him.
- Happily Married: Asuka Tenjoin and Jun Manjoume
- Hard Light: The "Solid Vision" generated by Duel Disks is mentioned as possessing this quality.
- Heroic BSoD: EVERY one of the Signers suffers this after they learn of Jack becoming a Dark Signer, Yusei far and away getting it the worst. A lot of their screentime in the following chapters up until now has just been them dealing with the emotional fallout of the events thus far.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Yusei is very hard on himself for his failures...even when they aren't his fault.
- In a Single Bound: Crow does his best Luigi impression in order to seal the last control tower in time.
- Invincible Hero: Subverted. The Signers have been getting their asses kicked up and down the street starting with Jack's death in the first chapter right up to Yusei getting his shit ruined by a pack of ravenous birds in Chapter 12, with no end in sight.
- It's All My Fault: How Yusei feels about unwittingly leading Carly right to Aki.
- Jaw Drop: The reaction of all present parties to Leo's summoning of Time Wizard.
- Karmic Death: No ambiguity regarding Divine's fate here. "Never mess with my queen", indeed.
- Lampshade Hanging: To quote Luciano "I never got the point of this school. I mean, we're messengers from God who don't require human speech to communicate, with pseudonyms borrowed from Spanish and Italian singers, pretending to be French and teaching English...all so we can lure in a guy who speaks Japanese? This shit is so convoluted that it's beginning to sound like the plot of some fucking Shounen anime."
- Large Ham: Carly, Jack and Goodwin. Becoming a Dark Signer seems to give one a penchant for the dramatic, above all else. Not that Jack didn't already have a tendency for it.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Unfortunately for pretty much everybody but Carly, it worked this time.
- Loyal Phlebotinum: Jack burns his hand touching his Red Demon's Dragon card after his transformation.
- Made of Iron: Partially averted. Yusei, Crow and Ushio in particular can take a lickin' and keep on kickin', but especially in Yusei's case, it catches up with them the second the adrenaline stops flowing. But the Crimson Dragon is more than happy to provide some Healing Factor on occasion anyway.
- Manipulative Bastard: Divine. Aslla piscu gets in on it too. Wiraqocha Rasca tries and succeeds to an extent, but after a while Jack makes it clear that he's not one to be screwed around with.
- More than Mind Control: See Not Brainwashed.
- Murderers Are Rapists: Averted in Divine's case. His sex with Aki is portrayed as being consensual, but it's not supposed to make him look like any less of a Manipulative Bastard. Aki is eventually revealed to be having nightmares that play it straight.
- Not Brainwashed: Reversed in Chapter 14, when Yusei and the reader learn that "the real Jack" is actually in there somewhere and doesn't actually want to destroy the world.
- Obligatory Swearing: Whereas the original series used swearing sparingly, My Dark King...doesn't.
- Oh, Crap!: Any card-savvy readers in the audience will get a bit of this when they see Jack's Fallen deck.
- Omnicidal Maniac: The King of the Underworld only exists to feed on mortal souls, so this is a given. Wiraqocha Rasca's plan to release the other Earthbound Gods doesn't quite cross the line, but the end result still screws everyone over given what they're capable of. The Light of Destruction freely admits to desiring the end of all things, being an Anthropomorphic Personification of nothingness.
- Purple Prose: The author admits to possibly having a bit too much Shakespeare in his background.
- Red Baron: "The High Ruler of Hell, Dark King."
- Relative Error: Sherry's situation with Mizoguchi is similar, as she notes "far too many idiots" have gotten the wrong idea about her relationship with her "legal guardian."
- Said Bookism: The writer explicitly faults themselves for this trope in their Author's Notes.
- Screw Destiny: Subverted, in that Jack's attempt to do so fails. Double subverted later when Divine's predictions go awry and he notes that something way above his supernatural pay grade is screwing around with fate.
- Shown Their Work:
- In a funny example, Jack notes that Goodwin is just using attack names when his monsters are forced to battle each other for the chance to flaunt his knowledge of Incan Mythology. The author also probably counts not just for the mythological references, but the references to quite old parts of canon and tying them into the 5D's world.
- The first appearance of Asiru Amaru is overloaded with references to various myths.
- Sixth Ranger: Crow sorta becomes this, getting Jack's mark when he dies, then later when Goodwin bites it and Yusei gets the Dragon Head mark in line with canon, Ushio gets Yusei's old mark.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Misty is only alive for less than a chapter, but her shadow heavily defines both Aki and Carly's character arcs.
- Soft Water : Averted in the side-story "Second Sun." Goodwin manages to leave Satellite by speeding off a bridge into the ocean below, but the impact destroys one of his arms in the process.
- The Stoic: One thought that occurs to Yusei during his breakdown is how at odds his current behavior is with the image he normally maintains.
- Summoning Ritual: A more scientific variant. Wiraqocha Rascha plans for the Momentum Reactor to set off a cataclysmic explosion that will release every remaining Earthbound God from their seals. Doubles as Race Against the Clock.
- Superpowered Evil Side: Jack, Carly and Goodwin. The Reaper and his goon squad sort of count too.
- Trigger Phrase: When Divine tries to use one on Aki after the first one wears off, she and Yusei beat the crap out of him until he agrees to stop. It's later revealed, much to Aki's chagrin, that he had implanted a 'lot' of them, and even after he's dead, they're good and stuck.
- Troperiffic: Unsurprising, considering the writer is a troper. Several Tropes are even referred to by name.
- Unstoppable Rage: Jack unleashes his on Divine when the latter threatens Carly's life.
- Victorious Loser: Misty might have died in her Duel against Aki, but she dies with the satisfaction of successfully convincing Aki that she's nothing more than Divine's pet monster.
- Villainous Breakdown: Goodwin gets one when Jack takes control of Wiraqocha Rasca and it goes without a fight.
- Barbara as well, after realizing that her death is likely imminent.
- Wham Line: "And as for a name...you can call me Judai Yuki."
