The Core Concepts of the Millennium Items
Jun. 11th, 2011 05:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteTo both prove I am not dead and am still thinking about Yu-Gi-Oh and to clarify something I've been stewing over (which, in a convoluted fashion, revolves around WDKY), I ask you this: What are the core concepts of the individual Millennium Items?
I'll start: we already know the Millennium Puzzle's concept is "unity." This is stated at the end of he series, and well-supported throughout. Its "power" is to bring people together, to bring forces and abilities together. This makes sense, because a puzzle itself is made up of many disparate pieces. (That said, the "puzzle" wasn't originally MADE to be a puzzle--it somehow became one in the years AFTER the Pharaoh was sealed in it and when it ended up in the tomb that Sugoroku Mutou later found when he was a young gambling explorer.)
If the core concept of each item somehow ties to what we've seen it do otherwise, then we have these rough approximations of the rest (my thoughts, anyway):
Eye - Awakening, seeing an individual's decisions (can be circumvented by rapidly changing one's mind, or acting on "impulse," as Yugi and the Pharaoh did in the battle with Pegasus)
Necklace - Foreknowledge, seeing the future based on the current path that events are on (can be circumvented by "going with one's gut," and doing something surprising...this is similar to how the randomness of an individual can alter the "power" of this Item, the way the Eye can be wrong, but it has more to do with "seeing" events for many people than seeing the thoughts of one person)
Ring - Guiding/Placement, seeing the connection between things (where the Millennium Items are, if one is close); transferring souls from one place (the body) to another (Bakura did this in the DMRPG arc, didn't he? Or am I getting confused?)
Rod - Transfer, moving souls from one place to another. This is what Priest Seto did with Shada in the ancient past, right? I'm not sure how to explain Malik's usage of the Rod, since it was pretty screwy no matter how you dice it.
Scale - Balance/Justice/Truth, the weighing of one's deeds versus one's intent, or one's heart versus one's words. Ties back to the Egyptian myth of the heart being weighed against the feather of Ma'at after death; if the heart was heavier than the feather, the person would be devoured by Ammit and never reborn or allowed in the presence of the gods.
Key (Ankh) - Seeing the unseen, seeing the true soul/heart of an individual. But this doesn't tell you what a person will necessarily do, only more of who they are as a person. If the Eye tells you WHAT, the Necklace tells you WHEN, the Ring tells you WHERE, then the Key tells you WHY, or perhaps even WHO (who really is the person behind these actions?). But I don't know if any of the items really tell a user HOW...
I'm not sure about these. Even if you can boil down the Millennium Items' powers into a single word or concept, some of them seem to have overlap which doesn't make sense to me. In canon, they were created via a dark ritual, but with good intent (to protect the people), so it WOULD make sense, to me at least, that these concepts are either vague or can "go both ways," and be used for good or ill. After all, "evil is in the eye of the beholder," right? (Or rather "history is told by the victors.")
Discuss!
I'll start: we already know the Millennium Puzzle's concept is "unity." This is stated at the end of he series, and well-supported throughout. Its "power" is to bring people together, to bring forces and abilities together. This makes sense, because a puzzle itself is made up of many disparate pieces. (That said, the "puzzle" wasn't originally MADE to be a puzzle--it somehow became one in the years AFTER the Pharaoh was sealed in it and when it ended up in the tomb that Sugoroku Mutou later found when he was a young gambling explorer.)
If the core concept of each item somehow ties to what we've seen it do otherwise, then we have these rough approximations of the rest (my thoughts, anyway):
Eye - Awakening, seeing an individual's decisions (can be circumvented by rapidly changing one's mind, or acting on "impulse," as Yugi and the Pharaoh did in the battle with Pegasus)
Necklace - Foreknowledge, seeing the future based on the current path that events are on (can be circumvented by "going with one's gut," and doing something surprising...this is similar to how the randomness of an individual can alter the "power" of this Item, the way the Eye can be wrong, but it has more to do with "seeing" events for many people than seeing the thoughts of one person)
Ring - Guiding/Placement, seeing the connection between things (where the Millennium Items are, if one is close); transferring souls from one place (the body) to another (Bakura did this in the DMRPG arc, didn't he? Or am I getting confused?)
Rod - Transfer, moving souls from one place to another. This is what Priest Seto did with Shada in the ancient past, right? I'm not sure how to explain Malik's usage of the Rod, since it was pretty screwy no matter how you dice it.
Scale - Balance/Justice/Truth, the weighing of one's deeds versus one's intent, or one's heart versus one's words. Ties back to the Egyptian myth of the heart being weighed against the feather of Ma'at after death; if the heart was heavier than the feather, the person would be devoured by Ammit and never reborn or allowed in the presence of the gods.
Key (Ankh) - Seeing the unseen, seeing the true soul/heart of an individual. But this doesn't tell you what a person will necessarily do, only more of who they are as a person. If the Eye tells you WHAT, the Necklace tells you WHEN, the Ring tells you WHERE, then the Key tells you WHY, or perhaps even WHO (who really is the person behind these actions?). But I don't know if any of the items really tell a user HOW...
I'm not sure about these. Even if you can boil down the Millennium Items' powers into a single word or concept, some of them seem to have overlap which doesn't make sense to me. In canon, they were created via a dark ritual, but with good intent (to protect the people), so it WOULD make sense, to me at least, that these concepts are either vague or can "go both ways," and be used for good or ill. After all, "evil is in the eye of the beholder," right? (Or rather "history is told by the victors.")
Discuss!
