#and they never let Kiryu acknowledge everything Majima does for him

[deadsouls-is-canon]

…was no one going to tell me that when Kiryu arrives in zombie- infested Kamurocho to rescue (once again, kidnapped) Haruka, he busts through the walls with not one, but two distinctly colored trucks??

…you’re telling me this doesn’t mean something?That Kiryu has access to these pimped out rides at any old time?? When the last time we saw this very heavily modded, super conspicuously-hued vehicle, it was Majima, rolling in like the knight in pink shining armor he is, to save Kiryu’s bacon in one of the most overtly romantic scenes between them in the entire series?? It’s just a reused asset, hmm???

[melonsodypop]

H-hi! I hope It's ok if my first request is not a smutty one? Yakuza men and what makes them feel loved? Thank you in advance!

yakuza men and the things that make them feel loved !

❀ pairing -  kazuma kiryu, goro majima, taiga saejima, shun akiyama, y0!akira nishikiyama, daigo dojima, ryuji goda/reader (all seperate)

❀ tags - fluff, angst, gender neutral reader, probably sloppy character analysis, these men all really need therapy, love languages, alcohol/smoking mentions

❀ a/n - of course non-smut requests are welcome!! stares at my college degree on the wall that focused almost entirely on how people's experiences, relationships and environments affect them and their inner wounds/ways they want to be loved... i am so ready to break these down hehehehe (also i learned how to use gradient text are u guys proud of me)

kazuma kiryu ❀ spending time with him

deceptively simple, kiryu feels the most loved when you decide to just exist near him

oftentimes he feels like he's undeserving of company or that his mere presence is a danger to his loved ones, so frankly your insistence on being close to him is going to freak him out at first

he might even start avoiding you in the early stages of a relationship - don't take it personally, it's just that he loves you so much that he's anxious about hurting you

the more and more you stick by him, the more he realizes that he doesn't have to do everything on his own

in fact, he likes not doing everything on his own, a wave of relief every time he remembers that he has someone he trusts and admires deeply at his side

it slowly heals that deep emotional wound he carries that for someone to love him means for them to be hurt

the reason i hesitate to use the word 'quality time' with him is that he doesn't even really need you to be doing something with him

just being in the same room as him, focusing on whatever you both are working on separately

he's never been one to be comfortable expressing himself in words, the silence between the two of you like a warm blanket instead of awkward

i could get into my hc that he's autistic so it's a form of parallel play to him, but i digress

if you look over at him, you'll see that there's a rare soft smile on his lips

wordlessly will walk over to you and pull you flush to his side gently, pressing a tender kiss to your forehead

"i like when you're here," he'll grumble softly to you - which in kiryu-isms, really means 'please stay by my side like this forever'

goro majima ❀ letting him vent/talk about his feelings

oh boy i have so many thoughts about majima and how hard of a time he has accepting love

he's a master at self-sabotage - he doesn't know how to process feelings of love or affection, nor does he really feel that a piece of shit like him deserves it (see: how often he tells others that they'd be better off without him)

so he often chooses to bury his feelings instead of doing something about it

it was much the same when it came to you - he loves you so much, painfully so, but there was always that annoying voice in his head that told him that that you had better things to do than spend time on a mongrel like him

he'll keep his conversations surface-level with you at first, but ask him how he feels about everything and validate what he says

it'll catch him off-guard at first, and he might even try to put up a front and say he doesn't like talking about that sappy shit

but he'll eventually start giving in, going on long rants about all the crap he had to deal with that day or his 'tragic fuckin' backstory' while you listen intently

the more you wrench his ribcage open and force him to expose his real heart to you, the more he starts falling helplessly for you

not only are you letting him acknowledge and let out the emotions he keeps bottled up close to his chest, but you're seeing every ugly, rotten part of him and you still love him

now, that doesn't mean don't hold him accountable when he's kinda being a dick

praising everything he does will just make him feel like you're putting him on a pedestal or seeing some idealized version of himself you made up in your head

which will give his brain an excuse to run out on you before he eventually disappoints you

so don't let him run - from his feelings, from accountability, from you

the mad dog doesn't like to be collared, but for the person who looks past every facade he puts up and lets him just be goro majima - he'll happily put himself on a leash if it's you who's holding it

taiga saejima ❀ giving him physical affection

for most of his life, saejima was treated like a dangerous beast due to his size and that perpetual scowl on his face

it only got worse after the ueno seiwa hit - shackled like a circus tiger as he was dragged from jail to jail, never able to escape whispers of 'the man who slayed eighteen' and 'the stone-cold hitman' that make him sound more like an urban legend monster than a man

saejima has his own pride in his strength, and for the longest time he just accepted that he was the untouchable, scary beast that everyone made him out to be

it's not until you come into his life and start to subjecting him to little casual touches of affection that he realizes how touch-starved he is

grab his hand, cuddle him, catch him off-guard with kisses to his weary face - it makes his chest tighten in a way he doesn't understand just yet

he feels silly that such small, soft things are affecting him this much at first, but every casual little touch you give him makes him feel less like the boogeyman and more like a person

the fact that you trust him enough and feel safe enough to him to attach yourself to him... he feels like he could cry

it takes a while for him to start returning your touches, but when he does he suddenly turns into the biggest teddy bear

every time he holds your cute little face or holds you protectively against his chest at night, he's taught that his hands can do more than just inflicting pain

he'll never, ever admit it out loud but he loves it the most when you hug him, your arms barely able to wrap around his thick torso but trying your best regardless

he can't help but chuckle as he feels your body meld against his, patting your head and wrapping his arm protectively around your shoulders

he knows people would gawk if they saw how cuddly he gets with you, but he can't really bring himself to care

he's not a monster, a beast, stone-cold, or a killer when he's in your arms - just a big, soft tiger

shun akiyama ❀ taking care of his physical needs

akiyama SUCKS at taking care of himself, often relying on other people (i.e. hana-chan's scoldings) to remind him to eat or get his work done

it's not like he's completely helpless, he insists - he at least keeps himself clean and well-groomed

but being homeless for as long as he was, he eventually just forgot how to attend to his needs

even now, with all the money in the world, he's still unlearning how he had to just suppress his hunger pangs when food was an uncertainty and sleeping on a regular schedule when shelter wasn't always guaranteed

his body does it unconsciously now, often attending to his paperwork for hours on end without even noticing that he's hungry or tired

he feels embarrassed when you start slipping him bentos here and there when he's so wrapped up in his work, often giving you an apologetic smile and profuse thank you's

but the fact that you cared enough to notice, and cared even more to go out and get him something to eat makes him remember why he fell for you in the first place

he might protest weakly when you pull him away from his work when you notice his eyes are getting sunken and his body's lagging behind

or roll his eyes with a smirk when you snatch a cigarette from between his lips and smush it in the nearby ashtray, reminding him that he was whining about needing to quit smoking just yesterday

but he's truly, genuinely thankful that you're forcing him to take care of himself, the fact that you're invested enough in his wellbeing to scold him

he'll be damned though if he becomes one of those boyfriends that treats you like his mother, though - he may call himself a bum, but he's not THAT much of a bum

expect to be taken care of in equal measure, akiyama insisting to pay for your meals and run your errands for you to show with his actions, not just his words, how cared for you make him feel

akira nishikiyama ❀ praising him

yeahhh i couldn't not talk about nishiki's inferiority complex and how damaged his self-esteem is

his cool-guy bravado very thinly covers up a mountain of insecurities

he doesn't really feel like he does much of anything right, too pathetic to be a scary yakuza and too cowardly to stand up for himself or what he believes in

so anytime you genuinely praise him and tell him he did a good job with something, the high he gets from it is strong enough that he could probably quit nicotine, he thinks

he preens when you compliment how stylish he looks or how well he styled his hair - he takes a LOT of pride in his appearance, probably one of the few things he doesn't really have insecurities about

he can't help but grin ear to ear when you cheer for him at karaoke, or clap and whoop when he gets a strike at the bowling alley

he admires you so, so much, and that verbal affirmation that you think just as highly of him soothes that little boy inside that never thinks he's good enough for anything or anybody

every time you compliment him, he gets so giddy that he'll grab you by the waist and start pressing kisses all over your face

"i did that for you, baby," he'll claim proudly, his eyes shining with affection

the first time he cried in front of you, he was shocked that you didn't call him a crybaby or told him to man up

you just held him gently and wiped away his tears, whispering that he did the best he could and that you were so proud of him

he absolutely crumbles when he hears that, hugging you close and crying even harder :(

it kills him (in a good way) that even when you see him at his most vulnerable, you don't think he's pathetic or weak, just someone who needs the reassurance and comfort he's been deprived of his whole life

i'm not saying you'll fix him, necessarily - but perhaps the entirety of 1 could have been avoided if someone just told him he was doing a good job

daigo dojima ❀ letting him be weak

from the moment daigo was born a dojima, he was expected to be as strong, proud, and cold as the rest of his family

even when he left the tojo clan after the ryuji incident to not have to carry that expectation anymore, he still had a gang of people who started to follow him and put them on a pedestal as their leader

and now, as the sixth chairman, he has even less opportunities to let his guard down, not with thirty thousand people looking to him as an example and his enemies lurking at all times

daigo's resolve is strong, having long since accepted his lot in life as a leader - but he can't deny that he just gets so exhausted sometimes

so when he can come home to you, who doesn't expect him to be the sixth chairman, a dojima, or hell, even a yakuza, just daigo, is when he feels the most loved

sometimes just lays his head on your lap when it's just the two of you on the couch in the living, the feeling of your fingers threading gently through his jet-black hair and just being able to relax making the stress in his muscles melt away almost instantly

his greatest peace is when you both lay down to sleep at night, holding him in your arms and whispering to him about how hard he works and to get all the rest he needs

he hums softly and nuzzles into the crook of your neck, not saying anything back as he revels in the feeling of your fingernails scraping against his scalp as your digits comb through the tresses of his hair

there's no expectations, no danger, nobody expecting him to make a decision on the spot or suppress his personal feelings for the good of many

just his darling lover who sees him for who he is, feelings and weaknesses and all, and still loves him

he knows that there's a long list of things he has to do tomorrow and put on a strong face again, but for now he lets himself cuddle in your grasp, letting your words and gentle touches soothe him to sleep

ryuji goda ❀ when he gets to show off for you

a very... simple method of affection for a very straightforward man

he's just got some somewhat dated ideas about what it means to be a man in a relationship, and a lot of them revolve around flexing how strong and skilled he is to you

nothing makes him more satisfied than seeing your eyes shine with awe when he helps you move an insanely heavy piece of furniture or when he shows you just how much whiskey he can knock back in one go

it's less of the showing off itself that makes him feel loved - he's confident in his strength and his skills so he needs no reassurance in that department

but your cutely surprised reactions and the fact that you're so openly proud to call him your boyfriend that you'd let him strut his stuff out in public to show the world how cool and strong he is... yeah, that's what makes him happy

he gets so determined to show off for you that he sometimes gets in way over his head about things he usually wouldn't give a shit about

for example, when he tried to get you the cute stuffed animal that you wanted from the ufo catcher

ryuji scoffed and told you to step aside, confident that he would get it first try

until he didn't. and didn't on the second, third, fourth, fifth tries-

he let out a string of colorful curses as he watched the claw uselessly pinch at the round little sparrow, his jaw tensed in concentration as he shoved another coin into the machine's slot

ignores your reassurances that he really didn't need to do this for you, retrying until he eventually gets the damn thing to drop in the hole

he feels stupid until he hands the round bun-chan toy to you, your eyes wide and a smile on your lips

as soon as you hug him with a squealed thank you, he laughs, patting your head and telling you that it wasn't a huge deal

ryuji's not one to usually lie, but your praise and admiration is, unsurprisingly, the BIGGEST deal to him

as he wraps his arms around your waist to walk the streets of sotenbori, showing off both you on his arm and the little plushie he won you, he knows he would move both heaven and earth if it meant it would make you proud to call him your lover

[clockworkowl]

That 6th panel, right in the oof.

I’m glad to run across other commentary acknowledging how fucked up tragic Majima in 3 is. On some Reddit thread a couple months ago where people were arguing about how much of the mad dog act was an act, someone had commented that it was all an act he put on to never be used again as evidenced by how chill he is in later games down into 7, and I sort of mini-ranted about how the sad thing is he’s never not being used and exploited and that 7 is the one time we actually get to see a Majima who isn’t being used by someone and is actually a part of the plan as his own person with agency there because people are treating him as a respected partner in matters and not just a tool.

That 3 is all about how Kiryu exploits his loyalty to drag him back into the Tojo to play babysitter so that he can feel absolved of his feelings of responsibility in the most minimum way possible, and then when shit blows up like it always does he won’t even let him help. I got back that Kiryu wasn’t exploiting him, he just didn’t have anyone else who had the ability to watch over Daigo he trusted. (Which, hello, Kashiwagi. Kashiwagi is literally right there, and still in the Tojo. And Kiryu views him as either an Uncle or an older brother. I can try to explain away Kiryu’s dragging Daigo into the Tojo and installing his ass as chairman despite having no experience instead seeming to even ever consider making Kashiwagi chairman by Kashiwagi probably being clear he didn’t want to be chairman, was infinitely better being the behind the scenes support and advice man and then it’s even less sensible to argue that he had no choice but to ask Majima to babysit.)

The thing is, and I think maybe it’s even more painful, is that Kiryu’s exploitation/manipulation of Majima isn’t some purposeful, calculated, mean-spirited thing. He’s not viewing Majima as his property to wield for his own gain or power with no care for the cost to Majima, unlike every other person to hold Majima’s metaphysical leash. (Excepting Saejima, though at this point it’s Majima’s own imaginary guilt-generated version of Saejima who serves as a penance and a yoke he leashes himself with, which is ironic as Saejima is the one and only person who just refuses to participate in all of the mad dog/leash whatever business that is woven through every relationship in Majima’s life personal and professional. )

Kiryu’s desire to get the fuck away from Tokyo and the Tojo is perfectly understandable. It’s probably the decision that almost anyone would make if they were Kiryu and raising Haruka, hoping to give her as much of a normal life where she won’t have more trauma dumped onto the fiery dumpster of her childhood. It might even be the right one if only he wasn’t also doomed by his competing character flaws and deep-rooted untreated trauma and survivor’s guilt to continually insert himself back into situations out of some suddenly re-discovered sense of over-inflated responsibility and ownership, while refusing almost any and all help. (And sure we all know that he refuses help, feels he must do everything alone because that’s his trauma talking and he believes that people who try to help him, that get involved with him get killed because of him, and every year it gets worse because those beliefs get reinforced to by the time he gets to 6 I think he full on thinks that he’s a curse to anyone he cares about. And to be honest I have a whole other rambling screed inside me about this by itself. We know this, but in the context of the moments of the games and to those people, that’s not exactly the message his rejections of their offers come across to be received, and especially when it’s Majima he’s rejecting and you look at how it all appears through Majima’s perspective).

Here in 3, I fully believe that the underpinning thought process that leads Kiryu at this point to trap Majima into a return to the Tojo is that he wants Majima to re-enact Majima Everywhere for Daigo, because to him, Majima is the one who knew what it would take for him to survive and he wouldn’t let Kiryu sabotage this training so Daigo wouldn’t be able to shirk it either. It’s possible he even thought that Majima was somehow secretly in on Sera and Kazama’s plans, that Majima Everywhere was an assignment he was covertly put on for the good of the Tojo, rather than just a personal mission Majima gives himself to see this one man survive, partly in order to speak to some part of himself that sees in this man, another similar man who he couldn’t. He so greatly trusts, respects and appreciates Majima that he never thinks beyond what’s best for the Tojo and not what’s best for my friend.

In his mind, which is pre-occupied by his concern for Haruka and his own almost overwhelming need to both just run away from the weight of the responsibilities that he neither wanted nor has the, well, the spoons, to actually cope with at this point and the demands that his own sense of honour and responsibility make of him that he is a little desperate to assuage so he can just run away from it all. He can’t escape this debt he owes Sera and Kazama for their trust until he can pass that trust on, but he sees an out. He’s realised somewhat that Daigo is his analogue in what Sera and Kazama did because like him Daigo grew up with the Tojo as family business, had a father/figure who held high rank and witnessed and had a distaste for the political scheming and power-hunger that’s been eating the clan like a cancer from within the last several decades. Insiders who are outsiders, and who share a strong set of honourable beliefs they are too stubborn to be divested of. So he thinks if Majima managed to hone him a man who could survive the position then surely Sera and Kazama can’t find fault from the afterlife if he entrusts the same man to forge Daigo into the one who will ultimately fulfill the promise. And he doesn’t have to think it through, consider it any further because he knows that Majima will agree. He knows how loyal Majima is to him, to the Tojo, to Majima’s own internal code. He knows it won’t even take negotiation, only a fight, not even a fight a sparring match. His only

And while he understands this much about Majima, he still doesn’t understand Majima, the real Majima. He clearly gets so blinded by Majima the legend that he doesn’t see the man; ironic for a man who suffers so much from being seen only as his own legend.

3 just makes me so sad for Majima anyway, like the moment when Kiryu rejected his help and wouldn’t let him come to Okinawa to help and he looked like he was going to cry right there, and I think even fucking Date was looked at him with pity. Ugh. This post is way too long now and I’ve made myself sad. One of these days I need to write something about how fucked up it was in 4 when Daigo just casually sold him off to be murdered in one of Munakata’s blacksite Yakuza death prisons and no one seemed all that concerned even once they found out about that being what the prisons were, because for real, that is not cool.

hey

based on this

[fabiansociety]

you know, one thing i didn't really consider in this response in y0 majima's effect on kiryu. which i guess is sort of how i read their relationship in general for at least the pre-okinawa yakuza games, that kiryu is the pursued and majima the pursuer. that's particularly so in the majima everywhere system (my beloved), where the player goes from worrying about majima unexpectedly wrecking shop to actively seeking him out to get stronger but where majima is just *always* looking to push you into reacting. but does kiryu change that much because of majima's efforts? he gets stronger, sure, mechanically and narratively, but he doesn't really adopt more of majima's philosophy as a result of it

the difference in how they interact with their mr. libidos in y0 is a possible parallel: majima's mr. libido pushes him to acknowledge that he enjoys masturbating and thinking about women and that he doesn't need to be ashamed of that and can bond with other men by talking about it, and by the end of the questline majima has come around to that way of thinking, if he still isn't anywhere near as horny as mr. libido. kiryu's mr. libido, on the other hand, has a problem with burnout that kiryu solves by introducing him to the mama-san of the okama bar and broadening his sexuality. the storyline ends with kiryu exactly where he was in his sexuality, but with a slightly quizzical wonder at the scope of humanity. kiryu's not passive in the relationship, but he provokes change without changing himself.

but so let's tease out how meeting majima might have changed kiryu. would majima have wanted to change kiryu in that moment? majima is a lot smarter than kiryu, with a much better understanding of when and how he's being manipulated, so i suppose it's possible that majima might have spotted more of kazama's plans, but i just don't think he would have… cared? particularly? kiryu definitely wouldn't have; several of the clan leaders that kiryu fights over the course of the game flat out tell him that he's being used and it doesn't matter at all; kiryu is loyal to kazama regardless of everything, and if finding out that the man murdered his birth parents didn't shake his affection, nothing majima was going to do would. the one skill that majima has that kiryu might have benefited from learning was the ability to suppress his own opinions when necessary, but that's just so hard to imagine. kiryu really only learned that from mirei park, and my god was that just absolutely the wrong time to learn that lesson.

ultimately i think the issue is that kiryu has never lacked for friends the way majima has, so there's less opportunity for one earlier friend to change him that much. the things majima might have offered as a friend kiryu was already getting from nishikiyama. really, if there's any character who would have been dramatically changed by making friends with majima, it's nishiki. that dude really could have used a mad dog persona to save his soul

I find myself thinking a lot about Yakuza 0 and how thinks would have played out different over the series if Kiryu and majims had actually met and gotten on. My first intro to the series was Y0 and I kept expecting them to meet because of the close parallels. Do you have any thoughts on it?

I had a very similar experience my first time through the game, it wasn’t until playing the whole series and looping back around that I think I understood what the game was and was trying to do. Chronologically, y0 was released after y5. it’s much more of a flashback story commenting on kiryu’s emotional state at the end of *y5* than it is an origin point for the rest of the series. As part of that, Majima serves as a surrogate for y5 Kiryu: exiled from his family, saddled with intense guilt for “betraying” his loved ones, stuck in a strange city he doesn’t really like. The game isn’t about their relationship, except thematically, so it doesn’t have any interest in having them meet.

I don’t necessarily agree with those choices — it’s a bizarre decision to have Majima show up at the end in full kiryu-chaaaaaaan mode without ever having met the guy onscreen — but there’s at least some method to that particular madness. But I think it would have been a stronger story if they *had* approached the game more as an entry point to the series and established a bit more; the lack of any role for Yumi is a particular sore spot for me, but I don’t think it would have hurt the story if Majima and Kiryu had met in Kamurocho and we actually got to play through that first meeting.

But you asked about how meeting earlier would have changed their dynamic, and honestly I don’t think it would have changed all that much. Majima is such a doomed character by the time Yakuza 0 starts, and I don’t think Kiryu could have saved him from that—his need to get back into the clan for Saejima is so overpowering, and the game does do a good job of showing that becoming the mad dog of shimano was really the only way he could stay sane and alive. y0 Kiryu wouldn’t even have much to push back on there, since he’s doing the same thing in a much shallower way for Kazama’s sake. Meeting sorrowful, long-haired Majima and bonding with him would have given some additional nuance for the strange respect they have for each other in kiwami, but I think that’s about it. Y0 is a tragedy, and the thing about tragedies is that by the time the story has started, it is already too late