#i still have the y4 on the file so i might work on that but this is my peak... im never drawing him this good again....

[bugprinz]

i daigo'd too close to the sun

[kenzan-kiwami]

NO i love it too!! livejournal itself was a bit before my time but i've done wordpress comment sections before lol

always made me so sad that kiryu doesn't find out about the HLA until after kashiwagi dies, and also that i never finished that part of the game when i played 3 because i had INTENSE gun boss memories from kiwami and i was convinced it would be the same in 3 for some reason??

full disclosure, i never played y4, but that's really interesting to know about. also really funny to me because i swear half of the things we know about kashiwagi come from things other people say about him (bad back anyone)

thinking about it now though i imagine kazama and dojima's families merging in the 90s and then eventually taking over the family himself would have brought a lot of capital into kashiwagi's hands that he could have put towards starting the HLA up - i seem to remember them saying kamuro castle was like a theme bar at some point before they repurposed it, which was why it was outfitted like a dungeon? but yakuza 3 is on my replay list for good reason lol

0 too, for kazama reasons... it would make sense he's not as popular as kashiwagi for those reasons especially, and in general i think the games seem to present him as kind of an asshole despite kiryu as the main protagonist being informed by things kazama said or did through every step of his life. i know a lot of people in this fandom love to meme on him being a shit dad, and i do find it really funny too until it starts to broach "i hate kazama unironically and i think he's completely terrible and irredeemable" fanonisation territory cause it's so disingenuous to his character. but i do think that mentality and the lack of in-depth kazama analysis propagate each other in a sort of feedback loop

hah, might have to open up my docs while it's quiet at work next week... he deserves a treat. and nishiki deserves to have a moment of being portrayed as competent for once by organising informal dinner for his bros. :) but i think i would need to go back and play some pokecir and real estate minigame before i feel comfy writing about it hehe

I HAVE thought about the pre-fight ficlet though. i'm not super confident in my ideas, but i love the thought of them coming out of an alley next to cafe alps and kashiwagi offering to buy majima a coffee before they beat the shit out of each other, cause he walks into the office looking like he got dragged backwards through a bush and i think (especially by that point in the game) kashiwagi can absolutely relate and sympathise. i think for me at the moment my biggest singular issue is stringing things together in a way that flows well & generally what i've written since i was a preteen has been very short scenes or moments that don't require a lot of thought towards pacing or intensive dialogue lol

but yeah, reuse ga gotoku is real lol. i dug up kashiwagi AND that giant-ass dragon from 7 in gaiden's files when i was looking for shishido, and idk maybe they use the dragon somewhere but DEFINITELY NOT WAGI <\3 them not re-rendering the orphanage pic is why i'm so crazy about what's going down with haruka in 8 because they redid her princess league scene in dragon engine and i'mmmmm very interested in what this might entail

the cap's actually from nanba's drink link! i think that scene from 7 is the only one i haven't managed to dig up yet in those big cutscene videos (because that's basically my only option if i want to watch 7 with jpn audio) but mobile makes it so hard to navigate sixteen hour uploads : ( Some Day when i'm at my own PC

i still just can't believe everyone who finished the game saw that scene and then only like three or four people started writing about them together LOL

(screenshotting the replies and posting because i feel weird replying from my main <\3 hope you don't mind the ping @startledpixel )

i never even thought about it happening that way... haha... excuse me while i go scream in a corner for a couple of minutes

it ties in really well to the sort of recurring motif i see through his life that the only time he's allowed to be truly happy with himself and his place in the world is after his "death" and recovery. kazama is a very complicated character to think about when it comes to his motivations and his relationships with the people he's close with - i don't think he's very good at prioritising his emotional investments (nishiki being the obvious example, but also the way he doesn't send any letters to kiryu in jail until the last day before his parole), so to add an extra layer of tragedy to the whole thing i like to think that he hadn't been making as much time for kashiwagi towards the end than he maybe could have been. not in a premeditated disloyalty sense, of course, but he's got his hands more than full with the whole embezzling 10 billion yen from the tojo coffers gambit... kashiwagi being the way he is though would be all the more desperate for reconciliation, and to then not get it before kazama kicks it would be the icing on the shit cake

but yeah KNOWING adachi was in the building with everyone else must have been like reliving his second-worst nightmare... meeting this man he thought he'd be able to settle down with for the first time in sixty odd years but still constantly having to worry after him. i still adore no idling as an exploration of those feelings after the fact & i find myself coming back to it an awful lot as someone who doesn't generally read fiction more than once or twice unless i'm trying to find something specific (if you may allow me my nerd moment)

it's something i would love to explore more myself, but i don't really feel i have the means to do it in a way in which i'd enjoy the end product... but i suppose that's what commissions are for!

ANYWAY, apparently, everyone kiryu meets in his side story gives him some kind of reward, and i'm having A Time thinking about what he might get from kashiwagi. i'm trying not to set myself up to be disappointed by what happens, but there's a big part of me that hopes kashiwagi pulls "suzuki" to the side and leaves whoever else on the bar for a while so they get a chance to actually catch up. i think at this point both of them really need something like that, because i doubt there's any way kashiwagi didn't get the news that kiryu "died" in 2016

the other big thing that's got me physically shaking is the idea they might finally namedrop him. and uuhhh if they still let us karaoke at survive then i hope judgement gets its own cinematic. : )

[missnight0wl]

I’m just going with the idea that Verucca is Merula’s aunt. If Merula really is working for R maybe it has something do with her aunt or her parents? R was mentioned to have former death eaters a while back. Maybe even Barnaby’s parents are connected to the group, but I don’t know if that feels like a stretch. Maybe the mole is said to be “loyal” to R because they have family in the group and if they don’t do what they have to do they’ll lose their loved ones.

I’m sorry, but… I really dislike this idea. The reason why I dislike it, though, is because if Verucca was Merula’s aunt, it’d probably mean that she’s also related to Rakepick. And I just… can’t handle such unnecessary “development” of the story. It adds nothing, it explains nothing, it’s the same level of a plot twist as MC’s father being the leader of R: lazy and badly executed (if either of them ever was to be true). But first things first.

I have no doubt that the mole was manipulated into working for R and still is (or they just can’t get out of it at this point). I keep saying it for a long time, and it’s basically a given if you ask me. However, I just don’t think it has to be connected with having members among R. Like, Jacob was being blackmailed with his mother, Hagrid, and Torvus, for example (from what Duncan told us). In Merula’s case, my guess is that she was promised power to free her parents or whatever – which would also go nicely with her belief about “The Most Powerful Witch At Hogwarts”.

As for Death Eaters among R’s member, I still believe it was supposed to draw the connection between the spell Bill taught us and the tattoo the Wizard in White allegedly has. I talked more about it: here. Sadly, I assume that it’s an abandoned idea, and I don’t even think Death Eaters were mentioned ever since.

Now, let’s move to “Merula’s aunt” in specific. I’m not sure if that’s what people mean when talking about this idea, but I doubt she could be the aunt who takes care over Merula as mentioned in Y5Ch28 – at least not in your proposition, simply because she probably wasn’t a Death Eater – or at least she successfully got away with it. Merula made it sound like she’s rather unwilling to be connected with the Snydes because of their crimes, so I imagine that she has a good reputation on her own. I mean, that’s actually another problem with the whole Death Eaters thing. Moody told us:

The thing is that “former Death Eaters” should’ve been in Azkaban. If they’re not, they had to be declared innocent, in which case, I see two issues: 1) the Ministry should know exactly who they are, 2) how many people like that can be there? Like, they should’ve been the easiest suspects to investigate, so what are you doing, Moody? Go check your files and move with that case finally. How wouldn’t he look into Merula’s aunt by now?

All right, but let’s move to potential connection Merula-Verucca-Rakepick… And I’m sorry again, but it just doesn’t work. Like, nothing in Merula’s behaviour ever suggested that she might know Rakepick - and every big plot twists so far were foreshadowed somehow (even Rakepick’s relationship with Jacob - as early as the beginning of Y2 in the optional conversation with Rowan). In fact, Merula’s very first reaction (Y4Ch2):

… fits rather the scenario where Merula is the mole and Rakepick doesn’t work for R, so the mole tries to make Rakepick look suspicious (let’s remember that the Red Cloak in Y4 told us to “stay away from Patricia Rakepick”). Not that it matters much because for pretty much all Y4 and Y5, basically everyone was suspicious of Rakepick. But still. Also, even if Merula didn’t know she’s related to Rakepick, she’d probably make a connection between her and Verucca through the pin, wouldn’t she?

I just… really don’t see what would be the point of that connection, you know? Besides the shock element, I guess. I’m totally with you that the mole is “loyal” because they HAVE TO be, not because they want to, but I don’t see convincing arguments that it has something to do with Verucca.

(By the way, your point with Barnaby is not that big of a stretch – although, I believe that R would tell him that it’s for MC’s good or that they won’t kill MC if he keeps delivering them information. I also talked about it in the past: here.)