joeku-xiv

[joeku-xiv]

He is trying to kill you, and you deserve it, you do, and you know this, and you are ready to die. You know these things, and you know a boy is a dead boy unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn’t do, because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.

— Richard Siken, Crush

[joeku-xiv]

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it." - Jim Jarmusch

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if i lose, it won't mean that it was impossible to win

disco elysium / eduardo galeano / langston hughes / black sails / langston hughes / disco elysium / jenny holzer / krista tippett / black sails / disco elysium / andor: a star wars story / ursula k. le guin / black sails / miguel de cervantes / alejandra pizarnik / disco elysium / welcome to night vale / black sails / sappho / disco elysium / che guevara

[joeku-xiv]

last night i was drunk at a birthday party and i woke up with this message that i absolutely don’t remember

(last message: “and why the fuck are we talking in english now”)

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Gendered parenting is so weird. As a little kid I was a total daddy's girl, I was told I would always try to sneak the garage, I was always very interested in everything he was doing and would follow him around while he was working, but while my family was never the type to outright say "you can't do that because you're a girl", they simply didn't entertain the idea that I could possibly be interested in cars. Then when my little brother was born, it was just assumed he would become a mechanic like our dad because he was a boy. Even though he, unlike me, didn't like being in the garage much and wasn't all that interested in what dad was doing. Once he got to a certain age, dad started making him help and would drag him away from his actual interests for it, which lead to a lot of arguing and not much actual learning.

Gendered expectations sort of create doubles of children. There's the real child with their actual personality, interests and behaviors, and then there's the Gender Child.

My real brother hated soccer and team sports. The Gender Child that existed only the minds of the adults in his life enjoyed playing soccer because that's what a Boy Child likes.

Growing up, I always felt like adults didn't actually know me as a person and they weren't interested in getting to know me. Because they felt they'd already learned everything there was to know about me when they were told "it's a girl".

When I talk about how I never got gifts I actually liked from my relatives (to this day I still don't like getting gifts that aren't something I picked out myself), it isn't actually about the gifts themselves. I don't even remember them. What I do remember is the feeling of being given gifts that were seemingly not bought with the real me in mind. They were for the Girl Child™️ version of me. The me that adults wanted me to be, not who I actually was.

[joeku-xiv]

You mean them genderbend?

idk who you mean but i’m not into it tbh, if i’m talking about someone with a different gender from the canon it’s always because they are trans for me

[joeku-xiv]

i’m afraid this is saejima’s song

[joeku-xiv]

The Ages of the Cast of Like a Dragon Gaiden and What They Imply for the Cast of Yakuza 0

Since age was specifically a factor in the casting of Shishido and Tsuruno according to Yokoyama, I've always been inclined to think they’re roughly the same age in Gaiden as Motomiya and Yamaguchi were when Like a Dragon Gaiden was released in 2023—51 and 52 respectively, about the same as Kiryu was in Gaiden. If not that, then at least roughly the same age Motomiya and Yamaguchi were in 2019 when Gaiden is set, 47 and 49.

It gets kind of muddled with Shishido referring to Kiryu as a “geezer” and Kiryu referring to Shishido as a “kid,” though. Depending on how you take it, that could be an indication Shishido is younger than Kiryu (not by much, but presumably by at least a year or more). It could also just be Shishido’s relative lack of maturity, which is brought up later on and is a trait he shares with Yuto Tamura (Yamaguchi’s character in Unification of Japan/Nihon Touitsu that Shishido is based on).

All in all, I think roughly 47–51 is a decent ballpark for Shishido’s age based on the above and on his appearance in both the present and the flashback, relative to Nishitani III being played by then-39-year-old Kim Jae-wook (35 in 2019, incidentally).

Taking that as being the case in the absence of concrete information, Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut got me thinking about the details of Shishido’s story. Shishido says he was sold into slavery under the Kijin Clan when he was 15. If he shares an approximate birth year with Motomiya, who was born in 1972, he would have been around 16 in 1988 when Yakuza 0 takes place—enslaved for a year. If he was instead aged up to match Motomiya’s age when Gaiden was released, he would’ve been born around 1968, been around 20 in 1988 like Kiryu, and enslaved for 5 years.

As for Nishitani III, there is a discrepancy in the localization that’s relevant here; Nishitani III is not a survivor of the Jingweon Massacre in 1980, but the son of a survivor, meaning it’s not a certainty for him to have been an adult (or even have been born) at the time of the massacre like the rest of the victims. This tracks with Shishido emphasizing Nishitani III’s youth when introducing him; if he’d been an adult in 1980 he’d be in or approaching his 60s at least in 2019. If we base Nishitani III’s age on Kim Jae-wook and do the same math we did with Shishido, he would’ve been born between around 1979 and 1983 and been around 5–9 in 1988.

None of this is solid, of course; Iura Arata played a 25-year-old Tachibana at 41 (-16 years), Takuya Kimura played a 35-year old Yagami at 46 (-11 years), Ryuji Akiyama played a 37-year-old Masaru at 46 (-9 years), and so on. Conversely Hiroki Narimiya played a 29-year-old Tanimura at 28 (+1 year), Shinichi Tsutsumi played a 57-year-old Sawashiro at 56 (+1 year), Kiichi Nakai played a 62-year-old Arakawa at 59 (+3 years), and so on. Putting aside that this is all based on the year of release, not the year of casting, and that it doesn’t account for birth dates, it’s often give-or-take.

There is a lower limit for Shishido, however; he says he was enslaved for “decades,” in this case most likely 20–30 years, so he was freed when he was roughly 35–45. Add to that the 2 years Shishido spent plotting against Tsuruno and Watase (clearly he’d been around longer, we just don’t have a concrete number for how long) and he can be no younger than 37. That is, again, without accounting for the period between when he was freed and when he learned of the dissolution.

The reason I’ve enumerated everything like this, and the reason the Director’s Cut got me thinking about it all, is the indefinite but distinct possibility that the Kijin Clan’s system of slavery is already in place in Yakuza 0. That the Bed of Styx, where hardened criminals fight to the death to escape the death penalty, isn’t just a predecessor to the Kijin Clan coliseum where enslaved children fight to the death with no hope of escape, but exists as its contemporary. That—if I’m right—somewhere hidden away behind the scenes there’s Shishido and the other boys enduring the unimaginable.

Looking at it like this, just as Shishido’s characterization is extradiegetically inextricable from Majima’s, the birth of the Mad Dog is intradiegetically inextricable from and complicit in Shishido’s suffering.

I don’t expect the Director’s Cut to go into any of this. With only 26 minutes of additional content to spare, I just don’t think it would come up. I don’t think they’re likely to add anything to Nishitani’s story due to Keiji Fujiwara’s unfortunate passing (although we’ve seen a glimpse of Billiken)—if they do, I don’t think it’ll tell us anything definitive about the practice of slavery or how and when the name was passed down or anything to do with Gaiden, basically. I honestly don’t even think timelines between games are planned out this meticulously—even here I’ve had to presuppose a number of things as being true that may not be, and I’ve had to correct a major miscalculation, which probably isn’t the only one of it’s kind.

But I can’t help thinking about it.

[joeku-xiv]

saejima <3

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goldwing // sommaren med dennis

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Charlie and Dennis /// Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton

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[joeku-xiv]

had to explain to my brother how i chose my name (it’s a combination of a joke my bestfriend’s brother did about my bro’s name which is spelled really really wrong + fucking jojo)

[joeku-xiv]

tag your traumatized man comfort character

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in Disco Elysium I was expecting there to be some kind of “addiction mechanic” that would add a long-term downside to taking drugs, and was surprised not only by the absence of any such mechanic but also that the benefits of drugs greatly outweighed the cost. anyways fast forward to the late game and I was downing three bottles of pyrholidon and smoking an entire pack of cigarettes before attempting any check, and it was only then I realized there was in fact an addiction mechanic

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