Surprise Kiss!

I just preferred shanks to be the interesting one with more layers rather than twist done to death by every comic book in history

that's valid honestly, i can't even argue with that because that IS an overused trope lmao. but i think this will be an opportunity to see a new side of shanks, one that isn't shrouded in mystery, but instead open, emotional and dramatic.

let's just hope oda will surprise us (like he often does), maybe he will use the trope in a way that positively serves the plot!

...did luffy basically just debunk the "shanks and buggy see each other as brothers" theory lol

Huh. So I randomly remembered Croc is pretty much Italian.

i baked a cake to celebrate law's birthday earlier today,

i think it came out pretty cute! i'm sure my law action figures loved it too despite their seemingly uninterested looks...

bonus picture of The Tiny

slowly going through my asks, sorry if i take a bit to post my answers, life gets in the way sometimes + i'm working on other long posts too!!!

months ago, while mindlessly scrolling through twitter, i came across an analysis of this particular panel from chapter 434 (i can’t remember who wrote the thread, i’m so sorry </3), and i really want to talk about it too.

(EDIT: original author of the thread is @goingbuggy!!! go check out their metas, they're amazing)

the thread was focusing on the way the speech bubble covers shanks's scar completely, and how it can be seen as a sign of vulnerability. oda is using shanks’s own words to hide his suffering, letting his physical scars be representative of his emotional ones, even though the event he’s talking about is completely unrelated to the way he got his scar.

in fact, we know shanks is not ashamed of the scar, since just a couple of pages after this one he mentions it directly as a way to start the conversation about blackbeard:

he doesn’t have a problem with the marking itself, it’s just used as a narrative device, a tool to highlight (in an extradiegetic way) his emotional wounds and the pain he always tries so hard to hide, in an effort to keep his usual composure.

the original author of the thread compared the panel from chapter 434 to another, way older one, from the very first chapter:

this takes place right after shanks loses his left arm to save luffy’s life. it’s obviously a very emotionally charged moment, which means the best thing to do would be showing a close-up of shanks’s reaction to everything that’s unfolding in front of him at that moment (luffy’s cries, or even his own reaction to his sacrifice). oda, however, chooses not to do that; instead, he hides half of shanks’s face, just like he did in chapter 434. the way the moment is portrayed tells the reader shanks is willing to hide his pain in an even deeper way than what he’s showing by smiling at luffy right after getting his arm chopped off.

it’s a great way to explain an important characteristic without stating it right away. it's a focal point of shanks's character: it's his way of showing luffy he cares about him and would much rather hide his suffering than pass it onto him, but it's also oda's way of conveying that shanks is much more vulnerable than what he allows himself to show.

having said that, the reason oda chose to bring back this framing in chapter 434 appears obvious: shanks misses buggy.

it’s plain to see, especially if we look at the whole page.

shanks tries so hard to act collected when talking about buggy, but it’s obvious that he’s hurting. his wording makes it clear he’s trying to detach from him (“that’s the end of it” + “rumors have it”); he acts like buggy doesn’t exist in his thoughts anymore, when it’s obvious he still does. he feels remorse, he regrets letting buggy go. he’s scared he might have been in the wrong. he knows he hurt buggy, but he desperately wishes he didn’t.

all of this weighs on him in a way he isn’t used to, so he locks these feelings up, thinking of them only in relation to something that happened in the past, and as so, stays in the past. he smiles while talking about him and buggy, but it’s a remorseful smile. he cuts the conversation short even though he vividly remembers what happened between them, and as he does so, his words hide the scar. he desperately tries to patch things up in his mind by exclusively clinging onto the good memories they share, but the remorse always creeps up on him. he always smiles when talking about buggy, even when he’s talking directly to him. but his smile always ends up looking sour.

this is exactly why i hate it when people say shanks doesn’t care about buggy. oda wouldn’t have given these panels so much depth if he didn’t want to show just how much shanks actually cares. even just the fact the panel we are focusing on directly mirrors a panel from the first chapter, one so important and impactful, should tell you everything you need to know.

buggy will always be shanks’s weakness. caring so much about someone when you’re a pirate of that caliber is difficult in itself, even more so when that someone is so far away from you now.

SHUGGY IS INCLUDED IN THIS YEAR'S TOP 100 SHIPS OF TUMBLR?????? SHUGGY NATION WE WON SO HARD

Yamato

There’s a lot of discussion on Yamato’s gender. And the one take I see particularly often when it’s brought up, is about how Kaido ‘forced’ Yamato to be a man.

So, I wanted to explore this train of thought. And explain why this just isn’t true.

First, let’s explore every time Yamato has been referred to by feminine pronouns/gender.

Within the canon of the text, these are the only times Yamato has been called female, daughter, or princess.

(Chapter 984, pg. 17)

The first time is right after Yamato is properly introduced to the audience, and is following a panel where Luffy questions his gender.

(Chapter 984, pg. 17)

Here, Yamato explicitly says that he chose to be a man, like Oden was.

So it appears that the introduction Oda box was more to indicate Yamato’s birth sex, to confirm to the audience that yes, he was born a woman. But Yamato himself is confirming that while he was born female, he is choosing to identify himself as a man, due to how Oden inspired him.

After this moment, Luffy affirms Yamato’s gender by calling him by the nickname “Yama-o”, which is what he calls Law and Kid by as well.

(the rest under the cut. this is an EXTREMELY long post)

Continua a leggere

Please more thoughts about Penguin x Shachi 🤩😋

of course anon!!!

penguin x shachi!

god i just cannot be normal about them. they make me insane. paradoxically, the more i'm fixated on a ship the harder it seems to find the words to talk about them. seeing them or even thinking about them at all just makes my mind shut down lol. but i'll try my best to write something that isn't a nonsensical ramble about how they make my brain short circuit <3

something i love about them is how insanely close they seem to be. actually, that's the main reason i ship them. every moment one of them is on screen, the other is there too, right beside him. it's something so comforting but also so concerning, not in a bad way of course, but in a "what the fuck is wrong with them /affectionate" way. and the thing is, nothing's wrong with them, they're just like that! they've spent their whole life together, never a moment apart, so of course they're going to keep spending every waking moment attached to each other's hip. and the whole crew has just accepted it. no one ever questions it, it's just a given that they'll always be carrying out their missions together.

actually, we saw someone questioning it once, in the first chapter of law novel's second installment. i've been meaning to talk about this in a (long overdue) separate post, so i won't go into detail on it, but this is the gist of it. when something kept the two of them apart for the first time, it was an actual disaster. both of them almost cried in front of the rest of the crew because they were made to sleep in separate rooms, and they weren't used to it; penguin was the more mature one about it, but when shachi started to complain about the decision, penguin almost cried. law, bepo and hakugan laughed at shachi, because the whole thing was so stupid to them: i mean, a 17 year old crying about not being able to sleep in the same room as his buddy? but penguin didn't laugh. he made fun of shachi a bit, but then there he was, trying his hardest to keep his composure and not end up getting ridiculed like shachi did. yeah. i can't believe this moment is canon either.

what i'm trying to say is, they've both proved, in different ways, that their bond is very, very important to them. it's essential to their wellbeing, i'd say. they just work better together, and no one is allowed to come between them. that's exactly what i love about them.