Buggy X Galdino/mr. 3!

surprise kiss!

something quick for valentine's day :3

What are your top 10 characters and why is Law so high?

law is so high because he's amazingly written and a really captivating character! i've been a law fan since i first got into one piece, i've always been interested in him and the more i learned about him the more i loved him. i obviously don't think he's underrated, but i do think he's a greatly misunderstood character. more people should give him a chance instead of stopping at "he's not the strongest so whatever". i love how he evolved with the story and he holds his place in the narrative really well. 10/10 character. then of course there are other, more personal reasons that justify his place in my list of all-time favorite characters, like his closed-off nature and naturally distrusting demeanor, which are traits i always tend to seek out in fictional characters <3

in no particular order, my absolute favorite one piece characters are law, buggy, zoro and ace. then there are, of course, penguin and shachi. other favorites are baby 5, perona, sabo and uta! so i would say this is my top 10. there are a lot more characters i routinely obsess over, but if i started naming them this would just end up being a boring and almost endless list, so i'll refrain from doing so. you can always ask again if you're really interested, maybe i'll post a tier list, who knows.

drunk tipsy confession

i don't get how people could think that law is going to be part of the strawhats. he has his own crew. are the heart pirates nothing to them? do these people just ignore their existence, or do they think law is the type to, i don't know, abandon them forever to go be part of another pirate crew? law would never do that, and never in his life has he shown interest in doing that. he's not going to be part of the straw hat pirates. he has his own thing going on, he said it multiple times.

happy birthday shachi!!! <3

i’ve seen a lot of people genuinely confused about shachi and penguin’s relationship in canon. i happen to be hyperfixated on them both, so i thought i’d write a post briefly explaining the origin of their bond!!

i think the confusion stems from the fact most one piece fans haven’t read law’s novel, and learned more about penguin and shachi exclusively through the wiki, which (despite the editors’ much appreciated work) sometimes lacks info. when the wiki says “their parents were killed in a tsunami” it doesn’t mean they share the same parents, as someone seems to think. this is clarified in law’s novel (thank you @/odaslaughtale for your translation!), in the paragraph where penguin opens up about their past.

plus, if they were related, i don’t think there would have been a point in specifying the people that took them in after the death of their parents were exclusively shachi’s relatives and not penguin’s.

we don’t know exactly when shachi and penguin met, but since their parents knew each other and it was normal for the two families to hang out together, it’s not a stretch to think they have known each other since birth due to their parents being friends or something like that. it warms my heart just thinking about it sorry

i obviously don’t have anything against people that see penguin and shachi as siblings; everyone is allowed to interpret the relationship between characters as they’d like (when no type of bond is explicitly stated in canon!!!), and exchanging ideas and headcanons is without doubt one of the best parts of fandom culture. however, i don’t want people to unknowingly spread misinformation, especially since law’s novel isn’t available in all languages and some may not have access to it. so i thought a post like this might be useful!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAW!!!

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.

IT'S REALLL IT'S SO REAL. ACTUALLY INSANE

i would love to share my thoughts on the shanks twin theory (which is now apparently Very Real and Very Much Not A Theory Anymore). but i will not. i will talk about it when we have more info though trust me