Curate, connect, and discover
Your shuggy meta broke my heart, stitched it up together and broke it again. It’s so beautiful, I hope it is actually that deep in canon, but there’s no way it isn’t. This could not be an accident.
omg thank you so So much for this, i didn't think i would be able to make anyone feel like this with my writing but this is such a pleasant surprise!!! thank you anon <3
and yes, i always question myself when writing this type of posts; i'm always like "is this actually meant to be that deep?", sometimes i even get stuck while writing analyses because i'm afraid of looking like a moron that twists the most frivolous aspects of canon in a desperate attempt to make everything about their ship. but then i regain consciousness and realize subtext is a thing that actually Exists, and authors deliberately use techniques like that all the time to highlight aspects of a character's nature without having to make explicit statements.
so while i surely am afraid to end up looking like a fool if oda chooses not to do anything meaningful with shanks and buggy and just leaves their relationship stranded, i will never stop bringing up all the little things that keep them connected, in spite of everything, after all these years. there's no way those are written into the narrative without a sliver of purpose.