I Think We Should Steal Zoro From The Dudebros Indefinitely

okay, whew. lots of thoughts about how dark one piece can get…

so i've reached the part where hiyori publicly humiliated one of the corrupt individuals in flower city in front of all the people in the brothel for falling into the trap of greed and lust.

and wow

i just. it's so fucking dark. and it's like in your face and it gets under your skin kind of dark. the laughter of the courtesans, kyoshiro mocking and ordering his underlings to beat him up in front of everyone, and hiyori's "i spent it all" laced with no remorse at all… it's just so cruel. and rightfully so tbh, since it was displayed how the man caused so much trouble to innocent people just to fulfill his disgusting fantasy of objectifying hiyori and viewing her as a trophy he can have.

i know that hiyori's identity as komurasaki was for the agenda of bringing down orochi, but a royal ending up as an oiran makes me sick. im not saying this because sex workers disgust me (i dont. but im of the opinion that sex work can be very dangerous and it is such a difficult job. and also it caters to the objectification and commodification of their bodies, which i find to be extremely damaging.), but i find it to be really tragic.

but at the same time, there's no definite answer as to what really happened to hiyori growing up, nor if she slept with men as an oiran at all. it's kind of up in the air for us to decide. i think this is a smart decision on oda's end as a writer.

are we going to interpret it as close to reality, or are we going to use the bounds of fiction and say that hiyori was relatively safe growing up?

i mean, we can say that hiyori did sleep with men as an oiran in exchange for manipulating them to drain all of their money. but we can also say that hiyori just entertained them until they're not of use to her anymore.

idk but to me both scenarios make sense.

it's like with hancock and her sisters. we know that they were abused by celestial dragons, but to what extent? were they physically tortured or did something far more sinister happen to them? also the same with robin's life. she spent most of her life running away from powerful people, and most of them are men. we can never say for sure if she always got away unscathed.

i think oda puts these types of situations in the story to keep younger audiences from digging too much into it while teaching them to be aware of the dangers lurking in the society ー but for us who are older it will really make us think and it kind of serves as a reminder of how scary the world is.

anyway back to hiyori, im of the opinion that she didn't actually sleep with any men, but thinking about all the mind games that she played with them just makes me feel bad for her. i imagine she had to endure so much of that from a young age, all while dealing with the death of her parents and the fall of their empire. it's just too much for a little girl. and now she has to put up a front for the sake of rebellion. it's like all her life, up until the strawhats freeing wano, she never got to truly live as her own person.

it's pretty fucked up. i want to say that there are better ways to write hiyori's character but yeah, i can't really think of one that would have bigger impact than what she was in the story. that scene of her stating her name as a kozuki sends chills down my spine. i honestly don't get how people would just dismiss her as a 'whore' or an 'evil, manipulative cunt who doesn't care about the lives she'll ruin'. as if kaido and orochi weren't the root cause of it all.

i just love how deep the lore can get. there have been so many characters in the story of one piece and im just amazed at how oda can maximize their stories to the fullest potential of the specific arc that they belong to.

truly a work of a genius.

Aro culture is liking shipping bc it is a game to me. I am playing with my dolls. They are kissing. I am told that is a thing people do. For some reason.

.

Mmmmm... (and other noises of approval)

Although my main OTP is Zoro/Hiyori (idk why it just is), I think that something great about One Piece is how there are few ships that almost everyone absolutely despises that are regularly talked about, which to me just shows how well each character gets along with each other, enough to encourage a healthy dose of enjoying a large range of ships.

Most of the Strawhats (minus chopper because he's too baby) can be shipped together for genuine reasons that many people can get on board with, and if people don't like that so much they can ship them with any of the other people they interact with in specific arcs.

It's really a testament as to how Oda's writing of the main crew makes them so fun to read, draw and write interacting with each other.

The beautiful thing about One Piece is that I genuinely enjoy a lot of the ships, even if I don’t necessarily ship them.

I will see a ship post with art or just funny moments of two characters I never even considered and be like;

"Yes they are so in love",

& then go back to my citrus trio and frobin brainrot.

[image ID: Bernie Sanders meme with a small aromantic flag captioned “I am once again asking for you to include aromantics in your pride art/posts/merch” End ID]

I need to prove a point to my mom. Reblog if you can realize you’re asexual/aromantic in your teens.

Is it odd to say I sometimes struggle to place exactly how I think of Zoro and Chopper's relationship?

Some people say they're like father and son, whilst others say they're more like siblings, but I feel like I'm in some weird no-man's-land where neither title really matches up.

It's like Zoro's an older brother who was forced to look after his younger brother, Chopper, in the place of absent parents, and is the closest thing to being a father whilst simultaneously absolutely unable to act like an 'actual' parent should due to being completely inexperienced and too young to fulfill that role properly.

I hope I articulated that properly because I don't even know at this point, I just want to hear if anyone else feels like this 😭

For some reason I absolutely love Roronoa Zoro/Kozuki Hiyori, but the tag on ao3 only has 75 fics (I check daily so I know) and half of them don't actually ship it (background at most).

Also they hardly have fanart.

It truly is the saddest part of shipping something not super well loved by the fandom 😔

thinking about how spoiled i got with reading bnha fics because there was a million and one fics over any au i could think of and now im suffering because i wanna read a million and one fics over one piece but there’s just. not as many

"Kuina's death is ridiculous" yes! That's the point! You do realize that falling down the stairs is a way of showing Zoro how fragile human lives are, right? You are aware that the point of Kuina's character is the unfairness of the world towards women in comparison to the privileges men have, like living in itself and fulfilling their dreams, right? You know that Kuina's death is "ridiculous and dumb" because it's meant to show that even the strongest person Zoro knew could die from something so little, right? You understand that the value Zoro gives to life is fucking immense, right? Right?? You realize Zoro can't seek revenge because nobody took her away from him and now the only thing he can do is become the world's greatest swordsman to avenge her death, right? You get that Zoro's character is an atheist because he doesn't believe in anyone and he can only rely on himself when it comes to Kuina's sudden death, right? You are aware that sometimes people die in the simplest of ways and that doesn't make them weak because death doesn't discriminate, right? You know that all of these things are what make Zoro's character so interesting and important, right? Right??? You know, right?

Well, of course you fucking don't because if you knew you wouldn't be saying her death is ridiculous <3