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#i'm so invested in shanks' potential bachelor status now

He is literally married to buggy since he was 12. Have some decency/j

that "come with me" loguetown scene really did feel like a proposal tbh...... if shanks had held out a ring instead of his hand would buggy have been tempted to follow?? the answer is probably yes and i think that's really fucking funny

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Cat hat

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I have a one piece related question I hope it’s fine to ask here. Everywhere I go I see people comparing zoro luffy relationship to shanks mihawk one and calling it the failed luffy zoro. Similar almost the whole universe see usopp luffy as buggy shanks.

I feel like I’m the only one disagreeing? If I squint I can see where it comes from, but eh? It seems reaching to me

What do you think? And if you talked about it somewhere before please link it. Thank you

hi anon!! of course it’s ok to ask; i’d love to throw my own ideas out there. these questions are fun to entertain :)

it's pretty easy to see why people enjoy comparing shanks and mihawk to luffy and zoro. there’s some overlap -- a “mentors shadowing the mentees” moment, if you will. the idea of trust/faith is another big intersection. mihawk doesn’t trust anyone, but zoro’s faith in luffy has been one of the most unshakeable aspects of the series at large.

i hesitate to call it a “failed” luffy-zoro relationship, though. i think the overlap is just a result of the groundwork oda has laid for future confrontations between zoro and mihawk, as well as luffy and shanks. oda wants us to make those character comparisons, but it’s only natural that people would expand upon that. (i.e. take what they see from the zoro-luffy dynamic and project that onto the shanks-mihawk dynamic.)

usopp and buggy also have some overlap, so again, it’s only natural that people would then take the usopp-luffy dynamic and project. usopp and buggy are both cowards with strange noses who have the capacity for so much more, but suffer immensely from insecurity. (not to mention usopp and buggy’s miraculous-yet-unintended influence on others, as well as their tendency to skirt around the truth.)

usopp and luffy’s water 7 split-up was the result of usopp’s unaddressed insecurities bubbling to the surface/a lack of communication, and i think you can make a similar case for buggy and shanks during loguetown. but again, i would hesitate to suddenly deem shanks and buggy a “failed” luffy-usopp relationship. (i.e. just because usopp/buggy and shanks/luffy have similarities, this doesn't necessarily mean their dynamics play out the same way.)

in both of these cases, you can see echoes of shanks’ relationships in luffy’s, but it’s not a one-to-one correspondence. they share a likeness, and you can map ideas out from one to the other, but not everything fits. again, i think this phenomenon is just a byproduct of the obvious comparisons oda does intentionally draw between shanks and luffy.

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i’m pretty certain that’s not shanks’ own wedding. from what i’ve seen in the japanese fandom the general consensus is that it’s not his wedding and he’s a guest. (a popular theory is that it’s uta’s wedding but idk about that…) i’d bet it’s something to do with the giants (which oda didn’t want to reveal yet) just from the way it’s drawn is meant to deliberately hide the size of the church and the other guests. there’s a guy in the background who’s cheering at the church while facing away from shanks at the same time the doves are being released. it’s a crucial moment and shanks is just off to the side reading the newspaper.

i’m so certain shanks doesn’t have another kid, that would fuck up his character. oda loves shanks, and he loves his father-daughter relationships. he’d never make shanks into the kind of guy who’d willingly start a new happy family while uta’s back in Elegia suffering. it also just goes against the whole theme of bonds being stronger than blood? shanks leaves his adopted daughter miserable and suicidal, but takes care to ensure his biological child he hasn’t met is safe and loved? i just can’t imagine that being the ending.

i also see japanese fans saying they’d think shanks was a scummy guy towards uta if he went and had a kid, so i’ve seen people leaning towards beck instead. apparently oda emphasizing that beck loves women is a big indicator. 

another reason some fans say it’s not shanks is because makino calls him ‘taichou-san’ which is a very formal address. how people refer to each other is very important. so there’s a hint in how it’s distant and like a stranger’s behavior.

my personal opinion is that the dad is just a regular villager or a marine. there’s a lot of men who are way closer distance wise so that would be the simplest answer. there’s a good chance oda just doesn’t know or care when only one parent matters. we don’t even know yamato or luffy’s mom.

hi, anon!! sorry for making you wait. it's actually funny that i forgot to reply to this for so long, because in that time, my feelings have slightly... changed? somewhat??? i'll explain.

i was reading the extra "road to laughtale" volumes for fun recently when i stumbled across shanks' section, and there are some interesting implications which actually contradict my previous thoughts, if true.

the language used here -- that shanks is "attending a wedding ceremony," and "performing a benediction" -- sounds less like a man getting married, and more like a man who officiated someone else's wedding. (of course, there's the matter of translation accuracy and how canon this information actually is, but...)

"benediction" in particular is very interesting. not only is shanks attending a wedding, but he is essentially giving his blessing. how literal this is, i can't be sure, but either way, it implies a sense of familiarity/closeness to a party other than himself. perhaps shanks is giving his figurative "blessing" as an emperor to one of his allies, or maybe as a captain to one of his own crewmates. or maybe, in the most literal interpretation, he was responsible for wedding two individuals in some way.

i'd love to get my hands on the raw scans and see alternative translations, but "benediction" is so specific a term, and the repetition of "attending" reads as intentional. again, we still don't know for sure, but i feel a lot less certain about it being shanks' wedding, now!!

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Я ахуеть как сильно одержима ими

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His princess

Bestie said that if Buggy had a dog, this would be small, thoroughbred and angry one

Sooooo Buggy and his furball✨

Kiki is not the final name (it was the first one that came to my mind)

And yes...It was Shanks who was supposed to find the lost girl

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Very helpful. 10.

thank u anon i can sleep easier now knowing i was helpful LMAO

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thank you so much for all the compliments on my recent post!!! i've been reading your analysis posts and metas for a while, you're one of the reasons i got so fixated on shuggy so the nice words you put in the tags really mean a lot to me <3 and i'm sorry for not properly crediting you at first, i don't really use twitter that much so i didn't think of saving your thread and then when i started writing that meta post i just couldn't find it anymore </3 thank you for being so kind about that also, you're tagged at the start of the post now!!!

oh wow !!! i'm so honored to be one of those reasons. nothing makes me happier than seeing other people love shanks and buggy as much as i do <333

i can't wait to see what else you post in the future :))

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Nasty little bugs I found under a rock

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…. Will they be “possible staying alive” flags mentioned….?

there's something so funny about all of us holding onto that sliver of hope that they both might live to the end LMAOOO

every panel that i will label as a potential "death flag" is, in a sense, an argument i'm making.. we don't know for sure, and it's my job to convince you that these moments could be a sign of something greater. but there's always the chance that an argument could be wrong, of course; so, if you're asking if i will mention counterclaims to my own arguments, my answer is yes !!!

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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.

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.

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Parenting AU

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I need you to know I spend at least 5 hours thinking what to vote for because everything you write is perfection. I voted for death flags ONLY because I’m both terrified and thrilled with the idea of my favs dying. But I love all of your metas so much and it’s always so perfect and insightful. I hope we will see both and more soon!

auuughhh thank you so much anon !!!!!! <333

i'm terrified and thrilled too (for different reasons though, i think). i've been wanting to tackle this topic in particular for a while now, but i keep putting it off because i want to be as ambitious as possible. i don't want to post some half-assed collection of panels; i want to dive into themes, draw comparisons, and explain every "why" and "how" to the best of my ability.

this meta will likely be more than one part, which is another first for me. but when we speculate on potential "death flags," our predictions are based on both A.) the source material itself, and B.) our previous experiences engaging with other media. death flags are moments in context, so to take them out of said context and then suddenly label them "XYZ" is doing each moment a disservice. instead, i hope to be mindful, so as not to dive in headfirst and make unfortunate leaps in logic.

i guess the tl;dr is ... uhhh ... pray for me. because the writing process will not be fun. LMAO

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Nothing has changed, really.

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Too close

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Shuggy 😔😔🤟🔥💯💯💯