springywinter

[springywinter]

Raise a Selkie | White Wave

It's a small world.

Bel was mentioned in a previous oneshot, but I'll put his image here again.

The animal motif this time is the beluga! They're also known as the sea canary, which is such a lovely name, I wanted to play into this aspect. Since they're AKA white whales, I thought it'd be an interesting tie-in with the White City. The selkies in this RAS AU all have a bit of fantastical elements to them and I hope to explore this area more if the ideas keep coming.

For Flevance culture and such, Oda had said Law's nationality would've been German in the real world so I used Germany for inspiration.

Edit 13/8/24: Sep is Bel's nickname for Sepida.

[springywinter]

Raise a Selkie | Venom

He's been told the dosage makes the difference of whether it'd be a poison or a remedy—not that it mattered in Uni's case.

Our fav sea urchin is in the house! Going into a bit of fantastical elements of selkies in this AU. Research for this fic was quite fun.

For Uni's role in the crew, I really wanted to lean into the urchin aspect. As for his character, it was a bit strange to write since this is set when he newly joined the crew, so his reservations takes over most of story. Once he's sailed years with the Hearts, he's comfortable with them and his odd personality really comes out then.

I wanted to explore interesting aspects of a sea urchin so I landed on the Antarctic sea urchin and the flower urchin.

[springywinter]

Raise a Selkie | Half-asleep

Never had Penguin been glad he was a bird for he too would've gotten the sea treatment at 5am.

Balaena is this lovely fella.

Afterwards, there was some indignant yelling, explanations, and grumbling, but ultimately Law figured if he has crew who are alert and can sleep at the same time, they might as well be on night watch more often than not while the rest of them get actual sleep. Not too often, cause he’s not that mean.

Some cetaceans fall into unihemispheric slow-wave sleep (USWS). It's so they don't drown while they're resting, and I figured what if some of the Hearts could do something like that as well? I think it's neat when your abilities have everyday uses.

[springywinter]

Raise a Selkie | Homecoming

“Fourteen years ago, Bepo left Zou in search of his older brother, got on a ship to the North Blue, and wound up on Swallow Island a year later.” “Bepo studied seafaring and navigation in the hopes of returning to Zou.”

Polar bears can swim for days and their thick fur keeps them so warm they can overheat when they run around too much.

Ch812 where Wanda explains to Nami about exchanging clothes with outsiders is SUCH as fun little tidbit, and made me wonder, what if the Hearts did random clothes-swapping days started by Bepo? Nevermind the fact that Bepo may or may not know such traditions XD

I adore every single fic that incorporates bilingual and multilingual into their worldbuilding.

When I was drafting Bepo's chapter, I didn't think it was going to be his backstory. The initial draft didn't fit chronologically so I moved it for a later installment.

Also, can we appreciate how hardcore 8-9 year old Bepo was for surviving a year throughout the New World and then to North Blue? Yes minks are natural-born badasses from birth, but a journey on his own was hella extreme. I imagined how important Zepo must've been to Bepo to have recklessly left Zou at a young age.

While I absolutely adore a tiny Law and ever tinier Bepo, the thought of big crybaby Bepo comforted by smol Law (and vice versa smol Law hugged by a giant bear) won me over. What got me was Bepo longing to return to Zou since he learned navigation for it, and despite finally getting there after 10 or so years, he stays with Law and the Hearts.

Edit: 3/3/24. Why kumquats? I wanted a citrusy fruit that could be homegrown inside a house and might find on a tropic island like Zou (though it could've be imported). I also saw this adorbs comic and hey, Bepo's martial arts had me thinking. Guess where kumquats are native to?

Swimming is a Weird Thing in Zou (considering they ride Wanis to get around). I thought of lore about minks prizing their fur, and aside from baths, they wouldn't want it soaked by ocean water. But for polar bears like Bepo and Zepo, it's the perfect cooldown activity.

[springywinter]

Things I love about this cover page:

Bepo trying to assault this poor leopard with boiling hot water and a bat XD

Law chilling with a floofy hoodie to further confirm how much he likes fuzzy things. And he likes vodka (or possibly as antiseptic?)

Further proof the Hearts stamp their jolly roger on everything they own

The amount of art and comics we got from the fandom

[springywinter]

Raise a Selkie | Birds of a Feather I

Who knew the solution to their clothing problem was that simple?

Below Alba (pompadour), Sepida (bandana or green hat), Seiuchi, Bel (yellow hair).

Reveal fics are so much fun. Thought about writing one with the Straw Hats but there's too many scenarios of how that might happen XD

Alba is the pompadour one because you can't tell me this guy doesn't care about fashion.

There's only about 10 or so crew members so far which is why Alba, Hakugan and Penguin are the only birds in the Hearts for now. That changes down the line.

If the Hearts can help Law’s surgery on Luffy and Jinbei, then damn straight that all of them know first aid (though sometimes might be too panicked to remember it), with some having bits of training in specific areas. Law’s an amazing doctor, and while he’ll keep his crew healthy, I think the conscientious part of him with all his contingency plans doesn’t want to leave his crew floundering in scenarios when he’s not available. Hence why some of them might be trained in certain medical skills (and with Alba, it's suturing).

I spend way too many hours on this AU, it's eating my soul XD Hopefully I managed to convey SOME of the background lore.

Edit 24/2/25: Alba's ancestry was inspired by a certain Japanese folk story. Alba isn't just a selkie-albatross, he's a selkie-hybrid. Edit 17/1/24: In response to a comment; like how the minks in the real world are weasels but the Mink people consists of all sorts of furred species, the selkies are mostly ice-cold sea animals instead of just being seals. In verse, they're primarily called 'shorefolk' as mentioned in Before Minion Island of this AU. With Bel, I struggled what to name him for awhile, whether by his species or by his romaji, Beruuga. Then I realised Law, Jean Bart and Bepo don't fit the typical on-the-nose naming convention, and rolled with it XD Same with Alba. Yes, Alba does have a wide wingspan, befitting of his species.

[springywinter]

Forgot to update that ch3 and 4 for stars misalign was updated and I've forgotten alot since life and working on other things. But in summary, I join the please-let-Akechi-interact-with-dog train + the fun of experimenting in the Metaverse.

[springywinter]

Raise a Selkie | Hide-and-seal

It's a game most North Blue children have played at least once. Shachi didn't think his crew would shape it into a version of their own.

Seiuchi is the one with the black brimmed hat as below.

Quite a few animal facts here--a polar bear's insane sense of smell, ice birds don't get frostbite, and echolocation (my main prompt inspiration), which I find is one of the coolest animal superpowers out there :D Also, it's interesting that Oda would just randomly say that Ikkaku, Uni and Clione didn't agree to the Straw-Heart alliance at first. We never get the reason why. I do have my personal headcanons in this series for why they might've felt that way (all selkie-related btw)--as to whether I'll explore that in this series, maybe if an idea hits me. As for how I chose Seiuchi's name and animal, just look at that gorgeous beard XD Edit 17/1/24: Shachi will learn the ways of the whale/dolphin, eventually, from Ikkaku--it becomes a bonding point for them actually.

[springywinter]

Raise a Selkie | Found

It started with rumours.

Actually, much to everyone’s surprise at the time, it started with Penguin—or Law, depending on who you ask—because if anyone did the ridiculous, it should’ve been Shachi.

So. Sometimes you get a penguin who tries to adopt *coughs-kidnap-coughs* an abandoned chick. It actually happens XD

Also, I think it's absolutely adorbs the thought of these kids calling him Law-san before they formed the Hearts, it shows so much respect they had for him. I like to think that they hadn't grown out of it yet when it was just the quartet. So even if that's not happened in the Law Novel... WELL.

[springywinter]

It Takes a Crew to Raise a Selkie

Before Minion Island

Law hadn't turned into a seal for years, not since all he cared for turned to ashes. He already had a target bloodied on his back for being a White Monster. He didn't need another.

But he wasn't going to lose another person to something as lame as drowning to his own clumsiness—!

Specifications

Wolf had seen a lot in his travels—both the beauty and the cruelty. Of course, he was going to worry about these kids. The least he could ensure is some small comforts to a perilous journey.

I have two fics to work but end up writing other snippets because this One Piece Hearts selkie AU is taking over my life. I blame the fandom and their awesome concepts XD

Before Minion Island -- I feel like I can still improve the characterisation and ended the scene better but that comes with writing the first chapter, you're still understanding the characters.

My thoughts: even though Law had hope that the Ope Ope Fruit could save him, he wasn't going to expect it will until it actually happened. So he still thought he was going to die, especially since he's in the final stages of the poisoning. And dying without anyone knowing who or what he was a bit... so if there's anyone he was going to trust his secret, it'd be Cora-san.

I couldn't decide between a seal or a snow leopard, but decided on the former to actually, ya know, fit the selkie theme. Might consider writing an AU where he's a snow leopard instead.

Specifications -- Kudos to Wolf for taking in a bunch of kids for three years. Until Law meets some of his much older crewmates, I thought it’d be nice to have another adult figure actually know Law as a selkie.

Wolf knew obscure things like the Eternal Life Surgery (and so did Blackbeard actually, now that I think about it), and living the in North Blue, Wolf had to have known that selkies weren't make-believe. But seeing is believing, and seeing an adorable, fuzzy seal in front of the fireplace that could talk was well, enlightening. Regarding the Tang bathroom renovations, there was two thoughts in his mind: a seal needed plenty of space to swim, and that selkies were rarely alone.

This series was partially named relating to the Hearts learning to be selkies together, but one other thing that will be shown later.

[springywinter]

Chapter 1 and 2 is uploaded. I’m honestly nervous to be uploading this series as I never intended to (since it’s my usual self-indulgent trash), but I figured I might as well get over my jitters.

[springywinter]

Dawn Chapter 4 is uploaded. I remember this one taking a lot of extensive research. Might be slow pace for some people.

[springywinter]

Dawn Chapter 3 is uploaded. Finally figured out how to make the link a banner again but not sure why it’s showing New Session instead of the usual...

[springywinter]

Chapter 2 for Dawn has been uploaded. Like all creators, the process was full of “this is terrible, I’m terrible”.

[springywinter]

That. Puts so much things in perspective XD

on fanfic & emotional continuity

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation. 

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character - let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred - you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different - perhaps wildly so - story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place. 

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity - not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit - the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this. 

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters - and fic readers - the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions. 

The fact that ficwriters en masse - or even the same ficwriter in different AUs - can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative. 

[springywinter]

Hiya everyone! First time posting on Tumblr, and already I respect everyone who knows how to fiddle with the formatting. I’ll be posting my ongoing BSD Part 1 Dawn of the Daybreak fanfic series.

Take care and Have a lovely HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🎆🎉

It’s also here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14014421/1/Dawn