#the downfall of one piece

[thekingofwinterblog]

Thoughts on those "the downfall of One Piece" videos by that Drizzt guy? He seems to really like Brandon Sanderson, and with you quiting the same author, I thought it may be interesting to contrast views that seem to be so different in regards to the quality of post time skip One Piece

I watched drizzt's take once yeah... Im not doing it again, so i'll try to give my thoughts on his from parts i distinctly remember.

Well to start off with, my opinion on One Piece isn't entierly positive. I too regard it as a series well past it's prime and highpoint... I just dont regard what came after that highpoint as bad(with exception of one arc). It's a series that is good, but is dragged down by the fact that no matter hoe much it tries, it can never recapture the glorious highpoint that was water 7/enies lobby.

By contrast Drizzt regards One Piece post timeskip more in the vein of Naruto. A series with a very clear, and obvious point where it fell off a cliff, broke it's back, and had to crawl across rocky, muddy, marshy terrain towards the finishline.

So lets start with the shit i kinda agree with him. The Strawhat's dreams are for the most part the most underutilized part of one piece by a wide margin.

Ironicqlly, the two dreams i completely disagree woth being used badly are the ones he bitched the most about, namely Luffy and Zoro. Luffy and Zoro's dreams are different than the rest, in that they don't actually have to achieve anything in between. Beat mihawk, and find One Piece. That's it.

The fact that they just travel on their journey, getting stronger along the way is not really a problem.

He compares luffy negatively to luffy, but the reality is that both of them came into the political climate under very different circumstances.

Roger had to actually do it, he was the trailblazer, the one who proved that it could be done... Evsryone else that followed him, luffy included, all had to repeat his feats to reacht he top. It was from the scramble for that goal that the Yonko system came to be, with 4 pirate superpowers who simply did it better than all the rest... but none of them had the power to sweep the rest away.

And its into this system that luffy came in, and in the end toppled, setting the stage for the endgame.

Otger than luffy and zoro though, none of the crews dreams are used in a particularily good way.

Nami wants to map all the world... We never really see any focus on her map making, and later learn there are over 10 million islands on this planet... Good luck with that.

Sanji wants to find the All Blue... I genuinely dont think it's even been mentioned in any real capacity since all blue.

Usopp wants to be a brave warrior of the sea and meet his dad again... Wrll while the latter seems likely to happen very soon, if usopp hasnt done it by now, he will probably remain a man ruled by fear for the rest of his life.

Chopper wants to create cures to any disease in the world... Sorta used in an interesting way by contrasting him with caesar and Queen... But notice he didnt actually go on to fight and defeat either of them.

Robins dream is at least in the same way as Luffy's and zoro's in that there is a logical endpoint, but unlike theirs we really could have gotten way more insights into the past before through poneglyphs discovered in the story, rather than all the lore being dropped all at once. Oda really was way too focused on the ancienct weapons to realise that the poneglyphs could have been used to give us haunting snippets of character momenys, and pictures of lore from a dying age, that brought about the world government, that would all have fit together at the end.

To illustrate this point, we dont actually know the tone or the content of Joy's apology to the Mermaid princess.

Was it a harrowing apology for his own weakness? A nochelant eh, sorry things didnt work out? A We sure gave it our all huh... And yet it didnt change anything.

The fact is, we dont know. And that illustrates what a missed opportunity the poneglyphs actually were. There was so much room to use them beyond info on the ancienct weapons.

Franky's dream is also a missed opportunity, because we are never really given focus or attention on him fixing the ship or upgrading it.

Brooks is bizarre, because he could have achieved his dream at any point during the timeskip, and just... didnt.

And finally i dont remember what Jinbe's dream actually is... Which is a bad sign in its own way.

As for his other conplaints... I don't actually recall them much. It's been a while.

My own thoughts on one Piece post timeskip is that the problems boil down to a number of key issues.

1. Way too many new characters in each arc.

2. The age old One piece problem of Oda almost never killing characters no matter what means almost nobody gets to exit this story on a highnote, and when Characters do die, it usually feels more like an afterthought, rather than a defining moment(Pretty much everyone of luffy's allies who died in wano feels like this). Combine with point 1, and you get stupidly large casts that almost never get trimmed down, meaning every single arc is full of characters who almost always devolve into greek choruses in some form by the end.

3. One piece has completely changed it's fight structures, so fights where we get to see the action from beginning to end are much rarer, rather than the norm. There is a reason most of the strawhats post timeskip only has 1 or 2 good fights each under their belt(if that), when before every single one of them(except brook) had plenty of vool fights and moments. The new structure where we usually only get to see snippets of fights rather than the entire thing mrans oda can put in way more stuff alongside them, but it also means the fights themselves are usually lackluster.

4. several characters have become worse in one or several ways, and the narrative doesnt really avknowledge this. The biggest, by far, is Sanji, who not only is a worse character in every regard, but every single genuine development he got is undermined and undone. He gets a girl who genuinely loves him in the form of pudding. He hits a woman because of the german upgrqdes and decides to abandon them completely, only for his powers to sorta still be there maybe, but in the end he didnt actually hit the girl, it was an invisible queen. I cpuld go on, but oda had some many chances to shake up Sanji's character after the timeakip, and he backtracked on all of them.

5. Haki got fucking insane in wano. Oda made a gigantic mistake early in wano's arc, where Kaido took out Luffy in one blow. It was a cool moment, but it also meant that haki's ability to let fighters stay on their feet and recover from total beatdowns in record time had to baloon to insane degrees. And lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. Which sucks even more, because the qctual explanation about how luffy had to improve to reqch thw kind of offensive that roger, whitebeard, big mom kaido and shanks have and had was actually pretty cool and set up way before this. But unfortunately that's also introduced in the arc where luffy gets up again and again after kaido beat him unconcious, with no other explanation than Haki baby! It sucks any tension out of any fight when you know haki can allow people to just get back on their feet no matter how gravely theyre wounded.

6. Gear five having no actual foreshadowing/being a zoan.

Oda wrote himself into a corner with the biggest reveal one piece ever had... And there was only 2 ways to handle it to make it truly work.

Either go all in on foreshadowing this shit, and have characters point out that luffy losing his rubber body against sea stone when he doesnt when underwater is kinda wierd(which makes sense for a zoan, but not a always transformed parmecia), and judt highlight that there is a mystery here... So that when the reveal comes it all falls into place.

Or, and this is the solution i would have gone with, have luffy awaken and have all the powers of Nika luffy, just withouth a transformation. Id have accepted the cartoon logic becoming part of the world around him as the awakened powers of a rubber devil fruit no problem... It was adding in, oh he's actually a myyhical zoan devil fruit intrical to the world's history where oda lost me.

There are other flaws too, but these are the main repeating ones, you'll find all over the story after impel down.

Overall though, O would say One piece is a good story that suceeds in spite of its flaws... But those flaws very much means that it isnt a perfect story, and after the timeskip, it has never come close to reaching the high watermark again, and thats very the big problem. When you have reached the top, there is nowhere to go but down.

Arguably one piece biggest achievement post timeskip is arguably the fact that in spite of this, it has only had one bad arc, with the rest being good, to great if never outstanding.

The only bad arc of course being dressrosa. I could make an entire retrospective about all the ways that one dropped the ball.

[iaxsl]

while shanks and mihawk are like those divorced exes that still talk occasionally. shanks and buggy are the whirlwind once in a lifetime tragic romance. met and fell in love too soon and got together before either of them were ready. their story was destined to end in heartbreak

[cuteiemonster]

MY THIRD PIECE(s) FOR @mcytblraufest !! o7

LETS DO THIS ONE LAST TIME, these are for @allusiontomemes 's fic, [ DREAMS FROM WITHIN THE CAGE ] !! we got horrors beyond comprehension, we got multiple universes, we got accidentally destroying said universes, we got desert duo- come on down and see what else is up with these guys!!

thank you allusion and @riceofthepuffedvariety you made me go insane o7

[asitrita]

Thoughts on the Donquixote's crucifixion.

Since today is Good Friday I felt like sharing this piece of interpretation of Donquixote family's "crucifixion". Throughout the series and Doflamingo's life I think we can see some symbolism, paralelism, or just vague allusions and hints to his nature being similar to that of the Antichrist (opposite of Christ) or the idea of Doflamingo as Lucifer or a fallen angel (we see something akin to The Last Supper with his "family", including his own personal "Judas" sitting at his left; his ideology of being the rightful king to rule the world, yet not being willing to sacrifiece himself for anyone, but actually expecting everybody else to sacrifice themselves for him; his agent-of-chaos personality; the entire idea that he is almost a devine creature that fell from Heaven to Hell, stripped of his rightful power, status, and legitimate possition above humans, betrayed by his own family and blood; the nickname "Heavenly Demon", etc.). However, I believe the moment in his life he comes to incarnate all these topics comes just after his and his family's crucifixion, or just right after the very moment he lashes out against the rabbid mob awakening and loosing his haki. Just seconds before we have this image:

Here we have Homing, whom we know is a good man, in the middle, at the centre of the scene. Rocinante is to his right hand side, and Doflamingo is to his left. As you might know, Jesus Christ was crucified together with two more people, often refered to as the good thief (traditionally named Dimas/Dismas), and the bad thief (traditionally named Gestas). The good thief was crucified at the right hand side of Jesus, while the bad thief was cricified at his left. Maybe I am looking to much into it, and I'm pretty sure someone else must have already realised this, but I can't help to notice the paralelisms and similarities. In this scene, while all Homing is concerened with is the safety of his children and doesn't mind begging and humiliating himself to try to get the mob to free them, to the point he asks the enraged mob to forgive his children, for they were only little kids, Doflamingo's anger gets the best of him and he lashes out at the crowd, not asking nor begging them to put him down, but threatening to kill them all for their actions, all while blaming his father for all his surffering and his family tragic fate. No forgiveness, no acceptance, but defiance and a promise of vicious and bloody revenge for his father and the craze mob's wrong-doings. Homing was willing to take in all the hate, die for the sins his kind had committed over the centuries, if only to appease the mob and get them to spare his children. He was willing to die for them (and he eventually did, though not in the best way possible, tbh), he was a good person and this scene perfectly shows that, despite his naiveté and the tragic and dire consequences of his actions, he acted out of the goodness of his heart. Doflamingo would not even lower himself to the point of asking for mercy, not before humans he believed were below him. We all know how the story goes, how Doflamingo and Rocinante turned out to be complete different people, with the whole good vs evil motive they have going on. Again, I'm probably digging too much into it, but I just like the Rosi/Dismas, Doffy/Gestas and Homing/Christ paralelism. More so considering how Homing will eventually willingly die for his kids' future, which sounds kinda biblical given we are all God's sons and daughters, and he (Jesus, God's son, God himself) died for us (even if in Homing's case he did die for nothing, as Doffy will not be accepted back among his kind); and how, just after Homing's (Jesus) death, it will be Doffy who becomes, in a way, the symbol of the fallen angel, of the gone-wrong-Jesus, of the anti-Christ, almost Satan himself (ruling the underworld, as his father's heresy took the throne above away from him). He replaces his father as the semi-Biblical almost Christ-like figure, but in a reversed, twisted and sick way.

Crucifixion by Giovanni Donato

[chalkrub]

testing the limits of how small i can make dragons. I imagine these guys are small enough to pass through a partially permeable membrane via diffusion

[slaughtergutz]

Arlong literally brushes away Kuroobi saying Nami is going to betray him. Nami tries to kill him multiple times yet he still doesn’t get that betrayal fact into his skull.

And honestly Arlong was right, he just didn't ever expect there could be someone in the East Blue who was stronger than him.

Because she never would have betrayed him. Getting enough money to buy the village was too important. He didn't know why she wanted it or cared so much but she never would have risked their deal (I think he thought the assassination attempts were more funny than anything.)

Even after the Marines took her money she was willing to get it all back again because she didn't want anyone in the village to get hurt. Arlong knew this.

How tf could he know that there was a bigger monster than him in the weakest ocean on earth.

[thirstydiglett]

Congrats, you’ve been given this secluded island mansion with six beautiful bedrooms! One is for you, but you have to fill the other 5 with sexy One Piece characters who are madly in love with you and cater to your every whim. Who makes the cut???

(Answer in the tags pls it’s much more fun)

[sa-bo]

Genuinely need a break from this arc real quick why does One Piece delve so deep into the ethics of war this arc, like holy shit I'm gonna fucking die

[moldwood]

also its kaspar time :] (belongs to @vodoriga-art/@vampcleric)

[glassartpeasants]

me trying to write a second yandere eustass kid fic but I can't pay attention cause my brain go brrrrrr

[jemmo]

i watched only friends ep 3 for the third time and i am stuck on nick saying the line “no one dares hurt me”. bc in context it’s nothing, and he says it with this slight smile that’s still a little disappointed but just trying to play it off and you could just see it for what it is, just him trying to act fine that boston is abandoning him or whatever. but where’s the fun in seeing things at face value. bc this is post him seeing the pictures and seeing and finding out who top is and putting the wiretrap in boston’s car and seeing boston talking to top (i don’t think it’s clear whether he actually hears what they’re saying about ray and mew and meeting up later and sticks around to see what happens, or is just generally sus of boston and hangs around bc he’s just sus and so happens to see them). this is post this constituted story he has that was sparked by that tweet about liking someone else and that’s why you can’t become something more. he thinks top is that person (and he’s kinda right), that boston likes top more than him, despite boston constantly calling him his favourite. you can see the pieces falling into place, that while boston’s behaviour serves to keep himself in control and have nick on this leash of always being there and keeping him interested with the promise of more that will go nowhere, for nick, it doesn’t just hurt him in these sad ways that keep him dependent on boston to feel good about himself and thinking he has this special relationship when he doesn’t. it also hurts him in ways that boston wouldn’t have intended, ways that turn nick into someone dangerous, someone that can be boston’s downfall. bc now he looks at top not just with sadness and envy, but with anger and disgust, bc who is this person?? what right do they have to be the person boston likes more than me?? when im the one he goes to all the time, when i have this connection, when our relationship is progressing?? bc the feeling of comparing himself to top, and his inadequate that makes him feel, bc of course he isn’t enough, of course he’s not better than top, of course boston would like him more, that can so easily turn and become something dangerous, bc you lash out at other people instead of lashing out at yourself. it’s that thing of i do everything, so why have i not earned your love?? that’s what he says in the trailer to boston; “i just want you to love only me”. it all comes together to make me think nick is gonna be the one that really starts shit. that idk, either through just telling people or maybe that wiretrap can record what happened, he’s gonna be the reason the whole mess starts to come out. and idk if he’s gonna just let it out and let boston get shit for it as a way to get back at him for hurting him, bc bc of his feelings, bc of that line in the trailer, bc i think he still depends on boston’s affection and validation, i think it’s more gonna be a matter of him doing it to push top and boston apart, so that when it all falls apart, the end of it all he can say to boston i did it all bc i love you, bc top doesn’t deserve you, bc i want to be the only person you love.

and you can see how it would happen, when it all comes out and ray and mew clarify that there’s nothing between them and everyone gets mad at boston for fabricating these stories to manipulate people, who do you think is gonna be the most mad?? top. bc he’s the one being messed with, his relationship with mew, and it’s all just ultimately bc boston wants to have sex with him. the man is ruining his relationship just for a fuck, and at this point we don’t know if there are any actual feelings, or if it’s just so that boston can feel superior and in control still. the whole point is that bad behaviour yields bad behaviour. boston is a dick, but he also doesn’t know that he’s feeding in to his own downfall. and nick is being manipulated and taken advantage of, and that’s horrid and sad, but he’s also not this helpless victim. no, i very much believe he intends to bite back just as hard as he’s been bitten. and it still hurts bc it’s such a realistically human bad relationship, the person that lacks self worth and so over invests in a relationship to give them that worth back, and the person that doesn’t want commitment but also doesn’t want to lose control, and so they dangle promises they’ll never keep like bait to keep someone trapped. and it hurts bc the ways nick will turn and start acting out aren’t just his fault, bc boston played into it and made him believe, only for it to be broken. and this is not victim blaming, but you also can’t baby nick and make out he’s harmless, helpless, defenceless. you can’t not see the grey in him. bc he’s expecting boston to be something he’s not, and so you can’t say it’s fine when he gets mad that boston isn’t that thing he wants him to be. you can’t excuse him being overly invasive of a private space like he has ownership over every part of boston and his life. yes i get it, boston plays into it, but at some point we’ve got to stop using that as an excuse, bc the behaviour is still bad, and i feel like it’s only gonna get worse. im calling it, nick is gonna turn into a mess that boston created and become something he can’t control, and it’s gonna all come back around and destroy him. bc it’s not just a matter of messing with the wrong person, it’s the fact that boston doesn’t think anyone can mess with him back, and he doesn’t realise just how catastrophic the consequences of his actions are gonna be.

[tatsumi-rin]

WELL DONE TUMBLR MARKETING TEAM

@staff @netflix having fun there after your clowning?

So basically, I have some info after filing a complaint myself out of sheer pettiness due to the annoyance of this campaign and having to warn people terrified of clowns to stay off tumblr. An email arrived about half an hour ago.

It turns out netflix and Tumblr are now having an official investigation from the UK Advertising Standards Authority for potentially breaching SEVERAL RULES with their One Piece campaign.

Buggy is censored by me for your convenience, from one of the screenshots provided by the ASA. The yellow markers appear to be their own.

Anyway - just figured some of you might want some technically insider information given how much that campaign was legitimately messing some people up. Hopefully, there won't be a repeat of this whole ordeal.

[dyketubbo]

goes insane thinking abt how c!clingyduo are codependent to its best and to its worst

[chibitorra]

Wanted to redraw my baddie oc for OP in my new experimental art style so meet Katsumi.

He's awful but I love him anyways.

[dexaroth]

love looking through slasher +/ horror ocs and a huge majority is black/white/red like hell yeah brother 🤝nothing beats default

[pears-trinkets]

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