#the queer folks here are generally really kind and trustworthy

[fabulouslygaybean]

my younger sister and i are going to the first day of our city's pride fest and im so excited!! scared, but still excited

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Wano (Part Two)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

okay so the wano flashback is possibly my favorite in the whole series for a whole bunch of different reasons, and oden as a character is a big part of why. honestly, i think he’s great. he’s wildly entertaining and ridiculously likable, just like a folk hero should be.

i care about oden and the akazaya nine a lot. they have one of my favorite found family dynamics in the whole series, up there with the strawhats themselves- a bunch of thugs and castoffs who wound up gathering around this one wildly charismatic moron and deciding to be stronger and better for him. 

i think they really feel like a family, in these little moments we get of them just interacting and messing around, and it only makes later events- oden’s death, the twenty-year separation, kanjurou’s betrayal- hurt all the worse.

on god it is the funniest thing on earth to me that this is how oden and izou wound up on whitebeard’s ship. 

the roger pirates!! i really really like the roger pirates!! i love that there’s this entire predecessor crew who are both absolutely fucking fascinating from a lore perspective and who are just all individually really good characters with really fun relationships. the dynamics we get to see just in this brief part of the flashback are absolutely delightful. i think the fact that i would read a whole series just about the roger pirates is a testament to oda’s character writing. 

there’s a specific sort of tragedy to the roger pirates, and i think it really hits home in their last few pages in this flashback. by all appearances, they were a crew just as close-knit as the strawhats are. they cared about each other a lot- that ship was their home.

and then their captain died, and they just- fell apart. 

awhile back, in my sabaody post, i talked about how we get to know roger first as a story and then as a character by getting to meet characters who knew him personally. to the rest of the world, roger is a story, a name to curse or a height to aspire to. but for shanks and rayleigh and crocus and buggy and all the rest of the roger pirates, he was their captain. 

the whole wano flashback, possibly more than any of the others in the series, really feels to me like a story being told, a folk tale being passed down, which makes sense, since it’s canonically framed as oden’s diary entries. and i think that framing device just adds so much to the atmosphere of this entire section of story, the feeling of myth and legend to it. 

i honestly really like how oden’s death is handled. i have trouble articulating it, but it’s so much, so over the top, so heavily set up and foreshadowed- a legendary death for a legendary man, if that makes sense.

toki’s prophecy is one of my favorite motifs in this whole arc. wano is all about a country that’s been trapped and dying for years and years, holding out desperate hope for salvation. toki is the one who gave them that hope. she doesn’t try to tell them that everything will be okay, she says it will be dark and the darkness will be long, but the dawn will come, and even though she gave her life to do that, she did it smiling. 

without toki, the wano arc never would have happened, because there would be no future to fight for. 

this panel is the header on my favorite op discord server and sometimes i just scroll up and stare at it. it’s so good. 

this entire sequence, starting from luffy law and kidd’s entrance, is probably my favorite in wano arc. it’s the turning of the sides, the daybreak after the darkest hour- these three show up, and then jinbe, and denjirou reveals his true colors and it’s revealed all the rest of the samurai left before orochi blew the bridges, and it turns out they haven’t lost a single step to kanjurou’s treachery. it just feels so good to read, after the prior hopelessness of the akazaya and the tragedy of the flashback.

i really like how the akazaya nine are absolutely ready to roast each other at any and all times. that’s how you know they’re best friends. 

i think i mentioned it back in fishman island, but one of my favorite things is the strawhats just being absolutely cheerfully, chaotically destructive. every time we get to see them wreck havoc while nonchalantly bickering with each other it puts a huge smile on my face.

i think ulti and page one are very very funny and i like their dynamic a lot, it’s a laugh riot. i also like that oda lets luffy seriously fight a woman here!! i’m serious, we don’t see enough no-holds-barred fights between men and women (conventionally attractive women, specifically) in this series, so i’m pleasantly surprised when it does happen. 

i do appreciate wano’s ability to continuously raise the “holy shit!” quotient without it ever really feeling like a twist just for the sake of the audience. like, i don’t know that anybody saw kaidou killing orochi coming, but at the same time, it feels like it does make sense, given what we know about kaidou, for him to do this.

my heart goes out to momo, honestly. he’s only eight, and in that time he’s lost his home and family and his whole world when he was thrown twenty years into the future, and he has the weight of his whole country resting on his shoulders. he’s borne up admirably under that stress, starting from zou and building up to this point.

i LOVE kin’emon’s speech to kaidou about luffy SO much. kin’emon’s come a long way from being a mostly comedy relief character in punk hazard to here, where he’s shouting down an emperor. i really like this progression- kin’emon doesn’t change, exactly, but the side of his character that is revealed in wano is very likable and admirable. it goes back to something i’ve mentioned before, about how one piece’s characters are very rarely one-dimensional.

kaidou’s dragon form is extremely cool, and so are most of the panels where it appears- it’s extremely striking, especially in panels like this, where he’s silhouetted against the moon.

i love... the ripple effects of luffy just being himself that spread throughout the world of one piece, and i think this is one of the best examples. luffy befriended coby all the way back in chapter two, mostly by accident, and now, nine hundred and some chapters later, that’s what leads to drake joining the strawhats’ side. because drake is friends with coby who says luffy is trustworthy, so when drake is stuck with nobody else to turn to, he turns to luffy. 

moments like this really reinforce just how much the world and story of one piece is built on relationships between people, and i really like that. i like that instead of necessarily being built around abstract ideals or morals, characters’ actions are, more often than not, motivated by either specific personal goals or by their relationships with other characters. it feels much more true to life.

i like the loss of kiku’s arm, because it showcases exactly how serious the fight is on both sides. it both shows that kaidou is fighting to maim and kill and do whatever it takes to win, and that the akazaya are fully prepared to take whatever he throws at them. kiku gets back up smiling after losing her arm. neither side in this fight is even close to backing down, now or ever. 

i genuinely can’t believe how long it took me to talk about yamato, so let me just say: i love him so much. part of this, i’m sure, is my personal bias towards any and all kickass queer characters, but part of it is just- he’s so cool. he’s ten feet tall and carries a club about as big as he is and tanks explosions like they’re nothing while also bickering with luffy and falling out of ceilings and generally being like... stupidly lovable. 

i just like yamato a lot. 

a thousand chapters in, and every strawhat but robin has had a moment where they declare luffy is going to be the king of the pirates, but honestly, i think nami’s might be my favorite yet. nami has always been a person who acts at a distance, not one inclined to direct confrontation and putting herself in danger-

and yet, when it comes down to it, when faced with a choice between death and disavowing her captain’s dream, even when assured by usopp that she would be fully justified in lying for her life, nami chooses luffy. even in the most dire of circumstances, all of the strawhats know luffy is going to be the king of the pirates, and none of them would ever deny it.

i kind of alluded to this back in my dressrosa post, but i really like the development of law’s new dream being discovering the meaning of the will of d. it just feels like a very good and natural progression for his character, given he’s the only holder of the will of d who we’ve been shown is consciously aware of it and what it might mean. and in general, i like seeing him having something else to work towards after doflamingo’s defeat.

i’ll end this by just saying i am so desperately curious to know what is in that book, and what yamato knows about the will of d, about the dawn of the world, about laugh tale. 

guess we’ll find out, huh?

thanks for reading through to the end!! i had a lot of fun putting these posts together, and writing them up was a really cool way to be able to compile my thoughts headed into chapter 1000 and beyond. i can’t wait to see where oda takes us next. 

[davidsilvercloud]

Terry David “Butch/Butch Naked” Silvercloud,

DavidSilvercloud.com (Blog)

ButchNews.com (Video)

ButchNaked.com (Photo Stream)

SeriousThunder.com (Art)

ElectronSpeed.Tumblr.com (Physics... The Speed of Light)

Visual Artist, Photographer, Physicist (Particle, Sub/Atomic Physics/Relativity)

I'm a friendly, but pretty blunt, kind of guy.  No time for beating around the bush.  I like to say what I mean and mean what I say.  I'm 73 years old.  Time is not on my side.  You don't have to like me.  I'm a social recluse, anyway.  I share my life, in photos, to let you into my life and hope to inspire you to be a productive and useful human.  I have old age issues but will continue to post, here, while I'm well and able.  I talk a lot... I'm told it's part of my OCD and ADHD.  Come direct at http://ButchNaked.com  Sign in if you wish to see me naked.

....... The DAILY GRIND.....  what's up today.

11 Million photo views, to date at ButchNaked.com.  Thank you.

Now keep reading.

Friday, 17 November, 2017.  Sunny and cool today... very nice day.  The low pressure area has moved south over California giving us a day, or so, of sun before the rain returns.  I wuz up about 9:30am... had stayed up late.  I'm on day 8 of my hormone cycle which is peak time and I have more energy... thus stay up late.

Today the library closes at 6pm so I'll get downtown late in the afternoon to get online... I can't afford internet, just now.  I live on a couple of very small pensions and a government rent supplement.  Once I get out of debt, again, I'll get my own online connection.  Meanwhile, I adjust my day around going downtown each day to get online, get out and about, and do grocery shopping, etc.  I live about five miles south of downtown.

I'm 73... old skool, and grew up in an era of different sexual relationships among men and women.  Being gay was illegal and could have you sent to jail.  I find it interesting how events of public figures... being outed for poor sexual conduct, is happening so frequently this past few weeks.  Something is going on in social relationships and I can't quite put my finger on what.  The fact that young people can meet more easily, no matter what their sexual inclinations, by way of online web sites, and by Smart Phone applications has changed everything.  People who are much older, lived in a different world of heavy sexual repression and a world where men had more social rights than women, and queer/gay people had no rights at all.  I think this will take several more years to sort itself out... old ideas to die off, and new moral standards applied to society... what is acceptable behaviour.

100 years ago it would not be weird for teenagers to go off to war, or get married, and for much older men to wed much younger women.  That has changed, dramatically, in the past 20 years.  Women want and demand all the same rights as men and it's hard to say how that will play out over the long term.  It totally ignores physical and emotional differences between men and women while not seeking ways to take advantage of those differences.  It poses all kinds of new situations which will change the future... large numbers of children growing up in daycare, with working mothers and fathers while, at the same time, the number of children in families will be very low... 1-2 children.

The social changes will not be apparent for a generation, or two, but it seems we are entering an era of very conservative social thought.  Conservatives are a danger to themselves and everyone around them.  I expect those who don't conform to the new social order will be severely outcast.  Kindness and conservatism do not go together... the very idea of Connservatism is 'every person for themselves and f**k anyone who isn't part of the group".

THIS IS THE END OF THE DAILY GRIND.

"I've been USED!!!  Just like that condomn on the ground over there"  Cleveland Brown, The Cleveland Show. .............................

If you don't know me, the following might help you get to know what kind of person I am.  I don't expect you to understand me.  I can be a bit OCD and ADHD.

"They've already got more blow jobs than we'll ever get"  Steve Smith (American Dad), talking about college freshmen.

"Now let us touch testicles and mate for life"  Alien on The Simpsons

l'm here to teach you things.  While I appreciate other people's opinions, I really don't give a crap what anyone thinks.  Until you prove your worth, I will be nice but you have to earn my respect.  You should assume that I don't trust anyone.  I've not met a single trustworthy person in my entire life.  I've met nice people who aren't too bright... well intentioned folk who know little about anything, people who are nice, most of the time, until you say something that offends them.  Honourable people agree to disagree.