Yes Sam is the hero of the story but don't forget my boy Frodo. He breaks my heart. Frodo Baggins knowing he's walking straight to his death crushed by fear and despair and still taking on this mission and refusing to give up? What got Sam through it all was his strong faith and hope and unwavering love for his master, which makes me cry every time, but, there is something equally heartbreaking in Frodo's clarity about the certainty of his doom, there is something especially heartbreaking in his total absence of hope. He does not have any faith that he will survive this and he is not even certain if he will be able to achieve his purpose before dying, he senses that this is much bigger than him, and the wound will never heal. He knows, yet he goes on. Death is inevitable, "all men must die" but as long as we live we have to keep trying. "We must do without hope" as Aragorn says. I think the character of Frodo is the very manifestation of the "inevitability of death", which is the "key spring of the Lord of the Rings" according to Tolkien. Also Sam's particular brand of heroism deserves a whole separate analysis but it is interesting to juxtapose these two because they are both heroic in different ways and it is heartbreaking how much they love and complete each other. Because Sam KNOWS this about Frodo and this is precisely why he admires Frodo so deeply. When Sam wonders about how much food they will need for the return journey and Frodo tells him that he can't even imagine surviving this , Sam starts crying, because he knows very well that Frodo doesn't have hope or faith, he knows the depth of his struggle and agony and that makes him love and cherish Frodo even more fiercely because if Frodo doesn't have hope, Sam has to have enough for both of them and "‘Come, Mr. Frodo!’ he cried. I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he’ll go" and I just, I'm in PAIN -
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I have been consuming Zack Lives AUs and would like to offer the headcannon: Zack keeps a habit of taking initiative for transporting Cloud to places even after Cloud wakes up. Usually grabbing and leading Cloud places, but sometimes ends up with Zack full on hoisting Cloud over his shoulder and starts walking.
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You do get the sense that the fallout of Roger's death and the Roger pirates disbanding not so much traumatized Buggy and Shanks indifferent ways but instead generated such drastically different reactions to the trauma.
While the trauma of everything seemed to push Shanks into the future, always constantly waiting for something, putting plans on hold and then later in place, for this great moment, this great coming that he sees on the Horizon. For Buggy it rooted him firmly in the past keeping him trapped in this grief masquerading as anger.
While Roger's death forced Shanks to grow up fast, it kind of arrested Buggy's development keeping him stuck in those same feelings, rooted int that same place.
You get the sense that Buggy's whole east blue schtick is just one long overdue rebellious phase one big fuck you to Roger and his ideals. He's rebelling against Roger's principles. One of their rules was don't steal from innocent people and Buggy was keeping a whole town in poverty. If Roger and Luffy's pirating styles are diametrically opposed to someone like Blackbeard, who might be the most literal pirate in the entire series, then buggy is the parody of that Blackbeard piratism. He is playing up cruelty, being the most piratey pirate possible, hell he's literally a clown on a stage. It's all a show! It's his own special way of trying to "get back at Roger" of trying to discard everything Roger taught him for this overacted, over exaggerated clownish cruelty. Mentally he never left that execution square. He is still 15, alone and scared.
Hell he literally never left either, while I'm pretty sure Shanks' booked it out of the east blue as fast as he could, Buggy never lef, might have never left, if not for Luffy. It's part of why Luffy bothers him so much, he's just like Roger everything that Buggy is trying hard to forget and here comes this kid, whose never even met the Captain but is wearing his hat, shoving it right back in his face.
It makes sense that he never leaves the east blue till Luffy literally forces him out of it (fucking with Luffy gets him captured and imprisoned) and it makes sense that it's Luffy that literally breaks him out of prison, literally sets him free, and on the path to greatness that maybe he was always meant to achieve (even if he trips his way into it). This boy that is tragically so much like his old captain but so beautifully unabashedly himself, is what Buggy needs to start letting go off the past, to start trying to move forward.
Maybe that's why Buggy, at what could arguably be described as his lowest moment, gets the strength to free himself from his own self imprisonment, realizing that even back then he was locking himself away and pinning his own dreams on Shanks. And, maybe for the first time ever, Buggy really own his dream. He declares to his tormentors and his crew and the entire world that; actually He wants to find the one piece, him, as captain of his own crew, this crew, not just a part of someone else's. That's his dream and he's willing to turn the world upside down to do it.
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Obsessed with Lloyd never mentioning his grandfather is the First Spinjitsu Master, apparently to the point even Arin didn't seem to know, because "eh, it never came up". Cause like, yeah, sure, my grandfather is God, what of it? Normal day for me. Shit happens. My dad is also evil, you wanna talk about that? I sure don't.
It's also funny from a character arc perspective. Here's itty bitty baby first season Lloyd, loudly proclaiming he's the son of Garmadon, and probably also making sure everyone knows he's God part 3 electric boogaloo. And then one Tomorrow's Tea and a few more years later and he's doing everything physically possible to NOT care about his heritage. In fact he'd probably rather his parentage was literally anyone else. Dude could care so less he forgets about it most of the time. King behavior.
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