Hrm hrm today I’m having thoughts about Kuina and her overwhelming Lost Boy vibes and how like. You NEVER GET Lost Girls like that. Narratively, she is The Girl Who Didn’t Grow Up. She will always be eleven and perfect, immortalized in memory. In Zoro’s mind, she is forever just a little bit older and a little bit taller than him. Even now when he remembers her, he pictures her face from an upward angle. She will ALWAYS be “older” and yet she will NEVER be more than eleven. I want to know what was happening in Zoro’s head when he turned 12 and realized he was older than she would ever get to be. I just. All the vibes, give them to me. This is one of the things that just gets me every fucking time!!!
(Sabo is also positioned like this, and is a fairly straightforward example up until it gets subverted by him ACTUALLY GROWING UP. Sabo is what happens when the lost boy grows up and it’s fucking FASCINATING.)
I think the key thing is, in order to be a "lost boy" narrative and not just a tragically dead child character, there needs to have been an expectation of greatness. It's not that little girls don't die in fiction, or that they aren't mourned. But this particular type of narrative emphasizes the specific grief of the loss of incredible potential, which isn't a thing dead little girl characters usually get. They're usually narratives about the loss of innocence or the fragility of life and the injustice of mortality, and Kuina has a little of that - how unfair it is for her life to be cut short. But it's also the bit of, if you'll let me get lyrical for a moment, you could have done so much more if you only had time.
as people grow up, one of the things we have to deal with is the loss of the possibilities of what we could have been, because we can only become one of our possible selves. Even if you become great, even if you're happy, even if you made the best possible choice, you still have to make that decision that to become this I must give up on becoming that. Lost Boys don't ever get to become, so they are enshrined with all that potential still in them. All of the people they could have been, all of the paths they might have taken.
(A thing that drives me crazy: balancing the grief of growing up with the grief of not-growing-up. The tragedy of becoming and the tragedy of never getting to become. The dozens of ghosts of possible selves that every adult carries around with them. Not relevant to the current discussion, but still, a thing to think about!)
There's also the fact that she gets set up with a projected character arc - we can see how she might've grown and dealt with her insecurities and overcome the obstacles in her path, but she'll never get to do it. And Zoro can take their shared dream on himself and make that his responsibility, but he can't resolve her emotional baggage for her, because that's not how that works. And we don't know! Maybe she wouldn't ever have managed it! But Kuina-the-confident-adult is just one of the many possible people she'll never get to be.
literally though the fundamental misunderstanding that characterizing chuuya as someone who is too extroverted, or cant help getting attached, is. because he could actually! very easily!!! he already has trust issues! & it’s such a huge thing that for him, the fact that he has not yet become verlaine or become dazai is a choice, an effort, often at the expense of himself
While Loki bullying his brother and dissing his mom were obviously horrible things to do, I don't think that Loki actually felt any real prejudice towards Hajrudin or his mother. I think that he was just saying the thing that he knew would hurt his brother the most and this was part of an already established pattern of Loki lashing out due to already being treated poorly by the rest of Elbaf by this point.
Remember, every giant was dunking on Harald's first wife for being non-Elbafian so it's more likely that Loki, who is much younger than Hajrudin who himself looks about seven or eight here, parroted what the older giants were saying without understanding the actual weight of it. Kids say stupid shit they overhear from adults who should know better all the time.
Plus, notice how none of the older giants in this flashback are jumping to Hajrudin's defense or holding back Loki from attacking him? If anything, it looks like they're egging on the violence. Even Harald, the peace-loving king who just said he wants his sons to get along, isn't putting a stop to one of them beating the other bloody while spewing xenophobic remarks.
You could give Harald the benefit of the doubt by saying this happened when he wasn't around (I took the 'get along when i'm gone' as 'get along after i die' but he could have just been leaving on a day trip here), but still the giants are doing nothing to defend the king's eldest son from physical and verbal abuse even from one of their pariahs implicitly because, in their eyes, Loki isn't saying anything that they don't agree with.
Frankly, it's a miracle that Hajrudin didn't become as resentful of Elbaf as Loki did.
They're gonna be ok right? They're just little guys, they'll be fine, Right????? :)))))
Look I like Roger enough, I understand what he represents and I generally don’t think he was a bad dude. I do however think he was shit at interpersonal relationships because, what the fuck. Whitebeards crew is infinitely more well adjusted and I’d say he arguably had the more traumatic death.
Like what even, what kind of planning leads a 53 year old man to sire a child knowing he is dying of an incurable illness and is about to turn himself in to be excuted by the marines where he will cause so much chaos it is literally still turning the world on its head 22 years later. He knew he was going to cause so much of a stir that he literally disbanded his crew and told them to spread far and wide to keep them safe. Because he knew the marines would hunt them far and wide But yet he still brought a baby into the world. Babe. What the fuck? What even is that? What was the thought process. I sincerely hope it was an accident and not a deliberate attempt to bring about a new era.
Because if so babe I need to see the recipe or I’m afraid we can never let you cook again
“teenage Dazai this” “teenage Chuuya that”
WHAT ABOUT TEENAGE FUKUZAWA
I know where Ranpo gets it from.
this was not the plan
y'know when you make a plan and you're about to execute that plan but then stuff happens and all of sudden you have to upload doodles instead of a finished drawing?
Yeah, me neither. Didn't draw art for it, but Chapter 1138 murdered me. It was so beautiful. I love One Piece so much
They are the coolest people in the mafia and they know it
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