#I love that Oda of all people says trans rights bc that's funny as shit

[nehswritesstuffs]

So, um, it's time for Nehs to go off again on One Piece bc my gears are turning thanks to Lore Piece being solid as per usual. Spoilers for chapter 1097 are under the cut, as well as talk of some of the basis of Crocomom, a fanon theory I do not ascribe to but don't necessarily dismiss, so if you do dismiss it then don't read I guess.

Okay, um... so I've been kind of thinking that Bonney isn't really twenty-four years old for a while and something more like a middle schooler (10-14), but this chapter to me sort of soft-confirmed it, as well as set things up for this other crazy-ass fucking thing I didn't think was even possible.

'Cause the end of the chapter puts things fourteen years ago, right? No mention so far of a kid despite Ginny's enthusiasm to get into Kuma's pants. Oda would have mentioned a kid, especially if it was already ten years old. Kuma is too cute to have been a dad and NOT gotten a moment with his baby. (LORD ALMIGHTY why is Kuma so adorable in this edition of Lore Piece I just wanna smush his cheeks and tell him he's doing a fantastic job at caring for his flock and being a rebel.) This means that Bonney is one of a few things:

Kuma and Ginny's daughter they had after rescuing her, giving her a different family name to distance her from the Buccaneer race, ala Ace going by Portgas

Ginny's rescued relative we don't know exists yet

Kuma's adoptive daughter that he takes in bc she looks hauntingly like Ginny

Ginny's daughter from things happening while she was kidnapped

Ginny's clone in the Clone Trooper sense, taken and prematurely aged

Ginny's clone in the Boba Fett sense, taken w/o being aged

No matter how you shake it, unless Bonney is some until-now-unknown child waiting to be rescued, all of these options point to her actually being somewhere around tween/young teen in actuality but presenting like an adult in order to get taken seriously. The anti-eyebrow piercing would even play into that, being a potential way for a kid to prove they're so big and tough and able to run with the big kids take me with you Shanks I'm no anchor. So, we're getting to her true origins soon, also where Vegapunk comes into play, whether he is a cause or a secret-keeper or whatever.

Now, remember how I said something about Crocomom? As it turns out, I feel like if we get any confirmation for the trans!Crocodile fan theory, it's gonna be within the next two or three chapters. Why? I think Croc is potentially connected to whomever captured Ginny. Iva, being their fabulous self, is not above using their power to disorient opponents. While this could mean that Crocodile is a cis man but got temporarily femme'd and turned back after humiliation, it also leaves open the possibility for Iva putting Croc through permanent HRT for either punishment purposes (so unwitting ftm not changing you back candy you've been bad now go learn a lesson) or for negotiation purposes (already afab ftm but give us our Ginny back and I can make you grow a dick and lose your tit fat). While I don't think that Crocodile was necessarily designed to be transgender from the beginning, I also feel like Oda has to know about the Crocomom/trans!Croc fanon and he is specifically the kind of author who just shrugs and goes with shit fans make up. That's how he got almost all, if not every single, birthday for the cast, so why not this twist? Like, I wasn't sold on it the first time I encountered this theory, but like I said: I never discounted it because we never know what's going on in Oda's brain. He really gave us a good potential set up here, so it'd be weird if he didn't use it.

(I still think that Crocomom specifically is a long shot since Luffy's five at this point, so unless Dragon is going to potentially wage war on his ex/babymama and neither of them mention Luffy, it leaves even more parts of the puzzle that don't quite fit (and Croc wouldn't already be ftm bc that's a lost chance at a new character design, which we all know Oda is shit at resisting). There's a lot of them that already don't fit to me, but that's neither here nor there. I'm just concerned that even if we do have ftm!Crocodile thanks to Iva's Devil Fruit, that a lack of Crocomom would mean that One Piece has its own version of the Blaise Zabini Debacle in the works (apologies for bringing HP into it but it's true) and we as a fandom are better than that.)

OR I COULD BE WRONG ABOUT ALL OF THIS AND GINNY WAS CAPTURED BY MARINES, GIVING HER TO VEGAPUNK FOR EXPERIMENTS, WHICH WOULD LEAD INTO OTHER STUFF but yeah

None of this theorizing I think could have been possible, like, ten/fifteen years ago, because part of me feels like Oda has been putting his foot down a lot based on what it is we've been getting. Some stuff could have, yeah, been sort of meddled with by the editors/SJ at this point, but it feels like he's been able to get away with a lot more than he did before. Being such an important asset can do that.

...but yeah, if none of this happens (or is at least more firmly kickstarted) by chapter 1100, chances are that we're not getting it.