#I’m watching marineford arc videos again

[superbattrash]

I don’t think anyone could ever understand how much I hate Akainu and want him to suffer for all eternity

I would wine and dine Endeavor, I would wax poetry about Cell, I would marry Frieza before I would ever consider forgiving this piece of shit

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Paramount War (Part One)

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)

the introduction of the celestial dragons really is just so brutally effective. this is the first time we see them, and before they even show up on page they immediately establish themselves as both absolutely powerful and absolutely despicable. everyone is watching them commit atrocities in broad daylight, and nobody dares say a word. 

i mentioned it back in the enies lobby post, i think, with spandam, but oda is very, very good at creating villains who it just feels so good and so deeply satisfying to see them get annihilated, and the celestial dragons are maybe the crowning example of it. 

i really like how none of the strawhats are really intimidated or impressed at all by the celestial dragons, in sharp contrast to how everyone else responds to them. some of that is ignorance, but you can’t tell me zoro would have acted any differently in this scene had he known charloss was a member of the world’s ruling class. all the power the celestial dragons have comes from fear; of course their greatest weakness is someone who just doesn’t care. 

obviously this moment is just excellent, no qualifiers needed, but one thing i really love about it is how all the bad shit that results from this does not detract from the sheer satisfaction of what happens at the auction house at all. like, even though this leads directly to the strawhats getting crushed by the pacifista and kizaru and scattered by kuma, i’ve never once caught myself thinking luffy shouldn’t have done this. 

i’m a huge fan of how rayleigh introduces himself. he knocks out the whole action house with conqueror’s haki, but luffy is completely unaffected, and the two of them just watch each other down the aisle for a moment as everyone else collapses around them. 

i don’t know that i’ll ever get over the fact that oda created and designed the supernovas as he was writing sabaody. they’re all such distinct and memorable characters, and almost all of them have fit neatly into the post-timeskip story one way or another. they really feel like a part of the world that was always meant to be there. 

i think the way roger as a character is handled is very, very cool, because we don’t really meet him as a person- when we first learn of him, on the very first page, he’s a myth, a story, a framing device. which is fitting, because that’s all the characters know him as. the rest of the world doesn’t know what roger was like as a person or why he did what he did, and so neither do our main characters and neither do we. 

and then we learn, slowly, by following in roger’s steps and meeting the characters who did know him, like rayleigh and whitebeard and garp. and through their testimony and memories, over the course of the story, roger goes from being a faceless myth to being a proper character.

i think this panel, where luffy says he just wants to be the freest person on the seas, might be my favorite luffy panel. if nothing else, it’s definitely one of the ones i think about the most in terms of his characterization. luffy’s been defining himself by his dream since the very start of the story- he’s the man who’s going to be king of the pirates! but it’s only here that we learn what that goal actually means to him, and what he actually really wants. he just wants to be free. 

the tone shift of sabaody really is impeccable. because up until a certain point, everything seems pretty par for the course. the strawhats make some new friends, get into trouble for their sakes, get into a hard fight where they all have to work together but eventually scrape out a win. 

but then kizaru shows up, and another pacifista, and kuma himself, and for the first time in the story luffy says this is a fight they can’t win- 

and then zoro disappears, and all of the audience’s expectations for how this is going to play out get thrown completely out the window. 

it’s not that we haven’t seen luffy upset before this- his fight with usopp in water 7 and merry’s funeral are the two obvious examples that come to mind- but we’ve never, to this point, seen him as crushed as he is at the end of sabaody. it really drives the abrupt tone shift of sabaody home, because we’re used to seeing luffy be generally cheerful, and if not that, at stubbornly determined to power through. but here, he’s just wrecked- and the paramount war saga is just getting started. 

every time i see hancock i’m reminded what a lesbian i am.

i’m talking a lot about character introductions this post, but a lot of really good characters get introduced in the first half of this saga, from the supernovas to rayleigh to jinbe. on that note, i really like hancock’s introduction, for reasons similar to what i said about roger earlier. she’s introduced as a cartoonishly evil one-dimensional bitch, and she leans hard into that characterization for the first half or so of amazon lily.

and then luffy narrowly keeps her and her sisters’ worst fear from being realized, and her facade starts to slip, and we get to know her as- still kind of a bitch, but also a deeply traumatized person who has very valid reasons for being the way she is, and someone who is overall a lot more complicated than she appears at first glance. 

one of my favorite things about luffy is his ability to always, always defy expectations. hancock is dead certain he’ll take her offer of a ship and abandon marguerite and the others, but he doesn’t even hesitate before doing the exact opposite. luffy is always turning people’s worlds upside down.

i have a friend who coined the term “conflict of interest arc” to refer to the arcs where a crewmate is forced to choose between the crew and some obligation or baggage from their past- arlong park for nami, whole cake island for sanji, etc. 

marineford is luffy’s conflict of interest arc- he has to make the choice, here, to prioritize saving ace over reuniting with his crew. where it differs from all other such arcs, then, is that nobody else can come to back him up. he’s well and truly on his own. 

i love how thoroughly expectations get turned on their head with jinbe. for the longest time, all we know about him is that he’s a shichibukai and arlong’s former captain, so given what arlong was like and what the shichibukai encountered thus far have been like, it’s a fair guess to assume he’s pretty awful.

and then we meet him, and he’s ace’s friend, sitting bloody and beaten in the deepest dungeons of impel down for refusing to fight in an unjust war.

bon-chan is really one of the greatest examples of one piece’s stubborn refusal to treat any character as disposable, and oda’s endless ability to find new and interesting ways to fit them into the story. in pretty much any other manga, it would be all but guaranteed that we wouldn’t see a character like bon-chan again after the conclusion of the alabasta saga. here, luffy straight up would not have made it to marineford without him. this is true for mr. 3 too- who would’ve thought his ability to duplicate keys out of wax, established and promptly forgotten some three hundred chapters ago, would be the thing that let luffy free ace on the scaffold?

magellan is a good antagonist. i’m not saying i like him- i don’t particularly- but he’s a great antagonist for a couple reasons, and one of them is that his powers are terrifying. magellan is essentially what might be called in video game terminology an advancing wall of doom- the only viable strategy for dealing with him is to run.

i had more i wanted to say here but it literally kept turning into a rant about one piece’s take on morality no matter how many times i tried to keep it short, so i’ll settle for just saying that magellan is an antagonist but not a villain and i think that’s interesting. 

the absolutely ridiculous, eclectic mix of people that luffy winds up gathering to escape impel down is possibly my favorite part of the whole arc. i just think it’s so fun and so characteristic of him that even when separated from his crew, he winds up attracting the weirdest, most powerful bunch of people around to break out of prison with. 

the relationship between luffy and blackbeard is a really interesting one. it’s been plenty clear for some time that blackbeard is almost certainly going to be luffy’s final opponent to become pirate king, and yet they’ve been mostly running on parallel paths through the world, only occasionally coinciding (such as here and in jaya) and generally seeming pretty unconcerned with each other. it’s a really cool way to handle the built to an eventual showdown, and i really like it. 

this is one of my favorite spreads just for sheer smile factor. i love it so much. i think we should get to see jinbe’s whale shark buddies more often, it’s a crime we haven’t seen them since this. 

[zerochanges]

My 2021 Media Binge Reviews

2021 was a weird year for me personally; full of a lot of downs, and yeah that’s pretty much it, there weren’t really any ups to speak of, just downs, it just kept going down and down–in fact I think it hasn’t stopped yet, I’m still falling, please god, make it stop, things get worse every day. ah-hum Excuse me, ignore that. My year honestly isn’t probably all that different from a lot of others’; it was the same old, same old: work sucked and drained my life, my health declined, a family member died, and covid just kept trucking. To say this year burned me out would be an understatement. I won’t really elaborate too much more than that, it’s all just useless self gratifying prattling anyways, whatever, who cares, but because of how hard my year was it sent me down a couple new rabbit holes and also really kept me from engaging in my usual hobbies.

Usually at the end of every year I list off my favorite video games and anime but damn man, I really didn’t play that many games this year, and shit, I can’t even remember when x anime aired and if it was from y season or even if it was from this year. It all just runs the same and blurs together now in some gelatinous apathetic blob known as time. But I did do stuff this year! I did find comfort in this living hell known as reality. So I thought as an experiment it would be interesting to discuss and go over the media I binged this year instead of just listing and ranking random shit that came out between the months of January and December. If it catches on, maybe I’ll try to do it again next year, I'm not sure, but making a media year-in review seems like it’s popular nowadays. Right? I see a lot of really long, annoying, and impossible to follow threads on social media dedicated to that at least. Well whatever, who even cares anymore. 

By the way if you are wondering why all this is happening a week into the new year, my own health declined once again, literally on New Year’s Eve, yup, ended that year just right. Well, being overdramatic, but damn, I got sick during New Years, so I’m a week late. 

One Piece

One Piece was my rock this year. It got me through the worst that 2021 brought me and marathoning episodes well into the night just to wake up and watch more episodes in the morning was all I could do in order to keep living. It was nostalgic and comforting since it’s been going since I was a kid, but also all new and exciting since it will never end and there is so much content to digest that there’s always something to discover. 

Now, One Piece fans will laugh at me for sticking with the Funimation redub of the series, but I have grown very fond of it over the years and found it best suits my watching habits. I try to just sit down and complete entire story arcs of this behemoth and then take a break from the series when I need a break. It just makes it more digestible and easier to sit through, I cannot even imagine trying to follow it every week anymore. The English dub is still stupid behind but this watch method of mine makes that less of an issue since I still haven’t caught up with the dub anyways. 

That might change though in the near future as I progressed a considerable amount this time. I watched over some 220+ episodes this year, picking up at Thriller Bark where I last remembered watching it and going all the way through Punk Hazard, finally getting past the time skip, it felt so good. I plan to pick up Dressrosa now too, since the dub is in Zou and I know I can watch all 100-something episodes of that arc in peace with no fear of waiting for the next volume. 

This chunk of One Piece I watched this year was especially fantastic and highly beloved in the fandom, and it’s easy to see why. Impel Down, Marineford, Post War, all these arcs are masterfully done and set in motion such unforgettable moments in the series. And here I was at my lowest pigging out on these episodes nonstop, life was good then. Updating my current personal list of favorite story arcs for One Piece I think it is now:

Arlong Park

Impel Down

Post War

Loguetown

Thriller Bark

Robotech

One of the better things to come out of this year is the end to the long (and at the time) seemingly never ending dispute between Harmony Gold and Macross, and I am hopeful that we will be seeing more Macross in the near future. For now, we have the first ever blu-ray release of Robotech, and I’m a slut so I bought it and began my rewatch of this 80’s classic largely because of that. 

Robotech is controversial because of the terrible things Harmony Gold has done but now with this hopefully behind us we can appreciate it a bit more. For many it was a landmark experience and a gateway into anime and a damn fine attempt at localizing material that never had any chance over in these necks of the woods. Robotech is legitimately fairly fascinating and well crafted for what it was. The writing is sharp, and even the voice acting holds up surprisingly well–and it is some of the earliest known roles for a bunch of now prolific voice actors in the anime dubbing community like Wendee Lee and Tony Oliver who seems even more famous and beloved now than back in his heyday of the early 2000s. I remember hearing him in so many dubs then and he never seemed to get much attention so it’s funny how much the American Lupin fandom has claimed him the definitive English Lupin. Getting off track there, my bad, just been thinking about how much people’s perception for celebrities (do anime voice actors count?) change the longer you live. 

Super Dimension Century Orguss

This is a show I wanted to watch for a very long time. For about 6 years to be exact. When Discotek originally released Orguss on DVD back in 2015 I was beyond excited to get it but one thing led to another and I just sort of lost track of time. It didn’t help that this DVD set in particular never really seemed to go on sale that much and was on the more expensive end. Because of that I decided to wait for an eventual BD release from them since it is a fairly common business tactic from Discotek. When they finally got around to rereleasing the series on blu-ray this year I was all in! 

I got to tell you guys, Orguss is weird. Like really, really weird! I never experienced a show like this before, it’s honestly really hard to even explain it! I don’t even know where to start with this thing! The main character is a complete asshole and total pervert. Somebody like Kei would never be in a TV show today, especially as the main protagonist. At best maybe a funny side character but not the main guy. Kei is a total horndog, he cheats on girls, he can’t keep it in his pants, his main fling in the show is with a girl who has a fiancé already, and did I mention he caused the end of the world? 

The show starts with my dude for whatever reason breaking military order and deciding “Screw it! I’ll detonate this extremely complicated and very dangerous weapon of mass destruction that needs exact calculations to work” and causes a calamity that implodes like every Alternate Reality into one. I don’t know, does this count as an isekai? To Kei this is like being flung into some parallel universe but it is actually his own Earth! Just that every other parallel universe Earth is also now conjoined in it. Honestly it sounds like some DC crisis superhero comic cross-over event instead of an anime. I have no goddamn idea how Big West thought this should be the follow-up to the highly acclaimed and profitable Macross and I can totally see why it was considered a flop during its time for falling to live up to Macross. It’s like going from Star Wars straight into David Lynch’s Dune. We are firmly in psycho weird ass anime territory with this one, and goddamn I freaking love it. Orguss is wonderful. Also, the opening theme song is iconic. 

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I only ever watched Eva once, back when I was in High School. Back then I remember thinking it was okay but also that it just kind of really bummed me out and it probably wasn’t for me. I more or less kind of wrote it off as overrated as very intelligent and worldly teenagers often do and moved on with my life. Over the years I became more interested in the series that served as major inspirations to Eva, this was not because of Eva though and I often didn’t realize they even were its inspirations until much later after people brought it up. For me that meant having to defend the likes of Devilman and Space Runaway Ideon from Eva fans that saw them as only stepping stones of Evangelion. To this day, I find this debate annoying and honestly detrimental to the enjoyment of some series–but honestly my biggest regret is that I never went back to revisit Eva because of it. 

As an adult, I definitely ‘get’ Eva much more now. Shinji chanting “I mustn’t run away, I mustn’t run away” is me every morning in my parked car sitting outside of work on the verge of a mental breakdown as I force myself to go inside and pray to whatever god in the universe that might listen that I won’t die of covid today in this hellscape I unfortunately have to call my home. Shinji as a protagonist is something I can relate to a lot more in my mid-30s than I ever could have as a teenager. The series honestly feels less like a head trip to adult me and more like a deep dive into somebody’s depressive episode and how to cope with a world that is constantly collapsing around you. In this regard it’s one of Anno’s sharpest works which is another thing I respect. Despite my prior disinterest in Eva I always found Anno to be extremely talented and loved many of his works, from Shin Godzilla to Kare Kano to Gunbuster, all seminal works with great direction, atmosphere, and writing–and now as an adult revisiting Eva I can say the same of it as well. 

I love how Shinji as a character has a pretty classic tired-and-true character arc throughout most of the TV series as he grows, socializes more, and comes out of his shell–only to be abused so badly at the eleventh hour by his father forcing him to almost kill a friend and regressing back into an even worse state than he started the series in. It’s poignant, my boy was shot down the second he was starting to fly again, that’s toxic people for you. Shinji’s rage, paranoia, and sense of betrayal upon having to fight Kaworu is honestly the high point of the entire series to me. “You betrayed me! Just like my Father!” It’s at this point the young man has completely lost his marbles, and I love it. 

The final two episodes of the series are rough, and for many leave a lot to be desired but I think it’s my preferred ending. The End of Evangelion films are fine, and I like some parts of them better, it certainly gives Asuka closure and not to mention way more to do! But overall, I actually think the original TV series ending as-is was thematically more poignant and just more interesting. 

Coming back full circle to where I started, it seems like I don’t need to come up to bat for Devilman anymore; it having its own resurgence with Masaaki Yuasa’s very excellent Devilman Crybaby reaching new generations. I still think I’m more of an Ideon guy though at the end of the day. Ideon’s tenuous relationship to Eva really has brought it nothing but hardships honestly. So many people expect a show like Eva when they watch Ideon but Ideon is far more cut from the same cloth of the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam than it is of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The front half especially of Ideon is far more inline with the episodic early portions of Gundam granted on a cosmic scale and with some mysticism thrown in but it’s the back half of Ideon where it gets downright Lovecraftian. Sadly most Eva fans never get that far. Also Ideon can kick Unit 1’s ass any day of the week, fight me. Ideon destroyed entire planets, and eventually galaxies, and maybe even the universe itself. The ideon wins every time! 

I ended up spending some stupid money on this because of the classic dub being taken hostage in a special edition set, but I don’t regret it. This was how I wanted to watch Eva again and goddammit I had a great time watching it again. I definitely can see why a modernized dub was needed, and I definitely see the merit and quality put into it, but I just couldn’t accept the large amount of recasting despite the new actors all being incredible talent that I love in other works. To me, recasting Spike Spencer is like recasting Sean Schemmel as Goku, it’s just not something you should do. Apparently somebody else out there agreed since he has reprised the role again post redub. 

Twin Peaks

Oh boy! Here we go again! This was my biggest obsession of the year! Twin Peaks! A few years back I tried to get into Twin Peaks and I am pretty sure I got somewhere in the middle of season 2, before the murder was solved (I never had that spoiled for me thank god) but just didn’t finish it. This year, I finally came back, I just had to really cross this one off my list. It felt great! This is such a remarkably quirky and iconic series and it had such a huge influence on Japanese nerd culture, and hell after reading a lot of essays and watching the show Twin Peaks probably even changed the landscape of American television forever. But the Japanese nerd end is definitely where my interest lies. Watching the show I had glimpses of Suda and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and of course survival horror games, Silent Hill and Deadly Premonition being the biggest most obvious instances. It was almost like Twin Peaks was some primordial ooze that birthed all these great and wonderful things that I grew up with and obsess over so finally coming full circle to Twin Peaks, I obsessed over it all the more. 

At its core is just such a wonderful and fun show and the main character Dale Cooper easily is at the heart of it giving great sage wisdom that I find myself now trying to live by and just having a general quirky zest for life that feels refreshing and wonderful. Coop is just a joy, and I wish more modern TV shows would ape this too, we need protagonists that are just wonderful people that are excellent to everyone. When you start the series you have no idea what this guy is about, he seems cool but there isn’t really anything to go on, hell back when it originally aired in 1990 there were even some people who were initially confused at who the main character was supposed to be after the pilot aired. But then a couple episodes in, Coop is talking about Tibet, solving crimes by playing baseball, and having strange cryptic dreams that he believes whole heartily will solve the mystery. It’s a wonderful progression as you slowly learn more about Cooper and slowly become more entrenched and in love with this small town and the many people that live here. 

For me the original first two seasons are peak Twin Peaks, it’s the show at its best. I know a lot of people think the second season starts to go downhill a bit after the creators were forced to solve the murder of Laura Palmer, something that David Lynch was adamant about never wanting to do since it was a plot device to steer the entire show. And I agree that at first the second season can be a bit rocky, post Laura Palmer murder, but it picks up and gets great again if you ask me. It’s everything after Season 2 that falls off a bit. 

To me, the film Fire Walk With Me, is both a masterpiece and the worst entry in the series. It’s beautifully shot, has some incredible lore, great moments, lines I quote constantly, but not the right tone. The darker subject material, that being a prequel that gives you an in-depth look at the rape and murder of Laura Palmer, is … how to say it lightly, a downer. This movie made me downright depressed when I watched it. It’s wonderful but this is one that hurts. It hurts a lot to sit through. There’s no levity in the whole film once it starts covering Laura’s last week alive, and there is no quirkiness the series had. It’s violent, upsetting, and beautiful. I can see why the film was initially misunderstood and hated when it came out. 

The Return (aka Season 3) almost feels like a combination of the two, it is a darker, harsher, more cruel Twin Peaks, some 25 years later, but it is still Twin Peaks. The humor and tone return to level out the violence and harder to watch aspects that the series gained with Fire Walk With Me. It’s a strange season but it is great to see a series become un-canceled even after 25 years. This season initially was hard for me to follow and I wasn’t into it as much as the first two seasons, and still now I think those are my favorite, but The Return is something that grows on me, especially more as I analyze it and try to understand the deeper meta narrative behind it. I wasn’t sure if I would ever … return to The Return but I think in future rewatches I will. As a finale it’s not exactly what people want, the unconventional ending can easily leave you feeling confused, and maybe upset. But the more you examine it, the more you look at it outside of the context presented in the show, the more you can see what it is doing is something special. 

Overall, there is nothing really like Twin Peaks (except Deadly Premonition, that nails it) and it’s something that needs to be experienced. It was one of the best TV experiences I have had in a really long time, and obsessing over it, and later the works of David Lynch, have kept me going long after I finished the final episode. That said, my God, I don’t think I will ever forget some scenes from the show. To not spoil anything, let's just say “It is Happening Again” is forever a scene that will stay with me. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced in television.

On another note, the blu-ray set I bought had these wonderful menus that played clips of the show, all curated around themes or commonly used motifs in the show and I absolutely adored the amount of effort that went into giving each disc its own. When I reached The Return I was gutted to find that these discs did not do that. This isn’t uncommon, I’m no stranger to companies reprinting older discs with just a different label on top of them so I am sure they simply grabbed already authored discs for logistical reasons and used them but losing those wonderful menus made the transition to The Return all the more jarring. Man, those original discs had so much personality and were made with so much love for the show, and The Return discs are so bare bones, and so depressing. Don’t get obsessed and over analyze media kids, or else you become a 30-something that talks about DVD menus.

David Lynch films

I am going to start off by saying I know David Lynch directed more films, I don't have them all, but I have give-or-take almost all of his feature films on blu-ray that are easily purchasable. I know Inland Empire is long OOP and DVD only in the US, and I don’t want to mess around with importing European BDs and there’s a few other oddities like that, but so far, what I got this year, I am happy with. I haven’t seen every film here yet too, but burning through Lynch’s filmography is something I am enjoying at my own pace and I just wanted to mention that I am doing that. 

Obviously, like I said above, my love for Twin Peaks was so much that it made me branch out into all other David Lynch material. I have grown rather fond of the man, he is a true artist and I greatly respect him. I enjoy his work, his outlook on life, and just listening to him. My YouTube history at one point was just video after video of interviews and keynote speeches from Lynch on movies, art, meditation, and just anything else. Lynch is such a fascinating individual, he makes some of the hardest, most violent, thought provoking horror I have ever seen but in real life is the kindest, most gentlest, charismatic, charming little old man. He’s too adorable in a lot of ways. You can truly tell every work of Lynch is 100% sincere, he puts himself into everything and wears it all out on his sleeve to create something beautiful. There’s no corporate world BS or just doing a job because you need a job, the man is an auteur, you can identify David in every one of his movies. That’s him. That’s so him. His work is himself. 

Out of everything I have seen so far, I think my favorite of his films are probably Blue Velvet and Lost Highway. For Blue Velvet it’s easy to see, it is almost in many ways prototype to Twin Peaks, maybe that’s my dumb Twin Peaks fan way of interpreting the film but I can’t unsee it. It’s a fascinating movie and probably the most conventional and easy to digest film from Lynch. You can’t help but get a certain Twin Peaks vibes in how the film presents a good vs evil dichotomy, and Dennis Hopper is hopping mad in the film as Frank Booth, which is legit just Killer Bob from Twin Peaks. Lost Highway I love for the elements of identity and how people aren’t who they seem to be. The mystery is unsettling, and the villain, if you can call him that, once again steals the movie as a truly haunting performance from Robert Blake, who turned out to be an actual murderer in real life too, so yeah, go figure. Lost Highway is a real head trip though about reality and what we think is reality, and how we all shape our own identities, sometimes to even hide ourselves from none other than us.

[ohshanksno]

Sorry for the blurriness @wineismyname because I honestly don’t know how to reblog replies. I’ll tag as opspoilers just in case because I talk about Whole Cake Island based off on what I know. 

In all honestly? I’m pretty damn excited because I’m so curious as to what he’s gonna do as the big bang. I got a gut feeling about this shit. I know someone’s (or some people, maybe?) gonna die (I have bets on Marco, and a small bet on Shanks. I’ve heard rumors about Zoro. I doubt Sabo would die again but it’s gotta be a death that, like, transitions the ending for One Piece. It’s gotta be something that makes Luffy rethink his choices in some way or fashion. Now, if it was Teach, then....well...aight then.)

...

Now this is me just rambling about it. I might be wrong, but it’s just some thoughts. This is my envisionment for the ending of One Piece and I got too excited and it got waayyyyy too long so it’s under a read more, hah.

This question reminded me of the time where Mum and I went out to go find some steel toe shoes for me, and I was driving and fell asleep at the wheel (VERY dangerous, kids! Don’t do this, EVER! If tired, please pull over and rest or switch with someone else!) Mum woke me up by talking to me, and she asked me to talk about One Piece and that really woke me up.

I remember telling her specifically about the ending, and how Oda was gonna do something much more extravagant. I have a feeling that Luffy would be devastated, especially (if) going against Blackbeard. Knowing little about Teach, he’d probably take Luffy on one on one, instead of the usual fight where he comes across the minions before coming to the big boss. Like, in a video game!

Right now Luffy’s suffering huge losses due to Cracker, that mirror lady, Katakuri and losing Sanji, and he still hasn’t gone against Big Mom yet. That’s as far as I know because Tumblr. He still has yet to go against Kaido (my bro reminded me this the other day when I mentioned the alliance he was still in with Law) and going against Blackbeard? All of this would look like child’s play when Teach comes into the screen.

I envision the fight like, something that won’t be so...childish, like the rest of them. They both got a grudge (Teach with Luffy being in his way? and Luffy with Marineford) so of course this is gonna be the most serious fight ever since Lucci and Arlong. It’s not gonna be like Eneru, or Crocodile, or Moria, or...I know I’m missing some people. Oh, Doflamingo! He was serious but not serious serious. I kinda breezed through that arc, sorry. 

So they finally meet up, right?

“So, you’ve decided to come down this road, Strawhat?”

Luffy points at him. “I’m here to beat you.”

Blackbeard’s crew is gonna be watching this shit like they’re in a movie theater, and Luffy’s crew/fleet (if Sanji and Zoro are still there, hah, and Law and Marco and maybe Shanks might be there too? Who the fuck knows) are gonna be watching too but they’re cautious, especially with Kuzan on their side. I bet Robin’s gonna have a few words with him about that. Money goes for Robin possibly fighting Kuzan. More money if Shanks and Marco do show up and try to plan together to whip Blackbeard’s ass.

Most people would probably believe Luffy to make the first hit, right? Nah, not this time. He’s probably gonna stand there and Teach is gonna wonder “why aren’t you doing anything aren’t you pissed?”

“I am. But I’m not gonna be careless about this.” because he’s impulsive and he’s seen what happened. His impulsiveness here would and will get him killed. He’s come too far to die here.

Now, there’s an 94% chance that Burgess is gonna ruin everything and attack first so he lunges at Luffy because GOD was his captain taking forever at this and Laffitte is like “you’re a fucking dumbass did you not remember the plan that we went through 5 times before we got here” and Luffy’s about to defend himself but I think that Jinbei might be the first to step up, right? Or Zoro, if he’s still alive? Then suddenly it’s an all out brawl between a fleet and 12 people.

Luffy and Blackbeard are on their own battlefield and they’re just staring each other down. They’re not moving.

“So we meet again, Strawhat?”

Luffy doesn’t say anything.

“Hmm. You’re a lot smarter than what you let on.”

Luffy’s haki is going up and Blackbeard starts his D.F. powers. 

“Although, I must admit, Ace was much more impulsive than you are.” Teach probably would say something to get Luffy to be angry so he can gain the upper hand. 

And that little bit of shock and unfocused attention is what’s gonna cost him and before he knows it he’s getting sucked into the Black Vortex and there’s a beatdown going on. Yeah Luffy’s getting his ass kicked but so is Blackbeard with Luffy’s Gum Gum Pistols because he doesn’t have enough time to form his haki anymore.

Then, Blackbeard grabs him again but this time he holds Luffy close to him and gabs his face and looks right into his eyes. Luffy can’t help but look into him and Blackbeard starts smiling.

“Ahh...I see it now...that restless fear. Are you scared? What are you so afraid for?”

And Luffy can feel his powers being sapped and he’s struggling, bu tht more he struggles the more his powers get drained (if you Played One Piece: Unlimited World Red and got to the end of the game, you’d understand what it’s like in this envisionment) and there are people calling Luffy’s name and he can’t really hear them because it feels like he’s dying.

“Tell me, Strawhat...what’s your worst fear?”

And Luffy’s brought into pure darkness and he can’t see anything. Luffy then understands. There’s a reason why everyone’s afraid of him. There’s a reason why he’s so strong. Because his devil fruit feeds off people’s fears. (I hope to god that’s what it’ll be like because if it isn’t then Blackbeard isn’t shit)