#also all your connections of ace to motherhood/unconditional love are on point👌👌

[to-a-merrier-world]

obseeeessed with the pomegranate/orchard imagery, love that.

as for Ace’s connection to mothers/women like… this is totally my personal take on the characters, not quite headcanon but sorta just what i’ve taken away from different scenes and such, but anyways. the really clear, upfront story that Oda gives us is about Ace and his views/struggles with father-figures and masculinity. however, i feel that his overarching emotional growth and ultimate happiness lies in mother-figures and his connection to femininity.

i’m gonna give a kinda barebones thought process here. (This is so long and rambling, i apologize in advance lol)

So, starting with my thought process that hopefully makes sense lol:

Ace’s fundamental emotional/personal struggle can be broken down to, essentially, belonging and connection. Do I belong in this world and can I connect with other people. When we first meet him, Ace doesn’t quite have connections—not deep ones, at least. His relationship with Garp comes off tense and a bit fraught; he doesn’t trust or really get along with the bandits (I think of that scene of Dadan drunkenly repeating what Ace has heard from other adults when he confronts them about Roger and being so visibly upset by this); and his one connection with Sabo seems to be built on 1) a mutual desire to leave and 2) a similar anger and violence. They come off more as co-conspirators or allies, rather than very emotionally close, prior to Luffy’s involvement in their lives (again, just my interpretation).

We see that the way he views his mother is that she was the one person who loved him, and now she’s dead. He clearly has a great deal of respect and reverence for his mother, in taking her last name (which I don’t think was just because he hated Roger, personally, because otherwise he would have chosen it before he left Goa). However, he was also clearly hurt deeply by her death—a sort of “loving me hurts other people/i’m the reason she died/was i even worth that sacrifice” sorta mindset, especially since he wasn’t supported emotionally in his early childhood (looking at you Garp, wtf was that answer to Ace’s “was I supposed to be born” question).

Now, the real start of all this and the impetus of Ace’s emotional changes is, of course, Luffy, who has a lot of what could be considered traditionally feminine traits. He’s very openly emotional and emotionally sensitive, he has fairly high emotional intelligence, he is generally very kind, forgiving, and sweet. Luffy challenges Ace with how different he is, but also in their similar stubbornness, loyalty, and competitiveness.

It’s through his connection with Luffy that things really change for Ace. His relationships, for the most part, improve or deepen, which we really see with Sabo, Dadan, and the bandits. We also see how Ace changes, especially after Dadan fights for him and Sabo dies. Speaking, briefly, on his relationship with Dadan: Ace and Dadan connect on a deep level but not a superficial one. They aren’t demonstrably close, they aren’t particularly kind or loving to each other, however they are loyal and they care. Dadan ran into fire and almost fought to the death for Ace, and Ace carried her from the flames and kept her alive long enough to get home, denying himself every opportunity to run. Dadan is Ace’s first parental figure, and while I think she struggled for a long time with filling that role and didn’t always do the right thing, she ultimately holds a place in Ace’s life as such.

(She’s the mother you can’t have an emotional conversation with, but who will rush into a burning building for you. I think Ace truly valued her as a mother figure, even if they’d never be able to say as much to each other’s faces.)

But back to Sabo and the impact of his death: Ace’s solution to becoming a better brother to Luffy and how to “take care” of him is to seek Makino’s advice—Ace seeks out not only how to properly thank someone, but also clearly learns how to be polite, friendly, charming, and kind. (I don’t think he JUST learned these from Makino, and he obviously can turn these traits on and off depending on what he wants to do in any given interaction, but there’s an undeniably STARK difference between 10yo Ace and 20yo Ace, and I think the key is in his learning and embracing of feminine traits.) We see how his purposeful learning of these traits led to him making very close friendships among Whitebeard’s crew and allies, we see how his willingness to engage in emotional honesty with Whitebeard (in revealing his birth father) led to a lot of personal healing and fulfillment for Ace.

Ace is undeniably a masculine character with a storyline focused on father figures, but the reason he didn’t remain the same spitting-angry 10yo who hates the world is because of the feminine traits he learned to cultivate. He learned to allow more emotional honesty and openness, he learned manners and friendliness, he learned kindness and emotional sensitivity.

pasting over acelu thoughts from twitter

luffy helping ace learn to be selfish… pre-marineford ace was willing to give things up bc he thought it'd be "what's best for Luffy". But after marineford, he realizes that it actually hurt luffy more when Ace didn't fight harder to be with him. so "selfish" here really means like, "made me feel loved enough that my happiness was worth prioritizing"? maybe

thinking of updating my post-ts ace design to not have his beads anymore, bc he gave the necklace to luffy in their behind-the-polar-tang sort-of secret marriage vow after they both woke up from their injuries/surgery

(also laughing bc then it would function a bit like "this was my dear mother's wedding ring that I give to you now" except it's Dadan we're talking about. and she's both their moms)