#btw nel's big early chara question / theme is: do u live safe but unhappy or take risks and be happy?

[sanzos]

HI I'M BACK FOR MORE. is there a timeline of nel's story? when does she join the straw hats and where's she sent to during 3D2Y?? also how the heck does she travel on land! curious minds wish to know.

HI WELCOME BACK!!!!! there is in fact a timeline bc i like to daydream and also i like having those details ya know?

MEETING THE STRAW HATS

so! the straw hats first meet nel just before alabasta. aka they fish her out of the ocean a la bon-chan bc i think its funny if luffy fishes up two whole people at different times in the day like? guess the fish in this part of the grand line are shaped like people huh.... neat! nel isn't particularly pleased with any of this and is planning to immediately book it like "ha ha thanks for this bye" but then she gets dragged into the alabasta stuff bc bon-chan copies her face and is now under the impression she's a part of the straw hats! she would like to say: SHE'S NOT!!!!! PLS!!!! and considering she's currently (and has been) running from another animal themed weirdo and she doesn't want a second one on her ass she decides ok fine i'll stick around. get the lay of the land. she's 100% planning to throw them to the wolves if she thinks they'll lose. unfortunately she got bit by the friendship bug :/ damn girl sucks to be you so she sticks around for alabasta, kicks some weird birthday clown's ass, and forgets for a moment what she's running from. the usual Thing that happens with the straw hats. but watch out! the other animal themed weirdo kidnaps her off the merry after alabasta. robin manages to nick an eternal pose from one of the goons though and the straw hats go off to rescue their grumpy friend!

3D2Y

alright im prefacing this by saying: idk how observatories work... or astronomy really (research will be the death of me) so like rly suspend some disbelief here! but also its one piece so nel gets sent to a world government funded astronomy tower in the calm belt called vega tower! its the tallest man made structure in the world (like... red line levels of tall) and no one rly knows... how it was built? did giants do it? something else? whatever it was before its an astronomy tower now and has a whole thriving population and culture within it. its an astronomers dream to be able to study there, but once u do its almost impossible to leave. its basically like selling ur soul to the wg. top secret shit yada yada. as such most of the scientist in the tower have a bad relationship with the wg. they're rly only there for the science of it all tbh the head astronomer/astrophysicist is a man called folio! he's a trans man and was born on amazon lily but left to pursue his dream of the STARS!!!! he's extremely logical, to the point where it comes off as wildly eccentric, and when he heard nel's dream of going to the moon he was wildly inspired and agreed to take her on as a protege.

as for traveling on land, nel has been able to split her tail for as long as she can remember? this was one of the factors that led to her childhood isolation and her eventual interest / obsession in the stars and the moon! since those were always there for her :)

she actually doesn't travel on land often! staying within the ocean is safer (since her pursuer cant reach her there). the smart thing to do would be to stay underwater forever but she cant fight the pull of the night sky and always ends up surfacing in the end.