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understandableparadox · 11 months ago

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Queer Charecters in One Peice.

The queer community lives and dies but those who remain in sight. What constitutes this sight? From top down, it's Activism. Advocating for yourself, those around you and those you will never see. Community, advocating for yourself and those around you. Then there is seeing yourself as something worthy of protecting, worthy of expression. Worthy to speak in your own defense. That was an exceedingly pretentious opening for a post regarding one piece and its themes but I do believe that it's a good flat layer in which we can build our understanding of the importance of seeing Militant Queer characters.

To be militant means to be combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, often in favor of extreme and confrontational methods. It is often shown to be a negative state of being. Survivors of the rise of JpegTubers angrily waving their stick puppet around yapping yelping and parking because a lesbian was miffed that she was only socially acceptable as a tab on someone's browser may sit this explanation out, please enjoy the cookies, pizza and soda left outside of the seminar hall, don't bitch about them being store brand tho.

We still see this bastardization of what it means to be militant in shows and movies, Milquetoast hand wringing writers eager to join the laughs at the straw men they crafted with dyed hair and pronouns waved about to pantomime the faux outrage they believe comes with being militant. “Ah yes, those Snowflakes will most certainly care that I'm placing this Sticker on the back of my truck~! Mmmm, their outrage, delightful, tasty, a Special Little treat for a Special Little Man~ WAIT NO, BIG MAN, BIG MAN, BEHOLD THE BALLS ON MY TRUCK, A SIGN THAT MY OWN BALLS ARE JUST AS SWOLLEN AND ENGORGED, A BEACON OF MASCULINITY THAT ANY MEDICAL PRACTITIONER WILL WEEP AT!” What was I talking about…?

Oh yeah if i ask you to come up with a list of characters that follow this little diddy. A well meaning, white suburbanite, oft well to do who is overly vocale on social issues much to the detriment to their own social circles. Switching the tracks, a young black woman with a protective hairstyle or Big afro. Maybe a green jacket in most weathers.Attends rallies and goes about abusing bullhorns via shouting about black issues, often alienating her from her own friend group or creating discord between them because she may have white friends that are rather Perturbed by her rhetoric. The second may be played to attempt a positive characterization but it still comes from the same hay bale.

This character comes from a shift in public perception that the Advocates words must be genial and pleasant if it is to make the mark. That their struggles must be made palatable and consumable to the larger audience if they are to be accepted. Of course this is a larger load of shit then the streets of london prior to the advent of public plumbing.

Yes this is the Malcom x vs Martin luther bullshit again, a million smarter authors have penned this shit enough time for the squids to beg for a bit reprieve and I promise i'm not going to go over it to much as I have nothing clever to say on it aside from a brief summary of pop cultural digestion and acidic markings.

Martin Luther is seen as the Soft Figure, the Proper advocate. The one that will go to a place and make a heart warming street and march and hope the police will beat them a little bit softer or hope the towns water pressure isnt as bad (an unforgivable assertion by the by, those marches were massively disruptive, you cant march that many people down a large street and not have it be in some way fucking disrubtive.) This gets turned into someone like Professor X, one who balks at his own power and helps humanity in hopes of appealing to the shared empathy of all. This is contrasted to Malcolm X, the black panther movement, the Threat of violence in service to a social cause. The Scary Other. This is morphed to magneto, the one who demands mutant acceptance now but is revealed to be a mutant supremacist. Song Meet Dance.

Now what the fuck does all of this have to do with one piece? Simple. It is the story of the Militant Other.

But do I hear someone say, it's a shounen manga that's filled with gratuitous fighting! Of course we're going to see those labeled as the “other” being militant! Well I must simply retort that you are trespassing, please leave im vary scared, im holding a sword and quivering in place, my fucking teeth are chattering, get out please, you can have a bottle of water on your way out but take no more I beg of thee.

The story of one piece is about characters that are othered at birth, made others by circumstance and society or choosing to embrace their otherness and becoming militant. Who shall we look at first? The main character?! Oh you treat me so well, what a delight~!

Now Luffy and his story isn't inherently tied to him being queer but it sets up a very clear arc path for other queer characters that we will see later on in this post. If you are not aware, luffy is almost violently asexual, by violent i mean in that way that if I was an obnoxious power scaler i could easily list it as a power feat. please note the episode when he first met boa hancock, a woman drawn to be sexually attractive with the explicit power of turning people who find her cute or attractive into stone. Luffy gets hit with this and just ignores it. Fuck you it counts and I like it… ok im sorry, i dont know how you reacted to that information, that was so rude of me, im so sorry, please sit down, you can have another water bottle ontop of the courtesy failed robbery water bottle you recived. Please try to remain hydrated.

Funny aside, Luffy is Himself. He is always Himself. There is no situation in which he can act as anything other than himself in all situations the self that he embodies is indelible. He understands this about himself thus surrounds himself with people that are able to not change the self but help the self become more with the promise of the same happening to those around him.

He is also astoundingly passionate in what he believes in, he is passionate about the causes of his friends, he is passionate about the causes of people he finds to be good. This passion often shows itself as Extreme, Violent and one may even say Confrontational. Of course some may not consider punching someone directly in the face multiple times as confrontational but apply your better judgment to this matter as you consider it.

Luffy is a militant activist. When he supports a cause, it's mostly for its ideological aspects. He believes that people should be free in the most basic of terms, they should be free to travel, grow, eat, laugh. Anything that hinders that is a direct insult to Luffy's ongoing system of thought and means you are going to be punched or ignored.

Lets keep going down the line to see who else fits in this theme, shall we? No? What the fuck man? I gave you two water bottles, and they're like…Good water bottles, they don't even have those squiggly walls, they're like… smooth plastic square bottles.

Well I'm going with or without you, starting with my beloved Bon clay. We meet bon prior to the start of the alabasta arc, fished out of the water by the straw hat crew in which he gives his express thanks, here we are given a stark humanization. We get to see him eagerly match pace with the energy of the crew, eagerly feeding into their jokes, showing off his powers, laughing with them.

A side note. Laughing has always been made a huge deal in one piece, whether it's the other characters' starkly unique laughs or most arcs ending off with the crew and cast laughing. It's a show of celebration, that you are in a joyous mood, that you are Happy. I wonder if that's important to any narrative theme… anyways

I think this is all astoundingly important because they show bon clay as a fun weirdo who is in love with the self they have become before they are shown as a part of the villains crew. It establishes that they are more than their narrative born role as a minor antagonist, they are a complex human that is capable of complex thoughts and ideology. Show cased by the end of the arc, the exact moment that i fell in love with them, like really fucking hard. I'm talking about running into senpai, bread in mouth. My hearts going doki doki, doctors are flipping shit trying to label it as heart arrhythmia but oh no it's not you P.H.Dick it's the power of love burning like a goddamn cyclone smashing into a oil refinery, that explosion isn't disrupting the wind flow but it is sucking up those flames like a really well thought out sexual innuendo that your super duper impressed by and think is really funny and want to congratulate me on for making such a cool sexual joke.

They sacrifices himself in order to allow the straw hats to escape from alabasta. Ending their appearance with a heartfelt farewell to the crew that they have fought with only a day ago, that he was willing to kill on orders a day ago. Leaving them with the words

“One may stray from the path of a man, one may stray from the path of a woman, but we never stray from the path of a human.”

FUCK THATS A REALLY GOOD LINE, anyways we see him again later in impel down in one of the hell layers, with even the scorching heat and arid air unable to squash his eccentric personality like the god damn wonder they are. Dancing in the depths of hell they soon hear that luffy has broken in and rush lower through the layers to meet up with them, Eager to join up and fight with him.

Again, we are seeing behavior Vary similar to luffy, that actions which serve their passions are to be taken always. A passion for friendship, loyalty, all of that. The willingness to serve time in a massive human rights violation of a prison…ok thats a little vague, thats most prisons… Anyways we do get to see more of bon clay's belief system as we meet both our next queer character and our next militant character.

Ivankov. They to me are the true exemplification of all three levels of advocacy in service to a group of peoples existence. At the most basic level, ivankov cannot hide who they are, it's impossible, I mean look at her! He has powers that can increase the size of their face, they wear makeup so thick it can be peeled off, they are Violently of the self.

For their community, we have the new kama queendom, she has created a paradise in the depths of super hell jail to protect those around her. Even outside of the jail he has done much of the same by creating the okama queendom, the island outside of government control in which men and women flock in order to be able to express their true selves. Notably, despite ivenkovs ability to turn men into women, many of them do not make use of this power. They are free to express themselves without the expectation of fitting into that role visually. That's the community aspect to me.

Then we get the more militant activism, ivenkovs role as a member of the revolutionary army. The way he provides an outpost in the middle of the grand line, his funding through his miracle medical work, his willingness to fight for those she will never ever see.

And there are more, we see other queer characters in the revolutionary army, and they have yet to be shown in any sort of negative light. Their militant activism, their willingness to fight and rally others to fight for a cause is shown to be positive.

The desire to fight for a cause throughout one piece is shown to be an overall positive cause, all forms of it. Whether it's through the more peaceful methods such as otohime or through violence and confrontation such as Fisher tiger.

So to reiterate because this is getting hella long, I love One Piece because it allows its queer characters to fight for what they believe in, in any way that they desire. That queer characters are allowed to be weird, they are allowed to be evil, they are ugly, beautiful, powerful, anything and everything!

Thank you for reading.

#one peice #emporio ivankov #bon clay #otohime #luffy #yamato #fisher tiger #queen otohime

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