#i think it's important to remember that our own chosen interpretations do not necessarily align with the author's intent

[goingbuggy]

I already sent you something and I hope that Im not spamming your ask box I just like your way of thinking and I’m too new to know other meta people. What do you think about the familial relationship in one piece? I mean I noticed some new discussion about whatever shanks is luffy father figure or not and it’s not the first time I see this type of discussion here. There’s a lot of those figures in one piece talk and I get headcanons but many consider it canon? And for example call ships weird. I’m not even gonna mention shuggy, I think you saw it and obviously don’t see it this way(I’m here so I agree). But I noticed Uta and Luffy being siblings. Mihawk being father to perona and zoro. Crocodile being father to robin. Makino being mother to ASL (I only counted dadan as their mother). Zoro dad to chopper also counts but it’s less serious. I also saw some all straw hats are family. How do you see them? More headcanon or is it oda intention to see those as family type? I think it’s interesting since non blood related families are big theme in one piece. Thank you and sorry for coming to your ask box again

honestly i think popular headcanons often get misconstrued for authorial intention, which causes friction in the fandom over what really just amounts to interpretation. and i think one piece's emphasis on found family has actually had the opposite effect in that many feel the need to link certain in-universe relationships back to found family somehow. there's nothing wrong with headcanons, but sometimes it irks me, especially when people declare their own interpretation as canon.

[julystorms]

Hi. Sorry. This is a stupid question but I just don't get it. Does Ackerbond = In love? Or just dedicated? Not ship bashing at all. Just not understanding something. Sorry to bother.

I really wish I had a better tag system! I talked at length with several people about the difference a couple of months ago.

It doesn’t mean they’re in love. The general function of the Ackerbond seems to be that when “bonded” to someone, the Ackerman family members are capable of using their ackerpowers at full capacity. 

Ackerpower is the power that unlocks: Kenny when he was younger, Levi possibly in the flashback of his childhood when Kenny taught him to fight, Mikasa when she had to save Eren’s life (shortly after he’d saved hers).

The Ackerbond, then, is the bond that’s formed when an Ackerman makes the choice to devote themselves to a person and/or that person’s dreams/ideals.

Cut for length/pictures/examples.

Disclaimer: this is my interpretation of the ackerbond and is not necessarily the same interpretation fandom at large has.

For Mikasa, I feel she’s the outlier who devoted herself wholly to Eren as a person, rather than any specific dream or ideal that Eren had. Eren had no reason to care about her, no reason to help her, no reason to bother with putting his own life on the line to save hers. What I believe is a strong moral compass is what pushed him to do what it took to save her life, and after all that rage and anger he’d shown earlier, he was kind and thoughtful enough to do this one little gentle thing for her–and to her, that really, really meant something special. This is the kind of person she wants to stick with.

I feel Levi’s reasoning is a bit more fuzzy/complex. No Regrets was kind of retroactively absorbed into the canon as evidenced by the above scene; this moment wasn’t drawn into No Regrets itself, but it’s clear that Isayama drew this scene with a bigger intention in mind. Now, in No Regrets, Levi initially blames the deaths of his friends on Erwin, but Erwin challenges that way of thinking on several levels!

Levi: They were nothing but pawns in your worthless game. Well, you lose.

Erwin: Worthless game? Who’s the one that killed my subordinates, your friends? Was it me? Was it you? Do you think that if you had come to attack me together that the two of them would have made it out alive?

Levi: (If we hadn’t split up, then…) …That’s right… It was my conceit… My damned pride is to blame…

Erwin: No! It was the titans!! Where did the titans come from? Why do they exist? Why do they eat people? We don’t know! We’re completely ignorant. And as long as we stay ignorant, they’ll keep eating us. We’ll never turn the tables on them by staying inside the walls. Look around you! In this wide open place, there are no walls, no matter how far you go. Here, there might be something to free us from our despair. But there are people who would keep us from leaving the walls. They stay where danger can’t reach them, obsessively thinking only of their own profits and losses. It’s understandable. The clouded eyes of mankind, blocked for a hundred years by the walls… They can’t see the other side. What about you, Levi? Have your eyes remained clouded?

[…]

Erwin: Fight with the Survey Corps, Levi!! Humanity needs your skill!!

Lots to talk about here! Now, I know y’all’re used to me talking about Erwin as a master manipulator, but this is done so on-the-fly I don’t think he’s actually trying to manipulate Levi here. And he’s also not wrong. Remember, the #1 rule of manipulating people successfully is being mostly truthful about everything; it’s just that you have to spin things to your advantage–usually in speech. Erwin’s really good at it. Like, he’s incredible. Technically the reason Isabel and Farlan died is…a bit murkier than just “the titans killed them” (who brought them out of the underground in the first place?), but I think it’s foolish to assume Levi’s too dense to think of that on his own. 

There’s a lot for Levi to think about after the death of his friends. Titans did technically kill them, but before that, I think…he honestly and truly felt that Isabel in particular felt like she…could belong in the Survey Corps, and that meant something to him. So them joining the Survey Corps wasn’t to blame in Levi’s mind: it was his own selfish goals, conceit, pride. He took a huge risk in splitting up, and it wasn’t just Levi’s friends who died, which is something Erwin is subtly reminding him of. His words, “my subordinates, your friends” could be referencing “my subordinates who were your friends” or “my subordinates and your friends” in equal measure. The rest of the team died with Isabel and Farlan, and yes, in part it was because Levi left them to do his own thing, but what dealt the final blow was of course the titans. Erwin is not wrong about that.

And better yet, he comes off as really passionate about this. He may be manipulating Levi a little bit in that scene, but not actively; he’s actively just being passionate. I think he wants very badly to change people’s minds about the Survey Corps, about the fight against the titans and the importance of knowing the truth.

In this way, Levi isn’t completely ignorant about Erwin’s overarching plans, his own personal goals. But I get the feeling that his reaction to Erwin in the canon means that: 1) Erwin didn’t tell him this directly/was hiding it, and 2) He’d never realized how far-reaching or perhaps deeply rooted Erwin’s personal goals actually were. Damn. This is good shit.

Anyway, Erwin makes a lot of good points and his line about the clouded eyes of mankind is really good. This is more perhaps unintentional manipulation, but it’s master-class stuff. He’s not stating it outright, but he’s trying to hint that he believes there’s something fucky going on in the walls that people don’t want to know the truth. Do you remain ignorant on purpose, Levi? Are you one of those people? The person he was going to kill Erwin for is one such person. There are more. Many more. Levi’s not blind to that fact. I think this resonates with him on a bit of a personal level. 

And hey, it’s a great nod to the fact that in a year the warrior kids are gonna kick in Shiganshina’s gate and then shoulder-bash into Maria and those assholes who are sitting pretty thinking of themselves will realize they’re not really that safe and instead of organizing efforts to ensure the safety of their people, they’re just gonna start getting really awful (which I think, if nothing else, helped seal Levi’s loyalty to the Survey Corps and to what he thinks is Erwin’s ideals: fighting back against the titans and learning more about them to save humanity–to free humanity from its despair. Because in this way of thinking, Erwin is also suggesting to Levi that people like him, like his friends, deserve more than they’ve had and some day, if people like Erwin and Levi and Mike (who is there for this scene) work hard enough, maybe the awe and wonder they no doubt all felt upon leaving the walls is something everybody can safely experience. Every single day.

To Levi, that is a dream worth fighting for and Erwin is exactly the kind of person who can make it happen. 

Levi is clearly not much of a leader himself, so it makes sense that he’d attach his skills to someone who is. His moment of “bonding” himself, of dedicating his skills to a cause and a person, comes at once in No Regrets when Erwin implores him to use his skills to help humanity.

Finally we have Yuri (or Uri) Reiss bowing to Kenny after admitting to him all of his grandiose dreams for the world and for peace: a speech that touched Kenny deeply, and which he seems to have been fighting for to the end…though in a rather misguided sort of way, IMO. (But that makes it all the more tragic, doesn’t it?)

Basically, Ackerbonds are chosen connections to people. For Kenny and Levi, it seems these bonds aren’t just to people, but to ideals and dreams that those people have expressed. They are a reason to fight and allow the Ackermans to use their strength and skill at full potential–not like some magical bullshit I assume so much as in the way an artist really shines when they apply themselves to something they themselves feel passionately about! 

So Levi, Kenny, and Mikasa all are best off when using their skills for something they believe in: whether that’s a person or a cause, though because all three characters are kind of “follower” types, they tend to attach to both at once.

Which you can think of this way: Yuri’s dream is nice, but it’s nothing without someone in a position of power to carry it out. The same is true of Erwin’s dream/goals as expressed to Levi. Dreams can’t stand alone. So I love that these bonds for Kenny and Levi come about because of dreams.

Better yet, when Yuri dies, the bond isn’t…really broken in my mind? I feel the same about Erwin. The dream is still alive and I feel like the bond gets split 50/50 between dream and the person who can make the dream happen, so just because Yuri and Erwin died doesn’t mean their dream had to die with them. The idea of Kenny, and now Levi, taking up the dream of the person they believed so seriously in is really, really good.

What I think is really cool is that Mikasa doesn’t follow the pattern. She attached herself to Eren, not necessarily his ideals or dreams. Because of this, when her view splits from his, she’ll probably act on her own for what she’s passionate about…and I think it’s possible that she might switch her passion, her bond, to a goal that means something to her instead of just Eren, whose goals may no longer align with her own/be something she’s willing to lend her strength to. (I guess what I’m trying to say is that I really like the idea that her character in this regard is flexible.)

I think the depth and way you interpret the bond can change how you feel about it. The way I view it, I can honestly really get behind it (but I also don’t feel it’s like some magical moment or even really A Thing so much as putting a name to a point in time the characters themselves might remember very clearly as life-changing). Some people like it to be less impactful, others prefer it to be a deeper, more personally meaningful thing.

But on its own it doesn’t mean romance. If you ship the characters who are “bonded”, romance more than likely stemmed from just being around one another a lot and getting to know each other. It kind of has that “friends first” background to it, which is excellent.

(Images taken from this post which compares the Ackerbond and Ackerpower difference in basic terms–it’s a great post so check it out!)