I feel like we don't discuss Nami's relationship with gender enough. Her entire character is so deeply informed by being a girl in a male-dominated pirate world and it's so interesting and so worth talking about.
The background creepiness of Bad pirate crews, which are most of them, how they tend to not have any female crew members at all, how they beckon any pretty young woman around to come play with them and join them. It's real bad. It's also like, a totally 2 dimensional portrayal of evil that is reserved for the most background of background characters.
However I think their ubiquity says a lot about how piracy is meant to be perceived by the public in One Piece, and is one of the strongest indicators of how prevalent misogyny is in-world.
It's very normal in One Piece for regular island inhabitants to have never met a Different class of pirate in their life. There's no reason for them to withhold judgement that maybe these pirates won't be like every crew that attacked before, and to wait and judge them by their actions. I mean frankly that would be irrationally weak self-preservation.
There are people who live peacefully under the flags of Yonkos who protect them, and feel loyalty and gratitude to them for it, but that seems to only be thing with very big name pirates. The East Blue, being the weakest and least populated, has no such plethora of powerful people and resulting turf wars.
So. Nami. Is very clearly implied to have never met any Different pirates before. I'm thinking about what that means. About how every group of pirates she stole from were creepy, dangerous men. How she started going out stealing when she was still a young child. How she didn't have a mother anymore to guide her or comfort her. How Arlong would grab her chin inappropriately, talk about her as a "human female", as property, and god knows what else.
How all the men in Arlong's crew treated her patronizingly, pretending they're all friends, teasing her and playing at respect when really not a single one of them ever stuck up for her or hesitated to accuse her of betrayal. Who were always ready to kill her if she refused to cooperate. Who grabbed her and intimidated her when they felt like it.
That's what she had to come back to after a close call with stealing from other predatory men, instead of the relief of home there was a dark, cramped room filled with endless hours of misery and isolation and blood. Where any one of her captors could barge in and demand new maps, work faster, where did you go, you took too long again this time. Endless threats and incursions.
I'm thinking about that her fight scene in Alabasta, where she tumbles and rips off her cape and uses it to catch her enemy's spikes, before leaping to her feet and running out the back door, all in one moment. How it makes her enemy reconsider her and think, "so the girl's not a total novice at fighting after all." What that implies about her experiences as a young thief. The times she wasn't fast or clever enough and had to fight and claw her way out. Why she always carried a staff and a knife. Why she was the only one before Chopper who had any medical knowledge or experience.
You know she was stitching herself up. And the weapons, how do you think she learned to use those? If any of the Arlong Pirates helped her it wasn't out of kindness and it wasn't gentle.
Then I think about Nojiko, and Bellemere's memory, and the only softness in a hard life. How easily Nami connects to every young woman experiencing hardship that she meets. How completely she dismisses the struggles of men unless they mean something to her and are going through something terrible. The way that Nami only has sympathy for women and children is easily noticeable in-text, but it's also something confirmed in those words by the author. And it's clearly because of the life she lived, the men who had all the power and only abused it, who saw her as nothing but a girl to take advantage of, without anyone aside from her sister clearly knowing and caring about any of it.
Nami clearly isn't bitter, she doesn't think the world owes her recompense, on the contrary she knows she is far from the only person in the world to suffer the things she has suffered. She is endlessly reaching out and kind, but only to those that she isn't sure would get help without her. Certainly, before Luffy, Usopp, and Zoro, no man ever reached out a hand to her without an ulterior motive.
I think when she sees a girl in trouble, a girl biting her lip to hold in a scream of grief, a girl running in the woods away from a monster, a girl captured by pirates, she sees someone who no one is coming for. Who no one will stick up for. A person without allies in a world against her. Whether it's actually true in this case or not, she runs straight for that girl anyways every single time.
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Epic the Musical:
Athena: Please dad help Odysseus! I realized he is my good friend and needs help!
Zeus: Who? That shameful man I made him choose to kill himself or his men? Why would I do that? It was so fun!You just seek attention! I'll tell you what though; if you convince others then I shall release him! Let's play
Athena: *does that*
Zeus: How DARE you!
Zeus: *strikes her*
The Odyssey:
Athena: Please father how could you forget on Odysseus who was always pious to the gods?
Zeus: Me? Forget about him? How can I? He is like one of the best when it comes to sacrifices and respecting the gods.
Athena: Then why won't you help him?
Zeus: I have nothing against the man. But my hands are tied! He committed hubris and nemesis had to find him and my brother is pissed off at him. I can't do much.
Athena: I cannot face him but now he is away please help Odysseus at least escape Ogygia! Send Hermes to bring the message and I shall go to help his son! The prophecy needs to be fulfilled!
Zeus: you speak the truth. Let us try.
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Book time! I want to post all my new stuff but don't want to flood people with them, so I waited a bit after my last one to put this one up, but I can't wait any longer to show it off. This is The Rose and the Serpent, a Good Omens Beauty and the Beast AU by Atalan. I know there's some kind of fairy tale fic event going on in the fandom right now but this one is from a few years back, so if that's your thing and you're impatient go check this one out.
I'm totally in love with how this one came out. It's like, if you had a cartoon character who's reading a plot-relevant book of fairy tales, this is the book you'd draw for them. Belle has this book. It's perfect for its niche. The front cover is burgundy cardstock with brown faux leather on the spine, and antique-brass-finish photo corners to protect the edges. The rose was done with gold embossing powder and a stamp, since I can't draw and those lines are too fine for the cricut. The batch of books I'm working through now is my first time experimenting with legal quarto size (legal size paper (8.5x14 in.) folded twice) and everyone who raved about it is right. It's very satisfying to hold and was a joy to make.
Check out the rest of my photos under the cut!
Close up of the photo corners and a view of the spine. I've never used photo corners before, partly because I don't ever see them on commercial books, but they just felt right for this project so I felt it was time to experiment. I didn't glue them down, just clamped them closed with jewelry pliers, and I was worried they wouldn't stay in place but they seem to be fine. Cardstock isn't a very hard-wearing material, and if it has a white core it tends to show at the corners of the book where it rubs against things, even under light handling. Hopefully the metal corners will protect it.
The spine title came out well. I was worried about matching the color with the embossing powder color on the front, but they came out fine and I'm very pleased.
Top view, with handmade red-and-green endbands and a green ribbon bookmark. Both of these were chosen to match the absolutely gorgeous endpapers with this mosaic flower pattern. They're chiyogami from ChibiJay and they're stunning; the photos don't do them justice. I bought them because they remind me of the stained glass windows in the Disney Beauty and the Beast. CJ has this great deal where you can make custom paper packs in pre-cut sizes for a discounted price, and they've got hundreds of patterns. This isn't sponsored, by the way, I just think they're awesome.
Some photos of the title page and first page of the story. I'm experimenting with DaFont some more. The one on the title page and for the chapter numbers is called Christmas Card, and the drop capital is called Floral Capitals, both free to use for personal projects. I've only done drop caps on a couple of projects, because for purely personal aesthetic reasons I don't like when they sink into the paragraph, but if I can mimic them by just making the first letter huge? Love that. Defintely going to keep doing that. Can never get the kerning to look right when I do it the regular way, but with this it isn't an issue.
The graphics on the title page are re-used from an older project, but they were so perfect for this one that I just went with it.
As I said above, this is my first legal quarto but it for sure won't be my last! There are three more in this batch, and they're so pleasant to hold that I'll for sure be making more before too long.
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