do it with a DON!!!

I HAVE!! so many thoughts

1. um. partners?? I see u oda. you're finally giving me the old man yaoi

2. objectively also kind of throwing out a lot of the potential with marco's fruit being that of a regenerating and infinitely reincarnating bird, so i think dad!gram is the most boring option but okay. it could've been really juicy and emotionally complicated but OKAY!! WHATEVER!! IT'S FINE!!

3. I am rotating polo gram in my mind he's so cute

u know people should do whatever they want but it's like watching someone pour ketchup on ice cream. the APPEAL is that he's an incompetent loser who somehow continually manages to fail upwards, and if he'd been a less self-serving greedy person and believed in the power of friendship, he'd be in a far better position than he is. which is the point.

despite how terrible the circumstances of someone's upbringing might be, they have every chance of turning out okay and making choices that help themselves and others, just as much as the trauma might subsume and destroy them. the flipside is that no matter how well someone was taught and no matter how positive their role models, they might still choose to be a bad person. and that's buggy.

but ace wasn't looking for a connection to roger, actively resented him, and shanks isn't the kind of guy who'd force his perspective on others (that would, after all, make him just like a celestial dragon which is the last thing he'd ever want), so he doesn't bring it up. but he does his best to watch out for the kid who's (checks notes) going to try and kill whitebeard?!

but shanks, who grew up on the oro jackson and has personally gone after that old man, knows whitebeard. whitebeard did not instantly one-shot him and buggy when they had the nerve to try and attack him as teens. he knows ace is gonna meet that great pirate and get parented, which sounds like exactly what he needs. tbh. and when he gets the news about whitebeard's new recruit, a rookie who tore up paradise and hit the new world at breakneck pace, who then became his second division commander...

so this kid who's his little brother in spirit has been in the care of the whitebeard pirates for (i wanna say two?) years, and those are really the most capable hands he could've ended up in so shanks doesn't worry too much about him. until he goes after teach, who capably scarred shanks when he wasn't even off-guard. and then got captured by the marines.

and whitebeard, being whitebeard, mobilizes his WHOLE FLEET to go save that kid who is as good as family to shanks. and then LUFFY shows up-- which shanks probably only found out about after arriving at marineford. luffy, a rookie, would've died countless times throughout the war at marineford if the whitebeard pirates hadn't stepped in on his behalf and he still got majorly beat up...

it says a lot about shanks that he arrived to back up the whitebeard pirates at marineford, but it's also worth considering how much he thinks of the whitebeard pirates as having acted on HIS behalf in protecting ace and luffy when he couldn't be there himself. i think a lot about why he'd step in and handle whitebeard and ace's funerals, and even if we never find out anything else about his relationship to the WBPs, it's obviously because they've looked out for people who were important to him first.

"You know," the Phoenix said matter-of-factly, "we're pirates. We're all living on stolen time. However much of it you get, you should try to enjoy it."

luffy's not judging people based on something innate and unique to only him-- he just uses what he can observe of a person's actions to make his mind up about them. and that should be really encouraging, because it means you don't have to be luffy to figure out who you can trust. you just have to look at someone's actions, regardless of what they say, and draw your conclusions based on that.

and very interestingly how in marineford it wasn't mentioned at ALL that marco was a doctor, much less THE ship's doctor (which was revealed in 909), which the fandom (including me) understandably took and ran with to mean that he was always trying to control whitebeard's drinking-- but we never see him in the series itself ever trying to do so, even though the nurses try (234)

and in fact we have seen him chilling with pops while he's drinking without saying anything about it even after he lost his hair (1023 and 1121, while he's talking about the 'race of gods on top of the red line', which we learn in wano is something he does when he gets drunk)

do u ever think about. marco knowing that if pops decided to take it easy, stay on land, fight less, drink less, and pay more attention to his health, he'd probably have a few more years to live but asking him not to do the things that make him happiest (sailing around, partying and drinking with his family) would be torture for that stubborn old man, so marco doesn't say anything. just quietly watches his dad who he devoted the last 30+ years of his life to die slowly (and quickly) and simply does what he can to make him comfortable

and in his FINAL MOMENTS, the last person whitebeard thinks of and addresses is marco-- the viz translation makes it sound like [his crew] gave him everything [they have], but the raws are more explicit in that he says 'everything [i have], i received from you guys'.

oda's processing a lot of his feelings about parenthood through kuma and bonney and the giants on elbaf but he's definitely also at the age of going through adult child of elderly parent emotions, so i'm excited to see that pan out.

during shanks's meeting with whitebeard, marco tells the rest of the crew to stand down because shanks 'isn't the kind to do anything stupid'

even when they're kids, when marco's 19 years old and shanks and buggy are 13, he says they've 'got the attitude of grown men!' imo that shows a pretty high level of respect and acknowledgment of their relative maturity and resilience, even if he finds him annoying as hell sometimes LOL

this comment is a little bit rude, but rudeness from marco (a polite guy...) is a sign of closeness. moreover, he's drawing direct parallels from shanks to his own family by calling him a big-time pirate who needs to be babysat 😆 he was right hand to a high maintenance captain of his own, he saw beckman go gray in the span of 10 years. he knows shanks isn't an idiot, but he knows that man will stress him out!!

Thank you!!