Harri

First and foremost, a lot of people seem to have a totally bastardized idea of what "grooming" actually even IS nowadays. It gets tossed around so much that people forget that the main trait is INTENTIONALITY. It is an INTENTIONAL process of manipulation and abuse for selfish reasons (similar to gaslighting). It is very hard to "accidentally" groom someone. You can give them the wrong idea, maybe, but that's not grooming. It originally means to basically prep and train up someone for a specific role later in life. Doflamingo uses this meaning of the term when talking about wanting to train Law up to become his righthand man.

Cora-san's character is LITERALLY DEFINED by his selflessness and sacrifices he makes to save Law's life. He doesn't expect anything in return. He acts on a sense of duty and then empathy. He suffers greatly in attempts to allow Law to survive and live freely, out from under the thumb of his brother.

Speaking of Doflamingo real quick, for some reason I feel like I see the ship of DofLaw get a lot less hate than CoraLaw despite the fact that they're in similar positions. Usually, because people have the headcanon of DadCora even though Law never views or refers to Cora as a father figure in any canon or spinoff material. If you have that headcanon, fine, whatever, but you have to remember that canonically, Law and Cora do not see their relationship as familial. That's part of the weight in the scene that Law has with Sengoku after Dressrosa. "Don't look for a reason for somebody's love."

Law didn't have to be family or important or anything for Cora to love him. He just did, if anything, from a sense of deepseated empathy and understanding of the pain that Law was going through.

Now- the actual shipping part of it.

It is also extremely difficult to groom someone if you are GONE FOR 13 YEARS.

The most commonly depicted manner of CoraLaw as a ship is Cora returning after 13 years, whether he secretly survived Minion Island, has been a ghost, was resurrected- whatever it may be, there is the gap of Cora being gone and assumed dead for over a decade. That is a LONG TIME to be separated from a person, and by the time you reunite, things will have changed, ESPECIALLY LAW. He is NOT the same person he was at age 13 anymore, obviously. He is a fullass grown adult at age 26 in the current canon. He has become an entirely new person with new strengths, confidence, and outlook on things.

Another important part of the ship to me...is that it is most often LAW who is pursuing CORA, not the other way around. LAW is the one who has spent all this time devoted to avenging Cora and being basically obsessed with honoring his memory and repaying the sacrifices that Cora made to him. The devotion is met in equal measures in that sense.

Their relationship as adults, 26 and either ALSO 26 or 39 (depending on if Cora is resurrected or has actually been alive this whole time) is them recognizing how things have changed and how their dynamic has now evolved into something totally different. Law isn't a kid that Cora can pick up like a football. He's an accomplished pirate captain. He was a warlord for a bit!!! He's an insanely powerful and scary guy tbh!!!

But Law still has a soft spot for Cora, still talks about him with an edge of kindness and love. Law would he terrified of admitting that he's perhaps developed feelings because of the fear of rejection from his most precious person, the one he owes everything to.

A lot of fics go with the mutual pining angle, both afraid of ruining what they have, despite the fact that things aren't the same as they were 13 years ago. It's an interesting space to explore and requires a lot of trust ans vulnerability on both ends-

No. It's not a conventional relationship by any means. I won't argue that. But that's why I like it, damnit. It's a fictional scenario that is largely impossible in our world, and it's a fun space to explore and to consider the depth of the affection they already have for one another, evolving into something different and new.

That's the main takeaway here tbh for me. It's FICTION. Literally no individuals are being hurt and it's not even ticking off any boxes of the usual Dead Dove sort of things so. Yeah