oooh man, i am kinda in love with your sabo->ace hanahaki au snippet? i-i think you might have made me ship them, oh no. what are your thoughts on the two of them as a ship?
Ahh I’m glad you liked it! There’s a few more ideas kicking around in that au, and hanahaki for a whole bunch of everyone else I’ve been playing with; imagine an Ace who comes by his predisposition to losing his breath when he loses his heart honestly; Roger went to his death with eyes full of defiance and hibiscus on his tongue.
For Ace and Sabo as a ship…that’s a bit complicated for me, so I hope you wanted an essay. Sabo apparently ran away from home at five, which explains Stelly better; Outlook Sr doesn’t find him again until he’s ten. Five years for a five year old? No wonder they assumed he was dead.
But that also means that Sabo and Ace ran wild, together, in a forest and dump for five years. Half their lives up until that point, and in survival mode. They depended on each other for food, for shelter, for protection, for defence, for comfort and for education. These boys raised themselves, even with the bandits around, and you cannot convince me they were not horribly, horribly codependent.
It doesn’t matter if they love each other romantically. It doesn’t matter if they even like each other, honestly; when you are that much to someone for that long, they are a part of you. Sabo trusts Ace with everything he is and was because Ace was there for the making of it, and Ace will never ever forget Sabo because how could he? For five years, they were all each other had. (Ask me about idioglossia and development sometime, I have thoughts.)
They have enough distance from that time to have had their own lives, their own experiences, and to grow up. There’s enough separation that it’s something I’m comfortable with, and that they should have distinct, different personalities, but it’s also such a part of each of them that it doesn’t matter who came next; they were first. This is why I write them as I do, recognizing each other because they see themselves reflected back. Ace taught Sabo how to survive, and Sabo taught Ace how to live.
So, to boil down my specific thoughts: I think that it doesn’t matter if you ship them or not, they’re still, inextricably, part of what makes them themselves, and to ignore that is doing them both a disservice.
jacobvanloon
