U N C E R T A I N

So now baby Sanji just follows baby Zoro around everywhere like a puppy and Zoro is like totally fine with it.

Kuina makes fun of him all the time because why is Zoro so invested in this random kid? Zoro doesn't see what's so strange about it and honestly he kinda loves how Sanji cheers on Zoro during his spars with Kuina. Even though he loses every single time Sanji still tells Zoro he's so so cool.

At some point Zoro would tell Sanji to just not go back home and Sanji is now a runaway that Zoro hides in his room. The master finds out eventually, but lets Sanji stay at the dojo even though he's not a student. Sanji helps in the kitchen and is really good at chores so it's a fair trade.

Even though they are definitely a lot nicer to each other in this timeline they are still them so once they get older they start bickering all the time. Sanji starts wanting to "be his own man" at the ripe old age of 13 and starts pushing back and getting angry at Zoro for always fighting for him. Zoro is angry at this and low-key hurt that Sanji doesn't want his protection anymore since that's the only way Zoro knows how to emote.

It all comes to a head one day when the arguing crosses a line and fists (Zoro refuses to use an actual sword against Sanji which makes Sanji even more upset) are thrown. Zoro obviously wins at this point because Sanji has no formal training and it ends with Sanji angry crying.

Sanji basically says he can't stand being in Zoro's shadow anymore and he wants to get far far away from him. Zoro is triggered because Kuina is dead at this point and now the only friend he has left wants to leave too? So Zoro tells Sanji in the coldest voice he's ever used that Sanji should leave then. If he's not around slowing him down and distracting him anymore then he'll get strong enough to achieve his goal in no time.

They both make some dramatic declaration to sever ties and be rivals from now on. They'll each get stronger in their own right and one day when they are gown there will be a battle to determine who is better once and for all.

Sanji packs his things and leaves the village. Zoro refuses to look at him while he walks away. Sanji doesn't look back either.

From then Sanji & Zoro's story go back to the original canon. Zoro trains non stop until he leaves and Sanji still joins a ship to learn cooking and gets stranded on that rock with Zeff. Really the biggest difference is they each have each other in the back of their minds all the time in order to push themselves harder.

When the crew meets Sanji at the Baratie him & Zoro instantly recognize each other, but won't say anything about it to anyone else. Zoro spends the entire time trying to get Luffy to give up on recruiting Sanji. Sanji is even more resistant to joining. However you can only resist destiny so much and Sanji still ends up joining the strawhats.

They never tell anyone about their history and everyone thinks they just have incompatible personalities. If you pay attention though you'll see that they know a bit too much about each other for having just met a couple years ago. The insults seem a little too personal right from the get go.

Zoro will sometimes instinctively shield Sanji during a battle which sets Sanji off. Sanji somehow knows where to look for Zoro when he disappears. Almost like he's had a lot of experience with finding a lost Zoro and can guess which way he would be inclined to go.

When they are both drunk you can find them alone and laughing like hyenas. Whispering and reminiscing about childhood hijinks. If you're lucky you might overhear Sanji say "you're still so cool. it really pisses me off mosshead" and a "Guess you were right about needing me gone to get stronger. I hate thst you were right..." from Zoro.

Two years later, it turns out grey rabbits are hard to see on the road, and white rabbits stand out to predators, so now we have a bazillion identical black rabbits roaming the streets like lost souls of the damned

It’s also a year of the water rabbit, sometimes called the Year of the Black Rabbit (because of the association with the color black with water).

Even in the house it was LOUD.  Probably the loudest thing I have ever experienced but at a normal, predictable interval.  You would begin to time your sentences with little pauses with the rest of the lighthouse crew so you would talk like this while making your………..HORN…………. tea and then carry on talking because you knew when it would go off.  It rattled the walls and the dishes in our cabinet.

At least one girl had died there. They kept photos of her everywhere “in honor of her sacrifice” because she had decided to take the winter watch alone and died in a storm where bounders the size of mini vans had been lifted out of the ocean and left scattered across the island, to say nothing of the ice chunks.  People weren’t allowed to be alone on the watch after that.

One day a dead moose washed up on shore and it took my entire crew all day but we managed to rig up a line to hang it up to dry because we thought having a moose skeleton in the house would really spice the living room up a bit.  It did.  Weird shit happens when six of you are left alone, like ALONE ALONE, no cell reception, no wifi, just a radio to contact the real world and not a lot of reason to do that.  People don’t go on lighthouse jobs if they want to stay connected, I’ve found.

He is played obviously camp and dramatic, for a start, and there is the aforementioned "hate your hair/not likely/yikes yikes yikes/let me guess you have a great personality" summary dismissal of all his potential brides. Then he spends dinner asking Yzma about Kronk ("so he seems nice? He's what, in his late twenties?") and otherwise being slightly obsessed with him.

Then there is the whole Adventure of Doom with Pacha, him being ever huffy about the Kiss of Life, and then the restaurant gag where Kuzco takes to playing Pacha's fake wife and dressing up in ladies' clothing with great gusto (reinforced by the waitress' "bless you for coming out in public" remark when Pacha says they're on their honeymoon). Then when he is finally de-llamafied, we don't see him paired off with the obligatory girl from the lineup earlier, as might otherwise be expected in a Disney movie. Instead he is still single, but goes to found family it up with Pacha, Chica, Kronk, etc, which dare we remark is a very queer trope.

In short, I have no idea how a Disney movie with no white people (all the characters are Indigenous/people of color), a gay king, cross-dressing jokes, and the most offbeat plot of all time actually ever got made (can you imagine the Family Friendly Mouse doing that today? Let us also talk about Kronk because he is a brilliant deconstruction of both toxic masculinity and the musclebound henchman stereotype.) Other than that this was the Chaos Hour of animated movies in the late 90s/early 2000s, and yes.

Please, read this article if you have some time. This story is wild, and involves directors being pitted against each other Bake-Off style and a shockingly intimate documentary created by the wife of Sting who, himself was heartbroken by the decimation of the songs he wrote for the film including cutting a fantastic Yzma villain song sung by Eartha Kitt that is SO DAMN GOOD but would not ever have fit the more nailed-down Yzma we would eventually come to know and love. It’s so catchy though, I’m doubling up on calls to action but please listen now:

I see parents who had children because it was the “right thing to do” who end up institutionalized because the emotional and psychological strain that comes with raising and loving this whole other human being who is solely dependent on them becomes too much. This isn’t shit I’ve seen on the internet. This is shit I have seen with my own two eyes multiple times.