Y'all mind if I go a little insane about Zeff & Sanji in We Rotten Few?
You don't mind? Okay great, welcome to my TED talk. So this scene in particular is giving me brain rot, specifically Zeffās POV of it:
What I was trying to show was how Zeff is a very flawed individual trying to do right by a kid who put his fragile trust in him. If Zeff had actually hit Sanji at that moment, their relationship would be significantly different (in a bad way).
I think that for WRF!Zeff, he probably had friends like Sanji in his youth. Boys who stayed out late if they knew their father had been drinking. Boys who threw all they had into every fight like it would be their last. Boys who jumped at shadows but also cursed them out too, wearing their anger like a suit of armor.
So for Zeff, who knew Sanjiās identity and expected him to act like a spoiled brat who never heard the word no, to instead see a boy who acted too much like a kicked stray, this was probably a very difficult situation. How does someone like Zeff, who grew up with distant parents and eventually turned to smuggling to make ends meet, raise a child like Sanji?
He's not a gentle or soft man, and to pretend like he is would be doing his character a disservice. But honestly I think it's important that he's not, because having a man who's capable of great violence and anger try to learn how to be gentle for Sanji really tugs at my heart strings. It's easy to take basic human decency for granted until you're looking at a boy who doesn't expect to be treated like a person by anyone, much less by you.
Now once again, WRF!Zeff is not a nice man, he's a criminal and a scoundrel and a bit of an alcoholic. He doesn't know the first thing about kids or what cPTSD is or why he would need to control his anger when he has always been an angry man. But in spite of all that he did his best to be a good father to a boy he didn't know, and in turn raised a kind and generous man who charms basically everyone he meets.
I can't stop thinking about Zeff and all the different ways it could've gone wrong between them, and why it didn't. That's his son by choice!! He made that choice every goddamn step of the way and somehow Sanji managed to stay kind because of him!
Ough the father/son dynamic got a little kick to it...
