#ducktoothcollection

oh!! he’s my 100lb black lab shepherd cross who i love so much!!! here’s a video of him trying to walk with boots on

also. if someone were to be inspired to engage with One Piece as a result of your posting. anything I should know? (e.g. infamously bad translation to avoid, weird reading order, manga and anime significantly different, etc)

First of all I can't think of a possible more effective recommendation, I haven't heard of Kidd Commander but I'm gonna go check it out AT ONCE!

Second. Oh my god. Head in hands.... I NEVER EXPECT TO ACTUALLY SUCCEED IN GETTING ANYONE TO TRY ONE PIECE...... oh god OKAY!!!!!!! Yes!!!!!!!! I actually have A TON of thoughts on what you should know, I hope you don't mind!!!!!!

Main Differences Between The Manga and The Anime

1) PACING!

The manga is fairly fast paced and consistent. In my opinion, the impact of the panels is more effective for both comedy and drama due to the speed. The anime on the other hand, contains almost no filler episodes, about 9%, but makes up for the time by intentionally dragging everything out.

There is a charm to this! You really have to relax into the ride, but once you do, it is a very special kind of soothing. The long shots of open shining seas... The extra laughter and silly jokes.... The way it savors emotional moments.... When Mother Sea plays.... It's very lovely, but you have to be a pretty patient person to appreciate it.

It also fluctuates as the series goes on, with some later arcs hitting a reaaaaally bad rock bottom. Switching between manga and anime might be a good option for some arcs. (Long Ring and Dressrosa for sure, maybe more)

2) FAN SERVICE!

Since the anime drags everything out, there are more bad moments as well as good ones. The difference is DEFINITELY enough to be a tipping point for many people, including me. As much as I love the anime, there are many episodes I simply couldn't enjoy due to this. At least in the manga, to some extent you control the pace and what you look at, so skipping over irritating parts is ONE BILLION TIMES EASIER.

To be clear, the fan service issue in One Piece is MOSTLY shitty character design, you won't find female characters put into compromising/undignified positions as much as you might expect from this kind of anime. However, there is a main character that is A Chivalrous Woman Obsessed Man, and while the jokes are ON HIM for being pathetic, it can be extremely grating! Especially in the anime. He has his moments and his fans though.

3) THE BEGINNING!

For some reason, the two main events that the story starts with are switched in order shown in the anime. I think they wanted to start off with more motion, but I do feel it's worse off for it. It's not a big difference, but it matters to some people.

General Warning About The Bigotry:

As I said at the end of my One Piece Disability post, there are a lot of offensive caricatures in One Piece, and they can be very upsetting. I'm going to try to give a thorough warning that doesn't spoil anything.

In an early arc, there is a story about two peoples being forced to share one land, and it's an awful display of the colonizer's fantasy version of events. Like all the caricatures that get serious screentime, they are empathized with narratively and have more to them than meets the eye, but it some of the dialogue is genuinely nauseating! The arc is worthwhile, but god he really puts you through hell in this regard.

About halfway through the story, be ready for some serious transmisogyny. It's A MILLION TIMES WORSE IN THE ANIME but unignorable either way. As much as I hate the way they are drawn, and the stupid awful gags involving the Chivalrous Pathetic Man reacting with terrible transphobia to them, there is something compelling about them. Their non-binary leader was inspired (and is voice acted) by a real life drag queen that the author is a fan of, Luffy befriends them earnestly without judgement, they have a community aspect that is honestly shocking from such a cishetero author, and they have an amount of plot importance in regards to the larger world events. So. In a way it's a mixed bag. Definitely a huge dealbreaker for many people though, rightfully.

Another huge issue is whitewashing. In the anime, the main character's skin tones gradually get lighter. It's fucked. There is one character in particular, who was brown, and then she wasn't. Not to mention villainous characters tending to be darker skinned than most characters. It's genuinely insane, and another reason to prefer the manga.

You should also be aware of the weird fetishization of blackness that is common in japanese media. It doesn't come up often, but when it does, uh. It really does. You might have noticed already that the main black character, Usopp, is drawn with circle lips, which is obviously super offensive. It was actually what made me stop reading it when I started it when I was 12. He is truly a wonderful, wonderful character, but you have to look past the flaws in his character design the same you do for the female characters. Once again, definitely rightfully a dealbreaker for lots of people.

There's also, as you might have guessed from the hyper-skinniness of the female characters, a good deal of fatphobia. There are good fat characters, and background characters are pretty body diverse, but like everything and everyone else there really is no inherent respect given in terms of appearance. There are two examples that are especially bad, one in the very beginning and one much later. Something to watch out for, and again, worse in the anime.

Recommended Experience:

Well, as you've probably noticed by now I'm a huge proponent of the manga. However, what I did, and what I recommend to you and everyone, is a mixed media experience. Watch the first opening! Listen to the soundtrack as you read! (Particularly I like to listen to Overtaken and The Very Very Strongest when shit starts to go down) Watch some clips to find out what the character's voices sound like so you can imagine them as you read! Watch some of the movies and filler arcs when you get to them! (One Piece is special for many reasons, and the fact that fans LOVE the filler arcs is one of them. By and large we wish there were more.... G8 Arc you will always be famous!!!!!)

Most of all, find someone to talk to about it as you go!! If you enjoy it, you're gonna want someone to gush over all the best moments with. And it REALLY REALLY HELPS to get through the bad parts if you have someone to commiserate with!! You can live-blog directly into my DMs if you want to, I would love that. But no pressure to do that, like One Piece, or continue with it!!!!!!!!

One Piece is an incredibly special once-in-a-lifetime adventure. There is nothing else like it. It can, obviously, be tough to get into, but once you're there, you have ENDLESS endless joy ahead of you. It's really the gift that keeps on giving. Good luck!!!!!

I haven’t seen it before! Where is it from?

The quote is from the book Epistemology of the Closet, by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, from the introductory section "Axiomatic". In one part of this chapter, Sedgwick lays out a series of "axioms" for the different ways in which people might engage with or conceive of sexuality, as examples of the ways in which our current taxonomic systems of understanding sexual orientation or sexuality are not necessarily sufficient for conceptualizing the multitude of ways people can align or diverge from each other re: sexuality. Or, to put it another way, people who are categorized as having the same sexual orientation can have sharply different attitudes towards sex and sexuality, approaches to sexual practice, etc - and people under different taxonomic labels can have surprising points of commonality.

The list itself has been very soothing and affirming to me in lots of ways, and I feel comfortable saying it has been for others as well. It's kind of a breath of fresh air in the same way much of her work is for me. Transcription of the list under the cut:

:D I appreciate the attempt to watch!

Truly, the movie is similar to a painting to me, like it really gives you one brief moment in a world that is very, very old, and, for me, that encourages imagination in all of the space "outside" the painting.

I've read that the movie was criticized for the simplicity of its plot when it was released, and I do see that, but to me that was never an issue because when a certain kind of simplicity is done well, that gives me, as a viewer, the chance to dive into the depths on my own that I get from the details of the painting-movie.

I was also intensely fascinated as a child by 1) a setting with no humans or familiar animals in it (are there ANY other movies like this? please tell me, anyone) and 2) the fact that the Problem of the Bad Guys in the movie was NOT solved by killing them/sending them to jail--this was the first movie I saw as a kid that took a different option, and in such a unique and dramatic way.

Well this plot escalated quickly. First I tried to figure out something based on Peter and Cutter both having hot voices, but then I got distracted by the title, and now it's a three-way crossover because I decided to drag in the soy sauce from John Dies At The End. The alternative was something sensible about Juno and Peter going up against Goddard and Juno having to listen on comms as Peter tries to flirt his way past Cutter. I'd figure out something interesting to combine the worldbuilding, maybe Pryce succeeded and she and Cutter are immortal now. Maybe there could be an exploration of Juno finding it both hot and weird to listen to Peter flirt for a job. But that has nothing to do with soy sauce, so instead we have this.