#feels wrong

Hehe ye, Swedish! I tricked you with my British themed story ✨😗 (Well, hopefully, I suppose).

And god jul to you too 🥰🎄

… I miss snow ⛄️

To then seeing the corruption of Morgan and realizing the marines aren't infallible, that the system allows corruption like that to happen, and though he still joins up, he also literally tells luffy to destroy the marines...

We see him in marineford and while he doesnt really take part in the fight he says himself, he thought the execution was an unfortunate but necessary evil, BUT later he also stands up against his own superior to try to stop the fighting because he can FEEL all the hatred and bloodlust and death around him and he needs to make it stop, even if he dies trying to do that.

And then we see him NOW, just following orders without a second thought and believing the WG are the only hope for the world, and its like... How did we get here? You detest oppression, you detest unnecessary violence and loss of life, and yet here we are.... What happened??

I blame Garp.

No but i mean he is someone that is unfortunately easily led, more susceptible than most to propaganda (tho no one is immune to it) likely as a result of his naturally timid nature and years of abuse, and any military is built upon indoctrination and quite literally brainwashing people until they're fine with following orders without question and killing people without remorse. Tho he still seems to retain his moral foundation, he has definitely been taken in by the propaganda and i think he either needs some sense SMACKED BACK INTO HIM (luffy get in here and slap some liberation into this boy) or he needs to see the marines/nobles/world government do something SO HEINOUSLY OBVIOUSLY EVIL and just fully have no repercussions at all or even be celebrated for it and realize "Oh. Shit. I'm on the wrong side of this war." Himself.

I do think him realizing on his own is far more compelling than him just continuing to follow his admiration of luffy like a lost puppy, i want him to be his OWN PERSON who makes his own decisions based on his own experiences... Thats far more interesting than, again, just getting the Liberation slapped into him (tho that would be funny and 100% reasonable to expect to happen in this fucking story..)

Anyway tldr koby is currently 100% propagandized and while i know he will likely continue down this path for a while, long enough to become an actual potential threat to Luffy's dream, i do think there's still hope for him because we've SEEN him witness the corruption in the system he admired and go "oh shit thats fucked up we have to stop this" before and i think he definitely still has it in him to do that again.

Like we KNOW his MORALS are in the right place... But he's been Taken In by the propaganda and likely garp himself has contributed greatly to that, but that doesn't mean that koby is blameless for the things he's actually DONE (his actions on amazon lilly are fucked up and wrong and i willl never deny that, even if he likely doesnt know the whole story, it's still fucked up especially because as a SWORD member he has the right to ignore orders he doesn't agree with)

But i do think its also important to remember that he started out as a 16 year old, fresh out of... Basically slavery (kidnapped and forced to work with no hope of ever getting freedom unless he RAN, which he WAS planning to do, in the manga) to a pirate crew, who constantly physically and verbally abused him, for two years, then joins the fucking military (another abusive and controlling system where he's expected to just Follow Orders without question Or Else) again, AT 16, it... It's kinda understandable that he would end up where he's at now. Again, he's not blameless for his actions, but i can also understand how he ended up here, especially if he doesn't know everything we know, as the audience.

I imagine garp likely learned his lesson with Dragon and has kept some of the darker things away from his dear pupil, at least for now, but that part is just headcanon of course

We’re forgetting our roots. The ancient texts. The foregone ways of old.

'Where Your Loyalties Lies' is one of those fics that was very cool in my head and never quite felt right on paper....

I wrote it ages ago. Let it sit for a really long time. Edited it ages ago. Let it sit for a really long time again. Just went through another round of edits and I just don't think it's going to get better.

It's one of those fics that I'm like 'is it bad or is it just not what I pictured in my head?'

It's a small AU about Captain picking Cassandra over his kingdom (except not really). Frederic gets the bright idea of using Cassandra as bait to lure Gothel out and well... things don't go as planned.

I'm thinking of posting it next Thursday (not tomorrow) cause it's a one-shot, it's done, I might not like it, but someone might enjoy it and what difference does it make if it lies dead in my drafts versus on ao3?

Anyway, here's an example of the sort of editing I do when a fic doesn't have anywhere to go: