#mjrtaurus

Maybe it'll teach him to respect closed doors. Probably not though.

HI COOL i don't know how much i can elaborate on it because it's just. how I read canon? like--okay. Next paragraph, spoilers for God Valley flashback in current manga.

One Piece is a story about legacy. Family, chosen, deferred. We know that the 'will of D' in particular is a legacy passed down through family lines. Dragon, as he's first named to us, is only 'Dragon the Revolutionary.' The earliest we see him, he's at God Valley, and he's there because he's a Marine and the son of a Marine--he had to be following after Garp. when we see him leaves, he tells Garp to his face, "I hate you," and that's also him hating and leaving and denouncing and rejecting the Marines as a whole. There is no way to tell this story that gets Monkey D. Dragon away from the man and circumstances that made him.

But Dragon, just Dragon, The Revolutionary--he doesn't have a family who can be hurt or disappointed or targeted on his behalf. No father, no son. no Will except what he makes. the Revolutionary Army is founded on dreams, not just Dragon's but Ivankov's, and everyone else who has ever joined dreaming of a better world and determined to make it happen. and we see at Marineford that Dragon's identity is NOT common knowledge. he's made himself the Most Wanted Man In The World, synonymous with the Revolutionary Army itself.

we know he gives up Luffy, and we know--we do KNOW this, we have explicit and repeated cues about it no matter how many 'oh he's a deadbeat' "jokes" fandom likes to make!!!--that it was an act of love, that he loves Luffy and wants to see him thrive, that he's PROUD of him for becoming a pirate and pursuing his dreams in a way i don't think Luffy could have if he was raised among the RA. Dragon has never once put the weight or consequences of having him for a father on Luffy's shoulders. he's cut himself off from that legacy, for good and ill, in both directions. and everything we see about him, from saving Sabo to paying tribute to Ohara to saving Luffy in Loguetown to trying to run out of God Valley with babies in his hands--he's a man who does things on purpose. He makes decisions and sticks to them.

And with Rigo Sanchez's delivery in OPLA, all I can see and think about is a man who KNOWS he IS the Most Wanted Man In The World, the Leader of the Revolutionary Army, whose every single word and action reflects back on his cause and is therefore chosen with the weight of that in mind. Someone who has to live for his cause because he has no other life, by his own choice. We're starting to see in current-day canon how the legend of The Flame Emperor is growing up around Sabo--I think the same thing happened to Dragon, once.

AND YET DESPITE ALL OF THAT. Despite seeing him tell Kuma that Luffy is his greatest vulnerability, that being too connected to his son could destroy him (destroy that separation, destroy that denial of personhood, destroy the fact that he isn't just someone who came from nowhere and lives for nothing but the Revolutionary Army, force him to be a person and reckon with his grief and past and future)--we see him come to Loguetown. not for the RA. to see his son set out to sea.

Because it's also the first time we see him, the other thing I realized from OPLA and Sanchez's performance is that the only time we ever see Dragon smile in person...

i talked about it a little here and dragon is also portrayed as half-shandian in my fic here! so yeah, i really like the theory.

the fact that dragon's back is suspiciously obscured in the god valley flashback (first by a seemingly purpose-less backpack and then by a cloak) and that he's already wearing the pattern he later gets as a tattoo at such a young age (which implies to me that it may be cultural or related to his mother) really made me go from "cool theory but i doubt it's canon" to "oh yeah that might actually be a thing."

i also think it would be a fun narrative choice: it would help connect skypiea more to the wider story and--as a person of indigenous (shawnee/saawanooki) heritage myself--i think it would be very meaningful for the revolutionary leader in the series to be linked to a group that is clearly an indigenous analogue, given how indigenous peoples have always been at the forefront of activism in the real world.

Your forgetting his second reaction

The man gets so caught up in the inaccuracies of bad porn he completely forgets that someone and him the object of their sexual desire. X3

Some of the highlights

- “he licked my wounds.. That is not sanitary!”

- “didn’t this say that y/n was like 5.4? Prep with two fingers is not enough..”

- “ohh so that’s what oral fixation is… surprisingly accurate.”

- “again something that would not fit in that small of a hole.”

- “I can’t look someone who’s 5.4 in the eyes without kneeling.”

- “this y/n really sucks at their job”

- “why am i always shirtless?”

- “what do I wax daily? No way my chest is hairless.”

Awww!!! ♥♥

Bonus gremlin children:

*gigglesnort*

Here's the first part of the Stinky Child AU

So many things are happening after Marineford, in one way or another Dragon's entire family is hurting and they're about to enter a new era. But he would still take some time to sit with Kite - first in silence (because a part of him worries that the first words out of his mouth would be "I could have told you if you had just asked" or "why?" so he'd better not even try) and if Kite has no words to talk about his feelings, maybe eventually he'd tell him why he quit.

I don't know if Dragon ever told anyone what he experienced on God Valley, why he is still tense around his father sometimes, how angry at the world he was for a long, long time. Most of all, how he understands Kite's grief with every fiber of his being.

It might help both of them move forward. ;w;

(Have I ever posted this sketch? I've had it lying around forever because I can't get the pose right. But thematically it fits: