#op 1160

You cannot tell me this isn't Oda being a cheeky little shit. It's a very obvious nod to the readers imo lol.

If you were to go back and look at all the canon couples, you would see that the vast majority of them with any look into their history has the guy saving the girl at some point. It normally serves as the Kickstart to their romance as well!! Sometimes Oda even likes to subvert the trope & have the girl save the guy as well/instead.

Even Chiffon & Bege have a moment where Bege rescues Chiffon as a way to prove to the characters & the audience that their love is true & not just a loveless arranged marriage.

Suffice to say, I can't wait until we get that dramatic moment of Rayleigh coming in for the save & cementing his position as Shakky's "true love".

[ manga spoilers! ]

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It was late at night, long after Shamrock's bedtime when the young Lord snuck out of his chambers and past the servants quietly roaming the halls of the Figarland manor like shadows. He had tried his best to sleep, but one question had been burning so brightly in his mind that he could not find a moment of rest. The only way to soothe his worry, to fill the gap within his heart, was to seek out the only person who'd know the answer.

The boy knocked on the double winged door to his father’s bedroom. He was forbidden from ever entering it without permission, it had been years since he had set a foot inside. When he stood in the dark hallway in complete silence after the echos of the knocks had faded, he turned around to leave.

Only for the voice of his father to call out to him.

"Come in," Saint Garling said and his son pushed the door open, his face suddenly lit up by the candles on his desk. "Did you have a nightmare? Go bother your maid with it."

Shamrock carefully closed the door behind him before he stood in the middle of the lavish master bedroom of the mansion. He nervously played with the hem of his sleeping gown, feeling the pressure of his father's sharp eyes glaring at him with a mixture of disappointment and impatience.

"Speak," Garling commanded and left his desk to wander around the room with his hands on his back, he stopped in front of a mirror so he did not have to look at his son’s face directly.

"Father, do I have a mother?" Shamrock asked.

As soon as the word had left his mouth he regretted them dearly. His father's face twitched in the same cruel way it always did before he lost control and … and … Shamrock's mind blanked. He met his father's eyes through the mirror and saw a deep sadness in them, only for a second, then all was replaced by fury.

"A mother? Why should you care if you have one? Are you perhaps still a babe who must be breastfed? You were born and now you are mine, do not waste my time with these questions," Garling replied to him with a cutting edge to his words.

Every other night Shamrock would have ducked his head and walked out, but something had sparked him to stay and continue.

"I spent every day watching all the other children getting picked up and carried by their mothers, I saw Killingham's mother giving him a kiss … she told him that she loves him!" Shamrock hadn’t noticed it as he spoke freely, but his calm voice had suddenly bursted into screams, loud enough to shatter the mirror if he spoke any higher.

His father approached him with long strides, walking across the room faster than Shamrock could run. He raised his chin and snarled at the blond knight, the man who refused to tell him the truth.

Garling raised his hand and Shamrock instinctively flinched, but to his own shock his father did not bring his palm down on his head to strike him, but to caress his face with a sickening gentleness. A warning, a threat disguised as an act of love. There was no love in father's eyes, they were empty when he looked upon his son.

"Why don’t we go to the slave market tomorrow and you may choose a new servant?" His father suddenly spoke up, his voice unusually cheerful.

"But … father!" Shamrock insisted, but he was ignored.

"What about a fishman? One strong enough to handle you and Cerberus, he will serve you longer than the last one I hope," he continued to muse, even a dry chuckle escaped him.

Shamrock stared at him in disbelief.

"Can we go and buy me a mother instead?" The boy mumbled to himself as he realized that his father wouldn’t answer him.

Garling wouldn’t get the chance to react, because in that very moment a distraught maid appeared at the door and profusely apologized.

"I am deeply sorry, my Lord. Young master Shamrock must have slipped out when I wasn’t looking, I shall take him to bed at once," the lady announced with a bow and father merely nodded.

The maid, though she was just a slave, was strong enough to pull on Shamrock's arm and move him out of his father's bedroom. He protested and complained, but all was futile.

Before the bedroom door fell shut, he caught his father staring at the mirror again almost like he was seeing something in it … someone. His lips were moving in unspoken words. Who was he talking to?

"It's best you stay in your bed, young master. You have much to do tomorrow," the maid lectured him as she dragged the boy back to his chambers.

When Shamrock lay in bed, he was back with no answers but so many more questions than before. Something told him that his father was keeping a dark secret, one so terrible he knew Shamrock couldn’t take it. Nonsense, he wanted the truth! How bad could it be? Not knowing was worse.

The boy buried his face in his pillows and wept, wept for a mother whose touch he didn’t recall and whose voice he could not remember.

That night Garling had made a grave mistake, from then on the seed of doubt he had planted in his son's mind would grow and fester until he'd one day feel Shamrock's blade upon his neck.

"Why? Why did you kill her?"

I've already brought up before the interesting differences between Teach and Rocks. Everyone expected Rocks to be a villain of the past era that Roger and Garp had to team up to defeat, but Rocks isn't evil and is at most a rival of Roger. He's just a guy who doesn't like the government and is otherwise pretty reasonable and personable, not someone overly violent or angry or cruel. He's not going to God Valley because he wants to attack and kill celestial dragons (though that would be entirely valid of him and I'm sure he sees it as a bonus) he's going there to rescue his wife and kid. In a way, he and Dragon are on the same side here, morally and emotionally. And Rocks seems like a pretty loyal guy who values his friends based on his interactions with Harald.

Teach, in comparison, grew up with Whitebeard, possibly joins his crew after the God Valley incident (but if not at least joined him as a kid at some point). Yet despite growing up with the WB pirates who view themselves as family and would have treated him well, he was willing to betray them and kill Thatch for a fruit that he may well very have been given willingly if he had just asked for it. Rocks, in contrast, was pissed, absolutely offended, at the suggestion of getting Harald to join his crew by force because that's his friend damnit and he would never treat his friends that way. He has a hodgepodge crew that consists of several future villains, but he also has several good people on his crew as well. And the fact that he uses Davy Back fights to get his crew members is fascinating to me. He doesn't just destroy other crews and take his pick of the strongest via violence like Kaido does, he challenges other crews to a game that is far less deadly and is something that needs to be consented to since both crew have to agree to the challenge. Teach, conversely, steals his crew members by breaking the worst of the worst out of prison, and arms them with fruit powers that he steals from other people he's killed. When he asks Ace to join him and Ace refuses he defeats Ace by force and hands him in to the government. Something I could never see Rocks doing.

We don't know yet whether Teach will get to meet his father. We don't know yet what he even thinks of his father. His ship is named the Saber of Xebec, but is it because he actually respects his father, or is it more of a case of him rejecting the Davy part of his name? Is it possibly about him trying to do what his father couldn't? Does Rocks fail to save Teach and his mother, and does that cause resentment? Or does Teach look up to his father and is he trying to follow in his father's footsteps but doing it in a misguided, more selfish way? I'm guessing we'll find out some of that stuff soon but I'm very curious about it.

And then there's Luffy and his family. We're used to seeing how similar he is to Garp most of the time. Like Luffy, Garp is bombastic, larger than life, front and center in the conflict, going up against the biggest names directly. Seeing their similarities is expected. But Dragon? Dragon is surprisingly meek, and anxious, and full of doubt. He spends his time lurking in the background, struggling to do the right thing because he doesn't want to allow the slaughter to continue but he also doesn't want to endanger his own platoon and he doesn't know what the right thing to do is. He silently tranquilizes a celestial dragon from behind to save Iva and Kuma's group without them even knowing, and tries to sneak away with Shanks and Shamrock quietly. Instead of inspiring others out in the open like Luffy and Garp tend to do, we see him being inspired by others to push past his doubts and fears to do the right thing in spite of his fear and doubts.

But in many ways he IS a lot like Luffy where it counts. Garp is willing to look the other way when he sees injustice if he has to for the sake of doing his job, but Luffy and Dragon aren't willing to look away from something they know is wrong. Even though it put his crew in danger to act, Luffy couldn't stand back and allow a celestial dragon to hurt Hachi and Camie, and he chose to act willingly in order to protect someone who needed protection despite the danger it brought on himself and his friends. Dragon did the same thing. Even knowing it could put himself and his platoon in danger, he couldn't stand back and let Iva and Kuma be killed. And we know that ultimately Dragon left the marines and formed the revolutionaries to fight against the government and free people from under the WG's thumb. Luffy likewise became a pirate who liberates people from oppression wherever he goes. They both defied Garp's wishes in similar ways. And on top of that both seem to focus a lot on inspiring people to fight and stand up for themselves first and foremost.

It actually makes me soooo curious about why Garp has made the choices he has. Because it's clear that he's not a bad person on a basic level, his problem is that he's complicit. Why would someone as headstrong and recalcitrant as Garp cowtow so thoroughly to the government to the point of allowing his own grandson to be executed? Where does that loyalty come from? We see something similar with Kizaru, they both do small things to help the people they care about when they can get away with it (like Kizaru feeding Luffy to get gear 5 going again for Bonny and Kuma's sake, or Garp letting Luffy go at Water 7 until he's ordered directly to stop him) but when they're in the spotlight they fall into line no matter how reluctantly, no matter how much it hurts them emotionally to do so. Kizaru closes his eyes at one point when shooting at Bonney after attacking Vegapunk, unable to watch it happen, he tries to comfort her when he's about to kill her and Kuma by saying it'll be quick and won't hurt. He even yelled at Akainu afterwards in tears because he was so upset about having to kill Vegapunk and Akainu was actually contrite in response. It's clear how much he didn't want to attack and kill these people he cared about, who he knows are good people that don't deserve to die, yet he still did it. It makes you wonder, would Garp do the same if he was backed into a corner? He certainly has the potential to if he would guard the execution platform during Marineford, even stopping Marco from making it to Ace at a key moment. He let Luffy punch him off the ramp that one time sure, but how much of that is just one of those little things he can get away with? He stood back and didn't interfere when Kizaru was trying to kill Luffy even though it pained him to do so, never tried to stop Ace's execution even though it brought him to tears when he spoke to Ace on the platform. If he was given the executioner's blade and told to cut Ace or Luffy's head off himself in front of the world government, what would he do? I genuinely do not know. I want to believe that'd be his limit and he'd finally choose his family for once, but I don't know. I would have thought he wouldn't allow a lot of things to happen that he did in fact allow, so I can't say for sure that there are things he wouldn't be willing to do if he had no other option aside from denouncing the marines.

And that's part of what fascinates me about him and Kizaru as characters. Because I wanna study them under a microscope sometimes. I wanna know where that loyalty to the government comes from when it's clear that Garp hates the government at least as far as the Celestial Dragons are concerned, and Kizaru doesn't seem particularly fond of it personally either. Ryokugyuu at least seems more like his loyalty to the government is because he actually agrees with its methods and likes how they and Akainu do things, and so his loyalty and willingness to follow orders makes sense.