I've actually been kind of wanting to talk about Coralaw for a while now and I guess this is a good excuse to do it. Anyone who's been following me since I made this blog probably noticed the transition from "all things Luffy and Zoro" to "all things Corazon and Law" (I still love zolu, for the record, but for months now I've been completely enthralled by the latter dynamic).
Click for ramblings about fandom, found family, shipping, etc.
Obviously, Coralaw is a controversial ship. But I genuinely think that, at least in western fandom, it gets way more hate and vitriol than it deserves. For months I've been occupied with exploring it from the Japanese fandom perspective, where it's actually quite popular (pixiv rankings puts it among the top 5 OP slash ships for all time which is impressive considering the amount of pairings and characters One Piece boasts overall). A statement such as "I think people ship Law and Cora without realizing it's wrong" feels ignorant to me. Japanese fans are well-aware of what kind of dynamic they're shipping, they just also know that it's fiction and don't see the use in attaching moral values to these things the way westerners do (we all know our culture is way more easily skeeved out by sexual topics and it's only getting worse with the rise of puritanical/conservative values here. But that's…not a discussion for today lol).
"Found Family" has also become a big deal here in recent years, which I used to think was great! Found Family is an amazing trope that's especially beloved by queer fans who often have shaky or nonexistent relationships with their own blood-relatives. And One Piece includes brilliant examples of Found Family themes! But more and more I see people taking these relationships and pigeonholing them into nuclear family roles that lack nuance at best and feel downright insulting at worst (no, Robin is not Luffy's mom, for god's sake!)
"Corazon and Law" has this problem, too. And in some ways, I do see them as a type of Found Family, though not really*, and definitely not "father and son". Law had a stable, loving family that was ripped away from him, and has no reason to seek to replace them. Even if he was looking for a new father figure, Doflamingo would have been the one that Law imprinted on, being the one to take him in, educate him, train him, etc. while Corazon kept his distance between occasional beatings. Corazon and Law do bond and develop something powerful during their journey but it's notably never defined. Oda certainly could have had Law see Corazon as a parental figure or perhaps an older brother (more fitting with their abrasive dynamic and the barely-over-a-decade age difference), but he never has Law use familial language like that (neither as a child or as an adult when speaking about Cora). This is likely intentional on Oda's part, because Law never fully understood what he actually was to Corazon, why this man loved and died for him. He spent thirteen years believing that there was some kind of "condition". He was a D. He had to avenge Cora by stopping Doflamingo, fulfilling his dream. Even being seen as a "son" by Cora would have been a condition, of sorts. But as Sengoku says to him, "don't try to attach a meaning to the love you received." Which is what I see all too often from fans. "Why did Cora care? Oh, he must have loved Law like a son!" THAT undermines their canon relationship. Flattens it, cheapens it. Sometimes things are more interesting when you don't try to force them into little beige boxes! And I'd be saying this even if I didn't like Coralaw as a ship because, while I do love Found Family, I've never, ever enjoyed the way people try to link relationships back to literal familial roles, especially assigning people as "parents" when they're in their mid-twenties with no business having a teenage son. What happened to role models and mentors? What happened to being friends? Granted Cora and Law aren't any of these, either. The complexity of their (canon) relationship makes it all but impossible to label and that's why it's so fucking fantastic. That's why Law's feelings are so complicated and intense and why he can place Cora on a pedestal of "savior" because Cora transcends both friend and family while simultaneously never even reaching these levels because he was taken from Law too soon. That's the beautiful tragedy *and I why I don't completely see Cora and Law as Found Family canonically, though they had the potential for it.
But what about lovers? "Lovers" can be a type of Found Family and I do ship these two, right? Well, yes, but that's a different conversation that steps outside the boundary of canon, as shipping inherently does. That's also why arguments like "X character doesn't see Y character as a lover" are so silly to me because yeah, obviously—that's kind of how it goes, especially with gay ships. They're rarely canon, they're fanon. And that's the beauty of transformative works. And tragic, "what if" types of ships are especially good for this, because the AUs and possibilities are truly endless.
"It's wrong to ship these characters, even as adults, because they met when one was a minor!" Okay, but like…why? We're all aware that these characters aren't real, right? We can (and should!) explore literally any premise in fiction, even ones that some people may find uncomfortable. And yeah, I know part of my tastes and acceptance of more nuanced pairings is because I grew up in a more lawless, "anything goes" era of fandom. My shipping interests are usually very tame and vanilla but I do enjoy some weird stuff now and then, including fictional romance that pushes boundaries while also ultimately being a net positive for the people involved. There are darker takes on Coralaw but the thing that I personally like about this ship is that their genuine care for each other could naturally evolve into deep, devoted, HEALING romance, and I've always found it interesting how the portrayal of a loving and healthy relationship between these two grown men is apparently so much more disgusting than like…all the Law abuse and rape fics and artwork that exist? Like this fandom puts Law through literal hell and the ones who ship him in a relationship that would make him actually happy are the ones who get lambasted and blacklisted? Okay…
"It's a grooming ship!" Grooming is a seriously fucked up ACTION that adults take to harm children in real life. No ship is inherently showcasing grooming unless it's specifically written that way. Someone could feasibly write a fic where an adult grooms someone from childhood but that would be clear "dead dove" content and pretty obvious that the adult is being presented as a fucked up person. But people don't think beyond "proship=bad" and ignore anything else, including that most people who like Coralaw ship them as adults, usually in a more canon-compliant scenario where Corazon re-enters Law's life after Dressrosa. That's a whole thirteen years put between them and Law is no longer the teenager Cora once knew. Part of the fun is seeing how he navigates this. If romance stems from the two at that point, I really don't see how it's wrong or even that unusual (especially in the One Piece world where there have been even more questionable canon relationships than coralaw). Like, Law is a 26-year-old man and if we're going to pretend he's a real human with rights then he's WELL within them.
I know Coralaw isn't for everyone. That's 100% fine. But the constant disrespect I see, people saying CL shippers should be violently killed, we should go to hell, etc. is something I find a thousand times more detestable than any One Piece ship. Having artists I admire tell me that they love the ship, too, but could never admit it online because they fear "anti backlash" and seeing the artists who do post their work treated so disrespectfully, is just a sad reminder of how fandom has changed. Yet meanwhile the asian fandom is like the total opposite! So yeah, goes without saying that I've been exploring that side. At least the ship is appreciated over there and people act like adults about it.
I guess that's it for now. If you actually read all that, I genuinely appreciate it. Thanks!














