Shiwasu Hoshikawa Celebratory Post For Chuuya's Birthday

from the digital sketchbook

OK correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the main 'yin/yang' parallel with Atsushi and Akutagawa is not something like 'this one is bad but secretly has a good side and this one is good but secretly has a bad side'.

I feel like it's more about 'who they are at their core vs who they choose to be'.

At his core Akutagawa is kind and at his core Atsushi is not. But despite this Atsushi tries every day to make the kinder choices and I love him so much for it. He has to work so hard to be good.

He wants to be a bitch SO bad I know he does but he tries his best to help people and be nice (sometimes he fails but that's OK <3)

Atsushi doesn't always WANT to help people, a lot of the time he's selfish and scared, but he does help people anyway. He keeps helping people over and over again. There's still some selfish motivation to it, and his initial motivation for helping people was because the headmaster told him that's all he was worth, but overall he does care about the people he helps and it weighs on him if he fails to save them. And of course, as the series goes on he starts helping people more because he can rather than because he feels like he needs to.

In Akutagawa's case, he's still capable of being kind but his environment led him into being someone who chooses to hurt people. But he's always been a protector at heart. In the start he was bad compared to Atsushi because he was choosing to hurt people and keep the cycle of abuse going. Just like how Atsushi developed in why he saved people, Akutagawa starts to get redeemed when he chooses to not just act on his rage. Not only does he start to spare people, but he speaks more kindly to them (apologising to Higuchi and telling Kyouka he's proud of her). It all culminates into the moment he chooses to help Atsushi and sacrifice himself for him, going back to his core value of being a protector. Even when he's finally revived, he keeps this role in his new position as Aya's Knight.

I kind of see the streaks of white in Akutagawa and the streaks of black in Atsushi not as their 'hidden sides' but as their fundamental selfs. That's who they are at their core, and their main colours (black for Akutagawa and white for Atsushi) are how they're presented to everyone else and how they try to have people see them as.

Bsd is really never beating the allegations, is it?

CHUUYA NAKAHARA + SONGS

-> (insp)

Cover 91 redraw or something

I legit hate drawing zoro, I can never do it right for some reason. Nami is like the exact opposite, shes so easy to draw. She's the best. And Robin with brown eyes, I like it that way

Happy birthday Chuuya! ♡

Obsessed with how buggy kept his apprenticeship with Roger a secret. You'd think a guy who calls himself flashy would be as vocal as possible about his captain, the adventures they had, his connection to an emperor. But no, he never talked about it, and it's not just because he's a coward.

Buggy stayed in the same sea where his captain was killed for over a decade, the weakest sea in the world. He sought a lesser treasure no one cared about, terrorized small towns that couldn't fight back, didn't stay in contact with his former crew. These aren't the actions of a man seeking fame and fortune. If anything, he was actively sweeping himself under the rug of history.

Buggy wasn't biding his time in east blue, he was hiding. And now we know he was hiding because he didn't believe he deserved to chase his real dreams when Shanks existed, who had so much potential. So he stayed stagnant and comfortable in his little corner of the world, pretending he was satisfied, until a rubber boy jolted him out of his complacency, wearing a familiar straw hat...

So something that caught my attention with the Dragon symbolism stuff with the world nobles vs how it’a used in the RA led me down a rabbit hole that I found interesting enough to share.

So the whole thing stems from two instances of dragon claws being depicted in One Piece.

So! First we have the Celestial Dragon Claw, four clawed, used as branding to mark word noble “property”. Then we have the Dragon Claw Fist, three clawed, a fighting style that we can assume was developed by the RA using the Finger Pistol of the Six Powers as a base.

The difference here is the number of claws, which is what lead me down the rabbit hole in the first place.

The consensus is that the claw number of a depicted dragon is actually a class indicator. Bear in mind that these observations stem from Chinese folklore and its place in Imperial Chinese law, so it might not hold water. And as always do correct me if I’m off in any of these points.

The number of claws and the colorations of dragons in Imperial China was an extremely important thing, and misrepresentations of these could quite literally get you and others executed for acts of treason.

Five clawed yellow or gold (or red during the Ming Dynasty) dragons are a symbol of imperial power for the emperor alone to use. It was illegal for nobles and civilians to wear anything depicting a five-clawed yellow or gold dragon in Imperial China. It was considered- as stated above- an act of treason, and offenders (and their families) could be imprisoned or executed for the crime.

Four clawed dragons are a symbol of nobility. Lesser in the hierarchy than the imperial dragon, but still a mark of high status. It was illegal for civilians to wear depictions of four-clawed dragons. Again, a treasonous act punishable by death or imprisonment under Imperial law.

Civilians could depict dragons with three claws. This was allowed.

So, we can make an assumption here that through these observations, the RA use the three clawed dragon as symbolic of the class warfare that is happening in the One Piece world. But there is another thing!!!

There are these things called Dragon Dance Competitions, where a nine-segmented dragon puppet is manipulated by a team of dancers and musicians to have the dragon chase a pearl- a symbol of wisdom- across the allocated space. These are very interesting to watch, and I highly recommend giving one a watch, since there are plenty of them to see on YouTube. Do take care if you are photosensitive or sound sensitive, as they are bright and loud.

A tradition for these competitions and others (such as lion dances and dragon boat races) is called an “eye dotting ceremony”, which happens at the beginning of the competition. An authorized party comes by to paint the pupils on a dragon to symbolically awaken or- relevant to this post- empower it.

The Celestial Dragon’s Claw is a symbol nobility, and likely has high amounts of regulation on how it can and cannot be used, with infractions on those regulations met with imprisonment at best, and cipher pol or a buster call at worst. It would be highly guarded, and was used to brand people to mark them as property, as we know.

The dragon depicted in the introduction to the Dragon Claw Fist that Sabo utilizes? Three claws, no pupils. It is an unempowered civilian dragon- a weakling by dragon standards- and it is beating the shit out of a World Government official.

Class warfare symbolism. Revolutionary symbolism.

I'm not a hater but so much shit is stupid

I just saw someone say that Luffy, Ace, and Sabo aren't brothers because they're not biologically related, and I'm just... speechless. How can someone watch One Piece in its entirety and think this way?? I can't even express myself properly about this because it's just so obvious that the fact that they're not related by blood just... doesn't matter. Like, that's the whole point of their story, to show that even though they have different origins they still love and consider each other as brothers, that your blood doesn't matter, and that the people you choose as your family are your real family. How can you watch them become sworn brothers, their shared childhood, Ace and Luffy's grief when they are told that Sabo is dead, Luffy and Sabo's pain when Ace dies, their reunion, and how much effort they make to inherit Ace's will and honor him, and still believe that they are not brothers?? Found family is literally one of the biggest themes of One Piece??? I just can't understand how someone managed to simply not understand the most important part, not only of the story of these three, but of the story of One Piece as a whole.