Eli 🕊️ she/they 💖 too old for leonardo dicaprio 🥰 not spoiler-free for op/sxf‼️ i post nsfw stuff sometimes (tagged as such and/or suggestive) art side blog: elipri
NO I DON'T KEEP UP WITH SPOILERS ANYMORE, PLEASE RESPECT MY BOUNDARIES
✨️Rules for anon asks✨️
1) if you want to send me yet another gotdamn ask about Mishanks vs Shuggy or something equally stupid, you HAVE to pay the Elbaph tax or else I'm not gonna answer you at all and will talk about Loki and/or HaraRocks instead
2) the Elbaph tax can be paid in form of a (cute) headcanon or just by mentioning Loki, because I love talking about my bbygirl princess the most
I think one of the big themes of Elbaph is "there's no such thing as 'wrong' love", but Harald was constantly getting punished for "loving wrongly". Punished by the world and punishing himself....because of love....
1166 gives me so much whiplash bc wtf do u MEAN my brainrot ship got practically canonised in the most doom whump way how tf am I supposed to feel both joy AND dread at the same time????
“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know
My current take on the elders refusing to let Harald marry Ida even years later when Loki was a teenager is that they were genuinely just petty. Perhaps they're the only ones who can officiate weddings, and this was their only way of punishing Harald for changing Elbaph in ways they didn't approve but couldn't prevent.
Sooo, I wanted to explore the narrative around these two.
Mainly, I wanted to explore what caused Loki to fall in love with Lola, and why it may have happened in the first place.
The first time we hear about any of this is through Chiffon.
According to her, Loki fell in love at first sight. We don't know exactly when this happened, but it was at least 6 years ago, since that's how long Loki has been chained up.
When Lola ran away from the proposal however, Big Mom sent Chiffon in her place. But that just ended in disaster, and it further ruined relations between Linlin and Elbaph.
Which tells us that:
1. Since the giants all hate Big Mom, Loki must have actually initiated interaction between their groups with his proposal. She's basically been blacklisted from the island and everyone involved, so there's no way she could have gotten into contact herself.
2. Loki knew Lola well enough to immediately tell that Chiffon wasn't her. Which means he loved her because of her personality and strength of character.
3. This was such a huge slight, that the giants of Elbaph - who all despise Loki because they believe, at this point in time, that he killed his own father, King Harald - were upset at the sheer disrespect shown here.
This upset Big Mom so much that she began to beat Chiffon regularly, and actively wants Lola dead.
This was her last chance to make a connection with Elbaph, and Lola ruined it by running away.
Again, given how much the giants hate Big Mom, there's no reason any of this should have happened unless Loki made the first move.
Now, the real question: What about Lola made him fall in love with her at first sight?
Let's put a pin in that.
Although unnamed, Pudding directly references her on Cacao island.
She was acting the part of the innocent fiance, but I don't actually think her words were empty here.
After she hears that the crew met Lola, Pudding thinks back to her older sister.
This isn't her acting. She has no one to act for here, and no one can read her thoughts.
This is all Pudding thinking about her mom and her sister, and deeply contemplating her own situation.
Not long after this, she attacks Reiju.
If I had to guess why, it's because she knows that, if she's not useful, her own mother won't hesitate to kill and discard her. She knows this because Lola decided to seek out her own freedom - and Pudding saw, first hand, the consequences of those actions.
And so she doubles down on being evil, ensuring her value to Big Mom. Because, from her point of view, there really isn't any other choice.
But i think that, deep down, Pudding wishes she could do the same as her sister.
At the end of the arc, we get to see Pudding's memories, along with her genuine thoughts and feelings during them.
During the scene on the balcony - which happens right after Lola was brought up - we see her thinking about how she's not just a doll for Big Mom.
Even if Lola is hated by their mother, she's free, and determined to choose her path in life - one that isn't controlled by Big Mom.
Something that Pudding wishes she had.
And it's pretty heavily implied that Pudding genuinely loved her sister.
During this scene, she's already sided with Sanji and the Straw Hats, and Chiffon (who was part of an assassination plot to kill their mother) is right there to correct her if lies. But there's no reason to here.
From Chiffon, we learn that she's been offered the chance to become Minister of Chocolate, which would give significant benefits to her.
But she keeps refusing, because she wants the position to be open for Lola, if she ever came back.
It's honestly such a naive, innocent hope - Pudding knows how much Big Mom hates Lola and wants her dead. Even if she came back, there would be no place for her there. It'd be a walking death sentence.
It's something she even warned Lola about before she left.
But that was her beloved sister's position, and Pudding refuses to take it, just on the off chance that Lola would ever return and, somehow, be welcomed back.
If we examine the arc, Pudding doesn't seem to be particularly close to any of her siblings. Chiffon seems like the only one she has any kind of genuine bond with.
Which begs the question: out of all their siblings, why does Pudding like Lola so much?
As soon as Lola is introduced on Thriller Bark, she displays great strength of character.
When an opportunity for a counterattack against Moriah finally appears, she takes it. And after Nightmare Luffy begins his attack against Oars, she immediately orders her crew to go aid the fallen Straw Hats.
She may not be the strongest pirate around, but she's a fantastic captain to her crew and demonstrates great leadership.
And when it looks like dawn is coming and they're going to die, Lola refuses to go to safety and hide, despite her crew begging her to.
She's put her hopes and dreams on the backs of the Straw Hats, and she's going to see it through to the end. As far as she's concerned, she's done hiding - whatever fate the Straw Hats end up with, good or bad, she'll be joining them.
If they die, she dies. It's as simple as that.
Lola demonstrates that she's anything but a coward, and that she's got a deep sense of honor and pride. She has strong convictions, and she will fight and die by what she believes in, consequences be damned.
Which she then reinforces again at the end of the arc.
She's the one who recognized who Kuma was. She knew better than anyone else the kind of danger he presented.
But when he asked them to hand over Luffy - someone she now owes a great debt of gratitude to - she (and her crew) join the rest of the Straw Hats in refusing to comply.
There's no hesitation. Even if she has no hope of stopping Kuma, she won't hand Luffy over.
This moment also shows how deeply she cares about those around her.
Lola loves her family. She believes Linlin still loves her and would never kill her because they're mother and daughter.
At the end of Thriller Bark, after everything they've been through, Lola says that she and Nami are now like sisters. And through her shadow, we've seen how far she's willing to go for people she cares for, even willing to jump in to protect them, as Lola the Zombie did for Nami when Absolam was chasing her.
So we've seen how far Lola will go for someone she views as family.
Pudding is about 10 years younger than Lola.
I can't imagine Lola would take the bullying Pudding went through quietly. Especially since we've seen how Pudding has such a soft spot for her.
And at the very least, Lola is not the type to judge someone the way people were judging Pudding.
I believe her relationship with Pudding ties directly into why Loki fell in love with her.
Because Pudding and Loki share a lot of things in common.
They were treated as freaks and monsters for their unusual eyes.
To the point where they both truly believe that no one will ever love them because of it.
They hate themselves. And it tears them up inside.
Both Linlin and Estrid found them to be creepy and disturbing.
Their was deeply conditional - for Pudding, she would only be loved if she were useful.
And Loki was never loved in the first place because he wasn't born with "normal" eyes - something completely out of his control.
And so both decided to embrace the titles of monster and freak. They lashed out at the world and those who abused them, and only survived day by day.
If they were going to be treated like monsters, they may as well act like them.
However, Pudding had all that shatter the second Sanji called her beautiful.
It was the first time anyone had ever called her that. Anyone who knew about her third eye always called her hideous - and she deserved it. Because she was a monster.
But not to Sanji.
This shifted her perception of reality so much that she immediately broke down crying, completely unable to go through with the assassination plan anymore.
His kindness literally broke her, cutting her to her very core and exposing things she thought she had long since buried.
As a child, Loki couldn't believe that Harald would come back to Elbaph just for him.
The idea of his father caring about him enough to drop everything and return out of concern for his son was such a completely foreign concept, that Loki couldn't even conceptualize it. He could only rationalize the idea as being a coincidence.
Loki only really accepts the idea that Harald loved him in the moments just before killing him. That was 14 years ago.
After that, he sets out to become a pirate.
Then, at some point, he runs into Lola.
Lola, who is extremely non judgemental and earnest - who has a deep sense of honor that would make any Elbaph warrior proud, who shows kindness like it's second nature - never assuming the worst of those around her. And who always stands up for what she believes in, regardless of consequences.
I imagine, if Lola ever saw Loki's eyes, she would have little to no reaction to them. After all, she saw how horrible people treated her sister.
If anything, she might even compliment them.
Which, i imagine, would send the same kind of shock through Loki as Sanji's words did to Pudding.
And if wasn't her reaction to his eyes that led to a proposal, I'm sure something in her actions did.
And I'd be surprised if he didn't admire her free spirit.
There's very little reason for Loki to have not fallen for her.
But as we know, she turned him down and ran away to find her own future, eventually getting married to Gotti.
Unfortunately for Loki - between Rocks and Lola - he has a track record of picking people to love and idolize that won't return the sentiment, and with Harald and Ida, he realized far too late how much they meant to him.
At the start of the arc, his closest relationship is with someone named Shaggy. Maybe things will be different there. But that's something to look forward to in the future.
