Ok, you’ve shared what characterizations about Zoro bother you. How about your MVP Sanji?
......sigh. listen, its important to note that i'm just incredibly picky about characterisations & that this is just MY take. obviously i hate the way he's reduced to a pervy punchline, that's the obvious take, but.... i was yapping to a pal about how sanji is often The straw hat to become trauma fodder & its a personal dislike of mine. again, i mostly see this in zosan but even in gen media sometimes. sanji IS traumatised!! obviously!! his canon's full of starvation & abuse & bodily alienation & shame & violence & performative masculinity. BUT. but. at some he stops being a character & becomes a way to stack every possible trauma onto him until he's no longer recognisable. & i get why people project onot him!! i do!! he's a very resonant character for all those themes and i definitely dip into them also, as you'd know lollll. but trauma should reveal character, not replace it & for me his trauma is inchresting bc of HOW it interacts with the rest of him INCLUDING his capacity for joy & silliness & arrogance & vanity & intelligence & pride. if all that gets stripped away then he's just this fragile, broken, helpless, endlessly victimised thing with funky eyebrows. at some point a lot of interpretations feel like they're just asking how much suffering can be poured into this sanji-shaped container, yk?? he CAN be traumatisied but damn, give him somethign else, too!! you're just trauma stacking atp and i'm not rly here for it. ESP around germa bc yeah sure OFC germa is foundational!!! no-one can deny that!!!! his childhood there matters ENORMOUSLY & is a huuuuge part of his character & i love to think about it..... but sometimes ppl write it as if germa's the ONLY text of his life. sure that trauma shaped him but it didn't finish him, not in canon at least. & you might be saying "but james! you love body horror! you love shoving sanji into horror situations!" and that's so true bestie, I DO, but there is a difference TO ME in how they can be explored!! we love dehumanisation in this house and i love horror & i loveeee dark sanji intepretations......... but i hate trauma stacking :( some fics/media do this REALLY well, but....... most do not. to me, at least (AND AGAIN THIS IS JUST MY OPINION!!!)
tbf i do see this mostly in zosan bc ppl seem to looooove mistaking being loved for being fixed, which ???? idk, man. it's just not my vibe!!!
The Grand Line has always had teeth. Beneath those bright seas and laughing sails you'll find haunted hulls and laboratories where flesh learns to scream in new shapes, shadows are torn loose to find new faces, and cursed bodies transform anew. Come with us on a journey to discover things that were never meant to crawl back out of the dark.
This zine does not ask you to look away. It invites you to turn One Piece inside out and press your ear to the writhing underside, creating an anthology of horror in every strange, grotesque and heartbreaking form it can take.
Come aboard with us. The hatch is already open, and something has been waiting below deck for a very long time.
STRAW & BONE is an upcoming One Piece horror project in the form of a digital zine featuring written and drawn works of all kinds. We're currently taking a contributor interest check, so if this piques your creative curiosity, fill out our form here!
For more information, you can visit our carrd, and follow the zine here on tumblr and over on bsky!
listen, y’all know i have the curse of being a sanji girlie, but if i EVER write sanji or zosan in a way that glorifies sanji or Does put him on a pedestal or is detrimental to either of them (or their dynamic, lol) you have my full permission to fly to australia & just fucking eviscerate me. take me OUT.
It would be nice if the fandom stopped characterization Zoro like he's some sort of mindless brute. He can cook. He knows how to play chess. He can strategise. He's emotionally intelligent when it comes to other people. Some of you are just racist and want him to be the "tamed savage" for your special guy. Or just in general.
ok im allowed to rant but what i was saying is that this is fucking RAMPANT in the zosan & zolu fandoms in particular & are a huge part of why i can't stand either!!! separate to that...... you're telling me the man who THRIVES on strategy wouldn't enjoy a lil chess?? zoro IS extremely intelligent, he's just not performative & THAT is a different thing altogether. this issue is, when we talk about cleverness, most of the fandom only seems to recognise one very narrow & very privileged form of intelligence, which seems to be centered around social fluency & monologues & banter & pretty verbal language which just ain't it. in canon zoro is Not stupid, that much is clear to anyone with even a scrap of media literacy. he's shown to be pragmatic and resourceful multiple times and is frequently the one articulating these clear moral decisions when they're under fire. the fact that he doesn't narrate himself constantly leads to ppl mistaking that restraint for emptiness, bc he's not performing vulnerability in the way the fandom finds interesting or familiar. but that doesn't there's nothing there!!! silence isn't absence!! when y'all decide he's too stupid to understand feelings it is THE quickest (and most boring, frankly) way to strip away the exact thing that makes him a really compelling character!!
we see him reduced to this brainless weapon stereotype time and time again, which is just. really?? sure, he takes immense pride in being able to stand between the crew & whatever nonsense they're facing that day, but good goddd im sick of the focus being purely on what he can do For other characters. protect luffy. protect/threaten sanji. absorb damage. it's a profoundly lazy misread of someone whose entire arc is about self mastery and ambition and choosing what kind of strength and intelligence matters. (it ALSO reduces his life before the crew into smithereens which ?? what do you think he was doing for all those years?? he was Clearly taking care of himself just fine but that's a whole other post, i fear)
which circles me back to my main point lol & how zoro's dumbification is obviously worse in ships, ESPECIALLY zosan & zolu. y'all are the worst culprits, truly. w/zosan in particular that view of zoro gets even more feral bc OFC sanji is often portrayed as this, like, ~refined~ intellectual with strong european coding...... and then you've often got zoro there as the animal opposite bc people think that's contrast but it's NOT. that's hierarchy, and that's Not to be fucked with!! sanji gets all this moral complexity & zoro gets "he'd just cut someone lol" RACK OFF WITH THAT SHIT. first off, he's one of The most self controlled guys out there And his violence is usually highly intentional. does he enjoy a silly joke or two? sure! does he enjoy a good fight? absolutely! is he a primitive, sexually aggressive, dirty, dumbed down caricature incapable of care or analytical thinking???? fuck. off. zolu is often just as flattening in that zoro is often reduced to luffy's guard dog or attack command or this, like, mindless worshipper which is ??? way to gut the ethical weight of all that loyalty, man. their canon dynamic is cool and inchresting BC it subverts this. he's not following luffy bc he lacks independent will or thought!!
this all gets worse when we remember how heavily japanese-coded zoro is. and, look, not every single "zoro is stupid" joke is racist in isolation, BUT we cannot refuse to recognise the pattern behind it, when we are faced with this consistent(ly bad) take around zoro's level of intelligence & how this is portrayed, both individually and in his relationships with the crew. it's a tale as old as time, that same old fandom bullshit of letting racialised characters be perfectly weaponised bodies but god forbid they have a shred of complexity. the gags about him drinking or getting lost or having silly jokes Can coexist with having a very serious & deliberate mind!! the contrast Is the point!! he's ridiculous AND he's profound!! stop making the best parts of his personality synonymous with stupidity!! let him weird & funny & dry & stubborn & perceptive & emotionally diverse & kinda campy AND deeply intelligent in ways that don't need resemble sanji's or robin's or luffy's or usopp's to be legible and meaningful!!!!!! it's 2k26!! we can do better!!!
It would be nice if the fandom stopped characterization Zoro like he's some sort of mindless brute. He can cook. He knows how to play chess. He can strategise. He's emotionally intelligent when it comes to other people. Some of you are just racist and want him to be the "tamed savage" for your special guy. Or just in general.
The Grand Line has always had teeth. Beneath those bright seas and laughing sails you'll find haunted hulls and laboratories where flesh learns to scream in new shapes, shadows are torn loose to find new faces, and cursed bodies transform anew. Come with us on a journey to discover things that were never meant to crawl back out of the dark.
This zine does not ask you to look away. It invites you to turn One Piece inside out and press your ear to the writhing underside, creating an anthology of horror in every strange, grotesque and heartbreaking form it can take.
Come aboard with us. The hatch is already open, and something has been waiting below deck for a very long time.
STRAW & BONE is an upcoming One Piece horror project in the form of a digital zine featuring written and drawn works of all kinds. We're currently taking a contributor interest check, so if this piques your creative curiosity, fill out our form here!
For more information, you can visit our carrd, and follow the zine here on tumblr and over on bsky!
i’ve been playing around with this forever & i’ll play with it more one day, but for now i’ve hit The Wall with it and need it out of my sight hehe. shout to sascha & sophie for the vibesssss. will this do this again one day when i’ve learned more!!
someone asked why i didn’t choose wisteria & originally i did!!! i had a diff sketch of him front on with wisteria But thistles just fit him better in my brain….. it’s so zoro it’s almost stupid!!! i’ll probs finish the wisteria sketch one day 💜
The Grand Line has always had teeth. Beneath those bright seas and laughing sails you'll find haunted hulls and laboratories where flesh learns to scream in new shapes, shadows are torn loose to find new faces, and cursed bodies transform anew. Come with us on a journey to discover things that were never meant to crawl back out of the dark.
This zine does not ask you to look away. It invites you to turn One Piece inside out and press your ear to the writhing underside, creating an anthology of horror in every strange, grotesque and heartbreaking form it can take.
Come aboard with us. The hatch is already open, and something has been waiting below deck for a very long time.
STRAW & BONE is an upcoming One Piece horror project in the form of a digital zine featuring written and drawn works of all kinds. We're currently taking a contributor interest check, so if this piques your creative curiosity, fill out our form here!
For more information, you can visit our carrd, and follow the zine here on tumblr and over on bsky!
YOOOOOO y'all know i'm a horror girlie at heart & i've been wanting to run a one piece horror project FOREVER!!!!
we're running an interest check to scope out if there's enough interest to pull this baby off, so pls consider filling out the interest check here!!!!!
your time is appreciated!!!! <3 <3 any questions hit me up or follow the whatever!!!!
Sanji drifts towards water the way smoke drifts when there’s no wind to push it, or the way a tide finds its own path. They dock somewhere warm and sunny and Sanji ends up at the harbour wall like the stone itself’s called him by name. They camp inland and he finds the nearest stream within an hour, following its silver tongue until it widens into a brackish world and the air turns rough with how thick the salt is. They stop for supplies in a town built high above white cliffs and he’ll spend twenty unhurried minutes leaning over a railing to watch the waves hurl themselves against the rock.
It takes Zoro a long time to realise this is a pattern, which is kind of embarrassing considering how much he notices about Sanji all the damn time. He blames the fact that Sanji’s usually doing something when he does it, smoking or cleaning fish or checking nets or complaining in that crisp, affectionate cadence. he’s usually pretending to inspect produce while his eyes slide past the stall and fix on whatever scrap of water he can find between the buildings — just a slice of distant harbour or the glint of a canal or the suggestion of something vast and living.
When Zoro does finally notice, though, he can’t stop coming back to the realisation that Sanji looks at the sea differently to the rest of them. Luffy looks at the ocean like it’s possibility given form and Nami tracks it like it’s a language she’s fluent in. Robin looks at it the way she looks at ruins, fondly and curiously, with the quiet awareness that it’s been here longer than any of them and will outlive them all.
Sanji looks at it like home. He watches the water the way other people watch the faces of the people they love, and sometimes his face goes empty in a way Zoro rarely sees, soft and unarmoured, open in a way that feels almost private. It’s like the ocean reaches inside pf him to switch off every sharp edge he carries for the rest of the world.
One day they're on an island where the whole coast’s made up of pale stones and tidal pools that mirror the sky. They’ve been there for three days already and Zoro finds Sanji sitting at the very end of the dock before breakfast, pants rolled to his calves and feet in the water. The stillness of him is almost startling; he doesn’t even turn when Zoro approaches.
“You planning to drown yourself?”
Sanji snickers, waving his cigarette about. “Morning to you, too, seaweed-head.”
Zoro sits down beside him anyway, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth where the blonde’s concerned. Sanji gives him a sideways look laced with suspicion, the early light catching in his hair to turn it aglow.
Further down the coast, someone’s unloading baskets and the sun hasn’t cleared the sky just yet, but the water reflects the glow in trembling pieces, every small wave lifting and falling against the dock legs with a liquid sigh. A tiny silver fish flashes near Sanji’s ankle and is gone, and the corner of Sanji’s mouth curls. Zoro catches it anyway, putting it in his ribs to keep, and then watches Sanji keep watching the place the fish was, like the water might give it back if he’s patient enough. Finally, he clears his throat. “What’re you looking at?”
The cigarette glows once between Sanji’s fingers, eyes narrowing. “The ocean?”
“No,” Zoro frowns, frustrated by the sheer inadequacy of every damn word that comes to mind. “What’re you looking for?”
Sanji’s expression goes genuinely puzzled, eyebrows drawing together in utter confusion. “What?”
“You’re always staring at it.” He gestures out at the sea, broad and clumsy. “I don’t get it.”
“We… live on a ship, Moss.” Sanji squints at him, the look half a challenge and half curiosity and at least three quarters fond exasperation. “What's to get?”
Zoro scowls. “That’s what I’m asking.”
“The ocean’s beautiful.” It’s apparently all Zoro’s going to get — Sanji just continues staring at him, patient in that spiky way of his.
Zoro huffs. “That’s it?”
“What the fuck else do you want? No, seriously.” His voice goes softer now, mouth twitching at the corner as the almost smile threatens to become real. “You wanted some tragic childhood metaphor?”
Zoro shrugs, the motion small. Maybe he had been expecting a tragic childhood metaphor. It’s hard to know with Sanji, sometimes, how much of him has been forged from joy and how much from grief and how those pieces braid together more often than not. “Something.”
Sanji laughs, warm and surprised and a little bit delighted so Zoro elbows him, hard, and cops an elbow back for his efforts. The contact lingers a fraction longer than necessary, the way it’s done for weeks, now. For another minute they sit there in silence, ankles near the tide and shoulders pressed. Then Sanji sighs, and any faux fight goes out of his posture. “It changes, I guess.”
“Your answer?”
“No, idiot, the ocean.” Sanji looks back at the water again, something open and unguarded in his face that Zoro’s only ever seen when they’re like this. The rising sun continues to move across the surface in shifting beams and a larger wave curls around their feet before sliding away. His voice comes low and almost reverent, thoughtful in a way that makes Zoro go still, the kind that feels like a door left ajar. “You can look at the same patch of sea ten times in one day and it won’t be the same twice. Tide changes. Wind changes. Light changes. Temperature and salinity, even the fish that move through. Plankton’ll bloom somewhere and the whole colour’ll change. A storm you can’t even see gives it a different weight and a different… voice.”
It’s the first time Zoro thinks he might understand, kind of. The way Sanji looks at the water like it’s the only place in the world that’s never once asked him to be anything other than exactly what he is. He presses his hands to his knees. “That’s why you like it?”
“It looks enormous from up here,” Sanji continues, almost absently, like he didn’t even hear. “But then you put your face under it and suddenly there’s this whole other world underneath it, you know? Whole mountains of whatever. Animals living their whole lives without ever knowing we’re up here having stupid arguments.”
Zoro snorts. “Some of them are probably having stupid arguments, too.”
“Obviously,” Sanji smirks without missing a beat. “Crabs are assholes.”
Zoro rolls his eye, but Sanji seems pleased all the same. He smiles around his cigarette, smoke curling up past his cheeks. Zoro wants to waft it away and kiss him, but he hasn’t quite figured out how to ask for that yet, so instead he hums. “Sounds complicated.”
“Maybe. I dunno. I just like that it’s… big. Big enough that nothing about you particularly mattes to it.”
Something in the sentences catches; Zoro feels it rhe way you feel a current change against your ankles. He doesn’t comment, because he’s learned that much by now, and Sanji doesn’t seem to realise he said anything worth commenting on in the first place. He just stretches his legs further into the water, watching the way the surface breaks and reforms around him. “It doesn’t care where you’re from or what your name is or what you're supposed to be. Doesn’t care if you take from it carefully or like a fucking idiot, either. Mostly, it just wants to kill you.”
Zoro barks a laugh, startled and real and a little too loud for the quiet dock. “At least it’s honest about it.”
“It’s honest about a lot of things,” Sanji agrees around a grin, glancing sideways briefly. “More honest than most, at least.”
Zoro can’t afford to look at that too closely right now — not when they’re sitting so close together and not when the sun’s making Sanji look like that, so he just bumps their shoulders together again, hard enough to make the blonde sway. The water keeps moving around their legs all the same, like nothing has change and everything has.
Two days later, Sanji digs his knuckles into Zoro’s shoulder until he jerks awake, heart pounding.
“C’mon,” Sanji grunts, making a beckoning motion and, honestly, Zoro has half a mind to tell him to fuck off and go back to sleep, but.
But.
He follows the other man up on deck, where the sun’s barely cresting the sky, and freezes when Sanji tells him to take his swords off. “No.”
Sanji doesn’t even look up from where he’s shrugging off his jacket. He starts unbuttoning his shirt, so Zoro pins his gaze to the other man’s nose and furiously ignores the way it keeps wanting to slide back down. “You’re not bringing three slabs of steel into the ocean.”
“They’re not slabs.”
“They’re not buoyant either.” Sanji finally looks over, one eyebrow arched in pure disdain. “Drop them or we’re not doing this.”
Zoro doesn’t even know what doing this entails, but he grits his teeth and carefully props his swords against the railing, neck heating at the way Sanji’s smile turns mean and honed. The Sunny rocks below them, the sea below so damn clear Zoro can almost see the rippling patterns far beneath the hull. Further out, the water darkens in soft patches of blue and green and blue again, like someone's spilled three different inks and is letting the current decide where they settle.
Sanji steps up onto the rail like the wood’s been waiting for him, light and balanced, but Zoro’s body goes alert before his brain can catch up, muscles tightening and weight shifting. “What are you doing?”
Sanji looks wholly unimpressed. “Showing you the ocean?”
“I’ve seen the ocean.”
“God, you’re dull.” Sanji rolls his eyes with that same little smirk, before he brightens in a way Zoro doesn’t appreciate being affected by and holds out his hand. “C’mon, Mosshead.”
His face is still sharp and smug and still very Sanji, but there’s also a flicker of nerves or anticipation or — something under the expression. Something almost shy, like he’s just placed a fragile thing between them and is waiting to see if Zoro’ll crush it or take it carefully.
Zoro sighs. “Don’t drop me.”
“No promises.” His fingers close around Zoro’s wrist, steady and sure, grip strong enough that something in Zoro’s chest unclenches. “Other arm around my shoulder, unless you want to fall headfirst into coral and make Chopper cry.”
Zoro mutters something unkind under his breath, but he steps close enough to hook an arm around Sanji’s shoulders, ears heating with the way Sanji always fits against him so easily. He’s all long lines and controlled strength all the damn time; Zoro can feel the set of muscle across his back and the steady expansion of his ribs with every breath, heat radiating through his shirt from Sanji’s bare torso being so close. His hand settles at Sanji’s waist without really meaning to, more for balance than anything, and he doesn’t miss the way the other man inhales sharply.
And then he steps off the rail, and Zoro’s stomach drops. He’s not scared of heights by any means, but adjusting to Skywalk is always a special form of hell. For a second there’s only air as the Sunny falls away behind them in a blur of brown and white, sunlight flashing brilliantly over the water’s skin — and then Sanji kicks and the air cracks and they launch forwards.
Zoro’s fought besides Sanji for years and he knows the blonde is fast, he knows Sanji moves like a line drawn in fire and is intimately familiar with the snap of his kicks and the way his body speaks velocity. This is different, though, because Skywalking over open ocean feels like flying with a lunatic. Sanji runs on nothing, each step punching invisible platforms out of the air with vicious precision and the wind tears at Zoro’s hair and clothes, making him grimace. Sanji laughs one single time, breathless and almost wild, and Zoro feels the sound through his own ribs. He scowls. “You enjoying this?”
“Oh, immensely. Hold your breath.”
“What —”
Sanji drops and the surface hits like a fucking slap. A cold, cold slap. For a split moment Zoro’s whole world is made up of pure shock, water closing over his head in a single seamless embrace as the sound vanishes into a deep, ringing silence. The sunlight breaks apart above him into a shattered silver skin that fractures and fractures. His grip tightens reflexively around Sanji, and Sanji’s hand clams over his in answer as if to say stay.
The water drags them weightless and heavy all at once, cool silk that presses close and then lets go, holding and releasing in the same breath. Bubbles stream past Sanji’s face in beads, catching in the floating strands of his hair like temporary stars. His eyes are open as he twists and kicks once and it’s not like swimming at all. It’s something harder and faster, a compressed burst of motion that throws them forwards beneath the surface with the same elegant violence he uses in the air. Zoro has one moment to think, this is a terrible idea and then the reef opens underneath them and the thought chokes and dies.
It isn’t like looking down at it from a boat. From above, the reef had been colour and shape, pretty and interesting, something the cook could get sentimental about between cigarettes and complaints. Here, it’s a whole fucking world. IT rises from the seafloor in impossible skyscrapers, vast shelves and towers and branching forests of living stone. Coral twists like antlers, like delicate lace, like cupped hands reaching to the sky, like open mouths midsong. There’s purple so deep it borders on black and red that glows where the light touches it, pale yellow and ghost white and living green that seems to pulse with its own quiet breath. Soft things wave in the current with patience: anemones with translucent fingers and seagrass that bends and lifts, like the whole meadow’s inhaling and exhaling with the tide.
Fish move everywhere, daring through routes only they know, either with panic or curiosity, Zoro doesn’t know. A dense cloud of tiny blue fins vanish into the coral branches in a coordinated flicker, only to burst out again on the other side like confetti. Yellow ones hover int he open water, flashing their sides while a striped fish darts close enough to inspect Zoro’s face with one. huge unblinking eye, before disappearing again. Something flat and speckled presses itself into the sand so perfectly that Zoro only sees it when it moves, and a larger shadow passes higher up as another ray glides through.
Sunlight comes down in shafts and nets, broken by the surface above and turning the water into a cathedral of gold. It slides over Sanji’s face, across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose and the open curve of his mouth, highlighting the way he’s staring with helpless amazement. One hand’s still locked around Zoro, but the other lifts to stretch towards a passing cloud of fish — they move around his hand like living light, and his eyes are wide, wide, wide.
There’s no performance in him, now. There’s no flirting or anger or gentleman act layered over terror, no scrap of the armour he wears for the world above. He’s just… Sanji.
Zoro thinks, abruptly, of all the times he's seen the other man at the railing with a cigarette burning forgotten between his fingers, eyes distant. Zoro had thought he was looking outwards, maybe, towards the horizon or escape or whatever grief still lives between his teeth, but maybe he’s been looking down this whole time. He follows the line of Sanji’s finger when he points down, catching a sea turtle moving between bushels of coral, shell patterned with dancing light, and Zoro feels his mouth soften. Sanji’s face lights up in turn, almost painfully beautiful in how delighted he is, before his hand tightens to signal it’s time.
He kicks up, still unreasonably fast, and the surface breaks around them with a crash of brightness and sound, sunlight flooding back as air rushes back into Zoro’s lungs hard and ugly. Sanji comes up laughing, hair plastered dark and shining to his face as water runs in rivulets down his throat.
“Well?” he demands, treading water with ease. “Still just water?”
Zoro wipes said water out of his eye and glares, just for kicks. “It’s still water, Curls. But it’s… it’s not just water.”
Sanji goes quiet for a second, grin turning into something gentle. They float there in the warm chop, knees knocking under the surface, still half holding on. It’s so unbearably sincere that Zoro has to cover it somehow, lest he just reach across the gap and pull the other man in at last. “You could’ve just used the boat.”
Sanji’s head snaps back, water droplets flying from his hair. “I give you a transcendent experience and this is the thanks I get?!”
“You tried to drown me.” The grin comes lazy and unbidden, and Zoro dares another glance down at the surface again. “Reckon you’ve got another five minutes in you?”
Sanji laughs again, the sound carrying across the open ocean like something living. “Oh, I’ve got way longer than that.”
x
bonus round ft spellcheck...... i want those twinks pirates canonised!!!!
i’ve been playing around with this forever & i’ll play with it more one day, but for now i’ve hit The Wall with it and need it out of my sight hehe. shout to sascha & sophie for the vibesssss. will this do this again one day when i’ve learned more!!
i absolutely ADORE your writing and it’s actually what got me into zosan. i have wondered this for a long while but do you think you’d ever write explicit zosan 👀 mayhaps as a birthday present from you to us for your birthday 🤭
this is very sweet (thank you!!) but also the funniest ask i’ve gotten ehehehe. sure why not!! birthday treats for everyone. if you’ve got any specific requests hit me up