Sanji = Tenryuubito Theory?
Okay that’s unfair. I’m sure they mean well and they tried very hard to uh think it through? Maybe... But honest to god, I have so many fucking issues with it, from start to finish. 1) they make some huge leaps in logic that simply go against canon. 2) They make some huge leaps in logic that go against REALITY. 3) Skipping over the One Piece shit, IT HONEST TO GOD REMINDS ME SO STRONGLY OF #GAMERGATE THAT YOU ARE GOING TO GET A TL;DR IN THAT INSTEAD. Sorry. I mean that truly. Whether you’re pro-#GamerGate, Anti-#GamerGate, or completely and totally fucking neutral, this is now #GamerGate & Sanji Theory. \:|/ BUT THEN I will tag team & pass it off to someone who is FAR better qualified (mentally and emotionally, and even experience-wise) to analyze from a less angry “are you fucking kidding me, this is just shit” position. Aka, canon. And you know, smarter. She analyzes One Piece period, so she’s definitely way more qualified in every single way. @tresdem
Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT A PERSONAL ATTACK ON ANYONE. I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE THEORIES PRESENTED, YES, BUT THIS IS MY PROBLEM, NOT THEIRS. So if you support their theory, please don’t take it personally, it’s MY problem. I’ll try to explain WHY I have this problem, but don’t mistake it for a personal attack. I do not at all mean it that way, and I do fear coming across too aggressively because of my tone and nature. Sorry.
Let’s start with the most glaring assumption.
That Sanji’s (mis)treatment of women is evidence of tenryuubito or noble lineage. Let’s just... THAT IS A BIG THING AND I WAS NOT KIDDING ABOUT HOW MUCH THIS SPEAKS TO ME OF #GAMERGATE SO ONE THING AT A TIME.
“In the game of Patriarchy, it is important to remember, that women are not the opposing team, they are the ball.” -- It’s time for a new game! Called, “Guess the quote!” Do you think it was said by: Anita Sarkeesian, or her producer, Jonathan McIntosh? TIME’S UP! It was a trick question! It doesn’t matter! In the game of feminism, women are a mouthpiece for ideological conquest of the masses in a quest for financial dominance!
In the game of Davy Back, the hardest one to get into a goal post is usually the ball. Among the Whitebeard Pirates I like to assume they make Jozu or Namur the ball. Because either way, you try to put one of them anywhere and you’re going to be hurt.
-- But, uh, does this mean is Sanji a woman now? Or just more uke than Zoro? Or maybe more easily conned that it “looks good on you” to impress Nami. If you literally can’t see the problematic consequences of having to ask yourself that question, you PROBABLY shouldn’t be trying to have this discussion.
Okay don’t get me wrong, there’s some MASSIVELY fucked up shit that would take me A BOOK to get through to explain all the facets of Sanji’s sexism and how it presents, where it comes from (possibly), and what it says contextually both about the world of One Piece and Oda’s point of views and okama, and holy fucking SHIT, if you know me well, I scratch this superficially a LOT.
I grew up in a pretty matriarchal household (Iroquois residue culturally) I have some mental scars that are just fucking EVERYWHERE all over my psyche on this. I cannot, LITERALLY cannot talk about it without those things getting at least a LITTLE in the way of me trying to explain it, because they ARE ALWAYS THERE. THEY AFFECT ME STILL. They are part of why I had to deal with what it means to be trans* and trying to understand gender, and sexuality and so many fucking things, that literally, I am not at all exaggerating, it would take me an entire book to try to explain.
So yes, is Sanji sexist? Of course he is. First of all, have you seen the way he treats men? Secondly, putting women on a pedestal is not equality. But this brings us into what the fuck is modern feminism trying to achieve anymore? And the frank truth is, modern feminism doesn’t know. Because there are too many god damn factions, and they all have different objectives, different means to their ends, and some of them are, and I mean this as bluntly and harshly as possible because they threatened my life for daring to disagree with them and said I should be raped and dismembered (lovely) -- completely fucking insane.
However, the idea that anyone’s sexism is representative of others is simply not true. I will concede of course there are FACTIONS of this extreme sexism within feminism but this is why I cheerfully LOVE and post #NotAllFeminists with just EVERYTHING. Good feminism, bad feminism. Because idiots hate it. Because they want to be able to lump all of everything, all of one demographic together and threat them as if they are the same. This is batshit fucking insanity. This is the fucking problem Sanji fucking has. Women aren’t all the same just because they’re women, and frankly on the important and basic things? They’re not that different from men either. Men aren’t all the same either, and okama aren’t, and god, I just... fucking ADORE Oda for trying to address that with a character. I adore it to itty bitty pieces.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore James Bond movies (not the reboot, fuck the reboot, sorry to the fans, just not my cup of tea, I grew up on Dr. No and For Your Eyes Only) and I LOVE Ian Flemmings’ books and I would literally not be the same person I am right now without those having influenced me from such a young age forward (much to my parents’ chagrin). But when people try to say women are James Bond’s “weakness” I stare. Women are NOT his weakness. Compulsive heterosexual lust addiction MAYBE, but even THEN, he uses his head and intentions enough to help women so that they’ll RARELY truly benefit by betraying him. How the fuck is that a weakness? It’s like when people try to say Odysseus is a good leader. FUCK NO HE IS A SHIT LEADER. SUN TZU WOULD HAVE BITCH SLAPPED HIM. SO WOULD HAVE ALEXANDER THE GREAT. HE WAS A SHIT LEADER. THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT. Whatever. -- However; women are DEFINITELY Sanji’s weakness.
Sanji gains NOTHING from this weakness. He endangers himself, his nakama, EVEN OTHER WOMEN. He does not enjoy it. He does not want it, he KNOWS it is a weakness, but it is still part of who he is such that it would take substantial overhaul that even two years on an island of okama could not begin to fix, and indeed, only exacerbated.
To suggest that this comes from an individual childhood trauma or worse; a bloodline, is to underestimate the other themes Oda has presented in One Piece so far.
The idea of NOT holding children accountable for the actions/wrongs of their parents goes all the way back to fucking Usopp & Yassopp. You had Usopp who, despite his fierce pride for his pirate father, still had to deal with a lot of prejudice, a LOT of disadvantages, and a lot of neglect and learning to take care of himself from an early age because Yassopp took off. It’s a CONSTANT. HUGE. FUCKING. THEME.
You cannot. CANNOT!!! Broach the subject of Fishman, tenryuubito, slavery, and racism without this. Period.
So we come back to why CC gets extremely emotionally invested.
Native American Iroquois & Huron, yeah?
So the idea that you don’t hold children responsible for shit their parents did? IS A VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY FUCKING IMPORTANT IDEA IN BOTH TRIBES. I can’t speak for other tribes, I won’t even speak for all descendants of the tribes, because I know in my case(s) (pluralized because of the dual situations) the Catholic influence ALSO helped a lot. But I still can’t fucking emphasize it enough because even with all my Native American mentors, Algonquain, Iroquois, Mohican, you fucking NAME IT, ALL OF THEM, emphasized that point to me. IT WAS A HUGE DEAL TO THEM. THEY IMPRESSED IT UPON ME FROM THE TIME I WAS TOO YOUNG TO UNDERSTAND AND TOOK IT FOR GRANTED THAT THIS WAS HOW THE WORLD WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. THIS IS ONE OF A BILLION FUCKING REASONS I HAVE TO TAKE HUGE STEPS BACK TO BREATHE, AND BE CALM BEFORE DISCUSSING PRIVILEGE. IT. IS. A. BIG. DAMN. DEAL. Fuck, even my first lifeguard instructor who was 1/8th Iroquois explained this to me. I mean to me, this is just, THIS IS. THIS IS HOW IT IS.
Okay, so if you’ve heard of the Native American theme/motto, “We don’t inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children,” it doesn’t just mean land and environment. It means, EVERYTHING. It means, take care of what you do because your actions are going to have an effect on a future beyond you, and you want to leave the world a better place so that the future can also do better and keep moving forward.
It’s important, especially since again, can’t emphasize this enough, I was lorekeeper. My Mom’s a historian. I know a lot of the atrocities that happened, yeah, but I also know a lot of the batshit insane shit that went down. My ancestors were cannibals, serial killers, torturers, genocidal, fuck-ups. They had their good things and bad things, and it’s important as an adult to KNOW about both so I can say, “Yes that WAS bad, but I am the future, and I will do better, thank you for getting me here, I will learn from the past.” I will not apologize for something I never took part in. How can I?
My fiance’s philosophy teacher told him there really is no such thing as karma, and I said, “Sorry, but they’re wrong. I see it every fucking day. It’s slow sometimes, and humans seek instant gratification a lot, but karma isn’t instant, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.” Does this mean my ancestors deserved the bad things that happened? No. It means that just as an axe is slowly dulled with each tree it cuts from all the sap, so too goes human life. Humans are intricate. We help each other. We try to remove sap, we try to interfere, we try to help, we change things, but still all things have an effect, good or bad, slow or instant.
So the idea of Sanji being sexist because of his blood, ABSOLUTELY infuriates me.
Sexism isn’t... innate. It’s taught. It’s not learned through one traumatic experience either. It’s reinforced constantly. And usually in an environment that becomes more extremist and isolated, without enough external integration.
Like tumblr. And most of Anti-#GamerGate or a lot of feminist circles.
Look, I could go into explaining WHY I think Sanji grew up to put women on such a pedestal (because they were so rare, only seen when on dates with someone else, and therefore he learned most of his behavior of how to treat them from men who were trying to woo them, and women wishing to be wooed, rather than women just there as friends with guy friends -- because you’re not going to travel to a floating ex-pirate restaurant with just a friend for not a special occasion) and I could go even MORE in depths to explain that Sanji ONLY expresses parts of his “true” self with men, and parts of his true self with women, because he learned this to protect himself -- which happens a lot, and AGAIN, IT WOULD TAKE ME A WHOLE FUCKING BOOK to explain all of it from start to finish + why the okama whom try to get Sanji to express his true self, but force him to NOT express his true self, therefore make him utterly and totally have a god damn meltdown. I could explain what it means to have yin and yang as male and feminine sides, and whether yang really is masculine, or whether it was just perceived at the time as masculine, and what the fuck how does Taoism apply to Confuscianism and neo-Confuscianism and One Piece, and modern 2000s, anyway?
But it would take me a long time, and I’m not sure it would be useful enough except to explain where I personally, as someone who read too god damn many books, am coming from in my own understanding of this.
So let us go back to bloodlines. Usopp knows his, but has entanglements because of it. Luffy didn’t give a fuck about his, and is wanted by the government (extra) as a threat, and is sometimes protected because of it without knowing, so it all kind of evens out, but Luffy is Luffy, and gives no god damn fucks. Chopper is a reindeer. Zoro I’m still hoping actually IS a prince of a now defunct/destroyed kingdom just so Sanji has a fit and goes into this mode:
Point is, blood isn’t NEARLY as important as the choices you make, and I refer you most obviously to Nami, Nojiko, Bellemere, Chopper, Kureha, Hiliruk, Luffy, Sabo, Ace, Franky (who chose to not even be human and make himself a cyborg, NEED I EXPLAIN?!), Brook, Laboon, ALL OF THE FREAKING WHITEBEARD PIRATES AND ALLIES, THE ENTIRETY OF THE FISHMAN ISLAND ARC, and this song JUST IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T GOTTEN IT YET:
Pirates HISTORICALLY were all about throwing off society’s labels, living free from those restrictions, and being themselves. Attempting to restrict them again with labels, automatically leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Whether it’s people trying to baby Chopper too much (he’s 17, he might be the “baby” of the crew, but he’s fucking 17 now, that’s how old Luffy was when they started, for fuck’s sake...) or attempting to cookie-cutter anyone to fit a predesignated idea of what a role is. Don’t try so hard to make them into something, let them be who they are, and you’ll find that’s more magnificent than anything you could have ever dreamed of.
The idea of Sanji’s blood 1) playing a factor in his behavior 2) making him RESPONSIBLE for past behavior of OTHERS sends me into a fucking #GamerGate “THAT IS NOT FUCKING ETHICAL” tizzy. and 3) Kind of makes me taste blood because jfc, that’s so much not what One Piece is about.
Let’s go back to #GamerGate though.
When you attempt to force other people into a stereotype of your predisposition, you do both them and yourself a disservice in not allowing them to be themselves and not allowing YOU to get to see who they really are.
As much as I am SO GOD DAMN INTROVERTED I wanted to run away to a cave and be a freaking hermit with a bunch of books and just a campfire to read by? I ACTUALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE PEOPLE. I FIND EVERYONE I MEET TRULY GENUINELY THOROUGHLY 2000% FUCKING FASCINATING AND AWESOME. This is my favorite part of Doctor Who, and something I LOVE about One Piece. Both Oda and Doctor Who GET THAT. There is NO SUCH THING as a boring person. There CANNOT BE. There can be shy people. There are people who think they are not as interesting because they cannot see their place in the magnificence in the fabric around them, so they think they do not shine as brightly, but they do. They all shine. There is no one who is boring, and they are best, and their brightest when they are a crazy rainbow star -- or at least just being themselves. (Luffy-bro and I are a crazy rainbow star and unafraid to say so!)
I don’t like anti-#GamerGate. Duh. I mean even beyond the fact that they treat me worse than shit. If they flat out ignored me we’d still have ideological differences at best. The fact that they help cover up an abuser’s behavior and help her to abuse her ex extra infuriates me, but whatever. I like to pretend some of them are not monsters, just misled. HOWEVER: one of the things I really just can’t stand is that they are constantly unable to see people as they truly are, because they’re too busy trying to force everyone into a cardboard cutout they have in mind for them.
I know there are directors like this. I luckily have not had personal experience with those directors so I couldn’t tell you, I just know they exist. I don’t think we’d get along well. My favorite part of directing is giving a loose framework, maybe a wire spine the actor can build and sculpt around and some advice if they need/want it, and harmonizing all the pieces together and getting the shit to be on point. I would never. EVER, want to try to force my actors to fit a cookiecutter of what I have in mind. Because I KNOW it would be bad. I KNOW it would be WORSE. I KNOW they can do better if I take that cookiecutter away and say “share with me YOUR vision.”
When casting for Hades in Disney’s Hercules, they originally were looking for someone like Jeremy Irons who played Scar in Lion King. Slow, diabolical, steady, even. They were THOROUGHLY FUCKING UNPREPARED for James Woods’ Billy Crystal style fast talking, hip, jive, fly, snarky, reading of lines, and SASSY mofo style. They weren’t sure. It was so NOT what they were thinking. They had him come back. It grew on them. They went with it. Hades is now one of the most beloved Disney villains out there, and largely credited with James Woods’ acting choices. THAT is the kind of shit I’m talking about. I NEVER want to miss out on glorious opportunities like that because I was too busy looking for silver that I missed a diamond.
It’s really easy to find morally reprehensible behavior. Just be a judgmental bitch. I mean for fuck’s sake. I’m Catholic. I live in MA. Do you KNOW how far back Puritanism GOES here? Wooooooooo.... Boston banned PINOCCHIO when it was first released -- and I don’t even disagree with that! THAT IS A FUCKING TERRIFYING MOVIE. And I’m 28 and all about the free speech and Crocus’ gag inside of Laboon is STILL one of my all time favorite scenes ever.
I can go a lot into this C.S. Lewis quote (hell I wrote my thesis on C.S. Lewis)
but the point is, if you just want to find the bad in people, take a look, it’s there. But you’ve done nothing. People know it’s there. Life is about struggling and learning what to do with those imperfections, those wrongs, those faults, those flaws, those fucked up shit we learned young and throughout 30 years, or even longer, and whether to fix it, keep moving forward, help others not be fucked up like us, or WHAT. Make sense of it.
I’m Catholic, so again, please forgive this, but it’s important to me. It’s WHY the “first you must remove the block from your own eye before trying to remove the speck from your brother’s” speaks so damn true to me. I don’t want anyone else trying to fix me. I can barely fix me, but I’m trying. Fix yourselves if it’s so damn important to you.
And that comes back around full circle through #GamerGate, feminism, SJW concepts, Native American, the way I was brought up, and One Piece, for privilege.
Start from just pure fucking SCRATCH.
Are you honest to god going to try to tell me with a straight face that Sanji grew up more privileged than the rest of the Straw Hats somehow?
You can all go fuck yourselves if you say “yes.”
The only one I can REMOTELY take into consideration seriously would be Chopper, and that is SUCH A HEADACHE to try to compare because he’s a fucking reindeer. Are we also going to factor in his reindeer pack? How about his life compared to other reindeer? His ostracization from other reindeer? What about Brook’s fifty year separation from EVERYTHING?!
It’s not about those things! I AM SJW! I STILL AM! But privilege is not a fucking contest to see who is the most oppressed!?! You’re doing it all wrong!
We all go through individual struggles. Some of us have MOST of our options completely cut off from us through circumstances out of our control (Doflamingo, Corazon, Law, all of the Straw Hats, Ace, Sabo, etc.) and that SUCKS. And we can REALLY end up resenting it. Some of us obsess over it, and instead of moving forward with limited options, focus on the ones we can’t have (Doflamingo -- although his “family” reinforced that) and that’s not healthy!
The most important thing about how he handled always losing to Kuina wasn’t that he had a grudge because she’s a girl, he was PISSED OFF that she was basically planning to say that if/when Zoro finally defeated her it wasn’t because Zoro spent 18 hours a day TRAINING LIKE AN INSANE PSYCHOTIC DEMON CHILD, but because she was a girl so she innately couldn’t be as strong because biology. That’s. WRONG. Morally. Realistically. It’s unfair! It was saying to Zoro, “Nothing you do is good enough either, you’ll only win through chromosomes, not hard work.” And when Kuina died, she died in a REALLY SUDDEN AND FUCKED UP AND WTF WAY!!!! But he moved forward. The best he could think of. To be the best for BOTH OF THEM.
I used to bench 320 when I was in high school. I want you to think about that because I was a tiny 5′4″ tall busty girl with all muscles and boobs but 120 pounds myself, pressing nearly 3 times my own weight. Guys COULD HAVE benched more and ABOUT that IF they worked out as much as I did. But I was Color Guard captain and I wanted to be in row crew and I did hiking and I had plans for applying Tech crew work to Habitat for Humanity (16 yo, I got CFIDS, everything imploded) so I worked out 2-4 hours a day and my Dad was an ex-army Lt. who after getting CFIDS himself sort of did encourage my workout regime a little extra to live vicariously (we have a mutually fucked fucked up relationship \o/) so I used to LAUGH when guys when talk about being innately stronger. Innate means JACK SHIT IF YOU DO NOT USE IT. And in our modern society, there is NOT a lot of reason TO work out and bench that much. I had MY reasons, but most guys my age were could bench about 100 raw. I could do pushups INFINITELY until my boobs unbalanced me lol. And a lot of my female friends were athletes too. Most were on taller size, so they had to protein crunch CONSTANTLY and carry around string cheese and slim jims. To this day, I STILL have string cheese as my instant protein go-to.
Innate doesn’t mean as much as much as what you do with it.
People say all the time that “Anyone can draw!” but I REALLY can’t. I mean I cannot even SEE lines some days, so no, I cannot draw. But I’ve seen a lot of people with innate talent for art not use it because of other factors that trouble them, and a lot of people without that innate talent still overcome it through love and practice alone. And that’s how I was with Color Guard. I am SHIT at color guard to be perfectly honest. It takes me at LEAST twice as long to learn even the most BASIC things. I do not have the right coordination for it. My brain doesn’t like it. It takes me a LOT of work. But that’s what I love about it. It takes me extra work, but because I put in that extra effort, I can end up extra good at it. There are few sports still like that.
#GamerGate can’t be Cookie-cutted anymore than Sanji can. Anymore than ANYONE in One Piece can. Those who wish to force stereotypes and blanket one-size-fits-all thinking need to step back and undo such ideas, for their own god damn good.
I’m an SJW, woman, busty chick with Native American cultural background, unschooled for 2 years of High school (when I got CFIDS), I was abused by a woman, I was a Zoe Quinn fan, I’ve been a gamer for 28 years, I’m not in STEM, but my Dad’s a scientist, and the reason I used to call myself a feminist -- my Dad’s mentor, his chemistry professor, IS a woman in the STEM field who really WAS paid less than her male counterparts because she’s a woman. I know facts. I wasn’t unschooled like Jonathan McIntosh. I was unschooled like an information addict being told “Figure it all out now, your whole life is in your hands from here on out,” and I laughed and said, “It always was.”
The more you try to push me into anything, the more I’ll break out, break free, and fly places you didn’t even realize existed.
Sanji is not my favorite Straw Hat, but I do love him, and I wish people didn’t misrepresent and misunderstand him so intensely as they seem to.
At his heart, Sanji is just a giant giant fucking dreamer.
Look at that sweetheart. That is a kid who knows he’s going to DisneyWorld AND heaven, and it’s going to be both. And he cannot wait. He is so happy.
Why is Sanji Mr. Prince? (Other than Vivi being a Princess, and Sanji’s determination to protect her)
-- Please note the stupid ass frog that is meant to represent Sanji IN HIS OWN GOD DAMN FANTASY. Yes. He considers himself a frog prince. Who must be kissed by a fair maiden to stop being such a cuck. \:|/ Sanji ilu, but you’re a god damn loser, at least you know it.
Even knowing NORLAND’S story is less about Sanji being North Blue royalty (it was taught to peasants thanks) and more about Sanji being fucking obsessed with fairy tales and flights of fantasy. And that’s just, a huge part of his characterization you REALLY shouldn’t overlook.
He’s... he’s basically the Anti-GG white knights of One Piece. Complete with Zoro representing the much annoyed fed-up egalitarians pointing out the bullshit of feminists who don’t mean equality at all, and Nami being a vibrantly-colored haired lady that Sanji wishes to woo and simultaneously respects too fucking much to actually get anywhere. And he’s proud of it. Because he’s a feminist.
So I have called him sexist, but mostly in the classic “Women get special rights and men SUCK AND GET SCRAPS YOU CAN ALL GO DO THE DISH AND STFU AND I WILL KICK YOU ALL IN THE HEAD” of which we see.............. non-fucking-stop in Anti-#GamerGate, but is Sanji racist to fishmen?
I’ve explained I think... 5-8 times now on my tumblr WTF racism is and the etymology of it, and how it needs to use CLASSISM, and therefore be a form of systemic oppression, not just prejudice, but in using slurs, you are actually engaging in a form of classist oppression that was designed &/or used specifically to keep races from progressing, ergo, is certainly a huge part of racism, ETC.
So I really don’t want to get into it from scratch again. Search my tumblr if you need to.
But even aside from the fact that Sanji is chill as fuck with ALL THE OTHER FISHMAN THAN JINBE, EVEN INCLUDING HACCHI WHO SPECIFICALLY FOUGHT ZORO AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HIS REASONS FOR DYING OF NOSEBLEED WERE YOU KNOW, SEXY SEXY MERMAID BOOBS AFTER BOOBIE DEPRIVATION (It’s a real thing. No I’m serious. Seriously.) -- The problem isn’t that he has a grudge against all fishmen. He HAD a grudge against JINBEI for OPENLY SENDING ARLONG DIRECTLY TO NAMI’S HOME ON JINBEI’S ORDERS RATHER THAN 1) ARREST AND DEAL WITH ARLONG HIMSELF 2) LET ARLONG STICK AROUND FISHMAN ISLAND AND DEAL WITH PROBLEMS THERE 3) DEAL WITH MARINE ISSUES THAT MIGHT HAPPEN. Sanji has a problem with Jinbei openly trying to take responsibility for KILLING BELLEMERE OVER MONEY because 1) if Jinbei HAD capacity to stop it and didn’t, that’s fucked up 2) if he didn’t realize, he shouldn’t have sent him there (true) 3) He shouldn’t be apologizing for shit he can’t control.
Well no, I don’t think Anti-GG, nor the inventor of this theory CAN. But that is.... part of my many many many many problems with this.
THAT, not Sanji, not even Jinbei.
The assumption that an individual’s actions reflect a wider current of cultural commentary and say something about their whole race. THAT IS THE MOST RACIST THING I CAN CONCEIVE OF.
Now that was satire. Yet you have idiots LITERALLY SAYING THIS SHIT WITHOUT ANY HINT OF SELF-AWARENESS OR REALIZATION THAT THEY ARE THE EXACT OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE SAME HORSESHOE.
Sanji’s sexism doesn’t say ANYTHING about his race, because we don’t even KNOW what his race is. To try to platform that to compare him to tenryuubito who view women as actual property.... is insane.
Not that you’re far off given some feminists lately.... :| “Literally it was just... a hundred and so few years ago that women were still viewed as CHATTEL! The property of men!” Bullocks.... So yeah, I guess if you think Sanji’s putting women on a pedestal as high as the gods of Mount Olympus, and only letting them deign to come to mortal territory if they step on his head so they don’t sully their feet with the foibles of unclean ground where PIGGISH MEEEEEN LIVE is the EXACT FUCKING SAME AS VIEWING WOMEN AS CHATTEL....
Even then, I don’t have enough headdesk for this.
One thing I’ll give Anti-#GamerGate’s feminist men and women and trans* and so on, is that for all that they’d happily cut off body parts of each other (and us if their threats are any indication) they don’t view women as slaves.
But even most of Anti-GG agreed that was FAR over the line, and kicked that mod out and made a new subreddit because holy fucking shit, no. No. And when even Anti-GG says you’ve gone too far... Anti-GG who believes bomb threats and riots, and ISIS are perfectly acceptable tactics, so long as you use it against the “right kind of targets” yeah. You have fucked the fuck up.
So let me make this clear.
Sanji does not believe in gender equality.
This is because Sanji believes women are a hundred thousand fucking MILLION BILLION TIMES BETTER THAN MEN. He needs therapy. I genuinely WISH/HOPE Oda has something AMAZING in store for him when/if he meets Haruta of the Whitebeards Pirates. Shit will be amazing. Someday he might slowly chill the fuck out and become saner. Maybe. He needs more people help him understand how to be himself and GOOD and yet not fucked up this way. That’s hard. I’ve been there.
Sanji is obsessed with fairy tales and flights of fancy. This is why he is semi-secretly Usopp’s best friend and never ever fights with Usopp (not really anyway.) Because Usopp doesn’t tease him about it, and lets Sanji be stupidly ridiculous about the fairy tales, which sloooooooowly lets Sanji adjust the two sides of himself he has become SO OBSESSED WITH KEEPING SEPARATE TO PROTECT THEM. -- See also: Why I think his meeting with Haruta would be Mind-blowing. Because they are both frog princes. And gender dorks in opposite directions. And okama issues in opposite directions. And can be friends. /smooshes cheeks.
Sanji wants to find the All Blue as a chef, yes, but let’s go back to that chef thing too.
Why the fuck is Sanji working as a chef if he was a tenryuubito descendant? :| Even kicked out, EVEN ON THE RUN, he wouldn’t make for a good cooking assistant. The tenryuubito have been shown WITHOUT FAIL to have grown up very spoiled, and unable, incompetent, and completely ignorant of how to do basic jobs in life.
Paying back debts is a HUGE theme with Sanji, as we saw with his ENTIRE REASON NOT TO LEAVE THE BARATIE EVEN WHEN THEY TRIED TO MAKE HIM GO! This is one of MANY reasons, he took issue with Jinbei’s apology because it simply didn’t seem sincere. Words mean little, actions mean everything. You don’t repair damage with word, you start with action.
Sanji is sexist, but again, because he thinks women > men. This is VERY common in a LOT of feminist factions right now. So before you you go into how shitty that POV is, and therefore proof of Oda’s sexism (easy counter: Zoro does consider them equal \:|/, Luffy barely seems capable of remembering gender is a thing, and don’t let Nami and Robin kicking your ass bug you too much on your way out buh-bye) kindly tackle that in Western feminism, because it’s actually setting other feminists, other women, and of course, most men, quite a ways back.
Sanji views NO ONE as property. Ever. Nor is he entitled. He does not thing he is deserving of anything or even attention, sometimes, and he just mopes and rolls around when his epic plans to be Sanji fail.
Being Sanji is suffering.
Please also note, they do not even give him attention for these outbursts. They ignore him. Because he is not a fully actualized adult in maturity yet but that is okay, he is their nakama, and they love him anyway, enough to pretend that they aren’t just mentally shaking their heads at the giant cuck thinking “Wow you need to get laid.” What good friends.
Also, assuming that blond hair = nobility because Sabo, Doffy, and Rocinante + the nickname he gave himself???
THAT once again, is REALLY FUCKING RACIST. You’re trying to force an entire race of people to be related through a singular characteristic in order to excuse a hatred for them? FULL STOP. DON’T DO IT YO. FUCK.
Marco and Whitebeard and Thatch are also blonds! Carlos, the tenryuubito that got punched, has BLACK hair, and if we go with the whole “HAIR COLOR = LINEAGE” if ANYTHING, the Ds are probably more likely to be tenryuubito that said “FUCK YA’LL WE’D RATHER CHANGE THE WORLD” and set out to do that.
Don’t jump a massive gun.
Don’t be racist either.... that shouldn’t need saying jeez. Just try to be more forgiving and understanding of people and CHARACTERS and authors instead of assuming the worst possible thing you can though. Seriously.
So to finalize this out: Individual responsibility rather than a sacrifice for the collective sins of a large group is.... big thing in #GamerGate. We still deal with this on a daily basis. “Prove you don’t condone harassment.” Why bother? What does it prove? Even if I was one of the harassers on a secret puppet account (I’m not, I’ve actively tried to help stop them) do you think I’d have ANY trouble saying “Oh yeah I’m totally against harassment.” Fucking hell.
In One Piece as Garp said, “Do you really think the blood of an old man like me will satiate them?” and Ace was sacrificed for what? Crimes he never did? Being born the wrong blood? Being a danger to society because in the true form of a Greek tragedy, they decided to declare him so. That’s logical.
You can’t start off saying that it’s wrong to expect someone to take personal responsibility for a collective action because that’s racist (which it is), but then go on to USE THAT VERY IDEA TO TRY TO PROVE YOUR FINISHING POINT. BY YOUR OWN LOGIC YOU’RE BEING RACIST.
Even if you COULD prove that somehow this actually definitively means Sanji is tenryuubito (you can’t, and the points DEFINITELY DO NOT SUPPORT THAT) it’s still racist to assume that Sanji is part of the tenryuubito’s oppressive regime rather than simply the INIDIVIDUAL PERSON AND NAKAMA, CHEF, AND BEST FRIEND OF THE STRAW HATS THAT HE IS. THE MAN WHO TRIED TO HELP USOPP AND WARN HIM ABOUT AQUA LAGUNA, THE MAN WHO FED PIRATES WHO COULDN’T PAY EVEN IF THEY WERE GOING TO DESTROY HIS HOME, THE MAN WHO TRIED TO SACRIFICE HIMSELF TO SAVE LUFFY SEVERAL TIMES AND HAD TO BE STOPPED BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE IN THE CREW CAN COOK AND FEED THE OTHERS.
For fuck’s sake. I GENUINELY hope this is the ONE QUOTE I’m remembered with after I die if they have to put it on my tombstone to get it to stick or something.
If you can’t get to know a person as an individual, you’re fucked up.
He doesn’t need a last name. He doesn’t need OTHER last names because it shouldn’t CHANGE who he is, how we see him, or even really EXPLAIN how he became the man he is now, or why his goals are what they are. We KNOW that stuff already. We HAVE unanswered questions about Zoro (Roronoa family anyone?) but not as many about Sanji. Whether his mother was a queen, a tenryuubito, a prostitute, a scullery maid, or died in childbirth, like Ace’s, does it change where he is now, how he is now, how does it even inform on it?
I’m reminded of the Wolverine comic where the X-Men characters are asked who they think Wolverine is, and they all give a different answer and upon asking Logan himself, he says they’re all wrong, except that he can’t swim. That one’s true. Sometimes the way we see a character says more about ourselves than the character we’re trying to see.
I have synesthesia, so this SERIOUSLY fucks up my sense. Every character in One Piece to me is like a mix of a bunch of colors, and a sensation like a cross between a taste & a scent on the very back of your throat, right where you’d be inhaling or swallowing. Tresdem once went through the whole gambit of OP characters that interested her to me to find out how that worked, and it’s part of the reason I can’t do certain ships. It becomes a very bad/awkward taste that I instantly can’t stand and reject.
To me Sanji is like the cross between the smell and feel of swallowing a perfectly fresh flakey croissant mixed with the light salt-air breeze of the seashore right so strong as it hits you high up you can TASTE it, and you feel like you can spread your arms and jump into it to fly away like a seagull, with a teasing hint of butter but not much but too much is unpleasant.
It doesn’t translate well. Much ado about nothing. Sanji is a lot of things. But he’s always Sanji. Isn’t that wonderful though? He hasn’t fully figured out what it means to be himself yet, but he will. We get the pleasure of watching that journey as he tries to find All Blue too. Maybe he’ll find both together.
I think one of the worst things you can do is simply not let someone be themselves. My Grandmother impressed upon me that helping others to be comfortable around you is the height of manners, and while I’m much too much like Smoker to be all that comfortable except when I’ve got a giant mug of tea, too much work, a newspaper, books, and rocks to stacks (and then I am a very content CC), I can’t imagine anything worse than not letting my friends be themselves. That wouldn’t just be to my loss, it would hurt them. I’d hate that.
When you try to make someone responsible for a collective large problem you aren’t letting them be an individual. You’re making them a sacrifice. Like Ace. A needle for every person Roger ever hurt. And his dying words will be “I’m sorry for even being born.”
There isn’t a single person I have ever met that I think shouldn’t have been born. I can’t imagine that kind of hatred turned outward. I know it must hurt, but I truly can’t fathom it. Don’t hate like that. It’ll fuck you up, and it’ll stop you from achieving your best. Sanji doesn’t hate like that. Not anyone. He’s protective as fuck of Nami, and if she asked him to kill someone he probably would try, even if she meant it as a joke and Zoro and Luffy would have to hold him back before that would get through to him -- although I think Nami is smart enough to know this, and therefore she’s more careful than she seems with how she directs Sanji. But let’s remember again, he also owes Nami his life, and he knows it. It is part heroine worship, yes, but it’s also that he truly loves her as a nakama and respects her as navigator and Nami.
His rage towards Jinbei wasn’t because he was a fishman, it was because he was trying to take responsibility for having “let” Arlong kill Bellemere and make Nami’s childhood torture, in a fucked up reverse way of Koala. Again, you can’t fix that with mere apology, and Sanji, more than EVERYONE ELSE in the crew, knows that feeling best. Of owing someone deeply and being so unable to repay it with mere words.
Don’t be racist to Sanji and assume things of him. Fuck.
That’s the same as Anti-GG trying to say we should apologize for shit we didn’t do. Sorry, no. Do you want me to apologize for Atilla the Hun? Genghis Kahn? The scalpings by Indians in my town that took place to try to send a message in the 1600s? Not my tribe, hell my my tribe(s) wiped them out because the Iroquois and Hurons had some major fucking issues, but will it make you feel better?
Do even apologies FROM those responsible do any fucking good?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw
Don’t get so caught up in meaningless bullshit you lose sight of the big picture. And lately that seems to be what privilege discussions amount to among some idiots. “He has more rights than me so I’m going to take some of his away to make it more equal!” A...Are you fucking KIDDING me? I know it’s the internet, so maybe I am dealing with some very young children, but when I see this behavior from adults older than me, I have to bite a fist to stifle a scream.
I know, I know. Sanji isn’t real. The ramifications of a crack theory in a fandom are minuscule at best, but it bothers me. Especially in a series that is FILLED with themes that are the exact utter antithesis of this, and indeed, in the VERY SAME ARCS used for out of context clips, Luffy outright SAYS, “Pirates, bad guys, good guys, just decide for yourselves!” THIS IS NOT THAT HARD.
And so One Piece fans.... No. No. That is not a very good interpretation of canon and it is rife with too many canonical or even internal logical inconsistencies. Please, I love crazy ass theories, I REALLY DO. I have like FIVE about Marco’s stupid little anklet and I chewed on my Shounen Jump like “ODA COME ON ALREADY GIVE ME MARCO PLEASE,” but ugh... when constructing your theories, maybe try to double-check how you’re putting them together and why. And don’t... don’t lie to yourselves. Don’t tell someone something is good if you think it sucks. If you’re STRONGER THAN ME, by all means, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BE NICER AND MORE TACTFUL (I’m a biiiiiiitch) but wow. Just.... shit man.
And to Anti-#GamerGate, if you read any of this, please understand Sanji is that guy arguing on your behalf for the sake of all the ladies out there, whether they want him to... or not. At least Sanji doesn’t actually speak down to them and refer to them as property which you already know is better than some of GamerGhazi and the IRC chats. If this annoys you about Sanji, my answer is that you should get better friends instead of taking out your frustrations on fictional characters or calling them racist.
To pro-#GamerGate: let Sanji and #FullMcIntosh be a lesson to you. It is better to be Zoro than constantly cucked into not even being yourself. So have a drink, give up your sanity, and enjoy the ride.
