What do you think Cora would think of Law memorializing him all over his body, ship, crew? Would he find that obsessive or weird?
(apologies for the ramble; i get to your question eventually, i promiseーthis topic is actually really personal to me and makes me a bit upset).
is this a popular take? because I’ve seen it several times now, and i just don’t understand what people are getting at. it genuinely kind of makes me upset because i feel like it’s coming from the perspective of people who have (fortunately) never experienced the unique kind of grief the death brings and are therefore judging how “messy” it can sometimes look.
sure, I suppose it’s “weird” in the sense that holding onto that kind of rage & guilt for literal years is unhealthy for your mental state (especially if that’s the last thing rosinante would have wanted for himーhe wanted to free him from doflamingo, not bind him to him via his rage)—but i’ve read multiple fics before where authors paint it as this… creepy, stalkerish thing? like it's helga's shrine to arnold in 'hey arnold!' or something? it’s not. It’s really not.
(cw: death of a loved one).
when i was 22, a friend i knew since i was 2 (he was 2 years younger than me, so i literally knew him his entire life) passed away falling off a balcony. really traumatizing, really horrific—i genuinely have a fear of standing too close to balcony/banister railings now. i’ve had nightmares about it.
i keep his ‘in memory’ card and the funeral program his mother gave out at the service on a shelf in my closet so I see it every day when i get dressed or hang up laundry. i took several copies to ensure that i never lost them, and plan on putting them into a nicer shadowbox at some point (but have been too afraid to touch them because I don’t want to ‘ruin’ them). i still post birthday messages to his socials every year. i have old choral performances of his saved to my computer. i have a memorial tattoo.
if someone told me my way of remembering him was ‘creepy’ and ‘obsessive’ just because i think about him a lot or hold on to a lot of momentos, i think I genuinely might have a panic attack & burst into tears? this is all i’ve got left. he’s not here anymore; he was cremated so i don’t even have an actual grave i can go visit and have that connection. and i’m just… not allowed to have any of this because people on the outside think the way i express my grief is ‘too much’? i'd straight up just never speak to that person again.
so, no, i really don't think rosinante would be that off-put by the tattoos, or the jacket, or the jolly roger at all. if anything, he'd be honored that he made such an impression in this kid's life that he wanted to keep his memory alive like that.
he'd recognize they were separated in an extremely traumatizing wayーand adults have a hard time dealing with difficult emotions like grief, much less children & teenagers dealing with it. there was no way law wasn't going to be impacted by that, so he decided to redirect those things into something physical. tattoos. a custom jacket. a jolly roger. a special attack with his devil fruit. he turned that grief into something that guided him, and arguably gave him strength to keep going.
but also, not to mention, he's a doctor.
barring his jacket that literally has rosinante's codename on it, all of the heart motifs can just as easily hold a double meaning for law. he's literally called dr. heart stealer with a special move where he can detach your heart from your body and put it in a little cube. rosinante may have been a big part of the name & motif choices, but law clearly has other things in his life he connects the meaning of 'heart' to. it means a lot to him.
so, no, i don't really find law's behavior that odd or 'obsessive' (except for his blind hatred of doflamingoーthat was clearly obsessive) and i doubt rosinante would, either. the grieving process is wholly unique to an individual, and some people just like to attach their grief to physical momentos that they can latch onto when they miss that person, or feel like they're losing focus.
i find it endearing. beautiful, even.
