slawbo 3 extended authors notes
fic is HERE if you missed it!
just like last time but with much less medical information!
so! slawbo 3. FINALLY. this has actually been finished since like june UGH but summer was crazyyyy and fall has been too and editing this was a slog. but here we are! and it's even longer than the rest of the series combined!
behind the scenes stuff: so the bouncer/security guy, Smith - in the early draft he was actually a locksmith, so his name was a pun lmao. it stuck thru the changes, even tho its not a very one piece name lol (full disclosure, I'm terrible at naming stuff, both characters and places)
the original draft had sabo asking a local locksmith (Smith) to let him into his 'office'...Smith wouldn't buy it, Law would come along, and they would make out to convince smith that they really were dating
obviously all of that changed in the final draft but bits of it remain!
actually the original premise for this fic was JUST fake dating, and the handcuffed together thing was gonna be a different fic, AND the thrown in jail together fic was gonna be separate, but they all ended up being combined here.
shoutout to ruth for MANY things in this fic: i'll list all of them throughout, but the first one here is that she named the character Sangria (based on her holding a glass of sangria). THATS such a one piece name lol
so there is SOME medical talk here lol - so the bit where Sabo gives medical advice...i wanted to tie back to the last fic, so i had him talk about aortic aneurysms/dissections lol
(like the last fic, this is about AORTIC aneurysms - most of the time when people say 'aneurysm' theyre probably thinking about a brain aneurysm, which is a similar concept but with one of the blood vessels in the brain).
basically, an aneurysm is - contrary to what most people might think - just the widening of the vessel, where the dissection is the actual tearing (which usually leads to death) of the vessel
crazy enough, if the aneurysm is small enough, you just kinda monitor it 😳
so you can see that the aneurysm is alarming as fuck but not necessarily fatal, where the dissection involves the actual vessel tearing, causing blood to leak everywhere (and this is all the aorta, your body's largest vessel, so that's really bad)
TAA = thoracic aortic aneurysm; AAA = abdominal aortic aneurysm
fun(?) fact: if a AAA is large enough, you can feel it - if you press down on the midline of your abdomen, you can feel your abdominal aorta pulsating there - but if you can feel it realllllly far to either side of your midline, that could be an aneurysm!
(please dont worry if this is the case for you, your pulse can reverberate and some people have a wide pulse normally, this is very general lol)
anyways. i feel like sabo would do some hate-research after the events of the last fic, and that leaves him with some handy medical knowledge to get law all hot & bothered with lolll
what else...ah, northwood. mr captain flint northwood. in case it isnt obvious, his name is a play on clint eastwood: clint-->flint, and north instead of east lmao. s/o to ruth for LOTS of help with his character 👏
also shoutout to ruth for thinking up the whole 'multiple physical medical licenses' bit, AND the 'trafalgar leg' name lmao. it was initially a one-off gag from the first fic, but it ended up fitting well here, so we get the triumphant return of leg
law is right about the sternal rubs actually! that IS how you try to arouse a patient who's in a stupor - it's part of how you grade somebody's mental status for the glasgow coma scale
i had to hold back so many medical terms/bits for sabo's pov lmao. ruth Went Thru It while beta-ing. next fic we'll be back w/law and the medical BS will be back
northwood just kinda appeared. i think themed marines are soooo funny so i had a lot of fun writing him lmao
also, ftr, law really DID just happen to be in town lmao. that's three times these fools have run into each other by chance...maybe somebody they'll interact INTENTIONALLY (stay tuned!)
this fic actually has some ANGST in it whoaaaa. as yall can probably tell, im more of a humor writer than an angst writer, but i still had a good time with that
as yall mightve also noticed, i really love exploring sabo's amnesia (shameless sabo amnesia character study fic plug), so i really enjoyed having him reveal his amnesia to law and talk about it a little
that line where law offers to fix sabo's amnesia and asks to look at his brain - i've had that snippet written down since about 2018, when i first wrote 'make me burn the candle right down' [slawbo pilot fic], so i was REAL happy to finally have a chance to use it haha
i can sooooo picture little baby sabo hitting his head on stuff trying to see if percussive force will fix his amnesia lmaooooo
i also give ruth full credit for the exchange where the mayor says law saved him 'with his own two hands' and northwood replies '...the hands that have death tattooed on them?' ty for that genius tidbit, and also the 'pirates will steal anything these days' bit as well 🔥
i really like having law in situations where he isnt the straight man (like he usually is w/the straw hats), bc i think it's interesting to explore that side of him. plus, like we outlined in the manifesto, this is smarmy smirky pre-canon law we're dealing with!
so yeah, he gets to go full Actor Mode with sabo at the end there lol
not sure if its clear but i didnt really intend northwood to be homophobic by being vaguely uncomfortable at the PDA - more like he's just uncomfortable w/PDA no matter who's involved
i figured these two might need a little push to get to the 'making out' point in their little situationship, so here we have it
also, the kissing is SUPPOSED to be pretty awkward (especially at first), fwiw. imo, they're both pretty inexperienced, PLUS they have an audience, so there's a learning curve
will northwood return? great question. stay tuned to find out!
will sangria & the mayor of this unnamed town return? honestly, probably not, but you never know!
will slawbo return? YOU BETCHA! I have big plans for slawbo 4, and I also have two other sabo-centric fics cooking (including a sequel to the above-mentioned sabo amnesia character study fic), so expect those to come around this next year.
this past year was VERY busy for me w/grad school (sadly, becoming a medical practitioner in this world is much harder than it is in one piece), but this coming year i'll be doing rotations, so much more hands-on training and much less studying til i pass out. yippee!
that also means more time to write! I refuse to publish things until they're complete, so it might be a few months, but those sabo fics I mentioned are multi-chapter, and slawbo 4 is shaping up to be pretty long too. hope to see yall there!
thank you all, dear readers!!! enjoy!!
