grainjew

[grainjew]

in the path of the sun

Trafalgar D Water Law experiences an escalating series of nuisances. Meanwhile, Monkey D Luffy learns some new tricks, gets dropped in the ocean, and awakens to a slapstick horizon of possibility. These things are related. (The battle between the surgeon emperor of deathless Flevance and his latest challenger does not proceed as expected.)

part three of the upside-down roleswap series co-created by me, @grainjew, and @hopeworth!

#you have to read this one thats just how it is sorry i dont make the rules #goes crazy goes insane. the flow of the action the stylistic choices for various sections #go. experience what kaidou v luffy would be like if it was law instead of kaidou. you wont regret #emperorswap #one piece #rebloggèd #trafalgar d water law #monkey d luffy

[grainjew]

You are the moon unaware of the dawn!

#YOU GET IT OP. YOU UNDERSTAND. THE CHAPTER 1044 AGENDA. THWYRE THE SAME LUFFY AND HIYORI ARE THE TWO GENRES. THE TWO NARRATIVE STYLES. THE #TWO SIDES OF THE COIN THEY ARE DOING YJE SAME THING!!!! THERES A REASON HIYORIS TRIUMPH TRADES BACK ANF FORTH WITH LUFFYS!!!! #also this is gorgeous. this is so beautiful. I'm becoming a worm #ouaaaaaAAAAGH #Everything Here. you get it. you understand #wano is soooOoo #one piece #rebloggèd #gear 5 #kozuki hiyori #monkey d luffy #kozuki toki #kozuki momonosuke

[grainjew]

we pray to a new dawn

#the nika story was one of my absolute favorite parts to write of this whole fic #and you just NAILED the vibe #love everything about this. obsesses obsessed #he is LEAVING the panel . he is SKEDADDLING #really love the most beautiful woman panel the way you drew her reminds me of that one panel of rouge which is fun #and the way hes squeezing the music bars... and the sun symbol.... #HE IS HAVIN A GOOD TIME!!!!!!!!! gwaaahhhh #hey everyone read the fic and then reblog this art Ten Thousan Times #one piece #gear 5 #inspired by me

[grainjew]

"was that necessary ? youre part of the richest crew on the seas.

-you too, and you still have a ton of debts :p

-your gf is at the head of the most wealthy island of grandline you could-

- no :p

#i cant stop staring at this nami. she looks exactly like so many older women i know #somethin about the way you draw her just makes me so happy . at peace #this is a woman who has lived in her body for sixty years #her sharpness. her lines and angles. the way her skin goes over her bones #just absolutely blown away. exquisite #rebloggèd #one piece #nami #roronoa zoro

[grainjew]

inside an open grave

law & doflamingo & rosinante | teen and up audiences | roleswap au | 16.3k words

Trafalgar D Water Law loses his home, joins a pirate crew, gains two sons, reclaims his home, becomes an Emperor, sells drugs, loses two sons, and is thoroughly miserable the entire time. Naturally, this goes well for exactly nobody. (The life and crimes of "Surgeon of Death" Trafalgar D Water Law, Emperor of the Sea.)

this is part 2 to the emperorswap au that @oriigami @grainjew and i have been working on where we roleswap kidd and law with kaidou and linlin. check out the other work in the series and bookmark or subscribe for future installments :)

#OH HEY FORGOT TO REBLOG THIS #yeah!!!! read emperorswap!!!! we're very silly with it #well this one is 16k of law being the worst man alive. but #hee hee. emperorswap. more soon #rebloggèd #emperorswap #one piece #trafalgar d water law

[grainjew]

outside the auction house

Rising Supernova captains Charlotte Linlin, Kaidou the Beast, and Monkey D Luffy meet for the first time at a Sabaody auction house and, inevitably, get along like a house on fire. Chaos ensues. (You know how this story goes.)

(part 1 of a roleswap au i've been working on with @oriigami and @hopeworth ! follow the series to hear about their parts too <3 )

#opfanfic #one piece #charlotte linlin #kaido #monkey d luffy #emperorswap #zephflix original #fic tag #ao3 fic

[grainjew]

Kaidou's Post-Imperial Adventure (The Kaidou & Linlin Magma Tea Party, The Newspaper Reader’s Woes, How To Crash A Strawhat Beach Party, & Other Happenings)

In Which Kaidou Experiences, In Rapid Succession: a midlife crisis, a cover story, and the Luffy Effect.

(@oriigami and i wrote 6.5k words of comedy about kaidou getting bullied and you should read it. it's silly i promise)

#opfanfic #kaido #monkey d luffy #nami #charlotte linlin #one piece #ao3 fic #fic tag #zephflix original

[grainjew]

Spit-Take

"Feels like I'm next," she mutters, swallowing. The Emperor Strawhat Luffy smiles. (Or: Whatever happened to those Marines who tried to catch Luffy in 1106?)

(silly little thing about the unfortunate marines from chapter 1106 experiencing the consequences of poking this particular emperor. written in collaboration with @oriigami again <3 )

#one piece #opfanfic #monkey d luffy #gear 5 #fic tag #ao3 fic #zephflix original

[grainjew]

Fundraiser masterpost

This is a masterpost for the evacuation fundraisers I've vetted so far, a few other fundraisers I find trustworthy but have not been able to vet (inability to communicate with the organizer), and a few semi-completed fundraisers or fundraisers for a different purpose (like house rebuilding, or aid distribution). The numbers next to the names have no significance beyond ease of navigation for me for when I check their progress in the future. Occasionally I will update these with new info.

VETTED FAMILY ESCAPE FUNDRAISERS

Walaa Abusamra (1). 10 family members. 13k out of 80k €.

Ezzideen Shehab (2). 6 family members. 3.7k out of 32.5k €.

Madleen Abu Jayyab (3). 4 family members. 4k out of 70k USD.

Jehad Shehada (4). 1 individual. 1.7k out of 15k CAD.

Aser Alassar (5). 5 family members. 258k out of 550k SEK. Or 24k out of 51k USD.

My friend Mona Abu Hamda (6). 9 family members. 52k out of 75k USD.

Mohammed Shamia (7). 7 family members. 1.9k out of 35k USD.

Abdullah Al-Saghir (8). 9 family members. 65k out of 100k €.

Randa Abubakr (9). 6 family members. 10.1k out of 14k €.

Fadi Alshrafi (10). 9 family members. 40k out of 85k USD.

Osama Abdelrahman. (11). 9 family members. 27k out of 45k €.

Alhaw family and the Albittar family (12). Between 18 and 12 family members. 1.9k out of 90k €. (EXTREMELY LOW, NEEDS FUNDS)

Verified Fundraiser by Palestine Asdiqa to help a malnourished baby with cerebral palsy. (13) 6.3k out of 31k USD.

Rana Abu Ahmed (14). 6 family members. 63.8k out of 66k CAD. NEARLY COMPLETE.

Mohammed Abu Matar (15). 6 family members. 5k out of 34k CAD.

Moataz Abu Sakran (16). 3 family members. 10.4k out of 20k $.

Ayah Abu Sidu (17). 10 family members. 15.2k out of 50.4k USD.

Said Fadel (18). 7 family members. 19k out of 50k USD.

Tasneem Nabil Musa (19). 7 family members (ALL INJURED, NEED MEDICAL CARE.) 13.2k out of 50k USD

Belal Azmi Msallam (20). 14 family members. 7.1k out of 160k AUD.

Mortaja Family (21). 11 family members. 28k out of 70k €.

Abu Ramadan family (22). 14 family members. 10k out of 148k €.

Mai Rajab (23). 42.3k out of 50k USD (CLOSE TO COMPLETION)

Amal Abu Shammala (24). 4 family members. 33.1k out of 42k €.

Maryam & family (25). 29.5k out of 50k USD.

Haneem Abdelhalim (26). 8 family members. 31k out of 40k USD raised.

Ahmed Masoud (27). 12 family members. 8.3k out of 60k €.

Mohammed Fareed (28). 21.7k out of 60k CAD.

Lena Nofal (29). 32.7k out of 35k € (NEARLY COMPLETE)

Rasheda Alfaiomy (30). 6+ family members. 22.3k out of 65k USD.

Ula El Hindi (31). 1+ individuals. 8.2k out of 15k €.

Muhammad Safi (32). 5+ family members. 4k out of 30k BP.

Yazan Khalaf (33). 18 family members. 12.4k out of 40k USD.

Afaf Masoud (34). 5+ family members. 55.1k out of 75k €.

Motasem Khayal (35). 5 family members. 442 out of 43k € (26.5k needed for escape.)

Youseff Abu Saeed (36). 3 family members (1 is already out for treatment). 154k out of 200k USD.

Abdulaziz & Abdullah, escape & surgery (37). 2+ family members (1 has already been treated). 95k out of 150k BP.

Nadine Abdullatif (38). 8 family members. 103k out of 130k AUD.

Sami Salhab (39). 6 family members (5 already evacuated). 13.1k out of 26k €.

Jehad Al Ghandour (40). 5 family members (1 already evacuated). 30.6k out of 100k USD.

Mahmoud Algharabli (41). 16 family members (4 already evacuated). 48k out of 57.6k USD.

Dr. Marah & family (42). 2+ family members. 5.1k out of 40k USD.

Khaled Alshabrawi (43). 5 family members. 1.4k out of 35k € (25k needed for escape, but will begin with 10k for stable housing).

Muhammad Osama Alzaq (44). 5 family members. 2.1k out of 60k BP.

Mohammed Wishah (45). 7 family members + 1 pet. 2.3k out of 71.5k €.

Ottawa4Palestine’s vetted fundraiser spreadsheet (76 different families with listed fundraisers)

UNVETTED, BUT HIGHLY LIKELY LEGITIMATE ESCAPE FUNDRAISERS:

Rasha family (1). 5 family members. 483 out of 15k € (EXTREMELY LOW, NEED FUNDS)

Natasha Matar (2). 14 family members. 18.1k out of 200k CAD (140k needed for escape).

Islam Daher (3). 6 family members. 2.3k out of 50k CAD.

Qasim Al-Kafarneh (4). 12 family members. 5.7k out of 80k AUD.

Ahmed M. Saleh (5). 4 family members. 7.8k out of 35k €.

Salwa Zarifa (6). 4 family members. 1.6k out of 50k €.

Moutasem Quffa (7). 6+ family members. 7k out of 65k €.

OTHER FUNDRAISERS:

Eman Abdel Rahman. Need help rebuilding home and access to food. 7.1k out of 42.6k USD.

Ibrahim Adil Osman. All intended beneficiaries have escaped, they just need some financial support to start being stable enough to make money to get more family members to escape.

Abd Al Karim Adnan Alakklouk. Most intended beneficiaries have escaped, they just need some financial support to start a new life and send more family members money to survive.

Samar Elrayih Hydoub. It seems that most family members have been evacuated, but they need an emergency 1.5k for medical expenses.

Bana AZ. All intended beneficiaries have escaped, they just need a bit of support in establishing a new life. (only 866 € left to meet goal)

Kareem Abu Samra. All intended beneficiaries have been able to escape. They just need support to establish a new life.

Helping the People of Gaza – Mutual Aid Fund (run by my friend Mona)

Supporting Displaced Families in Gaza (CareForGaza)

Emergency Medical Relief for Gaza Refugees.

Help Sudan Tarada Initiative.

Amer Qudaih’s Relief efforts in Gaza.

#signal boost #current events #rebloggèd

[grainjew]

lets all pretend this is the first time im uploading this and tumblr didnt completely break the previous post, okay? okay.

#pretending this is the first time yovue uploaded and reproducing my tags exactly because i screenshotted them <3 : #tumblr autoloop is so dangerous ive been transfixed watching this for like 10 minutes now or something #it is so satisfying to look at . ouagh. edidting #op . your skill and talent. back to looping it ten more times i think #one piece #i looooooooooooooooooooove the transition from the posters btw. and like ten thousand other things but that specifically #monkey d luffy #gear 5 #rebloggèd

[grainjew]

Holding Court

They meet there in the late afternoon, all ten of them together at last. Kings, courts, and Ancient Weapons.

(wrote a little thing for the loyalty series because chapter 1056 made me abnormal)

#opfanfic #one piece #nico robin #franky #monkey d luffy #zephflix original #ao3 fic #fic tag #loyalty content

[grainjew]

Summary: In the original timeline, Shanks took Higuma's mistreatment calmly and with dignity, shaping Luffy's essential character for the rest of his life. In this timeline... ==== "Huh!" said the kid. He tugged at his cheeks. "Guess I'm in the past, then!" His expression cleared, because apparently that made sense to him, and he grinned. "Shanks! Hey, Shanks, you never told me how cool you are!"

Author: @grainjew

#hysterically useless data I love this #shout-out to the small percentage of people who read it while not in the fandom what are you doing #👍 #rebloggèd #one piece #kind words

[grainjew]

Nikaposting Pt 4: Sun God Tropes

This is the fourth of a series of posts about Nika & associated religious practice in the One Piece world. As I write and post the rest of the series, I’ll add links to this header.

Pt 1: Crypto-Religion | Pt 2: Symbology & Syncretism | Pt 3: Joyboy was Shandian

Enormous credit to @oriigami for being my discussion partner through all of this and having a substantial influence on the final product. Check out our ao3 series Joyful for a narrative rather than analytical take on the Nika tradition, and definitely go read her OP blog @kaizokuou-ni-naru for meta and translation fun facts.

-

#JustLittleSunGodThings

So Luffy’s a sun god, or the embodied power of the wishes for one, or whatever. But does he do mythological solar deity things?

Yes actually.

This post is the fourth and last (as of now) in this series, and it’s entirely for fun. I’ll almost certainly miss things as I go down the list here- if you can think of other solar or dawn deity things he gets up to, please add them in the replies!

With no further ado, here is a list of sun god things Luffy has been known to get up to, & which will no doubt inform the mythology developing around him in the One Piece world. (How many people were deifying this guy even before he awakened his devil fruit? Like it was definitely not zero is all I’m saying.)

Getting eaten by snakes

What started this whole list was me turning to @oriigami in the middle of the night after we’d been rewatching Little Garden and trying to make an accurate count of how many times Luffy’s been swallowed whole and going “you know what’s sun god shit? getting eaten by snakes.”

Sun gods are often doing this. Take Apep in Egyptian myth, who tries to devour the sun god Ra every day. Or Rahu, the Hindu shadow planet and serpent, who swallows the sun to cause solar eclipses.

Luffy is also often doing this. The most notable example is of course the Nola Incident in Skypiea arc, but if we expand the definition of snake to include generally snakeish sort of guys, he also gets briefly ate by Kaidou very shortly after awakening, and just now by Mister Sandworm in ch 1110. (And by Kaidou fish-fish fruit equivalency I’d argue we can also count the Little Garden goldfish and the crocodile that ate him as a kid here but obviously that’s more tenuous and mostly just funny.)

Slightly more tenuously as well, there’s Amaterasu of Shinto lore retreating into her cave (a cave is a kind of snake), as well as the Norse wolf that chases the sun Sköll (occasionally merged with Fenrir), the Javanese god (described as an ogre) Batara Kala who eats the sun and moon to cause eclipses, and the alchemical Green Lion that devours the sun.

Storm and sky gods are also often interacting with, killing, and being eaten by snakes, which is less relevant here except that Nami is storm god coded and she also got ate in the Nola Incident. So that’s fun!

Having a chariot that circumnavigates the world

Many sun gods, especially in the Indo-European sphere of traditions, have some sort of chariot or boat that they ride from east to west each day to carry the sun across the sky. Often they have attendants (sometimes dawn and dusk gods; or sometimes these gods have their own chariots or horses as well) to help them with this.

If you want a list of sun vehicles the wikipedia page for solar deities has a whole bunch of them. Have fun.

I think Thousand Sunny speaks for herself on this front: not only is Sunny a ship designed, destined, and dreamed up to herself circumnavigate the world with Luffy as her captain, but she also has the Sun on the front as her figurehead in a manner that does kinda remind me of some depictions I’ve seen of the sun being carried across the sky in such a chariot. Also, she can fly!

Association with royalty

Kings and emperors love to use sun gods to give divine legitimacy to their rule. This is in no way universal (there’s lots of storm gods out there who also do this, just off the top of my head) but take Amaterasu (Shinto), Inti (Incan), Amun-Ra (also Aten) (Egyptian), Sol Invictus (Roman), etc.

Obviously Luffy is going to be King, and is currently an Emperor. But also, he tends to go around and toppling kings and gods and tyrants and vaguely lending legitimacy to whoever is stepping up to the throne in their place. He’s got the Mandate of Heaven (this is a joke mostly but we HAVE all read Loguetown)! And also distributes it to people he likes. Thanks Luffy.

Solar discs, radiate crowns, and beetles

A solar disc is a flat circle, sometimes with rays, that symbolically represents the sun or the sun personified. If you have read pt 2 of this series, you will recognize the Nika symbol in this description.

In the same vein, when applied to a personified depiction of the sun, the solar disc has the habit of becoming a halo or a radiate crown (such as the one worn by the Statue of Liberty - the radiate crown used to be an emperors and sun gods thing and has since become associated with personifications of liberty. So That’s Fun). Obviously Luffy is not in the habit of having either of these representationally, except of course for. The hat that encircles his head in gold.

The final note on symbology I have here is that the Egyptian god of the morning sun, Khepri, is associated with scarabs/dung beetles. A fact that I think known beetle-lover Luffy would appreciate. Get this guy some scarab symbolism stat. Check these bugs out!!!

Bonus: descending into the underworld and eclipse stories

Katabasis, that is, a descent into the underworld, is in no way a sun god exclusive, although solar myths do often involve the sun god, having traveled across the sky by day, needing to find their way through the ocean, the underworld, or some other sort of nether realm to return, overnight, to their morning home in the east. And it’s very fun to look at in the context of Luffy, eclipse myths, and the Marineford saga.

So obviously the Impel Down arc is is a very literal katabasis. It’s Hell, it’s got all the Dante’s Inferno theming, and, like in so many katabases, Luffy descends to the depths in pursuit of some goal, eventually emerging miraculously alive but unsuccessful (see, for a very quick shortlist of katabases of this type, Orpheus & Eurydice, Inanna, and Izanagi & Izanami).

So that’s delightful. But I think it’s even more fun to think about the Marineford saga in general, eventually culminating in the timeskip, as a prototype for an eclipse story.

Solar eclipses, though predictable, are something like a rarer and more frightening form of night, and so their associated myths have a general tendency to involve a more dramatic and/or violent symbolic death of the sun- see, for example, the various devourers of the sun mentioned in the first bullet point of this post.

So, we have the timeskip. The fire goes out. The sun, having descended into the underworld and pushed himself past his own limits, is defeated, disappearing completely from the world for two years. Until- In a way that was, technically, predictable, if you had the correct sphere of knowledge, he returns, miraculously renewed.

I’d incorporate that into my belief system, is all I’m saying.

-

Thank you all for reading! This is all for the series so far, but not, I hope, forever. Many more thoughts to have and webs to weave!

Have a lovely week!

#fun fact i originally wrote the last bullet point of this with one of the first migraines i'd ever had. showed it to jonny #and she had to physically stop me from trying to post it because oh it was so so bad . it was incomprehensible gamers #you could Tell #monkey d luffy #nikaposting #one piece #opmeta #meta tag #zephflix original #if i hadn't dropped out of college i'd be a religious studies major and this tag is how you know

[grainjew]

Nikaposting Pt 3: Joyboy was Shandian

This is the third of a series of posts about Nika & associated religious practice in the One Piece world. As I write and post the rest of the series, I’ll add links to this header.

Pt 1: Crypto-Religion | Pt 2: Symbology & Syncretism | Pt 4: Sun God Tropes

Enormous credit to @oriigami for being my discussion partner through all of this and having a substantial influence on the final product. Check out our ao3 series Joyful for a narrative rather than analytical take on the Nika tradition, and definitely go read her OP blog @kaizokuou-ni-naru for meta and translation fun facts.

-

Joyboy. What’s his deal?

Context note: This post makes the assumption that Joyboy was an awakened user of the Nika fruit. I don’t think that’s a particularly disputed take but I wanted to make sure we were clear on that to start with: To these posts, Nika is a mythical figure with a cult of worship and an incredibly potent wish attached to his name. And Joyboy, like Luffy now, was a user of the fruit created of that wish and harmonized enough with its nature to awaken.

We know basically nothing about Joyboy, but there’s just enough there for some really fun theorizing. This post will be shorter and more speculative than the rest of the series, but I think it’s a fun enough concept that I wanted to add it in.

So: Here’s why I think Joyboy was Shandian!

Let’s start with the obvious- Oda definitely re-read Skypiea while he was planning out the Nika stuff. It’s widely known that the Nika pose and the rhythm of the Drums of Liberation were pulled directly from the Skypiea dance scenes, especially the mid-arc one with the wolves. I’d add that the concept generally of Luffy being silhouetted against the sky in a pose & percussion instruments taking on a symbolic liberatory role (the bell and the drums) can also be traced back to this arc. The visual choice to have Who’s-Who’s imaginary version of Nika dressed stereotypically “tribal”—not a design choice I feel particularly positive about but a design choice Oda would make purposely—also evokes Shandora.

Skypiea was also the arc where we encountered the Shandora poneglyph, which is eventually revisited in the same arc we’re introduced to Nika and Gear 5 (that is, Wano), and which is the poneglyph pointing to the location of Poseidon, the Mermaid Princess, in Fishman Island.

We know from Joyboy’s poneglyph apology that he was a surface-dweller who was nonetheless a great friend of Fishman Island and of the Mermaid Princess of the time. His apology was addressed directly to her, for breaking a promise to her and her country. Similarly, the Shandians held the protection and eventual delivery of their poneglyph as a tenet of extreme importance until Robin took that burden from them onto her back. I doubt such a precious friend of Fishman Island would leave the location of Poseidon with anyone other than a nation he trusted absolutely- with his own people, the shandians.

Skypiea and Fishman Island are also arcs with a very pronounced thematic parallels/opposites thing going. Briefly:

They’re both set either 10 000 meters above or below the surface of the blue sea, in unfamiliar environments that require their own methods of fighting and navigating.

They feature longstanding conflicts the Straw Hats have sort of blundered their way into regarding oppression, power imbalances among cultures and classes of people, and very flawed but ultimately compelling depictions of real-world issues.

Their ruling parties are named after real-world religious figures (Skypiea’s God; Fishman Island’s King Neptune and Queen Otohime).

And silliest of all, Luffy has to be nerfed in both arcs because otherwise the final battle will be over in about one second lmao.

I think it’s safe to say they’re at least connected on a thematic level, and it’s my connection that once upon a time in the forgotten history, Joyboy, shandian friend of the Mermaid Princess, was that connection point.

It’s also notable that Shandora was a great nation back in the Void Century (indeed one of the three disconnected rays sun symbol nations, as well as a sun god-having nation - see pt 2 of this series of posts), and is the only nation other than the Ancient Kingdom that we have been explicitly told was brought to ruin during that time. Of course there’s infinite reasons the Twenty Kingdoms could have had to wreck the place, including “they were in a war,” but a strike at the home of that most problematic user of the Nika fruit seems particularly in-character.

And even if none of this convinces you that Joyboy was a child of Shandora, I sure hope you can agree that we should all be giving Skypiea some very close reads in the coming years!

#nikaposting #joyboy #opmeta #meta tag #zephflix original

[grainjew]

we speak with the sky

Monkey D. Luffy slams the entire battlefield with a wave of untempered conqueror's haki at the most inopportune moment possible, because of course he does, because no member of Garp's family has ever made Sengoku's life easy. The executioners crumple like ragdolls, and Sengoku curses, turns, and everything twists- And then all of a sudden the sky is upside down, an impossible ocean overhead stretching from horizon to horizon, and the air is filled with the sound of drums. (A miracle strikes Marineford.)

(perfectly normal marineford fixit about the usual guy these are about definitely for sure. pspspsps. come closer. [cowritten with @oriigami as always])

#one piece #opfanfic #sun god nika #gear 5 #monkey d luffy #bartholomew kuma #other guys also but they're less important #zephflix original #fic tag #ao3 fic #jonny my good friend jonny this is my jonny tag

[grainjew]

Nikaposting Pt 2: Symbology & Syncretism

This is the second of a series of posts about Nika & associated religious practice in the One Piece world. As I write and post the rest of the series, I’ll add links to this header.

Pt 1: Crypto-Religion | Pt 3: Joyboy was Shandian | Pt 4: Sun God Tropes

Enormous credit to @oriigami for being my discussion partner through all of this and having a substantial influence on the final product. Check out our ao3 series Joyful for a narrative rather than analytical take on the Nika tradition, and definitely go read her OP blog @kaizokuou-ni-naru for meta and translation fun facts.

-

So About That Sun Symbol (and all those sun gods)

Context note: This post assumes you’ve read pt 1. If you haven’t, the TLDR is that the Nika cult is best categorized as a crypto-religion and may not ever have existed outside of a cryptic and oral form.

There’s a lot of sun gods in One Piece. And there’s a lot of appearances of that sun symbol we discussed briefly in pt 1, with the disconnected rays. This post will cover that symbol, the survival of non-Kuma Nika cult branches, and the proliferation of sun gods across the One Piece world.

The sun symbol can be found everywhere, in what seems at first to be a wildly disparate collection of places. There are a number of borderline cases, so I’ll be defining the “Nika sun symbol” as being any symbol with a central circle, disconnected rays, and four- or eight-fold radial symmetry. This leaves us the below list (images of the majority of these instances can be found in this very helpful post):

The Kuma-Bonney/Buccaneer version found in his church and on the amulet he left for her (8 circular rays) ; this is our basic template for the symbol

The Alabasta national symbol (8 droplet-shaped rays; the droplets seem to be drawn at various different orientations depending on the panel)

The Kozuki crest (8 circular rays in the center of a bird in the center of another circle also there’s some sprouts or something)

The Shandian crest (8 circular rays inside a larger circle, also the central circle contains the kanji for kami/god)

The Sun Pirates’ mark (4 more traditional flaring rays; the rays seem to be drawn inconsistently, especially in the anime)

There’s also Ace’s dagger, which has the basic template version, but one can assume he bought that thing in Alabasta or something like that.

From this we can conclude that the sun with disconnected rays is not exclusively a Nika symbol- in fact I would be surprised if it was, because of how prominently it was displayed in Kuma’s church (see the discussion in pt 1). However, Alabasta, Shandora, and Wano are all poneglyph countries, and were all involved in some way or another in [incomprehensible void century muttering]. I would be extremely unsurprised if the sun with disconnected rays wasn’t a more widely-spread popular symbol among [void century muttering] countries back then, which was adopted by Nika worshippers as their secret symbol around that time and simultaneously retained in more benign form by certain nations as an element of their national symbology.

(Sidenote: If you were unaware, Oda snagged this symbol from a castle in his hometown and clearly just seems to enjoy drawing it. However that doesn’t matter to us in meta analysis land. We continue.)

The Nika cult absolutely survived outside Kuma’s family: at the very least, among slaves on Mariejois. There’s a very high chance Fisher Tiger heard Nika stories while enslaved- the compositional similarity of the Sun Pirates’ mark to the base Nika symbol, Jinbe’s pissed off refusal to answer any of Who’s-Who’s questions, Fisher Tiger’s own status as a warrior of liberation, and of course, the Sun Pirates’ name and the importance of the sun to the residents of Fishman Island all point in this direction.

The proliferation of the Nika sun symbol across the world also points, to me, to at least pockets of the Nika cult potentially surviving in cryptic form across the world, like Kuma’s family did, with various levels of conscious awareness about what their rituals and symbols actually mean and what secret seditious knowledge they’re actually carrying.

However! All that said! Not all sun gods are Nikas- At least, not completely.

Upon their arrival at Egghead Island, Dorry and Broggy identified Luffy as the Sun God. However, I contend that Nika was not originally Elbaf’s sun god.

In expository Nika dialogue, Nika is specifically cited as a god of slaves (& as an ethnic or cultural god of the buccaneer people), and the giants as far as we know are (1), not a traditionally enslaved people nor particularly easy to enslave, (2), are based on Vikings & have their own pantheon which includes a god of war, & (3), while I can absolutely see how a tradition of a prolonged fast > feast festival would have evolved around a Nika figure, it does still feel a little strange. That’s supposed to be a Luffy-alike!

Besides this, the Shandian pantheon also includes a sun god, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that the sun god in question existed prior to any awakened user of the Nika fruit running around causing issues (although, more on my thoughts about Joyboy and Shandora in pt 3). Human sacrifice traditions also feel about as odd for a Luffy figure as fasting does, and while obviously Luffy, Joyboy, and Nika aren’t the same person, with the way One Piece’s narrative conventions work they’re probably quite similar.

Solar deities are the lynchpins of many if not most traditions in the real world. Sun’s a very notable noticable thing that follows a set course across the sky and brings light and life! And especially in One Piece, where the sun is also a critical thematic element and motif, I would be surprised if the majority of One Piece cultures hadn’t developed their own sun gods at some point or other.

So, all that said, why were Dorry and Broggy calling Luffy Sun God? Syncretism.

Not every god has a mythical zoan or the things would be wildly more common- only gods and figures with, as @oriigami put it while we were talking about this, a particularly potent wish attached to them. Even fewer gods have awakened mythical zoan users around. So when an awakened user of a sun god’s mythical zoan is running around (and particularly, a sun god with an incredibly potent wish attached, because Nika is a god of liberation as well as the sun, and it’s a god that people wish they could be and emulate as a matter of course), it’s easy to fold them into your mythology as your sun god. Tradition is very malleable! He’s the sun, even if he’s not exactly how you traditionally pictured it.

Traditions are very good at working with what they get, and at the moment what they get is a smiling, laughing pirate captain and liberator of slaves. What could be better?

#nikaposting #sun god nika #gear 5 #opmeta #meta tag #zephflix original #if i hadn't dropped out of college i'd be a religious studies major and this tag is how you know

[grainjew]

Nikaposting Pt 1: Crypto-Religion

This is the first of a series of posts about Nika & associated religious practice in the One Piece world. As I write and post the rest of the series, I’ll add links to this header.

Pt 2: Symbology & Syncretism | Pt 3: Joyboy was Shandian | Pt 4: Sun God Tropes

Enormous credit to @oriigami for being my discussion partner through all of this and having a substantial influence on the final product. Check out our ao3 series Joyful for a narrative rather than analytical take on the Nika tradition, and definitely go read her OP blog @kaizokuou-ni-naru for meta and translation fun facts.

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The Nika Cult is a Crypto-Religion

Terminology note: I will be using cult in these posts in the sense of “cult of worship,” rather than in the modern pejorative sense. Additionally, I tend to use “tradition” rather than “religion” as a general term, because “religion” is a messy and difficult to define concept, while “tradition” is much more inclusive of traditional practices, folk beliefs, and cults of worship that may not be considered religions by Western scholarship.

Raise your hand if you saw Kuma’s church and Bible, concluded “oh, the Nika stuff is basically One Piece Christianity,” and moved on with your life.

It’s an easy assumption to make, and for all I know authorial intent may well stop there. I’m not Oda. I’ll never be able to guess what goes on behind those fish eyes of his. But a second look at the worldbuilding around both Nika and Christianity in One Piece brought me to a very different conclusion: that the Nika cult is a crypto-religion and is, in Kuma’s case, using the outward appearance of Christianity as camouflage.

First of all: We have ample evidence that Christianity (or some variation of it- I’m fascinated by the implied existence of such things as One Piece Jerusalem and the One Piece Council of Nicea) does exist in the One Piece world, and is both fairly widespread and quite legal. Flevance was pretty explicitly Catholic (Law went to church as a kid), Miss Monday and Mother Carmel masqueraded as nuns to imply harmlessness, many if not most of the graves shown in the series are crosses, whatever Usopp was on about with that exorcism equipment, and, yes, Kuma’s church and Bible.

Even mentioning the Nika cult, on the other hand, is grounds for the government to assassinate you with extreme prejudice.

A crypto-religion is what happens when a religion is suppressed to the point that its practice is grounds for exile, torture, and/or execution: Some people will convert. Some people will flee into exile. Some people will die. And some people will outwardly adopt the dominant religion, but will continue to practice their own traditions in secret; ie, they’ll create a crypto-religion.

One of the more famous examples of this is the post-Spanish Inquisition crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal, who converted to Christianity in public but kept what Jewish traditions and rituals they could in private. To this day, descendants of these conversos whose families have been Catholic for centuries are discovering that their family tradition of lighting two candles on Friday or not eating pork on Saturday are in fact the legacy of a violently suppressed heritage. There are countless other examples of crypto-religions throughout history, both among Jews (my own personal field of knowledge) and among other traditions (for an example that would be known to Oda, the crypto-Christians of Japan).

There’s no way the Nika cult could have survived except in cryptic form. If it ever had physical infrastructure in the form of temples or pilgrimage sites, the government would have sought them out and demolished them long ago if they were not adequately disguised, especially in World Government member states like the Sorbet Kingdom. Likewise, anyone foolish enough to speak publicly about Nika will be summarily assassinated.

In fact, I have doubts that the Nika cult ever existed outside cryptic form, at least in a significant or long-lasting manner. It was specifically introduced as a slave tradition, likely nigh-exclusively oral, practiced in secret either from its inception—if Nika was a figure created by slaves, including the buccaneers—or for a very long time—if it was the cultural or ethnic tradition of the buccaneers, which spread from enslaved buccaneers to non-buccaneer slaves because Nika was a figure that resonated with them. I tend the favor the second option, but either has merit.

As @oriigami said when we were talking about this, Kuma has a church. Kuma has a bible. Kuma worships a god about whom absolutely nothing is written except in the oldest texts.

Additionally, I’ll expand on this more in pt 2 of this series, but the pendant Kuma leaves for Bonney, a large circular sapphire surrounded by eight smaller circular sapphires, matches the circular symbol inset into the crosses of his church. Bonney immediately identifies the pendant as a sun even though it really doesn’t look like one, and it can be surmised therefore that it’s a Nika amulet, and the sun with disconnected rays a Nika symbol. Following this read, and especially because this symbol occurs across the world in other contexts (see pt 2 for my thoughts on that), its presence in the church is a very careful bit of architectural sleight of hand on the part of whichever of Kuma’s ancestors built the place- echoing a very common practice of real-world crypto-religion adherents to mark the true nature of their allegiances and houses of worship in ways only those in the know might recognize.

And on a storytelling level, Kuma’s entire presence in the narrative and in the world has been a tragic saga of appearing to be one way until he’s revealed, again and again, to be the opposite. It makes thematic sense for him to be fooling the world about his faith as well!

#nikaposting #sun god nika #gear 5 #opmeta #bartholomew kuma #meta tag #zephflix original #if i hadn't dropped out of college i'd be a religious studies major and this tag is how you know