Here’s something interesting! Read back to Marineford arc and consider what Whitebeard might have meant to Crocodile. It was only after the witnessing WB getting stabbed and talking to his adopted son that Croco did a 180 to protect Luffy. I try to read WB’s dialogue to guess what he said affected Croco so much. My favorite theory is that WB is Croco’s bio dad and thus Luffy’s other grandpa! The family tree would be so entangled lol
This is one of those things which makes me feel insane because, I swear to god, around like 2011 I remember Oda saying in an interview that he based Whitebeard on a gay friend he had, which was like part of the reason why Whitebeard's crew WAS his family, instead of him having like a wife and bio-kids. That Whitebeard was gay. But like, no matter how I try looking that up I can't actually find any information to confirm this?? Like no interview or as much as a mention of an interview like that ever existing??? DID I IMAGINE THAT??? IT'S SUCH AN OLD, CORE MEMORY, I CAN'T IMAGINE HOW I WOULD'VE IMAGINED IT UP??? OR WAS IT JUST AN EARLY 2010S TUMBLR HOAX?????? I FEEL DERANGED
Honestly, considdering the way Marco of all people found it unimaginable WB had kids, let alone that Weevil was the son of Whitebeard and Stussy (the current running theory being that Weevil is actually like a clone of WB with Stussy's DNA mixed in), I do personally find it unlikely Whitebeard has any bio-kids at all. Like, that felt like the implication there to me, that Marco doesn't believe WB had bio-kids with anyone, and I would be inclined to believe Marco there as he's kind of meant to be seen as an authority figure in a way (at least on this subject)
At most, if the "Xebec is Croc's dad" theory did turn out to be true, it would actually make sense if Whitebeard had adopted Crocodile after the God Valley incident-- whether the kid stayed is debatable, since WB did still betray his dad so he might've ran away, but regardless, at most I could see WB being Croc's adoptive father. At most. (Alternatively, as Oda has stated in an SBS, Whitebeard didn't believe women belong on a battlefield so it could be plausible he didn't want to keep a 9 year old child on his ship either. So he could've picked up Baby Croc until he found a safe place to ditch him in, kinda like how Franky ended up)
I have been feeling tempted to do a re-analysis of Croc in Marineford because, when I did my first analysis, I was too Lost In The Sauce and far too excited about the mere idea of Crocodad to form coherent, even semi-objective thoughts. But now that it's been a few months, I feel like I could really look at it with a more fresh perspective
But let's just look this exchange Crocodile and Whitebeard had really quick
As far as we know, the only person Crocodile has ever lost to (aside from Luffy) was Whitebeard, and that loss was the thing that crushed his spirit and dreams. Whitebeard, the most powerful man in the world. He who humbled Crocodile and taught him his place in the powerscaling of the world, that Crocodile was at best a silver medalist and could never catch up to him.
That must've been Crocodile's entire worldview, for so many decades. That WB was #1, an absolute fact nothing could change.
But time comes for all.
Whitebeard has become old. He is no longer in his prime.
"I can't remain the strongest forever"
Even if Whitebeard didn't say that outloud, I'm sure in this moment Crocodile understood that deep inside. That the absolute he had believed in wasn't an absolute after all, that a new era is approaching and the kids (Luffy and Ace) on this battlefield are going to take their places (his and WB's) sooner or later, whether they like it or not.
And of course; this isn't the same Whitebeard who beat Crocodile's ass over 20 years ago. Taking his head would not give him the satisfaction and catharsis he wanted.
Trying to get past Jozu and Marco and the rest of WB's crew, some of whom might be more dangerous than WB himself at this point, would not give Crocodile the revenge he wanted. It wouldn't even be worth the effort. If anything, taking WB's head here and now would just give the World Government exactly what they'd want.
Like, putting aside all the theories, your Crocodads and Whitebeard's bio-kids aside. ('Cause sometimes you need to look past the rose-tinted theory glasses even if you don't want to) (And I need to remind myself to do that more often tbh)
I do think the main reason Crocodile ends up assisting Luffy, is simply because of that. Whitebeard isn't worth it anymore. He's just an old man. Crocodile could kill him, without a doubt, it just wouldn't change anything.
So he just moves onto the next thing on his list of priorities; not letting the Government get what they want, out of spite.
31 notes
·
View notes
i have once more Read a Book !
the book was jim morris' cancer factory: industrial chemicals, corporate deception, & the hidden deaths of american workers. this book! is very good! it is primarily about the bladder cancer outbreak associated with the goodyear plant in niagara falls, new york, & which was caused by a chemical called orthotoluedine. goodyear itself is shielded by new york's workers' comp law from any real liability for these exposures & occupational illnesses; instead, a lot of the information that morris relies on comes from suits against dupont, which manufactured the orthotoluedine that goodyear used, & despite clear internal awareness of its carcinogenicity, did not inform its clients, who then failed to protect their workers. fuck dupont! morris also points out that goodyear manufactured polyvinyl chloride (PVC) at that plant, and, along with other PVC manufacturers, colluded to hide the cancer-causing effects of vinyl chloride, a primary ingredient in PVC & the chemical spilled in east palestine, ohio in 2023. the book also discusses other chemical threats to american workers, including, and this was exciting for me personally, silica; it mentions the hawks nest tunnel disaster (widely forgotten now despite being influential in the 30s, and, by some measures, the deadliest industrial disaster in US history) & spends some time on the outbreak of severe silicosis among southern california countertop fabricators, associated with high-silica 'engineered stone' or 'quartz' countertops. i shrieked about that, the coverage is really good although the treatment of hawks nest was very brief & neglected the racial dynamic at play (the workers exposed to silica at hawks nest were primarily migrant black workers from the deep south).
cancer factory spends a lot of time on the regulatory apparatus in place to respond to chemical threats in the workplace, & thoroughly lays out how inadequate they are. OSHA is responsible for setting exposure standards for workplace chemicals, but they have standards for only a tiny fraction—less than one percent!—of chemicals used in american industry, and issue standards extremely slowly. the two major issues it faces, outside of its pathetically tiny budget, are 1) the standard for demonstrating harm for workers is higher than it is for the general public, a problem substantially worsened during the reagan administration but not created by it, and 2) OSHA is obliged to regulate each individual chemical separately, rather than by functional groups, which, if you know anything at all about organic chemistry, is nonsensical on its face. morris spends a good amount of time on the tenure of eula bingham as the head of OSHA during the carter administration; she was the first woman to head the organization & made a lot of reasonable reforms (a cotton dust standard for textile workers!), but could not get a general chemical standard, allowing OSHA to regulate chemicals in blocks instead of individually, through, & then of course much of her good work was undone by reagan appointees.
the part of the book that made me most uncomfortable was morris' attempt to include birth defects in his analysis. i don't especially love the term 'birth defect'—it feels cruel & seems to me to openly devalue disabled people's lives, no?—but i did appreciate attention to women's experiences in the workplace, and i think workplace chemical exposure is an underdiscussed part of reproductive justice. cancer factory mentions women lead workers who were forced to undergo tubal ligations to retain their employment, supposedly because lead is a teratogen. morris points at workers in silicon valley's electronics industry; workers, most of them women, who made those early transistors were exposed to horrifying amounts of lead, benzene, and dangerous solvents, often with disabling effects for their children.
morris points out again & again that we only know that there was an outbreak of bladder cancer & that it should be associated with o-toluedine because the goodyear plant workers were organized with the oil, chemical, & atomic workers (OCAW; now part of united steelworkers), and the union pursued NIOSH investigation and advocated for improved safety and monitoring for employees, present & former. even so, 78 workers got bladder cancer, 3 died of angiosarcoma, and goodyear workers' families experienced bladder cancer and miscarriage as a result of secondary exposure. i kept thinking about unorganized workers in the deep south, cancer alley in louisiana, miners & refinery workers; we don't have meaningful safety enforcement or monitoring for many of these workers. we simply do not know how many of them have been sickened & killed by their employers. there is no political will among people with power to count & prevent these deaths. labor protections for workers are better under the biden administration than the trump administration, but biden's last proposed budget leaves OSHA with a functional budget cut after inflation, and there is no federal heat safety standard for indoor workers. the best we get is marginal improvement, & workers die. i know you know! but it's too big to hold all the same.
anyway it's a good book, it's wide-ranging & interested in a lot of experiences of work in america, & morris presents an intimate (sometimes painfully so!) portrait of workers who were harmed by goodyear & dupont. would recommend
8 notes
·
View notes