Cloud Gazing with Luffy
Day 1 of Fluffvember 2023
Gender & race neutral reader
Requested by @bas-writes
A fresh wind blew over the field, transporting wild pieces of dry grass and dust. You breathed in, the scent of the cooking in a nearby cabin traveling to your nose. Licking your lips, you opened your eyes. White, puffy clouds were speckling the bright blue, high noon sky.
The hand holding your own squeezed around yours. You turned to Luffy, who was smiling softly.
“Were you sleeping?” he wondered.
“No, no, don’t worry.” After a pause you added: “I was just enjoying this moment.”
Luffy smiled brightly at you. His gaze then traveled back to the sky.
“Hey!” he shouted. “That cloud looks like Merry!” he added, pointing at a white puff.
Upon closer inspection, you saw the shape too. The round head, the curled horns, the long neck attaching it to a vague ship shape.
You smiled at the realization.
Looking around, you searched for a fun cloud yourself. After a few seconds, you piqued Luffy’s interest by pointing at a straw hat shaped one.
This prompted him to press his free hand against his own hat.
“Oh! What about that one?” you pointed again.
“Oh, yes! It’s meat-shaped!”
You smiled at his enthusiasm, when the scent of food once again hit your nostrils. Maybe it was time to grab lunch.
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longtime dc fan and i think a lot of people are angry because alex is obviously one of the most culturally relevant instances of misogyny in media. that being said being more culturally relevant doesn’t mean it’s the worst instance of misogyny and i think bumble definitely experiences more profound misogyny in the way the actual content is presented, if that makes sense
I get you, and that's a charitable way of looking at it.
I think what's rustling my jimmies is that like, there was a couple of WC fans being mildly dismissive of Alex in that note minefield, after dozens of comments of "fuck you how could you let the fridge woman lose" and "Bumble didn't deserve to win ANY rounds" and "how could A CAT experience misogyny." But then WE get blamed for the toxicity because THEY were butthurt that the Funny Cat People have the 'audacity' to win something they feel entitled to.
Like, we've gotta be endlessly charitable as we get openly insulted because they're upset about Alex losing, a very well-known and culturally relevant character with a legacy so massive we have a whole term named after her. But condemnations of "She's just a cat, letting WC into this poll was a mistake, Bumble can't even be a victim of misogyny" only started coming around once I started talking about it.
as if it's OUR fault people got passive-aggressive or even OPENLY aggressive towards us, and that we're "just as bad" for retaliating
But like you said, it's not a "Most Culturally Relevant Misogyny" tournament, it's a "Canon Misogyny Victims" tournament. And you're not even supposed to give a shit that Bumble died. The fat, woman abuse victim is beaten to death by a dictator, and your takeaway is meant to be, "It's so sad that Clear Sky is being blamed for murdering her, now they're all preparing for self-defense against a homicidal maniac, oh nooo :("
And I think that DOES make her deserve the win here! Alex is a MARTYR. Everyone with a brain agrees what happens to her is bad. It happened in her canon because it was bad. We talk about her and keep her memory alive. Bumble gets dismissed entirely out of hand because she's "just a cat in a kid's book" as if that doesn't make it worse, and as if the kid's book didn't treat a domestic abuse survivor like a moron for even asking for help.
Anyway, just to reiterate, I love DC fans. It's not all of you guys. Alex was done dirty and deserves justice-- and it's even kind of a shame that all she became is "The Fridge Woman." I haven't even heard people talk about how she was a wary, responsible person who was still ready to rock with Kyle's new weird glowstick powers, or that she was a journalist, or that she just got brought back in another edition as a Green Lantern only to be revealed as an illusion and re-absorbed back into Kyle's mind. Nope. Even her fans just remember her as The Fridge Woman.
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It may not come as a surprise that I am OBSESSED with the paranormal, and thus I posit a silly little thought nugget-
Devil Fruit eaters in general being No Longer Human. Like. Not even just Zoan users, but ALL of them.
The Fruits were created by the Sea Devil, offering odd and incredible powers in exchange for a weakness to water, a tomb of seasalt. The abilities are varied and dynamic, but they are still, by definition, an exchange - a Deal. It is Give and Take, a contract forged with the life-span of the eater as the signature. The Fruit braids itself into their genome, into their Soul, and makes them Other.
More beneath the cut, I just have so many thoughts send help
For some, this is an instinctive change. They Know things, information fed from the magic in their veins and marrow to their brain, all that the Fruit has learned from previous users in an abstract way. For some, the information from their Fruit is Locked, tidbits bleeding through the cracks and grooves of the chest which contains the treasure trove of knowledge which they are not equipped to handle. The Fruits are only truly Conscious when they are Bound, Eaten, Active, after all. To needlessly overwhelm and kill their hosts would be unfortunate.
In that vein, one could argue that the eaters are something of a sacrifice, a symbiotic relationship between our world and the one beyond it.
Some Fruits however simply do not HAVE the knowledge to pass on. Some have not been active in a very long time. Some have not had the experience in thriving with their Host. Some just simply rarely get eaten for whatever reason.
Some simply protect their Host from the Truth.
What all Devil Fruit eaters have in common, loosely though it is, is an innate ability to recognize one another, to identify each other, and to toe the line between the mortal world and the Other. The sharpness of the awareness varies person to person, soul to soul, but all Notice in their own ways, can reach beyond the veil to varying degrees and with varies intentions.
Luffy can See into others, an ability he's had always, but after eating his Fruit, it sharpened. His gaze cut deeper, his sight clearer, and he could read a person as easily as a scholar with a juvenile practice book would read the text therein. His gaze is clearest beneath the skin of others.
Luffy, inhuman as parts are, must feed both aspects:
The body he has, and the form which his Devil Fruit has woven itself into, must eat. He loves meat, a trait often found in Ds, but his appetite is voracious even then, feeding and feeding and feeding. What few realize is that his hunger is both mortal and not, a craving for meat of any variety. He will eat anything. Anything. His natural defaults mesh well with his Fruit, and he simply catalogues it easily within his existing paradigm
The soul he carries is fueled by love, freedom, expression. He is emotional and unhindered by expectations because he chooses not to be. He gives himself the freedom to do so. He wants to be untethered and to feel and experience and BE. He wants for others to have much the same. He finds people who are Chained and he takes their shackles in hand, asks them why they are there, and then he shatters them beneath the force of his Care and Ambition and Temptation. He opens the doors of change and growth and liberation, and then he lays the choices before those he can. It's a subconscious thing, mostly, but he Feeds the carnal, bare bones Drive of his Fruit in the same breath as him feeding his own freedom and thus his own soul.
<>
Buggy on the other hand does not have the same basis to work from. Whereas Luffy's Fruit is Other Than and thus not as impacted by its infrequency in circulation, Buggy's is not so blessed. The Bara Bara no mi is not a common Fruit to be eaten. It has had precious few holders who survived long enough to learn much of anything regarding its properties. As it stands, Buggy himself is the longest survivor of this power. Not only does it initial stage impact the nervous system in unique and bizarre ways but it also changes the musculoskeletal structures and the host's brain. In order to be able to split and still function, your spatial awareness needs to be far higher than average, and the synapses in your brain must be able to handle the strain.
Many holders of the Chop Chop Fruit were driven mad by this. Be it the influx of information or the psychosomatic pain of a limb loss or worse, it would often lad to death - and not always by the hands of another.
Buggy was always more cerebral than his crewmates, than Shanks and the others. He was a thinker, and his specialty was operating outside of normal conventions - it was how his weapons making skills improved leaps and bounds. Chemistry, physics and mechanics were his biggest passions, followed closely by some dabbling in medicine and botany. There were no limits in his mind, on questions and redirected pathways. Where one path did not lead to an expected result, another would open, would branch off, and the yield of these actions would be cataloged and coveted.
The Bara Bara no mi was not much different in this. That Devil Fruit was perfect for Buggy, for his natural processes and his demeanor. Buggy already toed the line of fragmented, puzzle thinking, and his Fruit simply exacerbated this.
He feeds his mind with the options and dynamicism he exhibits with his body.
He does not however feed his BODY with the same. Oh, he eats when he remembers or someone reminds him. He has noticed some things taste better, make him FEEL better than others. But he doesn't seek them out.
This is partly due to mental health issues, and an unidentified food aversion which began in his childhood. Food was often used as a punishment/reward system, and things, unattended to, spiraled from there. Buggy doesn't even realize it.
Another problem is that his tastes in foods he has had the best responses with remind him of things he would rather not think on. Specifically, they remind him of his late captain. Roger always preferred his steaks rare and juicy. Buggy adores his much the same.
And a final issue is that the few times Buggy DID act on the Hunger, the Drive for something, he was punished for it, told it was bad and not okay. In their defense, he was a child, and raw meat is not safe for consumption, especially in one who has such a problematic immune system as Buggy. He always draws the short end of the stick in things.
He subsides loosely on intimidation tactics, licking the blood from his knives, a habit which began after the loss of his family. He does not acknowledge the baying hunger in his chest when he does this. He has buried it along with so many other things.
Buggy is good with his Devil Fruit, but he is good with it while starved and unwell.
It truly would be beneficial for another Devil Fruit User with long term experience to ask him what he Feeds on, wouldn't it?
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