Listen, I fully support the whole idea of demon Zoro but I think a small part of me will always root for a more war god/goddess approach.
Hear me out because this goes in a few loops before tying together but my words wouldn't word right and my thoughts wouldn't thought right. So this is as good as it's gonna get and hopefully it kind of makes sense at the end. 🤷♀️
I listened to a podcast years ago that talked about how war goddesses always got portrayed as these terrible women, their stories warped until they were just bloodthirsty and vindictive.
But that's such a shallow, shitty take on them.
Yeah, war is bad. We all know that.
But war could be...
• defending your home
• fighting for the safety of your family and friends
• protecting yourself
• the only way to progress, justice, freedom, etc.
Point is, I love the concept of mother goddesses of war.
The ones that love their devotees with all their heart.
The ones that keep the fires going in the hearth and bring rain frequent enough to keep the soil wet
The ones that offer a full harvest and constant refuge
The ones that speak in gentle tones and vicious snarls
I love the ones that ride into battle beside their believers
The ones that wear blood like war paint and gently stroke your cheek with hands calloused from weapons
The ones that led the charge one steady feet and strong beliefs
The ones that howl like wolves, cry like ravens, and bring with them the wrath of a pissed off mother
The ones that stand in defense, tall and unmovable when someone has asked for safety, when called out for by those scared and desperate like all humans call out for their mothers when faced with death
The ones that say you will not die here because you are mine and I will come when you call
I love that.
I also think that type of role is very specific to the mother goddesses.
I also think that fits Zoro perfect.
The crew has not sailed without Zoro.
He's always been there, right next to Luffy.
He was the first, and that's important, meaningful.
He stands unwavering when they hide behind him, cling to his clothes or arms
He's safety when there's danger. Arguably, I'd even say more so than Luffy.
Luffy is kind of a wild card in a lot of situations and it's a guarantee he'll be dealing with the main big baddie, so it makes him a risky place to seek shelter.
It's a safe bet Zoro will be in the middle of the action too but he always seems more reachable than Luffy.
I also, personally, think Zoro knows absolutely everything that goes on in their crew and on their ship. He hears and sees it all.
I think the one of the worst situation someone could be in is having legitimately pissed of the strawhats.
Firstly, because they're all fucking crazy.
But more importantly, you're going to have Zoro and Robin looking for you.
Zoro carried the title of hunter. He regularly tracked people down for bounties before meeting Luffy.
Luffy strikes and strikes hard, but Zoro had to have patience, that relentless chase, hunting.
I think he lets himself be more loud and careless because of Luffy.
He settles under Luffy because he wants to. He has devoted himself to Luffy because Luffy is someone worth devoting himself to.
Zoro is fierce and strong but Luffy is a king, a god.
More importantly though, they balance each other, sometimes as opposites and sometimes as equals.
They provide something for each other that no one else quite can. They are the same breath in separate lungs.
Lightning and Thunder
Sun and Moon
Clouds and Stars
Sea and River
Blood and Bone
Skin and Steel
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Speaking of Tyrest. A lot of people forget that he treated Pharma with absolute disdain, not only using him as a test subject for a clearly painful mass murder machine, but talking to Pharma like he saw him as nothing but some henchman to order around that was nothing more than a 'diseased cripple' if Tyrest hadn't come to rescue him.
Like it really is an interesting background dynamic with some curious implications, but when you look at fandom posts from around that issue/the years after, for some reason people just saw "Pharma worked with Tyrest" and concluded Pharma is a card carrying bigot ksjfnskxkd. Like yeah Pharma didn't do anything to stop Tyrest but it seems his main beef with the Autobots was with Ratchet in particular and maybe a general disdain for his ex-comrades. As well as continuing to hate Decepticons which like, not even the "good Autobots" are immune to (even in Pharma's introduction, First Aid says in his journal something like "yeah we all hate Decepticons, but Pharma REALLY hates them"). And despite what fandom likes to construe there's really no evidence in IDW1 that Autobots and Decepticons are different "races" or "types" of Cybertronians, so Pharma hating Decepticons really isn't a bigotry/robot racism thing. And instead probably has something to do with, idk, the 4 million year long galaxy-spanning blood feud war, or maybe being blackmailed and tortured into insanity by the Biggest and Most Decepticon-y of Decepticons.
Tyrest treated Pharma like trash, the other Decepticons working for Tyrest (how come no one ever brings that up btw) also hated him, so if anything it seems that Pharma was more of a rogue element only staying with Tyrest bc he was his best option and probably had no way to even escape.
I'm glad that at least in recent years the fandom has acquired a keen reading eye and good taste to finally recognize Pharma as the (accidentally) complex character he is instead of making him some posh, racist Starscream clone SHSJDGSGDH
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