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[tibias]

Mun

Name: Kat
Livejournal/Dreamwidth Username: autumnae
E-mail: auctumnae@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: auctumnae (AIM)
Current Characters at Luceti: N/A


Character

Name: Red-Haired Shanks
Fandom: One Piece
Gender: Male
Age: Oda says 37, so that's what I'm going with, even if it makes other things kind of crazy.
Wing Color: Red with gold flecks.
History: His page on the amazing One Piece wikia.
Personality:

On first glance, Shanks is the most easy going and laid-back person on the planet. Not much fazes him, and he's content to let life go as it will. He's an adventurer at heart, but he moves at a much slower pace than other pirates that we see in One Piece, staying at places like Fushia for long periods of time and then moving on to wherever the wind takes him and his crew next.

He's a great lover of all things fun, whether that be drinking heavily and throwing parties (which he's got a reputation for doing) or teasing the hell out of a little kid because he has such hilarious reactions. He's also a pretty friendly guy. Unlike some pirate crews, Shanks is incredibly friendly with his. They call him boss and while they all respect him and the great pirate he is, they're also pretty irreverent at times. They laugh at him when something funny happens and they're not afraid to make remarks about him whether or not he can hear.

Shanks himself is pretty cool with that. He doesn't care much about what others think of him and he doesn't have much shame. He laughs when things go wrong in small ways, and he doesn't care if other people throw food and drinks at him. It's just not worth it to him to get worked up over things like that. It doesn't matter much to him.

But lay one hand on someone he likes and you're a dead man. Shanks is fiercely loyal and won't forgive anyone who hurts one of his friends. Given that he's an incredibly powerful and fearsome pirate (when he wants to be, anyways) pissing him off is a bad thing to do. In addition to being willing to always fight for the people he cares about, Shanks is also willing to sacrifice incredible amounts for them. Whether it's an arm for the Luffy, the kid he liked teasing, or his pride and possible good relations with Whitebeard when he goes to the other captain to talk about Ace, there doesn't seem to be much of a limit to what Shanks is willing to give up for a friend. It's very likely he learned this from watch his captain when he was young, Roger, who would stay behind and fight against impossible odds, risking his very life for the possibility that his crew could get away.

Though he's generally a very cheery and optimistic person, even in incredibly serious and painful situations, Shanks can and does get serious when the situation calls for it. And when he gets serious, putting his mind to work, it's a pretty incredible thing. Shanks seems to be able to read situations pretty well and is careful and deliberate with his words in tense situations. Sometimes this is a good thing, like in Marineford, and sometimes he screws it up. But in the times we've seen him get serious, he's always had a thing for words. He's persuasive when he wants to be, and also pretty wise when he wants to be, too. When he was younger, he seemed to have a deeper side to him when he talked with Buggy about things pirates do, and when he has his internal monologue at the end of Whitebeard and Ace's funeral, we see the deeper, wise side to him again.

On a completely different note, Shanks doesn't have much of a temper outside of his obvious hot button of his friends, but the guy can be pretty stubborn when he wants to be. When he was younger, he would fight with Buggy over stupid things and not back down even though there was no way to win the fight. When he's older, he goes so far as to draw his sword when talking with Whitebeard (which was a huge mistake, lemme tell you) because he's so serious about trying to stop the events that were to come with Ace and Blackbeard. Guy sticks to his guns, even when it's probably not a good idea to.

All in all, Shanks is a pretty damn layered character for someone who's showed up in a total of like... seven chapters. He's pretty much the definition of a minor character, but he's got a lot of depth to him outside of the cheery, alcoholic pirate without a care in the world. Not that he minds people thinking of him as just that.

Strengths:

Though you wouldn't think it, due to the fact that he only has one arm, Shanks is actually a force to be reckoned with physically. Oda has said that losing an arm didn't diminish his fighting ability any—and he's got a lot of it. Before he lost the arm, he duelled on a semi-regular basis with the World's Greatest Swordsman. In addition to his mad sword skills, Shanks is also a Haki user. A ginormous run-down on Haki can be found here, but I'll do my best to summarize.

Shanks has used Busoshoku Haki, which is basically using ambition/willpower/shounen fighting spirit to create a sort of hard armor around the user. It can also be applied to weapons to make them super hard. In addition to that, in the One Piece world, people who use Busoshoku Haki can break through and touch people with Devil Fruit powers. We've really only seen this part of it when it comes to Logia users whose entire body becomes whatever element Fruit they've eaten. So someone who's eaten a Fruit that turns them into gas and would normally be intangible and have the ability to let weapons and hits pass through them wouldn't be able to avoid hits given with Haki. In canon, Luffy uses this to hold onto Caesar Clown while he's in gas form and Shanks uses it on his sword to hold Akainu's magma fist at bay.

The other type of Haki Shanks has is called Haoshoku Haki. It's a rare, one in a million type of Haki that basically allows the user to overpower the wills of others. Which basically means when someone lets loose with a wave of Haoshoku Haki, it knocks all the weak willed people out. Experienced users (which Shanks is) can focus this type of Haki on a few people, and they can do the "giant wave of knocking weak people unconscious." The definition of "weak willed" changes depending on who the Haoshoku user is and how powerful they are. The greater the power gap between the people, the easier it is to knock them out. And, of course, the smaller the power gap, the harder it is, especially since some people with strong wills can resist or ignore Haoshoku Haki. This ability has also been used to tame wild animals and scare them off, but that hasn't been done to humans yet so who knows if that's just an animal thing.

Outside of physical strengths, his two greatest strengths are probably his words coupled with a bit of a strategic mind and his laid-back attitude. Though he does get serious when he needs to, his blasé attitude when it comes to life in general and things happening to him, specifically, make for a relatively healthy and optimistic outlook on life. That, in turn, makes it easier to deal with the tough situations when they come.

As far as his mind goes, it's pretty obvious that he knows how to read situations and play them to his advantage. He was able to stop a war just by talking and piggy-backing off of something someone else said. Even though the Whitebeard pirates were probably itching for vengeance after Ace and Whitebeard himself were killed, he knew how to use what Coby had said before to convince Marco to stand down so there wasn't anymore needless bloodshed. That is pretty damn impressive.

Weaknesses:

The most obvious weakness Shanks has is probably his lack of an arm. While he may be able to fight while missing it, he is physically disabled now and there's things he can't do with one arm that he could with two. Not to mention the fact that if he were to sprain or fracture any part of his remaining arm and hand, he'd be up shit creek without a paddle. It's hard to do daily self-care things with only one arm.

Outside of the obvious physical weaknesses, Shanks has also got some glaring weaknesses in his personality. The biggest one is probably his ego, strange as it sounds. He may not care what other people think of him, but he's got enough confidence in his abilities—namely his ability to read a situation—that when he screws up, it gets screwed up big time. We see this when he meets with Whitebeard about Ace. He thought Whitebeard had sent Ace after Blackbeard when it was actually Ace who insisted he go. Though Whitebeard lied about Ace being a stubborn butt and doing his own thing, Shanks has enough familiarity with the other crew that it's possible he should've realized Whitebeard would never send Ace after an enemy that is almost guaranteed to hand him his ass on a silver platter. Couple that with his showing off with his Haki and that meeting was not what it could've been.

We also see this in the first chapter of One Piece, when he confronts the bandit. After Benn disposes of the bandit's band of bandits (say that ten times fast) he lets loose with a smoke bomb and escapes with Luffy. Shanks didn't see that coming and promptly falls into a panic. Benn's reaction makes it seem like that's something that happens on a fairly regular basis when things don't go according to plan.

In addition to his panicking and occasionally getting to relaxed when he thinks he's got things in hand, he's also a stubborn butt. When he was a kid, he would get into fights over stupid things because he didn't want to admit he couldn't prove it one way or another. He's mellowed out with time, but it's safe to say he's still got a stubborn streak that could get him in trouble.

Samples

First Person:

[ in the background, there's the sounds of nature. rustling leaves, rushing water, chirping birds... and then there's a quiet chuckle from the owner of the journal. ]

This is quite the place. I've seen quite a bit in my time, but nothing quite like this. And that guide is very handy! [ there's another small laugh ] Very thorough in its explaining this place.

[ shanks pauses and there's the sounds of splashing. he's kicking his feet in the river. ]

If this place gets new arrivals in cycles, I imagine you get a number of these "I'm new here," journal entries. Aaah, well, that won't do. Let's spice things up and give you something more interesting than that!

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A Marine officer falls overboard during a battle with some pirates. He's a Devil Fruit user, so he can't swim and has to be rescued by a deckhand. When he's back aboard his ship, he thanks the deckhand and asks how he can best repay his underling for saving his life. The deckhand looks sheepish as he replies. "I think the best reward would be keeping it a secret, sir," the deckhand says, "If the other fellows knew I pulled you out, they might push me in!" Dahahahaha!

Third Person:

Grass has its own unique and unmistakable smell. To people who live mostly on land, it's common enough that it's wholly unremarkable. But to someone like Shanks who is used to the smell of salt, surf, and gunpowder, the grass and earthy smells are somewhat startling. Oddly enough, his lack of a shirt and shoes isn't as startling as those two things. He's woken up in worse positions before, but they've been rarer occurrences since he lost his arm. Not to mention the fact that he's never actually woken up half-naked on land when he went to bed sober enough to remember wearing a shirt and actually getting into his bunk.

He opens his eyes and the sight of a forest around him is... worrying. Almost as worrying as the foreign ache between his shoulder blades. It reminds him too much of the phantom pains that still wrack through his shoulder and the bit of remaining arm he has on the left side. Carefully, he pushes himself up into a sitting position and cranes his neck to look at his back ask best he can.

Wings. Huh. That's a new one.

Squinting, he carefully reaches back and runs a finger over one of them. He shivers a little at the sensitivity and frowns. If someone was going to graft new appendages onto him while he was sleeping, could they at least have given him more useful appendages? Or just one appendage. Like a new arm. That he could actually appreciate. Not these strange red and gold things stuck to his back.

A quick look around him is enough to determine that almost everything around him is unfamiliar. The shirt, shoes, and mantle folded neatly on the ground beside him are recognizable, and something he's grateful for, but the forest and the journal are alien. Shanks dresses relatively quickly, careful of the wings. Once the shirt and cape are situated and covering his stump well enough that he's satisfied, he picks up the journal and moves to rest against a tree. Might as well see what all this is about.

The guide isn't too difficult to find, though it does take him a bit. As he reads it, his eyebrows slowly climb up his forehead as if they were looking to gain their freedom away from his face. The New World was a special kind of crazy, and he'd seen a good many things in his years of travelling to the stranger places of the world. But this place? This is like nothing he's ever seen before. It almost seems like some kind of sick joke.

Carefully, he closes the journal and tucks it under his arm. As he stands, he grabs his sandals and starts walking until he comes to a river. He all but flops down on its shores and immediately dunks his feet into the water. The cool rushing feels good and familiar. It makes thinking and digesting this whole kidnapped to another world thing just a little easier. After a little while, he turns back to the journal and opens it. If he's going to be here for a while, he might as well see who else was out there, right? And there had been a bar mentioned in that guide. Maybe he'd be able to find someone to go drinking with. A good lot of hard liquor wouldn't be unwelcome right about now.