u/Kekero63

Alright I’ve been thinking about Kaku. Why is he the way he is and why is it so similar to Luffy. He uses his body like a spring when he compresses it, his legs come out whenever he retracts his neck too far.

Are all zoan fruits like this? I mean it’d make sense, Kaku is supposed to be the demonstration of what a zoan fruit actually is and can do.

Wonder what this could mean?

Probably a necessity so a person doesn’t simply die from the pain of the transformation. Nika can probably just take on any Zoan form since it’s entirely limitless which explains why Luffy is able to manipulate his body in any way he wants Nika is like the “Omni-Zoan” which gives it properties similar to a logia. While other zoans are limited to in-between stages of their transformation or transformations arising out of how your zoan changes your body. Like making your horns bigger or smaller.

We know from statements from Oda that in one piece your beauty is determined by the amount you follow your dreams. If you give up then you usually become fat and ugly.

We see in the God Valley flashback that Big Mom is actually a 10/10. Does anyone else think she might have a dream she stopped following? If so, what do you think those dreams and aspirations might have been?

bro really saw a random fucking dude who was JACKED. trying to kill him, he asked his name, and killed himself afterwards. did Megumi put ANY of ts together?

Alright this is going to sound insane, but I believe I’ve found the root of all magic. Narrative, narrative is the magic. Narrative isn’t as simple as your beliefs, they are real spirits with their own wills and desires.

The world opens up when you realize this, alchemy has come to pervade every facet of modern life. Its substance is faith. What is an institution but the collective faith in it? What is money but the faith of its value? These are all narrative and spiritual.

The word “dog” is not a dog nor is any drawing of a dog a dog. But both are calling upon the spirit of the form of “dog” to impose itself onto reality. Transmuting paint and ink to “Dog”.

In short the three separate parts the dog, the word “dog”, and the drawing of the dog, are all united under a common narrative spirit. Same could be said for any icon or word, humanity is inherently spiritual.

Gold is valued because we have imbued the gold with narrative spirit, with this framework you can do better than turn lead to gold, you can turn anything into anything with the correct rhetoric.

There’s a throughline in occult circles that alchemists were mostly swindlers, this is true for the ones who take on the role of a snake oil salesman. But oftentimes alchemy is simply a framework to understand storytelling.

You can either use these narrative spirits to create ugliness in the world or beauty. What you choose is simply a reflection of your inner self.

These narrative tools will give you the ability to create great art. the peak of Alchemy is the creation of a “philosophers” stone. But this stone and the process by which it is made is actually depicted within the Bible multiple times. First was in Bethel where Jacob saw angels climb to heaven upon a ladder in a dream. He then took the stone he slept upon and drew a border, saying that the area around the stone was to be a house to the chief God El.

From now on I will refer to the philosophers stone as a “Bethel stone” since this is a practice common to the Semite peoples other stones were often called Baetyl stones. Both meaning “house of El”

These stones were often black meteorites, the Bethel stone is a vehicle for granting arbitrary authority which could be used to requisition resources from the followers of the God of the stone.

This was used a second time to create the temple of Solomon with the Ark of the Covenant as its Bethel Stone. A third time it was established by the second temple Judaism, which had a heavy emphasis on preserving the power and prestige of the Babylonian exiles’ bloodlines. Where the declarations of king Cyrus were used as a source of arbitrary authority and thus forming the “stone” of the second temple. This is one of the primary reasons Cyrus was named messiah, to make his authority permanent among the Jewish people

More examples outside of Judaism exist but the Jews were quite prolific writers and scholars. So many of the written sources on specific stones are Jewish.

These include Elagabal, The Kaaba, the Omphalos at Delphi, the stone of scone, etc.

If you extend the logic the stones themselves no longer become necessary but the system of arbitrary authority remain. The action of obeying the stones is more important than the existence of those stones. A lot of the time these stones represent a contract, or a witness to a contract.

Witnessing a contract is an essential element of ancient trade and politics. If only the giver and signer of a contract were the only witnesses to a contract it was considered invalid. So often people would rely on temples, and give further authority to the contract by swearing upon a God, which would be contained within the Bethel stone.

These stones in a sense represent the social order itself, and being able to manipulate the social order can allow you to gain whatever you want. Power, sex, money, etc etc.

This kind of magic has advanced to the point where paper currency has become spiritually indistinguishable from gold coinage. Where the office of president’s spirit prevents men from disobedience.

Spirits are hard to define but humans know them when they see them. :-) is not a face, it is simply an organization of light which you perceive as having the spiritual essence of a face creating the linked narrative between the Platonic form “face” and the object “:-)”.

Transmutation can be seen as a process of changing perspective. And mastery of alchemy is the ability to take on multiple perspectives at once. alchemic praxis can be seen as your ability to convince others of the narrative of an object. These rhetorical skills are often defined by “Olympian Demons” who you channel into yourself and use to deceive others.

I do not recommend this kind of malicious practice, it is the way of the snake oil salesman. The ones who do this practice maliciously are usually kings or aristocracy. the common swindler is just a nuisance in comparison.

the Bethel stone is religion and faith itself. All social contracts are a sort of religion. From property rights to even the idea of personhood. But people are easy to become infatuated with arbitrary authority with enough pomp, ceremony and legend.

Manipulating the beliefs of others is far more valuable than anything like a universal panacea or being able to turn lead to gold.

In the story Mob psycho 100 Reigen Arataka is actually a perfect example of a “real” magician ironically enough. Half swindler, half savior. Spinning narratives and giving himself arbitrary authority through vibes alone.

I see in anime that there’s a lot of metaphor linking Magic and Art as well. Full Metal Alchemist and Witch Hat Atelier are both great examples of how magic and art are one and the same. Art is the highest form of narrative transmutation. Creating beauty is a holy task and it shouldn’t be sullied by the low swindling and authoritarianism of the foul alchemists.