A pseudo-essay... on SmoAce?
What.
Well, after the recent interesting discussion about Ace's and Smoker's characters on the SmoAce comm, I decided to write about why I liked SmoAce so much. Somehow my little ponderings spawned a monster of around three thousand words. How did THAT happen? x'D
--
WHY
Ponderings about Smoker/Ace
--
Due to the fact that I draw Smoker and Ace frequently, people on deviantART - generally also SmoAce fans - often ask me a very good question: “Why do you like SmoAce?” Being an immature idiot fuelled solely on crack fanfics and One Piece updates, my usual answers are something along the lines of “because of the corny jokes”, “because of all the bad puns you can make”, or “because they’re smokin’ hot!”.
One evening during an epic quest for doujinshi, I came across a forum where somebody inquired as to why people liked Smoker/Ace so much, and there were also some random hypotheses by non-fans underneath. After failing in the search, I decided to go to sleep. However, it suddenly struck me the next morning at approximately 2:30 am that I wasn’t really sure why I liked SmoAce. It was my OTP. I loved it to pieces. But why?
The stereotypical behaviour of a rabid fangirl - and perhaps some equally rabid fanboys - is to find two (or three or four or, screw it, all) sexy male characters, stick them together, throw in some random smut just for good measure, and voilà! Out comes an OTP! Like I said, this is merely ‘stereotypical’ behaviour, but this may be how some people find their ‘one’ true pairs. Or threesomes.
I will have to confess that I came to know SmoAce through something like the above scenario. My love for One Piece wasn’t quite so fanatical last year. My high school, although (allegedly) blessed with the largest manga collection in the school region, only had 12 volumes of One Piece. In terms of Canadian publishing speed, it wasn’t really that far behind. But compared to scanlations, 12 volumes was pitiful. Less than pitiful.
Having nothing else to read, I decided one bored afternoon to just reread the volumes at school. And wow, was it great! I suddenly remembered just how much I had loved One Piece, and how it was just the perfect series for someone as messed up as me. In a rabid-fangirl fashion, I immediately started reading online (and then promptly went “@#$% that’s a lot of chapters”) and went to fanfiction.net.
Reading fanfictions is definitely an addiction to me. So, not really wanting to sift through poorly written drabbles with no plot, I used my super-awesome-and-generally-effective filtering technique: change the settings to “All ratings”, “Complete”, and “>100,000” words long. Evidently I didn’t get much, so I toned it down with the word count. Then lo and behold, something entitled “Of Seminars and Men” popped up, and saying, “Okay, sure, why not” I proceeded to read.
Yes, that’s right, it was the lovely tshapo_chi that introduced me to SmoAce. But the irony! Smoker I had met in Loguetown as the marine a friend of mine described as “Why the hell is he smoking two cigars, is he retarded?”. I knew who Smoker was, although not very well. But Ace? Who the heck was Ace?
Tshapo_chi introduced me to SmoAce, but it was my good friend from school who showed me who Ace was. It was a random conversation in band and the topic of One Piece came up. “Oh, my favourite character is Ace,” she said happily while putting away her clarinet. “He’s so cool! He’s even cooler than Zoro!” At that my curiosity was piqued (I mean, who’s cooler than Zoro, that’s blasphemy, I thought), and when I got home, I devoured chapter after chapter of One Piece until I figured out who this “Ace” fellow was.
It was instant love! And then the interesting interaction between Ace and Smoker made me fanfiction-twitchy. So I went on a fic hunt, shredded through all the stories on Blurry (which is down now, rest in peace) and fanfiction.net, found a lovely SmoAce community on LiveJournal (which was why I joined, actually), started writing some things, and went on a fanart spree - all in just a month or so. Reflecting back on it now, my instantaneous addiction was more than just a little strange, it was borderline creepy. Something this strange never happened. So why now?
Stupid references with the jitte aside, there had to have been good reasons for SmoAce to become my OTP. I usually skim through fandoms, sticking with them for a couple of months, tops. But Smoker/Ace has been my favourite pairing for almost a year now, and I had to find some reasons why. So at ungodly hours in the morning, I compiled a list.
The shallowest reason why I love them is because of their appearances. They just look good together - two awesomely sexy men with fantastic abs and a penchant for not wearing shirts. Face it, they’re both really hot (pardon the pun), and together, they’re really hot. Their designs also have some nice contrasts once you exclude the shirtlessness. Ace wears colourful things, has black, medium-length hair, childish freckles, and a cocky smile. On the other hand, Smoker is mainly monochrome, has whitish, choppy and short hair, a manly stubble-beard-thing, and is 99.99% of the time scowling like somebody goosed him or something. In Sven’s book, visual contrast is a nice bonus.
A hypothesis I found on that forum was that the fandom existed because of Smoker’s and Ace’s Devil Fruits. I will have to acknowledge that that was a pretty good guess. The two of them are ridiculously closely linked Logia. People have even created sayings about fire and smoke. Add the fact that they presumably tied in their Nanohana showdown (and the huge cloud of flames and fumes found solely in the anime that apparently spawned more yaoi fangirls) and you’ve got a pairing with potential facepalm!puns abound.
One slightly better reason I have for loving Smoker/Ace is because of their relations with other people. The main common denominator between the two of them is Luffy; Luffy is Ace’s younger brother, and Luffy is Smoker’s reason for leaving Loguetown. It is also awesome that the two of them met because of Luffy. Sometimes I dislike some pairings because they exist in some sort of black hole with no memorable side characters. What I love about SmoAce fanworks is that the side characters aren’t ‘side characters’ (hey, like One Piece) and that they’re interesting.
Ace has a nutcase family. Firstly, there’s Luffy, the younger brother who looks up to him, whom he deeply cares about. Then there are the mysterious parents: Monkey D. Dragon, the ‘worst criminal in the world’ whom Ace seems to show resentment towards, and his unknown mother and namesake to whom “he owes a great debt”. Next is Garp, the enthusiastic grandfather that tried his best to raise Ace and Luffy into ‘strong marines’. There’s also the pirate crew he belongs to - Whitebeard, his captain, Marco, Jozu and the late Thatch, his fellow division commanders, and all of the other pirates. He also has many short-term connections to ‘secondary characters’ like Buggy and his crew, Shanks and his crew, and Mouta in the side arc. Finally, the implicated relations with other people with the name of “D”. Blackbeard, or Marshall D. Teach, is the nakama-murdering traitor Ace tries to hunt down and to whom he ultimately loses against. Then, most interesting of all, is the fact that he may be related to Gol D. Roger, King of the Pirates.
Smoker has fewer connections (which is to be expected) but they are no less interesting and are, in some cases, more defined than Ace’s. The most obvious one is his wonderfully adorable second in command, Tashigi. Although he often yells at her clumsy ‘incompetence’, he obviously respects her in some fashion because, to be blunt, she’s still his second in command - you don’t just become Smoker’s SIC if he doesn’t like you. There is mutual respect between them that goes beyond boss-and-loyal-subordinate, and also a strange sort of father-daughter relationship. Smoker also has a friendship with Hina. They bicker and gripe, but they’re evidently somewhat close because they’re the kind of people that just don’t make many friends… in Hina’s case, maybe many ‘connections’, but not nakama. Then there’s Smoker’s mysterious link to Aokiji, shown only once through the Admiral’s brief mention to Luffy about some sort of message from Smoker. Finally is his obscure relationship with the rest of the marines - his crew that fears and respects him, and the brass he really doesn’t pay much attention to.
From a fanfiction writer’s perspective, Smoker and Ace can either be a pain in the butt or extremely fun to write about. Why? Because they have virtually no back story! Being ‘minor characters’, Oda-sensei rarely mentions anything about their pasts. All we really know about Ace is that he’s a D., that he used to live on Fuchsia Island with Luffy, and that he joined the Whitebeard pirates because Whitebeard invited him. We know even less about Smoker - we never see any glimpse into his past except for implicated events, like seeing Gol D. Roger’s execution (I think in the anime they add some more things, but not much). At first, the lack of information is irritating… but then you have so much more freedom. You can imagine reasons as to why Smoker and Ace turned out the way they did. You can claim that Ace had gotten drunk and then as a joke, Marco tattooed his name incorrectly onto his left arm. Or, you can claim Smoker began smoking two cigars because he needed a way to cope with an annoying Garp. It’s not like anybody can prove you wrong or anything. Yet.
Smoker/Ace is a brilliant pair merely because the type of pair itself is already fascinating! It’s the cliché of “opposites attract”. It’s the traditional, angsty, star-crossed lovers with pirates and marines instead of Montagues and Capulets. Then there’s the near fourteen-year age gap between them. And the fact that they’re both highly ranked in their own worlds just increases the number of problems for Ace and Smoker. As some people may know or have noticed, I love a healthy dollop of angst in things I read (and write), and SmoAce provides abundant angst in generous servings. Can I say “fraternization”?
However, the absolute best thing I love about SmoAce is the complexities of their characters. Both of them are so mysterious and obscure that it’s intriguing! The two of them are just so complicated that there is a whole spectrum of opinions about their characters. And although the differences seem vast to an outsider’s perspective, if you know Smoker and Ace reasonably well, you realize that it’s still the same people, just different facets of them. I love a flirty Ace as much as a thoughtful one, and an emotionless-rock Smoker is just as good as one that’s perpetually ticked off. It’s the same thing, really.
Ace is obviously difficult to understand. I love him to pieces because Oda-sensei made him so different depending on who was around. With Luffy, he’s a caring older sibling, worried about the safety of his brother, but not to the point of overprotection. After all, he delays his hunt for Blackbeard to see if he can say hello, yet the two of them have no contact whatsoever in the span of over three years. Regarding his captain, Ace shows a great deal of reverence, admiration, and unwavering loyalty to his ‘father’. But to Garp there’s less regard - it’s more friendly than respectful - and Ace doesn’t even like his real father. Left to his own devices, as shown with the short stay on Buggy’s ship and with Mouta, Ace is similar to Luffy and seems a bit, dare I say it, goofy at times. To be fair, the side arcs tend to bring out the silliness in One Piece characters, but even with real people, it’s how you act when nobody else is watching that shows a more truthful picture of who you are. Ace is extremely cold to people he considers his enemies, like Blackbeard and his crew, showing that he is in a way more of a ‘pirate’ than his younger brother. Then to Smoker, he’s either being cocky, arrogant, provoking, maybe even flirty if you squint, or heck, all of them at once… there’s only so much you can read from body language and facial expressions in a manga.
Smoker, on the other hand, is a different kind of complicated which is even more difficult to explain. With Smoker, he’ll always be Smoker. In a way he’s very honest; he lies (like when he tricked Mr. 11), but you know he means what he says and does. Smoker is a man that only does what he wants, and he won’t ever be dissuaded by anyone other than himself. He doesn’t half-ass things - if he’s going to do something, he does it, and screw whatever you or anyone else thinks. Smoker is a walking, talking, and glaring contradiction. He’s a marine that doesn’t listen to the government. He follows his own Justice, and not the absolute justice his job requires. It’s difficult to know what he’s thinking, but once you find out, his thoughts don’t surprise you at all. His actions are predictable and unpredictable. When you look at him and his mess of opposing facets, you feel like his character is very ‘undecided’, but with Smoker, his mind is always made up about something. He’s the feared White Hunter that terrifies enemies and co-workers alike, but he stops in the street to give a little girl extra money for accidentally ruining her ice cream. And he’s always angry and scowling, yet when Tashigi is heartbroken over feeling helpless against Baroque Works, Smoker comforts her in his own way. He’s a man that left his post against orders, but attempts to arrest Ace because it’s his job, and then ditches him because he found the lower bounty pirate he left his post for in the first place. It’s confusing… Oda-sensei made it so that you don’t really know Smoker, but whenever he does something it is Smoker. He’s not just a two dimensional figure that’s constantly mad and nothing else. He’s actually wonderfully thought through and his character is much too complex to dissect and analyze.
People complain that “Ace isn’t flirty”. Well, okay, he’s not. But flirts tease people, and it’s a fact that older siblings are natural bullies, so why can’t Ace sometimes be a flirt? People complain that “Smoker isn’t a cold, unfeeling rock”. Well, okay, he’s not. But it’s his job to deal out ‘absolute justice’, and it’s a fact that absolute justice may not be ‘right’ and can be heartless, so why can’t Smoker sometimes be a cold, unfeeling rock? Oda-sensei didn’t make Ace and Smoker characters, he made them into people, and people are complicated, varying, and just can’t be figured out.
Having two awesomely intricate characters interact with each other makes for an intricate and interesting pairing. This is why I think Smoker/Ace is loved by me and all their other fans. Their love isn’t simple, and real love isn’t simple either. The two of them are incredibly different yet similar at the same time. Both of them are capable of being ruthless and heartless murderers, but they still retain a sense of life’s value by sparing their ‘enemies’. They’re intelligent people - they sort of have to be - and are observant and insightful. However, they’re both men who act on their impulses. Because of what they are, they are ‘enemies’, but they don’t view each other as enemies for who they are. In their little Alabastan staredown, Ace showed none of the cold and detached animosity he had towards Blackbeard, and Smoker had none of the furious and sneering disdain he had towards Crocodile. And let’s not forget the fact that they’re both too stubborn and curious for their own good. What makes SmoAce wonderful is because even with all the potential problems and dire consequences, it still works! They’d just accidentally fall in love with each other and not realize it until they’re just too far gone, and that’s how it works best in reality.
I love Smoker/Ace. It’s versatile. It’s intriguing. It’s addictive. It feels real. For them, you can’t just say “It’s OOC” if they’re not your stereotypical cheerful Ace and grumpy Smoker. How can anyone know what’s IC and what’s not for them? You know a general sense, but you don’t know everything - same with people in real life. I say it’s “IC” if you read it and it feels like they’re real, breathing humans. People tease us for having an OTP of fictional characters, but what they don’t realize is that, yes, they’re fictional, but they don’t feel fictional because they’re just like us.
SmoAce is a lovely pairing with many wonderful things about them. That’s why it’s a good pairing - because you can’t just describe it to people in one sentence. Anyone who’s ever been in love knows they just can’t shut up once they start rambling about why they love whoever, and with Smoker/Ace it’s sort of the same thing. You know it’s good when you can describe it and can’t at the same time.
The next time somebody asks me why SmoAce is my OTP, I will still answer the same way, but because the real answer is far too long for words. Puns are great and all… however it’s just an added bonus. So if I see a short, one-sentence guess from a non-SmoAce fan ever again, I’m going to have to say to them, “Close, but no cigar.”
Well, after the recent interesting discussion about Ace's and Smoker's characters on the SmoAce comm, I decided to write about why I liked SmoAce so much. Somehow my little ponderings spawned a monster of around three thousand words. How did THAT happen? x'D
--
WHY
Ponderings about Smoker/Ace
--
Due to the fact that I draw Smoker and Ace frequently, people on deviantART - generally also SmoAce fans - often ask me a very good question: “Why do you like SmoAce?” Being an immature idiot fuelled solely on crack fanfics and One Piece updates, my usual answers are something along the lines of “because of the corny jokes”, “because of all the bad puns you can make”, or “because they’re smokin’ hot!”.
One evening during an epic quest for doujinshi, I came across a forum where somebody inquired as to why people liked Smoker/Ace so much, and there were also some random hypotheses by non-fans underneath. After failing in the search, I decided to go to sleep. However, it suddenly struck me the next morning at approximately 2:30 am that I wasn’t really sure why I liked SmoAce. It was my OTP. I loved it to pieces. But why?
The stereotypical behaviour of a rabid fangirl - and perhaps some equally rabid fanboys - is to find two (or three or four or, screw it, all) sexy male characters, stick them together, throw in some random smut just for good measure, and voilà! Out comes an OTP! Like I said, this is merely ‘stereotypical’ behaviour, but this may be how some people find their ‘one’ true pairs. Or threesomes.
I will have to confess that I came to know SmoAce through something like the above scenario. My love for One Piece wasn’t quite so fanatical last year. My high school, although (allegedly) blessed with the largest manga collection in the school region, only had 12 volumes of One Piece. In terms of Canadian publishing speed, it wasn’t really that far behind. But compared to scanlations, 12 volumes was pitiful. Less than pitiful.
Having nothing else to read, I decided one bored afternoon to just reread the volumes at school. And wow, was it great! I suddenly remembered just how much I had loved One Piece, and how it was just the perfect series for someone as messed up as me. In a rabid-fangirl fashion, I immediately started reading online (and then promptly went “@#$% that’s a lot of chapters”) and went to fanfiction.net.
Reading fanfictions is definitely an addiction to me. So, not really wanting to sift through poorly written drabbles with no plot, I used my super-awesome-and-generally-effective filtering technique: change the settings to “All ratings”, “Complete”, and “>100,000” words long. Evidently I didn’t get much, so I toned it down with the word count. Then lo and behold, something entitled “Of Seminars and Men” popped up, and saying, “Okay, sure, why not” I proceeded to read.
Yes, that’s right, it was the lovely tshapo_chi that introduced me to SmoAce. But the irony! Smoker I had met in Loguetown as the marine a friend of mine described as “Why the hell is he smoking two cigars, is he retarded?”. I knew who Smoker was, although not very well. But Ace? Who the heck was Ace?
Tshapo_chi introduced me to SmoAce, but it was my good friend from school who showed me who Ace was. It was a random conversation in band and the topic of One Piece came up. “Oh, my favourite character is Ace,” she said happily while putting away her clarinet. “He’s so cool! He’s even cooler than Zoro!” At that my curiosity was piqued (I mean, who’s cooler than Zoro, that’s blasphemy, I thought), and when I got home, I devoured chapter after chapter of One Piece until I figured out who this “Ace” fellow was.
It was instant love! And then the interesting interaction between Ace and Smoker made me fanfiction-twitchy. So I went on a fic hunt, shredded through all the stories on Blurry (which is down now, rest in peace) and fanfiction.net, found a lovely SmoAce community on LiveJournal (which was why I joined, actually), started writing some things, and went on a fanart spree - all in just a month or so. Reflecting back on it now, my instantaneous addiction was more than just a little strange, it was borderline creepy. Something this strange never happened. So why now?
Stupid references with the jitte aside, there had to have been good reasons for SmoAce to become my OTP. I usually skim through fandoms, sticking with them for a couple of months, tops. But Smoker/Ace has been my favourite pairing for almost a year now, and I had to find some reasons why. So at ungodly hours in the morning, I compiled a list.
The shallowest reason why I love them is because of their appearances. They just look good together - two awesomely sexy men with fantastic abs and a penchant for not wearing shirts. Face it, they’re both really hot (pardon the pun), and together, they’re really hot. Their designs also have some nice contrasts once you exclude the shirtlessness. Ace wears colourful things, has black, medium-length hair, childish freckles, and a cocky smile. On the other hand, Smoker is mainly monochrome, has whitish, choppy and short hair, a manly stubble-beard-thing, and is 99.99% of the time scowling like somebody goosed him or something. In Sven’s book, visual contrast is a nice bonus.
A hypothesis I found on that forum was that the fandom existed because of Smoker’s and Ace’s Devil Fruits. I will have to acknowledge that that was a pretty good guess. The two of them are ridiculously closely linked Logia. People have even created sayings about fire and smoke. Add the fact that they presumably tied in their Nanohana showdown (and the huge cloud of flames and fumes found solely in the anime that apparently spawned more yaoi fangirls) and you’ve got a pairing with potential facepalm!puns abound.
One slightly better reason I have for loving Smoker/Ace is because of their relations with other people. The main common denominator between the two of them is Luffy; Luffy is Ace’s younger brother, and Luffy is Smoker’s reason for leaving Loguetown. It is also awesome that the two of them met because of Luffy. Sometimes I dislike some pairings because they exist in some sort of black hole with no memorable side characters. What I love about SmoAce fanworks is that the side characters aren’t ‘side characters’ (hey, like One Piece) and that they’re interesting.
Ace has a nutcase family. Firstly, there’s Luffy, the younger brother who looks up to him, whom he deeply cares about. Then there are the mysterious parents: Monkey D. Dragon, the ‘worst criminal in the world’ whom Ace seems to show resentment towards, and his unknown mother and namesake to whom “he owes a great debt”. Next is Garp, the enthusiastic grandfather that tried his best to raise Ace and Luffy into ‘strong marines’. There’s also the pirate crew he belongs to - Whitebeard, his captain, Marco, Jozu and the late Thatch, his fellow division commanders, and all of the other pirates. He also has many short-term connections to ‘secondary characters’ like Buggy and his crew, Shanks and his crew, and Mouta in the side arc. Finally, the implicated relations with other people with the name of “D”. Blackbeard, or Marshall D. Teach, is the nakama-murdering traitor Ace tries to hunt down and to whom he ultimately loses against. Then, most interesting of all, is the fact that he may be related to Gol D. Roger, King of the Pirates.
Smoker has fewer connections (which is to be expected) but they are no less interesting and are, in some cases, more defined than Ace’s. The most obvious one is his wonderfully adorable second in command, Tashigi. Although he often yells at her clumsy ‘incompetence’, he obviously respects her in some fashion because, to be blunt, she’s still his second in command - you don’t just become Smoker’s SIC if he doesn’t like you. There is mutual respect between them that goes beyond boss-and-loyal-subordinate, and also a strange sort of father-daughter relationship. Smoker also has a friendship with Hina. They bicker and gripe, but they’re evidently somewhat close because they’re the kind of people that just don’t make many friends… in Hina’s case, maybe many ‘connections’, but not nakama. Then there’s Smoker’s mysterious link to Aokiji, shown only once through the Admiral’s brief mention to Luffy about some sort of message from Smoker. Finally is his obscure relationship with the rest of the marines - his crew that fears and respects him, and the brass he really doesn’t pay much attention to.
From a fanfiction writer’s perspective, Smoker and Ace can either be a pain in the butt or extremely fun to write about. Why? Because they have virtually no back story! Being ‘minor characters’, Oda-sensei rarely mentions anything about their pasts. All we really know about Ace is that he’s a D., that he used to live on Fuchsia Island with Luffy, and that he joined the Whitebeard pirates because Whitebeard invited him. We know even less about Smoker - we never see any glimpse into his past except for implicated events, like seeing Gol D. Roger’s execution (I think in the anime they add some more things, but not much). At first, the lack of information is irritating… but then you have so much more freedom. You can imagine reasons as to why Smoker and Ace turned out the way they did. You can claim that Ace had gotten drunk and then as a joke, Marco tattooed his name incorrectly onto his left arm. Or, you can claim Smoker began smoking two cigars because he needed a way to cope with an annoying Garp. It’s not like anybody can prove you wrong or anything. Yet.
Smoker/Ace is a brilliant pair merely because the type of pair itself is already fascinating! It’s the cliché of “opposites attract”. It’s the traditional, angsty, star-crossed lovers with pirates and marines instead of Montagues and Capulets. Then there’s the near fourteen-year age gap between them. And the fact that they’re both highly ranked in their own worlds just increases the number of problems for Ace and Smoker. As some people may know or have noticed, I love a healthy dollop of angst in things I read (and write), and SmoAce provides abundant angst in generous servings. Can I say “fraternization”?
However, the absolute best thing I love about SmoAce is the complexities of their characters. Both of them are so mysterious and obscure that it’s intriguing! The two of them are just so complicated that there is a whole spectrum of opinions about their characters. And although the differences seem vast to an outsider’s perspective, if you know Smoker and Ace reasonably well, you realize that it’s still the same people, just different facets of them. I love a flirty Ace as much as a thoughtful one, and an emotionless-rock Smoker is just as good as one that’s perpetually ticked off. It’s the same thing, really.
Ace is obviously difficult to understand. I love him to pieces because Oda-sensei made him so different depending on who was around. With Luffy, he’s a caring older sibling, worried about the safety of his brother, but not to the point of overprotection. After all, he delays his hunt for Blackbeard to see if he can say hello, yet the two of them have no contact whatsoever in the span of over three years. Regarding his captain, Ace shows a great deal of reverence, admiration, and unwavering loyalty to his ‘father’. But to Garp there’s less regard - it’s more friendly than respectful - and Ace doesn’t even like his real father. Left to his own devices, as shown with the short stay on Buggy’s ship and with Mouta, Ace is similar to Luffy and seems a bit, dare I say it, goofy at times. To be fair, the side arcs tend to bring out the silliness in One Piece characters, but even with real people, it’s how you act when nobody else is watching that shows a more truthful picture of who you are. Ace is extremely cold to people he considers his enemies, like Blackbeard and his crew, showing that he is in a way more of a ‘pirate’ than his younger brother. Then to Smoker, he’s either being cocky, arrogant, provoking, maybe even flirty if you squint, or heck, all of them at once… there’s only so much you can read from body language and facial expressions in a manga.
Smoker, on the other hand, is a different kind of complicated which is even more difficult to explain. With Smoker, he’ll always be Smoker. In a way he’s very honest; he lies (like when he tricked Mr. 11), but you know he means what he says and does. Smoker is a man that only does what he wants, and he won’t ever be dissuaded by anyone other than himself. He doesn’t half-ass things - if he’s going to do something, he does it, and screw whatever you or anyone else thinks. Smoker is a walking, talking, and glaring contradiction. He’s a marine that doesn’t listen to the government. He follows his own Justice, and not the absolute justice his job requires. It’s difficult to know what he’s thinking, but once you find out, his thoughts don’t surprise you at all. His actions are predictable and unpredictable. When you look at him and his mess of opposing facets, you feel like his character is very ‘undecided’, but with Smoker, his mind is always made up about something. He’s the feared White Hunter that terrifies enemies and co-workers alike, but he stops in the street to give a little girl extra money for accidentally ruining her ice cream. And he’s always angry and scowling, yet when Tashigi is heartbroken over feeling helpless against Baroque Works, Smoker comforts her in his own way. He’s a man that left his post against orders, but attempts to arrest Ace because it’s his job, and then ditches him because he found the lower bounty pirate he left his post for in the first place. It’s confusing… Oda-sensei made it so that you don’t really know Smoker, but whenever he does something it is Smoker. He’s not just a two dimensional figure that’s constantly mad and nothing else. He’s actually wonderfully thought through and his character is much too complex to dissect and analyze.
People complain that “Ace isn’t flirty”. Well, okay, he’s not. But flirts tease people, and it’s a fact that older siblings are natural bullies, so why can’t Ace sometimes be a flirt? People complain that “Smoker isn’t a cold, unfeeling rock”. Well, okay, he’s not. But it’s his job to deal out ‘absolute justice’, and it’s a fact that absolute justice may not be ‘right’ and can be heartless, so why can’t Smoker sometimes be a cold, unfeeling rock? Oda-sensei didn’t make Ace and Smoker characters, he made them into people, and people are complicated, varying, and just can’t be figured out.
Having two awesomely intricate characters interact with each other makes for an intricate and interesting pairing. This is why I think Smoker/Ace is loved by me and all their other fans. Their love isn’t simple, and real love isn’t simple either. The two of them are incredibly different yet similar at the same time. Both of them are capable of being ruthless and heartless murderers, but they still retain a sense of life’s value by sparing their ‘enemies’. They’re intelligent people - they sort of have to be - and are observant and insightful. However, they’re both men who act on their impulses. Because of what they are, they are ‘enemies’, but they don’t view each other as enemies for who they are. In their little Alabastan staredown, Ace showed none of the cold and detached animosity he had towards Blackbeard, and Smoker had none of the furious and sneering disdain he had towards Crocodile. And let’s not forget the fact that they’re both too stubborn and curious for their own good. What makes SmoAce wonderful is because even with all the potential problems and dire consequences, it still works! They’d just accidentally fall in love with each other and not realize it until they’re just too far gone, and that’s how it works best in reality.
I love Smoker/Ace. It’s versatile. It’s intriguing. It’s addictive. It feels real. For them, you can’t just say “It’s OOC” if they’re not your stereotypical cheerful Ace and grumpy Smoker. How can anyone know what’s IC and what’s not for them? You know a general sense, but you don’t know everything - same with people in real life. I say it’s “IC” if you read it and it feels like they’re real, breathing humans. People tease us for having an OTP of fictional characters, but what they don’t realize is that, yes, they’re fictional, but they don’t feel fictional because they’re just like us.
SmoAce is a lovely pairing with many wonderful things about them. That’s why it’s a good pairing - because you can’t just describe it to people in one sentence. Anyone who’s ever been in love knows they just can’t shut up once they start rambling about why they love whoever, and with Smoker/Ace it’s sort of the same thing. You know it’s good when you can describe it and can’t at the same time.
The next time somebody asks me why SmoAce is my OTP, I will still answer the same way, but because the real answer is far too long for words. Puns are great and all… however it’s just an added bonus. So if I see a short, one-sentence guess from a non-SmoAce fan ever again, I’m going to have to say to them, “Close, but no cigar.”