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Heart Pirates Week 2023

Chapter 9: Day 9: Law: Smile

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Day 9: Law: Smile

Sumire. 菫。Violet or Viola. A common weed useful for colour, garnish, flavouring and seasoning.

Aconite, Aconitum, Monkshood, Wolfsbane—same flower, different names—carried the  traditional characters for violet too. One edible, one not.

Aconite, one of the three most poisonous plants in the north and nearby regions.

Spear tips and arrow heads were dipped into Aconite's poison for hunting across the lands. Sumire was not quite a SMILE, but close enough when Doflamingo, Caesar and Kaidou were involved—inverting the helpful and hopeful into the harmful.

Doflamingo smiled while he caused others to grin and bear it. Perhaps cruelty was nature. Volcanoes bubbled with sulphur and toxic gases, skin dappled white. Unlike striped hornets, poison didn't always let itself be known.

 

Notes:

Playing a bit here. Violet or Viola (and some variants of) in Japan are usually depicted in the katakana: スミレ (su-mi-re), and that katakana can kinda be read in Romaji as (su-mi-le) [because /l/ and/r/ are interchangeable, which can kinda be read as smile, although not pronounced. There is a yakitori shop called スミレ and which also carries the name Smile. Anyhoo, sumire also has a kanji: 菫 and this same kanji is sometimes used for the very poisonous aconite (Monkshead, Wolfsbane) 菫. Hence, I'm drawing a long bow.
The photograph above is originally from Wikipedia: CC 表示-継承 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=592691

Notes:

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