#(im breakinf my own organizational tag system and tagging this bc i soent an hour on it and i need t to be Seen)

[everybrook]

Brook's souls wandered around after his death and was able to resurrect himself, even though he was just bones... Is Brook technically immortal?

i have a lot of thoughts and headcanons about Brook’s quasi-immortality so, first off, thank you for this ask! second off, i’m very unorganized w how i explain things, so i apologize in advance. now, here’s what i think

- it can be assumed that the yomi yomi no mi will only bring the user back once, if only because Brook already knew what the fruit did before he ate it. that means someone else had to have had it once and died, letting it respawn. so Brook probably won’t just keep coming back. im sure Brook is fine w that tho, bc he seems like someone who would absolutely hate being immortal. do you know how many crews he’d lose? i don’t know if he could do that shit a second time

- of course, Brook’s soul is stronger than most souls! he can take out “fake souls” by pure force of will, power a dead body with no other real “power source” (when he was on the florian triangle, i imagine he probablt didn’t eat a whole lot. if all the bodies rotted to nothing, all the food probably did, too. brook must not need food, otherwise he would have died again), and purposely detach from his body and move around on his own. you could argue that this may very well mean Brook would be strong enough to, if he so desired, turn around if he died. of course, his soul is visibly tethered to his body when he does this, so it’s unclear if he would actually be able to control it still when he dies again. this is probably not something Brook will want to test, though

- as i mentioned earlier, Brook probably doesn’t need to eat, but he can. his soul can replicate most normal bodily functions, but i don’t think it necessarily has to. a while back someone sent me an ask suggesting everything he does—eating, sleeping, breathing—is completely voluntary. i agree! and Brook, being someone who has been alone for so long, probably decides to voluntarily breathe, eat, etc because everyone else does. it’s a connection to other people! he likes being included in stuff! (i think he also sometimes forgets he can opt out of this sort of thing...)

- example: Brook is strangled and decapitated. he chokes when strangled, but losing his head doesn’t. inhibit his breathing, or kill him. he doesn’t need to breathe, because he’s powered by his soul, not by oxygen. usually, though, he still chooses to. he wants to be included!

- other example: on punk hazard Brook falls victim to sleeping gas (either bc he forgets he doesn’t have to, or bc the gas took out everyone else and he doesn’t want to be left out/alone. depends how sad you want to be!), later, however, Brook is able to rescue Kine’mon when Kine’mon falls victim to a different gas without being affected himself. (if i’m remembering right, the other gas worked by affecting the skin, so it might just be that Brook didn’t have the skin for it to matter, but...) (it’s also like. an off panel thing, so i don’t know that Brook actually ran into the gas (it’s not rlly addressed), but i’m assuming given that. he sort of had to in order to retrieve Kine’mon since Kine’mon was in it)

- what i think makes this pretty clear is that Brook actually admits to faking some stuff to be included! when asked why he took a coat despite the fact he can’t feel cold, he admits he did so because he wanted to join in feeling cold with everyone else

- the only maybe-exception to this would be exhaustion. Brook gets tired regularly. most of his fights seem to end when he realizes he’s out of energy rather than when he’s in pain. i guess even soul power is not infinite. in his original fight with Ryuma, he seems more like he cedes defeat when realizes he can’t defend himself / his hair from Ryuma. it’s not injury that makes him give up, even though Ryuma fractured a piece of his skull.

- Brook’s soul-powered body has other effects as well! he’s immune to a lot of stuff other people arent, and so is much more durable and harder to kill.

- it’s unclear to me if Brook can really feel physical pain. this one is also hard to deal with since shonen characters always have high pain tolerance, but brook doesn’t really react to pain like he should? if he can feel pain, i think he feels it differently than other people. as mentioned, he was stabbed through his eye socket by Ryuma and didn’t seem too affected by it. despite the fact he can see, he was more by his skull cracking. being decapitated doesnt hurt, being shocked is easily walked off. again, i don’t know for sure. it’s hard to tell if this is Shonen Pain Tolerance or genuine inability to feel pain like others do. but, as mentioned, Brook usually seems exhausted after fights rather than hurt. he usually cedes defeat due to admitting a difference in skill rather than actual suffering.

- you can run an electric current through Brook (nami has more than once), you can “dehydrate” him (a guy tried at fishman island) and he’ll be fine (so he probs can’t die of thirst), you can decapitate him and he’ll put his head back on. i assume he could reattach limbs and be fine as well, should the need arise. he regularly tears his own head in half to store things inside. he can’t be affected by poison because there’s nothing TO affect, and he probably can’t get most sicknesses. he can’t feel cold, so he probably can’t freeze to death. with the fact he’s still active and agile at the age of 90, i don’t know that aging really affects him. when aged down in film z, he says the only difference is his hair is nicer. Brook’s bones can be cracked and he’ll put them back together with milk! Brook says the only way to kill him is to destroy his body, but how destroyed is enough? if you break his bones he can fix them! if you cut Brook into pieces, could he still be healed? how small would you have to go till he died? if you ground him to dust, would he die, or could you pour milk on him and find he’d reassemble himself? you could probably burn him, but honestly at this point i don’t know if id bet on it. the only reliable method with which one can kill Brook is to drown him. that might be his only weakness. Brook might be literally fucking unstoppable

(- also, this is just a personal headcanon i find relevant and not smth canon-supported, but i like the idea that sea water affects Brook differently than other DF users since he doesn’t have lungs and doesn’t necessarily need to breathe. Brook doesn’t drown when submerged, and instead the sea slowly erodes the yomi yomi no mi’s connection of soul and body. sapping the strength taken further, the sea instead literally saps his life away. the end result is the same, though, and after a few minutes held under water Brook is dead.)

- and these are my thoughts on Brook’s quasi-immortality. ive been looking for an excuse to make this post for a while, so thank you!

#long post #soul king brook #One Piece #(im breakinf my own organizational tag system and tagging this bc i soent an hour on it and i need t to be Seen) #notBrook #everyask #anonymous #a related point i forgot to include: i think the voluntary basis thing also explains inconsistencies #like Brook says he cant cry when he meets the strawhats despite the fact he obviously can. i think he just straight up didnt know he could #Brook talk tag