User blog comment:AYET/Pirate Crew's Jolly Roger/@comment-3425840-20120312081656/@comment-4754162-20120312121138

Firstly Soul-kun, in no offensive tone, I kinda dislike when we had to bring out "Oda" to ease the explaination of something. Not that I am saying its wrong (maybe what you are saying regarding Oda there could be true), but I'm would actually look deeper into the canon logics of OP to explain thing. Please pardon the tell-off there, I'm just speaking my mind so you know where I am coming from.

Ya know, if you are a pirate captain and you are about to have your own jolly roger, you would put something in the flag which being seen by others instantly identifies YOU. You can put something that you treasure the most (like the straw hat as you correctly stated) which may or may not belong to you, or you can put in some of your characteristics or something you are proud of (like Roger's mustache, WB's cresent beard, Buggy's red nose), or do something which intimidates others just by looking at it (Kuja Pirates, Baroque Works, Thriller Bark).

But Shanks did neither of those. The scars are not his treasured or proud of thingy. Yes, while its part of his current characteristics, but its not his natural trait. And to be honest, Shanks can't be so proud of those scars of his that he would eagerly put it into his jolly roger. If its you, would you?

I do not study psychology, but from seeing movies and stuff, I get the general gist of it. If Shanks and Red Hair pirates are in reality now, seeing the jolly roger and knowing the history of those scars, I would think Shanks is hiding his extreme hatred and vengeance behind his carefree and jolly personality, in truth he's hell bent on revenge over what BB did to him, so much so he placed it (the scars) into his jolly roger to remind him of the actual reason why he's sailing the seas currently. These are my cheap-psycho analysis I made on my favourite character there.