@electricmastro said in Official Egghead Thread:
Paulie never seemed to have a grander purpose outside of Water 7 and never seemed interested in sailing out either.
Well, you need to see things in the same perspective as back then.
Franky also had no interest in sailing, and even refused to leave his family behind (in the end it was the Franky Family that had to convince him to go and asked Luffy for help on that).
None of the shipwrights had any interest in sailing, and Franky, until his flashback, wasn't even known to be a shipwright. So, whoever was to be the crewmate, he would need to be convinced first.
And Luffy earned Paulie's respect first. They were fighting side-by-side for Iceburg's live while Franky was still purely an enemy.
So, it was very easy to jump into Paulie's bandwagon. Even when Franky's dream was revealed, it didn't require Franky to join, since he just wanted to make a ship capable of sailing the whole world. So, in theory, Franky could provide the new ship, while Paulie could still be the one to join the crew.
It was only later that things began to shift to Franky: first he cared for Usopp, then we learned he was a shipwright, then he got involved with Robin's kidnapping, then he fought alongside the Straw Hats and made up for his early villainy, and finally he had to be kind of forced into joining.
Meanwhile, Paulie's fought alongside Luffy, found CP-9's identity, saved Luffy and the others from the Acqua Laguna, snuck into the sea train... but then his presence started to diminish. He got secondary fights and was left behind for the main ones, and practically disappeared for the remainder of the arc.
We now know that Oda did that on purpose. He advertised a shipwright was going to join, but added several of them in order to hide the real crewmate in plain view.
It's funny, because before CP-9's reveal, even Lucci and Kaku had their share of fans campaigning for nakamaship. Some Kaku fans still hoped for him to be redeemed well into Enies Lobby fights, if I remember correctly.
Anyway, I've been here for Franky, Brook and Jinbe's joining, and I remember the discussions around all of them. Just for the record, Brook was the only one I thought was going to join while the majority of readers was still skeptical. I doubted Franky and Jinbe at first, but eventually changed my mind a bit before they joined.