orenonahaichigoda

[orenonahaichigoda]

This is definitely great. I said earlier how the narrative does kind of seem to shuttle from solidly disproving to sometimes it being OK. And I do think that that's pretty erratic. I could delve into a chat I had with my reverend about temperance of even the Middle Path some weeks ago, but I'll just say there's still a line. While I definitely do like that even things done for bad reasons can be useful (Kurotuchi) and things done for good reasons (or at least out of love if nothing else) can be wrong (Kaname, Gin. Ichigo does also commit murder for those he loves a few times. And it didn't just happen against Tukisima, either. He was planning it for a couple of hours) I do tend to view things as a greyscale rather than typical Western binary thinking (ever noticed absolutely everything is shoved into a Pure and Good/absolute evil dichotomy?) or the opposite.

I actually think the best example of this in Bleach is probably the narrative surrounding Byakuya and the Kuchiki house--the nobles we see the most of in the show and comic without extra materials. It's extremely hard to see Yamamoto as being truly benevolent. Byakuya's house is more of a clearly mixed bag. Which we mostly just see Byakuya. Though a lot of what I'm thinking of is actually filler episodes...

But frankly, everyone has "mixed bag" points. The narrative is incredibly inconsistent in its treatment of these things; I'd've appreciated a little more explicity of the complexiveness, but I do like that about non-Western media in general.

Saw a post that made me realize a thing I really like about Bleach but haven’t thought too much about or like taken the time to appreciate. Which is that like…I am used to MAINTAINING BALANCE being like. A good thing. When I think about that concept I think of things like Avatar or Star Wars where we spend a lot of time talking about MAINTAINING BALANCE. These are fallible people and they can fuck up, but the system itself is not really the problem here. Even in the case of the Jedi we just kind of form our own new Jedi Order instead. Since that religion is not the problem apparently because this is apparently a Good and Evil balance. Which is dumb. In Bleach though we have a system in place to maintain universal balance and that system is tied to a culture which is fundamentally unjust. Large portions of the cast are absolute fucking assholes due to being crushed under and traumatized by said system. And they’re just the ones lucky enough to be able to be skilled enough at combat or whatever else their dumb jobs arrive that they can have the positions they do in a military that is respected like it is. What about the people who aren’t in those positions? Or who get kicked out? Life kind of seems to suck for them! And the actual balance maintaining led to a genocide. This is never forgiven. This is never excused. We get a reason for why it happened, but the narrative at no point goes “And the Soul Reapers were 100% super justified in doing this”. One of the first questions we see asked in Thousand Year Blood War is whether or not the Soul Reapers can ever truly be forgiven for what they’ve done. The person being asked, a teacher, stumbles over his words. He is then killed. By a Quincy no less. And at the end of this all we prevent the end of the world and balance is maintained and the Soul Reapers are never forgiven for what they did. People do not stop hating them. We are told by Rukia in the arc previous that changes are happening in everyone who has met Ichigo and in Soul Society at large but like…Those changes are slow. This is a societal level change that needs to go down. We do have our enlightened boy who has found that which is not found who is inspiring and changing the world around him just by existing as he does. But that is not a magical cure all. Ichigo does not and cannot just FIX things. Though he has laid the groundwork for continued change over time. There’s also the nature of the fraud of Soul Society. Soul Society’s social problems are just that. Social problems. They are not order and they are not necessary. People just treat them like they are and however much it may irritate the boomers, Yoruichi shirking tradition is not leading to a universal collapse. At best she is upsetting people and hurting feelings. This is part of the fraud. There is also the nature of how the Three Worlds system is even a thing that like was artificially constructed. That is true. It was Designed to work a particular way and the designing process was also Deeply Fucked. There was another world before it that worked differently. There could be conceivably entirely different ways of the world working. We could have a world without life and death. But in terms of how the balance of souls is necessary to maintaining universal order as it currently exists? That’s correct. As is true that the methods being used to maintain that work. The Soul Reapers are not incorrect on this front and their work is, functionally, necessary to keep reality existing in its current state. We are now just stuck with a samsaric hell cycle. It sucks but it’s what we’re working with. And that’s kind of nice actually? To have a group whose practices are vital to reality functioning and whose balance thing does actually DO something. But to have that group not necessarily be Good. To have their philosophies, histories, etc actually be kind of Shit And Terrible In Many Ways. For all of that to be, in many ways, socially constructed fluff which could conceivably be changed or abandoned as needed. And the most we get is we get told that changes are happening and we see it in the behavior of a few people. We do not get to magically fix things by the end because you cannot magically fix this degree of fucked in an instant. It’s not nice because I think that the Soul Society is great. It’s not. It just isn’t. But it is nice because like…It’s really nice to see balance being maintained as important but also like…something deeply fraught with problems. And that some of those problems aren’t even things that are fundamentally necessary to preventing universal collapse. It’s kind of like Zen that way I guess? Wherein the important thing in Buddhism wasn’t the texts or the sitting or the lecture style or the logical tradition. It was the thing laying beneath all of that which people were trying and failing to point to. The texts, the sitting, the lecture style, the logical tradition…Those are all just. Fluff. There isn’t any real substance to them. There is to what lays behind them but theoretically we could get to what lays behind them in other ways. You don’t need sutras to understand Buddhism and you don’t need a cripplingly cruel aristocracy system to prevent the world from collapsing in on itself. You can set both on fire.

[orenonahaichigoda]

Frankly, it seemed really off that they have no cake with the whole Edo thing going on, too. That line, I always chalked up more to script blunder inconsistency than anything else.

That being said, though, a lot of this is something I've also noticed.

So, S1 takes place in 2001. The phones they have are pretty appropriate for that year. They also have computers (Kurotuchi's. It's also easy to take the nonsense letters as a secret code for lack of something like encryption. I can tell you right now Unicode didn't even exist yet in real life. Web logins did, you could build a Geocities site or make a Fictionpress account, but you weren't exactly doing banking and employee time cards on apps yet... Computers already ran in places like Wall Street or international corp HQs and big laboratories, ergo Y2K panic, but I don't know how any of that data was secured)

At any rate, so, they have the latest tech in the military capital. Then look just outside the walls when Jidanbou is amputated his arm.

This is what I've always thought--so the military is clearly a volunteer military. It's not a draught or compulsory.

At the same time, it's often the only path to more beyond surviving the day.

In my works, I lean fairly heavily on the parallels between that and the reason so many poor people, often poor POC, in the US wind up enlisting, yes.

Anyway, I've been likely to read it as the military incorporating only what those in charge find suitable for themselves and nothing more. And also further keeping it for themselves.

Granted, the novels explain the reason anything outside Seireitei is as it is, but we also have two explanations of what happens to a soul when it dies. They both do and don't leave a corpse, and they both reincarnate and return to particles that make up the world--the latter being Kaien's explanation as seen in Rukia's flashback. Ageing is wildly inconsistent. A lot of things are. Which is part of what makes Bleach so ripe for transformative.

At any rate, though, it's definitely more consistent, at least among everything done by Kubo, that Seireitei has way better tech and general living standards than even just outside the wall.

I do feel like the tone went from "this is a martial law dictatorship" to "...and that's OK" after Rukia was saved. Unfortunately, some of the nuance in treatment of it faded.

I'll cold stop here because it's extremely late and I'm forgetting how to put words together in non-native languages.

there is no cake

When I think about my top episodes that are foundational to my mental concept of Bleach, I think my #1 is the cake episode from the Advance Team filler. Like, bar none, it’s gotta be the Cake Episode.

Because through it I learned that Soul Society does not have cake. IT JUST DOESN’T HAVE IT.

Which I think is 1) tragic and 2) fascinating, because it’s not as though they don’t bring plenty of stuff over from the living realm–but not cake?! Hundreds of years and no one thought to import cake?! Even though as far as I can tell one of the primary reasons to use gigai at all is to be able to eat?!

I love that adoption of more modern and/or Western conveniences is piecemeal and arbitrary in Soul Society (2nd has heated floors and sliding doors, 4th has ventilators, but 5th and 10th don’t use window panes, 10th shops at IKEA for furniture; 12th has mainframes and computers with GUI interfaces, but everyone is writing their reports by hand, by BRUSH), and it certainly seems like crossing over happens a lot more often (as does everything) in the particular sliver of time in SS that coincides with canon, likely leading to a lot more adoption than previously (instead of Japan Before Perry it’s SS Before Ryoka, lol).

BUT BACK TO THIS CAKE THING. Does Hanatarou just mean this particular kind of cake, or does SS also not have Portuguese cake? Because that surely existed in Japan in the Edo period. (My HC about why SS went hard with Edo and more or less stayed there is because Yamamoto created SS contemporary SS to his personal taste; so after humanity alit on an era he liked he was just like, I’m the leader, I shall craft us in their image. And that was just The Culture from then on. So did he nix the cake from his personal vision of what an ideal society should be like? [Does the Council of 46 have a say in matters of cake and culture? Is Sasakibe the only reason SS gets to have anything that Yamamoto has decided is not period/region-correct to Edo?])

And like, maybe SS consciously decided that cake was not something worth adopting into their culinary milieu. But I feel like is absence is totally a marker of the way SS operates in general, as this insular, sclerotic body that’s just like “we have this thing that does this thing; this is the way it’s always been and this is good enough.” Whether that’s lifestyle goods or systems of government (and in spite of the fact that it’s obviously NOT good enough, given that their noble class is kind of a trainwreck and has been, never mind anything that happened in the SS arc). Like, misanthropy notwithstanding I can see why Mayuri hates everyone–NO INNOVATIVE VISION. (Okay, the people that we’ve seen are all quite creative, both with their hobbies and their battle techniques, but from Mayuri’s POV–NO INNOVATIVE VISION.) Same with Aizen. 

I feel like even without Aizen and Ichigo, SS was wandering vaguely into a cultural sea change–because morale was so bad at some point they decided they needed to start a mod pub like Seireitei Communications; because surely there’s no way having SO very many Captains/VCs from Rukongai, like SS presently has, has historically been the norm (outside of 11th?)–but man, I think about SS’s lack of cake (and how much these three liked the cake), and it just gets me.

[orenonahaichigoda]

That's been my read for a solid while. Definitely lives up to the "father to his men." Clearly also respects people who he feels deserve it (see his mondo admiration for Unohana), and again, even if he doesn't like it, remember the speech he gave in the flashback where he more or less says people are entitled to their own opinions. And he'll also be honest about things he thinks are dumb (remember the overcoat bit?) but not in a way that makes things harder for others (compare Kurotuchi at meetings. Even though Kenpachi definitely does his fair share of property damage--who doesn't--but he'll also wear that eyeball leech patch to keep others safe until the animators forget about it)

Frankly, pretty much everyone reads traumatised, but the sinigami are literally military, so, yeah, "soldier's heart" is par for the course even if they didn't live hundreds of years. Frankly, though, he seems one of the most well-adjusted, too. The next closest least neurotic/most well adjusted captain is actually probably Komamura. Ikkaku and then both Iba (debatable for sheer lack of screen time) and Nanao would probably be the most reasonably adjusted Lieutenants. Shelving Sasakibe completely for lack of presence.

I'm not actually sure about Juusirou being well-adjusted or just living with blinders on. Shunsui is a prime example of a older view of drunkenness as simply humorous, as most are often played to be, but it's pretty easy to also argue the darker side of it (I think the term "self-medication" is known enough these days to use here and expect to be understood)

And one really can speculate a lot about what drove Unohana to hide all she did for centuries and simultaneously also not let go of it.

Kenpachi, Retu, Yachiru, that whole ending was horrible and disappointing in multiple ways. I'm looking forward to watching the continuation in October, but there's a good few things in that arc where the story just... got rocky. Even Kenpachi himself. He always expresses honour that he won't fight someone who isn't willing and able. So him cutting through the quincy begging to be spared was off, too. And many suspected Yachiru's fate for years, so it wasn't left field, but it was still a letdown.

At any rate, though, as much as clearly living in a place like Zaraki deeply and thoroughly affected him--even to the point of never having taken anything but a placeholder name at any point after--considering this as *relative,* he does frankly seem like one of the most well-adjusted sinigami out there.

And Komamura's next because he can easily read "stealth due to societal reactions." I don't have a problem with being trans myself, just it's not safe to be anything but stealth/need-to-know in the West and offline, where I could get hurt and be refused even employment so long as a currently acceptable reason was on paper or a bot did the sorting, like how they get away with shunning Asian, etc., names. Saijin seems to enjoy being a dog (clearly a Japanese dog breed. I think that's another thing non-Japanese people miss, but he could be either a siba or akita. Yes, there's absolutely ignored pun potential with the noble family) and he does talk about others' perception of him and his loyalty coming from due to that, not having chances before enlisting, so that absolutely doesn't read like insecurity to me. That's why Saijin would go second after Kenpachi for captains.

It's definitely honestly pretty easy to read Kenpachi as comparatively very well adjusted and a father figure. That was my original point.

I think it's interesting that Kenpachi is the only captain that we see with more than just a couple of division members during the 3rd ending animations.

I feel like his division members greatly admire him, rather than simply fear him. Even though he became captain via violent takeover.

First off, I believe he created an environment where those who don't fit into the more dignified air the Gotei 13 tries to exude. The only thing that Kenpachi asks for is that you like to fight. Nothing else matters.

Another reason is because of his strength and his behavior on the battlefield. Kenpachi is not a strategist. He charges into battle and, if you want to follow him, that's up to you. He will not slow down for you... But he will clear a path.

The third reason is that I believe he does actually care for his division. He won't ask how you're doing or anything outward like that. He doesn't really try to be very protective either... But no other captain is allowed to reprimand you. We see this when Kurotsuchi was trying to interrogate Ikkaku but was refused. Kurotsuchi tried to attack him, but Kenpachi stepped in. (Being reprimanded by Kenpachi would be terrifying, I imagine.)

The final reason I'm going to mention is that, well... Kenpachi is Dad. No other way to say it. He is a dad with a ton of misfit sons... And a daughter that runs roughshod over all of them.

[orenonahaichigoda]

More non-Ichigo character thoughts. This time, Rukia.

Sleving the ones who are actually permanently children for whatever reason completely unexplained at least before the novels, haven’t been following the novels. Like the Digimon Adventure universe movies, the only other cartoon I like on its own merit and not because it’s tied to my cartoon-loving dad who died of racially motivated fetishistic abuse against Asians, the same which most fandom exhibits, the Bleach novels seem like they’re mostly there to justify the poor rush job that the epilogue was. Again, same as the Adventure epilogue. Just, the literal twelve-year old fans decided to hop on the family computer and type up some fix-it fic to post on their Geocities rather than the terrible-twos-esque temper tantrums we saw from some Bleach fans.

Anyway, so, you know, there was definitely a deep love between Renji and Rukia that appeared when Renji was fighting Ichigo, though not in the early stuff, because seat-of-pants writing. Been there, and I think anyone who’s written fic has.

However, not only do none of their interactions ever read as romantic, they don’t read as the same maturity level except for the early jail taunting bit.

Renji reads like a lot of his peers, except that his childhood as a street urchin haunts him especially hard.

Remember episode one? The first thing Rukia gets mad about ends with her claiming she’s ten times Ichigo’s age. When she binds him, she takes time to draw on his face before going to do her duty.

I just mentioned the whole problem of characters’ trajectories veering wildly onto a completely different road. Shoot, look at early Gin and end Gin. (Leaving aside early Orihime who wants to be a cyborg and wants to fight to protect Tatuki like Tatuki always protected her, and her veering into Nurse Nancy In Distress Orihime, which compounds sexism because yes, the work is sexist and all sorts of queerphobic. I really would’ve loved to see a follow-up on when she decides to destroy the Hogyoku, honestly)

However, Rukia… never really moves past or gets veered off the course of her early characterisation. Even her very sweet scene with Orihime in the early Arrancar arc—it frankly read *way* more like possibly shippy peer content between them.

There are totally adults that size—I’ve known white, black, and non-white European cis men under four foot nine and Rukia’s height and build is not at all uncommon for E/SE Asian women. Her and Momo both look like just short women, not the same as, say, Hiyori or Tousirou, who are clearly just perma-kids. The average Japanese woman is five foot two/157 or 158 cm, but that height and build is not uncommon. (And though mine was racially motivated because I’m Asian enough, furthermore, Japanese enough, Momo seriously needs more love—takes a DV survivor to know a DV survivor. Clearly Aizen has groomed probably even her sense of self out of her, and neither canon nor fandom is particularly kind to her. There is not much explicit about what went on between them, but I honestly see no other possible reading for her)

Just…Rukia doesn’t ever end up reading like someone who would make a good parent. Yes, the parents of all Bleach teens are absolutely dysfunctional—the adults in positions of authority over them in Karakura all are somehow. However, what little we see in the new SJ Bleach chapter, which I actually bought at my local Japanese language bookstore, so I’m going off the original in my native language, thankfully, they’re not just repeating the dysfunction. (Though I’m very curious why there does seem to be formal kinship terms despite the fact that Kubo unimaginatively rolled with current Japanese law—thank the LDP, America’s favourite—and Rukia married out instead of Renji marrying in, as evidenced by their name plaque at their door. Clearly, there is some Kuchiki influence in their family, though… scratching my head)

It’s another undeveloped, inexplicable thing, just, I mean, while the read I got was Orihime seeing Ichigo as her hero when abuse is on all sides, totally reasonable, and Ichigo seeing Nurse Nancy in Distress Orihime as a *responsibility,* and that is just never the underpinnings of a healthy relationship. I don’t even care if you’re talking a D/s relationship, you don’t start off on that foot and expect to last, at least there was *some something* going on?

Renji and Rukia just don’t read romantic, and furthermore, Rukia just doesn’t read mature enough to be a mother at all. Rukia looks like she could be in her twenties, but she acts like a teenager throughout. Any time she’s not in line of duty mode, she just acts like Ichigo’s age. So that development was absolutely a curveball.

(And “people can be born as ghosts” is just a whole another issue and posts. Artificial bodies being capable of reproduction resulting in living children? OK. Ghosts having ghost babies…? Stretching a little too far for my taste)

[orenonahaichigoda]

So, it’s apparently super normal and OK that the whole fandom fetishises Japanese people and queer men instead of treating us both like human beings, but I thought y’all’d like to know about your in-story proxy for your homophobia.

Taken from a VHS tape I made off the computer, with altered subtitles to watch with friends who don’t understand the audio, and while there are issues with them, this scene fully checks out.

This is the one time we actually see what Lisa reads. This will also serve as image description. While they have Ichigo on the walking machine before he yells that it’s designed to suck up his spirit pressure

—note that I’m translating because fetishists, while cosplaying Japanese people, do real violence to Japanese people for speaking anything ever other than the English of someone who has a PhD in it while they themselves can’t spell their only language, look at fic, so, regardless of whether or not this is made-up Bleach terminology, I have been made to feel unsafe to even use that because of the way the bulk of Anglophone people and especially Anglophone fandom for Japanese anything, treat actual Japanese people—

Anyway, when Ichigo is actually huffing and puffing on what kinda reminds me of 1970s treadmills, to be honest, the Vaizards are all just hanging out having usual banter. Kensei reprimands Lisa, as he wraps his arm in the boxing bandages, that she’s supposed to be watching him. Then we see over Lisa’s shoulder as she says she is and he calls her out. She’s looking at some magazine and we see a not terribly detailed and perfectly acceptable for prime-time/pre-watershed TV image of a woman with blondeish wavy hair on the beach wearing a two-piece swimsuit, though the subs block the visibility that the swimsuit isn’t a one piece. The subs show Kensei calling Lisa’s bluff that she’s not watching Ichigo and is just looking at swimsuit idols.

My best guess is that it’s a swimsuit photo book of a (made up, of course) idol (ie: this is gonna be someone who sings and acts both, like Jennifer Lopez in her heyday, except is more about the age of debut Britney Spears, which yes, the level of sexuality between those sort of photo books and Spears’ Bad Catholic Schoolgirl thing… except for the light in which they are cast, wherein the idols will be shown with a more ‘innocent’ air—and yes, I can list many male idol groups in the 70s and 80s—Spears’ video I mentioned was definitely more “sexy bad girl.” Other than that, same sort of thing. I didn’t go for this thing then, nor do I now, I’m ace and I think modern music generally sounds terrible besides, but I’ve definitely heard about 21st Century Disney stars trying to break out of the Disney stereotype also taking a similar tack to Britney Spears, from what I understand, so your “Japan sexualises children but Good and Pure White Countries Would Never (tm) “ is invalid racist schlock, shut up. Yes, idol contracts are way overreaching, and it’s wrong, but that’s not this subject)

Now that I’m done the SECOND disclaimer to ward off racism, anyway, so generally idol photo books are going to be each focusing on a specific idol. Again, I’ve never gone for these, just the actual records and tapes if I like their music. But you’re not gonna find Shibugakitai in a Hori Chiemi photo book. So, Lisa bought a book to ogle women in swimsuits.

I mean, beyond straight and gay exist, so she could totally still like men, and I was extremely disappointed that Lisa wasn’t Nanao’s mother and that there was nothing about Shunsui and Lisa reuniting (and who says he also can’t be with Juusirou? Or they both can’t also be with Juushirou? My exact reaction to the song “She’s My Only Lover” was and still is “congrats on being mono with someone of the opposite binary gender and therefore having the only type of relationship society allows???” or at least did allow at the time)

Regardless of whatever you want to *transform* Lisa’s sexual or otherwise anything into, claiming she is canonically into homophobic fetish stuff , at least according to the TV show, no, she’s not. She’s not looking at boys/men at all in this.

[orenonahaichigoda]

As a Japanese person in this fandom (mind, a Japanese queer male), yes, I am putting this on my roleplay blog. Noticed fandom also had zero to say about SAH.

this sort of epic trend of people getting obsessed with east asian media like kdramas and anime, move to japan/korea to become an english teacher, pick up the first asian man they see walking the streets, and create the worst genre of youtube videos to plague the platform has gone on for literally. too long

[orenonahaichigoda]

What Does Your Choice of Words Say About You?

Rules: take quiz as character, post results.

Quiz: https://uquiz.com/quiz/M56yaE/what-does-your-choice-of-words-say-about-you

Ichigo’s results (I think something went wrong here www I followed his love for Shakespeare. I guess he does never say things he doesn’t mean, which neither do I):

you always consider what you're about to say before saying it. this makes you both a very considerate person and an over-thinker. you take your time when talking with others, which might try people's patience, but those willing to listen to you are glad they did.

Tagged by: @akanekishimoto

Tagging: @notsobubbly @unforgivingpipsqueak (cross fandom, here)

[orenonahaichigoda]

Mun Game

Rules: Google/search your name + your favorite color + the word ‘aesthetic’. take the first four (non collage) photos and voila, you have your aesthetic moodboard! Then tag your friends and moots to join.

I dunno what a « moot » is, but

Tagged by: @mysteriousshopkeeper thank you ! Also, how « me » are the first and last one www

Tagging: @notsobubbly @unforgivingpipsqueak (cross-fandom here)

[orenonahaichigoda]

What Kind Of Herb Are You?

Quiz Link: https://uquiz.com/quiz/qg68TP/what-kind-of-herb-are-you

Ichigo’s results:

Dandelion

You grew up too fast and all you know is the calluses on your fists and the thousand invisible scars that you pretend don't ache. Your anger burns so bright, so hot or maybe not at all, so deep you could never tell it was there. You are yours and you will defend that to the death after so many years of being ripped apart and denied your own agency and maybe you are still facing the bastards who stole your innocence but you will survive because that's the only thing you know how to do without breaking, the only thing you know besides protect, protect, protect, protect, yourself or sometimes those few others you claim as yours. You are a thousand sharp edges but impenetrable, a traumatized child so covered by thorny armor that you promised yourself you're grown now, you're stronger than anyone who has ever hurt you. You're safe. Nothing will ever hurt you again. You're so alone though sometimes, in a world that sees you as too much or too broken or too angry or too hurt, and you want to scream with the too-much of it, prove that you're okay, that you're self-reliant, that you are strong enough to stake your claim on your body, on your mind, on your heart, on your people, and protect it from any who dare take it away from you. You are the sea in tempest, a howling sky, a tsunami in motion, a force of nature, no matter how much you sometimes yearn to be still, to be safe, to be small. You are a dandelion, stubborn and determined to grow in the rockiest of soil, and bloom again in spring.

Thoughts: Hammer, meet nail. This is really on the nose!

Tagged by @mysteriousshopkeeper thank you!

Tagging: I only talk to two people in this famdom; there’s no one left to tag.

[orenonahaichigoda]

What Bleach Character Are You?

Rules: take the quiz both OOC and IC, post results

Link:

Results: I just got a new phone, and I’m not about to mess with copypasting pictures when I’ve had a long day and haven’t used Apple since I-Phone 6, and then mess with image descriptions, but I got Uryu for both. Gotta be honest, there were a couple of things where I just picked something sweet but melancholy for Ichigo, and also, well, Glee is stupid; just listen to real 80s music like a normal person. They also didn’t have family dinners at Denny’s except as a way to cheat (it’s actually literally called a family restaurant in Japan, in stark contrast to its rep here. Though in SoCal, it was a popular after church family brunch place...). I definitely picked things like Ichigo not reading fanfic, though, because Ichigo’s definitely more uptight about his standards than even *I* am (I mean, I just *have* them is all, so I still don’t read much, as a QMOC, and moreover, Asian myself, but what little I do find good these days is only on ao3 as far as Western languages)

I don’t quite know how I arrived at my abusive cousin’s favourite character he kinda looked a bit like, but probably because, as usual, I couldn’t find the answer I actually wanted either IC or OOC for 75% of the questions.

As always, you get 10x the blathering on my answers you do on anyone else’s, but at least it’s already readable by any Anglophone without having to transcribe?

Tagged by: @akanekishimoto Thank you!

Tagging: I think she already tagged anyone I know in this fandom, and the other fandom doesn’t exactly love Bleach, so it’d be meaningless to them. Oh well.

[orenonahaichigoda]

@deivorous found a picrew and hey, this kinda looks like Ichigo.

Really pale,again, because no one anywhere wants to admit yellowish tan skintones exist, thanks beauty standards, but it's pretty close!! And he'd totally wear that jacket, too.

Also, they helped recolour *themselves* a picture made from the following Picrew, and here's an approximation of Ichigo And Chad's daughter,Yasuko! Except her hair is more wavy and her skintone is more*between* Ichigo and Chad, like me vs my parents or my dad vs his (though my mother just had the colour of her lighter-skinned parent and the hair colour, as she was the white parent and her mother had had light hair, of her darker parent,so it's not always like that) Anyway, here's the first approximation of Yasuko Kurosaki. Age 3, and I tried to make her look as precocious as the maker allowed. She knows something's up, and she's not afraid to let you know she knows... Unless playing naive will get her candy or an extra hour before bed. She *can* be bought.

So, @deivorous really helped me out a lot. And there we go!

[orenonahaichigoda]

Close as I could get. Typical picrew, there's 365 girls' options for hair and demon/bat/dog ears, but all of two men's options. No yellowish tan skintones (I typically put Ichigo on the darker end of his canon colour range, between my dad and my granpa) no light red hair even though there was green and blue. Surprised this one had facial hair, that's a first. I wanted to colour that binder black, the most common colour they come in for some reason, but not an option.

Picrews always lack options for drawing men, and I actually made an account so I can try to make some of my own, but it looks pretty complicated and daunting to use. So I dunno if it'll ever happen.

Tagged by: @akanekishimoto Thanks for remembering me :)

Tagging: Honestly, no one I play with (which is under five people, they all play men/boys) will be able to find the right options here, so no one.

[orenonahaichigoda]

Ichigo is torn six ways from Sunday in ways that only Grimmjow would cause.

The growling and teeth tell his instincts to retreat, his anger to come forth, and, the same thing he's always seen in Grimmjow, his heart to show the guy what a hug feels like.

Ichigo's seen it since their final fight before Aizen fell; Grimmjow has been treated like dirt so much, all he has is a hammer and the world is made of nails. The closest thing to positive emotion pointed at him he can think of is only pity.

If Ichigo could only get him to calm down and listen, he'd show him there's so much more.

And to get closer, he realises in the moment he's willing to compromise his morals, abandon his life's mission given to him by the parent that accepted him without question. The poor hollow on the floor doesn't deserve any of this. If Grimmjow left, he could juat purify the poor schlub, and everyone would be OK.

But he doesn't want Grimmjow to go, and it's high time he chases what he wants.

Not like he doesn't have regrets he beats himself up for already, what's one more? Everyone just gives him credit he isn't due.

Pounding at the door pulls him out of his reverie. Girls'voices asking their father and brother what's going on come muffled through the cheap wood.

"I-I'll be down in a few minutes, girls, just wait for me in the living room."

Footsteps scamper away--crisis averted.

Ichigo flounders for a comeback that might keep Grimmjow here, finally remembering and dropping his arm. Remembering when Chad shared with him the foods of his parents' native Mexico, and the various African foods he learnt after he became an orphan.

(Of course, those weren't also a moral question)

He wants that with Grimmjow. Food and sharing culture typically brings people closer.

And Grimmjow clearly wants the same thing (right?)

"I want to share with you, and I want you to come back and share with me. See it through and all. And yeah, OK, it's just... regular molecules... But there's gotta be something you might like. I mean, I've never eaten spirit particles myself, I don't think, but is nutrition really the point of this?"

orenonahaichigoda​:

Ichigo takes a deep breath and reels himself in as the hollow finally quiets down. He runs a hand through his hair. “OK, fine, I’m sorry I yelled.”

Oh, *he’s* the heartless one? That’s rich. If not for Grimmjow, he’d’ve given the poor thing a soul burial already! Not that he thinks Grimmjow is really incapable of caring (in fact, this is probably a sign that he does), but, still, it’s pretty rich coming from the guy who got the hollow in that state in the first place.

He steps around the hollow and stops just shy of grabbing Grimmjow before he can go through the garganta. He knows it’s not good to touch someone so volatile, and the result of stopping himself in his tracks leaves them less than 20 centimetres apart.

“No! You brought the hollow here, show me what you want me to do. You show me how to eat your food, and next time, I’ll take you for something I like,” he adds, hoping that appeases him. (Plus, some okonomiyaki or something would be a lot easier to deal with than this)

He’d grown fond of Grimmjow by the time the Quincy arose, but some days, he really wishes he hadn’t.

Grimmjow bristles instinctively at the invasion of his space; hostility is an immediate response and he bares his teeth, ground held firm. Kurosaki doesn’t try to touch him however, his hand left to hover awkwardly in the air and his body physically between Grimmjow and the void of the Garganta. Grimmjow could push him and it would be all over.

Grimmjow would never kill him like that though. No. When Kurosaki dies, he’ll be standing on his two feet with a sword in his hands and his heart in Grimmjow’s. He refuses to accept anything less than the victory he deserves.

He snaps back from his daydreams of red-stained sand and pitch black soul steel when Kurosaki talks again. He realizes, absently, that he’s still growling and the sound sputters in his chest before dying out.

“Maybe I don’t wanna fucking show you anymore. And why the fuck would I be enticed by your shitty human food”- because whatever was cooked downstairs smells incredible, because he misses the taste of actual food, because its someone (Kurosaki) offering to feed him - “anyway? It doesn’t have any fucking reishi in it.”

[orenonahaichigoda]

Ichigo takes a deep breath and reels himself in as the hollow finally quiets down. He runs a hand through his hair. "OK, fine, I'm sorry I yelled."

Oh, *he's* the heartless one? That's rich. If not for Grimmjow, he'd've given the poor thing a soul burial already! Not that he thinks Grimmjow is really incapable of caring (in fact, this is probably a sign that he does), but, still, it's pretty rich coming from the guy who got the hollow in that state in the first place.

He steps around the hollow and stops just shy of grabbing Grimmjow before he can go through the garganta. He knows it's not good to touch someone so volatile, and the result of stopping himself in his tracks leaves them less than 20 centimetres apart.

"No! You brought the hollow here, show me what you want me to do. You show me how to eat your food, and next time, I'll take you for something I like," he adds, hoping that appeases him. (Plus, some okonomiyaki or something would be a lot easier to deal with than this)

He'd grown fond of Grimmjow by the time the Quincy arose, but some days, he really wishes he hadn't.

orenonahaichigoda​:

Ichigo is nothing if not confused and out of his depth and the *wailing* is literally too loud for him to think.

“Well, I just- I- WHAT THE F-CK DO YOU MEAN BY THAT! I’VE NEVER EATEN A HOLLOW BEFORE EXCUSE ME IF I DON’T KNOW THE BLOODY PROTOCOL!!”

He’s just shot any headway he was making with Grimmjow in the foot, and he knows it, but there was too much going on for his filter to work– not that he isn’t kicking himself– and what does Grimmjow even expect? Every living thing he eats is chopped up by the local butchers except the fish (which even they’re descaled)

“Look, I get it, I appreciate the gift, but I don’t have teeth like you–AND I CAN’T THINK OVER THE SCREAMING, OKAY!!”

It was supposed to be a nice night, he was going to take a nice pain relieving bath, the girls were busy watching TV downstairs and Issin was passed out from a 48 hour stint. He can’t hear enough for footsteps, but he’s pretty sure they’re about to be walked in on, too.

Grimmjow’s shark-like grin flattens into something wholey unamused. He steps off the back of the pitiful creature he so kindly delivered and prowls closer, the first hints of fangs making themselves known.

“First off, you keep screaming at me like that and I’m gonna cut out yer voice box.” The growl that accompanies his threat reverberated deeply from within his chest and the rough flex of his reiatsu is enough to force the prey into a mewling, whimpering submission, too terrified to even scream any longer. Grimmjow doesn’t even glance at it when it decides to shut the fuck up. He’ll kill it either way.

He clicks his tongue, projecting irritation, and waves a hand at the sluggishly bleeding, only partially cauterized, stumps that used to be arms and legs. “It’s in pain, shinigami, you fucking heartless psychopath. If you ate it faster you could put it out of misery. But yer standin’ here leavin’ it to suffer.”

He doesn’t even bother to reply about Ichigo’s lack of teeth. Grimmjow can see them every time the stupid shit opens his mouth to scream. He debates sticking hsi fingers into his mouth and peeing back his lips to see them better, check they aren’t rotten and need to be ripped out, but decades of rooted habits mean that Grimmjow is loathed to put any part of himself near another’s teeth, even a shinigami’s.

He glares down his nose at the shinigami for a long moment before scoffing again. Whatever. If Kurosaki’s going to be a little bitch then Grimmjow doesn’t give a shit. Not like he expected any different, this is just more gasoline on the fire.

He turns abruptly and rips through the fabric of the Living World, opening the Garganta right into the shinigami’s den, fully intending to leave the prey behind for Kurosaki to deal with.

[orenonahaichigoda]

9. 3 words or ideas you’d describe yourself with?

Impetuous--Ichigo knows he rushes into things and has no patience to plan.

Polyglot--this really speaks for itself. It's not really a judgement so much as something that's objectively true.

Insufficient--Ichigo can't see all the times he's succeeded at protecting his town and people he cares about for the times he's failed.

[orenonahaichigoda]

25. What are you really bad at?

Ichigo is terrible at cooking. One of my fics goes into this in depth

But the long and short of it is he doesn't understand that 30 minutes at 200 degrees can't be converted into 15 minutes at 400 degrees, and doesn't have the patience one really needs in cooking. This is actually a beginner's error, so he's not *doomed,* but he doesn't have any way to really practise.

[orenonahaichigoda]

This plus the same thing being done to Asians is why I'm so ready to attack first in fandom. Because 90% of both fandom and the wider world is about reducing me to someone's "kink uwu" on both those axes.

okay like. supposedly being interested in m/m relationships, or even a specific m/m relationship because you like the specific dynamic depicted is fetishizing. because it’s only acceptable to take an interest in any m/m relationship if you’re a man who likes men, apparently. BUT then also m/f relationships are supposedly relatable and accessible to everybody???

or maybe.

just maybe.

that’s a bullshit argument used to shut down enthusiasm for anything that isn’t heteronormative as well as to shame a group of what is perceived to be young women and girls. because any time young women like anything at all, however harmless or even positive and uplifting, that thing is relentlessly mocked and derided as shallow and ridiculous.