#B3: clearly the place to start here is soi fon's dead brothers also rose has an exwife do shinigami get pensions what about their bereaved

[bleachbleachbleach]

Hello there! Idk have you ever talk about this or not, but I just found out a translation of an interview with Kubo called 'Bleach Jet' from local Bleach fanbase. One of the question said 'are the captains married? Since the only confirmed married one is Byakuya and he's actually younger than other captains'. Then Kubo answered 'well, tbh I never thought about it. But when I think it over, it would be sad if somebody as old as Yamajii is not married. So let's assume that they could be married, but it's just not necessary to be included in the story so I never write about it'. You know, I was so excited when I read it lok. In your opinion, which captains are apparently married? I only could imagine Ukitake since he's a perfect husband/daddy material (well I also want to know who's that lucky woman). But the others, seems kinda impossible lol. I'll be happy if you responded to my question. Thanks!

OH MAN. I’m interested in this in a couple of ways. The first way I am interested in this question is that neither of us had ever once wondered this. It did not even occur to us to wonder this, LOL. Too busy fixating on WHEELS, apparently. 

Because of this, it feels like a magic trick, where the source material has asked you to look in a particular direction at a particular thing and sleight of hand (spouses) might occur before your eyes without you ever seeing it. I truly just took for granted that everyone would be single unless explicitly noted otherwise--Byakuya continues to be married to Hisana in his heart as the only married captain, until eventually Rukia joins him.

But it’s exciting to me that there could already be secret spouses who never came up simply because the narrative was never pointed in their direction. I’ve experienced this with people IRL before, and I think there’s plenty of precedent for this in Bleach itself, given that there are a fair number of shinigami with relatives whom we know to be alive and well and never meet.

For instance, Yoruichi’s brother seems really young, which suggests that their married parents might…? still be alive?? Unless they died tragically in the decades immediately preceding TBTP when Yuushirou was a baby, which I guess is equally possible and probably further justifies Soi Fon’s distaste for Urahara/her being high-strung about the kind of company Yoruichi keeps/depends on. Maybe the Shihouin Parents died when all of Soi Fon’s brothers did. 😬 (Speaking of family members it never occurred to me would have existed until we were told they existed…)

As for our currently or were-recently serving Gotei officers: In my mind, Yamamoto and Sasakibe were together. Not romantically—in a different universe, maybe, but in theirs the fact that Yamamoto is Captain Commander and Sasakibe is his VC precludes all else. Because this relationship exists, it forecloses all notion of other romantic partners, even as they themselves are not romantic partners.

I’ve always imagined Kyouraku and Ukitake having a different but kinda similar thing going on, though I’d be more willing to imagine that Ukitake also has a spouse out there somewhere than Yamamoto having one, re: your suggestion in the original ask. It makes me think about all of Ukitake’s siblings. I assume they’re all well into adulthood at this point but… how much do they know? About how Ukitake died? How much were they depending on his care (financially, family leadership-wise, family mediation-wise, etc.)? :(

One other person I could imagine having a spouse is Rose. Specifically, I could imagine him having had a spouse, past tense—pre-exile. If he were Seireitei-born to some middling noble house. Imagine with me a wife, and a noble marriage put together on the expectation that the line should continue by the birthing of children. It was arranged; they’re well-matched and get on quite famously. They have similar interests and pedigrees and if their marriage is not driven by fiery all-consuming PASSION, well, many marriages aren’t and they always have music to turn to if they’re in need of that kind of enchantment. When Rose was sentenced to death/exiled, his marriage was annulled and his wife was re-married to a different Outoribashi or related clan. I don’t think Rose would have wanted otherwise—it’s been 100 years now, and she and her new husband are quite happy; heirs were produced, etc.—but it’s still sad. The Vizard exile had more consequences than many in the Gotei will ever know, and more still that will never be written.

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The second way I am interested in this question is that I actually really enjoy Soul Society as a place where social roles—specifically as they relate to romance, marriage, and children, in any case—are a lot less circumscribed than they are often understood to be in the mainstream of the Living World. If the prototypical narrative in the Living World is, say, "by age 20 you will be married to a spouse of the opposite sex and children will follow thereafter," that doesn’t seem like the case within the Gotei, at least from what we see, and I love thinking through potential factors.

Some baseline examples:

A billionty of the people in Soul Society weren’t born in the first place, and instead arrived. 

Shinigami lifespans differ from humans and life milestones may not function in the same way (even as it seems like shinigami spend a LOT of time in what are optimal child-bearing years for us). 

Shinigami biology also differs from ours, potentially in ways that matter--who knows what fertility is like for them.

It seems like shinigami are dying just like, all the time, which I can imagine genuinely altering baseline assumptions around what interpersonal relationships are like and what they mean. 

I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity here for a lot of different types of relationships being much more normalized and understood alongside the marriage/children route. (And, additionally, the marriage/children route being more naturally understood as itself quite individual and rife with complexities that the boilerplate version of the Living World’s Notion of Marriage tends to leave out.) So that’s all very exciting to me.

What is the prototypical sexuality in Soul Society? Idk, all of them? What is the prototypical formal relationship arrangement? Idk, all of them? With probably more heterosexual coupling (or at least heterosexual-reading coupling), and more monogamy/marriage in noble circles, proportionally-speaking. I mean, I don’t think people getting married and having kids would be exceedingly rare, in the sense that Renji and Rukia probably weren’t making scandalous tabloid splash pages (though maybe on slow news days Hisagi has threatened this—idk I’ve never read WDKALY); but it feels like it would be one option among many, rather than the norm to which all other potentials are compared. I’m very enamored by the idea that D. All of the Above is Soul Society’s default in this one regard. 

They might live under ridiculous authoritarian hierarchical military whatnot, but AT LEAST LOVE IS FREE.