#Sora inoue

[vanillaxbiscuit]

One-Way Sympathy

[emosyzoth]

wow Orihime they will never make me hate you

[rainbowberriesandcookies]

Orihime's weird food combinations actually make a lot of sense-

It's one of those things that in the moment, it's used for comedic relief when other characters see her or hear about her weird food combinations but honestly there's also a lot of subtlety that makes me wonder if Kubo has more personal experience growing up poor or with food security because my god it makes too much fucking sense.

We know that Sora and Orihime had abusive parents who were described as the types of people that would hit a child until it stopped crying and that Sora intentionally hid her away from them to take care of her.

Chances are, their parents never taught Sora how to cook or take care of himself properly, and growing up, he likely had to feed Orihime little bits of what he could put together before he was able to turn 18 and run away with her.

At the start of the story, Ichigo says that Sora died three years ago and at the start of the story, Ichigo and Orihime are both around 15 years old. Which means Orihime was no older than 12 when Sora died.

Have you seen what 12-year-olds left to their own devices eat? And eventually, we find out that Orihime is taken care of by a distant relative who only sends her money as long as she keeps her grades up. Given that she lives by herself, it's likely only enough money to ensure that Orihime isn't homeless or starving - but not enough to actually buy proper meals.

And if it is - Orihime likely doesn't know what a proper meal looks like. From how Sora described their parents, he likely had to raise himself as many children do in abusive relationships, and then had to raise Orihime. But children often learn things from their parents like how to cook, clean, etc.

Another character with a similar home life that Orihime reminds me of is Taiga from Toradora.

Until she met Ryuji, Taiga pretty much lived on convenience store food as her parent(s) only sent money every so often. Likely - once again - it was just enough to make sure she wasn't homeless or on the streets but not enough to be able to afford cooking proper meals and Orihime - like Taiga - likely doesn't really know what normal food or meals really look like.

And as early as the volume 2 character profiles, we learn that Orihime is supported by relatives.

At one point, she's even seen eating bread likely because it was all she could afford.

In Chapter 14, Orihime just brings an entire loaf of bread and a can of red bean paste to lunch and as early as Volume 2 we learn that she's supported by relatives - yet we also know that she lives alone which even as early as this it can be assumed that they're fairly distant and only do so out of obligation rather than love.

Come Chapter 450, this is elaborated on even more

She outright mentions that a distant aunt pays for her living expenses and sends her less when her grades go down. And here, you can see her recounting what she heard about her parents being "really abusive" from her brother all with a smile on her face despite the fact that it's a pretty somber.

Another hint to the food insecurity is how Orihime looked at the donuts earlier and Riruka upon hearing this, let Orihime eat as much as she wanted.

It's in her own way, but Riruka clearly understood that Orihime didn't really have a good home life. But she's a tsundere so Riruka has to say that she doesn't want them anymore instead of outright saying she feels bad and doesn't want to deprive someone who likely has never really had too much food security of food that's right in front of them. The typical "It's not like I care or anything" from tsunderes like Riruka.

Jumping back to earlier chapters-

Orihime joked with Tatsuki about having to carry around a sleeping bag and sleeping outdoors after being kicked out of her apartment following the hollow incident in Chapter 24.

Given that Tatsuki didn't appreciate the joke and up till this point, she's one of Orihime's closest friends, chances are Tatsuki knows that Orihime has a precarious living situation which is why the joke didn't come off as funny because Tatsuki would also know that Orihime is the type to just smile her way through all of her troubles.

So combined with what we know...

As early as Chapter 4 her apartment was damaged as a result of Ichigo's battle with Acidwire, in Chapter 14 she brings bread and red bean paste to school to eat and in Chapter 24 Tatsuki doesn't appreciate her jokes about having to be in a sleeping bag until she finds a new place before admitting that she's actually staying in a hotel.

Chances are her grades slipped to the point she couldn't afford rent anymore or the damage to the apartment was that bad - either way the result was a pretty big strain on her already tight finances.

Orihime's odd food tendencies aren't just to make her quirky, but one of the only ways she knows how to survive. After all - a lot of people who live in poverty or struggle with food security eat and enjoy strange meals like mustard sandwiches where it is just bread and mustard or sugar sandwiches where it's just butter, bread, and sugar... A lot of struggle meals honestly involve some type of bread because it is cheap and filling.

Bread is one of the cheapest food items you can afford and while everyone else thinks that her food combinations are horrid... there is at least one person who appreciates them.

Rangiku!

And from what we know, Rangiku also had a very similar upbringing where she was found starving and alone by Gin. He offered her persimmons, a fruit that when eaten at the wrong time is very sour but when it's ripe it's mushy/soft. Because of this, persimmons can be something of an acquired taste - and when they're dried the flavor of them is even more concentrated

All in all, her quirky food habits are a subtle nod to her upbringing, and thinking about it now, it makes sense as to why it never really sat right with me when people would callously make fun of her food combinations or rather treated them like a genuine character flaw to mock and demean her over.

It's used for comedy because when you hear certain struggle meals, they really don't be making any sense and sound disgusting! Yet at the same time, it's a result of having to make do with what you have and your tastes revolving around that.

Even with the consistency of Rangiku, someone who was found starving enjoying her food combinations - it makes me wonder if Rangiku is no stranger to eating weird things or combinations on occasion. It also contrasts with Toshiro who was shown not really enjoying the food combinations, but unlike Orihime or Rangiku, he's never really been shown starving or hungry in his backstory because he had his grandmother and Momo with him.

Because of that, it's kinda hard to chalk up Orihime's weird food tendencies and growing up poor to be a "lucky coincidence" because the other person who enjoys them too grew up similarly to her - where food was scarce. Given how seemingly well thought out it is, it makes me wonder if Kubo himself may have either had or knew someone who struggled with food scarcity.

[kisses-in-the-void]

We stan Ichigo Kurosaki, a feminist king who always respected Orihime, fought for her freedom and her right to choose how to live, and never allowed anyone to force her into doing something she didn’t like. And it's no wonder that Orihime decided she wants to fall in love with him in every universe.

[ilolr77]

I had a vision but now I'm just sad

[tossawary]

Everything surrounding Orihime's kidnapping in the Hueco Mundo arc of "Bleach" feels... weird and underwhelming to me. Like, I'm not fully certain what happened there. Did Ulquiorra hold those two random soul reaper escorts hostage until Orihime returned from saying her invisible goodbye, or was he just threatening her friends generally...?

The invisible goodbye thing has some interesting elements, but... I don't want to call Orihime a pushover for being threatened by genuinely scary people when she's feeling especially isolated, but it does seem to immediately and directly prove Urahara and others right when they said that Orihime is probably unsuited for the battlefield. Even medical / support people have to triage and improvise under fire and work within a greater structure! She (fairly!) does not like weighing lives!

(Though I do think that Urahara and others were very wrong to just tell Orihime to go away. She has no family! All she has left are her friends! And she's too self-sacrificing to ever willingly leave for her own sake! It would have been far better to keep her close and let her train for a medical / support position, so that she wouldn't get kidnapped like this (and would have had the confidence to work out some way to get around Aizen's weird mind games), when Ichigo is fucking notorious now for going apeshit if anything happens to even distant friends.)

When Ulquiorra first appeared in that space between worlds for an ambush, I was like, "OH SHIT, THAT'S COOL." This place is famously dangerous and if she and her escort disappear without a trace here, no one will know what happened. Perhaps Ulquiorra can destabilize whatever safety technology exists here and make it look like some mechanical failure. It's clever! (It also made me imagine Ulquiorra as some kind of deep sea leviathan, cleverly feeding on the plus souls and hollows passing over this trench, where the soul reapers don't think to look. Ulquiorra potentially first meeting Aizen by attempting to ambush him and swallow him whole in this inbetween place would be a great first encounter.)

And then Ulquiorra lets Orihime go to say a weird invisible goodbye? As part of Aizen's mind games to make the Gotei 13 think she left on her own and her feel like this kidnapping was partially her own choice? Unless Ulquiorra was holding those soul reapers hostage at this point in time, I'm really not sure why Orihime went along with this instead of trying to get help (besides her obvious feelings of isolation / depression + plot requires she be the damsel in distress to kick-start the Hueco Mundo arc). (There's REASONING, I'm just not fully persuaded by it.) It feels a little overcomplicated for me on Aizen's end, especially when I haven't yet seen it be paired with any other charisma or compelling persuasion from Aizen, this supposed master manipulator, when Orihime has plenty of buttons to press besides fear.

"Soul Society is broken and doesn't care for the poor people on the outside." "The Gotei 13 are corrupt and will ungratefully turn on people like Ichigo and Rukia as soon as they're no longer useful." "Hollows are people too, aren't they? And the soul reapers don't bother trying to help the people who need them most." "The Soul King is a threat to us all and I'm the only one who can stop him." There are so many lies and half-truths that Aizen could tell! This could be a point in time to showcase how he got so many people to follow him besides spiritual strength, and him being apparently nice to a vulnerable Orihime would be genuinely eerie given what we saw / know happened to Momo.

And this "making the Gotei 13 think that Orihime left of her own choice" story decision could work if Aizen had done more to frame her! But the fact that the Captain Commander immediately makes this assumption with so little evidence makes him look incompetent, when there are so many people who could immediately vouch for her and for the fact that it's way more likely she's been forced into something bad. Of course, maybe the story's point is to make the Captain Commander look bad at reading situations! Rather than simply ruthless for dismissing Orihime as lost and irrelevant. That gets a slight pass, I guess, but it's really such a wild and insulting and unnecessary assumption.

I think what I would have preferred to happen is OPTION 1) Aizen or underling kidnaps Tatsuki first and uses Tatsuki to get to Orihime.

This would bring Tatsuki fully into this arc instead of sidelining her again. It would be a nice culmination to the secrecy straining her friendships with both Ichigo and Orihime, and a nice bop to Ichigo's nose for trying to protect everyone on his own and his utter failure communicating danger to his friends and family. We could have a lot of fun stuff with Orihime and Tatsuki trying to survive together in this place. It would give Orihime some fucking motivation that isn't just "trying to help Ichigo". It would allow Orihime to find her strength by protecting the friend she has always viewed as being tougher and more confident. I need more women in this show who aren't made of relentless boob jokes.

OPTION 2) I would have preferred it if Aizen had found some way to locate Orihime's brother, Sora, and kidnapped him from Soul Society to use against her.

Aizen is supposedly a genius. It would track with the rest of the story if he could invent this technology. It would make the Gotei 13 look really bad if they have a way of helping families reconnect in the afterlife and just don't bother; and it would look really bad for them if Soul Society had utterly failed to be a safe place for Orihime's loved one. If Aizen is interested in Orihime's powers, he would probably be interested in seeing if her brother has any similar potential.

Option 2a is that Sora could be a regular plus soul and remembers Orihime. Aizen could have been experimenting on him and could be threatening to continue experimenting on Sora. Maybe being a regular plus soul in Hueco Mundo without the protection of a soul reaper's cultivation energy is dangerous. The air is toxic to him. He'll undergo hollowficafion again without special medicine from Aizen / Aizen's experiments keeping him as a normal plus soul, and he's terrified of becoming that monster again. Aizen coaxes Orihime to help him by claiming he's trying to find a way to cure hollowfication forever, so that Sora will be safe.

Option 2b is that Sora has no memories of Orihime or they've been suppressed, and Aizen has turned Sora into an Arrancar. Aizen claims that Sora was left vulnerable and starving on the outskirts of the Soul Society, abandoned to become a hollow again, or attacked by a hollow and transformed. Aizen has now used the Hogyoku to take Sora back to a mostly human state and given him Arrancar powers to "protect himself". Sora is grateful to Aizen for having saved him and as loyal as Ulquiorra. Aizen asks Orihime if she's prepared to fight her own brother. Doesn't she want to help him help Sora?

Honestly, I dig Ulquiorra so far and I'd like to keep him (he and Sora could have a weird not-twins thing going on), but you could totally replace his role in the story with Arrancar Sora and then put Orihime through the ringer torn between Ichigo and Sora. It feels so, SO weird to me that Orihime's dead brother never comes up again in this show about dead people and the story barely treats it as relevant.

OPTION 3) is that you bring both Tatsuki and Sora into it! Why not? Have amnesiac Arrancar Sora kidnap Tatsuki while Ulquiorra ambushes Orihime! Have Aizen threatening to turn both Tatsuki and plus soul Sora into hollows if Orihime doesn't cooperate!

I am feeling desperate for Orihime to have anything in her life again that is not her love for Ichigo. They don't have chemistry! The story is not taking the time to develop chemistry and bonding and partnership between them! Ichigo barely seems to remember she exists half the time.

Side note: I can barely fucking believe that Ichigo went off to train with the Visored without telling his family that he was leaving or where he would be. That's not a great sign for good mental health or healthy relationships! Which is probably (hopefully) the point! He could be dead in any alleyway for all his baby sisters know. That's not good big brother behavior! Ichigo has a real problem with not trusting anyone else to protect everyone (not without reason!), including not trusting his loved ones to protect themselves, and I'm not certain yet whether or not the story actually thinks this is a real problem and intends to have Ichigo fix his communication bullshit.

There is so much good, bloody material here if the story was genuinely willing to dig into the mess and make it hurt good. Instead, I'm watching Nel and her little hollow buddies do their fairly repetitive hijinks and Ichigo fight random nobodies who will not be meaningful to the story later. When Rukia finally ran into Aaroneiro pretending to be Kaien, I was like, "Oh, thank fuck, something with SOME emotional weight and compelling psychological turmoil again."

[mechadeimos]

[brokenangelwings22]

Gravity's Ascension Chapter 13 is now up!

Yep. It's been MONTHS. I finally got the inspiration to finish the chapter! Please enjoy! As always, thank you to @gina-chan1979 and @lowrider-dreams for being there for me. Enjoy, m'loves!

Gravity's Ascension Chapter 13: One Last Plea

[lordtocco]

The theme song of Eternal Yesterday still in my mind after weeks!

I like it, or maybe I miss the drama's emotion.

P.S. Most of the time I skip the opening. But for this BL drama I couldn't do that because the music was so beautiful.

[vanillaxbiscuit]

Red Dragonfly

I'm obsessed with Orihime so I want to draw more of her childhood memories. I drew this image based from Orihime's dialog in Bleach Ch68 where Sora can catch red dragonfly using his finger.

[platinumz0nvrmre]

what are the best panels in bleach?

chapter 4 has a few contenders

but one stands high above the rest

some good ones are

these two, ichigo protecting orihime and soras hollow form looming above tatski

but no those aren’t the best even if they’re good

the best is this

orihime getting thrown out of her body by sora

the blank look on orihimes face

the hand growing from the plushie

everything in this panel is just

amazing

[lavendertownsghost]

I just randomly remembered an AU I though of ages ago, where Sora hollowfies earlier and manages to get to Hueco Mundo before he hurts Orihime. He manages to get to Adjuchas level and Aizen (or Nel) finds him and he becomes Nel's Fracción. Then shit happens and be eventually becomes an Espada (the title of the fic would be Espada of Emptiness so that isn't really a spoiler).

I should write it.

[kcuf-ad]

Sora is the dad that stepped up to Orihime.

[dailybigbro]

Today’s Big Bro is Sora Inoue from Bleach! He loves his little sister!

[mechadeimos]

[brokenangelwings22]

Gravity's Ascension Chapter 13 preview

I should have this done as soon as possible for you. This is a long and heavy chapter. Just to let you know, the finished product might require Kleenex and chocolate. or whatever makes you feel better.

The teenager sat across from her brother, her smile radiating as he dug into his meal.

“Good?”

“You could be a chef!” Sora praised. “How was your day?”

“Oh, you know,” Orihime shrugged. “Work, tutoring, talking with Tatsuki.”

“Ah,” he said quietly. “How is she? You haven’t had her over lately.”

The auburn-haired teenager bit her bottom lip, looking oddly uncomfortable.

“What is it?” He pressed gently.

“Her parents aren’t allowing her out much,” she explained with a subtle tinge of sadness. Her fingers tapped on the table anxiously. “Where they live across the river… things are getting worse. There’s more vandalism and mob mentality. Mrs. Arisawa’s dojo was trashed last night. The vandals tore up the tatami floors, broke the windows, and tagged the walls with a symbol.”

“What was the symbol?” Sora felt his gut clench, cramping up with concern and a feeling of dread.

Orihime’s fingers stopped fidgeting but her knee began bouncing with nervous energy.

“A turquoise jaguar.”

Sora held back a curse and tried to calm himself. Orihime didn’t need to know the significance and danger that symbol brought.

“Are the Arisawas alright? Do they need anything?” He chose a path of using a soothing tone instead of anger.

“Yes and no,” she replied quietly. “We’re becoming more isolated. I planned everything for The Festival of Lights, but now it’s hopeless. There’s no way we’d be safe celebrating together. I miss Tats so very much. This has been lonely and difficult.”

Orihime turned her head, but Sora could tell she was trying to hide the tears dripping down her cheeks. The solace he had felt in coming home had evaporated and the heartache of being unable to stop his sister’s sadness and loneliness broke something inside him every day.

When she turned back to look at him, quickly wiping away stray tears, her eyes held a depth of pain that felt wrong and out of place. She had been such a joyful child. The world had become a cruel and unpredictable place, wrenching away innocence and safety from everyone.

“I can't allow this to continue,” his sister said quietly. There was a slight quiver in her voice, revealing both her anger and internal struggle.

Sitting back in his chair, Sora examined her closely. Orihime had always been eerily quick-witted and deeply empathetic. It was not in her nature to seek out justice violently. But, he supposed, everyone had their limits.

“Orihime,” Sora said with a hint of a fatherly warning. “Do not let your emotions rule your decisions. You can’t allow darkness into your heart. It isn’t who you are.”

The teenager winced at the reprimand. She nodded with a sobered look.

“You’re right,” she whispered. “I am sorry.”

Sora let out a soft sigh, shaking his head fondly at his sister.

“I understand that this is very hard for you. You are alone for a considerable amount of time. You see more than most should. If I could wave a wand and make the world whole again, I would do it in a heartbeat. For you and everyone.”

Orihime fidgeted with a lock of auburn hair. Her gray eyes still shimmered with unshed tears and fire within them. She was someone who wore her heart on her sleeve. She was honest even when she tried to hide the bottomless wealth of thoughts and emotions.

“Orihime,” Sora spoke quietly, folding his hands on the table. “It might be a good idea to get you out of the province.”

The teenager whipped her head and looked at him like he’d lost his mind. Sora held up his hand, signaling that he wasn’t done.