#and it is my understanding that this doesn't happen even once in CFYOW

[recurring-polynya]

I'm sorry if this comes off weird, but I wanted to ask why you seem to not want to know about Can't Fear Your Own World? Do you dislike it, or it's nature as a post-series work?

So I've read a couple of the light novels and they simply do not spark joy. The plots sort of wander around, the characterization has very little to say, and they are full of what I'll call "lore dumps", where there will be a paragraph of exposition that's not integrated into the story in any sort of natural way and is frequently of the "thanks, I hate it" variety. Even though they may be "Kubo approved", or include stuff that he came up with, they completely lack his storytelling skill or the charm of his character voices. There are usually about 3-5 bits that I find charming per light novel, and about five to ten times as many that I find aggravating or off-putting (or just plain tedious or boring).

I think that a big part of it for me is that I read a lot of fanfiction and while there is an awful lot of mediocre fanfic, I have also read a lot of brilliant stories written by people who have given a ton of thought to the characters and the worldbuilding and out-of-canon adventures that these characters might go on. To me, the light novels I have read feel like finding a story on AO3 that has all my favorite tags and a cool story description, and then it turns out that I absolutely hate the writing style and direction. It feels like adding insult to injury that on top of that, I am somehow obligated to consider them canon.

To address CFYOW specifically, it does not contain any of the characters I care about. I mean, I like Shuuhei, but what I like about Shuuhei is his relationship with Izuru, Momo, and Renji. I like his job at the Seireitei Communication. I like his guitar playing and boring cooking and the goofy outfits he wears in splash pages. I could not care less about him getting bankai. I've said this before, but I would like relatively very few characters to get bankai, and he is not on my shortlist. It feels very shoehorned to me.

The plot sounds convoluted and tedious as hell. I already found the Fullbringers tedious enough when I had to read about them in the manga, I do not want to spend one more minute of my life thinking about Fullbringers.

Tokinada seems mildly interesting, but I'm pretty sure I got as much as I care to know about him from reading thru some BBS screenshots.

I hate literally every piece of Soul King-related lore I have heard come out of CFYOW. It makes me literally enjoy Bleach less.

I read a fan translation of the first couple of chapters when they came out and it barely kept my attention. I briefly considered that maybe the professional translation might be a little more readable (I say this with all love and respect for the translation I read, which was trying to keep it very close to the original), but then I have heard that Viz butchered the translation, so I feel like there's no winning there.

It's just not for me. If it were a fanfiction, I would look at the tags and description and simply keep scrolling. I wish peace and love on planet Earth to everyone who enjoyed it and any of the other light novels, but it's not something I wish to spend my time and energy on. There are so many parts and pieces of Bleach--the manga, the anime, the movies, the filler arcs, the novels, databooks, random facts Kubo spills in interviews, fanworks, etc, and I've always been of the opinion that as fans, we all have the right to pick and choose which ones we want to consume and what we want to include in our own personal canons. Further, because CFYOW is post-canon, it literally affects nothing if I ignore it. Yeah, there are a few interesting crumbs in there, like the stuff about Ikkaku and his sister and I think there's an off-hand mention of the Six Hearts gang going to the beach, but it's simply not worth it to me to read through over a thousand pages of something that I am otherwise just not interested in.