#and not just because of the bleach

[frenchublog]

[mezzomarinaio]

Here is my gift for this year's IchiRuki Basement Holiday Gift Exchange! 🥳

For @deathberi, who loves soulmate AUs and fluff! The idea behind this is an AU where until the day you meet your soulmate, you have to deal with your soulmate’s Zanpakutou spirit instead of your own! 😘

[sheprd]

took a crack at my own interpretation of grimmjow's second resurrection form from the mobile game.

[recurring-polynya]

Sorry to be insane about Soul Society once again, but does anyone actually know anything about those boards they are always banging on whenever there's an emergency or a wartime exemption or whatnot?

This thing:

Does it have a name? A historical precedent?

I wasted a portion of my morning trying to figure this out, and the closest thing I could find was the hanshō (半鐘), which is a bell that was struck with a hammer and were used for fire alarms. (You can read more at this interesting article about fires and firefighting in Edo-era Tokyo; there's a section about halfway down specifically about the bells).

That's a bell though. The thing above is definitely wood; I left it as a video so you can listen to the banging. If you want to listen to what an actual hanshō sounds like, here's a news piece about the one at the U.S. National Arboretum. There is a lot of bell ringing in that video but they ring the actual hanshō about about 1:25, and it's got kind of a muted reverberation, but it definitely goes "bong", rather than the distinctly wooden "clack clack clack" from the video above.

At some point while I was down deep in this rabbit hole, I learned that most hanshō were melted down for their metal during WWII. Does the Seireitei have a metal shortage? I feel like there is not a lot of metal/mining in Soul Society generally and while this might be fun enrichment for my terrible brain, someone chose to draw these bang-y boards all the time and I am absolutely sure it was not for the purposes of alluding to Soul Society's otherwise-uncommented upon metal shortage.

There was also the weird slide-y board, cursive alert tiles that B3 posted about once. We saw it exactly once during that early period where Kubo was absolutely wilding on Soul Society worldbuilding. Weirdly enough, if you look up that part in the anime (the opening moments of episode 21), you can hear a bell being struck in the background. Maybe they just liked the wooden sound better??

In fact, the sound effects they used in the manga were "BONG BONG BONG" and "KLANG KLANG KLANG."

I don't even know anymore.

[cirnothemovie]

twitter liked this one i love you absolutenutcase162

[littleeyesofpallas]

So i got this comment on a Bleach post i forgot i'd even made. It's nd old one and i hate the way it reads so i'm not reblogging it, but I will sort of resummarize bits of it now and add to it accordingly...

Kyouraku no Jirou Sakuranosuke Shunsui[京楽 次郎 総蔵佐 春水]

Kyouraku[京楽] is written with the kanji for "capitol" (the same kyou in Kyoto and Tokyo) and "music," and together referencing the music(and somewhat implicitly theatre) of the city the compound word means "enjoyment" or "pleasure." Moreover it's the root of a few recognizable terms like kyourakuteki[享楽的]: "pleasure-seeking," kyourakuseikatsu[享楽生活]: "a life of pleasure," and kyourakushuugi[享楽主義]: "hedonism" All very directly reflected in Shunsui's overall personality and demeanor.

His full title appends, (no)Jirou[次郎]: "next son" (synonym with jirou[二郎]: "second son") making his title or epithet, Kyouraku-no-Jirou[京楽 次郎]: "(the)Kyouraku's SecondSon"

In a kind of old fashioned convention for samurai, the name Sakuranosuke[総蔵佐] is a kind of temporary or informal name. (In the real world they were something a samurai might change pretty often, either as an alias or sometimes as a kind of ornamental name or epithet, but that doesn't get used in media too often, outside strictly historical settings/characters, I assume because it tends to get confusing.)

It's maybe a little strange that Katen calls him by something as informal as a kind of a nickname. On the one hand it shows their relationship is fairly casual as opposed to formal, but it seems to bring into question their actual intimacy? I guess you can just hand wave it as a cutesy pet name thing since he also calls her Ohana(O-[お] being a now rather outdated prefix in women's names, and the hana[花] of course just being "flower." But colloquially it could be read almost like calling her "Gorgeous"/"Beautiful" as in like a nickname, not as an adjective.) in return, but in conjunction with her pretty overt oiran archetype, it suggests the kind of relationship where a wealthy patron sneaking in to see a prostitute doesn't give her his real name.

Although depending on how, either angsty or romantic you want to be and what the genre and audience are, some might argue that it's more open and honest and intimate to use fake names and not be stifled by the rigor of adhering to, or even acknowledging social roles.

It would seem a little odd for how powerful he is, and thus implicitly how good his relationship with his sword spirit ought to be to facilitate that... But then even outside the nickname thing their relationship does seem more than a little strained. His reluctance to use bankai is played off in their dynamic not unlike the aforementioned brothel patron suddenly giving the cold shoulder, leaving the woman asking, "why don't you come see me anymore?"

And in this kind of overlap of samurai era period setting and sordid romance drama that their designs and character types play with, it is a pretty common trope for the naive young man to fall in love with a prostitute, promise her to buy her freedom, and then fail to follow through on his promise, typically leading one or both of the star-crossed lovers to kill themselves with the expectation that while insurmountable social factors keep them apart in life, they can be together in death.

Oh and it's also a deliberately weird reading kinda shoehorning it into being a pun on sakura[桜]: "cherry(tree)," which of course just loops back around to the spring time and flowers thing. The actual kanji used read "General Warehouse Assistant," where the (no)suke[佐] bit is a common naming suffix. The kura[蔵]: "warehouse" bit is normal enough, but the kanji [総] doesn't normally read as "sa," which seems to be shortened from satoshi[総] or satoru[総] which are names on their own. But as far as i can tell, when it's in a compound, and particularly as a prefix, [総] is only ever pronounced "sou-".

Anyway... finally, the given name, Shunsui[春水] means "spring water." (Spring like the season) It's a kind of motif in art and poetry referring to the winter snow melting at the start of spring. As with his overall design it evokes leisure and comfort; the hard times are over, the easy and bountiful times have begun.

There's also some stuff about his sword that echos bits of all this, as well as lends kind of an ominous tone that Kubo doesn't quite follow through on... But I've been over that a few times already over the years, so i won't repeat myself here. I don't know that i've got anything new to add to any of those rants.

It's off the back of this that Kubo gave his brother the name Shunzan[春山]: "Spring Mountain" which is also a common art motif. It doesn't seem to have much more significance than that, just a kind of obvious branch off all Shunsui's existing themes. No new aspects or clever insight to add to the themes in play. Honestly it almost feels like a name Kubo might have considered for Shunsui himself in some early phase of design.

Ise[伊勢] is just written exactly like Ise the modern day city, which gets its name from the former Ise province(now Mie prefecture), but more importantly it's the home of the Grand Ise Shrine, which houses one of the royal national treasures, the yata-no-kagami; a bronze mirror featured in early shinto myth, and reflects the light of the mother sun goddess, Amaterasu. While the later developments of the manga take this reference pretty bluntly, I never actually got the feeling that it was really made to foreshadowing anything. Even retroactively the "reveal" of Nanao's backstory having this link to the Ise temple via the mirror feels like it doesn't actually come from or play with her established character at all. But maybe that's just me...

Anyway, given name, Nanao[七緒] is written "Seven Chords/Strings," as in on an string instrument; could also read "Seventh Chord/String." I don't really know what to make of this apart from that it's implication of an instrument plays into Kyoraku's "music" meaning. (I did have an alternate take on her family name and subsequently a different reading on the full name in that post I reference above, which i wrote years ago, but I honestly have no idea what I was talking about in that. I think I was off on some wild goose chase by the fact that the i-[伊] in ise is actually only used phonetically in Japanese and has no apparent meaning, unless you try and looking into how it's used in Chinese. But while Kubo definite does dabble in obscure and even chinese readings of kanji, this does not appear to be one of those times...)

Anyway, her mom has a name now too, I guess. The name Isuzu[檍涼] is written with the kanji for [檍]: "ilex/holm oak/evergreen oak/birdlime tree" and [涼]: "cool-breeze/cooling-off," like cooling off in the shade of a tree on a hot day. It doesn't really play into the Ise thing*, or Nanao's name. It's also got a weird alliterative sound to it that i don't like but maybe that's just me. I don't exactly have the best ear for this sort of thing

*see comment section

I guess you could argue that collectively both sides of this family all work together to paint a certain classical kind of scene... i don't know what to call it really, but it's a common enough scene of people lounging around in spring time drinking, listening to music, and admiring the scenery. I guess it falls under scenes of hanami:"flower viewing" but I feel like that's more specific than what I'm thinking of... Unrelated to anything but it seems popular in bonsai.

So... Technically in the real world the high priestesses of the Ise shrine have a very particular lineage, where the mythic founder of the temple was the daughter of an emperor, and every subsequent head priestess has in turn been some kind of blood relative to the throne(typically a daughter or sister, but sometimes a niece or even an aunt, or more distant relative). So, even if they aren't priestesses, and there is no apparent temple, I guess that could imply that the Ise bloodline in Bleach is supposed to be near to the Soul King's lineage in some way? Yet they don't seem to be one of the two unidentified royal houses, which you would think they'd qualify for if that were the case (or the unidentified house if we want to pretend the LN are canon and Tsunayashiro count) so it's probably not something Kubo took into consideration or intended when drawing on the Ise name.

It still bugs me that Nanao's whole shtick really felt like it came out of nowhere. not just because it hadn't been addressed before, but because it wasn't even addressing questions anyone as asking. This weird working backwards sort of writing to make up an excuse for her not having her own zanpakutou, despite that fact that Kubo drew her with a distinctive zanpakutou, so it was clearly not some big master plan twist he'd been sitting on for forever. it all just feels rushed and poorly conceived. But that's true of a lot of things in the final arc. I don't think it's because Kubo was "rushed" by editorial or something, btw --i know that seems to be the popular apocrypha-- I think he's just bad at serialization. He used to get in these rutts where the plot would just fully stall out for weeks at a time, and I'm convinced these writers blocks are what contribute to some of his worst writing. He's never exploring character or themes or advancing a plot or even answering real questions, he's just trying to turn his 19 pages in on time.

That's the kind of "rush" I see underlying these weird moments where he just unloads exposition or that he he'd do where a fight would have a big power reveal only for it to immediately fail and be overshadows by a second power reveal. It's just bad pacing and I don't think he knew how else to get thru the fights because it got worse and worse as things went on over the whole series.

[itsdappleagain]

design for chief in my au where ACME is a collection of anonymous journalists instead of a secret agent organization! she looks a bit goofy in her fullbody but it showed the full design so whatever. she's editor in chief. get it

i may post zari (niusha is the first name i gave her! that's who chief is talking about) if i draw a design for her!

[edengarden]

There has to be something very neurologically wrong with me because I’m always drawn to a VERY specific type of character. And they all look the fucking same on some level. Here’s my character history in chronological order

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME

[starsbubbles]

Headcanon that after the incident Danny's new hair growth started coming in white naturally like phantoms so he had to go to Sam to teach him how to dye his hair black properly so he would still look normal

[mystickingstuff]

Dumb people in the streets really trying to tell me that a guy that fly from the heavens and drops in a bridge, saying he came to rescue the girl who changed his life and made his everlasting sadness vanish, who told her brother he was going to beat him and then leave, who eventually fulfilled that promise... Should not end up with her. That's insane.

I swear to God, I don't care about canon, about the author's dumb intentions...

I just needed to say... Soul Society is like a romantic fairy tail from the Prince's POV. Ichigo... My man... That was some real romantic thing to do.

[sunnixsunshine]

Grandpas! >:)

All 7 of them are Shinjiro’s kids, heres Homura’s and Sora’s 3 kids + Laurel’s and Gib’s boys (Kobylu’s grandkids)

[recurring-polynya]

a cool thing about writing bleach fanfic is that i have read certain parts of the canon so many times that i feel like i know it really well and then i'll realize there's something i have absolutely no clue about. today's example: in the wake of Ichigo storming Soul Society, how widespread was the knowledge that Urahara had been assisting him?

Aizen knew, obvs, for Aizen reasons, but some of the stuff he mentions, like Urahara's known base of operations being in West Rukongai-> the involvement of known Urahara associates Shiba Kuukaku and Shihouin Yoruichi and other clues probably had a number of characters such as Yamamoto, Ukitake, Kyouraku, Unohana suspicious. I feel like Soi Fon and Kurotsuchi could easily have put it together as well, but I did not get that vibe from them so either they didn't or they were just too distracted or in Kurotsuchi's case, he probably did put it together and just didn't care (or pretended not to care)

When the captains finally show up in Hueco Mundo, we learn that Urahara had been working with the Gotei for some time so obviously his involvement has been known at some high enough level of security clearance.

Did Byakuya ever officially report the fact that Ichigo Hollowified right in front of him, which may not have meant much to him, but probably would have been a big tip-off to Yams. On one hand, it does not feel very Byakuya of him to leave something like that out of a report, but on the other hand, I really feel like he just kept it to himself.

Would Rukia have mentioned Urahara in her debriefings after she was arrested? On one hand, I do not think she understood who Urahara was and would not have thought much of mentioning him. On the other hand, Rukia is a "snitches get stitches" type to the marrow of her bones and I feel like she would have intentionally wiped any mention of him from her narrative 99% on principle and 1% for the purposes of protecting Ichigo

If I were banished from Soul Society and hiding out in the Living World, I would use an assumed name, probably all the time, but AT VERY LEAST for the case of interacting with active-duty shinigami. The only person who actually did this was Isshin and I honestly believe he just changed his name for wife-guy reasons.

Ichigo did, very much, straight up tell Ikkaku that Urahara taught him to fight and it was quite clear that Ikkaku was fully aware of who Urahara was. Did Ikkaku tell anyone this or otherwise do anything with this information? I feel like he did not.

Does Ikkaku have a security clearance???????

I would not give Ikkaku a security clearance

If I were going 100% by the manga, I would assume that Yoruichi ghosted after they failed to arrest Aizen, given that she's still very much banished, but in Honey Dish Rhapsody, she apparently hung around with Soi Fon for a while. Is it possible that she had some meetings with the Gotei higher ups in the interests of re-establishing a relationship/working on getting the banishment reversed? My heart wants to say no, but Yoruichi often makes herself freely available to the Gotei in filler arcs, so who knows?

When the Advance Team first goes to the Living World, Renji goes to stay at Urahara's in the interest of "asking" Urahara why he put the hogyoku in Rukia (I assume "asking" is a euphemism for breaking his nose). I feel like this could be the natural follow-on to the idea that Renji just got handed a file of classified info related to this mission and is freshly Hot Mad at this dude he didn't know existed up until now.

Presumably, Rukia also could have given Renji a more detailed version of her time in Karakura in a non-official capacity

Presumably also, the Karakura kids could have gone around telling anyone who would listen about their Mysterious Shop Keeper Friend

I think the answer I'm leaning towards is that the Gotei higher-ups knew about Urahara's involvement and re-established communication with him, possibly in an obfuscated way so as not to run into trouble with Central 46 (fairly easy to do, since they were dead at the time). It's a pretty poorly kept secret, but on the other hand, Gotei op-sec seems to lean pretty heavily on the assumption that people who accidentally learn state secrets don't know what they are looking at and will most likely forget it in a day or two anyway.

[kingofanemptyworld]

hey you know what would be fun? a fic where the Royal Guard follows through with their plans to make Ichigo the new Soul King and Grimmjow promptly loses his shit because what the actual fuck Ichigo has already given these people literally everything, twice, and this is how they repay him? recruits Nel and Harribel and Urahara and Yoruichi (after Nel sits on him for a while because Jesus Christ Grimmjow you can’t storm Soul Society by yourself no matter how much you’ve powered up) and it’s the Ryoka Invasion all over again except with pissed off arrancar instead. I just think it would be neat

[lvmimis]

it's really funny trying to make selfship lore while you're still in the process of watching a show cuz you'll realize you just accidentally make lore that is already a canon plot point in the show and it looks crazy

[askhezureviews]

Would you have wanted Ichigo and Rukia to marry in the ending in Bleach? Or think that they should have been together somehow? Do you think * THAT * would have fixed the ending(or one of many plot holes in its ending)?

I do believe that out of the two main ships, Rukia and Ichigo ending up together would have made more sense in terms of plot hole cover up, but it wouldn't fix the ending, or the rushed, confused plot the ending would lead to.

In my opinion, Ichigo should have become the next soul king; or if not that, then at least would have made the sacrifice of his human life, forced to stay in Soul Society since his power level is too dangerous to have him around normal humans anymore- narratively, having Ichigo join Soul Society to reinstate the Shiba clan and do what attracts most of BLEACH's fanbase (not counting gooners) : epic action sword fighting and spell casting- narratively it just brings Ichigo right back to his family roots and allows him to actually have a hand in Soul Society's rebirth.

Ichigo was always looking for the next fight, always looking to help those in need, always wanted to make a difference, bounced from job to job in school, never talked about career goals, never showed an interest in starting a family let alone actually caring for one outside of using his fists. (that's one of the reasons I'm frustrated with the pairing of Ichihime, because Yuzu, Ichigo's younger sister, stepped up to household chores when their mom died, while he ran off to start fights at school instead of helping out around the house. And neither did their dad help for that matter. (aka patriarchy) I don't want Orihime to be in a housewife position doing laundry at home while her husband and son are constantly running off to go fight hollows. It just feels insulting to Orihime's character, who wanted to fight by her friends' sides, to be left like that.)

Anyway, I digress. Ichigo and Rukia don't have to end up together to have fixed the ending.

[queer-book-character-tournament]

well! Looks like our final round will be a divorce poll! Congrats to our winners and sorry for your impending divorce