#despite it being about the Seireitei Candle Co.

[bleachbleachbleach]

tbt to that time someone in the Seireitei had a candlemaking side hustle

where the draw was that each candle was meant to evoke different types of reiatsu, as described by the traditionally florid prose of candle/perfume descriptions. There was some press around the candles' potentially homeopathic effects, and though the 12th put a stop to that pretty quickly, some shinigami had standing orders for the candles because some users swore that burning the candles could help augment one's own reiatsu. (One wing of the 3rd Division barracks did burn down, but that's neither here nor there.) You could commission custom blends if you paid for a reiryoku reading, which the candlemakers then used to whip up a candle specialized to you.

Where things got really tricky was when the founder of the Gotei Candle Co. tried to step it up and offer a limited edition Gotei Captain candle set, where each candle was meant to describe/evoke the reiatsu signatures of, well, the Gotei Captains. You can't normally brand things like that without express permission of the Council of 46 (though notably not the Captains' individual permissions, which don't factor into this at all, officially), but the Gotei Candle Co. knows that the SWA gets permission to run their calendars every year, and they thought if they did a Gotei Candle Co. x SWA collab, it would be a real knockout event.

BUT photo calendars are one thing and reiatsu signature candles are another, and when this went to the Council of 46 they found that they DID actually have to consult the Gotei, to determine whether or not the candles constituted a breach of military security. And this had to go to a Captains' Meeting vote. The voting was split across several positions:

captains who believed the candles constituted a breach of military security because anything COULD be a breach of military security

captains who realized that believing that would mean greenlighting the idea that the candles were accurate to their reiatsu in any way, which might tacitly confirm the notion that the candles had actual homeopathic validity, on which grounds they refused

captains who believed in the candles, actually

captains who were willing to say the candles were a breach of military security and all that other stuff just because they did not want the candles to exist

captains who had no real opinion on military security or science but disliked the candles, yet still refused to tarnish their principles by pretending the candles were legit even if it meant they had to be a candle

In any case, the Council of 46 refused to make a move without evidence-based deliberation from the Gotei, so they had to spend hours and hours sniffing candles as part of the process. And the 12th wanted to run a test so there'd be science-backed proof that the candles did/did not accurately type Captain reiatsu, because they did not believe captains sniffing things constituted actual evidence-based anything. There was some pushback against this, but ultimately the 12th prevailed and the REASON the 12th has all the captains' reiatsu typed--and having this done is now part of any captains onboarding, even post-candle debacle--is because OF THESE DANG CANDLES.

Eventually the Gotei decided, fuck it, these candles are a no-go, I don't care. But then Sasakibe brought up the fact that to deny them outright was technically a violation of the Commercial Clause of 1457, which states that when military procedure infringes on free trade within the Seireitei, it must offer an alternative enterprise as part of the sanction. After all the candle business, having to deal with this hangup was the closest the Gotei has ever come to executing mass ritual suicide in Yamamoto's office. Strange but true. The candles, man.

Anyway, at some point Byakuya leaks this to Shirogane, because He Cannot With This, and Shirogane suggests "okay no candles but what about eyewear tho" and Byakuya brings this to the next Captains' Meeting and Byakuya is, briefly, a HERO to his peers, and Shirogane is a HERO and that's why they let him leave the Gotei entirely and open up a glasses store.