#i was gonna say 'anything that involves my faves' but i tried ukitake/rukia once and didn't like that

[bleachbleachbleach]

Do either of you like any bleach ships? Which ones if so?

@whipplefilter's answer: I’m not a shipper, and a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that I’m unclear on the concept of romance just like, generally, lol, and shipping tends to imply some kind of romance. But I am very invested in relationships! It just doesn’t really matter to me whether the relationship is romantic or non-romantic, and I really love it when non-romantic relationships get focus and airtime. But I’m certainly not anti-ship! I probably consume more fannish shippy content than non-shippy content, by pure virtue of the fact that there is more shippy content, and I’m perfectly happy about that because if it’s about characters I like—and to have my cake and eat it to, about relationships between characters I like—then I’m probably excited about it.

Personally, I don’t feel strong distinctions, or a strong need to identify distinctions, between what’s a ship and what’s a friendship. I think that’s part of the reason why shipwars always take me by surprise. I don’t feel like a character not being in a romantic relationship with someone automatically devalues the relationship they have. I mean, I think if the character thinks about their relationships in that way, then that’s what happens. Or if the character tends to be a single-minded kind of person, such that they really can’t imagine themselves having multiple intense relationships of varying stripes. These aren’t Bleach examples, but in Nana, Hachi treated her friends like complete shit in pursuit of/focus on her romantic partner. In that case, yeah, she was totally the one devaluing her friendships! Or in Chihayafuru, Taichi ends up heartbroken because Chihaya doesn’t reciprocate his confession of love, and he knows that Chihaya is a one-track-mind kind of person.

By contrast, I see Ichigo as someone with huge capacity to have, well, a mountainload of intense and meaningful relationships, in ways that distinguish him from a lot of "one goal to rule them all" 15-year old manga protagonists. (No shade to single-minded love! I mean… We run a very monogamous and single-minded Bleach blog.) I’d say the same is true of many of his friends.

Beyond that, I do think my level of excitement re: shipping varies in terms of how central romance feels to [my interpretation of] a character. Like, in terms of how important *I feel* their love life *feels to them*. XD (And also how proximal the "things that make this pairing tick" are to the "things that excite me personally about this character.") So like, I am very excited by the idea of Hisagi/most fucking anyone, because, paraphrasing @ippoddity, his desire to make connections and be perceived is both important to him and to my investment in him. I think Hisagi is thirsty for any kind of connection, but I think he’d really like it if some of them involved romance. Also sex.

As a writer, I’m pretty committed to gen, because it’s my fave and there doesn’t tend to be as much of it in fandom spaces and I want it to exist. In one of my other fandoms, I have run a gen fic exchange for over a decade and people are still unclear on what "gen" even is! People constantly confuse gen for "anything that’s not porn" and submit shippy stuff lolol. Though, on the flipside… long long ago in a kingdom far far away, I did once run, like, THE Naruto porn meme of its time. XDDD Which is weird to look back on, but I think that was really because I happen to be pretty good at organizing things and it was a way of hanging out with my horny friends, LOL. Porn itself does nothing for me outside of its potential aesthetic value, and/or its potential to show me things about the characters/their relationship. And while a lot of porn is interested in both those things, if it weren't also very interested in the actual fucking then what would be the point?

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@ippoddity's answer: I'm on a similar page as @whipplefilter when it comes to shipping. It's not like I don't ship, because I certainly do have preferences, but I am more invested in (and interested in) relationships (whether they be romantic or not).

I really love that in canon, Ichigo's relationship with Rukia is deep and meaningful, but not necessarily romantic. I really like the idea of soulmates (or twin stars or twin flames or whatever you want to call them), but like, not romantic soul mates. I think what makes IchiRuki so appealing to many people is that they have a close connection. And I'd love to see more of that explored (not just in regards to IchiRuki, but all relationships in general), sans romance.

This isn't to say that I don't also consume shippy fanworks! I do it all the time! I am sort of an equal opportunity shipper, and will try out anything at least once. I feel like I can appreciate a good piece of content, whether it's for something I ship or not. Like GrimmIchi works?? SO MUCH GOOD STUFF OUT THERE (y'all are amazing). It's not necessarily a ship I'm actively sailing on or contributing to, but I'm there for the fun ride. Like my co-blogger said, I also think that Hisagi can be shipped with almost anyone. The poor man is just so desperate for connection and acknowledgement. So if someone is gonna give him a relationship that gives him what he wants, I'm down for it. And something else I've gotten into since starting this blog? Akon/almost anyone. He has so much potential and I've really gotten onto this Akon stan train.

When it comes to shipping or not, for me the most important thing is "does this relationship make them happy?" And that's really all I care about. For example, I think Renji's happiness very much weighs on his connection with Rukia, so I'm happy that he's happy with her (if that makes any sense at all). For the same reason I'm down with IkkaYumi, because I love Yumichika and think he deserves to be happy and I think his relationship with Ikkaku makes him happy. LOOK I JUST WANT HAPPY ENDINGS FOR EVERYONE.

(ngl I was scared of writing this post because I didn't want to get stuck in between some kind of shipwars. The fervor of shipwars honestly baffle me because I do not think I could ever feel so strongly about a ship that I get dragged into hateful discourse, especially for series that ended a long time ago?? But I am also very against confrontation to begin with, so I would probably just apologize and bow out anyway.)

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ALSO we are sorry we are so bad at answering asks in a timely manner! But I assure you, we are DELIGHTED every time we receive one and love interacting with everyone! Our asks are always open!

[recurring-polynya]

hi there! AMAZING blog and great bleach write-ups. u know the characters so well it rivals - if not surpasses - kubo himself. im just curious what ur thoughts were on the 20th anniversary special one-shot chapter? (i apologize if u already talked about this but im just living vicariously through some of ur old bleach posts and haven't caught up to the new ones yet. sorry!)

Hi, thank you so much! I *wish* I knew as much about the characters as Kubo... the only thing I don't like about the return of Bleach is that he keeps dropping info and ruining my headcanons/stuff I said in my fanfic. 😂

Here is my very personal and biased take on the one-shot: I loved it. To be honest, it was basically catered to my very specific interests: lore + my faves. Renji had more panel time than any other character (really, truly, someone on Twitter counted) and his DILF energy was off the charts. It was lieutenant-centric overall, my favorite group of characters. We got an Akon shikai tease, I love both the new lieutenants, Mayuri shot laser eyes at Hisagi, Shinji made a hilarious face. There is now canonically tv, Line, and videophones in Soul Society. Yumichika is a wine aunt. Rukia is a shitlord. It's perfect.

Beyond that, even, I actually like the new story arc that's being teased (I am working under the assumption it is going to continue, it just doesn't make sense otherwise). My primary complaint about late Bleach is that there are too many characters. Kubo feels the need to have all his mains get a fight and then he needs to let everyone they fight have a backstory and he tries to interleave things and it takes so long to come back around to the small subset of characters any given reader actually cares about.

Don't get me wrong: I really, really like Ukitake, Unohana and Kyouraku as characters, but part of what I like is that they are a) old as balls, b) have seen and done some gnarly shit, and c) enjoy the relative peacetime where they get to mentor young people and be kind and pretend like they haven't committed a ton of murders for the Good of Soul Society. Yamamoto is a special case because I don't believe he's remotely sorry for anything he ever did (see: that filler arc where he falls asleep while Amagai is screaming about how Yamamoto threw his dad under the bus). In any case, we never really got to see Ukitake go ham, and we only got glimpses of Unohana, and I'm honestly kinda into the idea of them becoming Lords of Hell, because they probably do deserve it. Also, I want to see Bankai Rukia vs Hell Yamamoto, that shit is gonna slap.

I do wish we'd gotten a little bit more of Orihime, Chad and Uryuu (and no one needs to tell me that was the back of Uryuu's head at the ramen shop-- I don't actually think it was and also the back of someone's head is not very exciting). As I said, I have every expectation that this story will continue and I am hoping they are all involved. I can't imagine that Orihime *wouldn't* be, but it is a strong possibility that Chad and Uryuu will get shafted. I am saving my rage for them. (Note: What if Chad got to fight Shrieker again?? That would slap!!) I'm not really concerned about other people not appearing much-- it was already an extra-sized one-shot, and it had a lot of cast members, it was enough for me.

Two last thoughts!

1) I liked the amount that the kids appeared. For a while, I was really concerned that they were gonna pull a Boruto and make some next-gen series (possibly with minimal involvement from Kubo) and it was literally going to make me hate Bleach the way the new Star Wars movies made me hate Star Wars, a thing I once deeply loved. Instead, the kids were there and they were relevant to the plot, but the action was carried by the adult characters. This is cool in my opinion because it lets use see our faves in their role as parents and it builds the kids' characters organically instead of asking me, the reader to care about them solely on the basis that I liked their parents.

2) I mentioned Kubo ruining my headcanons earlier, and probably the #1 thing I didn't like about the one-shot is that I had always assumed that Soul Society basically knew how Hell worked, and that they had some sort of treaty or natural division of responsibility between them. Tbh, that's on me, my expectations were far too high. From day 1, shinigami have consistently known jack-shit about how anything works and just blunder through the larger greater spiritual world, making stuff up as they go along. I used to assume that this was a Rukia thing-- she only had one year of shinigami school, she's a Kuchiki so she can just say things and no one disagrees with her, and she's Rukia. But, no, Kyouraku's out here performing insane rituals and sending his pals to Hell and he's like, "oh, man, I think I read something about this on Yahoo! Answers once but then I got distracted." Complete and utter buffoonery. I can't wait to see more.