#this whole post should also come with a huge asterisk that i'm deeply critical of gin's backstory in general and usually try to ignore it

[evilkitten3]

i have a theory about shinji, gin, and aizen, but i'm not really sure how to word it.

we never really see shinji and gin interact all that much, which makes sense bc both of them have significantly more important relationships with aizen, but at the same time it's a little odd how much there isn't.

like. gin cut hiyori in half. shinji is understandably pissed about that, but he aims that anger at aizen - and this seems to be one of the very few things in the bleach world that honestly isn't on him bc he never told gin to do that, he never even implied it. hiyori was never a threat to him. hell, we don't even know if she was charging in the right direction; if anything, attacking her implies that she was which is a really stupid thing to do when you're surrounded by a bunch of people who super want you dead and would kill you if they could be sure you weren't tricking them into stabbing each other (ofc it could also be a fakeout but still)

but i don't remember shinji's beef ever really being with gin, even tho he didn't seem to anticipate that gin was working with aizen the whole time during tbtp. so like does he feel responsibility there? cuz gin went straight from academy to 3rd seat and shinji could plausibly feel like that sent him right to aizen bc he doesn't know that gin was always aiming for that. did he blame himself? does he feel like he should've seen it coming? does he still see him as some weird genius kid? does he just view gin as an extension of aizen, which is both dehumanizing to an extent but also entirely fair bc gin did that to himself?

the thing is, since we never really see them interact much, it's kind of only interesting on shinji's side of things, bc gin doesn't really care about much outside of whatever the fuck he thought he was doing and the version of rangiku that he has in his head who needs back something that the real one doesn't ever seem to have realized she lost to begin with. gin's so disconnected with basically everybody that most of the time you can usually assume his thoughts are just "lol. lmao" and there's no reason to think that doesn't extend to shinji as well (gin has deep thoughts on: aizen, ichigo, and matsumoto (massive asterisk on that one ofc) and i think everyone else is kinda set dressing to him lmao the guy is Fucked Up)

anyway i think it's interesting to toy around with that relationship as it was in reality as well as how it might've been perceived, but also in the sense of both of them being sort of opposite ends of the manchild spectrum - shinji leans into his childish side but still has a fairly adult worldview, and gin is able to pull off maturity to an extent but was never able to escape a deeply childish mindset