Goofing-Off Blog

finally done with this!

A Kyoraku/Aizen comic where they talk about the moon 

aaah……anyway…im just happy to be done gj

#factoid actualy just statistical error ichigo georg (x)

#also if you're strong enough in feudal Japan you have to go to super hell when you die the second time (x)

#i forgot the manga/anime existed and i thought this was about the cleaning product. was very confused. (x)

#the only 2 genders in bleach. pretty progressive all things considered (x)

#secret third option is to reincarnate into nazi germany #in which case the samurai and the spanish inquisition are out to get you (x)

#and of course the last nationality— HELL (x)

#tite kubo said #even in death the Japanese won’t escape imperialism #sick and twisted (x)

#and then in feudal japan you can be poor and starve to death again #yay! (x)

#you either die and experience a military dictatorship with enforced slum poverty or you die and get eaten by spaniards (x)

#meanwhile british people are 5th dimensional harry potters who get eaten by dragons (x)

#assigned nationality at death (x)

#literally like rukia saying the soul society is peaceful but you die and youre literally forced to live in extreme poverty 😭 #or join the military power. your choice mate (x)

#also you can die twice if you're lucky enough (x)

Plus some more^^

Just look around: A housing shortage, crime, pollution; we need better schools and parks. Whatever our needs, they all require work. And as long as we have unsatisfied needs, there’s work to be done.

So ask yourself, what kind of world has work but no jobs? It’s a world where work is not related to satisfying our needs, a world where work is only related to satisfying the profit needs of business.

I don’t know that this is an unpopular opinion, per se, but Yoruichi was treated very poorly in the manga and deserved vastly more panel time and attention.

We never got to see most of her backstory. That includes most of her history with Kisuke, Kuukaku, and Tessai. That includes her abilities, whether it be her zanpakutou, shikai or bankai, ability to transform, or ability to do hybrid/fusion states. That includes her parentage or family, or the Shihouin clan in general, and especially their role in Soul Society as, apparently, armorers and soldiers.

Her role was also neglected. Kisuke was Ichigo’s first teacher, and Yoruichi was his second, and that was… pretty much it. Kisuke shunned teaching (e.g., with Chad), claiming he was unsuited for it, but why not Yoruichi? She’s great at at least half of zankensoki. She could’ve given Ichigo the bootleg version of an Academy education.

The fights she was given after fighting Soi Fon and the shunko reveal were all lame. The fight against Yammy was barely a fight as she was burdened by protecting Orihime (the hierro injury was also stupid, to be honest, as it almost never came up again other than with Nnoitra). The fight against Aizen was also barely a fight as he’d already become a bullshit hacker. And the fight against Askin was also bullshit because just like the rest of the four Waffen SS, he could just no-sell abilities for no reason (and she was reduced to fan service during it). She wasn’t allowed to shine.

And that was on top of her randomly being excluded from arcs (e.g., the entire Xcution arc) and being reduced to Kisuke’s gofer half the time that she did appear (going to get Orihime in Karakura so Kisuke could tell her off, gathering the vials in TYBW, etc.)

Even her transformation gimmick got stolen. Like, let’s be super real here: pretty much everything in the Hueco Mundo arc is a cheap copy of Soul Society. Grimmjow = Renji, Dordoni = Ikkaku, Ulquiorra = Byakuya, Nnoitra = Kenpachi, Szayelaporro = Mayuri, and so on. But you even had Nelliel = Yoruichi. “Surprise, the innocent-looking [pet/kid] is actually a really strong and hot woman!” The difference is Yoruichi did a whole lot of useful things in the Soul Society arc, and Nelliel did exactly nothing other than delay Ichigo dying long enough for the actual Kenpachi to show up and murder his cheap copy.

I wanna know what the deal is with her abilities and history. I wanna know about her adventures back in the day. I wanna know what she was up to in the century she spent in the Living World (during WW2 no less, among other things!). I wanna see her have cool fights. (Like, hey, imagine if she’d fought that other cheap Sternritter copy of her, Candice Catnipp.) But we didn’t get any of that. And it was a fucking terrible waste of an interesting and strong character.

And that’s another thing: she is interesting. Another maybe unpopular opinion on her that I have is that most of fandom and the extended universe (e.g., BBS) don’t understand her and kinda treat her like shit too. She’s often presented as very one note: she’s mischievous, or lascivious, and that’s pretty much it. And like, Yoruichi in canon is a pretty complex and nuanced character? She has a lot of emotional range and she pretty clearly has a lot of opinions on things, even if she mostly keeps them to herself. But you’d never know it from the majority of how other people write her, where she’s usually just a prankster with a generous helping of tits and ass. (On that note, I do prefer her later look, but she was originally much more lithe; Kubo’s insistence on focusing on busts didn’t solely happen to Orihime.) In short, she’s so much more than just a sexpot.

This is probably unpopular, but I often get tired of how she’s shipped too, whether in canon or in AUs. I go back and forth on liking putting her with Kisuke in large part precisely because I don’t like how in canon she comes across as so deferential to him. A lot of the time she just seems to take orders from him, and it’s like, if anything she outranks him; when we see them interact in TBTP, it’s exactly reversed, with her clearly in charge, so what the hell happened there? Likewise, sometimes Soi Fon’s constantly overwritten obsession with her comes off as kind of gross. I occasionally feel like she’s too good for either of them, to be quite honest. And I despise when people put her with someone like Grimmjow, especially on the basis of something weak like, “They’re both cat-like.” (I’m going off topic, but I’m almost 100% of the mindset Grimmjow shouldn’t be shipped with anyone, period. Except maybe death, like Deadpool is.)

Or, as presented, they shouldn’t. The ice is just a side-effect and a nice aesthetic motif.

Someone may or may not have talked about this already, but I wouldn’t know and it’s been bothering me for awhile. I’ve been developing these ideas for fanfic, but I think they have a fairly interesting basis within canon, so if I have your attention, allow me to explain:

(This is adapted and expanded from this post.)

Bleach is not a shōnen. I want you to imagine One Piece ending with the World Government still intact and the World Nobles still running things. I want you to imagine Dragon Ball Z ending with Frieza’s empire still terrorizing the galaxy.

Bleach is not a seinen. I want you to imagine Berserk with Guts deciding to just let Griffith and everything else go.

Bleach is not even a young adult work. I want you to imagine Harry Potter ending with Voldemort still on the loose. I want you to imagine The Hunger Games ending with the Capitol still dominating the 12 Districts and holding the Hunger Games.

No, Bleach is a dystopian work, more like Nineteen Eighty-Four, or Brave New World than anything else. All of the above is exactly what happens in Bleach.

The meta about how Bleach is actually a fantasy YA lit series, not shounen, and therefore should be analysed accordingly. 

OR:

Ichigo is not the hero of the HM arc, and this is why I believe Kubo has had a long-term plan for Bleach all along.

(… ok, maybe not from the very beginning all along, but probably from about the moment Ichigo first sets foot in Soul Society.)

OK, so this theory/bit of meta has been kicking around in my head for a while now, but jess/ @sequencefairy made a liveblogging post about Ichigo’s Deicide victory that finally spurred me on to put it down on paper. It’s a bit (very) rambly, and very much grounded on nothing but instinct and a handful of symbolism that may or may not be coincidence, but allow me to explain (also, please note that I am using the term ‘HM arc’ very loosely, to cover everything from the end of the Soul Society arc to the end of the Deicide chapters). The idea for this meta started when I was trawling through the HM arc for something for one of my art pieces, when I remembered that old comment Kubo made about how Orihime was the heroine of the HM arc. 

And honestly? I’m not about to dispute that; I think she genuinely WAS the heroine of the HM arc (the only problem, as @mizulily put it, was that she was the heroine of a tragedy; the HM arc focused on her a lot, yes, but I don’t think many people can argue it was in a positive way). So, Orihime, heroine of the HM arc. But is Ichigo really the hero of the HM arc?

The Soukyoku was actually rebuilt

This wasn’t a dream, a worst case scenario “gotcha!” chapter

Someone in Soul Society actually ordered and oversaw this machine of death being rebuilt

People actually built it back up

It’s actually there again, this symbol of broken bureaucracy, this pillar of corruption and those at the top being left to poke and prod the ants as they please

The very first thing Ichigo changed in Soul Society was rebuilt

The very symbol of Soul Society’s corruption and how easily those with power could abuse it, the thing Ichigo destroyed

The manner by which Rukia was sentenced to die, an excessive punishment by many measures

The thing Ichigo destroyed to save his friend, an effort that took him through several battles and showed us only the first glimpse of how far Ichigo will go for Rukia, his first declaration of “I have to save her!!”

And they rebuilt it

It’s like Soul Society’s higher ups forgot all about the substitute reaper who stormed into their realm and broke their rules, committing several crimes of his own to stop them from making one of their own

Aizen was sentenced merely to a prison for all he’s done wrong. Prison.

Whereas Rukia had been sentenced to DIE, for staying in the human world

Aizen’s punishment I feel not only was to force him to deal with what he’d done, but also a show that SS was changing after Ichigo’s impact.

We see him steadily through each arc break down old archaic rules, call attention to abuse of power, and become a driving force in change

But tell me, what changes when you build a tower of blocks back up, and just make it taller, stronger than it was?

it just becomes more intimidating and harder to break down

!

They rebuilt Soukyoku and made it even bigger

They disregarded everything that Ichigo fought for, everything he changed

And that’s just one of many things that were taken back and ignored in this ending, just one more moment to wonder why we all bothered in the first place.

And to add insult to injury, the chapter in which we see it rebuilt, giant and imposing, is the chapter Rukia is made a captain. I actually can’t believe he’d dare to do that, to put the thing that almost destroyed Rukia in the same chapter as her achieving such an honor, as if we’re supposed to remember she could have been killed, had it been his whim.

I just really can’t believe this.

I can’t believe that Ichigo’s impact on Soul Society could be so easily brushed aside, all his work wrought to nothing.

And that’s exactly what this ending has given us.

You would think that a population that requires no food or water and apparently isn’t prone to disease would be easy to manage, but they don’t even set up the equivalent of police departments to keep the peace. (In fact, people routinely organize for protection if none exists; consider the Yakuza, the Mafia, etc., which all started out as secret societies designed to do just that before exploiting their positions and becoming protection rackets and organized crime outfits. Nothing like that exists in Soul Society. Maybe because it’s not allowed to. Probably because this is exactly how the Shinigami started, given Yamamoto and Unohana’s backstory, and they’ve eliminated all successors. Who else might the Stealth Forces be assassinating?)

How have they left it so poorly managed after all this time? Because it’s designed to be that way.

Mayuri is a monster, but have you ever thought about the reason why he had to go and kill 28,000 souls in Rukongai?

It’s because they weren’t dying fast enough “naturally”.

Broken families, atrocious conditions of squalor and poverty, random mass killings, crime, Hollow incursions … the reason the Shinigami ignore Rukongai and don’t take any steps whatsoever to improve it is that first, it provides an incentive for recruitment to their ranks and second, it makes sure that people die and get reincarnated, maintaining the balance of souls. It doesn’t matter whether it’s depression, madness, a general disdain for human life, whatever; all they need is some kind of mechanism to arise in the population that inspires murder, because it does their job for them.

It’s expedient; if it was a utopia, then they’d have to all be like Mayuri, going out to routinely slaughter the population to keep things running. Logan’s Run style. They require it to be shitty, so that the system continues passively ticking over, otherwise they’d have to actively maintain it.

I don’t know if this is what Aizen meant when he called the Soul King a monster, but it could’ve been, and even if it’s not, it’s fitting. Soul Society is an experiment designed to get rats to eat each other. Its fundamental basis of operation is the promotion of suffering.

It’s a concentration camp.

And that is what was allowed to continue running in that ending. The Sōkyoku being rebuilt is like them just building a newer, shinier guillotine to put the guards back on notice. The actual concentration camp never changed one bit.

You know how Soul Society’s prison system is named after the various levels of Buddhist “hell”? For example, Muken, where Aizen ended up, is more commonly known as Avīci. That means Soul Society is itself a kind of Naraka, a purgatory and/or hell, containing other Naraka.

This ending literally had Ichigo “I want to save a mountain-load of people” Kurosaki leave Rukia and everybody else in hell and sign off on its continued operation, and Rukia become one of the wardens of the camp that tortured and repeatedly almost killed her.

If you want your memory or executive function to improve, stare out a window at the skyline or sidewalk or trees or birds on the electrical wires for like 20+ minutes per day. (With no other stimulation like a podcast or TV if you can manage but hey baby steps innit). If you're fortunate enough to have safe outside with any bits of nature, go stare closely at a 1 meter square of grass and trip out on the bugs and shapes of grasses and stuff.

Literally this will make you smarter. Our brains HAVE TO HAVE this zone out time to do important stuff behind the scenes. This does not happen during sleep, it's something else.

That weird pressurized feeling you get sometimes might be your brain on no defrag.

but kill them!

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minecraft logo font text generator w/assorted textures and pride flags

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FromSoftware image macro generator (elden ring Noun Verbed text)

image to 3d effect gif

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microsoft wordart maker (REALLY annoying to use on mobile)

Saw this on twitter and THIS is the fandom mindset I learned and follow.

I enjoy reading and writing darker things. I do not give a shit what fictional things or ships you like. That is your business and if you don't like what I like? Great! I also don't give a shit!

Find what makes you happy, brings you comfort, makes you feel those emotions you want, or what gives you closure from something