Dancing Alone

i read the cutthroat one and the ace one and they were much sweeter and loving there

like im not saying it is bad or telling u how to write ur own fic but was just curious on why the reason it, i wonder if its because of them being st the beginning of it and having more unresolved aspects or simply ur personal choice, as u said this fic is way personal to you...?

again i still love it and went yipee as soon as notif for new chapter came! and you did a wonderful job again, just was a bit curious...

I'm not offended at all! The IkkaYumi dynamic in Dirty Names is totally toxic! It is very unlike who they are in Bleach and it is very unlike my other fics. The toxicity is intentional and I have a few reasons for it.

The main reason is that I find relationship conflict to be interesting. I am normally drawn to ships with a lot of conflict. IkkaYumi is an exception to this so I have thrust my love of relationship conflict upon them.

Yes, it is also because it's them at the beginning of their relationship. These are the events before the happily married couple they are in Bleach. I want these characters to have bad parts of themselves and bad parts of the relationship they have to work hard to fix before they deserve to be happy and before they are allowed to have their happy ever after together.

This fic is also a dark time for both these characters. They are dealing with a lot of complicated emotions due to very different problems, and they are struggling to be there for each other in the ways the other needs because of it.

This fic being personal to me is right as well. I used this fic to work through a lot of my own issues. I wanted to have a conversation with myself about toxic masculinity, domestic violence, internalized homophobia, relationship conflict, past sexual assault, etc. I wanted to explore the toxic parts of myself and my relationship at the time when I started writing. I have been dealing with a lot of big life problems while writing this and that tension might have bled into my work.

My intention was to make their relationship less toxic and more comfortable as the story went on but if you're still getting toxic vibes at chapter 31, I may have gone wrong somewhere. Oops!

Oh hi again! It's good to hear your thought process in sending me that ask because I was a little confused by it.

I definitely have a bias toward Ikkaku. When I was a kid reading Bleach, Ikkaku was my guy. I liked Yumichika as a member of the 11th but nowhere near as much as I liked Ikkaku. I actually shipped Ikkaku x Iba and Yumichika x Hisagi. This history of my feelings probably still lingers. But after Yumichika's fight with Charlotte, I saw him in a whole new light. And after he freaked out when Ikkaku lost his fight against Poww, I suddenly liked IkkaYumi.

It is true that I like Ikkaku and IkkaYumi together more than I like Yumichika by himself. But I still do like Yumichika a lot. I especially like him as a tragic metaphor for queerness and being in the closet in a hyper-masculine culture. I also just personally like the darker parts of his personality. I think they are more interesting. I really like how villainous he was to Ganju and how mean he was to Charlotte and Giselle. He is a great example of how morally grey soul reapers can be and that is a lot of fun.