what's the misconception with rukia??
That because Ichigo changed her world that it means that they revolve around one another to the exclusion of literally everyone else unless they serve a supporting role in their developing dramatic romance, ignoring the fact that canonically they do not and never have had a romantic connection*. There is a criticism to be made about Rukia’s story laregly involving men, but Ichigo isn’t one of them; Byakuya, Renji, and Kaien are the three most important men in her life.
Furthermore, she’s best friends with Orihime and it’s a very important relationship that is flagrantly ignored by fandom. Orihime is pointedly her first female friend and really the first/only real close friend she’s had since Renji, which is why Orihime was the first one they announced their marriage to. It’s widely accepted that Rukia only tolerates Orihime and otherwise ignores her which is a MASSIVE contradiction to what happens in the story. Like, yanno, taking Orihime with her to SS for a month for one-on-one training (lesbireal, that cemented them as More Than Friends), or dragging her broken, bleeding and dying body across the floor trying to save Orihime in Las Noches.
She’s often characterized as this stone cold yet pristine and pure ice princess which she’s absolutely not, she dropped the cold facade once she was kidnapped. She carries herself nobly but speaks bluntly like a man (EVERYONE FORGETS THIS) and she’s goofy and whimsical as shit and still kind of awkward around people after isolating herself emotionally for so long and people act like this is ~because of Ichigo’s love~ when no, they were never in love. Instead, by meeting him she learned how to let people in again and what having friends is like and how important that is.
Also, she’s not the warrior princess second main character of Bleach. Yeah, she was the first character conceptualized, but ultimately it’s Ichigo’s story, and Rukia’s importance was mostly overblown advertising because of popularity. She really wasn’t that central after the SS arc as the main female focus officially shifted to Orihime and stayed on her until the series ended. And Rukia’s specialty isn’t swordplay, it’s kido, and her martial prowess is not an important or huge factor with her.
tl;dr the most common misconception of Rukia is that she’s the actual hero of Bleach whose prize dick was Ichigo and who was so much better than every other woman and that interpretation has been around f o r e v e r and is deeply rooted in internalized misogyny and really fucked up standards for how a woman “should” be (esp. when compared to all the unwarranted criticism and utter shit flung towards Orihime for absolutely no reason).
(*sidenote here about the nonexistent romance between Rukia and Ichigo, because it would look like all the images and the anime and stuff would say otherwise right? it’s all advertising by the publisher and several color illustrations Kubo did of them were by request (and to the point that he got tired of it and was running out of poses lmao, as noted in “All Color But the Black”). The director of the anime was horribly biased and changed several scenes early in the anime to make it seem like it was Ichigo and Rukia’s love story and that they were going to have the kind of belligerent romantic tension that other popular couples had at the time when, again, they really didn’t and were never intended to by Kubo; and he said several times that they didn’t have a romantic relationship. It set up a false idea for what actually happened in canon, in manga, and frankly cheapens the fact that the two had the kind of platonic yet poignant relationship many claim they wanna see more of instead of forced romance.)
