369 Spoilers and moderator's post

[http://users.livejournal.com/_debbiechan_/]

There were some from Nja at 2ch yesterday that were a bit confusing but 69 had something RICH today. Translations are at this post at BA.

( hahaha )

No Bleach next week because of a holiday. ANNIE'S BIRTHDAY. Haha.

ETA MOD POST: oh and now that I've my coffee and fixed the title of this post (Debbie should not type before at least one cup of Community Medium Roast) and read over much of the Bleach offerings from fandom this morning and giggled over a lot of the wank over Kubo's latest volume poem, I want soooo much to jump in feet first to the poetry discussion. Some of you don't know this about me but I'm a poet by profession--yeah, published in various journals, anthologies, used to give workshops and got paid to give readings before I gave up that glamorous life to homeschool my kids. Three degrees in literary nerdom too. Poetry is my turf and one of the reasons I fangirl Kubo-sensei so hard--he's an honest poet and what other manga-ka frames his story with GOOD poems, not the cheesy Hallmark variety but the magical resonant kind that one can turn over and over and each line illuminates the next. My Japanese is poor to non-existent without the help of my fluent friends but even in various translations Kubo's poetry rocks the casbah.

Some of the shipping wank the volume 40 poem has been inspiring amuses me because I admit it, I like to watch wank even though at times propriety and the little voice that goes "Deb, you're a grown-up now" tells me to look away. So many times I'm tempted to call out individual quotes of fan-dumb in here to refute, but then I think eh, don't be a show-off and a meanie. So I leave such exposition to my wittier friends.

In any event, I'm trying to establish a fair precedent here on bleachness --that is, we can and should encourage all discourse about ideas, arguments, even shipping arguments, anything pertaining to the source material but we should avoid personal attacks against individuals in fandom or against groups of fans. Disagreeing is not attacking. Just want to make that clear before people start commenting. I'm going to delete comments that start railing against this or that particular translator or any one specific person in fandom. Bash Hitsugaya all you want--he's fictional and can't be hurt, but as a someone with a fairly tough hide who's been knocked around in a few cyber Coliseum bloodsport tournaments, I'm telling you now--don't, just don't start that stuff here.

Maybe if I get really excited and get some time I'll prove with fancy academics how Ulquiorra's character poem is a traditional love poem. In the meantime, chill, people. It says that Ulquiorra desires humanity and human traits and it very strongly implies that he DESIRES one person, namely Orihime. The poem ALSO resonates with other themes for the Lust arc. The poem doesn't disprove Orihime's lust to be rescued, Ichigo's lust to protect, Loly's envy of Orihime, Ishida's pride of the Quincy, Yammy's gluttony for pieces of Hollow flesh or any other demonstrations of the Seven Sins that were shown in the Lust arc. The poem does specifically use a Japanese pronoun to show Ulquiorra's fascination with Orihime--something that many Bleach fans, including myself (my OTP is IshiHime and I'm still rooting for my archer boy to get the girl) saw years ago and argued to the staunch denial of other fans so that's why there's a lot of celebrating going on. And no, "I lust for everything about you" doesn't mean "I lust for everything you own" and exclude the person. That would be like calling all those lyrics, odes, pop songs and ballads that list a woman's attributes and repeat a refrain like "Every little thing about you" are REALLY written by fetishists who do not love a person but love her actual eyes, breasts or toes. You can't desire something in its parts without desiring its totality. So really, please, nitpickers, if was bad enough when you were going through Kubo's interviews to warp his words into the opposite of what he was saying, but this time, your efforts are laughable.

And that, my friends, was my mini-essay without examples, references, pictures, or paragraphs of support.

I encourage everyone to read the following,a really cool link provided by combandmirror  that may have been the source for Kubo's pissy unicorn and other animal illustrations to represent the seven sins in the endpages of volume 40:

In this wilderness are many evil beasts: the lion of pride, the snake of poisonous envy, the unicorn of anger, the bear of dead sloth, the fox of covetousness, the sow of gluttony, the scorpion with the tail of stinging lechery, that is, lust.
http://www.hermitary.com/articles/ancrene.html