Bleachness

 nehalenia  is one of those writers like incandescens or laurie_bunter--I'm just going to rec ALL this writer's Bleach fic anyway so just remember the author's name. She's done it again. This time she's written a piece that for being first person Hollow!Ichigo narration is surprisingly eloquent-- yet the guy is  IC. Hollow!Ichigo maintains a dynamic with an Ichigo who figures in the story even if nicey Ichigo's not there. The violence is handled expertly--it's never over the top. The characterizations make me give this piece of smut my "more than smut" award (didn't know I gave those out, eh? Usually sublimeparadigm racks them all up in my head for her emotional but hardcore yaoi stuffs). And yes, it's disturbing subject matter, and yes it's disturbingly erotic, and yes, the story is about that ambivalence. It's smart stuff.

Runaway Horse (NC17) by  nehalenia Warning: non-con, yaoi, Hollow Ichigo/Ishida

Now more about chapter 315. The scans are out, and I've read at least two interesting discussions on friends' LJs about Ichigo's character--is it consistent? What about his speech to Kenpachi at the end of the chapter? IC? Unnecessary?

First, an illustration! I was really sick of the (damn sexy but) girly Uryuu of the filler arc ( He's so vuuulnerable) so I drew a picture in which he is the hero of the current. I challenge (beg?) someone to write a fic for this. I need more IshiHime to read (says she who started yet another IchiIshi last night....)

If Only

Now onto my Tanabata shipping crisis. I was up too late last night reading the various versions of the Tanabata myth (I've done this before) and trying to weave (ha ha) the various mythological threads here and there into the Bleach story. There's really no doubt that Kubo Tite (originally at least) intended for the story to mean some sort of connection between Ichigo and Orihime. I mean, really-- Orihime the weaver/handicrafts girl and Ichigo (one of whose kanji representations means ox king or something), the ox-puller, the hikoboshi who travels to heaven (hmmm, it was Rukia that he went to "heaven" to save?) to get his goddess woman in a moon-shaped boat (yep, yep, Ichigo is represented by the moon, no one can deny--it's his symbol in Bleach). There's all the damn rain imagery (when rain falls in the Tanabata story, the lovers can't meet), and there's fricken rain all over Bleach. Rukia in the rain with her arms around either Kaien or Ichigo (she really cares for them both--it's heartbreaking--but if Ichigo turns out to be a "bleached" version of Kaien,I'm screaming IT WAS TOO OBVIOUS, KUBO! I'm hoping that the reincarnation stuff is a red herring--the way Byakuya's picture of Hisana looking exactly like Rukia was supposed to make us guess at an unsavory backstory--did he adopt Rukia bc she looked like his ex-love? Did he want to kill Rukia for that reason?) The rain imagery goes on and on--Ichigo's mother dying in the rain, Orihime with her umbrella pining for Ichigo, Uryuu whose name means "rain dragon." At some point, the mythological parallels break down--there's something there, but the pieces don't all make sense.

The Tanabata myth also seems to fit the essence of the Bleach conflict (earth and sky, humans and Soul Society) for a while there. In another version of the myth, Orihime's lover has to weave 1000 pairs of shoes to reach her in heaven, and well, the lover is a weaver/handicrafts feller too (Uryuuuuu?)

But did Kubo's story run away with him? How can characters which have developed one way be squished to fit a mythological paradigm?