Analyse this.

We don't get a huge amount of anime on TV here in New Zealand (we used to, but not anymore, alas). However, I've spent the last 40 minutes watching the second Naruto movie on Cartoon Network (New Zealand version). The first 39 minutes was in some language that was neither English OR Japanese (and there were no subtitles). Now, in the 40th minute, it's suddenly switched to the dub version. Half way through a scene.

Weird.

Title: Please Teach Me! Shuuhei Sensei!
Summary: Renji needs some advice in love, and he needs it fast.
Rating: PG-13, because my Renji has a dirty mouth.
Meme: Write a love letter from one character to another.
Request: Renji writing to Shuuhei, as requested by ann89103

Notes: This is actually a mini-version of a plot bunny I had during my exams and which fits nicely with the challenge ^_^. The original plot bunny was going to be chapters and chapters long (and the opening letter was admittedly going to be a little different), but it’s nice to get something that has been stuck on my head written for once!

( Uh, hi. Shuuhei sensei. )

Stolen from animegoil, because this looks like fun!

Give me a pairing and I will write a love note from one to another. The pairing can be my character and yours, mine and someone else's, or anything that strikes your fancy as long as I know who they are.

Regarding my last post: you are all very evil ^_^. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite what I was looking for (although I want other people to write some of those 'punishments' now), but since I can't seem to write anything at the moment, it's possibly a good thing.

Aaand we’ve switched over to slow dialup. Ouch. I’ve managed to watch bits and pieces of the sub (and the raws last night), but unless I figure out how to buy a bit more broadband, I probably won’t see a full version of the subs until Monday.


( Bleach 246 thoughts - spoilers )

One of the things I love about Bleach is that it's a complex and magical fandom to play around in. However, I'm finding myself very limited by my own imagination.

If you were to punish someone in a methodical, somewhat sadistic but controlled manner in the Bleach universe, how would you do this? My head is stuck on the use of a whip, but it seems almost cheating to pick something that unrelated/nonspecific to the Bleach universe. It can't be anything too complex (eg: mind games) because everyone involved understands the purpose of what is going on.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

I blame Del's recent foray into dark!fic for this muse, by the way.

So that's ... episode 245 and manga chapter 382?

Spoilers beneath the cut.


( cut for anime and manga spoilers )

I think I’ve read too many bad Kira fics, because I think I’ve lost all concept of his character. So! Discussion time! Tell me your thoughts on Kira, what you feel is at the core of his character.

Kira doesn’t strike me as someone who had an abusive relationship with Gin. For starters, Gin is far too intelligent for that. Kira is surrounded by close friends who would easily pick up on things if they were wrong, plus Matsumoto would probably realize something was off as well. I think being Gin’s lieutenant was probably very trying, and Gin probably screwed around with his head a bit because Gin likes to have fun with people, but I don’t think anything deeper ever occurred. Additionally, Kira states that he only agreed to do what Gin asked if his friends were left out of it. In other words, Kira is confident enough in his relationship with Gin to make demands, as well as being confident enough that Gin will abide by them. He doesn’t simply follow Gin’s orders, he negotiates. This is one of the reasons, I think, why he snaps – Kira made the wrong decision and his friends got hurt. However, he only had the opportunity to make that decision because Gin gave it to him. If he hadn’t been given that choice in the first place, then Kira would have dealt with the consequences far better.


I also think that, canonically, Kira has actually been portrayed as having the weakest link to his captain out of the four people most betrayed by the defections (Kira, Matsumoto, Momo, Shuuhei). Momo’s infatuation with Aizen is well documented – be it romantic or not. Matsumoto’s history with Gin is a huge part of both their back stories. It’s canonically been stated that Shuuhei is heartbroken over Tousen. Kira’s angst, however, has really only been tied to his friends. He’s angry at Gin because his friends got hurt. He snapped because his friends got hurt. We’ve seen Kira’s anger towards Gin, but never any signs of heartbreak or hurt, and I think that’s deliberate. Kira isn’t Matsumoto, Momo, or Shuuhei. He hasn’t known Gin anywhere near as long as Shuuhei has known Tousen, nor was he directly placed in the same division as Gin immediately after the academy like Momo was with Aizen. Kira’s relationship with Gin, comparatively, wasn’t that important.

However, his relationship with his friends most definitely was.

I’m not trying to imply that Kira’s angst is any less than Matsumoto’s, Momo’s, or Shuuhei’s. What I’m attempting to portray is that it is different. While Matsumoto, Momo and Shuuhei’s angst has to do with being betrayed, Kira’s comes mostly from being the betrayer.

As for Kira the character? He’s one part polite, one part dour, and one part dry humor. I don’t necessarily think he’s a polite person by nature, but because he thinks that is how he should act. I get the feeling that he has little time for people he doesn’t care for, and it’s through his interactions with those he does that we see him at his most genuine. He’s basically the straight friend in the TV comedy duo ^_^. I think at times he’s hypersensitive to perceived criticism (as seen with his reaction to Shuuhei during the fight with Allon), but I think there are some shades of arrogance in his character. We see this in the way he believes he has the moral right to execute those he fights against, some of the comments he makes during fights, and how he thinks he has the right (aaand that it’s a good idea!) to take Yumichika out in the way he does. For Kira, the ends really do seem to justice the means.

Thoughts?

Very quick post. I signed up for the yaoi_challenge, and it's currently open for requests until sometime on the 7th. How it works is that people signed up and wrote mini advertisements for pairings/fandoms they were willing to write. Now, the community is open to anyone (regardless of whether they offered to write themselves, it isn't a fic exchange) to request fics from any of the people who offered their services. The 'catch' is that everyone's advertisements use a pseudonym, although it's ridiculously easy to guess who I am.

The advertisements are here: http://community.livejournal.com/yaoi_challenge/245014.html
And the request thread (it's screened until the reveal date) is here: http://community.livejournal.com/yaoi_challenge/245249.html

Request away!

Title: Stone Angels.
Rating: PG.
Summary: Renji isn’t entirely sure how to deal with a human Byakuya.
Notes: Takes place at the end of the Soul Society arc, while Renji is waiting for Byakuya to regain consciousness.
Notes II: This was actually my first Bleach ficlet. I wrote it after finishing the Soul Society arc, so it’s very much set in that stage of character development. Thanks to thierrys for the beta!


( FIC: Stone Angels )

Pick 12 characters from a fandom and number them one to twelve, then answer these cracktastic questions...

BLEACH List:

1. Shuuhei.
2. Kensei.
3. Renji.
4. Byakuya.
5. Tousen.
6. Yumichika.
7. Kazeshini.
8. Kira.
9. Omaeda.
10. Urahara
11. Shinji.
12. Tachikaze.

( Q and A time. )

At some point in my fanfic writing 'career', I somehow picked up on the idea that writing from an omnipresent POV was a bad thing. I love to read it, but I sort of forbade myself from writing it. It's a style I've been slowly trying to reintroduce into my writing lexicon, however I've completely forgotten how to write it, as silly as that may sound. I was wondering if anyone had any story recs that were written from this perspective.

Interesting Cairnsy fact of the day: I actually love writing from a second-person POV as it's the closest I personally ever get to being inside a character's head. The reason I rarely ever write it is because I don't feel I have a strong enough hold on my characters voices to pull it off. For some reason, I find it far more intimate and personal than first person POV. The first Bleach fic I ever wrote was actually in second-person POV (it's a Byakuya and Renji ficlet). I should actually post it one of these days.

Notes: Sporadic posts AND comment replies over the next few days in particular. I will catch up, however ^_^

( BLEACH 380 chapter spoilers )

I'm in the middle of exams now (had the first one today) so I'm just going to be popping and out of livejournal randomly. This also means my thoughts will be more disjointed than usual.

( spoilers for episode 243 )

Title: Newton’s Third Law.
Rating: PG
Summary: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tousen and Shuuhei centric. For fictictactoe with delwynmarch (the board is now yours!)
Word count: 1983.

Notes: This is a little late (although there is technically no set time frame) because it originally had some Tousen/Shuuhei threads running through it, but I couldn’t quite get them work so they had to be stripped out/rewritten. Tousen/Shuuhei is one of those pairings that does interest me, because I can just see Shuuhei being absolutely clueless about the underlying dynamics that would be present. Sadly, it didn’t work out.

Notes II: Tousen’s blindness. Everyone has a different philosophy on this, mine is that whatever 6th sense abilities he has allow him to ‘see’ the same things that a normal person can see. It might be through an interaction effect of all the different senses, so it’s put together differently from a normal person, but if you waved a card in front of his face he was be able to say it was the ace of spades. This is a man, after all, who is left in charge of surveillance even when that requires him watching intruders being recorded by a surveillance camera. If he can tell what is happening on a TV screen, he can ‘see’ peoples’ expressions (at least for the purpose of this story!).

( FIC: Newton's Third Law )

I'm editing my ficlet for Fictactoe, and there is one line in particular that is frustrating me because I don't know if I'm getting the cliche right, and google isn't really helping. What I'm after is something like "Cairnsy sleeps the sleep of the good", but I'm not sure if a) that's actually the right turn of phrase, and 2) if the double 'sleep/sleeps' is just too clunky. For the line to work, it has to approximate the original cliche, but I'm just not sure if I've got the wording of the original cliche right in the first place.

Any thoughts?

Ok. I officially love this episode. The dialogue more than met my expectations, and answered some burning questions.

( spoilers for episode 242, subbed episode )

Can we please have translations now? The dialogue is what was really interesting in this episode.

Rambles, as always, behind the cut.

( spoilers for Bleach episode 242 )

(Why, yes. I AM trying to avoid study AND trying to beat my fictactoe story into something readable. Why do you ask?)

Stolen from ravens_rising because it looks like fun.

Comment with a fandom and I'll tell you-

1. The first character I fell in love with:
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t:
4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
5. The character I would shag anytime:
6. The character I'd want to be like:
7. The character I'd slap:
8. A pairing that I love:
9. A pairing that I despise:
10. Favorite character:
11. What are my five favorite things about the fandom?
12. What are my five least favorite things about the fandom?
13. Who are my five favorite characters?
14. Who are my five least favorite characters?
15. What are my five favorite pairings?
16. What are my five least favorite pairings?
17. Which character you are most like?
18. What is my deep, dark fandom secret?

Edit: Fandoms I've been in over the years (give or take the ones I've forgotten) - Bleach, Dragon Knights, Faeries Landing, Saiunkoku, Hitman Reborn, Angel Sanctuary, Digimon, Gundam Wing, hanakimi, Harry Potter, Kyou Kara Maou, Les Miserables, Love Mode, Magic Knights Rayearth, One Piece, Orphen, Petshop of Horrors, Sailor Moon, Slam Dunk, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, Vampire Game, x/1999, Yami no Matsuei, yu-gi-oh

One of the really sad things I've discovered about the Bleach calendars is that, because they do 2 months per picture, it's generally fairly predictable who will get showcased. By the time you've hit up Ichigo, Rukia, Hitsugaya, Byakuya and Renji there is only one place left for someone else.

I was not, therefore, expecting anything different from the anime calendar for next year. That was, until the character list was revealed.

表紙…一護＆斬月＆村正 (Cover Ichigo, Zangetsu, Muramasa)
1･2月…日番谷＆氷輪丸 (Hitsugaya and Hyourinmaru)
3･4月…白哉＆千本桜 (Byakuya and Senbonzakura)
5･6月…檜佐木＆風死＆吉良＆侘助 (Hisagi, Kazeshini, Kira and Wabisuke)
7･8月…乱菊＆灰猫 (Matsumoto and Haineko)
9･10月…恋次＆蛇尾丸 (Renji and Zabimaru)
11･12月…ルキア＆袖白雪 (Rukia and Sode No Shirayuki)

BOOYA-AH! Ok, so Shuuhei has to share May and June with Kira, but in the past Kira would have gotten the page to himself and Shuuhei would have been MIA. The art so far looks gorgeous (although no picture yet of Shuuhei and Kira's month). This makes me happy.

EDIT: SCANS ARE UP! SEE BEHIND THE CUT!!!!

( cut for awesome Shuuhei/Kazeshini/Kira/Wabisuke goodness )

The challenge: to demolish delwynmarch in a game of fictictactoe.
The conditions: Shuuhei must be a central character in each fic. However, once another character appears in a mainish role, they cannot appear again in subsequent stories (Otherwise known as the Shunsui effect).
The battlefield:

01. LAWS OF NATURE

01. Harmonic Movement.	02. Action/Reaction.	03. Catalysis.
04. Relativity.	05. Nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed.	06. Natural Selection.
07. Gravity.	08. Inertia.	09. Electromagnetism.