That's like a lily

I've finally reached the point where I've posted more Bleach fic than I have Smallville fic, which feels right because I posted all that Smallville fic two plus decades ago. There should be a 'show only my top most written fandoms in the last five years' button 😂 I filtered by date updated for five year periods to see what fandoms I was most deranged about writing in in any given period, and first of all it's not even accurate because I have three fics tagged LOTR and it says I have only two. And secondly I think I've realised I'm just as unhinged in the 2021-2025 time period as I was 2001-05. I may have written 21 Buffy stories in the 01-05 period (well, I wrote more than that, but plenty of my early extra bad fic was not posted backdated to AO3, and in fact has been lost from the internet), but I also wrote ...uh... 23 Mysterious Lotus Casebook stories in a year and a half in the 2021-2025 period, so... there's that...

Whereas 06 to 10 and 11 to 15 is just [gandalf I have no memory of this place meme]. I wrote Merlin fic?? I wrote Teen Wolf fic?? I wrote Young Avengers fic?? I have absolutely no memory of ever writing getbackers fic, but I was obsessed with it, so at least that makes sense.

Limbo (1014 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kira Izuru & Matsumoto Rangiku, Kurosaki Ichigo & Kurosaki Isshin
Characters: Kira Izuru, Matsumoto Rangiku, Kurosaki Ichigo, Kurosaki Isshin, Tia Harribel
Additional Tags: Bittersweet, Grief/Mourning, Post-Winter War (Bleach), Awkward Conversations, Angst
Summary:

Three different shared griefs, in three different places.

!!!! The new Kaiju no 8 episode! An absolute killer. I did not expect to be so emotional because I didn't think I was that invested in that character, but I cried. That episode was beautifully done.

Click for spoilers

Shinomiya Isao ;_; It was so good, he went so hard, and got so close. He was willing to destroy his body to defeat the kaiju and it wasn't enough! It got me all the more so because of that tech guy who stayed close to help and had to witness it all. And the flashbacks to his wife, and to Kikoru as a child, sobbing forever. I feel so bad for Kikoru. This is absolutely going to mess her up. She was already so fucked up by seeing Kafka nearly kill her dad, but now no 9 ate him. JFC, that's horrific. This was the emotional depth this season needed.

The new episode of The Summer Hikaru Died was also great. I love how it went into Asako's early childhood and showed what it meant that she could see ghosts, and how this was a positive for her, and the way she felt Yoshiki was safer with Hikaru. But also love the jealousy Yoshiki feeling turning to horror and anger at the end of the episode, and the complicated ways he's feeling about Hikaru. I think the complicated intense feelings - the way everything for Yoshiki is on the edge of one thing or another, never pure and uncomplicated, but always intense - is the great strength of the show. It really captures those teenage feelings through the supernatural horror metaphor of it all, but also works on the non-metaphorical level as well.

I'm now at the end of episode 325 of Bleach. I got through the end of all the Aizen stuff! Finally! The anime really dragged that out to the point of being tiresome, whereas I know I enjoy it a lot in the manga. I'm now square in the filler zone. The characters talk a lot faster in filler episodes because they're not trying to drag things out to avoid outpacing the manga 🤣 I thought I was going to appreciate the anime giving more time and space to the immediate aftermath of Aizen's defeat, but it turns out Ichigo watching Rukia fade from view as his powers disappear in the manga hits me a lot harder than the 'idk it could disappear some time' thing they're going for in the anime. I get why, it's so they can have filler arcs, but still. I do appreciate seeing Matsumoto's grief for Gin, though.

Some of the one shot filler episodes are pretty fun! The one with the squad 11 training exercise is fun, not just for the repeated joke of Renji and Ichigo joining in for no good reason, but also because it's about squad 11 (and especially that dumbass Ikkaku) being shitty and immature and passive aggressive about something for 100 years and Ichigo fixes that problem. The Kenpachi and Yachiru in Rukongai story was also great; I liked how it used those characters in a more serious way and filled in some of their backstory. Right now I'm in the midst of the Reigei arc, which is fine. Some of the fights are pretty cool.

I also started watching The Apothecary Diaries. I wasn't sure during the first episode, but the second episode charmed me, so I'm about six episodes in right now. I like the light touch it takes to serious things, without being too light, and Maomao and Jinshi are charming characters.

What have I done since last entry? Completed a couple of exchange fics, and I keep telling myself I'm not going to sign up for more exchanges because I don't enjoy most of them the way I enjoy Yuletide... eyeing off some pinch hits nonetheless.

Also, I started watching Kaiju no. 8, the first episode of which is an awesome work of science fiction that imagines what it would look like in a society that was used to kaiju invasion. The main character, Hibino Kafka, is a 32 year old man working on the team that cleans up after the monsters are defeating: cutting them up to make the bodies easier to remove, crane-lifting bits out, generally hosing things down. His childhood friend has gone on to be a big name in the monster defeating squad, and he thinks longingly about joining the defence force, but after all he's been rejected in the physical exam so many times... and then at the end of the episode he swallows something he doesn't want to and becomes a kaiju himself, discovering what this means in a hilarious scene where he and a friend break out from the hospital while everyone around them screams.

Great stuff! Unfortunately it becomes a standard shonen fighting story from there. There are good moments once he meets new characters who also want to fight the monsters and people keep interesting backstories and cool fight scenes & etc. but nothing anywhere near as good as the sheer science fictional excitement of the beginning. And it's on to season 2 and there's even more characters, and while the new characters have cool hair they don't have interesting personalities... I'm still watching, though, and trying to reframe it as just a fun monster fighting show, because the monster fights are cool.

The Summer Hikaru Died continues to be so cool, and every episode I don't know how to describe my reaction to it! This one had eldritch horror in a bath and still yet more supernatural fisting, yet more of Yoshiki and monster Hikaru trying to figure out the borders of what their relationship is and what things they should do to each other.