#This dynamic subconsciously plays into my mind when I'm talking to a patient

[cero-blast]

Your post about Gin "messing with people's heads" makes me think, doesn't this also apply to Ulquiorra? He also psychologically tortured Inoue, don't you think it's hypocritical to say Gin's actions don't nullify the bad things he did, but say that UH is good/not toxic? I'm not trying to hate on you, I don't ship anything in Bleach, I just wanted to know why Gin is considered a bad inexcusable guy but Ulquiorra's relationship with Inoue is glorified?

This will get… really long. I’m genuinely sorry it’s this long.

I never said Ulqiorra did nothing wrong (though it’s fair to say I didn’t happen to specifically point it out), or that UH is a ship with many positive feelings associated to it. That would be… an interesting take. I hope you don’t think I think that. But I also need you to understand that I don’t base my taste in ships on what I desire/consider healthy in real life. They exist in the context of the canon — not interchangeable with reality considering the existence of superpowers, ghosts, semi-human creatures and time warping — and that’s where it ends for me. Applying the dynamics in my ships to any situation other than the precise one of Bleach’s canon would make them fundamentally different.

I’ve wanted to mention this about Ulquiorra for a while now and I’ll take the occasion to do so. It’s a mistake to put him in the same framework as a human or shinigami. (The latter two also have their differences but based on observation shinigami seem to behave in a much more human-like manner compared to hollows/arrancars.) He’s practically incapable of understanding what empathy is or find any good reason not to hurt other people, which is why it’s surprising when he manages to grasp even a shred of the concept right before dying. Hollows are born from experiencing such severe pain that it distorts their whole ‘essence’, so something has gone terribly wrong with them emotionally by definition, whether they evolve to arrancar form or not. Ulquiorra’s aspect of death, his ‘theme’, is emptiness — characterized by complete neutrality towards everything. Since a person with a healthy mindset tends to focus on danger and negative events, neutrality often comes across as immoral for being equally conceding towards moral right and moral wrong. The point is, Ulquiorra’s motivations for provoking Inoue had nothing to do with him taking joy in causing pain to her. In fact, it’s hinted he’s not even fully aware he’s doing it, like the scene where he tells Inoue he’d laugh at her friends’ foolishness in her place. He’s unaffected by most things AND has difficulty placing himself in others’ perspective, which results in him assuming everyone around him would be unaffected. The only thing that factored into him doing just about anything was curiosity, the need to fill the void, however you want to put it. If a human or shinigami behaved the same way he did around Inoue, it would come across in a vastly different way and I’m not sure it would even interest me as a ship. Ulquiorra is not only a hollow, but a hollow with a particular impediment in understanding how others feel, and this is an integral part of him as a character, of his interactions, of UH, of anything regarding him. I know it’s funny as a fandom meme to act as if he were human, but he’s NOT and this needs to be kept in mind.

This applies to any arrancar or espada, really. It’s tempting to judge them on the same basis as enemies who are closer to humanity, mainly because of their appearance and intellect. But this is the trick itself the narrative plays, a progression that has been present in Bleach since the start: it created a human/monster (shinigami/hollow here) dichotomy, then spent the longest arc deconstructing it by blurring the lines between the two. It doesn’t matter how smart and eloquent the espada manage to get, the only productive way of interpreting them is as people who are missing a very core part of their personality, so someone severely psychologically ill. (I say this as someone who has their own problems, before it gets misinterpreted as condescension.) Should this absolve them from punishment? Bleach says a very clear no. They almost all get killed by shinigami, in Ulquiorra’s case Ichigo specifically — Ichigo, who, by his own admission, empathized with everyone he fought and even gets angry at Yammy for speaking ill of Ulquiorra after his death. (I don’t want to start arguing about how he was in hollow state when he defeated him. He would have killed Ulquiorra either way if he continued to stand in the way of protecting his friends.)

In summary, the espada aren’t human. Ulquiorra isn’t human. It’s unrealistic to expect him to behave like a human. You’re free to pick who you want to have compassion for among Bleach’s positive and negative characters and if you decide Ulquiorra is irredeemable in your opinion, that’s fine — many characters would agree. But at the very least it can be objectively said that Bleach spends a lot of time presenting ‘evil’ characters’ perspectives as nuanced and explicable instead of writing them off. It gives the audience a choice in the matter. A core message of the entire story is that we’re subjective and maybe we’ll never manage to see the world the same way as someone else, but that’s fine and it doesn’t make us all that different; hollows can become *almost* shinigami, shinigami can become *almost* hollows, and they both have ways to relate to one another while retaining the insurmountable differences and even fighting and killing each other.

Now, onto Gin. First off, you seem to be under the impression that I don’t like him as a character. That couldn’t be further from the truth; I only said it in the tags because I figured saying it in the post would have sounded like making excuses, which is not what the post was about. I don’t know if I would call him a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person. All I know is that I really enjoyed him as a character and I could see how he evoked sympathy — in the tragic way antagonists do when they get some sort of redemption. I noticed it’s a common tool in fiction to make an impact on the audience, I suppose because we’re happier when we see ‘bad people getting fixed’ rather than someone already good doing more good things. It’s a Prodigal Son type of thing; can be argued about but it definitely makes an impact.

Gin is a quintessential ‘mysterious type’; he has a long-running plan that he executes throughout almost his entire life without ever consulting with anyone (an important detail). He had a hypothesis on what would be the most effective way to kill Aizen and constructed a convoluted plan based on it — a plan where the ends would have justified the means in many, many situations, and that required causing problems to a lot of people. He had, however, no certainty that what he was doing would lead to the desired results (which it then didn’t…). A lot of his provocation was a means to create a certain image of himself and there’s a big question of where to draw the line there, whether all of that was absolutely necessary. Leaving to Hueco Mundo and technical demonstrations of loyalty were, sure, but mocking Rukia on her way to being executed? He considered keeping everything a secret a prerequisite for things to work out — presumably because if he talked to anyone, Aizen could have noticed — but was it, really? Many of his actions were based on his personal judgement on what would and wouldn’t have ruined the façade, subjective and hunch-based since he didn’t know the outcome for sure.

Gin isn’t inexcusable, but I noticed a lack of emphasis on the damage his actions caused among fans, both because of the chronological order of the story and his affiliation with the protagonists’ side. Because the last thing he did was a good thing, that’s what he’s remembered by, without taking into account the sum total of his interactions with others. He posited himself as vicious until the last moment and did so consciously. Ulquiorra had a very, very gradual progression in the way he talked to Inoue, which doesn’t make it less rude and traumatic, but there’s a difference between him showing up and telling her she ‘has no rights’ and later taking an active interest in her views on the Heart. It would be equally reductive to interpret him by his last moment and nothing else, but all he did before led to that moment progressively, while Gin’s was a very abrupt twist.

My post was a comment on psychology on the most basic, technical level, not a moral judgement. The two are separate in the way we process trauma and that’s exactly what I find interesting. Having strong negative emotions associated to a memory (what I think Kira, Hinamori, Hitsugaya or Rangiku could have had with Gin’s betrayal) creates a very subconscious reaction that can hardly be fixed by suddenly finding out it was necessary for a positive cause, which is why healing from trauma requires years of therapy. Because *in that moment* you didn’t have that knowledge, the pain remains in your memory and it’s not a matter of logical reasoning. Now, I’m not saying Ulquiorra’s interactions with Inoue were numerous or productive enough to properly process the trauma he caused her — the canon info is ambivalent on how comfortable Inoue was around him towards the end of her captivity because there’s both scenes like the famous slapping one *and* her seeming more light-hearted towards Ulquiorra in Unmasked, plus no one has any idea of which came before which. All things considered, I think repeated discussion and an attempt at mutual understanding does a better job at elaborating something traumatic than one single piece of information on why what traumatized you was justified. And note that the *only reason* the understanding between Ulquiorra and Inoue could have been mutual is because Inoue was exceptionally patient, empathetic and willing to face discomfort, way beyond the base level or what should be expected from anyone. Even if it was a *small amount* of *not very productive* discussion, it’s better than one act in my opinion (which most of the people who had some sort of issue with Gin didn’t even directly witness). Which of them is *morally worse* depends on how you draw the lines and define morality and that’s not something I feel qualified to decide.

So, in the end;Ulquiorra:-working towards enemy goals overtly-motivated by curiosity, which can be considered self-oriented-gradual improvement-not fully conscious of the emotional impact of his actions-Inoue considers him an ambivalent presence but “Isn’t afraid”, in her words-half-succeeded, as in: failed the goal of killing Ichigo but sated his curiosity

Gin:-working towards enemy goals on the surface and soul society goals covertly-motivated by attachment to Rangiku and/or revenge, less self-oriented but still focused on close acquaintances -long-running façade of being a terrible person followed by a sudden twist towards the good side-completely aware of everything he’s doing, plan laid out hundreds of years in advance-Gotei 13 don’t interact with Gin throughout HM arc, consider the traitors a lost cause-failed to kill Aizen

Instead of this encyclopedia I could have just written “Gin isn’t irredeemable, I just said he did bad things before”, but I thought too much about it. And I might go through spelling mistakes once I wake up.

#anon #ask #long post