#kubo compared her to a god and you insinuated she was a child murderer i think i know which characterization i'd stick with

[zabiume]

Orihime as a pacifist + TYBW reflections

So, yesterday, we were talking about Orihime’s core traits in @governthestars ask about writing Orihime + her general characterization and I didn’t expand much about her pacifism because I wanted to make a separate post about it.

On my first read of TYBW, the thing that struck me the most is that both Yhwach and Orihime were probably the most proclaimed “peace-loving” characters in that they both called for a unity of all three worlds.

But the way both characters aim for this “peace” is rather distinct. Yhwach advocates for total anarchy, and his definition of anarchy is the total breakdown of social systems and orders that currently uphold society as we know it, rendering everyone into one clustered group through destruction. Orihime, on the other hand, advocates for anarchy in that she trusts social groups to be capable of taking care of each other and living in harmony through interdependence, without the help of higher institutions like Soul Society. Yhwach focuses on destroying the status quo; Orihime focuses on unionizing the 90%. The fun thing for me is that both definitions have been used to describe anarchism/anarcho-pacifism before and I’m sure this wasn’t meant to be that deep, but it could be, and I’m sad it never went anywhere.

The most frustrating thing about Orihime’s “cool-ness” as a character is that she’s a pacifist in a series where literally everyone is a fighter. Bleach is a shonen, so power-ups (shikai/bankai) and final forms take center stage in what makes a character “cool” to an audience. Kubo set up bankai to be a technique that is incredibly rare to achieve + a physical manifestation of a character’s self-actualization, and that’s pretty deep, but the thing about writing a shonen is that you’re inevitably going to have a shonen audience. AKA, no one cares about what you can do if you can’t do bankai. This is why Chad and Orihime are usually ranked low in popularity polls, despite having solid character arcs and motivations that are apt for them, while characters like Byakuya and Hitsugaya (who have had little to no relevant character arcs post-HM) are very popular. You’d be surprised at how many people on forums think Chad is irrelevant to Ichigo’s main circle, simply because he’s a non-shinigami character. You’d be surprised at how many people think Ichigo is closer to Byakuya than he is to Orihime. But when you see both these ideologies floating around, it isn’t really surprising that most fans thought Ichigo would end up in Soul Society.

I think the point Kubo was trying to make with Ichigo and his identity struggles as a Visored in HM arc, Fullbring in the FB arc, Quincy in the Quincy arc and shinigami throughout is that he can co-opt the identities of all these factions without actually committing an undying loyalty to any single one of them. This is why Ichigo has allies in every faction, just as he has enemies. The entire point of Ichigio’s moral code is that he discards the official manifestos of whatever groups he’s in and creates his own. He’s no one’s man, so to speak, abiding by what he thinks is right as opposed to what each society claims is right. This is a recurring theme seeded in as early as the Lost Agent arc and people still think he’d throw in with the shinigami folk after all the awful shit they’ve done and would have done to him & his friends. If we were to draw a scale of anarchy →  status quo, you’d have it be something like: Yhwach → Orihime (& Ichigo & co) → Urahara(& co) → Gotei 13 with all other characters falling somewhere within that spectrum.

What does this have to do with Orihime as a pacifist? Well, this is what peace and harmony means to her on a grander scale. On a smaller scale, Orihime doesn’t want to hurt a character unless she absolutely has no choice. And even then, her heart isn’t in it unless she’s protecting someone other than herself. This is why she had troubles with Tsubaki before Fullbring Arc, but I don’t think she does now, even if Kubo didn’t really have the time to expand on her powers and origins. I think this quote by Wonder Woman does a good job at summarizing Orihime’s take on violence:

“Don't kill if you can wound, don't wound if you can subdue, don't subdue if you can pacify, and don't raise your hand at all until you've first extended it.”

Orihime would much rather avoid violence and she hates when there’s avoidable loss of life, as we see in Ichigo’s introspection of her re: Yammy. She values life, much like other popular characters in media who don’t kill--like Batman, or Aang. Given her history with family violence and abuse in general, it is pretty much central to her character to be non-violent. Plenty of good characters in media are non-violent as I said, but I think fans like to jest and mock her a lot in fics, especially in I/R fics where her pacifism is written as passive-ism;  where she doesn’t appreciate her powers as much as Ichigo does, where she doesn’t care about whether she has powers or not, unlike Ichigo, who would die without Rukia his powers. This is such a fundamental and hateful misunderstanding of what her powers mean to her and why they were born in the first place-- i.e to protect. Her powers were born because of Ichigo and in the epilogue, we saw her powers protecting Kazui, their son. One of the main reasons why I think a Bleach next gen series would never work--or at least why I don’t want Kubo to cave and make one-- is because it dismantles Orihime and Ichigo’s core of wanting to protect their loved ones. As long as Ichigo and Orihime are alive and functional, I don’t think they’d delegate any wars or greater responsibilities to their son, beyond the occasional Hollow. Orihime sees her powers as an avenue to protect her loved ones, to keep them safe from their enemies -- which, ahem, you might be surprised, is how Ichigo sees his powers, too! It’s almost like she has a fully developed moral code, just like Ichigo does, who knew?

Look, we all read Bleach for different characters and I think it’s amazing that it’s  a versatile enough series that you could read the entirety of it for a character who’s not the protagonist and still walk away with a satisfying story. I mean, I literally could not care less about Nnoitra, while there are fans who run entire meta Tumblr accounts for him. My point isn’t that you shouldn’t do that, it’s that if you read Bleach entirely for characters that are not Orihime and willfully ignored every single panel she was in, you’re not going to have a well-rounded or accurate opinion of her. You’re only going to see her as Ichigo’s bland and convenient love interest or wet blanket wife (yuck) or even a nuisance and hence you’re going to write her as such. If Kubo wrote her that way, I would understand that reflection in fics as well, but he didn’t. We see her as one of Ichigo’s closest companions and motivators for 685 chapters. We see her as his wife in one of them. You don’t need a degree in the School of Orihime Arts & Sciences to be a good Orihime writer-- you just have to understand that she had more of a purpose in Bleach than to be Ichigo’s wife, or Ichi/Ruki’s red herring, or Uryu’s trophy wife or XYZ gay ship’s laughing stock. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

(Part 1)

#this is just my excuse to sneak in comrade!orihime into my posts huh skdjsjdks #orihime inoue #meta #sorry for the Salt but she's my daughter and im tired of the Direspect #i have SO many headcanons and thoughts about her powers and loose threads kubo never got the time to write #and i give every fic a chance if she's in it #but it's so funny when the writer clearly hates her/doesn't know what to do with her #and you'll see the comments praising op for doing a better job than kubo did like please.. #kubo compared her to a god and you insinuated she was a child murderer i think i know which characterization i'd stick with