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create-with-afp · 5 months ago

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Writing Update 2.20.2025

Goodness! Not that my free time has increased exponentially, but my spiraling about... well... the state of the world... has forced me to seek some sort of shelter in creativity, and let me tell you what, yes, yes, I will do that with my tens of minutes a week.

Anyway, while I have not written anything on the next chapter, I have been writing what is probably the thrustiest chapter in the next Part (is that a word? "thrustiest"?) as in it will be determinative of how the next major plot-point gets pulled off. Whereas the three chapters before it are various limited versions of what happens here. It's not quite a retelling of the same events in five different POVs (a thing I personally love in fiction), but there are elements of that in the overlap of how characters get to where they go.

Anyway, below is an excerpt written like a year ago that feels pretty complete (as in, I'm not fiddling with it as much now) and is more mood and vibes of the aforementioned chapter.

Snowflakes dart and give chase on a stray gust, floating up toward a sky blanketed with clouds. The midday sun makes itself known in the only way it can: by turning the seams between the clouds a molten shade of yellow. Pinpricks of light shine through these tight stitches. The wind dies down for a brief moment, and all goes quiet and still.

It’s whimsical, Hisana thinks.

Almost whimsical enough to distract her from the fact that she’s standing in the slaughter yard of Squad Two during a snow storm.

As punishment (no doubt) for requesting an opportunity to leave the Second, Hisana has been saddled with the thankless task of witnessing and verifying the execution of traitors, dissidents, and defectors.

Because in Seireitei, even state-sanctioned killings entail paperwork….

Today, the blood of the condemned largely stains the Central 46’s hands.

Hisana never knows what to make of the decisions handed down by that organ of Soul Society or the proportionality of the purported crimes worthy of death, which include (but are in no way limited to): adultery, insulting a noble, petty theft, murder, arson, defection, betrayal, and emotional distress of a noble.

Hisana frowns at the stack of files. The cold has numbed her fingers, making it difficult to flip through the pages to confirm the prisoner’s name, charges, and sentencing information. She rarely pauses to look too closely at the post-arrest pictures of the soon-to-be-executed. By the time they reach the slaughteryard, they no longer resemble their former selves. The various jails around the city seem to have a transformative effect, marking up faces and bodies with casual cruelty.

For the record, Hisana would take the Nest of Maggots to whatever they got going on at the Central Chambers and Noble Assembly. The nobility there is vicious.

“You want to trade?” teases Itabashi, his breath fogging midair.

The warden is alarmingly spry for his bulky stature. His height, too, is alarming, a feature that can only be described as “looming,” like a shadow cast from a sky-scraper. His face isn’t much to write home about, either, if Hisana is being completely honest. His features are all either too small or too large to be considered average, let alone handsome. He does have keen, bright eyes, which gives the impression that he knows more than he lets on.

His gaze scatters in the direction of the large, shiny, black metal box set in the middle of the field.

Hisana’s frown deepens at the sight of it. “For the murderer?” she sighs.

“One of ‘em.” He laughs and then jerks his head in the direction of an enormous cauldron being hauled from one of the storage units. Three well-muscled guards struggle with placement due to the icy and uneven ground.

Hisana sighs harder.

Not that she loves processing twenty people for a good old-fashioned beheading, but she’d rather that than watch a man be tortured to death.

“It’s only one,” he practically sings.

Dragging her gaze back to him, she asks, “Why don’t you want to do it, then?”

Itabashi runs his thick, stubby fingers through the dusting of gray hair left on his head and shrugs. “Thought it��d be good to ingratiate myself.”

Not liking the sound of that, Hisana’s eyes narrow. “Ingratiate yourself to whom?”

His brows jump up toward his hair line as he eyes her with intention.

“To me?” she crows.

“What?” He chuckles. “You’re a Kuchiki pet.”

Hisana tries to mask a harder, longer sigh with a snort.

To no avail.

Itabashi continues, undeterred, “Figured if I did you a favor that you’d have to repay me whenever the time came.”

Oh, yes, the Second’s time-honored tradition: the bartering of kindness. It’s Hisana’s favorite pastime. The Second even has a ledger tracking the debts. According to squad legend, Ōmaeda had a hand in implementing the system. Not surprising. Ōmaeda is the crown prince of pettiness.

“What do you want, Itabashi?” She swallows back the urge to groan.

“The straw grilled pigeon from Umenohana,” he says, stars in his eyes.

Umenohana, eh? Good choice. It’s also something that she could actually swing, what with it being a Kuchiki-owned restaurant.

“Never would’ve taken you for a gourmand.” Hisana cuts him a sideways glance before heading toward where her prisoners are being lined up.

“What about it?” He wags his brows expectantly.

“Not a chance.” Watching a guy get slowly skewered through with kidou swords for a solid fifteen minutes is a vignette straight from her nightmares.

“Who gets the Central Chambers Special?” Hisana calls to Suzugamori and jerks her chin toward the cauldron.

Suzugamori, who is in charge of processing the prisoners from their jails to their execution stations, pauses to check his list.

The snow is really coming down now, falling in sheets that angle with the wind. Some of the flakes catch in Suzugamori’s eyelashes, forcing him to squint when he finally acknowledges her. “Some maid who caused a noblewoman distress.”

“Oh.” Hisana’s jaw clenches as she watches the men begin to set the spells to fill and heat the cauldron with boiling oil. Usually, it’s murder, like Itabashi thought. “And what kind of distress merits a boiling death?”

“Maid fucked her son, I think.”

Oh, dear. You can get boiled alive for that? Praise be that Byakuya’s mom is very much past-tense. Maybe distressing a nosey auntie nets a lesser sentence, like being drawn and quartered by wild boars…. You know, something festive.

“Rethinking some life decisions, huh?” teases Suzugamori.

“Who? Me?” Hisana jabs a thumb into her chest before flashing a wolfish grin. “Only every day of my life.” She then steps to the line of prisoners standing against the western wall.

She’s been preparing for what she sees next. Knows the exact way her heart will jump. Knows that her breath with stop. Her preparations, however, weren’t close to enough.

They never seem to be.

Every molecule in Hisana’s body freezes at the sight of a face that she knows well. Threads of terror and dread and hate and rage weave together, forming a tangled knot so heavy and thick that it threatens to suffocate. Fortunately, the vibrations of a consuming indignation dislodge the bolus from her chest and set fire to her veins.

#bleach #hisana kuchiki #byakuya kuchiki #my writing

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create-with-afp · 1 year ago

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Bleach Fanfiction Master Post

Figured I would make a fun little catalog of my years of Bleach fanfiction. (Jeez, I am so old.) All of it is ByaHisa because that is my special kind of brain rot. My favorite romantic set-up involves a firm stoic falling hard, and we know like… five things … maybe? … about the other half of this canon pairing, which leaves a lot open to interpretation/artistic license. Also, contextualizing or reframing the woman character whose sole function in a narrative is to serve as characterization for a male character is a Fine Undertaking* in my opinion, and Bleach has so many interesting dead wives to choose from….

So, without further ado, here we go (in-progress or completed stories only):

Mortal Devices: Part III of the Maid!Heist/Dark Academia series with The Darkest Black as Part I and An Education as Part II. This WIP departs from both Maid!Heist and Dark Academia, as it's more of a political slow burn with espionage and clan politics taking up most of the breathing room. It's still firmly ByaHisa (as the politics of their marriage is explored in depth), but the main plot revolves around locating stolen documents and research from the Twelfth before they can be used to devastating effect in the WOTL. [a03 exclusive]

An Education: Part II of the Maid!Heist/Dark Academia series with The Darkest Black��(described below) as Part I. This is finally complete and is the “Dark Academia” portion of the tale. The chapters are broken up into seasons for each year (Year One: Autumn, Year One: Winter, etc.). Accordingly, the chapters are largely episodic with a few themes woven into each “Year.” I’m not quite convinced I’ve nailed Dark Academia with this one; it seems more “Slice of Life” than anything else, which I think is partially owing to the dual POVs with Byakuya (the other POV character) not attending the Academy. (He’s actually banned so… yikes….) [ff.net (discontinued on ffn, but there are a few chapters there so I'll link it) │ a03]

A Thin Red Line: This is my longest work to date, as it’s basically the length of four traditionally published fantasy novels (400k+ words). To be fair to me, this is a retelling of Bleach where Hisana does not die so it covers the Byakuya and Hisana origin story, the major arcs, plus that whole 40-year period where canon Rukia was basically living in a gothic novel. Mind the tags. Still in progress after like 10 years…. Edit 6/19/23: And she’s DONE! Bonus content on AO3 for registered users. [ff.net │ a03]

The Darkest Black: While stuck with writer’s block on ATRL, I wrote an entirely different “how did Byakuya meet Hisana” story that is… bleak? Bleak for me, at least. Probably not bleak objectively. Hisana is a thief who agrees to steal a priceless piece of art from the Kuchiki family posing as a maid. Hijinks ensue. Byakuya is particularly unlikeable as a character in this one, but that’s probably more of a side-effect of Hisana being the main POV character. This was my way to make a “Hisana as a maid” meet-cute between these two characters make sense in my head. Complete. [ff.net │ a03]

Smoke and Mirrors: A dark ByaHisa origin story with Hisana as an oiran. It isn’t particularly graphic in terms of sex or violence since that isn’t really my style, but the text and subtext are definitely there that terrible things happen to Hisana, and her mental state is understandably not great. [ff.net │ a03]

Without Frontiers: Like the Peter Gabriel song! (Yes, that song was the inspo. I write to music just like probably 95% of anyone who writes.) This is a pretty fluffy one-shot where Byakuya and Hisana are childhood friends. There is like 0 romance. They are legit kids just making up stories and being goofy. There are some hints that Hisana may be exposed to Bad Things that she is trying to process through story-telling because, really, who doesn’t want a little Adult Fear injected into an otherwise light-hearted story? [ff.net │ a03]

Charcoal Hearts: This is my very tame attempt at a reincarnation fic. The story is about Byakuya taking Rukia to a ballet during their off-time. He is there basically to ogle the reincarnation of his dead wife as a ballerina performing Serenade. It has a flirty ending, but, since I don’t particularly love Hisana reincarnation fics, it ends ambiguously. [ff.net │ a03]

So Far Away: A pretty depressive one-shot where an injured Byakuya recovers in Hisana’s hovel in the deep Rukon. Here, Hisana is a barmaid who scavenges and does side jobs to support herself, and Byakuya is… well… sort of an asshole? Like I think writing this one-shot was where I had an epiphany about Byakuya’s character (or at least my attempt to write his character): That “epiphany” being that because he lives in a rich people bubble, he (1) is extremely entitled and (2) struggles to understand and connect with others. These two traits create a feedback loop that makes him come off as simultaneously arrogant and stiff/awkward. I don’t think Byakuya is canonically on the spectrum, but I could entertain that theory, especially in light of the CFYOW books. Instead, I think there is a point when someone has so much privilege that they never learn how to read the damn room because all rooms, at that point, are basically designed to cater to them. Everyone is artificial with them so genuine concern or emotion seems inconvenient, at best, to alien, at worst. All that said, in this story he very much trips all over himself, but he improves. Slowly. Over the course of like years. [ff.net │ a03]

Stages: A short ByaHisa origin story that incorporates the five stages of love challenge that was popular on LiveJournal back when LJ was a thing. (Is it still a thing?) Hisana is a courtesan. It isn’t the best, and I sort of hate it, but it is part of the plot bunny that prompted me to make a version of Hisana as a courtesan that would be interesting, or more interesting, and better researched in keeping with the Edo Period sensibilities of Soul Society, which led to Smoke and Mirrors and A Thin Red Line. [ff.net │ a03]

White Flowers and Red Hearts Trilogy: These stories are the earliest of my ByaHisa brain rot, and they probably read exactly like that. I have not done a re-write (or, hell, even a re-read) of any of these in like a decade or more so… yikes… But, from what I recall, the first story, Dissidence is the meet-cute, where Byakuya meets Hisana while on a mission. Hisana is a Rukon local working as a host performing tea ceremonies, and Byakuya sort of winds up in a “you broke the thing, now you must buy the thing” situation with Hisana, explaining his decision to marry her. Dimuendo is the middle child, and it chronicles their first year of marriage. Both Dissidence and Dimuendo are pretty fluffy with some light angst. Dolente is like super depressive because… well… death is pretty sad, and it is the final year of their marriage. Would not recommend any of these, and, like Stages, I would probably delete them if not for the sentimental value. [a03]

The Rites of the Dead: It’s a weird story. Technically, it’s a one-shot, but it has a few “movements” that break the story into parts. It has no romance. The subject matter is dark: Hisana is a member of the Fourth and is tasked with preparing the funerary arrangements upon Ginrei’s death. And, I like it? Still. For some strange reason. Sure, there are things that I would go back and fix on a technical level if I were to re-edit it (which I have no plans to do), but the idea of Hisana and Byakuya’s first meeting being on a tragic occasion seems poetic? Also, the idea of a bunch of “dead” people having to mourn and “bury” their dead is so on the nose, that it seems right. I found the wordplay in some parts of this story to be pretty clever. (No one else did.) [ff.net │ a03]

A Suggestion of Marriage: A light fluffy one-shot where Byakuya asks Hisana to marry him. She says, “yes.” Shocker. I know. I do kind of like the backstory for Hisana in this one, which is that of an Academy flunkie who goes on to work at a tea house. I think this is the story where I got the idea to finally take the plunge and make her an oiran; although, she isn’t technically one here. [ff.net │ a03]

Fan Dance: A one-shot where Byakuya and Hisana meet during a sparring match. She is the Lieutenant of the Fourth, Byakuya is the Lieutenant of the Sixth, and they get matched to spar during an event where all the fancy pants Shinigami are supposed to release their zanpakuto for public spectacle. Byakuya gets more than he bargains for when Hisana winds up not being a total powder puff. No hugging or kissing, which seems to be a theme among like half of the one-shots…. [ff.net │ a03]

*On a tangentially-related aside for anyone who comes across this random post and who wants recommendations from an internet rando on actual literature where real, serious authors reframe women who got the short end of the narrative stick, see Wide Sargasso Sea, The Penelopiad, or The Problem with Susan (Jane Eyre, The Odyssey, and the Narnia series, respectively).

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