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Me, an American, looking at current events: ...

Me, turning to look at my fondness for Bleach AUs where the Gotei 13 commits atrocities under Aizen's mind-control but as soon as Aizen dies everyone snaps back into sanity and the Gotei 13 becomes a benevolent and just militaristic force: ...

Me, looking back and forth between these two things: ... Ah. I see.

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I want to share an idea I've been playing with to help cheer you up. An AU I'm working on in between my other works.

At first and foremost, this is entirely a comedic story.

Bleach Time-travel AU. The premise is Ichigo is somehow stuck in Rukongai in the past, a little before TBTP. Here's the rub. He's in an appropriately sized body for a Soul Society dweller his age. AKA. The body of a 8-9 year old. However, Zangetsu is still as big as ever on his back that Ichigo somehow manages to lift and carry around despite it being twice his size.

What is his first meeting with Kaien and the rest?

Well, having managed to convince someone to give him a job. Kaien rocks up with Miyako in tow. They're on a mission, they need a break.

Ichigo spot them through the crowd because Shinigami being out this far in the districts garners attention. Ichigo notes the resemblance, figures this must be Kukaku and Ganju's big brother but remains largely indifferent, trying to keep a low profile.

Unfortunately for Ichigo, an interesting-looking ugly courtesan spots him, stops the resemblance to Kaien, and thinking she's found herself a meal ticket, snatches Ichigo by the wrist and announces loudly that Ichigo is their son. She improvises a story on the spot that Kaien slept with her and they had a kid (ignoring the fact that Ichigo is a ginger and violently protesting that "You're not my mum, fugly!").

Cue Kaien being irritated and slightly mortified because, really? This is how his day starts? In front of his wife of all people?

The courtesan gets shooed off (she's known for pulling this with other shinigami) and cue Ichigo and Kaien kind of having to awkwardly address each other's existence.

"So... are you actually a Shiba?"

"My dad was. Don't worry, I'm not a bastard or anything like that and I'm not looking for acknowledgement either. I just want to pretend THAT didn't happened and we can go back to ignoring each other."

"... We could. Or you could come with us back to the family?"

"Nah, I'm good thanks. I like my peace and quiet."

"Mmm. Yeah, well, tough shit. You're mine now." **kidnaps Ichigo.**

Thank you so much for sharing this!!! I really needed the pick-me-up. I'm going to be imagining all the shenanigans Ichigo is getting up to and all the exasperation Kaien is experiencing for a while, haha. This is a fun one!

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Hey anon! It's up! Thanks for the prompt!

If you want, feel free to harass me in my DMs sometime this Sunday and I’ll write more of this. Or I'll rewrite the snippet, if after some sleep I realize that it could use rewording or elaboration. I likely won’t write more without someone bugging me about it, but if you hit me up on Sunday there’s a good chance I’ll do more.

This was fun to write, really appreciate the idea. Thanks again! :)

Consider time travel but Ichigo sends Urahara back in time

Dang, anon, you're so right about this. You are the proud new inciter of the Uno Reverse AU.

I'm going to spend some time writing a snippet for this and also some bullet-points. Check back in like, 2 hours or so (maybe a little more, it'll def be up by midnight ET) and I'll have added the update to my blog. Wanted to let you know now though that I saw this and am working on it.

Thanks for the idea!

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Have yet another Bleach time travel AU! I dub this one the Uno Reverse AU. Here's the initial prompt I received from a lovely anon: “Consider time travel but Ichigo sends Urahara back in time”

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The thing is. The thing is, if someone acts in the way they always have, in the way you knew they always would, in the way you fell in love with them for, can you be mad at them for it?

Ichigo. First protector. So selfless. So kind. So good. So determined to keep everyone else safe.

Kisuke’s body tells him he has been betrayed. It is in the shock stiffening his limbs, making him clumsy. It is in the way his ears refuse to process the sounds around him, rejecting reality. It is in the way he is shivering despite the heat of midsummer, the way his feet have pressed him into the darkest corner of Yoruichi’s private rooms, the one place where he has never been hurt -

But his brain, oh, his brain, damn himself, tells him that an Ichigo who did not attempt to do what Ichigo just did would not be an Ichigo at all. It is not a betrayal when a positive and negative ion attract each other, nor is it a betrayal when a star circles a black hole. It is just - it is just natural, just the universe going on being the universe.

Betrayal might feel right, but the truth is, it is not that Ichigo committed an offense. No, it is Kisuke’s own fault for hiding away his heart in someone so reckless.

…No.

No, not that.

That makes it sound as if he regrets it, as if to do so were wrong, and nothing could be further from the truth. Kisuke could never regret it, not now, not ever.

It is better, perhaps, to say that it is Kisuke’s fault for not preparing well.

Yes, that is more accurate.

If you do not want a positive and negative ion to attract each other, you keep them separated. If you do not want an Ichigo to lay on a wire to protect someone else, you must keep Ichigo away from any and all wires.

And Kisuke had known only one of them was getting out. There were three of them, at the end - Yhwach and Kisuke’s precious heart and Kisuke himself. Three of them, locked in a guerrilla war that no one could win and no one could give up. Three of them, trapped in a necropolis of a universe where the very fabric of spacetime itself was unstable.

Three of them, and, practically, only room for one to break free. Oh, mathematically, theoretically, two was possible. If you do it at the exact same instant, you can send multiple souls back in time together. But practically speaking, the precision necessary to do so is impossible. And once one soul has been sent back, the universe unravels, resets to where that one soul lands, the rest of it is all a hard-drive wiped blank, and so Ichigo is -

Ichigo is -

- It is best not to go there.

Kisuke knew Ichigo’s learning curve. He should have known Ichigo would have figured out a way.

In the end, Ichigo had used his bankai to send Kisuke’s consciousness back, beating out Kisuke’s own development of a temporal kido array by a matter of entire months.

And so the student surpassed the master, and Kisuke is left alive, and it is not a betrayal, no matter how much it feels like one.

It is just an ion being an ion, and a Kisuke being too slow.

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Things that happen in this AU:

- With the leisure of time and the advantage of a lab not created by scraps in the apocalypse, Kisuke finds a way to snatch Ichigo’s soul from the exact instant he himself was sent back.

- Before Kisuke realizes he can do this, he goes through three arcs:

       1) He goes a little emotionless from the thought that he will never see his Ichigo - the one that knows everything they’ve been through together - ever again. (He’s not actually a psychopath, but, uh, it’s not exactly ideal for his enemies when he voluntarily shuts off his own empathy because being a feeling person hurts too much.)

       2) He goes a little mad trying to convince himself that this new timeline’s Ichigo will be, in essence, the same as the one he lost. He also goes a little mad knowing that he has to wait 100+ years for Ichigo to even be born. (He’s onmitsukido-trained, he can totally wait...)

       3) He goes a little evil-scientist-with-no-boundaries trying to figure out ways to make it so Ichigo is born earlier.

- Fortunately, Tessai intervenes before anything irreversible is done and gives Kisuke a pep talk. He also gives Kisuke about 200 pages worth of notes on temporal kido arrays that provide the foundation for getting Kisuke’s Ichigo back.

- In every universe, Tessai and Yoruichi will be in the set of Kisuke’s Most Important People. In every universe, they fully deserve to be in that set.

- Before Kisuke retrieves Ichigo, he deals with Aizen, Yhwach, and a handful of other threats that Ichigo doesn’t deserve to have to think about. This may or may not happen during Arc 1, when Kisuke is an absolute monster to people he has reason to turn Benihime against.

- Ichigo arrives in Soul Society in an explosion in the outer Rukongai. (Kisuke didn’t quite get the physical location correct, but considering the difficulty of getting the temporal location correct, he can be excused for it.)

- The 13th division is sent to investigate the explosion. Kaien finds Ichigo and press-gangs him into joining the Shiba clan. Ichigo is so obviously related he doesn’t get the chance to protest.

- Ichigo pleads amnesia about his past. Absolutely no one believes him, but no one presses, either - yet.

- Ichigo joins the Court Guard Squads under Shinji.

- Some of the Captains and Lieutenants of the Court Guard start to act a little strange…

- (The Visored share a mental connection, and Ichigo’s presence snaps that bond back into place. Literally no one realizes this until the Visored start to slowly become, uh, visored. At which point, Kisuke is like, oops, too late to fix that, oh well!)

- Yoruichi, through some insane and brilliant political maneuvering that can’t be traced back to her, forces the Shihouin and Shiba clan into arranging a marriage between Kisuke and Ichigo.

- Kaien only goes along with the arranged marriage because he thinks Ichigo and Kisuke were the ones who orchestrated it all in the first place. He’s not sure how he feels about Ichigo and Kisuke being together, but they’re so obviously gone on each other he couldn’t dream of becoming an obstacle between them.

- There is a weekend, right after Ichigo first arrives, in which Kisuke, ahem, takes Ichigo to an isolated location and demonstrates his displeasure at being separated. Ichigo enjoys the demonstration very much, but he also comes out of it very bruised.

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Consider time travel but Ichigo sends Urahara back in time

Dang, anon, you're so right about this. You are the proud new inciter of the Uno Reverse AU.

I'm going to spend some time writing a snippet for this and also some bullet-points. Check back in like, 2 hours or so (maybe a little more, it'll def be up by midnight ET) and I'll have added the update to my blog. Wanted to let you know now though that I saw this and am working on it.

Thanks for the idea!

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If there's something specific you want me to write send me an ask or put something in the notes here and I'll knock out a few paragraphs - or give elaborate bullet points - on it.

I have had an exceptionally difficult week, am coming up on about a month off of my main circus discipline due to an injury, and am missing my friends terribly. I am also not completely sober right now. So I am bored, want a distraction, and am pretty dang suggestible. Hit me up with a prompt and I'll see what I can do. Go wild.

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Love your timetravel aus, made me make my own

I know you sent this to me ages ago - I don't know how long, but it's at minimum been many months. I let my inbox fill up without looking at it because I was super busy and VERY low on spoons. But I just had to come back and say that this is the best thing someone could tell me. I'm glad you liked the aus, and I am SO SO happy you made your own. Hell yeah. Fandom is the best when we all play in the sandbox together. Drop me a link if you've got them posted somewhere!

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Have a dialogue snippet from the Lies to Send You Home AU (where Urahara tricks Ichigo into seeking out the Shiba family). This is during the second part, after Aizen is dead, Ichigo has told Kaien about a good chunk of the future, and Kaien is coming to the horrendous realization that Urahara would actually be an excellent addition to the family.

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“Oh, gods,” Kaien says, despairing, as the universe’s greatest jape yet becomes clear to him. Urahara is a genius among genii, an intelligence the likes of which Soul Society will not see twice. But at the end of the day, in a plot twist Kaien could have really done without — “You’re as stupid as Ichigo.”

Urahara sets his brush down and leans back. Kaien finally finds himself holding the attention of the captain. It does not feel like a victory. Urahara’s face moves into an unsettling smile, his eyes blank and the corners of his mouth stretched just slightly too wide. It is the movement of a monster mimicking something it does not understand but has seen others do; a predator camouflaging itself to get close to prey.

Kaien considers how much practice Urahara must have in controlling his facial expressions and body language, and wonders how any of them ever fell for it, the psychopath-facade of his. If Urahara actually were what he pretended to be, no one but Captain Shihouin would have been able to pick up on it - he certainty wouldn’t have been showing his true colors so blatantly.

(A thought for later, Kaien thinks. Why does someone destroy their own reputation? Certainly not for selfish reasons.)

“My, my, Lord Shiba, such harsh words for your cousin.” Urahara’s voice is plainly mocking. “Could it be that the Shiba’s newest pride and joy is as bad at kido as the rumors say?” He tilts his head, smiling still.

Two weeks ago, Kaien would have bought that Urahara was trying to rile him up, embarrass him, and make him angry — and all for the game of it, too.

But Ichigo gave away more than he thinks he did, when telling Kaien of the future. And that precious knowledge has taught Kaien to look harder, peer deeper, when dealing with the Captain of the 12th.

And so Kaien sees, now, plain as day, that Urahara is taking the opportunity to test Kaien, trying to suss out if the Shiba clan is as nice as their reputation would have people believe they are.

Kaien gets it, he really does, especially considering which clan Urahara grew up in the tender care of.

Kaien wonders how long Urahara has worried about this, if Ichigo is being treated right behind closed doors - if the Shiba have been cruel to Ichigo for his lack of talent in the bloodline kido, or for the way he so obviously wasn’t raised a noble, or for one of the other thousand things the Shihouin clan would have made Ichigo’s life a living hell for.

Urahara’s eyes are intent, studying Kaien’s every minute movement. Kaien wonders what would have happened to him if the words had struck a nerve, if he had given any indication that he was embarrassed by Ichigo. Violent food poisoning, at least.

(It does not escape Kaien’s notice that when Urahara missed the affection in Kaien’s complaint — they’ll have to work on that, Urahara will be eaten alive by the clan kids if he doesn’t learn how to tease — Urahara only came to the defense of Ichigo, completely ignoring that Kaien’s comment was mostly aimed at himself.

Exactly the same type of stupid as Ichigo. Fuck.)

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the faw I just guffed

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The thing they don't tell you about circus is the psychic damage that comes from accidentally saying an idiom literally.

I was practicing juggling and lost tempo, and thought to myself, "I have too many balls in the air." Instant failure on an intelligence saving throw, got slammed by 2d6 mental damage.

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Have a Bleach snippet from a world where Urahara has empathy but it doesn't stop him from doing what's necessary, Aizen is an apocalyptic threat, Ichigo is a girl because reasons, and Ururu is a rescue from a Central 46 lab.

Also this snippet is kind of predicated on the assumption that Urahara is responsible for Ichigo turning out as an utter science experiment of a person. (If you know me IRL, you have all my disclaimers.) ______________

Kisuke's throat tightens and his eyes start to burn.

He looks away from the baby, up at the blank wall of the clinic. He forces his expression to go neutral.

It takes longer than it should, for someone raised in the Shihouin household.

In and out, even and quiet, he breathes. The little girl in his arms breathes, too. He can feel her little rib cage expand and contract in his arms, can hear her soft exhales.

He tunes it out, and grows ice in his heart.

When he has regained himself, he looks back down.

This little girl, he decides — she does not need to be lied to just yet. He will make it clear, in this moment, hidden in the shadows of a clinic no human may enter, that he is her enemy, and she is not safe with him.

“I am going to make you hurt yourself very badly, one day,” he confesses softly, cradling her. “I am going to twist you up so horribly that you will volunteer to destroy your own soul. And then you will experience agony beyond what any being was meant to endure, and then you will die.”

In his arms, she stays sleeping.

More words push at the back of his mouth, the specifics of it all, the worst of the crimes he will commit against her. He has never had the urge to tell a target his plans, before, but he finds it difficult to not do so, now.

He bites it all back, swallows it all down.

He lowers her, slowly, back down into her crib. Before he pulls his hands back, he finds himself rubbing his thumb across her forehead, and then brushing her tiny little cheek with the back of a finger.

He crouches so that he is on her level, looking at her through the bars of the crib. “If you ever see me, little one,” he breathes out, “run, and do not look back.”

And then he stands up and leaves.

He does not make it back to the Shoten before he breaks. The warmth of her against his chest, the slight pressure of her in his arms as he held her, it all stays with him — a phantom that his brain cannot let go of.

It reminds him of the first time he held Ururu, carrying her away from the monsters who had abused her. Rescuing her from the facility where she was seen only as a weapon, not as the child she was, not as a scared and hurting little girl who needed help.

The parallels are impossible to not see.

Without consciously deciding to do so, he finds himself in a liquor store. He takes three bottles of soju and leaves without paying. He does not permit the humans to notice him.

Human alcohol cannot kill shinigami, and he does not want to be awake to the world any longer. So he stops, right in the middle of the street, invisible to all who would see his shame, and he slices off the tops of the bottles.

A quick flash of power from Benihime, severing glass from glass, and then he is drinking - drinking like a dying man drinking water in the desert: quickly and without regard for the damage too much can do.

Six minutes find every drop gone.

Before it hits, he shunpos back to the shop, seals himself in his room, and lies down to suffer. _____

He wakes up to cat fangs in his ear.

He hisses, and the noise hurts.

A second later, he starts registering input from his nose, and is promptly assaulted by the stench of sweat and vomit. He can dimly feel both fluids seeped into his shirt, sticking to his skin.

He cracks his eyes open. The light coming through the window feels like daggers stabbed into the meat of his brain. He closes them again instantly.

The cat fangs retreat, now that he has proven he is awake and not dead. Yoruichi says, “The name.” She is angry, and before she continues, Kisuke assumes she is angry at him.

“It’s Kurosaki Ichigo,” she continues.

It takes a moment for it to register.

Ichigo. First protector.

First to protect, and thus never to be protected by others.

First to risk herself. First to the thick of the fighting. First to die.

In essence, Shiba Isshin and Kurosaki Masaki have named their infant child self-sacrifice.

His response comes like sap, slow and sticking in his throat. “There was a time, not too long ago,” he croaks out, “that we would have killed someone for that.”

His mind flashes back to what it felt like to hold Ichigo — Ichigo, gods, they are all going to hell — and then back to what it felt like to meet Ururu, and what they did to protect Ururu, and what they needed to protect Ururu from, and what they are planning on doing to Ichigo — and he starts to laugh.

It hurts. The sound, the movement, the air in his throat. The being awake. But he can’t stop.

Yoruichi’s head butts under his chin. Her tiny skull is a source of gentle pressure, of muted warmth.

The small comfort cracks him straight through, and he rolls over to hide his face in her fur, crying. _________________ … And then a decade and some years later Ichigo sits Kisuke down to lecture him on the Trolley Problem. She goes on a long rant about how pulling the lever doesn’t make him guilty for the trolley existing in the first place, and also how she would have been pissed if he hadn't pulled the lever considering that a good chunk of existence and her sisters were on the opposite track, and also can he stop acting guilty for figuring out how to save the world, please.

The lecture doesn't exactly stick, but that's okay, she can repeat it whenever necessary, on account of the fact that the world didn't end because the plan worked.

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The sheer number of Gaza scam asks I've been getting is driving me nuts. Like, seriously? Taking advantage of a literal, active genocide to scam people?

Or, sorry, am I actually supposed to believe that people living in a warzone with no access to electricity somehow have an active tumblr?

sigh

I suppose Tumblr wouldn't really be our dear hellsite if it didn't have a spam bot problem. Gotta keep the rent low somehow.

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Anyway if you see this you have to reblog and tag with a delight from ur day -- even the littlest thing counts

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me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU

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I am reading through the leaked gc for the first time, and.

Uh.

There's a lot to unpack there but this made me spit-take.

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What if aliens managed to translate our languages and learned what we name our rovers and probes. Curiosity. Hope. Perseverance. Opportunity. Voyager. New Horizons. These names reflect what the best of us value - what humanity, when it is accomplishing its most impossible, holds dear.

Talk about a first impression!

Funnily enough, when they first meet past the edges of the Sol system, the aliens like the humans.

None of the humans were prepared for this.

The humans prepared for decades- for centuries! to contact life out in the black, and be judged harshly for their past.

The aliens, almost to the one, seemed delighted with humanity and everything they entailed. Good, bad, and ugly.

“You see, we heard you calling out for long, long, long… we could not find where you called out from. Now we have! You called for so long, and now we meet you! It is good to know you! We have tried so hard to find you and say, Hello!”

The messages Earth sent out, just in case there was anyone out there to hear, to extend reassurance that they simply were not alone was received always with delight. And they sparked a soft race to find the origin of such a kind and curious signal into the vastness of the universe.

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What they don't tell you about blanket forts is the older you get, the better you get at building them.

I built a massive blanket fort with six old college friends. We all fit under it - six adults! - and just spent a few hours inside talking. 10/10 experience. Never let them trick you into thinking you're too old for something.