#Spoilers because its based on the 3rd descender

[luxu-loveskh]

A sacrifice to quench the thirst ofthe world

May the 3rds remnants be of use to this world

Alt version:The lies

[recurring-polynya]

Hi Polynya! I’m curious and in the spirit of Ginrei’s birthday, what do you think are his opinions of Rukia and Renji separately and together?

Ha ha, this is such a simple and straightforward question and my answer is going to be so long and so complicated and have almost nothing to do with Rukia and Renji because Ginrei's feelings toward Rukia and Renji have almost nothing to do with Rukia and Renji.

So, I want to start out by saying that Ginrei is a lot like Hisana in the sense that he's a canon character, we get the idea of him and what he's there for, but there's no actual characterization of him, which gives fanfic writers a tremendous amount of leeway to do whatever they want with him. I'm not going to try to justify anything I say here, it's just my ideas and how it goes in my fanfiction. I love it whenever a writer tries to take on the Kuchiki clan and I'm always interested to see what other people's takes are, even when they vary wildly from my own.

I love the fact that "Kuchiki" means "dead tree." We meet Rukia first, and it's sort of a delightfully spoopy name, very appropriate for this salty, overdramatic, grim reaper girl, but it takes on additional meaning when we meet Byakuya, the noble and powerful scion of a dying house.

The thing that makes Ginrei interesting as a character to me is that he is the one who ruled over his house as it fell. I tend to regard filler episodes as semi-canon, so I like the idea of Kouga, even if I don't want to acknowledge the rest of the Zanpakutou Rebellion shenanigans. I think that the main line of the Kuchiki was already running a little thin, Soujun's health was a big concern, and so they marry in this guy who is a scholar and a powerful shinigami. They never say what Kouga's previous social status was, but given that they emphasize what an accomplished dude he is, I think he was chosen for his skills, not his lineage, to strengthen the Kuchiki bloodline, except it backfires. Then Soujun dies, too, a few years later.

Ginrei strikes me as the type of leader who thinks he can control everything. He manages his clan with an iron fist. He is pragmatic, not sentimental. He’s not bad or mean, but he can see that he does not have a lot of room for missteps, and he takes his role very, very seriously. Despite this, he’s lost the generation under him, and all that he has left is Byakuya. There are cousins and branch families, but to the pride of the Kuchiki is its main line, descended from great generals and heroes and the very founders of Soul Society. Byakuya, in a lot of ways, hearkens back to the great Kuchiki of old, and Ginrei sees that he has the potential to reclaim the power and glory of his house. He’s hard on Byakuya and has high expectations for him. Ginrei loved his son and he loves his grandson, but after Soujun’s death, he often wonders if he was too soft on him because of his health, if Soujun would have lived if Ginrei had just expected more of him. Byakuya is the last hope of the Kuchiki and Ginrei knows he can achieve great things, and Ginrei is determined to do everything in his power to make sure Byakuya achieves his full potential.

And some ways, Byakuya is the perfect Kuchiki. He’s strong and he’s hard-working. He’s principled. He’s working on his self-control, and he’s very good at when it comes, to say, sword practice, he’s just not so good at in when it comes to interpersonal relations, but he’s coming along. Then he meets Hisana.

Hisana is absolutely unacceptable to Ginrei. Byakuya needs a marriage with a woman with strong spiritual pressure and a noble lineage so that he can gain some alliances from the marriage and then she can pop out some strapping young heirs while also managing his social life for him, just like Ginrei’s wife did for him. Hisana obviously isn’t going to check any of these boxes.

I headcanon Byakuya as demisexual, in the sense that he doesn’t experience sexual attraction very often, and if he does, it’s only to someone he’s already got strong feelings for. He was sort of okay with the vague idea of marrying someone for the purposes of procreating until he met Hisana and realized how much that would pale in comparison to actually being married to the love of his life.

Up until this point, Byakuya has had some minor rebellions against Ginrei, but they’ve never really gone at it, but this is one time that Byakuya stands firm. Ginrei is super-pissed. He lets Byakuya marry her because he figures she’s going to die soon anyway, but he’s mad about it. He never comes around to Hisana and he’s mean to her and this is really the nadir of Byakuya and Ginrei’s relationship.

Finally, we are getting around to what you asked. Hisana dies and Ginrei softens a little toward Byakuya in his grief. He retires and turns the clan and Squad 6 over to B, hoping it will be a distraction and that Byakuya will finally turn his focus over to what matters. This seems to be going well for about one year and then BAM! Byakuya acquires an orphan.

I am guessing that Ginrei didn’t know about Byakuya’s promise to Hisana to take care of Rukia, but even so, I think if you asked him, he would have regarded Byakuya’s duty to his clan and promise to his parents as more important. It’s not that Ginrei isn’t an honorable man, it’s that his concept of honor doesn’t necessarily extend to a dead peasant in comparison the Noble and Ancient House of Kuchiki. So Byakuya adopts Rukia and Ginrei’s immediate reaction is panic. What is Byakuya doing? Is he going to marry this girl? Is he going to name her his Heir? Has he cracked? And it turns out to be none of those things, he’s just going to keep her around as this sad ghost that haunts his house, but Ginrei’s initial reaction toward Rukia is that of interloper. He thought this Hisana nonsense was overwith, but no, we’re still doing this.

When Ginrei first meets Rukia, she is in her overwhelmed, lonely stage of first becoming a Kuchiki. Ginrei also criticizes her for being small and meek and basically useless. She’s a mediocre shinigami. She’s not beautiful or talented, so Byakuya can’t even marry her off for political gain. The real issue, though is that Rukia is just emblematic of the fact that Byakuya doesn’t intend to move past his grief and remarry. He works his ass off as Captain and Clan Head, but other than that, he’s just gonna be a sad widower and sit in his big house and write letters to his dead wife and the Kuchiki are going to die off. There is really nothing Rukia could do, no way she could be different that Ginrei would approve of, because it was never really about her in the first place.

Fast forward a few years, and now we come to Renji. I also headcanon that in his retirement, Ginrei has moved out to a scenic portion of Rukongai, so he doesn’t interact with Byakuya much on a day-to-day basis, but he hears stuff through other family members that come out to visit him. He’s never actually met Renji, all he knows is that Shirogane retired, and Byakuya hired some tattooed goon from Squad 11 instead of one of the dozens of Kuchiki cousins that are lying around. In my fanfic Call Me Back When the War is Over, Byakuya explains to one of his aunts that the reason he did this was because he didn’t have a relative who was capable of passing the Lieutenant’s Exam. She replies that he just should have pulled some strings so that someone (preferably her own son) could pass, assuming it’s a mere formality. Now this is exactly what Ginrei would have done. This is a problem, though: it involves choosing sides. I’ve got the top seats of Squad 6 set up as follows:

- 3rd Seat Ohno is the Heir to the most powerful Kuchiki branch family. His father is arguably the next in line for Clan Head, based on power terms - 4th Seat Kuchiki Choei is an actual Kuchiki, but he’s a younger son and he’s a clown, meaning that he got bored standing in line for Clan Head and wandered around the corner to vape - 5th Seat Kuchiki Takehiko is the actual closest of Byakuya’s relatives to him, and is arguably the next in line for Clan Head, strictly on family line terms

Pulling strings to help any of these three become the next lieutenant would be a very political move on B’s part, tantamount to anointing his successor. Ginrei assumes that B picked an outsider for the purposes of recusing, of saying “I shall simply refuse to die and remain Clan Head myself, forever’, with the addition fuck you of picking the Actual Worst Person Byakuya Could Find for the job, instead.

This really isn’t the case at all, it is literally that Byakuya feels that you shouldn’t be a lieutenant if you can’t pass the exam. He’s basically a rule-follower, and also it’s a good rule, and also his dad died as a lieutenant and I think he thinks a lot about how that could have been avoided through actions, whereas Ginrei tends to think of it more of a thing that could have been avoided if Soujun was better.

So, that gets us up to the beginning of canon. I am (in theory) working on a fanfic that takes place in the 17-mo timeskip where Ginrei comes to visit and actually gets to know Rukia and Renji and (spoiler alert, but is anyone really surprised) he ends up liking both of them a lot. Part of it is just Ginrei has chilled out somewhat in his retirement and realized that it’s okay to have parts of your life that are not completely devoted to the Good of the Clan. Part of it is that Ginrei loves Competence and Rukia and Renji are so, so competent. Part of it is that Byakuya is obviously doing a lot better than he was, and it’s just really obvious why. Like I said, Ginrei does and always has loved Byakuya, he just wants what’s best for him. It’s just that if there is one thing Kuchiki are terrible at, it’s expressing their love for one another in a positive and healthy way.

As to Ginrei’s feelings about Renruki as a ship, he’s for it, actually. Conniving family members have been trying to marry Rukia for years in hopes of getting an in with Byakuya, and I’m sure they’re setting their sights on Renji, now, too. Ginrei likes them well enough, but he can imagine what a shitshow this could turn out to be, and he finds it very convenient if they were to just marry each other.

I’m rather fond of the idea of Byakuya appointing them as a branch family to the Kuchiki, because I’m not super keen on them going full-Kuchiki if Renji married in, but I think Byakuya would be upset if Rukia married out and he wasn’t able to provide her with the lavish lifestyle he thinks she needs (she does not). It’s a nice compromise that lets them be a part of the family, but out of the limelight. In any case, I think that was Ginrei’s idea, thanks Granddad!

[well-wail-whale]

God Emperor of Dune Summary + Review: Why the Sci-fi Classic Series Stagnates With Its 4th Book

It’s been a while since I read a Dune book. I stopped reading the series after Children of Dune, the concluding book in the original Dune trilogy. I loved the series, but felt a drop in quality after Dune Messiah and the drop continues with God Emperor of Dune. SPOILERS GUARANTEED BELOW. 

First of all, the 4th book takes place 3,500 years after the events of the 3rd book. In addition to that, book three kind of jumped the shark based on what I’ve been used to with the Dune.

Throughout the entire three books we were exposed to all types of science fiction concepts, light speed travel, prescience, cloning, giant sandworms, a spice that controls the known universe, and a toddler with the memories of her ancestors that acts like an adult.

But with Children of Dune we were introduced to the young child Leto II squishing sandtrouts onto his skin until it covered his whole body. The squished sandtrout morphed him into a super human with the ability to leap across dunes at high velocity with enhanced strength. This is the point of decline for the series for me.

Leto II also has the memories of all his ancestors unlocked through a series of events which allowed him to take power away from his now corrupted aunt, Alia, establishing himself as the eternal leader of the Atreides empire.

He enacted a plan called “The Golden Path” that would ensure humanity’s survival throughout time. His plan spans more than 3,500 years and with God Emperor of Dune we get a glimpse of the final year of Leto II’s reign. Since the 4th book took place 3,500 years into the future it was hard to overlook the lack of detail about the universe Frank Herbert brought us into. Herbert had always been great at describing the landscape, the people, the institution, and the world that Dune takes place in. However God Emperor of Dune is the opposite of the usual Herbert. A majority of it takes place in dialogues with less and less descriptions of the world. It’s upsetting that he’d make us fall in love with Dune, jump us 3,500 years, and give us scraps of the future Dune world. On top of that, all the main characters of the past are dead except for Leto II (I forgot to mention that he’s kind of immortal and survived all those 3,500 years) and the million clones of Duncan Idaho that Leto II had manufactured to breed the Atreides and Idaho blood together.  So with the 4th book we’re starting off fresh with Leto II, whose become a god character with little physical and intellectual flaws, leading humanity into a new era. It sounds better than it reads. The actual movements of the book are about Duncan dealing with Leto II’s questionable rule and Siona, an Atreides descendant also rebelling against Leto II’s empire.

So this puts the plot at a terrible place. We have Leto II as an infallible, but intriguing character. He’s enamored by an Ixian ambassador (who was manufactured to charm Leto II). The romance feels forced and Hwi herself is a flawless character but understanding of the crushing isolation that Leto II has dealt with since he’s set humanity on the Golden Path. 

Hwi also falls in love and charms Duncan and they later have an affair that Leto II finds out about. There’s no real punishment for this for either Duncan or Hwi. Hwi makes it known to Leto II that she still has physical urges that Duncan can not satisfy. Leto, after 3,500 years, has slowly turned into the primordial form of a sandworm. He is gigantic in size compared to humans and has lost all his human organs and shape except for his face. Since he has no genitalia, he can’t satisfy Hwi even though they’re due to be married.

Since Leto II is all knowing of the future, few things are able to happen outside of his knowledge. Along with his psychic-like ability to read human emotions, he’s practically omniscient. Except his enemies create a device that prevents him from seeing their actions and that he’s bred his lineage to become invulnerable to prescience. The culmination of his own breeding program is Siona.

Siona is a rebel and enacts violent action within Leto II’s kingdom that he allows because he knows she’s the future of humanity. By creating a breed of human that is immune to prescient visions, he saves humanity from self-destruction. Except the way the story plays out is deadpan.

Leto II is boring because he’s a flawless character. There’s little emotion that can be related with him. Herbert does a good job of letting us see his loneliness caused by his devotion to the golden path but it’s not something that carries the novel. Leto II gives us the Herbert classic of lengthy political and religious dialogue, pondering humanity’s place in the universe, but that gets repetitive after 400 pages. This style of dialogue has gotten tiresome since we’ve seen it for four straight books now. We’re kept in the dark with Leto II’s plan until the end.

Duncan is the best of the cast because he’s been cloned for thousands of years. However his memory goes as far as his initial death in the first book, meaning he always has to be reintroduced into the world. His cloning is done without his own permission and he’s forced to play apart in Leto II’s plans. Duncan is the closest we get to a true protagonist because of the tragic manipulation of his life.  He carries a hardy allegiance with the Atreides but soon finds out that Leto II is not governing like a true Atreides would. His disagreement with Leto II leads him on a quest to assassinate the God Emperor worm with the help of Siona. It wouldn’t be the first time Duncan tries to kill the emperor either which is how his previous clones have died.

Siona is a new Paul Atreides. She’s the capable, rebellious, and the resilient leader against Leto II. She understands how Leto II has put the universe into a box and hindered everyone’s freedom through his governance. Leto II allows her to play a role in the rebellion because she’s the key to the future. Through coercive measures, Leto II finds a way to make Siona try the spice and she experiences the Golden Path. Siona, convinced of his path, joins him as the commander of his military army known as Fish Speakers (who are all women). 

Duncan and Siona never suffer. No one really suffers throughout this story which is why it plays so slow and dragging. We don’t feel any urgency in the story because of the way Herbert structured it. Threats feel small because of the omniscience of Leto II. 

What obstacles does Duncan face? Trying to understand Leto II’s plan for the most part. He has no solid objective in front of him because he’s confused for a majority of the story. It’s not until the end that when he teams up with Siona that we see him form a plan and get excited to see it flourish or fail.

Siona is similar. While she does have an obstacle, which would be defeating Leto II it’s never expressed through her lens. All we see is how Leto II crushes her revolts and prepares her for his trial that leads to her consuming the spice. We don’t see her making an individual plan until the very end with Duncan. 

The ending assassination involves Siona and Duncan betraying Leto II’s trust that Leto is either unable to foresee or allows to happen as part of his grand plan. In the process they kill his to-be wife, Hwi, and drown Leto II in water which is now a poison to him because of his sandworm body. It turns out to be the best part of the novel because it gives us Siona and Duncan taking agency for once from beginning to end and getting the result of Leto II’s demise.

However the ending isn’t enough to make up for the event-less and shallow feeling that the entire book gives me. The novel raises plenty of philosophical messages as it strays away from ecological focus that the first three Dune books are known for. 

And that’s another magical factor that is now lost in the series. It’s no longer about terraforming the planet and helping the Fremen survive. It’s about helping humanity survive. By expanding the breadth of House Atreides’ goal and removing the ecological interest in Dune, we get less than before.

I can’t feel for the struggle of humanity’s survival as I did with the Fremen survival in the first trilogy. I got to know the Fremen up close through the eyes of Paul which made me care in the first place. Herbet’s book is a fantastic take on humanity’s longevity as a race, but it doesn’t give me a reason to care. Since the novel unfolds through the all-seeing eyes of Leto II, readers become observers rather than participants. The story develops through conversations 90% of the time and, even with Herbert’s philosophically juicy dialogue, it leaves me of more substance.

Do I love the world and politics? Yes. Do I love/hate the characters of Dune?No. I feel indifferent to most of them aside from the Han Solo-esque Duncan Idaho and that means that Herbert failed to give captivating characters to drive the story.

I don’t know if I’ll read the 5th or 6th book. Those book enter into a different plot arc than did the first four. I’ll likely just read other works by Herbert because for me the series has taken a fall that it can’t recover from.