100 of My Fandoms
12. Bleach



Oooohh, Bleach. Bleach was my big fandom for a very long time. After Naruto's popularity began to wane, Bleach was the my friends' and my fandom of choice. And like with Naruto, we all had our own dudes from it. Rekka had Aizen (the non-glasses one, for reasons I could never understand), Shad had Grimmjow, Usa-chan had Ulquiorra and Hanatarou, other people probably had other dudes, and I had Szayel. Oh, Szayel. ♥ He was actually how I got into Bleach in the first place. I'd known about its existence, and I'd read the first couple chapters when they were published in Shonen Jump wayyy back in seventh grade or so, but I didn't have a personal interest until Usa-chan sent me a picture of Szayel. This one, as it happened. She knew my type. :B (That, incidentally, is where the name "SPHFWLKaiB" (pronounced spiffle-cabe) came from, because I decided "Szayel Aporro Granz" was too hard to spell. It stands for "Sexy Pink-Haired Fellow Who Licks Knives and is Bespectacled", and was my friends' and my main way of referring to him for basically our entire time in the fandom. c:)

Even after that, I didn't become seriously into the fandom until my parents got me one of the DS games (Blade of Fate) for Chanukah in tenth grade. Luckily, this game happened to cover most of the anime's plot in its story mode, bringing me up to speed on the story/characters up to that point and also giving me a crush on every boy. Luckily, I made a list of the guys I was crushing on in my paper journal at the time, which is here replicated in full: Szayel, Ilforte (screw the canon spellings btw I have common sense), Nnoitra (if he keeps his mouth closed), Ulquiorra, Gin, Aizen with glasses, Renji with his hair down, Byakuya, Ukitake, Urahara, Uryuu, Mayuri with his facepaint off, Ichigo's profile, and Grimmjow, sort of. When we played Shattered Blade (more on the later) I also got to add Arturo Plateado to the list, and then at some point later I also realized Tousen was a gigantic hottie so let's stick him in there too shall we. :B

So after this I began to fangirl in earnest, a fangirling which lasted through a great deal of my high school experience, and which produced many fond memories. I remember how Usa-chan and I talked about Bleach a lot in tenth grade geometry because we sat next to each other, and how the ever-present equivalence of Bleach characters with numbers inspired us to come up with the 4/6/8 threesome. I remember capslock_bleach, our fandom hangout of choice, and its many memes (Taco Aizen, Bancouch, Jesusjaques vs. Szayelchrist), and how Usa-chan's Shakespeare-themed Macro Thursday inspired me to create my first macros ever. (And I can't bring up CL_B without mentioning Morita B Station, which I miss greatly.) I remember how at Anime Boston '08 I bought volume 31 of Bleach (the one with Szayel on the cover) and carried it around at school with me for the rest of the school year. It got pretty beat up. @_@

Also I can not forget the high school AU I came up with! I actually wrote the beginnings of a fic for this, though like all of my very few fics it was never completed. Basic points: Aizen is the new kid and is really short; he organizes the misfit losers (the Arrancar) into a club with him as their leader; Gin is gay, and he and Aizen spend the whole time figuring out they're in love with each other; also Szayel develops a crush on Mayuri after he grows his hair long over the summer and really, really hates himself for it (this was what the fic dealt with). Also Ilforte has a ponytail.

Okay no I am not done with the nostalgia, this is the last one and it is important to me okay. I've got Bleach to thank for what was probably the best birthday party I've ever had: my sixteenth, when I'd only recently been catapulted headlong into the fandom. I actually invited my friends over for once, we went to a local restaurant for trivia night and had a blast (team name: SPHFWLKaiB, which the host had to shorten to "SPH"), we had a cake with Szayel on it (promptly dubbed "SPHFWLcake"), and we stayed up plying the Bleach and Naruto fighting games until 5 in the morning, when my dad woke up and made us all got to sleep. It was awesome. I love you guys, guys. ♥

Now I am done with the nostalgia part. Anyway, Bleach got kind of dumb after some time and I fell out of it (ongoing lack of Szayel didn't help), but it was pretty good stuff for a while there. I'm not going to say it had the deepest storyline ever or anything like that, but it didn't have to. It was shounen action fluff, and hey, I liked it. Plus, it was basically the poster boy for Loads and Loads of Characters (we're talking over 250, apparently), and we all know how I'm a sucker for those. Also, if Kubo were to start a clothing line after Bleach ended, I'd totally buy all his stuff. That man can fashion.

Hottest guy: Szayel, Szayel, Szayel. Even out of that huge long list of dudes up there, Szayel still comes out on top. He wears glasses, has longish pink hair, does science, can voodoo control other people, is ambiguously gay (I see him as pan/omni), is effeminate but still dudely, is sexy and he knows it. There was really no way he wouldn't be my favorite. Also I took it really hard when he died. I guess I knew it was going to happen eventually, but that didn't make me curse Mayuri's name any less. :(

Hottest girl: The criminally underremembered Mira/Mila Rose. I've seen about four pieces of fanart of this fine, fine woman, and they all seem to depict her as a twig. She's got some meat on them bones, people. Also, she has one sexy English voice. Unffff.

OTP: Pesche/Momo, aka Peachshipping, because at some point Usa-chan realized that their names meant the same thing and we never looked back. Non-crack OTP is Gin/Aizen, and some other less cracky ships would be (deep breath) Szayel/Ilforte, Szayel/Mayuri, Szayel/Cirucci, Ulquiorra/Grimmjow/Szayel, Gin/Tousen, Gin/Kira, Ukitake/Shunsui, Ichigo/Keigo, Keigo/Chizuru, Orihime/Tatsuki, Ichigo/Rukia/Orihime... And this isn't even getting into the crossover ships, mind. But you'll have to wait till the Digimon post for the big one there.

My friends' and my (mostly my) nicknames for characters:
Szayel: SPHFWLKaiB
Ulquiorra: Cubone, Emo German
Grimmjow: Dr. Pointy Hairs, Jaromír Jágr
Wonderweiss: Wonderwall, Wonderball, Wonderboy, Wonderbread, Wonder Woman
(They didn't make much sense to us either.)