Fannish Appreciation
May. 6th, 2026 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseI've been in Bleach fandom since at least 2012 (a date easily checked because that's when I started my AO3 account.) And, you do not need to immediately comment that you've never read Bleach. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to most people. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anime or manga fans, either! For whatever reason, Bleach just happened to be the thing for me that hit me in the right place at the right time. I felt 15 years old again, absolutely caught up in something that I felt desperate to share with other people. That feeling is probably familiar to you, my nerdy friends. So, as I talk, just imagine Your Thing anytime I say Bleach.
I've been really lucky that, over the years, I've had other Bleach fans gift me things. People have written stories for me, people have drawn amazing art for me, and
opalsong even podcast one of my fics ("Hey, Opalsong, if you like Free! you should read my Bleach x Free! crossover," I say for the nineteenth time before I remember that YOU PODCASTED it.) There are so many things people have offered me as part of this fandom that I will cherish forever, but until recently no one has ever offered to share a amateur bound book of my work with me.Behold!
Image: a fan bound book with the title "Academy Blues" by TSP Bindery. (https://www.tiktok.com/@tsp.bindery).
This volume actually contains two of my multi-chapter fics. First,"Forever With You Never Sounded So Stupid"and "Academy Blues." Not than most of you care, but both of these fics are part of my emotional process of recovering after the absolutely stupid, rushed ending of the official Bleach manga. I will not get into it (in part because if I start ranting, I will not stop), but suffice to say this is a fix-it that, in my own personal head, is now canon. I literally note which panel to stop reading, because my story perfectly fits canon up to that point. I also actually include a lot of the information gleaned from the official light novels that Shounen Jump commissioned to also try to actually fix the mess Kubo Tite left behind.
Anyway, the cover isn't all that exciting, honestly. But wait until you see the interior....
Interior chapter start, this one featuring Renji from Bleach....
And a second one,
Image: featuring a bone tree from a part of the Bleach universe known as Hueco Mundo, the Hollow World
Also scatterred throughout are some bits of a manga-style comicbook that aysmiro drew and shared with me, while I was writing this particular set of fics. As I was telling a friend, the pieces of this fan manga are so important to me that I've desperately been saving it on various digital back-ups for years. Now, thanks to this fan project, I have high quality printouts forever.
Image: a fan-drawn manga of a fan work of Bleach.
The crazy thing about this, of course, is that in the past year or so there's been a scammer who has targetted me twice attempting to suggest that they will draw a comic book/manga-style work from my story. (It's usually kind of obvious it's a scam because they'll pick a story where I'm like, "three people have read this. Why?") I always answer this with, "if you found my AO3 profile, you know I've given blanket permission for you to do this. Have at it!" and then they always come back with, "Yes, but for a commission," and I have to say, "Friend, I write fan fic for free. If you want to do fan art for the love of it, go for it. I am not paying you to make fan art of my fan work." Especially since this book I got? I paid nothing. The book artist wouldn't even let me pay for shipping.
Anyway, fandom is the best.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-06 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-06 11:54 pm (UTC)Anyway, yay to you for giving it a go!
You can put down your sword with honor. You have fought bravely. You've seen enough. :-)