PSA: How Not to Do Orihime

[crystaldawn]

I've been bouncing this off a few people for a while, and it's time for another one of those posts - you know, the really fun informative essay kind. Today's topic: Common Weird Things People Do to Orihime in RP and Fics and Why You Shouldn't Do Them.

Comments

[eloni]

LITTLE BLUE MEN! *headdesks repeatedly* Oh how much I hate them. I admittedly don't read many IH fics, but I've seen that one around enough for it to be annoying. Even if it was canon, don't people want to be a bit more... creative?

[crystaldawn]

The Little Blue Men drive me NUTS. People have been doing it since I started reading IchiHime fics, and I don't even know where it started! But I wish to god they'd stop! It's even in otherwise good fics by decent writers, too, which is the point at which I want to scream. They'll have Orihime acting perfectly normal otherwise, and then just suddenly burst out with "The Little Blue Men told me so!" It's especially jarring in rairakku_hana's stuff, because you'll have a fic where Orihime's in her twenties, newly pregnant, and acting otherwise mature... and then she'll burst out the Little Blue Men. ABWUH?

It wouldn't even be so bad if there was a reason for it. Did she see it on a tv show? Did she DROP ACID? What?

[bitter_tea]

When Rangiku compliments Orihime's food, she said it none of it looked good, but it tasted good. I think a big part of her tastes aren't just combining what she has for practicality, but that she probably had to rely on making food for herself even when her brother was alive. You leave a kid to make food, the results aren't probably normal by any means.

I also blame the anime, because there's a Shinigami Golden where Rangiku makes a bunch of food, and because of Orihime, she puts red bean paste on everything. Then there's this one. And this.

The whole "coming back from HM with Orihime having nightmares and Ichigo needing to bring her out of it" is getting to be a bit old. It can be done well, but most of the time, it's not.

[crystaldawn]

You leave a kid to make food, the results aren't probably normal by any means.Speaking as someone who's been cooking for herself since she was roughly 8? Yeah, this is all true. Not just that, but sometimes you can screw up parts of a meal. Not boiling the noodles enough, not boiling the potatoes enough, putting too much of one thing, not enough of another - it doesn't always turn out just right, even if you use the right things

[bitter_tea]

I remember when I was 13 or 14 being in the Ronin Warriors/Yoroiden Samurai Troopers fandom, and people had fics with Rowen/Touma being the worst cook ever. It makes no sense, because the guy pretty much raised himself as a child. I can see maybe that he can only cook instant food, but so many fics wrote that he ruined/set ablaze anything in the kitchen by touching it

[crystaldawn]

That's how they did Akane, too, in Ranma 1/2.

Which one is that? I'm not sure I know your ffnet username |Da

I have nothing to add to that comfort/neediness thing, because you just nailed it. How can we complain about people making Ichigo completely dependent upon Rukia when we make Orihime completely dependent upon Ichigo? It's the same damn thing!

(Oh god, I hate that, too. Poor Renji D:)

[shiroyuki_kun]

Man, this reminds me of the time I was in BDR and I saw your Hime eating like grilled cheese with jalapenos...and I said to myself "that sounds AWESOME" and I didn't have any jalapenos but I had some banana peppers, and so I made that and I WILL NEVER NOT EAT IT GRILLED CHEESE WITHOUT PEPPERS AGAIN

[rinkhals]

I love it when I am playing a character who's a bad cook and I come up with weird shit and then actually try it out to see what happens, ha ha. That's how I discovered that Vegemite and Nutella on the same piece of toast is actually amazingly good.

[shiroyuki_kun]

I also try stuff my mom likes because it's reeeeeeally funky.

To this day I will see my mom eat penut butter and cheese sandwiches...I don't think I will ever be desperate enough to eat that sort of thing, but I'm sure Orihime would eat it.

[crystaldawn]

GRILLED CHEESE AND JALAPENOS IS FUCKING DELICIOUS I mistyped that as 'jalapenis'. And I won't eat my pizza without hot sauce, so yeah. I think everyone has a weird food combination they indulge in.

It's actually not hard at all - all you have to do is play word association. It... probably helps that I jump topics like a train going off the tracks even on good days, but it's a useful skill to have in RP because a lot of the time you get stuck threading with people that just don't know what to say. Orihime makes it easy to continue conversations with them because she can just... pull topics out of her ass to keep them talking instead of letting the thread devolve into "Uh huh" "Yup" "Right" "Okay" back and forths.

[shoiryu]

YYY Word salad is a big old warning sign that something's not right. I've got a character who's a paranoid schizophrenic, and he word switches when he's having an off day -- but they're words he personally associates with the switched word, sometimes subconsciously, so it's not cute randomness, it's unsettling "something wrong" talking. His last episode, in which he tried to communicate to his girlfriend that he was mostly okay, but switching, and that a friend of his wasn't doing so well, looked like this:

if you don't i'm just going to be out forever, because you're a sun and I'm not even atmosphere right now, it's not like that. I'm just okay, but they're not right they won't function because it's sliding off the sides?? Do you know, you know b

Because I'm selfish and I want to make it and be THE LIGHT except i'm the rock instead

It's not cute.

[crystaldawn]

The worst part is, you can make out what he's trying to communicate... it just sounds really Uncanny Valley and off. And yeah, like you said - it's really unsettling.

It constantly boggles my mind that people have Ichigo or Ishida or ANYONE REALLY sitting by passively and going "She's so cute~ *sigh*" when they write Orihime talking like this. It also reminds me of Luna Lovegood, who also didn't do random Word Salads - she was just a conspiracy theory chaser, and everyone at school thought she was nuts because of it!

[shoiryu]

Yeah, exactly -- he was together enough to basically communicate that he felt ok and wasn't hallucinating, but she's used to him like this, and so are his friends, and their reactions aren't "aww how sweet!" because it's an incredibly distressing condition to have, and it's generally apparent he's upset/frustrated. It just isn't some cute affectation. I mean. If someone wants to go there with a version of any character, I say power to them -- maybe Orihime's manifesting schizophrenia! It tends to manifest in mid-late teens in women as far as I know! -- but if you're just going for "LOL RANDOM CHEESE MONKEYS SPORKS AND PIRATES" then you know, fuck you.

Yeah, UGH, Luna Lovegood! Randomly babbling about little elves! I never liked that kind of shit.

[crystaldawn]

LOL APPLE MONKEY CARBURETOR! Why is it always cheese and monkeys? Is there something EXTRA FUCKING FUNNY about cheese and monkeys?

I loved canon Luna! Because there are actually people like that IRL! And they generally have that same unsettling quality! But yeah, people handle it so badly in fics that it's distressing.

[dropsofgleam]

*bookmarks it just in case*

* pokes the comatose plotbunnies* ... Dammit guys, don't leave me hanging. :B

[crystaldawn]

Now that the trauma of Whorefic is over, I can finally get back to poking my plotbunnies, too! I need to finish my Tanabata offering first, though. SOB.