Inoue Orihime (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sixflowers) wrote2013-11-16 10:36 pm
sixflowers) wrote2013-11-16 10:36 pm
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amatomnes
PLAYER
» Journal: llamafordrama
» Birthdate/Age: February 1987
» Characters Played: none
» Re-App Status: Not a re-app
CHARACTER FACTS
» Name: Orihime Inoue
» Canon: Bleach
» Reference: http://bleach.wikia.com/wiki/Orihime_Inoue
» Canon Point: Chapter 440, after being attacked by Tsukishima
» Gender: female
» Age: 17
CHARACTER INTERPRETATION
» Appearance: There's not much more growing to do between sixteen and eighteen, especially since Orihime seems to have hit puberty early. She's short and thin and EXTREMELY buxom, with orange-brown hair that she keeps long as part of her pact with Tatsuki. She's very fit.
» Suitability: For all of her goofiness, Orihime is incredibly mature for her age. She has a part-time job to help pay the rent, and she makes sure to get excellent grades in school so that her distant aunt will continue to send her the rest of the money she needs to get by.
As for sex — while she does have precious memories that she would want to protect (the memory of her brother, Ichigo, and all her friends), the main reason she would willingly have sex is to help other people. Orihime is the type of person who cannot bear to see other people suffer, regardless of whether they’re friend, stranger, or even an enemy. The Arrankar Grimmjaw brutally cuts down Loli and Menoli when he catches them beating the crap out of Orihime in order to repay his debt to her. Immediately afterwards, Orihime uses her powers to heal them. It doesn’t matter to her how they had just brutalized her; they were dying, and she had the ability to save them. If having sex is what she has to do to save people in Amat, then she will have sex.
» Orientation: There is no strong canon evidence for an orientation other than heterosexual. The only explicit romantic/sexual interest she expresses is in Ichigo.
» Personality:
A Hollow's mask is an extension of its self; it's as much a part of the Hollow's person as the face it obscures.
In that sense, you could say Inoue Orihime has a mask of her own.
At first glance, she's the ditzy school beauty. She has a wild (and unusual) imagination, one where walking home with the boy she likes morphs into a race with a famous runner and ends for some unfathomable reason as a boxing match. She's extremely intelligent & among the top students in her class, but she's still prone to stupid mistakes -- like drawing a picture of herself as a badass space robot for an assignment to "draw your future self.” She can be very naive & child-like. When asked why she has a crush on Ichigo, she says that his face makes her laugh. She can be a little shy and easy to fluster, so she doesn’t seize romantic opportunities — when Ichigo offers to walk her home after she’s injured and she instinctively says no, something she regrets as she walks home alone. She’s too innocent to be offended by Chizuru grabbing her breasts or the shinigami officer making sleazy passes at her. Surrounded by warriors, she alone lacks the killer instinct, the willingness to do harm in order to win & protect. More often than not, from dangers as small as being molested by a classmate and as large as death, Orihime is the one who needs to be protected. She is a manic pixie dream girl, a pedestal princess, a chauvinist's ideal of womanhood.
None of this is affectation; this is not a mask she puts on to hide her real self. But it’s also not a complete representation of who she is.
Yes, in many respects she is a classic pedestal princess, fundamentally incapable of defending herself. When Chizuru molests her, when Kon kisses her, when shinigami soldiers make passes at her, she doesn't try to push them away, or even register that there is a problem at all. She is touched intimately with no regard for her own desires, and yet it's up to Tatsuki and Ishida to protect her. Alone in Hueco Mundo, with no one to protect her, she simply lets Loli and Menoli, her Arrankar "caretakers", to beat her up. She never even tries to protect herself.
But she will protect others. She throws herself into the path of the Hollow her brother Sora had become in order to protect Ichigo, but also to protect Sora. She allows herself to be horribly wounded so that she can hug him, apologize for making him feel lonely, and reach his heart so that he can move on to the Soul Society of his own volition and not in the heat of battle. She discovers her own spiritual powers when she steps in to defend Tatsuki, the best friend who has for years always protected her, from the Hollow attacking their school.
She has an almost complete disregard for her body that goes beyond her inability to protect herself. She’s completely unfazed after almost getting hit by a car (which is the way her brother died). She throws herself into the path of her Hollow brother and lets him almost kill her. The only positive things she’s ever said about her body are actually related to other people. As a child, she kept her hair long because her brother loved it; now, as a teenager, she keeps it long as a symbol of how much she trusts Tatsuki.
She wants to be a warrior like the rest of her friends. She joins the fight to save Rukia from execution. And when she's taken prisoner by Aizen and the Arrankar, the lives of her friends depending on her good behavior, she is determined to defeat Aizen herself, using her power to destroy his ultimate weapon. She even hopes that the others DON'T come for her, because this is something only she can do.
Wanting to be a warrior is not the same thing as being one. Despite her courage and how hard she works to become stronger, Orihime often finds herself completely unable to act when there are strong allies around her. She does successfully attack a Hollow to save Tatsuki, but after that, she fails at going on the offensive. She tries to attack to save Ishida, but her commitment to do harm isn’t strong enough, and Tsubaki, her offensive weapon, is almost completely destroyed. Even after Tsubaki is fixed, she doesn’t go on the offensive. When Ichigo and Ishida are fighting Ulquiorra to save her, she doesn’t jump into the fight. Even when Ulquiorra defeats Ichigo, she completely panics. She knows that she can fight, knows that she should fight, is furious with herself for not taking action, but even knowing all of that, the only thing she can do is scream for Ichigo to save her. She may want to fight, but she’s too much in the habit of being protected to actually do so.
Her need to be protected is just one of her “traditionally feminine” traits that is actually part of deeper psychological issues. As cheerful and normal and well-adjusted as she may seem at first glance, she’s had an extremely troubled life. Her mother and father were abusive; her brother took her away from them when she was 3 years old because he was afraid they would kill her. The two of them were very much on their own, without any support from the rest of their extended family. He was pretty much her entire world. She didn’t have any friends at school — in fact, she was bullied severely because of her unusual hair color — so he was the only person she had to care about. He raised her and protected her, and she tried to protect him too, by not telling him how she was tormented at school. Yet the effort of keeping this secret has its cost, and they do occasionally get into fights. One day, he gets her a set of hairpins, and she rejects them angrily, saying they’d make her look childish. When he left for work that day, she didn’t tell him “Have a safe trip.”
That was the day he died. Nobody seems to have taken her in after that; she gets money from a distant aunt to pay for her lodging and groceries and other necessities, but the amount she gets is contingent on her doing well in school. With no family to love her, and still bullied at school for looking different, Orihime fell into a deep depression. It’s only when Tatsuki steps in to protect her from the bullies and becomes her friend that Orihime manages to piece together a semblance of a normal life.
Tatsuki is her best friend and her first White Knight (excluding her brother). The other girl protects Orihime from bullies and from sexual harassment, and tries to encourage Orihime to confess to Ichigo. There’s an extent to which she tries to teach Orihime to protect herself — by teaching her karate, so Orihime is at a blackbelt level though not actually a blackbelt — but mostly she acts as Orihime’s constant and personal bodyguard, no matter what the threat is. She is the dragon who guards the princess. But Orihime wants just as fiercely to protect Tatsuki too. When their school is attacked by Hollows and Tatsuki is nearly killed protecting Orihime, the girl curses her powerlessness so strongly that the Hogyoku answers her wish and gives her spiritual powers - the Shun Shun Rikka. The strength of her power depends on her conviction; the only Hollow that Orihime has ever killed was the one threatening Tatsuki. Orihime goes on the offensive to try and protect her other friends at later points, but it’s only for Tatsuki that her conviction was strong enough to do damage. This doesn’t keep them from drifting apart, just a little, as the series goes on. Orihime doesn’t tell Tatsuki about the shinigami or any of the major world-changing events she’s a part of, and there is a period of time where Orihime is so wrapped up in what’s going on with Ichigo & co. that it seems as though she’s forgotten her best friend.
In some ways, Ishida slips into Tatsuki’s role in Orihime’s life as she gets more involved in the spiritual world. At one point, Orihime even forgets the fact that he’s NOT Tatsuki and starts getting undressed in front of him, and she is so comfortable with him that she isn’t even embarrassed by the error; she just apologizes and then hangs up a curtain for him to change behind. In the Soul Society, he is her companion and guardian until a fight with the twisted scientist and shinigami captain Mayuri makes him send her away (although it takes another shinigami knocking her unconscious to actually get her to leave Ishida). In Hueco Mundo, he stays by her side while Ichigo fights Ulquiorra to save her. And just as he looks after her, she looks after him — albeit on an emotional level. She is able to see through the cool facade he presents to the world. She is the only one to notice that his powers are gone after they return from the Soul Society, and she recognizes how his bickering with Ichigo is a sign of how the two boys have become friends. When Ishida is sent to the hospital at the beginning of the Fullbringer arc, Orihime is the first person called to his side. She’s good friends with Chad and is madly in love with Ichigo, but Ishida is the one she’s closest to.
Her crush on Ichigo seems like a typical schoolgirl romance, but it borders dangerously close to obsession. It's not creepy stalker obsessive, or "If I can't have you, no one can" future murderer obsessive, but it IS an obsession. When Ichigo's in the room, Orihime sees nothing else. In the Soul Society, she disregards her own hunger because Ichigo has trouble forming a ball with his spirit. Given the opportunity to say goodbye to one person before being kidnapped, Orihime visits Ichigo instead of Tatsuki, her best friend and protector. In the Fullbringer arc, she doesn't notice that Ishida is lying bleeding on the ground because Ichigo is crying. She gets tunnel vision around him, and it hurts not only herself, but other people she does care for deeply.
It's not a wholly romantic love, either. While initially a fairly typical teenage crush -- his face made her laugh, and she was disappointed that Rukia didn't have a crush on him too so they could team up against him -- they begin morphing into a deep love when Tatsuki tells her about his mother's death. The tragic loss of the person you love most, and the guilt of feeling it's your fault, connect Orihime to Ichigo. So does their unusual hair color, and the bullying they've experienced because of it. In many ways, you could argue that Ichigo is the person that Orihime wants to be. While suffering tragedies similar to hers, he has a tight knit family and the strength to protect them. Orihime doesn't have any real family, only the friends that she loves and that she would gladly sacrifice herself for.
Included in this group is Rukia, which might seem a little strange since they appear to be rivals for Ichigo’s affection. Orihime’s school buddies certainly expect Orihime to feel threatened by the other girl, but she doesn’t. To see Rukia as a threat, Orihime would have to see Ichigo as a prize to be won, and she doesn’t. Even when she admits to Rangiku that she’s jealous of Rukia, she doesn’t feel any resentment towards the other girl. She just wishes that she had the same ability to be Ichigo’s strength. The emotionally violent aspect of jealous she directs solely at herself, with feelings of inadequacy — partially because of her inherent self-esteem issues, and partly because she respects Rukia. She admires Rukia’s strength and courage. And Rukia is the one of the only people to really respect Orihime as a person with agency, rather than a preerson to be protected. When Urahara forbids Orihime from participating in the war with Aizen, Rukia argues for Orihime’s right to fight beside her friends. While Orihime’s other friends say “Yeah, you should probably sit this one out,” Rukia says “You’re not strong enough to fight? The answer is to get stronger.” She helps Orihime train for the coming war.
Unfortunately, becoming stronger doesn’t stop Orihime from being kidnapped by the Arrankar and taken to Hueco Mundo.
The Arrankar embody, in various ways, qualities that are antithetical to who Orihime is. Grimmjaw is a bully and a brute with a simplistic quid-pro-quo view of the world. Orihime restores his severed arm — and therefore, his place among the Espada — as part of Aizen’s test of her power. Grimmjaw later beats up and practically murders the two Arrankar who had been brutalizing Orihime and says “Now we’re even.” He doesn’t understand why Orihime is horrified by this, or why she insists on healing them before he breaks her out of prison. For her part, Orihime can’t understand how anyone could be so cruel, particularly to their own comrades. This confuses Grimmjaw, particularly after he takes her to Ichigo and demands that she heal him so they can have a fair fight and she refuses. He figures that she owes him, and that a softie like her would especially want to heal the guy she loves, but Orihime sees healing Ichigo as a death sentence. She doesn’t want to mend his injuries just so he can get into a fight that he can’t win.
Ulquiorra is the Arrankar that Orihime has the most complicated relationship with. He is the one who kidnaps her, and he is the vehicle for Aizen’s various mind games with her (such as telling her she can say goodbye to one person, which was both a ploy to make her think her captors were compassionate and to make the shinigami think she had defected). He is responsible for both her care and her emotional torture. He threatens her if she doesn’t eat and tells her that her mind and body belong to Aizen. He tells her that her friends have come to rescue her but she shouldn’t care because she belongs to Aizen, and he even goes so far as to make her repeat that.
His final question to her is: “Are you afraid of me, woman?” and Orihime’s answer is “I’m not afraid.” She even reaches out to him as he dissolves. It’s not a romantic gesture, or even really a sign of Stockholm syndrome. Rather, it’s Orihime’s compassion. The same compassion that compelled her to heal the Arrankar who brutalized her makes her want to reach out and Ulquiorra, despite the ways he’s tortured her and her friends. Orihime’s ability to forgive is probably her strongest power of all.
» Re-App Changes: N/A
SAMPLES
» First Person Sample Choice: Prompt 3 - Open Prompt
Ishida-kun! Do you remember that "our future selves" drawing we had to do in school? I updated mine!
TA-DA! THE HIMEXBOT!
Atia's latest greatest superhero robot! The back two arms turn into WINGS so I can fly around the city looking for citizens in distress! Whether they're being mugged or bullied or their collars are choking them, the Himexbot will save the day! There are rocket launchers in my thighs and compartments to hide all kinds of toys.
OH NO! I FORGOT THE CAPE!
» Third Person Sample Choice: Prompt 1
Orihime woke up moaning.
It wasn't a familiar moan; it wasn't her "I forgot to pay the rent!" moan or her "I slept through the Power Rangers!" moan or even her "I'm too hungry to go grocery shopping" moan. It wasn't a moan of pain or exhaustion. It was womanly and...satisfied.
She tried to sit up, but her limbs felt like spaghetti noodles that hadn't been boiled long enough so they were still a little stiff and starchy. She settled for turning her head so she could look around. She was lying naked on a bed in a strange room. The last thing she remembered was was being stabbed by her friend Tsukishima.
Her friend? Why did she think that? More importantly, why did she think he had a sword? She’d just gotten a stomach ache. Maybe he brought her here because she wasn’t feeling well. But why would he leave her naked & alone in a strange room? Another person’s thoughts might have leapt directly to rape, but that never occurred to her. Sex wasn’t just the last thing on her mind; it generally wasn’t even in her mind. The fact that she didn’t know where she was worried her far more than her state of undress.
She touched a hand to her hairpins -- they were still in place. But they felt...empty.
"Ayame." Nothing. "Baigon." Nothing. "Hinagiku. Lily. Shun'o. Tsubaki!"
The Shun Shun Rikka were gone. A chill swept through her body, devouring the languid warmth. Now she was well and truly frightened.
"Fight-o!" she told herself, and forced her body to sit up. She couldn't give in to despair. There were a number of reasons why the Shun Shun Rikka might not be responding! Maybe they were taking a nap! Or watching a movie! Or maybe they had gone to get help.
In her heart of hearts, she knew that none of those were the explanation, that whatever happened to her power was far more sinister than she wanted to admit. But those comforting thoughts got her moving out of bed. Thankfully her clothes there, and she quickly put it on, feeling more comfortable dressed. She touched the collar around her neck -- a delicate thing -- but when she tried to pull it off, it wouldn't budge. There was no clasp, and although it was thin, it wouldn't break. She soon gave up. She could worry about the collar later. Right now she needed to find someone who could give her some answers.
» Journal: llamafordrama
» Birthdate/Age: February 1987
» Characters Played: none
» Re-App Status: Not a re-app
CHARACTER FACTS
» Name: Orihime Inoue
» Canon: Bleach
» Reference: http://bleach.wikia.com/wiki/Orihime_Inoue
» Canon Point: Chapter 440, after being attacked by Tsukishima
» Gender: female
» Age: 17
CHARACTER INTERPRETATION
» Appearance: There's not much more growing to do between sixteen and eighteen, especially since Orihime seems to have hit puberty early. She's short and thin and EXTREMELY buxom, with orange-brown hair that she keeps long as part of her pact with Tatsuki. She's very fit.
» Suitability: For all of her goofiness, Orihime is incredibly mature for her age. She has a part-time job to help pay the rent, and she makes sure to get excellent grades in school so that her distant aunt will continue to send her the rest of the money she needs to get by.
As for sex — while she does have precious memories that she would want to protect (the memory of her brother, Ichigo, and all her friends), the main reason she would willingly have sex is to help other people. Orihime is the type of person who cannot bear to see other people suffer, regardless of whether they’re friend, stranger, or even an enemy. The Arrankar Grimmjaw brutally cuts down Loli and Menoli when he catches them beating the crap out of Orihime in order to repay his debt to her. Immediately afterwards, Orihime uses her powers to heal them. It doesn’t matter to her how they had just brutalized her; they were dying, and she had the ability to save them. If having sex is what she has to do to save people in Amat, then she will have sex.
» Orientation: There is no strong canon evidence for an orientation other than heterosexual. The only explicit romantic/sexual interest she expresses is in Ichigo.
» Personality:
A Hollow's mask is an extension of its self; it's as much a part of the Hollow's person as the face it obscures.
In that sense, you could say Inoue Orihime has a mask of her own.
At first glance, she's the ditzy school beauty. She has a wild (and unusual) imagination, one where walking home with the boy she likes morphs into a race with a famous runner and ends for some unfathomable reason as a boxing match. She's extremely intelligent & among the top students in her class, but she's still prone to stupid mistakes -- like drawing a picture of herself as a badass space robot for an assignment to "draw your future self.” She can be very naive & child-like. When asked why she has a crush on Ichigo, she says that his face makes her laugh. She can be a little shy and easy to fluster, so she doesn’t seize romantic opportunities — when Ichigo offers to walk her home after she’s injured and she instinctively says no, something she regrets as she walks home alone. She’s too innocent to be offended by Chizuru grabbing her breasts or the shinigami officer making sleazy passes at her. Surrounded by warriors, she alone lacks the killer instinct, the willingness to do harm in order to win & protect. More often than not, from dangers as small as being molested by a classmate and as large as death, Orihime is the one who needs to be protected. She is a manic pixie dream girl, a pedestal princess, a chauvinist's ideal of womanhood.
None of this is affectation; this is not a mask she puts on to hide her real self. But it’s also not a complete representation of who she is.
Yes, in many respects she is a classic pedestal princess, fundamentally incapable of defending herself. When Chizuru molests her, when Kon kisses her, when shinigami soldiers make passes at her, she doesn't try to push them away, or even register that there is a problem at all. She is touched intimately with no regard for her own desires, and yet it's up to Tatsuki and Ishida to protect her. Alone in Hueco Mundo, with no one to protect her, she simply lets Loli and Menoli, her Arrankar "caretakers", to beat her up. She never even tries to protect herself.
But she will protect others. She throws herself into the path of the Hollow her brother Sora had become in order to protect Ichigo, but also to protect Sora. She allows herself to be horribly wounded so that she can hug him, apologize for making him feel lonely, and reach his heart so that he can move on to the Soul Society of his own volition and not in the heat of battle. She discovers her own spiritual powers when she steps in to defend Tatsuki, the best friend who has for years always protected her, from the Hollow attacking their school.
She has an almost complete disregard for her body that goes beyond her inability to protect herself. She’s completely unfazed after almost getting hit by a car (which is the way her brother died). She throws herself into the path of her Hollow brother and lets him almost kill her. The only positive things she’s ever said about her body are actually related to other people. As a child, she kept her hair long because her brother loved it; now, as a teenager, she keeps it long as a symbol of how much she trusts Tatsuki.
She wants to be a warrior like the rest of her friends. She joins the fight to save Rukia from execution. And when she's taken prisoner by Aizen and the Arrankar, the lives of her friends depending on her good behavior, she is determined to defeat Aizen herself, using her power to destroy his ultimate weapon. She even hopes that the others DON'T come for her, because this is something only she can do.
Wanting to be a warrior is not the same thing as being one. Despite her courage and how hard she works to become stronger, Orihime often finds herself completely unable to act when there are strong allies around her. She does successfully attack a Hollow to save Tatsuki, but after that, she fails at going on the offensive. She tries to attack to save Ishida, but her commitment to do harm isn’t strong enough, and Tsubaki, her offensive weapon, is almost completely destroyed. Even after Tsubaki is fixed, she doesn’t go on the offensive. When Ichigo and Ishida are fighting Ulquiorra to save her, she doesn’t jump into the fight. Even when Ulquiorra defeats Ichigo, she completely panics. She knows that she can fight, knows that she should fight, is furious with herself for not taking action, but even knowing all of that, the only thing she can do is scream for Ichigo to save her. She may want to fight, but she’s too much in the habit of being protected to actually do so.
Her need to be protected is just one of her “traditionally feminine” traits that is actually part of deeper psychological issues. As cheerful and normal and well-adjusted as she may seem at first glance, she’s had an extremely troubled life. Her mother and father were abusive; her brother took her away from them when she was 3 years old because he was afraid they would kill her. The two of them were very much on their own, without any support from the rest of their extended family. He was pretty much her entire world. She didn’t have any friends at school — in fact, she was bullied severely because of her unusual hair color — so he was the only person she had to care about. He raised her and protected her, and she tried to protect him too, by not telling him how she was tormented at school. Yet the effort of keeping this secret has its cost, and they do occasionally get into fights. One day, he gets her a set of hairpins, and she rejects them angrily, saying they’d make her look childish. When he left for work that day, she didn’t tell him “Have a safe trip.”
That was the day he died. Nobody seems to have taken her in after that; she gets money from a distant aunt to pay for her lodging and groceries and other necessities, but the amount she gets is contingent on her doing well in school. With no family to love her, and still bullied at school for looking different, Orihime fell into a deep depression. It’s only when Tatsuki steps in to protect her from the bullies and becomes her friend that Orihime manages to piece together a semblance of a normal life.
Tatsuki is her best friend and her first White Knight (excluding her brother). The other girl protects Orihime from bullies and from sexual harassment, and tries to encourage Orihime to confess to Ichigo. There’s an extent to which she tries to teach Orihime to protect herself — by teaching her karate, so Orihime is at a blackbelt level though not actually a blackbelt — but mostly she acts as Orihime’s constant and personal bodyguard, no matter what the threat is. She is the dragon who guards the princess. But Orihime wants just as fiercely to protect Tatsuki too. When their school is attacked by Hollows and Tatsuki is nearly killed protecting Orihime, the girl curses her powerlessness so strongly that the Hogyoku answers her wish and gives her spiritual powers - the Shun Shun Rikka. The strength of her power depends on her conviction; the only Hollow that Orihime has ever killed was the one threatening Tatsuki. Orihime goes on the offensive to try and protect her other friends at later points, but it’s only for Tatsuki that her conviction was strong enough to do damage. This doesn’t keep them from drifting apart, just a little, as the series goes on. Orihime doesn’t tell Tatsuki about the shinigami or any of the major world-changing events she’s a part of, and there is a period of time where Orihime is so wrapped up in what’s going on with Ichigo & co. that it seems as though she’s forgotten her best friend.
In some ways, Ishida slips into Tatsuki’s role in Orihime’s life as she gets more involved in the spiritual world. At one point, Orihime even forgets the fact that he’s NOT Tatsuki and starts getting undressed in front of him, and she is so comfortable with him that she isn’t even embarrassed by the error; she just apologizes and then hangs up a curtain for him to change behind. In the Soul Society, he is her companion and guardian until a fight with the twisted scientist and shinigami captain Mayuri makes him send her away (although it takes another shinigami knocking her unconscious to actually get her to leave Ishida). In Hueco Mundo, he stays by her side while Ichigo fights Ulquiorra to save her. And just as he looks after her, she looks after him — albeit on an emotional level. She is able to see through the cool facade he presents to the world. She is the only one to notice that his powers are gone after they return from the Soul Society, and she recognizes how his bickering with Ichigo is a sign of how the two boys have become friends. When Ishida is sent to the hospital at the beginning of the Fullbringer arc, Orihime is the first person called to his side. She’s good friends with Chad and is madly in love with Ichigo, but Ishida is the one she’s closest to.
Her crush on Ichigo seems like a typical schoolgirl romance, but it borders dangerously close to obsession. It's not creepy stalker obsessive, or "If I can't have you, no one can" future murderer obsessive, but it IS an obsession. When Ichigo's in the room, Orihime sees nothing else. In the Soul Society, she disregards her own hunger because Ichigo has trouble forming a ball with his spirit. Given the opportunity to say goodbye to one person before being kidnapped, Orihime visits Ichigo instead of Tatsuki, her best friend and protector. In the Fullbringer arc, she doesn't notice that Ishida is lying bleeding on the ground because Ichigo is crying. She gets tunnel vision around him, and it hurts not only herself, but other people she does care for deeply.
It's not a wholly romantic love, either. While initially a fairly typical teenage crush -- his face made her laugh, and she was disappointed that Rukia didn't have a crush on him too so they could team up against him -- they begin morphing into a deep love when Tatsuki tells her about his mother's death. The tragic loss of the person you love most, and the guilt of feeling it's your fault, connect Orihime to Ichigo. So does their unusual hair color, and the bullying they've experienced because of it. In many ways, you could argue that Ichigo is the person that Orihime wants to be. While suffering tragedies similar to hers, he has a tight knit family and the strength to protect them. Orihime doesn't have any real family, only the friends that she loves and that she would gladly sacrifice herself for.
Included in this group is Rukia, which might seem a little strange since they appear to be rivals for Ichigo’s affection. Orihime’s school buddies certainly expect Orihime to feel threatened by the other girl, but she doesn’t. To see Rukia as a threat, Orihime would have to see Ichigo as a prize to be won, and she doesn’t. Even when she admits to Rangiku that she’s jealous of Rukia, she doesn’t feel any resentment towards the other girl. She just wishes that she had the same ability to be Ichigo’s strength. The emotionally violent aspect of jealous she directs solely at herself, with feelings of inadequacy — partially because of her inherent self-esteem issues, and partly because she respects Rukia. She admires Rukia’s strength and courage. And Rukia is the one of the only people to really respect Orihime as a person with agency, rather than a preerson to be protected. When Urahara forbids Orihime from participating in the war with Aizen, Rukia argues for Orihime’s right to fight beside her friends. While Orihime’s other friends say “Yeah, you should probably sit this one out,” Rukia says “You’re not strong enough to fight? The answer is to get stronger.” She helps Orihime train for the coming war.
Unfortunately, becoming stronger doesn’t stop Orihime from being kidnapped by the Arrankar and taken to Hueco Mundo.
The Arrankar embody, in various ways, qualities that are antithetical to who Orihime is. Grimmjaw is a bully and a brute with a simplistic quid-pro-quo view of the world. Orihime restores his severed arm — and therefore, his place among the Espada — as part of Aizen’s test of her power. Grimmjaw later beats up and practically murders the two Arrankar who had been brutalizing Orihime and says “Now we’re even.” He doesn’t understand why Orihime is horrified by this, or why she insists on healing them before he breaks her out of prison. For her part, Orihime can’t understand how anyone could be so cruel, particularly to their own comrades. This confuses Grimmjaw, particularly after he takes her to Ichigo and demands that she heal him so they can have a fair fight and she refuses. He figures that she owes him, and that a softie like her would especially want to heal the guy she loves, but Orihime sees healing Ichigo as a death sentence. She doesn’t want to mend his injuries just so he can get into a fight that he can’t win.
Ulquiorra is the Arrankar that Orihime has the most complicated relationship with. He is the one who kidnaps her, and he is the vehicle for Aizen’s various mind games with her (such as telling her she can say goodbye to one person, which was both a ploy to make her think her captors were compassionate and to make the shinigami think she had defected). He is responsible for both her care and her emotional torture. He threatens her if she doesn’t eat and tells her that her mind and body belong to Aizen. He tells her that her friends have come to rescue her but she shouldn’t care because she belongs to Aizen, and he even goes so far as to make her repeat that.
His final question to her is: “Are you afraid of me, woman?” and Orihime’s answer is “I’m not afraid.” She even reaches out to him as he dissolves. It’s not a romantic gesture, or even really a sign of Stockholm syndrome. Rather, it’s Orihime’s compassion. The same compassion that compelled her to heal the Arrankar who brutalized her makes her want to reach out and Ulquiorra, despite the ways he’s tortured her and her friends. Orihime’s ability to forgive is probably her strongest power of all.
» Re-App Changes: N/A
SAMPLES
» First Person Sample Choice: Prompt 3 - Open Prompt
Ishida-kun! Do you remember that "our future selves" drawing we had to do in school? I updated mine!
TA-DA! THE HIMEXBOT!
Atia's latest greatest superhero robot! The back two arms turn into WINGS so I can fly around the city looking for citizens in distress! Whether they're being mugged or bullied or their collars are choking them, the Himexbot will save the day! There are rocket launchers in my thighs and compartments to hide all kinds of toys.
OH NO! I FORGOT THE CAPE!
» Third Person Sample Choice: Prompt 1
Orihime woke up moaning.
It wasn't a familiar moan; it wasn't her "I forgot to pay the rent!" moan or her "I slept through the Power Rangers!" moan or even her "I'm too hungry to go grocery shopping" moan. It wasn't a moan of pain or exhaustion. It was womanly and...satisfied.
She tried to sit up, but her limbs felt like spaghetti noodles that hadn't been boiled long enough so they were still a little stiff and starchy. She settled for turning her head so she could look around. She was lying naked on a bed in a strange room. The last thing she remembered was was being stabbed by her friend Tsukishima.
Her friend? Why did she think that? More importantly, why did she think he had a sword? She’d just gotten a stomach ache. Maybe he brought her here because she wasn’t feeling well. But why would he leave her naked & alone in a strange room? Another person’s thoughts might have leapt directly to rape, but that never occurred to her. Sex wasn’t just the last thing on her mind; it generally wasn’t even in her mind. The fact that she didn’t know where she was worried her far more than her state of undress.
She touched a hand to her hairpins -- they were still in place. But they felt...empty.
"Ayame." Nothing. "Baigon." Nothing. "Hinagiku. Lily. Shun'o. Tsubaki!"
The Shun Shun Rikka were gone. A chill swept through her body, devouring the languid warmth. Now she was well and truly frightened.
"Fight-o!" she told herself, and forced her body to sit up. She couldn't give in to despair. There were a number of reasons why the Shun Shun Rikka might not be responding! Maybe they were taking a nap! Or watching a movie! Or maybe they had gone to get help.
In her heart of hearts, she knew that none of those were the explanation, that whatever happened to her power was far more sinister than she wanted to admit. But those comforting thoughts got her moving out of bed. Thankfully her clothes there, and she quickly put it on, feeling more comfortable dressed. She touched the collar around her neck -- a delicate thing -- but when she tried to pull it off, it wouldn't budge. There was no clasp, and although it was thin, it wouldn't break. She soon gave up. She could worry about the collar later. Right now she needed to find someone who could give her some answers.