#i dedicate their gold shin guards to the 2003 UDel men's hockey team

[recurring-polynya]

I was wondering: can you draw the Spirit Society versions of Rukia and Byakuya meeting Renji (as either his shinigami self or him as a human samurai) and some ensuing shenanigans (and a little RenRuki)? I’d love to see what you’d have in mind!

Phew! So, when I got this ask (which was ages ago), my first reaction was “you have severely overestimated my artistic skill”, but I’m always encouraging my kids to stick with their art even when it’s bad, so I decided to, uh, give this a shot. I learned a lot doing this project, even if mostly what I learned was “I should have done this in a different way” and also “Spirit Society Byakuya has way, way too much swag.”

Anyway, every day I wake up and make the difficult choice not to play BBS (I am playing 2 different restaurant-based phone games right now and that’s bad enough), so the only thing I know about Spirit Society I learned from 2 fanfics and the blessed people like @metalporsiempre who post screenshots from the BBS story mode. Even the BBS wiki was not particularly helpful, at least as far as lore goes, so please forgive me if I have gotten any of this tragically wrong.

BTW, this story takes place in interminable Filler Arc Time, where continuity doesn’t matter and the points are made up.

SO! I love the idea of BBS, and I would want this AU to be as BBS as possible. (My dream is to someday mock up some BBS dialogue screens for shitposting purposes). Therefore, the basic premise of this is that Renji is bumming around with Ichigo in the World of the Living and they end up going to Spirit Society in the usual way, which is to say, walking through a park and then they’re in Spirit Society. None of this is important, except for the fact that Renji is wearing the orange Zabimaru shirt, because the casual outfits are the #1 greatest thing about BBS.

Anyhoo, they go to Kuchiki Manor: Spirit Society Edition, and Renji ends up explaining all of this to Rukia while Ichigo facepalms off-screen.

The next thing that happens is that Byakuya would want to fight Renji, because Byakuya fights Renji in like 75% of the Bleach OPs, Byakuya fighting Renji is obligatory. The thing is, though, that Renji has fought Regular Byakuya approximately 9000 times and studied him for 30 years and Spirit Society Byakuya just met Renji 5 minutes ago, and I’m not saying B got trounced, but my feathery man got trounced. Not that he’ll admit it.

Presumably there’s a very filler arc-y plot, where Grimmjow is planning to invade the tengu territory with a bunch of demons or something like that, and Renji and Ichigo agree to hang out and be helpers. I thought it would be fun if, at some point, they have to disguise themselves as tengu warriors, because I... wanted to design some armor? What the EVEN, Polynya? They should probably be wearing masks, but drawing Byakuya’s mask was a nightmare, and by the time I finished drawing feathers on literally everything, I forgot about the masks anyway.

@kaicko pointed out to me too late that Orihime should have been in this AU  and she was right, Orihime definitely would have fixed Ichigo’s horns for him. If this post makes it to 50 notes, I promise I will draw Orihime in tengu armor.

There will be a B part to this post tomorrow, which is a fanfic drabble that I wrote. I finished it, but you gotta let fanfic rest, like a good steak, or all the juices fall out you don’t catch all the typos because you’re so tired of looking at it.

#my fanart #wacky au ideas #spirit society #i dedicate their gold shin guards to the 2003 UDel men's hockey team #who wore yellow socks so they looked like chickens #YEEHAW FIGHTING BLUE HENS! #i also gave rukia a nezuko manicure bc i've been watching demon slayer #it's a good look! #i maxed out my procreate layers so many times on all of these #polynya did renji's hair magically grow longer in spirit society so he could braid it? something seems off #RENJI'S HAIR IS NOT BOUND BY THE LAWS OF TIME OR SPACE #this is a CANON FACT