❤Grimmjow❤

i've really respected your creative and analytical work with loveless for years (i actually remember reading your house crossover fanfic in like 2011 maybe?) so i've always wanted to know your general take on soubi's character? if you have time and haven't already written about it before, id love to see a general character analysis!

first of all, thank you so much! it’s fantastic to know that you like my analytical work and that i have partially redeemed myself from those weird fanfics i used to write. you know how we all look back on our past fanfics and other creative work and laugh at ourselves? well that’s what it’s like with me except i wrote about a crossover between an american medical drama and a gay catboy manga and i can’t look back on it without crying in shame. 

BUT I DIGRESS. thank you for sticking with me!

NOW. youve asked me about my favorite topic (i’d make a ‘my favorite topic: myself! agatsuma soubi’ joke here but i think i already made that joke in this post and also on deviantart and probably in a couple other places) but holy shit do i love talking about soubi. hes kinda my favorite character analytically. SO, LET’S TALK ABOUT SOUBI (and i apologize if this jumps from one topic to the next bc i have many thoughts on this tall child)

soubi is a very peculiar character because more than any other character in the series, he changes. beginning-series soubi is this incredibly creepy, weird, myseterious guy who constantly says the worst and most creepiest things possible and seems to prey on children and constantly asks about killing children and frustrates the reader to no end with his whole insistence that he can’t say shit about anything. see, the thing is that you’re not supposed to like beginning-series soubi. he’s a fucking predatory asshole who is creepy and weird to no end. however, people fell in love with him because this manga was marketed as a yaoi/BL manga, which made soubi fall into the bishie trope where it is completely acceptable for the ‘dominant’ character to act in a way that is very creepy towards the other characters.

so, this really, really divided people’s opinions on soubi’s character. some people hated soubi or strongly disliked him, which was close to the correct response you’re supposed to have to soubi in the first few volumes. others fell in love with him and the bishie trope and either fell off the series or were confused when soubi’s real characterization came to be. regardless, though, i strongly dislike beginning series soubi, but now that we have an understanding of his character, i know why he acted the way he did.

let me put this into perspective. agatsuma soubi was raised in a violent society. for twelve years he was completely isolated in a small town in the mountains in a school where he was taught how to violently battle other teams. this is literally all he knows. soubi himself says that he does not remember his parents well and he was six when his parents died. developmentally, six is a huge age because it’s when a child actually begins forming long-lasting long-term memories. not a lot of people remember much before they were six years old. i like to believe that this age was chosen for soubi to lose his parents because of this, but with yun i can never be sure. just let me try to believe that this was done on purpose pls. 

so soubi does not remember not being in this world. this is all he knows. on top of all this, there’s ritsu. ill get to ritsu more in a bit because i fucking love talking about the horrible dynamic between these two (and i mean that in the best way possible), but ritsu completely destroyed soubi. he took a child and destroyed him so thoroughly that soubi has no fucking idea how to function without him. ritsu filled soubi’s head with the idea that soubi would lead a subservient life where he’d be nothing more than a tool. he beat soubi constantly and used him as a way to get back at akio. even then, soubi was nothing more than a replacement for something missing. and this was how soubi came to identify. as nothing. as a fighter. as someone who would never lead and who would never have any sort of power, as someone who would lead a life of pain and fear of failing. and soubi accepted this, because he was a child and knew nothing else.

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