So in the interest of promoting a better understanding of the elusive (but much discussed) IchiHime shipper in their native environment, I decided to put together this informative fandom pamphlet (with the help of my friends list, of course, since I can't pretend to speak for an entire ship).

See, we often see blatant misinformation - dare I say, outright lies - disseminated about us and ours to fandom at large. Many of the IchiHime Boogiemen heh, I keep typing 'Boobiemen' put forth to scare fandom onto the 'straight and narrow' of shipping, as it were, are actually nothing more than Strawmen set up to make the opposing viewpoint look better and more attractive. A Strawman can also be taking the half-baked opinions of one supporter of an idea and proclaiming them as being what all supporters of the idea think, simply because they're the easiest to argue against or dismiss. So here today, let's set some Strawmen alight, shall we?

Strawman #1: IchiHime fans are viewing the manga from a Western Perspective because they don't understand Japanese culture.

False. First of all, several IchiHime fans are actually of an Asian persuasion, although not necessarily Japanese. My own boyfriend spent several years of his youth in Japan, so if I have questions about Japanese culture, I can simply turn around and ask him. At least one of the IchiHime folks on my flist has a degree in Japanese and Linguistics (although I won't name her since I didn't ask if I could).

Secondly, that would be assuming that the IchiHime pairing is somehow exclusively Western and contradicts Japanese culture in some way. Actually, I'll let the IchiRuki girl on my flist, turtlemonkey, address this one since she does it so beautifully:

It was long accepted in the Ichiruki fandom that we actually were a lot more western inspired whereas Ichihime was more eastern. *PUTS ON GLASSES OF SERIOUSNESS*

The western Generation Y grew up after generations of feminism finally paid off and suddenly media had a huge inflation of very strong, very powerful, assertive and outspoken women characters to the point of almost oversaturating the market. We went from Eliza Maza as young kids to Mulan to Xena as kids to Buffy to Captain Janeway as teenagers. This meant that generation Y grew up with the idea that relationships were at their best with an aggressive, forward woman and we respond to it accordingly. This is very western, and very unique to this generation. Ichiruki easily captures basically the exact 'formula' we of the west were fed throughout our entire lives. It's a humorous, slaptstick rivalry between a strong man and a strong woman. It is our generation's idea of the ideal relationship.

Eastern, moreso Japanese, standards have always, and everyone who reads manga can back me up on this, tended to favour more feminine, subdued and gentle women. Not weak, not weak at all, but gentle, and this is a key difference. I was just rereading Cardcaptor Sakura and when Sakura became the love interest for Syaoran, you instantly saw him picturing her in a more gentle, kind and fragile light, much like her mother Nadeisco who is even named for this trope. Just as how Ichigo and Rukia are perfectly tailored for young Western audience, Ichigo and Orihime pretty much encapsulate all the standards of an ideal Eastern/Japanese couple. He's brash and strong and valiant and she's gentle and calm, brave without being a threat but strong enough to support him. Think of the Samurai's wife: She's meant to be beautiful and an object of both envy in her beauty and awe of her kindness, but strong and wise to back up and support her warrior husband.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on samurai backs Turtlemonkey up on this point. On the topic of the ideal samurai wife, it says:

Traits valued in women of the samurai class were humility, obedience, self-control, strength, and loyalty. Ideally, a samurai wife would be skilled at managing property, keeping records, dealing with financial matters, educating the children (and perhaps servants, too), and caring for elderly parents or in-laws that may be living under her roof. Confucian law, which helped define personal relationships and the code of ethics of the warrior class required that a woman show subservience to her husband, filial piety to her parents, and care to the children. Too much love and affection was also said to indulge and spoil the youngsters. Thus, a woman was also to exercise discipline.

Anyone who's read the I Ching or any of the works of Confucianism or Taoism can also tell you what's expected of the female half of a couple on the Eastern side of the world - humility, love, serenity, grace, frugality, and practicality. She is expected to support, advise, and encourage her husband, just like a minister advises a king. Likewise, her husband is expected to listen to his wife, provide for her, and provide a steady hand for his family. They're both expected to discipline the other when they step out of line.

One could argue that Rukia, in her role as a Kuchiki woman, exhibits some or all of those traits. But those are not the traits that fandom sees and praises her for. The traits Rukia is generally revered for in fandom are those that are regarded as good traits for a Western (in particular, American) woman: self-reliance, hard work, an aggressive personality, and an emphasis on reliability and strength over gentleness or good looks. While none of those are necessarily good or bad things, they are also an indication of the culture viewing the character; Western audiences tend to pick out traits that Westerners like in general.

As for Orihime, she does exhibit the traditionally ideal traits of an Eastern woman. She is gentle, kind, and compassionate to a fault. When she talks to Ichigo for the first time in canon, she's been actively engaged in shopping for dinner - a typical duty of a frugal wife. She is emotionally strong, but not strong enough in battle to be 'threatening' to the male leads. Also of note is that, just like a samurai's wife, she doesn't fight with a sword. Swords are instruments of murder, and murder is not for ladies - self-defense is. Similarly, I believe Orihime not having a sword is a statement on her passive nature - she is not a killer and her powers are not meant to kill.

Strawman #2: IchiHime Shippers see IchiHime as a Disney fairy tale.

False with a side of misleading.

First and foremost, there's absolutely nothing wrong with liking Disney movies. In fact, Osamu Tezuka, the Godfather of Anime, was a noted Disney fanboy, as are many, many Japanese. And while one could argue that many Disney flicks are problematic on a feminist, racial, or cultural level (Mulan 2 anyone?), one should also keep in mind that Disney movies - nay, any media aimed at small children - are simply a reflection of the culture in which we currently live. This certainly doesn't give them a free pass on problematic themes, but they're far from the devil incarnate in this area. I'd also bet you'd be hard-pressed to find an American girl that didn't like at least one of the Princess movies. Yeah, they exist, but most of us did watch and enjoy them at some point in our childhood.

Secondly, this seems to be implying that IchiHime shippers view Ichigo and Orihime as a perfect fairy tale prince and princess because we don't constantly rehash their supposed 'flaws'. No, we acknowledge very well that they both have flaws - they just don't happen to be the flaws that the other vocal part of fandom thinks they have.

I'll be the first to tell you that Orihime has chronically low self-esteem. She doesn't think herself worthy of her friends' affection, and you can see this when she's genuinely shocked that they came to rescue her. She even admits that it upset her that they did at first. This is probably a result of her odd personality coupled with her odd looks creating a cycle of bullying at school that was only broken when Tatsuki started standing up for her. This doesn't mean she's too weak, lazy or co-dependent to stand up for herself or others; on the contrary, she stands up for Tatsuki when she's in trouble because she wants to return the kindness her best friend has shown her. However, when she herself is bullied on her own account by Loly and Menoly, she does nothing but tell them firmly to leave her alone. Why is this? Is it because she's weak or stupid?

NO. It's because that's how you deal with bullies. Take it from someone who was bullied for pretty much her entire school life: when you don't have the ability to call bullies out and humiliate them into leaving you alone, the next best thing to do is to not give them the satisfaction of a response. Orihime couldn't have beat Loly and Menoly up at her power level. Crying or showing fear would've encouraged them. The best thing she could've done was simply to ignore them to the best of her ability. Her response wasn't weak; it took a lot of fortitude to stand up and not bow out like she did.

The other major character flaw that I'd say Ichigo and Orihime have (and I think our side of fandom agrees with this) is that they don't rely on their friends enough. Orihime bottles things up out of fear of being a burden and refuses to let her friends help her with her problems. She tells Sora as his hollow is dying that she didn't want him to see her tears, so she only told him good things from school. She held in her jealousy of Rukia to the point that she broke down in front of Matsumoto. She was content to sit on the sidelines even though she hated it just because Urahara told her she was a burden. And finally, she went to Hueco Mundo without even so much as trying to get help because she thought that by sacrificing herself, it would give her friends a little time to get ready for battle.

For his part, Ichigo tends to think he's a damn cowboy and try to do everything himself (as has been pretty well-illustrated in the second set of Wingless/Winged Eagles chapters). He blames his nine-year-old self for not single-handedly defeating the hollow that ate his mom. He dismisses his best friend that's had his back for years out of hand in the fight with D-Roy. He tried to fight his inner hollow on his own to the point that it almost killed him. Even when fighting Hiyori, his inner monologue was something like "I can figure it out myself if I just keep watching her enough". When Yamamoto tells him he can't go after Orihime, he tells him to go fuck himself, that he'll charge into enemy territory against insanely overpowered opponents on his own. And when Chad and Ishida try to come along, he tells them that they're not strong enough and should just let him handle it by himself. He's finally coming out of it in recent chapters - thank the lord - but it's been a long time coming.

And while that might not sound like severe faults to a Western audience, in an Eastern society, and in all practicality, they are large faults. We as Westerners (and Americans in particular) are raised to value the relation of family and spouse as the only relationships that are really 'worth' much. Friendships don't count for much around here outside of grade school, and people who value friendships are generally seen as hokey and lame. Edit: For people who're looking for more information on this claim, this book by a Harvard sociology professor is a good place to start (thanks for the link, lady_ganesh!). If you're looking for info on how this affects women in particular, The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf is a great place to start. Edit^2: There's also more discussion of this down in the comments, if you're interested.

Moreover, we are taught from an early age that we can be whatever we want, as long as we work hard and give it our best shot! Everything depends on the effort you put in! If you didn't get that dream job, you just didn't try hard enough! We value self-reliance to an absurd degree, and that's not a very valuable trait in Japanese culture - in fact, it's seen as being just as rude and selfish as Shinji tells Ichigo he's being in chapter 389 for trying to hog the fight against Aizen.

Contrast this to Japan, where the culture is wholly more community-based than ours. Social conformity is a huge deal there, as is being a social outcast. The needs of the community outweigh the needs of the individual by several factors of order (hello, the entire Soul Society arc, anyone?). Friends, community members, nakama are all extremely important in Japan - which is probably why you see the theme emphasized over and over and over again across several anime and manga.

In short, in the context of the story, both Ichigo and Orihime's extreme self-reliance is a bad thing and is a fault that they both need to, and are in the process of overcoming.

Thirdly, back to the whole Prince/Princess topic, the kind of 'perfect romance' that this dichotomy seems to imply would bore a whole helluva lot of IchiHime shippers. The dynamics of their relationship are best simply because they both have flaws. To copy from something I told sarajayechan once:

Part of the point is that Ichigo and Orihime are facing their inner demons (in Ichigo's case literally) and each other's (again, literally here).

Part of the crux of the pairing in the story and as a concept is that you can't really love someone until you learn to accept what they are, warts and all. Ichigo's not a perfect prince. He has a hyper-destructive monster living inside him that basically is him, and he knows it. And so does Orihime - one of the biggest moments in the Hueco Mundo arc was her seeing his mask for the first time and having a minor freak out over it. Nel kicked her in the ass for being afraid of him and she realized what she was doing wrong and stopped. The other big moment was when he went uber!hollow and she started beating herself up because she thought it was her fault. After he went back to normal, she smiled at him, which leads me to believe she's not going to turn her back on him for it.

Without that tension - in short, with the characters both being perfect and princely/princessly - the relationship would be boring. It would be a find-and-replace with every other pairing in history and wouldn't have anything that originally drew us to the pairing in the first place.

Strawman #3: IchiHime is anti-feminist and IchiHime Shippers all want women back in the kitchen.

Hilariously false. Feminism is not, nor should it ever be, a celebration solely of Women Being Strong, Because Strong Is Good. Nor should it be used as a hammer to insult women we deem 'inferior' or 'not strong enough'. Nor should femininity always be associated with weakness and badness.

Feminism is loving and celebrating every woman, regardless of how girly, weak, or inferior we think she is. Regardless of how misogynist we may think she is. She is a woman, therefore she is 'good enough'.

Feminism is also about giving women the opportunity to chose their own path in life. Some women are going to be brokers, astronauts, stock car drivers, miners, bartenders, and CEOs. Some women are going to be housewives. As long as they have the opportunity to chose whether to be a housewife or a lawyer (or both at different times), that's feminism. Neither one is wrong; it's about what's right for that particular woman.

Likewise, if Orihime wants to open a bakery? Good for her, that's awesome. If she wants to marry Ichigo and have babies? Good for her, that's awesome too. If she wants to do both (which, all signs point to her wanting to do both at some point), awesome! Have your cake and bake it, too!

I also feel that I should point out that Japanese and American ideals on womanhood and feminism vary quite a bit. Yes, American feminists see the Japanese as being hopelessly sexist as a society - this is even occasionally a hot topic on feminist communities. This is frequently reflected in the anime and manga we see; women are allowed to kick ass, be astronauts, race car drivers, karate champions, but there's often a catch to it. They almost always have to reassert their femininity at some point so that they're not threatening, whether it's by wearing skirts, liking cute things, or openly crushing on boys (Tatsuki, Sailor Jupiter, Angel Daisy, and Tenjou Utena all spring to mind here). There's also an expectation that these women will settle down, get married, and have babies at some point in their lives; as much as Americans don't like to admit it, that particular expectation is even still with us today (just ask anyone who's decided not to have kids).

And as a final note on this topic, man - if being IchiHime automatically revokes your feminist street cred, I need to call NOW and get my membership money back from them. I'll tell them my card is in the mail. Yes, I have one.

Strawman #4: FLOL is a bashing comm and IchiHime shippers bash all the time.

False and misleading. First of all, shippers from all walks of fandom bash, behave like idiots and wank. One idiot fangirl from one ship does not a wanky ship make.

Secondly, while I've seen many claims of Rukia bashing floating around TV Tropes and Encyclopedia Dramatica, the only link to a Rukia-bashing board run by IchiHime fans they had was a dead link. Other than that, I have yet to see Rukia-bashing by... well, anyone, really. Not to say she doesn't get bashed - there are people who'll bash anything - but I haven't seen it.

As for FLOL's opinions on Rukia, you can join and go here to see for yourself, or you can take my word on the poll results. Out of 212 IchiHime fans who were polled on their opinion on Rukia, 101 (47%) said she was absolutely awesome, 51 (24%) said she's awesome as long as she doesn't interfere with IchiHime, 40 (18%) said they have no opinion either way, 12 (5%) said they just don't like her, and 8 (3%) said they absolutely hate her. A combined total of 8% really isn't enough to color an entire portion of fandom, sorry to say. More than that, the thread itself is pretty civil. The people who didn't like her tended to say things like "Her character just wasn't my type" or "I liked her, but her more vocal fans have soured me on her".

As for FLOL encouraging bashing, that's also untrue. Here is the list of rules, but in case non-members can't view it, I'll copy the relevant ones here:

10. Discussion about Ichigo and Rukia as a couple is partially allowed here, but speaking negatively about the ship or the fans that support them is not allowed. Anything the mods and I deem as "speaking negatively about" will be edited or deleted.
14. Please do not post links to any sites or forums that are Anti-IchiHime. Post will be either edited or deleted.
15. Do not quote members from other message boards to mock them.
16. Do not discuss what is said on other message boards in a negative manner.
22. Do NOT bash characters. Anything the mods or myself see as bashing a character, your post will either be edited or deleted.
26.Do not take comments said on here and post them elsewhere to mock, bitch about, or shart shit with.

Call me crazy, but six whole rules banning bashing and wanking doesn't seem like something a hate board would put into place. And yes, they do enforce them.

But just to clarify, let's go over some of the stuff we IchiHime shippers actually do. We do state when we dislike a character and what reasons we have for it, if any. I'm not fond of Barragan because I think he's boring. That doesn't mean I'm bashing him or disrespecting his fans. No one is going to like every character ever, and they are entitled to their opinion. It's when you begin to insult other people's opinions that it becomes a bad thing.

We do make friends locked posts about people we run into who are especially egregious or irritating in pushing their opinions onto us. Unfortunately for the rest of fandom, friends locked posts are rather heavily banned from places like Fandom_Wank, and for good reason. If we friends lock our bitching, that means we just want to bitch and don't want to start shit. And hey, we're perfectly within our rights to talk shit about people we want to avoid under our own friends lock - that's no skin off their nose.

We try very hard not to make sweeping generalizations about entire sections of fandom and their opinions. If I were to say that all UlquiHime fans are destined to have shitty, abusive relationships, I'm pretty sure that copper_cakes would bitchslap me nine ways to Sunday. If I were to say that all IshiHime fans are projecting their codependence or whatever onto the pairing, I would feel very bad because cherry_chiicake ships it and she's been an awesome friend to me for ten years now. (and for the record, I was going for the worst things I could possibly say there that would make no logical sense. I FEEL KIND OF BAD ABOUT TYPING THEM, GUYS :|) Long story short, almost all of us have friends who ship differently than we do. We also put up with enough stupid, untrue generalizations slung at us on a daily basis to want to avoid using them.

Strawman #5: IchiHime Shippers lack reading comprehension skills because they lack college degrees in English.

Misleading. College degrees are little proof of reading comprehension, if any. A degree in English also does not guarantee good reading comprehension, particularly of a Japanese shounen manga. What a college degree is proof of is that the possessor of said degree had the time, money, and ability to do course work required to receive that degree. And unless you went to a very interesting college, I sincerely doubt they had 'How to Read Manga 101' on the course listing. Quick, someone who went to SCAD - is this a course there?

Furthermore, I bristle at the very heavy implication that I am somehow intellectually inferior to someone with a degree in English. The IchiHime shippers I've talked to come from a variety of backgrounds. One has a degree in linguistics and Japanese. One has a degree in Applied Science. Another has a degree in communications and journalism (if she doesn't mind me claiming her for these purposes). And I personally graduated the toughest school in the US Navy (check out the course listing for hilarity's sake) and went on to graduate an equally difficult school dedicated specifically to radiological controls work. Ask me why a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity is important to YOU. I dare you. It'll be fun.

I also see "this essay would get an F in college" tossed at IchiHime shippers with frightening regularity. Newsflash, most fandom essays are poorly formatted, poorly researched, and riddled with an absolutely sickening amount of fallacious reasoning. If you have to rely on an overabundance of manga panels with squiggles drawn on them to make your point, then you are not writing an 'essay' - you are posting manga pictures with words explaining what an intelligent reader would've been able to figure out on their own. Furthermore, I would rather have someone link to Wikipedia (which does actually require outside sources) than make outrageous claims and not back them up at all. No, Wiki links aren't allowed for school research papers, but a school research paper is not a fandom essay.

Here, let me say that again to make sure we all understand it. Fandom essays are not school research papers. They are not good for college credits. Making an essay that a lot of people agree with does not mean you made a good essay. And most importantly, you are not a college professor and do not get to grade other people's essays like one with any authority. Unless you went to college and got the credentials necessary to teach Composition there, you have no business 'grading' another fan's essay - especially if your own are riddled with spelling and grammar errors, faulty premises, debate fallacies, and ad hominem attacks out the wazoo.

Strawman #6: IchiHime Shippers think the rejected pilot is canon and proof of their pairing.

Misleading. While I can't speak for every IchiHime shipper out there, the ones I've talked to seem to agree that, while the pilot chapter was cute, it has no place in an actual analysis of the main story itself.

We do seem to think it has a place as supplemental work, which is completely different. Even though the pilot was rejected, certain parts of it were carried over into the main story - Orihime's father figure, who is now a hollow, attempts to kill her because he's jealous of Ichigo's affect on her. Considering this was pretty much the first multi-chapter arc in the story and the basic structure of that story was left intact (right down to some of the dialogue - Orihime's father and Sora even share a few lines), I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Kubo thought it was pretty important.

But in the grand scheme of things, I don't think any IchiHime shipper necessarily needs to use the pilot chapter for anything when the major gist of it carried over into the Sora chapters. This strawman keeps getting beaten to death because, frankly, it's easier to point at a rejected pilot and go "SEE, IT'LL NEVER BE CANON HA HA" than it is to try and discredit Sora's story, which will always be canon. In short, anything we could use the pilot for, we could use Sora's story for, but better.

Strawman #7: IchiHime Shippers only ship Renji with Rukia to separate her from Ichigo.

False. This implies that RenRuki is a faulty ship on its own, and that people only ship it out of an obligation to Pair the Spares with Renji and Rukia. This is heavily untrue on its own - it's pretty well canon that Renji is in love with Rukia and just about everything he's ever done in his adult life has been to get closer to her. That by itself is a pretty solid reason to ship a pairing if I ever saw one; indeed, I've seen several IchiRuki fans that also enjoy RenRuki.

It also implies that IchiHime shippers are so insecure in their ship that they feel threatened by Rukia. Well, no, not exactly. Most of us simply don't see IchiRuki and would much prefer to spend our time discussing a pairing we care about. We don't need to spend our time tearing IchiRuki apart - we're more than happy with what canon has given us. Don't believe me? Go look at our list of Essays and Manifestos - this is actually open to non-members, so you can see it if you don't join and look, I'm on there twice! You know you want to look! :D There are a couple essays about Rukia in the context of being Ichigo's friend, a couple of her in the context of matchmaker, a couple of Ishida in the context of matchmaker, and a couple about the Ichigo/Ulquiorra fight, but you'll notice that there is a distinct lack of essays about ships we don't like. Imagine that.

But I can give you a few reasons why IchiHime shippers tend to ship RenRuki as well. As stated above, Renji's feelings for Rukia are canon, so that's a big push right there. But there's also the same undertone with RenRuki as there is with IchiHime - that of a man challenging a protector figure (in both the cases of Orihime and Rukia, it's a big brother figure; with Orihime, it moves on to being Grimmjow, Ulquiorra, and ultimately Aizen) for the right to court his girl of choice. It's a general undercurrent and tension that both relationships have, and that makes them attractive (as well as the IshiNemu relationship, which might explain why you often see these three pairings clustered together). It should hardly be surprising that fans of one pairing would then become fans of the other. And for the record? Most IchiHime fans I've spoken to shipped RenRuki before they started liking IchiHime (I know I'm in this faction personally).

Strawman #8: IchiHime Shippers hate Ulquiorra because he threatens their ship.

False. In addition to the list of essays provided above, I can personally tell you that I don't actually care enough about Ulquiorra to feel threatened by him. (Although I do admit to fangirling the ever-loving shit out of him in Soul Carnival 2 - oh EmoSpada, you look so much better in color with your freaky green-and-yellow eyes. Your Burning Attack is also cool as fuck.) It is entirely possible to not have feelings one way or the other about a character that has nothing to do with your chosen ship, believe it or not.

Actually, in this thread, FLOL discusses why they do or don't think Ulquiorra will return from the dead. There's a lot of "I think his story's done" and "he just didn't appeal to me" and "he had an awful lot of time spent on him in the story", but no "I hate him, I'm glad he's dead, baww" that I can see. And speculation that he may come back in the 4th movie, and general agreement that it would make an awesome 4th movie if that were the case. And Copper fangirling Ulquibat as usual. XD

And over here, we have a poll asking who the respondents' least favorite Espada is. Ulquiorra took a whopping 25% of the vote with 11 votes, tying him with Zommari as the least popular Espada. Runners up were Absolute Monsters Szayel Aporro Grantz and Aaroniero Arlululukeyboardsmash with 5 votes and 11% each. Starrk got a whopping 0% of the vote, followed closely by Grimmjow and Barragan who got 1 vote each (spoilers: I was the vote on Barragan 8D). Nnoitra and Harribel each got 3 votes, and Yammy got 4. Again, no bashing - just a lot of "I didn't like Ulquiorra because he mindfucked a 15 year old girl" and "I thought Harribel was the personification of fanservice" and lots and lots of talk about Zommari. One person mentioned they disliked Ulquiorra because he 'had shiptease with Orihime', but hey, we can't all be perfect.

Really, if you're going to try and deduce anything from those numbers, I think your best bet would be that we really fucking love Starrk and Grimmjow as do all good people.

Strawman #9: IchiHime Shippers are all huge perverts that love to talk about sex and how good at it Ichigo and Orihime would be.

Misleading. All I can say to that one is "Welcome to the internet, honey". If you dislike people talking about sex and their favorite characters *gasp* doing sex, your stay here is going to be long and tedious indeed.

More to the point, and I hope this post illustrates this clearly, we talk about lots of things. Our chosen pairing engaging in *gasp* coital relations being one of them among many. I know, this is totally scandalous, but I think your heart can take the shock.

Beyond that, I think this is the point where I point out that sex is a natural, healthy human function and nothing to be ashamed of. It's okay for men to enjoy sex. Hey, it's also okay for women to enjoy sex! Informing me that I enjoy sex and reading about fictional characters having it is like telling me the sky is blue and the grass is green - yes, it's true, why should I particularly care?

The implication here, though, is that sex is all IchiHime shippers care about, which is a pretty baseless statement at its heart. If all we cared about was reading sex between fictional characters, without regard to their personality, why would we adhere to a ship in the first place? Why would we even read a shounen manga like Bleach that has no sex in it? We'd be better off reading Sei So Tsui Dan Sha, aka the Bob Sapp Detachable Penis Manga which, by the way, you should read.

Strawman #10: IchiHime Shippers have nothing to their ship, so they're constantly stealing from the IchiRuki side of fandom.

False. I'm not even sure what the basis of this one is, but let me assure you that I don't read or look at IchiRuki fanwork because... I don't like IchiRuki? I couldn't tell you what the IchiRuki side of fandom does, other than what I've seen on capslock_bleach and bleachness, because I quite frankly don't care what they do.

Strawman #11: IchiHime Shippers think they're reading Twilight and Ichigo and Orihime are Edward and Bella.

False. This one is just. Seriously? Let's bash Twilight and IchiHime at the same time, it'll be SUPER POPULAR!

First off, there's nothing worse about reading Twilight than there is your garden variety shoujo manga or romance novel. Yes, I've read it. Yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, I thought it was fucking hilarious for reasons SMeyer probably didn't intend. Reading Twilight, contrary to popular belief, is not indicative of illiteracy, stupidity, or horrible taste in literature. I finished the first three books and moved on to Creation of the Gods and Paradise Lost - what was your point again?

Secondly, comparing IchiHime to Edward/Bella is a false comparison at best. The characters act nothing alike - indeed, I'm rather fond of Ichigo and Orihime. I thought Edward and Bella were the two weakest characters in Twilight. Sure, Ichigo has a protective streak - but I'm fairly sure that it doesn't extend to removing the engine from his girlfriend's car to keep her from seeing a boy he doesn't like. He also doesn't sparkle like a Lisa Frank unicorn on the fourth of July, but that's neither here nor there, is it?

Really, I'm just addressing this one because someone brought it to my attention and I thought it was too hilarious not to include.

Wow, that turned huge. ANY ICHIHIME SHIPPERS WANNA COME UP TO THE ALTAR FOR TESTIMONIALS?