Enterprise Secret Santa

[Zeke]

You may have noticed we still have the Christmas banner up on the front page. There's a reason for that. (And it's not just to spite evay, who scolds me sometimes when I go past Epiphany. Superstition and balderdash!)

This is an ENT update -- and the biggest one since the Dirty Pair pastiche. But before I can show you, I need to do a little explaining.

As you know, I'm into anime and manga. One of my personal favourites is Bleach, a long-running shounen series with remarkable depth and artistry behind the swordplay. It has an obscene number of characters, so the learning curve is steep, but well worth it -- I get more out of the series on each reading. (Trivia fact: I first checked it out on Jim Wright's recommendation.)

Now, Bleach has a big fandom, and I recently became addicted to one of the best things in it: Bleach Lists on Tumblr. Created by Bleach Lists Girl (BLG), it's now in its fourth year, with literally thousands of lists posted (she used to post four a day!). You'd think it would get old after a while, but BLG is consistently hilarious, always finding new spins to put on things.

Let me put it this way: over the last couple of months I've made it most of the way through the archives on my phone, taking screenshots of all the funniest bits. I have taken well over a thousand.

Now if you poke around the blog a bit, you'll notice that BLG's style is very similar to mine here at 5MV -- her posts are basically chattier Top 10 lists with fiver scenes mixed in. It struck me that some of her list concepts would work well here too; maybe I could use one for a Disbanding-sort of thing that would double as my tribute to Bleach Lists. And then I noticed that BLG's birthday was coming up. (She shares my holiday-season birthday pain. Hers is January 14 -- the same as Rukia, Bleach's female lead.) And then I realized which of her list ideas was the perfect one for both occasions!

What follows has nothing to do with Bleach, and 5ME fans can enjoy it fully with no outside knowledge -- but it is also a Bleach Lists tribute. It's written in her format, which differs a bit from mine (you'll quickly notice the biggest way). There's another connection I won't spoil that BLG's readers will spot immediately. And if she gets even a fraction of the laughs from this that I've gotten from her blog, I'll consider it a success.

Ladies and gentlemen: Enterprise Secret Santa!