#everyone loves choei and no one loves ohno

[recurring-polynya]

ok so i really like choei and i’ve been wondering what he looks like...i mean he’s a pretty prominent oc in a big chunk of your fics so maybe... a doodle? xD

(2/2) ok maybe prominent is not the right word but memorable would definitely be it 

So, a while ago, I had the idea to try and draw a bunch of my Squad 6 OCs and do, like, little profiles for them? Like they used to have at the end of the Bleach volumes? Mostly, I just wanted to practice drawing faces. Anyway, this turned out to be way more work than I expected, so this may be the only one I end up doing, but it was fun.

Ahhh, Choei. It was 2019. I was writing my second fanfic. I needed two Squad 6 OCs, whom I hoped to reuse, because I hate making OCs. Two upper seats, one of them who laughs at Renji’s jokes and one of them who would never laugh at Renji’s jokes. The former became Fourth Seat Kuchiki Choei, the OC that dared to ask the question: what if a Kuchiki, but also a bro?

Birthday: November 26 (Sagittarius)

Height: 183cm (6′0″)

Weight: 80kg (176lb)

Zanpakutou: Namazu

Release command: Furuwasero, Namazu!/Shake it up, Namazu! (furuwaseru means to cause something else to shake as opposed to furueru / to shake)

Special skill: Plays pivot on the Squad 6 futsal team

Hobby: Collecting stuff from the World of the Living.

Food: Likes: Yakult (yogurt drink)  Dislikes: Mushrooms

How he spends his day off: Can often be found wearing a backwards baseball cap and Sidewalk Surfers and hanging out in one of the trendy Living World-style karaoke bars and coffee houses that sprang up in the years following the ryouka invasion.

Theme Song: “Good Time” by Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen

Choei facts!

Namazu, Choei’s zanpakutou is an otsuchi, a war hammer traditionally used for breaking down doors. Choei has two special attacks: (1) he can slam Namazu into something with tremendous concussive force, shaking it to pieces and (2) he can strike the ground to cause small earthquakes.

Namazu is named for the legendary catfish that causes earthquakes in Japanese folklore. He is normally trapped by the thunder god Kashima under a stone or gourd, but sometimes he gets rowdy and thrashes around, causing tremors. He was a popular subject of ukiyo-e prints in the 19th century and is also regarded as a deity of social justice and wealth redistribution. (Choei likes to redistribute his wealth at the bar on Saturday nights). The trailing ribbons on Choei’s zanpakutou are meant to be evocative of catfish whiskers.

In Squad 6, all shihakushou accessories must be approved, in writing, by the captain. Choei holds the record for the most rejected applications, including, but not limited to: Doc Martens, ski goggles, a puffy vest, a trucker hat, and a fanny pack. To date, the only thing he has gotten past Byakuya is a pair of bro-ass grippy weightlighting gloves which he claims are “functional.” (It is a great mystery among Squad 6ers whether Byakuya makes Renji submit accessory applications and actually approves them or if Vice Captain just does what he wants and Byakuya lets him. Also why?? how?? Is it because he has bankai??)

Choei is Byakuya’s second cousin (his paternal grandfather is Ginrei’s brother). He has four older brothers and one older sister, Naoko, who is the Lady of the Gotou branch family.  

Choei is a bit of a black sheep. He is a not a man of culture and he isn’t interested in settling down and making a nice marriage alliance. He joined the Gotei because it’s about the only thing he’s able to do to the satisfaction of his family. Although he has very high reiatsu and is a strong fighter (his zanpakutou is especially well suited for smashing Hollow masks), he has rarely been motivated to work hard, and was often dismissed by his relatives for his fun-loving lifestyle and fighting with a “vulgar”, non-bladed weapon, not befitting a Kuchiki. Since Renji came on as Vice Captain, he has made Choei do approximately 900,000 pushups and lets Choei hit Hihiou Zabimaru in the face with his hammer. Renji doesn’t know this, but Choei admires him deeply and has improved a lot under his abuse tutelage.

Choei managed to distinguish himself in my sadtimes Byakuya Dies AU, Portions for Foxes by passing the Lieutenant’s Exam and becoming Renji’s Vice-Captain (and also by hooking up with Sentarou.)

Special thanks to @kaicko for help with Choei’s zanpakutou and release command and also just listening to me ramble about my bro son.

Also, credit to AdorkaStock for the pose reference!

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 7/30/2021:

It’s Friday and that means time to asspull another wordcount!

Ginrei fic: The on that matters is the wordcount on the clean document, which is 19606 (+3710 from last week.). By my own count, I wrote ~5000 words this week, which included some joshing around with Choei and Ohno, and the Final Jeopardy Round of Pub Trivia (although I didn’t manage to finish it). I also wrote a bit that I am not sure if I like or not, so I am just letting it sit there and simmer and irritate me until I come up with a way to fix it or I just delete it. In any case, Chapter 3 is in far better shape than last week-- I have one major scene left to write and I have to string all the pub trivia bits together into something coherent.

I think that if it takes me 2wks/chapter, that seems pretty reasonable. My outline currently shows 8 chapters and a prologue, but the chapters keep getting progressively longer and longer, so my current best guess is that we’ll end at 10. (I am not planning an epilogue but it would not be shocker to end up with one)

I had one kid home this week and one kid at part-time camp, and it felt... chaotic. I have both kids next week, so if I manage to get chapter 3 finished, I’ll be pleased with that, I think. For the record Ginrei hasn’t even gotten here yet, he shows up first thing in Chapter 4, and honestly, I feel like I will feel a lot better once I have that one under my belt. The week after that, I will be on a family trip, so it’s possible I will get nothing done at all. On the other hand, I started writing Portions for Foxes on basically the same trip in 2019, so who knows what may happen. Love 2 write on my phone like a crazy person.

I drew a new a little in love banner this week (you should get to see it later today) and I might draw... another one? For single-chapter use? Uhhhh they’re good practice at faces 😬. I also have a Dumb Comic in mind.

I’ve been trying not to be too depressed on main, but I have been battling a lot of feeling like a hack lately, like I just write the same stuff over and over and everyone is tired of me. (I say this as if I have ever gotten tired of any of my favorite fanfic authors and don’t lose my mind every time they release a new chapter.) I am very grateful to the people who comment on all my new chapters, all of you are Too Good.

That’s it for now. I have to go pick up my kid and then we’re going to ✨bake a carrot cake ✨

[recurring-polynya]

This is very random but I love the cast of random side characters that you made up (like Seike and Ohno) -- so much so that i am sometimes surprised when they dont actually appear in Bleach?? Anyway love that kind of consistency...would love to see it in my own writing someday skjfjsjsj

Ah, thank you so much! You are a great writer, and this is a very achievable goal!

Ha ha, believe it or not, Seike is actually canon?? I am pretty sure his name only appears in We Do (Knot) Always Love You, but I have always assumed it’s this guy:

Anyway, here are some tips for creating side characters! It’s way easier than you think!

I hate making up characters. I hate it. Much the way all great programmers are very lazy and therefore work to minimize the work they have to do over their entire lifetime, I work very hard to never have to make up anything about my characters.

Here’s a tip for names: I am not Japanese and coming up with Japanese names is hard for me and makes me nervous. If I am naming an important character, I will go to the trouble of giving them a meaningful name and working out the kanji, etc etc (by which I mean I go drop hours of my time into https://japanese-names.info/). If they are a side character, I will look up the Wikipedia article on “Japanese entomologists” or “Japanese Olympic figureskaters” and pick one surname and one given name that have the right “ring” to them. I will usually do a quick Google to make sure that name isn’t the name of an important character in some other anime/video game I wasn’t aware of. Bam. Done.

You can also cheat by naming everyone in Squad 6 Kuchiki, Ohno, or Gotou because they are all Byakuya’s relatives, or having there be six guys named Maki in Squad 11 (there are already semi-canonically 2). If you make a joke about it, everything thinks you’re a very funny person instead of just incredibly lazy.

I keep a spreadsheet. Every time I make up a detail about a character, I try to log it so I don’t have to look it up later. Here’s what the Squad 6 tab looks like:

Be minimalist. The less you make up, the less you have to remember later. Every time you bring in a character, say to yourself, what are they here for? You really don’t need to go much further than that. Ohno and Choei got introduced in one of my first fanfics, because a) I needed some exposition, and b) I wanted to show how Renji interacted with his squad. What I wanted to convey was that most of Squad 6 is lazy snobs who enjoy the benefits of nepotism and Renji’s presence is really cramping their deal: hence, Ohno. However, Renji is very likable, and I also wanted a contradicting voice that thought Renji was cool and fun and livened things up: hence Choei. I made them the 3rd and 4th seats because he would work with them a lot, and I would be able to reuse them. Ohno should be kinda important, so I made him the heir to the largest Kuchiki branch family, which explains why he’s snooty, but also always angling for Byakuya’s approval. Choei’s basic characteristic is his chill bro-ness and lack of ambition, so I made him an extraneous fifth son. He’s on the futsal team, because that gave him additional reason to like Renji. He’s openly gay because gay people are cool and I felt like it. That’s it. Two characters that I have gotten incredible mileage out of. Every story or so, I add another detail if it makes sense to. Ohno is, surprisingly, fond of dogs. Choei’s zanpakutou is a warhammer. Ohno’s dad is a huge bitch, which explains a lot about him without me having to explain anything.

My OC’s are primarily there for my protagonists to bounce off of! Like Plato’s shadows in the cave, they really, really, do not need to have a richer inner life than what our protags see of them.

One of my characterizations of Renji is that he’s very personable and knows everyone. When I’m doing his POVs, I name almost any character he comes across, and often include a fact about them. Conversely, when I’m writing Byakuya, who doesn’t notice people who are beneath him, I will frequently not use names, even on people whose names he should really know, like referring to Kira as “that dour fellow from 3.″ It’s also really interesting, particularly in the case of Squad 6, to examine the way Byakuya interacts with his underlings vs. the way Renji does.

One of the things having bit characters does is to make your world feel bigger. A related thing you can do is to casually namedrop places-- invent a name for the restaurant your characters like to go to, or refer to different parts of your setting like you are describing them to someone who lives there (”up near the art musuem” or “that noodle place north of the Eleventh”). When I write about the Seireitei, I am always thinking about my Local Large City, and how I would describe where things are.

Reuse bit-part canon characters interchangeably with your own! This works very well in confusing your audience as to who you made up and who is canon! As I mentioned, Seike is actually canon, although we don’t know much about him. Ichigo’s lesser-known classmates, like Ryo and Michiru are similar. I tend to think of characters in tiers: in my stories, the protagonists are Renji, Rukia, and to a slightly lesser degree, Byakuya, so that’s my A-tier. The B-tier are the other Bleach characters they interact with the most-- Izuru, Momo, Shuuhei, Ikkaku, Yumichika, Hitsugaya, Ukitake, etc. The C-tier are characters that are of lesser importance in the canon story, but I like them, or they are relevant to the story, so I use them, like Hanataro, Akon, Rikichi, Kiyone and Sentaro, etc. There are also the characters that are important canonically, but just aren’t as important to my stories-- Soi Fon, Kyouraku, etc. Then, there’s the D-tier, which should contain both throwaway canon characters, like, Seike, and your made up cast. If you can keep them at the same level, you’re doing the right thing! If you use any character enough, they can move up a tier! There’s also an E-tier for characters that are just a name and some minor details. It’s good and okay to have these, too! You can think about this in terms of tags, as well: your primary audience is clicking on your story for your A-tier characters, and many people may be clicking on it because they are thirsty for content of your B-tier characters, so try to scale their roles according. You’re trying to make the C-tier characters happen, and your audience is just gonna have to deal with it, so it’s your job to convince people that they are Good, Actually. D-characters are there for flavoring, and I guess if you can make people like them, that says something about you (me, I guess?) as a writer.

When I wrote Between Tides, I cut my protagonists off from their main cast so I *had* to introduce some OCs at the B/C-tier and I hated it and rolled around on the floor wailing about it for 3 months. I have gotten so many compliments on Rukia’s intense, overbearing boss, Sunadori, and Renji’s no-nonsense cooking mentor/witch friend, Mrs. Kuwashima. I have no explanation, except maybe all the anguishing did something. I think I invented them more by feel than anything else-- Sunadori’s role was to get Rukia used to the idea of being a vice-captain, and Mrs. Kuwashima’s role was to let Renji be someone’s soft son for a bit. This is more important than any particular bit of backstory. Mrs. Kuwashima didn’t even have much of a backstory, now that I think about it, and the only reason Sunadori had one is because it tied into the plot.

Also, I am a dialogue-ist, and I let my characters establish themselves through their own voices, rather than trying to enforce personalities from above.

Ha ha, I think that’s long enough. Thank you for this opportunity to bloviate about my own writing. The upshot is, worldbuilding is not just magic systems and fantasy governments, it’s also deciding that the lady who goalkeeps the Squad 6 futsal team is also Byakuya’s cousin who once pushed him in the mud as a child.