#he often gets characterized as a lot more dour than he actually is in canon and he doesn't deserve this

[shegoesbyjoy]

new year, new fic! featuring...

an exploration of kim's need for control and how that manifests itself in various ways, including how he grieves

my interpretation of eyes as a character (he's that "boy next door". to me. based on nothing except vibes—let me live ok)

a look at the careful relationship kim maintains with eyes's widow

a singular use of the language of flowers that took an absurdly long time to figure out because i was determined to make it realistically attainable during winter (surprise, there aren't a whole lot of meaning-laden flowers available during cold weather)

harry being vaguely unhinged as usual

really enjoyed writing this one. would love to hear your thoughts if you decide to give it a go—you can find it right here <3

[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.