User blog:DustpeltX/The Making Of: Chiyo Hāto

Hi Fanon, Dust here with a blog post that's one-half guide and one-half shamelessly showing off my OCs. I plan to do these as a series either every time I think I need to make a new character or when I'm re-vamping one of my older characters. Just a habit I want to start so that I can explain my thinking, justify my choices, improve future writings, and maybe gain from popularity.

I encourage any one of you to do the same too, I feel it tends to make you think critically about your character and how you approach them. Anyway, without further explaination, let us begin.

Why Make Chiyo?
I think this is the first thing that comes into my mind when deciding to create a new character or not; in this case, VOLUME 4 was right around the corner and my team was in need of a re-vamp. However, one character in particular, Asher, had no reason and no method to improve that I could explain reasonably with his rather "normal" backstory.

And so, I decided to make one, and this came in the form of Chiyo. Now, I didn't know her or his name at the time, but I did know he or she was going to be the reason my Asher will be recieving some kind of change, buff, or redesign, so he or she had to be relevant some how.

LESSON ONE:
This concept stretches over all my characters; one would not exist, have an interesting plot point, or a drive if the other did not exist.
 * Create characters for a NEED

What was Chiyo going to be?
She had to be a fighter for sure, but she would need to have a reason NOT to have met my characters beforehand until now.

She would also have to be someone who had a fighting style which complimented Asher in a way that he was willing to learn from her as well as some form of destiny or fate tied in to reinforce that this outcome was meant to be.

For this, I looked to Asher's backstory and his fighting style: he wasn't a fighter and from what I wrote, he learned to fight from Heart, another character of mine and a team member core to his backstory. Even so, they were stylistically different in their combat styles.

This gave me the link to have Chiyo related to Heart in some way, namely having Chiyo be Heart's aunt and related to a sword-smithing clan, the Hāto. Giving me three things I was looking for:
 * Appropriate Fighting Style
 * Since Asher learned to fight from Heart, it seemed only natural that he learn from someone related to her that is supposedly better and more competent, namely, Chiyo.
 * New Weapon Replacement
 * Heart and her family were written as skilled craftsmen, especially with swords. Considering his original weapon was not his to begin with and did not suite his style at all, it gave a good reason to replace it as well as a good origin for his new one.
 * A Sense Of Destiny/Fate
 * Doing this enabled me to further explain Asher's previous fighting style as an oversimplified and downright inferior version of Chiyo's fighting style, giving it a "hero's destiny" premise. Therefore, it was appropriate for Asher to be learning ther proper way to fight from a proper master.

LESSON TWO:
Random characters rarely come together unless they have some common goal and even then, their bonds are rarely very strong.
 * Character relationships should be meaningful

That isn't to say good and bad character relationship means good character dynamic; the two are rarely related, but it's a simple thing to think about.

What was Chiyo's Character Design?
This part actually splits into 3 parts: Weapons, Fighting Style and Abilities, and Personality, of which I considering in that order respectively while adding to her backstory.

WEAPONS
This part was quite easy and straight forward. As I stated before, Chiyo was going to be part of a clan of weaponsmiths specializing is sword-making so naturally she was to have a sword of some kind. Now personally, I'm not much of a weapon designer so I borrow ideas or concepts from other things.

LESSON 3:

 * There is nothing wrong with borrowing ideas as long as you give the appropriate credit

Of course, just the concept alone doesn't make the character, but how the concept is used.

At the time, Dark Souls III had just came out and while playing it, a certain boss with a certain weapon caught my eye. Of course, that boss was the Abyss Watchers wielding the Farron Greatsword which I instantly fell in love with.

Now there was a different problem, there must be a reason why Chiyo would use this kind of weapon, especially this kind of pairing, this separates a straight up copy from an inspiration.

Keeping this in mind, I went onto her fighting style and backstory somewhat which would justify her use of the weapon as well as giving them the names Barbatos for the dagger and Lupus for the sword.

For one, I justified to myself that the Hāto Clan where not a very liberal bunch and thus where very stern on tradition; one of those traditions being only having ONE weapon for offensive use only, doing anything else would be an insult to your blade and the clan as a whole.

Thus, Chiyo Hāto became a rebel, somehow hated by her own family because she made a twin weapon solely for a defensive purpose. Why? So that she could be different from her brother and Heart's father, Astray Hāto. The sword, Lupus, was a nod to its wolf-based origins while the the dagger, Barbatos, was named after a demon for its heritical symbolism. As a package, they expressed her character as well as a reference to the titular mecha from Mobile Suite Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, ASW-G-08 Gundam Barbatos Lupus.

FIGHTING STYLE
While her style was inspired by the Farron Greatsword moveset, the reason she would fight this way was to be different. She had to have some sort of defensive fighting style to be able to teach Asher appropriately but at the same time, she had to pay homage to her Hāto origin.

Thus I incorporated her unique fighting style inspired by the weapon moveset, it's advantages, disadvantages, and uniqueness, to explain her backstory as a second rate individual to her brother. At the same time, her Semblance provided an additional window of opportunity to solidify their sibling rivalry. They were marginally similar but had advantages and disadvantages over each other giving an interesting dynamic.

LESSON 4:
Of course, that doesn't mean you can't start with the weapon, Semblance, or Fighting Style as the basis to your character, but simple that they must compliment your backstory to not appear as a cool factor.
 * Your weapon, Semblance, and Fighting Style exists due to the backstory, not the other way around

PERSONALITY
So with the previous two factors defining most of Chiyo, what's left is to fill in the blanks. Chiyo was the neglected little sister of Astray, a supposed prodigy in a group dedicated a craft with a very conservative view point who only address Chiyo as the second in rank to inherit the clan.

Now how would a character like that act? While I do not have this kind of problem to that extreme, I certainly can related by remembering similar situations in my past.

And so, Chiyo was to be a very rebellious character who tried to defy anything and everything she could just to have her own identity that was distinct from her brother. That's it! Nothing more to really add to it. However, it is this personality of which I kept in mind when finishing her backstory.

LESSON 5:
It is most often when you related to your characters that they appear more human. This rule applies to all of my characters that I can think of, which is why some characters seem to be tropish while others do not.
 * Relate to your characters

Chiyo's Name?
Probably the hardest part of her character. I named her brother Astray as a nod, again, to a mecha this time one from Mobile Suite Gundam: SEED/ASTRAY, MBF-P02 Astray Red Frame, as well as a slight corelation with the devil.

In addition, as siblings they had to look similiar, I modeled Astray after Jōichirō Yukihira from the cooking manga, Shokugeki no Soma, both because I liked his design as well as justifying Heart's eye colour a gold. She also had to have a name that was symbolic to her character.

Freedom was what I had in mind, because it was something she desired. Thinking about it some more, Freedom was a very basic name like Destiny, or Hope (no offense) so I opted to change the language to something I was more comfortable with, Chinese, giving me with the Cantonese/Mandarin pronounciation Chi-yo which somehow gave it a Japanese undertone.

It also fit the colour name rule as well as her colour, a sort of red, with freedom usually alluding to red, blue, stars, stripes.

Generally, America is her colour.

Now, I'd Like To End This On A High Note... (Closing Thoughts)
But that's generally my thought processes, as you can see, everything was very deliberate and methodical. I don't really care if my characters are cool or not, but that they demonstrate a very clear and decisive choice when you really break them down. I like my characters to be human, and I hope this little humble-brag of a blog-post can let you see that as well.