| Zf6hellion's Shitty Guides to Characters | |||
| Fullbringers | Quincy | Hybrids | |
'allo ladies, gents, and those of you with fetishes for the defiance of gravity (Lookin' at you Sei >.>). It is I, your friendly neighbourhood Official Databook here today with my very first attempt at a guide. I suck at this kinda thing, y'see so bear with me.
We've had an influx of guides fairly recently, one for combat, Kidō, even a guide on how not to do guides. On top of that we've got a bunch of folks popping about. Oldies, newbies, and the occasional weirdo or eight. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the mechanics and practices of most of the various races that encompass the Bleach universe, and so I felt like trying to lend a hand in that regard. With that said, welcome, to what will, hopefully, be the first of a few blogs covering the creation of each of the races. Tips, helpful info, and all that kinda junk. And to start us off I'll be covering one of the most underdeveloped races in the series: Fullbringers!
For those that don't know, a Fullbringer is a Human who is granted powers from a Hollow under a specific set of circumstances, namely that their mother was attacked by a Hollow before the Fullbringer was born. A remnant of Reiryoku, spiritual power, of that Hollow lingers within the parent and is passed onto the child at the moment of their birth granting them their powers, though the point when they become aware of it differs from individual to individual. That out of the way, let's actually get to making one.
Name & Appearance[]
This should be the easiest part of making a Fullbringer, as they are all Human physically. This narrows down the physical appearance part while also giving you a large amount of freedom. Fullbringers are always Human, but they can come from any part of the world. The majority of the cast in Bleach are Japanese, but become a bit more diverse with regards to Fullbringers. Jackie Tristan is likely American, Yasutora Sado is of Mexican descent, and Yukio Hans Vorarlberna is Germanic to some extent. Anyway, the freedom here is that your character can be of any ethnicity in the world, of any heritage and have any name you could think of. Be it normal, unorthodox or flat out outlandish, if you want your character to feel at home with the Quincy anyway (NaNaNa Najahkoop... le sigh). The only restriction is that your character is Human (And there are likely loopholes one could come up with to skirt even this), from that you can be an athlete from Portugal, a Tibetan monk on a spiritual journey, a Nascar driver, even. You should, of course, attempt to pick something and stick to it as it will help with coming up with a unified design which is important in making the character feel cohesive.
History, Personality, "Theme"[]
Each of the races have some kind of theme riding behind them in the background, an undertone or two that applies to most, if not all of the individuals from a particular race in the world of Bleach. Many of them have their own theme on top of this, to help deviate them from the pack. And those that don't... well... Let's leave the Quincy for another day, alright? Alright!
For Fullbringers, the themes are seclusion, exclusion, and loss.
- Jackie came from a family involved in crime, the first gift she'd ever gotten was a pair of leather boots that were likely stolen, though she pretended not to notice. Not long after, she comes home to find her entire family had been massacred as retaliation for some black market dealings.
- Yukio, as a child, was a quiet and untalkative lad. His parents, thinking that the words "mother" and "father" meant little to their son, had him secluded away from them. He would retaliate, stealing his father's money and ruining his business only for them to commit suicide.
- Sado, was taken in by his grandfather when his parents died. He started out as a bully, beating the crap out of anyone that annoyed him. His granddad attempted to put a stop to that and did so by taking a beating, in Sado's place, from the parents of the children that Sado had tormented. His grandfather eventually passed away as well, but not before inspiring Sado to become the person we know (Bless his useless ass heart).
This affects them in different ways. Jackie is the only Fullbringer in Xcution that out right hated her powers, as they manifested shortly after her family was killed. What use are they if they couldn't save her family? What's the point in having gained them when its too late to change what happened? To make matters worse for her, the Focus she uses for Fullbring are none other than those boots her father gave her. His first and last gift to his daughter. On the flip side, Yasutora was spurred on to become a proponent of pacificism (No, not pacifism). Only fighting when he had to in order to protect others; never himself.
While one doesn't have to play to the common theme of something, if you're stuck and unsure what to do, I'd say its always best to look back and see what happened to those characters. From there you can work out what happened to yours, and how that haunts or drives them to become the person that they are.
The theme is a part of the character that permeates everything. It is the underlying focus of their history that brought them to the present, and it helps build a foundation of what these people are like. As the theme sets the stage, the history puts on paper, and the personality sculpts itself around it. Yeah, let's go with that.
Powers: The Eponymous Fullbring[]
Mechanics[]
As was revealed late in Bleach, everything in the Human World has a soul. Every single person carries a soul, obviously, as do cats, dogs, and everything else within the animal kingdom. Plants, trees, the planet itself. Each of them carries a soul at their core. Even inanimate objects do, every Twilight novel is manufactured with its very own sparkly world-hating soul. Those stinking bathroom stalls at the local petrol station are all crying out for a quick demise lest they accrue more pee stains. And I know for a fact that those towels and tissues y'all use up aren't fond of it.
That aside, this is important to Fullbringers because of their one, and their only, ability: Fullbring. It allows them to "pull"1 on these souls in order to achieve various purposes. They can pull on them, so that they achieve what is normally expected of them in an unusual way (Raising water into one's mouth to be drank without using a glass), or they can pull on them to change the properties of it so that they can perform supernatural feats that would otherwise be beyond them, such as altering the elasticity of the ground to greatly augment their jumping ability or manipulating the air so that they may walk on it, or move through it faster (In the former case, giving it solidity, and in the latter, altering wind resistance and momentum) which is how Ichigo achieved his high-speed movement2 during his brief time as a Fullbringer.
- "Pull" is not literal in this case, rather its meant to allude to how they manipulate souls, they "pull" on it, to direct it in certain ways, bringing it to a point that benefits the Fullbringer rather than the soul itself.
- As an aside, Bringer Light is not a technique Fullbringers use, it is a side-effect, Bringer Light is a passive manifestation which appears to signal the fact that the Fullbringer is about to move at high speed. Fullbringers only have one ability: Fullbring.
Foci[]
Every soul is made up of memories. Experiences, emotions, and so on. Just like Humans they go through whatever they go through and that is all remembered, retained within them. While Fullbringers can manipulate most any soul, the degree to how profoundly they can manipulate one differs from soul to soul. The soul of an Ant is likely to provide less resistance than that of a Bear. A wooden plank isn't likely to register as much difficulty as a skyscraper. The memories of these souls, however, can create a connection with the Fullbringer. Something a Fullbringer has had with them for a very long time, such as Jackie's boots, or Sado's own flesh, can form a bond as they share the experiences of their holder, they witness the pain, the joy, the growth of their wielder. These are Foci (Plural of Focus... You can never be too sure).
With a strong enough connection, a Fullbringer can manipulate certain objects with intense ease, to the point that they can alter its form entirely, transforming it into something different. This is the most explicit display of a Fullbringer's ability, and about the only one given any real focus in the manga and anime.
Now anyone who's lived a decent chunk of their life will have grown attached to a couple of items that they could name to you no problem. And these items become personal trinkets for all manner of reasons, a precious gift, a memento, it could be totally mundane or laughably irrational. I used to have this little penguin teddy, and you can all fuck off right now, it was the shit, alright!
*ahem*
So that's how it works, on a more-or-less, mechanical level. What about making one?
The Focus itself, as stated, should be a relatively simple thing to figure out. A cop has likely formed a connection with his sidearm, his badge, or even his uniform. And so on and so on.
As with any character, ones powers should tie into who that person is. Be it an expression of their personality, an allusion to their history, or even the opposite.
Jackie Tristan has the Dirty Boots. That gift she was given from her father was something she took immense care with. It was the first gift she had ever been given. The series remarks that she cleaned them thoroughly, making sure to keep them from ever getting dirty until the day she lost her family. The first thing to ever stain her boots was the blood of her own brother. Dirty Boots, her Fullbring, gives her power the more her Fullbring is dirtied. This connects back to Jackie and her boots, as well as her underlying contempt for her powers. She feels dirty and unclean and wants nothing more than to be rid of it for good. Dirty Boots gives her increased speed and physical strength, both traits centered around physicality, which is often associated with anger and rage, brought about by her own self-loathing.
On the flip side, Sado, who has two Fullbring, can be seen as representations of the two walks of life he has followed. Brazo Izquierda del Diablo, which uses his left arm as its Focus, is a purely offensive tool, meant to dish out heavy damage. This represents a younger Sado, the bully that took down anyone that annoyed him. Brazo Derecha de Gigante, his right arm, originally starts out as a more-offensive weapon before it fully matures, and was shown to have been fairly weak all things considered. Once it has fully matured though, it becomes a shield, a defensive tool. This represents Sado in the now, he's grown into a young adult and has long since taken his grandfather's teachings to heart and uses his power to defend those he cares for.
Kūgo Ginjō's Fullbring, the Cross of Scaffold, is simple and straightforward where-as Ginjō himself turns out to be less so. On top of that, its simplicity works as a parallel to Ichigo's own Zangetsu and the similarities that went between both characters (Substitute Shinigami 'n' what not) with them both having access to a flashy but simple energy blade.
Only One?[]
Though there are scant few canonical examples, beyond Sado, a Fullbringer is capable of wielding more than one Fullbring. And as I've stated, its incredibly likely that someone would form a connection with more than one object through out their life. Unless you're Amish, I guess. A Fullbring should always be dedicated to one particular power (The alteration of memories, the setting of time limits, dirt = HULK SMASH!!!) but this allows Fullbringers to become incredibly more versatile, though they should remain wary of going overboard. Its cool that a Fullbringer can have a backup Focus to cover that one blindspot, but having one for every single situation is boring.
Names[]
The hardest part of anything is usually naming it in such a way that you're proud of it. Especially in a shounen series where its likely to sound corny as all Hell, unless that is what you want. Names for Fullbrings are typically done in English, but can obviously be rendered in other languages as fits a particular character (Sado, relating to having been raised in Mexico names his in Spanish; A student of languages may name theirs in whatever language they most identify with). The names themselves come in one of three flavours, mainly. Which are:
- Self-descriptive (Dirty Boots, Dollhouse, Jackpot Knuckle)
- Phrases (Time Tells No Lies)
- Gibberish (Cross of Scaffold, Right Arm of the Giant, Book of the End)
Which you use is down to yourself, but the name should relate to the powers in some way if nothing else. For example Time Tell No Lies is all about deadlines.