Kinda a nothing burger post but look at this oc exercise I did! The heads of the assassin family spanning back 12 generations. Our beloved Reiya is the 11th, and his daughter, Haruna, is the 12th
I haven’t really done an established lore drop. (I prolly should) it’s important to note that each head is male!! Excluding Haru of course
Reiya, Haru, and “Chiyo” are the only ones named because……they’re the important ones. Chiyo is the progenitor, the very beginning of it all. Reiya expands the family business by the most ever. Haruna is representative of change and the future
I’m still working on Chiyo’s backstory, but I do wanna talk about what I’ve been workshopping bevause I find it interesting. I’ve been doing some research on the Tokugawa/Edo period and what things were like for the working class. Not just that but researching the history of homosexuality and gender nonconformity in Japan. It’s been fun!
My goal for the backstory is to take the character “Chiyo” and another character, “Ume” and bring them together. I don’t talk about the family a lot, but understand that they’re not just a business but a DYNASTY. They’re not just renowned in the underworld, but also the high class underworld. But yeah, gotta figure out an origin story for a family like that.
Chiyo is kinda meant to be like.. the boy who never had anything, subjugated to abuse on the basis of his birth sex (unfortunately, at the time, the predation upon young boys was very popular) . Ume is supposed to be the girl that had everything and had it taken away on the basis of her birth sex (married off). This is an oversimplification— I want the narrative to focus on a variety of topics:
- perception of children (and women) as possessions rather than people
- what pushes someone to murder
- the fluidity of sexuality and gender
- gender nonconformity as a form of self preservation as opposed to identity
- the weaponization of femininity
- the big Baki topic of it all. Strength. In this case it’s strength forged in blood. At its heart it’s about the reclamation of autonomy. Being able to be strong
Pretty basic but this is stuff I care about so I wanna go deep with it. To put a long story short however. This is about two tainted kids. Chiyo and Ume’s separate circumstances send them towards a life of killing for survival. This eventually evolves into organized assassination. As it becomes more of a job and reclamation of power, they eventually encounter one another. They bond over their shared experiences and perceived “taintedness” and this sets off a domino effect that ultimately results in the creation of this massively known “business”.
……..and keep in mind these aren’t the Baki relevant characters. This is just the pre story! I needed to explain reiya’s existence somehow!
This is your sign to pick up some articles. Research is very fun. And I feel a lot of Baki ocs could benefit from some sort of actual research…Y’know it’s kind of lame to see very basic things like flubbed. Big example is kimonos drawn incorrectly. Not to be that guy but y’all be orientalist asf sometimes. I’ll see an oc and her kimono is flipped like girl why are you dead.
