ARCHIVED.

It may come as a surprise because I don’t think a lot of people think this way about Kisuke, but the aspect of Kisuke’s personality I feel is most important to me is his caring personality and desire to help others! Now let me put a disclaimer, he’s no angel, not by a long shot. But I think a lot of people forget amidst edgy character theories that Kisuke is indeed generally shown to be caring towards those who deserve it and willing to help those in need, even without having any benefit for helping them. (TBTP and EBTR definitely showed situations where Kisuke wouldn’t have had anything to gain but helped anyway.) Heck, his given name even means “joyful helper”, so y’know, it must be pretty important that he’s generally helpful to other people in some way.

I think what’s most important to Kisuke is different. Kisuke would value his smarts over his kindness because he’s harsh with himself and doesn’t see himself as particularly kind. He’ll often overlook the real kindness he gives. (As far as we know he’s never implied anything about the Visoreds or Isshin and Masaki owing him, for example, so he’s rather humble about what he did and views it as un-extraordinary.) But he does know that he certainly is smart and will show that off. He really values his observant nature and his inventiveness / creativity. He does feel pride in what makes him smart, which is being able to watch his surroundings and learn from it, then also applying what he’s learned in new and unique ways. It’s the basis of his genius, and he regards it as important to how he functions. So I value an emotional positive trait of his and he values a mental positive trait of his.

Besides Kisuke being my favorite Bleach character, what made me start to write him is because I wanted to explore the intricacies of his character—stuff that hadn’t been touched in canon. I know that’s a lot of people’s motivation for writing Kisuke is that exact same thing because his intentions and motivations aren’t straightforward. But he’s such an enigmatic character that you can’t help but wonder who he really is on the inside, why he does the things he does, and how he manages to do all that he’s done. He’s also just a really fun and goofy character, which are the type of characters I manage to write well.

If I could change one event in my muses’ life, it actually wouldn’t be his exile. Maybe it seems a little cruel because it is one of his main sources of emotional pain, but I feel that if you changed Kisuke getting screwed over by Aizen and exiled, you change his whole character. I can’t really say whether or not without it he’d be better off or not, but that experience for him is such a crucial part of who he is that he wouldn’t be the Kisuke we know and love.

But an event that I think I would change is just, Kisuke in the Thousand Year Blood War arc in general. The two worst “bad” things he did in canon that really, truly weren’t presented as bad things/mistakes were in that arc. Beforehand he had done bad things but it was presented as bad things—like almost getting Rukia killed, and endangering Ichigo and friends. And he was also conscientious enough to know it was wrong so he actually apologized for it.

But the Thousand Year Blood War arc is just...... Bad. I would change Kisuke having made Orihime’s dress and making awful comments about it, and I would also change Kisuke having done what he did to Yoruichi. The reason why is not even that Kisuke couldn’t realistically make those mistakes, it’s that those bad things he did not have any real purpose towards character development, and Kisuke doesn’t reap any real consequences for doing those bad things. Both instances were simply sexism, sexual preying, and shock played for laughs, and nothing more. It didn’t play into some greater conflict or character development or anything. Sexism for the sake of sexism. It’s bad writing, and when I write Kisuke I take an eraser to badly-written canon.