Hitori 'Bocchi' Gotoh

Player —

Player Name: Gwiggs
Pronouns: he/him
Are you over 18? Yep
Contact: mcgwigglesor gwiggs on discord
Current Characters: None!
Who Invited You?:Yinza!

Character —

Character Name: Hitori “Bocchi” Gotoh
Character Canon: Bocchi the Rock!
Character Age: 15
Canon Point:Episode 12 of the anime, after her failed stage dive at the school concert.
Link to History: link
Inventory: Her father’s guitar (a 1968 Gibson Les Paul with a freshly broken tuning peg).

Powers —

Skills:
Guitar: Hitori is an exceptionally skilled guitarist for her age, after having practiced alone for 6 hours a day for 3 years straight. Her skill is good enough that her youtube account has gained quite a bit of popularity, earning her status as a minor internet celebrity. Unfortunately, since this time was spent practicing alone, her skills are highly limited when it comes to performing as a part of a group or band.
Superpowers:
Sound Enhancement and Manipulation: Hitori can enhance and manipulate sound waves. On her own, she is capable of creating ear-piercing screeches and wails that can shatter glass and temporarily deafen people - but with the proper tool in her hands (ie a guitar) she can focus the soundwaves better, allowing her to manipulate pitch, strength and to targer her sonic attacks at a particular target.
Limitations:
Unfocused: Without a guitar in her hands, her sonic abilities are loud and omnidirectional. She needs an instrument to effectively use them in a way that is useful and doesn't affect everyone around her (ie to direct sonic blast, for example).

Anxiety : Hitori suffers from SEVERE social anxiety. While she's gotten over it somewhat (she's fully capable of performing in public, if not speaking), the simple act of someone speaking to her directly is enough to throw her off her game.

Personality —

Hitori “Bocchi” Gotoh is a mentally ill teenager. Within canon it’s fairly explicitly stated that she has some kind of anxiety disorder, but it also seems fairly clear that she struggles with depression as well (or, at the very least suffers from depressive episodes).

These are things she struggles with; but they aren’t the whole of her personality, and they aren’t the result of any sort of trauma or mistreatment. They’re illnesses, and they are problems in her life. And the way they’ve affected her life, and the ways in which she’s learned to cope with her mental health issues inform her other traits.

So. She has an anxiety disorder, and one of the primary triggers for it is social interaction. It’s not that she dislikes people, but they make her anxious and as a result she spent much of her childhood isolating herself from her peers - always second-guessing herself and unsure if she was even allowed to ask them to join their games. This had a compounding effect: Because she basically didn’t spend any time interacting with kids her own age, she never got any practice speaking with them and now she isn’t just anxious but also very, very awkward.

Which sucks for her, because she doesn’t dislike people. Throughout her childhood she becomes incredibly lonely and she desperately wants to make friends, but unfortunately she sort of cheated herself out of the opportunity to learn how to do that naturally.

And so she has attempted to make friends in her own way. Because, despite her awkward and timid nature, Hitori is a very driven, goal-oriented person (even if those goals can often be misguided). When Hitori got the idea that she could make friends by learning music and starting a band, she took the first step and worked incredibly hard at learning how to play the guitar.

And when she finally found a group of people willing to be in a band with her, she faced her fears repeatedly to earn their trust and to help them in any way she could. She performed on stage, she got a public-facing job to help pay for the band’s expenses, found a girl to be the band’s vocalist and approached her. And when the band’s morale grew low during their first concert, she burst into an impromptu guitar solo in front of an audience for the first time to boost the energy in the room. These things weren’t easy for her, each step required her to face her anxieties head-on.

That’s another one of Bocchi’s personality traits: She wants to improve herself, she wants to help her new friends, and she wants to pursue her dreams of becoming a rock star. The fact that she’s willing to confront her fears in order to pursue these goals means that she’s actually pretty brave in her own way.

She understands that her anxiety is never going to just go away. She’s never going to wake up one day and be a bold, extroverted person - but it seems clear that she has the potential to become a functioning adult who understands how to cope with stressors and who doesn’t let the small missteps in life get her down.

She still has a long way to go, but it’s clear that she’s already on the right path toward this goal. She needs to continue making human connections, despite how scary she finds it, and she needs to keep finding ways to cope with her anxiety and learning how to push through the fear in order to get what she wants out of life.

Gameplay —

Areas of Interest / Brainstorming:
Hitori is EXTREMELY motivated by the idea of fame, adoration, or really any sort of positive attention at all, so the concept of being a superhero will have some level of appeal to her. At the very least, she will be interested in the aesthetics of superheroics.

At the same time, she is not especially physically fit, and is a coward - she’s terrified of people (and of the idea that they will perceive her negatively) and her tendency to hesitate and hide will be a huge hurdle for her if she ever wants to make a proper name for herself in this new world.

In my opinion, that contradiction provides a really fun space to play in. She’ll want to help people, and as someone with powers she’ll feel socially obligated to help people. But that’s something she’ll struggle with a lot.

Samples:

Sample 1.

Sample 2

★ Character Information ★

Character Name: Hitori "Bocchi" Gotoh
Character Age: 15
Character Species: Human
Current Health: Physically she is healthy.
Outfit: A black t-shirt with the name of her band on the front, and pink tracksuit pants.

Character Canon:
Link to History: Wiki link
Canon Point: End of episode 8, at the end of their afterparty.
Canon Iteration: Original Canon

★ Folkmore Roles & Attributes ★

Skills:
- Guitar: Hitori is extremely good at shredding. She's practiced for at least 6 hours a day, every day, for 3 years and it shows.
- Social Media: Hitori operates a moderately successful youtube channel under the name "Guitarhero." She has gotten pretty good at misrepresenting herself to make herself look more pleasant and socialable, and that (combined with her afformentioned skills with a guitar) have gotten her over 30,000 subscribers.

Canon Abilities:
None! She is a normal teenage girl with no abilities beyond what you'd expect of a high schooler with anxiety.

Role: Myth
Role Qualities/Attributes: She'll grow a set of black antelope horns, giving her a fiend-like look that is also representive of her fearful and flightly nature.

Role Reasoning: While I certainly don't think that Hitori is an "evil" character, I think she has really negative opinions about herself that would manifest in becoming a Myth. She's a compulsive liar, she considers herself to simultaneously be very arrogant and completely worthless. She understands that she has an anxiety disorder, but she also considers herself to be a coward.

Also: She's a rock musician. What's more rock and roll than growing a set of devil horns?

★ Personality ★

Option 1:

Hitori “Bocchi” Gotoh is a mentally ill teenager. Within canon it’s fairly explicitly stated that she has some kind of anxiety disorder, but it also seems fairly clear that she struggles with depression as well (or, at the very least suffers from depressive episodes).

These are things she struggles with; it’s important to note that they are not the whole of her personality, and they aren’t the result of any sort of trauma or mistreatment. They’re illnesses, and they are problems in her life. And the way they’ve affected her life, and the ways in which she’s learned to cope with her mental health issues inform her other traits.

So. She has an anxiety disorder, and one of the primary triggers for her anxiety is social interaction. It’s not that she dislikes people, but they make her anxious and as a result she spent much of her childhood isolating herself from her peers - always second-guessing herself and unsure if she was even allowed to ask them to join their games. This, in turn, had a compounding effect: Because she basically didn’t spend any time interacting with kids her own age, she never got any practice speaking with them and now she isn’t just anxious but also very, very awkward.

Which sucks for her, because she doesn’t dislike people. Throughout her childhood she becomes incredibly lonely and she desperately wants to make friends, but unfortunately she sort of cheated herself out of the opportunity to learn how to do that naturally.

And so she has attempted to make friends in her own way. Because, despite her awkward and timid nature, Hitori is a very driven, goal-oriented person (even if those goals can often be misguided). When Hitori got the idea that she could make friends by learning music and starting a band, she took the first step and worked incredibly hard at learning how to play the guitar.

And when she eventually, finally found a group of people willing to be in a band with her, she faced her fears repeatedly to earn their trust and to help the band in any way she could. She performed on stage, she got a public-facing job to help pay for the band’s expenses, she found a girl to be the band’s vocalist and approached her, and when the band’s morale grew low during their first concert she stepped up and boosted the energy in the room by bursting into an impromptu guitar solo in front of an audience for the first time. These aren’t things that were easy for her, each step required her to face her anxieties head-on.

That’s another one of Bocchi’s personality traits: She wants to improve herself, she wants to help her new friends, and she wants to pursue her dreams of becoming a rock star. The fact that she’s willing to confront the things she’s afraid of in order to pursue these goals means that she’s actually pretty brave in her own way.

I think she understands that her anxiety is never going to just go away. She’s never going to wake up one day and be a bold, extroverted person - but it seems clear to me that she her full potential is to become a functioning adult who understands how to cope with the stressors in her life and who doesn’t let the small missteps in life get her down.

She still has a long way to go, but it’s clear that she’s already on the right path toward this goal. She needs to continue making human connections, despite how scary she finds it, and she needs to keep finding ways to cope with her anxiety and learning how to push through the fear in order to get what she wants out of life.