#also there’s so much context to each of these doodles so I can’t possibly explain them but I will if u ask and that’s it

[lepeltge]

Did a little doodle page of @nnnnnnnothingtoseehere ‘s pirate au bc hcing and talking about it has kicked my creativity into overdrive

[un0vian]

Hear me out, SSS Miraculous Ladybug AU?

oh man you guys have no idea how much I’ve thought about an au like this before

The anon is new, but this has been in the inbox for a while, I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long! Also this kind of takes a general understanding of the show to make any sense!

This is just a HUGE bundle of ideas lmao I’m sorry it’s so disorganized. I’ll put some of the doodles up here and put in a read more for all of my bullet points (I wrote almost 2K words for this hhhh)

No Pokémon in this AU, and I’m not clever enough to shape the Miraculous after any of them lol.

I think Lance being the Guardian of the Miraculous fits the most.

Lyra becomes the Ladybug Miraculous holder the same way Marinette does, by showing and acting upon her compassion towards someone in need (not the same exact way, considering Lance isn’t nearly as old as Master Fu; she probably saves an old man and Lance notices).

In this AU’s origins I think it would make sense that Giovanni and Silver just moved to Goldenrod from Kanto. Giovanni (obviously) was a part of the crime-world, but found out about the Miraculous and their power, got ahold of the Cat and Butterfly Miraculous, learned of the Ladybug Miraculous’ general location, then decided moving was a good idea. They move into a place like the Agreste mansion (Silver thinks the move is just random btw).

I would say Giovanni holds Silver to high standards like Gabriel does for Adrien. Giovanni has Silver play the Violin and Cello (READ FVAWA!!!), and was probably homeschooled in Kanto. I’ll also say he probably has basic self defense training.

To blend in, Silver becomes enrolled at the same school that Lyra, Kris, and Ethan attend.

Lyra, Kris, and Ethan always try to yoink the back two tables, and every new seating chart the three play Rock Paper Scissors, loser sits alone. Lyra loses and ends up at the table next to the other two with an empty seat.

Their teacher, Professor Elm (I mean, who else would it be?? There’s Oak ofc but eh), introduces Silver to the class and has him sit with Lyra. 

It’s obvious to Lyra that Silver is more socially reserved, but she introduces herself anyway.

Lyra moved from New Bark Town to Goldenrod City early in her childhood (Her and Ethan were childhood friends, Ethan moved to Goldenrod a little before Silver. Kris grew up in Goldenrod). I think it would be cool to keep the Bakery; Lyra’s mom would work there with Lyra helping out a lot.

I’m thinking Lyra could possibly be a model like Adrien, but wayyy on the DL in comparison. She has the right temperament for being in the spotlight (aka not being a flustered mess all the time), hence why she’s so well suited for the Miraculous.

Her passion is writing! Writing poems, speeches, music, all of it. And she enjoys public speaking. She’ll pull out a notebook (or just type on her phone like a sane person) whenever she gets a new idea.

Lyra sings and plays the synth. She plays songs she writes sometimes!

Tikki helps Lyra a lot with her worries about being a Superhero, and is great at giving suggestions and ideas of what Lyra should write if she has a block. Basically usual Tikki being great.

When the first Akuma appeared, Lyra found her Miraculous the same way Marinette did. The difference is when Tikki appeared she was less fearful, and learned about de-evilizing Akumas from the start.

When Ladybug showsed up to stop the Akuma there was no other support. She was able to defeat the Akuma, but damn, what a workout.

Hear me out here, what if there wasn’t an umbrella scene? I’d rather have their feelings for each other grow over time as Silver begins to doubt his father’s reasons for needing the Ladybug Miraculous and reflects on his actions. Besides, Lyra having feelings for Silver in the beginning would be kinda cringe 😬 (@Marinette in the PV smh)

The first Akuma was Giovanni’s way of testing the waters, and confirms that the Ladybug Miraculous is in Goldenrod. The night afterwards he approaches Silver with the Cat Miraculous. Giovanni explains that he needs the Ladybug Miraculous along with the Cat Miraculous to bring Silver’s mother back (which is total bullshit, all he wants is power), and offers him the Miraculous.

And about Silver’s mother; I know there’s a theory about Ariana being his mom, but in this AU (and in general, really) I HC his mother being kindhearted and not part of the mob ahah. (Also same sitch as Adrien’s mom in this AU)

Silver is apprehensive towards the “offer”, but can he really say no? And he does want to see his mom again. So he accepts. Giovanni barely hides the vile smirk on his face and throws in a “I’m proud of you, son” for good measure :/

From then on, Cat Noir shows up to battle Ladybug after an Akuma is de-evilized.

Plagg is somewhere between neutral and good. He’ll (not-so) subtly suggest that Silver should join Ladybug, and point out how much of a dick Giovanni is… but he won’t actively try to stop him because he can’t really do anything about it anyways. Plagg supposes he’ll just have to be patient. And he teases Silver about anything and everything, and his reactions are priceless.

Already having no partner to rely on during Akuma battles, Ladybug is most definitely tired out and has far too many close calls in her battles with Cat Noir. Lyra vents about this to Tikki, and worries about being unable to contact the guardian and request more help.

Lance realizes his mistake after a particularly nasty fight when a stroke of luck saves Ladybug from de-transforming. He introduces himself right after that fight, and apologizes for his oversight.

At this moment I don’t know if it would make more sense to introduce only one more Miraculous holder or two, and if they should be permanent or temporary. I’ll put down my bare-bones ideas for the Miraculous holders anyways.

Ethan - Fox Miraculous, Kris - Turtle Miraculous. I see Kris suiting the Turtle Miraculous because she waits for the right moment instead of jumping right in. I see her as being a great protector compared to Ethan.

Sheesh this is already super long any I haven’t really gotten to the SSS portion 

Slow burn like the show, but in this case neither has a crush for a whiiiile. That part is quite different from the show, but the context is not the same.

Eventually there’s a semblance of a friendship between Lyra and Silver. They got close through sitting at the same table in class and working on different projects together. They also find they both share a love of music.

Anyways, Lyra gets really excited about their friendship and prattles on about it to Tikki.

“Wow, it almost sounds like you like him!”

“Whaaaaat? No!!! He’s just a friend, Tikki!” (Nice Adrien impression, Lyra 😃)

Along the way Silver begins questioning Giovanni’s reasons more and more, but it’s difficult for him to decide whether to keep fighting Ladybug or not because of all the things that could happen. 

Eventually Plagg sits him down and is like:

“You don’t want to fight Ladybug.”

“Right.”

“You have a friend (Lyra) who has made it clear to you that you are welcome in their home, so you would have somewhere to stay if Gio-bitch kicks you out.”

“Right.”

“Ladybug may not trust you at first, but if you explain yourself she may begin to understand, and the act of switching sides paves the path to redemption.”

“Right.”

“So SWITCH SIDES.”

“OH. OKAY.”

Then there’s the ol’ switcheroo. During the worst Akuma yet (with Kris and Ethan helping as heroes), Cat Noir is able to get close to the Akuma and Cataclysms the Akumatized object. He flees immediately, thinking it better to show loyalty in small increments pffff

It’s a HUGE shocker to Giovanni. And Ladybug for that matter. Silver already packed a bag and had his violin ready to go, he grabs his things and doesn’t bother staying. He’s a little pissed Giovanni didn’t even try to stop him.

At this point Lyra and Silver like each other, but neither know how the other feels. Silver feels SO awkward about showing up at the Bakery with his stuff and almost turns around when Lyra’s mom (who had a bad vibe about Giovanni in the first place) spots him.

“Do you need a place to stay?”

“...No.”

“You’re lying. Tell me what happened.”

Silver reluctantly explains that he couldn’t stand staying there anymore, and that he had had enough of his father’s shit. So he left.

Lyra’s mom is a bit iffy on letting him stay. Without enough context it seems like Silver is just angry with Giovanni. Silver can tell she doesn’t understand and tries to explain the situation more.

“I… betrayed him. In a way. I’m sure he doesn’t want to see me around for a while.” “I understand. Feel free to stay the night, but you should talk to your father about whatever’s going on tomorrow. If he doesn’t let you back in you’re welcome to stay.”

Lyra shows up moments after, very confused. Her mom explains the gist to her and leaves them alone to talk.

Tikki overhears Silver explain the situation with a bit more detail and becomes suspicious. If Giovanni was Hawkmoth and Silver was Cat Noir, this situation would make a lot of sense. And Silver has the same hair color as Cat Noir (Lyra is obviously none the wiser because Adrien and Marinette be like that). Tikki doesn’t draw solid conclusions (it’s very easily just a coincidence) but she takes a mental note.

I think that’s where I’ll leave it. I’m already delving into so much plot skdjfbfb Anyways here’s a bunch of bonus drawings for sticking til the end!

[kob131]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XgKp9jj4Is

*sigh* Great, yet ANOTHER ‘Let’s rewrite Adam’ argument made by miss ‘It’s hard to keep track of RWBY characters like Zwei.’

“Degredation of Adam’s character from Blake’s mentor to an abusive ex to a whiny incel who makes insults like it’s his Pokémon name.”

A. “Blake’s mentor” is not a character. It is a description and not even a bare bones one.

B. What is the difference between an abusive ex and an incel exactly? They’re both used to describe despicable people in relation to romance.

C. That is not what incel. You’re using it as a generic insult and thus that last description may as well say ‘Adam bad’ for all the substance it has.

D. Adam always made stupid insults. People laughed at his voice in the Black Trailer and in Volume 3 for fuck’s sake.

And E. What WOULD you make Adam that wouldn’t just make him every generic freedom fighter?

“We’re gonna drop the abusive angel completely and go with Monty’s original plan-”

Done.

You just killed your own video by assuming a dead man’s intention with no fucking reason other than ‘mouthpiece.’

I have no reason to accept anything you say in good faith after this. Before you say that you wanted to change as little as possible then change a massive aspect while using a corpse as a meat shield from criticism.

You are owed nothing from this point on.

‘You don’t doodle your abuser in your notebook-”

Unless, you know, think about them. But hey, why use your brain when you can rely on the inevitable RWBY haters to drown out all criticism?

‘The abuse angle is the worst explored in the show-”

Proof?

No?

Considering your history, I HIGHLY doubt that.

“*Insert Adam into the Volume 2 train fight instead of the WF Lieutennat because he was an out of nowhere threta*”

...

So the Black Trailer and the Volume 2 finale never happened...or you’re an incompetent idiot.

“It gives the scene more weight because we know who Adam is-”

We also know who the WF lieutenant is AND we don’t waste an important character for a worthless fight that amounts to nothing as the train fights ultimately mean NOTHING.

Congrats, you made Adam worse because his first in series fight had him giving a good performance. Here, he can’t even kill Weiss (and in fact, as I am about to explain, he’d get CURB STOMPED by Weiss.)

Just as well, you’ll need to completely change his weakness. Adam is a glass cannon, he can dish out a lot of damage and move quickly but one good hit knocks him down. Makes sense since he’s not exactly big and buff and he can’t fight back when someone isn’t intimidated by him. It also makes him dangerous to Yang as she relies on taking hits at first which she can’t do with Adam because she often flings herself in ways that make dodging impossible. It also makes sense why Blake can fuck him over and why she can get fucked over: she’s also fragile but evasive which connects her with Adam too.

But say he fights, I dunno, someone who can zip around quickly in a manner that he can’t block the attacks and would logically get fucked over quickly by. Like say, a Semblance that zips you from spot to spot like WEISS’. 

Yeah, he’d lose in an instant against Weiss because he’s never seen to be able to block attacks moving that fast and he’d get fucked over quick. So you’d need to up his durability and suddenly he loses a logical weakness that is represented by his personality, connecting him to Blake, basically making him a Yang clone and now you need a NEW weakness. Suddenly a lot of Adam’s interesting elements SHATTER.

This is why Adam rewrites suck. None of you think through your writing. You make the same mistakes that Miles and Kerry made but with less experience, less insight and less care and then pile on EVEN MORE flaws.

Worst of all, the bullshit you give about ‘knowing his threat level’ ignores other factors like appearance, attitude and fighting style. Oh wait, I know why. If we include those, the WF Lieutennat suddenly becomes a clear threat. His appearance is distinctly different from the WF goons, with his tall and thick frame indicating he’s strong and durable while his choice of weapon shows he would have a strong but slow fighting style and his attitude shows that if Weiss loses she could very well die a PAINFUL death by a sadist chainsaw wielding terrorist. (’More tension’ my ass.)

You throw out so much just for ONE point that was accomplished in the original anyway. What the fuck else are you gonna muck up?

“Have adam be there to show Adam working with Torchwick-”

Which Blake would already assume since the WF is working with Torchwick and Adam LEADS the WF. But I guess Blake is too stupid to do basic math.

“Then have Adam let Blake run away-”

WHAT THE FUCK?!

Run to where?! They are in an enclosed space! Adam should be chasing after her! He has every reason to chase after her, both personal and professional!

“Then we can have dialogue that goes something like this in Volume 3: Adam: “I don’t want to have to fight you but I will if I have to. Blake: No no, Humans aren’t bad people! Adam: I have seen what they can do. Your family kept you safe. I wasn’t so lucky-”

Cool, so he’s every generic ‘sympathetic’ freedom fighter now.

Instead of being a deconstruction of the noble wounded freedom fighter, showing how such a person would be impossible for such a situation from the extremity of the harm done to him, the manipulation by his superiors for their own ends and his own faults, he’s just a generic pity bag now.

No wait, a SHITTY generic pity bag now because in the Black Trailer, he explictedly tried to blow up innocent people on a train. Blake even questioned him on it and he said ‘So?’. That isn’t the reaction of some noble but misguided person, that’s the reaction of someone so far off the deep end they’ve lost basic sympathy.

Trying to make him out to be noble here would be like trying to make me believe Raven is this secret loving mother or this protector: their actions in the past CONTRADICT this.

‘But Twiinks never said that-’

Her choice of words did. The words you choose your characters to say speaks about how we are suppose to view them. Adam’s word choice in the original communicates a dangerous sadism and madness built from pain and a lack of emotional maturity. This version communicates a sadness stemming from a supposed kindness that Adam SHOULDN’T have.

‘But it tells us what they’re stances on humans are-’

So did the original while also why we should route for Blake over Adam (i.e. she’s still sane and tries to be kind while Adam has lost it and is being cruel and vindictive.)

We literally lost something here.

“He truly feels like this is the only way to help Fanaus-”

So we're now working off the assumption he cares about the Fanaus and not just himself and his own pain, deconstructing how real life movements become corrupted from their original purpose by focusing on their own personal pain than a universal kindness.

Cool, so Adam isn’t Adam anymore.

“Adam still stabs Sienna but it’s about the orgnazation instead of a lame power grab-”

*rolls eyes*

I really hate these rewrites. Why do you even bother with Adam if you tear out the character and insert someone completely different? 

“Adam is remorseful, Sienna says something like ‘I would rather die than give you the organization’, and Adam apologizes. Perfect scene.”

A cheesy line that rings hollow and more OOC. Wonder-fucking-ful. I also looked ahead and saw that you are changing Adam’s character short to be about getting his scar. (More on that mess when we get to it.) So Adam being used by Sienna to push for her more violent agenda over Ghira’s peaceful one, something used by the show to show we shouldn’t be shitty to each other (AKA A core theme) still exists. Meaning that what should be Sienna paying for her sins by having the very person she used to push her agenda take it to its logical extreme, kill her in turn and destroy her work is just nonsensical pity begging.

I also assume Adam declaring his idea of Fanaus Supremacy and basically quoting Mein Kampf is still in the show since you never address that. Cool, so either I pity a woman who screwed this man’s life or I pity Furry Hitler. *slow claps*

“During the Volume 5 fight, his breaks and we see his scar-”

...

I’m not even surprised by how dumb this shit is. 

Adam’s scarf reveal in Volume 6 was wonderful and one of the best moments in the show. For so long, we saw Adam as someone who was destructive and hateful for no reason and right there, the audience is forced to see that while his actions are inexcusable, his reasons are very human and very real. He’s not a monster, he’s a person whose consumed by pain. At the very end of his life, Adam wasn’t a monster: he was a sorrowful reminder of what pain does to a person.

What does the scar reveal do here? ... Nothing. Seeing his face in full means nothing. Twiinks doesn’t even say anything about it. It’s just there because she wants a look of remorse and thinks that can’t be accomplished with the mask. Even though we could see him cry or have a look of sorrowful anguish. Adam can emote fine without his mask.

I just-I can’t believe this.

”The Adam short is now instead of a bunch of emotionless fight scenes now about how Adam got his scar-”

...

Just more pissing on what makes Adam good. Yeah yeah...

The Adam short is not just a bunch of emotionless fight scenes. The fight scene you show (of Adam protecting Ghira) shows so much. It shows the struggles of the peaceful White Fang, it shows Adam being shocked at killing a human as he hadn’t fallen yet, it shows Sienna using Adam to push her violence without concern for his well being and it shows how he got it into his head killing was fine.

That was ONE scene. ONE. Your scar replacement as a whole would have less impact (as we can tell how got it from context clues) than ONE scene.

Are you guys getting WHY I hate rewrites of RWBY so much?

“Adam finds Oscar-”

If this doesn’t end with “and then he kills Oscar” I don’t care. Even this version of Adam would jump at killing a human and would have no idea Oscar knows Blake.

And it doesn’t. Great. BTW, Oscar wouldn’t know about the plan at this point so him showing up at the CCT tower isn’t explained and this scene is pointless.

“Adam would show up at the CCT tower, killing the CCT guards while ranting about equality and justice. Blake jumps in, leading him away to the waterfall. She says ‘Adam, you’ve gone too far! You’re just as bad as the people who hurt you!’“

Gee, that wasn’t clear when he tried BLOWING UP A TRAIN FULL OF INNOCENT PEOPLE?!

Also, Twiinks tries to push this idea that Blake wants to reconnect with Adam (which makes no sense as she LEFT Adam).

“Now we have the decapitation scene-”

We know she’s not gonna die, the fear came from the destruction of beacon and Yang being injuried. Of course Blake isn’t gonna die here.

“-moved to a thematically appreciate moment in the story-”

Considering you didn’t give two shits about thematic before, why the fuck would I care now?

“-Yang isn’t involved as to not muddy how if it was self defense.-”

So Yang’s arc is just scrapped and instead of having someone around who went through similar shit as Adam with a similar mindset and personality to dislay how wrong he is, we have a far shittier version that doesn’t even serve it’s purpose as protecting friends and family is covered by self defense and the people who bitched now would still bitch because Adam dying is the issue, not self defense.

“We see regret in Adam’s eyes-”

Means nothing because he was just a loon at this point out of nowhere and he’s still a terrible person. See, the thing is you can give a pitiable side to characters like Adam but you have to accept there is still good reason to hate him. Trying to hammer sympathy at us is just gonna make him less sympathetic.

“We shouldn’t be developing the budding relationship-”

It wasn’t.

That wasn’t a fucking romantic scene, it was an emotional breakdown after a stressful 

“By making Adam an understandable character-”

This is perhaps the most insulting part.

Adam IS understandable. Just because you don’t sympathize with him doesn’t mean you can’t see how he became this way. He was enslaved at a young age, branded in a way that robbed him of so much, he tried to make things better but because of forces outside of his control and his own issues, he lost his way and became what made him: someone cruel and uncaring of others. And yet, even as he does terrible things, we can still see that even he is a victim of the world, lamenting his fall and who he could have been.

That is something that fits the tone of RWBY so much better than a generic freedom fighter turned crazy person. Not to mention all the brilliant details you scrapped for shallow and boring details that any run of the mill show could do.

You improved NOTHING here. You just turned Adam from an interesting deconstruction and a cautionary tale of what we can become to every revolutionary in western media which, considering America’s origins, are a dime a dozen.

I’ll say it again: This is why I hate rewrites. You didn’t put nearly as much thought and effort into the show as the creators did and yet you stand on their work, rot it from the inside and try pedaling a worse version because it fits some people’s delusions.

Every time I look into you Twiinks, you become worse. How far will YOU fall?

[loruleanheart]

The Legend of Hilda: Epilogue

Pairing: Yugilda

The Crown Princess of Lorule looked out over the crowded ballroom. She bore the heritable dark purple hair and vivid crimson eyes of countless generations of Lorulean royalty. A young man around her age stood next to her. His hair color was much like hers, although his eyes were the color of emeralds.

"Ravio, please... Enjoy the ball," the young woman urged.

"You put a lot of effort into putting this event together. You should enjoy yourself as well, Hilda, Your Highness."

"I will wait… Until he arrives. Although, I can't stop thinking about the possibility that his reincarnation cycle has ended…" Her voice wavered as she stumbled over her words, alarming Ravio. He had no idea what she was talking about, but whatever it was had clearly been affecting her emotional state, and her secret motivations were coming to light.

"Until... who arrives?"

"You don't remember, but… You will soon."

The offhand remark took his breath away, the crypticness of it. Ravio found himself walking away with an unsettled feeling. He spotted the Captain of the Guard in the crowd and went to him.

The older man greeted him, and smiled reassuringly, perhaps seeing the disjointed look on the boy's face.

Ravio frowned and lowered his voice in a conspiratorial manner.. "Captain… Can I confide in you? Promise to keep it to yourself?"

The Captain's eyes lit up, sensing the seriousness of Ravio's request. "Of course!"

"Okay but not here. Follow me."

Ravio and the Captain exited the ballroom and went out into the foyer, which was empty. The heavy, ornate doors muffled the sounds of the crowd and the music to a low hum. The two came to stand in front of an ancient painting of a woman.

"The Princess said something very strange… It seems she organized this entire ball as a ruse to try to find someone who doesn't exist. As you know, she has spared no expense or effort to invite everyone in the kingdom. Couple that with the fact that she is obsessed with the ancient legends and worse, I have a suspicion she actually believes in them. I mean... No one has even believed that members of the royal family are descendants of a goddess for centuries. It's all hogwash after all. And now I have this terrible feeling that I can't explain away.

"Yes, very strange, indeed..." The Captain agreed. "That reminds me…" The Captain smiled. "I have often observed her completely entranced by this particular painting…" The Captain nodded to the portrait behind them.

The engraving on the frame had long been worn away, but the painting itself featured a strikingly beautiful woman with sharp features and wavy, orange hair. Her breathtaking crimson eyes were not unlike those of the Princess Ravio knew, but... Wasn't there another reason they were so familiar?

"Uncle Wormy..." A redheaded young girl in resplendent royal dress calls out to him. Her fathomless scarlet eyes break down all his barriers. She wears far too much makeup for a child. Likely her father's handiwork, Ravio thinks to himself.

And then the moment faded in an instant, leaving him with a sense of confusion and wonder.

"Ravio?"

"Oh…" The boy snapped back to the current time and place. "It's nothing, Captain."

"You were just standing there slack-jawed for a moment."

"Yeah..." Ravio said, still trying to recall what had been on his mind a moment before, but it had left him as quickly as it had taken over.

Likely her father's handiwork... The words were there if he strained his mind, but that was all they were... Words without context. An echo of a thought from long ago.

It was as if his mind itself was many thousands of years old. He'd never felt that way before. It didn't sit well with him, especially in light of Hilda's recent behavior. Was this how she felt all the time? It was driving him insane.

"As I was saying, before your apparent brain fart… This painting is said to depict a princess that lived 10,000 years ago." The Captain continued. "I think it is her unique features that make so many believe the legends of her extraordinary beauty and power never seen before or since. That is if she even truly existed and she's not just a legend to inspire Lorulean princesses..." The Captain trailed off, his attention on a strange man who'd just entered the foyer.

The strange man moved with a pretentious feminine gait, coming to a stop in front of the painting. He looked at the painting for a long moment, as if not seeing the Captain and the young knight also in his presence.

"What a breathtaking masterpiece…" The man said, speaking in a melodic, falsetto tone.

Ravio cleared his throat, already put off by the man's appearance and pompous attitude. "And just who are you? Do you have an invitation? You're a little late."

The man finally cast a glance at them, looking down his elegantly long nose. "Yes I have an invitation, you hideous smear of a doodle, and no I am not late! My arrival is right on time." He said, setting his red lips into a tight smirk. He turned brusquely, thick orange curls swaying back and forth over his shoulders as he made his way into the ballroom.

The Captain and Ravio looked at each other speechless.

"That guy definitely looks like he takes the legend of that princess to heart. The resemblance is uncanny." The Captain joked.

Ravio frowned "Yeah… Weird, creepy bastard…"

Emerging into the ballroom, the strange man moved through the crowd. The people turned, all eyes drawn to him. They looked as if scrutinizing his eccentric, but alluring appearance. The crowd parted to reveal the princess. Catching sight of him, she stood very still as if frozen in time. The man continued to make his way towards her. And the music in the ballroom swelled, breaking her from her momentary trance. She pushed herself towards him at last, her legs feeling unsteady. The crowd watched with rapt attention. This was the first time the Princess had moved from her seat during the entire ball. Her breath hitched, and she extended her hand. Her lavender lips parted to say something, but the words caught in her throat. The man smiled as he took a knee and kissed her hand.

"Your Grace."

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 14 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you’re on his list, you’re in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who’s developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

—————————————————————————————————

What.

What?

What?!

Barry feels like his thoughts are simultaneously moving a million miles a second while also experiencing total blue screen of death crash, which is a weird experience. It's like he's thinking every single thought he could possibly think all at once, except each and every thought can best be described as "?!"

Captain Cold is Leonard Snart.

Leonard Snart -

Leonard -

Len.

Barry's Len.

Len is a cop.

Len is a cop in internal affairs.

Len is Captain Cold the might-be supervillain.

What?!

It's not that Barry hasn't mostly dropped the whole supervillain angle - Iris is vouching for Captain Snart, after all, and despite his original belief that she was being very effectively manipulated by him, Barry knows and relies on her good judgment of people. If she's been able to work with Captain Cold for days, even weeks, and still think he's well-intentioned, then he probably is.

Having that little revelation where he realized that certain things could look extremely suspicious from the perspective of a third party that didn't know about metahumans and the Reverse Flash had also helped.

So, really, when you think about it, you know, he sort of knew, right?

No.

No, he didn't.

He had no idea.

He’d barely even accepted the not-a-supervillain thing.

Sort of.

Okay, sure, Barry and Cisco got into a huge fight over the whole "is he a supervillain or not" thing when they got the message about Iris being kidnapped, with Barry insisting there had to be another explanation and Cisco insisting that they were clearly right all along. And that whole thing basically descended into Barry accusing Cisco of wanting Iris to be in danger just to prove he was right and Cisco calling Barry a delusional optimist that risked people getting hurt and Barry threatening to just leave without getting Cisco's help and Cisco telling Barry that he could find his suit anywhere even with the comms turned off and then Wells'd made everything worse by jumping in and Barry was still so pissed about everything and -

Barry's starting to think that maybe running at speed through the power plant on his way to the showdown in order to burn out all the comms through a makeshift EMP might, in retrospect, have been a mistake, because he could really use some third-party confirmation that what he's seeing is really what he's seeing.

Which he's pretty sure it is.

But -

Len?!

His boyfriend Len?

(Okay, not exactly full on boyfriends, they'd promised each other that they'd go slow, but they were definitely heading in that direction, or certainly enough in that direction to explain why Barry maybe-kind of-sorta-actually-definitely has been doodling Len Allen on some of the spare sheets in STAR Labs. Which is a totally reasonable thing for a grown man to do, really.)

But still: what?

How had the fact that Len was a freaking cop never come up? Much less a police captain! They work in the same precinct!

Well, okay, it's not that implausible that they've never run into each other. Barry works up in the attic in his on-site lab, while Captain Cold works in the mostly deserted offices on the far distant side of the building, presumably in the hope that he doesn't get into as many fights with the regular cops as would otherwise be likely given the nature of his job.

Well, given the nature of his job, it probably wouldn't be fights, just glares and not-so-muffled whispers and maybe some light sabotage when they thought they could get away with it.

The precinct sometimes reminds Barry unpleasantly of middle school.

Still! The second Barry mentioned that he was a CSI affiliated with the CCPD, Len could have brought it up; why didn't he?

You didn't bring up the Flash thing either, a little voice in his head reminds him.

It's not the same, though!

Sorta is.

Is not!

...great, now Barry's arguing with himself like an idiot.

But, like, it wasn’t like there were signs or anything! Len uses crutches, and Captain Cold –

Okay, Captain Cold was always either sitting down or – the few times Barry saw him walking anywhere – he was usually limping, and Len did say that his doctor gave him some new leg braces that he hates like hell because they make him all stiff and stuff, and which he could only use for a few hours a day so he limited it to when he was going out on work business –

There was no way for Barry to have put that together, though!

And, wait, didn't Captain Singh say that Captain Snart was investigating Barry? Was the whole dating thing just part of some sting plan? Surely not - that seems like it’s horrifically unethical, right? - but then again, Singh also pointed out that Snart has a history of undercover work, and Barry knows he has no staff to go do things for him, so maybe he just thought that they could get to know each other -

Oh, man, if it really was just all an investigation, Barry will just have to go throw himself off a skyscraper or something -

"- better not be evil," Snart (Len?!) is saying.

"Uh, what?"

"I said, you'd better not turn out to be evil," Len (Barry can't help but think of him as Len, not when he has Len's face and Len's eyes and is Len) repeats. "I really don't want to have to explain to my boyfriend that I teamed up with the guy who killed his mom."

Aww, Len thinks of them as boyfriends, too!

Wait.

Killed his mom -

"Ohhhh," Barry says, because holy crap, that actually kind of makes sense in a weird, weird sort of way. If you know that the Flash exists and don't know about the Reverse Flash, and someone told you that their mom got killed by a guy running faster than lightning -

Yeah, okay.

Reasonable deduction.

Hilariously wrong deduction, but, like, reasonable. Kind of.

No wonder Captain Cold seemed to have a grudge against the Flash!

Awww, Len was carrying a grudge on Barry's behalf. No one but Iris has ever been angry on Barry's behalf before.

(Len thinks they're boyfriends!)

"What, exactly, does 'ohhhh' mean in this context?" Len asks dryly. “Kind of a weird reaction to someone accusing you of murder.”

Oops, yeah, that was weird.

"Uh, oh, no, definitely not. I’ve never killed anyone's mom." Barry says quickly. "I mean, I’ve never killed anyone! Well, there was this one guy who was falling off a balcony and I tried to save him, but he shoved my arm away and jumped, that was really traumatic. Plus there was this other guy with lightning powers that, like, thought it made him immune to electrocution and it apparently, uh, didn't, and - yeah, that was awful, too. But I didn't actually kill anyone -"

"Please stop talking," Len says, but his eyes are doing that adorable crinkle thing around the edges that he does when he thinks something is funny and kind of cute.

Heh, Len thinks Barry's cute even when he's the Flash.

(Len! Thinks! They're! Boyfriends!)

"We are trying to be sneaky here," Len continues.

Right.

Families.

Mortal peril.

(Boyfriends!)

"Right," Barry says. "Uh - I could run us inside really quick, if that would help?"

Len considers it. "Do you leave behind sparks every time you run?"

"...yes?"

"Hm. Not that subtle."

"Right. Er. I could go up the side of the building instead?"

Len looks intrigued by that. "Really? At once, or do you need some sort of running start..?"

"Running start," Barry tells him, secretly pleased all over again by the fact that his boyfriend (boyfriend!) is a bit of a nerd. Sure, possibly also a bit of a liar and maybe working as undercover cop, but - boyfriend! Yes, Barry's aware that his prioritization system is probably pretty screwed up, but...boyfriend! "It's just speed, not, like, sticky feet or anything."

"I was thinking gravity or friction manipulation, but that's fair," Len replies. "Okay, take us up, and get us up high - the old joke about bad guys never looking up is surprisingly accurate."

Barry grins. His boyfriend was an undercover cop! That's so cool!

...okay, he was-slash-is also maybe investigating Barry, which is a real downer if Barry thinks about it too long, but they'll deal with that later.

(Boyfriend!...okay, he'll stop now. Maybe. Sort of...nah. Boyfriends!)

Barry runs them up to the second floor in a split second.

Len looks around once they stop, then frowns. "No, we need to be higher; at least another floor up."

Barry complies, but once they're up on the (rather rickety) steel scaffolding that makes up most of the third floor, he asks, "Why's that? If they don't look up..."

Len's shaking his head. "They don't," he says. "But I was trapped in one of those things -"

He jabs a finger at one of the steel vats.

" - remember? They'll go up to the second floor to look into them to see if I'm there." He makes a face, half disgust and half the remnants of a recent fear, which makes Barry really want to hug him except for the fact that he's currently the Flash and Len doesn't know he's the Flash and it would be really weird for a random superhero to just hug you, right? Probably right. "Hate things like that - like a modern day oubliette, where you leave someone and forget about 'em. Monstrous. But yeah, that's the issue. Now, settle down, we don't want them to spot us...why red, if you don’t mind me asking?"

"What?"

"Your costume. Why red? Ain't exactly subtle."

"I have no idea," Barry confesses. "I think it was the only color available in this fabric at first - I need it to deal with the friction when I run or else my clothing lights on fire."

Though he’s really happy that Cisco eventually managed to find a friction-proofing agent he could use on the rest of his clothing. Barry uses his powers way too much – if he hadn’t found a way to stop the fires, he’d have ended up naked at the office at least a dozen times by now.

Len smirks at that, then his expression fades into something more wistful. "I know someone who'd get a kick outta seeing that."

Barry can't help but smile a little - that must be Mick, Len's pyromaniac friend, the one in the coma.

Len’s smile fades a second later, replaced by a serious expression that is, somehow, just as ridiculously attractive. "They're coming. Don't move."

Right, right, Family bad guys.

Two Families.

Which - what the hell? The Darbinyans and the Santinis hate each other. Most of the time, when they meet even by accident, they go to war. Barry's talking Montague and Capulet levels of "I hate you and will fight you wherever" sort of war, the sort that gets both sides in trouble because they're too busy fighting to pay attention to anyone or anything else.

And, like, yeah, they both hate traitorous rats who turn out to be undercover cops, but still...

"Which one did you spy on, anyway?" Barry whispers.

"Both," Len hisses back. "I was a freelance thief. Now be still!"

Barry sits tight.

His boyfriend is so cool.

...his boyfriend might not be his boyfriend after Barry reveals that he's lied about the whole Flash thing.

Crap.

Not good.

Maybe Len'll be more inclined to be lenient because he's also been omitting information?

Assuming this whole thing wasn't about spying on Barry in the first place.

But if it was, why would he describe Barry as his boyfriend when he doesn't know that Barry's the one listening?

Maybe he was describing some other -

Get a grip on yourself, Barry; the likelihood of there being two people with mothers killed by speedsters in Central City seems like it would be extremely low. He was clearly describing you.

Maybe it's some sort of clever fake-out - but if it's a fake-out, wouldn't that require that he already know that Barry is the Flash? There's no way he could know that.

Is there?

How would Barry know, after all? If someone who knew about him decided to fake ignorance and -

An elbow drives into Barry's side the same second a hand slaps over his mouth, muffling his automatic yelp of surprise.

"Real bad at this whole sitting still thing, ain't you?" Len hisses in Barry's ear. "Whatever line of thought has you buzzing - and I mean that very literally in your case - stop thinking it."

Oops.

"Nod if you understand me."

Barry nods.

Len lets him go.

Barry focuses on staying still and listening to the people below them. Most of them are on the ground level, but as Len predicted, two climbed up to the second floor to look through the various steel vats, presumably searching for Len.

"Nothing," one of them finally shouts down. "They must've gotten cold feet."

"Doesn't matter," one of the ones on the ground floor - Giuseppe Condutti, Barry recognizes him from his mug shot that's hung up on the wall to be used as a dartboard back in the precinct, the guy's basically untouchable but everyone hates him - calls back. "Getting Snart woulda just been icing on the cake, after all –”

“Some pretty damn nice icing,” one of the other guys says loudly. “Fucking snitch.”

“– the important thing,” Condutti says, ignoring him, “is that we’ve got these guys by the short hairs just for dealing with us. And just in time, too."

Another guy, one of the Darbinyans, scoffs. "Yeah, right. What’s it matter? If they got cold feet, then Snart's gonna kill 'em -"

"Ice them," Barry and Len mutter under their breaths in accidental unison, then flash momentary grins at each other.

(Heh. Flash grins.)

"- and that makes 'em useless. Unless you wanna have another cop on the payroll kicking up their heels in Iron Heights?"

"Hey, that means they ain't on the payroll no more, huh?"

Laughter.

"What I never understood about corruption," Len murmurs, scowling down at the mobsters milling about below. "How do you sell your soul to someone who'll sell you up the river in a heartbeat..?"

He sounds disgusted and a little murderous.

Barry wants to give him a hug.

He says, “Shhhh!” instead, because he’s stupid like that.

Len rolls his eyes.

"What's the difference in having two more pigs on the hook, anyway?" one of the guys asks as the two on the ladder climb down. "Just another two ain't gonna affect the big day."

...big day? That sounds ominous.

"You never know," Condutti says with a shrug. "There's always some more strings that might need to get tugged. Lotta stuff happening all at once, lotta coordination -"

"And the Santinis insisting on having one of their men at every location is making that so much smoother," one of the Darbyinians – Barry’s pretty sure this one is Darius Petrosyan, again judging by what he remembers of the man’s mugshot – sneers.

"Like your bosses don't want the same," Condutti snaps back. "The only reason you lot're so paranoid about being stabbed in the back is because you're always plotting to do it to someone else and you assume everybody's like you!"

"Hey, hey, let's not get heated here, all right?" one of the other guys says, stepping forward with his hands up. He's a big guy, with a sleepy expression - but according to what Barry recalls of his files, he's Rizzo Hovsepian, the head of the Darbiniyan's most efficient disposal unit.

And Barry isn't talking about garbage.

"Remember," Hovsepian continues. "We might hate your Santini guts, and you might think nothing of ours, but we're all agreed on one thing."

"What?" Condutti asks skeptically.

"The Ranskahovs are worse."

That gets a laugh all around.

"Yeah, no kidding," Condutti says. "Penny-pinching Ruskie slobs - they keep trying to reduce security, you know that? Says it cuts into profits too much."

"Let ‘em try. The bosses'll never agree, not for a minute, not for something this important –"

"The Ranskahovs are involved, too?" Barry breathes.

"What on earth could get not just two, but three separate Families to do anything together?" Len murmurs, agreeing, glancing at Barry with a disturbed expression that Barry's pretty sure is mirrored on his own face.

“–doesn’t matter if these two go down for it,” Condutti is saying. “So what? We’ll get Snart after the big day.”

“Everyone’s always talking about how great things’ll be after the big day,” Petrosyan says, snorting. “The bosses are all sure of it; this’ll happen and that’ll happen and the green will be fucking greener and the trees’ll start raining money and it’ll be just like the good ol’ days again before the crackdowns and the paranoia and shit.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Old days are just that,” Petrosyan says. “Old. We don’t need this. We’re strong enough without it.”

“Sure you are,” Condutti replies, rolling his eyes. “Declining profits, snitches everywhere, Feds at our backs every way you look – things are fucking rosy. Don’t talk out your ass. The bosses know what they’re doing.”

“’course they do,” Petrosyan says, though he sounds...doubtful. “Still, we’re the lieutenants. It’s our job to plan for the worst.”

“Ain’t no planning for the worst this time,” the other Santini, Boccaccio, laughs. “It goes well and we get it all, or it blows up and we’re all fucked. That much happening, all at one time? We go down, we all go down.”

“There’ll be security up the ass,” Hovsepian says dismissively. “Now c’mon, if Snart’s not here, there’s no reason to stick around.”

“Damn,” Len murmurs.

Barry agrees. If only they would give more details...!

The thugs start filing out, still talking amongst themselves – split into two groups, Santinis on one side, Darbiniyans on the other, and only Condutti and Hovsepian still talking together, half-glaring at each other even as they pretend to smile.

“– best whore in the Twin Cities –”

“– so much fucking work still to be done –”

“– always knew he was a pig, that Snart guy, I’m telling you, he had a vibe –”

“–coming up soon. Running around like a goddamn maniac to get it all ready–”

“–mouth like a Hoover–”

“–can’t wait till we get ‘im, back-stabbing bastard–”

“–all the coordination, y’know? So many parties all together with half the city already running around–”

The door shuts behind them.

Barry shifts a little, figuring he can run them out now.

Len’s hand shoots out, grabs his arm. “Not yet. Not till they’re gone.”

Right.

Barry waits, trying to keep still and quiet even though he’s practically vibrating with the need to talk over what, if anything, they’ve uncovered.

Recalling Len’s earlier comment, though, he tries not to do that, either.

After about three minutes, he whispers, "Is that enough time?"

"I have no idea," Len whispers back. "I'm just guessing."

Barry frowns and straightens up. "What do you mean you're ‘just guessing’?” he demands at normal volume. “You're the undercover guy!"

"Yeah," Len says, also returning to normal volume – which for him is the lazy nasal drawl that Barry’s already become embarrassingly fond of. "Undercover. Meaning that I'm not usually up here eavesdropping from the shadows; I'm down there, hanging out with everyone and asking questions to find out more that I then turn over later. This method’s a lot less convenient."

"Oh," Barry says. That makes sense. "Then how do you know...?"

"Childhood interest in spy movies."

"...what."

Len did not just risk them being discovered by evil Family thugs based on spy movies, did he?

...no, actually, that sounds just like something Len would do.

"Oh, relax. Been testing out certain tropes since I was a tot," Len says, smirking at Barry's dismay. "Just for fun. Most of ‘em are trash, but people really don't ever look up without a good reason, even criminals."

Barry's boyfriend is such a troll.

Luckily Barry knew that already.

Though of course, finding out about the whole Len-is-Captain-Cold thing clearly shows that Barry doesn't know everything about him...like, say, about whether and why Len was (is?) investigating him...

Hmm. Maybe Barry can do some undercover digging of his own.

"You're a cop now, though, right?" Barry says casually.

"For all intents and purposes, I always was," Len says dryly. "Ever since I graduated from the academy. But yeah, sure, now it's officially known that I am."

"No, I mean – well. Now that you’re, y’know, official, do you still do investigations?"

Len gestures wordlessly to their surroundings, giving Barry a highly skeptical look.

“No, I didn’t mean – these are clearly unique circumstances!”

“I’ll give you that,” Len allows. “And, yeah, sure, sometimes. Not often; most people I meet know what I do now.”

“But if someone didn’t know, would you –”

“Are you stalking me or something?”

“What? No!”

“Then stop asking about me and focus back on the Families,” Len says. “But first, can you get us out of here?”

Barry flushes red, mumbles something in the affirmative, and runs them both out of there. He just takes them back down to the alley he originally rescued Len to –

Man, is Barry glad he listened to Iris and came looking! A dozen minutes later and the Families would’ve had Len in their grasp – and Barry would never have learned what happened to Len.

Or, worse, he would have - but while on the job.

Barry should always listen to Iris, basically, that’s the lesson he’s getting out of this. He’d hesitated, when she’d first started worrying – he’d been a little insulted by their whole “rescue the damsel in distress” tactic when Iris’d oh-so-casually revealed it once he’d “rescued” her, so he’d initially dismissed her concerns with the suggestion that Len’d just ditched or something, but she’d smacked Barry on the shoulder and told him that Len was a professional.

And, well, even to Barry it seemed a little unlikely that Captain Cold would go to all this trouble and then not follow up.

Then Eddie ran up in a panic, too, so Barry figured there was no harm in running a circuit to see where they’d gone. When he saw the cop car in the slum districts…

Yeah, Barry can put two and two together.

“Thanks,” Len says after a few minutes of leaning against the wall, breathing hard and clutching at his side. Barry’s been pretending it’s not happening, since Len generally prefers it that way when they’re on a date and there’s no reason to think he doesn’t now, too, even though he’s not using the crutches. Barry can even see a bit of his leg braces flashing through the gap between his boots and his pants, now that he’s looking for it.

Wait, hold up, Len’s little work-related accident that made him retire! Captain Singh had said that Len – well, that Captain Snart – got tortured and shot when they found out about his undercover work…crap, and Barry’d thought it was some sort of criminal job gone wrong, inspiring Len to go straight.

Was he ever wrong about that.

And yet, despite all that, here Len is, seconds after nearly being thrown back to the nonexistent mercies of the Families, turning right around and going right back into Family investigative work.

Just – wow.

He really is fearless.

After all, look at how casually he unmasked himself in front of Barry!

Okay, he didn’t know it was Barry.

He certainly wasn’t afraid to let the Flash know his identity, anyway.

...Barry really should do the same.

Yeah.

He should

He will.

Any minute now.

Really!

Any minute now...

“Okay,” Len says after another moment in which Barry mentally kicks himself for not doing or saying anything. “That was instructive.”

“Was it?” Barry asks, a little skeptically. “They didn’t really say anything.”

“We know they’re working together, at least three Families, maybe more. We know the rank-and-file are not necessarily happy about it,” Len points out. “And most of all, we know that there’s a ‘big day’ coming up at some point soon that they’re all working towards.” He frowns. “Something on a day when half the city’s already running around. Don’t know what that’d be, though; nothing gets this city moving.”

“Sad, but true,” Barry agrees. “If Gotham’s the city that never sleeps, Central’s the city that never goes above a mild stroll, no matter how urgent the situation.”

“No kidding. Like when there’s a tornado actually visible on the horizon heading your way, and everyone just sort of stands there and gawks –”

“I...may have done that a few times.”

More than a few.

“No, I know, me too,” Len says. “It’s a Central City thing. It’s still dumb.”

Barry has to agree to that.

“Thanks again for your help today,” Len adds. “I still want to ask you some questions about what you're up to – I don’t let anyone off the hook that easy – but this Family stuff has to take priority. They're poison.”

“I get that,” Barry says. That’s probably his cue to leave, but he lingers, shifting from one foot to the other.

He knows that he should really unmask himself, now that he knows who Len is. Before now, it was just a matter of omission, of not mentioning everything about his life to Len, but if he leaves without saying anything, then he’s making a deliberate choice to lie to Len – to not tell him when he could –

It’s a good moment for it, too; Len’s clearly focused on the Family thing, not his Flash hunt, and he’s definitely not thinking of Barry Allen, even if he does seem to think of Barry as his boyfriend – man, Barry wishes Len was a little less clever and let Barry unobtrusively ask some questions about his investigation of Barry, but noooooo, Len's too sharp for that to work.

He wants to think the best of Len, really – or, hell, Barry’s enough of a sappy romantic that he’d be totally happy with a story that went with Len starting to investigate him and then falling in love and regretting it, that would be awesome, best get-together story to tell at dinner parties ever, right? – but either way he really desperately wants to know.

The best way to know would be to ask.

The only way to justify asking would be to unmask.

But at the same time, all the reasons he hasn’t already told Len about the whole Flash thing still apply – he didn’t tell him at the start because he didn’t know him that well, and once he did know him, he knew about Len’s hatred of any perceived betrayal, not to mention the risk of one of his enemies figuring out who Len is and what he means and using him against Barry, putting him in danger because of Barry, and really, in the end, it was just easier not to tell him.

But now...

God, Barry can't decide. Should he say or not? Is he being smart about it, or is he just being a coward? How will he ever get the answers he wants if he doesn't unmask? Which approach is more likely to get him what he wants (Len not angry at him and still dating him) and which one would result in -

“Hey, hold up, don’t move for a second,” Len says suddenly, interrupting Barry's train of thought as he takes a few steps forward towards Barry. “You’ve got something on the back of your cowl, spider or something – must’ve gotten on you while we were in that warehouse – lemme just get it –”

He reaches over and puts his hand on the back of Barry’s cowl.

Then he yanks it down.

“Hey!” Barry yowls.

“Barry?!” Len exclaims.

Oh shit.

“Uh,” Barry says. “I can – explain –”

“You really can’t,” Len says.

Barry’s shoulders droop. “I - can’t?”

“No, you can’t! I can’t believe that trick actually worked! Jeez, Allen, have a bit more spatial awareness, okay? What if I’d had a knife or something?”

“If you had a knife, you wouldn’t have been going for my cowl –” Barry pauses. “Wait. That’s what I can’t explain? The fact that you just pulled off my cowl? That's the part of this you're having trouble with?!”

“I literally learned that trick in third grade,” Len says. “Literally. Come on!”

“That’s what you’re getting out of this?!”

“Oh, I already figured out it was you,” Len says. “Only about ten minutes ago, sure, but still, it gave me the chance to get over my surprise – no, don’t look at me like that, I did! While we were up there, eavesdropping, you kept forgetting to keep doing that thing to disguise your voice. Vibrating your vocal cords, I’m guessing?”

“Uh, yeah,” Barry says, bewildered. “You – recognized my voice?”

Len gives him a look.

“Oh, right. Undercover guy; you’ve got to be good with voices.”

“There’s that,” Len says dryly. “Plus there’s the fact that you’ve had your tongue near my tonsils a few times; I think I have your voice pretty much memorized by now.”

Barry blushes. “Yeah, that too,” he says, unable to keep himself from smiling a little. He's a dork, okay, he's not shy to admit it. “It makes sense you’d recognize your boyfriend’s voice – I mean, I don’t mean to presume, but you said earlier –”

“Oh, we’re definitely boyfriends, Allen,” Len says, and there's a little hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Don’t you dare back out on me now.”

Now Barry’s full-on grinning and he doesn't care who sees it. “I wasn’t sure, you know, we’ve done all that talking about going slow –”

“Going slow,” Len interrupts, groaning. “Going slow. Now I get it. That’s why it’s ironic – we’re going slow, and you have super-speed powers that make you usually go really fast –”

“Yes, exactly!” Barry exclaims. He knew Len would like those. Honestly, this whole revelation thing is going so much better than Barry thought this was going to go!

“I’m going to have so many puns about this.”

“You have no idea how hard it’s been not to break them out,” Barry confesses.

“I can imagine,” Len says, looking mildly aggravated – almost certainly by the missed punning opportunity. The man’s a pun fiend. Barry's never been so grateful. “Lemme guess, you didn’t want to tell me because you weren’t sure whether I was trustworthy?”

“At least in the beginning,” Barry agrees. “I don’t mean it as an insult or anything, of course –”

“No, I’m glad you have at least some self-preservation instincts,” Len says. “You’re too trusting; I’m amazed you haven’t gone streaking down Main Street yelling it out.”

“‘Streaking’ down Main Street? Really?”

Len smirks.

“What about you, though?” Barry asks curiously. “Captain Singh said you were investigating me –”

“I told him not to do that,” Len sighs. “Guess he couldn’t resist. And yeah, I was; I thought you were corrupt.”

“Wait, what? Me or the Flash?”

“Both,” Len says wryly. “Given that I didn’t know you were one person. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I was probably wrong.”

“Listen, I can see why you’d suspect the Flash, what with the disappearances,” Barry says, choosing to ignore that 'probably'. Len's already admitted to being paranoid beyond all reason; there's no way to get rid of that last hint of doubt other than to keep proving himself. “But me as in Barry Allen? I don't even have any parking tickets!" Almost certainly because he doesn't own a car, but whatever. "Why in the world would you think I was corrupt?”

“Well, you disappearing for nine months like that –”

“I was in a coma!”

“You were?” Len says blankly, as if that's the most surprising thing that's come up in the entire conversation.

“Well, yeah. What did you think I was doing?” Barry asks, equally blank.

“Literally anything else,” Len says. “Going off and joining a Family, investigating what’s going on with the Flash...anything! A guy doesn’t get out of a nine-month coma and jump out of bed, back into his job and with a new and improved set of abs!”

Barry can feel his face going red. “Yeah, those were kind of a shock,” he admits. “And – hey, when did you see my abs?!”

They’ve totally not gone that far. Barry would remember!

“Surveillance photos,” Len says. “Don’t ask; it’ll just make you paranoid.”

“...I’m becoming more paranoid already,” Barry says, and then it suddenly hits him what’s really going on. He knows Len. He knows Len, and what matters to him, and it's all so clear why Len would bother going after such a small fry matter personally. “It’s Mick, isn’t it? You assumed I had to be up to something during those nine months, because if I actually was in a coma and managed to get that much better...”

Len makes a face. He probably intends for it to be a rueful expression of distaste, but it comes across more like someone just ripped his heart out of his chest. “Yeah. I can’t keep hoping for another miracle that I know ain’t gonna happen.” He grimaces. “They’re saying he might not – this month – if he doesn’t wake up, we’re gonna have to start talking end-of-life options.”

“Oh, shit,” Barry says, shocked. He’d known things weren’t good, of course, but...somehow he’d been assuming this whole time that Mick would eventually wake up and he’d get to meet him one day. But of course not all comas were like his, with a happy ending. “Damn, Len, I’m so sorry.”

Len shrugs. “So you actually were in a coma?” he says, obviously not wanting to talk about it further. “For real?”

“It wasn’t a regular coma,” Barry assures him. “My heart was moving so quick the doctors couldn’t identify it on a monitor, but there was nothing physically wrong with me – well, once the other signs of being hit by lightning healed up. I have super-fast healing now, so it was pretty quick.”

Len frowns. “Has your heart slowed down?”

“No; why?”

“What’re you going to do for the mandatory yearly CCPD physical?”

“...panic,” Barry says. He’d forgotten about that particular requirement for being part of the CCPD, one that not even CSIs are exempt from. And it has to be a physical with a CCPD-approved physician, so he can’t just have Caitlin fake him a doctor’s note.

“Say you have a medical condition,” Len suggests.

“A medical condition of not having a heartbeat?”

“Why not?” Len says, shrugging. “Your buddies at STAR Labs are scientists, right? They must’ve published something about your condition, however anonymized, and it would’ve been on your insurance forms – you did submit insurance forms, right?”

Barry blinks. “I...don’t know? I mean, I assume so? I know Joe did at first, for sure; he’s still complaining-not-complaining about the medical debt and his new premiums being so high. I don’t know what happened after that, though.”

Len’s eyebrows go way up. “Wells didn’t charge you? Or, well, charge the insurance companies on your behalf?”

“I don't think so?” Barry says, shrugging. “He said it was charity, given his involvement in the Accelerator explosion...” He trails off, looking at the expression on Len’s face. “What?”

“Part of the reason I was so suspicious of you,” Len says slowly, “was because you were Dr. Wells’ only patient.”

“I – what? The only one? That can't be right. I thought I was just, you know, the only one left -”

“No, you were the only one at all,” Len confirms. “For months after the Accelerator explosion, Wells didn’t do anything else: he didn’t set up care clinics, he didn’t donate to rebuilding charities, nothing. Even fired most of the staff that wouldn’t quit, with only one or two exceptions, and then suddenly he takes you in – you, and no one else. It was so obviously fake that I assumed it had to be some sort of Family front.”

Barry swallows, his mouth suddenly dry.

“After we found out the connection between STAR Labs and the Flash, I assumed you were in on it, and then, when I learned more about you, that you were involved just to investigate it,” Len continues. “But the disappearances, the other speedster, that stuff – it all revolves around STAR Labs. All of it.”

Barry can’t move.

The hints of bribery that Terri found to enable STAR Labs’ creation.

Hartley Rathaway’s accusations that the Accelerator explosion had been intentional.

The Accelerator’s creation of metahumans, including Barry.

Dr. Wells’ increasingly bizarre focus on Barry increasing his speed.

The lack of any scientific method to their ‘tests’ meant to increase that speed. The lack of any publication, of any control tests, of anything that even vaguely resembled proper science.

The way Wells got so angry when Barry skipped speed training to focus on any anything else, like his job.

His lack of surprise when Barry’d broken the time barrier.

Barry travelled through time – the biggest breakthrough in modern science! – and yet, no reaction, nothing but more encouragement to focus on going faster, faster, faster.

As if time travel was an expected result.

How could Dr. Wells have known about the possibility time travel?

How – unless, of course, Barry wasn’t the first speedster he’d met.

Now that Barry thinks about it, the very same day Barry started skipping training in favor of his job, the Man in Yellow appeared – and suddenly Barry was fully focused on training again.

The way Wells keeps mentioning Barry’s mom ever since then, like a goad to make Barry keep trying to get faster.

The way Wells seems to care less about Barry actually saving people and more about – more about the result.

The result, of course, being that Barry gets faster every time he fights a bad guy.

“Has Dr. Wells ever acted strangely in regards to you?” Len asks intently. He's clearly putting two and two together himself, getting the right number this time. He reaches out and puts a hand on Barry’s shoulder. “Does he ever seem like he’s keeping secrets? Like he has some sort of goal for you that might not be the goal he told you about?”

Barry nods mutely, his lips pressed together tight.

“Tell me,” Len urges. “Tell me everything. We’ll deal with this – with him – we’ll take him down. Together.”

Barry puts his hand on Len’s.

Together.

That sounds good.

[wrong--lever]

Your Thoughts for OW’s Lore At Blizzcon

**Edit - would help to tag you hurr durr @freckledmccree

I like how you will indulge in detailed speculation and interpretation of OW lore and don’t center all ideas around one specific (noncanon) idea but will admit occasional personal bias. I also really appreciate that you steer relatively clear from fanon and when people respond to your writings you don’t have an attitude or seemingly disregard them. Sooo, that’s why I wrote this disgustingly long thing even tho I’m paranoid about being annoying.

 (Apology beforehand if you have answered any of these before, I have not properly stalked your blog yet. Also, excuse my rambling I did my best to be coherent. Lastly, I only have one friend who is kinda into OW and I feel bad to bother them 24/7 so I talk a lot in this.)

McCree Speculation

The following assumes that the new cinematic will be McCree’s.

If there is another known character in the short along with McCree, excluding flashbacks, who do you think it would be? 

I have 3-4 ideas even though I would not say they are likely. And with any of these I don't imagine a role any larger than Brig's in Honor and Glory or even Zarya in Infiltration.

A.) Genji. I don't think it's likely but I wouldn't be surprised. It also might be risky on Blizzard's part because many are salty about Genji's abundance of lore compared to others. (Which is dumb and I would gladly rant on it but it's not the point) Reasons:

Notable increase of McCree's interactions w/him.

McCree might've left OW in a less professional fashion than others. Which would mean he may not have anything to be alerted by for the recall. Especially since he went underground for a while.  Winston’s contact info? Long since changed.

From how I interpret “Dragons” it seems that Genji has received the call as well as offered Hanzo a choice to go w/him “The world is changing once again, Hanzo. And it's time to pick a side.” So why not others?

Genji has also been canonically in touch w/at least one other ex OW member. So why not try to get in touch with another member that we know he directly worked with?

My logic - Why would their interactions matter?

McCree's asking about how Genji dealt with the loss of his body emotionally/physically as well as Genji's response leaves room for the implication that Genji knows how he lost his arm.

Why would Genji go in person?

Well, I mean you probably don't wanna broadcast that your getting the highly illegal band back together. In which said band also is also hated by the UN and every other terrorist organization on the planet.

How will Genji know how to find him?

Cause he's a ninja, duh. But seriously McCree most likely said something before he quit OW and if not Genji would just have to look at the news and he'd be there.

B.) Sombra. If anything I wouldn't be surprised by a small reference to her rather than actually seeing her.

Reflections comic (duh)

My logic - I expect Sombra to get involved with a little bit of everything. She likes making people question their beliefs on who is “right” or “wrong”. 

She would most likely know about the recall so if she wants to manipulate that at all she could be the one to tell McCree about it. Idk, she’s a wildcard with anything.

C.) Fio. The Blackwatch Pilot in Retribution. (I used “known” characters loosely) I'm not sure on my certainty with her, tbh. But I do find it rather intriguing. (I said no flashbacks but maybe with this one)

Fio's only lines that are not directly related towards the mission are all directed towards McCree.

The tone of them is clearly on the teasing/banter side of things.

My logic - Why have this side character show any interest in conversation outside of the task at hand? 

If she was just being used for the game mode and as lore filler it would make more sense to have only lines relating to the mission. Or have generalized ones for the team. But she has multiple focusing on the one and only Jesse McCree.

Reasons for that could be that they ran out of time to add other interactions. Which would explain why McCree does not acknowledge her comments. (The only time he was quiet during the mission is when she talked to him, rip you got denied girl) Or it could be that they knew each other previously or trained together in some of the early days of Blackwatch.

D.) Mercy. This one I would be surprised to see but it would have some logic to it.

Losing his arm, depending on the how/when/where.

She is not one of the characters who speak to him about his arm.

My logic - Who fixed his arm up for him?

Depending on how/when/where he lost his arm he may have shyed away from public hospitals. Especially with Talon  seemingly controlling so much of the press. So he may of wanted someone he personally trusted as well as doctor patient confidentiality.

Why does Mercy of all people not ask about the prosthetic? 

Out of the people who question McCree Mercy isn't one of them. Which may seem odd since she has known him for so long and her being a doctor. However, she does call out his smoking. So this proves she does pay attention to his over all health. (Which I am aware is a much older interaction) But it would have been a good opportunity to have her inquire about the arm there if she doesn't already know.

 Do you think McCree will directly receive the recall or from some other source?

What do you think of the fact that McCree lost his left arm specifically?

If the loss of McCree's arm is related to the Deadlock Gang do you speculate that it was intentionally the arm that had his tattoo on it? With how far McCree got in his career/life with OW and potentially spilling info on the gang when caught some people might want him to hurt. Not just die. To me forcefully sawing off the branding of the gang he betrayed would fit the bill. As well as be a good warning for others. (Not that blizzard would show that)

How do you imagine the camaraderie within Deadlock to be?

I ask this since in “Hero” right before the Los Muertos member throws the grenade it shows him actively choosing to help the other gang members (very broken gang members thanks to Soldier 76)onto the back of the truck instead of getting out ASAP. 

I just found that to be notable in how their social structure works. It makes more sense for Los Muertos specifically since they originally wanted to stand up against the politics and speak out for the people still suffering from the Omnic Crisis. They are not formed from the shady work they do.

Deadlock, however, doesn't seem to represent a core ideology. So I wouldn't be surprised if when OW caught some of them the others ran. Especially since McCree would probably still be pretty low in the pecking order at the time.

Can you imagine a shoot out in the warehouse tho, that'd be so risky people could be anywhere and there's no good line of sight except for where the truck drives through. Sneaky teen McCree climbing around and ish

Do you expect/hope for the origin on any mementos to be revealed?

My only idea is his iconic BAMF belt buckle. We know he's had it for quite a while since he wears it here: 

Just  thought Blizzard could do something cute with it if they wanted.

Do you have any thoughts on the Deadlock Torb skin?

Idk, this is kinda silly but people have talked about it. People do have a good point that it’s odd for him to have that skin.

Lastly, do you have any little head canons that you hope to see confirmed? 

Nothing serious just simple personal hopes from the cinematic which may or may not set you up for disappointment cause fun

(When I first started writing this I had two questions, rip. I'm pretty sure I forgot one of the original questions too)

Other Blizzcon Lore Speculation

Do you have any ideas for the new hero?

Personally, I do not have any super strong theories but I do have a few loose ideas. Tbh, I can’t especially convince myself of any these besides the likelihood of said character being a tank.

A.) Talon Tank

Reasons:

Moira’s origin story contains two possible indicators towards this, or another Talon member in general.

We need another main tank added to the roster (opinion)

Talon has a character for every role except tanking (weak)

Popular request (weak)

My Logic lacking- Majority of this idea comes from Moira’s origin story which shows this relatively well known photo with a person or armored suit of some kind on the back panel here: 

I used to think of this to be much harder evidence than I do now since it looks like it could be a uncolored design used for the Talon members in Retribution. However, there’s another detail in the photo (including the version with the different back panel that I believe could point to another member. Each character, excluding Moira, has their line of sight going to the same spot. My doodles for emphasis:

(Reaper is kind of hard to tell but that’s basically his entire role in Talon at this point, lol) Who are they all looking at? This could just be an artistic choice for viewer immersion but it also could be rather purposeful. To me, it looks like a proposition to someone, with the panel in the back for emphasis. If not a proposition, perhaps the workings of a plan or setting clear expectations for said person. (either version works for this context) This someone must be rather important to have them all there. Moira is looking back at the rest of them, seemingly reading their expressions/body language. She seems pleased but then again she’s a tad bit odd.

B.) Mystery Characters

Idek, I added this cause I could. This is not likely at all but will remain on the list of possibilities as long as Overwatch shall live.

Have been shown or spoken of very early on but nothing since

Recently mentioned names but no physical hints of who/what they are

Tying up some long held questions (weak)

Popular demand (weak)

My logic (or lack there of) - I have exactly one tiny speck of logic for this. Mystery characters shown and/or spoken of before the cancellation of the First Strike comic are still occasionally brought up to the OW team. Yet they have conveniently  not retconned them.  Why not say they are no longer a significant part of the story when there has been no updates on them for 2ish years? Maybe they are just keeping the possibility open. Liao and the two from Ana’s origin story are the best (only?) examples:

There is also more recently mentioned characters such as Ray and Fio. Ray was discussed mostly early this year and all we know about them is the following:

We do not know anything else about who or what Ray is. I do not 100% believe Ray is an actual person but you never know. The comment on the beard and his response to has Ray’s combat experience could be some teasing on Michael Chu’s part. To me, Ray is either a person, an omnic, or some sort of computer system used in the Orca.  I should note that another AI other than Athena would seem odd especially with the whole reason OW formed and all.

(Fio I have already discussed but at least we know she’s an actual person, hopefully...OW is weird man)

What do you think of the common theory of Sanjay Korpal being the next hero?

Personally, I think he lacks the look of an OW character. He looks rather plain to me, almost like a background character used to fill up comic space. I do believe his role is going to grow substantially in the lore but as an in game hero? Eh, I don’t know. Another thing I struggle with imagining is him being a tank like a lot of people presume. It would be interesting with what Vishkar can do with hard light technology to have a tank based on that, I will admit. Just don’t see him filling the role of that, he doesn’t strike me as someone who wants to get his hands dirty. I will admit, that this is very strictly my opinion and read of his character and by no means is anything to go off of speculation wise.

 But, if I’m wrong, then next years first cinematic should definitely be a Symmetra/Lucio one and it should definitely have Symmetra kiCKING HIS ASS FOR MANIPUlATING HER foR GOD KNOWs hOW LONG..ahem.

Do you think a comic will be released soon?

They usually put out comics on Wednesdays but they have been odd this year when it comes to them. Idk, if they’ll announce one at Blizzcon. I kinda doubt it. Personally, I’m hoping for a really kick ass Christmas comic since in Reflections it ended with Winston saying he has a good feeling for “next year” (OW’s next year cause timeline) plus last year’s was cute but underwhelming.

I think that’s all I have to ask/discuss for now? I had ideas keep popping up but I kept going back over what I already wrote and my attention span is all or nothing soooo there goes my ideas into the void.

***Random ass question cause you like RDR2. I keep getting a gamestop ad for it and it’s bugging me cause I can’t make out what this guy is saying. It sounds like “I don’t want to kill all you smooth dutch. Just you.” Idk where the exact video is rip, but I feel like I’m really mishearing the guy, lmao.

Non Sequiturs and Stupid Fangirl Squealing

(possibly completely incoherent warning idk how to wenglish when im excited pls ignore mw)

I saw a comic aart thing once and it had young jesse punch Jack in the face and Reyes thought it was the funniest thing and I feel like that’s in character

What if Reyes had a few choices on who to recruit and he was like I want the cowboy chose the instead of the trained older guys. Ana would be like Reyes no and Reyes would be like I want the damn cowboy

I never realised how much I appreciate McCree’s character until the hints of him having a short started popping up. Before I liked him sure, I just never thought too deep into how they could expand on his character. Originally I was just like, “so Reyes picked this kid out of a big ass gang and had him trained among the world’s most renowned soldiers and he still is perfectly content being a cowboy?” Good for you my dudely man, good for you,

wanna see skinny (lean)  young McCree but everyone will want the skin but it wont look the same with his in game model so blegh

I agree with you on how you think reyes recruited him, so many people think he just yeeted jesse at a bunch of angry omnics and was like lol have a cowboy

Imagine McCree being so confused by the weird ass original OW team like y there captain america, my new found father, a dwarf (swede) and an 8 ft german happy meal

He’d be so intimidated by Ana I bench lift Reinhardt for fun Amari being his coach like asdfsdf

But I think with her training it’d be the first real time he let his guard down without him realizing it because he was so in awe of her sniping skills and being able to get taught by her, bonding over shooting people half a continent away yAY

What if we see lil pharah??? I’ll die???

Okay I’ve said this to another  blog but even tho McCree is not my “type” I’m still gonna need to strap my ovaries in place for this short, cause booooooooyyyyyyyyy (I dont even have a type but I guess I mean a lil scruffy?)

[monkeydluffy19920]

“I remember that night, I just might Regret that night for the rest of my days, I remember those soldier boys Tripping over themselves to win our praise, I remember that dreamlike candlelight Like a dream that you can't quite place, But I'll never forget the first Time I saw your face, I have never been the same, Intelligent eyes in a hunger-pang frame, And when you said "Hi," I forgot my dang name Set my heart aflame, ev'ry part aflame”

- Hamilton the musical

Sannami week day 2 - a table for two ( @sannamiweek​ )

Alrighty, third and last entry for this year’s Sannami week-event. I would’ve done an amv for this prompt and song if I had more time to plan it or doodle/edit something but since i’m not artistic I decided to continue with making another post with quoted lyrics and some (fangirl-headcanonish) thoughts regarding the prompt. 

When it comes down to romance intimate moments with each other, I always been thinking that what if both Nami and Sanji are much shyer in these matters . Sanji has this “womanizer” reputation due his lovey-dovey- behavior around ladies but I think he would be the most loyal man once he found “the right for him”. I really think that all he really wants is a woman who loves and cares about him unconditionally and mutually. A love and a bond as strong as he shared with his mother Sora but of course with “the love of his life” it would be more than platonic and motherly. I’ve also been thinking that he might have a fear of loss that would also affect on him if he was in a serious relationship (him being sometimes a little too overly protective boyfriend/husband and him being afraid of not being enough although he wouldn’t show that directly).

Then there is Nami who is not shy to show her emotions. She sees no problem in punishing crewmates if they do something stupid or stating her opinion or shed tears in distress. However, the deeper we dig into her character (the past), we more we could think about the perspective that she might not be ready to show all the feelings. Seeing her adoptive mother getting shot in front of very own eyes and struggling years with the chance of emotional and physical abuse in order to save her entire village, it’s no wonder if she has some emotional locks and why she might be so guarded when it comes down to any romance. I think @namibean​‘s thoughts regarding to this topic were really interesting and just like many fellow shippers, I see the possibilities for her headcanon being canon (Nami rather denying her feelings than admitting them is a way to protect herself from getting hurt etc).  

So, if Nami does have any romantic feelings towards Sanji, her admitting them is difficult for her because she probably is secretly afraid of rejection (which could explain if she also would be insecure about being  good enough). 

Ok that was the introduction, back to the prompt. So, Sanji has basically already made “a table for two” when he served first only Nami a dessert after Zeff lectured him and then those two flirted with each other without caring that others are around (and that’s one reason I added that panel under the lyrics) but I think that if they ever became canon, they would want to go a proper dinner date without other crew mates around because well, they want to get to know each other even better. I think this quoted part of the song could represent Nami’s thoughts of their first real date and how she loves to recall that special evening as “the evening when they met for the first time, again”. 

This next part of the analyze goes a bit more to the headcanon/fangirl thoughts (and probably isn’t really a necessary detail) and it was really hard to choose whether to drop out the first 4 sentences from the quote but they were kinda linked so I left them. Although in the original song this “I remember those soldier boys, Tripping over themselves to win our praise” line is related to the scene where the characters go outside to check some guys and they get the attention from them, in this post’s context (and maybe in more edited lyrics) it could be interpreted as something like their crew mates help them to prepare for the big evening (or just making it a big number just to tease those two and making it awkward xD) but again it’s all just random intepretation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Also, obviously Alexander the main character of the musical would be switched with Sanji’s name (I edited both away from the quote though). I think hunger-pang frame- description could be replaced with something else that is more relevant since Sanji hasn’t been starving ever since before Baratie or maybe I just took that word just too literally? Could that then be linked to ambition (him wanting to chase his dreams, finding All Blue?)?

Then there is this “I remember that night, I just might, Regret that night for the rest of my days” part which could represent the previous thoughts about her insecurities.  In other words even if she enjoyed their date with the fullest and they would later take a step further to have a more serious relationship, there is a possibility that Nami would hesitate in the beginning and Sanji would have to break her walls and convince that their thing is going to last for forever. 

Last but not least, the background song is originally from the musical called Hamilton and it’s quite a sad one. I haven’t seen the whole musical but as far as I understood from the lyrics, it’s a song about woman falling in love with a guy who ends up marrying her sister and this is her toasting and giving a speech to the newlyweds and at the same time regretting that she let him go (it’s a long story but Helpess-song tells more about it). Well, I wanted and chose only that part of the song where everything is fine because aren’t we all shippers trash for happy stuff? *laughs* 

[migook]

[TEXTBOOK REVIEW] Integrated vs. EWHA

In the 5-ish years I’ve been off and on studying Korean, I’ve largely worked with Talk to Me in Korean, Integrated textbooks, and EWHA textbooks. I’ve never felt the need to venture into other textbook series (though I’ve been peeking through and I guess technically working with another since coming to Korea, but only in a sense of review.) Good textbooks differ for person to person - we all learn in our own styles and need things presented to us in different ways.

This system has been invaluable to me. As a self-studying learner, the kind of textbook you use is really important, because most of us don’t have a teacher to correct us or further explain things, and likewise, many of us don’t have a Korean friend or Korean-speaking friend to assist along the way. I’ve been lucky to have friends to help, but still, the textbook I used was very important for this.

Thus, I have a hopefully detailed and terribly picture heavy review of both Integrated and EWHA textbook series and how they compare to each other or how you as a learner can utilize them together or with other books!

When I got my first textbooks, I’d already taught myself to read and write Hangul and had been working quite a while with Talk to Me in Korean. As a result, I was a bad student and skipped a lot of the stuff at the beginning of the textbook. If you’re a new learner: DON’T DO THIS! There’s a lot of invaluable information, especially in the Integrated series. I’ve brought my beginner book to language exchanges before and have swayed a few people into buying some of the books I use because they found the beginning information alone to be hugely beneficial.

My first textbooks were the Beginner Integrated series. My decisions were based on the fact that I already had friends using these books - it would make it easy for me if I had questions, as they’d already worked with these before - and also the price. At the time I got them, I was able to get both Beginner 1 and 2 for about $35. Unfortunately, that was 5-ish years ago and the price isn’t quite as low and is much more on par with other textbooks.

Please don’t mind how old and beaten up looking it is; this guy and I have been through a LOT together!

This is the stuff I skipped when I first got the book, and frankly, would have been invaluable to my learning. From the way I taught myself to pronounce Hangul, even these days I still have to push myself to differentiate my 으 from 우. But visually seeing how these sounds are formed is really important, especially for beginners. There’s a lot of sounds we as foreigners and especially as beginners struggle to differentiate. When I help at Diana’s classes, I find a lot of people have issues with 어 and 오 - let alone 에 and 애 and further 스  or 쓰. Of course it’s not a foreigner only thing; at the language exchange, while helping Koreans with pronunciation, I’ve found they sometimes hear things that aren’t there or can’t differentiate certain sounds, either. That’s just language. But knowing how to say things not only helps your pronunciation but when you’re talking to someone, watching the way they speak can help you differentiate sounds as yours ears get used to it.

It’s actually quite extensive. Again, if I’d read the beginning, I would have figured out things like resyllablfication - a mouthful that simply means consonants carry over into empty spaces to make pronunciation MUCH easier. Instead, I spent a good while mispronouncing everything and wondering why speaking was so difficult. 

Now let’s get into the good stuff!

Integrated is set up into Lessons that are then broken up into 2 conversations/dialogues. After each conversation, you’re given a new word bank, and some new words and expressions in your notes. After that it’s a couple to few pieces of grammar. Sometimes that grammar is a full grammar piece (like a sentence ending), sometimes it’s a particle, sometimes it’s about irregular /ㄹ/ or /ㅡ/ or something.

Typically, integrated is very detailed. There’s usually a lot of notes, examples that show varieties of way of use, and then exercises! I never got a workbook with Integrated so I can’t tell you much about it, but because a. I had no one to check it and b. I have so many exercises in the book, I didn’t regret this. A friend of mine who has used integrated told me that she feels the exercises in the book are sufficient enough because they’re very similar to what you see in the work book anyway.

Let’s have a look!

Look how short these dialogues start out. Ahh, nostalgia~

The word bank is always sorted by word type, which becomes useful when you get further in and realize that sometimes adjectives are conjugated differently from verbs! The New expressions heading usually is followed by really useful stuff that doesn’t always warrant its own grammar lesson but still is relevant to your learning.

Grammar is always introduced first by examples and then explained in the notes. As you can see, Integrated can be very verbose in its explanations. For some people, this is beneficial. Others, not so much. I tend to like to learn my grammar inside and out; I’m not that great at learning by example or inferring reason, so this very verbose manner of explanation is great for me. Also, I have a tendency to overthink things, so when it’s laid out, it helps.

The end of the lesson is always presented with a narration that uses all of the grammar you learned in the past lesson and whatever the lesson’s central theme was (university life, transportation, food, etc.) There’s comprehension questions and activities. But the best part of the end of the lessons is all the stuff they tack on!

Ignore the doodles, pls. And the notes. I was a mess, okay!

The end of the lesson always features some kind of culture lessons where they teach  you various matters about life in Korea and Korean society. It also goes further into detail about usage. Language is not a one way kind of thing. The way initially presented in the textbook is not the only way to say or express things. Further, it has more activities that build upon what you’ve done throughout the lesson. See why a workbook is virtually unnecessary?

Importantly, the end of the lesson has conversation translations. As you can see, there’s no answers for the exercises, which could be a make or break thing for people. Having no one to correct it makes it hard to utilize the exercises.

Despite the fact that the book lacks answer keys, I find Integrated has been invaluable to my learning. Admittedly, I may be biased because of the time I’ve spent with these books, and thus I’ve grown fond, but even in retrospect I still feel they were and are incredibly useful.

Integrated textbooks are thicker than my EWHA textbooks - they're roughly the size of 2 EWHA books, which seems to make sense because Integrated has two beginner books and I believe for EWHA, level 1 and 2 are considered beginner and 3 seems to start on an intermediate level. As Integrated books are so big, they’re full of information. FULL! The first beginner book alone presents quite a lot of conversational grammar and vocabulary and beginner 2 (what I would think of as high beginner to myself) further expands on it.

Admittedly I was the most inconsistent studier until I came to Korea, so it’s probably unsurprising that I’ve worked out of these two books for the entirety of the time I’ve been learning. In fact I only JUST made it into my Intermediate books. I have a lot of reasons for that, but the point I’m trying to make is that I’ve spent all these years able to use the grammar and vocabulary from these books, so it’s really quite beneficial in my eyes.

(A comparison, for example, is the book my friend teacher Diana uses. Her lessons follow Beautiful Korean, a book that has 3 books in the beginner series, I believe, and each costs 16,000 won. Considerably cheaper, sure, than Integrated Beginner coming in at 30 a piece. But when you consider again that Integrated is the size of 2 textbooks, the price seems to even out. Further, Through us using Beautiful Korean, most of what we learned was only pronunciation and vocab. Only at the beginning of the 1-1 lessons were introductions and the most basic sentences and structures introduced. The actual act of making sentences and grammar doesn’t show up until 1-2. So further, if you consider comparison, you need all 3 books from the beginner series of Beautiful Korean to possibly probably equate to Beginner 1 and maybe 2? idk I haven’t seen what comes after Beautiful Korean 1-3; it might still be beginner level for all I know! That’s not to put down the Beautiful Korean series at all but as far as values, when you consider all 3 books will cost about 48,000 won, Integrated, to me, seems more valuable. But I digress.)

Integrated Beginner 2 stays much the same and follows this same format. In fact, even in Integrated it does, though notably the conversations grow longer and now after each conversation there’s comprehension questions, which is a welcome addition! 

That said, EWHA certainly has it’s merits, and my shallow self will admit the fact that they are ever so pretty certainly endears me towards them - but I promise it goes well beyond shallow reasoning.

EWHA is best paired as a set with it’s companion study guide. As you will see, EWHA does not go as deeply into explanation about things as Integrated - and thus we have the study guide. Sometimes the study guide doesn’t offer a deeper explanation, either; often it’s unnecessary and as I’ve mentioned before, EWHA seems to want you to understand things through context and by gleaning things yourself. The study guide provides more examples, though, in case an explanation isn’t quite enough; you’re supposed to figure out usage and context with those examples. Sometimes it’s great! It depends on how you learn, to be honest. I find I need lots of examples AND lots of explanation, but I’m trying to learn to mine more from examples without being handheld and spoonfed, but like I said - we all learn in different ways.

Much as Integrated does, EWHA has a good introduction to Hangeul in both pronunciation and construction. Though I don’t find it QUITE as indepth as Integrated is, EWHA tends to throw little tips at you as you work through the books that Integrated introduces in the beginning, and really you don’t miss much by getting them later.

So Integrated is set up in lessons with conversations per lesson. EWHA instead gives you two prep lessons which will lead to a conversation practice. And where Integrated introduces one big word bank per conversation, Integrated just throws them all into your prep lesson. Sometimes it’s big, sometimes it’s small. Something useful that I didn’t do but probably should have was going through the entire lesson and write down the vocab or make flashcards if that’s your thing and review them before you get to them that way they have some familiarity to you. Or, on the other hand, you can go through at the end of the lesson and see which words you remember and then play with the ones you don’t. Your call!

The prep lessons build up to a practice conversation! You get a little information about your roleplay characters and what you’re supposed to be talking about. Basically it’s guiding you and nudging you to use the grammar it’s just introduced to create a conversation. It tells you things like “make a greeting and introduce yourself” “ask their nationality” blah blah and you’re supposed to construct the conversation. On the next page they’ve written out the conversation how they want you to follow it, so don’t look! Cover it up as you try to do it so you don’t rely on just reading it. It’s a really beneficial way of learning to make sentences and especially to think outside of the box of what you’re used to!

As you can see on that page, sometimes they throw in pronunciation tips, which I definitely needed when I first started out! I was lucky I started with TTMIK who do a good job of explaining why ~습니다 is pronounced as ~슴니다 but other things I didn’t learn about until later.

They also give you conversational tips! Obviously you might not be able to figure out the conversation fully on your own, but the book has extras for you. It’s good to try your best and then to check the dialogue and see how or why they came up with what they did. I really like this part, because sometimes I get fixated on one way to say or express something, but as with all languages, there’s many ways to say things! I don’t know why I become so uncreative when I’m trying to construct things in Korean; I guess a sense of unfamiliarity where with English I know exactly how to throw things together. So these are parts are VERY IMPORTANT in really expanding your manner of speech and understanding!

As you can see, it continues this way, following this sort of pattern of prep lessons leading up to a conversation practice. Occasionally, EWHA will throw in a page with images and what they are in Korean. Obviously, you’re supposed to figure out what they are visually but I’ll confess sometimes I’ve had issues with that, but don’t worry; the study guide has you covered! We’ll get to that soon, I promise.

Another example of the conversation practice. Note there’s even MORE vocab at the bottom!

Towards the end of the lesson, there’s always an audio piece that you listen to and answer comprehension questions over and you get MORE fun little expressions like above, except these you’ll have to find in your study guide. It’s really important you get these as a set because if you don’t, you’re lacking an entire half of your EWHA experience - and the study guide just makes it better for self-learners.

Like the textbook, it also opens with some pronunciation and intro to Hangeul type things. You really aren’t lacking for this kind of stuff, when it comes to these books! It’s also why I always recommend these to beginners! While I am fortunate to currently be in Korea where I can practice and have people help correct me, when I started out self-learning there was no one to do that and I was going off of (terrible) romantization to figure out how to say things. It was bad!

At the end of every lesson, the study guide has a vocabulary check and this! Is! One of my favorite! Things about the study guides!!!!! In the series 1 books it’s very often just words but as you get into series 2, you get phrases and the such which is useful because, again, sometimes I just forget how to construct things I know and it’s nice to see it used in ways that makes you go “ahhh” and helps you make better use.

The study guide always shows which pages of the textbook it corresponds to. You can see how there’s a tiny bit of extra information in here; there’s not a lot at this point, because these things don’t necessarily need as much explanation - but there’s plenty of sample sentences! Read the sample sentences! If you’re having a hard time understanding something, reading the samples might be able to help you glean what you’re supposed to be understanding.

As you can see, there’s also an answer key to the activities in the book, which is really great if you don’t have anyone to check your work!

Remember those little expressions in the conversation practice pages? The study guide goes further into depth on them and helping you with your usage. This is the second best part of the study guide! It’s just really full of extras to help you out!

You can also find transcripts for the audio dialogues in here!

Just a few more samples!

Both sets are really wonderful for learning Korean. I maintain that the “best” one is whichever adheres best to your learning style. If you, like me, require lots of explanation, then Integrated might be best for you. It’s extra full of activities which really negates the need for a workbook. Unfortunately, you need someone to check your work, because while there’s translations for dialogue, there’s no answer key for your activities. EWHA is great for a self-studier in the manner that they DO provide not only transcripts/dialogue translations but also answer keys. Someone who doesn’t necessarily need things explicitly laid out can benefit from EWHA and to be honest, it could probably help people learn TO take meaning through context. Again, if you go with EWHA, you really need the Study Guides as well for the entire experience.

Some things: re EWHA. As you can see above, in books 1-1 and 1-2, your instructions and lesson introductions are written in both English and Korean. By series 2, the English there disappears. You still have English explanations and vocab translations, but your activity instructions and lesson intros are entirely Korean. By series 3, it’s FULL Korean. Your study guide still has English!!!! But your books? Korean! Even the vocab!!!!! I’ll try to remember to add pics of that later. But the idea is, of course, that you’ll learn as you go and eventually you won’t need it entirely written in English. I’m certainly not at that point yet, but I hope I’ll be able to get there soon!

Obviously, textbooks don’t come very cheap, so if you have to choose between the two sets, weigh your pros and cons. That said, the way I use them typically is that Integrated gets prioritized and then when I need a break or a review, I use EWHA. I used to review through Integrated but I find I’m not really taking in anything new when I’m just going over something I remember. By using both sets, I get different vocab sets, different situations, different kinds of usages of the grammar I’m learning. Both introduce things at different times. I’ve learned some things from EWHA that hadn’t been introduced to me at the time in Integrated where sometimes Integrated introduced to me things EWHA wouldn’t for a LONG time get to. But they both give me unique, fresh takes on things I’m learning. I’ve bought my books over a long period of time, so if you DO want to play with both, I’d say start with one set and later on down the line, add the other, so you can spread out the purchases.

Regardless, even if you can only choose one, I think they both have very strong merits as learning tools - and there’s always additional (free) options to help pad out your learning. I still make use of Talk to Me in Korean when I need to review something or I want another take on it or I need another explanation. When I REALLY want to get in-depth with things, I hit up How to Study Korean, where things are really broken down and in-detail explained. Don’t rely on just one study option. If you choose to use a textbook series, pad it out with the free online resources as well! The more ways you can see things used, the better it will stick with you!

I hope this is able to help a little! If you have questions, feel free to ask me! I can try to get some simple comparisons later of Integrated Intermediate level and EWHA series 3 books, and eventually I’ll do some write ups about the TTMIK books I own and the ways I find them useful!

[clove-teasdale]

survival of the fittest

*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧

A/N: not a challenge but has background, some detective clove and rp~ Sorry for any mistakes in writing or typos, I was done with revisions and probs missed some stuff lol. there are mulan and batman (and slight marvel) references. italics section in the end is past. word count around 3k. enjoy! ft. rp with @maya-edwards  & little wilson

[edit--some slight changes were made/added in the last section]

*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧

One earbud in, I tapped the pen against my notebook. 6 Twos in the last Selection. Gradually less than our current 10.

I’d found the list of old Selected in a magazine published over two decades ago. I doubted ripping off the page was allowed considering it was from the library, but it wasn’t an actual book so I sneaked it out anyway. The possibility of someone noticing was extremely low after all.

I kept the page folded and clipped in the back cover of my notebook in case I needed it later, but had already made my own version of the list on a fresh page. I wanted to work through it even with other people around, so I knew I had to make it visually confusing. For once my love for complicated plans came in handy. 

The list consisted of name abbreviations. Carmen Zoraya becoming C.Z and so on. Next, to each name, I added caste number and week of elimination. 

C.Z-3-W8.  R.D.J.-2-W12 B.M-5-W3

Getting the information had taken me hours of reading in the library, but I’d managed. I went through different magazines, hidden between some pillars and a bookshelf to avoid being spotted by other girls that frequented the area. Organizing the old issues by their dates had probably been the biggest challenge–sitting on the carpeted floor, my back to the bookshelf and dozens of magazines on my lap.

I focused mostly on reading eliminations to get the crucial information out, but I hoped to go back later in the week to read about the dramas that had ensued during those months. Maybe that would give some extra insight otherwise dismissed when looking only at the bigger picture.

I wasn’t sure why I was still working on this. A gut feeling? Many psychologists debated there was always information and data our right brain was taking in, no matter if our left brain was busy on something else. The body registers the information even when your mind stays unaware. If that were true, what had I noticed besides the already obvious? I couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter. I had enough spare time to work on it.

Running through the names again, I added strikes under Threes. I was in the eighth strike when I caught a girl approaching from the corner of my eye. She was the embodiment of nervousness, eyes searching the room as she clutched a book to her chest. There was an empty spot next to me, but she hadn’t noticed it yet when Victoria walked behind her. The TV sensation hadn’t even batted an eye in her direction, but the girl with the short afro was startled nonetheless.

The book was soon in the air as she juggled it around in an attempt to catch it. She wasn’t as swift as a coursing river though and it fell to the ground pretty quickly. 

She sighed, shoulders slumping in disappointment. I stared in silence, making sure others hadn’t paid much attention to the event before stating, “I think you dropped something.”

She was startled once more, but this time by my voice, a groan leaving her lips as she realized the spectacle had had an audience. “You saw all that, didn’t you…”

“Does it make it any better if I say no?”

She reached for the book and once standing, nodded a little, a worried frown as she said, “A-actually yes…”

I raised an eyebrow at her fear, unsure of the reason behind it, but settled with an “Okay,” and went back to my notes. I knew the best thing was not to make any further comments.

“Can I, uh- Can I sit here?” She asked after a moment.

I stopped in the middle of adding another strike to the number of Threes and considered the question. Staring at my notes without context made no sense as expected, so I figured it wasn’t a problem. “The seat is open to the public, you may sit.”

Whether she understood my slightly joking tone or not was hard to tell, but she cleared her throat and sat down either way. “Thanks…”

I’d seen her around before. Maya was her name if I remembered correctly. Sometimes she seemed kind of lost. Not like she didn’t know what was happening, but more like she wasn’t sure why she was there or what her plan was. A combination of shy and awkward was very likely.

Easy targets tend to know what they are. Wilson’s face crossed my mind at the thought. I took the single earbud I was wearing off, then went back to counting Threes. “No need to thank me. You didn’t need my permission to sit there.”

“Uh, well…Maybe you didn’t want company or- maybe it was taken?”

“Whether I want company or not should not scare you away from taking a seat that is there to be used by you.”

She frowned, considering my words. “I suppose not?” A moment of silence. “Sorry?”

I paused my count. So one of those people. Looking up, I raised an eyebrow at her. “Why sorry?”

Her own logic caught up with mine as she stuttered, “Uh-well- I don’t know…” 

Trying to run away from embarrassment, she quickly opened her book and pretended to read. Too bad she wasn’t good at pretending. 

I smirked down at my notes and said, “I see you have the ability of reading upside down.”

Her blush was unmistakable as she closed her eyes, realizing she was holding the book incorrectly. She tried to fix it, turning it over quickly. “No-Yes, yes, very entertaining, I can tell you.” She cleared her throat at the end and my smirk didn’t leave.

“Mhmm, I bet so. What did you think about the love interest killing his sister?”

“It really uh, turned the story ‘upside down’…”

I snorted at the pun. “Of course… you do realize that doesn’t happen though?” Taking the book from her and reading the page at the bottom I pointed out, “Page 56. The love interest isn’t introduced yet.” Also, there was no sister. Closing the book, I handed it back with a smug smile. Her smile in return was awkward.

“Well, it was worth a try? Sor– I mean, eh the book is nice then? Haven’t read it yet.”

“I figured as much, but yes, it’s a decent one. What made you pick it up?”

“I dropped it? So… Then I picked it up again?” She frowned and a head tilt followed. I frowned too, not getting what she was talking about at first, but then laughing at the mistake.

Once she realized what I meant she was quick to explain she hoped to get some knowledge on palace rules and etiquette considering the setting of the book. In theory, it sounded like something good, but it wasn’t going to be enough and she actually had access to books about the subject in the library. I suggested those for later. She pointed out they were boring in a small voice and I couldn’t disagree. I did tell her a novel wouldn’t help much, however.

“I know, I know…” She pouted, but soon curiosity took over her features. “What are you doing though?”

I stared at my barely understandable handwriting. I had the potential to make it neat if I bothered to try, but half the time I didn’t and especially not now. “A… personal project I guess.” I shrugged it off as I closed the notebook. “Nothing too important.”

“O-of course! I didn’t mean to uh–…” She vaguely gestured with her hands in the air when I waited for her to continue. “You know, to be rude.”

“It’s alright, not that big a deal, just something I don’t think I’d be able to explain.“ A partial lie. I didn’t want to start havoc just because I’d run a couple of numbers that could technically still be coincidental. Thankfully, I usually pulled off keeping things to myself pretty well. “You’re Maya, right?”

“Yes! And you’re Clove.” She smiled, taking another second to remember to offer a hand for me to shake. 

I nodded at the name and accepted the handshake. It wasn’t a soft grip, but slightly wary. She could use a little confidence. “You know, you shouldn’t be so frightened by them. They won’t bite you.”

I hadn’t mentioned Victoria’s name, but she got what I meant, biting her lip and trying to joke to dismiss my comment. I wasn’t too impressed. “I mean it.” I opened my notebook, this time on a random page, and started doodling a spiral pattern out of habit. “They seem like they’ll hurt you but if anyone was that mean sabotage would already be happening.  Worse case scenario maybe one of them is that petty, but you’d have to piss them off for real to worry about it.”

Maya nodded. “It sounds logical… Thanks anyway.”

That smile was more convincing than the previously given, even if she changed the subject after it. 

It took a few seconds for Wilson to stop laughing. “Oh wait, you’re serious?”

Even if he couldn’t see it through the call, I rolled my eyes at him. “You talk as if I can’t make friends.”

“Well, I mean… you can, but you hate them most of the time.”

That got a snort from me. “I don’t hate them. I just don’t trust their intentions.”

“Same difference. Clove Teasdale doesn’t make friends.”

That was a partial truth. I had various friend groups during high school and middle school, but none of them stuck with me. I was that person people wanted to be friends with, but not for any good reasons. It was because we fitted or because it was expected. Other times it was just convenient. Sometimes I wondered if maybe it was me though. Maybe I didn’t know how to be a good friend. That or I had really bad luck.

People at Mt. Rainer High School always seemed to strike some drama no matter what the clique. More often than not, about something I couldn’t understand, but whenever I gave suggestions to make things less complicated I was ignored, an annoyance, or horrible for not supporting a side.

When groups fractured I took a step back. Better alone than in a mess. Wilson had never understood why I’d give it all up and move on so fast, but I didn’t blame him. He knew that it was a smart choice to avoid drama, yet wished he could have that choice himself. He didn’t. He wasn’t really liked around school and therefore had only one friend...Which wasn't that different from me except I could pretend more.

Students liked to say it was because he was kind of a nerd. He knew as much as I did that it was because of his previous Caste though, even if no one would admit so. It was kinda dumb. As dumb as the caste system itself–trying to set a number with the life you’ll get–forcing a talented artist to become a teacher and a physics genius to be Picasso.

Not everyone could pull off a Da Vinci and be good at whatever they were put in. Many people failed because of that. Others were like Wilson’s mother, giving up the life she was born in for a life as a Three with whom she fell in love with. That left Wilson as nothing but a Two by chance. Terrible, dreadful chance that he never even asked for and would probably give up to get his parents back.

I leaned against my chair and got back to our conversation. “Statistically speaking, most people that stay friends are from college so…”

He pretended to be offended. “Ouch.”

”You’re decent enough. But as I was saying, I’ll try to befriend some of the girls. This isn’t school.”

“Hmm, you’re right. Everyone here sucks.”

“Even Graciela?” I teased, remembering the name I’d gotten out of him a few days ago. He scoffed back at me.

“No, she hasn’t been corrupted yet.”

“Now you just have to actually talk to her.”

He laughed for the second time. I was silent. “Oh, you’re serious again.”

I shook my head. “You’re a lost cause, kid.”

It was the middle of freshman year when we met for the first time.

I was placing books in my backpack, my head making a list of the homework for the next day when Cooper pushed him into a set of lockers feet away. I turned my head in the direction of who would one day be the future varsity quarterback as he took care of the new wimpy kid. 

Cooper wasn’t really original, trying as hard as possible to go for the popular-jock-bully stereotype as soon as the school year started. Intimidating middle schoolers and stealing lunch money he didn’t even need. It was hard to ignore sometimes, but I did.

Pressing my lips together, I watched as he stepped away to laugh at the boy, inciting his two friends to join him on whatever joke he’d made. Obviously, they did. Cooper’s father was a high ranking officer in the military. He had everything he needed to be on a high pedestal in school one day, which was annoying. 

I was on the list of few who ever stood up to him since we’d once been friends. That is before he filled his head with air. The brief moment I got to look at his new prey was enough to recognize the black haired kid holding tightly onto the strap of his backpack with a clenched jaw. 

His eyes darted from Cooper to the floor around him, head hidden between his shoulders. I’d seen that face in a million pictures around Mrs. Grayson’s house after my chess classes with her. It was her grandson, the one she always referred to as little robin. Apparently, the kid ran around saying “holy cows, Batman” more than he should when he was seven.

She told my parents he would move in with her soon, being the legal guardian his parents’ had asked for. “Car accident,” she’d mentioned. I had already spotted him in our algebra class a few times that week. He seemed advanced enough to take it before high school which only made him a bigger target.

Cooper nudged him, “Come on, that was hilarious.” Little Robin didn’t seem to have the same spirit Mrs. Grayson always talked about now and only gulped, averting his gaze. Cooper didn’t leave him though. “Cat got your tongue or something? I’ve never heard you say anything in class.” He towered over him, making him press his back even closer to the lockers.

I narrowed my eyes at them and walked over. I hadn’t precisely told Mrs. Grayson I would keep an eye out for him, but I felt like I needed to on her behalf. Sometimes she’d served as a babysitter of sorts when my parents traveled together. She was good to me. 

I elbowed Cooper’s friends out of the way and they gave angry glares until they recognized me. They decided to step away instead so I stood behind Cooper and tapped his shoulder.

“What-” he paused mid-sentence as he turned around, eyes locking on me, annoyed for the split second he realized I wasn’t one of his friends. Jaw clenched, he stood up straighter and then mumbled my name between a gritted-teeth smile. “Anything I can help you with?”

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, flatly.

He offered a charming smile. “Oh, just asking the genius for some tutoring classes. You know how bad I’m at Algebra. I thought I might as well ask him to teach me some stuff. Right George?” He elbowed the kid for a sign of confirmation.

I was pretty sure his name wasn’t George, yet Little Robin didn’t correct him either as he spared me a glance himself. There was a pause long enough to tell Cooper was lying. And though I knew that much already, in the end, the boy thought it was wiser to agree halfheartedly to the lie. Survival of the fittest. He wouldn’t disagree after Cooper established himself as an authority so firmly.

I remained silent, thinking of how to turn the situation around. The kid was new, he didn’t know what to do. It was like a game of poker. Bluff even if you don’t have the upper hand.

“He can’t tutor you,” I stated, earning a confused frown from both.

“And why is that?” Cooper crossed his arms, puffing out his chest. Good thing this wasn’t a matter of physical strength, and if it were, a strategy could give leverage either way.

“Because I asked him to tutor me already.” My turn to lie.

The boy blinked, trying to read between the lines of our conversation while Cooper narrowed his eyes at me. “I didn’t think you needed help with math, Clove.”

“Well, I do, and he promised to help me out.” I looked at the boy. “Right kid?”

Again he only blinked. 

Your turn to join the game Robin, don’t disappoint. It took him another second, but his eyes lit up with understanding and he stood up straighter. “Yeah, I um…I did.” 

Cooper glared at him and the kid broke eye contact, however, didn’t slump against the lockers anymore. Then the glowering was at me. 

I only raised my eyebrows in response, inciting a move from Cooper. His lip twitched, jaw set as I stared up at him. He knew better than to make a scene. I’d tied his hands. He couldn’t force Wilson to tutor him if I claimed he’d agreed to tutor me first. Bringing in a teacher to ‘settle the situation’ was possible if I wanted too. There was no way for him to win.

Knowing how to pick his battles, he turned around to leave but I stopped him. “Wait.”

“What?” he groaned.

I crossed my arms. “Did you take any money from him?”

His eyes flashed as he swiveled around. I waited. He let out a breath through his nose before placing a grin on his face to hide unwillingness. If there was something Cooper hated was letting others know someone had been able to push his buttons.

He turned to the boy, taking a few bills out of his pocket, and forced his voice to sound friendly. “Hey, thanks for lending me the money kid, but turns out I might not need it anymore.” 

The boy stared at the money like it was on fire, but accepted its returns when he noticed my head gesture and the jock’s angry gaze. 

“Happy now,” Cooper muttered afterward. I shrugged and he stormed off as soon as he could, followed by the other two jerks. Once they were gone I looked back at him.

“You okay?”

His head snapped back in my direction. “What just..”

I didn’t let him finish the question and simply announced, “He lost the game.” 

His mouth opened to reply. Nothing came out and I glanced at my watch. If I didn’t get moving I’d have no chance to eat. “Stay out of his way and you’ll be fine.”

“Um… y-yeah, alright. Thanks.”

I nodded. “Clove Teasdale.”

“Geordi Wilson.”

George would have been better… I sized him up. His uniform was in pristine form: shirt tucked in, vest ironed to perfection, hair combed neatly and shoes as shiny as they could be. Not bad by any means, but definitely like he was trying too hard. He would need some help to survive around here.

I turned around to leave. “Stick with Wilson, kid.”

[tuchimuchibrainvomit]

EPISODE 3:

Aloha, fellow Sakuga Seedlings!

Welcome to my case study series, Brain Vomit.

Name’s

Tuchimuchi Yoshinori – or just Tuchi…

And I enjoy animation. Especially animation from the eastern archipelago of Japan, also called “Anime”!

In this series, right here, I’ll be exploring Japanese Animation Production and enlightening this growing community and myself to the power they have in this expansive animated medium.

For today’s episode, I’ve chosen to discuss one of our most important topics that I’d love to talk about in great detail. And I want to be as sensitive and open-minded as possible, so please do not take what I say as any standard or absolute. This series is meant to enlighten, not to judge or criticize. But today, I want to discuss character design -- !!

I hear you, I do, but there is a reason why. Hold your horses, guys!

So, Character Design---We understand the basic logistics, yeah? A character design is simply that, how a character is designed. What aspects of the character give them individuality and what aspects help relate to the world/culture they live in.

Are they young? Old? Human? Furry? Tentacle Monster? Whatever.

These are just the basic ideas...

Character Design is something some people understand it well and others… not so much. I refrain from putting up examples of bad character design as not to offend anyone. But, often things can get lost, over done or just a bit... lacking creativity.

Hence why today, I want to focus on breaking down character design--and not Character Design in a broad spectrum, but Character Design with the Animators in Mind.

Animators in mind meaning...?

Oh yes, character designing for an animator -- streamlined, easy to animate consistently and efficient.

So. let’s start broad and narrow it down, to help reinforce the points I want to explore…”

Q: What makes good character design overall?

First of all, I hate the idea of “good” or “bad” character design. It’s less about being good or bad, as those are more opinionated, rather more of a design being “successful”.

Depending on your perspective, design can be merely the aesthetic choices or a solution to a problem. But in reality, it’s a marriage of the two.

A: Since this is more opinionated than definite and I am not a professional by any means. Based on a multitude of different opinions across the net and through some readings that I’ll like below, these are the main 5 factors that in my opinion make for a successful character design:

1.) Silhouette

2.) Aesthetic and Style

3.) Reproducibility

4.) Exaggeration

5.) Fungibility

Let’s break all of this down…

Silhouette: The most straightforward. A silhouette is the basic structure of your character, most easily expressed when put into shadow or overlaid with a color that gets rid of lineart and detail.

Let’s perform a -- Silhouette Test-- on some characters, which I believe are all well designed.

(Insert silhouettes here)

What is the Silhouette Test? It’s simple really, take a character -- or a bunch. And turn them completely black, a silhouette. I recommend choosing a pose or a model sheet where the action does not overtake or mask important parts of the design.

Ask yourself these questions:

-- Does your character stand up to the silhouette test?

-- Can you tell which is which in a crowd of silhouettes?

Yusuke Murata of One Punch Man remake and Eyeshield 21 fame is known for having interesting background characters in his work -- fleshing out his world a bit.

Now see if they stand out from each other and that of it’s contemporaries. If you can tell who a character is from the silhouette, congrats. You have the makings of a successful character design. 

However, remember context is always important! Silhouette is not the end all be all.

Let’s try it out! Or better yet, let Extra Credits explain it every better with video!

(Check out their stuff! They have some great videos on Game Design)

There are many things that can help an artist create characters with different silhouettes.

For example:

-- Use different blocking shapes to build your character. Start simple and grow into complexity. Honestly, simple is always better.

-- Use the shadows of other objects to your advantage.

-- Study body types, I hear a collective group groaning--No. You can’t have every girl have the same huge boobs and not every guy can be a bara wet dream, if you want interesting and differing character designs, variation is very important -- OMNI-IMPORTANT -- even, let’s put ‘Omni” in front of it. This not a difference of opinion, this is just the basics of broad character design. I won’t name names, but many artists I love, realistically speaking, may not be good character designers--And that’s OK!

Build with shapes. Understand shapes and how they come across to the eye, I recommend this video by SuperEyePatchWolf to even go into that better than a couple of words from me ever could!

A bit of a tangent, but more my opinion: Here’s where Furry characters have a strong advantage, they can use animalistic features like ears, tails and muzzles and exaggerate them to make a more interesting silhouette without building up all this detail. Because I’ll be frank -- more detail to clothing and face without changing it’s shape is not gonna make your silhouette any stronger.

So when I see furry designs that are basic with just a lot of color or patterns, it doesn’t really work. As the silhouette test takes out the tertiary details and focuses on the form. If you’ve never heard of a sparkledog -- you are blessed.

Moving on!

Aesthetic and Style: This is where you get to get your creative side on. Be creative and show off your individuality! But focus on the character, think of their background and personality, make sure those are congruent to the world you are trying to build. This is where CONTEXT MATTERS!

Ask yourself these questions:

-- Do your characters have a distinct look? How does it compare to others with similar influences? How does it compare to my influences?

-- Can you tell what style is yours based on how they are drawn?

-- Does my character stand out from other characters I’ve designed?

-- Does my character's identity come through the basic design?

If so, then you passed! You probably have a strong aesthetic, and you may have also avoid plagiarism charges from other artists…

Seriously... I 100% understand having influences, but the “discount this artist” isn’t super appealing. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but at the same time -- most artists want to be seen for their individuality. Quite the double-edged sword. I recommend exploring yourself and your influences and expanding. Find new things in the world that intrigue you. Becoming better as an artist and designer is about exploring the world and yourself.

Always bloom proudly, as I like to say.

There are many things that can help an artist create characters with different aesthetic and styles.

For example:

-- Try understanding body differences and get creative with it. Life drawing. Life drawing is a necessity. Even if you cannot get into a class, sit outside and doodle people and their behaviors. There are plenty of sites with life drawing models with set time limits. I’ll put some links right here!

-- Understand character development. Understand your characters. A nerd probably wouldn’t have a suede jacket, a smug grin and greased back hair, unless the point of that character is dissonance of appearance and personality (And no, not all of your characters need to be this convoluted, most designs to speak for themselves. But in terms of audience expectations -- they should be able to tell some truth from a character’s appearance, Use those aspects in design.)

-- Keep your character simple before building complexity. Starting complex may leave you more in a rut than one would at first think. 

-- Study other artists’ styles, study styles of art in general! You may find something that inspires your direction in design aesthetic.

-- And stay passionate about what you do. It’s very easy to compare yourself to others in a destructive way. I won’t be that guy that says “always be drawing” as sometimes we all feel unmotivated from time to time and that’s OK. That’s life. But keep your mind active and be aware of both the self and the outside world. In the age of the internet, it’s easy to forget what fresh air smells like.

I believe every artist has a personal style inside of them that they can use to split themselves off from their inspirations. But in my opinion, when artists begin to blend, it screams red flags about those artists’ potential being wasted -- so the harder you experiment and learn from reality, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

I know, I didn’t hold any examples here -- but there’s no way to define what is a good or bad aesthetic. It’s all subjective, so that’s up for you to discover.

Third,

Reproductibility: Can you draw your character easily -- as in like 5 minutes maximum? This is more of an animation perspective, but if you cannot draw your character over and over again in quick succession, you may want to rethink your design.

(Burnout is plenty possible in any situation. Simplicity is merely a way to keep things moving.)

Is your style easy to emulate, but unique? You may have a style built for animation -- but with that does come danger from plagiarists. I know, I’ve been talking about it a lot today. And while I have never had the first hand experience, I’ve observed the feelings and it’s not a positive one. Maybe it’s out of my own fears in that regard. Who knows...

Character design. It’s a balance, really.

Repetition is key. That’s why simple is always best.

Got it down? Then you can design reproducible characters!

Things that can help you design reproducible characters:

-- Find things that flow with your hands. These characters will be drawn thousands of times, you need to enjoy drawing these characters!

-- Keep things simple, but not too simple that it loses aesthetic and style.

-- Look at model sheets and understand them. These are not tours to drive you to their destination, rather guides to finding the path for you.

Yeah... Reproductibility... This one isn’t too long or complex. Anime, while a bit full of it’s own tropes, tends to have great character at its best. While they may differ from the manga they may be adapted from, it’s all for the sake of animation in the end. As decades go on, anime is only getting better on a technical level.

Simple, cute as hell yet badass in it’s own right! I have a bit of a thing for PreCure, especially Heartcatch PreCure! (This is Princess PreCure, don’t judge me!)

Moving on!

Next up: Fourth,

Arguably the most important in animation (as it is also a PRINCIPLE OF ANIMATION, see Episode 2 for more) is Exaggeration: This is how far your character can go before they become unrecognizable. No matter how they are drawn, you should know which character this is at all times. This is CRITICALLY based on the last three concepts.

How do I know if my character can be exaggerated well?

-- Keep your designs unique, reproducible and simplistic.

-- Learn about the basic animation principles.

-- Experiment, Experiment, Experiment! Get wacky with it, try drawing them in another person’s style. Can you still identify them? 

-- Draw them in different poses and angles! You want to be able to draw them from any angle be it worms-eye, bird’s eye, dutch, over the shoulder... These are more filmography terms, but the point still stands. Animation is just film where your camera is imaginary and based around composition.

I may get some heat from this and there is a video that I’ll link that goes into pretty much all the points and go check out their stuff but -- Steven Universe while I love it -- does suffer from composition deficiencies... It comes off as if they cannot draw their characters from experimental angles and foreshorten well. There’s a reason why Mindful Education is such a successful episode composition wise -- Takafumi Hori is miles beyond the level of the Crewniverse in terms of raw animation skill and experience. Most high quality action shows take a lot of inspiration from anime in terms of composition because it set some lofty standards, which dates even further back to Asian action cinema then to American cinema and Disney.

It all comes back to Disney -- my mortal frienemy.

Anyway, got the basics down? Got your character take to the level that they can do anything in any way possible?

Then good, you can exaggerate your design because it’s very strong!

What if I need help exaggerating my character?

-- Don’t be so stiff. There’s a reason why Ash’s design was changed in Pokemon Sun and Moon! This is one of the major reasons why!

-- Imagine how they’d act in different scenarios… Now dial it up a notch! Get crazy! Artistic technique can be taught, but creativity and passion are talents! Animation is not for the faint of heart, but don’t give up if you feel the fire and desire in you! Chase it!! That’s why I’m here, encouraging more animators to flourish.

Lastly and an odd case,

Fungibility. 

Fungibility?

Fungibility is the congruence and comparison between an outcome and the effort or resources put into it. 

Think of a game for an example, let’s say Pokemon. This game is fungible to me in that the time I got out of it outweighed and exceed how much I put into claiming it. It was about $40-50 for Pokemon Sun and Moon and once the credits rolled and I reflected, I found it a worthwhile experience for how much I paid (and the effort the creators put into it to even have it exist on a shelf.) 

It was Fungible.

How does this work in character design? Ask yourself this:

-- Do I like this character?

-- Do I love this character?

-- Do I love this character enough to put hours into drawing them over and over again?

If you said “Yes” to ALL of these, then you understand the fungibility of your characters and aesthetic.

There is no real way to define an individual’s fungibility in a concept or character design. It all comes down to learning about yourself and what you--yes, YOU, find enjoyable in your art. Most animation is made to make a buck--but great animation is made because you wanted to make it and enjoyed it.

That is what makes animation truly fungible.

Now, let’s take these broad concepts and narrow them down to an Animator’s perspective.

Imagine it:

You have to draw this character for a 12-episode anime, each episode 22 minutes working on an average of 24 frames per second (the number of drawing that make up a second of time is 24, but limited animation techniques allow many ways of working with this).

That’s about 31680 frames that you may have to draw this character. Which do you think will be easier and more flexible to be animated. If you don’t believe me, the Canipa Effect had a great video about it that I’m linking down here!

While both are designed for animation, if you chose the Sun and Moon design, then you better understand character design from an animator’s perspective. While subjectively, it may not be the most appealing (or you are clouded by a sense of nostalgia, which only dillutes creativity.) Thinking about it objectively, animation serves a purpose, even as small as being a stupid comedy or trying to tell a wholly intertwined narrative.

Opinions aside (I F**KING LOVE HIS REDESIGN) -- it is undeniable the success of Ash’s Sun and Moon redesign for OLM’s production of Pokemon. It shows in how the show is animated -- it is an animated series after all with many passionate staff members including Masaaki Iwane and Ken Otsuka to name a few. 

Just watch the openings between each Generation.

Even if you think he “looks bad”, these are things to pay attention to and learn in Ash’s Character Design and its redesign:

-- What is the series trying to accomplish?

-- What has this series been notorious for?

-- What does this redesign change about that?

-- How successful has that been?

Character design to an animator is OMNI-IMPORTANT (there it is again, heh) hence why we are hitting this after Animation Principles -- because they need to be able to draw this character in any situation in any view, have them look cool while doing it and make sure that they understand the physics around the world this character lives in.

You may see people bring up poorly drawn in-betweens and the like during a critique of a new animation style (especially in Pokemon and Dragonball Super) but in those critiques, it is easy to tell the person does not understand how animation works. While having every frame be perfect is ideal, the focus in animation is not each still rather how they flow and convey movement. If you want fantastic stills read a comic. They are designed to look good when still.

When designing for animation, think of these:

-- How far can this character look off-model before it’s too much?

Let’s dip into that right quick. Off-model. The statement that a certain image or frame doesn’t match the model sheet. And in my opinion, it’s more contextual. For example, Naruto vs Pain... It may be off-model -- but it’s well animated... You love it or you hate it. But it’s important to understand it.

-- Have much can each piece be exaggerated?

-- What pieces are the most important to keep the overall design intact? This is where simplicity is important. You can warp a scene as a stylistic choice, but you know a character is strong that even when distorted, the character design is still clear. This ties back into silhouette.

The character designer has to be able to not only do all of this, but also know it from just a glance!

That’s crazy, right?

So, make sure when designing your characters for an animation screen, keep these things in mind.

Now then, what problems come from badly designed characters?

Well, let’s look from two design problems that are common in a lot of artists, once again, these are more my opinions than definite fact:

There is Over-Designing -- Where the character’s abundance of details not only make an animator’s job harder, but also shows terrible design sense.

And Under-Designing -- Where character designs blend without detail. Showing that there is not been enough detail in basic form to be unique.

What do I mean by Over Designed and Under Designed?

In simple terms, adding way too much to make a character stand out when the problem is on a design fundamentals level. This is often attributed to very erratic and complex clothing, patterning or other non-silhouette affecting changes.

Note: If characters aren’t supposed to look alike, make them look different. Just changing their clothes or hair without changing facets of their form and silhouette and saying from a stylistic perspective that these characters are very different is bad design. Period.

(I’m throwing the shade at you Negima, but you aren’t the only member of this trope... I honestly enjoyed you when you got to be an action series instead of a harem.)

Look up Six Face Syndrome for a more detailed analysis. TVTropes is an ally.

A good way to fix this is often the silhouette test. Try doing a base silhouette too, removing clothes and hair to the central design. How much is the silhouette different without the clothes and hair?

Now add the clothes back, how much has the silhouette changed?

Now add the hair, how much has the silhouette changed?

If the only differences are seen from the hair and clothes, you may want to rework your design.

Who doesn’t like swag though, but this shouldn’t be the only distinction between characters.

By Under Designed, the context is that not enough detail is there to make characters stand out.

This can often be from a lack of interesting silhouettes as well, but also can be from not enough detail. It’s definitely harder to under design compared to over design, but Six face syndrome is often a sign of Under Design. Once again, if I put up an example of a “bad design” it’d get too subjective...

I knew this episode was gonna be more dice-y...

OK. How can I work on characters that are under designed?

-- Look back at that Aesthetic and Style note from earlier. These are the essentials in adding the right things to an under designed character, taking them from bland and forgettable to great and memorable.

It’s truly a balancing act of not too much detail to become forgettable and frustrating to draw, but not too little detail to make characters blend in with each other.

My best advice is look at artists that truly have mastered this concept as well such as Character Designers in most well received anime.

For examples:

Sushio: Character Designer for Gurren Lagann, Panty and Stocking and Kill La Kill.

Toshihiro Kawamoto: Character Designer for Cowboy Bebop, Golden Boy, Noragami and Kekkai Sensen.

Chikashi Kubota: Character Designer for One Punch Man, One Piece Movie 6 and Robotic; Notes.

Akio Watanabe: Character Designer for the Soul Taker, Bakemonogatari and Popotan.

… And this is only scraping the tip of the iceberg.

All of these artist come in many shapes and forms from Sushio’s ability to exaggerate his designs, to Kawamoto’s realistic, sexy and cool designs, Kubota’s ability to make important features stand out and Watanabe’s soft and moe, yet varied designs.

But something important to notice is: ALL of these designers are veteran animators. So they understand what a design needs to both stand out and look well when animated.

Even in adaptations of existing manga, the Character Designers must be able to adapt characters that looked great in still images to look great in motion. Hence why illustrators and mangaka are most often NEVER Character Designers in Anime, but know that this is not mutually exclusive.

There have been a few healthy exceptions, i.e.) Shirow Miwa, character designer from Kiznaiver is an illustrator for the group Supercell.

“Well, I think that’s enough for one day…

Next week, I think I’ll take a break and just kinda relax a bit. I’ve been hella busy with adult life things. But I’ll be back at the end of the month with Episode 4. It’ll be a hefty one -- Where I can start diving into Sakuga and seeing how liberal I can get with “defining” tropes...

Ho boy -- why do I put this pressure on myself...?

ON THE NEXT BRAIN VOMIT!!

EPISODE 4: LIMITED ANIMATION -- THE BASICS, THE MASTERS AND THE STYLE OR I LEARN HOW TO CREATE ANIME SLANG FOR AN AUDIENCE...

I CAN EVEN DRINK SODA WHEN I WANT TO! JUST WATCH ME!!

Remember: Always bloom proudly,

– TUCHI OUT!!!