#and you know what. the universe is right. community ain't always comfortable | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

writingplotsonflashcards · 10 months

Text

Brainstorm: what would missing-nin!Kakashi wear?

For those unfamiliar: I'm currently writing a Naruto AU on AO3, in which Kakashi is a missing-nin (I won't spoil much more of the story ;)). The fic is currently eight chapters long.

I was writing along, happy as a clam, when I realized a thing. I'd written in one of the earlier chapters that Kakashi was wearing a flak jacket and hadn't given much more thought to it - of course he'd be wearing a flak jacket, he always wears a flak jacket.

Except, in this fic, that didn't make any damn sense. And thus ensued a brainstorming session that I absolutely devoted far too much time to (and, if any of you has a good suggestion, I'm absolutely prepared to devote even more time to).

Just because my process might be helpful to someone else, or maybe just fun to read, I'll share my clumsy process here. (I'm studying Communication and Multimedia Design, so I know a thing or two about the process of designing, but I'm relatively new to AUs, so bear with me ;))

---

The knowledge we're working with

By chapter 8 of my fic, we've established a handful of things about this version of Kakashi:

He is a missing-nin, and has been since the day after the Nine-Tails' attack.

He still finds himself in fights occasionally (so his clothes need to be comfortable enough to fight in, while also protecting him).

He does not like the title of missing-nin; he would rather not be recognized as one, and doesn't wear his Konoha headband. Also, Naruto thinks that he might be a civilian when they first meet, implying he also does not dress like a shinobi.

...It's specifically the third point that made me realize I'd overlooked something. Yeah, a flak jacket ain't gonna cut it.

---

Commence the Brainstorming!

If a flak jacket wasn't going to work, then I'd need to give Kakashi some other kind of armor or protection from weapons - something that's hidden.

Does something like that exist in canon? Yep!

According to this Reddit post, it's probably chainmail or kusari. We can at least assume that it's something that helps protect against weapons, because that makes more sense for shinobi than, say, mesh would. As we can see, it's canonically easily hidden underneath another layer of clothing.

So, that was my first major decision. No more flak jacket: instead of that, Kakashi would wear chainmail that he'd probably hide underneath a sweater or something. (More on that later.)

These were my earliest sketches:

More changes that I decided to make:

His hair is slightly longer than in canon, long enough to cover his Sharingan, since he no longer has his headband to cover his Sharingan with.

Since Kakashi left Konoha when he was in ANBU, I like the idea of him outgrowing his ANBU boots at some point and swapping them for civvy boots instead.

(I had some space left in the lower right corner and decided to sketch out what a wrist splint would look like, just in case I messed that up in my writing as well. Thankfully, it looks like I described that one correctly even though I originally used the wrong source '^.^)

If you look closely, you can see "cargo pants??" written in pencil in the middle of the page. That's because my sister made this suggestion as a joke and I ended up liking it a lot.

---

Commence Round Two of Brainstorming!

Another issue with removing the flak jacket, is that Kakashi is missing a bunch of pockets that he would normally store scrolls in. Additionally, since he prefers to look like a civilian, he wouldn't be wearing weapons pouches either.

Enter cargo pants. And hoodies. Which both have pockets, and both would probably look inconspicuous enough to be mistaken for civilian clothes.

It took me a second to figure out whether hoodies and cargo pants even exist in the Naruto universe, but fortunately they do. There's a couple of kids in hoodies in this screencap, and there's at least cargo shorts (the third kid on the right (edit: also Naruto lol)).

So, here comes the second round of sketches:

I wasn't originally sure about the hoodie, since the emo vibes are Pretty Strong and I'm not sure if that's what I'm going for, but then I painted with it a bit and... well, it's growing on me, honestly. It's also practical, since Kakashi could use the hood to hide his Very Recognizable hair from shinobi without having to use a henge or genjutsu. Not 100% sure about the colors yet, but I figured something dark would make sense, as it'd be practical to not stand out in the night.

I also tried to pull inspiration from Kakashi's canon civvy outfits, but I gave up pretty quickly. I feel like my version of Kakashi takes himself a little too seriously to walk around like Sukea or like he does in the Steam Ninja Scrolls arc in Boruto (though it was really fun to draw hahaha).

---

Conclusion?

I feel pretty good about the combination chainmail-hoodie-cargo pants, though if you guys have any suggestions, please let me know! I'm very new to this sort of thing, so if you can give me some advice or ideas, it'd mean the world to me!

#naruto #kakashi #fanfiction #writing #i really tried with the drawings and the painting hahaha #it'd been a Real Long Time since i'd last drawn

17 notes · View notes