given name Lee Suwoong profession Cover Artist
Comic Illustrator date of birth January 20, 1994 hometown Beijing, China residence Gwangju, South Korea status & sexuality Single & Mingling personality infp - Type 2 - Capriquarius lines
  Lee Suwoong (born 01/20) is the fortunate heir to a decades old conglemerate known as Orion Confectionery. It's where the fortune ran out, for a long while, as soon after his celebrated birth the boy was diagnosed with leukemia. The last born child in a late frenzy of a long marriage, Suwoong was not anything easy on his family even with their vast wealth.

   EARLY LIFE
  Suwoong doesn't remember much of his youth. The days of being alive and well were rare; he could remember holidays and get togethers that tried to piece together the fracture of a family driven apart by their wealth and success but rarely much else. There were no easy Saturday mornings or long and lazy Wednesdays. The days were there, marked by how often he was in the bathroom bent over the toilet or how many more sleep dreams he'd get before his next visit to treatment. There was good ㅡ there is always good, he's found, even in the darkest of memories ㅡ but it comes to him more like snapshot photographs than the vivid memories of burning throat and aching body.

  Grandmother Ran was the nicest of those memories. A cold woman, she spent more time with her grandchildren than her children and Suwoong was no exception. It was probably the finest sign of her strength, the way she avoided coddling her sickly grandson more than the others. A boy heir, to Aing-Ran, was not any more important than the girls. Especially a boy who could pass away at any moment. But, she made her dues, paid the bills and got him the best treatment plans. It meant he got to see more of her than most children are blessed with and some of those days, the weekdays that Suwoong remembers distinctly, were spent with her. Laid in bed with blankets and warmth as some film prattled on the television set and his grandmother rambled to the air and Suwoong about meaning, truth, passion.

  Without those things, she always said, the films would be nothing more than colors on a headache box. Suwoong remembered that. He loved them the same as her, reveled in the songs and dance, cried with the loss and endings. Those days almost made him forget about everything else.

  So, they called him a fighter for it, a little soldier who managed to still laugh now and again and smile. Like living was the difficult part when it wasn't a choice he had. The treatments, they thought, were helping and as each year passed into another they almost hoped that Suwoong would be able to actually survive his disease and live on. They were wrong, the doctors said, when Suwoong collapsed and had to be brought in a few weeks after his ninth birthday. It'd taken a turn for the worst. The doctors had always warned them that all it took was one episode, one bad reaction, and he could be lost. But Suwoong was a fighter. A little soldier, they said, and did everything they could to save him.

  He remembers the pain, vaguely. It came like red flashes in dreams. Like suddenly the sky was burning and bits of it was touching his skin. He couldn't swat it off fast enough, couldn't do anything, until suddenly he was nowhere and everywhere at once. His brain functions fell to barely there at all and his heart slowed. It beat, which gave both his parents hope, but they weren't sure if he would survive another surgery. It was Aing-Ran who forced them to continue the work; her grandson would either come back whole or die completely. There were no in-betweens. To Suwoong, it didn't matter, because he was already long gone somewhere else.

   THE OTHERPLACE

  The boy fell asleep for a long, long time and Suwoong woke up in the snow. That is what he remembers best, the snow underneath his face, his hotel gown turned into a cape around him and no other clothes on him. He was a child, cold and alone with nowhere to go. Suwoong remembers crying, remembers that his tears had turned to ice on his cheeks as he wrapped his cape around himself and tried to make good on something, anything at all. His voice went hoarse trying to scream for his family, for his sisters, for anyone. Then Sapphira came; a beast too large to not be terrified of that approached him hard and fast. She took Suwoong down fast, paw to his chest and claws hovering over his throat. When she spoke, Suwoong calmed down; suddenly he thought he was in a dream for a moment or a fantasy come to life because the snow leopard spoke to him like a gentle aunt and Suwoong actually listened.

  Through her, Suwoong learned everything. If he willed it well enough, it would be. They started with clothes, with basic knowledge. Safety came next, sitting on Sapphira's back all the way to civilization where Suwoong began to learn. Because going home, that wasn't an option. He couldn't click his heels three times and wish for it. There wasn't even a golden brick road to follow to some great wizard that could teach him. Instead, Sapphira insisted it was Suwoong who was the Wizard here. He was the great and powerful ruler. He was the one that could change everything and anything, even the evil witch of the world named Carmilla.

  There was an evil witch. Suwoong could hardly believe it, until the town he stayed at was attacked. Monsters with no faces and beings burned like blackened ash moved through the world in fantasy and strife. Smoke drifted off them like smearing of lead and Suwoong couldn't believe it at all. But Sapphira didn't let him have time not to. Instead, she forced the boy to fight where he had to, to fight where he could. Because fighting, fighting was survival. A law of nature. A law of the world.

  Suwoong had to be a brave little soldier. A strong little fighter. And there was no other option.

  Life toiled, slowly and surely. In a few weeks time he'd helped a city build off the thoughts of a child. In a few months, an army. He learned, surely and slowly, the casting of magic and his understanding of Otherplace. Suwoong named it, too, a nameless dimension before him that seemed to exist in pause for him. In wait. Carmilla had tried to take over before he could come and the people, they had little to go off of. But while she'd built her army another group had built themselves together, too; Sapphira took Suwoong to meet the Sisterhood of Wind so he could really train properly. It felt like years even though he didn't grow, didn't age; it felt like aeons by the time Suwoong actually felt sufficient enough to try and take on Carmilla in the darkest corner of Otherplace.

  The fight was on he will never forget. Most nights, it still haunts him vaguely, little tattered black wings coming in on the edges of dreams like maybe there's someone there waiting to grab him and take him away. She didn't cackle like the witches in movies but she moved like liquid shadows; she was scratches and drip at once and Suwoong thinks, probably, if he hadn't had the thought of his grandmother in heart he would never have been able to strike out against Carmilla to overcome. One strike through the heart and she was gone; the darkness lingered but her throne fell apart, her castle slipped into ruin. It was a nice moment, a lovely moment, and then it was gone as quickly as it had come.

   POST COMA

  It was nearly two years later when Suwoong's eyes opened again. Things were different, his mind aged and his spirit learned while his body had only grown, but he was there. Awake, alive, alert. And the first face he saw was Aing-Ran at his bed side looking down at him with an understanding grace only she ever managed in his entire family. That was good, good enough that Suwoong's wide eyes stayed open on her and felt mist at the edges. There was rush after that, hurry, because the doctors knew that waking up after this long wasn't the easiest thing for anyone let alone a child.

  And they had much too much work to do for his body.

  For the better part of a year, Suwoong was mute. He could understand everything people said and respond, in his own ways, but speaking back was nearly impossible; his vocal chords would never be the same, they said, and lessons began on how to control them properly. It took a long time and much too much patience but, by the end, his voice was his own tool again. One that falters in stress and fades fast but exists, surely, and loudly when he needs it to. It was the easiest part of the transition. It was the only part of it that anyone really expected to have to actually deal with.

  Suwoong took to drawing, while he couldn't speak. He would write down messages and leave sketches alongside them. He'd read, too, so he could learn phrases and habits to return to people in kind. Comic books were wonders, the bright strong colors all so sure in their pages that he felt an understanding. A whole creation there underneath his fingertips, a whole world. He began to speak like his own life was one of those little stories, one of those little comic books. Suwoong was hungry. Suwoong was tired. Aing-Ran was pretty. Shinae was nice. His family was concerned, until they found out what happened.

  It's been hard to figure out if Suwoong's family has ever really accepted the requite of his nature. They let him go to train, of course, but never questioned much about what actually happened there. The Otherplace was not real, not a domain; it was trickery of his mind. The only member of his family who has even actually questioned what he was doing; she freaked out the first time Suwoong showed her a portal but she came back later, a little messenger bag in hand with Suwoong's named stitched into it and told him to remember Mary Poppins. To this day, it's still his easiest way to let people process his gift. Like being made of magic is at least simpler to understand.

  She's also the only member of his family to have ever seen Sapphira's true form, before Rara became a kitten perched on Suwoong's bed. The rest never questioned where the cat came from, a visitor that Suwoong had brought back in training from Otherplace. Because she had needed to keep protecting him, to keep him safe. The Sisterhood had a stranglehold on the universe as it was, they were able to keep things in line. And Suwoong, he was strong now as he grew older, stronger than anyone expected. If even a storm comes to pass in Otherplace he can feel it drift through his thoughts and heart.

  There was nothing left to worry about, as long as he could keep the two places far apart from one another.

OTHERPLACE
 As Alice fell into Wonderland, Suwoong was pulled into Otherplace. Though there are places of calm and peace in Otherplace, there are also places of chaos and danger. The world itself ㅡ an entire universe that unravels on endless paths of road, air, water and nonsense ㅡ exists in the terror and fascination of a child. While there are structures that make sense and are sound, it is only because Suwoong saw them as a child and they were then created for the universe he inhabited; the rest is terror and shade, a scratched attempt at creation that doesn't all the way make sense. The Otherplace seemed to have existed before Suwoong fell into his coma and yet, once he became there, it truly came to life. A spirit world parallel to our own it exists just out of frame of reality so that, while it grows and in some places mirrors our own dimension, it still exists in its own time. By his own eyes he's seen lands on it where dinosaurs still devour then cities that seem to spire toward the sky. Inhabitants, outside of creatures and monsters, are few and far between; they exist in clusters and stay mostly nameless, served by their titles: Mother, Father, King, Queen, Hero, Thief etc.

 In this world, Suwoong is Lord; he is divine enough to shift it into all he chooses and his powers are endless. Outside of Otherplace, Suwoong is fragile, at best. The very nature of his Requite was ownership of a personal dimension; the growth of it is by the whim of a child who did not want to wake into a place where he would ever be absolutely alone. Because of it, on Earth Suwoong can, in the easiest manner, teleport. He chooses to move himself into Otherplace so traveling becomes simple, a dauntless task, and returns to our dimension with ease. While he can teleport to other dimensions if he saw fit the outcome would be, well, awkward at best; without being well versed in the geography of where he portals he wouldn't really be able to know where to land safely. Even on Earth he sometimes misses by a long shot, ending up in the sea when he meant to slip into someone's home.

 In essence, within Otherplace, Suwoong is a god. There is nothing beyond his imagination or capability of doing; it exists because he does and he exists within it as totality. On Earth, however, he is at best a mystical boy, able to drag his gifts from another realm with wear and tear. While Suwoong can easily traverse the worlds and bring with him delicate gifts ㅡ gusts of wind, weaponry, bursts of energy, technology and even animals or people ㅡ larger events are taxing on his body. The larger a thing he tries to do, such as creating a dangerous storm or summoning spirits of the undead, the longer it takes Suwoong's head to recover and return completely to Earth. Should he ever try and push too far, too hard, too fast... he might get stuck in Otherplace forever.
TRIVIA
■ is a meer 166cm in height, shorter than he cares for

■ fan of showtunes; took a few voice lessons but he's not great

■ freelance artist working mostly for marvel studios

■ likes to swim but only with his shirt on it's a thing

■ does not have a driver's license with which to survive

■ career lifted from actual comic artist julian totino tedesco

■ always has snacks on him. he's a bottomless pit of a boy

■ collects cute bags to open smaller portals in for daily use

■ because she's gotten lazy rara normally looks like a kitten

■ wears baggy tops and tight bottoms since it's hard to find proper pants

■ was nominated for an eisner award for best newcomer in 2010
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