Once upon another time

The Character pipeline

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

AHHHH THANK YOU!

this is going to be really long, i can feel it, so i’m putting it under the cut. 

Send me a ☕️ and a topic and I’ll talk about how I feel about it

okay, here goes: i loved the way that this show had these two entangled from the start. having selina as the sole witness to the wayne murder besides bruce was an interesting twist and it felt almost like fate. of all the alleys she could have ended up in she ended up here, and while she was witnessing the most horrific event of bruce’s life - as awful as that was -, their destinies were now entwined.

having them meet and develop a bond as children really added depth to the bond that they inevitably share. other than me being a sucker for the childhood freinds romance trope, it made their connection feel more emotional and mental rather than just physical. they just connected. like the reason they know and understand each other so well is because they’ve been there. they’ve seen every single shade of each other and stuck with each other through all of it. it’s safe to say that (with the exception of alfred on bruce’s side) they know each other better than anyone else. and it’s clear in the relationship that they share. frequently over the course of the show, they’re able to get through to each other in a way that no one else does. they call each other out on their shit and (i believe david and camren have said this as well) they each leave their arguments taking on board what the other has said. bruce realises he’s been an ass and strives to do better and apologise for it, and selina makes an effort to make more of herself (’i’m tired of just surviving, i want more’) and opens herself up a little more.

the parallels between to two of them were also really well done. you always got the sense that they were both walking the line, and while bruce always fell on the ‘right’ side of this line, selina could fall both sides. and this in itself gave them an interesting dynamic. that they could be so similar and yet so different. and this is just another reason that they worked as a pairing (in whatever form that took). selina could always pick up the tasks that bruce couldn’t (stealing things for him and using violence in a more extreme sense than bruce). and they both influenced each other - selina helped bruce see that things weren’t always quite so black and white sometimes and that some things are necessary for survival and bruce often pulled selina back towards a moral centre if she fell too much the other way.

and even with all of this they always remained individuals and they never lost sight of that individuality no matter how strong and deep that connection was. they didn’t sacrifice any part of themselves to be together and most of the time they respected each other’s differences. selina did her best frequently to ensure that bruce didn’t have to kill, because she knew that that wasn’t who he was and that he wouldn’t be able to deal with it (even if she herself would be able to) and while she encouraged some of his darker side, she made sure that he stayed the same pure hearted kid that she met (it’s good you’re changing just don’t change too much’). and while bruce struggles to accept some of selina’s darker acts in favour of insisting that they’re the same, he never tries to force her into being anything other than herself, even if it hurts him to watch her spiral. another thing i loved about them was that, while they were amazing together (a true power couple honestly), their stories never revolved around the other. they remind me lot of that post that compared soulmates to a pair of socks. they’re each a whole complete sock on their own and can manage perfectly well on their own, but they’re amazing when they come back together as a pair. they had their own storylines going on and yet that connection remained very strong regardless. no matter how far away from each other they drifted, they always came back together. their bond is inevitable. they could have not spoken for months or been so mad at the other but even they, they still protected each other. we saw this in season 3 with selina. she breaks away from bruce in the fallout of her mother’s return and hasn’t seen him for months and yet when five shows up and she realised bruce is missing, she stands up for bruce and decides to tell alfred so that he can find bruce. and selina at various points throughout the show saves bruce’s life. even if it almost breaks her rule of self-preservation. she often tells bruce that she’s unwilling to go somewhere that puts her life in danger (’i’m not going back’), but when bruce is the one in danger, more often than not, she does. she checks on him in 2x03, helps save him from galavan in 2x11, stays behind to get him, gordon and lucius out of arkham at the end of s2, comes to help him in 3x11 and proceeds to stand protectively in front of him and alfred when they’re threatened, she goes to the diner in 4x16 and saves him from the fear gas in 4x21. and bruce similarly puts his own life in danger to save her. and it never comes across like selina is a damsel for him to save. most of the time she saves herself. they’re true equals and i love that about them.

also this show gave them so many lighthearted moments as well which truly emphasised that love is at the basis of their connection. they truly care about each other and make each other happy. you see that the connection they share isn’t just based on destiny or their similarities, there’s a genuine emotional bond there which is truly what ties them to each other. they flirted/bantered, went on dates, comforted each other, and selina was the first person to get bruce to act like a kid and just have childlike joy in something since his parents died (despite alfred’s best efforts for the first part of s1). jim told bruce that there would be light and selina gave that to him. so much so that even alfred knew how connected they were regardless of his own feelings about selina, and he let her stay at the manor after all.

as you can probably tell by now, i have a lot of feelings about gotham’s batcat, they were really well written and brilliantly portrayed by david and camren. they worked really well together on screen and brought the writing to life. they made you believe that these two loved each other through everything they went through. the good, the bad, all of it. what they meant to each other was never in doubt. there’s a whole lot of a soulmate feel to them. the fact that they always come back to each other, the fact that selina could calm bruce even as he’s living his worst fear (4x21), how similar they are and the fact that even after a 10 year separation, they can sense each other’s presence still and their connection has not dimmed. and while it hurt a little to know that they weren’t together at the end of the show, their rooftop scene gave me a lot of hope. selina finally verbalised her feelings for bruce (to him)  - a rarity - and asks what will happen now. he tell her that he doesn’t know (it’s up to her) but that he’ll never leave gotham (her) again, before telling her to ‘return the diamond’. it sounds almost playful and their game has begun. he knows she won’t return the diamond and she knows he won’t force her to, and now she knows that he did see her steal it and didn’t do anything to stop her. (after all she’s got him wrapped around her pinky.

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila