Take This 🦇

masked x unmasked *part 1*

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(why yes, shall i get more an' more ambitious in well, uh limitation of my current skillset, but still. more kissing! drawing them kissing gives me life *esp now, when i've got hella sick again lol* if i’ll draw them smooching 100 times, i will prob reach immortality. ooor i will be able to have this engraved on my headstone. one or the other!

but welp, as the title suggests, this collage focused on a scenario, where crane isn’t the scarecrow just yet. i believe, i mentioned that AU-ish idea in another drawing before. but this one, specifically depicting the comicverse scarebat. with this being said, this still implies that jonathan caused bo to crash the car. an’ that he most likely did smth to his predecessor *he didn’t murder him tho*, when it comes to his position as professor, an’ he still has fascination with fear, but it’s way more tame, than what kind of stuff he typically does in canon. it’s a slow-burnish corruption for him. but yeah, he will eventually become the scarecrow, anyways. but for now, he’s jonathan crane. an unlikely ally of the gotham’s new, mysterious vigilante. each art addresses different stages / moments of their relationships. starting from batman’s ambiguous, slightly intimidating flirting an’ ending up with jon getting bold enough to return his affection an’ even be the one, who initiates it. i suppose, it took him a while to realize, that this isn't some cruel joke at his expense or anything.

an' since this is comicverse, i kinda wanted this arts set to look a bit comic book-y too. as if looking at an old comic book page or smth along those lines. the final result, prob doesn't give off that vibe, but i still like how it turned out. as essentially, this art is one of those works that have around 4 different versions of it. an’ i just posting the ones, which look the most 'interesting'. but since filter did obscuring some lil details, here is a recollection of jonathan blushing throughout the whole thing.

i wasn’t able to keep this feature in the posted version, since it ended up looking kinda odd. but in case, someone might have wanted to see this, here it is.

aside from that, i think that in this set, the arts themselves are pretty straightforward, an’ more focused on the action aspect vs specific set up, aside from AU-ish frame. but i do imagine, that in the top right artwork *the one, where bruce is maskless*, while jon’s glasses make it hard to tell where he’s looking or not, his eyes are actually closed, since it’s the only condition in which bruce will openly reveal his identity to him. i also imagine, that since jonathan’s eyesight is pretty poor, sometimes, he might just take off his glasses an’ see bruce as a blurry shadow, but at least, still have some things to go from. like the fact, that bruce’s eye color is blue an’ he’s a brunette. it's their lil trust game, an' despite being curious, crane is too scared to screw this up just bc he wants to see his lover's face. not to mention, that typically jonathan not super obsessed an’ sometimes literally doesn’t care too much about batman’s everyday persona, since it doesn’t change much for him. whoever batman is, he’s the exact same man for him, inside the cowl or without it.

an’ oh yeah, it's indeed part 1. since i have sketched the set up, where bruce aren’t batman *bc his parents had never died in that universe* but jon is still the scarecrow, the notorious criminal. it doesn’t seem to deter wayne’s heir, who flirts with him for some reason tho.

p.s the most top left art used to be this .)

...they literally just met & so much clinging going on already. so-so much, that it managed to keep me happy for days. with ability to slow-mo it. this looks even better, intimate almost. gotta feel up your new enemy, while he's pinned to the wall. it still shocks me, that batman slammed jon against the wall so hard, that he lost his footing for a few seconds...

as a kid i was absolutly in love with this episode. n' with this scene in particular! i didn't know why. it just felt 'right' to me. as adult, i can finally break it down for myself. actually see, why i was all like : i wanna rewatch it 333 times on rewind...!!!!

loking at it now, it's akin to an old school PG-horny? where you have to fit all the implications behind a raiting, that won't suggest more than met the eye. but shipping is like having a thrid mind-eye open, n' while i cannot possibly shove all of my screenshot into pretty looking post, i have this lil collage for inspo!

if you watch it in slow-mo, it's like so many things happened there.....! n' this all of the touching only during like first few minutes. all the collar dragging toward the end is its own delight!!!

❤️🖤like this one right here. it's like a perfectly cut mid-frame. mid-kiss...? ❤️🖤

it was my fav ep for many reasons, n' now i love it even more, bc i feel sort of spoiled with all those visuals. context doesn't even take away from it. if anything, it adds an extra layer.

my dream as a fanfic writer is for one day, one of my fics to be someones comfort fic. like the fic that they reread when they don't feel good and want to be happy. i want my words to comfort someone one day

"i don't comment on ao3 because i don't wanna be annoying or weird" skill issue + you greatly underestimate the power dynamic here, writing multi paragraph comments is like feeding a bunch of deeply insane and possibly starved ducks at the park and watch them go completely mad over having received a piece of bread

i’m choosing to take this personally

❚█══the dystopian old men yaoi.══█❚

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(i finally made myself finish this. it was sitting in my files for like 4 months as a barely recognizable sketch, judging me *the pun shamelessly intended* for being that slow. 

but since i’m taking it easy atm, i thought why not give these arts another shot. esp bc i only recently realized that dredd an’ fear' are those two guys i really loved in the game, i played as a child at my aunt’s bf house all those years ago. i had no idea that it was connected to judge dredd movie *the old one* an’ even less so, that it had smth to do with comics at all. 

*kinda crazy how many of these fundamentally ‘my’ things had re-found me years down the line. an’ everything makes such a shocking amount of sense too. the sort, that kid brew could do nothing important or super fun with. but adult brew knows how to enjoy it properly. it literally aged like fine wine for me.*

but oh, dredd an’ fear, i feel like one of those cases, where writers are kinda low-key afraid to expand on certain possibilities, bc many of them have the exact same problem with batman an’ scarecrow. my main theory, is that it’s not even ‘this would have been too gay’ sort of hold up, but that men are historically afraid of intimacy, esp between each other. doesn’t even have to be romantic stuff. just general intimacy. smth that you can reach only in that specific context, with those specific characters. but that’s just a theory! like, there are many other things, that make it impossible. as well, as the fact, that i can’t say that judge dredd is super rich when it comes to delivering an emotional punch. even if sometimes, it does this fairly effectivly.

but anyhow, i love the idea of dredd being forced to deal with the undead creature, who is fixated on him, simply bc he’s the only man, who has ever survived him. i mean, there was that one child, who also wasn’t scared of judge fear an’ didn’t die from a heart attack like anyone else, but fear threw him out of the window in fit of rage, so technically he still killed him lol. i also love the implication, that dredd can in fact feel afraid, but considering how emotionally stunted he is, perhaps, that’s what kinda saves him. what he might see tho, is another question as fear’s ‘face’ is supposed to project a person's deepest terror an’ nightmare right at his victim, stopping their heart as result. i love the idea of dredd being able to see fear’s actual face. be it a nightmarefuel, which was shown to us a couple of times, or his actual face. the one, that he seems to be very keen on hiding.

in short, i see so many opportunities to expand on both characters via their interactions with each other. esp since we barely know anything about fear at all. to me, he always feels like jonathan crane’s distant, alt dimension cousin. bc man, do they have quite a few similarities. i mean, if fear’s name was truly stanley kramer *this bit is unconfirmed, but i keep this as my personal hc* then you can’t tell me, that this wasn’t intentional. like, crane … kramer. both are thin, fugly, obsessed with fear an’ that one guy, who sends them to asylum / prison, cuz he's not afraid of them.

an' oh, by old men yaoi, i mean actually that. dredd ages in real time. so even, if he doesn't look it, he's 80 smth. an' judge fear is either around the same age, or maybe even way older. not that it matters for him, since he's literally an evil undead zombie ghost thing.

as for arts themselves, they are mostly based on judge dredd vs death game, less so on the comics. i really love how dredd have to navigate sewers in order to find fear. this is also the coolest level too.

but i think, that real culprit of my inspo was this,

i love how fear being low-key villainously poetic here. an' in the beginning of the level, he says 'dredd. i can smell your fear, dredd'. with what he can smell it with is a mystery. but he has way more lines directed at dredd vs mortis or fire, which is kinda curious. i guess, bc fear does like to talk big an' generally to run his mouth, even if in way lesser extend than judge death.)

Safia Elhillo, from Alone, Home Is Not a Country