#and like even beyond the metaphor I just freakin' love the visual of these jagged gnarly sharp uneven ravenous teeth consuming the galaxy

[ashcroft-writes]

YESSSSS OK LOOK SO

I love this on so many levels. One? Komodo dragons are BOSS, and I am all about this sweet collection of information about them. Two, I’m loving the latching onto the parallel of this apex predator reptile and Bane.

“They're the defintion of 'Work smart Not hard' and only need to get one bite in to kill” <— Ohhh I wonder who that reminds me of????

“You should keep a very respectful distance at all times” <— lmao YEAH ONE PROBABLY SHOULD for both the dragons and him 😂

Even if you didn’t put a ton of thought behind the decision, it is WORKING as delightful metaphorical and abstract art on so many levels, heck yeah.

“They don't have to run you down, why would they when both you and it know that you can't outrun it.”

This makes me so frickin’ hype to share some future Bane scenes I have lol. I. Love. This Komodo dragon thought line so much.

And I’m delighted as always that my words were a catalyst! Even before this becomes about Gunslinger’s Paean, I’m having so much fun with this! But in the context of the fic, I really love how it’s communicating a more visceral feeling that would be so hard to make in a literal piece: that there’s this huge, ongoing theme of hunger, of consuming and being consumed. I know we were discussing this a bit on Ao3; I probably should make a post here about it, copying some of that over :3 But to keep it narrow just for the story that inspired this art, and why I think you precisely hit my wavelength:

With his reward, the boy scampered off. Alderaan was the first to fall; he knew it from his books. It was bright, tart-sweet, red inside! Almost made him rattle a ketter of joy as the jam burst over his tongue, tingling him through with the sugars he needed to keep going. Oh! Next one was Onderon! He was almost laughing. He never got anything like this. It practically was a drug; these had to be two credits each! Rodia and Corellia vanished next, gleefully obliterated between his back molars, a child-sized planet-killing apocalypse.

There’s a sweetness (lol) I wanted in this moment, a little kid who finally gets a reward and some relief on an oppressive summer’s day in the form of these sweets shaped like some of the major habited worlds in the galaxy, a bit of joy in what we can already tell is a life that has more emotional and physical neglect than it deserves. And it feels nice to read; it’s hard to even be a little upset that he stole the candy.

But we know it’s also not enough. It’s not everything he needs, and he’s going to be hungry again later, and that hunger is going to just keep growing greedily, for food, for purpose, for understanding, for credits, for reputation, a vast space that this little child is going to keep trying to fill until he becomes one of the most brutal hunters in the galaxy. He will travel across all those worlds and back again for real, and he’ll never be fully sated, and he will be feared. There will always be another job, another score that his teeth will seek to sink into.

But throughout the story, he’s starting to brush against the realization that he has those empty spaces. That certain unexpected things calm them. And in the final story in Summer’s End, we have the callback from the PoV of the boy Bane has suffered to rescue, one who reminds him a little of himself:

“Hm.” Ekenki’s brow furrowed as he probed the pile with his precision-fingers. Was he pleased? The possibility ached with yearning. Slowly, he lit on a pack of candy orbs. “They still make these? Huh.” On closer look, the spheres seemed to be sweets styled in the trappings of planets.

He seems to mellow in this moment, perhaps remembering. And Wulo experiences this sharing of food and stark instructions with Bane as sweet, a relief, something to be grateful for. He experiences Bane in general as a shocking net good, a period of his life in which he’s fed every mealtime—for though Bane cannot give much in the way of warmth, truly, he feeds some other need that he grew up understanding was critically important.

And perhaps Wulo won’t grow up with such hunger. And perhaps Bane himself will eventually find something that is enough.

Time will tell!

But in the meantime, what badass art omg

For @ashcroft-writes (who else at this point <3)

You might have seen me yelling at you in your comments in ao3 already but if not:

Have an illustration of the absolute beast of an image of Bane eating planet-shaped sweets. Ever since that chapter came out last year, this image has refused to leave me alone until I finally sat down to draw it. And then in the latest chapter it came back?! If I tell you I nearly started screaming at my screen ...! The red planet at the front is Coruscant as the image search suggested, I hadn't expected it to be so vividly red and yellow but I'm sure that made for a tasty looking candy. The colour for the other two planets was determined by what I thought looked nice lol.

If you're looking at this and think 'hold in, Bane is blue though', true.

I don't do realism or accurate copies well and I've seen depictions of Bane floating around that were more concerned with vibes than sticking close to the character design we see in the show, so I let myself be loosely inspired. There was one drawing in particular that used a hmm (body) horror approach with really strong colours and distortion but I can't find it anymore else I'd tag the artist :/

What I used as basis for this design was the skull of my favourite reptile since I can remember: the Komodo Dragon. There really wasn't a ton of thought behind that decision, I just thought it would be sick xD

If you've never heard of these friends, here a link:

Some facts about the Komodo Dragon that floated around in my head as I was drawing:

They're the coolest and I love them <3

I'm wearing a necklace from the protected area of the Komodo island with a Komodo Dragon's tooth right now because they're endangered and the nature park needs money to keep protecting them.

That's it.

...

Just kidding^^

The way that Komodo Dragon's hunt is really fascinating; they're the defintion of 'Work smart Not hard' and only need to get one bite in to kill: For a long time it was believed that the bacteria in their saliva turned the bite wound gangrenous and slowly killed prey but scientists found actual venom glans in their lower jaws that distribute really complex venom. To my knowledge there is no anti venom and unlike most snake who only really attack humans when they feel threatened, K Ds regularly hunt Prey Like horses and water buffalos, they are /not/ scared of humans and though they're somewhat used to our presence, you should keep a very respectful distance at all times.

They reach a length of 10.3 feet (3.13 meters) and even though they look pretty heavy, they can absolutely sprint short distances and hunt a human down.

They're cannibals and young K Ds need to be fast and good climbers to stay alive.

They're covered in body armour. That a reptile is scaly is no real surprise but K Ds are covered in osteoderms which are bone fragments (how metal is that??). Other lizards have them as well but usually only patches K Ds simply have more. And they only get them once they're adults and get out of the trees again. Another link because this is really turning into an Info dump lmao:

Still here? :P

K D have serrated, backwards-facing teeth; what are they for? Cutting really well and leaving gaping wounds; the serration means that snatches of meat are torn out of the wound even when the prey initially gets away. And if I'm getting it right, the wounds themselves aren't cleanly cut which creates an ideal foundation for infection over the next days. The teeth also break off pretty often and grow right back.

Like snakes they have forked tongues and a really keen sense of smell. They also lay eggs and females can apparently reproduce via parthogenesis which is a type of asexual reproduction (diversity win! Haha)

If it hasn't been clear yet, K Ds are apex predators and apart from adult animals they have no known predators in their natural habitat; even humans can't really do anything with their dead bodies as their skin is unsuitable to being turned into leather.

So why have I told you all of this? Yes, because I got excited about an animal that I first learned about when I must have been maybe six at most and have loved ever since. But also because I do think it's a pretty cool spirit animal for our friend Cad Bane. not in every aspect maybe; I do think overall they look a little to heavy for him but the hunting strategy? Once this animal has its eyes (or vomeronasal organ) on you, there is no escaping. A K D paired with actual sapience and a more stable body temperature would be stupidly terrifying. They don't have to run you down, why would they when both you and it know that you can't outrun it. One bite and it's game over and I think that's how being hunted by Cad Bane would feel like.