It isn't just that it's darker than it should, by rights be. Filled with shadows, yes, but also appearing to be drawn in grayscale, as though color cannot survive here.
It isn't the desperation that permeates the city so strongly it feels as though it has a scent and a taste to even mortal senses, if one could just focus hard enough on it.
It isn't even the horrifying crime rate.
It's that everything feels ominous and menacing - something actively hostile baked into every element of it. It is dangerous to be here, and there's no attempt to hide that behind any pretty facade. It's been that way for years.
It's been that way since two wealthy citizens died, and their son didn't.
Any outsider - anyone who doesn't belong in, or to, Gotham stands out like a scream shattering silence. At least to that now adult child, pulled out of a gutter running with his parents blood and raised in hell.
Bruce doesn't approach - or make himself known - immediately. He's just in the shadows, observing and torn between being impressed at the sheer stupid bravery and frustrated and near insulted by the unbelievable audacity.
When he finally moves there's no warning. There's no sound at all. Shadows simply pull back as he steps forward. Black on black on black, save red, nearly animal, eye-shine that... the light isn't right to account for. "You don't belong here."
Oh, you know.
It isn't just that it's darker than it should, by rights be. Filled with shadows, yes, but also appearing to be drawn in grayscale, as though color cannot survive here.
It isn't the desperation that permeates the city so strongly it feels as though it has a scent and a taste to even mortal senses, if one could just focus hard enough on it.
It isn't even the horrifying crime rate.
It's that everything feels ominous and menacing - something actively hostile baked into every element of it. It is dangerous to be here, and there's no attempt to hide that behind any pretty facade. It's been that way for years.
It's been that way since two wealthy citizens died, and their son didn't.
Any outsider - anyone who doesn't belong in, or to, Gotham stands out like a scream shattering silence. At least to that now adult child, pulled out of a gutter running with his parents blood and raised in hell.
Bruce doesn't approach - or make himself known - immediately. He's just in the shadows, observing and torn between being impressed at the sheer stupid bravery and frustrated and near insulted by the unbelievable audacity.
When he finally moves there's no warning. There's no sound at all. Shadows simply pull back as he steps forward. Black on black on black, save red, nearly animal, eye-shine that... the light isn't right to account for. "You don't belong here."