Fic: Duality Chapter 9 (Batman + Superman)

Title: Duality
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,963
Characters/Pairings: Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Chloe Sullivan, Kara Zor-El, Richard White; mention of Clark/Lois, Clark/Chloe, and Richard/Lois
Previous Part: Chapter 8
Next Part: Chapter 10
Summary: Lex catches up with an old friend by the name of Clark Kent, Lois seeks closure on her relationship with Superman, and Chloe is the invisible woman – even with X-ray vision, Clark can’t see her.

( They talked for what seemed like hours, about Smallville, about the past, even about Chloe. Lex’s charmingly tiny smile drizzled down into a somnambulistic tightening of the lips, even as Clark let his clenched jaw relax into almost a stupor. A pleased one. The only thing surprising him more than his own pining for the old days was how wistful Lex was, how gleefully he recounted starting his own business, making his first million, gazing up at the stars with Clark. Even then, Clark had been looking for a red star that no longer existed. He never had figured out what Lex was looking for. )

Fic Round-Up for August 2008

Hunter's Moon. Diana/Selina. Originally an entry in the femslash porn battle, but I expanded it a bit to be a little more serious and to go more in-depth into both women's characters - although I do think Diana is a bit off-base and even a little naive about Selina's psychology. Chalk it up to Diana being newish to Man's World and just a tad condescending to their women. Selina does have a fear where she equates intimacy with dependency, so though she wants intimacy she doesn't want dependency which causes her all sorts of problems... but there's only so little porn a porn-fic can contain while still being fit to fight in a porn battle.

The Accomplice. Mary-Jane/Felicia. One of those couples that nobody ships but me, much like Barda/Mega-Rod/anyone. They're both flirty, independent women, so once you stop giving them an excuse to fight, they're going to... pool their resources. And just to make sure no one confuses this AU with the Great Satan, Peter is happily involved with Gwen and totally playing match-maker with Mary-Jane and Felicia.

Fitting In. Kind of a platonic Zuko/Toph? Watching Book 3, I was interested in how Toph would react to Zuko since she's the one with the least history with him and, obviously, she can't see his kinda-a-big-deal scar. Plus, how does Zuko deal with all that anger? It can't just go away because he's decided to be a better person. So, between-episode stepping stone. Simple as that.

The LESBIAN Trap. The ALL-CAPS are very important. Barbara/Diana/Dinah. Sometimes, you just have to wonder what femslash would be like if Frank Miller wrote it. The answer: Terrifying.

Get Well Soon. Azula/Ty Lee. More of a character piece than a ship-fic, although obviously there is that. The finale left me wondering what happened to Azula, given that she was portrayed surprisingly sympathetically as a victim of Ozai's emotional abuse (see scar, Zuko's). Obviously, there wasn't time to go into what happened to her, but then the wiki said she had been put in a mental health facility. Wonder how that worked out...

The Unfortunate Sex Dream Solution. Wendy/Lacey. As soon as you mention "Lacey" and "sex dream" in the same episode, something like this has to be written.

The History of the DC Universe (as told by chibis) Part 1 - Want to terrify yourself? Imagine Chibi!Starfire meeting regular!Starfire. Now imagine them hooking up.

Everyone Breaks Hey, TDK!Joker fic that isn't Joker/Batman. Is that allowed? Once jen_in_japan (I think it was) pointed out Joker's obsession with proving everyone was corruptible (from the opening bank robbery betrayals to the broken pool cue), I wondered what exactly drove him to that? Maybe he had been broken by Batman in the past and there was some guilt, some self-loathing at work there. That still wasn't enough to go on, but then I hit on the idea of the Joker telling his story in first-person and the rest, as they'd say if it weren't rather pretentious, was history. Although technically the Joker's villainy was a result of the old cliched lost love, I tried to make it clear that he was pretty crazy even as a kid, it just took his betrayal of "Harley" to make him Gotham-crazy. After that, the scars were almost unimportant.

Escape Attempt. Scott/Barda. I confess to simply liking the visual of Scott being held prisoner and Barda feeding him because he's starving himself, then needing a story to go with it. Shame ain't my game, holmes.

Chibi!Batman: A Booboo in the Family. Either you like highly-sanitized DC canon or you don't, but if you do, here's a little detail you may have missed: He went over to Bruce’s house first thing in the morning, passing Wally on his paper route. His friend Bart had tried to take over Wally’s route, but then some mean kids had pushed him off his bike and now Wally was doing it again.. shananagin and I came up with all these crazy chibi versions of recent DC canon, so it's great fun to throw them into the main story as background details.

The Gender-Bender Make-Out Session Wendy/Lacey. The Middleman gives me plot bunnies like no other TV show. Like an evil genius would-be sorority pledge switching bodies with the hero in order to pull off some lipstick lesbianism. Also, “Booty call is booty-cancelled!”

Too Good To Be True The Joker/Harley Quinn. Written in response to both the Joker's increasing woobification by certain substrata of fandom (you know who you are) and the general interest in a Nolanverse!Harley. Fan-things, this is what would happen to your Mary-Sues if they tried to ask the Joker on a date. If they were lucky.

Eavesdropping Dick/Dinah/Babs. Dick and Dinah have sex while Babs listens in. Honestly, I'd be surprised if I was the first to write this. Well, not really surprised. Fandom, why no love for the Babs/Dinah? If you don't shape up, people are going to think you ship Ollie/Dinah.