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mithenTitle: Enter the Mysterious Figure
Relationship: Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, Heat Wave, Captain Cold, Dick Grayson
Continuity: Heroes of the Squared Circle, a DC/pro wrestling fusion.
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count 2500
Summary: Superman and the Dark Knight team up, and a Mysterious Figure seems to be pulling the strings behind the Injustice League.
Wrestling is a stupid show for dumb idiot babies, but talking and worrying about it constructively are the most fun things in the world. You get into the fake histories and lives of these fictional characters as they travel the world, getting into fights that could easily be solved with some reason and sanity but always end in chair fights and broken tables. It’s weird. It rarely makes sense. --Brandon Stroud
“I’ve had up to here with this ‘Injustice League,’” Lex Luthor raged in his office, his image cast onto the arena monitors. “They think they’re in charge of this promotion--well, I’ll show them who’s really in charge!” He pointed at Otis, who almost dropped his pencil. “Tell Heat Wave that tonight he’ll fight...the Dark Knight.”
Offscreen, the sound volume ticked up a notch at the sound of one of their favorites’ names.
“And tell Captain Cold that he’ll be fighting…” Luthor snapped his fingers a few times. “...That new guy, what’s his name.”
“Superman?” said Otis, and backstage Clark grinned to hear that there was a noticeable upswell in sound from the audience again--not as much as at the Dark Knight, but it was there.
“Yeah, that guy,” said Luthor. “That’ll remind the so-called ‘tag team champs’ who still calls the shots around here.”
“Sure thing, boss,” said Otis, saluting and wandering off.
Lex Luthor steepled his fingers and smiled. “Yes,” he said to himself, “That will show them indeed…”
The camera closed up on the piece of paper in Superman’s hand: Need help. Meet me in the parking garage, level A-4. Kon. A small Superman shield was added, just in case viewers forgot that the wrestler formerly known as the Metropolis Kid was Superman’s cloned son. The camera panned up to take in Superman’s grim face as he folded the piece of paper up.
Fade to black.
After the next match, another piece of paper in close-up--this one held in a black-gloved hand. This time it said Need help. Meet me in the parking garage, level A-4. Nightwing. The camera pulled back to show the Dark Knight, his jaw set.
Fade to black.
After the commercial break, the show started with footage that looked plausibly like a feed from a security camera, trained on an empty parking garage.
“Kon?” Superman’s hushed voice carried to the mic, and the fledgling hero came into view. He turned around so that he was backing into the frame, crouched and ready for an ambush.
As he did so, the Dark Knight backed into the camera range from the other side, his fists up to protect himself from an attack. Step by step they backed toward each other--until they collided back to back, whirling to confront each other.
“Oh, it’s you,” said the Dark Knight. “Did you send me this?”
Superman looked at it and his expression grew grimmer. “Not unless you sent me this,” he said, holding up his own note.
“I think,” said the Dark Knight, “That we’ve both been set up.”
“Well,” said Superman, with a grin, “I think they’ll find it was a mistake to ambush both of us at the same time in the same place.”
There was a rattling bang just outside the range of the camera, like someone knocking over something heavy, and both of the wrestlers spun to put their backs to each other, their fists up and ready.
“There are a lot of them,” Superman said calmly, gazing off-camera.
“I think we can take them,” said the Dark Knight. He was smiling.
“You want some?” Superman called into the shadows, taunting. ”Come get some!”
What followed was an epic backstage brawl, with Superman and the Dark Knight using everything in the garage to fight back against eight members of the Injustice League. Superman got clocked in the face with a garbage can, and the Dark Knight got suplexed over the hood of a car, but at the end of it the two of them stood triumphant over eight groaning heels.
“We make a good team,” said Superman. Clark could taste blood in his mouth from that shot with the garbage can; he rubbed at the corner of his mouth but was disappointed to find there was no color. Couldn’t you have hit me a little harder, Amazo? “I never thanked you, you know. For breaking Brainiac’s hold on me. It feels good to be free at last.”
“I don’t like to see anyone enslaved,” the Dark Knight growled. “That doesn’t mean we’d make a good team.”
“But we would,” Superman insisted. “Can’t you see? Someone needs to stand up to this Injustice League--and I think we’re the ones to do it.” He held out his hand. “At least let’s give it a try,” he said.
The Dark Knight looked at Superman’s outstretched hand for a long moment. “You may not be my enemy--but you haven’t proven you’re a friend yet, either,” he said. Clark allowed his face to fall for a moment before Bruce went on: “But for now, you’re apparently the only option I’ve got.” He reached out and shook hands with Superman.
Even from the parking garage, Clark could hear the whooping cheers and applause, and the delight in his smile at the Dark Knight was entirely unfeigned.
“In light of tonight’s...events,” said Lex Luthor, “I’ve decided that instead of facing the Dark Knight and Superman separately, Captain Cold and Heat Wave will now face them in a tag team match--with the titles on the line!” He pointed at the chagrined tag team champs, who were shuffling their feet and looking down. “Sending ambushes against other wrestlers--this kind of reckless and unprofessional behavior will not stand, do you hear me? You’re lucky I don’t strip you of those titles right here and now! Now get out of my office,” he said, pointing angrily to the door.
“Ready?” Bruce asked, holding his fist up for Clark to bump.
“As always,” said Clark, touching his knuckles to it.
The plotline of the match was that the Dark Knight and Superman didn’t know each other well, or truly trust each other yet. On the other hand, for all their bickering, Captain Cold and Heat Wave were an integrated team with many matches under the very belts that they swaggered down to the ring in.
The match started rocky for the new partners, when there was a disagreement about who should start the match in the ring and who should wait on the outside. ”I’m the former heavyweight champion!” barked the Dark Knight, gesturing for Superman to leave the ring. Superman glared, but after a brief, tense staredown he shrugged and went to the apron, waiting.
Of course, Superman immediately felt the need to yell advice at the Dark Knight--”Roll him up! Get his shoulders down! What? I’m just trying to help!” Distracted, the Dark Knight caught a clothesline from Captain Cold and went down hard on the mat, receiving a few extra kicks in the process. “Tag me!” yelled Superman. “Get over here and tag me! I’m fresh!” But the Dark Knight instead struggled to his feet and launched himself back at his opponent, leaving a frustrated Superman standing on the apron.
“Dang it!” Superman bellowed. Clark saw some people in the front row giggling at his choice of language, so he decided to play it up a bit: “Tag me, gosh darn it!” The Dark Knight took a hard suplex and Superman winced, crying out “Great Scott!” Clark had no idea how much the mic was picking up, but the people in the front row seemed to be eating it up.
Finally, the Dark Knight seemed to make up his mind that tagging in his over-enthusiastic partner was a better option than getting beaten up, and started to make his way toward Superman’s corner. Captain Cold, however, tagged in Heat Wave, and his fresh partner tackled the Dark Knight and dragged him back to the center of the ring. Superman stretched out his hand, agonized, and the Dark Knight tried to reach him but was pulled back into a new barrage of punches. he fought back with an elbow to the jaw, then a quick drop kick. Jumping to his feet, he threw himself across the ring and tagged Superman.
The crowd cheered as Superman vaulted the ropes into the ring and started assaulting Heat Wave, but Heat Wave fell back, luring Superman into their corner. When he tagged in Captain Cold in turn, the two of them took advantage of the five-second grace period before Heat Wave had to leave the ring to double-team Superman with their signature move, the Fire and Ice Combo. Reeling, caught far from his own corner and the Dark Knight waiting there, Superman staggered into a Captain Cold’s uppercut finisher (the Cold Cut, of course) and collapsed with a thud.
A three-count and a bell-ring later, and the tag team titles were retained by Heat Wave and Captain Cold, and the newest tag team in the division had met their first defeat.
“If you had tagged me in sooner, we would have won!” Superman snapped. Superman and the Dark Knight were glaring at each other over the Jimmy Olsen’s head backstage after the match. “If you hadn’t been so busy playing the alpha male, we could have the titles around our waists right now!”
“Well, if you hadn’t been so over-confident and let them double-team you, we could have beaten them! I never should have teamed up with you, we’re obviously not a good match.”
“Well, it’s sure not going to happen again,” growled Superman.
“Guys?” Olsen broke in timidly. “Guys? I guess you haven’t heard that Lex Luthor has decided you two are going to be a regular tag team from now on? If you want to work in the DCW, you’ll have to work together.”
“What?” The Dark Knight’s fury was nearly incandescent. “Work with--with that cocksure, headstrong, musclebound--” He broke off into sputtering that, Clark thought, hid fairly well that if he had continued with his litany of insults he risked breaking into giggles.
Superman rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe this. I manage to break free of Brainiac only to be saddled with some...some…Bat-Man who dresses up in a funny suit and hides his face.” He stuck his fingers up behind his ears to mimic the bat ears, and Clark could hear the audience shrieking with laughter at the image of the solemn, serious Dark Knight reduced to nearly-wordless fury by his own tag team partner.
“Funny suit! Says the guy dressed with an S on his chest! I don’t know what it’s for, but it sure isn’t ‘smart’”!
“It stands for ‘hope’!”
There was a long comedic beat as the Dark Knight looked from the S to his partner’s face and back again. “Hope doesn’t start with an S,” he finally pointed out.
“It’s too complicated to explain to the likes of you,” huffed Superman, turning on his heel with a flick of his cape and exiting the scene.
Clark barely managed to get out of camera range before Dick pounced on him. “Bat-Man? Bat-Man?” he hissed as Clark tried to shush him. “That’s gold, right there. Bat-Man and Super-Man, the two dumbest names in wrestling!”
“Nightwing is hardly high poetry,” Bruce said, coming over as the cameras turned off and the director said “Cut!”
“It’s a thousand times better than Bat-Man,” Dick said, dissolving into chortles once more.
“I like Batman,” said Bruce, and Clark wasn’t sure how he could hear him removing the hyphen and making it one word, but he could. Only Bruce. “It’s simple. Clean. And it matches Clark’s name.” He smiled at Clark, a brief, conspiratorial flicker, and Clark resisted the urge to kiss him.
“Now we just need a team name,” said Clark.
“I’ve got some ideas,” said Bruce. “But we won’t need one for a while, not until we’re getting along better.”
“Good promo, guys!” yelled Mick Rory on his way to his own promo, his Heat Wave goggles shoved up on top of his head.
“Good match!” Clark called back. “Thanks!”
“I’ve got some ideas for the next one,” said Bruce, taking Clark’s arm. He had the next six matches all mapped out in turns of their “relationship arc,” complete with diagrams and outlines scribbled into a notebook with bats on the cover. “Let’s talk.”
Clark grinned at Bruce as he was steered toward a corner. “Let’s.”
The camera--this time the “invisible camera” that captured wrestlers’ actions without their awareness sometimes--hovered near enough to catch Captain Cold and Heat Wave in intense conversation in a darkened room. Around them sat other members of the Injustice League: Poison Ivy and Two-Face, Amazo and Agamemno, Brainiac and Cheetah. Joker sat alone in a corner, chuckling quietly to himself.
“--No, I don’t know who he is,” Heat Wave was saying to Captain Cold. “No one’s gotten a good look at his face. I mean, the Key said he was going to try to, and no one ever saw him again. I’m not risking that!”
There were beads of sweat on Captain Cold’s brow. “I don’t like this, man. I want to know who’s who, not be led around by some mysterious weirdo in a--”
The television screen on the wall flickered into life, revealing a figure shrouded in black, his face hidden within the folds of a cloak. “My followers,” it said, and the voice was distorted, warped somehow, hardly recognizable as human. “My loyal and faithful servants.”
The camera happened to catch Joker rolling his eyes at that, but most of the others looked nervous, their heads bent, their postures submissive.
“We are entering the era of a new reign of terror and strength,” intoned the Mysterious Figure. It pointed with one black-draped hand. “Captain Cold, your doubts and lack of faith have been duly noted.”
“Sir, no sir,” stammered Captain Cold as everyone turned to look at him. “I’m fully committed, sir.”
“Good,” said the Mysterious Figure. “And now, we must turn our attention to the destruction of our greatest foe--Lex Luthor. We shall strike first at that which is precious to him--although even he does not know it yet. We shall--”
Suddenly Two-Face’s voice rang out: “Is that a camera there?” All of the villains turned to face the camera simultaneously, giving the audience the unpleasant experience of having some of the scariest heels in the DCW staring directly at them. A babble of angry voices broke out.
On the screen, the Mysterious Figure raised his hand--and all went black.
Relationship: Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, Heat Wave, Captain Cold, Dick Grayson
Continuity: Heroes of the Squared Circle, a DC/pro wrestling fusion.
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count 2500
Summary: Superman and the Dark Knight team up, and a Mysterious Figure seems to be pulling the strings behind the Injustice League.
Wrestling is a stupid show for dumb idiot babies, but talking and worrying about it constructively are the most fun things in the world. You get into the fake histories and lives of these fictional characters as they travel the world, getting into fights that could easily be solved with some reason and sanity but always end in chair fights and broken tables. It’s weird. It rarely makes sense. --Brandon Stroud
“I’ve had up to here with this ‘Injustice League,’” Lex Luthor raged in his office, his image cast onto the arena monitors. “They think they’re in charge of this promotion--well, I’ll show them who’s really in charge!” He pointed at Otis, who almost dropped his pencil. “Tell Heat Wave that tonight he’ll fight...the Dark Knight.”
Offscreen, the sound volume ticked up a notch at the sound of one of their favorites’ names.
“And tell Captain Cold that he’ll be fighting…” Luthor snapped his fingers a few times. “...That new guy, what’s his name.”
“Superman?” said Otis, and backstage Clark grinned to hear that there was a noticeable upswell in sound from the audience again--not as much as at the Dark Knight, but it was there.
“Yeah, that guy,” said Luthor. “That’ll remind the so-called ‘tag team champs’ who still calls the shots around here.”
“Sure thing, boss,” said Otis, saluting and wandering off.
Lex Luthor steepled his fingers and smiled. “Yes,” he said to himself, “That will show them indeed…”
The camera closed up on the piece of paper in Superman’s hand: Need help. Meet me in the parking garage, level A-4. Kon. A small Superman shield was added, just in case viewers forgot that the wrestler formerly known as the Metropolis Kid was Superman’s cloned son. The camera panned up to take in Superman’s grim face as he folded the piece of paper up.
Fade to black.
After the next match, another piece of paper in close-up--this one held in a black-gloved hand. This time it said Need help. Meet me in the parking garage, level A-4. Nightwing. The camera pulled back to show the Dark Knight, his jaw set.
Fade to black.
After the commercial break, the show started with footage that looked plausibly like a feed from a security camera, trained on an empty parking garage.
“Kon?” Superman’s hushed voice carried to the mic, and the fledgling hero came into view. He turned around so that he was backing into the frame, crouched and ready for an ambush.
As he did so, the Dark Knight backed into the camera range from the other side, his fists up to protect himself from an attack. Step by step they backed toward each other--until they collided back to back, whirling to confront each other.
“Oh, it’s you,” said the Dark Knight. “Did you send me this?”
Superman looked at it and his expression grew grimmer. “Not unless you sent me this,” he said, holding up his own note.
“I think,” said the Dark Knight, “That we’ve both been set up.”
“Well,” said Superman, with a grin, “I think they’ll find it was a mistake to ambush both of us at the same time in the same place.”
There was a rattling bang just outside the range of the camera, like someone knocking over something heavy, and both of the wrestlers spun to put their backs to each other, their fists up and ready.
“There are a lot of them,” Superman said calmly, gazing off-camera.
“I think we can take them,” said the Dark Knight. He was smiling.
“You want some?” Superman called into the shadows, taunting. ”Come get some!”
What followed was an epic backstage brawl, with Superman and the Dark Knight using everything in the garage to fight back against eight members of the Injustice League. Superman got clocked in the face with a garbage can, and the Dark Knight got suplexed over the hood of a car, but at the end of it the two of them stood triumphant over eight groaning heels.
“We make a good team,” said Superman. Clark could taste blood in his mouth from that shot with the garbage can; he rubbed at the corner of his mouth but was disappointed to find there was no color. Couldn’t you have hit me a little harder, Amazo? “I never thanked you, you know. For breaking Brainiac’s hold on me. It feels good to be free at last.”
“I don’t like to see anyone enslaved,” the Dark Knight growled. “That doesn’t mean we’d make a good team.”
“But we would,” Superman insisted. “Can’t you see? Someone needs to stand up to this Injustice League--and I think we’re the ones to do it.” He held out his hand. “At least let’s give it a try,” he said.
The Dark Knight looked at Superman’s outstretched hand for a long moment. “You may not be my enemy--but you haven’t proven you’re a friend yet, either,” he said. Clark allowed his face to fall for a moment before Bruce went on: “But for now, you’re apparently the only option I’ve got.” He reached out and shook hands with Superman.
Even from the parking garage, Clark could hear the whooping cheers and applause, and the delight in his smile at the Dark Knight was entirely unfeigned.
“In light of tonight’s...events,” said Lex Luthor, “I’ve decided that instead of facing the Dark Knight and Superman separately, Captain Cold and Heat Wave will now face them in a tag team match--with the titles on the line!” He pointed at the chagrined tag team champs, who were shuffling their feet and looking down. “Sending ambushes against other wrestlers--this kind of reckless and unprofessional behavior will not stand, do you hear me? You’re lucky I don’t strip you of those titles right here and now! Now get out of my office,” he said, pointing angrily to the door.
“Ready?” Bruce asked, holding his fist up for Clark to bump.
“As always,” said Clark, touching his knuckles to it.
The plotline of the match was that the Dark Knight and Superman didn’t know each other well, or truly trust each other yet. On the other hand, for all their bickering, Captain Cold and Heat Wave were an integrated team with many matches under the very belts that they swaggered down to the ring in.
The match started rocky for the new partners, when there was a disagreement about who should start the match in the ring and who should wait on the outside. ”I’m the former heavyweight champion!” barked the Dark Knight, gesturing for Superman to leave the ring. Superman glared, but after a brief, tense staredown he shrugged and went to the apron, waiting.
Of course, Superman immediately felt the need to yell advice at the Dark Knight--”Roll him up! Get his shoulders down! What? I’m just trying to help!” Distracted, the Dark Knight caught a clothesline from Captain Cold and went down hard on the mat, receiving a few extra kicks in the process. “Tag me!” yelled Superman. “Get over here and tag me! I’m fresh!” But the Dark Knight instead struggled to his feet and launched himself back at his opponent, leaving a frustrated Superman standing on the apron.
“Dang it!” Superman bellowed. Clark saw some people in the front row giggling at his choice of language, so he decided to play it up a bit: “Tag me, gosh darn it!” The Dark Knight took a hard suplex and Superman winced, crying out “Great Scott!” Clark had no idea how much the mic was picking up, but the people in the front row seemed to be eating it up.
Finally, the Dark Knight seemed to make up his mind that tagging in his over-enthusiastic partner was a better option than getting beaten up, and started to make his way toward Superman’s corner. Captain Cold, however, tagged in Heat Wave, and his fresh partner tackled the Dark Knight and dragged him back to the center of the ring. Superman stretched out his hand, agonized, and the Dark Knight tried to reach him but was pulled back into a new barrage of punches. he fought back with an elbow to the jaw, then a quick drop kick. Jumping to his feet, he threw himself across the ring and tagged Superman.
The crowd cheered as Superman vaulted the ropes into the ring and started assaulting Heat Wave, but Heat Wave fell back, luring Superman into their corner. When he tagged in Captain Cold in turn, the two of them took advantage of the five-second grace period before Heat Wave had to leave the ring to double-team Superman with their signature move, the Fire and Ice Combo. Reeling, caught far from his own corner and the Dark Knight waiting there, Superman staggered into a Captain Cold’s uppercut finisher (the Cold Cut, of course) and collapsed with a thud.
A three-count and a bell-ring later, and the tag team titles were retained by Heat Wave and Captain Cold, and the newest tag team in the division had met their first defeat.
“If you had tagged me in sooner, we would have won!” Superman snapped. Superman and the Dark Knight were glaring at each other over the Jimmy Olsen’s head backstage after the match. “If you hadn’t been so busy playing the alpha male, we could have the titles around our waists right now!”
“Well, if you hadn’t been so over-confident and let them double-team you, we could have beaten them! I never should have teamed up with you, we’re obviously not a good match.”
“Well, it’s sure not going to happen again,” growled Superman.
“Guys?” Olsen broke in timidly. “Guys? I guess you haven’t heard that Lex Luthor has decided you two are going to be a regular tag team from now on? If you want to work in the DCW, you’ll have to work together.”
“What?” The Dark Knight’s fury was nearly incandescent. “Work with--with that cocksure, headstrong, musclebound--” He broke off into sputtering that, Clark thought, hid fairly well that if he had continued with his litany of insults he risked breaking into giggles.
Superman rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe this. I manage to break free of Brainiac only to be saddled with some...some…Bat-Man who dresses up in a funny suit and hides his face.” He stuck his fingers up behind his ears to mimic the bat ears, and Clark could hear the audience shrieking with laughter at the image of the solemn, serious Dark Knight reduced to nearly-wordless fury by his own tag team partner.
“Funny suit! Says the guy dressed with an S on his chest! I don’t know what it’s for, but it sure isn’t ‘smart’”!
“It stands for ‘hope’!”
There was a long comedic beat as the Dark Knight looked from the S to his partner’s face and back again. “Hope doesn’t start with an S,” he finally pointed out.
“It’s too complicated to explain to the likes of you,” huffed Superman, turning on his heel with a flick of his cape and exiting the scene.
Clark barely managed to get out of camera range before Dick pounced on him. “Bat-Man? Bat-Man?” he hissed as Clark tried to shush him. “That’s gold, right there. Bat-Man and Super-Man, the two dumbest names in wrestling!”
“Nightwing is hardly high poetry,” Bruce said, coming over as the cameras turned off and the director said “Cut!”
“It’s a thousand times better than Bat-Man,” Dick said, dissolving into chortles once more.
“I like Batman,” said Bruce, and Clark wasn’t sure how he could hear him removing the hyphen and making it one word, but he could. Only Bruce. “It’s simple. Clean. And it matches Clark’s name.” He smiled at Clark, a brief, conspiratorial flicker, and Clark resisted the urge to kiss him.
“Now we just need a team name,” said Clark.
“I’ve got some ideas,” said Bruce. “But we won’t need one for a while, not until we’re getting along better.”
“Good promo, guys!” yelled Mick Rory on his way to his own promo, his Heat Wave goggles shoved up on top of his head.
“Good match!” Clark called back. “Thanks!”
“I’ve got some ideas for the next one,” said Bruce, taking Clark’s arm. He had the next six matches all mapped out in turns of their “relationship arc,” complete with diagrams and outlines scribbled into a notebook with bats on the cover. “Let’s talk.”
Clark grinned at Bruce as he was steered toward a corner. “Let’s.”
The camera--this time the “invisible camera” that captured wrestlers’ actions without their awareness sometimes--hovered near enough to catch Captain Cold and Heat Wave in intense conversation in a darkened room. Around them sat other members of the Injustice League: Poison Ivy and Two-Face, Amazo and Agamemno, Brainiac and Cheetah. Joker sat alone in a corner, chuckling quietly to himself.
“--No, I don’t know who he is,” Heat Wave was saying to Captain Cold. “No one’s gotten a good look at his face. I mean, the Key said he was going to try to, and no one ever saw him again. I’m not risking that!”
There were beads of sweat on Captain Cold’s brow. “I don’t like this, man. I want to know who’s who, not be led around by some mysterious weirdo in a--”
The television screen on the wall flickered into life, revealing a figure shrouded in black, his face hidden within the folds of a cloak. “My followers,” it said, and the voice was distorted, warped somehow, hardly recognizable as human. “My loyal and faithful servants.”
The camera happened to catch Joker rolling his eyes at that, but most of the others looked nervous, their heads bent, their postures submissive.
“We are entering the era of a new reign of terror and strength,” intoned the Mysterious Figure. It pointed with one black-draped hand. “Captain Cold, your doubts and lack of faith have been duly noted.”
“Sir, no sir,” stammered Captain Cold as everyone turned to look at him. “I’m fully committed, sir.”
“Good,” said the Mysterious Figure. “And now, we must turn our attention to the destruction of our greatest foe--Lex Luthor. We shall strike first at that which is precious to him--although even he does not know it yet. We shall--”
Suddenly Two-Face’s voice rang out: “Is that a camera there?” All of the villains turned to face the camera simultaneously, giving the audience the unpleasant experience of having some of the scariest heels in the DCW staring directly at them. A babble of angry voices broke out.
On the screen, the Mysterious Figure raised his hand--and all went black.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-23 08:30 pm (UTC)...sorry I love every possible reference to attitude era plots in this fic, they sustain me.
And I was just wondering, like barely a few hours before this update went live, how you were going to get people to start calling The Dark Knight 'Batman' in this story, and I love everything about how you executed it.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-27 01:41 pm (UTC)I'd started to get really annoyed at having to type "The Dark Knight" over and over again, and being in a tag team seemed like a very reasonable time to makee the change! And Bruce will go for anything Clark comes up with, because he's just so proud of his buddy's improv skills... :)
**bounces** !!!
Date: 2015-07-24 11:26 pm (UTC)You're setting it up!
“I think we can take them,”
Soooooooooooooooooon....
"You always think we can take them."
**more bouncing**
Also (you heard about Hogan?)
Re: **bounces** !!!
Date: 2015-07-27 01:49 pm (UTC)I did hear about Hogan, and am relieved that he was never a childhood idol of mine, because...ow. I'm kind of glad WWE is taking a strict approach, too? I know they've been awful in the past (and the present) but you have to start drawing the line somewhere, I think...
Re: **bounces** !!!
Date: 2015-07-27 10:27 pm (UTC)Huh. I find myself agreeing with the dropped contract and tv show. But maybe even scrubbing reference on the website (that are all current). But scrubbing (or trying to) him away completely and taking him out of the WWE Hall of Fame, seems, well, white guiltish to me (with sprinklings of panic).
Hogan's been a part of wrestling and associated with them for too damn long. It makes more sense to me, to acknowledge he messed up majorly, dissociate with his views, and strive to do better; to make some kind of statement recognizing you can't sanitize the past or pretend stuff didn't happen that did, you acknowledge and do better and move forward.
This 'disavow all knowledge of his existence' and how very much he'd been a lynchpin of their formation, is a little like; don't look too closely at the rest of us.
It feels mercenary to me.
And I grew up with the man. Him in pink spanky-pants still comes to my mind when I hear the WORD wrestling (him and Andre the Giant). Like that's my mental visual picture no matter how much I like The Rock, and Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns and Stardust and the Undertaker (still).
But, you say they've been awful in the past (which I don't remember - cause I dropped wrestling a lot in the 90's and on. I remember Stone Cold Steve Austin making me feel like at any moment I'd see the Confederate flag.)
So maybe there's a reason behind what feels like over doing things now in a theater way (like security theater, without any actual change, it feels like remorse theater and politically correct theater without actual respect and dignity and acknowledgement actions). Maybe theater is wrestling's way. Maybe. If they don't rend their shirt and put ashes on their head, maybe they think we won't know how they're feeling and or how sorry they want to be.
never/mind
Date: 2015-07-28 08:18 pm (UTC)And then there's his 'why does the potus get to say the n word, but he does and gets fired'.
Alrighty then.
I mean, it still reads like panic. But now whoa. Yeah, WWE. I'd panic too if Hogan's face was plastered all up next to my logo in a post gay marriage, the Rock's face brings in millions, Dusty just passed away bringing up memories of the working man and working poor, world too.
Re: never/mind
Date: 2015-07-29 06:57 am (UTC)Oh good grief, he's not--did he really-- *sigh* I had hoped he was going to manage a smidge of class in his reaction, at least. Alas.
I agree with you that it's panicky, and probably an over-reaction, but they have had problems with it recently--mostly with Mexican wrestlers in the recent past, actually. Right now their tag team champs are black (and one of them is also the first openly gay wrestler in the WWE, so huzzah!) and they've been putting them over really well, so I can see why they wouldn't want to be associated with that when (maybe? MAYBE?) they're trying to clean up their act just a bit. I do want them to start somewhere, and I guess I'd rather they overcompensate than under-, but...bleh.