mithen

Smallville Season 11: Written by BRYAN Q. MILLER, art by CHRIS CROSS

Smallville Season 11 is quietly continuing to be one of the best Superman comics available, and with the "Detective" arc it finally has Smallville's Clark meet Bruce Wayne!  The results have been a great deal of fun so far, as well as, well, pretty slashy.  Not that it takes much with me.

My only complaint with the series is the one that's shaping up to be my bete noir with DC Comics:  Nightwing was supposed to be Steph Brown, but at the last instant (actually rather after the last instant) the hammer dropped and Miller and Cross were told to make changes to turn her into Barbara.  This was actually the point where I dropped Birds of Prey and Batgirl, even though they're both solid comics:  I was just so ungodly sick of seeing someone called Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, someone who didn't even feel like Barbara Gordon to me.

But that aside (and that's not at all Miller's fault), the comic is great stuff.  Like how it starts with Bruce noticing whether Superman checks out any women--or men--in the crowd:



"Impressive," eh, Bruce?

( I think he likes me. )

Title: Overboard
Fandom: Master and Commander
Pairing/Characters: Stephen Maturin/Jack Aubrey
Warnings: None
Summary: After Stephen falls overboard and Jack dives in to save him, the two find themselves alone on the open sea. Filling in Stephen's POV during a scene in The Far Side of the World, but no particular spoilers beyond the situation in general.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1000
Notes: Written for riverlight as a New Year's Resolution!

( Immensity above and immensity below, and he was a mere chip of flotsam, a tiny speck of insignificant matter. )

Title: Bat-Fashion Disaster
Continuity:  Comics
Characters: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne
Warnings: None
Summary: Dick and Damian come across Bruce's teenaged design notebooks.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1100
Note: Follows up from Sharp Dressed Bat.

( Damian, I don't think you should be doing that. )

Title: A Moment of Illumination
Continuity:  Movies, between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises
Pairing/Characters: John Blake, Jim Gordon
Warnings: None
Summary: A dark night in Gotham, a spooked patrol, an image John Blake can neither understand nor forget.
Rating: G
Word Count: 566
Notes:  More non-spoiler guesswork about Blake and Gotham.

( In that moment of noise and confusion, Blake's thought wasn't for the Batman, it was for the man he was known to have a vendetta against. So as everyone else was staring into the darkness, Blake was looking at the Commissioner. )

Title: The Beast Wore Bearskin
Fandom: Master and Commander
Pairing/Characters: Stephen Maturin/Jack Aubrey
Warnings: None
Summary: After escaping from France disguised as a bear, Jack Aubrey finds himself in a Spanish castle owned, improbably, by his ship's doctor.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3800
Notes: Written for cathalin as a New Year's Resolution!

( Jack Aubrey was being mauled by a bear and finding it a very disagreeable experience. )

Title: Strength/Weight Ratio
Fandom: Steam Powered Giraffe
Pairing/Characters: The Spine, The Jon, Rabbit, Peter A. Walter I
Warnings: None
Summary: The Spine has done his research on metallurgy.
Rating: G
Word Count: 470
Note: I blame/thank queen0fcups for this one, for introducing me to a San Diego band called Steam Powered Giraffe, which is a steampunk-themed pantomime band where the band members are robots. The band has a complex and evolving canon and backstory, but the real draw is that they play beautiful music while looking really cool.

( He's done his research, in the Manor library (the library with its odd angles that fold in on themselves, the stairs that lead up and down at the same time). )

(Here's a music video from their recent album, it's basically...robot doo wop).

Title: Double Date
Continuity: Justice League Unlimited
Characters: Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Wonder Woman, Lois Lane
Warnings: None
Summary: Summer Gleeson is shocked to find the scoop of the century under her nose: Wonder Woman and Bruce Wayne on a date together!
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1100

( She heard distinctive baritone laughter by the doorway and turned to see four figures walking into the restaurant. Summer's eyes widened as she recognized Bruce Wayne in a double-breasted gray suit and--was that really Princess Diana of Themyscira in a silvery cocktail dress and diamond tiara? )

Written for month_of_meta!

We live in a time where it seems that more and more, "canon" creative works have a lot of the same derivative/transformative roots that "fannish" works do. Whether it's Elizabeth Bennett fighting the undead in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a modern gender-bent take on Holmes and Watson in Elementary, or a riff on fairy tales in countless sources like Once Upon a Time, it seems like there are more texts than ever that have multiple "takes" on the source material. What are the strengths of "wider" texts with multiple canon takes, and what are the benefits to more "narrow" texts with a more focused, clear voice? This essay is a (tentative) exploration of the differences.

A few clarifications at the beginning: I use for examples various fandoms I only know second-hand. Fandoms I don't know well I've put in bold, just so it's extra-clear I'm not speaking with any authority there. If I'm wrong about those (or any other) please kindly point it out to me! Also, I have a nice neat 10-point spectrum below, but in reality the categories are messy and there's a lot of wiggle room for what goes where. Feel free to make a case for changing categories, or for whole categories I've left out!

( Narrow and Wide Canons: A Spectrum )

Title: Special Order
Pairing/Characters: Clark/Bruce
Notes: Written for the S/B Kink Meme and for genclay 's birthday, because her smut inspires me! Prompt: Playboy Bruce Wayne inserts toy into Superman, then Superman returns the favor by having sex with Bruce while inserted.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Bruce has excellent taste in both sex toys and sex partners.
Word Count: 670

( Where in God's name did you even get that? )