thought she was icarus

Is there anything that Bruce will not eventually cave on if Clark is genuinely into it and it's not like, world domination or anything?

:D Haha, fair question. IMO, it's all about context: Bruce can TOTALLY be a stone wall in the worst possible way about team operations and, like, tactical stuff, because he's so sure he knows best and Clark just isn't considering all the angles; and also he can be kind of a control freak; and also (I like to think, in my head) after BvS he has some deep-seated issues about Clark's personal safety. (I sometimes picture them arguing about Clark wanting to charge in and do some saving, you know, and Clark all SERIOUSLY, BRUCE, NOTHING ON THIS FIELD OF BATTLE IS CAPABLE OF INJURING ME, but Bruce's hindbrain is screaming ONE PERCENT CHANCE, ONE PERCENT CHANCE, so he's a huge asshole about it. Oh, Bruce. And then Clark figures out what his problem is and they bang, that sort of thing. :D)

But about more personal stuff? I mean, in a certain sense I think Bruce is past having minor preferences he feels really strongly about—like, he knows what his priorities are, and his priorities are not the small stuff, and also he has to bend on all kinds of little things all the time to be Bruce Wayne publicly, you know? (I also sometimes picture Clark slowly realizing this—that Bruce is doing stuff all the time that makes him uncomfortable in ways he doesn't consider important, and/or that he’s kind of set aside the luxury of having personal preferences. And so Clark assigns himself the mission of figuring out what Bruce LIKES: not because it's useful, or makes sense, or is congruent with Bruce Wayne's image, but just because he irrationally, subjectively LIKES it. And then they bang. :D)

SO ANYWAY. I think Clark being genuinely into things is a deeply compelling phenomenon, to Bruce, and also that Bruce is the sort of person who would let Clark being into things outweigh whatever vestigial preferences he might have. And also that there is a non-zero chance you've just convinced me to write a fic about Clark realizing this and trying to do something about it because he thinks it matters, even if Bruce doesn't. /o\ OOPS

Does the Arrow/Flash/Supergirl/etc exist in your fics, or do you stick to what is shown in the DC movies?

Oh, interesting question, anon! I've mostly been sticking to what’s onscreen canon in the movies only, at least so far! (With the occasional transplanted or osmosed element of comics canon, I admit.) My impression is that the DCEU is intended to be a separate continuity from DCTV—like, Supergirl's Clark Kent is alive, for starters. And I don't know how or whether the DCEU is going to try to match up the Flash we're going to see in Justice League with the TV show canon. So to make my own life easier, I haven't worried about keeping up with DCTV in order to write DCEU, for the moment. :D

Reboot!Kirk or Original!Kirk, Bones, Scotty, Spock, etc?

... You meant this as an excuse for me to yell about how much I love both iterations of each of these characters on their own merits, right, anon? Because if you didn't, TURN BACK NOW. I SUPER DO. :D

Okay, just taking your list and running with it, and not just the names but also the "etc."—oh, anon, I'm so sorry about this. :DDDDDDDDDD

( More blathering under the cut! )

Follow up question—Kirk or Picard? (or reboot!Kirk/Janeway/Archer, etc)

Oh, no, the WORST QUESTION IN THE WORLD. /o\ Objectively speaking, I like Sisko a LOT, and Picard and Janeway are right up there, and TOS!Kirk, I mean, he started the whole thing—and AOS!Kirk isn't the same, but I really love the AUness of him, the places where he has sharp edges that TOS!Kirk didn't, and how much he cares about everybody (I feel like we get to see into his head a little more, because TOS was so Status Quo is God, TOS!Kirk didn't always get to feel stuff very deeply). Archer, I just don't know very well, because I ... never finished watching Enterprise. SORRY ARCHER.

BUT. In my gut, when told to picture Star Trek? It always has an Enterprise, much as I love DS9 and VOY. And when told to picture the Enterprise (with no serial number specified)? It is always, always the NCC-1701-D. TNG was my first Star Trek and at the end of the day the Star Trek of my heart, however terrible the early seasons may have been—and Picard my captain, in the end. :D

Have you ever seen the Christian Bale version of Batman? How does he compare to the Ben Affleck version in your opinion?

I have, anon! I liked Bale!Batman just fine, in the two Nolanverse films I saw (I admit I've never watched the third, but that's not because I was tired of Bale). I thought those movies did a particularly good job with the swaps from Bruce Wayne to Bruce and back. That moment in Batman Begins (... I think?) where Bruce consciously chooses to disappoint Rachel because he's decided it's best for her to be disgusted with him? ... Probably is still influencing how I interpret Bruce as a character. :D And then also if you saw the villain ask—it was not an enjoyable experience for me, but I certainly can't claim that I found TDK an ineffective or poorly-executed movie!

I think what it boils down to is that I like different things about them, and the things I like about Batfleck happen to lend themselves to fannish productivity. Bale!Batman was very self-contained—Gotham itself was really pretty self-contained, in those movies, and it never felt to me like there was space in that 'verse for the Justice League; as kind of an anti-hero, in those films, with the public so definitively believing the worst of him, Batman was Alone and that was The Point, and it was a point that was so effectively made that I didn't end up having anything to say about it. Whereas Batfleck, older and a little more shut down, doing all this heroing by hand and letting it eat away at him in a universe spilling over with superheroes ... I don't know, I just have more to say about that guy! So: Bale's Batman doesn't compare poorly to Affleck's in any objective way—I just don't have any stories to tell about him, as it turns out.

Do you have a favorite DC villain? And do you have one that you think is the most reprehensible?

Sorry for the wait, anon, and excellent question! I only wish you were asking someone with more comprehensive comics knowledge, because you’d probably get a much better answer. /o\

In my VERY LIMITED n00b experience, I'd have to say that the answer to that first part is probably ♥AMANDA WALLER♥. My favorite villains are always villains with a rationale I can understand—villains who do what they do because they have a reason, because they think what they're doing is right or best or necessary and that no one else will or can if they don't. There are all kinds of things that are fascinating to me about the Wall: her confidence, the iron will, that she's cruel not for the hell of it (or at least not just for the hell of it) but because she's decided someone needs to be and nobody else can do it as well as she can. I also deeply love that when other villains prove to be incompetent, she's got no patience for that and is just as willing to take them down. *_______* WALLER.

And—as you may have guessed, looking at all that stuff about reasons and rationales and thinking about DC villains even comics-illiterate fans know—I cannot bear the Joker. Pre-arranged scenes between consenting adults aside, hurting people just because you can, just because you enjoy it and no one can stop you, is about the least forgivable thing I can think of—and also the most terrifying and most horrible. (Trufax: I've watched the second Nolanverse Batman movie twice and I sobbed my way through it both times because I couldn’t handle it. I ... am not the Wall. <– UNDERSTATEMENT) So, yeah. "Reprehensible" doesn't quite capture my complete feelings about the Joker, but it certainly applies.

What drew you to writing the SuperBat dynamic the way that you do? It seems like—to me, anyway—that you have Clark getting all of the power in the relationship, and Bruce mostly angsts and acts passive until he snaps. During the movie, even when he was depressed and ptsd ridden he still had plenty of initiative and could manipulate Clark into something that Bruce wants.

Interesting question, anon! And no worries, I think your impressions are fair (as these things go, I tend to come down on the side of "author is dead", so whatever you personally are getting out of my writing is at least as valid as what I intend to be putting into it).

I'm probably going to repeat myself just a little here, because how I'm writing post-movie Bruce/Clark ties partially into my answer to the dominance ask. For me, one of the most affecting parts of BvS was the ending, especially the bit where Bruce talks about having failed Clark in life and vows not to fail him in death; I read that as Bruce kind of overcorrecting, going from considering Clark an obvious danger to putting him up on a pedestal. Clark's given him hope in humanity, the future, etc. again, and Bruce is making him the standard by which Bruce is going to measure his post-movie actions—again, not that this is NECESSARILY canon, anon, or the reading the moviemakers intended, but ... well, what I personally got out of the writing is at least as valid as what the creators meant to put into it. ;D

( More blathering under the cut! )

What style of clothing would y'all wear if public ridicule, financial limitations, and general inconvenience weren't a thing?

While I feel like I should say "something extremely comfortable", because that's the practical answer (and I do love me a nice fuzzy floor-length bathrobe, lbr), I have to admit that my deepest clothing id? Is totally renfaire-shaped. :D I love layers, I love old stuff, and I cannot overemphasize how much I enjoy wearing ankle-length skirts—and I do mean "skirts", I love having two or three on at a time. I love the feeling of weight, the swishy grace of them; I don't know if you've ever read Dragonflight, anon, but the super-brief description near the very beginning of Lessa in her new clothes, feeling the swing of nice heavy skirts around her ankles and loving it? <– YEP. THAT'S IT. THAT'S THE THING.

So, yes. If it were guaranteed no one would look at me funny, and cost were a non-issue? I would totally commission like fifteen sets of petticoat + skirt/dress + overskirt, plus or minus a few corsets (with busks rather than laces, I'm not coordinated enough to manage my own laces) and maybe even some slightly fancier things with crinolines (all right, yes, slightly later period than renfaire proper, but WHATEVER).

... Which is kind of a weird answer! BUT THERE IT IS. YOU WANTED TO KNOW.

Which do you prefer to read, a high school au or a coffeshop au?

Uh-oh, another question to which I only have an annoying noncommittal answer! /o\ BOTH. I love AUs of any and all kinds, fork-in-the-road or different setting or somewhere in between (I mean, if the Kents had moved to Metropolis for some reason, and Bruce and Clark ended up in the same high school—if Clark's low-key day job wasn't reporter but barista, and he happens to have picked a coffee place close to a Wayne Enterprises building—IT COULD STILL BE CANONVERSE, IS ALL I'M SAYING.)

I will say that in this particular fandom, I might have some trouble emotionally engaging with a mundane AU; Clark's backstory and powers inform certain aspects of his personality a LOT, and while I would adore a fic where Clark and Bruce were friends as kids, and Clark saw the difference in Bruce pre- and post-parents'-murder and that kind of thing, an AU where Bruce just isn't Batman at all is kind of tough for me to fathom. But neither high school AUs nor coffeeshop AUs are inherently mundane AUs! AND I LOVE THEM BOTH. :D

Body switch shenanigans for the trio? Funny, thought-provoking, traumatizing?

WHY PICK, ANON. My ideal scenario would absolutely include all three: there's an inherent hilarity to bodyswap, ESPECIALLY when powered individuals are swapping with nonpowered individuals (Bruce accidentally ripping doors off their hinges, unused to Diana's superstrength! Clark bewildered by trying to handle Bruce's human hunger/thirst/fatigue, stubbing his toes and getting papercuts!) or people with different power sets swap them (Diana's habitual determined stare keeps activating Clark's body's laser vision!).

BUT with any luck it would also be thought-provoking—I mean, any time Clark's powers are removed or changed should be thought-provoking for him, pretty much. Bruce ending up in Diana's body, in the body of someone he respects and admires and also can't really be Batman as, should shine a light all over his personal issues and how heavily he identifies as Batman vs as himself; and Bruce ending up in Clark's body, discovering firsthand what it's like to be constantly responsible for all that incredible Kryptonian power, to really understand the amount of care Clark is taking with everyone around him every single moment, absolutely ought to be thought-provoking for him. And Diana as a human, in a male body in Man's World, would be weird as hell for her—feeling so much weaker than usual but being granted all kinds of respect and consideration she usually has to fight for, just because no one knows it's her in there, yikes. Being Clark would be a little less strange, since she'd still have strength and flight and all, but the way people react to her would still change so much.

And—I'm not good at darkfic, that's not where my mind goes, so I probably can't brainstorm TRUE trauma here. But BvS!Bruce is so uncomfortable with Superman's abilities; I can absolutely see having them himself really messing him up. And being removed from Batman like that—he compartmentalizes so much, you could do a lot of awful things with that. D: Clark being depowered could absolutely have a genuinely dark side, SO MANY THINGS suddenly able to hurt or kill him and SO LITTLE he could do about it, which is scary as hell. Being Diana would be a little less bad in some ways, but there's a certain inherent body horror about bodyswap even if you don't choose to explore dysphoria. And similar issues could easily arise for Diana, both wrt being depowered and wrt seeing firsthand how differently someone visually assessed as male really does get treated in Man's World. D:

LET'S NOT END ON THAT NOTE. So yes, my vote is definitely for a combination! I find that humor and genuine awfulness tend to accentuate/deepen each other, and both of them give thought-provoking moments more depth. So incorporating elements of each where it makes sense to do so is always the route that makes the most sense to me. :D