I have a question (and some follow ups) for the batfamily! :D What are there thoughts on Jon? Is his crush on Damian obvious to them? And are they either protective over Damian or do they ironically feel bad for Jon?
"Crap!" the food truck worker shrieks in alarm. "Don't hurt him, Superman, he's just a kid!"
Clark . . . pauses, then looks up from the kid that he is currently pinning into the street as said kid struggles underneath him.
"'Hurt him'?" he asks in reflexive confusion, and then realizes how batting a teenager around like a person-shaped cat toy and pinning him to the street hard enough to crack it probably actually looks to an outside observer.
. . . um.
Whoops.
"Um," he starts awkwardly, and then the kid slips his pin while he's distracted and throws his arms around his neck with a gleeful laugh and a bright grin.
"Dad!" he crows triumphantly, and hugs Clark harder than literally anyone has ever hugged him before.
This post is dedicated @fanfics-or-dragons who wrote part of the post. I will put their part in bold. I would suggest checking them out, they write some really interesting stuff.
Previous
“Because it is!” Constantine screams, “They literally say ‘hi’ by fighting each other. Not to mention even if they don’t try to purposely hurt you they often do due to how fragile we are compared to them. Even their weakest would be a challenge to our heavy hitters!”
Constatine tried to take a deep breath to calm down. The kids were obviously alive so they obviously haven't pissed anything off too badly over there. If anything they might have gained favor with something from there. "Kids you may have not bungled whatever the hell you got up to but I seriously doubt you understand the ramifications that can happen when you form ANY type of relationship with beings so powerful you can't comprehend it."
Constatine was actually feeling like the sheer dred was fading and that he could handle this, and then Superman had to butt in to defend his kid. "The kids obviously have not been keeping us informed of their actions as much as they should have, and that will be being addressed Supernova. But they obviously have not gotten themselves into too much trouble with how you describe the beings from this realm. And you are one to talk about dangerous relationships with more powerful beings. The team has hardly had the type of relationships you tend to favor."
Which would have been annoying enough if it wasn't followed by the robin kid bursting out laughing and falling to the ground. Looking directly at Supernova, who was suddenly looking at the ground and bursting out into more laughter. He doesn’t get paid enough to deal with this let alone teenagers.
While Constantine was reenacting the scene from the office, Supernova and Red Robin worked on controlling their laughter.
“It was from when Batman was stuck in the time stream,” Red Robin stated through his muffled laughs.
All eyes turned to focus on Red Robin the moment those words came out of his mouth. The mood turned from slightly light hearted to sullen in a moment. Most members looked like they were sucking on a lemon, remembering how they called him crazy for thinking that Batman was alive. The look in their eyes as they agreed that he lost his mind in grief was always in the back of his mind. Reminding him to be careful with who he trusted and how small that number now was. It was why he liked rubbing it in their faces that he was right, no matter how childish the action was.
“The time stream,” Red Robin continued getting up from the floor, “is a part of the realms. Batman being there was causing them a bunch of problems so they were pretty happy to hand him over after we fixed the problems his presence caused.”
“Yeah,” Supernova chimed in, “and one of their citizens that was fixing the disturbances in the time stream talked about the rules and how Batman was breaking them while they helped us hold up our part of the deal.”
Which was partly true. It was mostly Danny complaining about how much trouble the Justice League causes him and with mentions of laws he needs to study up for his coronation. Apparently every new King throws out the previous ruler’s laws and makes new ones. He decided he would instead use old laws as a framework and make them fairer. They spent a lot of time with him working on them so they have the best understanding of the laws now that their boyfriend is King.
Even without mentioning that Constantine turned from his calmer state into looking half-dead again.
“So let me get this straight,” the con man said while he rubbed the bridge of his nose, “For fixing the disturbances in the time stream that Batman caused, they returned him?”
“Yeah.” “Basically.”
“And you never thought to mention that to anyone?!”
i've been working on this dumb little au for a while and i'm ready to throw it out into the world. I have more comics planned out but here's a proper introduction to the au.
basically. what if the boys were cats in a gag 4koma style comic.
Okay, I'll bite, what are your feelings on the trans conner pitch?
Oh boy! Thank you for tossing me this bone because I have a lot of mixed feelings!
I notice that people online are very hot and cold about the Trans Superboy Pitch, they either love it or hate it and that doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance + discussion. So to be respectful to a fellow trans peer in the industry, I want to do a fair review/analysis of Skyrocket: the trans Conner Kent pitch by Magdalene Visaggio.
My general takeaway from the pitch is that I like the premise, but the details fumble the execution for me. I can really feel from reading the pitch that Visaggio cares about Superboy. She understands that he's a very weird legacy character who has struggled to find proper footing in the DC Universe after all these years. An effective legacy character is one who is able to spin off and expand upon the themes of the character whose mantle they carry. But the cheesy whatever-goes 90's-ness of Superboy's original run didn't give future writers a lot to work with in terms of a Superman Legacy Character.
It's why I genuinely believe the later retcon reveal that -part of Conner's DNA is from Lex Luthor- is a fantastic addition to his character. It takes a character who was just kind of screwing off to gentrify Hawaii back into the center of Superman's good vs evil conflict. But now Conner's problem is that his story is too tied to his origin and Superman's shadow. Placing Conner with the Kents in Smallville afterwards made him narratively redundant. What's next for him?
So let's dig into the pitch!
I like what's at the heart of this pitch. It's a very season-3-ATLA-Zuko "honor wasn't all it's cracked up to be" arc and I think that suits Conner's character really well! It's the details I have gripes with:
"Conner has been largely relegated to the Jason Todd of the Superfamily" oof, haha that's not a particularly fair characterization.
The constant comparing of Superman to Christian imagery. He's described as basically "Jesus goddamn Christ" in the pitch. The Tyrannical Kryptonians are named Saint, Shepherd and Savior. No surprise I don't like seeing a character who allegorically represented Jewish immigrants to be constantly compared to Christian imagery and deified.
It's inevitable with pitching to the company, but the pitch is bogged down by a lot of convoluted plot points. I get that it's necessary to pitch event tie-ins and universe hopping shenanigans, but it's a lot.
Leland feels like a plot device in this. I'm sure there were plans to flesh out the brotherly clone relationship between him and Conner so that he can feel like his own character, but from the summary he just kind of revolves around Conner the way the pitch describes Conner revolving around Superman. Oops!
Conner's relation to Luthor and Superman works as a story about legacy, bloodlines and the things parents pass down to their kids. It's best when handled thematically and not literally because it's easy to get into essentialist "good genes" vs "evil genes" near-eugenics talking points. Unfortunately this pitch has a lot of that vibe. Leland has more Lex genes so he's super smart. Conner and Leland are able to start a schism in the Future Tyrannical Kryptonian House by "proving their truer genetic link to the original Superman, unsullied by thousands of years of tinkering" thereby gaining allies. Not great!
The part where Conner wants to find "his own Metropolis" by moving to Dripping Springs, Texas. That's Jinny Hex's field of operations, so is it really his own space? I would've just given Conner a new town so he can better stand on his own and build out a unique cast system.
Okay let's talk about the trans stuff!
I get that it makes for an Iconic Visual Superhero Moment, but I really don't like the part where Conner steps through a magical crystal and pops out the other side as a trans woman. It robs her of having that discovery on her own. The pitch says "I believe that this is as natural a move as Iceman's coming out". And just?? Man, remember when Jean Grey read Iceman Bobby Drake's mind and robbed him of his agency by outing him through that invasion of privacy? For a pitch all about Conner's journey of defining herself, it weirdly robbed her of that moment.
The pitch does such a good job talking about how Conner feels like her whole life revolves around Superman and how pointless wanting to be Superman feels now that Jon Kent has taken the mantle. She has Clark's genes, goes to Clark's hometown school, is raised by Clark's parents and all that. So then why is she eventually named after the women in Clark's life? Constance "Connie" Lara Kent. Clark's Kryptonian mom and human grandma? Was the world so small that she could not name herself after anyone else or come up with a new name? Connie doesn't even get to name herself, her new name is one Martha Kent bestows her with. It's hypocritical, and doesn't have the same impact that Superman giving Superboy a Kryptonian name does.
Speaking of which, this right here is my biggest gripe. It's not in the pitch itself but?? Wait- why go on about how Conner deserves a name that's not given to her and then turn around and make Martha name her? Sure, Connie comes up with the superhero name "Skyrocket" herself but surely she also deserves to name herself considering the thesis the pitch built up about self discovery and agency right?
Also with all due respect, this is the whitest queer take on Conner's identity. I wish white trans people could understand that you can have multiple true names that reflect different parts of you.
When Clark gives Superboy the name "Kon-El" it matters that it's given. It ties so well to the idea of familial acceptance into a nearly-extinct culture. You wouldn't know how to reclaim that part of your identity when that culture's been wiped out, so of course it's an honor to be trusted with a name that preserves Krypton's culture. This is a common practice with diaspora reclaiming cultural names from closed cultures, they are gifted their names by someone more culturally connected. I think the pitch having Martha name Connie is trying to echo this, but it doesn't hit the same without that cultural context. It also undercuts the genuine joy Conner felt from finally having a name he truly identifies with. Conner was only ever referred to as Superboy before then. When Clark gives him the name Kon El, Conner cries out that Kon El is his "real name". It's one of his defining moments, and to have that be diminished by saying "It's still a name someone else gave him" is so disappointing.
Then there's the design.
This is gonna lean more into preference, but I'm not the biggest fan of this design! I get what it's going for but it has too much going on everywhere. It also doesn't have that proto-punk look original Conner had, so it ends up not feeling like him. It's too superhero, and not enough casual-wear-on-a-supersuit that Conner sports really well. I see how it fits in with the everyone-in-Superfam-is-wearing-jackets-era, but I also think those new designs don't look good either. Especially Supergirl's. I feel like Conner should be more punk post transition. No respectability beam for her!
Also the name Skyrocket? It's giving knock off-brand toy vibes to me I'm sorry D: People on twidder suggested Supernova and that sounds way better! Even Visaggio stated she prefers that name so you can't be mad at me for this.
Overall big conclusion feelings!
I've been following Visaggio's work for a while because it's awesome seeing trans people getting picked up in comics. While there are some things about her writing I like, for the most part I've felt like her work isn't my cup of tea. I tried reading up a bunch of interviews she's in to try to understand why her writing wasn't clicking with me, and what I discovered is that we have fundamentally different approaches to queer storytelling.
From Paste Magazine. I get where she's coming from, trans characters deserve to have multi-faceted narratives that don't overly center how they're othered at the expense of further characterization. But also? I just actually find the interior lives of queer people and identity interesting. I like writing the kind of escapism and joy that's informed by surviving and inheriting hardships rather than erasing those things or skipping past it. I think this is why Connie is robbed of her trans discovery in the pitch. Why we don't get to watch her grapple with gender identity in a political way. Queer stories about queer struggles are considered archaic and unnecessary nowadays. It's part of the escapism Visaggio values in her work; to give a place of respite for trans readers from the cruelty they experience in reality, but I don't connect to stories like that personally. Whenever I try to share queer Indonesian art and writing with my peers, I'm often told it's too painful to look at. That our pain doesn't fit the modern expectation for happy, empowering queer stories. "trans people get enough hardships in real life, they don't need that in their fiction" Visaggio still talks about her newest projects like this btw.
I'd love to see a take on Conner that more holistically continues the political immigrant themes of Superman. The white parts of fandom love interpreting Conner's identity crisis as primarily a queer struggle, but it's also one of a person grappling with his mixed heritage. He's a diaspora kid separated by a generation away from Krypton. He has yet to make peace with the Luthor side of his identity, one borne of generational trauma and resentment for one's roots. Instead of a take where his queerness separates him from the pressures of legacy, I want to see a Conner take that has themes that are intersectional about his mixed diaspora and queer identity. I want his superficial punk aesthetic to graduate into actual punk ideals. The anti-establishment and radical love philosophies of punk culture would make such a cool extension of Superman themes and it would make so much sense that someone facing so many intersections of marginalization would be radicalized from their experience. I want a queer Conner who isn't just empowering and idealistic, I want one that also gives space for queer readers to feel like their pain is seen too. Conner isn't "Truth, Justice and the American Way" he's famously "Truth, Justice, My Way".
There's a tendency in media criticism to treat marginalized talent as infallible, and I don't think that fair to creatives like Visaggio. Being able to look at their ideas with nuance instead of essentializing it as being Good or Trash is the best way to respect diverse creativity. And my nuanced feelings are that a white queer person who looks at Conner's story and just sees the queer part and dismisses the diaspora mixed heritage side of him,,, is not going to give me the Conner story I want to see.
I've been hesitant to do this, but I'm going to start tagging authors (and artists!) who I rec in these lists, if they are on Tumblr (and if I can find their blog and know for certain it's them). If I tag you and you do not want to be tagged for future reference, please let me know! If you see your fic on the list and notice you are not tagged properly, again, please let me know! I really enjoy the fics and the art inspired by the fics (and vice versa!), so I figured this is to let authors and artists know that I really enjoy the stories and art they create, and to let others know where they can go to support them!
More Than I Bargained For by Run_of_the_mill - Superbat, complete. An AU where Bruce and Kal travel the universe with their adopted alien son, Dick :)
Preening for Flight by Elegitre @elegitre - Batfam, complete. I LOVE wingfics, so I was SO EXCITED to see this one! Tim needs to preen his wings, Bruce is there to help
tiger by the tail by pomeloquat @pomeloquat - Superbat, complete. I think I've recced this fic before, but I saw @sreppub excellent art of Bruce with cat ears, so that inspired me to read this fic again!
you fall from the sky with several flowers by starshotplagues - Superbat, collection of small stories. Some short Superbat stories! The last one has Bruce with cat ears again, I think I have a theme going on...
Hey look, friend's material by Speechless_since_1998 @mylifeisfruk4ever - Batfam, complete. Young Tim makes a friend. He found him hiding in his house. Bruce has some questions, like "why is this new friend hiding in Tim's house" and "why is he a clone of Superman?"
The Day the Cough Took Over by Elegitre - Batfam, complete. Tim gets sick, Bruce is there to help. Tim is confused (but pleased) about this :)
Patchwork Pod by KtKat9 @ktkat99 - Superbat & Batfam, wip. More of the mer Bruce fic! Jason finds out about his parentage and Cass has some questions about how human Clark came to be a parent to all these mer children
a face full or rain by HuntedPrincess @huntedprincess - Superbat, wip. An AU of The Batman movie. Investigative journalist Clark Kent and Detective Kurt Malone (aka Bruce) are looking into the disappearance of Annika Kosolov.
unexpected scoops by sky_of_starflowers - Superbat, complete. Clark finds an injured Harley Quinn sitting on his couch in his apartment. It's ok though! Batman said she could crash there. Shenanigans ensue.
buy back the secrets by sundiscus @vinelark - Timkon, wip. A 5+1 fic where Superboy rescues Tim, and Tim rescues Superboy one time. I love the identity shenanigans (Tim knows who Superboy is but Kon doesn't know Tim is Robin), Kon inadvertently helping the batfam with their family issues (FAKE UNCLE?? REALLY TIM??), and Tim interacting with his siblings (drunk Tim getting a ride from Red Hood was GREAT). I started reading this fic and fell behind on the updates, but @januariat 's AMAZING ART helped me to catch up again! There is also a lot of other excellent art created by other talented artist linked at the bottom of each chapter, so be sure to check those out too!!!