Two asks in a row?? More likely than you’d think! (Sorry lmao, I decided to split up my actual coherent questions and my super long meta ramble, you can totally ignore this one!)
The “this is a love story; this is a detective story” tag made me giggle when you first posted the fic, it’s really cute… but I’ve been thinking and now I can’t stop. So okay, it makes sense that it’d apply here right, given the whole Bruce has to find Clark on a time crunch / Clark is in danger and presumably hurt and presumably hoping Bruce will find him (this makes him sound like a damsel in distress 💀 but you know what I mean! Also I feel like Clark should get to be a damsel in distress sometimes just like. As a treat. Whaaat nooo journalistic integrity, bruce carrying clark up the stairs in a bridal carry after saying “let me save you… please” totally hasn’t altered my brain chemistry… sigh I kind of wanna reread actually I miss them.)
BUT OVERARCHING STORY (and also the OG comic, I’m ignoring that) ASIDE, even within the first 3 chapters, one could argue the tag already applies! Namely in chapter 3 actually. First, I feel like I need to clarify that, to me, it’s not about Clark being blind to the mystery or Bruce being blind to the romance! It’s not about a deficit on either side. No matter what, I think, you can’t have a superman story without him being clever and deductive and you can’t have a batman story without him being loving and caring. It’s about how they both frame the story and also about where they fit into it narratively
LIKE the whole kryptonian hologram thing. To Clark, at this point, what the whole fortress represents is primarily the story of his parents’ love, of each other and of him. It is the only act of love from his birth parents that he has ever known and will ever get to know. Of course it is a love story, because otherwise all that’s left of his origin and ancestry is a tragedy. But also!! He has spent the past decade working on unraveling the mystery of krypton. Fixing the engineering and learning the language and going through files and files of data and asking Tevi thousands of questions and learning countless skills in the pursuit of knowledge, etc, etc. Before it could be a love story, it had to be a detective story. Before he could find out the truth of how much his birth parents loved him, he had to dig and learn and discover.
In contrast, take Bruce. Everything Clark is sharing, it’s because of his love and trust in him and 1, Bruce takes that very, very seriously and 2, his first priority is comforting Clark. (See: “All Bruce's curiosity fell to the wayside. "Oh, Clark." He offered his arms. Clark crumpled into them, curling himself into Bruce's hold. Knowing better than to expect Clark to embrace him back….” what if I cry forever and ever oh my GOD. I love how well they know each other, btw, it’s my favourite thing about how you write superbat it just feels like they’ve known each other forever and they think of each other 24/7 and I’ll never get tired of it.)
So there are 2 ways this is a love story from Bruce’s POV: it is the story of their love, Clark’s trust in him and Bruce’s devotion to and protection of Clark, and it is the story of the love between parents and their child, (because Bruce, who is also an orphan, is vividly aware of that relationship and he sees it for what it is (beautiful and painful and bittersweet)). BUT ALSO!! He is a detective! His mind always has 3 tabs open minimum. To him, this is the story of Clark’s origin and of krypton and we see that. His brain immediately jumps into linguistic analysis of kryptonese and the death of a planet narrative and he’s cataloguing Clark’s parent’s builds and clothing (and ofc his mind circles right back to how Clark links to that because he’s obsessed) and all that. Why does he want to figure out the ship’s engineering? Because he is a Nerd and it is Fascinating. But why does he want to with the motivation of a thousand burning suns? Because that’s his Clark and he would do anything for him. All this to say, that for Bruce, the love story comes before the detective story.
In both cases, they’re of course intertwined it’s just like chronologically what comes first and what takes the focal point, in this story, at this point in time. The chicken lays the egg and then has to hatch it and raise it and the camera focuses on the lil baby chick growing up(? yeah idk man I shouldn’t be coming up with analogies at 1am)
AND AND my prediction is that, the way the story is going to go, they’re going to be put into similar positions (where deduction informs love and love motivates deduction, respectively) rather consistently throughout. So, I’m wildly extrapolating here, because (gestures) I’m going off 5 sentences of a summary BUT my guess is they’re gonna be put into a situation where they’re separated. We know Bruce is the one who has to find him, it’s likely they’re both working on their respective sides though. But, for Clark, it has to be a love story so that he can carry on… and for Bruce it has to be a detective story so that he can carry on.
Which!! Ugh I love them, okay because Bruce is… I think if he were to let it fully sink in that Clark, the love of his life, is in danger, he would kind of break? Like I dont think he can let himself dwell on the emotional side of things, because it would render him incapable of being a detective and actually fixing the problem (or at least, doing so at his full capacity). But of course, the whole basis of it all is that he adores Clark, duh, it’s his intrinsic motivation for everything. Whereas Clark, it’s tough to infer what position he’s in exactly, but my guess is that the love is going to be the primary motivation (like Bruce!) just in a more explicit way. Like, rather than it being an underlying drive, it’s a mantra to just keep going, to just do a little more. Be that to grit his teeth and bear it, or trying to have faith that Bruce will come through, or whatever it is, I think because he’s in a position where he can’t rescue himself, love is his lifeline. (Also I see those genocide and slavery tags 👀 if Kryptonians are the perpetrators thats a whole other, loosely related, can of worms and Clark’ll have a lot to reckon with emotionally)
In conclusion: love doesn’t look like a real word anymore and I’m insane about superbat and the way you write them and I absolutely cannot wait to read more, thank you for reading this ted talk!! I hope you have the nicest day everrrr 🩷🩷🩷🩷
Hey… I’m just saying. Clark deserves his time as the damsel in distress. He saves Bruce all the time, he deserves a little bit of saving. (And I love to write him having a hard time, sooooo!)
Oh my god this meta about the “this is a love story; this is a detective story”. I could roll around in it all day. For one, AUGH, just the analysis of them both as characters— you’re so right, it’s not a mischaracterization of the narrative they find themselves in, it’s how they react to it, and the themes they themselves bring to the table with their curiosity and their love.
Secondly, you got it, you got the themes exactly from just the summary and a silly tag and three chapters. God, just being seen as a writer from those clues is a wildly good feeling.
It’s a story about love — Clark and Bruce’s love for each other, Jor and Lara’s love for Clark, the love of [redacted] for [redacted] —
And it’s a mystery, a whodunnit, a old why written in the death of a planet, and a newly started ticking clock, a race against time.
Because that’s where Superbat is best, isn’t it? They’re a detective and an investigative reporter, they live for a good mystery, for teasing out the truth from scattered clues. They’re superheroes, who put themselves on the line over and over again because they love so deeply they can’t help but want to make things better. And they’re partners, who care for each other with the strength of a million suns, who regularly break the laws of the universe just to take care of one another.
Uuuuuuuugh I want to talk about things so bad. Guess I’ll just have to post another chapter.
Thank you so much for these asks!! I can’t tell you the amount of serotonin they gave me. Literally my fuel through today.
I hope your day is so amazing!!! 💜💜💜💜💜
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