#this is why when tim is away from gotham he's fundamentally not healing

[anarchomoop]

So in today’s pointless writing thought exercises: I started scripting in my head and writing dialogue for key storybeats for a Superman reboot while I was at work.  I wound up incorporating a lot of... tumblr-popular Superman meta I guess you could say into the ideas for the overall story.  The story features:

An inversion of the Lex Luthor/Superman dynamic, while it appears that Superman is “gifted,” he actually struggles to live up to his own ideals, in his own words “some days, I look in the mirror and I see superman.  Other days, I look in the mirror and just see me.  On the best days, I see both.”  Likewise, while Lex appears to be a self-made man, he definitely had a lot of invisible advantages over others, and while he rhetorically claims to have gotten where he was from hard work, he actually believes everything he has is a result of being fundamentally better than everyone else.  In his own words (in this reboot, Lex is the head of “Luthorcom” a company that started as a google-like internet based tech firm but expanded further into “horizontal” tech markets to the point where it’s now doing a little bit of everything STEM related, including weapons manufacture) “I kept looking at the world and seeing these basic things, these things where something was missing or could be better and I’d just go and I’d do it.  We had the internet and it was huge, full of information and products and people but with nothing to link them, no way to find them, like a library with n directory.  So I made LuthorLibrarian.com, later Luthorcom.  And it was simple.  Anyone could’ve done it.  And every time I took a step forward that’s what I said to myself.  ‘it was so easy, anyone could have done it.  I’m nothing special.’  Until one day, I looked out the window from the top of Luthorcom tower and I realized.  Nobody else did it.  Not a single person.  What I do, it’s not easy.  It’s not something ‘anyone can do.’  I can do it.  I do it.  Only me.”

The Daily Planet is now “Planet Media,” no longer a newspaper, it’s now a news website with both articles and videos.  Clark and Lois work both as article writers as well as personalities in front of the camera for video reports.  Jimmy takes both photo and video.

Superman’s costume is originally designed by Ma Kent to use to hide his identity and incorporates the red S, blue background, and a mask.  The costume is later redisigned by Jerome Green, an aids-positive black man who was selling knock-off superman goods to help himself and his grandma afford rent in their rapidly gentrifying Metropolis neighborhood, who makes the iconic red and yellow s-shield on a solid blue spandex outfit look. Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane’s role is somewhat reprised as Jimmy (a sophomore at Metropolis U in their photo journalism program and interning at the Planet Media.com as a photographer and sometimes cameraman) trying to impress Lucy Lane (Senior at Met U just about to finish their commercial aviation program to be a pilot) who he met through working with Lois at the Planet  This leads to Jimmy’s older sister Emily (recently finished undergraduate studies in Gotham U’s film studies program, now enrolled in Met U’s graduate program for film to learn how to direct and operate a camera, hoping to direct, write, and film her own micro-budgeted movies) meeting Lucy and sticking up for her younger brother, saying it’s wrong of Lucy to lead him along getting him to buy her things.  Lucy, by way of apology, tries to include Jimmy and Emily in her life, eventually leading to Emily and Lucy dating after Jimmy notices the two’s conspicuous and obvious crushes and pushes them to act on it.  This is... this is like the major B plot of the entire first arc but, like, super-abridged.

One of Lex Luthor’s telecom sats becomes damaged after colliding with some space debris -- an escape pod containing a human-looking girl in her late teens/early 20s (in this, Superman joins the planet after going through a journalism grad school program).  After she quickly develops the same powers Superman displays (she gets them on a faster time-table as a result of absorbing solar rays form space without the interference of earth’s atmosphere), Luthor uses her to his own ends by creating a SuperGirl loyal to Luthorcom.

Lois investigate’s Luthorcom’s weapons dealings, finding evidence that, in order to spur demand for domestic use of the product by police/military, Luthor orchestrated leaks/break-ins to get “criminal elements” access to Luthor weapons tech, creating the appearance of an arms race that the government must turn to Luthor to stop (this is the reason Clark becomes Superman, and part of why Luthor comes to hate him, because Superman is foiling his plans without even knowing it).  She eventually reveals this evidence with the help of staff intern Jimmy Olsen and new reporter Clark Kent, but Luthor manages to avoid implication  This is what puts Lois/Clark/Jimmmy on his radar.

Clark does not actually have access to his escape pod, knowledge about Krypton, Jor-El, or Kryptonite.  This is all discovered by Lex Luthor.  He learns about Krypton from Supergirl’s escape pod, then scours the areas near Metropolis for something similar that might relate to Superman (eventually finding a pod just outside Smallville where the Kents abandoned it).

Clark’s past and Kryptonian name are revealed to him when Lex “unmasks” him as “Kal El of Krypton” in front of a live TV audience that just watched Lex use Kryptonite to beat both Superman and Supergirl (Kara Zor-El), revealing “Kal El’s plot” to make “humanity weak and dependent” by saving them all from their problems instead of letting humanity sort them out themselves, that way a “Kryptonian fleet” can invade earth with no resistance.  Lois, there in attendance, calls bullshit, pointing out that A: if Kryptonians are as powerful as Superman and Supergirl they don’t *need* to weaken humanity and B: Superman wanted people to aspire to be better, that Superman “saw Superman in the people around him more frequently than in himself” and backs it up using a secret recording she took on her smartphone during a “date” with Superman which she was actually using to grill him for info (during the date she hides a tape recorder in her purse, which Superman finds with his X-Ray vision and asks her to take out and turn off, then later after he’s gone she takes out her phone and checks to make sure that the recording she got on it was clear, commenting that Superman was ‘clever, but still a sap’).

During the climax of the arc, Jimmy, Emily and Lucy save Superman by rushing forward to “get a good shot up close,” an excuse for Jimmy to shove his flashbulb right in Lex’s face and take a picture so that Emily and Lucy can get the Kryptonite away from him.  This leads to a fight where Superman is trying to protect Lex from a furious Supergirl and the crowd from both Supergirl (whose opinion of humanity is understandably pretty low at that moment) and Lex’s guards.  During the fight a stray “Krypton-alloy” bullet hits Kara in the shoulder, causing her to lose her powers and start falling from the top of Luthor tower.  She’s saved by Jimmy, who earlier noticed a window-cleaning trolley, so he jumps off the tower to grab her and just barely manages to grasp it and a barely-conscious Kara.  Emily and Lucy work together to pull the two fully to safety, initially alone but eventually with the help of the gathered crowd.  Important notes -- Superman attempts to save her but can’t, as approaching her causes his powers to weaken from the “krypton-alloy”.  This is important to the themes of the first arc, Superman is ultimately not the hero.  Lois, Jimmy and Clark (distinguishing Clark from Superman somewhat is also important -- Clark Kent is the real person, Superman is a mask he wears, and someone Clark aspires to be) are ultimately responsible for bringing down Lexcorp’s criminal activities and Emily, Lucy, and Jimmy wind up saving both Superman and Supergirl from Lex.

Kara and Kal-El are given official US citizenship and paperwork (Clark Kent also has official paperwork, although it is forged by someone Ma Kent knows who didn’t really ask any questions about this miracle baby who needed documents).  Kara’s life winds up being a lot more public than Kal-El’s as a result of her not being raised normally on earth or having any kind of secret identity.  She’s placed under investigation and put on trial, but eventually found not guilty as a result of A: not actually hurting anyone B: her attempts to harm the crowd and her threats against humanity as a whole during the fight with Superman were successfully justified under the “temporary insanity” defense (she was brought to a state of high emotion to the point that she could not be considered fully responsible for her actions, essentially the “yeah, you did kind of break some laws but honestly if I were in your shoes I’dve done the same thing” defense) and C: honestly they are not sure they could do much to prosecute her anyway.  After her trial and while she’s still recovering from her gunshot wound (fast healing is not a Kryptonian power in this canon -- when they get actually hurt they stay hurt for a while) Kara meets with Jimmy and thanks him, commenting that “Kal-El is right, about humanity.  About people like you.”  And then.. leaving it at that because restoration of a similar but different status quo at the end of the arc is important and Jimmy having a crush on a girl who he’s certain is totally out of his league is *very important to the status quo* Yeah, so that’s just... kind of the major story beats?  Most of them?  There’s flashbacks to Clark’s childhood, him realizing he has powers, how the Kents react.  Ma Kent and Pa Kent also act somewhat mysteriously.  Ma comes up with the costume idea for Clark suspiciously quickly and occasionally when trying to explain how or why they did/do something to Clark they just say “it’s what has to be/had to be done.”  This is a set up to a potential later arc involving time travel, the idea that Clark’s parents know he will become Superman before it actually happen is kind of important to the story as I imagine it.  The Kent parents meet Superman, and they realize being Superman is important to their son, and as a result they work to help their son become Superman. Edit: oh, also about the Kents, forgot to add: in this canon they’d be Jewish.  That’s actually kind of very important to some of the theming/parallels that the broader narrative is meant to make.

[scintillyyy]

i actually think so much about how drake manor meant *so* much to tim. a solid home after years of feeling adrift at boarding school. reconnection with his dad. family. warmth. love. at the same time, it helped tim hide his secrets from his dad. the purchase of the first real home he ever had with his dad was also the place doomed to cement the wall between them, never allowing them to be truly open with each other. the secret door in the basement of this same home leading to the batcave and tim's life as robin. drake manor was so *special* to tim and was so emblematic of his character in a way--the solid, steady family home tim had always dreamed but also its hiding the secret of his double life deep within its underbelly. and fanon turned it into a cold and awful prison bereft of love that tim must escape from. screaming into the void.