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Post by redsycorax on Jul 13, 2022 4:43:33 GMT
So, what happens when two superheroes or supervillains fall for one another? And no, I'm not talking about the 'classic' DC relationships- Bruce and Selina, Superman and Lois, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, Ralph and Sue Dibny, Barry and Iris Allen, Oliver and Dinah and Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor. No, the question is how one might get a particular non-canonical couple together. Okay, such as? I see that Nubia and J'Onn J'Onnz are a couple in 5Earths Earth-One continuity, so it has already been done here at least once. How about finding partners for Mary Marvel, Red Tornado, Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady, and other singleton metahumans? Or, if you wanted to try the other side of the aisle, what about the Riddler, the Penguin, the Earth-Two Rose and the Thorn, Earth-Two Atlantean Queen Clea, or others? Who would you partner them with and why? Would it be attraction, mutual respect for each others fighting prowess, shared experiences or other attributes?
So, who might be eligible for romantic developments and why would you do it?
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jul 13, 2022 6:45:16 GMT
Red Tornado is currently married, so he in ineligible.
How about Zatanna and Jeffrey Sloan? Or Melanie Palmer and Adam Cray?
I'd honestly like to have Fear Factor (formally the Scarecrow) and possibly the Penguin find love. It would be sweet to see a woman who could love them for the way they are.
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Post by jonclark on Jul 13, 2022 7:42:35 GMT
The problem is that unless a writer plans on actually working with a character long term it just becomes a bump in the road. You could introduce a romance between Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon only for the next writer to rekindle the Nightwing/Starfire relationship. I know that both of those are canonical, but they illustrate the problem better than taking two more obscure characters and hooking them up. If no one follows up on a proposed romance between Lobo and Starfire or worse yet the next time we see Kory she is still mooning over Grayson, then what was the point of the story?
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Post by dans on Jul 13, 2022 11:12:17 GMT
Pretty sure Mary Marvel and Cap. Marvel Jr. are a long term couple... I don't see any particular issues with writing a super romance here. I don't see any way to avoid the issue Jon brings up, about a new writer putting aside a particular story - but we do have somewhat stricter canonical oversight here than we think DC has. If you wrote a romance that was well-accepted by the current audience, and then next year someone tried to make significant changes to those characters (such as ignoring their history here) there would be a lot of objections from the other writers, I think.
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Post by starskyhutch76 on Jul 13, 2022 19:22:48 GMT
The Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson thing bugs me because it's post-crisis canon that's being forced ill-fittingly into our continuity. Pre-crisis, she was in congress while he was in college. It also feels like we're regressing him by pulling him out of the Titans and putting him back into the Bat-stable.
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Post by dave on Jul 13, 2022 20:50:46 GMT
We need to be careful about this sort of thing. It's one reason I wrote the Larry Lance story a few years back. Post Crisis had Ted (Starman I) Knight and Dinah (Black Canary0 Lance having an affair in the 1960's. I writer who no longer contribute to the site made the affair part of our continuity even though it did not fit the silver age source material before I joined. I believed and still believe that our mission is to stay in the confines of Pre-Crisis when it comes to the characters we write about. I just glad we have our collaborating editorship as we post our tales
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Post by jonclark on Jul 13, 2022 21:34:20 GMT
The Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson thing bugs me because it's post-crisis canon that's being forced ill-fittingly into our continuity. Pre-crisis, she was in congress while he was in college. It also feels like we're regressing him by pulling him out of the Titans and putting him back into the Bat-stable. I can see your point, though I also would have no problem with it based on Dick's flirting with Babs during their team=ups. But the up-in-the-air nature is what I was talking about. I've seen some hints in stories here of Babs/Dick alongside strong sentiment for Nightwing/Starfire. I have no problem with someone setting up a romance, but like i said I don't see a point in doing so just to check off a box or on a whim. It seems like a set up for the soap opera syndrome where a character is defined largely or entirely by their constantly changing romances with every new writer needing to create a new one. Dick is dating his police partner, no his landlady, Babs, no wait Supergirl, back to Starfire, a new vigilante in Bludhaven, back to Babs ... |
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Post by redsycorax on Jul 14, 2022 2:03:39 GMT
Ted Knight and Dinah had an affair? Sorry, I have problems with this scenario. I don't blame you at all for feeling negative, Dave, I feel exactly the same way. And as for the Babs and Dick thing, I've always preferred the Nightwing/Starfire story arc. Supergirl's love life is a good example of this. It would seem that her enduring romance is with Brainiac 5 and they're in the transtemporal version of a long distance relationship. Sometimes people change- remember, Luornu Durgo (Duo Damsel/Triplicate Girl) originally had a crush on Superboy and then moved on to Chuck Taine (Bouncing Boy). And don't get me started on what continued timeline fracturing has done to LSH relationships and characterisation. Suddenly, Lyle (Invisible Kid) Norg is gay. However, Ayla (Light Lass/Lightning Lass) Rannz is either in a relationship with Brin (Timber Wolf) Londo or Salu (Shrinking Violet) Digby. Originally, Element Lad and Shvaun Erin were a couple, until Jan's death during the Dominator occupation storyline in Five Years Later continuity.
They aren't the only ones. When he thought Iris had been murdered, The Flash moved on to (a) his fiancee Fiona Patten or (b) Zatanna, before John Constantine appeared on the scene. We never found out what happened to Fiona, did we? And then there's Wonder Woman. Excuse me, is Steve Trevor alive at the moment, and if so, which one?
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Post by DocQuantum on Jul 14, 2022 20:20:44 GMT
The Earth-1 Steve Trevor is in another dimension now, but the Earth-2 Steve Trevor is still married to that WW.
I don’t have any problem with Dick and Barbara personally. If Immortalwildcat had written up their relationship development in the form of stories I’m sure it would have been great. The age difference is negligible especially since Dick must be older than Marv Wolfman said based on when he graduated. My problem with it is that we will likely never see any of Cat’s plans come to fruition.
I don’t know if it has ever been firmly stated that a marriage took place, and if it has was it in passing? If Cat won’t come back to wrap up his plots it gives us an opportunity to do something different with the Batman Family if we wish to.
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Post by dans on Jul 14, 2022 21:35:13 GMT
Cat didn't seem very interested in writing the last time I talked to him about this site... he said writing filled a void in his life (or something like that) that isn't there any more...
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jul 15, 2022 1:06:07 GMT
Well, since the wedding was referenced as being scheduled for New Years Day in the Martian Chronicles, if we do decide to change it (which I would not support, I like Babs and Dick) We need a good in-story explanation for why Dick would break it off at such a late moment.
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Post by redsycorax on Jul 15, 2022 1:29:11 GMT
Hang on, are we talking about Earth-S Steve Trevor, currently reassigned to Earth-One and taking on his counterpart's duties? Anyhow, I see no-one's responded to my question about supervillain relationships. For some reason, supervillain couples are a rarity. There are exceptions- Lisa Snart (Golden Glider) was in love with the Top, her mentor, who died as a result of conflict with Barry Allen's Flash and took up supervillainy as a consequence. Catwoman and Star Sapphire of Earth-One are morally ambiguous and involved across the morality barrier with Batman and Green Lantern. There's Sportsmaster and the Tigress of the Injustice Society on Earth-Two and nowadays, there's the Joker/Harley or Poison Ivy/Harley relationships. Lex Luthor fell for Ardora from Lexor and they even had a child together in Earth-One's universe. Hey, what about Baroness Paula Von Gunther? We know she had a daughter from a previous marriage, but what about her husband or lover, her daughter's father? There could be an interesting untold Earth-Two story in that context. Okay, so according to this, his name was Gottfried, Baron Von Gunther from Austria and he was murdered by the Nazis for refusing to share the family fortune with them. Unwillingly, as a consequence of the threat to her daughter Gerta, Paula became a Nazi agent. But how much do we really know about Gottfried?: dc.fandom.com/wiki/Paula_von_Gunther_(Earth-Two) |
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Post by jonclark on Jul 15, 2022 8:53:29 GMT
Well, assuming we still plan to go through with the Bruce/Silver marriage, that frees up Catwoman and possibly Talia for romances that aren't with Bruce.
A romance between Selina and someone like one of the Flash Rogues who is a thief but not a killer could be interesting.
And while i can't see Ra's (or Talia) easily accepting that Bruce is off the table, it is possible Ra's could be practical enough to decide looking for a back-up heir makes sense. Queue a series of Demon's Head style blind dates for his daughter. Things like having Talia recruit certain Batmen of the World to thwart crimes (which are really Ra's backed "tests") or having the League eliminate rivals (Silver is off the table out of respect for Bruce, but not the romantic partners of other heroes). The latter would be more threat than bloodbath as the hero would thwart the assassination attempts, but it could shake a few relationships up.
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Post by jonclark on Jul 15, 2022 9:21:27 GMT
Just got the goofiest scene in my head.
Catwoman choosing some C-level character to have a fling with to get over Bruce, Could be something goofy like Cat-man (just because it's so obvious) or maybe Speedy (Nightwing is off limits but Speedy might serve the double purposes of tweeking off Bruce) or anyone that might seem like a "Mr Right ... Now" in Catwoman's eyes.
The thing would be that:
1) the person Selina chooses thinks it is more than just a fling.
2) they were in a serious relationship just prior to Selina.
This leads to a situation where the poor schlub thinks he has two potential love interests (Selina and his not-quite-Ex), the following line "But we were on a break" and the schlub being dumped by both women (with Selina and the ex trading jabs about our schlub as a romantic partner).
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Post by DocQuantum on Jul 15, 2022 22:27:17 GMT
Golden Glider’s love life has been explored in our stories, so that’s one villain. She was originally involved with the Top, but in our Post Crisis stories she reformed and had an unlikely romance with Captain Comet (not the real Adam Blake but a Martian sleeper agent as later revealed). In Underworld Unleashed I demonstrated that she’s bitter over her breakup with Adam (partly explaining her return to crime) and has been dating a series of criminal men also named Adam, whom she equipped with her brother Captain Cold’s equipment and called each Chillblaine.
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