Woaaaah boy. I was in the Superbat tag and saw someone asking for recs and I got about 5 fics in before I realized that wouldn't fit in a reply and decided I should just make a whole post. I feel like I've read half of the Bruce/Clark tag on ao3 at this point and yet I still find more every time I look.
As a note, this post is heavily editorialized. These are all fics I've personally read and are here because I liked them and they come from my ao3 bookmarks. If you want better details about the fic, follow the links and check them out š¤·āāļø I'm a picky reader so the fact that it's on the list says a lot, though our tastes may vary.
Onto the recs! I'll organize them by ratings and then by length for simplicity and at the end I'll recommend some of my favorite SuperBat authors for further reading!
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Rated: G
Uno Reverse by WixenBurr (~7k rated G) is really cute and fluffy
Summary: The batkids are trying to set Batman and Superman up. Unfortunately Bruce Wayne wants to date some rando news reporter named Clark Kent.
Rated: T
Know You Better by rotasha (~6k rated T)
super fluffy and cute. I adore this fic. Summary: Clark asks Bruce on a date, not knowing heās a famous billionaire. Bruce says yes, because this is the first time this has ever happened to him.
I'm Not As Think As You Drunk I Am by Mardiaz173 (~13k rated T)
This one is SO much fun ā Nobody believes Clark after he meets the supposed "flirty, stupid, entitled drunk" playboy billionaire Brucie Wayne when he says he's actually "clever, mischievous, and sober with an indecipherable ulterior motive."
Saudade by liodain (~20k rated T)
OK THIS ONE MAKES MY HEART MELT IT'S SO FLUFFY AND SWEET I CAN'T. Like put this on your re-read when you're sad and need to feel like love and goodness exist list. Bruce breaks down in Kansas in 2006 years before BvS and meets young Clark.
fallin' for him was like fallin' from grace by Resacon1990 (~23k rated T)
It's just 20k of Clark simping for Bruce. That's it. That's the fic. He's a golden retriever and he's in love, Your Honor. Bruce is not unaffected, but the pining is glorious.
summary: Or, five times Clark finds himself falling for Bruce, and the one time he does something about it
Mr. Romantic by Pandamomochan (~24k rated T)
ft Established Relationship SuperBat. Summary: Clark gets tasked to write a Valentine's Day article. The end result has every single women throwing themselves at him. Clark has always been patient with the drove of Brucie fans. Will Bruce be as mature with Clark's sudden popularity?
How to Date a Superhero by @solomonara (~25k rated T)
Technically a series of fics. Pure fluff.
1. Someone spots the Batman kissing Mild Mannered Reporter Clark Kent. Hijinks ensue.
2. Superman kissed Bruce Wayne in full view of several dozen phones. Now the whole world, including Lex Luthor, knows Superman has a boyfriend. But that's okay. Batman has a plan.
3. Deleted scenes from the How to Date a Superhero series, ruthlessly cut in most cases to prevent the Robins from taking over.
In every sense of the word by froggy-o (bobafiend) (~29k rated T)
From the author's summary: Alternatively titled "Why Wonder Woman is on the verge of losing her fucking mind."
I swear this fic is just Diana's eyebrow twitching as she watches Bruce and Clark start dating and she's let in on both their civilian identities meanwhile Superman and Batman are on the watchtower arguing and disagreeing about basically everything on the daily. In the name of Justice, of course. The identity porn is on a whole other level and it was done so well.
Get Over It by rotasha (~32k rated T)
heh this one has plenty of identity hijinks. Sooooo funny. Summary: Bruce needs to get over his inconvenient feelings for Superman and he meets an attractive reporter who he thinks can help him do just that. Little does he know...
the cost of being a good dad by Mawiiish (~96k rated T)
hehehe... the batkids set up a dating profile for Bruce and catfish Clark. It's more of a blind date for Bruce (not that he had any idea he was going on a date at all), but who has Clark been texting for the past several weeks??? Oh yeah. The kids. What follows is as follows. Still with capes!
Rated: M
Guardian Dog by BombusBombus (~22k rated M)
Summary: There's something wrong with Clark Kent. He has to be a villain, right? A threat? He doesn't behave like a normal person, no matter how handsome or clever he may seem.
grasp his heart (once and for all) by liodain (~32k rated M)
soulmate AU fic. Pretty emotional LOTS of identity issues going on there like so much. Kinda high on the drama and angst there honestly but it was a cute read. Summary: Bruce Wayne doesn't believe in fate.
tell all the truth (but tell it slant) by susiecarter (~33k rated M)
love me a fake dating AU. Summary: It takes a while for Batman and Superman to work things out, once Clark comes back from the dead. Pretending to date each other in order to explain why Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are in the same place so often? Doesn't help as much as you might think.
Strangers When We Meet by Trista_zevkia (~63k rated M)
ANOTHER soulmate AU! This time feat. Kryptonian Biology hehehe. Summary: Clark Kent thought he was straight, until Batman kick started something. The question is what did Batman start? Is Brucie Wayne able to explain it to him?
ship-to-ship combat by pomeloquat (~77k rated M)
OK NO LISTEN this is one of my all-time favorite fics EVER. It's so meta and so funny. Clark is us. We are Clark. Clark is writing RPF for the Bruce/Batman ship and he's very convinced it's real EVEN THOUGH he has a huge crush on the Batman... let the hijinks BEGIN.
Rated: E
Embracing Destiny by Mithen (~8k rated E)
This one is just really really cute. Summary: As a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st century, a teenaged Clark learns a stunning secret about his own future: he and someone called "Batman" will be legendary lovers.
perfect strangers by susiecarter (~15k rated E)
like. bruh. susie did it again. This tag says it all: communication failure. I love this one though. Summary: Batman and Superman are fucking. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are a great cover for fighting crime, and also might be dating. Bruce and Clark have no idea what they're doing; but they definitely aren't going to be able to talk themselves into stopping.
Relinquishing Control by foxyk (~25k rated E)
afsfwsdfhishdfksj no words. Read the authors summary and then just go read the fic:
Superman worries that if he lets go he'll injure his partner. Batman knows better.
Batman worries that if he lets someone else in, he'll hurt them. Superman knows better.
Picture Perfect by TheSaltiestDog @the-saltiest-dog (~26k rated E)
this one is cute and then horny on main but also just so fluffy. Clark sees Bruce in a new light through candid shots, then proceeds to take lots of candid shots as they begin a relationship. Cue schmoop, fluff, smut, and ā you guessed it! āMiscommunication!
A Night Off and sequel A Day Off by Mawiiish (~37k combined; first part is E, second is T)
One of my all-time favorites. My bookmark says 10/10 would read again soooooooo... šš¤·āāļøš š„µ
Bruce is enjoying one of his few nights off when a very persistent young man offers to buy him a drink. At first he's apprehensive; he's just here for a good time and this Clark seems to be looking for more than that. Then again, what harm can one drink do?
Clark wakes up to an empty bed and despite Bruce being honest from the start, he's still disappointed.
The Downsides to a Secret Identity by liodain (~42k rated E)
I'm currently reading this one ā the summary from the author says it all, it's so good but sooo drama:
Bruce Wayne has taken a shine to Clark Kent, but Clark is more interested in the Bat of Gotham. The Bat, however, has it in for the Superman in a big way. Clark should probably have considered that before falling quite so hard. They're working together to track down some missing Kryptonian weaponry, after all...
50 Shades of Wayne by susiecarter (~161k rated E)
No but listen, this is actually so full of plot and emotional depth and not as much smut as you might think. It's a full-scale retelling of Batman v Superman but without them knowing each other's secret identities. I read it in one go... the reveal? Maybe the best I've ever read. Soooo many emotions. It's one of the few times I've read BDSM in a fic and it actually felt in character. I wasn't sure I would read it when I started, but it was a compelling read and extremely well done. Honestly, I'd read it again.
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"It's eat the rich until it's Bruce Wayne," goes the saying in Gotham and Gothamites accept the hypocrisy. Until one Gen Z comment thread goes, "Oh, it's still eat the rich but Bruce gets eaten in an entirely different sense."
And suddenly Gotham is putting that shit on t-shirts, scrawling it on bathroom stalls, adding it into thirst traps of Bruce and spray painting it onto Wayne Enterprises billboards. Gotham wants to eat Bruce Wayne alright.
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Lately I've been thinking a lot about how the topic adoption is addressed when it comes to the batfam in both cannon and in fandom. This isn't meant to be like a call out to any writers or fans, I just think this is part of a larger cultural discussion of adoption. I will be discussing things I dislike personally when it comes to how it's represented, but there's a lot of nuance here. This is also my personal feelings on this, as someone who was adopted and knows other people who were adopted. I think adoption in the US is pretty misunderstood and often glorified. I think that the cultural understanding of adoption, raising a kid that wasn't born to you, and the legal process of adoption get lumped together.
I think a lot of people don't really know how adoption in the US exactly works. Adoption is when your birth records are changed to being the legal child of the adoptive parent. You are issued a new birth certificate with the adoptive parent listed and your previous records are sealed and can only be accessed by petitioning the court, and they can say no. It also severs all legal ties to your biological parents. This does give you the legal rights of a biological child, like being automatically included in inheritance and being next of kin without additional paperwork.
A legal guardian is someone who is given temporary or permanent custody of a child, is fully responsible for the child, and has all the same rights as a parent other than legal recognition of parentage. Also inheritance and next of kin assignment is not automatic and needs to be handled separately.
A foster parent is in charge of caring for a child, but does not have legal custody. The child is considered a ward of the state but you are in charge of there daily care and housing. Also the goal of foster care is supposed to be reunification. There's also a lot to talk about regarding the foster system, but that'd be a whole other long post.
I clarify these things partially because I see them mixed up in discussions often, but also to get into the matter of adoption records. So as I stated previously when you are legally adopted your original birth certificate, medical records, and many of the documents from the adoption process are sealed and cannot be accessed without petitioning the court and proving "reasonable cause" for unsealing them. Apparently them being your personal records is not reasonable cause enough. All of your legal ties to your biological parents are severed, in some cases they are given visitation if it's an open adoption but they don't have custody or even legal ties to the kid, they're just allowed to see them sometimes. Many adopted people, including myself, disagree with this process and want the legal process to change so that we are not deprived of legal documentation of our own history.
A lot of us feel that the right to these records is a human right, and sealing them is another instance of the system treating us like property.
(There is also a lot to be said about infant adoption, and how adoption agencies prioritize them, and neglect older kids because more people want babies and are willing to spend more money to get a baby. This leads to struggling mothers of new borns to be pressured to give up their kids rather than being given help, as well as instances of human trafficking because there are several adoption agencies that have been caught buying babies from traffickers overseas. Also the amount of money people pay for babies kind of makes it feel like human trafficking anyway. This is a huge issue in the US right now, not really related to this topic, but as someone adopted as an infant I just wanted to get this tangent out, and also I think it's something more people should learn about.
I'm not calling all the parents who have adopted infants human traffickers by the way, this a critique of US adoption agencies and the system they built.)
Now onto actually talking about bat media, one thing I always see talked about is how Bruce didn't adopt Dick until he was an adult. This is usually explained in comics as either the courts wouldn't allow him to adopt Dick as a single man, which was the case in the 40's comics as that usually wouldn't be allowed in real life, or Dick didn't want to be adopted because he was still grieving his parents. The latter is actually very common, especially nowadays, most grieving kids don't necessarily want a new birth certificate that says their dead parents never existed.
I think that the treatment of this in both fannon and cannon as a mistake Bruce made that needs to be rectified is weird because it is a very real and valid decision, and treating it as something bad implies that adoption is inherently better than legal guardianship. The only difference between a legal guardian and an adoptive parent is the process of sealing records and cutting legal ties with the birth parents, as well as automatic inheritance. A legal guardian has all the parental rights of an adoptive parent, and the legal status doesn't say anything about the relationship with the child. Also Bruce did in fact change his will to include Dick.
Batman #20 1940
Bruce adopting Dick later us usually seen as formality, often because he adopted Jason as a child, but I think we should start considering legal guardianship as a completely valid route to go, without putting adoption on a pedestal as a better option. This isn't to shame anyone who writes this plot point in comics or fan fiction, most people don't know the nuances in adoption and the struggle for adopted people's rights, but I think glorifying adoption often just silences these conversations about the downsides of adoption in the US.
(Here's some panels of Bruce talking about not adopting Dick as a child and adopting him as an adult)
Tales of the Teen Titans #50 1984
Gotham Knights #17 2001
I was gonna talk about instances like Cass and also Clark who's in the same boat with not really having previous records, Clark coming from a planet that blew up and Cass being raised in isolation (considering she had to threaten David Cain into telling her when she was born, I'm gonna assume she wasn't legally documeted.) and not having a legal identity for a good part of her life. That being said I don't have a lot of experience with kids who don't have legal records before being adopted. So if anyone has anything to add on that topic feel free to. I think this is a very case by case thing.
I think media as a whole conflates the actual act of raising a kid as your own with the legal process of adoption. There has been a lot of push to change how the legal process of adoption works and to regulate the adoption industry, but it's still an ongoing fight. Most media doesn't portray the ugly side of adoption which skews people's view of it. I hope to see more media in the future begin to explore the nuances as the cultural perception of adoption is very limited. I also highly encourage anyone to do further research into this topic, so I'm leaving some sources here at the end of the post. After all there's a lot I didn't talk about, and I am just one adopted person sharing my experience not the all knowing adoption god. I hope that this post inspires some people to do more research into adopted people's rights, and begin thinking more critically about how it's portrayed in media.
(Resources in the Reblogs because tumblr hates links)
(Also this is the third version of the post, the first one I decided I didn't like so I deleted and re-wrote it, and then tumblr ate my next draft)
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āYou wanna fight someone, you fight meā seemed like a silly rule at first. but after there was more than one batkid living in the Manor at the same time, suddenly the prospect of having to spar with Bruce on the mats because you couldnāt stop yourself from throwing a punch at Tim earlier is terrifying.
am now picturing a kid pestering and pestering Bruce to train and he's very reasonably like "not now" because he has responsibilities and tasks so the kid just hecking stiff-arm punches the sibling standing next to them
[id: three flat color images. The first is Cass as Batgirl leaning over to Bruce as Batman while he types away at something. She says, "Spar?" and he replies "Not now, Cassie, I'm working." The next image is Cass scowling while Bruce continues to work. Tim is coincidentally walking past the two of them, obliviously doing something on a tablet. The third image is Cass punching Tim's lights out while Bruce whips around in his chair.]
I love the slightly toxic / massively codependent relationship between Bruce and Dick no matter canon or fanon because youāre telling me Dick cut ties, created his own hero persona, led half the teams in the JL at one point, walked around telling everyone he didnāt need Batman anymore, but then if Bruce died on a mission theyād need the entire Justice League to haul him away from Bruceās body; and even if they could, heād fight them the entire way, screaming and spitting and inconsolable to the point of madnessā¦that Dick Grayson. and the Bruce who literally lost his mind and gave into war when Dick died in Injusticeā¦who carries his dead sonās body in so many comics like heās cradling a childā¦who split his knuckles down to the bone and kept going until Selina had to beg him to stopā¦
Batfriends HELP. I have an itch. Any fic recs for young batman Bruce adopting Dick and just the shenanigans of like, idk 23 year old Bruce dealing with gremlin child 9 year old Dick Grayson? Bc I seriously need that energy in my life right now.
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