OMG, I have to go back and watch that scene again. I forgot about Hidden.

Yeah, that was after the season 5 finale, Vessel, where Clark and Chloe kissed at the Daily Planet right before he went to confront Lex when he was about to be taken over by Zod. In the season 6 premiere, Clark escaped from the Phantom Zone and went back to the Daily Planet to find Chloe, only to see her there with... Jimmy Olsen. That's when Clark asks Chloe about what happened between them, and Chloe said, "You mean when I laid one on you? The world was coming to an end. I didn't think we were gonna hook up, or anything." What a ripoff. What a cop-out. The writers decided to throw Chloe and Jimmy together in one episode with no development or buildup whatsoever just as a way of getting Chloe away from Clark so he could continue to obsess about Lana for another two seasons. I appreciate that Miles Millar and Alfred Gough now admit their mistake and that they should've ended the Clark/Lana thing sooner, but that still doesn't excuse why they did what they did at the time.

Thanks! Well, I don't consider what I'm doing to be fanfic. I'm staying within the canon of both shows, I just made Bruce Wayne the same age as Clark instead of being a kid like in the Gotham show. But I know that The WB was originally planning on doing a teenage Bruce Wayne show before Smallville went into production, and I also know that Millar and Gough wanted to revive that Bruce Wayne project and have it run as a companion show to Smallville, so this is how I imagine that scenario would've played out at WB let it happen instead of being a bunch of stingy morons.

Yeah, I think it's because people in real life tend to think in terms of dialogue. No one thinks in prose or in a third person narrative. So maybe that's why you start off in screenplay format and then go more into a literary form.

See, I believe that Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne's stories are always linked together, in spite of the fact that they were created by two different writing duos. Those two characters made DC Comics what it is, along with Diana Prince. So my writing is about the Bruce/Clark friendship as it would've played out had Smallville and Gotham existed in a shared universe. My other idea is for a third show about Diana called Amazon, about how she went from being a teenager to becoming Wonder Woman. The other half of the Big Six - Arthur Curry, Barry Allen, and Hal Jordan - would all be supporting cast members in the three shows, leading into the creation of the Justice League.

Arthur, Hal, and Barry's origins would also be told, but in stand alone episodes that would still be part of Clark, Bruce, and Diana's stories. Arthur would feature prominently in Diana's show because of Atlantis, obviously. Hal would feature prominently in Smallville due to the Green Lantern Corps. and the Guardians decision not to intervene in Krypton's affairs. Hal, being a pilot, would also know Steve Trevor from Diana's story. They would both be teenagers, with Steve getting accepted into the Air Force Academy, while Hal gets turned down and ends up working for Ferris Aircraft. Barry would probably show up in both Smallville and Gotham, being both an intern at Luthorcorp and S.T.A.R. Labs and a future CSI. Of course, there would be drama between Luthorcorp (later LexCorp) and Wayne Enterprises, as well as between those companies and Cale-Anderson Pharmaceuticals, owned by Diana's enemy, Veronica Cale.

Thanks, I'll check it out. I'm glad you have the link in your signature.

I actually found an old archive of Chlark stuff in the pictures folder on my Mac so that's been fun revisiting the version of me that hoarded everything (spoiler: that's still me)

Nice to meet you too, TomsEnough! He's more than enough, that's so true...

Her name is Fatima, Janine.

LMAO not to worry, I figured it out later and Fatima also introduced herself so we're good.

Did you by any chance collect any of the Tom stuff?

Hidden is my favorite episode of the series, right next to Rosetta, Shattered, Memoria, and Transference. Vessel is also up there because CHLARK KISS

Oh I knew about the mind wipe in Zod! But they had Chloe referencing her feelings for Clark well after that and I thought there was another instance where the two of them had a chance but Chloe turned him down. If that was the only time then the writers are even dumber than I thought.

Fascinating stuff! You really get into the details and that's awesome to see. I'd totally watch shows like this for real.

Please do! I can't vouch for the quality of anything published over 20 years ago but I've done some highlighted rewrites of older stuff and just updated a Chlark fic this week so that might be the most enjoyable. Love to hear what you think!

Cool! What's the title?

Also for those who have been wanting some Chlark fic to read: Season 5 Redux (just posted the newest chapter today)

Thanks, Alex!

Thanks for that, Janine! Season 5 reimagined with a better outcome? I do that all the time. Season 6 needed that outcome as well. Again, not permanent, since Lois is around the corner, but for a brief time we should've had Chlark.

What did you think of the fics I wrote? The first one was kind of Bruce Wayne's introduction to Smallville, and playing on the running joke that women just lust after him upon looking at him.

The second and third fics are about Bruce trying to do right by Clark when it comes to Chloe.

Dig in, everyone!!

If we had Chlark instead of Clana then that could've carried us to Season 8 truthfully. But yes, feel free to leave a review with your thoughts! I'm already working on Ch. 3 -- shaping up to be my favorite but it's Hidden so who is surprised

I didn't see any links to your fics but if you mean the snippets you left before I replied to those!

That's one of my favorite scenes, Janine! Thanks!


See, I always use the Chekhov's Gun analogy when it comes to what the writers did with Clark and Chloe. If you show the audience a gun hanging on a wall in the first act, it must be fired by the final act or it shouldn't be there. Or, putting it another way, if you don't want anyone showing up to your house asking for hamburgers, don't put a big sign outside of your house with a big arch in the shape of the letter "M." In other words, don't tease us with Chlark and Chloe unless you intend to actually go somewhere with it. And for five seasons, we had a lot of guns hung on those walls.

Well, I wouldn't have had Chlark last until season 8. I'd have ended it before the end of season 7 because I feel everything after that should belong to Clois.


Well, those snippets are the fics, Janine. I didn't write any full fics, just those scenes. I don't have a Fan Fic account, I just brainstorm and write scenes like these off the top of my head.

I didn't see you mention anything about how I used Bruce Wayne, or the dynamic between Bruce and Clark, and Bruce and Chloe and Lana. What did you think? Oh, and Bruce and Lex would know each other from prep school.

You're welcome! I've spent a lot of time in the Chlark thread on Tumblr so there will be artistic revisits like this very often in the days ahead.

I've always felt that way about it too. More than five seasons of their chemistry for sure, just less relationship anvils. We deserved more payoff for all the setup.

I don't mean throughout S8 but from what I read they had Clana well into S7 and I'd have just replaced all their drawn out character regression with Chlark as a 1:1 so that's what I was really referring to.

I thought it was an interesting dynamic overall! Pretty sure I already said that. But yes, crossovers have very unique and fresh approaches and I hope you continue to explore those possibilities.

There's a Chlark thread on Tumblr? I never go to that site.

Well, I always get the feeling that the Smallville writers were writing scared. You don't have Clark and Chloe kiss at the end of season 5 just to pull the rug out from the audience in season 6, having Jimmy Olsen just show up out of nowhere and have Chloe just shrug off her kiss with Clark like it was nothing. The writers were too afraid to have Clark move on from Lana because Kristin was popular and they didn't want to anger fans by having Clark be with someone else... even though everyone knew that Clark was destined to end up with Lois.

Yep, we didn't need Clana to drag on for another two seasons. Everything that the show could do or needed to do with Clana was all done by season 5. Season 6 and 7 would've been better served with Clark and Chloe together rather than wasting them by putting Chloe with Jimmy and having Clark obsess about Lana for another two seasons.

Well I guess technically it's a "tag" but yes! Tons of art and screencaps and dialogue about them.

The writers were absolutely living in fear. And they also suffered from not having continuity within their own show with certain things. Because say for instance that it's true, they were worried about angering the great Clana fanbase and felt like they couldn't make better material for Kristin outside of her connection to Clark -- that's bad enough! But to also still hint at a romantic relationship between two characters you keep trying to shoehorn into a friendship role is even worse. Like pick a lane instead of broadcasting Clark and Chloe's chemistry for no reason. Years later, it still doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

It's my biggest gripe with the show. They made so many other characters look bad just to support Clark not getting over his high school girlfriend that was also never really consistently his girlfriend. That looks even worse next to the bond Clark had with Chloe and later on with Lois, two people he didn't seem to struggle with trusting. They had their rough spots, especially Chlark, but they intentionally showed how he never trusted Lana. To keep investing in that storyline was, for me, too much to handle.