A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
LANTERN WARS
A Star Wars/Green Lantern Crossover​

Best read with your screen tilted at a 45 degree angle and a score by John Williams playing in surround sound.

 

Smallville/Dresden Files crossover, Clark Kent centric.

The core idea of Smallville would be kept the same: Clark Kent is a teenager with a mysterious past, adopted and raised by an ordinary couple in Smallville, Kansas.

Over the years he has developed amazing powers: super strength, speed, and reflexes (and the speed of thought to go with them*). He’s apparently invulnerable to all physical harm: heat, cold, sharps, blunt force, pressure, radiation. He doesn't really need to breathe and is immune to all diseases.

His other powers could be left out, or appear as the story progresses. I’d give him at least X-Ray vision, because that’s always fun in a teen story. I’d definitely leave out flight.

He wouldn't have any particular invulnerability to magic, with the caveat that he’s still invulnerable to physical forces summoned by magic: if you use magic to create fire and it’s just fire, it’s not going to hurt him. But he’d still be vulnerable to thaumaturgy etc - assuming you could manage to cut a hair off him.

He might sound a bit OP, but he'd still have nothing on someone like Mab. But he does have something Mab doesn't: free will.

Anyway, the idea is to replace his alien origins with mystical ones. I was thinking he could be the bastard son of the faded god Mars and a human woman. Meteor freaks would be replaced with regular supernatural nasties: vampires, etc.

The story could take many directions: you could keep it in line with Smallville and have it as a “high school with occasional action from supernatural threats”. I think that would make a good introduction to the plot idea, but you couldn’t keep it up for long before having to develop a long term arc.

One idea would be to have him approach Mab (or be approached by Mab) looking for answers about his past. He then ends up in her debt and she has him doing something to bring him together with Dresden (Skin Game plot?).

Another, more general, idea would be to have the story be Clark trying to make a place for himself within the magical community, working to establish himself as a power there (no doubt for some altruistic motivation). Perhaps he could end up working for/with Odin, sticking with the faded gods theme.

*Clark’s super speed is an interesting thing. Because his thoughts (his entire nervous system, really) would have to move similarly faster than the human norm in order to control his speed. If his thoughts are moving faster that mean he’s perceiving time faster (he has more thoughts in one second than a human. He’s not particularly smarter than a smart human in terms of the quality of his thought, but he is much faster).

 

Superman's powers tend to vary as the plot demands. In the "Super Weight" scale run on TvTropes he's considered a class 4 "hyper weight" at his weakest (save for when he is depowered) and a class 7 "author weight" at his strongest. A lot of the "Super Weight" section is very poorly done with tropers very obviously trying to bend the scale to fit their interpretations of the respective franchises and generally I'd say to take what they've written with a grain of salt, but this time I absolutely have to agree with their assessment. Even at his weakest he risks being game breaking and at his strongest he absolutely is.

The obvious answer is to nerf the fuck out of him and be very clear in establishing exactly what his limitations are. When he's at his strongest, there's nobody in the Dresdenverse even remotely close except presumably the Big G himself.

 

Er, there are numerous characters in the Dresdenverse with the power to destroy galaxies.

 

Same with the DC universe. Yet Superman still regularly kicks the shit out of them.

Also, one thing to keep in mind is that those beings with the power to destroy galaxies can't actually use it without risking the undoing of creation or some such equally bad thing.

Which doesn't even take into account the fact that those beings number in the high teens at absolute best.

 

Informed Abilities. We haven't seen any character operate anywhere near that level and when something sort of big happened in I think Book 7 right away Harry was jumping to the conclusion that it was Lucifer himself.

It's one thing to say that a character can do X, Y and Z. It's another for it to actually happen. Now go look up Silver Age Superman. He's routinely doing things that in Dresdenverse are not even possible.

 

Everything is possible in the Dresdenverse, if you have the juice to do it.

Right, because the DC universe is retardedly inconsistent. Superman can resist the powers of galaxy-destroying beings but doesn't have that class of power himself. Stick him in the Dresden universe and now you're in a world where trying to punch above your weight class gets you killed fast. Mab could unmake Silver Age Superman with the blink of an eye. Perhaps literally.

Which is enough, I think, to count as numerous.

 

LOL? Unmake Silver Age Superman -- when Supes was a literal fucking reality warper who literally survived a supernova -- in the blink of an eye? Okay, I'm not going to bother with this farce of a discussion any longer.

 

Superman is a physical being. All his powers are physical - speed, strength, etc. He survives a supernova because that too is a physical thing.

Mab is not. Mab's power is magical, against which Superman has no defence. What could Superman do against something like the paralysing force of will we saw in Changes? And that was just a few of the Red Court's upper guys. Mab could take them all simultaneously.

I'm not underestimating Superman's power; you're underestimating how ridiculously OP Mab is. Her power literally underpins all of reality. The entire universe. She holds the Outer Gates. She exists on a completely different level to Superman, who essentially is a human with massively increased capabilities. But still essentially the same stuff: physical strength, speed, senses, etc.

AND she's not even in the top echelon of power in the Dresdenverse.

 

Superman (any version) regularly defeats beings from the fifth dimension. Mab wouldn't stand a chance against him.

 

You have some terribly misguided ideas and you've shown repeatedly that you don't know much about the history of the Superman franchise.

First of all, that's not even correct about Mab. The power of the position is not the same as the power of individual. That's like saying "Barrack Obama is worth 14 trillion dollars" because he is the President.

I'll pull a quote from the Word of God thread:

https://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=15724

THAT is CANON Mab's power straight out of the mouth of Jim Butcher. The strength of a city's worth of people, not the strength of the Universe itself.

Second, you clearly do not know much of anything about Silver Age Superman. Do you know why Superman has so many limitations? Because they became necessary in order to create some semblance of conflict. During the Silver Age Superman started doing things like flying so fast he broke dimensional barriers.

Earth has drifted too close to the sun? Superman pushes it into a further orbit!

A person died who the creators don't want to get rid of? Superman turns back time!

The Man of Steel feels like being a dick to Jimmy Olsen? Send him off to an alternate dimension for a while!

When you said Mab can unmake Silver Age Superman in the blink of an eye you showed a complete lack of regard to the Superman franchise. Back then his powers were whatever the author wanted him to be able to do. Silver Age Superman at his strongest is a LITERAL AUTHOR AVATAR.

In order to prevent Superman from solving every problem on Earth faster than you can blink, kryptonite went from being an extraordinarily rare element to being so common everyday thugs carried it and other limitations were introduced, then finally Superman's strength (moving whole planets -- multiple at a time) and speed (faster starships in almost any scifi franchise) were curbed to the more realistic level of "a nuclear weapon will knock him unconscious."

Third, Superman has fought opponents with the potential to destroy the ENTIRE FUCKING UNIVERSE. Ever heard of Anti-Monitor? The entire Winter Court is a complete fucking joke next to him. Why? Because he actually HAS destroyed universes. That is canon. Mab destroying a universe is not only wrong but strictly hypothetical.

Fourth, going back to my original point, it's one thing to say that a character can do such-and-such. Maybe Mab hypothetically can shift the orbit of the Earth closer to the Sun. Is there even a remote threat of that ever happening in the books? No. In Superman canon it happens all the time.

Which is more dangerous? A hypothetical threat of something that would never actually happen or the real threat of something actually happening? Planet destroying opponents unlimited by any kinds of arbitrary balancing forces are the STANDARD for Superman.

 

First of all, that analogy is terrible.

Secondly, no, the person is not the position (though mantles shape the person). Which is exactly the point. The person of Mab has access to not just her own significant power but also the power of the position. She is the embodiment of Winter - that's her role in the universe. She's a being, yes, but she's also a concept. We know that killing Mab would send the seasons on Earth into chaos, for example. To say that Winter is that which protects the universe from the others (that is to say, Winter underwrites reality) is to say Mab does so.

First, that's not how the Darkhallow works. The people die as part of the backlash of the ritual; they don't fuel it. The fuel are the supernatural beings in the Wild Hunt (note also, that the resulting power-up is greater than the sum of the beings used to fuel it - "and then some").

Second, saying that the Darkhallow makes one equal to Mab doesn't diminish Mab, it makes the Darkhallow really fucking powerful.

Thirdly, Mab doesn't have the strength of the universe itself, whatever that means. What she has is the power to defend the universe, and were she to stop doing so the universe would be destroyed (or invaded). Of course she wouldn't - maybe even couldn't - make that choice, because it's not in her nature. Her role is to do that. The reason why she has so much power is to perform that role. But its still within her capabilities, and it still makes any attack on Mab suicidal.

The thing about the power coming from the Stone Table doesn't mean much without knowing what beings they were sacrificing on it. Given their current power it wouldn't be surprising if it were gods and angels.

All those things (or their Dresden equivalents) are also within Mab's power.

And this is what I meant about the DC universe being retarded. Superman shouldn't have been able to defeat Anti-Monitor. There shouldn't have even been a fight. Anti-Monitor should turn up, and a fraction of a nanosecond later the universe is gone, including Superman, who is part of that universe.

Saying Superman defeated Anti-Monitor and thus could defeat Mab is like saying Harry Potter defeated Voldemort and thus could defeat Dumbledore. You don't get to take examples of plot armour and extrapolate from them to a character's general abilities.

In the Dresdenverse, Superman would have no such plot armour. If, in the Dresdenverse, Superman came up against a being with the power to destroy the universe, the universe would be destroyed. It would probably be destroyed before Superman was even born, given that in the Dresdenverse these sorts of beings don't experience time in a linear fashion.

 

Goku vs Superman, WHO WINS?

 

The Batman!

 

Let's Find Out In A DEATH BATTLE!!

Goku vs Superman

 

Death Battle was wrong.

 

To be honest, any fic where I'd see Mab really, really cut loose would be worth reading.
I don't claim any knowledge on Superman lore. I really don't like him as a superhero. But to fit him into Dresden Files, all his powers would have to make sense there, or be removed.

The whole dimension-breaching sounds like something unrealistic to mesh with DF rules.

 

I suspect you were being sarcastic, but....I've done that already. Twice.

Goku vs. Superman: Confrontation on New Namek

and the sequel

Superman vs. Goku: Rematch in Metropolis

---------- Post automerged at 09:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:51 PM ----------

Actually, he gets his shot in an epilogue.

 

Of course he was being sarcastic; this is DLP, not Spacebattles.

 

About Superman crossovers. Chuckman (the author of rather good NGE/Superman fic Last Child of Krypton) once mentioned that he is thinking about Superman/ASoIaF story.

While that's an interesting idea, it's rather tricky to make it really work without making Superman less super. And I don't mean his powers, but his character.

But there is a version of Superman that would fit well in this setting and that's Superboy-Prime.

Few reasons:

- Unlike other versions, he didn't arrive on Earth in the rocket, but was teleported. That way nobody will know he is not a human child.

- He didn't develop any of his powers until he was a teenager when they were triggered by Halley's Comet. That could give him a normal childhood by Westeros' standards until the red comet shows up.

- He is misguided at his best, plain evil at his worst. A perfect character for ASoIaF story.

- He has no weakness to magic. I want him to fight dragons not run away from their fire.

That wouldn't be too long story because once Prime figures out his powers there aren't many things that can stop him. Probably just dragons and maybe the White Walkers.