And Deena--thanks for the comments. The thing about Giles...hm. The thing about the Cruciamentum is that is was such a conflicted event for Giles, and while I see your point, I can see a Season One Giles trying to build a relationship with Buffy because there's a precedent for it with previous Watchers, and because he's beginning to genuinely care about her. I don't see that as messing with later events, because you really see Giles being frustrated and angry about the whole thing, working out his residual ties to the Council.

I'll take another look at the Smallville thing, see what I can do. It's only about 250 words, so it's not that big of a deal .

I can see a Season One Giles trying to build a relationship with Buffy because there's a precedent for it with previous Watchers, and because he's beginning to genuinely care about her.

This is true. I've been rewatching since the end of Season 7. I am angrier about their relationship in S7 now than I was when it happened.

Yeah. It made me nostalgic for earlier seasons.

Live journal ate my post. Argh.I exaggerate...it's up there. Just momentary weirdness.

Deena, I haven't edited a word. But yes, the clue was there; the fact that Ethan honestly can't remember any of what "Buffy" is claiming happened.

I absolutely LOVE the chemistry experiment exchange between Willow and Lex. That's really brilliant.

Thank you! It felt natural as I was writing it, so I had an idea it was good, but it's nice to have that confirmed. I'm thinking that they might get to bond over chemistry or computers at some later stage.

I need somebody with some pretty extensive knowledge of "Batman" comic canon to tell me something. How big of a secret was Batman's affair with Catwoman? A real secret? Or the Rock Hudson kind where everybody knows and nobody's talking. It's hard to explain but I need to know for my last scene. And don't be afraid to give me the full geek answer with an issue number and stuff, cause I think it's in character. Thanks.(the things I learn for fanfic.)

Holy Whiligigs, Batman! The confusing world of Bat-Canon.

Thanks, Daniel. I'll look at it in a bit...it's still a little early for that right now. I love the hivemind though.

The important passages:

The Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale LONG HALLOWEEN/DARK VICTORY opus wasn't tied to mainstream continuity, allowing them the leeway to kill Year One-era characters (like Lieutenant Flass, who survived into the present in the core series' wedding of Jim Gordon and Sarah Essen) and portray a romantic relationship between Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne that post-Crisis continuity had prohibited. The revised history had declared that Catwoman had never been captured and that Selina had never met Bruce or Alfred (BATMAN #499 and others). That said, the aforementioned Ed Brubaker has included the Bruce-Selina romance as canon, anyway (in places like BATMAN #600, CATWOMAN (current) #10 and CATWOMAN SECRET FILES #1).

That same issue of SECRET FILES also officially banished a Catwoman story (ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #s 611-614) that has long been regarded as non-canon. The episode had killed off Selina's pal, Holly (alive and well in the current series), but the detail that threw everyone into an uproar was a scene in which Catwoman threw two security guards from a skyscraper window to their deaths in order to frame Holly's killer for the murders. Even setting aside Catwoman's aversion to killing, the sequence didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Batman: Year One indicated that the pre-Catwoman Selina Kyle had been a prostitute, a development that seemed a bit too adult for a character still being marketed to children. Perhaps in acknowledgment of this, DC has shied away from that characterization since Zero Hour. 1994's CATWOMAN #0, for instance, established that the young Selina had become wealthy as a cat burglar and that the hooker persona had been a subsequent ruse to separate potential customers from their cash the moment they were alone.