Kara danvers seems honest and open and bubbly but you could know her for 2 years and not know shes an orphan who’s entire family died and her sister is her foster sister and English is not her native language (not even that shes an alien, just that she isnt from this country) and she’s ripped as hell and wants to be a journalist because it’s about service and her mother was p much on the Supreme Court and her father THE most well known scientist and her aunt was a general and shes basically the equivalent of a Princess in her culture and shes actually v religious but it’s not Christian and has anxiety and PTSD and just the fact that Alex seems to know when her Earth birthday is, not even Winn really aware, who’s her best friend and Kara definitely knows everyone else’s on the entire floor like shes an absolute brick wall other than the things that are easily Google-able no one even knows who shes dating or if shes dating anyone and when she does all she says is she has a date (thinking back to the pilot) and she, an alien who has been to several different planets, told winn with a straight face there is no such thing as aliens besides superman
Whereas Lena tells a complete stranger her life story and befriends a reporter within like 2 days and let’s her know all the sordid details about her life and her tragic backstory and her mommy issues and what her relationship with her brother was like and will tell anyone her past relationships and every person knows about her family and that her moms in jail and what theyve done like there is no hiding anyway so might as well share shes a complete open book
Tl;dr Lena Luthor is Professor Open Book and Kara Danvers is the absolute brick wall professor that you dont even realize is the brick wall until Lena starts talking about her wife Kara and you didnt even know they were married or that her brother tried to kill her cousin and her mom hates her wife and her wifes sister is an FBI agent??????? That her wife sometimes consults for??? And her wife can easily kill a man. Like. Lena would be the one to reveal all of this and no one in Kara’s class even knows her age or that she had a wife or anything about her life other than what her favorite food is and that she likes red since she wears it all the time but she is literally the professor everyone loves and goes to talk to for office hours and ends up crying about whatever is troubling them and comes out feeling better and more hopeful only to realize later they found out absolutely nothing from her in return
tbh i dont really like high school aus all that much, and Lena would never be in public school while living with the Luthors so
1) They’re all in boarding school together. Eliza thought it might be good for Alex to get a change of scenery after the first year that Jeremiah died, and she was kinda feeling overwhelmed as a single parent, especially to two geniuses.
2) The school was willing to work with Kara both her SPD (sensory processing disorder, because that’s essentially what Kara has) and her off the chart math and science abilities but extremely subpar English and history. in fact
3) The only one there that can keep up with Kara is one Lena Luthor–they share a private tutor for this one. Lena has always been the best at science and math, before only Lex able to come close to touching her, she’s won every award she could for her age, received every accolade and here’s this new girl out of the fucking blue blowing everything she’s done out of the water, doing math problems that take her months to complete and parse out in just seconds
lena tries being jealous and mad but kara makes it so hard to do that she’s just so nice and friendly and doesnt treat her like she’s THE lex luthor’s baby sister (because yeah, right now lex is the golden boy who’s supposed to save the world), or that her family is richer than god–she just treats her like a friend and god she’s so pretty (but yes, imagine a little bit paris geller “get out of my school” for a bit, but a lot kara doesnt even pick up on kara is not oblivious but she was not socialized on earth, and also is dealing with a bunch of trauma and constant sensory overload ok)
3) also a lot of things lena thinks she’s doing something mean and paris geller like that to her seem like she’s sending a message to kara but by kryptonian standards that message is not “i’m top dog” but “this is my way of wooing you and proving that I would be a good match.” Poor kara is very confused when alex is like oh im so sorry you have to spend all this time with lena when she hates you and kara is like ??????? she wrote a thing in a scientific journal for me what do you MEAN she hates me
4) maggie is there on scholarship she worked her ass off and is very little and the world is hurting her and she’s like you know what maybe i’m not gay maybe i just dont like anyone. and then sees alex running towards her with her surfboard and in a bikini and is like n e v er mIND
5) alex and kara are roommates bc siblings and they wanna keep them together but maggie and lena are also roommates and they both agree the danvers sisters should come with a warning
It’s funny that I keep seeing things that act as if Lena
would be the helpless one out of her and Kara and I absolutely adore Kara and
the girl is a damn genius with super powers and picks up things fast, but growing up she also had to
deal with extreme culture shock, PTSD, and along with powers sensory overload,
to name just a few of the things about
her childhood on Earth. She comes from a dying planet with insanely advanced
technology and science—not really survival skills, and more so just trying to
adapt and heal.
Lillian was teaching Lena chess at the age of 4. And say
what you want about the Luthors, and there’s plenty, we see Lena working
weekends, nights, hell Thanksgiving—she’s a CEO by 24, probably more than a few
degrees. That kind of work ethic and drive (regardless if it’s actually
healthy, it’s huge) didn’t come from
nowhere. Every single skill Lionel and Lillian could cram into Lex and Lena,
they probably did. Regardless of how Lillian might feel about Lena she’s going
to have expectations, and at the absolute least if she’s going to have to be
this girl’s mother she might as well make her useful, or someone for Lex to
compete against, and Lillian loves Lex.
There’s no point to giving him a rival if that person isn’t pushed
and given the same kind of preparation and training and education that he
receives. And Lillian is someone who can be on the run from everyone and not get caught—that’s going
to take more than just money, that’ll take skill. Not to mention running a
black ops program with no one the wiser isn’t exactly on the list of things
that a rich housewife can do.
Kara is from a technologically advanced planet—maybe a few
days is fine but she’s probably so horrified
not to be around any tech she only likes camping for the difference in her
senses and all the pretty nature and landscape. Imagine if you went back to a
time before indoor plumbing—and sure a week of it is fine but months and months???? No. It’s probably worse
for Kara. She was p well supplied with tech, if the spy beacon that Astra had
that had a signal that could be received anywhere
was simply a child’s plaything—or if it wasn’t, and it was something she had
because of Astra’s military connections, then who knows what else she had
access to? She’s probably good with mechanics, to a certain extent because of
her father the scientist—who created a damn rocket
and taught her plenty about mechanical engineering—but they would have had
different elements on Krypton. It’s hard to know how to build something
when all the materials are different—Lena
would be just as screwed if she was given Kryptonian materials from the get go.
But my point is, Lena is probably actual fucking MacGyver,
or even better yet, the Supergirl version of Elliot Spencer. The Luthors definitely
seem like the kind of people who have their kids be in Boy/Girl Scouts, because
you never know when you might need those skills—they’re Luthors, they have people
gunning for them from the cradle. You never know when you might need some of
those skills, especially if you need to go off grid, or have to dump everything
in a moment’s notice. Like I’m not making a definitive statement, except yes,
yes I am if you gave Lena a knife and some decently warm clothes and set her
off into a forest she’d probably be fine for however long she’d be there for.
Lillian and probably Lionel seem like they would definitely hire a swim coach
to make sure their strokes are textbook perfect, but first they’d absolutely and quite literally throw them in the deep end to teach them
how to swim—the coach is about achieving perfection, and this is survival. And
Luthors don’t depend on anyone else for that—the sooner they learn that the better.
A powerless Kara, on
the other hand, would be absolutely fucked. She may have gone camping w
alex but lbr kara definitely used heat vision to start a fire and has no idea
what kind of clothes to pack or what to do about bug bites and maybe knows how
to pitch a tent and some useful things that don’t rely on her powers but 5 minutes
after losing her powers she cuts her hand on glass and breaks her arm—it’s not
a matter of intellect, but it’s kind of like how astronauts look up when they
drop a pencil—you get used to a certain baseline. Kara could definitely learn,
but Lena already knows what she’s doing. Lena was taught she couldn’t trust on
anyone but herself to survive and Kara was taught stronger together. This isn’t to say this is a failure of Kara’s
that this isn’t her mentality—Kara has plenty of knowledge about science and
alien cultures and technology and language and religion and understanding of
people that Lena probably struggles with, especially in comparison. Kara was
doing calculus at least since she was 4. Honestly out of the two of them she’s
most likely better at science and
math—but it’s probably painful for her bc it reminds her of Krypton, and it’s
not like humans are going to be very accepting of a 15 year old trying to
correct them on widely accepted theories. That would bring attention.
Kara was told to hide—Lena was told she wasn’t allowed to,
that she had to be extraordinary because
that’s what Luthors are.
We see in her very first episode she’s a marksman, able to shoot
the man that had Alex hostage without even hesitation. We also see her Gerry
rig that device at her charity under the table with a tiny bit of help from Winn, but not that much—that’s not exactly a
lab setting.
The Luthors have so many back up plans and hidey holes that
their family motto almost seems to be “be prepared.” Like Lena does not like
Roulette and has 0 plans on ever going to her fight club but she knew exactly where
the address was from the top of her head, without consulting a planner. And
the fight clubs most likely rotate
where they’re at—sure Roulette has connections but the DEO took Leslie Willis—if
they don’t know about her she’s not going to bring her to their attention. And
still Lena knew where it was, because it’s
important to be prepared.
Or better yet—the Luthor motto might be all knowledge is worth having.
Lena probably picks up new skills in her “free time”—or really
whatever time she has that she’s not working at her company, not able to simply
lay around and do nothing. “You never know when you might need to know how to wrangle
a crocodile kara” “You never know when an assassin might try to kill me while I’m
on ice Kara” “You never know when you might need to know this very obscure and
esoteric language Kara” “It’s a very distinctive sound and one day I might need
to be able to distinguish between the sounds different guns make when cocked
Kara” “Who knows if you’re ever in the mountains with only a paper clip and a
hair tie Kara” “Kara it’s always useful to know how to be able to get out of a
straight jacket without any help”
Kara is very confused about her strange nerdy friend but
Lena feels such vINDICATION the first time something she’s been practicing
requires her expertise you said it was
weird to know how to competitively duck herd AND YET HERE WE ARE WITH A DEADLY ALIEN
SPECIES THAT RESEMBLES IN SEVERAL WAYS DUCKS
tl;dr Lena would be absolutely fine wherever she’s dropped
up to and including the woods or a farm with only the clothes on her back and a
used tissue and after a week or so Kara would be clutching her phone wondering
where the wifi is
according to lynne i have sucked up all the inspiration in the apt, which is apparently a finite resource, so i guess i will be the one producing any writing today…….anyway here it goes. things i said when you met my parents. @narraboths said there was only one choice when i was given this prompt.
One second, Kara is flipping Lena’s omelette over in the pan with careful and steady precision, dancing to the Real Estate song pouring out of Lena’s way-too-big sound system, when the door opens.
It’s been three months of dating, two blissful months of having great sex, one month since Lena had insisted Kara take a key to her large off-campus apartment and told her to go get milk and kale on the way back from her radio journalism class. Kara had got the milk, some cookies, a giant bouquet of shitty grocery store flowers, and forgotten the kale, but Lena had kissed her anyway.
She had met Lena freshman year in their shared Intro to 18th Century Lit class, and they had been through a lot of nonsense to get to here – Kara had dated this shitty dude named Mike, Lena had nearly blown up their friendship group by dating James for three weeks sophomore year. But Kara had felt it this past summer, while Lena fell asleep on the phone because she was in Turkey with her brother and Kara listened. It would be this year that they would figure it out.
They had, and that was awesome. What was not awesome was Kara turning away from the electric stovetop and seeing someone other than Lena in the doorway, while wearing an FBI t-shirt reading Female Body Inspector (gifted from her sister in a fit of drunken Amazon shopping) and boxers covered in tiny little flying cupids. Last night, when Lena had taken them off of her before giving her some inspired head, she had said they were cute.
so i was thinking about that post, about how maladaptive coping methods were at one point adaptive and do you think about how Kara and Lena both react to conflict and betrayal?
Kara is influenced by the shadow of kryptons destruction in her every action–how many people do you think she wishes she can see one last time? maybe she thinks about how stupid that one fight was in the light of such overwhelming loss and how she holds on tight to people no matter what. no matter how much they hurt her.
James and Winn lied to her for months after she was nothing but honest to them, where she didn’t even have a choice to tell James her secret, where this is something James can choose but Kara will never stop being an alien, who’s living in a deeply xenophobic society and still James and Winn were the ones who lied.
how j’onn was actually an alien but treated her like she was gum on his shoe and had her shot of the sky with Kryptonite and wouldn’t let Alex tell Kara about being in the DEO for 3 years.
Alex never went against orders and told Kara she was part of the DEO (aka alien Guantanamo) and killed her aunt. alex said it herself–clark abandoned her. astra tried to kill her and her sister but again Kara forgives her, because Astra is dying and what else left is there to do?
lena creates the thing that tortures her. the thing that killed and tortured her aunt (also there are plenty of things that can kill humans but when loved ones are killed by a certain thing, like a knife, or a gun, or even a dog humans tend to really hate the thing that killed them) and after the initial freakout she still extends her hand in friendship. and you know what? maybe Kara forgives too easily
it’s not really a criticism of lena but with everything that happened with Lillian and lex I think a lot about lena and her inability to forgive can be summed up as I finally love myself enough to be angry about how I was treated. and for someone who was always told she wasn’t good enough and had people who should have loved her try to kill her this isn’t the worst attitude to have..
whereas Kara kind of just. takes it. and keeps taking all of it. and there isn’t really talk for Kara any more about how to get past her anger and the betrayal
it’s that John mulaney quote- I’m going to hold all of my emotions right here and then one day I’ll die.“
whereas lena maybe needs to look at her one strike you’re out of my life policy if she wants to have healthy relationships w people bc people fuck up without it being an abusive kind of situation. it just happens. like. if Kara truly was acting like Lillian she would have said James was lying and he’s doing this because they used to date and he doesn’t want lena and supergirl to be friends (psa i am not saying this is what happened THIS IS THE BEING LIKE LILLIAN SCENARIO I JUST WANT TO BE CLEAR) but she owned up to it and was like ok we need to talk about this I did do that and i want to still be friends but all Lena can see is a repeat of her mother and lex and immediately cuts ties and metaphorically runs.
tl;dr lena and Kara both need therapy. so much fucking therapy. please someone bring them and everyone else to therapy.
Question of Smoke 