honestly for all 13 years on krypton, kara did not have powers. For clark, his powers are what makes him kryptonian and as we see with myriad, clark thinks of himself as human but with abilities–and when he solar flares he thinks “i’m human for a day.” If he lost his powers permanently, he would think I am now human.
For Kara, her sense of Kryptonian identity does not hinge on the fact that she has special abilities, because for the first half of her life she did not. And would explain why she never feels normal–not only is she on a new planet, an entirely new culture and language and history and religion that she is expected to assimilate to, and thus is not normal for any human–her abilities would make her an anomaly among Kryptonians as well.
Kara is always Kryptonian–this is not about what she can do but who she is, her language and culture and history and beliefs, the way she looks at a problem–like that idea that no one was their own man on Krypton, how she doesn’t want to be the same kind of superhero as her cousin but wants to be an el mayarah superhero–a kryptonian superhero, not the lone solitary human savior that clark likes portray himself as (and the Christian savior that a lot of writers like to portray Clark as but @ them they are frickin space jewish go do research stop doing the whole Christian savior thing bc n o p e but i digress)
When Kara loses her powers she is not “human for a day” but powerless, still Kryptonian,the only one in her life not to be taken over by Myriad’s control without outside intervention. And the fact that so many people forget this– the writers of both season 2 AND fic–and it’s too many
Clark’s secret is that he is Superman, that he is powers–Kara’s secret is not that she has powers, but that she is not human–and considering that James and Winn almost always forget this, forget that she is a survivor of her entire world dying and forget that she has so much anger and grief inside of her, that if she forgets herself just a little she could accidentally break their bones, that she isn’t just “Sunny Danvers,” a constant smile affixed to her face?
(except alex-alex, who saw that transformation, that struggle, that act that kara constantly puts out there, for every nightmare, for years of grief–because when Alex was looking at Kara, after everyone else found out about all of the pain lingering underneath the sunny surface, looking at her after red kryptonite and sporting a broken arm and looking at kara sobbing on the table back at the DEO once it was all over–Alex looked at Kara with sadness and love and understanding but she did not look at her with surprise. She’s known for years that this has existed, the struggle Kara has gone through not to succumb to this, to keep her head above the water and become someone she can look at in the mirror. She knows that this is not who Kara chooses to be but that she could be? Yeah, everyone else (except J’onn, the only other one who can relate) was surprised. Alex wasn’t)
It means that Kara is just as successful as Clark is at hiding.
This is the secret that Kara would share, with Maggie or Cat or Lena–because sure it’s obvious to anyone who has spent a good amount of time with both Kara and Supergirl that they’re the same–same scar between the eyes, same exact gold earrings, same hair color, same height, same bright blue eyes.
poe-dameron: I shut myself off from… From everyone. But I had to learn how to open back up again. The truth is I’m still working on it. Source: leia-organa
dealanexmachina: cylon: 1×11 // 1×13 “el mayarah.” it means, “stronger together.” kara is supergirl, but to her, the people around her are the heroes. cat and alex are her heroes. she surrounds herself with people she looks up to as much as national city looks up to supergirl. she looks up to her friends just […]
i can’t believe the blessings i was always meant to receive on this day. destiny has always been on my side. mental illness is a thing of the past. i have never heard of acne. the universe is grand and giving
Kara and Lena have so many parallels I’m not even sure the CW is aware that they all exist because they’re that unperceptive of their own plots. Which is wild to me because fic writers definitely are.
Even at face value supercorp is a very rich relationship. Granted, I think it was lack of forethought that created the mistake that is Lena being canonically 24 years old, but even just… look, young CEO trying to escape her family’s curse and madness befriends a reporter with a heart of gold that moonlights as the very thing that spurns on the young CEO’s family’s madness? FACE VALUE.
I’ve had this fic idea for a while about opposites. I was going to write it but I was too busy trying to finish this endurance test so I’ll tell you about it in vague plot points instead. I wanted to write about the mirrored image that Kara and Lena present to each other, how easily one could become the other or derail completely if just one scenario was different or if there was just one moral slip up.
I wanted to write about how everyone sees Kara as this selfless embodiment of sunshine and sky, all gold and blue and freedom. And I wanted to write about how everyone sees Lena as this guarded, stoic person, selfish and hoarding with her emotions, caught in the shadows of potential malice. But I also wanted to write about how they see each other and themselves.
I wanted to write about Kara’s selfishness–the way she favors her closest few. I wanted to write about all the accidents that happened in National City before she saved that plane because it was Alex on that plane. I wanted to write about the darkness in her heart that she brought with her from the Phantom Zone, the inescapable and crushing weight of nothingness equating to almost half of her living life. And then I wanted to write about Lena’s children’s hospital and how she looks for her mother to love her as if she were stranded in the desert, searching for water. I wanted to write about how she shoulders fault and blame because she thinks she deserves it and how she’d use herself as bait if it meant something else to someone else.
I wanted to write about Alexandra and Alexander, too, and I wanted to find the similarities in them. I wanted to write about the things that Clark left them, the resentment they both harbor for Superman. I wanted to write about how they both did things out of love for their sisters and how all those good intentions turned sour and made Kara and Lena both the women they are today. I wanted to write about how quickly Lex made Lena feel like his sister. I wanted to write about how slowly Alex made Kara feel like her sister. I wanted to write about how not wanting anything bad to happen to someone you love isn’t the way to show them how you love them because one tried to kill a man and the other tried to prevent a woman from rising. In some ways, they were both potential god killers. I wanted to write about how Alex is the one who really killed a Kryptonian, in the end.
I wanted to write about the House of El and the Luthors and the legacy that our parents leave behind. I wanted to write about the fathers that gave their daughters their names and the mothers who believed they were protecting their planets. I wanted to write about families of science and technology and influence and the pressures they put on their daughters.
I wanted to write about two orphaned girls, one with the power to crush this world and the other with the capacity to hate it, and how they found purpose in contributing to the communities they found themselves a part of. I wanted to write about control and how both could decimate a city if they lost it. I wanted to write about how they both, every day, make the choice to continue to be good, and to do the right thing, even when the right thing is the harder thing, the more exhausting thing, the thing that sometimes hurts them in the end.
I wanted to write about the what-ifs and the maybes of their girlhoods, if there was always sunshine and light for them when they were growing up. I wanted to write about how much they need each other for selfish reasons, because who else would see Kara for Kara and Lena for Lena? Because they’re always someone’s sister or their family or making up for the sins of their parentage or carefully guarding the vulnerably invulnerable parts of themselves from the people they know.
I wanted to write about how one know what it feels like when a world is gone and how the other knows what it feels like when the world might want you gone. I wanted to write about how they both know what it feels like for family to want to try and kill you.
But I have an endurance test that I’m currently failing and so many others have written so many (over 4000!) fics before I even came here.
I am messed up. I make mistakes all the time… I feel stupid and scared and ugly and insecure, ust like everybody else… but when I blow it, I don’t shrivel up and die.
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