ok well you and i have discussed this at length so this will not be new to you but imco (in my correct opinion) kara danvers [as portrayed by the cw's supergirl, not necessarily in other versions] is actually pretty lazy, and i would argue this is one of her most central and consistent character traits. and i don't just mean physically lazy, although i should note that per 3.17 "trinity" she canonically Hates Walking and doesn't understand why humans exercise. i mostly mean on an intellectual & moral level.
kara wants to be a reporter, but when she figures this out (because......a pretty lady told her she should do it? ig?), she does not apply to journalism school, or take online classes. instead she is handed a reporter job by her boss (who scrawled 'reporter' on her hilariously terrible resume when they met for reasons known only to her) and from then on proceeds to basically just do whatever she wants and get offended when more seasoned reporters who have gone to journalism school ask her to do basic functions of the job like Acquire Sources and Report On The Facts And Not Just Your Personal Opinions. at no point do we really see her ask her colleagues, even friendly ones like james, for advice or help; instead, advice is something that's imposed upon her by the wicked snapper, who dares to be unimpressed by her uneducated slay. throughout the show, on multiple occasions, the idea of actually Doing Her Job seems to offend her -- lena even calls her out for this explicitly in 3.02 "triggers," but she continues to display this behavior with andrea in s5 & s6. in the finale, when she is promoted to editor-in-chief in an act of blatant cronyism that truthfully should prompt the entire catco staff to quit in protest, it is not on her initiative, nor due to her efforts, nor is it because anything about the position has piqued her interest; it is, again, simply handed to her, and she just accepts.
additionally, we rarely see her express meaningful curiosity about, well, any subject, really -- we know she learned calculus young, but her interest in math and science seems nil; she is deeply naive about the u.s. justice system in s6 in a way that suggests she has never looked into it, though her own mother was a judge on krypton; and a lot of her interests seem very Basic (pizza, potstickers [? why girl.], nsync, the wizard of oz, harry potter), which to be clear is not inherently a sign of intellectual laziness or incuriosity, but it also does nothing to suggest that she is someone with a wide knowledge of food, literature, music, or film.
she also demonstrates what i would argue is a kind of moral laziness, though you could call it an offshoot of her intellectual laziness, in her general lack of real self-reflection about, like, any of her actions. although some of the other characters sometimes bring up how messed-up the DEO is (e.g. james in s1 with the gitmo comparison -- which, CRAZY line to put in your show and then never address, btw), kara herself does not question it (until the Wrong People take over, of course). her rhetoric in early s2 about daxamites suggests that she is quite comfortable believing sweeping generalizations she was taught as a child and has never really sat down to interrogate them, but while mon-el being.....pretty bad but i guess not as bad as his mom? yay? inspires her to stop being bigoted against daxamites specifically, we will later still hear her say that certain species tend to be peaceful or aggressive, etc., with no self-reflection. in 3.05 "damage," when morgan edge tries to make it seem like lena's lead dispersal device that kara activated poisoned children, kara does not take the opportunity to self-reflect on the choice she made and whether it was worth it; instead, her arc for the episode is reacting emotionally to her best buddy feeling guilty (about the thing kara also did. i cannot emphasize that part enough).
i would argue the conclusion she draws in 5.13, too, smacks of this moral laziness; she spends the episode looking for a magic shortcut to not having to feel bad anymore, and when she can't find one, she decides that actually, meh, there was never a perfect way for things to go down, so all that lying wasn't such a big deal and lena should just get over it. kara is dripping with a lot of guilt in 5A, but throughout both 5A and 5B there's very little actual, thoughtful self-reflection on what she did wrong and why, and that carries over into S6 when, after like ten episodes of lena (and also william ig) repeatedly trying to tell her not to play god, she decides in the very penultimate episode to solve her problems by eating the sun, and then when she decides against it partway through doing it, there's again very little self-reflection on her part of why the hell she thought that was a good thing to do. kara's morality, on the whole, seems largely based on (a) alex and (b) vibes, and not so much on any actual thought she's dedicated to the moral questions at hand.
and similarly to when kara is asked to Do Her Damn Job at her place of work -- when kara is challenged on her morality (like when lena challenges her on the kryptonite in s3, or on myriad in 5.17), she acts annoyed at the very idea of having to do the hard work of thinking about the morals she espouses as a superhero. and it doesn't read as someone who has thought very hard about her moral choices and is offended because she believes so strongly that she's right, because we never actually see her thinking hard about these moral choices she makes at all. it reads as someone who hasn't thought about it beyond a very cursory level and is frustrated that she's being asked to. because, again, she's just fundamentally kind of lazy.
and the thing is this might sound like i am dunking on her but actually i think this is a trait that is incredibly funny. my favorite portrayal of supergirl/kara danvers is the one from the children's cartoon dc super hero girls 2019, whose version of kara is ALSO lazy, on top of being an aggressive, quick-to-anger, rude, irresponsible, selfish brat. and she's hilarious in that show, she's one of my favorite characters. another favorite character of mine, also a children's cartoon character, is anne boonchuy from amphibia, whose entire character journey is about learning not to be physically, intellectually, or morally lazy and learning to [school principal voice] Apply Herself instead. it can be incredibly fun to watch characters be lazy and incurious and self-centered, whether they change for the better or not. but it is a bit strange that some people act like kara is this super disciplined person who loves working out and loves learning and reads widely and is curious about everything and self-reflects on her own decisions and how she affects others to the point of obsession. i wonder if part of it is 'femslash same-character syndrome,' where people slap other characters' traits from other popular femslash ships onto each other. because the character i just described is adora from she-ra. who a lot of people think is similar to kara. except no. she's not at all. as evidenced by this whole write-up ☝️ lol. they're just both blonde and for some reason (#blondephobia?) femslash fandoms wanna act like all blonde girlies are the same. but they are not. #wakeupamerica.....
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