#brainy

[missmarreynolds]

Supergirl textposts… PART FIVE!!

[moon-axolotl]

Supergirl Characters + Text Posts Part 2/?

[detective-jane-rizzoli]

[mannteka]

Maybe you can draw Brumsy (Clumsy x Brainy) ? : )

Fan of this ship

[everlastingdream]

The first time it happened, all agents took their weapons out the moment Lena entered the building like she owns it.

Alex considered firing everyone who let her past the guard post and then shoot her. In the leg. Maybe.

"Take it", Lena threw something at Brainy, who somehow was completely calm. It relaxed Alex too, since Brainy was an expert on calculating danger level of everyone.

And then Lena just turned around and exited the DEO, like she was dropping of their lunch or something. And she was still fighting with Kara!

"What the hell, Luthor!?" Alex shouted to her back, only to recieve resolute "Shut up!" in return.

Alex sputtered, because: excuse me, but you came to the secret underground goverment facility like to your own office! Brainy muttered something, tinkering with the thing Lena brought.

"It's anti-kriptonite suit", he said in wonder, already running some simulations on his tablet. "She shouldn't has figured this out for ahother five years".

"Brainy, test this thing in every way you can, and if it's safe, take it to Kara immediately", Alex grumbled, but her sister's safety was more important than Luthor's strange wims.

/ / / / / / / / / /

Next time everyone still grabbed their weapons, but wasn't ready to shoot just yet, as Lena angrily stormed into the building. Perhaps it was because despite her stare she complied with every security measure guards asked of her.

Which didn't stop her from slamming thick file into Alex's chest.

"What the hell, Luthor!?" Alex saw how Brainy grabbed Nia's hand to stop her from standing up.

"Shut up", Lena returned, as she went back without any explanation.

Alex was left with papers and strange sense of deja-vu.

Looking through evidence on their resent villain and drafts of some devices to counter his powers, Alex thought about how Lena always choose time when Kara was absent from the building.

/ / / / / / / / / /

When they reached fifth visit like that no one was surprised anymore. Because everytime they would be stuck, Lena will miraculously appear with what they need. But she still stubbornly refused to talk with anyone besides Brainy and only about science behind her inventions.

This time she confidentely walked into the building, but Brainy instantly stood up. Everyone around them tensed, powers and guns ready. Lena opened her mouth to protest but he forced her to sit under bewildered eyes of everyone in the room.

"She's injured", was the only thing Brainy said, as he pried another helpful thing from Lena's hands.

"Am not", Lena replied, and Alex noticed how she slurred her words a little. "Take this shit and let me go".

Nia was already out of the room, fetching medical supplies, when Alex moved Brainy to the side to check on her.

"Left side, one inch lower than her ribs", he told Alex. Nia, who put Alex's medical bag down, gently rubbed his back, even if it was almost invisible that he was worried.

Alex pressed her hand under Lena's jacket where he instructed, and her fingers returned covered in blood.

Lena was still swearing, when Alex cleared her wound - bullet hole - and dressed it.

"You need medical attention, Luthor", Alex said quietly. After everything she was still angry at the other woman but it didn't mean she wanted her dead.

"If I show it to someone, I'm as good as dead", Lena chuckled, cleary half-delirious from pain and pain-killers. How she managed to get there on the sole willpower was beyond understanding. "Even if you want it, I would like to live a little longer".

Alex didn't answer. Couldn't. Even if she knew it wasn't true, some part of her wanted Lena to believe it. To suffer.

It was a shameful, selfish thought.

/ / / / / / / / / /

"Lena?" Kara's weak voice sounded incredibly loud in the quiet of their usual exchange.

Lena stiffened and promtly turned to flee in the middle of her conversation with Brainy.

"Lena!" Kara could catch up to her in the blink of an eye, but somehow near Lena she always forgot she has powers.

Lena spent too much time talking over some sort of mathematical models and Kara wrapped up her mission early.

"Please, wait!"

"Leave me alone", Lena gritted through her teeth, but even Alex saw tears in her eyes, as she sped up.

"She's hurting", Brainy supplied from Alex's side, as they both watched this strange chase.

"She's injured again?" Alex asked with small pang of guilt.

"No, she's hurting emotionally. More than she shows."

He didn't add anything else. They watched door slamming into Kara's pitiful face.

/ / / / / / / / / /

"Why are you helping us?" Alex asked her about a month after Lena and Kara's dramatic meeting.

"Shut up", Lena answered, tired as hell after three all-nighters they pulled to rescue Kara from another dimension.

"It's getting old, Luthor. Spill the beans".

Perhaps it's exhaustion, perhaps it is somehow sisterly look in Alex's eyes, but Lena is silent suddenly, before almost pushing words out.

"You said you will turn over the world for your sister, didn't you? I had someone like that once. My big brother, who would be the only one to treat me like a person in the place that was supposed to be my home. Who protected me from everything he could. And whom I admired so much I wanted to be just like him".

Alex tensed, as always when talking about Lex. But Lena's voice was quiet, and her face already wet from tears she seemed to hold for so long, and Alex shut her mouth this time.

"When he did all that he did, I was disappointed. But I still loved my big brother. But when he first tried to kill me? I was heartbroken. The person who withstood father's beatings in my place tried to kill me", Lena chuckled through her sobs.

Alex never allowed herself to think about Lex past his atrocites. She couldn't afford any pity for the person who tormented her sister and her family. But right now there was another little girl beside her who lost her only family.

"You said you will turn over the world for your sister, didn't you?", Lena turned to her. "I killed my brother for her".

She didn't said anything after that. Just cried herself to sleep. And Alex was just sitting there, left alone with shocking news and even more shocking realizations. Lex was dead. Lena was the one who killed him. He told her Kara was Supergirl and she still killed him.

/ / / / / / / / / /

"Don't pity me, it makes my skin crawl", Lena said the next day, when she was given her own pass to the DEO. She threw it on the table right in front of Alex, and agent considered asking 'what the hell, Luthor' just for the fun.

"I'm not. But after what you did for my sister and what you continue to do, the least I can do is to give you free entrance".

Lena sat beside her, tired and feverish from overwork.

"Don't care about me either".

"When will you talk to Kara?" Lena scowled when Alex ignored her, but still took the pass.

"Never, perhaps. I look at her and see the dead body of my brother. It's not something a little talk can fix. And she will blame herself, burdening me with another endless boundle of her apologies".

"She will learn of his death eventually, and then she'll found out how he died. It will happen anyway. And yes, of course, nothing will be fixed just because you too will talk. But maybe you can relieve some of your burden, and maybe several small talks will help you both".

Lena didn't lift her head from the shiny surface of the table. But she nodded tiniest bit.

/ / / / / / / / / /

Lena kept coming to help. Kara kept trying to talk to her.

One day Lena conceded, and then she screamed at Kara for an hour in the empty conference room and stormed out.

They had reverse situation later, when Lena came injured once again. Kara screamed about her being reckless, and they eventually reached her past sorrows.

They screamed, then talked, then whispered. And slowly started to smile again. Later came tentative touches, lunches and game nights.

So when almost two years later Alex found them in the kitchen doing something she would prefer to erase from her mind, everything finally became as it should.

[owl-with-a-pen]

I’ve noticed a really fun parallel between the comic variants of Nia and Brainy, in particular in two specific arcs that I kinda wanted to talk about. In lots of detail. So, I’m going to do that.

Prepare for an essay! (NOTE: this does contain spoilers for multiple comic arcs involving Nia and Brainy, including the most recent Justice League Intergalactic Special)

Just to preface, as of current DC continuity, Nia and Brainy have not met. In fact, Legion of Superheroes is due another(!) reboot in a couple of months, so we actually don’t know anything about the current Legion in the new future as of the DC K.O arc.

So, the version of Brainy that I’m talking about is not from the most recent continuity; in fact, we’re going waaay back to the bronze/silver age of Legion lore. The first generation of LoSH, if you will.

Let’s start there.

The first thing you need to know about Brainy is that in almost every iteration that exists, he is an incredibly emotionally unstable character. In the show, this is mostly demonstrated through his inhibitors (something that’s also briefly touched upon in PZH continuity) but for other variants…. Brainy is just like that.

There’s a sort of unspoken expectation of Brainy in the comics that because of his twelfth level intelligence, he should be capable of handling just about anything. And because of that, he constantly takes on too much. He doesn’t sleep. He stresses himself out. He internalises. He has a mental break down. Rinse and repeat.

During LoSH's first continuity, Brainy was institutionalised after becoming delusional and paranoid from overwork and lack of sleep, feeding a jealousy he’d already been harbouring after not being voted as leader by the other Legionnaires. This nearly led to him destroying the entire planet with the use of the Miracle Machine, and even when he briefly regained enough of his senses to save the planet, his plan left another Legionnaire, Matter Eater Lad, completely mentally broken after using him to fix his own mistake.

So now you have a bit of context, allow me to introduce you to the story arc that I’m referring to for Brainy. One of my favourite Brainy-centric arcs of this specific continuity, actually:

THE TRIAL OF BRAINIAC-5

Over the course of this comic’s lifetime, many Legionnaires were put under scrutiny in one way or another, either in a UP courtroom or by the Legion itself.

In this story, when a long-term villain known as the Time Trapper causes the death of the Legion’s Superboy, Brainy – fuelled by anger and heartbreak - goes against the Legion’s back, gathering the support from a few trusted Legionnaires in the process, to concoct a plan to kill the Time Trapper. Brainy’s plan involves using the Infinite Man, formally known as Jaxon Rugarth, against the Time Trapper. Jaxon was left brain dead after a time travel experiment gone wrong that led to his transformation and eventual comatose condition. Therefore, he had no ability to give his consent to be involved with this plan - a plan that meant sacrificing his own life by becoming the Infinite Man again in order to destroy the Time Trapper.

However, knowing Jaxon’s values, Brainy surmises that he would have wanted to give his life for this and, in sacrificing Jaxon, he was in fact successfully able to defeat the Time Trapper.

Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl and Mon-El all agreed to be co-conspirators in this plan and during the fight, Triplicate Girl – at the time known as Duo Damsel – loses her second body when she is killed by the Time Trapper. For added context, in the early years of the LoSH run, one of Brainy’s inventions – COMPUTO – took on a mind of its own and killed Triplicate Girl’s first body, leading to her name change in later issues. Mon-El was also gravely wounded during this attack and later succumbs to his injuries. *Although he is eventually resurrected

While Brainy wasn’t necessarily responsible for either of these deaths, he was still held in contempt by his fellow Legionnaires due to the unethical nature of his plan. In fact, they hold a court hearing for him where the Legion must vote on whether he can remain a member. Legion opinion is split. Some agree that Jaxon was brain dead with no hope of recovery and that the plan was therefore morally sound, however others believed Brainy’s actions as sacrilegious as Jaxon was still technically alive and unable to consent.

Brainy doesn’t take the court hearing seriously because he honestly doesn’t care what the Legion thinks of his decision. In his mind, the plan was fully justified and he has no regrets in carrying it out. He even requests that Saturn Girl offer nothing in his defence.

Instead, he tells the Legion exactly what he thinks. That there is no trial, only an argument of morality, and he believes that his is sound.

In the end, even though the Legion do vote in favour of him staying, he decides to leave of his own volition, returning to Colu to pursue his research where he won’t be restricted by Legion politics.

It's important to note that Brainy is not a cruel or callous character. He cares about his friends and the Legion very much and wishes to protect them to the best of his ability. However, he is willed by his logic and practical mindset, and so when he isn't able to do his job because of the obstacles the Legion puts in his way, he isn't beyond leaving. Brainy leaves and rejoins the Legion a few times during the comic's run, sometimes due to dispute, others due to his own mental health, but he always rejoins the moment he's needed.

In fact, the only regret Brainy has over the fight with the Time Trapper is that Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel had to lose another life - both that he feels responsible for - leaving her with only one body. Before he leaves the Legion, he reaches out to her, leaving his shield belt - his signature tool - with her as an apology, and in hopes of keeping her safe.

Okay – so now let’s jump to Nia’s arc.

Nia Nal who, at 18 years old, only had about three years of experience as a superhero before she was forced to work for Amanda ‘The Wall’ Waller against her will. Nia Nal, who - in this universe - did not have the likes of Supergirl’s example to follow, but was rather made to lead a bunch of morally ambiguous criminals to carry out Waller’s bidding in a new Suicide Squad.

Nia Nal, who at just 18 years old, accidentally killed an old man when she was forced to transport her team to his location through his dreams. Oneiric Travel: a power unique to her comic variant

Nia had started out with the purest intentions, wishing only to live up to her mother's example, but after Waller threatened to dox the location of her home, the secret alien haven of Parthas, she was willing to protect it with everything she had, even if it meant abandoning her own morals in the process.

When Waller releases Parthas' location to the public anyway, Nia, full of rage and intending to kill Waller for what she had been forced to do, discovers through a dream that there was a trigger inside of Waller's body that would go off the second her pulse stopped. A trigger that would terminate her only surviving family.

She'd never had a choice, only orders, and if she mis stepped, it would have been her father and sister that ultimately paid that price.

Just like Brainy, Nia’s story is a lot darker than some of the other heroes that she runs with. For example, one of the first heroes she befriends is Jon Kent, son of Superman, who embodies the teachings of his father, never killing or using his powers for ill will.

So, you can imagine Jon’s surprise when he finds out that Nia had not only killed someone, but had been planning on killing a recently prison-breaked Waller as well.

But Nia had already left her mark on Waller.

After the events of the comic arc Absolute Power, Waller was finally incarcerated and the trigger was removed from her body, but not before Nia stole every incriminating memory Waller had, every piece of information she could have ever used as leverage. Waller’s power came from her intel, and Nia made sure that Waller would never have the means to blackmail anyone ever again.

*Nia did not, in fact, put a bomb in Waller's head. But she's happy for her to go crazy believing that.

Jon doesn’t approve of Nia’s methods, but Nia isn’t apologetic for doing what she did. In her mind’s eye, her plan was justified. She had ensured that Waller would never be able to hurt anyone again, but when she finds out that Waller might be in the process of having those memories restored, she doesn’t hesitate to plan her murder again.

In the end, Nia sees Waller at her weakest, stripped of her power, without her memories, and realises that so long as Waller’s memories can be permanently extracted, she isn’t a threat, nor is she worth killing. She only wants her to face justice for everything she's done.

By the time we catch up to Nia’s arc, she is disillusioned and bitter and no longer believes that she would ever fit in the tight constraints of the Justice League.

By this point, she’s seen the darker side of being a superhero, she’s worked with the people who never once had an easy day in their life, who were used and abused by systems outside of their control, who had become criminals to survive or simply because they had no other choice. Not only that, but in the Absolute Power arc, Nia had sacrificed her own life to protect Superman and other heroes from being attacked inside the Fortress of Solitude. Her body was ripped to shreds in an explosion and the only reason she survived was through the dreamscape of Jon Kent, where she was able to rebuild and reconstitute her body before returning to the physical realm.

Despite what she gave up, it amounted to nothing in her eye. Jon still doesn’t trust her after learning about what she’d done to Waller, and his boyfriend Jay still blames her for the part she played in his mother’s murder - despite the fact she’d already revolted against Waller before that had even happened.

So, she doesn’t want to be accepted back by the Justice League. Partially because she’s punishing herself, partially because she’s angry for being judged by the choices she made.

Despite all this, she’s still a hero. She’s lost a lot, and she’s terrified of losing anyone else, which oftentimes makes her choices come off as selfish. In fact, her own losses often blind her to the larger picture, which is that despite her losses, her closest friends have also experienced similar devastation.

And those friends are still striving for hope within the new Justice League, one they desperately want her to be a part of. Nia’s pain and self-hatred skew her own judgement. She no longer believes in herself, but in the end her heart and will to do good is still present, she’s just refusing to see it.

There’s still a lot of story left to be told, and so we don’t yet know how Nia will grow from here, but for the moment I’m taking what we do know to draw my parallels.

So, you may be asking at this point – what parallels? Aside from the fact that Nia and Brainy in the comics are way more messed up than their show counterparts.

I think what interests me the most about these two is that Brainy and Nia are both passionate for what they stand for, and they don’t let codes or judgement get in their way of doing what they believe to be the right thing. Nia and Brainy both make selfish choices at times, choices that may come from anger or grief or lack of control, but that doesn’t mean that those choices don’t lead to results that end up stopping the bad thing from happening, something that a hero with a cleaner conscience may not have had the heart to carry out.

And, when judgement is inevitably cast upon them, they are not ones to back down. In fact, they are more than happy to part ways with a system that they don’t believe is working in favour of finding one that better serves their interests. Justice is all that matters in their eyes, especially at these specific points in their respective arcs, and I just love that so much.

Brainy’s strength comes from his intellect, but his flaws are in his hubris. Nia is incredibly powerful, but she’s also inexperienced and punishing herself and others by refusing to look beyond the side of the story that she’s experienced first-hand.

Obviously, this isn't a perfect parallel, both characters are in very different stages of their journeys in these arcs, and their reasoning for not joining forces with their respected teams are coming from different places too, but it's their justification and passion for what they believe in and stand for that ultimately tie these two instances together in my mind.

Anyway, I just have a lot of love for these characters and wanted to share some of my thoughts! Feel free to share your own if you want, my asks are open, I’m on a bit of a DC kick at the moment.

[nxyofkrypton]

Lex: I see you’ve replaced me with… them.

Lena: Yeah, these losers love me. They also brought snacks.

Kara: And friendship.

Alex: And a flamethrower.

Brainy: And legally binding emotional support.

Lex: Pathetic.

Lena smirking: That’s Miss Pathetic to you.

[sluggoonthestreet]

Greebix is embarrassed to realize he has launched yet another alien invasion in his pajamas.