tagged by @sideguitars to post a random wip snippet - thank you for the tag!
Continuing with sideguitars' theme and in honour of rojascorp day (because it may not be the same day anymore, but only on this planet. On Venus a day lasts 243 Earth days, so who's to say how long this one can continue for?) here is the rojascorp-i-est snippet currently in my WIP folder.
(is it going to be rojascorp? Is it actually supercorp? idk, endgame undisclosed so interpret it how you like I guess? Either way Kara is not having a good day 😔)
(also fair warning it's more of a whole scene than a snippet, but since there's a chance the longer fic it's part of will never make it to completion, I'm posting it anyway).
-------
Kara watched from her lowly corner of the bullpen, arms folded tight across her chest to avoid inadvertently breaking yet another keyboard, while her boss and her former best friend hugged goodbye.
It was an unnecessarily long hug (seriously, they had just spent an hour and a half together and had made plans to meet again for drinks that very weekend, a 27 second goodbye hug was just excessive), but eventually they broke apart, and with a final press of Andrea’s lips to the delicate pink of Lena’s cheek (was she blushing, or just wearing a touch of blush?), Lena stepped into the elevator.
The doors had closed behind her and Kara was just daring to ease the death-grip she’d been maintaining on her own biceps throughout the little scene, when Andrea turned back to face the office. The soft expression she had had for Lena was entirely gone now, and instead her features wore the kind of resolve that suggested she’d heard a rumour about the Superfriends’ favourite ice cream flavours and was determined to beat everyone else to the scoop as she made a beeline for Kara’s desk.
‘A word in my office please, Ms Danvers.’
Kara scowled as she got to her feet, though she couldn’t help casting a furtive, guilty glance towards her already-behind-schedule article, the cursor blinking accusingly from the exact same place on the page it had been at the start of Lena and Andrea’s extra long “working lunch” (a working lunch that had – Kara couldn’t help overhearing – involved spending a good half of it or more reminiscing about old boarding school hijinks without so much as a word of actual business talk exchanged).
She was so busy taking in the empty boxes of (extremely high end) take out sushi still scattered across the table that it was a moment before she realised there was something… off about this meeting.
Instead of delivering a few clipped words of command followed by a prompt dismissal the way she usually would, Andrea’s stern expression had melted into a genuine-seeming sympathetic smile as she leaned back against her (Cat’s) desk, fingers tapping what would to anyone else have been a near-inaudible tattoo against its edge.
‘Do you know why I asked you here today, Kara?’
‘Because my article is late?’ Kara suggested, trying to head off trouble before it could begin. ‘I know I said this morning, but I’m nearly done, I just need-’
‘It’s not the article – although since you’ve been nearly done since I first asked how you were getting on at 10am I did think you’d have it ready for my review by now – but no. I called you in here because I have an assignment for you. It’s an important one, and I need you to try to see it as an opportunity to learn, and do your best to make the most of it. Do you think you can do that?’
Kara perked up at once. A new assignment, especially an important one with learning opportunities, would actually be exactly what she needed to distract herself from-
Well, from everything else that was going on in her life at the moment.
‘Of course I can! What do you want me to do?’
Andrea sighed, and though her expression remained unchanged, the tempo of her finger-tapping increased from a steady 90bpm to a more frenetic 180.
‘I’ve arranged for you to attend a seminar next week on appropriate workplace conduct, with particular regards to sexual harassment.’
‘You- I- what-?’ Kara stammered, so completely taken aback that if it had been a physical possibility for her, she would have been convinced she had misheard.
‘Andrea, I haven’t harassed anyone!’
‘You didn’t intend to do it, I understand that, but intentions and outcome are not the same thing. It’s standard in every case of reported sexual harassment, no matter how mild you might have considered your actions to be, for the employee in question to attend a seminar. It’s a way for us to make sure that everyone who works here – and their guests – can enjoy a safe, mutually respectful environment. I’m sure that’s what you want too, isn’t it?’
Kara shook her head slowly – not to deny the overall point (because yeah, obviously she agreed that no one should be sexually harassed at work, she wasn’t a monster), but because the idea of applying it to her of all people made no sense. She was super respectful. She was like, the most respectful. If Catco held a contest for the person least likely to sexually harass someone, it would be a tie between Kara Danvers and that guy from finance whose species reproduced asexually and didn’t even have a concept of sexual attraction, let alone actual-
Anyway, the point was, she would never.
She put her hands on her hips and glared back at her boss, chin jutting in defiance.
‘Who reported me? Because I can guarantee that they’re either lying, or mistaken.’
‘Is that right?’ Andrea cocked an eyebrow (though without the impressive level of control and finesse that Lena could manage with the same gesture, Kara couldn’t help noticing).
‘Then explain to me why, earlier today, I personally witnessed you barge uninvited into a closed office where I was having lunch with a guest, and try to pressure her into going into the stairwell with you?’
Wait.
What?
‘You mean Lena?’ Kara sputtered, ‘I just asked to talk to her! Since when is that sexual harassment?’
‘I would say demanded, more than asked, but regardless of the semantics, you then refused to take no for an answer, refused to leave when asked, and stated your intention to continue your advances in future, no matter how unwelcome they might be.’ Andrea said, ticking off each point on her fingers. ‘If you can’t see that that’s inappropriate, it just goes to prove my point about how sorely needed this intervention is.’
For a full 10 seconds after that, Kara didn’t dare do anything but hold herself rigidly controlled, every ounce of her attention focused on not breaking anything (or anyone, with particular reference to Andrea Rojas, who although no longer smiling, was still gazing at Kara with a sickeningly sympathetic look, like she was looking down on her from her comfy position as Lena’s new best friend, and she pitied her). She closed her eyes against the suspiciously kiss-shaped faint red smudge marking the otherwise perfectly porcelain skin of Andrea’s cheekbone, and just breathed.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
In-
‘Lena is my best friend.’ She tried again, sounding impressively calm to her own ears despite the fact that just below the surface her blood was still boiling like an active volcano on the brink of eruption.
‘I know she’s mad at me right now, and okay, maybe I should have listened when she said she didn’t want to talk, but I wasn’t harassing her. She knows I would never, ever hurt her.’
As soon as the words came out of her own mouth they hit Kara like a truck to the chest, and it was all she could do not to flinch away from them. Because who was she kidding? Of course she had hurt Lena.
She had hurt her so badly that the two of them had been shattering and re-shattering the shards of each other’s hearts ever since, and just a few days ago when Lena had offered her a way to make things right (a terrible way that would never work and would probably make everything a whole lot worse for the entire world when things inevitably went wrong, but a way, all the same), she had had to hurt her all over again.
Claiming that she never had – that she never would – was the grossest of injustices to all the pain they had both been enduring ever since Lex’s death.
But still, it hadn’t been like that.
It had never been like that.
‘Did she really report me?’ Kara asked at last, the question wobbling more than she would have liked in the face of Andrea’s apparently boundless composure.
‘No,’ Andrea admitted. ‘Actually, I reported you. What I witnessed this afternoon made it clear to me that you need some training on appropriate boundaries and consent, so I thought it best for us to nip this in the bud now, before anything more serious happens.’
Kara let out an exhale that was half relieved sigh that it hadn’t been Lena after all, half frustrated growl that they were here in the first place, and just barely resisted the urge to stamp her foot. Now that she knew the complaint hadn’t come from Lena, this whole situation was back to being plain annoying. And stupid. And just- GAAAH.
‘Andrea, this is ridiculous!’ she exploded. ‘You know it wasn’t like that, you’re taking everything out of context!’
‘No means no, Kara, no matter what the context. That’s something you’ll learn in your seminar on Tuesday.’
‘I am not going to a seminar!’
‘It’s not optional. Either you attend, take what you learn on board, and you can put this behind you without a black mark on your record, or you don’t, and this will escalate to a disciplinary. It’s up to you which you choose, but I take harassment in my company very seriously, and I would suggest you accept the option I’m giving you to resolve things informally.’
‘But-’
‘That will be all, thank you Ms Danvers.’
With that Andrea pivoted to seat herself behind her desk, her fingers beginning a rapid tapping at the keyboard so immediately that Kara suspected she was just typing nonsense to make the point that she should leave now.
After another long, furious moment she did, ears already straining to pick up even the barest hint of trouble out in the city.
She needed something to punch.
no pressure tags: @fazedlight, @theredcapeofk, @cynicalrainbows, @kj-yikes
I've tagged people I know probably have wips, but if you want to play and I haven't tagged you, please join in and tag me, I'd love to see your snippets!
#except some of us are scared of the deepfryer#glowybait#waybait#makibait#<- side tags#shallow fried dough then?#then we can argue about the classification of said fried dough
okay so are we starting with ‘what is the difference between pan fry shallow fry and deep fry’ 🔥
... Now you've got me reading about different types of frying and how each one cooks food (apparently if the temperature of the oil is correct and correctly maintained, the interior portion of the food cooks in steam generated by the heat of the oil when you deep fry it. Who knew??)
Anyway YES lets start there.
And then as a follow up (...a few follow ups) I would like to know:
Have you ever tried to fry something using a different type of frying to its norm? (for example, have you tried shallow frying a doughnut? Deep frying a potato cake?) How did it go??
What's the weirdest thing you have ever deep fried/been served that was deep fried?
What's the weirdest thing you HAVEN'T tried fried but REALLY WANT TO?? (for tastiness or for science, your choice)
@makicarn, @iglowindark, do you have thoughts on frying??
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.....
#maybe i'm just incredibly asexual but i will never get why people focus on the fancy (....low-cut) dresses when the soft sweaters are there#she looks so cozy and soft!!!!
honestly this???? i mean
LOOK AT THIS??????????
SOFT COZY SWEATER KATIE MCGRATH IS THE BEST MOST PRETTIEST AND LOVELY KATIE MCGRATH AND I WILL DIE ON THAT HILL !!!
The game: post gifs of my top 10 favorite TV shows without naming them and then tag ten people!
Thanks for the tag, @makicarn & @sideguitars ! I’m tagging (randomly & no pressure & sorry if you’ve been hit before) @wilfriede, @littlemousejelly, @asamiontop, @barillapasta, @casualkoalatea, @deadbiwrites, @damienns, @dancedance-resolution, @eqt-95 and @gay-art-vibes!
i was suddenly reminded by @makicarn’s tags on your post of this OTHER set of tags by @makicarn:
#more importantly#quinn#does mrs. fischer also think sam is a harlot
🤓🎣
what a FANTASTIC question.
the short answer is 'no, mrs. fischer does NOT think sam is a harlot.'
but not because her reckless treatment of clothes doesn't fall under 'harlot activities' because boy oh boy it does.
instead, it's simply because mrs. fischer doesn't know sam exists. unlike kara, sam knows what it's like to live out of her car, to rub pennies together, to hustle. things like paying for tailoring, while totally within her tax bracket now, is still something she can't bring herself to do. when ruby was starving, the last thing on sam's mind was getting a patch fixed or a button replaced. which means she's gotten especially good at repairing her own clothes.
even more of a reason is because sam is freaking the heck out that all of her clothes are magically buttonless. she's... hang on let me just:
- - - - - -
"Ruby, if you aren't ready in the next five minutes I am going to toss that phone in a blender and drop its sad remains over the balcony-"
"I'm up, jeez," called Ruby's sluggish voice from behind the door. "Why choose violence so early?"
Sam shoved her toothbrush back in her mouth, a tiny smirk of victory made less effective by the drool of toothpaste on her chin. She traipsed her way into her bedroom then into her private bathroom then further into her walk-in-closet. It was still so much space to get used to.
Toothbrush hanging idly in her mouth, she whipped through hanger after hanger of blouses. Blacks and greys and creams and off-whites... maybe Ruby was right. Maybe her wardrobe did need a splash of color.
Though What it needed now though were less empty hangers.
Which was... odd.
She looked again. The click of hangers rapping against each other faster this time.
Odd.
Again, faster. Her eyes glanced to her hamper.
Odd.
It was overflowing. It was never overflowing.
She huffed and marched over to the nest of clothes. A yank sent an avalanche of fabric to the ground. Sam held up the first garment.
Odd.
The second, third, and fourth were all the same. All missing buttons. All frayed with broken threads. All in a state Sam certainly would have remembered leaving them in.
She did not have time for this today. She had meetings lined up and lunch with Lena and Ruby's recital and... the list was endless.
It didn't matter. It was a problem for later. She dropped the shirts back onto the ground and reached for the closest blouse on the rack. Disgarding her toothbrush and giving her mouth a quick rinse on the way to her bedroom, she didn't think twice about the ease with which the blouse came off the hanger. Or the way it fell open when she dropped it over her head. It only raised a red flag when her fingers grazed the edges of fabric and felt... nothing.
Sam looked down, a breath caught in her throat.
Odd.
So odd that it sent her tearing through her bathroom cupboard, ripping bottles of moisturizers, make-up, and cleaning supplies onto the floor.
"Mom? Mom we're gonna be late-"
"Just a second," she called from the floor, fingers shaking, thread wavering, needle trembling.
A prick. An instinctive hiss. A quick press to her mouth.
She pulled her finger back; examined; scowled.
There wasn't a mark. There wasn't any pain at all.
Alex: How fiercely protective she is. Listen, I know this is a point of contention in the fandom, but as an older sibling myself, who was blamed for everything my younger sibling did, I GET HER. And yet, there is no doubt that she loves Kara wholeheartedly. She loves her people completely, and she's extremely loyal to them. (And I get SO mad, because the writers used her so inconsistently that half of the shit she does doesn't make sense for her character, but I digress). But also, I love how quickly she folds when it comes to Kelly, like girl, stand up 😂
Kara: I love my goofy Kara. To have gone through all the trauma she did as a child (even when they ultimately gave her part of her planet and her parents back, she still went to the loss and trauma), and still have that joy and wonder. Her love for musicals, games and movies, and the will to still see the good in people. Please, I love her.
3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?
Alex: I guess when she wants to force Kara to date useless men, and Idek if I can really blame HER, when I know (and everyone can tell) it's basically behind the scene bullshit... And that's a very particular Alex problem, because if the writers wanted to push X narrative they would always use her. So yeah, hard to say otherwise.
Kara: To quote Miss Luthor; the God complex. Baby, not everything has to be you. And that kinda bleeds into everything she does, because for a good chunk of the show, in her own eyes, she cannot do wrong, and she's always right (particularly s3 and 5). Her hypocrisy is astounding. And yet I still love her for it all, because that's exactly what makes her interesting.
