I've watched exactly one episode of CBS's Supergirl--the one where she meets the Flash from The Flash (CW)--and fell in love with her and her show. It's so ... fun. And yet at the same time it couldn't exist without its deep character relationships and badass heroes of all shapes and sizes and power levels. I love it.

I've been binging fanfic. It reminds me a lot of the peak of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman fandom, in terms of enthusiasm and writing skill/plot maturity. I haven't been watching the show due to time. Once all the episodes are on Netflix I can binge Season 1. And given that I was first introduced to the fandom by the AO3 archive, I think it was inevitable that I'd become a Cat/Kara shipper. OMG, they're lovely. Canon, of course, is giving us Kara/Jimmy Olsen, which is giving me an unpleasant Smallville vibe most of the time. (And I'm not just in it for the femmeslash. I'd also prefer Kara/Barry Allen. Or Kara/Anyone Not Jimmy, come to that.)

(There's also a characterization issue w/r/t Kara keeping her secret from Cat via use of Martian shapeshifting mind-screw that's a real thing, but I won't get into that here. ilyena_sylph and I have discussed it at length though. She and I have deep feelings on the matter. As someone who read the Young Justice comic books and remembers Greta Hayes, I'll also never be comfortable with Supergirl or anyone else working so closely with any incarnation of the DEO, but I digress.)

So, yeah. After reading so much fanfic, and given my own background with the comics, I've been getting ideas. I know I'll almost surely never have time to work on them anytime soon, so I'm archiving them here. Tumblr prompt posts are huge in this fandom, and I'm not really sure how those work, but by all means please feel free to run with one of these if you like.

If anyone takes one, please let me know and send a link so I can read it. :) I've included my brainstorming and details, but you certainly don't have to use them all/any of them. it's more the basic idea I'm throwing out there. I'd love to see multiple people's take on the same thing.

The list for this round:

1. Extended Stay: For whatever reason, Barry can't get back home at the end of the crossover ep, and is stuck on Kara's Earth (Earth-3? Earth-CBS?). Maybe the tachyon chest device he was wearing got smashed. So he's stuck there until he can get fast enough on his own to breach the dimensional barrier and get back to Earth-1. As far as Earth-1 is concerned, he's only gone for a few seconds (just as in canon). But for Barry, weeks/months/years pass--anywhere up to 10 years, so at most he'd be in his mid-30s at the peak of his powers when he went home). So he's a dimensional refugee and has to make a new life for himself as both Barry Allen and the Flash, all the while afraid that Zoom is destroying his home (since he doesn't know about the time differential).

• How does he grow?
• How does Kara grow given how much they obviously cared about each other and influenced each other even as friends--and Barry's Older Brother Mentor vibe with her.
• Does Barry keep trusting the DEO the way she does? Barry's interactions with Earth-1 General Eiling and ARGUS have been not-so-great, but not terrible, yet, either. (Eiling was presented as a one-off bigoted nutcase, but Amanda Waller's ARGUS is horrifying, even if Barry didn't have any direct contact with it.)
• Does Kara/Barry happen?
• Does Kara end up with someone else and Barry find someone else or spend a decade pining after Iris (I hope not)?
• How will Team Flash react to an older, more confident and powerful Barry reappearing after being gone for just a second or two?
• Does Kara come back with him to make Zoom's downfall that much more awesome and entertaining? (Because after months/years, I can't imagine Kara just letting Barry go by himself if the last thing he says is that he has to go fight a nightmarish, world-conquering speed demon from hell.)
• There are so many directions you could go with this.

2. The Fugitive from Krypton: So, in the comics, the DEO was perfectly happy to treat metahuman children as things to be dehumanized, experimented on like lab rats, and weaponized. The ones that couldn't be controlled were hauled off to something called the WABE, where they were presumably killed/dissected for evil science. They were not nice people. The comic incarnation of Young Justice forms almost solely to protect Greta Hayes, one of their escapees and one of the world's most powerful metahumans, from getting recaptured by people who refer to her consistently as "it" and other even more unpleasant things while they torture her. So I was incredibly thrown when I watched Supergirl to be presented with a "nice" DEO who were Kara's allies/trainers/support team. Until it was revealed that the Supergirl-verse DEO was just as evil and twisted as the comics mainline version until J'onn replaced and masqueraded as Hank Henshaw to take it over. It's a huge deal in the show when J'onn is outed as an alien and has to flee, and General Lane--his usual xenophobic, horrifying self, who waterboards Kryptonians with kryptonite injection torture--is going to put one his allies in control. Especially horrifying since he's of the mind that Kara is just as bad as the evil aliens she fights, and humanity would be best served by her being ... contained, at best. In canon, J'onn uses his mind powers to make sure that doesn't happen, by persuading the top brass to appoint Lucy Lane, who is not a xenophobic bigot nutcase, to command the DEO.

• Now, let's assume for whatever reason, that doesn't happen. Kara, not being down for being treated like an it, or a living weapon, or otherwise being forced into the DEO's servitude ("Here's a list of people we want killed. Get on it, alien.") lest she be imprisoned forever or killed or turned into a lab experiment, flees.
• It's entirely likely the DEO uses its influence to frame Kara for some sort of horribad act so the world thinks she's a villain and understands why "the good guys" with the guns and black helicopters are hunting her.
• This places, at minimum, Cat Grant, Carter Grant, and Jimmy and Winn in huge danger, as the DEO knows they're her chief allies and the first place she'll go for help.
• At minimum, Cat and Carter end up on the run with Kara, mostly because she has to rescue them from the DEO and its not safe for them to go anywhere else. Given how much they both care about Kara, I think their upset at having to be on the run would be tempered to some degree by outrage/fear at how she's being targeted, but still, this is not a recipe for happy times.
• Cat/Kara pre-shipping/ship launching would be very interesting under these conditions, but if platonic Supercat is your thing, that would also be magnificent. Carter struggling with what's going on around him and trying to reconcile the DEO chasing Kara with Kara being his hero would also be very interesting.
• The usual question that comes up with a lot of my Supergirl plot-bunnies and meta about the series: where the hell is Clark?

3. Studies in Xeno-Oncology: This one is more my reaction to the incredible, hair-pulling out stupidity of the DEO using constant Kryptonite exposure to make it possible for their human agents to train Kara. Put aside for a second that the best person in the world to train Kara to use her powers to the greatest extent is Clark Kent, and his buddy Bruce Wayne would be happy to teach her how to fight like a human for when she needs to do that (and hey, if Diana's around ... ). The DEO surely loves this also because it teaches Kara that she's no real match for humans determined to hurt her, if they have the right tools. The government hates uppity aliens. The show seems to think Kryptonite is merely an off-switch for Kryptonian powers, but that's not correct. It's radioactive. It doesn't strip Kryptonians of their powers so much as instantly and viciously painfully give them radiation poison that puts them in too much pain and causes enough instant cellular damage that the solar-absorption processes that enable their powers can't work correctly. So, consider what the DEO is doing in their training rooms:

• (a) Constantly bombarding Kara with Kryptonite radiation to damage her cells enough that her superpowers cannot fully manifest, but not so much that she can't still function;
• (b) Putting her in training simulations where her body takes varying degrees of non-lethal damage;
• (c) While her irradiated body tries to heal itself via normal, Kryptonian yellow-sun-accelerated healing processes:
• (d) which include (now irradiated) cells attempting to multiply themselves at a prodigious, superhuman rate to repair the damage
• (e) Kara seems fine, and they apparently do this to her daily, at least
  • BUT: we know from real world science that when radiation poisoning happens, it causes cellular mutations in cells spawned after the poisoning occurs, and this is happening to Kara over and over and over and over and with her superhuman healing compromised
  • IN CONCLUSION: Cellular mutations left unchecked, even when they're just happening at little bit at a time, are how cancer happens
• In sum:
  • The DEO's preoccupation with poisoning Kara (just a little bit) so they can regularly beat her up while she is in "my cells are on fire" pain, which must be great for her mental health,  do training, without any consideration to the realities of radiation poisoning, gives Kara cancer, likely either already spread throughout her body or in  position that it's likely to spread quickly once it's found given how rapidly her accelerated immune system/healing reproduces cells even when not pressed by physical damage.
  • Chemo and radiation and most other human means of curing cancer will not work on Kara's invulnerable body, not without the application of more Kryptonite, which given that it's already given her cancer, is not on.
• The big questions:
  
  • What do?
  • More importantly, how do the people that love Kara deal with this, and how does it change their attitudes about the DEO, which they've been trusting to safely train Kara all this time? I'm sure people like General Lane will actually be pretty thrilled with the news.
• I like to imagine that Cat is the one who figures out Kara is sick first, because she has experience of seeing someone developing cancer or something similar and she's Cat Grant, investigative reporter/Queen of All Media/Badass, and this messes with her head a great deal and scares the hell out of her, because of course Cat knows Kara is Supergirl, and Supergirl isn't supposed to get cancer or be mortal and sick. And she'll have fun explaining this to Carter.
  
  • Feels everywhere!
  • Platonic/shippy Supercat to taste.
• And also: Where the hell is Clark? (Given the number of terrible things that happen to Kara in this show without an appearance from Clark, this is kind of constant refrain in most of my plot bunnies.)

4. The Au Pair from Krypton (Superman Returns/Supergirl Fusion): Crossover AU. Superman leaves Earth after Superman II for the five year trip to go see if Krypton survived, just as in canon. Lois finds out she's pregnant, just as in canon. But before she meets and begins courting Richard White, and even before she writes her "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman" editorial, Kara Zor-El escapes from the Phantom Zone and arrives on Earth, looking for Kal-El. She goes to the Fortress of Solitude and manages to track down the only Kryptonian life sign on earth--which is presently gestating inside a human woman. Kara is 13 and of average intelligence by Kryptonian standards (which would make her a genius on Earth), and still hurting from the realization she failed to protect her cousin, who grew up without her. It doesn't take her long to realize the baby must be Kal-El's. Kal-El is missing, and the last heir of the House of El is unprotected. That's totally not on.

• Kara's already a 13 year old, with most of the education Kal-El got in Superman (1978) during his 12 years in the Fortress' tutoring program. It wouldn't take Kara nearly as long to work with Jor-El's hologram to get caught up on Earth culture. Probably less than a year, just doing it at night.
  • Kara would identify herself to Lois as Kal-El's cousin before she knew a thing about who Clark Kent was. So Lois has a traumatized, teenage alien girl determined to be her body-guard/live in babysitter, and wondering what the hell happened to her idiot baby cousin and why he went off to go find a planet Kara saw explode before her eyes. This whole situation kind of blows Lois' seething resentment of Kal-El (that led her to write "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman") to pieces.
  • Lois is too paranoid about such things to ever let the DEO or any other government branch anywhere near Kara, and Kara wouldn't let them anywhere near the baby.
  • Lois and Kara figure out together that Clark is Kal-El, and end up talking things out with Martha Kent while Lois is still pregnant. Martha would be thrilled she's going to be a grandmother; ready to strangle Clark for getting a woman pregnant out of wedlock and then disappearing like a moron, and perfectly happy to go along with the Jor-El AI's plan to set up a "Kara Kent" identity that would make Kara legally Clark's cousin.
  • Lois still writes "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman," but it's not nearly so much of a hit-piece as it was implied to be in canon, and more a self-examination of herself and society for being overly-dependent on someone who everyone sort of forgot had his own emotional wants and needs, so they were totally unprepared when he needed to leave to take care of himself. (This is the article I actually wanted to see her write, and one I think would've been award-worthy. Much more so than the "The Reason You Suck" article she seemed to actually do in canon.
  • By the time she's 16-17, Luthor/Zod/Non/Evil Lincoln is back and escalates things to the point that Kara realizes the world needs SOMEONE with an S on their chest. Perhaps Luthor targets baby Jason somehow, realizing he must be Kal-El's son? Enter Supergirl.
• Richard White: I suppose it's possible Lois still ends up with him, if she's angry enough with Clark/feels like he's not ever coming back, but I think it's much less likely he's with her here. But I'd hope he's still around. I loved his character.
• Superman Returns: and is greeted with joy by the people of Earth. And ends up hearing about his cousin first from the press corps covering the space shuttle/plane rescue. Awkward/wut-filled family reunion fun for everyone.
• Cat and Kara: Cat is always shown as being Lois' rival, so trying to set up a platonic or romantic relationship with Kara in this AU would be tricker, but I'd love to see it still done. Cat and Kara are such a key part of this incarnation of Supergirl. You could dial things back a bit with the timeline, so when Kara is about 15-16, Lois is about 26-28 (how old I think she must've been in the Superman II era), Cat is an intern/Perry's assistant/junior gossip columnist at about 18-19. Still squickly until Kara's a bit older if you're gonna ship it, but feasible. Plus, I kinda love AU stories where Cat and Kara are close in age and younger, because it means Kara tends to be there when Cat has baby Carter.

So, there's some plotunnies, and the overthought reasoning behind them. And now they're off my chest and will hopefully stop whispering to me when I'm trying to do other things, like make money to feed/clothe myself and keep the water and electricity on.

Well, after a December so crazy I didn't have time to write and not feeling the slightest bit coherently creative in any real way for most of January (if you're wondering why, see my previous post), I'm very happy to have written 783 words of my next installment of the When Not Distracted by Kittens and Rubies series.

It's not the most earth-shatteringly wonderful thing in the world, but it's great to be writing something again, and especially to be unplugging at least part of my brain from the less than pleasant start of 2016.

Stand by for something to be posted hopefully by the end of the week.

As part of the writing challenge I set myself for November 2015 (more on that later), I decided to actually run with the deranged plot bunny I got that inspired this entry on how one might take X-Men: Evolution Rogue and Nightcrawler seriously as a crack-pairing (derangement described previously, here). It's all a matter of timing, really. I'm going to say it's a tribute to all those poor, cried-out-in-terror-and-were-suddenly-jossed-as-no-one-has-been-jossed-before Luke/Leia shippers who were OTP'ing them before Return of the Jedi hit theatres. This is like that, but without the blood relationship to foul things up most traumatically.

In a sign that I will very likely be that crazy uncle who has a lot of fun with your kids but whom you can't trust them with overnight lest they end up accidentally enrolled in clown-assassin school (in Norway), I not only came up with a story fitting this plot bunny, but have a whole series exploring this universe taking shape in my head. Also, I blame senmut for being vaguely encouraging when I posted about this before. As the Joker once said, "madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little ... push." I'm not gonna pretend this isn't mad-crazy crackfic, even if I can't help writing it seriously.

(In all sincerity, senmut, thank you for encouraging me to write this. It's the first fic I've finished in at least a year, and I actually am having a lot of fun in this weird little universe.)

I'm going to link to the series page on AO3 given that the story summary doesn't really make a lot of sense without the series summary to explain how we got here. Enjoy. :)

AU Series Summary: When Not Distracted by Kittens and Rubies

An AU wherein Kurt gives up his crush on Kitty much sooner, and is drawn to Rogue instead. She appreciates that he's not completely oblivious to her own feelings, and the two recluses stumble around each other with all the shared flustered, fumbling lack of social experience they can muster.

Somehow they meet in the middle, and by the time they find out they were supposed to be related, it’s far too late…for Mystique’s plans, at least.

Inspired by Luke and Leia’s attraction in Empire Strikes Back, and the classic question of what might have happened if they never knew the truth and there was no Han.

Title: A Touch Unexpected (1340 words)
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution (Season 1 AU)
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler)/Rogue
Characters: Kurt Wagner, Rogue, Scott Summers, Toad
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Alternate Universe; Crack; Crack Treated Seriously; Mystique's Timing is Really Terrible When it Comes to Being Honest With Her Children

I've been online doing fannish things on the internet roughly since America Online began offering a flat rate monthly fee. So, without giving my precise age, I think it's safe to say it's been a while.

And in that time, I've written a lot of fanfic. Some of it is finished. Too much of it isn't. Most of it is a crossover of one kind or another, because I have a serious weakness for those. The challenge of making them work and balancing two or more canons so that everything fits together and examining the parallels and differences between characters that are iconic within their own fandoms is a lot of fun.

tl;dr: I have written and continue to write a lot of fanfic.

But in all that time there has been one big project that I've always wanted to do, and never managed to start. Something that's been in my head for so many years it's actually highly developed. But like trying to grab a snowflake, part of me is wary of actually trying to do it in case I destroy the (hopefully) awesomeness in my head in my attempt to make it manifest.

One fun side effect to this is the longer it lingers, the more nostalgia cred it (hopefully) accumulates.

Question: Does anyone else have one of these floating around their heads?

A relatively short (given the massive amount of brainstorming I've done on this) intro to mine is under the cut.
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