#alex brainy and alex would all be tech/crew

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Been thinking about another Broadway AU where our Supergirl gals are cast in Six the Musical. So of course I had to cast the roles...

Ready? Let's go.

Catherine of Aragon, played by Lena Luthor

Regal, poised, but stubborn as hell. She'll get what she's due, and once it's hers, she holds onto it.

Anne Boleyn, played by Eve Tessmacher

Young, flirty, and has no qualms of usurping a queen. However, her teasing may eventually get her into trouble...

Jane Seymour, played by Kara Danvers

Though she loves with her whole heart, she doesn't dive in blindly. Her passion comes with the full acceptance of her love's flaws, and chooses to love them anyway.

Anna of Cleves, played by M'gann Morzz

Jilted and cast aside, she gets her revenge by living her best life. She knows her worth and enjoys the pleasures in life.

Katherine Howard, played by Nia Nal

A young coquette who doesn't let love get her down; she's quick to move on after a breakup. Perhaps too trusting, her intimacy with the wrong men will ultimately lead to her demise.

Catherine Parr, played by Kelly Olsen

Strong, educated, independent. Already a widow, her choice of a second life partner is uprooted when the king takes an interest in life. Trapped in the politics of court, she has only one mission.... to survive.

[mimeparadox]

More James musings

So I once again made the mistake of visiting James’ tag--imagine that, someone who likes his story visiting his tag--and saw a post which I felt was emblematic of a lot of the comments I’ve seen regarding this week’s Supergirl, and James’ story this season in general--and specifically, how disingenuous they feel, either ignoring canonical details, holding him to a standard no other character is held to, or both.  Among the arguments the post made was that James was somehow terrible for going to the Child of Liberty he knew and had a relationship with in an attempt to get him to stop, instead of using Catco resources to warn the city about the attack.  

I’m sorry, what? 

The episode gives us an explicit deadline: there are twenty minutes between the moment Team Supergirl figured out the COL’s plan and the moment it was to be carried out. Even if James could head to Catco and prepare a warning they could broadcast in twenty minutes--difficult, with a Thanksgiving skeleton crew!--what is he going to say? He has no direct evidence that the Children of Liberty are responsible for the tagging or that they’re planning out an attack, and even less that he can divulge without implicating Kara and/or the D.E.O. Saying something like “Aliens! Could there be invisible marks in your house?” isn’t likely to be terribly credible, or helpful, particularly since infrared tech isn’t exactly a household item.  A broadcast warning wouldn’t be useless--at least some aliens would decide to screw the risks and just leave before the attack comes--but it’s a terrible plan A, and as journalism, it’d be hella irresponsible--not quite shouting fire in a crowded theater, but close.  

As for James’ larger plan, I fail to see the problem, besides the fact that the writers have been wishy-washy regarding what it’s supposed to be.  As executed, though, it seems like the sort of thing that would be unobjectionable, but for the fact that it’s James executing it. Establishing connections with the low level guys, in the hopes that they’ll lead him to the big guy? Standard operating procedure in anti-organized-crime operations. Ingratiating oneself with a group and then feeding intel to the opposing parties? Exactly what a double agent does. What’s more, what many of the people attacking James apparently refuse to acknowledge is that it has been effective--take James away, and the Thanksgiving massacre would have been far worse. The problem, it seems to me, is less that James is doing it, but that the D.E.O. isn’t, and probably wouldn’t have, even without the Colonel Hayley factor. Heck, Lena could probably hire someone to do it for her, and the plot has yet to explain why she hasn’t.  And for all the complaints about James validating the Children of Liberty and giving them a platform--which are valid concerns and something the series could stand to better tackle, even if the matter is above the series’ weight class*--it’s worth noting that nothing he’s done so far has involved CatCo or his identity as the Guardian (although that seems to change next episode), and that this whole confrontation with his source ended with him punching him out when he was about to use violence.  I thought we were all for Nazi-punching?

A lot of the arguments against James also suggest that he is outside his lane, and that he is acting out of ego, and generally that his reasons for saving lives--and again, he is saving lives--aren’t good enough. These are partly based on canon, and his expressed desire to more directly help people, but they’d also carry more weight if it weren’t for the complete silence regarding Alex, Kara, and Brainy’s decision to go against Hayley’s orders and investigate the COL anyway, even when it is explicitly not their lane. Why do they get to decide that they and only they can do unauthorized and reckless action in service of a perceived greater good, and not him?  It feels incredibly hypocritical, in a universe of super-heroes and vigilantes.  And again, it’s not as if he’s not actually helping--again, people are alive because of him. But apparently that’s not good enough for some reason. 

----

* And that’s even without taking into considerations the factors that make the COL not a perfect fit for actual hate groups--the alien invasions, the fact that the aliens do have superpowers, the country has no clear way to deal with them when they do crime (the D.E.O. is supposed to be secret, after all) and that a single alien infiltrated the highest office in the United States. It’d be one thing if the world-building had done the work of showing how exactly they became integrated into the fabric of the U.S., but it hasn’t, instead preferring to use them as immigrants in funny make-up. 

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Phantom Zone AU where Lena uses an exosuit and a transmat portal to go to the PZ and find Kara. Her tech gets her pretty close to Kara, actually, but between the short search and the inevitable fight with some wraiths/resentful PZ residents, they're there for what feels like maaaaybe a few days. Which are long enough, but even so, by the time they tumble back through the portal back to Earth, they discover that time in the PZ passes differently than on Earth.

Because it's been several years since Lena left.

Maybe the Tower isn't even the Superfriends' base of operations anymore. Maybe they step through the portal into a residence housing a bunch of college kids. Maybe Lex found the Tower and destroyed it, having turned the public against them and other vigilantes/aliens.

Either way, nothing is the same.

While Lex had announced his fear and concern about Lena and Kara's absences to the public, he had privately claimed responsibility for Lena's disappearance, taunting them that he had killed her (maybe Lena had left a bit of mess behind her when she left, which had supported his claims-- along with the fact that Lena couldn't possible be stupid enough to go into the PZ alone so it doesn't even occur to them that she would).

So they believe Lena dead, and with their best chance of getting Kara back 6ft under, they believed Kara lost for good.

Which means Kara finds her sister barely holding it together, broken up with Kelly and her plans for a family up in flames.

J'onn isn't faring much better, for having lost yet another daughter and been unable to help the one girl he has left.

Nia and Brainy have broken up, but are faring better than J'onn and Alex.

Andrea has joined the Superfriends as Acrata in a bid to exact revenge on Lex for killing Lena. She's the only one whose anguish is focused on Lena instead of Kara. (Most of the others simply count Lena as a victim of Kara being gone, the first of so many that they've become numb to it all.)

All of this leads to Kara and Lena having to work together to put it all right. Kara focuses on helping the aliens and others dispossessed by the smiling stranglehold Lex has on the city, while also trying to salvage what's left of her sister.

Lena focuses on Lex directly, as she's the only one who stands a chance in squaring off with him directly, both physically and intellectually. And she's wildly successful, considering that Lex has no idea she's back and blames Acrata for his private journals going missing and his manipulative treatment of Lena while growing up making a splash on the front page news.

Lena upgrades her exosuit to exceed Lex's, so when she and Kara finally reveal themselves, they're well matched. It's still a tough battle, but Lex's lack of concern for collateral damage not only puts Lena and Kara at a disadvantage as they try to mitigate his recklessness, but also cements his villainy in the public's eye, as both news crews and cellphones capture footage of his rampage.

When he's defeated-- with Lena walking away after deciding not to kill, only to have Kara incinerate him with her heat vision when Lex when he tries to shoot Lena in the back-- they're the two who are left to pick up the pieces.

Lena takes over at LuthorCorp again (which soon becomes L-Corp, as it should be), and Kara works with the disenfranchised to rebuild and accommodate alien/disabled needs. It takes years, but they succeed in returning National City to its rightful place as a beacon of hope and acceptance in the world.

This time, when the next statue of Supergirl is erected, Lena is cast in bronze right beside her.