#if your sense of what kara/lena are is coming mainly from gifsets and not episodes of the show

[swashbucklery]

I see where you're going with comparing Laudna/Imogen rift to Kara/Lena, but (and maybe I'm just really biased as someone who hates Kara/Lena) Laudna/Imogen's rift feels much more like something that actually ties into their larger stories, as well as their relationship. Laudna has to contend now with the question of how much autonomy she has from her patron and has to contend with the pact she herself made, along with the obvious relationship issue. And Imogen has to contend with losing another thread in the quest to figure her powers out, while also pushing herself further towards already very black-and-white thinking and isolation.

Maybe I'm just feeling like there's more intentionality to the CR plot than the Supergirl one.

I'm really kind of enjoying the possibility of two people who are incredibly (unhealthily) close to each other having a rift which forces them away from each other, and further into individual stories, before (possibly? hopefully?) coming back to each other having changed themselves.

Obviously no judgment, because that's not the kind of story for everyone (if it ends up happening that way and Opal/Laudna is a fantastic conceit!), I just don't necessarily see the Kara/Lena comparison. I do think that's because the storytelling styles (medium, genre, and intentionality) are so different.

Sorry this turned super long.

Anon I think you're totally welcome to love Imogen/Laudna exactly as it is; you don't need to love it any less because I see parallels to a ship that's not your thing.

I'm going to leave aside the points you brought up about narrative depth, mostly because I don't think it's necessarily a fair comparison to make. If each CR campaign lasts 100 hours at approximately 4 hours per episode, of course they're going to have more space for nuance than a television show that has to fit everything for all the characters into less than 20 hours per season.

I think the point I was trying to make was like - I've been reflecting for a few days on this because I like Imogen/Laudna (in theory, I've seen about 6 eps of C3 and at my current pace of one episode a month it's not looking gr8 for me to be caught up to canon ever) but there's been something about like. Not the rift per se but the way fandom is reacting to the rift that's just been getting under my skin, and I was having trouble figuring out what it was. The thing that clicked was that there are thematic elements and in-narrative tropes that feel similar, and that there are patterns to which elements fans are latching onto and amplifying and which elements they're leaving on the table that also feel similar.

The themes that really pinged as similar for me were actually some of the themes you identified, as well as some others: two people who are very enmeshed in a way that is both good and bad for them! Two complex and somewhat parallel individual journeys with identity and the ways that individual identity journeys have the potential to put them at odds with each other OR make them more compatible than ever! Complex (magical and nonmagical) powers that can be both a gift and a burden! Deep individual traumas that affect how each party tackles that bond! Black-and-white thinking on the concept of trust and what honesty can and should mean! A complicated relationship with boundaries!

That said: you can love Imogen/Laudna, acknowledge that it has similar tropes to Kara/Lena, and love only one without tearing the other up. There are infinite ships and only a handful of tropes and it’s natural that there’s going to be overlap. I’m the first person to admit that I’ve got at best a complicated relationship with Kara/Lena as a ship, and that there are many valid criticisms of it, but the ‘don’t yuck my yum’ rules of fandom still very much apply.