#lena honey................. why are you such a failure

[agoodluthor-blog]

          ❝ i didn’t know we were gonna be PLAYING POOL, ❞ lena says biting her lower lip anxiously. she feels like an intruder at the bar, an outsider from all the people who seemingly get along just fine and drink beer after beer carelessly. not only is she LENA LUTHOR      whom half the alien population HATE BECAUSE OF HER LAST NAME. she’s also not dressed for the occasion in the slightest, she thought they were going to have drinks and talk, which is the reason why she didn’t bother to change out of her work clothes. A TIGHT SKIRT AND HIGH HEELS are not a good combination to be playing any kind of game. ❝ i have to confess... i’ve never played it before. ❞     //     @notallbusiness

[anevolutionarymatter]

How Eliza Danvers Won a Nobel Prize

(Aka @thatsjustsupergirl​ is a bad influence. This spiraled out of control.)

Eliza was 13 when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Memories from that age were always a bit hazy. She remembers sneaking into her parents room, and overhearing that her mom had felt a breast lump and was going to the doctor. She remembers skipping through the door after a long day in the 8th grade, and stuttering to a stop at the look on her mom’s face. She was 13, and she knew that cancer was a poisonous word.

Cancer — “the disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body.” That’s the clinical definition. The problem with definitions is that they tend to fail to include what cancer means to a body, to a person, to a family. What do you do when your body is the one invading itself?

Cancer is what drove Eliza towards medicine. She remembers her mother through late nights at college, through stomach-churning study sessions in medical school, through every meticulously recorded failure in lab.

But then a little girl arrives to Earth in a pod. Five seconds after they meet, Eliza decides to push her cancer research to the backseat. She loves this little girl, and it drives her determination to understand alien physiology — to help Kara, Clark, and other aliens understand themselves.

And she loved her new work. There were so many unknowns — do aliens need vaccinations? (No, well… it depends.) What kind of nutrition does a growing alien need? What does a healthy heart sound like? Does blood even circulate the same way? What do aliens use for energy? Aliens deserved good health too.

Then, serendipitously, it was actually because of Eliza’s expertise in alien science that she was able to make a breakthrough in cancer research.

The Medusa virus was a truly terrifying creation, a devastatingly effective and desperately complex bioweapon, able to kill wide swaths of many species in one fell swoop. And unlike most viruses and bacteria, which were generally limited to infecting only a handful of species, Medusa could theoretically infect an infinite number of species. Eliza couldn’t understand how it was so efficiently lethal until she realized she had been looking at it all wrong. “Virus” was a misleading word. When Zor-El developed Medusa he created much more than a simple virus, he had developed something akin to a synthetic immune system.

Viruses have to have a “key” to gain access and cause infection, but an immune system doesn’t even need a key. It makes it simpler; it just recognizes what is “foreign” or “not self” and attacks that. So, Medusa didn’t have to recognize an infinite number of “aliens,” it only had to recognize what was “safe” and “self,” and not attack those, while attacking everything else.

(Not like me — attack.)

(Like me — no attack.)

It was brilliant. And once Eliza recognized the pattern, she realized that not only would she be able to save J’onn by reprogramming Medusa to attack any cells that were not his own, but perhaps there was a way to use Medusa to attack other cells that were “different.” To attack cancer cells.

It wasn’t as simple as she thought. It seemed easy, to just have Medusa target cancer cells like they had targeted White Martian cells in J’onn’s body. But no matter what she tried, Medusa would either attack every cell, cancerous or not, or attack no cells at all.

The problem was that cancer cells weren’t so clearly alien. Cancer was a wolf hidden in grandma’s clothes, and no one (should) want to potentially attack a grandma, so Medusa was stopped in its tracks. They would not kill without confirmation that this cancer wasn’t grandma. This was the reason why a human’s regular immune system couldn’t get rid of cancer.

But what was preventing Medusa from attacking these cells?

The realization came suddenly.

“It’s been incredibly frustrating,” Alex groused, “Winn and James keep insisting that they’re going to tell Kara about… you know, the shield… man… thing, but so far, nothing! Kara keeps wondering why they’re spending so much less time with her. I mean, Kara has been hanging out with Lena Luthor more now, which… is a whole other thing. But you know Kara, she needs constant stimulus. Between her and Maggie I feel like I barely have time to sit! Which, I’m not complaining about, because I obviously love them both very much, but sometimes…”

“Shields,” Eliza whispered, distractedly, “shields.”

Alex paused over the phone. “Oh, sorry, mom. Did you say something?”

Eliza blinked a few times, setting down her coffee mug on the countertop to reach over for a steno pad and hastily scribbling down, SHIELDS! “Sorry, honey, I was just distracted by my research for a second. Tell me more about how things are going with Maggie.”

“Are you sure? I know you’ve been struggling with Medusa, do you want to talk about it? Have you figured out how to prevent Medusa from attacking normal cells?”

Eliza smiled. “Oh sweetheart, I think you’ve already given me everything I need.”

Shielding — grandma’s clothes didn’t trick Medusa because it thought the wolf actually looked like Grandma. It was because grandma’s clothes were the signal, the shield that actually blocked Medusa. Take away the clothing, and the wolf would be exposed.

It was the breakthrough she needed. Eliza knew that this was it; this would revolutionize cancer treatment. So, Eliza and her team worked harder. And approximately thousands of coffee cups, hundreds of papers, and one potentially semi-permanent pipette shaped hand cramp later, they succeeded.

Eliza created a drug that blocked Medusa from recognizing grandma’s clothes, allowing it to attack the cancerous wolf. She saved countless lives.

Kara always knew that Eliza Danvers was a hero. Kara was the lucky girl who got to grow up with her kind smiles, warm hugs, and incredible intelligence. But today, everyone else would know that Eliza Danvers was a hero too.

Some would say it was a conflict of interest, but this was one piece she couldn’t let anyone else write. And anyway, how could anyone possibly be too biased about this?

THE NATIONAL CITY TRIBUNE: THE NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE AWARDED TO ELIZA DANVERS. By: Kara Danvers

A/N: October is breast cancer awareness month and this was my attempt to pay homage to that while also highlighting some very cool science.

Besides Eliza Danvers being the best mom, this was inspired by the work of Dr. James Allison and Dr. Tasuku Honjo, who were both just awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in cancer research. Their work (the discovery of what prevented immune cells from attacking cancer cells) paved the way for immunotherapy.

In this story, the discovery of immunotherapy obviously occurs much later in Earth-38’s timeline (but also flying blonde aliens also aren’t around on this Earth, much to my chagrin). Grandma’s clothes are an analogy for the checkpoint between immune cells and self, while Medusa is used as a stand-in for CAR-T-cell therapy (a procedure where a person’s own immune cells are changed in a laboratory to specifically target cancer cells).

I’m always happy to talk science and Supergirl, so hit up the ask box if you feel so inclined.

(Read here on AO3)

[facepalming-since-chernobyl]

Troll’s main problems with 4x01

Let’s start with „Kara’s show”. I get it, Mel was on Broadway, so her time was limited and it’s going to get better…. Is it? They introduced 4 new characters in this ep (two are main, two are so called cannon fodder). So, we will get at least 10 more I think plus Russians… wait, “Kazniacs”, my bad.  This ep was PACKED with characters, storylines and action and still I feel like not a lot happened. Because instead of doing something, they talked. Kara talked with J’onn 4 times I think? And if you think about it, they could deal with it all in two? What brings us to Kara.

“I don’t appreciate you questioning my judgment, which has been forever sound and has never led to our situation getting catastrophically worse” – this is what Kara said to J’onn. And later, we learn he was right since the beginning. Because you know, a guy with hundreds of years of experience vs 4 year of being hero. What pains me here, it’s Kara ignored J’onn and his advice, because she felt everything was fine, the world was at peace and everything was cool. And she wanted it to stay like that. By stubbornly sticking to her opinion. What is super childish and immature and I don’t expect behavior like that from a main character in freaking season FOUR. We can argue if her sticking to her mirages fucked up and caused more shit that could have been prevented (aka president’s exposure, J’onn’s friend death etc). And again, Kara feels not developed again, when she is going to mature? AGAIN? With that many storylines and characters?

What leads us to Kara’s ego. Because her flowery and optimistic idea of world at peace sounds like self-stroking her ego. Superman is out, world is on her shoulders (suddenly it’s not too much weight?) and she is responsible for it. Hate crime against aliens means she is not that good, huh? So, let’s ignore it! Because for sure it will help… Once again, I don’t expect behavior like that from a hero on this part of the series. I kind of feel: Kara =tumblr/twitter, J’onn Mahatma Gandhi = common sense. Also, Kara, sweetheart, you are loved by peasants because you are slender, beautiful, superpowerful goddess, who kicks asses and saves the day. And well… you are white. Basically, you are a cast above a cast of the privileged. And in s3 you had to throw away your heritage, mother and Kryptonian life to become “happy” and “at easy”. What it says about American immigrant policy – I do not want to know. And this is totally off when we look at the mentorship storyline.

Aside of the fact Nia is basically Kara’s clone, that needs constant pep talks and transfers us to the good ol’ times of season 1 (sarcasm), I see two problems here. First, Kara is not Cat. Sorry not sorry, she is not even close of the level of maturity, experience and self-awareness. J’onn clearly showed that she still needs pep talks (it doesn’t matter it’s journalism or not). Also, in s2 she sucked as a reporter and Snapper was right. She had potential and the spirit but she lacked the most important thing aka objectiveness and the ability to keep your emotions at check. And in s4, suddenly, she slays as a reporter (this is the same off-screen shit they did to Mon-El between s2 and 3, it’s called sloppy writing). I simply don’t believe that Kara can ask important questions and listen to them and suddenly be a stubborn thick-head five minutes later. Secondly, writers want to “fix” her failure as Mon-El’s mentor. The problem is… that was not a complete failure. Being a mentor means you teach and help but you learn from your student too. You confront and you are confronted. Mon-El gave opportunity to face her flaws, her xenophobia, he kept her on her toes, he challenged her. Yes, she sucked as a mentor but she’s learnt so much from him (and he from her). From the first ep, I got an impression, Nia is going to be a sweet, adorable, Kara’s worshipper and well, does Kara really needs another person who is going to pat her ego? What she is going to learn from Nia? (btw, Nia is cool and I’m sure they are not going to screw her character). And the last thing, if we are going to get more “make a tsunami!” lines, I’m turning alcoholic.

The other obvious thing – Kara is still extremely easily outsmarted. She constantly forgets she’s faster than, for example, fucking BIKES. She can use her superhearing when she wants, but forgets it a disadvantage too. I know, it’s this kind of writing, but it pisses me off.  I know fighting humans and fighting Reign is two different things but it still hurts, when you think about the battles from s3. And here we have, Kara screwed by two idiots. Yay.

Last thing about Kara – I’m not surprised she is happy, optimistic and moved on. It’s different than in s3, when she thought she had killed Mon-El. She knows where he is, she knows he is alive. Cool. Let her be happy (still, I am bitter as fuck that they could mention Sam or talked about Winn and the Legion, but Brainy misses his “friends”. Well, at least we are not baited, but the fact they erasure him like that is not nice).

Moving to the thing that pissed me off like nothing else. RUSSIA. Oh wait, not Russia, because they can’t piss Russians now, yes? Voting is coming, right? That’s why we got real Madrid (that was Budapest, in Hungary, but whatever, who cares about xenophobia, right?) and “fictional” Kaznia. The problem is, it’s Russia. Sorry not sorry. “Spasiba”? Old babushka wearing a COAT in the fucking summer? Fur hats aka ushatkas? Vodka? Friendly reminder, Red Daughter was “promoted” on twitter with hammer and sickle symbol. Smooth. Subtle. Etc. Basically, they are going to fucking swim in the worst Eastern European stereotypes. Usually, I ignore shit like that, I know American shows are made for American audience, but seeing this crap on Supergirl simply hurt. As a show that talks a lot about “beacon of light” and hope, it looks like it’s only for specific people, living in a specific country. The rest can get fucked.

What is funny (sad?), because this season focus on alien immigrants and their rights. I mean, do you see the shit? They are going to show us how hard life of aliens in America is, how they will fight for the rights - and it’s connected to modern American policy and situation - and in the same time they are shitting on Eastern Europe, using the most annoying stereotypes. And yes, I “believe” Russia-Kaznia is not going to be the big, communistic bad of the season :)

Other small things. James. Dude, stop being the macho, because you are not and let Lena do her shit. Lena. Honey. Stop doing shit behind people’s back. Also, are we again with the Lena is playing Lilian, who is played but in the end we realize Lilian played Lena, but Lena…. Should we also forget that Lena invited a device that can allow people searching for aliens? Also, TALKINGGGGG. Brainy. Dude, I know you are comic relief, but I feel your calculated comic-relief is going to start to annoy me in ep 2. This ep was not funny, btw. Villains. Smartass, dumbass and Darth Vader – call me excited and I will kick your ass.  

I don’t know guys. Maybe I’m salty and bitter, because I have heard the reviews were nice and people enjoyed it, but here I am, smelling incoming bullshit.

Feel free to add more.