#might get a double sc post today if I'm up for it

[kj-yikes]

26. Aura

(on ao3 here)

Lena Luthor didn't know she was a witch until the fateful day that her brother turned the sun red.

She doesn't have a full explanation for why her powers reappeared, but this is her theory: as a child, Lena remembers Lillian's scolding for talking about memories and experiences she didn't then understand, about how people all have a glow about them and that Lena could read their minds. Of course, that wasn't entirely true — Lena can't read minds, she can only read emotions, which is almost like mind-reading if someone is quite open with their feelings.

Lena thinks Lillian figured it out when she was a child, or knew about her mother, and supressed her magic somehow. That's what her mother's friend Florence had theorized when Lena made the pilgrimage back to her mother's hometown earlier this year.

Florence told Lena that magic could go dormant, could hide away if not properly nurtured. However, when Lena's life was threatened, when she watched Lex cause chaos throughout Metropolis, her powers had come rushing back all at once. Using her powers, she was able to read Lex and manipulate him, enough to buy herself enough time to escape and call the police.

Simply put, her powers had come back to her when she needed them most, and now that the floodgates had opened, even scientific, methodical Lena Luthor couldn't deny what they were: magic.

For most of the past year since her magic came back, it didn't interfere much with her daily life as much as the chaos within her family did. Lex was arrested, Lillian left town, and Lena took over LuthorCorp.

Eventually, the stress got to be too much, though. Every day, she walked into the LuthorCorp office and remembered the red hue of the sun and the angry, fiery flames erupting from Lex's aura. She remembered how the flood of emotion almost made her lose control. She remembered the feeling of madness emanating from Lex as he was cuffed and escorted from the building. She remembered each name of the people Lex had killed.

So, Lena came up with a plan. She drew up business proposals for new technology that could help the world and presented them to the newly hired director of R&D. She worked with marketing to come up with a new image for the company. Finally, she made plans to move the newly-minted L-Corp to National City, a place where she could start over, where she could hopefully work alongside a super rather than against her.

With the organized chaos of her job, Lena's powers had become a backburner issue. She could still vaguely see people's auras, but they blended in to their being in a way that Lena couldn't parse without dedicated practice, and Lena put it aside in favor of launching her new life in National City.

Until one morning, when Kara Danvers stepped into her office.

Lena's powers had only worked well on people she knows — her brother, Sam, Jack, even her assistant Jess. She's never been able to read a stranger's aura so clearly.

But there Kara stands, bathed in a bright pink glow as she listens to Lena talk. It fills Lena with the same jittery warmth that Kara must be experiencing and makes her stomach do a pleasant flip-flop.

Kara Danvers is gorgeous in a quiet, unassuming way. She fidgets with her glasses, wrapped in a pretty pink pastel cardigan, blonde locks flowing down her shoulders. She's endearingly awkward, a stark contrast from charming and collected Clark Kent, but she doesn't seem deterred by Lena's shortness and bluntness. Lena feels Kara's blue eyes on her and her heart gives a little flutter.

Lena's not quite sure if her reaction to meeting Kara Danvers is her own, or Kara's emotions seeping into her. It's a strange reaction to meeting a Luthor, to be sure. Though Lena can't generally read strangers' auras, she also has a knack for reading people's body language, and most people are not keen on meeting Lena Luthor.

Kara, on the other hand, studies her like she's trying to admire a complex work of art — critical yet admiring. If Lena could hear Kara's heartbeat, she expects it would be beating as fast as hers is now.

Lena looks directly at Kara when she says, "I'm just a woman trying to make a name for herself outside her family. Can't you understand that?"

Suddenly, Kara's aura morphs from that warm, fuzzy pink to a multifaceted, deep blue, almost as blue as Kara's eyes. Something shifts in Kara's face, as if a veil has been lifted on Lena and she's seeing her in new light. Lena squirms slightly in her office chair, feeling exposed.

The corners of Kara's mouth turn slightly upward as she nods, and it feels like sunshine warming Lena's soul. "Yeah. I can."

Kara's aura is like a magnet, dragging Lena along as she's filled with a flurry of emotion: curiosity, attraction, pain, anguish, understanding, and finally… hope. It rushes through Lena's body, spreads from the tips of her fingertips and down through her chest. She schools herself from the flood of emotion, keeping her face in a practiced neutral expression as she escorts Kara and Clark out of her office.

As she shuts the door behind them, Lena leans her forehead against the door and takes a deep breath, eyes closed. In her short time with her powers, she's never experienced anything like this before. It had taken her months of practice with Sam, with Jack, two people she loves and knows intimately, to even begin to understand her powers, to be able to somewhat-accurately interpret the colors and the emotions and the feelings.

What makes not-a-reporter Kara Danvers different? Why can Lena already read her like an open book? Why is her aura so strong, so bright, so…alluring?

The questions stay with her as she goes about her work that day and follow her as she boards a helicopter for a meeting up north in the bay area with some investors.

Lena hates flying, so of course something goes wrong, and that something is two drones facing them down.

Lena's eyes widen in panic as she sees bullets fly from the drones and hit the glass windshield of the helicopter. Before Lena even has time to pull out her phone and call for help, two blue blurs streak through the sky and place themselves between the helicopter and the drones.

And that's when Lena sees it again — the bright aura surrounding Supergirl. Lena wonders momentarily if maybe her powers are just growing, that maybe she's just seeing everyone's auras more clearly now. But no; when she looks at Superman, she can't see anything beyond the vague, hazy outline of color that she can normally see with strangers. What are the odds, that she sees the auras of two complete strangers on the same day?

Lena has more pressing issues on her hand, though, as she watches Supergirl plummet to the helipad with a huge crash. Suddenly, Supergirl's aura shifts from that deep blue to an angry red as she stands amidst the rubble and shoots back into the sky.

From the helicopter, Lena watches Supergirl take down another drone, a fiery red aura emanating from her body with just a tinge of blue desperation. Heart hammering, Lena tries to calm herself as Supergirl guides the helicopter back down to the top of the L-Corp tower.

Supergirl opens the helicopter door, and Lena gets the first clear look at her. Blue eyes pierce her, scanning her up and down to check for injuries. Despite the fear, despite the confusion coursing through her, which she knows to be her own emotions, her heart flutters again.

Interesting.

Supergirl helps her out of the helicopter and EMTs immediately rush to attend to the pilot. To Lena's surprise, Supergirl sticks around, ensuring that Lena and the pilot are okay.

Lena studies the blonde in front of her — from her bright, crystal blue eyes, to her curls cascading down her shoulders, to her strong stance, hands on her hips. She radiates power and authority, exactly the opposite of what she had seen earlier that day.

Still, that shimmering blue hue around her is unmistakable, the same color as her eyes and glittering in the sunlight. The same flood of emotion overwhelms Lena: hope.

There's no denying it, Lena thinks. There is only one logical explanation for it: Kara Danvers is Supergirl.

[whatswexceles]

I’m really tired.

This is I guess my big long official response to everything that's going on in the rainworld fandom

Since Tuesday I've been recording all my thoughts about this whole thing daily. This is something of a consolidation of all of that plus more. the original abridged version will be posted in a reblog.

I’d like to preface this with a few things

Firstly: This is a criticism of people’s ideas and philosophies. Not them as a person. I don’t despise anyone involved really either, I’m still friends with people on both “sides” of this dispute. I’ll try my best to avoid name dropping regardless

Secondly: if you DARE to harass anyone involved in this you are worse than everyone I’m talking about here

Third: I know there’s lots of misinformation floating around on this and I know I alone can’t clear it all out of my judgments. So if you spot anything I say that is blatantly wrong, I encourage you to tell me. Same goes for criticism, if you disagree with anything i say I wouldn’t mind being told RESPECTFULLY. If you just start attacking me I won’t really bother. I do want to have a conversation here

A few days ago, it came out that the single piece of evidence used to harass the biggest and most influential rain world artists off the internet was faked and spread with little thought or effort. And people have been scared that misinformation will be spread about them, or they’ll make a mistake and get harassed for it. Myself and my friends included.

My goal in this specific essay-post-ramble-thing is to give my thoughts and to write about how I believe to move forward In a way where that doesn't hurt people further, because I honestly don't hold a grudge against anyone who has spoken out against pansear or unwillingly spread misinformation in an attempt to help, or even people who wrote harmful stuff while angry or emotional.

There is, however, one individual who I will not spare sympathy for. I’ll get to them later.

Something I don't see being talked about that much is that misinformation about pansear and the shipping container have been spread since the initial post made calling out SC. The claim was thrown around that “SC is full of zoophiles and groomer defenders” which needless to say, is extremely false. Not only did nobody in the server know of the allegations until they went public (no hypothetical groomer defender would even know of a groomer to be defended), SC also had one of the strictest “no NSFW/suggestive material” rules of most servers I'm in. it was so strict that deez nuts jokes were off limits.

Was this a purposeful attempt to cause a harrasment campaign or just emotions clouding judgment? The answer doesn't really matter because this sentiment was doubled down on and hurt a lot of people, including myself

Why am I bringing this up? Because this misinformation had a similar, smaller effect to what we’re seeing now. People affiliated with SC were worried that they were going to be harassed for being affiliated with something everyone disliked. Today there are dozens of examples of people being worried about being harassed because someone might not like them and might spread misinformation. Let's hope this time we prevent this from going even further…

But, If it does. If the methods used to persecute pansear become the norm, then that hurts everyone, including the people spreading it. To quote myself from the past:

“…looking at how pansear was being nitpicked for problematic behavior, It just looks like the start of a cycle… …because if you foster a following that finds faults in normal behavior, what do you think will happen as soon as *you* make a mistake, or even a mistake you already made gets dug up. well then you’re gonna get nitpicked to oblivion. If You set the norm to be needless criticism that's what will be employed at your trial. People will try to erase your impact.”

A common sentiment I see being thrown around is that “although the main piece of evidence turned out to be faked, pansear is still deplorable because [X]” and while I personally think pansear has made their fair share of mistakes, a lot of things people put in that X factor is just… silly and can be chalked up to either coping mechanisms, panic attacks or just normal people mistakes. And every time I see that there's always a question in the back of my mind: “Is this an echo chamber?” And I'm inclined to say yes, but I also recognize I'm not exactly an authority when it comes to this, so I’ll leave it up to reader interpretation.

There's one specific person that I have a few choice words for, and that is the person who made the fake image that started this whole damned thing. And although we don’t know who you are, I know you are deprived enough to be reading this. I hope you don’t have a good ending, I hope you don’t have a bad ending either, I hope you’re FORGOTTEN, I hope nobody ever utters your name again. I hope you never leave the swamps of irrelevance. I hope you can see the people you’ve hurt thrive more than you ever will.

With the trash out of the way, how do we even move forward? my hope is that we can do it with forgiveness. Not all apologies need to be accepted but we should at least extend our sympathy to each other, it’ll be easier for all of us if we do. We should think about what we all did correctly and what we didn’t, and how to do better next time. We should think about how we all got taken advantage of with this misinformation and how to prove evidence next time. Does it even matter if pansear was deplorable or not when we’ll all likely never see them again? Can we all work on setting our grudges to the side? If we don't like someone we can just not interact with them.

Us as a community have a responsibility to think through all this and figure out our priorities moving forward. We all have a responsibility to coexist with each other. We all have a responsibility to treat everyone with the benefit of the doubt.

I think I speak for everyone in this whole situation when I say that we are ALL tired of this