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stranger-who-writes-fiction · 4 years

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Everything Awesome about COIE Hour 3

MANY THINGS OCCURRED!

This one is Long, guys.

Also a more accurate title would be Everything Awesome and some Less So about COIE Hour 3

But I wanted the posts to match, so.

So I never watched Birds of Prey because I never knew it EXISTED when it was on, but as a fan of the Birds of Prey team in general, and the characters Huntress and Oracle...not gonna lie, t’was sad to hear Helena desperately calling out to Barbara before they were destroyed by the anti-matter wave. So I give that cameo a thumbs up.

How is it only just NOW occurring to me that the Waverider (Wave Rider?) is serving the same function as the Monitor’s Satellite from the comics????

J’onn!!!! I’m so glad he’s here! Bearing news about the supporting cast of Supergirl! And the entirety of Earth-38!

So glad that they’re alive! And safe! And not dead! And that they are sure to remain that way, for the rest of the crossover! XD

And then J’ONN IS THE PARAGON OF HONOR!

It’s what he deserves.

And then like four different subplots are set up in short order: They gotta to to Purgatory to get Oliver’s soul; they gotta get Ryan Choi; they gotta go to the cave where the Anti-Monitor was hanging out until fairly recently; Kara’s gotta be talked out of using the Book of Destiny.

It’s...a lot.

Also Vibe is back!

“Maybe you didn’t hear me under those voluminous mutton chops of yours--!”

Another nice Iris/Barry scene, BUT, for my money, it’s the second one, later in the episode, that really tugs at them there heartstrings.

All the Pariah stuff is as accurate as the Arrowverse could possibly MAKE a Pariah. Good, solid, good.

Then the British Fellows Ham it Up for a few minutes, before The Soul Searching group goes to Lian Yu, because of COURSE it’s Lian Yu, as if Oliver would allow his soul to languish anywhere else.

Then we’re back in the Anti-Monitor’s room domain and COSMIC TREADMILL! AW YIISSSSSS

All of the good treadmill jokes have been made already so I’ll just move on.

This is very comic-y! The Anti-Monitor used Barry to power his Anti-Matter ray in the comic, and he ultimately destroyed it as well, dying in the process.

HERE, we discover that when Earth-90 Barry vanished last year, he was captured by the Anti-Monitor, and then CONDEMNED TO A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH; HE WAS TO RUN, FOREVER, ON A TREADMILL.

(...Pretty sure that joke was made on the after show, but I couldn’t help it. IT WAS RIGHT THERE.)

So they bust Earth-90 Barry out with the help of Jefferson!!!!

I love that he’s got his line in there, the, ‘whose life is this’ line. Good, yes, good.

(Listen: there is no greater proof that the Arrowverse will go back to some version of the multiverse model, than Jefferson’s inclusion here.)

I’m getting a little ahead of myself...BACK TO THE OTHER SUBPLOTS!

Ryan Choi is great! I don’t keep up with Legends, but it’d be cool if he stuck around, since Ray is leaving.

ALSO GREAT???? Routh Supes’ explanation of the black shield. ‘Hope cuts through the darkness.’

(And the Superman theeeeeeeme I never tire of hearing it)

There’s some Kate and Kara stuff here but I wanna cover that later so FIRST...

The Oliver reunion on Lian Yu happened way too fast! But then, many things happened way too fast! But this one REALLY FELT WAY TOO FAST.

Like: He’s ready to kill us! But no? YAY, OLIVER IS COMING BACK! But No? Wait, he’s Spectre now????

But also...SPECTRE!!!!!!

Spectre is the deus ex machina of the Crisis comic, so it’s fitting that he’s just. A sudden thing that pops up out of LITERAL NOWHERE and is apparently vital.

So I guess Oliver’s final form ISN’T Team Dad, it’s Mysictal Green Hooded Guy.

(Man we should have seen this coming.)

(I like that Oliver is Spectre, just to be clear.)

Iris’ pep talk with Ryan was lovely.

(And then there’s the moment I mentioned earlier, where Barry’s like, ‘I might die’ and Iris is like, ‘I don’t want to go, I want to be with you.’)

(I will admit...that part got me a little.)

HEY FLASH FANS, HOW DO WE FEEL ABOUT THE FACT THAT LITERAL YEARS OF TEASING LED UP TO A BAIT AND SWITCH, HUH????

I honestly don’t know if I’m impressed or annoyed by this cop-out.

I will give them props for the inclusion of the original Flash show footage, that was very nice.

(And I say that as someone who has but a passing familiarity with the original TV show.)

The disintegration effect, as well as the Flash emblem being the only thing left, are really great direct homages to art from the comic.

I’m gonna talk more about this part LATER so let’s jump back toooooo....

Oh! The Barry and Jefferson scene!

It was so niiiiiice.

Very emotional, and a nice bonding moment, and this bit:

“I don’t think Henry and Alvin raised quitters, so we should rage against the dying of the light.”

FEEEEEEEEELIIINNNGSSSSS

Another Kate and Kara bit, which again, I wanna get into in a minute, BUT, before we do, I will say that: this buddy dynamic is very nice, but it takes the place of the Kara and Alex stuff from crossovers past, which I might have been okay with...if not for the severe LACK of Danvers Sisters content in the SG season proper.

Here’s hoping 5B gives us...something.

(Also I know it’s very much because Kate is like, the lead of one of the five main shows being crossed over so obviously they’re teaming up instead of Alex and Kara hanging out but I just. Love the Danvers Sisters, okay?)

(Related side note: Really glad this crossover isn’t so focused on romantic pairings! It’s a nice change of pace! I mean we’ve got Iris and Barry obviously, as well as Lois and Clark but I’m just recalling the Double Wedding nonsense of Earth-X and...*shudder*)

(This is an improvement, IMO.)

OKAY OKAY HARBINGER’S BACK HERE WE GOOOOOOOOO

MIND CONTROL! BETRAYAL! DEATH! THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE!

And crashing on this Vanishing Point because technically we’re HooOOooOOomeless!

Aw man I was so sad to see Routh Supes go...and be replaced by LEX, ugh.

(But it’s very Lex, so.)

And Kara’s desperate, ‘Kal, Kal! What do I do?’

OKAY so I kinda wanna talk about the Kara stuff, the Barry stuff, and the Kate and Kara stuff.

This crossover does some interesting things, re-contextualizing the two ‘Big Deaths’ from Crisis.

In the comic, both Kara and Barry die, and their deaths are kind of like...thesis statements, on their brand of heroism.

They’re willing to give up everything--even their very LIFE--to ensure the safety and survival of others.

And both are treated as kind of remarkable things, even among their peers, who are other, selfless superheroes.

Which is WHY...the Barry thing is kind of...a massive let down.

In the after show, Marc Guggenheim talked about how they could have their cake, and eat it too, because Barry was ready to give up his life, but was denied the opportunity.

And...I get that logic, but man, they spent all of season 6A dragging out that ol Barry-Dies-Angst.

And last season too! The WHOLE SEASON LONG PLOT with Nora was centered on Barry’s disappearance during Crisis and thus, her growing up without him and now...

That’s all just out the door? Because a different Barry decided to take his place? AN ELEVENTH HOUR LOOPHOLE?

It’s so audacious...that’s why I’m also kind of impressed, as well as annoyed.

And they don’t quite do the same thing with Kara, since they haven’t so much as TEASED anything resembling her comic death--I kind of assumed they might with the Book of Destiny stuff, but she didn’t even open the thing.

(And ultimately this is GOOD because if they’d done something similar to Barry--a last minute bait and switch--HOO BOY. There would have been...WORDS. OF STERN DISAPPOINTMENT.)

Instead, the crossover frames living as the more heroic option, because these heroes are Paragons, and thus are needed for some...other purpose, put in motion by the Monitor.

So if they die, they’re actually DOOMING the multiverse.

As mentioned! It’s kind of an interesting inversion, and until we know being a Paragon fully entails--it is difficult to say if it’s a positive or negative change!

(Still love that Kara and J’onn are Paragons, tho, cause they’re my Favs.)

OKAY so that’s the Kara and the Barry stuff. NOW, for the Kate and Kara stuff!

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE KRYPTONITE, MY DUDES.

Yeah, you thought we were DONE talking about Supergirl-specific plot lines...BUT THINK AGAIN!

LET’S TALK ABOUT HOOOOOWWWWW Kate was gonna use that Kryptonite...BUT DECIDED NOT TO, AND THEN WILLINGLY HANDED IT OVER TO KARA because she knew that 1.) SHE WOULDN’T NEED IT and 2.) Kara deserved to have the deadly poison THAT IS ONLY POISONOUS TO HER AND HER SINGLE SURVIVING BLOOD RELATIVE to decide how to dispose of it.

AND THEN...Kara tells Kate to keep it, and I thought, for one HORRIFYING MOMENT, that Kara would insist that she might someday NEED it, should Kara ever go rogue, thus VINDICATING every stupid pro-Kryptonite debate ever BUT...

NO! Instead she’s like, ‘I know you won’t use it!’

And folks.

Folks.

If nothing else. If nothing else. Please. PLEASE. Let this fun week of death and destruction be a learning moment for Kara, that she both HAS and DESERVES better friends, than a woman who casually subjected her to Kryptonite to further her own ends.

PLEASE, SHOW, PLEASE.

Anyway! That’s hour three! And now we have to wait an ENTIRE MONTH to see how this plays out! XD

#stranger speaks #COIE spoilers #crisis on infinite earths spoilers #long post #DCTV #SG post

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spiftynifty · 5 years

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TeeVee Podcast’s Voltron s8 review

I’ve been waiting eagerly for TeeVee’s review of s8. If you recall, their s7 review was what gave us the man getting choked up about Shiro’s relationship.

The link to the podcast is here but if you’d prefer a sort of transcript, here are some of the highlights for me. I didn’t always catch who was speaking but I wrote down initials where I could. S=Shanon, A=Antony, M=Moises, C=Chip D=Dan. The panel is divided on their feelings on the season. 2 of them seem to have hated it, one liked it, one thought it was fine, and one feels mixed about it. Anyway here we go, some great quotes ahead.

Under the readmore cuz it’s long.

S: "After 7 seasons of a show that was going to be one of the animated series of the decade, they not only did not stick the landing, they fell on their butts, rolled off the mat, off the lines, into the judge's table and their leotard popped open"

"A lot of the plot was callbacks to things from seasons ago that we really probably didn't need to see again." "I wasn't entirely sure that they weren't gaslighting me."

Man Shannon is calling out some great points. She's calling out the dropped druid plot thread, and wondering what the point was of showing Lotor's past when he's dead, and nothing can change in his present and his redemption can't really happen.

A: "endings are hard. I was disappointed with this season [...] it was let down by poor plotting and that final battle made me throw my hands up in despair most of the time. But I have enormous sympathy for the EPs. Maintaining a longform episodic story is hard. And to pull off an ending that satisfies even MOST of the audience is harder yet. and let's not forget they were always upfront that vt always had 'editorial interference' from up top. Toys, the fact that it's aimed at children, corp resistance to some of the more modern social issues that they've tried to tackle. THAT SAID, we don't know what happened on this production, who had the final say, what they argued over. and I say this cuz a lot of the fandom drama over it assumes a LOT over how media and entertainment like this is made that simple ARE. NOT. TRUE. Some of the stuff I've read has been ABSURDLY offbase, like that there were different writers rather than just 1 the whole way through which ignores how TV is made. And if you think these writers just go off and write a script without talking to anyone first and then they come back with something that must be filmed without any changes, THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. [..]we don't know who made these decisions. The studio isn't always the bad guy. Sometimes they rescue things that would otherwise have been a horrible mess. And unless you were IN THE ROOM, you don't know, and neither do any of us. So let's all bear that in mind. [...]You can't lay the blame OR credit on any one person. For any of this."

They're laughing & making so much fun of the final 3 episodes and how baffling they were.

"Don't even get me started on Voltron merging with Atlas [and the crew disappearing] that was a bad, bad idea."

"But that was the ONE time Shiro was back with the team!"

a couple dudes are relatively ok with the Allura death because we've never seen a WOC heroically sacrifice herself for the universe and usually it's the Shiro hero character D: They also point out that technically she wasn't fridged so.. yay?

Antony and Shannon vehemently disagree.

A: "My problem with that ending was more just that it was... not. good." he makes a comparison to RotJ where Vader still dies and it's his SON, who lives, who 'redeems' him. "This was none of those things. It felt like a terrible lesson. You can be so evil that you kill literally billions of people for 10k yrs but if you say sorry just before you're about to be executed it's alright, dw about it, we'll put the universe back to rights. NO, that's a terrible lesson!!"

S:"They had the LIONS. That's my problem. Throughout this series we've had stakes going up but there has always been a trading of ideas, what can we do, what can we figure out, up to the point where they wind up sacrificing the castle, but they go through steps before that 'is there anything else we can do’. And here, there's not even... she didn't even get to say goodbye to Coran! This is the one character, WOC, and she has sacrificed throughout this entire series. She lost her planet. She lost the last connection she had to her father in the AI. She kept LOSING things over and over to the point where she sacrifices her crown to help Shiro. and the thanks she gets is that she has to turn around and say nope I've got to away and fix all of this and apparently never see you all again. It really, REALLY REALLY bothered me. All of my friends who have CHILDREN who watch this show, universally the kids were upset and angry and tearful and HATED that outcome. This did not feel like a triumph. Having to lose Allura like that robbed any kind of triumph in the success of saving all the universes. And I think that's one of the reasons that this last part of the season sits so poorly with me. I feel like it should have ended in a triumphant way. even if it meant losing a couple of the team members or the lions. Of course that takes away the toy aspect which is why that's not an option. We already had several tragedy arcs in this series. Zarkon, Honerva, and Lotor had tragedy arcs. Why does Allura have to have one too? We've had enough."

Antony & Shanon KILLIN IT on this podcast y'all.

C: "This series relies so much on 'oh wait, there's a new upgrade', 'oh wait, there's this new thing'" A: "Well that was the entire final battle." C: "So there's this handwavy Allura has to sacrifice herself. The heavy lifting wasn't done to make this an earned moment."

S: "I do think, whether it was at the direction of DW or WEP (Vld IP), without those little epilogue cards, there is the potential opening that Allura might be able to return.[..]It was open to interpretation."

One guy likes the Shiro ending for the surprising progress aspect, even though he's not thrilled about how it was put together. also he isn't convinced the epilogue wasn't planned. He likes a lot of s8 but all the stuff he likes is tied to stuff that he really didn't like.

S:"The shiro card is the other reason that I think those things were shoved in. For me, that turns Shiro's entire character into a token when he wasn't before. When they introduced his sexuality, it was done BEAUTIFULLY. There was this conversation with his significant other a mature relationship that ran into its problems and therefore couldn't happen anymore. Adam could've been Adele, and nothing would have changed about that conversation. It was not the defining characteristic of Shiro. It was just something else about him."

S: "And then s8 happens and Shiro is divided from everybody on the team. There are so few interactions of any kind that aren't just barking orders. or making plans. Keith is the prime example. Their friendship had been a backbone of this series and suddenly they can't even stand more than feet 5ft from each other.

A: “It’s barely evident, yeah.”

M:”And the same with the rest of the main cast. And if they had set that up at the end of s7, that he’s going to go into the background a bit, it wouldn’t have felt as weird.

S: “And they didn’t! S7 was miraculous in the fact that even though he’s no longer in a lion, he’s still got a vital part to play in the series. And s8 erased that. It pretty much neutered him! And the kind of message is once you've revealed this character to be gay, we've gotta keep him out of the way. And if they had not put those end cards in, again the fact that he's a gay man is just the fact that he's a gay man and it's not any bigger or smaller aspect of his character, but they did not EARN him marrying random bridge crew member #3."

A: "and RETIRING! A man who LEFT adam because he felt he had to go and fight."

A: "He left the guy he loved before because of his devotion to"

S:"To fighting to making things right"

A:”To being a soldier and doing the right thing.”

C:”Isn’t the whole point then that he achieves that?”

M:”The fighting’s over and he can leave that behind and he can actually be happy.”

S: “He wouldn’t’ve. I don’t see it.”

M: “I violently disagree.”

C: “I think it was a nice endcap for his character."

Moises also likes this because it’s not a BYG scenario and he gets retired. Shannon is extremely exasperated by these takes.

S:”For me, it’s like Tangled. You go through Rapunzel and Flynn, going through their adventures, getting closer, getting to know each other, they save each other, things like that. And then she’s reunited with her parents and then we get and endcap that says ‘for political reasons her parents decided they needed to marry her off to the prince in the next county, sorry’. That would’ve had people RIOTING. Thats not how you do a story with characters that people care about. And to shove shiro off onto this random character that we--his name is never spoken!”

A:”No he had like 3 lines in the entire season.”

S:”He had 3 line sin the season, you don’t know his name unless you watched the subtitles, and in the audio narration for the visually impaired, they called him Adam in the endcap. They called him Adam! They fixed that now. It feels like a hugely clumsy attempt to grab the woke points for a character that didn’t need them.”

Moises then talks a little about Shiro and Keith and how he and Shannon both thought there was something there, and still do, but they can’t know what happened behind the scenes and to theorize on the intent of that relationship is “conspiracy theory land” and trying to decide what the writers were prevented from doing is like “reading tea leaves and chicken bones”. He references people extracting things from his own writing.

M: “As much as I wanted to see that relationship flower and flourish, the fact that it didn’t, look, it’s one of a million times that’s happened for me, with fiction, where things didnt turn out the way I wanted to see them.”

S:”I’m talking about 2 different things, as far as Shiro’s character, vs shipping issues. I feel Shiro’s character was done a disservice that if they were going to end him in a relationship with another man, they didn’t earn it by throwing that little endcap on.”

M:”Yeah, they could have brought back one less robeast or something.”

S:”The other thing is, I think there is enough out there as far as interviews with JDS and LM to show that at the very least I think they meant to leave it openended. Again if you take out that endcap, the last shot includes a shot of just Shiro and Keith, together, same screen, looking up as the lions go away, without saying anything further. I know I pie in the sky hoped that they were gonna kiss this season when we did our s7 recap and yes that was the shipper in me talking. I truly did not expect that they would be able to go that far. What I did not expect was for them to tear it down. And I feel like that’s what they did. Between the complete absence of interactions in s8, and then throwing that epilogue in there.”

Dan doesn’t understand how that could be because he sees no reason for them to do that. Shannon patiently explains about DW’s history with LGBT characters but Dan insists that the creators told the story the way they wanted to and he’s fine with Shiro getting a marriage even if it’s a character they don’t know.

Overall the panelists love the show still, and in most cases prefer to consider it in the realm of s1-6 with a weak final double season (7&8) or that the show ends after s7. They would all love to know how long the NDAs last, a making of perhaps, to know what the heck happened and what changed along the way. Big mood my dudes. Big mood.

#voltron #vld #teevee #transcript

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daresplaining · 6 years

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So what's Matt's relationship with Stick like? It's clearly very complicated and I don't know what to make of it. Because Matt seems equally frustrated with Stick (telling Jessica, Luke, and Danny that Stick is very good at manipulating people), yet also clearly felt affection for the guy (given how he teared up when telling Foggy what happened).

Yes, it’s… complicated.

In the comics (as in the show), Stick enters Matt’s life during a period of turmoil. Matt has just lost his sight, and finds himself trapped in a new, torturous world that he doesn’t know how to deal with and can’t discuss with his father. His whole childhood was defined by confinement, with Jack’s well-meaning over-protection forcing him to sneak out on his own to indulge his restlessness nature. After his accident, Matt sees this one source of freedom closed off, seemingly forever. He feels powerless, frightened, angry, and alone.

Caption: “That night. In the gym. It used to be Matt’s favorite place– but now it’s filled with cries of frustration– tearful fury– and low sobs that speak of defeat. He can’t see. He can’t see. He’s useless.”

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #1 by Frank Miller, John Romita, Jr., and Christie Scheele

Stick saves him from this despair. He understands Matt on a fundamental level– something Matt has never experienced before. (He and Jack are very close, of course, but they don’t fully get each other.) They’re similar people– two big personalities capable of challenging each other, which is part of what makes their interactions so much fun. Stick offers Matt hope and– more importantly– power. With Stick’s help, Matt fashions something he saw only as a weakness into a new source of strength, and he rediscovers his own freedom and independence, which has become even more important to him since his blinding. And while his training is hard, and Stick is an unforgiving teacher, Matt is a stubborn, hard-headed thrill-seeker, and in between the frustration, pain, and occasional terror, he enjoys learning to fight and use his powers. While Jack cares for Matt in mundane ways, Stick understands his need for freedom, adventure, and empowerment, and encourages behavior that his dad would never, ever allow.

(Pictured below: Jack Murdock nightmare fuel.)

Caption: “The nights are the best. When Matt wakes before dawn– and, as always, Stick is there– and they dance, unseen…”

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #1 by Frank Miller, John Romita, Jr., and Christie Scheele

Caption: “He remembers feeling alive– in a way he never had before. The city was alive, too: he could hear every night-sigh, every bellow of rage, every desperate cry of hope. Catch the scent of an insomniac’s three A.M. cigarette. Of pooling blood. Of shedding tears. All of it– the pain and the joy, the terrors and the triumphs– washing over him as he sucked in his breath, made the leap… captured the night in the palm of his hand. But no matter how high he leaped, how far he went, his teacher pushed him higher, farther.”

Daredevil vol. 1 #349 by J.M. DeMatteis, Cary Nord, and Christie Scheele

Matt: “Stick! I made it, Stick! That was awesome! Right? It’s like I was flying! Whaddaya got t’say to that, old man? Huh?”

Daredevil vol. 3 #25 by Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, and Javier Rodriguez

(Stick calls Matt “punk”, Matt calls Stick “old man”. Aren’t they great?)

Matt knows that, essentially, he owes his life to Stick, and their team-ups when Matt is an adult reveal a functional working relationship and sense of mutual trust.

Matt: “Hallucinated, just as I was taking that last shot. Relived a promise to my father that I made as a child. That promise made my childhood a misery, Stick. The neighborhood ridiculed me horribly, made me so angry…”

Stick: “All the things that’ve made you feel that way… they’re obstacles in yer mind, keepin’ it from workin’ right […]. You gotta dig deeper now, Matt. You gotta face the enemies in yer head. An’ they’re just as real to you as if they was flesh and blood. They can kill you. Scared?”

Matt: “No.”

Daredevil vol. 1 #177 by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Glynis Wein

But Matt also resents him, to a certain degree. While “I hated that man. But he taught me well” (from DD vol. 3 #25, excerpted above) feels like an oversimplification, it speaks to Matt’s conflicting feelings regarding his teacher. The main comic doesn’t show us their initial falling-out, so we have to assume it’s the same as what happens in the Man Without Fear mini-series– which isn’t entirely within the regular continuity, but exists alongside it and often informs it. (You’ll notice we’re referencing it a lot in this post.) In MWF, Matt’s training ends when Stick deems him too volatile and emotional, as evidenced by his all-encompassing relationship with Elektra and his violent treatment of the people who killed his father. (The actual degree of violence in Matt’s revenge quest varies between MWF and the normal continuity… but in both cases he goes out and attacks people for emotional reasons, so we can assume Stick’s response is the same.)

Matt: “Stick– what–”

Stick: “Shut up and listen. That girl is poison. She’s on her way to the worst side and she’ll drag you down with her. It’s bad enough you failed me. I won’t have you joining the enemy. I’ll kill you first.”

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #3 by Frank Miller, John Romita, Jr., and Christie Scheele

(We have major issues with the way Elektra is portrayed in Man Without Fear, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Being cast aside in this way would be enough to make anyone resentful. Stick is right– Matt is extremely emotional, which often impacts his judgement– but Matt also has a lot of pride, and rejection hurts. His reunion with Stick as an adult is short, as Stick ends up sacrificing his life to protect Matt, Natasha (Black Widow), and Stone shortly thereafter. But he lingers on as a kind of sentient ghost, haunting both Matt and Elektra and offering up advice, for a long while afterward– which allows their relationship further exploration. Mostly, we’d characterize Matt’s attitude toward him as grudging respect and admiration. Matt would never choose to hang out with Stick, he recognizes that he’s a massive jerk (takes one to know one, right?), and he is fine with not having been chosen to join Stick’s super secret boy band. But he’s also willing to go to Stick for help when he needs it, and to trust in his advice… and as we said, he is grateful for everything that Stick has given him.

The situation in the Netflix show is similar– with one vital alteration. The sting of Stick’s rejection is far sharper in this universe due to Matt’s young age (616 Matt and Stick didn’t cut off contact until Matt was in college), and the fact that he doesn’t encounter Stick until after his father’s death. By switching the order of events and removing Jack from the narrative early (we’re not huge fans of this choice, for the record), Stick’s significance in Matt’s life increases. In the comics, Stick is a mentor and parental figure, sure– a kind of counterpoint to Jack– but in the show he is Matt’s only parental figure (that he knows of, anyway). When he has lost the one person he had in his life, Stick appears. And Matt clings to him all the more tightly because of it. 616 Matt would never have made Stick a dang bracelet. That wasn’t the nature of their relationship because that warm, fuzzy parental role was still filled by Jack. But Netflix Matt needs someone to hug him and take him to the park and tuck him in and do all the normal caregiver things… and that’s not what Stick is there for. He doesn’t want to get attached to Matt the way he grew attached to Elektra, and he certainly doesn’t want Matt getting attached to him.

Reaching out for that kind of love and being rejected, losing another father, is a terrible experience for young Matt. Thus, his resentment of Stick is far more powerful in this universe– but so is his emotional attachment. After they get their initial, obligatory name-calling out of the way, Matt is friendly to his mentor when he first reappears. The discovery of the bracelet among Stick’s belongings clearly hits Matt like a truck, showing that on some level, he still cares that Stick might think of him as a son.

And while he doesn’t have much time to mourn, he cries when he realizes that Elektra has killed Stick.

(This moment, by the way, is probably multi-faceted grief. He is upset that Elektra killed someone, he is upset that she had the capacity to kill Stick (who is her father figure too), and he is upset that Stick is dead. It’s just a depressing situation on all levels.)

This underlying attachment– which, evidence suggests, is mutual, and part of the reason Stick broke off contact in the first place– clashes with Matt’s anger and resentment, and the manipulation that becomes apparent throughout both seasons of Daredevil and The Defenders. On the surface, Netflix Matt hates Stick and his lying and scheming and emotional abuse. But underneath… it’s complicated.

#Daredevil #Netflix Daredevil #Stick #Matt Murdock #Asks #Commentary

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flameysaur · 7 years

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The always wonderful @skasse made a Halloween writer tag for us who are ramping up for upcoming month. I haven’t been tagged, but I gotta do it. So here we are.

The Rules:

#1 – Provide a BRIEF description of your novel before starting.

#2 – Don’t use the same character for more than 3 answers.

Brief Description:

Raeka Belrose was ten years old when her father told her he’d fake his death to give her a normal life. Somethings will never be normal. She knows more about the monsters that hunt humanity and the Descendants that hunt them than most humans three times her age. She still isn’t good in crowds, despite years of therapy. And sometimes, people seem to forget she exists, even when she’s in the room with her. But Raeka tries to live the life her father wanted her to have.

Except something is wrong, something vital, something life threatening. Only Raeka doesn’t know who’s life.

Walker Crossing has too many monsters, and Wolfram Vogel, the world’s most famous Descendant, has come in to find answers and flirt with everyone at school, not necessarily in that order. Raeka should trust him, and the Descendants trained to handle these problems, but she can’t stop the fear in her stomach.

As Raeka searches for answers for what is scaring her, and why she’s scared, she’s going to stumble on something much bigger than her small town. There’s a reason her father raised her in the woods alone for a decade. There’s a reason he had to fake his death to stop. And there’s a reason he always told her she was so happy she wasn’t like him.

To find out who she really is, Raeka might have to go from brand new tomorrows to forgotten yesterdays, but she’s not so afraid anymore.

The Questions:

1. It’s Halloween night! What is your protagonist dressed up as?

Raeka would be a ghost, the kind made from a white sheet with eye holes cut into it. It’d be a silly costume that you don’t really remember seeing again, even though she was there all night.

2. Who in your cast refuses to dress up and shows up at the Halloween party without a costume?

Lind, Raeka’s best friend/self declared sister, doesn’t have the time or interest in making a costume. She’s too busy with her ten million other art projects. Also people joked about her dressing as a sexy whatever too many times and now she refuses out of spite.

3. Which character wears the most outrageous costume, and what would it be?

Wolfram, for sure. He has money, imagination and a desperate need for attention. He’d turn himself into the Phantom of the Opera with a deformity that melts out of the mask and seems half grown on it. Honestly, looking at it, you’d swear it’s glistening with puss or something. It helps to have illusion magic.

4. On Halloween, werewolves, vampires, and zombies are on the prowl. Which of your characters gets caught in their clutches, and which creature do they subsequently turn into?

Well, one of those things always exist in this universe(werewolves) and one may or may not be at the party anyway, depends on how good the frights are. But if there was an attack, Declan, Lind’s dad, would be the one to fall. He’s just to dad-ish to fight back well. He wears a sweater vest on his days off, people. He’s not here to live.

5. Who wins the contest for best costume?

Wolfram. (He’ll bribe the judges if he has to.) Though his half-sister, Soraya, might start a bribe war. She hates to lose. But Wolfram is more charming and his costume is better, so...

6. Who hands out toothbrushes to the trick and treaters?

Lind, but only to be mean. Don’t make the grumpy person hand out candy, guys!

7. Which two of your characters decide to pair up and do an angel/devil costume together?

Wolfram would suggest it to Raeka as a couple’s costume, but she’d kind of miss what he meant, and then she’d talk Lind into it only for the whole thing to fall apart and Raeka shows up as a ghost and Lind refuses to participate. (Thank God Wolfram always has a back up.)

(This story has no couples outside the main, guys. I don’t got good people to pair up. They’re all related.)

8. Someone is too scared to even attend the Halloween party. Who is it?

Lucienne, Wolfram’s adoptive mother, is not scared, thank you very much. She is just very busy with business. It’s stuff you wouldn’t understand. It’s not important. Leave her alone.

9. Who overdoses on Halloween candy and ends up sick?

Soraya, easily. Probably she was eating too much, someone told her to slow down and then she ate twice as much as she stared them right in the eye. Then she vomited on Wolfram.

10. Which character is most likely to place a curse/hex on someone and who would they curse?

Isa, actually. Isa is Raeka’s aunt, and she’d put a curse on anyone who’d tried to take Raeka from her. She lost her brother to Descendants long before he “died” and she’s very scared of losing her new family. She loves having Raeka, both as herself and as a piece of her brother and when the Descendants try to take her? Isa won’t take it. A pox on all your houses!

I tag @akajacqueline (do your new idea! I want to know more), @fawxblogs (Inheritance if you want to, or your Sae kitsune story!) and @erzadragonborn (for SiL, they’re basically all your characters now anyway). And anyone else who has a story brewing. Tag me please!

#all hallows write #the wolf's fang #I did this instead of writing tonight #oh well #in the morning

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stranger-who-writes-fiction · 6 years

Note

Since Streaky is canon now (yay! :D), I'm wondering, does Streaky exist in the Cool Aunt Kara AU too?

Short answer: YEP.

Longer answer:

Karais not a pushover. She's not.

Shepromised the Danvers that Alex would be in bed by eight. And she is!

Physically.In bed.

...Notasleep, but...Getting there?

“Okaaaaay,have I told you about the time Thara and I—”

“Yes,”Alex chirps, nodding solemnly.

“Howabout that one time I saved Atlantis?”

“Youtold that one last time.”

Karasighs, scratching her head. “Right, okay.” Alex looks at herexpectantly. The deal was, Alex would go to bed, if andonly if, Kara could deliver asatisfactory bedtime story. Kara had hastily agreed, of course, buthad not bothered to read the fine print:

Ithad to be one Alex had never heard before.

“Um...therewas that thing with the batmobile and the tire pump—”

Alexhuffs.

“Youtold that one too!” she says, crossing her arms and frowning. Karaholds up her hands.

“Right,right, okay!”

“It'sgotta be new.”

“Iknow, I know,” Kara placates, “just let me...” she trails off,thinking. She lets her gaze wander a bit, hoping something in Alex'sroom might offer inspiration.

Shockingly,Lego bricks and Barbies don't really jog any exciting memories.

There'sBrian the Otter, lying at the end of the bed, but Kara's alreadyexhausted her cache of Atlantean stories, apparently. A couple ofbrightly colored Beanie Babies, a cheap, carnival-grade Odie andGarfield, won last summer by Jeremiah—

Karastares at the faded orange cat.

“...HaveI ever told you...” she starts, the memory falling neatly intoplace, “about the time I accidentally gave my cat superpowers?”

Kansas,some years ago...

Thesun had not quite set over the Kent farm. It remained perched low onthe horizon, casting everything in an inviting orange glow, thelengthening shadows tinged with violet.

Karaignored the picturesque scene as she trudged angrily towards thebarn, Jon's toolbox in tow. The tools inside clanked noisily witheach step, announcing her intentions to a few stray chickens who hadwandered over from the coop out back.

“Shoo,”she muttered to the nearest one, who just stared and offered a mildlyoffended squawk. None of the chickens cared much for her; probablyhad something to do with her noisy trips to the barn.

(And...there was that one time...with the...super sneeze...)

Itwasn't her fault, though. (The noisy tool box. The super sneeze...that was definitely all her.) It was the dumb pod that was theproblem, refusing to work properly. She approached the craft inquestion, letting the toolbox drop to the hard packed earth floor ofthe barn with a sharp KER-CLANK.

Shetugged the faded blue tarp aside, gathering the material up into acrinkled, messy bundle before tossing it away.

Dull silver metal caught the early evening sunlight, and the glarereminded Kara to trot back to the barn door, and nudge it closed.

Theywere quite a ways from their nearest neighbor, but. They weren't all thatfar from the main road, and the glare would attract attention.

Doorshut, the interior of the barn was decidedly more gloomy, all dullbrowns and dusty air. Slivers of orange and yellow light peeking out frombetween the wooden slats were enough to work by for now, but. Inabout thirty minutes or so, Kara would have to break out the lantern.

Sighing,she approached the pod again, this time clambering into the crampedcockpit. Her hands automatically moved to the controls, muscle memorytaking over from there as she cycled through the safety checks andflight monitors—all essentially useless now, given the current fuellevels.

Ofcourse, she wasn't interested in a joyride, so it didn't matter. Shewas more concerned with the on-board computer, and the knowledgestored therein.

AccessCode: Accepted. The messagescrolled lazily across the readout in the familiar, blockycharacters of Kryptonese. Kara smiled in spite of herfrustration—reading Kryptonian was so...instantand effortless. English always took half a second more.

Query?

Karasighed, pulling a folded piece of paper from the back pocket of herjeans. In smudged ink was a list of possible search topics that,hopefully, would lead her to something, anything on theon-board computer resembling an encyclopedia, or collection of...of...

Well.A collection of whatever was kept on the Sun Stones.

Thenew search terms she had thought up in the last week were just asnonsensical as the ones she'd come up with the week prior, and theone before that, and the one before that. She ran out of logicalinputs well within the first month of trying to extract everythingshe could from the pods—now she was down to the really weirdstuff that was almost certain to bring up absolutely nothing.

Andshe was right, of course, which meant she had to try and deal withthe darn Sun Stones again.

Ah,the Sun Stones.

Wayeasier to use than the dumb controls on the pod. In theory, anyway.

Shegrit her teeth as she climbed back out of the pod, stalking over tothe workbench where, tucked in a hidden compartment, wrapped in aboutfour layers of grease-covered drop cloths, were the six Sun Stonesthat had accompanied the El children on their journey from Krypton.

Everythingthey'd need to know, everything they'd need to survive.

Andunderneath the bundle of red-tinged prisms was the light array thatallowed the information to be read off the nigh-invisible groovesetched in the crystalline surface.

Thevery broken, entirely useless light array.

Sheset the Sun Stones aside, pulling out the pieces of thearray and setting them on the workbench, running her fingers over themetal casings and tiny, fractured parts.

Afterstaring at them for a while, she took a seat on the nearby stool, andstared some more.

Staredand thought. Ran over various solutions to the problem athand—solutions she hadn't yet tried a dozen times over.

Thetask was difficult for a number of reasons, but almost all of themcould be boiled down to the fact that Earth simply wasn't equipped todeal with this technology—all the tools at her disposal wereso...so primitive. Taking a wrench to this was a sure fire wayto cause even more damage. (Kara knew, because she'd triedthat and all she had to show for it was more broken pieces.)

Shesighed, reaching for the most intact portion—the housing of thesmall deltahedron core. That, thankfully, was stilloperational. The core emitted a bright, cheerful sort of blue light,and hummed almost imperceptibly. She was trying to find a way tojust...bypass all the broken bits and make due with the workingpieces, but. Without the actual light part of the light array,all she really had was an extremely efficient battery and...yeah. Anextremely efficient battery.

“Maybe...maybesomething with magnifying glasses?” Kara muttered to herself,pulling the deltahedron from the housing and blowing off a bit ofdust that had settled on the surface. The barn door behind hercreaked, and Kara turned, ready to tell the intruding chickens to getlost.

Exceptit wasn't the chickens, but rather, the large, orange tabby that hadtaken up residence in the hayloft.

“Oh,hello,” Kara greeted the cat happily. She much preferred hercompany to the chickens. “Want back up in the loft?”

Thecat didn't answer (she so rarely did) and instead trotted to one ofthe posts and rubbed her flank along the corner, purring noisily.Kara stood to shut the barn door, but before she could do so, threetiny kittens scurried inside.

“Oh,hey!” she exclaimed, grinning. “You've got a family!” shepaused, something clicking. “That explains the round stomach...Ikinda thought you were just. Overeating.”

Again,the cat ignored her, but the kittens...they took a keeninterest in Kara's presence, sniffing at her work boots, pawing ather feet for attention.

Shehesitantly granted their request, keeping the interactions to pettingonly—she didn't really trust herself to handle the tiny things—theylooked so small and fragile, and she...she was clumsy. And superstrong.

Theyseemed pleased, though, purring up a storm and mewling happily. Karafound herself delighted by the distraction.

“Youguys are so cute,” she remarked softly, “And way more interestingthan broken Sun Stone tech.”

Thesmallest of the bunch—another orange tabby with a random whitepatch on its side—meowed loudly in what Kara had to assume wasagreement.

Sheliked that one. A lot.

“Areyou guys hungry?” she asked, carefully standing. She was prettysure Martha had some sort of canned meat on hand. “I don't think wehave tuna, or anything. But. We might have that fake ham stuff.”

Therewas no cry of protest (not that Kara really expected one) soshe figured that would work. She briefly wondered if she should putthe Stones and array back in the workbench, but. She wouldn't be gonethat long.

“Beright back,” she promised, hoping they'd stick around a bit longer.They were a great distraction, yes, and infinitely preferableto angrily fiddling with the array all evening, but. Moreimportant than that...

Karawanted to show Clark.

“Whatwere the cats' names?” Alex wants to know.

Karapauses, mid-recollection, momentarily caught off guard.

“What?”

“Thecats' names,” Alex repeats, only slightly exasperated. Apparently,this is vital information that she needs. Right now.

“Well...therewas Streaky...” she frowns, trying to remember. “And Fluffy, Ithink? Or Fuzzy...no. Fozzy. And the other one was Kermit. Yeah.” She looksover at Alex.

She'sfrowning. “Those names are...okay, I guess.”

Karashrugs. “Clark likes the Muppets.”

Alex doesn’t pursue that line of questioning further. Instead, she has others: “Isthe light ray the one my dad fixed?”

“Yes.”

“Didthe mom cat have a name?”

“No,we just called her barn cat.”

“Howmean were the chickens?”

“Verymean.”

“Howdid the cat get powers?”

“I'mnot there yet.”

“Oh,yeah. You gotta finish it.”

“Yes,well. May I?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay,so. The SPAM...”

“What'sit?” Clark asked as Kara tied his shoes. Martha stood by, plate ofprocessed meat product on hand, ready to go.

“It'sa surprise,” Kara told him with a grin. Clark wiggled eagerly,reaching for his sweater, and tried to hurriedly tug it over his headwithout Kara's help.

Hegot a little bit tangled, the sleeves turned at an odd angle, but hemanaged to get his head through.

“Iwanna see!”

“'Kay.But you have to be quiet,” Kara said, straightening thesweater. Martha laughed as Clark covered his mouth with his hands.“And no peeking, either,” Kara made him promise, though shedoubted he'd be able to get his x-ray vision working properly. Hewasn't quite...there yet, in terms of control.

Still,she did want it to be a surprise, so she waited for Clark toagree.

Whichhe did, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster while still beingvery, very quiet.

Karachuckled, and took the plate of meat from Martha.

“I'llbe out in a minute,” Martha said, turning back to the kitchen.“Just have to finish up the green beans.”

“Okay,”Kara said, taking Clark's hand. The two made for the barn, and Karareviewed the rules.

“We'regonna be quiet, right?”

“Yes!”he cried.

“Shhh,”Kara said, and Clark nodded, this time whispering back, “yes!”

Satisfied,Kara opened the barn door and told Clark to take the plate (with bothhands!) over to the middle-ish of the barn and set it on the ground.She could see the mother still basically in the same place she'd lefther, and spotted two of the three kittens playing with some hay a fewfeet off to the side.

Clark'sface lit up when he saw them, and it was clearly a strugglefor him to walk slowly to put the plate down, but he managed.

“Stayquiet and still,” Kara instructed, knowing that he'd want to petthem as soon as they approached. “Let them eat first, okay?”

“Okay,”Clark once again agreed, watching with rapt attention as the catscame over.

Well,as most of the cats came over. Where was the third one?

Karalooked towards the loft and the stacked bales of hay, but saw nottrace of the orange kitten. It wasn't by the pod, either. Where—

Somethingclattered, and then a loud buzzing filled the barn. The catsbristled, and Clark clamped his hands over his ears.

Karafelt the color drain from her face, recognizing the soundimmediately.

Thedeltahedron.

Shespun on her heel and—just as she feared—the orange kitten hadbeen batting around the sphere that Kara had left out on theworkbench.

She'dknocked it to the ground, and Kara could see, even from several feetaway, that the outer shell of the core was cracked. Blue energypulsed and sparked...

Butworse than that?

Thefact that the dumb catwas still playing with it.

“No!”Kara yelped, rushing forward with super speed as the kitten raised atiny paw, and the core burned bright blue with energy. She grabbedthe kitten in one hand, the core in the other.

Bigmistake.

Thecore burned on contact, and for a terrifying moment, Kara could feelthe energy as it raced up her arm and into her chest. The kittenyowled, clawing from her grasp a split second before she dropped thesmoldering deltahedron.

Bothlanded on the barn floor, but only onetook off for the safety of the hayloft, her siblings close on her tail.

Clarkwas crying, surprised by the loud noise and worried something hadhappened to the cats, or his cousin, or both.

Andthat of course,brought Martha running from the house, as Kara hissed and mutteredunder her breath and wondered if she should apply cold water to the burn,or just stand out in the sun for a bit.

“Whathappened?” Martha asked, rushing first to Kara, and then to Clark,once Kara waved her off.

“Catsmessed with...with a thing,” Kara struggled to explain, still a bitrattled by the whole experience. Deltahedrons were some of thesmallest power sources they'd had back on Krypton, but geez...didthey pack a punch.

“Shhhh,shhhh, hey, it's okay, it's okay,” Martha was telling Clark, overand over. Kara nodded, forcing a smile.

“Yeah,I'm fine Kal,” and she would be, so it was kinda true. “I'm sorryI yelled, I was worried about the kitty.”

“IsKitty okay too?” Clark wanted to know, sniffling. Kara x-rayed thebales of hay, and saw the entire cat family, spooked, but otherwisefine.

“Yeah,”Kara told him, pointing to the hayloft with her good hand. “Theywere just scared by the loud noise.”

“Likeme?”

“Yeah,”Kara said again, and winced as Martha tugged at her hand to get abetter look.

“Whatdid you say the cat was messing with?” she asked. Kara sighed.

“Adeltahedron.” She hissed as Martha continued to inspect the burn.

“Well.I have no idea what that is, but I'm surprised it managed to burn you,what with your thick skin and all,” she mused quietly. “You tellme—do we treat this like a regular burn?”

“Idon't know,” Kara admitted. “I think it'll heal, but...” hereyes were starting to sting, because the burn was starting to hurt.“Um. Could we...?”

“Iceit in the meantime?”

“Yes,please.”

Atwhich point, Martha ushered both Kryptonians back to the house,though Clark protested a little—he wanted visual proofthat the 'kitties were good.' (His words.) And it was only Martha andKara's combined persuasive arguments that he finally acquiesced,allowing the trio to go back to the kitchen, where Martha procuredfrozen peas and some aloe vera for Kara's hand.

“Yousaid the cat gets superpowers.”

“I'malmost there, okay?”

Thecats were scarce after that, and Kara couldn't blame them. Sheherself was less than eager to return to working on the light array,as it would involve patching the deltahedron's shell.

Notexactly something she was looking forward to.

Herhand did heal on itsown, but not before she spent several hours whining about it.(Because it hurt andwhat a dumb thing painwas. She'd been without it for about four years and she didn't missit much.)

Clarkkept asking about the 'kitties,' (again, his words) and desperately,desperately wanted hiscousin to find them.

“They'renot in the hayloft, Clark,” she groaned after he asked for the sixhundredth time as to their whereabouts. “I don't know where theywent.”

“Findthem,” he suggested, and Kara sighed.

“Ican try,” is all she was able to offer.

Clarkwas not pleased.

Butat least he stopped asking after that. And Kara thought the issue hadbeen dropped.

Untilone afternoon, a few days later, when she returned home from schoolto find Martha scolding Clark in the living room.

“Clark,”she said, tone stern. “Did you do this?”

Shegestured to some scorch marks on the rug.

“Kittydid it,” Clark said with sincerity.

Karahad to stop herself from laughing out loud.

“NowClark,” Martha bent down, so that she was eye-to-eye with him. “Youknow kitties don't have special eyes like you do.”

“Theorange kitty does,”he insisted, and looked back at Kara, who had set her bag aside, andtaken a seat on the bottom most set of stairs in order to tug off hershoes. “The one Kara touched. It glowed blue!”

Andof course. Neither Kara nor Martha believedthis outlandish tale about a glowing blue cat with superpowers. Thatwould be ridiculous.

Marthawas getting ready to further interrogate Clark when Jonathan walked in from the kitchen, cleaning his hands on arag.

“Thereyou are!” he exclaimed, beaming at Clark. “I wondered where myassistant had wandered off to.”

Marthablinked.

“Hewas with you? Out in the barn?”

“Allmorning.”

Karaand Martha stared at one another for a moment.

“Clark...”Kara says slowly, “where did Kitty go?”

Kitty,as it turned out, went quite a few places. All they had to do wasfollow the trail of smoldering destruction.

“Thankgoodness she didn't go back to the barn,” Jonathan muttered,stamping out a small fire in a tall patch of weeds.

Thekitten certainly lookednormal, and perfectly content to nibble on some blades of grass. Butstray sparks of blue energy would occasionally arc up her spine, andwhen she sneezed, well.

Karaunderstood why the rug wound up scorched.

“So...so,”Martha folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head, staringat the cat. “Your...deltahedron? Is that what you call it?”

Karanodded. “Yes.”

“Yourdeltahedron...gave a kitten superpowers.”

“Idon't...think so,” Kara frowned and thought about the incident, andthe odd feeling in her arms and chest. “I think...Ihad something to do with it.”

“You?”

“Yeah,I...” Kara wasn't sure exactly how to articulate, nor could sheactually prove it,but. Hedrons didn't give people powers. They just...didn't.

Thefact that her weird alien DNA had been literally standing between thehedron and the cat, though.

Thatwas food for thought.

“Theenergy went through me, first. So...” Kara shrugged. “MaybeI...rubbed off on her.”

Jonathanlaughed, and Martha shook her head.

“Wellthat...certainly is something.”

Clarkgiggled in delight as the cat sneezed again, and sent up a spray ofsparks. Both Jonathan and Martha took a step back, while Kararemained seated in the weeds.

Thekitten shook herself, licked her paw, and promptly trotted overbefore curling up in Kara's lap.

“O-oh,”Kara exclaimed, surprised but also...not-so-secretly pleased. “Um.Hi.”

Thecat sneezed again, and Kara flinched, but the sparks didn't hurt. Notmuch, anyway.

Theydid burn small holes in her shirt sleeves, though.

“Wecan't let her wander off,” Jonathan surmised, taking a look at thepatch of smoking earth. “Last thing Smallville needs is a felinearsonist running around.”

“Sowe let her burn down our house instead, hmmm?” Martha asked with a smirk.Jonathan shrugged.

“Well...”

Asthey went back and forth, trying to figure out how to deal with thesuperpowered kitten, Kara thought about the deltahedron, and thecracked casing of the shell.

“Ithink,” she interrupted the two of them. “I have an idea.”

Karacarried the cat back to the barn; neither Jonathan nor Martha couldrisk being zapped by weird Kryptonian energy, for obvious reasons.(Those reasons being: injury, and/or accidental superpower acquisition.)

Clarkoffered, but Kara didn't trust him to keep a tight enough grip on thecat—or maybe, it would be tootight. Clark's powers were still developing, but even at this nascentstage, they were potent.

Shedid, though, eventually have to pass the kitten off to him in orderto work. She was less concerned, however, because Martha and Jonathanstood guard at the barn door, ready and armed with welding masks andrubber gloves, should the cat make a break for it.

“Holdon tight, but not too tight, okay? Be gentlewith the kitty,” Kara instructed, belatedly realizing that sheherself had managed to transport the animal without squishing it.

It was a pleasant surprise.

Clarknodded, and the kitten settled comfortably into his small arms. Hereverently stroked her head, using the lightest touch he couldmuster.

Karasmiled, and retreated to the workbench, where she regarded thedeltahedron casing with something of a resigned air.

“Thisis gonna make it harder to fix, isn't it?” she hadn't noticed thatJonathan had joined her. She curled her fingers into a fist, pressingher knuckles into the surface of the workbench. It creaked a little, but didn’t splinter.

“It'lltake a bit longer, yeah,” she told him. Though...it wasn'tentirely...truthful. It implied that there was even hope of fixingit in the first place, and. What with the deltahedron no longer being stable, and the amount of materials she'd need justto put the brokenparts back together, let alone the whole system...

She...shejust knew. That she'd never be able to get it to work.

“ButI mean...” she looked at Jonathan. “It's...my fault the cat'slike this. I have to help her,” she said, and then, frowning,added, “and I reallydon't want her to burn down the farm.”

“Yeah,I think we'd all like to avoid that,” he teased her.

Shetook a deep breath, reached for the casing, as well as Jonathan's boxof tools, and got to work.

Thecollar was not pretty.

Weirdhunks of alien plastic stitched onto mismatched scraps of nylon, itlooked less like a collar, and more like a collection of junk, strungaround the cat's neck.

Butwhen the cat sneezed?

Thesparks were drawn to the Kryptonian material via a process that, evenif Kara could explainit to Jonathan and Martha, their human brains would have no frame ofreference for it. Earth lacked the necessary scientific terms todescribe it.

Neitherof them seemed too concerned with the 'why,' though.

“Justso long as it works,” Jonathan remarked, pleased to see the collardoing its job. “Now she can come in the house.”

“We'rekeeping Kitty?” Clark asked somewhat breathlessly.

Jonathannodded. “She already pretty much lives in the barn.” The catsneezed, and once more, the sparks leaped to the collar. “And Idon't think we want to explain...that. To folks.”

BothMartha and Kara shook their heads. No, they did not.

“Soshe stays!” Jonathan declared, and Clark shrieked with pleased laughter.

“She'llneed a name,” Martha told the two of them. Kara and Clark thoughtfor a moment, staring at the kitten.

“Ilike Kitty,” Clark said.

“Simple,straightforward...” Jonathan nodded. “No frills...”

Karawasn't so sure.

“Well...whatabout...”

“Kermit,”Alex guesses.

Karais once more forced to an abrupt halt, stumbled by the interruption.

“What?No!” Kara says. “Streaky. We named the cat Streaky.”

Alexpushes up from her pillows and leans forward. “How come?”

Karasmirks and points back to the pillows. Alex huffs, and lies back downas Kara re-tucks her in.

“Becauseof that white spot on her side,” Kara says. “Like. A littlestreak. So...Streaky.”

“Whynot Sparky?”

“Becausethat's...” Kara blinks. “...Oh, that's...that's actually...prettygood,” she mutters under herbreath, before coughing and continuing. “Erherm. Clark likedStreaky.”

“Well,tell Clark it's a weird name.”

“I'lllet him know.”

“Andthat Sparky's better.”

“Gotit.”

“Thanks,Kara,” Alex says, pulling up the covers and reaching for Brian theOtter. Kara helps bridge the gap a bit, bringing the stuffed animalcloser so Alex can grab him. “That was a good story.”

“You'rewelcome,” Kara says, and can't help sounding a little bit pleased.She leans over to turn out the light. “Nightlight?”

“Psssh,no, nightlights arefor little kids.”

“Right,sorry.”

Shebids Alex goodnight, giving her a quick hug before turning off theswitch and heading for the door.

“Um,wait...” Alex says. Kara turns.

“DoesBrian need the nightlight?”

“...Yeah.”

“Thoughthe might,” Kara says, stooping to plug it in. “Night, Brian.Night Alex.”

“NightKara.”

Fin

#stranger replies #stranger writes #cool aunt kara AU #supergirl fic #long post #this was written quickly and with minimal editing so #BE WARNED #i-am-delta-s

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