•California Grown•

HONESTLY THO that was the worst part, i never ficced it but the whole point was that she was this very plain looking generally unexceptional woman who just did office work at some wayne subsidiary and she didn’t really have any family or friends, so she could get away with getting literally shot in the face without anyone really noticing. it just seemed like the bodies were disappearing. so like she’s getting mugged and here comes nightwing to save the day but it’s too late because she just grabbed the guy’s gun and made him shoot her in the head. from her perspective it just seemed like it would save time. now dick is having a fucking crisis because he doesn’t understand what happened. eventually half the members of the league who pass through gotham are carrying this secret shame of this thing that happened that they don’t want to talk about. you’d think she’d start taking a different way home from work but the majority of the time she doesn’t get shot so in the aggregate it’s a timesaving shortcut.

i think the plan was that it would get resolved when there’s some lone gunman at a wayne enterprises corporate event and he makes the mistake of trying to grab her as a hostage because she’s alone. so she shoots herself and while yes it does resolve the situation pretty quickly bruce is like “what the fuck, karen. what was going on with karen in hr. was anyone friends with karen. did none of you people ever talk to karen. what the fuck. would it have been so hard to ask karen how she was doing, jim? who taught you how to manage an office. what do i pay you for.” and when he figures it out she has to go talk to a bunch of superheroes to apologize. also he puts more emphasis on the presence of mental health coverage included in their insurance plan. please talk to a doctor, karen. this is not healthy behavior. i don’t care about your power. it’s unhealthy.

(and i guess the actual bigger problem was that this resonated with me as meaningful gritty realism when i was a child. i’m mature! i know how the world works! you grow up and get a 9-5 and you’re boring and no one cares about you and if you might as well die)

if i wrote it now she would have a personality and i could maybe do some interesting things with an idea of a character who dies for manpain but she’s actually fine and the manpain is all in the background and she doesn’t even notice it, as well as creating some interesting parallels with bruce ‘if i put myself in front of the guns no one will get shot it’s fine this is fine’ wayne

He was left to his own devices for 5 minutes and robbed a corner store. He’s incapable of doing nothing

He probably went to law school

Actually graduated

He’s barred in 13 states

Joined a drug cartel

Or stole from a few drug rings

Joined a gang

Or spied on rival gang members in prison

Befriended a few homeless teens

Actually steered them away from harm

Robbed a zoo

the brain cell in charge of serotonin n’junk: