#supercorp meta

because it puts them on equal ground. finally. in all senses of the word. because now, not only are they best friends, but there are no more secrets between them. they're on the same team, but more than that, they're partners. equal partners. they both have powers. there's no more imbalance because kara has something lena can never have (her superpowers.) lena has something kara can never have, now, too. literally, it's the one thing kara can't do. so it cancels out. which leaves them truly equal for the first time ever.

and not only is it beautiful to see, but we also know that kara has a habit of being attracted to people who are her equals...

Now, Kara's not a bad person. She makes mistakes, just like anyone else and it wasn't her intention to hurt Lena. But she did and that needs to be owned up to. I think before this point, Kara keeping her identity a secret was an issue but it was more understandable and forgivable (after all, it's her identity). But once Supergirl and Lena became at odds, it was disingenuous and unfair to continue on being friends with Lena as Kara whilst keeping her in the dark. Lena had a right to know that the person who had hurt her was her best friend, just as Kara knew what Lena had done with Sam and the kryptonite. If Kara chose to keep her identity a secret, as she ended up doing, then I think she should have ended her friendship with Lena. Even as a write that I feel terrible. I love Supercorp and I really really hope (foolishly) that it might one day become canon because I mean let's be real if they weren't two women they would be. But this made me uncomfortable and I'm gonna need it to be addressed on the show in order for them to move forward with their relationship, whether as friends or something more. 

but can you imagine how hard it must have been for her to actually say that?

like. this is a woman who has been taught that love is conditional; who had to teach herself not to care and not to show weakness, especially to those who have power over you. and kara, she had the scariest kind of power over lena.

but lena still put herself out there and said it.

can you imagine how much pain she must have been in? how many times she must have played all of their interactions in her mind’s eye, wondering if it was possible that kara’d gotten sick of her; thinking about all her decisions that ended up affecting mon-el’s fate, and beating herself up over having been so easily manipulated, when it wasn’t her fault at all?

can you imagine how many times she must have tried, and acted like everything was okay, and overanalyzed the tiniest interactions she got out of kara, until she finally concluded that she needed to ask?

because kara already made her vulnerable, and she was already getting hurt. so maybe it would be worth it – to show kara exactly what kind of power she had. to share her feelings, bare her fragile, battered and bruised heart.

maybe it would be okay – she would be okay, – because kara always took care of her. kara always noticed. and maybe if she hadn’t just this once, because she was heartbroken and dealing with her own stuff, maybe that would be fine.

because when lena voiced her feelings, kara would realize, wouldn’t she? and then she’d be attentive and present, and she would see her again.

but kara didn’t.

she waved off the concerns and guilt over the mon-el situation that had been eating lena alive, a situation she was nearly positive was the reason for the change in they’re relationship.

(and lena couldn’t have known. she couldn’t have known that kara was struggling with her own guilt; that her responsibility was to save, and she’d failed. that she had two lives and didn’t belong in either. in lena’s mind, it was simpler than that. in lena’s mind, she’d had a friend who was always there, and then she wasn’t)

and after the conversation, her best friend stayed oblivious to the weight of what was going on in that moment, to the amount of strength and courage it had taken lena just to bring it up.

and now lena probably believed what her mother always told her about being too sensitive, because the problem couldn’t be kara, could it?

no, kara was good, and had been brought up in a healthy family and nurtured countless beautiful relationships.

even if at first they are mostly a reflection of your choices, in time, those characters will be influenced by the actor who is playing them and their natural chemistry/gravitation towards other actors, which isn’t necessarily planned. if you’re a good enough writer, much like a parent, i think you let yourself learn from your character about your character, even if that means giving up some control and re-strategizing storylines which no longer fit their development.

i think if you don’t stay connected to the fans, you might lose sight of who your character has become, because it’s easy to cloud them with the vision you primarily had. i’m not saying this is an easy job - there’s a reason so many fandoms start pushing the boundaries of canon.

in supergirl, lena luthor is first meant to be a 3 episode arc character. she was probably not supposed to have chemistry right off the bat with supergirl, and she wasn’t supposed to steal our hearts quite so effortlessly like she did. katie’s acting did that. so maybe they had the idea of making kara and lena best friends because at the time they didn’t see that the way those two women gravitated towards each other had the potential for more. either way, i don’t think s2 supercorp was ready to be more than just friends. it was so beautiful seeing them open up to each other and trust each other despite where they come from. it was raw, and it was enough.

season 3 is when i think shit starts hitting the fan, because even if kara is still getting over an admittedly great story and heartbreaking split with mon-el, she starts getting even closer to lena, and scenes grow less platonic. until lena starts dating james, that is. i never understood that pairing. to me, it seemed like the first big time that the writers overlooked who their characters were, because it seemed a bit random. like it was just Some Dude who would squash the hopes of supercorp shippers, and Some Woman who would make james have a love interest. it didn’t seem to take into account their personalities.

in season 4, lena grows more protective of kara and, eventually, less wary of supergirl. i got the feeling that some scenes had been written in the kara+lena vibe, then simply shot with james instead. they had two women with great chemistry that, after two seasons of iNtEnSe FrIeNdShIp, could not have stayed platonic if they’d had the amount of screen time they deserved. so after a rather dry season in terms of kara and lena, but a rich development between supergirl and lena, we obviously get entirely destroyed by none other than lex luthor. let me point out that i never understood why they made lex (superman’s greatest enemy) such an important part of the series, when it’s supposed to be the story of kara growing into her own, superhero wise. makes even less sense when lena is supposed to get growth outside of her family as well.

season 5 delved into all the drama and problems everyone had seen coming, but in all the wrong ways. i mean, firstly, it made no sense for kara to keep things from lena this long. she told winn in the first episode, james and alex already knew, told nia within weeks of knowing her and even mon-el, a dude from another planet who she didn’t even fully trust at first, knew about her secret identity. the only thing that would make sense would be for kara to be so absolutely terrified of losing lena, she couldn’t bear to change anything about what they had. and the nature of that fear seems too passionate to be platonic as well. which is ironic, considering that i think they used lena’s oblivion about kara as a rift between them - they could never grow into a romantic relationship if lena didn’t know this key piece of information, and kara would never be able to be around long enough when half of the life she lives is hidden from lena.

anyways, back to season 5. you see lena as heartbroken as you’ve ever seen her, because the person who gave her hope in humanity was also not as perfect as she’d thought her to be. suddenly, the writers ramp up the (ex) lover energy, because the people who care more about The Breakup plot point are supercorp shippers. we watch an entire season that is more dramatic than mon-el’s departure by about a gazillion and we also watch as those two women struggle to not make their decisions about each other. season 5 was rich in gay energy, but not because the writers were planning on turning supercorp into something real. it was simply due to the fact that it gave them more drama, and more audience.

maybe even enough audience that it made sense to get kara and lena to work as an unspoken couple in season 6. there was no secret between them anymore, so no way to hold them back. but the writers would be damned if that meant they would have kara and lena actually talk about it.

so we got this limbo. throughout the years, the writers and showrunners have gaslit the audience so much that we simply have no hope for an actual worthy wrap up of the show and its protagonist’s relationships.

it’s just so sad to think all of this could have been prevented if the people who make decisions had listened to their audience. maybe it wasn’t always supposed to be lena and kara endgame. maybe those two characters weren’t supposed to work so well together or fall in love. but they have. and it seems really dumb that a show that has otherwise relatively good lgbtq+ representation became so messy because the writers drew the line at the protagonist.

first of all, i keep thinking about how it took lena months to tell kara she knew about supergirl, which she justified a number of times throughout the season: she wanted to make kara hurt like she hurt, she was able to use kara this way, yadda yadda. but if you watch her interactions with the superfriends during that time, you see her smile so often. like she’s treasuring every little moment with her whole heart. almost like she’s trying memorize every bit, preparing for a goodbye that she keeps postponing.

because yeah, kara may have lied to her, but deep down, lena knows kara loves her. she can’t trust kara, but she can trust her love and it’s shown time and time again by how comfortable she is with putting herself in harm’s way (literally jumping off a cliff a second after she used the watch, for example). and that’s already so different from anything she’s ever known, because even with relationships that mattered to lena, she used to be the protector (i.e with andrea or pre-supergirl kara). so hell yeah she wanted to enjoy some of that. she had the opportunity to feel kara’s love at 100% for the first time, and she took it. to actually feel like a hero when her best friend in the world chose to work with her to take down bad guys.

lena could tell herself whatever she wanted about how strategically beneficial it would be to pretend like nothing had changed (and she definitely took advantage of that), but i think her driving force was way simpler: she wasn’t ready to let kara go.

even in the fortress, you see her trying to take myriad behind kara’s back - which is so damn stupid because obviously kara would notice, but she tried. because i think a part of her still was putting off the inevitability of what was going to happen once kara found out the truth. lena was living in denial for way longer than just s5, and i think she wasn’t ready to give that up.

another thought: the episode showing the source of lena’s distrust was very eye-opening, but my favorite part is the fact that she used to have another very intense female friendship before kara. sapphic women know how this is: monogamic intense friendships whose end always break you. lena had a boyfriend, but she didn’t hesitate to say that andrea was the person she’d loved most, the one she would have done anything for. and don’t get me wrong, i’m all for girl power and friendship, but if there’s one thing life has taught me it’s that no matter how intense your friendship is, a straight girl will always end up loving her eventual boyfriend more. not because she’s evil, but because romantic love is just too maddening.

if i’m being honest, i’m not sure what kind of a read to get on kara. but lena, that’s a girl in love.

a girl in love with the person who gave her everything when she had nothing, who gave her a family, who gave her hope, who gave her the chance to be blindingly loyal once again. and who took that all away because once again, it seemed like lena cared more about her than she did about lena. and there’s not much that’s more heartbreaking than that.

OK OK OMG. so i was not expecting for that headcanons post to get so big and i am not used to people expecting quality product from me BUT I do actually have a giant list of things kind of more canon interpretation/subtext related that I’ve been discussing with @kara-snore-el so i’ll share a couple of those. I’m also working on a couple fics atm so I’m going to try to avoid any spoilers for those :) but also, I love doing those otp promp posts that are like who is person A and person B in a certain situation so if anyone wants to send me some of those for supercorp I would be so happy :)

Headcanons:

The first thing Lena notices about Kara is that she is shy and awkward, but somehow that makes her adorable. The first thing Kara notices about lena is that she flirts. A lot. And apparently with anyone? Kara is not sure because she is flirting with Clark a little in their first meeting, but later it seems she is definitely flirting with Kara.

Lena spends a lot of her time trying not to laugh at how awkward and nervous Kara is around her, especially with the “I flew here… on a bus” line. In the same scene, Lena definitely confuses Kara’s nerves about the alien detection device with Kara being nervous because she is responding to Lena’s flirting and being so close to Lena makes her nervous. She decides that her flirtation is working, even though at this point Kara is still pretty oblivious to her own attraction/feelings.

BUT Kara can also make Lena super nervous! Lena is usually a super confident doesn’t take any shit kind of woman, but she hates it when she thinks Kara doesn’t like her or that Kara thinks she is a horrible person because of her wariness about aliens. And when she realizes just how much she actually DOES care about what Kara thinks, to the point that she is actually nervous to hear what Kara has to say to her in her office after the article is published, she is slightly embarrassed about the fact that Kara’s view of her affects her so much. But as soon as Kara reassures her that she understands her pov, she is just extremely relieved, and she doesn’t really understand that either. Because she may be having fun flirting with the nerdy reporter, but she never expected to actually have feelings for her. 

also related to that scene in 203 on the couch: When it comes to flirting and talking to people of romantic interest, Lena is all confidence and seduction, she doesn’t get anxiety about it, she just goes for it. Kara on the other hand gets all giddy and nervous. In this scene it’s actually worse because Kara doesn’t really realize she likes Lena like that so she has all these feelings around Lena that she doesn’t really understand and that makes her even more nervous talking to her. Lena was not nervous in that scene because she was talking and flirting with kara, because if that was the only thing she was thinking about she’d be completely relaxed and confident. She was nervous because she was legitimately afraid that Kara disliked her and considers her a bad person for her anti-alien views. Also Lena isn’t so much anti alien as she is worried about humans. She wants aliens to have rights to live freely but she is also on the defensive because she knows they could easily overpower humans and her fear of that makes her say and do things that look bad to a pro alien person. I think she hadn’t really thought about what the repercussions of her device would be for the aliens, just that it would help humans feel safer. She and kara will continue to have interesting conversations about it and they will both come to a more moderate position and it’ll be good for both of them to have someone they trust who emphasizes differing concerns because then together they can figure out a better way than what either of them would have come up with alone. 

So to sum up: Lena realizes her feelings for Kara pretty immediately but they were really unexpected for her. Kara on the other hand notices Lena’s flirting but is totally oblivious to her own feelings and reactions to Lena at first. It takes Kara longer to realize she is actually attracted to Lena, and longer after that to realize she has deeper feelings for her. 

Also, and most importantly, Lena is a cat person, and Kara is a dog person. So they will eventually get one of each <3