[insert memetics pun here]

[alixtii]

Comment here and ask me ANYTHING about any fandom I'm involved in/have been involved in. Controversial or innocent, silly or serious, ask and you'll get my honest opinion on the subject [to the best of myknowledge/ability]. General fandom questions are also allowed, but nothing about actual people IN fandom, please.

I'm not quite sure what that last phrase is supposed to mean. I think it means I won't answer questions about people on my flist, like Elizabeth or Samantha or Ari or Grace? I'm not sure why people would be asking me such questions in the first place, though.

Comments

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Oh, I missed that! (Probably 'cause I don't read Supergirl).

So -- tell me what's awesome about Supergirl and why you were inspired to write about her!

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, like with Emma and the Cuckoos, there is a purity to her archetype which I find, to use a phrase of Ari's, "excite[s] me textually and symbolically." If Superman is the superhero, Supergirl is the adolescent objectified female sidekick. She's not the type of female I primarily would have been attracted to (Kitty's the clear winner there), but I recognize nonetheless the ways in which she is semiotically coded as the ideal prize to be won in a romantic comedy sense. And there's another sense in which she is the Eternal Feminine, as filtered through a skanky, problematic-like-whoa DC comics paradigm.

It's no secret that a large deal of what I'm interested in superhero comics is their treatment of adolescence, because I find the drive to will-to-poweriness in superhero comics to be part of an adolescent fantasy. So I'm interested in the X-Men titles which focus on the school; in Peter, MJ, and Kitty going to high school together in Ultimateverse; in the Homecoming antics of Spiderman <3s Mary-Jane; etc.

With reference to post-Crisis Kara Zor-El, the Supergirl fits into this scheme extremely well; even what is problematic about the character, like her skanky fashion sense, make perfect sense within this context (which isn't enough to justify them, exactly, but it is better than if she's being a sex object for no in-story reason at all). I love her for how she's having trouble trying to fit in, how her angst is so teenager-y and self-destructive, how we know she will eventually perseve through it and thus can keep hope alive. Supergirl #9 is an incredible issue for all this, IMHO. There's something delicious about Supergirl in a bellyshirt (Kon's old shirt, altered!), with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

So in some ways, Supergirl is awesome for not being awesome. She's a flawed, broken teenaged girl (and the IC/52/WWIII/1yrlater stuff just makes it worst, I think, although she's temporarily improved when she's in the 31st century and part of the team, but those types of temporal hijinks will never fit into continuity completely comfortably) and I love her for that, in somewhat the same way I love the Torchwood team.

It's occurred to me that much of Kara's problem is that there's no Superwoman (although Karen really should be filling that role). Nobody ever really expected Kon to be Superman, so he got to be a fun-loving teenager: wise-cracking, wearing a costume which consisted of jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers, etc. Kara doesn't get that: she wears a uniform which is a feminized version of Kal's and never gets a chance to be a kid. And she crashes and burns as a result, and it is so much fun to watch.

Now if only there were more Kara/Barbara and Kara/Linda fics....

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

And I just now saw the "and why you were inspired to write about her" part.

I'd been wanting to write Kara/Barbara for a while now, because Kara's adolescent vulnerability is the perfect object for Oracle's omniscient eye. And it'd be hot. Kara sort of lends herself to all kinds of hot power imbalances. Plus maybe something psychoanalytic about adolescent sexuality becoming mastered by the rational mind?

And when I read Peter David's Many Happy Returns, which is all about the homosocial relationship and love between two Supergirls--Linda Danvers and the pre-Crisis Kara--and just its incredible depth, I just couldn't not introduce Linda to the new Kara.

I'm still working on a continuation of "Up, Up, and Away." The two Supergirls have so much to teach each other. Plus, if I work at it, I have no doubt I can make them kiss.

[dkompare.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt I can make them kiss.

That, in a nutshell, is why the DCU is so overwhelmingly slash-friendly. ;)