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:D
As part of the Snowflake Challenge, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
naye invited everyone to share something that's making them happy right now. What's making me happy this week? Supergirl! Surprisingly!
I actually had dropped the show at the end of last season (maybe temporarily, maybe with an option on going back to it eventually) but then they brought in my favorite character from my favorite subset of the comics and OMG. ♥____♥ I love it so much I'm making a vid (which will probably be up later today).
One of the main reasons, maybe the big reason, why I've been a comics fan my whole life actually goes aaaalllll the way back to the late 1970s. My mom saved a big stack of comics that she was into when she was a kid, a bunch of old 1950s and 1960s comics -- Classics Illustrated, sci-fi comics, Batman, Superboy, the Legion of Superheroes -- and I basically learned to read from those. I loved them all, but I had a particular fondness for the LSH ones. And my favorite character, maybe the first fictional character I had a fan-crush on, was Brainiac 5.
Which is not a surprise - I mean, super-smart, competent, sarcastic iconoclast out to atone for his family's past? How is this not going to be catnip for me? Even for 5-year-old me, apparently. I didn't keep up with the LSH comics over the years; I would occasionally buy an issue here and there, and I have a vague idea of some of the storylines, but Brainy was one of those characters that I still loved but mostly didn't like what they'd done with him in pretty much any storyline in which he was featured. I also wasn't that crazy about most of the non-comics adaptations of him over the years.
SUPERGIRL, though. Supergirl managed to not only bring in my favorite character but they did it in a way that somehow merged everything I liked about him when I was a kid with a bunch of my narrative kinks now. He's been in exactly one episode so far, and it was love at first sight.
I'm still kind of WTF about the character design - I mean, you had a perfectly good, very distinctive and iconic design already; out of the majority of the fairly blandly designed Legionnaires, he's one of the ones with the most at-a-glance distinctive style (the green skin/blond hair/dark purple suit) and then they went and did something not only completely different, but that basically makes him look like the walking dead under most lighting conditions? I mean. WHY. I suspect it might be one of those things that looked better on paper than on the screen, because I can see how they were trying to echo the green/purple theme in his makeup, but it just makes him look corpselike. And then there are various other WTF bits about his costume and general design; I like the glowing forehead lights because they do give him a cool alien/transhuman look, but they're so huge they kinda take over his face, and then there's the little glowing triangle of what I assume is his forcefield belt RIGHT ABOVE HIS CROTCH which is now ALL I CAN SEE when it's lit up.
... but in spite of all that, I was pretty much sold within 5 minutes and 1000000% sold by the end of the episode. I have also rarely done such a complete *nrrowm* 180-degree turn into shipping a pairing in the course of one episode. I was fine with Kara/Mon-El (or Kara/James, or Kara/Lena, or any other Kara pairing, really; my true OTP for this show is Kara/happiness) but OMG I want Kara/Brainy LIKE BURNING. I didn't even ship it before; I mean, I know it's a thing in the comics, but it wasn't a thing I had feelings about. But now, with this Kara and Brainy? AAAA! GIVE ME IT!
And the episode really couldn't have been more Relevant To My Interests, with the whole h/c plot for Kara, her family worrying over her all episode, and Brainy being integral to getting her back. I just ... really really liked how they did that. His hero-worship thing for Supergirl could easily have been overplayed, but wasn't (at least I didn't think so), and you can see how he goes from thinking of her as Epic Hero Supergirl to seeing her as Kara (in the scene with the cat, especially), and how he goes from worrying about her because he's just been tasked with rescuing his lifelong idol (NO PRESSURE, NOW) to actually liking and appreciating her as a person.
And he's just such a glorious dork. I would've been fine with an arrogant ice-king version of him because he's that way in the comics a lot, but I absolutely LOVE that they went with "socially inept but sweet" instead. He really comes across not as someone who doesn't care, but as someone who really does want people to like him - wants to be part of the social life of the group - but just doesn't know how to do it. A lot of this is down to Jesse Rath's little acting choices, which are really fantastic, especially the way this version of Brainy doesn't seem to know how to manage eye contact; he either stares too long or looks off to the side, which is so perfect for someone who is trying to connect with people but just doesn't have the skills. And he wrote ":)" on Alex's cast in binary, which I'm SO COMPLETELY still not over that I wrote a fic about it. AUGH I LOVE HIM. ♥
AND! LSH RINGS! LSH IN ACTION! I CAN'T!!! My inner 5-year-old was in RAPTURE. The plot was total nonsense (I would've been fine with just "we can't help because of the timeline" but "we can't help because the cure for the future apocalypse is hidden in our DNA", what even) but I don't caaaaare because I got to see my original, imprinted-on-in-preschool found-family team FIGHTING TOGETHER in glorious live action, and the Bon Jovi entrance for the ship was Peak Cheese in that glorious LSH-y way. (Also, I wish someone on Tumblr would do a proper gifset of Brainy flying the ship because HOMG. ♥___♥) And it even had Kara and Brainy fighting as a team at the end -- his eager little grin when she prepares to go into action, I CAN'T.
So yeah, Supergirl did the thing I've been wanting them to do for three seasons, and they did it well. ♥ (Er. Leaving aside the "...?" of Brainy's makeup and like 90% of the plot. But I really truly don't care, because they finally brought my bae into the Berlantiverse and I am A+ on board with the way they did it.)
IMDB doesn't list Jesse Rath for any more episodes this season, but I'm hoping that's just because he's not contracted and/or it's not announced. Fingers crossed!
naye invited everyone to share something that's making them happy right now. What's making me happy this week? Supergirl! Surprisingly!I actually had dropped the show at the end of last season (maybe temporarily, maybe with an option on going back to it eventually) but then they brought in my favorite character from my favorite subset of the comics and OMG. ♥____♥ I love it so much I'm making a vid (which will probably be up later today).
One of the main reasons, maybe the big reason, why I've been a comics fan my whole life actually goes aaaalllll the way back to the late 1970s. My mom saved a big stack of comics that she was into when she was a kid, a bunch of old 1950s and 1960s comics -- Classics Illustrated, sci-fi comics, Batman, Superboy, the Legion of Superheroes -- and I basically learned to read from those. I loved them all, but I had a particular fondness for the LSH ones. And my favorite character, maybe the first fictional character I had a fan-crush on, was Brainiac 5.
Which is not a surprise - I mean, super-smart, competent, sarcastic iconoclast out to atone for his family's past? How is this not going to be catnip for me? Even for 5-year-old me, apparently. I didn't keep up with the LSH comics over the years; I would occasionally buy an issue here and there, and I have a vague idea of some of the storylines, but Brainy was one of those characters that I still loved but mostly didn't like what they'd done with him in pretty much any storyline in which he was featured. I also wasn't that crazy about most of the non-comics adaptations of him over the years.
SUPERGIRL, though. Supergirl managed to not only bring in my favorite character but they did it in a way that somehow merged everything I liked about him when I was a kid with a bunch of my narrative kinks now. He's been in exactly one episode so far, and it was love at first sight.
I'm still kind of WTF about the character design - I mean, you had a perfectly good, very distinctive and iconic design already; out of the majority of the fairly blandly designed Legionnaires, he's one of the ones with the most at-a-glance distinctive style (the green skin/blond hair/dark purple suit) and then they went and did something not only completely different, but that basically makes him look like the walking dead under most lighting conditions? I mean. WHY. I suspect it might be one of those things that looked better on paper than on the screen, because I can see how they were trying to echo the green/purple theme in his makeup, but it just makes him look corpselike. And then there are various other WTF bits about his costume and general design; I like the glowing forehead lights because they do give him a cool alien/transhuman look, but they're so huge they kinda take over his face, and then there's the little glowing triangle of what I assume is his forcefield belt RIGHT ABOVE HIS CROTCH which is now ALL I CAN SEE when it's lit up.
... but in spite of all that, I was pretty much sold within 5 minutes and 1000000% sold by the end of the episode. I have also rarely done such a complete *nrrowm* 180-degree turn into shipping a pairing in the course of one episode. I was fine with Kara/Mon-El (or Kara/James, or Kara/Lena, or any other Kara pairing, really; my true OTP for this show is Kara/happiness) but OMG I want Kara/Brainy LIKE BURNING. I didn't even ship it before; I mean, I know it's a thing in the comics, but it wasn't a thing I had feelings about. But now, with this Kara and Brainy? AAAA! GIVE ME IT!
And the episode really couldn't have been more Relevant To My Interests, with the whole h/c plot for Kara, her family worrying over her all episode, and Brainy being integral to getting her back. I just ... really really liked how they did that. His hero-worship thing for Supergirl could easily have been overplayed, but wasn't (at least I didn't think so), and you can see how he goes from thinking of her as Epic Hero Supergirl to seeing her as Kara (in the scene with the cat, especially), and how he goes from worrying about her because he's just been tasked with rescuing his lifelong idol (NO PRESSURE, NOW) to actually liking and appreciating her as a person.
And he's just such a glorious dork. I would've been fine with an arrogant ice-king version of him because he's that way in the comics a lot, but I absolutely LOVE that they went with "socially inept but sweet" instead. He really comes across not as someone who doesn't care, but as someone who really does want people to like him - wants to be part of the social life of the group - but just doesn't know how to do it. A lot of this is down to Jesse Rath's little acting choices, which are really fantastic, especially the way this version of Brainy doesn't seem to know how to manage eye contact; he either stares too long or looks off to the side, which is so perfect for someone who is trying to connect with people but just doesn't have the skills. And he wrote ":)" on Alex's cast in binary, which I'm SO COMPLETELY still not over that I wrote a fic about it. AUGH I LOVE HIM. ♥
AND! LSH RINGS! LSH IN ACTION! I CAN'T!!! My inner 5-year-old was in RAPTURE. The plot was total nonsense (I would've been fine with just "we can't help because of the timeline" but "we can't help because the cure for the future apocalypse is hidden in our DNA", what even) but I don't caaaaare because I got to see my original, imprinted-on-in-preschool found-family team FIGHTING TOGETHER in glorious live action, and the Bon Jovi entrance for the ship was Peak Cheese in that glorious LSH-y way. (Also, I wish someone on Tumblr would do a proper gifset of Brainy flying the ship because HOMG. ♥___♥) And it even had Kara and Brainy fighting as a team at the end -- his eager little grin when she prepares to go into action, I CAN'T.
So yeah, Supergirl did the thing I've been wanting them to do for three seasons, and they did it well. ♥ (Er. Leaving aside the "...?" of Brainy's makeup and like 90% of the plot. But I really truly don't care, because they finally brought my bae into the Berlantiverse and I am A+ on board with the way they did it.)
IMDB doesn't list Jesse Rath for any more episodes this season, but I'm hoping that's just because he's not contracted and/or it's not announced. Fingers crossed!
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... though I hope they'd go for more colorful costumes if they did give the LSH a show of their own; it's weird having the whole team in black leather!
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I'm getting used to it, and I really like certain aspects of it, but it's such a weird design choice.
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Also yeah, Mon-El/Kara never engaged me at all but her and Brainy (whyyy???) I am already on-board for. (Really I just want Kara to keep gathering her harem of guys, she deserves it!)
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... THE NAME THOUGH. I KNOWWWWWW. I was about 3 paragraphs into the fic I wrote last night when I realized that there is literally nothing you can call him that isn't terrible. Brainy is awful, but typing Brainiac 5 over and over again isn't much better. Querl's probably the best of the lot, but nobody actually calls him that!
Anyway, I'm just delighted that you like him too! I was hoping I wouldn't hate the Supergirl version, but I was sold halfway into his first scene. He's just so adorkably charming in his own clueless-supergenius way. ♥
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That nickname, and the costuming as you mention -- it's like they're daring to see how far they can push fangirl patience (when it comes to a character like this, you can push us pretty far :D) But he is delightful regardless and I can't wait for more (and yeah, while I also have little faith in the show writing romance, I sort of am hoping they will keep the ship UST/subtextual for a time; I'd love to see more of Kara without a major romance storyline and just being friends with a hint of more that I can ship in my way...)
(It's funny, I know the actor from his role on Syfy's Defiance -- in which he was also an alien in full face make-up, so I have little sense of what he actually looks like? ^^)
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He's actually pretty adorable when he's not hidden under all the makeup, too:
And somehow he can manage to emote charming-ness even while buried under a ton of makeup and facial prostheses, so he must have tons of natural charm to spare. :D I saw a bit from Twitter where he was responding to people (before the episode aired) who hated the makeup, going "I promise you'll like him once he starts to talk!" YES, WE DO. XD
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Awww, he is adorable! I wouldn't wonder if his work on Defiance helped get him the job, since he is used to emoting under makeup (Alak was a rather different character, though for that show and his people he could be pretty sweet...)
(Though if they do go canon with Karadox (hee!) I wouldn't wonder if Querl gets a 'look like a normal human' disguise...)
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Jesse Rath is great as Brainy! I loved all the quirky alien choices.
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MORE BRAINY FTW!
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I have a list of shows to watch in 2018, one of which is Supergirl. I really enjoyed S1-3 of Arrow (although S4 is a bit of a slog :/) and would like to pick up the crossover episodes. So LoT and The Flash are on the list too. I may need a timeline....
So glad you've got what you needed from the show. It sounds like it's hitting all the right buttons! <3
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