milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Once Kara got out of the cells and only kind of bolted for the Door, she couldn't get back to the Bar for a few days. She was sort of surprised she missed it, but hey, here it is. Coolness.

First things first - she leaves a long overdue note with Bar.

I turned myself in and did cell time for the fight in the woods. You don't have to, because I worked that out with the girl who took me in, so I'm hoping that you're satisfied with that.

I know it probably won't matter to you, but I am sorry. I hope you're doing okay.

- Supergirl

After that, Kara heads outside to study for Claire's math quiz. One small, blonde, cross-legged levitating girl in an entirely seasonable crop top and shorts is hanging out by the lake as she pours over her mostly borrowed notes.

This, she reflects, would probably be easier if she'd ever taken a test she could remember before that didn't involve hitting things with cars or identifying the silhouettes of weaponry.

Distractions will bring her grade down, but she'll be grateful anyway.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kara just thinks she looks cool. It's actually inspiring Claire's clothes tomorrow.

"Some people have to like it," Kara allows, generously, "Or, you know, society would probably crumble or something. I don't know. Thousands of square roots would go unfound."

"Yeah, but I'm not a geek, so I can't explain myself." YT shrugs. as if to say, what can you do? "I think it may be because some jerk kid told me girls were no good at math back in the second grade, and I had to prove him wrong. It sounds like the kind of thing I'd do."

"Totally valid reason to do something," Kara says, nodding, "I know that I can get behind that, at least."

"That's usually the reason behind about half of the stuff I do," YT says, grinning. "Someone telling me I can't do it, I mean. I figure most of the people telling me that don't know what the hell they're talking about."

"Exactly!" Kara says, grinning back, because could this be a kindred spirit? "I mean, people tell you can do anything if you put your mind to it, but when you actually do they get all disapproving on you. It's so stupid."

"It's doublethink. Orwell didn't write 1984 about the Soviet Union. That's another stupid thing most people say that's not true. Um." YT cocks her head curiously. "Have you read 1984? It's kind of depressing, but I think it's something everyone should read." Of course, it was Juanita who instilled this belief in her in the first place.

"...once?" Kara says, face falling a little as she remembers this whole conversation started because YT was smart. "I don't know if I got the point, though. Um, it was about how fascist governments and propoganda are bad?"

"He wrote it because he was seeing that stuff all around him, in England and America after the WWII," YT says. "Keeping up patriotism propaganda even though the fight was over, forcing everyone to conform - that's what the 50's was all about, right, conformity? - and selectively forgetting history. He really thought the Allied countries were gonna turn out that way. They didn't, at least not where I come from. Although our government collapsed." YT grins at this. "So they can't do that anyway."

Blah blah blah literary analysis blah blah blah governmental collapse?

"Your government collapsed?" Kara repeats, giving YT something of a look.

"Yep. Really bad fiscal mismanagement plus the internet commerce boom equals hyperinflation," YT says. "These days dollars are only worth something when they're in, like, the billions or trillions. They aren't real money anymore. Anyone who's sane uses Kongbucks or yen." She shrugs. "It doesn't take a war or a major disaster to off a government, see. Just the money going bad and a bunch of people who are sick of it."

"...okay," Kara says, biting the end of her pencil in thought, "Okay. That'd make sense. Um, are things...not okay now? Or, like, do you have a good anarchy?"

"The best," YT says, as if she's talking about some fine vintage of wine. "Although Dr. D says it's actually libertarian. Everything left to private enterprise and stuff. I guess maybe that's the technical term for good anarchy."

"Well, that's cool, then," Kara says, brightening, "Generally those things don't go so great, but there you go. The exception that proves the rule, right?"

"I don't know if it really is a rule," YT muses. "At least you don't think I'm living in hell or something. Most of the other people here who I've told about my world think that the government collapsing is the worst thing ever."

"Well, I don't know," Kara says mildly, "I've never actually gotten along so great with most governments. A lot of the rules are kind of dumb, and the ones that aren't are set up pretty badly and don't actually work most of the time. So, if not having one works for your world? Then hey, whatever, that's cool."

"Not the whole world, just America. And actually, I don't know if it would've worked out that way in any other country. You've gotta have a pretty schizoid culture and enough ambitious people to make it work."

Kara laughs.

"America is crazy," she says, cheerfully, "But I like it. It's - I mean, it's so messed up but it's fun. It's like - I don't know, everyone is just so - something! I don't know. I just like it."

YT grins widely. "Maybe because it was the first experiment with democracy, y'know? Well, modern democracy. It's still an experiment. Even if the government's gone in mine, I'm not gonna say it's a failure, because without it we wouldn't have the stuff we've got now." She rolls her eyes. "Maybe it's some weird mutated result or something, I don't know."

"Like - it got irradiated or something. Supersociety? Probably hard to say, but when you introduce a new stress like that into a system it has to adapt or die, and I guess you just lucked onto an adaptation that wasn't hellish weirdness." Kara says, illustrating something with her hands. She likes to gesture.

"Yeah, we just got garden-variety weirdness," YT says. "We've got some stuff in our 2007 that I haven't heard about anywhere else - the Metaverse, for one, and the Rat Things. Virtual reality internet and cybernetic guard dogs, basically. Closest thing any other Earth has to the Metaverse, far as I know, is this game thing called Second Life, and you can't even goggle into it." YT rolls her eyes, clearly indicating that this is one of the most lame and backward things she's ever heard of.

"Ooo," Kara says, suitably impressed, "Like, a Matrix kind of thing?"

"I'm assuming you don't mean the big green dude with a false eye. Otherwise, I have no clue." In a world with a Metaverse, the Matrix is not high-concept enough to be worth an astronomical sci-fi movie budget, so it never came out in YT's world.

No bullet time? Oh no!

"Um, it was sort of like this movie about people plugged into a virtual reality. I liked the slow motion scenes - I kind of made one of my friends watch it so she could get superspeed a little better, even if it's not actually totally right."

YT cocks her head and furrows her brow thoughtfully. "Plugged in? Do you mean really plugged, or is that just a name for it the way it is back home? Mostly we call it being goggled in, because we use, y'know, goggles."

"Really plugged in," Kara informs her, not without relish, "It was kind of gross, actually."