“I have knowledge of how a number of future events are going to play out, because I’ve already lived through the next eleven years. I’m making an attempt to change the outcome of those events in order to prevent a series of disastrous outcomes for Earth and millions of other worlds. Honestly, Susan, I hadn’t intended to read anyone other than Alex and Hank in on this, because I didn’t want to put the weight of this on anyone else’s shoulders."
Future Shock is a planned four-part Supergirl (2015) Peggy Sue fanfic by Argyle_s.
11 years into the future, the war against Darkseid has been lost. With options depleted Kara, M'Gann, Sara Lance and Thea Queen play the ultimate gamble, to send Kara's memories, some essential tech, and all the resources they can muster back to before the war was lost, before everyone died, before there was even a Supergirl.
And this time, Kara intends to do better.
The first story, The Shape of Things to Come
, details Kara's arrival, and her debut as Supergirl, which goes just a little different than it did before. Not everyone is thrilled however, and CADMUS is waiting in the dark.
In the second story, Devils In The Dark, CADMUS makes its move, and enemies both within and without gather, as the pressure begins to build on Kara, but what will crack first?
In the third story A Plague Of Righteousness, Kara defeated CADMUS, but begins to crack as her reputation has been ruined. Meanwhile Nia Nal begins to have a disturbing vision of a hellish place inhabited by monsters.
Future Shock provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Pretty much every named female hero, starting with Kara, Alex and Maggie, and including numerous DEO agents, most of the women on other Superhero teams.
- Afraid of Their Own Strength: After being repaired following the Battle of Little Krypton, Cat has some concerns regarding this given that she's lost fine motor function in her hands.
- Alien Among Us: No expense is spared to show us that Kara and the other Kryptonians are alien, with references to culture, religion and social traditions sprinkled throughout and forming a large part of both the social media arc and the Fendra arc.
- Archnemesis Dad: A tragic version in the bad future where Jeremiah Danvers is eventually turned into a Metallo unit that attacks Catco. After killing Cat Grant and others Kara is left with no choice but the kill him and Alex never really gets over it. In the current timeline things at first seem milder, then its discovered Jeremiah never wanted to take Kara in and has grown to actively hate her. This leads him to reveal Kara is a time traveller to the President. This actually turns in Nice Job Fixing It, Villain as it allows Marsden (whose been growing paranoid about all Kara's activities) to learn why its Kara is doing these things and fully ally with her. However a disgusted Alex disowns him, Eliza officially leaves him in favour of J'onn and by book three he's fallen in with Cadmus remnants.
- Lucy and Lois absolutely hate their bigoted father, and proclaim (loudly) they're on the Kryptonians side when he comes up.
- Lena and Lillian are a (step)mother/ daughter example as usual.
- There is very little love lost by Kara for Zor-El due to her knowledge of his work on bio weapons and her learning he modified her with Worldkiller DNA. Although long dead she does get to confront him by time travel.
- Lucy and Lois absolutely hate their bigoted father, and proclaim (loudly) they're on the Kryptonians side when he comes up.
- Badass Normal: Agent Vasquez, full stop. Leslie Willis, who even as a human gives zero fucks about how powerful Supergirl is.
- Broken Bird: Kara, in spades. It begins with flashbacks and PTSD, and gets so very much worse to the point where Kara wonders if she can ever be fixed.
- Cast Full of Gay: Most of the women (and some men) in the fic are at least bisexual, often leading to Adaptational Sexuality.
- Celebrity Cameo: Kara is on social media, so naturally there's some of this. Rachel Maddow has offered styling tips while Gordon Ramsey wants to convince her rice pudding is a real dessert.
- Despair Event Horizon: Kara careens right over the edge of this after she is forced to marry Fendra in order to be able to recognise the child Fendra illegally seeded with her DNA. It leads her to nearly committing suicide by travelling back to Krypton just before it's destruction and not leaving.
- In the future, the four surviving heroes reach that point to kick off the fic, reasoning that with Darkseid ready to begin hopping to entirely new clusters of multiverses, the actual destruction of the multiverse at the hands of the Monitors is a risk that's acceptable if it gives them a chance to stop him.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: Part of Lucy's arc after she becomes Kryptonian.
- Dope Slap: Happens a few times.
- Drugged Lipstick: Used by Poison Ivy, when it doesn't work Harley decides to try and smush it in using her own lips.
- Everyone Can See It: Kara and Cat, by almost literally everyone. Even fresh off the boat Alex figures it out quickly enough.
- Fate Worse than Death: Supergirl demonstrates to Lillian and Sam Lane that death is for people who lack imagination.
- Foreign Cuss Word: As Kara puts it, Kryptonian curses are just better. Cat eventually learns enough Kryptonian to call Kara out on her foul mouth when she swears in front of Carter.
- For Want Of A Nail: Things very quickly begin sliding out of control, though the actual divergence point isn't discovered till much later.
- Foreshadowing: At one point M'Gann says "People get shot over things like that, usually in the head". Guess what happens later.
- This is a running theme in the fic actually, a great deal of events are foreshadowed.
- Geeky Turn-On: The scene where Cat and Kara are laying out a business plan, and they have to keep stopping because Kara is so turned on by Cat's intelligence it keeps degenerating into a make out session.
- Good Is Not Soft: Kara pretty much defines the term. Kind, jovial, helpful, hopeful, but also ruthless to her opponents, cruel to those who've harmed people she loves, and completely willing to threaten, intimidate and occasionally assault or kill people to save lives.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Cat when Lucy climbs into Kara's lap and kisses her at the Christmas party. Alex intended to provoke this as part of an Operation: Jealousy.
- If I Wanted You Dead...: Kara notes near the end of Devil's In The Dark that she should have just killed her enemies the day she arrived, rather than trying to be reasonable.
- I Have Many Names: Kara has a whole list of names given to her by Darkseid's during the war. These include Red Daughter of Krypton, the Blue Death, Hivekiller, Godslayer and Destroyer of Worlds. One of them in particular, The Survivor, is especially painful for Kara.
- Immune to Bullets: Kara, of course. So her enemies begin throwing heavier weapons and bigger bullets at her.
- Mama Bear:
- Kara's reaction following the death of Kiera terrifies her friends as well as her enemies. What she does to the perpetrators evokes both justice and vengeance in equal measures.
- Vasquez defending Leslie Willis is at one point described like an irate bear defending a surly alleycat.
- Men Don't Cry: Averted with Winn following the battle in little Krypton.
- Mistaken Identity: Ray Palmer is at one point mistaken for Clark Kent, also doubles as an Actor Allusion.
- My Parents Are Dead: Averted in a surprising and painful way.
- Mythology Gag: So many due to the author's deep knowledge and understanding of DC comics, but also to the DCAU with a reference to the infamous world-of-cardboard speech amongst other things.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Kara, the other Kryptonians, anyone wearing a Kryptonite Warsuit.
- Only Sane Man: Kara dubs Susan Vasquez 'Adult Supervision' and gives her veto rights. Susan immediately lampshades why she doesn't want to be in charge of people with superpowers acting like children, but given that the entire multiverse is at stake, she accepts.
- Leads to a funny moment when the near 100 year old general wants her to act in the role and Susan begins dropping expletives
- Orphan's Ordeal: Kara never gets over the loss of Krypton and her parents, though she recognizes as an adult that it wasn't the perfect utopia she had wanted it to be.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Utterly averted. Kara puts sharing Kryptonian tech at the forefront of her mission to improve humanity. Not all of it, not all at once, but starting with fixing the energy crisis, providing easy space lift tech and 100 percent recycling methods it later extends to site to site bulk transport and medical tech. One particular politician uses this as part of her election campaign to 'prove' the insidious influence of aliens on earth.
- Related in the Adaptation: The fic eventually reveals Alura couldn't actually have children and turned to Astra for help. As such Kara is actually her biological daughter and Kara begins calling her "Mother" soon after learning this.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Given by numerous people to numerous other people, though the standouts come from Lois, Lucy and Lena near the end of Devils in the Dark
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Kara's primary goal, so far she's began making preparations for the wars with Darksaid and The Guardians averted the Myriad crisis and saved her Aunt in less than a month and taken on Cadmus. The last task proved a bit "more complex" than expected.
- The Shrink: Dr. Foster, who is instrumental in keeping Kara together.
- Shipper on Deck: Kara with regards to Alex and Maggie. By sheer coincidence, Kara meets Maggie in the new timeline four months before she comes out as Supergirl, and immediately starts trying to set her up with Alex.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Leslie believes she is this towards Cat, never having had any interest in sex or romance with anyone else. Then she meets Susan.
- Stress Vomit: Sara following regaining her future memories, specifically of the times she spent on Apocalypse, where there are no animals, but they still feed you meat. Yeah.
- Super Hero Origin: During her second run her first appearance is very carefully managed to appear spontaneous, it even takes in Cat Grant who notes that she made her first save in civilian clothes whereas Superman made his first save in the suit.
- Super-Senses: Cat waxes lyrical about Kryptonian eyesight and why a culture of fifteen thousand years of recorded history would still worship a sun when she notes she can actually see the light itself.
- Took a Level in Badass: Everyone, constantly.
- That Came Out Wrong: At one point, Kara accidentally implies that she's a voyeur during a conversation with Cat.
- The First Cut Is the Deepest: Sara is this for Kara with regards to her developing relationship with Cat. At one point, Kara specifically notes that she doesn't feel like she's able to pursue any relationship because she's still grieving for Sara. The issue isn't resolved until Sara shows up, and she and Kara briefly rekindle their relationship before saying a final goodbye when Sara has to return to Earth One to prepare for the coming war with Darkseid.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted with a vengeance. Everyone in the know, knows that Kara's mental state is fragile, and at one point a suggestion is made and mooted to send her and a therapist back in time to give her years of therapy effectively overnight.
- They Would Cut You Up:
- And James gets pictures when they find a PHAN cell who has been doing exactly that.
- When the CADMUS lab where the Bizarro's are created is discovered, Kara drops the Kryptonian equivalent of a Nuke onto it.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Despite flirting, innuendo and Kara making a public declaration of love to Clark Cat and Kara don't kiss for the first time until Chapter 44 of Devils in the Dark (more than 400,000 words into the series). It's another nine chapters and more than a hundred thousand words later that they finally consummate their relationship.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: After Sara leaves to return to Earth One Lucy shows up at Kara's apartment with booze than affects humans and Kryptonians. A night of drunken shenanigans follows. Lucy wakes up the next morning with pierced nipples and a back tattoo.
- World's Strongest Man: It's nearly universally acknowledged that Kara is the most powerful Kryptonian alive, to the point where President Marsdin thinks that six Lanterns might not be enough to corral her.
Maggie shook her head. “You know, back when we met, you told me you had trouble finding someone with shared life experiences. I figured there was a bad break up, or maybe a girlfriend who died or something.”
“Hey, I told you you’d have to come to Thanksgiving dinner to unlock my tragic backstory.”
