Sexualized Saturdays: Alex Danvers and a Coming Out Arc Done Right

(via purefandom)

I’ll be honest, I’m kind of tired of gay coming out arcs on TV by now. The angst, the panic, and the not knowing how their family and friends will react to the gay character aren’t really appealing to me anymore (I’ve had enough of that in my own life). I want to see LGBTQ+ characters living their lives, working, dating, asserting their identities, and standing up to bigotry. However, coming out remains an experience most of us, LGBTQ+ folks, share. And even though representation on mainstream media is disappointing more often than not, it seems that once in a while it’s still possible to be pleasantly surprised and moved to tears by a character figuring out their sexuality on a superhero show, of all places. I am talking, as you can tell by the title, about Alex Danvers—one of the main characters on Supergirl—and her character arc in the first half of the second season.

Spoilers for the Supergirl TV show below.

Fanfiction Fridays: Buried Alive by youmeandthehurricane

I love Alex Danvers from Supergirl—and why wouldn’t I? Not only does she have a healthy and supportive relationship with her sister Kara, Alex is also a badass alien-crime fighter who helps save the day on multiple occasions due to her quick thinking and ingenuity. Then of course, I also love hero-villain team-ups, which the show gives us numerous times through the antagonistic character Maxwell Lord. He’s someone who genuinely wants to do the right thing, but he’s always worried that Supergirl could easily become corrupt. It’s only a double bonus that Maxwell and Alex have something of a romance in the earlier episodes.

The two characters eventually break up in the show once Alex realizes what an awful douchebag Maxwell really is—also, he tries to kill her sister, so of course their relationship was doomed to fail. Normally, while I like hero-villain fics a lot, I tend to stay away from the ones with romance, if only because they have a habit of being creepy, non-consensual, and lacking any kind of self-awareness. So it came as a pleasant surprise when I happened upon Buried Alive by youmeandthehurricane.

Supergirl, Female Relationships, and Feminist Arcs

Late last year, Lady Geek Girl wrote down her thoughts on Supergirl’s pilot episode for you guys, and since then, we haven’t discussed the show at all. I’m here to fix that right now. Supergirl is everything I could have asked for in a female superhero story. The show is fun, has a really great plot, and some awesome characters. Furthermore, this is not another story with a female lead and an ensemble of male side characters—the show focuses a lot on family relationships between women and continuously allows those women to uplift and help each other through their struggles.

Spoilers ahead.