#why do Will’s feelings for Mike and the set up of it outweigh El and Mike’s feelings for each other…?

[chirpsythismorning]

Remember when the ST cast was presented with the fan theory that El and Will were secretly dating, meaning El would have essentially been cheating on Mike. And instead of stating what is believed to be the casual viewers assumption, you know, something along the lines of What? No! El loves Mike so that would never happen, they said What? No! Will loves Mike and he literally wants to play dnd and Nintendo in Mike’s basement for the rest of his life…— Meaning their problem with that theory wasn’t fans considering the possibility of El moving on from Mike, but Will moving on from Mike…

[motorcyclegirlfriends]

Why do you think Kara hasn't told Lena the truth about her being Supergirl?

So many understandable possibilities, which is why I’m always annoyed when fic writers have it actually just be because Lena is a Luthor. (And after Kara was seen punching cement blocks over other people assuming Lena was bad because of her family.)

Reason #1:

Lena’s mother wants Supergirl dead.

If Lilian ever found out that Lena knows who Supergirl is when she’s not saving the day, both Kara and Lena would be in danger.

Kara, for obvious reasons. Lena wouldn’t even need to actually tell Lilian for her to find out through Lena, all it takes is a little spying.

And Lena is in danger, because what if Lilian does ask her. Kara doesn’t know how willing Lilian is to actively hurt Lena for information, but she knows Lilian left Supergirl and Lena in Lex’s vault to die.

And then, of course, if Lilian found out who Kara is, she could endanger the other people that Kara loves to get to her.

Reason #2:

Kara likes being just Kara Danvers, reporter and friend, with Lena.

After “Kara Danvers, you are my hero.” Kara would likely love that a version of herself is appreciated, because it’s a version of herself that she isn’t gifted with by the sun.

Kara has expressed these thoughts in her own words, when she lamented the loss of her job,

“Supergirl is what I can do.Kara is who I am.”

Interestingly, even when she loss her job, she didn’t lose the role of Kara Danvers, because she had Lena. 

Lena is the only person who only knows that side of her, which gives Kara an opportunity to enjoy it and not be distracted by her other roles.

When Kara helps Lena, it’s with her words and her friendship. Her self. Hell, this version of herself that Kara gets to be is pretty close to Kara Zor-El, too. Because she so often draws from her full experiences, which includes the loss of her family.

But the one thing she doesn’t have to talk about is being Supergirl.

It’s kind of like... going on tumblr, as a bisexual, and only talking about girls.

I don’t need to talk about guys on here, because I am able to talk about them everywhere else. Everywhere else, people prefer me to talk about guys. This is often just my space for loving women. So much so that people assume I’m a lesbian. 

In fact, in a lot of ways, the rest of Kara’s reasons for not telling Lena draws parallels to coming out.

The Coming Out Story™ that it’s actually probably least like is the sexuality story (I think it’s perhaps something of a cross between coming out as a minority and coming out as trans- for reasons that I’ll maybe describe elsewhere) but because the coming out story I know best is my own, I’ll use that as a parallel.

Reason #3:

Kara ‘coming out’ as Supergirl would just take a minute. 

Just like it did in my case, and does in many other cases.

It doesn’t always matter who it is or if you consider yourself ‘out’. When you meet a new person, the clock starts over. The clock moves faster the more confident you are in yourself, but there’s still some time before you tell someone something like that.

It took me two years to come out to the friends I met back in college. Not because I thought they would judge me, but because it's just something you don’t get to know until you’ve leveled up in friendship. Now, with new real life friends, it’s closer to a month before it comes up. 

But Kara also isn’t really... out. It’s generally a secret. So she’s not where I am.

“Okay, but hasn’t Lena proven herself as a friend? Even if they haven’t known each other that long, shouldn’t she be ‘leveling up’ by now?”

Well, this brings me to,

Reason #4:

Lena has proven herself to be a good friend. She has proven herself to be a good person. She has proven that she doesn’t want harm to come to aliens.

But she hasn’t proven that she isn’t, to some degree... xenophobic.

“But you just said Lena has proven that she’s a good person! She can’t be a good person and be xenophobic!”

Well, there are degrees of these things. Most people have some shitty belief on some level. Xenophobia in the real world can range anywhere from “I want them the fuck out of my country” to "Well she’s Asian so she’s prolly smart, right?”

I didn’t tell my friend Mike that I was bi for a while after I really wanted to. A girl in one of our classes had said, with the kind of put-on pride that just dares people to say something, “I’m a lesbian”. 

Afterward, he had said to me, “That was weird. Wasn’t that weird?”

I didn’t know what to say.

Did this mean he was one of those people who is like “I’m okay with people being gay, I just don’t want it in my face?” (Which is a quick way of saying “I’m not homophobic, but I’m homophobic.”) 

Did this mean that he didn’t mind being told, but didn’t understand why she was defensive in that setting? (Which while isn’t necessarily homophobic, this at best hints at a lack of empathy for her, and at worse hints at “Did she just assume I’m homophobic?” which is the kind of rhetoric conditional allies use before going on about how nice they are to the gays, rhetoric that gays know to fear as “if you’re not nice to me, I’m just gonna go be homophobic instead.”)

I knew Mike was a nice guy. He was liberal, spoke against wrongdoings to minorities, never said anything I considered to be “problematic”. And he was a good friend.

He probably just meant that it had been an awkward situation and that she had said it kind of out of left field.

But I didn’t know for sure. And at that stage in my life, I had to know for sure.

Kara doesn’t know for sure.

“But Lena saved the aliens! Kara should know she’s not xenophobic!”

Well, that is definitely in the pro-column. But there is also a con-column, and it contains the alien detection device Lena made. 

Kara gave some leeway with Lena about ‘protecting yourself’ from aliens. Well, for maybe a day. She had been drawing kind of a false parallel between her hatred of Daxamites- who had actual slaves, mind you- and the people’s generalized fear of all aliens they don’t know.

But by the end of the episode, Kara was back to being pro-all aliens. And likely back to realizing that forcing aliens to out themselves is a shitty idea. 

One that Lena was into.

So then, like I did, Kara has to ask herself, “What are the connotations of this? How deep does this go?”

Is Lena just scared because aliens have power that she doesn’t?

(And Kara asks- Would she be scared of me?)

And that leads to other questions.

Does she on some level hate that we’ve made her life dangerous? Is this hate made stronger by how she grew up? Her family is xenophobic, so what did they tell her growing up? Did she grow up hearing them say things that are different are dangerous? That different things are bad? Wrong? Gross? Would she be grossed out by me? How I eat so much? The ways my body is different? Would she find my religion to be weird? My favorite memories, with my family on my planet- would she have to get over some knee-jerk disgust before she could appreciate them? She’s nice to Supergirl, but is that just because she knows she’s supposed to be? That it’s obvious because I’m a Super that hating me is becoming like her family? Would she feel the same if she only knew me as an alien?

And Kara calms herself, because she knows Lena is good and knows she is trying to be better than her family. That Lena has a good heart. That Lena would ultimately and fully accept her in the end. 

But there’s a part of Kara that fears what Lena has to overcome within herself before she makes the right decision. That spilt second of fear. Or revulsion. That split second of anything other than complete acceptance... is terrifying.

But that’s okay, right? To have shitty thoughts a second before the good thoughts? We’re all works in progress.

But so is Kara. She’s not going to have perfect confidence all of the time, and it’s unreasonable to expect her to take this risk right away.

They have time. Lena can prove to Kara a little bit more, conversation by conversation, that she doesn’t think of aliens as bad. And if there’s something that’s off, Kara can help her get to the right place (because, as Kara knows, it’s a lot easier to protect others than it is yourself, easier to argue with fervor on someone else’s behalf than on your own).

And then, over time, Kara’s fear of whatever secret negative feelings Lena might have will be outweighed by how much she wants to share her full self with Lena. And she’ll tell her. 

Unless, of course, someone else tells Lena first...