randomthingsthatilike123:

Honestly remember season 1 and Maxwell Lord was taken into the DEO without due process and that’s when James was like hey maybe the DEO actually isn’t good. At all. And he was right but at the time he was only talking about humans at the time, and how they were treating humans. But what if this led his season 2 arc, with him as the head of this massive media company was James realizing that the DEO is actually alien Guantanamo.

These aliens had at minimum 24 years of being locked up, since that was how long Kara was in The Phantom Zone. We have no idea how long they were sentenced there for, or even for what. And what we know is that the DEO would then capture the alien, take them in, and decide whether or not they will be locked up forever and probably horrible confinement with no sunlight, or cell mates, or any chance of parole. Just look at that tiny cell Astra had. There is no parole, they are there forever without any kind of due process or rights, with agents possibly also conducting experiments on them, like they did with Astra and Kryptonite. They literally tortured Astra–and have you ever seen an alien prisoner with a lawyer? I haven’t.

Jonn had to pretend to be Hank for over a decade–Hank, who clearly had a bunch of friends in the military as we see in that ep where Alex is interrogated by Lucy in s1. You can’t all of a sudden be an alien lover and have extremely Progressive views. Maybe he can gradually and arbitrarily make changes, like letting go of the professor of astronomy that we see, who Hank probably would have kept imprisoned, or doing his best to recruit people who aren’t all hardcore xenophobes. But it’s not enough.

The DEO literally play judge, jury, and executioner with alien lives.

am not exaggerating when I say this is alien Guantanamo

and James realizing this, especially realizing this when he remembers that they shot Kara out of the sky with Kryptonite and locked her up before letting her go. It’s almost a survival thing for Kara to work with them, because this could be her. And it’s one thing when it is all the Fort Rozz aliens trying to kill her, but what about all the other aliens in national city?

And do you know who’s also end up being on his side? Someone he talks to
as a point to be like yes this is the alternative we need, James isn’t
just going to be like “this is wrong,” oh no, he’s going to have a
solution and ideas of how to make the system better, an alternate especially since right now it seems like for any crime aliens get life sentences.
Who this would bring him into contact with? Detective Maggie Sawyer
from National City Police Department’s science branch. And oh look. Now
we also have a cohesive storyline for Maggie that exists outside of
Alex.

And that’s definitely one way to cause conflict between James and Kara, temporarily breaking them up. Because yes Alex definitely took the job in case they ever came after Kara–she straight out says multiple times she did this to protect Kara, because as she was before she couldn’t take on the DEO, and this would give her hours, maybe days of warning that she might need to grab Kara and run– but it was also a Lifeline when she was struggling. and there’s also a fact that most of the aliens Alex encounters wouldn’t hesitate to try and kill Aluras daughter if they knew about her, and she says in season one that J’onn told her that they were going to save the world. She then makes a point that she can’t distinguish between aliens and humans anymore, but we don’t really see that in DEO policies, other than they’ll now take in humans with powers as well as aliens. To do what she does, Alex needs to believe that she’s in the right– and tbh it kind of reminds me about border patrol dynamics w their family members(when I went to El Paso,TX–and this is from both undocumented immigrants and the border patrol themselves–they mentioned that several border patrol agents would have family members who were there illegally and it’s just the dynamic they live with it’s definitely an interesting but complicated topic).

This entire media war would definitely place James at odds with Alex. And even if Kara understands (even if it’s a truth Kara doesn’t want to acknowledge because so much of her life is hard and complicated and she doesn’t want to think about how tenuous her freedom really is, and what she’s maybe done for the past year), both Kara and Alex choose each other first, always. It’s not a man (or racism) who breaks up Kara and James. And James understands, he does, and he hopes that one day maybe Kara will stop being scared of what could happen (and if she is, its because hes helped shape a world where she wont be)–but it’s not going to stop him.

This is what’s right. This isn’t bs contrived drama–god, the metaphor and symbolism alone, about a black man being in control of the media narrative of the xenophobic practices of shady government law enforcement that do what they want to a vulnerable minority population, shaping public opinion, acting as the moral compass of the show? Mindblowing

This is how James Olsen can end up being a guardian for others. Not with his fists, or against muggers. Because
this is something he can do that Kara can’t. Kara may be a reporter, can go against a thousand corrupt politicians and institutions potentially–but not the DEO. She can’t do this–as an
alien, she’s under their purview. But James, as a civilian and a human,
isn’t. Kara Danvers may be somewhat of a big name for a few select
journalism circles by being Cat’s assistant for 3 years but that’s a
selective circle (and how many nights do you think Kara stays up late,
trying to avoid thinking about what scenario would make the DEO come
after her, or how many times they almost did, how much
information they collected on her, before she ever became Supergirl)
James said it himself–he took that picture, and now everyone
knows his name.

This is not about punches and fighting–this is how
James can frame the narrative to shape public opinion and make change on a global scale. He’s not some
random reporter the DEO can disappear, or intimidate into compliance. He just became the head of an international media company, and he’s publicly known as Superman’s best friend–this has nothing to do with Superman, but he, with all his fragile humanity, has been threatened and intimidated by every single goddamn villain Superman has gone against and came out the other side breathing. Sure he’s scared, but when has that ever stopped him?

He’s James fucking Olsen, and he’ll hold his head high as he does what’s right.