#because all his actions have been unobjectionable this season | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mimeparadox · 5 years

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More James musings

So I once again made the mistake of visiting James’ tag--imagine that, someone who likes his story visiting his tag--and saw a post which I felt was emblematic of a lot of the comments I’ve seen regarding this week’s Supergirl, and James’ story this season in general--and specifically, how disingenuous they feel, either ignoring canonical details, holding him to a standard no other character is held to, or both. Among the arguments the post made was that James was somehow terrible for going to the Child of Liberty he knew and had a relationship with in an attempt to get him to stop, instead of using Catco resources to warn the city about the attack.

I’m sorry, what?

The episode gives us an explicit deadline: there are twenty minutes between the moment Team Supergirl figured out the COL’s plan and the moment it was to be carried out. Even if James could head to Catco and prepare a warning they could broadcast in twenty minutes--difficult, with a Thanksgiving skeleton crew!--what is he going to say? He has no direct evidence that the Children of Liberty are responsible for the tagging or that they’re planning out an attack, and even less that he can divulge without implicating Kara and/or the D.E.O. Saying something like “Aliens! Could there be invisible marks in your house?” isn’t likely to be terribly credible, or helpful, particularly since infrared tech isn’t exactly a household item. A broadcast warning wouldn’t be useless--at least some aliens would decide to screw the risks and just leave before the attack comes--but it’s a terrible plan A, and as journalism, it’d be hella irresponsible--not quite shouting fire in a crowded theater, but close.

As for James’ larger plan, I fail to see the problem, besides the fact that the writers have been wishy-washy regarding what it’s supposed to be. As executed, though, it seems like the sort of thing that would be unobjectionable, but for the fact that it’s James executing it. Establishing connections with the low level guys, in the hopes that they’ll lead him to the big guy? Standard operating procedure in anti-organized-crime operations. Ingratiating oneself with a group and then feeding intel to the opposing parties? Exactly what a double agent does. What’s more, what many of the people attacking James apparently refuse to acknowledge is that it has been effective--take James away, and the Thanksgiving massacre would have been far worse. The problem, it seems to me, is less that James is doing it, but that the D.E.O. isn’t, and probably wouldn’t have, even without the Colonel Hayley factor. Heck, Lena could probably hire someone to do it for her, and the plot has yet to explain why she hasn’t. And for all the complaints about James validating the Children of Liberty and giving them a platform--which are valid concerns and something the series could stand to better tackle, even if the matter is above the series’ weight class*--it’s worth noting that nothing he’s done so far has involved CatCo or his identity as the Guardian (although that seems to change next episode), and that this whole confrontation with his source ended with him punching him out when he was about to use violence. I thought we were all for Nazi-punching?

A lot of the arguments against James also suggest that he is outside his lane, and that he is acting out of ego, and generally that his reasons for saving lives--and again, he is saving lives--aren’t good enough. These are partly based on canon, and his expressed desire to more directly help people, but they’d also carry more weight if it weren’t for the complete silence regarding Alex, Kara, and Brainy’s decision to go against Hayley’s orders and investigate the COL anyway, even when it is explicitly not their lane. Why do they get to decide that they and only they can do unauthorized and reckless action in service of a perceived greater good, and not him? It feels incredibly hypocritical, in a universe of super-heroes and vigilantes. And again, it’s not as if he’s not actually helping--again, people are alive because of him. But apparently that’s not good enough for some reason.

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* And that’s even without taking into considerations the factors that make the COL not a perfect fit for actual hate groups--the alien invasions, the fact that the aliens do have superpowers, the country has no clear way to deal with them when they do crime (the D.E.O. is supposed to be secret, after all) and that a single alien infiltrated the highest office in the United States. It’d be one thing if the world-building had done the work of showing how exactly they became integrated into the fabric of the U.S., but it hasn’t, instead preferring to use them as immigrants in funny make-up.

#Supergirl #James Olsen

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