 and thanks him but then decides to do things her way.
Nia sets up an Upswipez profile, bragging about knowing Dreamer, and dares The Asshole to come and get her.
Across town, J’onn psychically traces Trevor to a house where a woman denies knowing anything about him. He asks if Trevor could be friends with the woman’s spouse, and she insists her husband Richard doesn’t know him. J’onn calls her out on lying and she concedes that she stretched the truth a little; technically she doesn’t know him in the real world, but she’s been having a virtual fling with Trevor in Obsidian. And somehow doesn’t think it’s cheating. She says Richard can be possessive but she escapes via VR, but between that and Richard being a coder, J’onn figures Richard has something to do with Trevor’s disappearance.
At the DEO, Brainy is searching for Dreamer’s name on all platforms when he’s interrupted with an agent who came back with the assignment he gave her. She tells him she found over 200 social media groups and message boards catering to trans hate groups. A heartbreakingly realistic statistic. Brainy sadly thanks and dismisses her, and turns around to see his search brought up Nia’s Upswipez bait.
Alex, still in the VR escape room, is trying to get through the doors while Kelly updates her on what J’onn learned about Richard and Trevor. Kelly seems… surprised that people were using VR to have virtual affairs? Because, despite being very smart and also a psychologist, she’s apparently very naive.
Kelly talks Alex through getting through the door using her willpower, and Alex manages to manifest a key to get in. She finds herself in a bright white hallway that is a stark contrast to the room she was just in, and also she realizes she can’t hear Kelly anymore. Somehow Richard made a room that can’t be remotely monitored. Alex is on her own now.
Out in the real life CatCo, Kara and William are working on a piece about violence against the trans community. Kara is overwhelmed by the statistic that there were 24 trans people murdered in the past year, and William correctly points out that the real number is likely much higher but misreported because of police reports misgendering victims. I think this conversation is so important, because even though folks like us know these things and talk about them often, there is definitely a subset of people watching this show who love Nia and Dreamer and whose hearts are open to trans people but that aren’t involved in the LGBTQ+ community so who just don’t know how vulnerable the community is. Who don’t know how much our trans siblings need our support and protection and uplifting and celebrating. People like Kara, who thought they knew, but didn’t really know the depth of it until she had her eyes opened to it.
Kara understands the depths of Nia’s anger better now, and wants to do more to help her friend. Brainy calls Kara and tells her about Nia’s Upswipez article and Kara immediately goes to find her.
Alex continues down her virtual hallway and finds Trevor standing in the middle of a circular room. He’s happy to see her but also tells her to stay away because he keeps exploding at random then coming back. Alex is alarmed to say the least.
Trevor says that he’s been tortured like this for a long time and he’s in so much pain, and that sometimes Richard shows up just to watch. And then, as if on cue, Richard does appear, and Alex shoots him out of the simulation. When he wakes up, J’onn is in his hotel room, so he attacks, and Richard zaps him…but he still has the Obsidian lenses in his eyes, so something goes wrong and he ends up in a comatose state where his brain is flickering between virtual reality and reality reality.
In the simulation, Alex tells Trevor that he can control this virtual environment, that he can make his own rules, and talks him through stopping the next explosion, cheering him on and making even ME feel like I could do anything.
I want Alex being supportive audio on a loop.
Trevor is so happy, and tells Alex where his body is so she and Kelly can go get him out of hte sim. When Alex gets out of the simulation herself, Kelly is there waiting for her and so glad to see things went well even after they couldn’t talk anymore.
I love the little subtle ways they connect. Always reaching for each other. Even after all this time.
When The Asshole goes to meet up with Nia from Upswipez, he finds Dreamer waiting for him instead. He says she’s not a good role model, and that someone has to stand up to “you people” which is one of the most annoying things an asshole can (and will) say. He comes at her with a knife but she’s smarter and faster and stronger than him so she quickly gets him wrapped up in what Nicole Maines called the “phone cord of justice” and thus it will henceforth be known.
I do not make the rules. Nicole Maines makes the rules.
 But Nia has heard it all before, and she’s not having it. She tells him that his male ego is fragile and his sense of self is so shaky that anything outside of his narrow worldview feels threatening to him. She pulls her cord tighter and is ready to end him right then and there but then Supergirl shows up and begs Dreamer not to let The Asshole turn her into something she’s not.
She begs Nia not to let his darkness infect her, that she’s a symbol of hope and stooping to his level isn’t the message people need right now. Nia expresses her wariness that he’ll actually get justice, that he’ll actually get the punishment he deserves, and Kara agrees that it’s not something she can promise, but that the best they can do is try. Try to bring him to justice. Try to protect the trans community. Together.
Kara emphasizes this point. Nia isn’t alone. Kara and Alex and J’onn, and yes, even Brainy, are on her side. She says that they should have been more explicitly turning their eyes and their capes towards the trans community earlier, and she’s sorry for that, but they have now, and they’re not going anywhere.
So Dreamer lets go of The Asshole, and whispers in his ear that he’s going to prison and that if he ever attacks anyone in the trans community again, she’ll give him “a nightmare you’ll never wake up from.” Which is the perfect Dreamer threat, in my humble opinion.
Later, Kara finds Nia crying on a balcony. She holds her dear friend as she reckons with the fact that she almost killed a man today. She doesn’t want to be a killer, really she doesn’t, but she’s so… overwhelmed. She admits to Kara what honestly takes so much strength to admit: she’s not okay.
SAD NIA HURTS MY FEELINGS. I’M READY FOR A HAPPY NIA EPISODE.
Everything is crashing over her. Her community is constantly under attack, she had visions about her mom and about Yvette that she couldn’t interpret in time to help them, Brainy broke her heart and she doesn’t know why, it’s all just so much. So Kara just holds her.
Nia tells Kara that she thought she could get a sense of control if she stopped this one guy but gets that she went too far. Kara understands that kind of pressure, that moment of knowing you are powerful enough to do something equally bad or worse to someone who wronged you but having to be the better person about it. But, importantly, Kara clarifies that while she can relate on some level, she knows she can’t truly understand exactly, specifically what Nia is going through.
But she tells Nia that the difference between people like them and people like The Asshole is that they CAN do these bad things, but they don’t. That choice is what makes them different. What makes them heroes. She tells Nia that her community needs her, and that she’s sorry she wasn’t more supportive, that she didn’t know how much pain she was in. But she knows now and she’s here for her.
No YOU spontaneously burst into tears when Kara wiped a tear off Nia’s cheek.
Nia cries into Kara’s shoulder and it’s beautiful and heartbreaking and I wanted to throw all of the awards at Nicole and Melissa.
I want to live in this hug forever.
That night, at the gaylien bar, Alex and Kelly decide right then and there that their relationship is not an open relationship, not even for VR flings, and they’re both on the same page about it. Kelly still believes this Obsidian Platform technology can help people, but she feels guilty and angry that she didn’t foresee the way people would take advantage of it. Which on one hand feels very “duh” but on the other happens with big tech companies in real life all the time. They agree there should be more rules in place for who can use the tech and how, but Kelly isn’t even sure how much that will help since she flagged the glitch of not being able to get out of the sim months ago and it seems like it hasn’