lj-writes:

Spoilers for Black Lightning early Season 1 (eps 1-4).

Excited as I am at the prospect of ThunderGrace, I wish we’d gotten
to see more of Anissa/Chenoa before the relationship ended. Chenoa looked like a character with a lot
of potential, and I don’t think the way either Anissa or the narrative
treated her was entirely fair.

Though I’m sad that we may not get to know more about Chenoa (hoping I’m wrong on that, fingers crossed), I do like the flaws the relationship and the way it ended revealed in Anissa’s character. It looks like her struggle will be to open up to others, even those closest to her, and I hope this will be something she has to face up to in her new romance as well as her relationship with her family.

And I certainly don’t want ThunderGrace to be magically perfect because it’s with a new girl, because that would imply the problem was Chenoa. There was nothing wrong with Chenoa other than Anissa not being into her, and not having the courage to tell her until she was caught flirting with another woman. I’m not letting Grace off the hook here, either–she was entirely too sanguine about the information that Anissa had a girlfriend. I suspect her flaw is that she’s a people-pleaser, since she mentioned a strained relationship with her parents.

I really respected Chenoa, by the way, for not putting up with Anissa’s behavior, and for having the sense to see it wasn’t working. This was the girl she had been dating for a year having self-described “mind-blowing” sex with, the girl she wanted to introduce to her parents, the girl she was trying to hold onto even though she knew it wasn’t working. That took guts to move on after a year of investment in a relationship. It’s why I wished she’d gotten a fairer shake from the show, and why I hope to see more of her.

@spacecadetjaylah​ said:

I’m
enjoying Black Lighthing so far but this storyline bothered me, I
didn’t get what was the point of having Anissa date Chenoa only for them
to break up, what, two episodes in so Anissa could be with his comic
canon girlfriend? If they really needed to break them up for Anissa’s
character development, I wish they didn’t involve Grace in it

The
only way I can justify it in my mind is: the way Anissa and Chenoa’s
relationship went was meant to show that both Anissa and Grace are
flawed characters. Anissa doesn’t let people get too close, even hiding
important things from her family, and Grace is afraid to speak up and
lose people she loves, as her relationship with her parents seems to
have suffered when they found out about her bisexuality.

Anissa’s
issue was  clearer than Grace’s, but Grace’s flaw is definitely there
if the viewer is willing to see Anissa and Chenoa’s breakup scene (which
happened off camera ffs) through any other lens
than “ThunderGrace can finally date for real whoo!” I mean, Anissa
straight up admitted that she’d been leading on Chenoa and using her,
and Grace is, like, way too okay with that in my opinion. Their issues
would interact in interesting ways with the storyline of a couple
dealing with superpowers, something that’s already explored in part with
Jeff and Lynn. How open and vulnerable is Anissa willing to be with
Grace? And how willing will Grace be to speak up when things get hard
for her or she thinks Anissa is wrong?

If revealing character
flaws was the intent of the Anissa/Chenoa storyline, though, I think the
story should have stayed a little longer with Chenoa and given her more
respectful treatment. I cringed when Jeff and Lynn joked about not
being able to remember her name, and while I get that it’s because
Anissa didn’t introduce them and didn’t talk much about Chenoa, it still
struck me as dismissive–especially when Chenoa wanted to introduce
Anissa to her own parents and Anissa more or less shut her down. Worse,
the story itself treated Chenoa as a non-entity and, in their last scene
as a couple, a bad person when she had every right to be angry that
Anissa was flirting with another woman. We didn’t even get to see
Chenoa’s pain at the end of her relationship because, again, the breakup
happened off screen. This is completely disrespectful of both the relationship and the character.

This
dismissive treatment and even outright vilification of Chenoa lessens
the effect of revealing Anissa’s and Grace’s character flaws and the
potential problems they will face as a couple. Worse, if the storyline
is made to show Anissa and Grace as being in the right, then there
really was no reason for Anissa to start the show in another
relationship and the writers are being incredibly oblivious of what
that storyline revealed about Anissa and Grace.