Fanfic / Origin Story

Origin Story by Worldmaker (found here on Fan Fiction.net and here on Archive of Our Own) is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Power Girl crossover story that is set in the Marvel Universe during the Civil War.

In the aftermath of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Halloween", Xander Harris finds himself trapped not only in the body of Power Girl, but in the Marvel Universe as well during a time in which being an unregistered metahuman is a bad, bad thing. Naturally, given Xander's problems with authority, Hilarity Ensues as SHIELD and The Avengers try and bring him to heel. At least, that's what everyone thinks is going on. The truth is a lot more complicated, not only for Xander, but for the friends he makes, the enemies he provokes, and for the Marvel Universe as a whole. Calling himself "Alex Harris", he strives to find a safe harbor for both himself and the woman he comes to love.

In early November, 2014, the writer was involved in a near-fatal accident in which he suffered grave injuries that required extensive surgery and physical therapy. While he has somewhat recovered from his injuries, Worldmaker remains partially paralyzed, has lost the use of one of his hands entirely, and can no longer walk or speak clearly. He has thus warned the fans of this story that while he is continuing to work on it, doing so is "slow going" (his exact words) and that it might be a month or two between updates. Since this announcement he has managed to add several chapters and promises that the story will be finished eventually but that it will be extremely slow going.

He is fulfilling his promise, and is also not lying about new chapters coming out slowly. Chapter 31 came out on October 9th 2019, nearly two years after the release of Chapter 30 while Chapter 32 was released on April 23rd 2021. Chapter 33, the final chapter, was released on June 21, 2021.

The sequel was released on 22 December 2023; Call Me Superwoman.

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Origin Story provides examples of:

• Acceptable Breaks from Canon: The story has Tony Stark as Director of SHIELD during a period in which the actual Director was still Maria Hill. Very few of the fans of the story have ever noticed, and even fewer cared when they did.
• Accusation Fic:
  • The story was written specifically as a way to symbolically “punish” Marvel Comics for the entire Civil War story arc.
  • Buffy gets her nose broken in by a fellow Scooby Gang member when she takes too long to compute that, yes, the Kryptonian who curb-stomped Glory is a big potential danger, but she is most definitely not an actual danger and being so paranoid about her is extremely insulting at the very least. The fact that this is a constant issue with the Gang is also brought up by said nose-smasher.
• Achilles in His Tent: For most of the story, Alex refuses the call. She's possibly the most powerful superhuman on Earth, and has the right attitude to be an effective force for good, but all she wants is to be left alone. Eventually, she comes around.
• Action Girl: Alex doesn't hesitate in the least to rush in and help when people need help, nor does she shy away from fighting when a fight is what is needed. But then, half of her mental makeup is Xander Harris, and the other half is Kara Zor-L, so it's to be expected.
• Act of True Love: Alex kills three government agents (the Radioactive Man, the Venom symbiote and Bullseye) because they nearly killed her lover/partner Louise. She kills a fourth person, Homeland Secretary Henry Peter Gyrich, because not only does Alex find out that the attack was on his orders, he ordered Typhoid Mary to attack as well. Having to do so gives her nightmares and drives her into depression, but she thinks the cost is worth it as long as Louise is safe.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Ares can't help but laugh when Spider-Man executes a hit-and-run tactic that leaves the God of War hanging upside-down from the top of Avengers Tower.
• Affably Evil: Magneto, in the appropriately titled Chapter 21: “Breakfast With Magneto”. Alex notes his old fashioned European courtesy and even later likens it to meeting Ian McKellen.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: SHIELD's Helicarrier makes an appearance in Chapter 23: “Look, Up in the Sky!”, as SHIELD tries to enforce the “work for us or go to prison” provisions of the Metahuman Registration Act on Alex.
• The Alcatraz: The Gulag, Reed Richards prison, is specifically mentioned. One SHIELD agent hopes that they don't have to send Alex there for the rest of her life.
• All Abusers Are Male: Both played straight and subverted, all at the same time. At one point (during the short period Alex Harris still thinks of herself as "Xander trapped in Power Girl's body"), Alexandra is given a psychological evaluation by Doc Samson, and their talk eventually lands on "her" memories of being an abused child. When Samson asks if her father hit her, Alex reveals that while it did happen occasionally, it was actually "her" mother who was the abusive one, and that for every time "her" dad hit her, "her" mother probably hit "her" a dozen times. When Alex confesses that "her" father was much more of an emotional abuser, Samson responds that emotional abuse is often just as damaging as physical abuse.
• Allohistorical Allusion: Several characters discuss Buffy and wonder what the show would have been like had it "run for more than just the two seasons." This indicates that the show was canceled after Season 2 in this universe.
• Alternate Continuity: It turns out that the Buffyverse that Alex eventually returns to is not the one from the TV show. Buffy and Faith, who is not a Slayer, are now a couple; Willow is still with Oz, a grown-up Dawn Summers has time-traveled back to the past, and the original is now calling herself "Marie"; former Bully Larry Blaisdell has joined the team in fighting vampires; and Vi the Vampire Slayer is now active and in Sunnydale, and is romancing Jonathan Silverman.
• Alternate Self:
  • Of Power Girl. At first, Alex thinks that she is Xander Harris with Kara's memories, but later comes to realize that she's actually a melding of both Xander and Kara, with her own experiences and opinions. After realizing this, Alex becomes a wholesale Shout-Out to Superman, using the name Superwoman, complete with her first comic book in the MCU being outright a Marvel Comics version of the famous Action Comics #1.
  • In Chapter 27, Alex Harris meets Dawn Summers, who is not only grown up, but is also an active Slayer. She also meets "Marie Summers", the original timeline's Dawn Summers who changed her name to avoid confusion.
• Alternate Universe Fic: A Kryptonian comes to the Marvel Universe.
• Always Someone Better:
  • Alex "Superwoman" Harris swiftly proves herself to be this for basically every hero and villain in the Marvel Universe. It is remarked several times that it's going to take power on the level of the Silver Surfer or Doctor Strange to take her out, and neither of those two individuals are interested in the job.
  • Though it should be noted that the Clone Thor, which was significantly less powerful than the real thing, was able to hurt her and when it turned up, Alex, thinking it was the real Thor, was genuinely frightened. Considering that she knows exactly how powerful she is compared to everyone else, this is saying something. Now that she knows that Ragnarok is not the real Thor, she's a lot more capable of handling him, as shown in Chapter 31 when she basically no-sells all of his attacks and beats him down like a punk.
• Amazonian Beauty: It is remarked on that Alex is 6' 2” tall and is muscled like a bodybuilder. Louise, her girlfriend, is just above average height for an American woman, but is nevertheless still seen as “tiny” when standing next to Alex. According to the writer, Alex is physically modeled on actress/professional bodybuilder Raye Hollitt — specifically Hollitt as she was in the early 1980s when she was "Zap" of American Gladiators'' fame.
• Amazon Chaser: Louise presents a female version of this trope. Louise is no small woman herself (standing 5' 10" tall), but she openly admits that what first attracted her to her partner Alex was the fact that Alex is 6' 2" and is so muscled she looks like you took a male athlete and stuck huge breasts onto her.
• Ambadassador: Ben Grimm.
• Annoying Laugh: Alex Harris's laugh is described as a combination of a howl and a honk. One character described her laugh as sounding "for all the world like a seal being tortured."
• Anti-Hero: Alex, best showed when she fought Reed Richards. After being frozen, he assumes that she insured he'd thaw before suffering permanent damage. Alex corrects him that she neither knows nor cares.
• Anti-Villain: In the early chapters, Tony Stark can be seen as something like this. He's definitely an antagonist both in his pursuit of Alex and his support for the Registration Act, other characters speculate that he's doing everything mainly for the power rush, and he's definitely a bit of an authoritarian jerk. However, at several points we're given glimpses into his thought processes that both explain why he genuinely believes the Act is for the best and that indicates that he sincerely regrets the necessity of having to pursue a terrified and confused teenage girl just because she has superpowers. He also begins to have sufficient doubts that what he's doing is for the best to eventually prompt a Heel Realization and gradual Heel–Face Turn.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account:
  • In Chapter 18, "Dragged Into the Harsh Light of Day", Alex and the members of the Runaways are inspired to strike back at Norman Osborn in a way that would truly hurt him: by robbing him. They steal an OsCorp shipping container from the Port of Los Angeles bonded holding facility, thinking they'd net a few million dollars. When it turns out that the shipping container contains over $10 billion (its not specified how much over... just that it's over) they all have a bit of a freak-out. Alex and Louise's share of the take is never specified at any point in the story, but after the robbery they've gone from being homeless to staying in a $7000 a night hotel suite, driving a brand new Mercedes, and dressing in designer clothing.
  • In Chapter 29, it's revealed that Alex and Louise have over $700 million tucked away in a Grand Caymanian bank where it can't be touched by the US government.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: No one at first believes that a character from a popular TV show is trapped in a superpowered woman's body and that their world is based on a comic book franchise. But eventually, some people like the Avengers came to (at some level) accept Alex's story, as Black Widow points that they (the Avengers) have "encountered stranger things that were at least as improbable." For one, when Wonder Man makes some sarcastic remarks about taking Alex's story seriously, Black Widow's response is simply to matter-of-factly recite all the equally improbable details of Wonder Man's own origin story detail-by-detail.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Wonder Man to Tony Stark: “Why are we hunting this girl when she's done nothing wrong?”
• Arrow Catch: Or more like, "Hammer Catch." Ragnarok throws his hammer at Superwoman, who easily catches it one-handed. She then casually destroys it.
• Artistic License – Law: Lampshaded when Alex points out that her treatment is drastically unconstitutional because it's illegal to criminalize the fact that someone exists (or as Alex puts it, “Making it illegal to be a superhuman is like making it illegal to be red-headed; it's not something people can help”). She also points out how wrong throwing people in jail without due process is. Despite this, the U.S. government is doing these things anyway.
• As Himself: Alex makes a cameo appearance on CSI: Miami as herself in her "Superwoman" guise.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Even taking into account his brutal death at the hands of Alex Harris, no one is really mourning Bullseye too much after he's killed.
  • Alex and her friends steal a shipping container from Norman Osborn because he's Norman Osborn and thus responsible for a lot of their problems. Most of the people in authority who hear about the robbery generally think Osborn had it coming.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Alex is able to ignore the Metahuman Registration Act because, to be blunt, the only beings in the Marvel Universe powerful enough to enforce it just don't give a damn about puny humans and their political squabbles. Or, in the case of Thor, are currently dead.
• Atrocious Alias: According to Agent Dunne, any registered superhuman who can't come up with a superhero codename are assigned one by the MMA. Dunne advised Alex to picking her own codename as the MMA will sometimes come up with utterly embarrassing or only technically appropriate names, such as "Backhoe" (a married housewife in her forties who can control dirt and earth telekinetically) and "Mister Rainbow" (a decorated war hero who served in the Vietnam War who can change the color of his skin to the seven visible spectrum colors).
• Author Appeal: The writer is a self-admitted fan of theme parks, and the Disney theme parks in particular. One entire chapter of the story is set in Disneyland, while visits to theme parks are mentioned off-handedly in other chapters.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: For most of the story, Alex is perfectly happy to keep her head down and not get involved in the "civil war" going on across the US between superheroes. In fact, she only takes a side, finally, because she gets fed up with the fascistic pro-registration side constantly refusing to leave her and Louise alone.
• Badass Boast:
  • Alex has a little "discussion" with Tony Stark on the SHIELD Helicarrier about her problems with how he's enforcing the Metahuman Registration Act:
    Alex Harris: I am unilaterally declaring Florida a free state. I am defending the Constitution, something you swore an oath to do when you took government office, I might point out.
    Tony Stark: But you can't...
    Harris: Oh can't I? What are you going to do, send in the army to catch one person? [grabs Stark by the lapels and lifts him into the air] Here's what's about to happen. I'm going to leave. When I've left, you're going to turn this crate around, or so help me God, I will knock it out of the sky and into space. If I need your help, I'll ask for it. Until then, stay in New York!
  • One Alex makes to Carol Danvers after the latter pushes her Berserk Button crosses over into To the Pain.
    Alex Harris: Marvel, I don't want to fight you. And the last thing you want to do is get into a fight with me. Seriously, you do not want to be on my bad side. If I wanted, I could carve you into pieces like a pig gone to slaughter just by looking at you. I can shatter all your bones merely with the sound of my voice. I can boil your blood, or freeze you in place. And even here, surrounded by our teammates - OUR teammates, Carol, not just yours, since Tony invited me into this little club - I could do these things to you before anyone else here could even attempt to stop me.
• The Bad Guys Are Cops: The Thunderbolts. Alex points out the idiocy of making the Radioactive Man, Venom, and Bullseye a part of law enforcement.
• Bad to the Last Drop: Alex thinks of herself as a "definitive coffee snob" who usually enjoys a special Indonesian coffee blend that costs $35 a pound. In Chapter 30, she is drinking a cup of coffee she bought at a New York City deli while staking out a badguy's job. She specifically remarks to herself that she knows the coffee is Colombian because "it tastes like the oily mud the beans were grown in." This makes her no different from Tony, who also considers himself a coffee snob and even has similar tastes, preferring the Indonesian blend and despising the Colombian one.
• Batman Gambit: Alex counts on Carol and Sentry's hatred of her to make them act irrationally, and she's quickly proven right. They foolishly chase her into the upper atmosphere where she then uses an undiluted dose of The Power of the Sun to defeat them with no effort, thereby leaving the new Hydra-controlled Avengers without two of its heaviest hitters.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Alex/Superwoman makes a promise to Tony Stark that if he tries to use her and Louise's identities against them, then she will publicly reveal all of the identities and personal secrets of the heroes that registered.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't even think about harming Louise. Just don't. Remember, half of Alex's memories and attitudes come from Xander Harris, who is quite happy to rip the spines out of those who hurt the people he loves. Now, imagine a pissed off Xander Harris possessing the body of a Kryptonian.
  • Carol Danvers' is pushed whenever someone, ANYONE, refuses to obey her commands, whatever they may be, at which point she'll give them an unhealthy serving of Disproportionate Retribution.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: The assassin that Hydra sends after John Leslie, once realizing he's up against Alex, realizes he has no chance against her so he tries to shoot himself; becomes a Subverted Trope because, before he can pull the trigger, Alex has already used her Super-Speed to remove the top half of the gun.
• Big-Breast Pride: Alex Harris goes on a "shock jock" morning radio show and not only brags that her breast size is 40-H, she actively brags that "these puppies are all mine, 100% natural."
• The Big Damn Kiss: When Alex manages to return from Buffyworld and tracks Louise to Wakanda, where the latter is hiding, they reunite with a magnificently described kiss:
  Alex lifted Louise from the ground and held the other woman in her arms. She brought one hand up to cup her lover’s face and kissed her. To Alex, the kiss felt like it went on for all of eternity. It felt like they were dancing. The only thing Alex heard was the distant explosion of fireworks going off around her. The sensation of Louise held against her body caused a warmth to spread across Alex’s entire being. And Louise returned the kiss with just as much fiery passion. Alex could feel the love Louise felt for her through her skin. Despite everything that had happened, despite everything that had tried to separate them, Alex had made it back to her Louise. Nothing – nothing – could ever keep them apart.
• Big Fancy House: The house that Alex and Louise buy in Chapter 23: “We Know How to Stop Her", is effectively a single-story mansion on stilts (shaped like interlocking octagons) overlooking the Gulf of Mexico on Big Pine Key.
• Boldly Coming: Alex and Louise have a very active, and very healthy sex life that occasionally dips into Casual Kink.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Captain Marvel was always the superhero equivalent of the Alpha Bitch, but she mostly spewed hot air until HYDRA gave her the push to start indulging her worst excesses by dosing her with the Puppet Master's mind-control compound. And she's not the only one. On the other hand, the compound costs the brainwashed heroes quite a bit of performance. The heroes that No-Sell the drug's effects, like Ares (because of his godly physiology), Wonder Man (The Needless who doesn't eat or drink a thing) and Spider-Man (who, unsurprisingly, can recover from the effects in a short while), either stay with The Registration side willingly or eventually join Cap's side.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Deadpool appears out of nowhere in Chapter 29, Alex asks his what he's doing there and if he intends to try and fight her. After hastily denying that he has a fight in mind, he openly admits that he's just there to provide a little Wolverine Publicity.
  “What are you doing here, then?” Alex huffed. The man was a pain in the ass.
  “Nothing much. This is just a pointless cameo! It’s all the rage in comic books! Alexi Vandeberg, one of the writer’s best friends in the world, bet the writer fifty bucks that there was no way in hell that he – the writer, I mean – would just drop me into the story at random, in the same way that all those comics back in the 90s would include Wolverine just to say he was in their title once.” Deadpool shrugged. “Back when they were doing it with Wolverine, it was basically just a cheap grab for better sales, but it worked. TV Tropes even has a name for it: ‘Wolverine Publicity.’ Pretty neato, right? Of course, it sort of breaks the flow of the story, but fifty buck is fifty bucks, right?”
• Break the Badass: Despite Alex's attempts to present herself as nothing but helpful and unthreatening, Buffy Summers is freaked out of the fact that Alex casually took out Glory the Hell-God, a foe that managed to Curb-Stomp Battle Buffy on a regular basis and treats Alex like the potential threat she unfortunately is.
• Breath Weapon: Alex uses her “super-breath” on Reed Richards to freeze him, thus nullifying his stretching capabilities. He compliments her on her creative thinking.
• Bring My Brown Pants: When faced with Alex's remorseless, brutal and unstoppable rampage through the Thunderbolts after they attack and injure Louise, Moonstone is so terrified that she involuntarily wets herself.

• Call-Back: When confronting Marvin, Louise's pimp, Alex snatches his gun from his hand (Marvin losing his index in the process); much later, in Chapter 30, Alex stops a Hydra assassin from shooting himself by quickly snatching the top half of the gun, Alex casually mentioning the incident with Marvin after doing it, making emphasis on the severed finger's detail.
• The Cameo: In Chapter 29, Deadpool shows up to bug Alex, and specifically says he's just there to make a cameo in the story because a friend of the writer bet him (the writer that is) $50 that the writer wouldn't dare drop a random Deadpool cameo into the story. The writer won the bet.
• Canon Immigrant: Agent Coulson appears in the story despite the story arc taking place before he was ever created as a character.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • No one believes Alex when she tells them that she's Xander Harris stuck in a Power Girl's body and that she's not Karen Starr. In a twist, they're both right. Alex is a magically-created copy of Power Girl with Xander's memories. The actual Karen Starr was murdered by her own father.
  • Wonder Man and, to a lesser degree, Spider-Man frequently point out that, even if you don't believe her fantastical story about being a male character from a television show being trapped inside a female superhero's body, there's probably a better way to handle a frightened, confused teenager who is manifesting powers to a degree that no one has seen before or fully understands than defaulting to treating her like an Ultron-level super-villain who needs to be put down with terminal intensity. No one listens. They inevitably end up regretting it.
• Casual Kink: Alex and Louise are more annoyed than embarrassed to be caught wearing fetish gear by Coulson, though given that Louise is a former prostitute, it's hardly surprising. Alex, on the other hand, is simply the type to not be intimidated by anyone or anything.
• Catch and Return: When Marvin, Louise's pimp, shoots Alex in the mouth from point-blank range, Alex spits the bullet out (mentally commenting that the taste of cordite and gunsmoke is "the most disgusting thing she ever tasted") and hands it back to Marvin. This has the appropriate psychological effect on Marvin.
• Character Development: Alex starts out frightened, alone, and desperate to get home, but eventually grows into the idea of being the hero the Marvel Universe so desperately needs.
  Alex (as Superwoman): You people call yourselves heroes, but all you're doing is running around fighting each other! When was the last time you fed the hungry? When was the last time you helped irrigate a desert? When was the last time you were there for someone who just needed a friend? That's what being a hero is all about. You're all like children, throwing temper tantrums.
• Cheap Costume: Alex's "super-suit" is actually a one-off Halloween costume she bought for a party. She later acquires a carefully tailored costume with a supply of extra capes.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: After a diplomatic incident involving the illegal arrest of a French ambassador, President George W. Bush specifically points out that while they might joke about how the French are weak sisters, everyone knows that the truth is that any actual war between France and the United States would most likely end up in a Pyrrhic Victory for the US. He also notes that French martial prowess is so respected and worthy of note that many of the words in the English language used to refer to military affairs and combat are borrowed from French.
• Cherry Tapping: Alex takes out the Black Widow by slapping her on the back of the head. And during her fight with the Thunderbolts, she brings down Songbird by poking the woman in the throat with a finger.
• Chest Insignia: This is played with. Alex's costume has the Cleavage Window of Power Girl along with the color scheme of Superman because Alex accepts and believes in Kara's reasons for not having one. But she also acknowledges the House of El by including the classic Superman “S” on her belt buckle and on the broaches that hold her cape on. Like Kara, she feels that if people are overly preoccupied or distracted by her boobs that's their problem, not hers.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Alex Harris cannot not help people who need helping. And she considers helping people who are in danger, or who even just need a friendly shoulder to cry on, to be much more important than stopping criminals.
• Clark Kenting: Toward the end of the story, Alex starts wearing a pair of glasses and a dark-colored wig, but mostly relies on the fact that people are too busy staring at her Cleavage Window to notice her face when she's in costume to keep her Secret Identity.
• Cleanup Crew: In order to keep the police from looking too closely at what happened at the construction site, Alex "cleans up" Ben Wilkinson's body after Giles murders him by incinerating it with her heat vision. That she does this almost casually positively unnerves Buffy, even if Buffy agrees after the fact that it probably was the best thing to do under the circumstances.
• Cleavage Window: When Alex finally decides to stop running and become a superhero, she commissions a costume that is mostly an homage and tribute to Superman's look (and she feels unworthy to wear his colors), but includes Power Girl's Cleavage Window because Alex knows the reasoning behind it and accepts it.
• Comic Books Are Real: As in the mainstream Marvel Universe, heroes like the Avengers and Fantastic Four allowed to license their stories.
• Cool Old Lady: Melissa, the proprietor of the Celestial Treasures new age shop, is a dyed in the wool hippy. She's also a practicing witch who gives Alex and Louise some helpful advice and points them toward Jennifer Kale.
• Crossover:
  • Of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Power Girl, and set in the Marvel Universe.
  • Chapter 27, "Welcome to the Hellmouth", is actually a crossover with one of Worldmaker's other fan fiction stories, Vintage Season.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: After Bullseye almost kills Louise in an assassination attempt that is actually directed at Alex Harris, Alex punches Bullseye in the forehead so hard his adamantium skull is dented, his eyes explode out of his skull, and his brain liquefies. Just goes to show that it doesn't pay to piss off a Kryptonian.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Pretty much every time Alex gets into a fight, it's a Curb-Stomp Battle simply because she's a Kryptonian and the Marvel Universe doesn't have much in the way of people able to handle a Kryptonian outside of Galactus and his Heralds. Even Sentry, Ares, and Ragnarok get their asses handed to them on a plate.
  • The fight with Typhoid Mary is the closest Alex comes to being beaten, and that's because Mary is a telepath able to manipulate her target's perceptions. Mary is actually winning against Alex when she's suddenly cold-cocked from behind by Louise, who beats Typhoid Mary down from behind with a bottle of sparkling grape juice.
  • It should be noted that Ragnarok is considerably weaker than the real Thor (and Alex, thinking that he was the real Thor, was genuinely afraid of him) and Sentry was doing a fair bit of damage before he made the mistake of hitting her with one of his solar blasts. Once Alex knows that Ragnarok is not the real Thor, and figures out a way to successfully deal with Sentry, both go down like chumps.
  • At one point Alex is attacked by the "Unbeatable" Squirrel Girl and it doesn't even qualify as a fight, seeing how vastly overpowering Alex is compared to Squirrel Girl. In fact, the thought that Squirrel Girl once beat Doctor Doom gives Alex a case of the giggles, and she wonders whose joke character Squirrel Girl is.
  • A non-Alex related example is Spider-Man vs the U.S.Agent, the web-slinger making almost no effort while casually taking care of him.
• D-Cup Distress: A minor example but Alex finds it rather annoying that, with a bra size of 40-H, it's near impossible to find a bra in her size that doesn't "belong on a granny or a porn star."
• Darkest Hour: In Chapter 26, Alex is sent to another dimension, Louise is locked up in prison, and most of the Avengers are forced to go into hiding after Carol declares them fugitives for housing a known terrorist.
• Day in the Life: Chapter 19, entitled “Things to Do in California When You're On Vacation”, for the most part is all about Alex and Louise going on their honeymoon after being “married' in a Domestic Partnership ceremony.
• Deadpan Snarker: After getting chewed out for "letting [Alex] go", Natasha asks if they expected her to subdue the girl by breaking some of her bones on Alex's body.
• Defiant Stone Throw: Typhoid Mary smacks down Louise first, knowing that it's Alex who is the true threat. Mary then proceeds to put a serious hurt on Alex and completely ignoring the fact that Louise is even still in the room. This turns out to be a big, big mistake on Typhoid Mary's part.
• Destination Defenestration: In Chapter 17, “This Might Sting a Little”, Alex tosses Sentry through the bedroom sliding glass door of of Hawkeye's old house. It actually turns into an involuntary Fastball Special, as she uses Sentry's body as a way to knock Ragnarok out of the air.
• Different World, Different Movies:
  • The Marvel Universe has a popular comic book superhero team analogue of the Justice League of America called The Guardians of Freedom. They consist of Achilles, Ultraman (who is regarded as the first comic book superhero and predates the real superheroes), Crossbow, Amazon, and the Sapphire Sentinel.
  • John Byrne wrote a reboot on Ultra-Man.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Alex and Louise have what is effectively a business meeting with Magneto over breakfast at a Bob Evans. There are several other supervillains present, but they are very polite because Alex scares the living daylights out of them.
• Didn't Think This Through: After watching Alex toss around the Avengers, several SHIELD agents try to dog pile her.
• Diplomatic Impunity: Played with. After Ben Grimm gets the hell out of the United States because he refuses to have any part in the Civil War and hurting any of his friends on both sides, he settles down in France and is given ambassadorial status by the French. When he returns to the U.S. later on in the story, SHIELD proceed to disregard this new status and arrests him for being an unregistered super, only for them to get a call a short time later from an irate President Bush telling them to let Grimm go before the French decide to consider this an act of war.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Carol dishes this out whenever someone disobeys or even so much as argues with her.
  • It is noted by several characters in the earlier chapters that the zeal with which SHIELD and the Avengers are pursuing Alex is somewhat out of proportion to the crimes she has actually committed.
  • Try to hurt Alex or anybody she cares about and you will most probably die the most horrible death she can deliver right then and there. Although many of the people Alex kills are quite the Asshole Victim, there is no lack of people throughout the story who are horrified (even if only for a short moment) at Alex's brutal pragmatism and casual use of overkill.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • She has Power Girl's body, what else would happen? While she expects and uses this to her advantage, she can still get annoyed by it.
  • Tony acknowledges that he has a tendency towards this, and is ashamed to admit that it 'does' interfere with his professionalism. He does try to not be distracted by Alex when he realizes he has been ogling a 17-year-old girl.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Alex whenever someone tries to fight her.
  • Doubly so when Captain Marvel continues to antagonize her even after Alex joins the Avengers.
• Dynamic Entry: The reason Alex gets to toss Sentry through a sliding glass door is because he crashes through the roof of her bedroom. Too bad for him she saw him coming.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Alex gave Aaron an envelope containing the legal papers that grant him as president and chief executive officer of a charity that had been funded at fifty million dollars from the money stolen from Norman Osborn, and whose purpose is to help the homeless (including mutants). Aaron would remain as head of the Kent Foundation until his retirement for the next fifty years.
• Ear Worm: Alex is trying to concentrate during a strategy meeting with The Avengers and she finds herself half-humming, half-singing a Major General Song that starts with the line, “I am the very model of a busty superheroine..." She'd seen it on YouTube and now couldn't get the song out of her head. When the Black Widow asks her if something's wrong, Alex tries to explain, badly. She specifically calls it an Ear Worm, and can't figure out whether she is more annoyed by the fact that she can't get it out of her head, or that the damned thing exists in the first place, and was written about Alex herself.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Played in that Alex's middle name — since she is a magically created psychic cross-gender Kryptionian clone of Xander Harris — is "Lavelle", just like Xander himself. She still finds it embarrassing, but everyone else shrugs it off because it's not that bad a name if you're female. Which she is.
• Energy Absorption: Sentry's energy blasts end up being something like 'solar energy concentrate' which Alex can absorb to power up.
  • One of Ms. Marvel's superpowers is to absorb several different types of energy and then blast the energy back at enemies. She unfortunately finds out that there is an upper limit to her absorption when Alex hits her with heat-vision, causing Danvers to burst into flame like a gas-soaked rag.
• Entertainingly Wrong: After learning that Karen Starr has been dead for years, Tony Stark comes to the conclusion that Alex Harris is Karen Starr resurrected and given "the powers of a god". So very very wrong.
• Epic Fail: Marvin the Pimp and a couple of his gang invade the camp full of homeless mutants where Alex Harris and Louise Fulford are hiding out. They're all heavily armed and intent on punishing Alex and Louise for defying Marvin. The confrontation ends with Marvin missing a finger and being shoved into the trunk of his own car, which is then welded shut around him and dropped off at the nearest police station. (The trunk of the car, that is... the rest of the vehicle is torn away from the trunk and the trunk is sealed.) No one but Marvin and his crew are injured in this attack.
• Ethical Slut:
  • Well more like Ethical Porn producers. A couple of porn producer/recruiter do a somewhat high-pressure sell on starring in one of their films to Alex. However the second they learn she's 17 they back off completely, give her the 500 dollars they promised for just talking to them, and point her to a local convent that takes in homeless girls. They do give her their card for when she turns 18 but it's more of an afterthought.
  • Similarly, notorious ladies man Tony Stark is the first person to disapprovingly remind people that Alex is underage whenever they make lecherous comments about her physique in his presence.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In response to Gyrich's statement about Alex's legal status that is on Artistic License – Law and Inhumanable Alien Rights, a livid Tony informs him that was the exact argument the Confederate government used to justify refusing General Patrick Cleburne, who in 1863 proposed freeing those slaves who volunteered to fight for the South in the Civil War. Bear in mind, this is a statement he does early in the story, where he's a a very strong Pro-Registration fascist Jerkass.
• Everybody Knew Already: Alex confesses to Louise that she murdered Henry Peter Gyrich, and did it in order to protect Louise from further attack. Alex then begs for Louise's forgiveness. Louise's only reaction is to gently let Alex know that she figured it out days before, and that she forgave Alex as soon as she figured it out.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • SHIELD may not be exactly the best, but for the most part they have principles. For example, while Alex (aged 17) was in a coma at the beginning of the story, one agent thought it would be fun to take several naked pictures of her and sell them to a porn site. He was promptly arrested, fired from SHIELD and sent to Leavenworth, with full expectations of him getting shivved for his actions.
  • Learning about what happened to the real Karen Starr leaves all of the Avengers between nauseous and furious.
• Exact Words: Alex tells Nicholas Brendon (who played Xander Harris) that he "looks like someone [she] went to high school with", but leaves out that she means herself.
• Excuse Plot: The author admits that he wrote this story primarily because he “wanted to give Tony Stark a punch in the mouth” after reading the original comic book story.
• Eye Beams: Alex uses her heat vision multiple times, most notably to disable Captain Marvel.
• Face of a Thug: Sanchez and Francisco, a pair of twin brothers who work as agents for porn actresses, are described as looking slimy and like walking stereotypes but turn out to be honestly nice guys who give Alex some helpful advice after realizing she's underage.
• Fantastic Drug: Turns out that the reason why Carol Danvers is willingly working with Hydra as they subvert the American government is because they hooked her on a drug that was manufactured from the Puppetmaster's mind-control clay, and the addiction is so strong she's willing to sell out her friends and her country if doing so guarantees her access to the drug. She also willingly administrates the drug to as many registered heroes as possible; it's pointed out that the number of controlled heroes is smaller than originally thought, as some have powers that protect them from the drug's effects (Ares is totally immune, and Spider-Man only gets slightly affected, shaking off the effects in a very short time), and others are Properly Paranoid and it's very difficult to drug them on the first place (Tony always wears his armor around Carol, and Black Widow is very cautious with everything she drinks and eats).
• Feed It with Fire: Sentry's and the second Moonstone's attacks both empower and heal Alex. Sentry learned from this the first time; Moonstone didn't.
• Finally Found the Body: SHIELD agents find the body of the actual Karen Starr in her home's backyard when they try to dig up more information on her lookalike, Alex Harris.
• Finger Poke of Doom: Alex thumps several mooks into unconsciousness, and during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Thunderbolts, she takes out Songbird by jamming her index finger through the supervillain's larynx.
• Flash Step: During Alex Harris's fight with The Wrecking Crew, Alex takes down Bulldozer by slamming into him so quickly he never registers she is approaching, much less that she is slamming him headfirst into a cargo container.
• Foreshadowing: In Chapter 15, Alex jokes about how "There's never a gym bag full of hundred dollar bills around when you need one." Louise then responds that, "if we ever win the lottery, we're going to have to remember to always keep a gym bag full of money handy.” In Chapter 19 — after they've robbed Norman Osborn — it's revealed they keep a dufflebag full of hundred dollar bills in the trunk of their car for emergencies.
• Forgot Flanders Could Do That: At one point, after he says something amazingly profound and intelligent to the Avengers, Spider-Man scoffs at their surprised looks by reminding them that he does have Master's Degrees in both physics and engineering and is just a few credits shy of earning doctorates in both subjects as well. The Wasp specifically remarks that she forgot just how smart Peter Parker really is.
• Four-Star Badass: When they are trying to infiltrate a secure military base by disguising themselves as officers, Captain America reveals to Peter Parker that unlike the uniforms he and Janet van Dyne are wearing, his uniform is real, including his rank (Brigadier General) and all the decorations and medals adorning it — including the Congressional Medal of Honor.
• Friendly Target: Alex Harris's girlfriend Louise, along with Nico Minoru of the Runaways (who is trying to help the two women get back home) are targeted by Bullseye when the Thunderbolts attack because a) they're helping Alex, b) they're softer targets than Alex, and c) because they're there and Bullseye just likes killing people.
• Gangbangers: Marvin, Louise's one-time pimp, is a member of the Crips.
• Gender Bender: Averted. Completely and totally averted. This is not a gender-bender story, despite the fact that you don't find that out until 13 or so chapters in. If all you read in those first dozen chapters, however, you'll come away thinking that this is a story about Xander Harris turned into a girl. Except it's not. It's about a girl who has a sort of psychotic break and thinks she's Xander Harris. Or, at least, that's what most people think. As it turns out, it's basically a copy of Xander's mind in a copy of Kara's body.
• Genius Bruiser: Alex is very intelligent, a speed-reader, and has perfect recall. Her mind literally operates faster than that of a normal human being's. She's just not used to thinking of herself that way, having memories of an emotionally abusive childhood in which the phrase "you're an idiot" was used a lot.
• Genre Savvy: Xander Harris was a comic book geek. Alex has all of his memories. She is thus often able to predict what the various Marvel Comics heroes will do before they think of doing it. She also knows a lot of secret identities.
• Godwin's Law: A radio host compares the Metahuman Registration Act to the actions of the Third Reich then lampshades it by pointing out it's bound to happen when you anger a Jew like her.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: The Wrecking Crew, who — despite being nowhere near Alex's power levels — manage to seriously injure her because she'd become complacent in the fact that she overpowered basically the entire Marvel Universe.
• Greater Need Than Mine: Subverted. After Bullseye's attack on their car causes a crash, grievously wounds Louise, and seriously injures Nico Minoru, Alex Harris takes the injured women to a hospital emergency room. While they are being treated, another doctor tries to corner Alex, pointing out that she (Alex) is covered in blood. Alex refuses his help, revealing to him that, as a Kryptonian, it would take a lot more than a car crash and a psychotic assassin to hurt her. The blood she's covered in all belongs to either Louise or Nico.
• Groin Attack: Alex manages to land several brutal kicks on Ragnarok's crotch, and finishes him off with a swing to the jaw with his own hammer.
• Briefcase Full of Money: Even with their Arbitrarily Large Bank Account as backup, Alex and Louise keep a gym bag stuffed full of hundred dollar bills in the back floorboard of their car, just in case of emergencies.
• Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook: Wonder Man says this almost verbatim regarding Alex. She became a criminal after escaping custody and hospitalizing several Avengers because she was going to be sent to prison for life because she's seen as a psychologically unbalanced superhuman.
• Harmless Freezing: Subverted. When she uses her "super-breath" to freeze him in place, Reed Richards assumes Alex made sure of this. She responds that she simply froze him and doesn't care if he suffers permanent damage from it.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Francisco and Sanchez recognize that Alex is sex on two legs even when she's in badly fitting clothing, her hair is a wreck, covered in grime, and barefoot.
• Heel Realization: The slow realization that the government is now chasing a teenage girl solely because she is as powerful as she is, and not because she violated the law, causes Tony Stark to have one of these.
  Tony Stark: She's hardly Osama bin Laden, Reed. If she's a criminal at all, it's because we made her one, remember?
• Helicopter Blender: Inverted; Alex flies through an helicopter's rotor to ground it.
• Hero Antagonist: Most of the "bad guys" Alex fights are the well-known superheroes of the Marvel Universe.
• Heroic BSoD: Alex has one of these when she finds out that she is not, in fact, a gender-swapped Xander Harris, but is rather a magically-created clone of Power Girl who has Xander Harris's memories stuck in her head. She's brought out of it abruptly when Bullseye attacks.
• Hero Insurance: During a meeting with President George Bush, Tony Stark argues against wasting the time, money, and materiel in subduing Alex by summing up the damages Alex inflicted (including insurance pay-outs and medical costs for injured SHIELD agents and Avengers) at the cost of $700 million.
• Hero of Another Story: During the time Alex has been in the Marvel Universe, the Scoobies have been having their own adventures. When Alex returns to the "Buffyverse", the Scoobs are actively rescuing Marie (Buffy's younger sister) from the clutches of Glory the Hellgod.
• He's a Friend: Tony Stark attempts to end the hostility between Superwoman and the Avengers — not to mention getting the Federal government off her back — by recruiting her into the Avengers team. The first non-hostile encounter between both sides goes pretty well, up until the point that Carol Danvers shows up and ruins it all with her bad attitude.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Alex stops Juggernaut not by trying to directly stand before him, but by slamming him at full force from the back. She's left perplexed why nobody who has ever fought him has thought of doing that.
• Hollywood Healing: Louise gets knocked through a glass table by Typhoid Mary, and is hurt to the point that they need to put towels down to keep her from bleeding into the upholstery of the BMW. Alex spends about an hour pulling glass out of Louise's back, closing the cuts with various steri-strips and band-aids and gauze. The entire thing takes about five paragraphs in one chapter. Despite the fact that the events of the next chapter come immediately after the one in which she is injured, Louise's back and how badly cut up it was is never mentioned again. Band-aids really do heal anything.
• Honor Before Reason: Several of the Avengers chew out Black Widow for "letting [Alex] go" despite Alex having beaten Ms. Marvel, Iron Man, and Wonder Man. Combined with the fact that Alex shrugs off Hulkbuster bullets and Natasha asks if they expected her to beat Alex by breaking some of her bones on the girl.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Louise was trapped in prostitution by her kidnapper/pimp, and took the first opportunity to escape the life that was given to her.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Averted. At the time this story was begun, the issue of whether Humans could interbreed with Kryptonians had still been undetermined by DC canon, and Worldmaker decided for the purposes of his story, they couldn't. Since then, the "Rebirth" reboot has firmly established that the two species are genetically compatible enough to breed, what with Clark Kent and Lois Lane being parents to the hybrid Jonathan Kent. Rather than rewrite his story, Worldmaker has decided to just stick with his original decision.
• Hot Witch: When Alex and Louise go looking for the assistance of a powerful sorcerer, they find Jennifer Kale, a witch whose power and ability is on the same scale as Doctor Strange, working as an exotic dancer at the most expensive strip joint in Miami. Note: This is taken directly from Marvel Universe canon.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Avoided. Alex has Power Girl's memories, and thus knows instinctively how to use all of Power Girl's powers. She still plays around with them occasionally just because it's fun.
• Human Aliens: Alex is a Kryptonian, after all.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: Louise and Alex discuss the differences between humans and Kryptonians in Chapter 18, "Things to Do in California When You're on Vacation." Among the differences are the location of the Kryptonian heart (its center-right, as opposed to being center-left like in humans), the lack of anything resembling an appendix, one fewer set of molars, a menstruation cycle that occurs only once every three months, and fewer body hairs per square inch of skin. Alex also notes some differences that make humans superior to Kryptonians — or would, were it not for Earth's yellow sun turning Kryptonians into Physical Gods. Things like Kryptonians being more susceptible to allergens, skin that burns more easily than human skin, and having eyes that aren't as sensitive to shades of color than a human eye.
• I Choose to Stay: Alex justifies not fleeing to some other country to Nico Minoru of the Runaways because she's an American, and this is America, and she's not going to be run out of her own country. Besides that, she doesn't know how to speak any other languages. She also justifies finally taking a stand against SHIELD, the Avengers, and the Registration Act itself in Miami because she's tired of running and it's time someone stands up to them.
• I Have No Son!: Louise Fulford reveals to Alex that her parents threw her out of the house and told her not to come back not because she (Louise) was a lesbian, but rather because she was a mutant.
• I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: A telemetry station picks up Alex re-entering Earth's atmosphere and both the radar operator and his superior know they're supposed to be on the lookout for her. However as both have family that were saved by her before, they both agree they're picking up a meteor instead.
• Idiot Ball: Everyone who reacts to Alex escaping from SHIELD and defeating the Avengers handily with the idea that throwing more guys at her is a good idea is carrying this.
• Immune to Bullets: Alex Harris, being a magically created clone of Power Girl, is as Immune to Bullets as any other Kryptonian on Earth. It is specifically mentioned that her skin is tough enough to bounce Hulk-Buster Bullets, rail-gun propelled hypersonic adamantium bullets designed to take down the Big Green Rage Monster himself.
• Impersonating an Officer: In order to rescue Louise from a secure military base, Captain America, Spider-Man, and The Wasp dress up in military uniforms and use forged IDs and orders to get in. (It turns out that Captain America's uniform is real.)
• Inhumanable Alien Rights: Alex Harris is specifically told that she doesn't have any rights anyone in law enforcement need to respect, because officially she is not a person but a walking, talking weapon of mass destruction. In addition, Henry Peter Gyrich at one point makes the argument that, as she is not a human being despite appearances (Alex is actually a Kryptonian), his office has classified her as a strategically useful animal and thus is the property of the U.S. government.
• Intellectually Supported Tyranny: Tony Stark's justification for shredding the US Constitution when it comes to superhumans.
• Interspecies Romance: Alex is a Kryptonian. Louise is human. They love each other and are even talking about becoming parents.
• Instant Web Hit: Thanks to Phil Coulson and a MIT-level communications tech named Willow Rosenberg, the video footage of Alex's Curb-Stomp Battle with the Avengers and SHIELD was leaked on YouTube and shared on social media sites such as Facebook, resulting in a massive PR blow on the American government and the Avengers.
• Irrational Hatred: Carol Danvers holds this for Alex Harris, based on two things: the fact that Alex threw her two beatdowns without even trying and the fact that Alex is casually (and vocally) contemptuous of the Super Registration Act and everyone who supports it.
• Hit Them in the Pocketbook: Alex and Louise get revenge on Norman Osborn by stealing one of his shipments, thinking that they'll only get a small fortune from the heist. The shipment they stole ended up being worth several billion dollars. They end up set for life and Osborn (while he can afford it) is left reeling.
• I Warned You:
  • Tony Stark says this almost word-for-word to Henry Peter Gyrich after Alex Harris utterly annihilates the Thunderbolts when the attack Gyrich orders on Harris and her girlfriend Louise results in Louise's hospitalization.
  • Likewise, when the Thing is cornered by SHIELD agents, he nonchalantly hands over a folder proving he's got diplomatic immunity as a French ambassador. While one of the agents freaks out, his superior orders him to proceed with the arrest. A few paragraphs later, Tony receives a phone call from the infuriated French Foreign Minister, and the very next chapter, US is threatened with major economic repercussions, with Stark Industries being the first targeted.

• Jerkass Realization: Coulson repeatedly refers to Louise as Ms. Fulford (her maiden name), but is genuinely apologetic when Alex corrects him that they're married so she should be Mrs. Harris.
• The Juggernaut: In Chapter 23, entitled "Look! Up in the Sky!" Alex encounters... well... the Juggernaut. Using her full strength she is actually able to hold him motionless for five whole seconds... before his power (described as "once in motion, he stays in motion) overcomes her and she's pushed backward. She's also able to stop him by flying into him at Mach 10, a feat that results in Alex laying dazed at the Juggernaut's feet while he wonders how the hell he got that huge dent in the armor over his chest. She realizes that since his powers prevent her from stopping his forward momentum, she hits him in the back to push him in a direction he doesn't want to go in, and spins him around like a top. He wonders himself why nobody has ever thought to do this to him before.
• Kangaroo Court: Alex is subjected to something that may not even fall into the definition of a trial or court in chapter 5 but it certainly grabbed this trope and ran with it.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Alex's murder of Henry Peter Gyrich. Gyrich was going to keep coming after them, and it was inevitable that Louise would eventually get killed in one of the attacks, as she already nearly had been during Bullseye's attack. To Alex, removing Gyrich from the equation was the only possible way to keep Louise safe, so she removed him. The man was also responsible for the Sentinel Project (and the mutant internment camps by extension, although that tidbit isn't discussed) and seems like he was subverting the intended spirit of the Registration Act to press metahumans into an army for the government, instead of registration and training for future heroes.
• Killed Off for Real: Bullseye, the Radioactive Man, and Venom (only the symbiote). Because they hurt Louise, and no one hurts Alex's loved ones and walks away. Henry Peter Gyrich doesn't learn from their example.
• Kill It with Fire: As a Kryptonian, Alex has Heat Vision. It sees plenty of use, particularly when Alex is pinned down, and, like Superman, only if you make the mistake of pissing her off. The Venom symbiote was not the first victim, but it was the first to get killed by it.
• Knight Templar: Carol Danvers is so against Alex, despite her never having broken the law, that she has Baron Mordo, a supervillain sorcerer, given a pardon in order to send her to another dimension, gets Louise sent to prison, and then declares Stark and several other Avengers fugitives for refusing to accept her leadership.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After Alex defeats all of the other Avengers, SHIELD and Big Bertha listen to Alex's pleas to simply let her leave.
• Kryptonite Factor: Alex was hurt by Swordman's magic sword and Thor's hammer, as Kryptonian resilience doesn't apply to magic — not to mention that Ragnarok has the raw strength necessary to actually hurt Alex; Typhoid Mary used her mental powers to bypass Alex's resistance, as well. Other than that, the lack of an exploitable Kryptonite factor means that everything has to be done the hard way, as not even a Power Nullifier collar works on Alex (mostly because they were designed for humans). And Doctor Strange is sitting things out as per Civil War canon...
• Kung-Shui: The Avengers and Shield attack the house in which Alex Harris and Louise Fulford (and Ben Grimm) are hiding out. At the end of the fight, there are holes in the ceiling, one part of the house has collapsed, another part of the house has been vaporized, and a part of the lawn is on fire.
• Lesser of Two Evils: Stark's initial justification for the Registration Act. Toward the end of the story, he no longer really believes this, and has come to the idea that it was a choice that should never have been made.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Alex and Louise are attacked by the telepathic assassin Typhoid Mary. Mary knocks down Louise, then turns her attention to Alex and proceeds to use her mental powers (against which Alex has no defenses) to wreck Alex. Turns out ignoring the normal, untrained girlfriend was a mistake when Louise proceeds to clock Typhoid Mary from behind with a bottle of sparkling grape juice, then continues to beat the assassin with it until Mary is unconscious and bleeding on the floor.
• Live but Delayed: Alex, as "Superwoman," makes a guest appearance on "The Monsters in the Morning," a morning drive-time shock-jock show in Orlando, Florida. One of the hosts asks for her opinion on the Avengers, leading to the following comments:
  Dirty Jim: "So nothing bad about the Avengers?"
  Alex Harris: "Well, Captain Marvel's a total [BLEEPED OUT]. Can I say [BLEEPED OUT] on the radio?
  Russ Rollins: "Not technically, but we're running on a delay, so it'll get bleeped out."
  Alex Harris: "Okay, in that case yeah, Captain Marvel is a complete and total [BLEEPED OUT] and I'm glad I kicked her ass. Twice."
• Living Lie Detector: Alex can do this by way of being able to monitor changes in a person's body heat and heartbeat.
• Major General Song: At one point, Alex sings the first line of a Major General Song she heard in a YouTube video: "I am the very model of a busty superheroine..." It irritates her because, first, she can't get the tune out of her head, and second, the video, and thus the song, is about Alex herself.
• Master of Disguise: The Chameleon, a former Spider-Man villain who works for Hydra, has infiltrated the US government by replacing President George W. Bush, and is actually manipulating everyone from behind the scenes.
• Media Transmigration: In the aftermath of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Halloween", Xander Harris finds himself trapped not only in the body of Power Girl, but in the Marvel Universe as well during a time in which being an unregistered metahuman is a bad, bad thing. Considering that they were a huge comics nerd before, they adapt quickly.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Investigation into Alex's presumed identity of Karen Starr reveals that the real Karen Starr was repeatedly raped by her father who later murdered her and buried her body in the backyard.
• Mistaken for Badass:
  • Louise is thought to be a powerful mutant because she hangs around Alex and took out Typhoid Mary. In reality, the two are in love (later married) and she beat Typhoid Mary over the head with a bottle of sparkling grape juice.
  • Willow Rosenberg is considered a "stone cold badass" because of Tony's influence when he makes her one of the highest ranked agents in SHIELD. In particular, her file is "so clean and sterile you could perform surgery with it" which all the agents take to mean she was involved in operations so secret, SHIELD can't have records of them anywhere. Really, she was simply a computer technician and hasn't been involved in any operations.
• The Mole:
  • From the beginning, Wonder Man isn't as supportive of the hunt for Alex as Tony Stark thinks.
  • Phil Coulson helps Alex escape from SHIELD's clutches again and again without her ever knowing he's doing it.
• Mook Horror Show: Alex's fight against the Thunderbolts acts as one between Venom struggling to contain her and Moonstone's panicked thoughts of how Alex is going to kill them all.
• Most Common Superpower: Of course. And they are remarked upon several times, not only by other people, but by Alex herself and (especially) Louise, who really, really appreciates them.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Alex sometimes seems to have a flexible set of morals. While she's heroic in that she saves people and fights crime, she's also not above committing the occasional crime herself if she thinks the crime needs committing (including the murder of a government official who was endangering her loves ones, and the theft of over a ten billion dollars from a corrupt corporation). If you asked her, she'd probably describe herself as "pragmatic" rather than "criminal," though, and she does seem to regret what she sees as the necessity of the crimes in question.
• Mugging the Monster: Every time Carol Danvers pulled rank on Steve Rogers, she didn't realize he's actually a brigadier general and could easily get her in a huge amount of trouble for constantly disrespecting a superior.
• Mundane Luxury: At one point in the story, Alex is homeless and living in the re-purposed shell of a broken down school bus with Louise. They're getting basic necessities like food and the occasional new piece of clothing from a convent, but otherwise are sleeping on a cardboard mat under scavenged blankets. It's so bad that a trip so the $6 Breakfast Buffet at the Sizzler is considered a treat.
• Mutants: It's set in the Marvel Universe, so yes, there are mutants. The most notable one is Louise Fulford, Alex's Love Interest. Her mutant power, the ability to change her hair color (all her hair, not just the stuff on her head) to any shade or combination of shades she wishes) is less than overwhelming.
  • There is an entire community of homeless, low-powered mutants living under an overpass in Los Angeles. Alex and Louise take shelter with them for a while, and look after them afterward.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: The one time Alex pulls this, it's due to Spider-Man complimenting her muscles while staring at her tits (and thinking he wouldn't get caught due to the mask).
• Naked on Arrival: When Alex first arrives in the Marvel Universe, she's naked as a jaybird. She's also falling to earth from orbit like a meteor. When the Air Force rescue team reaches her point of impact, their first reaction to seeing her lying naked in the middle of a crater is bemusement.
  Major Doyle Duffy: "Well. There's something you don't see every day..."
• Nerves of Steel: While she gets annoyed by Captain America lecturing her, Alex can't help but respect his courage and how she doesn't intimidate him at all despite Cap being fully aware of her temper and power levels.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sentry is actually winning in his first fight with Alex Harris. That is, until he decides to fire a bolt of energy made of "the power of a million exploding suns" at her. As a Kryptonian, Alex absorbs and metabolizes sunlight to make her stronger, more invulnerable, and heal faster. Oops.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Alex has to spell out to SHIELD and everyone associated with them that due to their attempts to lock her away forever unjustly, she is actually following the law: She is registered, no court will even think about pressing charges on her for escaping illegal custody, and the people she killed are criminals who had international, shoot-on-sight orders on their heads. So any attempts to take her in now will result in a media and legal clusterfuck that they wouldn't be able to get out of in less than two decades.
• "No More Holding Back" Speech:
  • It is Alex's acceptance of the fact that she's not merely a copy of Power Girl, not merely the memories of Xander Harris, but a person in her own right made from many, many parts that allows her to stop running and be the hero she was always meant to be.
  • The speech she gives Captain America in Chapter 30, during which she openly admits that if she wanted to, she could make the world a better place by killing all the people who make the world a not-so-better place, is a pretty good example as well. She correctly points out that, were she of a mind to, she could "round up all those bigots and drop them in a volcano. I could do it in an hour. It would be that easy!" and follows up by pointing out that she hasn't done it because it was wrong, and because she couldn't face Louise after doing so.
• Non Human Lover Reveal: When Louise first finds out about Alex's super-powers, Louise originally thinks that Alex is a mutant, just like Louise is. When Louise finds out that Alex is actually from another dimension, she freaks out a little, but gets over it. By the time that Louise finds out that Alex is not only from another dimension, but is from an alien planet in another dimension, Louise is so far beyond shockable that she almost yawns at the news.
• No Periods, Period: At first it seemed as if the story was going to follow this trope (to the point that some reviewers commented on how unrealistic it was that Alex, who at the time was still thinking she was a man turned into a woman, wouldn't have had a complete freak out over getting her period). Turns out that the writer was instead using her period as evidence that while Alex looks human, she's actually a Kryptonian, and the two species are not identical even if they are similar. In the story, female Kryptonians are only fertile (and thus only menstruate) four times a year. Alex eventually did get her period, on the normal Kryptonian time-scale.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Tony Stark walks in on Alex, Louise, and Natasha Romanova while the three women are sunbathing topless next to the Black Panther's private swimming pool. While Louise rolls over to cover herself up, Alex and Natasha basically shrug and keep sunbathing. Despite his normal womanizing nature, Stark manages to be a good boy and doesn't ogle the naked women even once during the ensuing strategy session.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Alex effectively tells the US government that she will be watching their every move, and that if she sees them do something that crosses what she considers a line, she will come down on them, hard. When Tony Stark points out that this is effectively a “terrorist threat”, Alex counters that it's actually more akin to a parent telling their children to stop fighting or they'll be sent to their room.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Spider-Man's generally immature attitude often makes people forget he has two Master's degrees and is close to earning two PhDs. The dichotomy of his intellect and his behaviour is remarked on by some of his teammates.
• Obvious Crossover Method: At first glance, this story looks like it's just a Gender Bender version of the run-of-the-mill standard Buffy YAHF ("Yet Another Halloween Fanfic") plot. Except it really, really isn't. It goes off of those rails almost with the first chapter.
• Offing the Offspring: The actual Karen Starr was murdered by her father when she tried to run away to escape his sexual abuse.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The basic reaction of the SHIELD officers and lawyers who have basically been using the Superhuman Registration Act to railroad Alex when they suddenly learn that she has been drastically, drastically underselling the limits of her powers. And that the actual limits of her powers are way beyond anything they've ever encountered.
  • Moonstone's reaction when Alex attacks the Thunderbolts is a mix of this and Mook Horror Show.
  • Marvin's reaction when he shoots Alex in the mouth at point blank range, after she spits the bullet out and hands it back to him.
  • Magneto has a very, very discreet one after learning that Alex's powers are not from being a mutant, but from being an alien, and there is a planet (actually three) full of people just like her or STRONGER out there. He calms down after Alex tells him that she's the only Kryptonian on Earth at the time.
  • During a discussion about the flaws of the Registration Act, Carol Danvers refers to Louise as a whore right in front of Alex, leading to the other Avengers in the room visibly wincing while Wonder Man utters, "Oh shit."
  • Buffy Summers' reaction to Alex's Dynamic Entry, when the latter lands on Glory the Hell-God with both feet and then casually punches the Eldritch Abomination into unconsciousness.
  • John Leslie, agent of Hydra, when he returns to his apartment and Alex is there waiting for him.
• One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce: Alex Harris retains her species' normal weakness against kryptonite. The thing is, she lives in the Marvel Universe, where there is no kryptonite. Averted in that she also retains her species' weakness against magic, which is found in abundance in the Marvel Universe.
• Only in Miami: After falling in love with the beaches in Florida, Alex and Louise decide to settle in South Florida. While Miami becomes "her city" (and she becomes fiercely protective of it), Alex decides that it's better for Secret Identity purposes that they live on Big Pine Key, an island some 70 miles south of the city. The idea that their "hometown superheroine" doesn't actually live in their hometown never occurs to anyone in Miami, because hey, it's Miami. Why would anyone live anywhere else?
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Chapter 29, Tony Stark, Alex Harris, and Natasha Romanov have what is effectively a strategy session while the two women are sitting topless, sunbathing next to the Black Panther's swimming pool. The fact that Tony Stark isn't ogling the hell out of the naked women is a sign that he's taking the situation much more seriously than he normally takes any situation.
• Our Presidents Are Different: Averted. George W. Bush is the current president and he is (somewhat) typically depicted as The Ditz (such as mispronouncing words) and briefly being told what to do by Dick Cheney. In Chapter 28, entitled "Conspiracy Theory", it is revealed that the real George W. Bush has been replaced by the Chameleon, a spy and master-of-disguise who works as an infiltrator for Hydra, and that the entire Civil War plot has been engineered by Hydra to bring down America's superheroes.
• Outside-Context Problem: Alex Harris is this to both Glory the Hell-God and her demonic worshiper Doc. While they were both able enough opponents to face a vampire slayer, they were just horribly outclassed when faced by a pissed off Kryptonian.
• Pinball Projectile: At one point, Superwoman catches Ragnarok's hammer (which is a weaker copy of Thor's weapon), rips the head off the handle, crinkles it into a ball, and then tosses it passed Ragnarok's head. Ragnarok taunts her with a quick "you missed", except she wasn't aiming at him. Said metal ball bounces off a rock, then ricochets off a tree, and finally smacks the back of Ares' head so hard the God of War is knocked unconscious.
• Pool Scene: Chapter 29's meeting between Alex, Tony Stark, and Natasha Romanov takes place while Alex and Natasha are sunbathing topless next to the Black Panther's private swimming pool. The fact that Stark never once snarks about the two being topless is a sign of how serious Stark is taking things.
• The Power of the Sun:
  • Sentry tries to use this as a weapon against Alex. Too bad she's Kryptonian, and thus is empowered by the sun.
  • Alex defeats both Sentry and Carol by having them chase her to the upper atmosphere where she can take a full dose of undiluted solar power.
• Pragmatic Hero:
  • If you mess with Alex Harris or her friends, do not expect her to merely give you a talking to, or expect the law to deal with you. Highlights include robbing Norman Osborn, and throwing a corrupt government official into space.
  • Steve Rogers might absolutely hate when a civilian impersonates a military member, seeing it as an insult to everyone who ever wore the uniform, but he recognizes it as necessary for their current situation.
• Product Placement: The first chapter of Origin Story features what basically amounts to a commercial for Florida Citrus, specifically mentioning Hale Orange Groves of Indian River, Florida, and how much better Florida citrus fruit is than California citrus.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The various SHIELD agents, most especially Agent Dunne (who was completely honest with Alex and seemed genuinely upset that she was going to be imprisoned). Agent Dunne is also the only one to try talking Alex down before resorting to violence.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • In Chapter 13, Alex speaks this way while instructing Moonstone on the message to be taken back to Gyrich and Osborn:
  Alex Harris: "Tell your bosses to leave me alone, or the next time I’ll visit them in person. I don’t want to fight. I’m not robbing banks and I’m not hurting anyone. Leave. Me. Alone."
  • In the very next chapter, Tony Stark gets to do it to Norman Osborn, but in a sarcastic manner instead of angry:
    Tony Stark: "Why do you call her a thing, Norman?"
    Norman Osborn: "What?"
    Tony Stark: "Why. Do. You. Call. Her. A. Thing." Stark spoke slowly, as if to a four-year-old. He grinned when he was done, then caught himself and added, "Norman?"
• Rage Within the Machine: Tony Stark was the instigator of the Superhuman Registration Act. By the end of this story, he's one of the Act's most vocal critics within the government, and is actively campaigning to have it repealed.
• Really Gets Around: John Leslie, a Hydra agent who'd been following Carol Danvers for months, remarks how easy it was to use Danvers' promiscuous sexual habits to dose her with a mind-control drug.
  John Leslie: "She was cycling through the regulars there – I’m talking, like, a different guy or a different girl every night for a month, never repeating. She is seriously into the entire ‘take them home, fuck their brains out, shove them out the door’ thing and she never repeats a lover, I guess. So, I knew all I had to do was wait. Eventually my turn came around.”
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • After Alex and Louise are asked to leave a diner for picking a fight with a homophobic customer, the Sheriff's Deputy outside walks them to their car and advises them to get a hotel at the next exit so they won't have to deal with more bigots.
  • Tony Stark, in a strange sense - while he initially pursues Alex, after a little bit of a Heel Realisation, he actively looks out for Alex and Louise, tries to rein in both Gyrich and Norman Osborn, noting the stupidity of their actions, and seems to be looking to get the SHRA repealed.
• Reconcile the Bitter Foes: After Tony is betrayed by Carol and declared a fugitive, he and Steve agree to put aside their differences and work together to bring her down.
• Refuge in Audacity: Alex's response to the Runaways showing up to interrogate her is to pick up Bruiser and carry her to the buffet she and Louise were heading to.
• Refuse the Call: For most of the story, Alex refuses to become a superhero, saying that she only wants to be left alone. Then she catches a helicopter as it's falling out of the sky...
• Relationship Upgrade: That moment in Chapter 14 where Alex reveals that she's had an epiphany about her awkward relationship with Louise:
  Alex Harris: "So anyway, uh, after I sort of figured out I loved you, I started asking myself if this was for real. I mean, uh, are our feelings for each other real? Are we really falling in love, or are we just desperate? I feel love for you. I love you. I know I love you. I can feel it. But… but… you were in a really crap place, and I was in a really crap place, and maybe we just, uh, I don’t know, latched on each other, you know? I was just sort of wondering. Just wondering if we, you and me, if we hooked onto the only people we know who gave a shit. You know? I’ve been thinking about it, I mean. The whole desperation thing. About whether our feelings are real. And it’s why I’ve come to a decision about leaving you behind and hiding to keep you safe and whether or not we’re just being desperate. I’ve come to a decision about all of it. And what I’ve decided is, I don’t care. I love you, Louise. I know we’re not to the in love stage, but I want to be there. And I’m not running away from you. I’m not going anywhere unless you’re going with me."
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: When the Black Panther tells Alex that he thought she had died, she actually quotes the trope's title at him and cites Mark Twain. In response, he relates to her the truth that Twain never actually said it.
• The Reveal:
  • In Chapter 14 (entitled "RAGNAROK!"), Alex discovers that she is not, in fact, Xander Harris somehow transformed into a woman and given Power Girl's powers. She is, in fact, a magically created copy of Power Girl who somehow acquired all of Xander's memories. The realization causes a short Heroic BSoD.
  • In Chapter 28, the audience discovers that the President has been replaced with the Chameleon, and that Carol Danvers and her colleagues are all under the control of the 'Puppeteer Formula'.
• Revenge Before Reason: For several of the Avengers, defeating Alex is less about any laws she broke and more about her embarrassing them (or in Captain Marvel's case, critically injuring them) before.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Although SHIELD is way off on most of their early assumptions about Alex, they turn out to be (sort of) correct that she's a girl who's had a (sort of) psychotic episode that results in her believing that she's a boy rather than a boy who has been transformed into a girl, as Alex herself initially believes.
• Right Under Their Noses: Discussed shortly after Alex disposes of the Thunderbolts. Tony Stark, meeting with Norman Osborn, says that Alex might have decided to stay in Los Angeles, because, with everyone searching the city for her, they'd actually expect her to flee. Stark also points out that this plan would be stupid, because it ignores how real investigations work.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Alex, possessing all the powers of a Kryptonian, gets positively medieval on the Thunderbolts after they turn her girlfriend into "collateral damage". She hits Bullseye so hard that the assassin's adamantium-reinforced skull deforms around her fist, backhands Penance through a building, rips Radioactive Man's heart out with her bare hands, rams a forefinger through Songbird's larynx, and burns the Venom symbiote into a puddle of smoking goo with her heat vision. She leaves Moonstone alive and (relatively) unharmed as a "message".
• Running Gag: Everyone calls Alex "Karen Starr" (which is Power Girl's real name) despite her never once claiming to be Karen Starr. No one really believes her denials.
• Sarcasm Failure: In Chapter 29, Tony Stark, Alex Harris, and Natasha Romanov have what is effectively a strategy session while the two women are sitting topless, sunbathing next to the Black Panther's swimming pool. Stark not only doesn't ogle the naked women, he doesn't even comment on the fact that their naked breasts are on full display. This is especially notable because while all women in the Marvel Universe enjoy the Most Common Superpower, Alex Harris is a physical clone of Power Girl, and thus her Most Common Superpower is a bit more "most" than anyone in the Marvel Universe. The fact that he's not making tit jokes and eyeballing the boobies is a clue that he's seriously worried about the situation they are all in.
• Save the Villain: Alex averts this trope several times. She's got plenty of time, for example, to fly Songbird to the hospital in time to keep her from dying, but simply doesn't, allowing Songbird to bleed out. Likewise, she displays a casual disregard about whether or not Reed Richards is going to be permanently injured when she freezes him in place with her super-breath. Mostly this is because she believes that people who attack her or Louise deserve what comes to them.
• Scatting: In Chapter 22, Alex is so caught up in the absolute awesomeness that is being a superhero that she scats an iffy, top-of-her-lungs version of John Williams classic "Superman Theme" while lifting a sinking cruise ship out of the water and flying it back to the Port of Miami. A couple of the people she is rescuing manage to catch the "performance" on their iPhones, and it goes viral almost immediately.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • Agent Coulson and two other SHIELD agents leak the exact detail of what happened to Alex. Suddenly she goes from a mentally unstable girl who escapes from treatment, to a scared teenager running from unlawful detention and government assassination. Which means that politically, publicly, and legally, she is now untouchable.
  • The air force radar monitor who spots Superwoman's return – and the duty officer in charge of his shift – decide to reclassify Superwoman's radar track as a "slow-burn meteor" because neither one of them agree with the Superhuman Registration Act... or as one of them puts it, "the Nazi-Assed un-American Registration Act."
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Moonstone retires to be a teacher after her fight with Alex.
  • Norman Osborn flee to Dubai after knowing that the government would seize Oscorp and being scapegoated in the wake of the viral leak of Alex's battle with the Avengers and SHIELD.
• Secret Identity: Louise demands that Alex start using one when Alex formally decides to stop running from her destiny and become a superhero.
• Secret-Keeper: Many people think they know Superwoman's Secret Identity. She gets called "Karen Starr" all the time by various people. Thing is, Superwoman's real name isn't Karen Starr... it's Alexandra Harris. Alex's domestic partner Louise and the members of the Runaways function as Alex's Secret Keepers.
• Send Me Back: At first, this is Alex's entire raison d'etre. Still thinking that she's really Xander Harris, she wants to get back to Buffy and Willow and her friends. But then she finds out that she's not Xander Harris at all and decides to make a home in the Marvel Universe alongside Louise.
• Shooting Superman: SHIELD agents try to shoot Alex with "Hulkbuster" bullets (designed to take down the roaring green rage monster himself). They have no effect at all. Alex even lectures them about how they are more likely to hurt themselves with a ricochet than hurt her with them. Even better when a couple of agents try hitting her with batons. One agent had to let go of his baton because it rebounded too hard.
• Shout-Out: This story has so many Shout Outs that they were collected into their own page.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Every hotel, restaurant, new age shop, and strip joint mentioned in the story is an actual location, and all the prices involved are authentic. The writer mentions several times in his notes that he actually called these people up and asked them questions. Of special note were the women who worked in the men's department at Macy's in New York City, who actually had a twenty-minute long phone call with the writer in which they described what could be seen outside the store from the window's of their department.
  • The writer actually contacted DC Comics and Marvel Comics and asked them about the official chest measurement and cup size of Power Girl (DC's bustiest character) and She-Hulk (Marvel's bustiest character), respectively.
    Worldmaker: (in an author's note) "And even after asking and being told, I cannot believe there are official bra-sizes for these comic book characters. What a world we live in, hey folks?"
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Rare hero to hero example in Origin Story. Captain America takes Alex to task over her willingness to indulge in lethal violence, stating the Avengers don't do that. Alex throws back that he and the other Avengers have also acted ruthlessly in the past, and that for all her questionable decisions, she could have done a lot worse.
• Sidekick: At one point, Alex specifically refers to Louise as “my sidekick, Lady Clairol";. It was meant as a joke, but Louise occasionally refers to herself as Lady Clairol off and on for the remainder of the story.
• Slash Fic: Justified in that Alex's mind is made up of half Xander Harris, who is a strictly heterosexual male, and Kara Zor-L, who is a bisexual female. Thus, she has a natural tendency to view women as sexually attractive.
• Slipping a Mickey : How Carol Danvers gets drugged with the Puppet Master's drug on the first place. The HYDRA agent who does it also gets paid with enough of the formula to Date Rape several other girls.
• Statuesque Stunner: Alex just has that effect on people. She's 6'2" tall and built like a body-builder. Combine this with the Most Common Superpower and the effect is complete. Word of God says Alex is physically based on how champion bodybuilder and actress Raye Hollitt (Zap of American Gladiators) looked back in the 80s.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: Alex spends the first half of the story trying to find a way to get back to Buffy and the gang in Sunnydale. When she finally — if involuntarily — makes it back to Sunnydale, it's actually an Alternate Universe, making things considerably different than she remembers. The fact that Buffy and her friends are paranoid about her because of her Kryptonian powers is just icing on a sour, depressing cake for Alex.
• Super Hero Origin: Ultimately, the entire story is the origin tale that explains how Superwoman, a Kryptonian hero in the mold of Superman, came to be in the Marvel Universe.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: As in the original Civil War storyline, the X-Men sit the entire thing out after quietly determining that Alex is not a mutant after all. Since she isn't a mutant, and isn't attacking mutants (and has, in the past defended them) they don't see it as their problem.
• Superweapon Surprise: The Avengers are tasked by SHIELD to arrest a girl who escaped from their custody. SHIELD had previously tested the girl's power level, and put her somewhere on the scale between Beast and Spider-Man. Well, surprise, surprise, turns out she was a Kryptonian who figured out that maybe hiding just how powerful she really was might be a smart idea. Cue Tony Stark getting the ass-whipping of his life.
• Switching P.O.V.: The writer is pretty good about switching the POV of the story without making it seem awkward. Most of the story is told from Alex's point of view, but other characters, including Tony Stark, Happy Hogan, Henry Peter Gyrich, and even Typhoid Mary get a chance to tell the tale from their perspective.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Alex Harris becomes a Sympathetic Murderer after her Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Thunderbolts, during which she kills Venom (the symbiote, but not the host, whom she erroneously believes is Eddie Brock instead of Mac Gargan), the Radioactive Man, and Bullseye. Several members of the law enforcement community state outright that they're not sure about prosecuting her because if anyone deserved a good killing is was Bullseye.
• Take That!:
  • The writer of Origin Story really doesn't like the Marvel Universe's Carol Danvers, and has gone on record as saying that she's unworthy of the name "Captain Marvel". (In his opinion, only Billy Batson has earned that moniker.) As such, Captain Marvel continually gets used as a punching bag by the story's heroine, Alex "Superwoman" Harris.
  Dirty Jim: [during a radio interview] "So nothing bad about the Avengers?"
  Alex Harris: "Well, Captain Marvel's a total [BLEEPED OUT]. Can I say [Bleeped Out] on the radio?
  Russ Rollins: "Not technically, but we're running on a delay, so it'll get bleeped out."
  Alex Harris: "Okay, in that case yeah, Captain Marvel is a complete and total [Bleeped Out] and I'm glad I kicked her ass. Twice."
  • As a whole, the entire fic is a massive middle finger to the controversial Civil War storyline, most particularly to Iron Man's Pro-Registration side. Besides Iron Man and Captain Marvel, several other characters get called out for basically being assholes. It is worth noting that the author is basing these depictions on canon sources — actual issues of Marvel comic books that really depicted these characters as complete Jerkasses doing Jerkass things — and isn't just creating a Strawman Political situation, as several readers have accused him of doing.
    • To supply a specific example: SHIELD deciding to disregard Ben Grimm's status as a French diplomat and arrest him for alleged violation of the SHRA only for President Bush himself to call them and tell them to stow the Cowboy Cop act and let him go before the U.S. is considered to be doing an act of war is a perfect reverse of SHIELD trying to arrest Storm, who at the time was Queen of Wakanda.
  • Upon hearing the idea of turning Captain America into a Hydra agent, Alex laughs her ass off, saying it's not only completely ridiculous but that Steve is such an icon that it'd be like pissing on the Constitution.
  • After showcasing a snippet of an In-Universe episode of CSI: Miami where Alex makes a cameo as herself as Superwoman, the story cuts to the backstage conversations. David Caruso turns out to be a pretty big Jerkass that can't stop himself from ogling Alex.
  • Alex's meeting with Squirrel Girl ends with Alex giving Doreen a one-handed Neck Lift and telling her that she's a worthless character to her (suffocating) face, insulting her creator Jim Shooter, even calling her legendary victory over Doctor Doom "Wow... Doom must have been having an off day". Overall, it's as brutal as it sounds. Doreen did try to fight Alex, though...
• Take This Job and Shove It: After her traumatizing fight with Alex, Moonstone abruptly quit the Thunderbolts by leaving the moonstone and a note that read "Fuck you, I'm done." on Henry Peter Gyrich's desk.
• These Hands Have Killed: Alex has this reaction after the death of Henry Peter Gyrich. Surprisingly, this isn't the first time she's killed someone. The other times were in the middle of a heated fight, though, and Alex truly believed that killing Bullseye, the Radioactive Man, and the Venom symbiote was justified. The death of Gyrich, on the other hand, was simple premeditated murder. Alex thought it necessary to protect Louise, but it still wasn't like the others: they were fighting back, if ineffectively. Gyrich on the other hand never had a chance.
• The Stakeout: Alex watches the door to John Leslie's workplace, hoping to ambush the Hydra agent so the renegade Avengers can interrogate him as to the drugging of Carol Danvers.
• This Is Reality: Multiple times characters think of an idea, then declare it to be something that'd only work in an action movie.
• To Be Lawful or Good:
  • At one point Wonder Man asks Iron Man why they're chasing down a teenage girl who isn't likely to be hurting people or being a menace to anyone. Tony's answer is “Because the law says we have to.”
  • Carol Danvers also feels this way about the SRA (even more so than Tony) and holds firm to her viewpoint even after her colleagues present her with sufficient evidence supporting how flawed and poorly executed it was.
• To Catch Heroes, Hire Villains: The Thunderbolts are sent after Alex, but end up hurting her girlfriend instead. This turns out to be a grave error.
• Tomato in the Mirror: For most of the story, Alex believes that she is Xander Harris who has been somehow trapped in Power Girl's body. Turns out, she's actually a magically created copy of Power Girl who just happens to have Xander's memories.
• Transplanted Character Fic: The story is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Power Girl crossover, and yet it takes place in the Marvel Universe.
• Troll: After a homophobic man at the diner they're eating in tells Alex and Louise that God says they're sinners, Alex keeps asking him to specify which God, pointing out that there are a massive number of Gods, at least a dozen religions claiming to have a "one true God", and five different versions of the Bible.
• Trouble Follows You Home: After being attacked by Typhoid Mary while on their honeymoon, Alex and Louise flee Los Angeles like the hounds of hell are on their heels. They figure they're safe enough in Pensacola, Florida, after literally crossing the United States to get away. When they head to their car the next morning, Sabretooth and three other mutant supervillains who work for Magneto are waiting for them in the parking lot.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Captain Marvel uses the US military and the strength of the US government to usurp leadership of The Avengers, basically because she holds a grudge against Alex (who had earlier given her not one, but '''two''' epic-level beatdowns) and she sees this as the best way to take revenge. Her first order is to announce that not only is Tony Stark going to be arrested for aiding and abetting a terrorist, but that any of the other Avengers who refuse to toe the line will be sitting in a cell next to him. With two exceptions, they refuse to comply.
• Underestimating Badassery: Spider-Man's main battle advantage, according to Captain America, is that despite all his well-known abilities and feats that make him one of the toughest street-level heroes, he's still consistently underestimated by friend and foe alike, which gives Peter a great edge in most fights, as he proves in a Curb-Stomp Battle against the U.S. Agent.
• Understanding Boyfriend: Gender inverted. When Louise finds out about Alex's super-human strength, her only reaction is "Oh, you must be a mutant, like I am!"
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • The entire United States government. Alex stops several serious crimes, a train derailment, a bunch of building fires, and several other natural disasters, and their response is to call SHIELD and the Avengers down on her head. Again. ^note To be fair, they didn't know who they were dealing with (as she was identified as Superwoman) until they saw her in person.
  • The Scoobies treat Alex like a time bomb despite how helpful she's been and try to justify it with how she manhandled Glory, ignoring that if not for her, Glory would have won and destroyed the world.
• Unintentionally Notorious Crime: Alex Harris and the Runaways decide to strike back and Norman Osborn by stealing a shipping container from a secure dock (they're inspired to do it by a similar scene in Lethal Weapon 2), thinking they'll net maybe a couple of million dollars in cash. Turns out the container they steal contains over 10 billion dollars in cash, plus a car, plus a stack of high-grade plasma-screen TV's, plus around $300,000 in really high-grade champagne. The theft is enough to cause Oscorp stock to drop thirty points.
• Unkempt Beauty: Alex is scouted by two porn star agents while covered in grime and generally looking a mess.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Alex falls into this at times. When she fights Ares for the first time, he effortlessly dodges her punches and knocks her down several times, but when she lands one good hit, he goes down. The second time he is better prepared, and his skill is such that, for every blow that landed, he could block another four... but Alex is so ridiculously strong that Ares got hurt anyways.
• Vertical Kidnapping: How Alex removes the problem that is Henry Peter Gyrich. She grabs Gyrich from above right off his front stoop, carries him into outer space where he suffocates, and then pushes his corpse out of earth's orbit. It eventually collides with a Kuiper Belt object six million years later.
• We Help the Helpless: It is noted several different times that Alex spends more time helping people and stopping natural disasters than she does fighting supervillains. She actually calls the Avengers out for being more interested in fighting amongst each other than helping people.
  "“You people call yourselves heroes, but all you're doing is running around fighting each other! When was the last time you fed the hungry? When was the last time you helped irrigate a desert? When was the last time you were there for someone who just needed a friend? That's what being a hero is all about. You're all like children, throwing temper tantrums.”
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 13, appropriately entitled "Ragnarok!", reveals that Alex, who had up until then thought that she was a male-to-female gender-swapped Xander Harris, finds out that she is actually a magically created copy of Kara Zor-El who merely thought she was Xander Harris. She was never gender-swapped at all. The stress of this revelation was one of the spurs behind her Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Thunderbolts.
  • In Chapter 23, "We Know How to Stop Her", being essentially a Physical God has made Alex complacent and so a (by Marvel Universe standards) small-fry fight against the Wrecking Crew ends up with Alex stabbed through the gut with the Wrecker's crowbar. To make things even worse, the fight was recorded by the local news, and so Reed Richards and Tony Stark now have empirical proof that magic is the best method to attack her...
  • Chapter 26 has Carol Danvers pulling a Face–Heel Turn and having Louise thrown in prison, Alex banished from the dimension, and she takes over the Avengers, leading to almost the entire team going rogue.
  • A milder example in Chapter 27 occurs when Alex learns she's not in the Buffyverse from which she originated (where Xander dressed as Powergirl), or even in the main canon-verse, but a whole new alternate version of Sunnydale.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?:
  • Louise Fulford, Alex's partner, is a mutant with the power to change her hair color. She can change it to any range of color she can imagine, and even can change it to a rainbow-like combination of colors. Alex at one point jokingly assigns her the superhero code name "Lady Clairol." Louise calls herself Lady Clairol at one point as a matter of pride.
  • A lot of the residents of the homeless camp at which Alex and Louise take shelter fall under this trope. Aaron's power is to see infrared light, Oz can shapeshift, but only to the four primary characters of The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion), without gaining any of their abilities. Jan was a teenager with oversized jaw muscles and superhumanly strong teeth. Debby's skin is translucent. The Avengers these people aren't.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • A large number of conversations on this story are pretty much giving these kind of speeches to Tony Stark and anybody else behind the S.H.R.A... and then punching them in the nose when they won't listen.
  • Chapter 27: After a month-long barrage withstanding Buffy Summers and (most of) the Scoobies being a punch of hyper-paranoid assholes with passive Irrational Hatred, Alex simply has enough and gives a tear-filled speech to Violet in the middle of a patrol which has her asking: "what do I need to do for you (the Scoobies) to trust me? Die? I SHOULD JUST DIE, RIGHT?!?" and then leaves... and Violet later describes the scene to Buffy, only to get fed up herself when Buffy keeps on with the "she's too damn powerful for us not to be on guard" spiel and so punches her in the face.
• Who's Laughing Now?: This was basically Alex's reaction to Tony Stark wanting to be nice and conciliatory after Alex put most of the Avengers and about a hundred SHIELD agents in the hospital.
• The World Is Just Awesome: Alex Harris looks at the sky at night while she's cranked up her eyesight to ultra-high magnification and is immediately awestruck. She comments about how such natural beauty never seems to be mentioned in the comic books.
  • When Alex is first thrust into the Marvel Universe, while she is falling uncontrollably to the ground from orbit, she has two thoughts. The first thought is absolute panic about her situation. The second is "the same thought every astronaut ever had once had, viewing the world from this distance: the Earth is a beautiful and singular place."
• With Friends Like These...: Despite everything Alex is doing to help the Scoobies while she's trapped in the Buffyverse, the Scoobies still treat her like she's a monster whose about to attack them. At one point, Violet the Vampire Slayer points out that Buffy is treating Alex "like a yeast infection," and punches Buffy in the nose when their attitude causes Alex to fly away in tears.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: The Juggernaut muses that while he will fight a girl if forced to, he doesn't enjoy it. When Alex confronts him, he unsuccessfully tries to get her to walk away at first. It's only after she manages to actually slow him down that he decides that playtime is over and takes a swing at her. Not that it helps him much.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Squirrel girl 'is' known as unbeatable, however, she is 'only' unbeatable in more comedy-focused stories. When she tries to go against Superwoman in a serious fight, Alex can't help but laugh. Identifying her almost immediately as a joke character and taking the 'unbeatable' squirrel girl out with almost insulting ease.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Alex finally gets SHIELD off her back and becomes a member of The Avengers, only for Danvers to pull a Face–Heel Turn because of her obsessive hate-on for Alex and ally herself with a Government Conspiracy that hates the Avengers (and Stark in particular) just as much; she has Baron Mordo send Alex to another dimension, takes over the Avengers (putting nearly the whole roster on the run under charges of aiding and abetting a known terrorist (Alex)), and finally sends Louise to a Guantanamo-style Secret Government Stockade because she's Alex's "accomplice".
  • But then it turns out that Alex ended up in the Buffyverse... and now all she wishes is to go back to the Marvel-verse.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: When Alex finally returns to the "Buffy" universe she finds that while only a year passed for her while she was in the Marvel Universe, three years have passed for Buffy and her friends.
• You Can Leave Your Hat On: Jennifer Kale, powerful witch and exotic dancer, performs for Alex and Louise while simultaneously giving them information. The fact that she was tipped $100 helped, but one gets the feeling she would have been happy to do so anyway.
• You Can't Go Home Again: After Alex gets fed up with receiving nothing but mistrust from Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies, she flees Sunnydale in tears. Needing a moment to think and calm down, she lands on the dock behind the house she shared with Louise. Problem is, in the Buffyverse, it's not her house, not her property, and not her dock. The owner quickly asks her to leave, citing all the "No Trespassing" signs he has around the property.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Alex gets recognized (and caught on video) surveilling the workplace of John Leslie, a Hydra agent central to a plot wherein The Avengers would be drugged and mind-controlled by Hydra. Hydra's leaders don't know for sure that Leslie has been compromised, but the mere possibility that he might be is enough for them to send an assassination to "clean up the loose end" that Leslie represents.

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The sequel, Call Me Superwoman provides examples of:

• Big Damn Heroes: Alex shows up in time to stop Thor beating Tony Stark to death out of rage for his creation of the Thor clone during the Civil War.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Alex shocks Thor and Tony Stark when she is able to catch Mjolnir.

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