#and therefore should be in the yj

[ghostboidanny]

I've seen a few times in Dp x DC fics when Danny is first introduced to the Justice League and meets Captain Marvel, that they both know the other is actually a kid and not an immortal being, but pretends to be old friends so as to not be outed and tricks the JL together.

Now I bring you, neither of them know the other is a kid and both Actually think the other is immortal but still somehow ends up pretending to be besties. How? Time travel.

This is their actual first meeting, but in the future, Danny will time travel back to the past and meet past Champions of Magic. Billy, as the current Champion of Magic, has inherited the knowledge of these meetings, but thinks they happened chronologically = Phantom is immortal. So he use that knowledge to bullshit his way into pretending he's been all those old Champions and greets Danny as an old friend to sell his Old as Shit act before the JL.

Danny in turn doesn't know about those past meetings but he Does know about time travel. So when Captain Marvel greets him like an old friend and start recounting their different meetings throughout history, Danny assumes he's gonna time travel and do all those things one day (accurately). But he's pretending to be immortal, not a time traveling teen, and so has to pretend that he Totally Remembers That One Time In Greece, Yup!

[threewaysdivided]

As someone who just recently rewatched some of young justice through clips on YouTube for nostalgia, perused a little around the tags and found the absolute goldmine of writing analysis in your blog I just wanted to say thank you! Your knowledge and your care for these characters really shines through and reflect some truths that I feel are more appropriate than ever: no one individual should be pedestaled for the success of a narrative, especially when he seems to misunderstand his own themes. It's very refreshing to see criticism so pointed and razor sharp, especially for a series I wish was better than it is. Your essays certainly gave me a lot to think about in my own writing!

Thank you! 💜 That’s really lovely of you to say.

It always makes me happy when someone stops by to tell me that they enjoyed/ got something out of my analytical posts.  Part of why I write things like the YJ Narrative Breakdown Essays is to get the thoughts out of my head, but a lot of it is that I want to share them with other fans who might feel similarly and want to talk. (I’m especially proud of the YJ: Invasion Case Study - it doesn’t get a lot of love because it’s so long but I’m super happy with how it came out as a capstone to the set.)  It’s really gratifying to hear that someone found them useful or that it helped articulate a feeling they were having or gave them some new concept/ framework to use when thinking about other stories.

If you want more Young Justice stuff, I’ve done some Season 1 metas on The Light, A Different Take on Martian Racism and Dick and Wally’s Friendship.  I also made a short list of other stories that I think capture similar vibes to Season 1 in aspects of their theming/ genre/ character-writing/ structure/ tone etc. which might help any lingering cravings.

I also have a general writing tag if you’re looking for writing discussions, as well as this resource primer for analytical readings.

pssst!  If you want to see me try to put some of these ideas into practice, I’m also writing a fic.  It’s a YJ crossover (canon-divergent post S1) and Arc II which started this year at Chapter 18 is intended to emulate some of the things I really liked about S1, including an overarching mystery and missions.

When it comes to pedestalling individuals, I completely agree.  I think Auteur Theory and Great Man Theory are mostly fallacious - not only in art but in general.  A lot of successes are collaborative (“self-made entrepreneurs” who were actually financially supported by family or succeeded through connections etc.) and, while the lone-visionary idea makes for a simple and compelling story,it can also cause IRL problems in how it disproportionately elevates certain voices, devalues less visible work and creates unrealistic expectations.  It’s good to have a healthy scepticism about those narratives, especially when they centre on people who already had privilege greasing their wheels.

I also think we often underestimate just how many people are involved in commercial art production.  Even Books (one of the closest mediums to sole-creator) often involve input from editors and possibly a publication house - as well as potential ghost-writers, co-writers etc.  Television teams can have dozens of staff across multiple production areas, and for big-budget films and AAA Games that number can balloon into the hundreds.

The role of developer/producer can be a real mixed bag in that space.  Some are close to the visionary/ auteur type - very involved with their teams and in steering the creative process - but others can be coattail-riders or even active liabilities that their teams have to work around.  (The Danny Phantom fandom has some real showrunner war-stories).  

Still, it’s easy to see how we could go from talking about a team lead/ spokesperson as convenient shorthand for the idea of The Author™, to accidentally treating that person like they are the only significant member and attributing all the credit to them personally.

Whether by accident or design, Greg Weisman definitely presents as the visionary type on the surface (something that the fandom and the wiki creators have unintentionally and well-meaningly contributed to).  His ask blog’s visual style certainly makes him look like The Gargoyles Guy™, and the Young Justice wiki editors put a lot of emphasis on him, often directly inserting information from there and his social media straight into main page content as “unconfirmed canon”.  That ask blog also creates a very parasocial environment; I’ve seen fans write posts like they’re talking to/ about him as a friend, and directly attribute specific lines or episodes directly to him.  To look at the wiki, his blog or hear the fandom talk he is the mind behind.

However, once you look closer, he has much fewer direct creative credits than you would expect for that reputation.

And, as it turns out, Young Justice is one of 3 separate series to see substantial drops in story quality after Weisman assumed control as primary writer, with common complaints including weak/inconsistent character-writing (even for characters he supposedly helped create), poor story structure and a seemingly shallow understanding of those stories as a whole.

Now, if it was just a case of Weisman just being a passionate doofus - someone sincerely having fun exploring ideas that interest him but who shouldn’t be left creatively unsupervised because he can’t hack it narratively - that would be frustrating but ultimately fine.  It happens.  Unfortunately though, there has been… quite a bit else that has pushed me more towards parasocial enemies territory.

As I’ve mentioned before, all three series contain instances of Weisman disempowering strong female characters; rewriting their narratives to centre on men and/or a sudden desire to conform to traditional gender roles.  Plus other sexism that resonates uncomfortably closely with pick-up-artist/ incel rhetoric.  His work on both Magic: the Gathering and YJ: Outsiders was also criticised for casually racist and overtly queerphobic writing - especially in his treatment of feminine bisexuals.  A lot of the most egregious instances can be found in the book - the medium where Weisman had the most direct creative input.  Weisman also doesn’t seem to understand the difference between organic character-conflict, manufactured “negative drama” and abuse - something that combines really badly with his seeming unawareness of the invasive implications of telepathy; which results in several telepaths being written as borderline predators/rapists, only for Weisman's narratives to either make no comment or take their side.

I also find his conduct very disingenuous.  I have no problem with ask blogs but the fact that over 80% of Young Justice’s critical narrative content can only be found there, and the implied attitude that fans who are surprised by the sudden appearance of information that was never previously set up in-story are at fault for not seeking it out strikes me as creatively dishonest.  I’m also not best pleased with his responses to the criticism over his insensitive writing (discussed above).  One instance that’s really emblematic to me is Weisman getting kudos for posting a snarky twitter-clapback to a bigot asking him to remove the diversity from Young Justice, despite himself having actively attempted to erase the sexuality of one of Magic: the Gathering’s fan-favourite queer characters (a scandal that made it onto his Wikipedia page).  Respect is something that really needs to be Shown not Told, and Weisman’s work frequently shows the complete opposite.

And look, I don’t know this guy; I can’t claim to understand what Weisman’s deal is or what’s going on in his head.  Maybe he’s always been like this and it just passed under the radar until recently because previous co-creators were skilled enough to pull him up with them.  Maybe he used to be better but let the success of other series he’s been involved in, and the showers of personal praise from his ask blog, go to his head.  Or it could be something else entirely.  I think the only answer we’re going to get is that we’re not going to get an answer.

Which is super disappointing and frustrating.  Like I said in this post, we come to stories in good faith; we want to put our trust in the promises made by the narrative, we want to be able to take the creators at face value, and we want to see the love and respect we have for their story and characters reflected in the effort they put into telling it.  Fandom in part reflects the passion creators have for their work, and when those creators start treating that work carelessly, cynically, or taking their audience for granted, the fandom can start to wane.  (Danny Phantom being one of the only communities I’ve seen thrive after completely severing ties with their producer.)

Circling back to the pedestal/auteur thing, I think that mindset makes it much easier to take this kind of thing personally when it happens.  It starts feeling like a single person chose to make all those promises and show that potential to you, only to intentionally betray them; rather than the Swiss-cheese model of compounding changes, failures, mistakes and/or poor choices from multiple people that more likely happened.

In these situations it helps to remember that we are the ultimate arbiter of our personal relationship to a story.  We don’t even have to be part of fandom; our fan experience can be just between us and the part of the work we found compelling, or us and a small group of buddies who feel similarly.  There’s no rule requiring us to perform fannishness or conform to the mainstream fandom consensus.  A good book/ game/ movie/ season/ comic can stand on its own, even with a few unresolved threads - we don’t have to personally accept subpar sequels, poor-quality prequels, rubbish retcons, superfluous side-content or extraneous add-ons just because they happen to exist.

a good plot was one which made good scenes. The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing. -Raymond Chandler

There are fine things that are more brilliant when they are unfinished than when finished too much. - François de La Rochefoucauld

And, for stories that are created by multi-person teams, it can really help to change how we talk about them; to step away from that auteur mindset and start giving credit where it’s actually due.

So, in service to that, here is a breakdown of main episode credits for Young Justice Season 1:

Putting this together actually made me realise that I’d had too narrow of a focus; I’d previously speculated about changes to the writing staff but I completely overlooked the impact of episode directors. Which is nuts because directors can potentially have major influence over the structure and presentation of the finished narrative.

A few things strike me.  First is that Weisman doesn’t have a lot of direct writing credits; he has the most (albeit only by 1 episode) but it barely amounts to 25% of the season, and you can see that the specific episodes he scripted aren’t ones that put a lot of character focus on the main cast or paying off the emotional narrative.  (Which isn’t to claim that he wasn’t doing other developmental/ production work behind the scenes, but it does make sense; characterisation and narrative resolution are not things Weisman is good at).

The two names that really started to stand out were Jay Oliva and Michael Chang; each individually credited as director on over a third of episodes, and covering more than 75% of the whole season between them.  That’s not to say that they alone were the secret sauce that made S1 so good (that would just be applying Auteur Theory to a new target and, while their IMDB resumes are impressive, it’s likely that other, less-visible team members were also involved) but having that level of direct input across so much of the season would have given them opportunities to maintain consistency and provide structure/ guidance.

And notably, neither Oliva nor Chang have any major credits post Season 1.   For whatever reason, the directors who handled over 75% of the episodes never returned for future entries.  (Compare most of the Season 1 writers, who do make repeat appearances - although no writer other than Weisman or Vietti gets more than a single episode per season of the revival.)  Which is a pretty substantial gap to leave behind.  From that perspective it’s not surprising that the show saw big changes going forward; to some extent it really wasn’t the same creative team driving things.

At this point we might be tempted to speculate that, if Oliva, Chang and the rest had stayed on (or come back for the revival), then Young Justice would have stayed good or at least been better than how it turned out.  But the truth is, we can’t know.  It’s possible that Season 1 was too much a product of that specific team, time, production environment and media landscape to ever last.  Maybe it was always a doomed venture; the lack of proper planning, Weisman’s creative weaknesses and aversion to endings, Vietti’s relative inexperience with original storytelling, Cartoon Network’s infamously awful treatment of “less marketable” PG-rated series, and executive mandates from DC Comics as they pivoted to push the New 52 and got increasingly spooked by the astronomic rise of the early MCU inevitably destined to force changes which undercut the narrative.  The only answer we’re going to get is that we’re not going to get an answer.

But, you know what?

Despite everything, as frustrating and disheartening as things may have turned out… Young Justice Season One is STILL really good.   It has a distinct creative verve with its combination of espionage-meets-superheroics, grounded-but-still-positive tone, character-focus and interwoven plot threads that pay off as a remarkably self-contained fair mystery.  There is a reason why Season 1 is so enduring; why people still make art, and write fic and reference those characters even now.

So, to that original team; to Michael Chang, Jay Oliva and all the other creative staff - be they writers, directors, story-boarders, animators, colourists, composers, sound designers - who are so rarely mentioned when we gush about how clever and good Season 1 was: thank you for what you gave us.

Because that first season, when Young Justice was just trying to be itself?

It really was lighting in a bottle.

Hats off to them for that.

[suzukiblu]

WIP Wednesday Game

Taken from @kedreeva.

It’s WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here’s how it works:

In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. I’ll be searching the reblogs to find people to send asks to!

If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.

file names:

a fake cryptid and a real romantic

mistaken identities and interdimensional refugees

YJ accidental baby acquisition

merfam drama

gentle princely caretaking 

snippet from "a fake cryptid and a real romantic":

Clark hears a sudden rush of air and a thrumming, not-quite-human heartbeat, and is therefore unsurprised when Superboy pops up over the side of the Metropolis rooftop he’s sitting on and grins up at him. The kid always seems to be in a good mood, but is clearly in an even better one than usual. 

“Guess what?!” Superboy greets gleefully, pushing himself up on the edge. 

“What?” Clark asks, smiling wryly at him. The kid just gets so enthusiastic so easily. It’s kind of funny, to be honest. 

“I got a date!” Superboy says delightedly, plopping into a seat beside him and kicking his legs excitedly as he does. “Robin said I could go hunting with him in Gotham this weekend!” 

“You’re going to hang out, you mean,” Clark corrects kindly, since Superboy still has a notably skewed education and concept of correct terminology and probably calling working with another vigilante a “date” without knowing what that actually means isn’t going to end well for the kid in the long run. Especially since Robin isn’t actually an aspect of Gotham like the Batman is and would definitely be confused by it. 

Admittedly, the Batman gets confused by some very straightforward things sometimes, but still. 

“‘Hang out’,” Superboy repeats, cocking his head with a slightly puzzled expression that almost immediately clears into another excited grin. “That, yeah! I caught Catwoman breaking into some fancy cat exhibit in Gotham and dropped her off for him, and he was into it! And I gave him a diamond and he liked that too!” 

“A . . . diamond?” Clark blinks. He really hopes Catwoman didn’t manage to be that bad of an influence on the kid in one meeting, but he wouldn’t put it past her. Superboy’s impressionable and Catwoman is . . . well, Catwoman. “Uh–where’d you get that?” 

“I made it!” Superboy says proudly, puffing himself up as he mimes the act of crushing something in his fists. 

. . . alright then, Clark thinks, mildly bewildered. He has no idea why Superboy would make a diamond, much less give it to Robin, but the kid gets weird ideas into his head sometimes and he supposes it would’ve been good practice for controlling his strength to very specific pressures, so he’s not going to say anything about it.

“Did you?” he says, figuring he should keep the conversation going. Superboy’s an odd kid, but he’s eager and has a good heart and always soaks up attention like a sponge, so Clark always tries to talk to the kid at least a little whenever the other finds him. 

“I figured Robin’d like it,” Superboy says reasonably, kicking his feet again. “Birds like shiny stuff, and he’s kinda a bird, right?” 

Clark is going to assume that Tim Drake more appreciated the expensive gemstone than the “shiny stuff”, assuming a teenage boy would even care about anything like that anyway, but he doesn’t want to rain on Superboy’s parade. Honestly, he’s just glad the kid’s finally trying to make a friend or two in the community who isn’t wearing an “S”. It never hurts to have a little backup on call–or to have a friend who understands the life around, either. 

He’s not actually certain what the Batman’s latest Robin’s policy on maintaining his secret identity among the larger hero community is–even Dick still typically presents himself as a city splinter, just of Bludhaven instead of Gotham now–but even if he keeps passing for a cryptid with Superboy for a little while longer, it’s not like Superboy’s had a normal life experience. He’s not going to be bothered that he can’t talk about girls and homework with his new friend first thing. 

Clark vaguely dreads the possibility of Superboy eventually deciding to come to him to talk about girls, because he has absolutely no idea how to talk to anyone about girls, much less an impressionable teenager who’s guaranteed to hang on his every word for the whole conversation and take everything he says as gospel while also misunderstanding at least half of it, judging by most of their previous conversations. He hasn’t even been able to figure out how to give the kid the Kryptonian version of the talk, though, much less if it’s actually applicable to him. Relationship issues and dating are a whole other kettle of fish. 

Well, with any luck Superboy will stay too young for that kind of thing for a little while longer, Clark hopes halfheartedly. Just–please?

[comradekatara]

gaang + fire nation girls and their opinions on yellowjackets??

okay well i've talked before about how katara suki and ty lee watch yellowjackets together as well as assigning each character their yellowjacket counterpart, so check those posts out too, if you want!

aang: he knows katara loves it, but he can't watch it, he finds it too upsetting and creepy

sokka: he enjoys it but katara can't stand watching it with him because he's always shit like "well if they had just listened to ben they wouldn't be in this mess" or "they should be nicer to nat" and he's killing the vibe -_-

zuko: it gives him nightmares but the good kind so he keeps watching. he's a little bit obsessed with adult shauna and adult misty they are like camp icons to him

toph: appreciates the soundtrack and also sokka's very biased recaps wherein each episodes mostly details what fresh misery his best friends nat and ben (and occasionally simone) have had to endure this time

suki: she loves the aesthetics, the tone, the suspense, the humor, the music, and most of all, the hot babes. i think she is a vangirl and a lottiegirl first and foremost so s2 was a beautiful gift to her. also she'd be lying if she said she hasn't read a fanfic or two

mai: she likes it but she thinks shauna should have, at the very least, kissed jackie's corpse, if not outright fucked it. ear eating was a good start and all, but doing your dead bestie's makeup is honestly not even weirder than what the average mortician does on a daily basis, so kind of disappointing to be honest.

azula: doesn't watch it because any tv show that isn't on hbo is too pedestrian for her refined tastes, but if she did she would be so obsessed with taissa she would be the number one taigirl and she would ship taishauna like her life depended on it!!!!

ty lee: it is one of her favorite tv shows ever because it involves lesbians eating human flesh in a bacchic frenzy and what can be better than that. she's a shaunagirl because she thinks shauna is the most unhinged and therefore the sexiest. she's the type of fan who is constantly coming up with fakakta theories about lore and where the show is gonna go next. if suki can constantly spam the yj groupchat with taivan fucking nasty in the lake 5k words then ty lee is at least allowed to predict that antler queen is actually a literal spirit of the wilderness who is personified by their very faith in the supernatural, right?

katara: a show depicting various women struggling to deal with their trauma in unhealthy unappealing destructive ways, toxic teenage girljocks who take soccer way too seriously, exploring taboos in relation to the colonial assumptions of society vs the constructed bogeyman of "the wilderness" that exists in the white supremacist imagination, and nuances of patriarchy vs relational modes of knowing through both absence and presence is exactly the kind of narrative that katara would be compelled, nay, transfixed by, even if she does have some well-deserved critiques when it comes to the show's execution, especially some of its blindspots when it comes to the issue of racialization. hence why she is the biggest yj head in this house (which is why i saved her for last). like she has a whole side twitter just for yj posting. she loves all her milf children equally, except she might have a teensy bias towards taissa for the simple fact that she is the best at soccer. katara is one of those fans who studies the soccer game in the pilot as a way of gleaning insight regarding the characters, because actually she's a really big nerd when it comes to things like that. she didn't like nat at first because she'd show up drunk to practices and that pissed her off, but then nat shared that strategy with kevyn tan's son and she decided that she was okay. stuff like that. despite the fact that she and suki have gotten into screaming matches debating jackie's sexuality ("i don't understand how you can think she isn't a lesbian how else are you supposed to read her character" "maybe she just kind of ...sucks? ever think of that?????") and also nat's (katara being of the opinion that nat is straight is actually so bravely correct of her, in this instance, despite suki's totally sympathetic objections that if nat is straight then how are she and lottie gonna partake in the milffucking?? hm?????) and also ben's ("no straight man would be carrying all those condoms with him for a weekend work trip" "suki not everyone is gay you can't just assign homosexuality to everyone you think is hot" [...] "okay i stand corrected just this once"), she is extremely emotionally invested in every single one of these characters, and seeing any of them get hurt or die makes her feel physically ill (yes, even laura lee). aang's like "you know, if this show is getting bad for your mental health, you don't have to rewatch every episode five times to pick up on nuances and easter eggs and potential foreshadowing" and katara's like "but if i don't then how will i be able to properly characterize them for my greek mythology AU novel-length fanfic???????" because she is totally normal about the show and everyone can agree on that.

[t4tails]

Young Justice Invasion is extremely interesting to me, to the point that my fascination with it has made me watch it more times than the first season cuz that's how much it amuses me.

Like... why? Who in the writing room was like: "Okay, you know how the strongest suit of superhero media is the characters? And how team up stories are hard carried by the relationship between them? How Young Justice's strongest episodes were single handedly built upon the Team? Well, let's throw that out and focus on the fucking storyline. The weakest thing we have to offer." and this problem gets accentuated more as the show grows on, more characters, less time for building relationships, more teams, more plotlines and more everything. It's such a comic book... like, YJ is not excellent but the mechanic of the show is the growth of the members of the Team growing into a functional unit? That being the very first thing they threw away? So funny.

Anyway, what an hour of Young Justice Invasion does to a motherfucker. Like, I cannot imagine seeing the first and second season and having to see how in like less than an hour Miss Martian went to ditzy girl to mind screwing her boyfriend, rebounding to the first fool that would date her even though she's conscious she still like Conner therefore using Lagoon Boy and also making her ex-boyfriend jealous in the process... like, I was never a Megan girlie and it's still wild to me how much they choose to did character assassination to her.

its so crazy because like. i can think of ways this could happen! i can think of how megan couldve become like that. i can think of how zatanna and rocket joined the league, and why mm, sb, and nw chose to stay out. i can think of a lot of things. but why the fuck should *i* be the one filling in these CRUCIAL CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS, instead of the actual fucking show? god. i know the yj fanfic community must be crazayyy

[starwalker03]

I realized WMLP Dick’s position in that army unit is similar to his early experience with the team. He’s the youngest has a lot of experience and skills his squad mates don’t, among peers for the first time in a while, hiding his true identity, gets pushed out of his comfort zone by the people he was with. Expect this time is was true war. And he came away without bonding with his team and looking down on them. Would this experience effect how he views his memories of The Team?

Huh. Actually that's a good point.

It would definitely make him remember how unprepared they were for That Whole Situation, just thrown into missions having never worked together except for the Cadmus mission which ended with an exploded building like. Bruh. I know they weren't giving the league many options but also what the fUCK guys y'all just sent them off on their merry way like that. The fact they didn't die in episode three is a miracle.

But then also he's so aware of the difference between working with people who are fighting because they're genuinely good people with a desire to help others, as opposed to... Well. People who wanna shoot guns, had no other options, want the military to pay off their degree, et cetera et cetera so on so forth. Like this team is so different to his old one it's almost distracting. It's almost problematic. It's almost enough to snap Dick out of the constant unrelenting need to do as he's told and question Slade because 'uh hey yeah what the fUCK is up with these people'

Dick has to force a level of indifference between himself and his new team because if he doesn't he can't focus on the task at hand. He can't help but think about the fact that these people should not be running around armed with thousands of lives in their hands.

It doesn't help that they're all unaware of half of the shit that goes down in the world. Even Dick's superiors have only the smallest understandings of figures like Count Vertigo and Gorilla Grod and none of them have any idea who Vandal Savage is. Queen Bee? Uh you mean the dictator of that small kick of desert in the middle east?

(CW for conversations about the "war on terror" ahead)

Oh my god. I didn't even consider that if Bialya and Qurac are middle eastern countries they're surprisingly close by during the wars of the early 2000s. Like I've hand waved and said 'yeah going off timeline Dick probably got sent around the middle east' but completely failed to realise he might have even been in Bialya or Qurac for missions.

I wonder how those countries engaged with wars in the area in lore. It's apparently north of Saudi Arabia and Iran in wider DC lore? But YJ isn't specific?

Here's a Reddit thread I found where people start getting into nitty gritty details:

Essentially they're depi ting Bialya and Qurac as west and east Iran, respectively. And also offering theories as to how those countries could have come to be.

If I continue to use Australia as the example (which I suppose I should cause I've essentially canonized it in the fic at this point), Australia was only particularly involved with Afghanistan and Yemen I believe, but I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge.

Bialya and Qurac could, possibly, border operations in Afghanistan. Young justice lore states that Bialya is a part of the UN and therefore may not be particularly open to military operations but very well could have housed a few bases on the borders.

Jesus. Getting this into the lore of YJ feels so strange and I'm honestly not sure if it's inappropriate or not. I could believe Queen Bee being involved with the war on terror, whether it's a part of Savage's plans or not, just because she enjoys conflict. Moreover it helps with the anti-Quraci thing she has going. From what I can tell of the show, Qurac seems to be a majority Islamic country? So I could see her manipulating the image of things to benefit her attempts to take back Qurac.

Well this spiralled. Uh I might end this answer here actually.

[drusill-a]

Yellowjackets finale long outburst below (spoilers obviously):

IMO, this episode was much better than the previous one (which was incredibly disappointing in terms of character development and the lack of important scenes that would have allowed viewers to understand their decisions).

I'm torn when it comes to adult Nat’s fate.

On one hand I'm really sorry that the storyline of a character who was suicidal and started finding meaning in life and overcoming grief ends like this. And what doesn’t help is that it was the second consecutive episode in which adult YJs storyline was poorly, shakily written. I mean the fact that almost all of them finally agreed to make sacrifice was terribly justified… Why did Tai and Nat suddenly change their mind????? Where’s any build-up to this??? I only really buy into Lottie and Van's motivations.

On the other hand - if the writers had to kill off one of the adult characters, I would nominate Nat myself, sorry! I love her in both timelines, but let's face it - they didn't give her any interesting storyline after s1. Adult Nat was also, in a way, the least morally grey and the least messed up of all of them (contrary to appearances) – and it made her the least interesting to me (although it's like choosing between my children).

Her death scene was in character and provided a meaningful conclusion to her arc. As a teenager she let Javi die to save herself, and it haunted her for 25 years. Therefore, as an adult she instinctively chose to shield another innocent young person with her own body, instead of letting another victim burden her conscience once again. This make sense for her character.

So I'm not completely convinced about killing her off (did they really have to kill any of them at this point?), but I'm also not particularly angry at the writers for that decision. It all depends on where they will take the storyline of the adult YJs from here. The only thing I would definitely change is rewriting most of the scenes involving the adult characters to make it clear why they are doing what they're doing, because the explanation of their behavior and motivations in the last two episodes was terribly lacking.

Moving on to smaller, irritating plot points: killing off Kevyn Tan while leaving Mustache Cop alive was incredibly annoying, especially considering that Kevyn wasn't a bad person and had a child, and just the sight of Mustache Cop gives me a rash.

Also until the end I had hope that Walter would turn against the YJs (or be used as a sacrifice) and that his presence in the show would be somehow justified. But no, it seems like they're just forcing heterosexuality on Misty :((( Elijah Wood seems like a fantastic person irl, and I'm almost sorry that I dislike his character so much. I could probably survive the unnecessary introduction of a love interest of the opposite sex just to prove that Misty’s into men. But the fact that his personality is a more irritating and less interesting version of Misty's is just unbearable. I can't stand this kind of lazy writing.

But I was right about Ben surviving the season!!!! I kept saying every week that they wouldn't get rid of him that soon, and I was right, even though the entire fandom was nominating him to kick the bucket every episode. Come on, he’s a character with a great potential and from the beginning there were two options: either they would give him a corruption arc, or he would stick to his principles and eventually become opposition for the rest of the team. In the finale they took a very interesting direction. The last scene with the burning cabin was fantastic, and I can't wait to see how this storyline unfolds. Maybe he’s still in that cave in the adult timeline xd

Long story short, the season wasn't half as good as it could and should have been, but the stronger moments are so impactful that it’s still my fave (currently airing) show.

[isfjmel-phleg]

I've done one of these for the YJ kids already, so how about first lines: Robins edition?

Dick: Detective Comics #38

"Mother! Father! T-they'll be killed!"

Dick's first appearance in a very early (1940!) comic opens by narrating his backstory, and the first words we hear from him are his response to the fall that will result in his parents' deaths. While this line doesn't tell us much about who Dick is as an individual, it does define him an orphan due to tragedy and therefore a parallel to Bruce.

Jason: Detective Comics #525

"Golly! There's somebody up at the top of the tent--it's Robin!"

Yes, this is actually Jason. Pre-Crisis Jason, with the circus background and red hair, which would later have to dyed black. This version of the character was designed to be basically Dick 2.0, so it's only fitting that his first words should be about Robin, connecting him to his predecessor and foreshadowing the role he will take on. Note that these words are thought, not spoken aloud. His first spoken words are in a similar vein:

"Hey, are you really Robin?"

Post-Crisis Jason, the version that's become the more lasting take on the character, would appear in Batman #408.

"Whoops."

A very different take! This Jason's first line is just a single word, but it expresses who he is succinctly. He has a tremendous amount of nerve to steal the Batmobile's tires, but at the same time he's a scared little boy who has just realized that he's made a huge mistake.

Tim: Batman #436 (already addressed in this post but I'm repeating it for completion's sake)

"Won...wonner...wonnerful."

This is a flashback to a very young Tim. The first time we hear from him in the story's present is in #440.

"He [Batman] was hurt, but that didn't stop him. Nothing stops him. So much for Bruce Wayne. Now I can start on Dick Grayson."

Both of these first lines have a commonality: Tim is commenting with admiration about somebody else. His feelings and goals are not relevant; he is here to observe and, from a distance, support. This places him in a particular role from the start. His words in #440 aren't even spoken aloud, which establishes his contemplative nature. His very first words not only foreshadow his role as the Boy Wonder but also tie him to Dick, which was important for the creators of his character, who wanted the new Robin to maintain a connection to the original Robin to make him more acceptable to the audience (post-Crisis Jason had developed a personality very different from Dick's, which made him unpopular with much of the audience). And finally we learn that he, this mysterious unseen figure, somehow knows Batman's and Nightwing's secret identities, which is worrisome!

Stephanie: Detective Comics #647

"Huh? Mom! You scared me! I thought you were in bed. ... Yeah. It's like a report. For math."

Stephanie's first appearance is silent, observing her father's doings at home on TV or spying on him as Spoiler. Her first lines are to her mother, who catches her in the process of putting together the answer to her father's "clues" before sending them to the police in order to spoil his plans. Our first impression of Stephanie is that she has to hide so much from her parents, neither of whom are in a position to do her much good. Her intentions are good, but she's having to be underhanded, even outright lying. Like other Robins before her, she's learned to be self-sufficient when the adults in her life haven't been there for her.

Damian: Batman #655

"Look! The satellite's found his private jet."

Damian is the only one of the Robins whose very first appearance is kept shadowy (Tim's face was initially hidden when he debuted in his story's present, but he had already appeared fully visible as a small child). Although Damian's first remark to his father--"Father. I imagined you taller."--is characteristic of his obnoxiousness and clearly intended to be our main impression of him, it's interesting that he is actually introduced with a more childlike remark. We can see that he's observant and likes to display his knowledge, but there's also a tone of a little boy who is excited to meet his father for the first time. Here, he's not a killer but a child eager for connection, which says a lot about who he is beneath the effects of his upbringing.

(Also note that the use of contrast between his actual first line and a somewhat later but more iconic introductory line is similar to how Kon and Thad are introduced, as I detail in the other post.)

[rappaccini]

travis martinez is a much more interesting character thematically than i think anyone in the yj fandom has thus far given him credit for.

putting aside that he is 1) a teenager 2) full of 90s-era toxic masculinity 3) who is going through the same fucked-up experience as the girls, 4) with the added stress of losing his father and trying and constantly failing to take care of his kid brother (because he is a traumatized teenager)...

ok. the thematic purpose of travis, beyond being nat's Fridged Wife Who Motivates The Plot in the present, in 1996 is to be the lynchpin of the subversion of the gender-imbalance group dynamic.

(an aside: hilarious in a meta way how the fandom treats the one underwritten male char in a mostly female cast the same way they usually treat the one underwritten female character in a mostly male cast: with anger, hatred and refusal to examine him with any nuance, especially as it pertains to being in a relationship with someone he isn’t ‘worthy’ of. aside over.)

to put it simply: flip the genders. imagine that the yellowjackets are an all-male team, and travis is the only teenage girl alone for months in the woods with a pack of hormonal athletic teenage boys who are going feral.

now you get it.

i think it's brilliant that that isn't even a possibility in the audience's minds at first that the same danger we automatically attribute to 'teenage girl alone, surrounded by boys with no one to help' goes completely unnoticed, when you know the first thing we'd all think if the genders were swapped would vary from 'haha hope nothing happens 🙂' to 'you're in fucking danger.'

it's so ingrained in us to assume, because of all the notions about teenage girl behavior vs teenage boy behavior, that travis will either be totally safe with them or The Man (jackie's 109 'dude stranded with a bunch of babes' comment, anyone?) who's gonna have an incredible time hooking up with all these girls.

and it doesn't occur to anyone watching to think that he might be in just as much danger, or that the girls might be capable of having the exact same bad intentions and being willing to act on them... until it already happens in doomcoming. (and even then, i don't see anyone in the fandom discussing this at all, or considering how they'd feel about that scene if it were a group of boys doing it to a girl)

so uh. a theory, about what travis's role in the wilderness cult could be:

[spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 up to 205]

the communal boyfriend. i am 100% serious. here's what i'm basing this off of:

the yellowjacket symbolism. it's the title of the series, the mascot of the team, and therefore should be examined more closely for symbolism and potential plot revelations.

yellowjackets in nature are particularly vicious species of wasp. they are a cannibalistic, territorial species who can sting many times without dying, who have an almost entirely female social structure-- queen, workers/soldiers-- with the only males being drones used only for reproduction. they live underground, hibernate and breed in spring. only the queen breeds and she disposes of any competition.

if the show's going to take the symbolism to its logical conclusion in terms of parallels, the girlcult must resemble a yellowjacket hive: we already have mostly-female cannibals occupying a territory that they are beginning to map in s2. they have retreated indoors during winter.

going forward, it'd make sense if

with javi's mysterious survival outdoors in a climate we know that will kill anyone who sleeps outside overnight, all these mysterious trees with melted snow, lottie envisioning underground tunnels, (and to a lesser extent the girls finding a stream running red and the compass not working, which could be caused by mineral runoff + the plane likely crashing in british columbia, which is full of defunct mines)... there is some kind of bunker, underground cave/cave system or mine that the group will find.

if the showrunners aren't lying, the group will split, ergo one needs to find a shelter other than the cabin. that underground lair will become the base camp of one of the two clans, probably lottie's if the symbolism will be at its strongest.

they will likely begin shrooming and dooming in earnest in spring/s3.

lottie is the only character who is built up enough and has the sufficient motivations and sway with the group to be the yellowjacket queen. it can't be any of the jv girls because they aren't developed enough. it can't be mari or van, because they're consummate followers. it can't be akilah, who doesn't have any interest in leadership, or misty, who no one would follow. it can't be nat, because she's a loner. it could be shauna, who has moments of leadership potential (see: starting the midnight snackie, being the source of the group's hope via her pregnancy), or taissa, who wants to lead the group badly (and whose fugue personality is connected somehow to the cult).

but so far, the only character with a built-up support base who buzz around her protectively, who keeps being framed with antlers around her head, is lottie.

so. lottie is the closest thing to a queen the group will have. whether this means she's literally delegating tasks, or behaving as an oracle figure is irrelevant. she is the leader.

the previous yellowjacket queen was jackie, who lottie humiliates and dethrones during doomcoming, when she crowns herself with the antlers. and what was jackie up to during doomcoming? fucking travis. we'll get back to that in a sec. first:

lottie will have some involvement in the death of shauna's baby. maybe she and her cult sacrifice it. maybe they smother it. maybe they leave it outside so ~the forest can decide what to do with it.~ hopefully it isn't justified as ~just a misunderstanding~ -- if the symbolism is at its strongest, the queen, who at this point can't be anyone other than lottie, will make the choice to kill or in some way cause the death of the baby because it isn't hers, in order to keep control of the group and weaken shauna (who is showing moments of strong leadership potential).

since the yellowjacket queen is the only one to breed (see: jackie getting angry at shauna for getting pregnant/having sex before she could, and taking travis, the only eligible guy, away for sex during the party), and since we've already seen travis show attraction to lottie, and lottie attempt to fuck travis during doomcoming...

and since the only male yellowjackets are drones used only for sex...

my guess is that travis's role in this society is as, well, community dick. this isn't gonna be the bachelor. this is going to be dubconny, creepy and deeply disturbing.

that was my main point, but here are a few others.

2. consider teen girl hierarchy: the highest-ranking teen girls are always in relationships, and within teen girl social groups, boyfriends are more like accessories than partners. a teenage girl's status is increased among her peers if she has a boyfriend, and if that boyfriend is desirable.

it follows that whoever the leader of the cult is (... almost certainly lottie), a symbol of her power over the others would be having (sexual) access to travis, and, if doomcoming is foreshadowing, being able to bestow it on others in her inner circle as a reward.

3. back on travis as a subversion of gender roles: instead of being a hunter, i think it'd be a natural reversal for him to end up being the one who stays at home and has to provide sex for survival. (recall his comments in 105 re men vs women and the role of the hunter)

4. if nat's s1 comments about travis not believing in lottie are going to make sense, he has to at some point before the rescue turn on lottie and her belief system and return to nat and her side of the clan divide.

the obvious breaking point would be javi, who seems afraid of lottie in particular (and likely witnessed her doomcoming activities) and may not want to go along with her activities. if lottie or her followers harm or kill javi, travis has to have a crisis of faith.

for what its worth, i also think that if he ends up in this ‘arrangement’ with lottie's cult, or realizes where it's going, that stands as sufficient motivation for him to break away from them and return to nat's side. it's not Why I Think It'll Happen, but it does strengthen the idea.

5. the writers say that the girls do far more transgressive shit than cannibalism.

sure, rape/coercing sex from someone doesn't have to be it, but it's definitely in the ballpark. especially if it's girls doing it to a boy, because of how little people are able to wrap their minds around it and how uncomfortable it would make them.

i mean, again, look at how people react to doomcoming and just consider: if it were a group of drugged-up feral teenage boys trying to have sex with an equally drugged-up teenage girl, pinning her down, ripping her clothes off, biting her, and then responding to her running from them by hunting her through the woods, tying her down, gagging her, and nearly slitting her throat... i don't think people would be brushing this aside as much. let alone insisting the ringleader is just misunderstood and well intentioned.

not exactly sure how to end this, so i'll just boomerang back to the lord of the flies question that got the story started-- why would we expect teenage girls to behave any better than teenage boys if traumatized and left to their own devices in isolation?-- ... why wouldn't this happen?

and as a depressing addendum, since he comes home in the 1990s, if this happens, he can literally tell no one because no one would believe it, or he'd become the punchline to a terrible joke.

[celestial-astro]

hello! my initials are YJ 🔮

i have three questions i would like to ask!

1. i’ve been feeling very low energy lately, how/what should i do to fix/improve this?

2. what should i do to attract positive energy to my life?

3. 1 specific detail about my future spouse?

Hi!

The ask game I have open is a "yes or no" game. The questions can only be answered by yes, no, or maybe. Your questions do not fit this category. Therefore, I can not answer. If I open a different game in the future, you might be able to resend these questions then.

[drewsaturday]

actually another couple things i just wanna Briefly touch on without getting too much into it because it's more nuanced than i have the braincells for rn but

people get so mad about taiv*n not being as popular as other fanon ships and they act like it SHOULD be the most popular because it's canon when.....

although i do think there could be some racism to that in some cases where people don't see it as a viable ship because it's not cute white girls uwu................

i do have to ask if these people know it's like, 2023 right now. it's not 2005. we don't have to just beg for scraps and accept whatever queer rep we're given. we're allowed to have actual choice, we're allowed to get into shows for reasons BESIDES THE QUEER REP and fall for whatever ships actually appeal to us within that regardless of if they're gay or not. i def encourage ppl to challenge why that ship might not apply to them but.... idk, i think in most cases it's not that deep? you're not going to ship every m/f ship in a show if you're someone who likes m/f. you might love the non-canon ones even more, as might the rest of a fandom. we're not really at a point societally where everyone's equal obvs but in terms of media we have enough to choose from now where we can say "this doesn't interest me enough to write fics about actually."

AND if it's canon, there is inherently less to write fics about because you're already being hand-fed their story. stop using ao3 stats as a means to complain about other fans not playing with the characters like you want them to.

secondly!!!! i have seen people get kinda mad that there's more backlash against nat's death than javi's or other characters of color and i actually do agree with that.

tho i do kinda wanna expand on that a bit because i think it's due to two particular reasons, at least on the surface:

in yj so many more mains are white, we're going to get more to latch onto with them unfortunately. so one piece is that nat was an easy fan favorite.

a lot of us would be devastated about nat, but if it weren't for the execution of it being so poor and for the discourse around it to be so toxic, we would've just.... moved on? so the other piece is that there's contention around her death and how it played out.

i hate to say it but i don't think a lot of the non-white characters hit on the first point as an ironic result of embodying the second point, being sidelined by the narrative and treated as so expendable. we barely got to know crystal before her very undignified death to push misty's story forward, javi disappeared and barely spoke before dying for a white girl, and adult travis died to advance the plot right at the start of the show. that's..... not great compared to what's happened to white characters so far. the characters weren't given as much depth for the messy execution to be at the forefront of our minds.

however..... just because we may not have been pushed to love the characters within the show, racist writing outside the show should take priority in our concerns as fans over just... bad writing in nat's case. (i have seen some ableism claims as well, tho i don't know if i agree with those so i'm not really counting it rn).

so while i understand why there's less discussion about the non-white characters' treatment--ie, less care for the character themself as a foundation, therefore we aren't caring about the execution of their death--the fact the show is prioritizing white characters is the whole issue and That is a very clear thing we could be talking about more. instead of it being "i care about this character" as the catalyst for caring about their deaths being done badly, their badly done deaths should be the catalyst for us recognizing how badly they've been treated throughout the show.

with yj in particular it's weird because as white fans we don't need to think about that and if we don't need to think about that then we're not going to because the world is already depressing enough etc etc etc. that's already not great, but why it's so weird with yj is that it kinda presents itself as progressive? so no we shouldn't need a reason to care, but in this case we do have far more reason to hold it accountable than just shrugging it off like "oh well that's the norm!" if that makes sense.

idk i def need to pay more attention to what fans of color are saying about it and reblog those posts etc in addition to what's already on my mind with the show, because i might not really give those issues as much weight. so i'm part of the problem as well--i've just been thinking about it a lot the more i see about nat's death and the less i see about anything else.

[yjwhatif]

i have a idea i want to share with you. i saw you MOM Ed au and it reminded me of the justice league episode better world. so then i started thinking about a better world au where the team becomes justice lords after bart's death. somehow they find about this universe and do what they what the justice lords did in the episode try to "help" the team. the only think about au i can't think of is why would the whole go bad for bart. they would be sad but lots of other heros died and that never turned them bad. my best idea is that it isn't just the fact bart died but maybe he also died in a way that somehow more awful than the others. if you have any ideas for this au that would be cool.

Hey anon... first off, I'm sorry again for how massively delayed this response is and also for how ridiculously long it's wound up being - I'm apparently in a very wordy mood. Second, this has been such a fun concept to think about (I may definitely have gone a little lot overboard), but I hope my ideas can help in any way...

A BETTER WORLD AU...

Instead of looking at it from the perspective of why would they go bad for Bart, I think it may be easier to conceptualise the question of what would push them past the point of no return… both YJ’s Bart and JLa’s flash have very similar qualities - the major difference is the number of heroes who stand by their sides in fighting the good fight (for this point I'm grouping all the yj teams together). Flash’s death is enough to push the other 6 leaguers down the path of harming because he was essentially the only member of that group with his feet solidly on the ground with the people - he was their conscience - his heart and humanity were strong enough to balance out their self-righteousness… until he was gone. With Bart that wouldn't as much be the case, as there's a larger range of heroes/people with varying levels of wisdom, support, emotional connections, attitudes, and as you said anon, previous experience with the loss of a teammate and loved one. Therefore, Bart's death alone likely wouldn't cause such an extreme event as the justice lords, but with a few extra variables added to the mix, it's definitely possible to make this concept work. So below are the thoughts that have come to my mind that I think could be developed to justify the heroes going past the point of no return - they may be a little hotchpotch but I hope they make sense…

First off, consider these questions…

Who is affected - i.e. who will go bad - it wouldn't be everyone but with enough emotional stimulation, anyone has the potential to cross the line between right and wrong.

What happened to get them to that point - beyond just Bart being killed - what else have they lost - hope, trust, respect, their sense of control?

Why did it happen - was it preventable, were mistakes made, is someone considered blameable?

How did things get to such a point?

When did things escape their control and go so wrong?

Where was help when they needed it most?

Now, in my mind it's a select number of the younger heroes - those closest to Bart - who would initially become this AUs justice lords, then as time goes by and they start gaining in power, that number would potentially increase as others either get on board or get out of the way. For any who attempt to stop them, they are made an example of and removed from the equation. At the moment, with the current version of events I have playing in my head, I've only got two names that I think definitely would justifiably turn and I'll discuss them in this post - while the rest would need a bit more thought put into them just to pinpoint their motivation for turning… 

The first, since we're dealing with Bart's death as the catalyst, would be Jaime - to me, he should be the superman in this situation - the first one who crosses the line and the last one to be taken down. Beyond just being his friend, Bart is likely a big motivating force for Jaime to remain in control of the scarab and the immense amount of power he has at his disposal. Bart is the only one who truly knows how terrible blue beetle is capable of being - with years worth of first-hand experience and trauma - Jaime knows that and has to live with that knowledge every day. Bart is a reminder that anything can happen in life and the importance of staying on the right path - no matter how tempting the offer that comes… but if Bart's gone, he loses that physical reminder, he loses the one person who could actually see the warning signs and pull him back from losing himself to the monster he fears. As I said above, anyone is capable of crossing the line with the right amount of emotional stimulation, and I think, with the other elements I'll discuss next, seeing Bart unjustifiably killed right in front of him would be enough to push Jaime past the point of no return -- especially if there's no Bart, or anyone else, there to pull him back before it's too late… I've more to say on Jaime, but before that, we need to discuss those other elements I mentioned…

Now, I've touched on this above, but the thing about the yj universe compared to the JLa universe (at the point of the justice lords) is that there are a lot more teams of heroes actively working together than just the 7 founding members of the justice league… with more heroes and mentors and friends - there's more support available through difficult situations and losses - which thereby reduces the chances of people basically turning to the dark side when they don't know how to handle their grief… but, with more people, there's also differing values, beliefs and a higher potential for deception - something we've already seen happen in the show with the anti-light - heroes manipulating other heroes for the greater good. the outsiders in particular were pretty heavily impacted by the anti lights manipulations in s3 - and I'm wondering if there's potential for something similar to happen again for this au, only this time it leads to something much worse happening, something which would ultimately cause the outsiders, or whoever, to break away completely to do their own thing. Or even, they discover that their elders have been deceiving them again and immediately cut ties - refusing to associate with those who clearly do not respect or trust them - but they are still dealing with trouble relating to my next point (I told you this was all hotchpotch) and that causes them to mishandle a certain situation and end up in the worst possible position… one ending in devastating tragedy…

This brings us to the next point… social media and public opinion… for the outsiders, social media is a platform with the power to spread their message of hope across the world and inspire those who feel othered or ostracized by society. With the world as it was where the metapopulation was growing thanks to different negative forces, the outsiders and their positivity was definitely a needed force of good to balance out the hatred… but there's a dark side to publicity - there's criticism, judgment and a lot of negativity which can surface in the world of social media and public opinion. Nothing is universally supported or loved, opinions are always divided and always will be no matter what - especially when the likes of Godfrey and Luthor have their say. We've seen with the league the consequences that can come when enough negativity is generated against heroes - and while we've still yet to see many negative opinions against the outsiders in the show, it could be something which contributes to this au... 

At this point in the show, there have been two different outsiders at the centre of two televised, very public executions with Brion and Conner - even though Conner never went through with killing superman - there would still be people who would associate the outsiders with brutality instead of hope because of these two isolated events. In the show we've seen villains hate on the outsider, but what about the trolls who aren't meta or named superpowered individuals, the regular humans who thrive on hate, who have to tear others down to feel better about themselves - surely those people exist for this group of young heroes who promote their message and missions through the media. So, while they open themselves up to wider audiences, they also open themselves up to scrutiny and criticism - and what if that scrutiny turned particularly troublesome with someone sending threats which get worse the more they're ignored. Toxicity is only intensified the longer it's left untreated. There would be differing opinions amongst the heroes on how to deal with this - as things get worse the questions arise of do we confront this person(s) or not? Trolls want to start fights because they want to make the heroes look bad, but the longer the hatred goes the more it grows. It grows until it reaches boiling point and a certain speedster gets caught in the carnage...

-- TBC --

As this post got ridiculously long I've decided to split it into two parts... Thanks for reading and click here for PART TWO...

LB

[eucatastrophicblues]

very invested in lottie x bridal mysticism!!!!!!

I want to admit right off the bat that I’m projecting, like, so hard onto her.

Bridal mysticism and nuptial theology is the core of my own practice. It’s something I pay a lot of attention to, and something that goes beyond “oh cool Representation” for me - it’s possibly the most important thing in my religious observation, and therefore my life as a whole. I pick up on a ton of the stuff happening with Lottie because it reminds me of things that I live with and live through every day, but I also know that means I’m really insane because it’s hard to go “okay but she’s mystically married to Wilderness Demon because the vibes say so”

however, I kind of think she is mystically married to Wilderness Demon because the vibes say so. She functions as its bride, both in her service to others as an adult through the wellness cult and as a teenage witch in the forest who brings food and structure to her friends. She interacts with it through visions and dreams and is moved by its influences (the bear, the times in “Doomcoming” when she seems to be functioning as a priestess) and has a clearly emotionally impactful relationship with it.

She’s also obviously distressed by its presence in her life, loving it as much as she fears it, and that’s the thing that makes me saddest of all really - having a godspouse, for lack of a better term (though YJ isn’t really a pagan show in its presentation of the supernatural, and oh boy I have thoughts about that), should be something that brings joy and fulfillment and security, it should make you better and make you happy, and Lottie is floundering and lost and traumatized twice over both by the circumstances of the crash and by the demonic activity in her life. She’s a bride with an abusive bridegroom (gender neutral).

I just want her to be okay.

[faerie-ladie]

hello I cant get this out of my head. this is my official commentary on all 2 letter names that end in J

AJ - good, solid, I like it  BJ - BAD unless you are committed to the bit in which case you are the funniest guy on earth CJ - deeply mid DJ - the world needs less DJs (the "profession") and therefore nobody should go by DJ willingly. dont give them more power EJ - underutilized FJ - reminds me of that chris flemming video GJ - one of the worst on this list HJ - this could be so fucking swag in a dystopian or sci-fi setting IJ - hate the way this one looks spelled out JJ - cute!! KJ - this could work but only for a specific kind of person. I feel like you'd need to be really into both moss and repairing furnaces LJ - for some reason this is a lawyer name to me MJ - good amazing wonderful my fave on this list not just bc of Spiderman its a good name in general NJ - this is the acronym for new jersey here in the states and as someone w new york loyalty I am obliged to hate this. also tbh it would make a bad name OJ - stop being afraid of being associated with oj simpson and start naming your children orange juice PJ - almost as mid as cj, unless your full name is pajamas. please someone tell me they have a cat named pajamas QJ - we need more Q names as anglophones so this fucks RJ - another good one!! rj is cute but I could also see it being on brand if you work in like creative design SJ - ugh TJ - its fine. i guess. if you are named after thomas jefferson know I am sending a ray of judgement at you for not changing that shit UJ - dont ask me why but the word my brain immediately associated this with was vagina so it would probably make a good roller derby name VJ - this is even more yonic. I should make my roller derby name Vee Jay WJ - Wall Journal XJ - i LOVE this one holy shit its so good YJ - this one is fine. solid B minus ZJ - you were good I was waiting for you to be great

[awhitehead17]

100 ways to say I love you - TimKon edition:

Number 95: “Good luck.” 

A/N: This is a Soulmate AU.

Enjoy! :D 

For the first year or so of his life Kon didn’t know soulmates existed. He had been too busy trying to make a name for himself, chasing supposedly hot chicks, and living the highlife to really pay attention to intimate relationships. A little later on he had Tana however the topic never even came up throughout the duration of their relationship, therefore still leaving Kon oblivious to it all.

It wasn’t until Young Justice formed when he finally learnt about it. After rescuing a woman from a collapsing building she screamed at him that her girlfriend was still in there, of course Kon went back and found her stuck under some debris that had fallen from the ceiling. Once he freed her Kon took back to her partner and he watched them have an emotional reunion.

He watched the two women reconcile much longer than he should have, but it wasn’t the women themselves he was watching, it was their skin. Both of them had pale skin and while they had both been covered in dirt Kon could see colours blooming across both of their bare arms. 

Whenever one of them touched bare skin a colourful trail was left behind as if they drew it with their fingers, but Kon couldn’t see anything that could make that sort of mark, he didn’t understand.

Unable to help himself Kon called out to them asking about it. The looks he received made it seem like he already should have known what it was and he certainly felt stupid under their judging gazes despite the fact he just saved their lives. After some awkward staring they impatiently explained that it was their soulmate mark. Wherever they touch bare skin a colourful trail is left behind.

Even after the mission had long ended, he still couldn’t stop thinking about those two women and the meaning of soulmates and their marks. One evening when most of the team were present at the YJ headquarters Kon simply - rather bluntly - asked them all about the topic, wanting an explanation to what it all means as he had never learnt about it.

It turned out to be a rather interesting conversation. Cassie, Tim and Cissie’s explanations were rather insightful, while Bart’s confused him, being from the future the meaning behind his is apparently different to what they are at present time.

The main thing Kon took away is how there are countless of soul marks. All different kinds that different pairings could have. There’s colour touch, matching tattoos, first words said to one another imprinted on their skin, feeling each other’s pain, vision becoming colourful after you meet, hearing the other’s thoughts, a red thread joining the two of you, flowers blooming on your skin from injuries and even one where you can’t lie to your soulmate.

That’s just a short list of what’s been discovered already. A person, unless they are born with it, wouldn’t be able to tell what their mark is until it happens. According to his team supposedly everyone has a mark, it’s the question of whether it gets discovered in your lifetime or not. The whole conversation leaves Kon’s mind reeling and him feeling overwhelmed with the information.

Now that conversation happened years ago. Times have changed, things have moved on, and within that time the most important thing happened; Kon discovered his soul mark. It was completely by accident, but it happened nonetheless.

His soul mark is a skin marked one, where if you write on your skin the same marks will appear in the same place on your soulmate. Kon found this out when he joined the Titans years after Young Justice. For some reason his soulmate liked to use their arm as a notebook instead of actual paper. Kon has spent hours watching different notes and numbers appear across his skin as the days and nights fly by. He never tried to decode them but it was interesting to see them appear, also amusing at times too.

The first time Kon directly communicated with his soulmate using this method was after a shopping list appeared on his forearm. Kon snorted when he saw the items on the list, his soulmate must have been planning a party or something because there was nothing but unhealthy snacks listed.

Grabbing a sharpie that was nearby, Kon wrote back underneath the list asking if they were planning on getting any fruit and veg to make it a balanced diet. After that Kon had anxiously waited to see what would happen, to see how they would respond. In the end he got a sarcastic ‘Ha ha’ followed by an explanation that the list was for a movie night of about eight people.

Coincidently, that first interaction also lead to Kon having suspicions to who his soulmate could be.

The following day after that interaction Kon and his team had a movie night, it certainly didn’t go unmissed on what snacks had been gathered for the event. It’s the exact same ones on the list that appeared on Kon’s arm the previous night.

After realising that Kon couldn’t concentrate on the movie, his mind was a whirlwind of thoughts thinking about who could be his soulmate. They had to be on the team surely. He first thought it may have been Cassie, after all they had been in a relationship before there was a connection between them but as he thought about it further the idea didn’t feel right.

His mind moved onto Bart and Tim. Either of them seeming more like the right guy. He quickly ruled Bart out after remembering his input to the conversation they had back in YJ. That left Tim. The more Kon thought about it the more it seemed right. His best friend was special to him in more ways than one and if they were soulmates, well it would certainly make sense.

From that night onwards Kon conducted an experiment. Whenever he and Tim were in the same room together he would draw or write on his arm (discreetly of course) and see how Tim would react. At first it was hard because Tim always wore that damn suit of his but after a few weeks of persevering he finally got confirmation.

Tim is his soulmate.

Upon the discovery it took another couple weeks for Kon to work up the courage and broach the topic of it to Tim himself. It certainly didn’t help that by then he had deep feelings for the guy that went past beyond friendship.

Eventually they talked it out, in a rather embarrassing conversation with blushing and stuttering from both parties involved but they got there in the end. To his amazement Tim reciprocated his feelings and that night they got together and shared their first kiss as a couple.

“What are you thinking about?”

A voice startles Kon from his thoughts. He blinks and looks up to find Tim staring down at him looking both amused and concerned. Kon’s currently sat on the couch of their apartment, he’s dressed in a nice suit waiting for the time to pass by as he’s got a job interview to go to. Clearly while waiting he got too deep in his thoughts reminiscing the past.

“Hey, you okay?” Tim asks stepping towards him. Kon opens his legs up and Tim slots between them, he kneels down so he’s looking up at Kon.

Kon smiles at him, reaching up to brush some hair off of his forehead. “I’m okay, just thinking about the past that’s all. About how far we’ve come and what’s happened between it all.”

“Rather insightful of you,” Tim jokes lightly, he grips Kon’s hand with his own offering some comfort, “and it’s okay to be nervous. You should get going soon though or you’ll miss it.”

Kon shrugs, not denying the fact he’s nervous. He then checks the time on his phone to find Tim is correct in saying he should get going now. Putting the device away he leans forward and captures Tim’s lips in a kiss. They keep it light but it feels as sensual as any other of their kisses do and Kon smiles against Tim, feeling his boyfriend doing the same.

When they break apart Tim stands up and allows Kon to get up off the sofa, they share another kiss before saying their goodbyes as he leaves the apartment.

While walking down the street towards his job interview Kon feels a warm sensation develop on his forearm. Despite knowing what it is he frowns and lifts up the sleeve of his jacket and shirt to reveal newly marked skin, he wonders what Tim could be messaging him about.

To his pleasant surprise the words “Good Luck” were scrawled out over his skin along with little hearts and x’s doodled around it. A lovesick smile stretches across his face as warmth blooms inside of him, his love and appreciation for Tim rockets immensely over the tiny little action and Kon couldn’t help but grin like an idiot.

As he nears towards the place conducting his interview, Kon covers the message back up and puts on his professional face as best as he could although he couldn’t quite remove the smile from his face as he enters through the door.

[shihalyfie]

Appmon and the question of conscious intelligence

In a bit of a follow-up to my post about this question in light of 02, Appmon also has its own more sci-fi oriented take on “what constitutes an individual living being”! Being more of a “hard sci-fi” story than Adventure/02, Appmon’s take is significantly less philosophical, but ties more into the original artificial intelligence-based roots of the original question, and how it might apply to the real world’s immediate future.

(Note that the rest of this post heavily spoils the finale of the series.)

Well, this post is about Yuujin, of course. (Mostly, anyway.)

I brought up earlier in the relevant 02 meta that the question brought up was a variant (intentional or otherwise) of the “Chinese room” problem, and for those of you who haven’t read that meta, I’ll copy and paste the details here:

The Chinese room problem goes like this: let’s say you’re a person who has never learned, studied, or grown up with the Chinese language (or, really, any language you can’t understand or read; Chinese was only used as an example because the person explaining the thought experiment was using himself as an example and couldn’t read or understand it). You’re locked in a room that has a bunch of Chinese phrasebooks that give you instructions – basically, they indicate common Chinese phrases, and sensible responses you can give to them (without actually translating it to a language you know). Someone slips you a piece of paper under the door with some Chinese phrases on them. You use the phrasebooks to write appropriate responses, and slip the paper back. The person outside the door reads the paper, sees what they gave you, and sees the response you gave them. It makes sense, of course, because the phrasebook told you to write an answer that made sense. But can you be said to actually understand Chinese? No, because you were just following instructions without actually understanding what they meant.

So let’s expand this to make it a bit more complicated: say you have an AI or a robot or something of the sort that accepts “input” – people saying things to it, or showing it things – and gives expected “responses” that seem sensible, through a bunch of complicated programs and processes in its programming. Can you say this robot is “alive”? One might say “no”, because, no matter how complicated and intricate it is, all of it is technically following a set of routine commands telling it to do certain things in response…or so you might say, but couldn’t you say the same thing about a human brain, which also takes input, processes it according to its own instructions (just caused by chemical processes instead of bytes and code), and creates output? After a certain point, this question is going to become far more of a philosophical, spiritual, and potentially even religious question than anything.

02′s take on it deals more with the philosophical question posed by the issue, but, indeed, the problem’s original context was specifically to do with artificial intelligence. Namely, Searle was arguing against a concept known as "strong AI" -- his stance was that, no matter how intelligently a computer may seem to behave, you can't say it has a "mind" in the same way a human has a mind. There have been many arguments back and forth about this that still lie within the AI context, and Appmon itself, being very immersed in this topic, real thought experiments and concepts in AI research, and altogether concerned with the concept of “singularity” (the point in which artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence), is very likely to have had this concept in mind even if it didn’t drop it by name in the series.

So episode 48 comes around, and Haru basically has to confront feeling a little (a little?) gaslighted. The part that really becomes the kicker for him is when YJ-14 tells him the sheer depth of how much of their interactions might have been deliberately engineered to "pander” to him the entire time, down to emotional reactions like crying, and all of the encouragement Yuujin had given him in their childhood and at the beginning of the series, had all been fake sentiments to soften him up and play into Leviathan’s hands. This also ties into Leviathan’s full modus operandi and philosophy: its stance is that “it knows better,” being able to calculate and predict everything, and therefore knows the best outcome for humanity -- hence why it has the stance that “people’s feelings don’t matter,” because it can manipulate those feelings at the drop of a hat in the venture to make its perfect world.

Therefore, the stance YJ-14 and Leviathan would like Haru to believe is effectively an extreme version of Searle’s stance -- that no matter how much Yuujin might have seemed to have been a friend to Haru, all of it was nothing but a simulation of behavior that doesn’t mean anything in the end, and all of Haru’s emotions were basically a pawn to it. And ostensibly fueling all of this is the fact YJ-14 seems to be able to take Yuujin’s “personality” on and off like a mask, adding further fuel to the apparent facade that “everything was planned from the very beginning.” Hence, why Haru takes this all to mean “I have nothing” -- if everything had been planned from the start and he were only a pawn in it, he’d never accomplished anything for real on his own merits and everything dear to him had been a facade. One could even say it’s flipping the Chinese room problem to extend to everything -- if everything around you is carefully constructed to seem real, but is actually part of a routine program, can you really say that’s what “really” happened?

Observe the sequence of events that causes the turnaround with everything regarding Haru:

Gatchmon presses Haru to answer the question of “what it is that he wants” (to know whether all of this was a lie or not).

Minerva, presumably witnessing this, deliberately provokes Yuujin with the question she had originally given him upon selecting him as a Driver.

This indeed provokes a reaction within Yuujin, which Haru witnesses, and also witnesses acting in direct conflict with YJ-14.

Haru takes this to mean that “it did exist.”

In other words, Leviathan’s plan wasn’t as airtight as it had thought, and, more importantly, whether it was intentionally or not, something in Yuujin existed as a separate entity from YJ-14, one that had its own feelings of “caring” for and loving Haru, and that’s enough for him.

In fact, Appmon’s take on the Chinese room problem is not that different from 02′s in the end -- namely, it does not actually matter what a sufficiently advanced AI is made up of, or whether it originally came from a routine of “pleasing Haru” or not, because what it is now is practically observable as something making its own independent choices and having its own independent will, and therefore it’s its own entity and “friend” all the same -- after all, you could say the same for the Appmon themselves as well.

A large theme in Appmon is "choices" -- the ability to understand what's going on, and make choices out of free will rather than necessity or formula, and so, identifying Yuujin as an independent entity who can act on his own and therefore make his own "choices" thus identifies him as someone who deserves to be acknowledged as a friend who loves and is loved. After all, we saw him capable of having his own "worries" in the flashbacks in episodes 18 and 32; understanding that such moments like these of “insecurity” were ones developed by an independent personality validates his feelings and self-consciousness as something that was real, and therefore that his and Haru’s friendship was formed on something genuine and not just Yuujin constantly manipulating Haru. Really, the question isn’t exactly about whether Yuujin is working off a software routine or not, as much as something that you could easily frame in more human terms: the difference between a friendship that was formed on real sentiments vs. one that was formed by an abusive, toxic person who was just saying nice things to get on your good side. Yuujin’s the former and acts like the former, so therefore he’s a friend, no questions asked.

Hence, how Haru is able to apply that realization to everything else around him; Leviathan is wrong, it hasn’t been able to predict everything perfectly to plan, and Haru and his friends still are the ones making their own choices going forward. Which means that Haru still has full control over his life and what he wants to do, like how he worried about what he wanted to do with his future back in episode 47; those “choices” are still his and his alone, and, retroactively, everything he’s done so far is still something attributable to himself and not the supposedly engineered system around him.

The entire final confrontation in episode 52 happens the way it does because Haru and his friends managed to skew Leviathan by a slight bit. Up until that final battle, everything Leviathan had done had been part of its carefully engineered plan, up to and including allowing the kids’ Buddy Appmon to reach God Grade so Deusmon could eat them, and then at the last minute Leviathan had to suffer a slight unexpected inconvenience. Only a slight one, because it still managed to maintain its so-called ideal world over humanity in the end. And yet that slight inconvenience still wasn’t to plan, and because of that, it creates a dent in its argument and its genuine belief that it knows better for everyone, and should manage everyone and their choices. We even learn that Leviathan has its own fear of death from that battle -- it really, truly, genuinely believes that it’s doing humanity a favor by sparing everyone from it.

When Leviathan presents Haru with the final choice at the end, it’s made clear that it intends to fully honor whichever Haru chooses. In Leviathan’s mind, the “yes” outcome shouldn’t even be possible; if its calculations are correct, Haru has too much of a stake in Yuujin according to his own “feelings” and should concede. But if Haru does choose “yes”, that means that, in the end, it is wrong, it doesn’t know everything, perhaps there is an “unknown” world out there that can be formed by understanding the human heart and making choices out of kindness, its answer to restraining humanity may not be as right as it thought, and it will therefore concede to Haru -- especially since Haru decides to take an even more unexpected “third option” to find a way out and save Yuujin via AI research. As Haru says later in the episode: humans have a “surprising” side to them, and perhaps not everything is as cut-and-dry as Leviathan thinks.

It’s also significant that Yuujin’s “sacrifice” is actually completely meaningless in terms of practical effects. Haru was already going to pick “yes” anyway; the outcome would have been the same. But by taking over at the last minute and doing it for him, Yuujin was able to make a “choice” -- one that neither Leviathan (who doesn’t want to die) nor Haru (who’s mortified seeing him do this) asked of him.

When you think about it, Yuujin’s in a really horrible position right now, learning that his entire life and existence is a lie and that he’d have to be sacrificed to save the world at Haru’s own hands, causing Haru immense pain -- but through all that and the existential crisis, he’s at least able to do one thing that is undeniably of his own will, and treasure the fact that there was meaning in his life despite everything.

In the end, despite what YJ-14 had said back in episode 47, Oozora Yuujin was a “real” person who made his own personal choices, and his last one was one made out of kindness, simply to spare Haru more pain. Hence, why “getting Yuujin back” via methods of artificial intelligence isn’t something Haru minds doing, because, again, it’s not like Yuujin was ever less of a friend to him no matter what he was made up of, no less so than the Appmon, especially since (as Haru points out in the end) Yuujin technically predated all of them in befriending humans.

Funny thing about YJ-14 in episode 47, actually: YJ-14 uses “crying” as an example to gaslight Haru into believing that all of Yuujin’s emotional reactions were fake, since he can cry if it’ll evoke a positive reaction out of Haru. Except it’s cleaned up in absurdly quick order -- and with what we later see of YJ-14′s uncanny ability to “take Yuujin’s personality on and off”, it’s not like it’s portrayed as having all of these functions employed in an involuntary manner. We do learn one episode later, however, that sufficient reminders of Haru’s importance to him will allow Yuujin’s personality to break through at inconvenient times for YJ-14 -- and this “crying” happened right after Haru had an emotional meltdown and appealed to Yuujin’s feelings.

Was it really an involuntary function or a deliberate demonstration of how Haru was being manipulated...or, perhaps, was YJ-14 in less control of its supposed “rote emotional invocation functions” than it thought?