#Finding the Creativity in Madness

[leonstamatis]

also like. in general. there’s a lot of blaseball fic published in the time since s24 with <10 kudos. i bring that number up because i assume that means not many folks have seen them. it’s been pretty quiet on blao3 for a hot minute! so…

if you have any blb writers you have been fond of in your time as a fan, whether that was coronation or expansion or way back in discipline, check their ao3 profiles. chances are they’ve kept writing and there’s a lot more for you to read. the writers have never made a habit of stopping when the game does. branch out and explore the stories they’ve told, now that the sim won’t be giving us any more. and be sure to leave kudos and comment when you do!

[worldsworstfemale]

No one who genuinely understands and is good at math finds it boring. But you‘re from the us so I can see why you think you’re smart. It’s good that you’re that confident though ❤️ love that

maybe you’re just a soulless bore and lame nerd

[kenobihater]

you ever write up a combination of words you're really proud of at the time bc you think it's vivid but it's actually so atrocious that you remember it eight years later bc it's burned itself into your long-term memory? just me?

[redysetdare]

I don't know who needs to hear this but... You don't need to finish that WIP. not everything you create has to be a Work In Progress. you can just sketch something or write out a draft and then never go any farther than that. you don't have to finish everything you create. not everything is meant to be finished.

also, starting a new WIP when you have another isn't bad. it doesn't stop you from going back to the old one. sometimes you get excited for an idea, sometimes you just need to get that idea down. Do it. start another WIP. nothing is stopping you from going back to the old one later.

the only one putting these barriers up is yourself. Stop holding yourself back. You'll find yourself a lot happier if you stop forcing yourself to follow these invisible rules on what you can and should be focusing on finishing.

[threewaysdivided]

Hey ! i'm a longtime follower of your blog and I've read a lot of your YJ analysis and why the latter seasons totally flopped. I haven't seen you comment on Young Justice Phantoms, although I guess your opinion remains the same. However I'd love to read it one day.

PS : I do think Greg Weisman is a decent writer, but not that good at characterization and desperatly needs editors and not enablers *sigh*

Hey nonnie!

Glad you’ve found my YJ writing critiques interesting. 

The reason why I haven’t commented on Young Justice: Phantoms (or the final Targets comic) is that I haven’t watched it, haven’t read a synopsis and have no plans to ever do so.  My interest in the series went pretty cold as far back as Invasion but at the time I was willing to give the showrunners good faith on their claims that they had a plan to bring things together and that the problems were mostly production issues.  However, after how bad Outsiders was (and having seen similar awfulness from Greg Weisman in other franchises) I don’t have any good faith or trust left to give them.

I talked at length about how Outsiders left the show with no compelling narrative as part of this big Invasion breakdown (grumpier TL:DR version here), but here are the most relevant sections:

In terms of the Central Conflict, the Light are proved utterly correct: by Outsiders the Original Team are callous, hollow husks of their former selves, who have replicated a worse version of the same status quo the Team originally formed in response to. Dick, Kaldur and M’gann’s Anti-Light are a new upper echelon of older heroes who keep even more secrets from the next generations, who exclude the new generations far more strongly from knowing their plans, who give them even less reason to trust or communicate with them, and who do so for less just, less honest and less narratively justified reasons than their own mentors’ understandable (if condescending) desire to shield the proteges from the parts of the Life they may not yet have been equipped to face. Not only that but their constant lying with the intent to control others, and refusal to hold themselves accountable for those actions goes directly against both the League’s stated heroic ideals of “Truth, Liberty and Justice” and Red Tornado’s conclusion that caring is “the human thing to do”. By the end of Outsiders, even the existence of the Team itself is undone; decommissioned into the exact kind of safe training space that the Season 1 characters were desperate for it never to be. […] With Outsiders, any actual narrative set by Young Justice Season 1 is over. By their own standards the Team have lost, and lost entirely.

The meta-narrative of Young Justice Animated is that of a show that started with a promising initial season and strong sense of narrative identity, only to discard every part of that identity.  With Invasion the show discarded its original characterisations, themes and ideologies; replacing them with contradictory and often antithetical ones.  Outsiders would then shed even the surface trappings of its aesthetic (in favour of the more generic “modern DC” art-style) and mission-based narrative structure.  There is nothing left, save for some superficial proper nouns and call-back references: the textbook definition of an In Name Only Sequel.

I didn’t bother with Phantoms (and am frankly a little artistically insulted by its existence) because I knew it was doomed from the start to be a narrative stillbirth.  Having actively abandoned its original identity, Young Justice was left desperately scrambling to forge a new one, by clawing at the one thing it had left: people’s nostalgic attachment to the Season 1 iterations of the cast.  But this could never work because every season since has been engaged in a performative pretense of not acknowledging the character-breaking contradictions and hypocrisies forced upon the original cast by the poor writing decisions.  Phantoms would have to thread an impossible needle: wanting to be about the “journey” of the original cast for nostalgia reasons, while not being able to acknowledge that the last two seasons (and attaché comics) have resulted in all of them either actively failing or being tragically soft-locked out of their explicit character arcs without breaking that kayfabe of performative ignorance.  And, in trying to tell a story without engaging with that story's content or how broken it had become, what would they have left but to fall back yet again on canonical filler, sidequests and references held loosely together by contrivance? 

It could only ever be a zombie-fic of itself: having long-since concluded or abandoned any remaining character or plot threads, driven forward solely by the stream-of-consciousness compulsive-writing of a production team desperate to remain present, relevant and profitable.  And from the feedback I’ve heard from the general community and fandom friends who kept watching, it seems like Phantoms did indeed pull down the curtain on that empty, directionless, hollow-automaton-filled narrative for a lot of people.

As for Greg Weisman himself, while I agree that he is a particularly poor character-writer, I will respectfully but firmly disagree that he’s otherwise decent.  I think the fact that we have to caveat “he’s a decent writer” with the condition “so long as he’s surrounded by a team of strong editors and directors to keep him from being awful” kind of reveals that he isn’t.   I also don’t really accept the premise that the main fault lies with the people around him for not stopping that.  They certainly haven’t helped but he’s a grown adult who can make his own decisions. Enablers don’t generally induce behaviours; they simply amplify or become complicit in the behaviours that are already there.

In the video Plagiarism and You(tube), Hbomberguy did a great job of laying out the difference between “honest mistakes” – which can be easily cleared up by good-faith apologies and explanations – and “dishonest behaviour” – where the person(s) is aware that what they are doing is not appropriate and falls back on reputation-protecting deflections and “non-apologies” to avoid consequences when caught.  Weisman would not so-frequently disrespect his colleagues’ work with contradictions, or write patterns of misogyny, queerphobia, casual racism/ableism and abuse apologism into his stories if he did not fundamentally feel entitled to do so, was not comfortable and in agreement with those beliefs, or did not think he could get away with it.  And the way he has routinely responded to even gentle, good-faith comments by fans expressing frustration/confusion with inconsistent characterisation/structure indicates someone who knows he has done the wrong thing but resents being questioned or held accountable.  And then we see him continuing the same behaviours.  A “decent writer” should not need an editor to hold their hand and explain why directly contracting explicitly-stated characterisation is bad practice.  A “good ally” should not need someone to tell them that disproportionately subjecting queer/non-white characters to shock-value violence, writing minority characters to be dirty/dangerous/less valid in their identities, erasing/demonising/misgendering AFAB trans and bisexual identities, rewriting strong female characters to need motherhood or men to “tell them who they are”, writing gay men to be secretly misogynistic/racist, and framing victims as being equally responsible for their abuse is offensive.  All of which he has either directly done or tacitly allowed under his lead.  Multiple times.  Across multiple series.

These are not isolated incidents of “good-faith mistakes” from a newcomer learning the ropes (if they were, it wouldn’t bother me like this).  Weisman has had multiple seasons - multiple franchises even - and decades to show himself to be the kind of sincere ally and visionary artist of integrity that myself and his fans wanted him to be… and that he has so benefited from presenting himself as.  He has chosen not to. Say what you want about their stories, but you can’t claim that marginalised creators like ND Stevenson, Rebecca Sugar, Dana Terrace and allies like Neil Gaiman didn’t push back hard against their own publishers and make a lot of careful compromises in order to tell those stories in a way they felt was respectful. Weisman is in a very privileged position, with a resume that carries a decent amount of clout. He could have held himself to the creative standards he publicly expresses; could have worked improve his craft, could have examined his own biases and actually learned from the communities his stories speak about/over.  But he didn’t – because obviously it's easier and more comfortable to keep being lazy, keep relying on his colleagues to carry him, to not question his own biases/privileges and then lie when caught.  And with the money he makes, and all the second chances and new jobs he keeps getting handed, what incentive does he have to change that behaviour? 

So, personally I don’t buy his attempts to position himself as an UwU Nice Guy Ally whose haters are taking him out of context and whose nasty publishers keep forcing him to do incoherent bigotry.  He’s a grown-up, who can own his own behaviour.  And, even with a generous reading, this is at best the behaviour of a fair-weather sell-out who is willing to abandon his principles at the slightest hint of pressure from above.  That is not what respect looks like.  I wanted to give him good faith, but in light of all this, I find I can no longer trust him to keep his word or be honest about his intentions.

This is kind of the other reason why I choose not to support or engage with YJ Phantoms (or the revival in general): on top of being utterly disinterested, I just don’t want to incentivise this kind of creative behaviour with more money or attention.  I also can’t ignore what could be a pattern where Weisman makes grand promises that he likely never has a plan or intent to fulfill, then deliberately leaves holes/timeskips/inconsistencies in his narratives in order to generate ongoing demand for separate-purchase side content which promises to “fill those gaps”… but which never does because there isn’t actually a plan to facilitate that (thus creating an endless cycle of demand and profit).  To me that cuts a little too close to the potential for a privileged creator to be exploiting their clout and the good-faith belief of their fanbase in order to grift those fans out of their time and money.  I don’t find that acceptable.

So, yeah.  Not to deploy the GIF again but:

It'll be a big, fat doughnut on YJ Phantoms content from me 🍩. Sorry!

[jellie-the-aqua-puma]

I have a feeling, IF Gojo actually survives this and IF he loses his six eyes ability as some have theorized, we’re going to find out the answer to:

“Are you Gojo Satoru because you’re the strongest or are you the strongest because you’re Gojo Satoru?”

I’m not sure where Gege is going with JJK at this point, so I don’t know what purpose that would serve given everything that’s happened, however, I can’t lie and say that I am absolutely not looking forward to it being the latter (You are the strongest because you are Gojo.) which I wholeheartedly believe is the answer to that.

[undistortedworld]

what part of "it is bad etiquette to put character hate in that character tag" do people not understand? 😭 and then to act surprised and confused when fans of that character argue their point to defend the character LIKE YOU JUST BLASTED YOUR HATE SPECIFICALLY TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE BIG ENOUGH FANS TO SPECIFICALLY LOOK THROUGH THAT TAG WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?? 😭

[miraluking-respectfully]

Diving back into the Space Ant Book & something I wanna mention unrelated to bugs is that Han Solo is great in this book. Like, it's been a while since I watched the OT, but the characterization just feels spot on in how he's reacting to all this insectoid nonsense, ie, VERY grouchily. He's also the only non-Forcie in this group of friends, family, & in-laws. So you've got Luke and Mara Jade and whoever else slowly uncovering the workings of the hive mind and how to coax information out of them via Force means, and they're experiencing this situation as detectives in a mystery story. Then they explain the info they've learned to Han and he's like ARE YOU SAYING MY DAUGHTER THINKS SHE'S A BUG

[bisexualnamjoonie]

wait so jjk1 is literally just seven so far??? like there's no other song rn no definite plans for the album no overall artistic view??? or did I misunderstand what he said in suchwita when he said he hadn't really worked on anything else so far???

[pigeonxp]

Personally I agree on the not relating everything to dsmp thing, but I’m not saying anything because Wilbur himself brought up having a previous child so this was the only logical outcome 🤷🏽‍♂️

i understand i just hate it SO BADDD LMAOOO specifically the fanfics (im just trying to read some dadbur fluff WHY DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE ABT FUNDY AND ANGST) i really enjoy them calling back to dsmp lore as jokes bc it feels like a funny inside joke everyones in on but jfc sometimes the way some ends of the fanbases take it boil my blood idk

[gogoakechi]

i will not become emotionally invested in how my classmates interpret an example of a short story in my creative writing class and i will not think poorly of them for having opinions i disagree with

[posallys]

Hi, ive just started writing fanfic for the first time, do you have any tips?

honestly, just writing what makes you happy because who gives a fuck what other people think! if YOU like it, that's all that matters.

also don't be afraid to experiment with sentence structure, etc! rules are made to be broken and i am a staunch believer that breaking grammar rules (intentionally...not just having bad grammar lol) adds so much character to your writing and really gives you your own voice and style. I do it all the time! i love me a good intentional run-on sentence, some comma splices (i am a slut for comma splices i cannot lie to you), some fragments, starting sentences with a conjunction. etc etc etc.

also if you're having trouble getting a feel for your Style or whatever, it's okay to take inspiration from the style of some authors you enjoy (that obviously does NOT mean to copy their work, but look at their sentence structure, at how they piece their puzzle together; my new current sentence structure experiment is based on the way one of my friends wrote a fic, and i'm loving it.)

oh i know people preach active over passive voice, but i am telling you now that passive voice can be used and it adds to your writing sometimes! ESPECIALLY if you're trying to set a more serious, sort of prose-like tone....passive voice my beloved. some of the craziest lines i've written are passive.

use adjectives but dont OVER use them--and if you are overusing them, make sure it's intentional. (intentionality is literally the main thing; if you do something intentionally, it's probably going to come across like that, and your readers are going to understand it the way you wanted them to)

similar to the passive vs. active debate...showing vs. telling. it's a bit tricky to find a good balance sometimes, but you'll learn. but also, it's not as black and white as a lot of people make it seem. "showing" the way i see most people use it is just excessive use of adjectives and verbs, while telling is simply stating something (which i don't necessarily agree with)

Im going to use an example from the fic i'm writing right now:

And so he goes to them, like a ship to a beacon of light, a sailor to a siren. He goes because he cannot possibly stay away for a moment longer, cannot bear to not have them in his arms. He lies beside her and she relaxes into him, and it is too much, this love. Too much for one man to feel, too much for him to hold back. It thrums through his veins, begging to be released.

I would argue that most, if not all of that paragraph is me telling, not showing. "he goes to them" "he goes because" "he lies" "it is too much" etc etc. i use metaphors and whatnot, but i'm telling nonetheless. (there's another good point, actually: most of this is me telling, but it's also active voice, so they balance each other)

anyway enough of my babbling about grammar lol. just have fun and write whatever makes you happy--and don't feel like it has to be perfect, or like you're obligated to churn out content, because you're not. one of my favorite fics of mine EVER has been rotting in google docs hell since christmas 2022; what matters is that EYE love her and am with her in spirit, not that she's done and produced and perfect.

[welcometogrouchland]

I will feel so tired that it's like my atoms are coming undone and I'm being made unreal...and then I will have a little chocolate treat and for 15 minutes I am whole and present again. Then the horrors

[godreallyisawoman]

the-thing-that-isnt-god asked me a question yesterday. about death and the universe and stained glass windows. so I told the-thing-that-isnt-god I don't know what im doing here and I haven't stepped foot in a church in three years, that im not even sure if I could anymore. the-thing-that-isnt-god looked at me with pity in her too many eyes and told me a tale of dandelions and oyster pearls. wove the threads of the sky into my hair and drew stars in blood on my shoulder blades. I couldn't help but flinch at every featherlight touch. the-thing-that-could-be-god came back the next day when I was waist deep in a river I had never seen before. she asked me why I was so reckless and I told her I was trying to wash the blood off my hands. the-thing-that-could-be-god was holding a hummingbird and dripping sugar water from her mouth. she told me the blood would live under my fingernails unless I tore them off. and so I did. better my own blood running down my wrist than someone else's. the-thing-that-is-probably-god sighed five sighs at once and remembered watching me as a baby, crawling through the grass. I can't help but feel I have been a disappointment. the-thing-that-is-probably-god wants me to get up tomorrow and try again. but there are too many teeth on the ground and too much sorrow residing in my bone marrow. I tell god I'll wake up in a week and be better. be good. she shakes her head and lets me sleep. 

[youngestdaughtersyndrome]

ok and with that im logging off bc i got work to do ..... byebye

[girl-bateman]

when I think about it I've always been "a little off". like.. as a kid i was super obsessed (!!!!!) with tuberculosis and thought it was the most beautiful and tragic way to die (?). Pair that with my frequent hobby of drawing weirdly elaborate gore, something was definitely wrong with me from the start </3