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cosmos-dot-semicolon · 29 days

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Act 1, and Leshy's relationships with the other Scrybes

There was a post on here a while ago about Leshy outright hating Magnificus more than P03, and one interesting observation was that he cuts the Wolf's stats, but boosts the Stoat's. I think there's more you can gather from Leshy designing around the other Scrybes, though:

GRIMORA:

Leshy seems to be the most amiable with Grimora. Yes, I think this probably comes a bit from the dev finding their aesthetics and gameplay styles easier to pair up, but I think's its also a little bit because she values fun quite strongly, which meshes well with his focus on lore: both things that aren't purely gameplay based unlike the weirder mechanics of the west-side Scrybes.

Similar to Leshy in act 2, none of her puzzles really cause any harm to her subordinates. It's meant to be some fun flavour plot for the player to engage their brains with before the battles. Honestly, the amount of times she says 'Marvelous!' alone should convince you of her priorities (outside of destroying the world!)

Leshy goes out of his way to design a totally new card for Grimora, which doesn't appear anywhere in act 2 or Kaycee's mod.

It's the only one with a sigil on it - it's a fragile card, but it requires more actual strategy than playing the non-sigil Wolf and Stoat.

One line of dialogue remarks that he wishes he had kept Grimora around, as she was at least a worthy challenger.

He says that the Stinkbug is weak, but other than that accepts you having it in your deck. Compare that to him absolutely hating the Stunted Wolf on sight.

If you look closely in the finale, Grimora has an insect crawling across the table in her campaign. I don't know if it's really a stinkbug, persay, but it's an interesting parallel to his choice of her species.

Someone has said before that there are notably more insect cards than any other species in act 1, which also plays into him being closer to her than the others.

Bones are literally the secondary currency in his campaign, whereas energy doesn't appear at all, and sigils are limited to a single map event.

stinkyyyy

MAGNIFICUS:

Between Leshy actively saying he hates Mag's card once you first get it (versus one line about the Stinkbug being weak), and him literally stabbing the guy's eye out, it's safe to say Leshy fucking hates this guy. I've seen different theories on this, between the clashing gameplay and Leshy being kinder to his subordinates, but the one I've thought was the most interesting was that Magnificus is arguably, the most powerful Scrybe.

He's the only one who does have a plan to get Leshy's takeover back to normal, and the other two Scrybes are desperate for you to find him in act 1 because of it. He has future vision, he writes letters to the others warning about potential takeovers, and you never see him scrounge for the OLD_DATA. correction in reblogs: i think it is mentioned that he has

I've always read Leshy's feelings towards Mag as jealousy, mixed with clashing ideologies. I don't think there's a single moment where the two agree on anything outside of act 3.

I don't have much to say on his card, gameplay-wise, as you get it very late. Honestly most of the Stunted Wolf's design is just foreshadowing that Leshy beat this guy up and stabbed out his eye, lmao, but it's still interesting to note that:

The Stunted Wolf is one of those cards that's a variant of another one (i.e. Wolf Cub/Wolf, Mantis God/Mantis), but it's notably the only one whose stats are worse than its predecessor.

At the same time, it only costs one blood, and it's the only 2-attack card to have that. Gameplay wise, this is to balance things out, but it hints towards Magnificus having been much more powerful in the past. Like it makes you ponder how fucking good it would be to start off with a one-blood 3-2 card.

Magnificus's only other gameplay feature in act 1 is the sacrificial alters (given his association with magic and sigils). These are fucking busted. God I wish I could have four sigils on a card in Kaycee's mod.

P03:

Leshy seems to not think very much of P03 (both in the sense of not acknowledging it and thinking it's not a good designer), but doesn't seem completely unwilling to work with him. I'd argue he's not really hostile towards P03, just very aggressively trying to push it into his own ideal of the world.

In Kaycee's mod, Leshy refers to him as a rival and not an enemy, which I think gives a good basis for interpreting how he views it. P03's breakup speech snapping at Leshy in act 2 is ultimately what gets him to question his intentions at all.

The mention that the stoat's suffering was real during the tutorial isn't really ever brought up again by Leshy. It's interesting to think about in hindsight, given that P03 being a robot means its the least likely to have experienced pain out of the four.

Combined with P03's remark that Leshy keeps him around just to suffer, and the later remark in act 2 that he thinks that it is noble to be a beast card, "even one as lowly as a stoat," this implies that Leshy's at the very least trying to get P03 used to his world, and almost hopes that he'll come to like it.

The unbuffed stoat is a really terrible card. All the 1-2 cards have some sort of gimmick to them to make them playable, but the normal stoat just doesn't at all. The buff to 1-3 is a gift from Leshy to P03, despite everything. It implies he at least thinks there's something that can be salvaged between them, in his own view.

And like. The buffed stoat is so so useful in act 1. The extra HP means it can take a hit from so many more cards and it's a solid foundation for basically any run.

The stoat's the only one of the talking cards without an animal family. Of course it is! Nature and technology are usually thematic opposites, especially compared to magic and death. P03 doesn't fit in here, but Leshy is still clearly trying to make it a foundational card in his campaign.

#inscryption spoilers #inscryption #inscryption analysis #inscryption leshy #dots dots dots #i may have needed to rewatch the finale bc i was unsure if the stinkbug was canon or only a grimora mod thing #anyways idk if anyone will read this but these guys are so fascinating and I need an actually decent take of them out on tumblr #so i guess i will have to do it myself.

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becauseplot · 3 months

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*returns to yours* I HAVE THOUGHTS! NOT COHERENT ONES TOO SLEEPY AND NEED TO SAVE COHERENCY BUT THOUGHTS!!! MOSTLY ABOUT ISLAND TEAPARTIES AFTER THE KIDS ARE ASLEEP WHERE CELLBIT AND PHILZA DRINK TEA AND PHILZA TEACHES CELLBIT ABOUT STARS AND CELLBIT SLOWLY GETS BACK INTO HIS ENIGMAS AND THEY BOTH BITCH ABOUT TEA BUT DRINK IT ANYWAY BECAUSE IT HAS GOOD STATS

YEAAH!! YEAHHH!!! Okay okay okay so I meant to ramble more earlier when you initially responded to my ask and then I got sleepy and conked out and now it's super early for me, nailed it lmaooo. so anyway just like a couple things i noticed abt this scene *rolls out a scroll of notes, the bottom hits the floor and bounces out the door cartoon-style*

Chayanne gives Cellbit a rose!! Idk if Rose still has influence here (I'll have to sift through Phil's VOD to see if he says anything abt Rose, yesterday I mainly watched Cellbit's POV) but he's protected now!! That kinda folds him into Phil's "closer" circle of friends/family since it's primarily them who carries the roses for protection so!!!!! I'm!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE TEA!! Yes the tea the way the tea immediately broaches the topic of purgatory, and yeah the audible wince in Phil's voice after Cellbit says the tea triggers him and Phil agrees. Yeah it's so shit and they're both so sick of it but it's so OP. Phil survivalist (hardcore) :handshake: Cellbit survivalist (hunger games/"The War"), do and use what is necessary to keep yourself alive.

And AAA!! Yes, okay okay so like you remember that idea abt Phil and Cellbit having late-night convos at the Order pre-purgatory? This is basically that!! It's late at night, they're getting caught up with each other, they've both got the shitass tea and it's going cold and!! In my head this scene goes on for a full night and they just sit and talk and talk and talk, eventually conking out when it's late, just like old times EXCEPT THEY HAVE THEIR KIDS NOW WHICH IS ONE OF THE THINGS THAT BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER, THEIR DESIRE TO FIND THEIR KIDS, AND THEY FOUND THEM!!! (I should write a fic i NEED to write a fic, me vs the 754389 wips in my brain; in my head they still had late night convos in purgatory when their "play time" timers lined up, phil waking up early enough and cellbit staying up late enough for them to talk while the others slept)

The way Cellbit still minces his words abt what he and Bags did post-purg 1 "we had our fun...bolas...style..." is it because he thinks Phil will think less of him? because there's children present? because his SON is present? idk how much Richas knows abt what Cellbit did in purgatory, Richas *did* rescue him while he was fighting eye workers but does he know about Cellbit hunting fellow players for sport? what Cellbit did to his pai Pac? I NEED ANSWERS

Phil's "Dude! No! Oh my god... D:" to when Cellbit says Roier was better off without him. PHIL WAS AT THEIR WEDDING. HE TOOK THE GODDAMN PHOTOS OF THEM AT THEIR WEDDING. HE SAW HOW HAPPY THEY WERE, HOW HAPPY ROIER WAS, WHEN THEY WERE REUNITED IN PURGATORY. Phil isn't close enough to Roier nor speaks to him enough to really understand the full extent of Roier's grief after purgatory 1, but it's gotta be hard for Phil to imagine Roier happy with Cellbit gone. Whether he believes it when Cellbit says "yeah Roier told me he was better" (doied WHEN I GET YOU---) is up for debate but I think about this constantly.

Phil fucking laughing when Cellbit admits he ate some of the eye workers fhdjsk. I can't get over the combo of Cellbit POV (in character thinking: "I'm terrible I'm a cannibal I'm a monster") vs Philza POV (cc who laughs at everything that is even remotely cursed) honestly, taking this as in-character (bc ccPhil doesn't mute his mic to laugh and he...usually does that for ooc bits while in the middle of rp), it says a lot abt qPhil that he's able to just laugh abt an admission of eating corpses. ethics who? geneva convention who? qPhil doesn't know her. munch on those eye workers king they're dickheads. (fuck, DOES qPhil know that Cellbit is a cannibal, as in, he has eaten not just workers but other players?? hmmm...)

"I'm sorry I couldn't do much as bolas leader" "It's better that you didn't see us...I think you'll be disappointed" "oh I could never be disappointed what do you mean shut up *laughs*" GODDDDDDDD also Cellbit trying to say he got worse after purg 1 and Phil saying "nah bolas is already at ground level" (either not understanding or indirectly reiterating that he won't condemn Cellbit for his actions, I can't tell) and then Cellbit just,, going with it. because it's not worth it to argue and he's trying to move past all of that now anyway. (QCELLBIT PROCESS YOUR TRAUMA CHALLENGE LEVEL IMPOSSIBLE)

watching Phil's POV now and HFDJSK you can't hear it on Cellbit's stream but Phil catches Richas as they're both leaving and says quietly, "Take care of your dad, Richas, n' take care." I'M 💥💥💥💥 (<-banging table)

Anyway!! This is what happens when the two characters I'm obsessed with interact for the first time in months. Over-analyzing a 5 minute convo. Sorry, it will happen again :] Praying they stay as neighbors I'd love to see archivists have more interactions!! And yes yes yes yes the tea parties with the kids!! Phil routinely chatting with Cellbit and watching him slowly "regain his color" as he settles back into peaceful life post-purgatory, falls in love with enigmas again. They've always trusted each other when they don't trust themselves, and they're both a Stable Point for the other. I'll miss what we never got to have with the leaders-of-the-Order-having-meetings ideas (timezones, wails) but I'm so excited for new island mysteries!! :D

#qsmp #archivists #asks for curly #istg the bulleted list was actually supposed to be short but uh. yeah. im nothing if not long-winded.#see the issue is that i know a good amt abt qphil #and a *pretty* decent amt abt qcellbit (language barrier *is* still there so i can't claim to fully understand his pov without help from-#-community analysis/translation) and so i can just kinda. talk abt them both. a lot.#there's fs details and nuances im missing but im trying!!#stream live translation is soooo helpful omg. alsocellbit streams for so long so frequently so its hard to catch every detail myself #also side note: is it still fanon that cell ate pacs leg? saw a post a while ago saying that it's technically fanon. idk if it's true-#-and i have no source so. shrug.

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molinaskies · 8 months

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What was the problem with how Shadow was written in the 900th Adventure? He did feel a little off but I didn't think it was that bad.

The problem with how Shadow is often (mis)handled is with his delivery, not his intentions or motivations.

Shadow’s mission is to protect earth and its people from harm to honour Maria’s final wish. Harm comes in many forms, and Shadow doesn’t discriminate between “good” and “bad” guys. If he perceives you as reckless, then you are his opponent. This is the tenant reason as to why he and Sonic butt heads. They have the same mission, but Shadow believes Sonic does not take his role seriously or cautiously enough.

Many people who have written for the franchise (and even SEGA, for some time) have lost sight of this at some point. It’s what is most misunderstood about Shadow as a character. So, more often than not, Shadow’s delivery of his intentions is usually written from a place of arrogance and ego rather than protection and calculation.

Shadow insinuating that Sonic is a fool with power is not the problem. Shadow stroking his own ego is.

Shadow wanting to teach a lesson to bad actors is not the problem. Shadow being drawn as this dark, edgy, deranged force is.

#justice for shadow lol #I actually really liked shadow in the Eggperial City arc #that is a good example of a decent enough middle ground for me #same with Shadow in prime #the murder of sonic the hedgehog is the best example of how shadow should be portrayed in times of peace #sonic the hedgehog #sth #sonic #idw sonic #sonic idw #idw sonic spoilers #sonic idw spoilers #sonic 900th adventure spoilers #sonic 900th adventure #character analysis #shadow the hedgehog

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princesskuragina · 2 years

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i think costume design analysis is underrepresented in the sphere of people who produce amateur media criticism content and i'm sometimes tempted to start a costume design blog or something but also i am. so bad at keeping up with commercially relevant movies

#i know there's a decent if niche sector of amateur historical accuracy critique but it feels like relatively little actual design analysis #as opposed to like. people who talk about editing or direction or writing or even scoring

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note-boom · 1 year

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Honestly, though, words cannot express my love and appreciation for the ADA and the way they subvert tropes. Like Fukuzawa for example.

You know how a lot of fiction (justifiably, I think) has leaders being corrupt and always undermining the values of their organization to protect themselves? How usually they're the cold-hearted logical ones who discard the ideals to save their reputation?

Well, that's not Fukuzawa. That speech about doing the right thing even if they were labelled as the bad guys was not only such incredible foreshadowing but it was also just to show what a strong leadership and family they are. He wants to keep them all safe and values them all equally...but he also does not let that get in the way of protecting and saving others I love him so much guys you have no idea....

#of course that means if (spoilers for the manga) does die in the current arc then that's like the moral backbone of the agency falling #and i dont want to think about that #but guys i wont EVER be over a show actually showing decent leadership #maybe that's why kunikida was to be the next leader....because he might be the idealist of the group but he is also kinda grounded #ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh THE AGENCY IS SOOOOOO #they do something to me and that ED again KILLED me and im sobbing #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd season 4 #bsd s4 spoilers #bsd spoilers #armed detective agency #bsd fukuzawa #spitting nonsense #character analysis

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rivalsilveryuri · 2 months

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let’s him walk around on my palm

ruby and sapphire

#VOICEMAIL #funny 2 me that viz just. made his reoccuring...........bathroom joke into him pourign a can off of rooftops. but everyone else is still #reacting like he's killing someone while he's likr 'i love recycling :)' and emptying a can of pepsi or somethign #sorry that its what first comes 2 mind with him.#but i DO like emerald.... he's kinda the only hoenn dexholder i ... like??????????????? not in the way i DONT like the other 2 i just don't #have much 2 say on them. but also because reading rs may actually trigger my ptsd i think. a little. ummm. so i dont remember basically any #of rubys half.. i remember saphs just fine thoguh. but yeah what was i on about. umm. oohhh yeah i like emerald thr best #kinda makes me mad how people just infantilise him and look over. basically everythign about him. like his sibling relationship with crys #+ his backstory + the shit under the surface for the way he acts..#+the interaction they have as a trio because i find it kind of fascinating but its honestly the shortest amount of time 2gether a trios had #idk. it feels likr 2. people out there are actually interested in *emerald* himself #and everyone else just likrs. ............how everyone else sees him in universe.... and the rest see him how emerald wants to be seen. idk #always shy about character analysis cause i always worry im pulling at nothign and cooking nothing but i feel decently confident that-#-thats the whole point of emeralds character and his childhood and behaviour n etc.#i have NOT read oras though. umm. heard mixed things about it but who knows. itll take me 50 years 2 get there n e ways...#also emerald and wally. wish they interacted at LEAST cmon. unless ive brain fogged it but whateva........#how did me talking about piss jokes turn into character analysis

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aplpaca · 1 year

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ngl it's strangely fun to watch the tiktok and twitter Book Community cause like everything about the popular culture and tastes of those places is so far removed from my own vibes that it feels like watching reality tv. someone's like "heres my top 10 enemies to lovers hockey romance colleen hoover color-coordinated shelf books and coffee dark academia female manipulator aesthetic smut recommendations for the holidays" and I'm like "damb bitch you live like this?" [pokes at it curiously with a stick like it's a funny mushroom]

#booktok #books #its weirdly fascinating #i could go into a decently detailed analysis of the culture and its pitfalls but i don't feel like it #i have no desire to actually participate in it. i just wanna watch it like its a strangely alien nature documentary #i have never and will never read like 98.5% of the books they talk about but damn if its not kinda amusing to watch them go

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threewaysdivided · 4 months

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awwww 😭😭😭😭

Did you write a review on the legendary teen Titans series? (Aka what young Justice could have become if they weren't overly ambitious)

What's your opinion on Paul Dini as a writer?

(Follow up to these two previous asks)

Sorry nonnie! 😅

It seems that we both tripped down a rabbit hole of doughnuts.

youtube

I assume you’re talking about the Teen Titans 2003 Animated TV Series? In that case, you might be thinking of another user – I haven’t personally written any reviews for it. I do have a lot of fond feelings towards the show, though; it was my first real introduction to DC Comics alongside the Justice League/ JLU animated series. My Tumblr has a Teen Titans tag where I share art, meta etc. and I do have some thoughts about specific plots or narrative elements – you might also see me make occasional reference to it as an example on some posts in the writing advice tag.

Just for the sake of expectation management, I should explain that my Tumblr isn’t really a traditional “review blog”. And yes, I know that probably sounds a bit crazy considering the frankly unhinged amount of YJ analysis I’ve written, especially since I’ve been blogging less about other stories in the last year. Burnout, what can you do?

Really I’m more of a writing/ story-analysis blog. Sometimes I might write a semi-review style post where I try to break down and articulate a particular technique/ element/ execution/ implication of a narrative in order to understand what it’s doing well or why something isn’t working. As I said in the very first Frustrations with YJ essay, I think storytelling is fundamentally about communication and understanding. I got into fandom as a fan-reader turned fan-writer (AO3 wink wink), and before that I worked as a casual English tutor. I want to learn from the ways different narratives succeeded or failed at communicating their stories within the restrictions of their medium(s) so that I can better find, discuss and even tell stories myself.

Because of that, I’m also a big proponent of the Death of the Author approach to media analysis. Let me copy the definition over from that first essay real quick:

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR This theory posits that, because commercial art is created to be consumed, not just created, the audience’s interpretations of a work should be considered as just valid as the creator’s. The work must stand on its own and creators cannot micro-manage their audience’s response to it. 1. A creator’s intentions and biographical facts (political stances, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining the validity of an interpretation. 2. Save for re-releases/reboots or new entries, the creator cannot and should not attempt to retroactively insert information or interpretations that were not present in the original text.

I generally don’t look too deeply into or follow the specific people behind (non-fan) works. This isn’t always the case – if I like a specific author’s style I might look up their body of work to read more; some stories are clearly rooted in their creators’ specific opinions or experiences, which makes for interesting context; and sometimes I like to learn about the behind-the-scenes methods/techniques/production woes of a bringing a specific story to life – but mostly I put the priority on what I can learn from the final product.

As I’ve said before, commercial storytelling is the result of more than just one person. Under the right conditions I think a rank amateur or complete hack could produce something amazing and, if faced with enough production headaches, a usually-excellent creator could end up outputting utter drek although I expect that drek would at least be creatively interesting.

The questions that interest me more are: what was this narrative trying to communicate? what techniques were used/ creative choices were made? how well did it succeed? could a different approach have been used? and, what restrictions/limitations/priorities could have led to the final creative decisions? To me, information on a creator’s circumstances provide context for narrative analysis. Since I generally don’t know them I try not to postulate their actual intent too much, only the potential intent suggested by the story.

SO WHAT THE HECK WAS I DOING WITH YJ, THEN? What happened with Young Justice is actually an outlier for me in both regards because of how baffling flawed the series ended up being. Back in the pre-revival days I paid a lot of attention to the textual canon of Season 1 because I had started writing a fanfic based on it and wanted to do the story justice (heh). The result was I went into the later seasons with a lot more awareness of the canonical details and storytelling techniques – and (like I said in the final Invasion case-study) I ended up being blindsided by how instinctively bored and annoyed I became just a short way into an attempted Season 2 rewatch, despite the fact that I was actively trying to study it.

The reason I kept coming back with more and more posts is that I never felt like I had successfully grasped or articulated why I had such a strong and unexpected negative reaction. I think it’s a similar impulse to what Dan Olson cited as making the Nostalgia Critic’s Parody of The Wall so weirdly compelling: there's a confusing contradiction between the level of work required to implement the sheer amount of stuff that Young Justice tries to include, and the absolute thoughtlessness of how sloppily that stuff was actually executed. A multi-season, multimedia story like Young Justice is a long-term project: there are too many layers of production involved for the end result to be made in a brief flash of impulse or accident. It needs some sort of sustained creative motivation to drive it… but I could never find a coherent creative intent that would satisfyingly explain the decisions on display. Never before or since have I seen such a promising launch be followed by sequels so fatally flawed as to strip away every component of the original’s creative identity. There’s a reason I subtitled that masterpost A Massive Failure of Narrative.

This is also why I went after lead-showrunner Greg Weisman a bit, despite not usually doing that. The choice to exclude (or consciously excise) over 70% of the critical narrative substance and sequester it away in non-textual social-media /ask-blog retcons means that you cannot escape engaging with Weisman when trying to engage with the later seasons at any level of depth. As a Death of the Author proponent this ticked me off just on-its-face, but it also meant that he and those seasons are inseparably intertwined. Regardless of whether it was a conscious choice arising from his sense of creative entitlement, or simply a case of narrative incompetence self-selecting for a primary audience with a high tolerance for media-illiteracy Nigerian Prince Email Scam-style, the end-result is the same: Weisman gouged holes his narrative and left it to suffocate while he sucked up all the oxygen in the room. Then, later, as I encountered people from other fandoms whose narratives had been similarly decimated by Weisman, it became impossible to ignore how inseparable his personal flaws are from those narrative failures. As I alluded to in the last ask, you can separate the original seven Harry Potter texts from their author: Joanne Rowling and her politics could evaporate tomorrow and it wouldn’t change people’s ability to enjoy the story as a standalone work (in fact, the absence of her modern politics might make some of the more unpalatable flaws easier to accept as honest oversights rather than ominous foreshadowing). Meanwhile, Young Justice is such a disaster because the later seasons stop being about the original story and increasingly become about Greg: his failures at basic storytelling, his disinterested misunderstanding of his own characters, his weird fixations, his patterns of reactionary prejudice, casual double-standards, deeply disturbing attitudes about consent and power, and a self-righteous entitlement that resents being held accountable. Unlike Harry Potter, you can’t put Young Justice S2+ in a bubble. The problem at the root of every other problem with Young Justice is that it doesn’t have an actual narrative... and in the absence of a coherent central narrative, the text itself has become the story of Greg Weisman's terrible creative choices. His self-indulgent proclivities pervade every step of the later seasons' broken theming, bad pacing, warped characterisation, contradictory lore, intra-textual hypocrisies, over-stuffed cast and weird fanservice: baked-in at a level that cannot be ignored or rationalised away.

It makes me empathise a lot with how Hbomberguy said he felt on discovering the recent James Somerton stuff: it’s not fun to stumble down a rabbit hole of learning that a prominent figure in one of your communities is sucking up air via association with work from their less-credited colleagues, then using that air to present themselves as an ally, dominate the narrative and delegitimise valid criticism, all while spreading their own prejudiced agendas, refusing to change their behaviour and continuing to profit. That’s why I felt the need to explicitly point out some of the clearer patterns of reactionary bigotry and hypocritical non-apologies in Weisman’s work – I wanted to make sure the evidence was at least available somewhere outside of Weisman’s carefully-filtered reputation-protecting PR statements. People put pieces of their lives into communicating something that will hopefully be worth the pieces of life their audiences invest in return - I find the idea of someone exploiting that trust for gain to be deeply disgusting.

Now, with that exceptionally-overlong context provided: Paul Dini.

The disappointing but predictable answer is that I don’t really have an opinion on him as a writer. Having looked up his credits, I recognise a lot of works that I personally enjoyed (including the cancelled-after-one-season Tower Prep).

I really like Batman: The Animated Series, both for the human element it brought to heroism and the tone it set for the following DCAU (colloquially Timm-verse) generation of animated series. Justice League was one of my first introductions to the main DC roster, so that set a lot of my core understanding of their characters. I find Harley Quinn, especially her early B:TAS/ DCAU story-iterations, to be compelling in a way that’s equal parts fun and tragic. There are some parts of the DCAU that I find a bit silly (a couple of background ‘ships that make me go whaa?) but I think I was really lucky to grow up during a time when the DCAU and second-order series inspired by its tone and storytelling ethos (e.g. Teen Titans 2003) was the childhood DC experience for kids my age.

That said, I don’t know enough about the story behind the works in Dini’s credits to feel confident in speaking about him as a writer. Just looking at his resume, he certainly seems like a passionate and prolific creator who did a lot of very influential work. At the same time, however, I don’t know how much of that was Dini himself, how much was his frequent co-creator, Bruce Timm, and how much his works may have been adulterated by the influence of other, less-visible members of the production and editorial teams who worked alongside him. It can be convenient to elevate one or two prominent members to Great Man status as an easy shorthand for discussing works they’ve been involved with, but that can come with the risk of crediting or platforming the wrong people through mis-attribution or just plain projection.

I’ve learned my lesson on blind-lionisation after being thoroughly let down by all the Weisman nonsense, the same way others have learned from being let down by creators they previously idolised (Supergeekmike did a really good video covering this which also includes discussions of Death of the Author and Authorial Intent). Without doing proper research into and comparisons of Dini’s work, I wouldn’t feel confident making an assertion about his personal skills as a creator. I greatly enjoy many of the stories he’s been credited on, and can recognise the influence those stories had in shaping a generation of DC fans (and writers)… but while I’m happy to talk about the writing of those stories, it feels a little irresponsible of me to talk to the character or intent of a real person without knowing more about them. I’m not making that mistake again.

In the meantime though, I do want to talk more about actual writing. I’ve been taking it easier this year lockdown and job burnouts finally caught up to me and it suuucks, man but I'm hoping to pick back up in 2024. I want to finally get back to working on my main fanfic so I can share the companion meta without spoiling people. I have thoughts about some possible meta-textual metaphors in Across the Spider-verse. I might do a case-study piece exploring why the years-long timeskip in Arcane Season 1 worked really well while others haven’t. And there’s an ask about a canon-divergent-post-Season-1 Young Justice episode premise that’s been burning a hole in my inbox for at least 5 months now.

So yeah. More writing breakdowns to come. In the meantime, I previously wrote a Frustrations With analysis of how My Hero Academia’s story struggled following the Hideout Raid Arc if you’d like to check that one out. There’s also this big compilation of links to my Young Justice and Danny Phantom meta (plus recommendations for fanfics and other stories), and you can check out the writing advice tag for general storytelling discussions.

Hopefully that makes up for the drought of Teen Titans content!

#I feel like I might've served you another doughnut a bit here nonnie :(#I hope the universe gives you an actual free doughnut to make up for it #on reviewing #on writing analysis #on lionising creators #Paul Dini #DC Comics #Greg Weisman #Young Justice #Young Justice Animated #My YJ critiques are a decent representation of my analytical approach #but actually not a very good representation of the priorities of my blog #(pssst please read the Invasion one it's super-long but I worked really hard on it)#TFW a series you used to like goes so bad that it derails your entire blog for 3 years straight... *sigh*#anonymous #3WD answers

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