Young Justice: A Massive Failure of Narrative - The Masterpost
A few people asked for this, so here we go. Apparently I have had a lot of thoughts about this show that I only love a single season of, in my attempts to wrestle with why I found Invasion and especially the revival not only not engaging but also unsettling and kind of upsetting on a creative and ideological level, and why it was that my brain just couldn’t let it go. Now collected, for your perusal.
Quick version: ‘Scope Management’, ‘Toxic Friends’ and ‘Invasion: A Case Study’ cover pretty much everything. The rest are mostly elaborations
Structure, Scope Management and Audience Engagement
In this long writing-focussed essay I take an overarching look at the structural issues hurting the show; how the constant influx of characters creates an enormous scope management problem, how this problem is compounded by timeskips which make over 80% of the critical narrative substance inaccessible, worsened by a choice to imply important skipped content rather than showing or telling it, how the companion materials are an ineffective solution to this problem, how the show fails the Death of the Author test, how it over-relies on audience’s pre-existing knowledge of/ parasocial bonds with the characters from the comics in a way akin to fanfiction, and how all of this has contributed to the erosion of characters, plots, themes and narrative as the seasons progress.
Greg Weisman has openly said he wants Young Justice to go on forever. Here I briefly look at the kinds of shows and narrative structures that easily allow that kind of perpetual extension, and how this is completely at odds with Young Justice’s tightly chronological, momentum-driven approach. (Which beggars the question of why he would write an intrigue/mystery if he doesn’t believe in denouements.)
The Illusion of Story/ In Service of Nothing (But Profit)
“The director has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why.” In this ask-response I talk about the idea of using story elements in service of narrative and how Outsiders very obviously fails to do so. Particularly discussed are the use of violence for shock value, attempts to be seen as ‘topical’, gestures towards ‘representation’ that feel disingenuous, nostalgia-exploitation, the formulaic reuse of ‘secrets and lies’ plot beats and how - in pursuing a shallow moment-to-moment appearance of story without consideration for the story those elements combine to tell - we end up in a situation where the heroes are praised for recreating the exact same status quo they formed the Team in response to.
Toxic Friends and Partners
An examination of emotional/ psychological abuse red-flags in the writing of Superboy and Miss Martian’s relationship across Invasion/ Torch Songs/ Outsiders and the shades of abuse apologism/ victim-blaming in the way the narrative constantly puts the emotional burden on Conner to forgive what is done to him. Followed by a wider look at the implications of the original Team’s treatment of Conner (and to lesser extent Artemis) across Invasion and Outsiders, how Conner is increasingly isolated as the show progresses and how on a fundamental level the characters’ actions reveal that these are no longer friends who respect and trust each other but people who need, use and then discard each other once the relationships are no longer convenient.
Grandon’s Tragic DC Zombie-fic
An examination of major flaws in Invasion’s mole plot and the fridge-tragic fates of the Season 1 team members by the end of Outsiders. Followed by a look at why ‘the comic book context’ is a poor defense for the weak writing of Young Justice’s later seasons, how the show expects an unreasonable and inconsistent burden of extra-textual work from the audience, the audience expectations that were set by Season 1, how all following entries betray those expectations, the balance of creative power on the Production Team and how Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti probably weren’t the writers who made YJS1 what it was, Grandon’s personal creative weaknesses and how the show has changed and declined in quality as they have consolidated creative power, how the narrative construction of Post-Season-1 Young Justice exhibits the symptoms of ‘zombie-fanfic’ and how the lack of caring on the part of the showrunners reflects in a cast of ‘heroes’ who no longer seem to care about others.
In Season 1, Superman states that the Justice League of Earth-16 upholds the ideals of Truth, Liberty and Justice. A look at how (under new Production/ Executive direction from Season 2 onward) the forcible re-writing of the Season 1 cast into characters who routinely lie with the intent to control others while refusing to be held accountable not only contradicts their personal values and fails their arcs, but creates a series that is cynical to the point of hateful toward those stated heroic ideals.
Invasion: A Case Study in Losing Your Thesis
In this ask response I throw the microscope on Invasion as a case study/ writing exercise - drilling down through (and suggesting potential ways to address) the issues of scope management, failure to progress storylines, broken continuity between seasons, contradiction/ undermining of central themes and the nature of conflict, in order to get to the root problem at the heart of every other problem with Young Justice as a series: that it doesn’t have an actual narrative, and the one it did has been irreparably shattered.
Greg Weisman: Bad-faith Bigotry
Sometimes having friends in other fandoms can be an incredibly cursed thing. As it turns out, Young Justice is not the only story to have seen a substantial decline in quality after Greg Weisman took control as lead writer... and the patterns that emerge are as revealing as they are depressing.
