Criticize the story all you want, but the Justice League's complicity in the Nabu fiasco is very clearly canon.
I know and that's my problem. It's canon because of a plot hole and everyone knows that. IMO it gives Zoat no excuses not to fix it. He chose to take what was very clearly a mistake on the writers part and play it straight. Turning the entire league including Zataras canon close friends into heartless evil caricatures of themselves, or give some of them a galaxy sized idiot ball because Paul needs too be the ultimate champion. It did and still does break my SoD. If the leauge was brainwashed by Starros or lost their memories of him because whatever I might've bought it but it's played straight. Pure character assassination. And then he has the audacity to bash them for it.
In fact it's an even worse plot hole because it's actually played straight. The fact that not a single adult who came into contact with Zatara during those months never noticed anything is ridiculous.
TLDR: The whole Nabu arc shouldn't have existed in the first place fanfiction is made for stuff like this, stuff that doesn't make sense. That entire arc was based on a plot hole, an honest mistake, that should've been taken out of the story and never even alluded too, not played straight.
At that point it wouldn't be Young Justice, though. All of those things you listed were very clearly true in canon; take that away, and you have knock-on effects that will eventually make the setting not Young Justice at all.
what? It's fan fiction dude. it's not like the premiss evaporates because Zatara isn't there. The team is still on going the characters still exist.
You can't warp an entire fic and have everyone act OoC for no reason only because you want to do a specific plot line and then act like it's good writing. It's not.
edit: also in canon the writers forgot about Zatara. A mistake is very different from a knowing and deliberate action
Eh, to be fair, Zatanna is canonically a part of the Justice League in Season 2 and shows no issue working with Fate nor any angst about it.
We only saw Fate having a total hold over Giovanni Zatara for (Nov 6 to Dec 31 =) 2 months, and then there's
5 years for us to have a time-skip in which things can occur. I've always been pissed that the production team just dropped that storyline too, but there's enough room to imagine something pretty reasonable.
My preferred assumption has always been that Fate kept Zatara for 1 year and 1 day (for magical reasons) and then he just showed up in front of Zatanna, thanked her for her understanding patience in this trying time as Fate tied up all the loose ends, and without further ado took off the Helmet.
Hugs, tears, they spent time together, and Zatara renegotiated for a more reasonable time-share because Fate had done a lot of good while he was wearing the Helmet.
...
Or you could go grim-dark and argue that (since I
think WoG got hedgy when people asked if it was still Zatara under the Helmet, but we also didn't see Zatara when all the other heroes assembled) Zatara is dead and it's someone else under the Helmet.
The most extreme version of that is the head-canon that Fate got Zatara KIA'd, but that begs the question of
a) why Fate is still on the League when they would have a hard time forgiving that,
b) how Fate got a new host, and
c) why there isn't a memorial to Zatara up there.
A more
reasonable version (given what we canonically know) would be something like, "after a year or two of using Zatara as his thrall, Fate realized Zatara was having health problems, and as it was
no one would be willing to become a new host after how he'd treated his current one, so Fate realized he had to shape up and mend his ways."
Apologies and renegotiations occur, Fate lets Zatara go free for some of the time to reunite with Zatanna, Zatara and Fate find potential replacements with whom Fate forms a more reasonable contract, and Zatara is either retired, bedridden, or passed away from x when Season 2 rolls around.
...
Or if you want to complain about whether or not the League did anything, since there's so much that could have happened off-screen, maybe Wonder Woman (who fought beside Dr Fate in WWII so they have an existing rapport) got fed up, got in his face, and challenged, "Fate, what you are doing is wrong, holding a man in eternal bondage after you held his daughter hostage. I defy you to put on my Lasso (if the Lasso of Truth is YJ cannon, IDK,) and tell me this behavior is right and correct."
Fate tries to put on the Lasso, has to face the truth, suffers Blue Screen Of Death, & mends his ways, followed by an option from the above.
My point being that there's plenty of room for almost any assumption we (as readers/viewers) want to make.
...
Personally I dislike and disagree with how Zoat portrayed it in WTR - which is why I'm handling it differently in Life Ore Death - but even with my head-canons about the characters' natures and possible reasonable results off-screen I think everything that happened was in-character.
Why? Because
OL's behavior escalated the situation between them.
In YJ canon, the undertones in
the conversation between Nabu, Mr. Nelson, and Wally (around 2:50) have all sorts of significant suggestions. We don't know why Mr. Nelson put the Helmet on the shelf, but Nabu does not "appreciate being permanently hidden away, useless, isolated for decades at a time". He just spent 45+ years on a shelf, in what is basically glorified solitary confinement, denied the ability to fulfill his purpose.
Mr Nelson says, of Nabu's ability to monopolize a body, that he "can, but shouldn't," do it. There's a lot of potential to read in there.
Then Mr. Nelson says Wally will see that doesn't happen again [by finding another host], and Wally adds, "
Yeah, I swear." He swears a promise to an inherently magical being, and then he... uh... we don't see Wally searching for a host on-screen, and the Helmet just goes back on a shelf, albeit a more well-lit and visited one.
In canon, you can even see a Rule of Three where Fate waited through 3 prospective hosts before refusing to relinquish the third one (Zatanna) after he was left on the shelf for 10 weeks again. And what had just happened when Zatanna put him on?
Chaos was "allowed to reign," which Fate was firmly against (3:12), because Klarion split the world in two and cataclysmically killed hundreds if not
thousands (WTR total is >800,000 I think) of innocent children.
In WTR the situation is arguably worse. Unless I get a Word of Zoat, we have no reason to assume Wally's internal discussion was any different from cannon, but what happened immediately after?
His eyes go from Mister Nelson's body to the floor. "He almost.. almost didn't let me go."
"Who didn't?"
"Nabu."
Oh.
He holds the Helmet up and looks at it for a moment.
I don't remember any version of Nabu who actually stole unwilling hosts.
"He wants someone to wear him badly enough that he'll just steal bodies? We'd never accept that."
"I don't think he cares."
... ... ...
"Nabu didn't treat Mister Nelson like that back in the forties. What changed?"
"He got stuck on a shelf for fifty years."
Makes sense.
"And now we have to leave him there, because he won't accept going back there. I wonder if Lords of Order have a concept of irony?"
This is
totally in-character for Paul, who is inherently self-interested, to only
really care about his personal in-group, but from Fate's PoV, immediately after he let go in good faith the boy who had just
sworn an oath to find him a new host, OL declares that the Helmet is going to be
put back on a shelf and left there.
No
wonder Nabu largely hates him.
OL similarly only cares about the negative consequences that have affected his friends, and with poor communication it all death spirals out of control.
