VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
So I've tried writing this post for the last few weeks, but have until now failed to actually get the words out, partly because I was sort of hoping things got better, but mostly because it was actually painful to think about this latest season, but I've given up on the former and I think saying what I feel might actually help a bit. So in short Season 3 of Young Justice sucks. It's really really terrible and frankly, I'm astonished how badly this show is fucked up.
To start, the plot, such as it is, feels so disjointed and weird that it wouldn't shock me if someone said that this was originally written as either a film or a short miniseries. The show is taking constant deviations from the actual conflict and issues to deal with what only can be called bullshit padding. Once Forager and Halo had an episode where they went to high school in disguise for "shenanigans" I had to just give up. Of all the hack story conventions they could have pulled right out of their ass, they had to go with "weird character has to act normal and doesn't get it". I'll get more into those characters and why I hate them, but to go back to the padding, the whole fish out of water thing is only one of the several nonsense plot digressions present in the show at this point. Like for instance we didn't really need to have an episode where Nightwing spends 2/3s of the show tooling around with Roy, his clone, and some third guy I don't recognize but who is supposed to be Guardian. What does this add to the story at all? Or the episode devoted to the Three Stooges flying right to Ra's Al Gul's door, getting captured, then leaving with no further incident or cost to anyone. What the fuck was the point of that? To play coy with Jason Todd not being dead? Welcome back to 2010 I guess. That's not even mentioning the fact that 2/3s of the episodes are devoted to training that goes nowhere and pointless fights. Sure the first two seasons had fights and action in pretty much every episode, but it felt tight and tense with actual plot and drama, rather than pointless action and fanservice.
The fucked up part is that the actual story is pushed so far into the margins that it's barely there at all. The other two seasons had interesting and compelling mysteries to them that made the viewer want to tune in to see how the heroes deal with it. Every episode was in some way involved with this plot and had actual impacts on the overall story. Even seemingly minor details were important. Here any mysteries they do have are solved for you pretty much right away and the actual story is so simple that anyone with any understanding of the DC comics could figure out what the overall plan is.
Well if most of the episodes are dull padding and the actual plot is childlike in its simplicity what's left to watch for? The characters? Well, that'd work if all the characters were fucking horrible. Nightwing is about as close as this show gets to the main character and he seems to show up only out of contract obligations, there to dispense some exposition and dull platitudes while adding nothing to the main story. Superboy is so flat he manages to be the first 1-dimensional 2d cartoon and Miss Martian is there, less horrible than before but still oddly myopic and oddly creepy. I distinctly remember when she and Wonder Girl were effectively bitching about their boyfriends and I wanted to scream at her "Didn't you once mind rape Superboy in order to gaslight him?!?" She should be glad he looks her in the eye much less wants to marry her, and yet she's constantly playing the typical cliche girlfriend who is the responsible and mature one in the relationship because the writers basically wrote this show by hitting random page on TvTropes. Speaking of failed romance, the one character who might have actually been interesting, Artemis, is laughably misused that I'm shocked that the VA didn't quit mid-production. I mean she only lost her one true love less than two years ago, returned to fighting crime to cope, and is basically exactly where she didn't want to be when Wally died. Instead, we get her playing house with her brother in law and den mother to the new characters.
Speaking of these horrible horrible mistakes called the Outsiders, I hate them. All of them, though I will concede that Halo is at least tolerable in small doses. Her whole River Tam impression became grating in record time and the fact she doesn't seem poised to grow or change is maddening. Especially since within only a few episodes, they introduced Forager, who is essentially the same character, only more annoying and less justifiable. If there's one thing I hate in sci-fi it's alien characters who fail to grasp basic social and cultural conventions no matter how long they live with humans. the first time he takes an idiom literally it's merely trite and annoying. The 50th time it's the writers punching you right in the gut with how few fucks they give. This is especially bad when they force these two to interact, like say at a high school setting, with no one trying to teach or help them fit in with the people around them, largely because the creators of this show don't respect you. Of course as bad as these morons are they tower over the third member in terms of likability.
I know what I say will sound like hyperbole or me trying to be joking, but I absolutely 100% mean this next part: Geoforce is the worst character in the history of this show. He might be the worst character ever created by DC in history. He's loathsome in every conceivable way. Even more so than the actual fucking villains on this show. At least they have some positive human qualities or at least an awareness of the fact they're bad people. Geoforce has none of that. Every second he's on screen he makes the show worse for it. The show keeps telling you that his petulant whining, his high and mighty snobbishness, his demanding nature and uncontrolled temper are all signs that he's broody and troubled, like Superboy. Except Superboy was able to show some appreciation for those around him, understood if people told him no, and actually had good reasons for acting like someone who never had any prolonged social contact. Geoforce is just a shit head who constantly acts superior to the people helping him and becoming pissed off the second they tell him no. He's basically Joffrey with superpowers.
That's not even getting into the really suspect relationship he has with Halo. Like I didn't think they could create a more warped and fucked up relationship than M'Gann and Superboy, but boy was I wrong. I honestly don't see how no one in the writing room thought the idea of a man in his 20's and a teenage girl no older than 18 but likely much younger would work in the best circumstance. Much less in the circumstances of Halo scanning much younger due to her lack of memories and Geoforce's personality making him out to be at least in his mid-20s. Not only that but no one calls him out on this. You'd think Nightwing would pull him aside and tell him not to flirt with a childlike teen girl that he's likely nearly a decade older than. My god, how did no one catch this in the writing stage? It's not cute, it's fucked up and creepy. But considering this is the team that gave us...everything related to Miss Martian's love life I don't think they think this shit through at all.
The sad part is that there are actual moments of brilliance and art buried deep in this shit. Vandal Savage's episode so perfectly demonstrated why he is both a dangerous foe, a force to respect, and a monster to be feared with actual drama and intensity. The episode where the heroes are foiling a plan out of order was a neat trick that actually felt like old Young Justice was back. However the failure to actually play to their strengths cripple this show from the start and frankly, they should have left well enough alone rather than digging up YJ's corpse in order to piss in its mouth.
To start, the plot, such as it is, feels so disjointed and weird that it wouldn't shock me if someone said that this was originally written as either a film or a short miniseries. The show is taking constant deviations from the actual conflict and issues to deal with what only can be called bullshit padding. Once Forager and Halo had an episode where they went to high school in disguise for "shenanigans" I had to just give up. Of all the hack story conventions they could have pulled right out of their ass, they had to go with "weird character has to act normal and doesn't get it". I'll get more into those characters and why I hate them, but to go back to the padding, the whole fish out of water thing is only one of the several nonsense plot digressions present in the show at this point. Like for instance we didn't really need to have an episode where Nightwing spends 2/3s of the show tooling around with Roy, his clone, and some third guy I don't recognize but who is supposed to be Guardian. What does this add to the story at all? Or the episode devoted to the Three Stooges flying right to Ra's Al Gul's door, getting captured, then leaving with no further incident or cost to anyone. What the fuck was the point of that? To play coy with Jason Todd not being dead? Welcome back to 2010 I guess. That's not even mentioning the fact that 2/3s of the episodes are devoted to training that goes nowhere and pointless fights. Sure the first two seasons had fights and action in pretty much every episode, but it felt tight and tense with actual plot and drama, rather than pointless action and fanservice.
The fucked up part is that the actual story is pushed so far into the margins that it's barely there at all. The other two seasons had interesting and compelling mysteries to them that made the viewer want to tune in to see how the heroes deal with it. Every episode was in some way involved with this plot and had actual impacts on the overall story. Even seemingly minor details were important. Here any mysteries they do have are solved for you pretty much right away and the actual story is so simple that anyone with any understanding of the DC comics could figure out what the overall plan is.
Well if most of the episodes are dull padding and the actual plot is childlike in its simplicity what's left to watch for? The characters? Well, that'd work if all the characters were fucking horrible. Nightwing is about as close as this show gets to the main character and he seems to show up only out of contract obligations, there to dispense some exposition and dull platitudes while adding nothing to the main story. Superboy is so flat he manages to be the first 1-dimensional 2d cartoon and Miss Martian is there, less horrible than before but still oddly myopic and oddly creepy. I distinctly remember when she and Wonder Girl were effectively bitching about their boyfriends and I wanted to scream at her "Didn't you once mind rape Superboy in order to gaslight him?!?" She should be glad he looks her in the eye much less wants to marry her, and yet she's constantly playing the typical cliche girlfriend who is the responsible and mature one in the relationship because the writers basically wrote this show by hitting random page on TvTropes. Speaking of failed romance, the one character who might have actually been interesting, Artemis, is laughably misused that I'm shocked that the VA didn't quit mid-production. I mean she only lost her one true love less than two years ago, returned to fighting crime to cope, and is basically exactly where she didn't want to be when Wally died. Instead, we get her playing house with her brother in law and den mother to the new characters.
Speaking of these horrible horrible mistakes called the Outsiders, I hate them. All of them, though I will concede that Halo is at least tolerable in small doses. Her whole River Tam impression became grating in record time and the fact she doesn't seem poised to grow or change is maddening. Especially since within only a few episodes, they introduced Forager, who is essentially the same character, only more annoying and less justifiable. If there's one thing I hate in sci-fi it's alien characters who fail to grasp basic social and cultural conventions no matter how long they live with humans. the first time he takes an idiom literally it's merely trite and annoying. The 50th time it's the writers punching you right in the gut with how few fucks they give. This is especially bad when they force these two to interact, like say at a high school setting, with no one trying to teach or help them fit in with the people around them, largely because the creators of this show don't respect you. Of course as bad as these morons are they tower over the third member in terms of likability.
I know what I say will sound like hyperbole or me trying to be joking, but I absolutely 100% mean this next part: Geoforce is the worst character in the history of this show. He might be the worst character ever created by DC in history. He's loathsome in every conceivable way. Even more so than the actual fucking villains on this show. At least they have some positive human qualities or at least an awareness of the fact they're bad people. Geoforce has none of that. Every second he's on screen he makes the show worse for it. The show keeps telling you that his petulant whining, his high and mighty snobbishness, his demanding nature and uncontrolled temper are all signs that he's broody and troubled, like Superboy. Except Superboy was able to show some appreciation for those around him, understood if people told him no, and actually had good reasons for acting like someone who never had any prolonged social contact. Geoforce is just a shit head who constantly acts superior to the people helping him and becoming pissed off the second they tell him no. He's basically Joffrey with superpowers.
That's not even getting into the really suspect relationship he has with Halo. Like I didn't think they could create a more warped and fucked up relationship than M'Gann and Superboy, but boy was I wrong. I honestly don't see how no one in the writing room thought the idea of a man in his 20's and a teenage girl no older than 18 but likely much younger would work in the best circumstance. Much less in the circumstances of Halo scanning much younger due to her lack of memories and Geoforce's personality making him out to be at least in his mid-20s. Not only that but no one calls him out on this. You'd think Nightwing would pull him aside and tell him not to flirt with a childlike teen girl that he's likely nearly a decade older than. My god, how did no one catch this in the writing stage? It's not cute, it's fucked up and creepy. But considering this is the team that gave us...everything related to Miss Martian's love life I don't think they think this shit through at all.
The sad part is that there are actual moments of brilliance and art buried deep in this shit. Vandal Savage's episode so perfectly demonstrated why he is both a dangerous foe, a force to respect, and a monster to be feared with actual drama and intensity. The episode where the heroes are foiling a plan out of order was a neat trick that actually felt like old Young Justice was back. However the failure to actually play to their strengths cripple this show from the start and frankly, they should have left well enough alone rather than digging up YJ's corpse in order to piss in its mouth.
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