lordyellowtail | Looking for Everyone and Everything.

Hello, everyone. As I mentioned earlier, I'm still in the process of getting re-situated for online journaling and community participation, and one of the worst things about being off the grid five or six years is coming back and suddenly not knowing where anyone is (or who anyone is--I'm looking at my old LJ friend list and don't recognize half the account names because they've been changed (oops)).

Finding people isn't so hard once you find one or two old friends, because odds are they're still friends with the other people you're looking for that they were friends with before. ... And yes that sentence is terrible and I'm too tired to fix it. And there's this lovely warm feeling you get when you find someone you haven't talked to in years and they're still online and remember who you are and are happy to see you. :)

The problem I'm currently having is trying to figure out where the major discussion for various fandoms has gone. Before Strikethrough and Boldthrough, pretty much all the most active long-form fandom discussion and writing groups seemed to be somewhere on LiveJournal. It was huge and easy to get lost and turned around, but there was a map, and people who knew where things were. It was like being stuck on a gigantic super-continent.

Now everything feels so very fragmented. Given how much more interconnected things have become since 2007, it's really shocking that fandom itself feels this way. Not that I don't understand why. The whole mess with LiveJournal really was enough to cause chaos and diaspora. Still, it makes things more difficult. Before, mass congregation seemed to happen on LJ or not at all. Now, people could be on LJ, DW, Tumblr, Archive of Our Own, their own blogs, somewhere else, or some combination of all those.

So I sort of have this constant feeling of "am I missing something really cool because I don't know where to look?"

I'm keeping my LJ open and crossposting there for the moment (though I'm really only keeping it in case there are communities there I want to visit), and am active on AO3 and FFN, but I don't have the time or energy to try to keep track of several different networks anymore, especially if I want to actually have free time to write things. So those plus DW and the occasional Tumblr (though it still weirds me out that so much of fandom has migrated there because Tumblr, really?) are what I'm going to focus on, with most of my focus hopefully here on DW just for sanity's sake.

So, the point (there is one!). I find myself with a list of fandoms I want to talk about/read fic about, and no real idea where that's done anymore. Is it here? LJ? Somewhere else? So I'm going to list them here 1) to remind myself what I'm looking for; and 2) in case someone has a map and knows where I should go.

Sailor Moon: There's the sailormoonfans community on LJ, and ilyena_sylph was kind enough to point me to sailormoon here on DW, which looks like a fairly happening place.
The Flash (2014): This series is pretty much what got me determined to dip my toe back into fandom again (and inadvertently therefore what got me clued into the Sailor Moon revival, in a Kevin Bacon-ish way.) I'm still looking for a good discussion/fic space.
The DCAU (including Teen Titans:TAS, The Batman, Batman the Brave and the Bold, the recent DTVs, and almost everything else): Because it's still more fun and accessible than the comics it's based on. I haven't really started looking for this yet. (Maybe someday I'll even stop gnashing my teeth at Young Justice.)
Harry Potter: Looking for discussion and fic. Because why not. This is the fandom where I'm most interested just so see what the current state of things is as far as what's popular in terms of pairings and what Fandom Specific Plots are in vogue, etc., etc.
Pokemon: Because I am resigned to the fact that even when I reach the point I can't remember my own name anymore, I'll probably still be a pokeshipper and pissed off about Misty leaving the show because OTP, damn it.

I'll probably update this post from time to time as I find things and start looking for other things...

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I Tumblr. I see a bit of most of these things go by, but save TimmVerse DCUA, I'm not actively looking for any of it?

Also, curiosity has me: What part of Young Justice makes you gnash teeth? I'd stopped watching TV by that point (recently reacquired habit with a specific set of shows) and only know most of its highlights and flaws due to Tumblr.

Content-wise, Young Justice animated is really, really neat. It’s a fresh take on a lot of characters, and gets us a lot of characters in animated form that we never had before, with some very involved and well developed plot and character arcs. It’s arguably the most comic-like animated DC thing we’ve gotten, in a good way.

My problem with it is that it’s actually called Young Justice. Because it isn’t. Peter David’s Young Justice comic book was about a nearly entirely different group of characters and told a massively different story, about a bunch of misfit superpowered kids who were sort of adrift and alone coming together and being each other’s family when they didn’t always have anyone else. It was mostly lighthearted but these were still the proteges of the world’s greatest heroes and they had spine when they needed it and would stand up to Darkseid, the Justice League, or the US Government if it was that kind of day—and win not because they were hardened mini-badasses, but because they were crazy awesome adorable badasses. It was incredibly heartwarming, and sweet, and took a handful of frankly ridiculous characters and made you care about them as real people. And there were supporting cast that mattered. Cissie walked away from being a superhero in a dramatic and well written storyline and went on to have a successful and happy life doing what she wanted, not letting her mother make her something she didn’t want to be, and that was shown in a positive light. It was fun because it knew when not to take itself seriously, and when it absolutely had to take itself seriously, and probably one of the best comics I’ve ever read.

It was like the Wonder Years for teenage superheroes.

The animated series has an almost completely different cast, and a massively different tone and plot. The team doesn’t even assemble the same way. It’s more like a (very AU) adaptation of the comic book Teen Titans than anything else, with elements Young Justice thrown in almost as justification to use the name.

Cissie—Arrowette—doesn’t even exist in the cartoon, apparently. Secret isn’t a founding member of the team/the reason they came together. According to someone who watches the show regularly, it’s more like YJ was formed by the Justice League as a sort of black ops group to do the things the League couldn’t do to avoid negative publicity. (What.)

The Young Justice that I grew up with had a very specific, wonderful sort of heart. For all that the animated series is actually pretty amazing in terms of content, it does NOT have that heart and shouldn’t be hijacking the name.

Yay. Your reasons for rant are pretty much the full reason I did not want to watch it at all, even though my heart and soul character was their mentor.

I've never watched more than one or two clips on YouTube. I don't even know who their mentor is.

I'm glad you agreed with my rant. It makes me feel better to know I'm not the only one who feels this way about it.

I miss the real Young Justice. I still often smile when thinking of the time Secret needed to distract a bunch of people to cover for the team and so created the most terrifying diversion she could think of... a 50 Foot Ken Starr.

Random Guy: "It's the Independent Counsel! We're all gonna die!"

I miss Secret. And YJ!Era Tim. And Secret and Tim. And Bart. And Cassie and Cissie and Kon-El and Empress and Snapper and Slobo and ...

(Traya isn't even in the cartoon. UNACCEPTABLE.)

Black Canary was the mentor, originally, I think. And Zatanna had a hand with them too. So it was nice to see the Nets Team getting some media exposure.

BUT! You don't just throw the Young Justice name on what was basically a Titans team and go with it as a grim, dark universe.

Looking for Everyone and Everything.

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Fair warning: I just grabbed the rant ball...

Re: Fair warning: I just grabbed the rant ball...

Re: Fair warning: I just grabbed the rant ball...

Re: Fair warning: I just grabbed the rant ball...