So THAT'S it...

In my comments, I just figured out why the Amazons Attack and Sinestro Corps War reactions bother me.

Well, its a working theory, anyway.

I work at an office where we have shifts. Sometimes the entire office fucks up. Sometimes just one shift fucks up. Sometimes one shift fucks up when the other two shifts are kicking ass at the exact same task. Wen that happens, the blame gets assigned to the shift who actually fucked up, and while issuing a stern warning to the others is fair, what is not fair is assuming that the other shifts will fuck up in the exact same way.

What is extremely unfair is assuming that the people on the other shifts will fuck up in a different way.

Effectively, when I hear that the followup story to Amazons Attack will likely be as crappy as Amazons Attack because the followup story to Cassandra Cain's going evil story was crappy, I hear "Matthew's team won't be able to correctly solder that circuit breaker on swingshift, because Christina's team fucked up the preflights on midshift."

What the fuck?! That makes no fucking sense to me.

Not only that I know from where I work that people have different strengths and weaknesses. Christina may suck at preflights, but she's gotten honors in 3 different wire maintenance courses and happens to be an amateur ham radio enthusiast with at least 10 years put into her hobby so she knows her shit when it comes to soldering.

So, when I hear that Geoff Johns will break his narrative habits in Sinestro Corps to kill/ruin Kyle because he wrote a crappy story in Teen Titans involving Cassandra Cain I can't help but have the same reaction as I would have to "Christina shouldn't be trusted with soldering that circuit breaker because she missed a loose screw in the preflight inspection last night."

Even though she has soldered an integrated circuit onto a circuit card before and done so according to every necessary regulation. She fucked up one preflight, all other skills are untrustworthy.

Again, what the fuck?! How does this train of thought make sense?

Oh, but someone is about to tell me that the editorial staff sets the direction! So, its perfectly all right to make blanket assumptions about the entire writing staff of DC Comics, even though certain writers have actually worked quite well under this particular set of management.

See, when I hear that I have the same reaction as hearing "Matthew is bound to fuck up because your shop chief is an idiot."

Allow me to repeat that.

"Matthew will fail because his boss sucks."

Here's the thing with that one. If it were based on the boss's actual weaknesses, I could see a boss screwing up their employees. But these particular employees have made strong showings under the same boss in the same sort of jobs. Not only that, the conclusions that the boss will cause Matthew to fuck up are still based on Christina fucking up the preflight. It merely adds a "Christina fucked up the preflight because the shop chief didn't give her the right guidelines" which exonerates Christina when it comes to the preflight but sure as hell doesn't condemn Matthew when it comes to soldering. Because both have done successful work under this shop chief, there is no reason to believe there's a problem with the boss-employee relationship that will cause this job to fail.

There's no guarantee Matthew and Christina won't fuck up this job, there's no guarantees of anything. But there is no real basis for the assumption that they both will. I've never seen Matthew solder, but he's got all the qualifications and nothing he has said or done gives me a reason believe he can't do it. Christina's screwed up on different things, but she has actually given me a lot of reason to think she'll succeed admirably at soldering. I've seen her do it before. If I were to refuse to let either person do the soldering job and then tell the boss it was because of Christina's preflight, I would be quietly transferred to a position where I wouldn't have access to personnel or aircraft. And the boss would be right to do so, because I would be making a decision that is totally unfair to everybody.

I mean I've nothing against criticizing creators, and I've nothing against drawing conclusions based on past weaknesses. But you have to make sure that the conclusion is based on is something they actually did that constitutes an actual weakness in the area that you are coming to a conclusion about. You should criticize a creator's actual weak spots. Jodi Piccoult and Will Pfiefer are on the list of writers I don't trust with Wonder Woman, Gail Simone and Grant Morrison have given me no reason to put them on the list. I wouldn't let Geoff Johns touch certain characters (Wonder Girl, Bart Allen) with a ten-foot pole if I had a choice but he knows his fucking Lanterns.

You don't like Geoff Johns or Gail Simone? I'm sure you've got your reasons (more than once these reasons have been the exact same ones I put on my "reasons I like this writer" list) and you probably won't enjoy the stories anyway. But if you expect Geoff Johns to give you a surprise even though he's an incredibly predictable writer, I have to disagree and tell you you're misreading the stories. And if you've no faith in Gail Simone just because of Will Pfiefer's work, your reasoning is just plain skewed.

Now, this is your money and there's no reason for you to spend it when you don't think the storyline will work out, but there's still the matter of talking about why you won't spend your money on the internet. Under that subject falls perfectly understandable opinions, excellent reasoning, reasoning that proves to be on shaky (or in some cases nonexistent) ground, stupid assumptions based on unrelated events, and stupid conclusions that make my head hurt and cause me to blog these sort of posts.