With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[Neruz]

If we limit ourselves to just the cartoon, we can say that the ponies got blindsided the first time and failed to come up with an effective counter later because 1) not much time had past, 2) Celestia was mentally checked out due to her upcoming retirement and 3) Thorax had taken over the hive and was friendly. Not good reasons, but not an indication that anyone involved was a moron.

If we include things like the Changeling Amulet and previous large scale changeling attacks, that is no longer true. Celestia, Equestria's officer corps and whatever other political leadership Equestria has are all pants-on-head retarded, because they had plenty of notice and plenty of examples but still took no action. Nothing there contradicts cartoon canon exactly, but that Equestria is a very different place to live.

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Celestia always struck me as incredibly overconfident to a hubristic degree, so her foolishly dismissing the Changelings as a threat because they've been defeated before seems pretty in character to me.

Though to be fair she is a magical powerhouse who can just body slam her way through 90% of problems, so her arrogance is not entirely misplaced.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Though to be fair she is a magical powerhouse who can just body slam her way through 90% of problems, so her arrogance is not entirely misplaced.

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Is she, though? She lost a fight to Chrysalis during the invasion, and lost a fight to a cloud after Flurry Heart destroyed the Crystal Heart. And off screen she lost a fight to Nightmare Moon, some vines and some regular changelings. The only time I can remember her winning something was when she counterspelled Twilight's Want It Need It spell.

 

[Neruz]

Is she, though? She lost a fight to Chrysalis during the invasion, and lost a fight to a cloud after Flurry Heart destroyed the Crystal Heart. And off screen she lost a fight to Nightmare Moon, some vines and some regular changelings. The only time I can remember her winning something was when she counterspelled Twilight's Want It Need It spell.

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Chrysalis was juiced up for that fight if memory serves, and Nightmare Moon is by all indications not significantly weaker than her, and while Celestia is extremely powerful she's not at all combat focused so if she can't just blindly bash through it with raw magical strength without causing collateral damage she has no real recourse.

I do agree that her and Luna being unable to do anything more than temporarily delay the storm is absurd and makes no sense though, especially since weather management is one of the skills she should be actually good at. Going "northern weather is speshul" does not justify it at all.


e: Daybreaker does also demonstrate that Celestia does not seem be going anything like as hard as she is actually capable of going, presumably because unlike Celestia, Daybreaker has absolutely no problem with obliterating dudes.

Which still doesn't explain the cloud mind you.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Chrysalis was juiced up for that fight if memory serves

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She fed on Shining Armor, and had been for a while. And he was the only one we see her feeding on. Despite having Candace chained up in the mines there was no sign that she fed on her. Really more 'well-fed' than 'juicing'.

Nightmare Moon is by all indications not significantly weaker than her, and while Celestia is extremely powerful she's not at all combat focused so if she can't just blindly bash through it with raw magical strength without causing collateral damage she has no real recourse.

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She was losing their first fight before Celestia used the Elements, and lost the second so quickly and quietly that no one knew a fight had even happened.

 

[Signaller]

I'll take a stab at it. Basically, any ring user has to be experiencing their color's emotion to make constructs, and that emotion has to be directly related to the construct they are making. As we see often with orange, Paul doesn't have to pay attention to what he is doing, he just has to actively want it to happen.

For Green Lanterns, the paying attention part IS the emotion they have to channel. Naively, it would seem that they should be able to substitute intensity of focus for mechanical precision the way Paul substitutes intensity of desire, but, well,

If they're focusing really hard on something other than the construct itself, then they are, by definition, distracted. They can't channel green light from arbitrary focus into arbitrary constructs, they have to focus on the construct, and the AI can't channel it for them into something they aren't actually thinking about.* Picturing the whole construct and setting it in motion as an act of direct will is just...how green rings work, and if you can't actually imagine how a device would accomplish what you need, then...the construct doesn't do that, I guess.

I assume extremely powerful/skilled Green Lanterns can brute force solutions by "just trying harder" anyway, but that probably results in a wave of reality-warping green light rather than any kind of specific construct that the Lantern otherwise doesn't understand.

*Anti-green rings do this, so maybe the Guardians could get it to work, but the tradeoffs aren't worth it, or something.

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Unless Zoat has other ideas, this should probably be referenced in text or linked to on the main page somewhere? It'd be an interesting discussion at some point between a Guardian, Malvolio and maybe Guy or Stewart?

 

[Mr Zoat]

Unless Zoat has other ideas, this should probably be referenced in text or linked to on the main page somewhere? It'd be an interesting discussion at some point between a Guardian, Malvolio and maybe Guy or Stewart?

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I... Think it's come up at some point. Something about there being a reason why Jordan uses boxing gloves?

 

[Vaermina]

Well what can you do? Sometimes overwhelming force is the best solution to a complicated problem.

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Nothing wrong with overwhelming force.

The problem is he always lectures others about not doing things his way when his way is objectively worse and only really works because he has overwhelming force to back it up.

 

[Ardy]

I... Think it's come up at some point. Something about there being a reason why Jordan uses boxing gloves?

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Guardians nixed AI-support after the the man hunters disaster, controllers didn't

 

[Mr Zoat]

Guardians nixed AI-support after the the man hunters disaster, controllers didn't

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The Controllers are the ones who became anti-AI after that. They split because the Guardians didn't want to destroy them.

 

[Jankl]

So is Orange lantern ever going to upgrade his Amygdala like Jade did to herself and all those patients and as he did to Huang Jianhong? It seemed like a pretty useful change.

 

[Darko]

So is Orange lantern ever going to upgrade his Amygdala like Jade did to herself and all those patients and as he did to Huang Jianhong? It seemed like a pretty useful change.

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Jade's upgrade was mostly accidental, and her uncle barely had a functioning brain.

Paul may not want to accidentally give himself a seizure.

 

[Ardy]

The Controllers are the ones who became anti-AI after that. They split because the Guardians didn't want to destroy them.

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That's not what you said for the past decade or so?

 

[Neruz]

Nothing wrong with overwhelming force.

The problem is he always lectures others about not doing things his way when his way is objectively worse and only really works because he has overwhelming force to back it up.

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It's not so much people not doing things his way as people not doing things that they could be doing very easily that would improve their effectiveness.

Any power ring user can deploy any technology they have spent a bit of time understanding, and Earth has access to a wide variety of unhinged technologies. If the various Green Lanterns spent a few hours every week studying some of the tech the Justice League had acquired over the years, they'd have a much wider arsenal of capabilities available to them.

Yet for some reason nobody on the heroic side of things ever seems to bother to try and expand their capabilities until they're forced into a situation where their current capabilities are insufficient.

(The actual reason is of course narrative in nature, which is why it doesn't make consistent in-universe sense.)

 

[BR549]

Is she, though? She lost a fight to Chrysalis during the invasion, and lost a fight to a cloud after Flurry Heart destroyed the Crystal Heart. And off screen she lost a fight to Nightmare Moon, some vines and some regular changelings. The only time I can remember her winning something was when she counterspelled Twilight's Want It Need It spell.

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In universe, that's a odd problem, yes.

Out of universe it's because Celestia fills the role of an Adult Authority Figure in a children's cartoon where the main characters are a bunch of (functionally) kids, and is thus contractually obliged to be useless at resolving anything at all.

 

[Mr Zoat]

That's not what you said for the past decade or so?

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I'm pretty sure it is? I was literally quoting from the comics, there. The Manhunters slaughtered a sector, the Guardians wanted to repurpose them and the Controllers wanted to destroy them.

So is Orange lantern ever going to upgrade his Amygdala like Jade did to herself and all those patients and as he did to Huang Jianhong? It seemed like a pretty useful change.

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'Upgrade' wasn't an improvement. It was more to make it highly sensitive, which has significant effects on the user's personality.

In universe, that's a odd problem, yes.

Out of universe it's because Celestia fills the role of an Adult Authority Figure in a children's cartoon where the main characters are a bunch of (functionally) kids, and is thus contractually obliged to be useless at resolving anything at all.

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True.

 

[Mr Zoat]

16th October 2013
19:04 G.M.T.

I warp back into the Cygnus system, construct armour reinforced and an extra plasma shield added to my armour. It's unwieldy and the armour's battery won't be able to sustain it if my ring gets neutralised again, but I think it's worth it. Scan for-.

Oh.

"Jordan? Injuries?"

"Nothing I can't take care of later. Gaart?"

Gaart warps into the system behind me. "Sir?"

"No lasting damage?"

"A few honourable scars, sir. And I think I have a better idea of what being a Green Lantern requires."

"What's the fleet doing?"

"The battleship got its shields back up, but the missiles managed to overwhelm it anyway. The dreadnought's a write off. From the looks of things they're taking off survivors and bugging out."

I scan the area around the planet… Yeah. Not exactly quickly, but they appear to be leaving. "Where's Jade?"

"I sent her to Debstam Four to rescue Niiniini while this asshole was distracted. Guess she pulled something off."

"A world with iron age technology against a Darkstar with a starship…"

"Rescuing Niiniini wouldn't weaken Arkymandryte's constructs. right?"

"It-." Hm. "No. She could undermine the fear he caused, but without modern communications technology that wouldn't spread across the planet. You got his ring?"

"Yeah, and this is going straight to Oa. See if the Guardians can find out where he made it."

Oh? "It's an actual ring and not a construct imbued with power?"

"Sure feels like it." His eyes narrow. "Think we could do something about that fleet?"

"Ye-ah..?" I sigh. "They've probably got holds full of that yellow crystal, but if I jam their teleporters and we stay in their rear arc, we should be alright. Except there's a risk that we'll lose that ring and your prisoner."

"Gaart can take them both to Oa."

"Given the value… No offence intended to Lantern Gaart…"

"He could get ambushed by Sinestro. Hold on. Jordan to Salaak."

"Lantern Jordan. Why are you in Space Sector Two Eight One One?""

"Rescuing the Sector Lanterns, stopping a Dread Horde fleet and beating up a Yellow Lantern. You got anyone in the area?"

"The closest Honour Guard Lantern is Lantern Gardner."

"Seriously?"

The undamaged battleship triggers its faster than light drive and vanishes, along with its escorts.

"One moment. Illustres to Mongul the Second. Where are you going? What happened to 'do not dare disappoint me'?"

"Paul, I don't think that's gunna do anything. Salaak, I'm sending you the data. The Dread Horde has a-."

There's a green flare as… Lantern Niiniini warps in with Jade's ship on a tether.

"They've picked up some kind of Apokoliptian crystal that neutralises constructs."

"Did they acquired samples, or did they acquire the technology to produce more?"

"Samples, but a lot of them. It's something we can work around, but we should probably train for it with any Lantern in a Sector where the Dread Horde has a presence."

"Clarissi Salaak."

"Illustres."

"What's the likely result of Apokolips finding out about this?"

"They are unpredictable. Darkseid may take offence, or he may simply observe. The worst case scenario would be him deciding that he was about to lose the advantage of surprise and attack immediately."

"So just telling him and hoping that they fight between themselves..?"

"I would prefer not to take the risk."

"Right." And while he can't give me orders, the Orange Lantern Corps doesn't operate anywhere where the Dread Horde operates-. "Excuse me."

Disconnect, contact Lantern Mother of Mercy on a private channel. And plot course to the rear of the fleet. Might as well kill off those escorts.

Compliance.

Space jumps and my colleagues vanish behind me as I generate a construct railgun. Uh, the dreadnought is going to crash onto the surface-. We'll have to evacuate the remaining slave workers-.

Ring, plot… Likely impact zone?

An image appears in my mind. Okay, that could cause a cave-in, but it's far enough away that the Apokoliptian tunnels should-.

Scuttling charges go off on the spacewards surface of the dead dreadnought and the crippled battleship, propelling them towards the planet. Revise impact zoneshit.

"Regrettably, Lantern, I have a more pressing task." Mongul Junior. Naturally. "The next time we meet will be the last."

"Illustres to Lanterns in-system. Two capital ships falling towards the slave mine. Assistance requested."

I warp into the atmosphere, looking up at the colossal ship as it begins to hit the upper atmosphere. Hot as friction can make the hull, the fact is that the armour of an advanced warship can easily take it, because actual weapons hit way harder. Oh, and there's the battleship, just a little behind.

Uh.

Shockwave from hitting the atmosphere-. Yeah, I need to get started. Crumbler ram biggerbiggerBIGGER! And hit! Okay, good the hull's getting erased, and that should-.

My construct vanishes, crystals falling out of the remains of the hull.

Balls.

But I'm not in range, and those crystals aren't anything like as dense as the hull.

Crumbler again, hit somewhere that doesn't look like a cargo bay and keep hitting-.

Construct fails. Again. And again. Break it to pieces! Behind the shattering dreadnought, construct tethers appear around the battle ship and try to redirect it-. Another chunk of hull explodes, throwing crystals out and destroying their tethers!

Uh. What now?

 

[PJCG]

Construct fails. Again. And again. Break it to pieces! Behind the shattering dreadnought, construct tethers appear around the battle ship and try to redirect it-. Another chunk of hull explodes, throwing crystals out and destroying their tethers!

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Some green texts that should be yellow?

 

[lancelot]

"Ye-ah..?" I sigh. "They've probably got holds full of that yellow crystal, but if I jam their teleporters and we stay in their rear arc, we should be alright. Except there's a risk that we'll lose that ring and your prisoner."

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I never understand this and it happens a lot. You're on a time limit for something maybe the bad guys are getting away like this time, maybe there's about to be attack on some place, or something.
Basically you're in a situation where seconds matter, and instead of doing something about it even if it isn't the prefect solution, you just sit there and have a conversation. In this case the solution is a singularity weapons applied to a battleship doesn't have enough holes in it. Instead of talking about the problem you could fix that problem.

Instead by the time you're even close to done with the conversation the battleship that is likely filled with fear crystals that would really ruin the Green Lantern Corps day if the Yellow Lanterns start a war with them Is gone bye bye along with that dipshit Mongul.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Some green texts that should be yellow?

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No, he's really focused right there.