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

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by Mr Zoat, Jan 27, 2019.

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  1. Ace Dreamer

    Ace Dreamer Questioning The Nature of our Realities

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    Humans, as a species, are inclined to ignore what they consider to be the low probability/risk stuff. Because they want to get on with living their lives. The world-ending sky rock, etc., etc. But, for some of this stuff you at least need to have a group, like the UN, or some other world-wide organisation, to keep an eye out. Relying on individuals, super or otherwise, just isn't good enough.

    I found reading about Black Swan Theory interesting...
     
  2. BR549

    BR549 This is filth! FILTH!!

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    It's also worth remembering that for both Paul and Grayven their main issue with the Light isn't their actual goal, it's the supervillian means to that end.

    And that goal?

    "Earth standing on its own galactic feet without being propped up by superpowered beings."

    If Paul stuck his nose in what is, by all evidence, an entirely legal and above-board trading expedition, then he completely undercuts that point.

    Yes, they Chose.

    Orange Lantern, on the other hand, did not. He never asked for this. And, as mentioned above, his Getting Involved runs in direct counter to his stated principles. (Congratulations, you don't want him to be a superhero, you want him to be a politician.)

    The petulant behavior here is on the part of the entire rest of the Justice League, of whom only Aquaman is remotely justified in being annoyed at OL at the moment, who are demanding Paul act as at least Ambassador Of Earth if not - as he explicitly said he Does Not Want - King Of Earth in dealing with a legal alien trading expedition that is coincidental but entirely unrelated to his calling for OLC backup when it comes to the situation under the sea.

    Let us, as you said above, lay out casuality here:

    -OL called for backup to be on station if it became needed, in exchange for the mages he needed.
    -Dox decided it would be funny to send Manga Khan to Earth as the backup, because then Paul has to deal with him and Dox doesn't.
    -Manga Khan, entirely on his own account as a businessman (businessgascloud?), decided to kill two avians with one projectile and wear his ClusterCorp hat at the same time he wears his Orange Lantern Corps ring.
    -Paul makes it very clear that the trading expedition is not his circus, and thus, not his monkeys, for very good reasons that are entirely consistent with his prior actions and stated beliefs.
    -Everybody else points at Paul to deal with the aforementioned monkeys' poop-flinging, a job that many of them are far better suited to do, just because, coincidentally, the leader of the monkeys' troop happens to wear an orange ring.

    Paul is entirely justified at being annoyed at everybody else who is not only deliberately shirking their duties but are going out of their way to do so and leave him stuck with the job, and when the explosions inevitably occur (most likely as the cliffhanger to tomorrow's story post) he will be entirely justified in writing 'I TOLD YOU SO' in sufficiently-sized orange letters to cover the entire Earth-facing side of Luna.
     
  3. Grimnar

    Grimnar Versed in the lewd.

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    He's literally doing this to see his politics furthered, he's already acting as a politician in practice. His entire stance here is political, because it's to further his political agenda. So no, this holds no water.
     
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  4. BR549

    BR549 This is filth! FILTH!!

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    ...

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Ace Dreamer

    Ace Dreamer Questioning The Nature of our Realities

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    While that image resembles me, far too much, I'd like to think of the joke as tapping me on the shoulder, and, maybe tapping its foot, because I often eventually get it. :)
     
  6. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Dox is not doing this because he finds it funny. Dox doesn't have much of a sense of humour.
     
  7. SirKaid

    SirKaid Know what you're doing yet?

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    One thing I'd like to ask the "Paul should be handling this, that asshole!" crowd is: what, exactly, do you want him to do?

    Khan isn't breaking any Earth laws. Okay, maybe the Australian airspace thing, but as Paul lives in America and Australia hasn't requested Justice League assistance it's a bit much to expect him to drop everything to handle what amounts to a parking violation.

    Khan isn't breaking any Green Lantern laws. If he was, the Greenies could handle it, most likely by asking Paul for a minor favour, Lantern to Lantern.

    Khan isn't breaking any Orange Lantern regulations. OLs are explicitly allowed to use their rings for their own personal business.

    Khan isn't breaking any LEGION regulations. He isn't offering mercenary services to anyone other than Venturia, and even then Paul isn't a member of LEGION so it's not his problem unless Dox asks a favour.

    Paul is not the King of Earth and does not set Earth trade policy. If the UN passes a resolution he could enforce it, but he's not in charge.

    So I ask again: what the actual fuck do you want him to do?
     
  8. Doccer

    Doccer I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Just because we don't experience it doesn't mean she doesn't.
     
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  9. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    He is offering private security services, but that would only break LEGION regulations if he provided it to Atlantis.
     
  10. BlueMangoAdea

    BlueMangoAdea Alive. For now.

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    Is Khan aware of LEGION regulations?
     
  11. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    It's... Hard to say.
     
  12. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    He's probably aware enough to get out of any trouble.
     
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  13. Ace Dreamer

    Ace Dreamer Questioning The Nature of our Realities

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    I might suspect L-Ron, or a similar robot, knows... Lord Manga Khan might consider these 'fiddly details', unworthy of recall by his immense intellect. :)
     
  14. Grimnar

    Grimnar Versed in the lewd.

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    To Who? Governments who generally have a need for such support arn't the type of people to trust outsiders to provide it, and if it's not government, then are the provided forces providing security services in accordance with local laws?

    As a matter of fact, if it's not government, do they even have licence to operate such services and leave to enter the country? And the host goverments are just openly accepting while it's openly happening?
     
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  15. Idkusername

    Idkusername Versed in the lewd.

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    Are you being intentionally antagonising or obtuse? An offer does not mean that it has been taken up.

    Also, governments look for mercenaries precisely when they can't source it from within, otherwise why the hell would they even need them?

    Why are you assuming that local laws have been violated without proof, even if people have taken Khan up on his offer of mercenary work? (Which itself is a big if)

    Please do not be contrary just because the thread disagrees with you. It's a really good way to shoot yourself in the foot.
     
  16. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Think Grim may be having a Vaermina episode.

    It happens to the best of us sometimes.
     
  17. Grimnar

    Grimnar Versed in the lewd.

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    Many countries routinely suppliment their militaries with private contractors, the US and UK included. Most other countries with ongoing military commitments do the same.

    When they do however, their first port of call is internal security services because they in effect act as a private extension of their militaries. They are also subject to high degrees of oversight and law because when they don't, they tend to go around raping and slaughtering people.

    Hiring mercs from other countries is something to avoid... as the recent incident that won't be named shows you the reliability of external Security contrators.
     
  18. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    If the countries don't care what their regular soldiers do to their own population then they won't most likely care what mercs are doing to them.

    If the mercs have been hired by some African country, which are notorious for corruption and bureaucratic ineptitude, then hiring the mercs without safety precautions is highly probable.
     
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  19. Kalem_Lee

    Kalem_Lee Well worn.

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    I'm liking this arc so far.

    The Earth needs to get on the Cosmic pecking order for reelz. Seriously do not let Lex be the only one stepping up.
     
  20. memzak

    memzak Your first time is always over so quickly, isn't it?

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    Hiya! Been keeping up with this story for a year or two now and just recently finished binge reading the couple months of backlog. Decided to make an account on this forum to just chuck in a general-response post after that parallel paul crisis event. I actually really enjoyed it, getting to see all the disparate Paul-threads weaved together into a sweater of Paul-packed multiverse-drama was really neat.

    Might be a bit delayed (or might be a bit early, given we never got a breakdown of the crisis event's aftermath), but something that has been bothering me is the lack of... well... any change to the status quo because of it. We get mentions of alternate Paul's getting access to Big Orange's database, but OL doesn't even give a throwaway mention of anything he might have received in return. Information on Atrocitus's Blood Runes? The Boys's Compound V formula? Inviolate's anti-malthusian technology? All potentially really exciting stuff that wouldn't fit right in with what he was already doing.

    Ignoring that, however, why has OL not jumped at the opportunity to acquire rings of other colors? This crossover event was pretty much the only reasonable way through which he could acquire some, and even if (miraculously) none of the alternate Pauls died in battle... why not go for Gold? Inviolate's universe was most likely the only place he would be able to get access to the light of Will (albeit in Gold) without malthusian malware. Heck, Time Trapper could surely have paradox-ed any lost/unused rings into existence in return for OL's help in fixing his home timeline?

    I do acknowledge that these things might be revealed in due course, but the lack of even a throwaway sentence regarding it is vexing and not having any information feeds that he niggling fear that everything will just go back to 'normal' with no substantial change despite that being rather contrary to one of Paul's core desires / the core themes of this story.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2020
  21. Grimnar

    Grimnar Versed in the lewd.

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    No, that's THE most improbable thing, because they would know how tenous their control is, and this directly undermines them by spending cash they could be using to support their support base, and bring in potential threats. That's the very Last thing they would do.
     
  22. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    You're expecting them to make an intelligent decision when they are presented with the chance at getting tech that could help them conquer the planet.

    What cash, Earth money is worthless in the rest of the galaxy.

    They may just want the potential clients to pay them in flowers that their country has in abundance, but has no use for them, however ClusterCorp could use them as some kind of legal drug or medicine.
     
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  23. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    That's a reasonable point. I'll make reference to it in a future segment.
     
  24. Coda

    Coda Versed in the lewd.

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    Let me tell you the true story of Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad.

    A lady named Helen was waiting for her train. As a different train on the other side of the platform started to leave, a man carrying a box who was running late sprinted up and tried to jump on the moving train. A member of the train crew and a platform guard helped out, with the guard pushing the man as the crewman pulled him in.

    Unbeknownst to anyone else, the man's box contained fireworks. He dropped it when he was being pushed into the train, and the fireworks detonated. This caused a tall weighing scale to fall over onto Helen, causing painful but non-serious injuries and leaving her with a stress-induced stutter for several months.

    Who was responsible for Helen's injury?

    Helen sued the railroad company, asserting that if the platform guard hadn't pushed the man, he wouldn't have dropped the box and none of that would have happened.

    The court disagreed. While it's true that the guard caused the incident, he was not responsible for it: He had no way of knowing that the box contained explosives, and even had he known that he couldn't have predicted that it would have exploded from the fall, and even if he had anticipated that he couldn't have predicted that it would have knocked over an object that was more than ten feet away. The only part of that chain of events that might have been a foreseeable consequence was that the traveler might drop his box when being pushed onto a moving train, and that negligence (if it was negligence) wasn't the direct ("proximate") cause of Helen's injury.

    So yes: cause and responsibility are different things. They're related, but the distinction between them is important and must be observed.
     
  25. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Knowledge of other super power formulas that probably don't require you to have a human soul is nice.

    And knowledge on how magic and power rings can be used in tandem with each other would also be nice.
    We may finally see Paul use some advanced magic, aside from his instinctual spiritual powers and that bit of plant manipulation.
     
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  26. Idkusername

    Idkusername Versed in the lewd.

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    Is that a fellow law student I see?
     
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  27. AidanMorgan

    AidanMorgan Essentially Overworked

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    OK, um... The first two I get, but what does 'counting' mean in this context?
     
  28. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Counting as in future crimes maybe.
     
  29. FeepingCreature

    FeepingCreature Not too sore, are you?

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    Yes, it's a phrase. Usually used in the form "thirteen and counting" to indicate the number is still rising.
     
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  30. Idkusername

    Idkusername Versed in the lewd.

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    To elaborate, what Coda is driving at here is the concept of actus reus and mens rea. Actus reus basically means the act or situation that is defined as a crime, like the act of homicide or the situation of possession. Mens rea on the other hand, basically means 'was the defendant aware of the possible consequences of his action', or rather, 'would a reasonable person expect what occured to be a possible/likely outcome of their actions'.

    That's why simply possessing a drug won't get you in jail, the prosecution has to prove you were aware you had it.

    If some other Lantern had come to Earth instead of Manga Khan, no one would be blaming/crediting OL. It's why he isn't to blame here either. Plus, what part of Khan's activities is contrary to the OLC's directives or DOx's orders? What Earth Law has he violated that justifies a response that would lead to a First Contact scenario going tits up?
     
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