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

Goddammit I stopped reading for a while so I dont keep getting clifhangered not another one!

 

Come to think of it, do we actually know that Earth -14's Ophidian is the same as Earth 16's Ophidian? Larfleeze -14 probably hasn't been dealt with. Summoning best snek might have consequences...

 

WoZ was that he lived a l long, happy life and then died of natural causes.

Because the idea that his species is naturally immortal is stupid as all hell.

 

No matter what Hollywood might want you to think, the United States of America is not the whole of the Earth.

I don't know. New Gods come pretty close. AIs can go on indefinitely. Kryptonians get very long-lived if they get yellow sunlight.

 

I personally don't think the Illustres should go mind-controlling everyone; with his level of power and his form of thinking it would be a real bad habit to get into, not that I think he would but, you know, better not go there.

I do believe it would be better if he summoned the Ophidian but to be able to flex the biggest muscle around. Kind of what Grayven did when he went to Earth 50, become so much of a danger that either or both sides have to stop what they're doing to address this out-of-context problem. And that's when he hits them with the manipulative solution to make peace or something better that mutually assured destruction. Or else...

Mr Zoat some corrections.

Spoiler: Corrections

I think: 'And resilient enough to survive'.

I think this has an error in formatting? Not sure if it's just me.

I believe this requires a full stop.

I think this one is: 'and once started can't be stopped'.

Not sure on this one, if the hyphen is unnecessary or the full stop should be after it.

'I came right here and was floating in space'.

I think: 'Heh, because they're too stupid'.

'to have time to prepare themselves'.

I think this one also requires a full stop.

 

I searched through Mr Zoat's posts on SB and I was misremembering. He wrote that he wouldn't use the Spectre because he doesn't like the character and that he would show the Zauriel of Earth -14, which already happened.

 

perhaps try would be more useful here

a little awkward with adjective and preposition there. i would suggest two options:
hard core of nutters
-or-
hardcore nutters

 

Indeed Darkseid is 250k years old, according to death battles, and all the physical bodies are avatars. I'm not entirely sure if the physical Darkseid is an avatar of Darkseid, or an avatar of the god of tyranny who happens to be Darkseid. I mean he always seem to respawn as Darkseid, but OTOH, the death of a new god's avatar seems to be treated as actual death, sooo.....

Question: is your Fourth World in a separate dimension like it is canonically (if inconsistently)?

 

At this point Paul should just Pick up Zatanna and risk using the Plane of Avarice to go home.

you know what I don't Want to help either side of this anymore, so go ahead burn the world to ash and slaughter each other.
You people and your world are no longer my Problem and if you have any survival instinct left you won't make yourselves my problem or my worlds problem.

Ophidian appears

Because then you'll see why it's a bad idea to make me Want things.

 

Thank you, corrected.

No. Not only is mine correct, but that's the second time someone has tried to correct it. 'Try' makes less sense there. Why would Preceptor want Luthor to try him?

I think my use is valid.

No.

 

ah. i misread that part of the dialogue, then.

i read it as one of the soldiers behind Luthor saying that to Luthor, as in a type of "turn me loose, sir" statement.

realizing it was Crock speaking to Luthor, it makes perfect sense now. my bad.

 

You know, part of me wants them to finally succeed in killing OL... only for him to show them exactly why that was a Bad Idea not even a few moments later.

Few things are quite as awesome as being able to shrug off death, one of them being “You struck me down, and now, I am more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

 

I honestly would like to see The Specter, (known also as Aztar, or Raguel) pop up at some point as the sort of Antagonist that could very cause The Light to go, "Oh, Hey! Justice League! Buddies! We kinda have a LITTLE problem with a certain nigh-unstoppable Archangel of Vengeance who wants to give the lot of us, our associates and employees, Cruel and Unusual Deaths. Yeah, sure, while MANY of us from your perspective might be VERY well-deserving of such horrible fates, I invite you to consider the collateral damage, and sheer the destruction of the varied cities and governments no better than how Sodom and Gomorrah were? So what do you say? Temporary Team-up?"

 

And Luthor has a higher then 12th level intellect.

Which means he's smarter then the people who built Paul's power rings by a not insignificant margin.

On top of which, he could very well have access to Crime World Earth's version of Brainiac. Who spanks Lanterns for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

 

OL literally just lectured JL-12 about how being good isn't what team you're on but about what you do and don't do. Look, I usually fall consequentialist, but mind controlling the world sounds more super villian than hero.

There is a distinction there, and it's the same argument that showed up with the citadel. They weren't capable of change and thus were not deserving of full moral weight.

Maybe there are a few like that here, but if OL has to mind rape a planet because there are people who refuse to take the fight outside then that's either a failure or a renegade moment.

 

The problem seems to be that no one, including Paul, seems to give sufficient fucks to really want a real solution.

Paul's "Hey, let's send everyone to a third-world country!" is not really a plan, but more a wild idea you'd come up with in the first five minutes of a 72-hour planning session spent to flesh it out.

To get this in the range of an actual plan that people can take seriously, Paul would need to come up with an actual country. Is the Syndicate conquering North Korea, Sudan, Iran, Vlatava, what? Any particular country is going to have specific costs, benefits and relationships to others in the region, and it's the specific details that matter.

That's even before the issue that trying to sell "Hey, let's all invade some random country" to the Syndicate before you actually flesh things out has a high probability of--if they take that proposal seriously--them picking out a country on their own that may or may not work with your plans.

The larger issue is that you can't have a compromise without large chunks of both sides being invested in the compromise solution.

* The primary stumbling block to dealing with the Syndicate is that the heroes can't attack them without risking collateral damage to people they care about. So, Plan "Let's isolate the Syndicate in a country full of people we are explicitly saying we don't give a fuck about" is an obvious prelude to just obliterating that country once all of the Syndicate are isolated there, if the heroes aren't serious about this being a final resolution.

* The primary stumbling block to the Syndicate taking back power is that they're currently on the back foot, and need time to regroup. So, from the heroes' POV, letting the Syndicate escape, heal up, and have time to build their power back up is an obvious prelude to a Round 2 at a time of the Syndicate's choosing, if the Syndicate isn't serious about this being a final resolution.

You essentially need large chunks of both sides for whom the Syndicate setting up shop as rulers of Country X is an actual good outcome they want to happen, as opposed to what we have, which is this being an outcome that literally no one seems to desire.

There's also the incongruity that you literally have Paul giving Batman shit (fairly gratuitously, given the guy isn't there) for letting criminals go and not just executing them at the same time as he's trying to convince the heroes that the right thing to do is to let an entire group of criminals go and not just executing them. I mean, c'mon, Paul, pick a lane and stick with it.

 

Exactly

 

Ha, truth, though, he's an Orange Lantern, he wants all the lanes.

 

No, he gave him shit for not killing the Joker.

Joker 12 isn't like Harvey Dent where you could sort of see him recovering at some point. He's not like Dr Fries, who was trying to murder someone for their organs so he could save his wife, which is bad but you can sort of see why he's doing it. Joker 12 is manipulative serial killer who always gets out to kill again and does it for fun. At this point, all Batman's achieving by fighting him is to slightly reduce the body count. Batman is keeping his hands clean at the cost of the lives of innocent bystanders.

 

Not that I think it's really pertinent to the situation, but... come on, I like him when he's used well as a villain or plot element, nonetheless the Joker is the most powerful walking embodiment of Plot Armor to have ever existed. I mean, people can get angry about Batman and all the fans that he has but it's completely inconceivable that the Joker is still alive after two escapes, three tops.

Least of all in the U.S. of A., land of more guns per square inch than anywhere else in the World! (That may be a hyperbole, I don't know, but personally I'm convinced of that fact.)

There can't be a single person in Gotham that wasn't related or knew one way or another some individual that the Joker hasn't killed... and you are telling me that nobody has done nothing? And also that he has survived all of those brushes with death? I prefer not to think of it because that's a complete break of suspension of disbelief in my favorite corner of not only DC but of the comics in general.

Can't recall where I read it, but there was something about the Joker being some kind of curse provoked by Barbatos (I think that's the name of the Evil Bat God?) in Gotham in opposition to Batman and so there has been many Jokers, when one dies the curse of "just one bad day" hits somebody and a new version of Joker comes about. DC should embrace that, it would add a lever of terror to the character and, although not precisely an excuse, at least a reason to try to capture him; try to prevent a new version that could be worse than the current one while they investigate how to finally exorcise the curse (and/or Barbatos) from the city.

 

It isn't, about one in three households have at least one gun. Over half of people with guns own more than one.

 

This may be canonically true, but so is Superman lifting infinite mass and various other silliness. And feat-wise, Luthor isn't usually displayed as that capable. You could chalk it up to intelligence not being wisdom, and according to geniuses i know, it usually just shows up as having a larger vocabularity and being quick to pick up things so YMMV.

 

How old Darkseid is depends on continuity.

I read a LoSH story where not only was Darkseid only a few thousand years old, he freaking petrified from old age.

As for his body being an avatar, that's a completely meaningless statement as the DC writers use it.

Logically, when a body is just an avatar, that means the true entity is just fine no matter what happens to the avatar and so killing the avatar just annoys the entity.

In DC? If you kill Darkseid, well then he's dead, Jim.

Until he gets resurrected because the DC writers are too chickenshit to make a new character rather than use the New Gods as a franchise zombie.

But that's the case for the Joker, too.

At least in the Joker's case the DC writers don't come up with bullshit excuses for the bad writing like "Joker is just the avatar of the true omnipotent Joker entity."

 

The way I see it, DC should have run with the whole 'Earth is turning into the Fifth World' thing, and have The Joker be an emerging Fifth World New God of Nihilistic Madness (or mad nihilism or absurdism or something) as on of the problems that the post Final Crisis emerging gods of the Fifth World Justice League would have to deal with - which would explain why Joker seems unkillable (because he's ascended into a living idea).

...This may be getting off topic.


Come to think of it, does Grayven remember the whole 'Darkseid and Orion are fated to kill each other' thing, or is that not canon here?

 

What he's referencing is in Justice League Ultimate, when Darkseid came back fused with Brainiac and was kicking everyone's ass, Luthor grabbed Metron and forced him to take him to get the Anti-Life Equation. When they get to the Source Wall, Metron tells Luthor that only a 12th level intellect has the slightest hope of surviving.

Luthor, being Luthor, says that means he's over qualified and promptly dives head first into the Source Wall and immediately starts screaming in horror at what he's experiencing.

Then we go back to Earth, Darkseid is about to carve out Superman's heart and Lex shows up in a business suit with the Anti-Life Equation in hand. Darkseid goes to get it and him and Lex vanish in a flash of light with no explanation about how or why any of the above happened or even how he got back to Earth from the Source Wall.

 

Except we know exactly where that brand of "Judge Jury and Executioner" thinking leads.

A better question, and the one you should be asking, is why the justice system keeps sending Joker to Arkham.

 

You don't have to go all judge and jury-y if you're in a situation where basically any decent person would immediately put a hole in Joker's head. It's not some ridiculous lubricated slope, where if you literally kill one mass-murdering psychopath, you end up taking over the entire country and ruling it in fear.

Just put a bullet in him and then use that almighty willpower that you've been using to not kill him to, yknow... not go all "Judge, Jury, and Inspector of Lemonade Stands". Batman set a damned high boundary and he kept it, so I'd say he can lower it a bit and just keep that boundary instead.

 

Ehh....

*me waggles hand*

In Batman's case, I can understand both his reluctance to kill the Joker and why when he does he tends to go fully batshit insane.

Batman is already fucking crazy. Intensely so, but he channels that crazy with the rules he sets for himself. Breaking those rules is bad because he doesn't know where he'll end up at the end of that trip, but "No where good" is a pretty decent bet.

Now, everyone doesn't have that excuse. It is a massive failing of the justice system that Joker hasn't gotten the death penalty and a massive failing of Gotham's corrupt police force that he hasn't fallen down a flight of stairs.

 

Fair point, but I feel like Batman could just look the other way in a "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you." situation, or 'accidentally' leave the Joker tied up next to the latest group of innocent people he tried to kill.

And of course, it's baffling that he hasn't accidentally fallen down the stairs while in police custody. Onto a bullet. Repeatedly.

 

Oh I hate the god damn "all or nothing" morality crap in comics. Yes, we all know Batman doesn't just snap Joker's neck (in the main continuity) because Joker is probably the most popular villain in the world. Plus, as stated, the state would have executed Joker a long...looooong time ago.

It's the same as that "If you kill him, you'll be just like him." Bullshit whenever a hero has the villain at his mercy. Nevermind the mountain of mooks the hero has likely murdered his way through just to get there. Then the villain will do something that makes it acceptable to kill them and voila, he's dead, smiles all around.

And don't even get me started on all the fucking "In cold blood" crap.

A small word in the writers defense. It's often less "too chickenshit" and more "We totally know that if we kill this character off, the fans will never stop bitching." Because, if there is one thing that every comic book fan knows, it's that when you throw out the rules, and let the writer do whatever they want (usually in an Elseworlds thing) the very FIRST thing they do (besides corrupt the Paragon) is start killing everyone off. Oh my god, they just can't WAIT to kill Spider-man, or wipe out the entire X-man team minus their favorite (Almost guaranteed to be Wolverine)

Also, and more importantly, as much as people scream "New! Give us new! God, all you do is the same thing!" The fact of the matter is, their dollars just don't support that claim.

Launching new characters is practically an exercise in futility. People support the characters they always have, and even on books that get acclaim (Blue Beetle comes to mind) people just don't support them.

Hell, that's why Marvel opted to just try and replace their existing characters with Different race/gendered versions in All New All Different. They know good and damn well that despite all the cries for more "Representation!" that all those DOING the crying weren't going to head down to the comic shop to...you know, BUY the book. Plus, given that Marvel really....REALLY hates their Older fanbase (I.E the only thing that has kept them going comic book wise) they figured they could have it both ways.