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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. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    New 52 Mr Freeze would fit right in, what with his desire to preserve life by freezing things.

    Come to think of it, this stories version of Freeze may also fit into something like that.

    Think Zoat said that this stories version of him was never married and may have become a supervillain for...reasons, probably some supervillain bullshit.

    Here's a video that shows why a supervillains motivations for their actions and beliefs can be utter bullshit:

     
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  2. Ace Dreamer

    Ace Dreamer Questioning The Nature of our Realities

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    I think most super-vil motivations can be summed-up as, "It seemed like a good idea at the time, and then things snowballed...".

    (May be particularly appropriate for Mr Freeze. :) )
     
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  3. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Those were probably the thoughts Lex had when he joined the Light.

    Also here's a little tribute to that Psycho video:

    Lex: And so, after losing my hair in a laboratory accident I decided to become a corrupt corporate CEO that despises anyone that isn't a human, or as brilliant as myself, which no one is, and my greatest desire is to rule the universe as its absolute god and have everyone worship me whenever I so much as take a shit.

    Everyone that has any sanity: I'm not sure that tracks.
     
  4. Siskulous

    Siskulous Know what you're doing yet?

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    I disagree entirely. They only KNEW that there were Star Conquerors on the ship for half an hour, but they SUSPECTED before they even found the ship. And, as I said before, anyone with a functioning brain and any knowledge about them who took 10 seconds to ask themselves why the Star Hunters were shooting Pluto with a mining laser would have come up with a very short list of possible answers, with "there's a big Star Conqueror trapped down there" being right at the top of the list.

    That's a possibility that hadn't occurred to me. Paul's telepathic defenses are pretty good, but not infallible. And it would neatly explain the planet sized idiot ball everyone's been carrying around for the last few updates.
     
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  5. Ace Dreamer

    Ace Dreamer Questioning The Nature of our Realities

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    The problem that an author has in writing first-person PoV stories is that if the viewpoint character becomes an 'unreliable narrator', for some reason, then there isn't another PoV to point this out from.

    So, if OL starts seeing illusions, or becomes an 'idiot ball handler', then it may take quite a while for readers to figure-out what's up. (Doc :) )

    ((Totally OT, I liked the idea that Buggy Bunny was an extension into 3d reality of a Cthuloid Old One, that was just having a bit of fun... :)
    Sort of like a human reading the 'funny pages' of a newspaper (see 20th century history). :) ))
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2020
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  6. hkim

    hkim Know what you're doing yet?

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    Alright, look, y'all.

    There's lots of reasons to fire a mining laser at a planet in the DC-verse. It's fairly common from what we can tell. Further, as far as we know, that reason has never been "to release the monster hiding inside it". Yes, we know what it is because we're immersed in comics meta-theory every day and can check the wikis, but I think everyone's vastly overstating how obvious this is. It's not suspicious that Paul barely remembered in time, it's arguably suspicious in-universe that he thought of it at all.
     
  7. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Paul also doesn't have access to the DC wiki and is only going on what he remembers.

    He may have been a comic enthusiast before coming to Earth 16, but he probably didn't read every single comic that came out.
     
  8. cereal_lurker

    cereal_lurker Getting sticky.

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    I generally agree with the overall odds approach to this thinking. However, the last time Starro were seen (most immediate memory) was when the mid-size, non-magic Starro chose to kill itself to help the magic Starro escape and hide. This time we see the magic Starro having stolen a space ship, traveled to the outer edge of the system (and not farther, if it was attempting to flee somewhere), then stop to shoot a laser at Pluto, then stay and fight to the death even after the ship has been breached. Considering the utilitarian goal-oriented actions that Starro have taken so far including self-sacrifice, not considering what sorts of goals were being pursued is a failure of some note.

    But on the other side, we've also seen the SI make mistakes when he's focused on the wrong thing.

    EDIT: We've also seen from the interlude where Miss Martian transformed into a Starro that they can handle multiple activities simultaneously. Entirely possible that when this magic Starro beat the SI's magic wards, it mind-whammied him into distraction so he would miss the obvious.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2020
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  9. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    There was a scene where Alan pulls Paul away from the Conquerors when he seems to be affected mentally.

     
  10. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Called it.

    Called this too.


    But... I did...
     
  11. iamnuff

    iamnuff Connoisseur.

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    It's really not.
    The Starros have had basically one motivation thus far. To propagate their race and claim more slaves.
    Their individual lives don't seem to really matter to them, but the previous 'normal' star conquerors seemed determined to protect the red chaos one.
    Because magic is a new evolution that will be incredibly valuable to their entire species if they can get a Red Starro off-world and allow it to propagate.

    Paul even pointed out that they might call for a Mother-Star in their first appearance. When he had to convince the green lanterns that Star Conquers were even real.
    He also described it as a potentially apocalyptic threat. More on this later.

    Now, in this arc, if they'd taken the clustership and fucked off into deep space, then maybe they were planning to flee earth where they are a recognised threat to go find some planet inhabited by helpless primitives or pre-sapient animals where they can build up their numbers and evolve some bigger forms to try to take on the galaxy again.
    But they didn't.
    They stopped at Pluto, even though they must have expected pursuit, given how the Earth-lifeforms have been combating them so far. Then they fired a giant laser at the planet.

    This means that the Starros consider it worth the risk to their lives and the potential loss of the unique advantage that these new forms provide to the entire species, to fire upon whatever is hidden on pluto.
    So either it's something that desperately needs to be destroyed (something even Starros are afraid of) or it's something that won't be harmed and will be 'acquired' instead by being fired upon.

    And then the planet started moving. Sure, tectonic shifts due to the mass eruptions, whatever.
    Except the eruptions stopped and the movement continued.
    And then the planet started showing up on empathic vision.

    This should have been a BIG FUCKING RED FLAG. Because it means that either Paul somehow managed to break his soul vision to the point where it's showing him things that aren't there, or there's something alive on Pluto that is shielded from him, moving, big enough to move significant chunks of a planet's mass and valuable enough to star conquerors to risk dying and losing their handful of only magical star-hunters.
    There's one answer. Only one thing could possibly be so valuable.
    It's a big fucking Starro, and they're trying to free it to either conquer the earth for them, or atleast to cover their escape.

    And he ignored it.
    And he continued to ignore it as the ship started to move towards the planet (or the planet towards the ship, he never bothered to check) while casually musing about how maybe they're moving because of 'invisible scry-warded thrusters' pushing them towards the planet, but he never bothered to check or do anything to course-correct the ship.

    And he continued to ignore it as the soul-vision flash happened again, and then when he'd worked out what it was, he played around with a Star-Mother construct and asked Kori about her mental barriers, instead of screaming into his comms about the emerging star-mother to the Orange and Green Corps, to get as much backup as they can provide before this thing eats his entire planet and enslaves his species.

    So yeah, Paul's threat assessment in this arc is way more lax than it was when Starros first showed up, when he explained to Guy that they were a civilisation ending threat that enslaved multiple entire species, and that the Green Lantern Corps had to throw into suns to dispose of.

    Given that a star-hunter is so telepathically powerful that Miss Manhunter takes that form for a power-boost, and those are IIRC "fifteen meters from tip to tip" then something roughly the size of pluto (2370000 meters across) is almost certainly going to have the power to just shut down every brain within a couple of thousand miles.

    It's posturing for now, flexing it's muscles and yelling 'I awaken' but I fully expect the opening of tomorrow's chapter to be it brainfucking everyone in the vicinity hard enough that they lose consciousness.
    Good thing Paul wears a spacesuit under his ring-generated forcefield, otherwise he'd probably just instantly die when his ring shut off.
    Assuming everyone effected doesn't just have their liquidifed brains pour out of their ears, I mean.

    I don't think Mr Zoat is actually going to reduce a bunch of the cast (including the main character) to vegetables so suddenly, but that's how I expect a planet-sized telepath would fight. Just outright crushing the puny ant-sized minds of those around it into dust with zero effort.
    Now, "planet sized" is a bit deceptive. It's not earth-sized. Pluto itself is only two-thirds the size of the moon.
    But "moon sized" is still pretty respectable, given that the only other thing of comparable scale that scale I can think of is The Death Star.

    Atom might be ok, since he has no organic brain, but it could still likely rip him to itty bitty shreds with telekinesis at this range.
    Lantern Manga Khan might be good, since both his brain and his body are... like a weird cloud thing?
    I'm not really sure what they can do to that.

    I expect everyone else to be defeated by the first paragraph of the next chapter.

    Edit: i'm not using wikis or any meta-knowledge beyond what Paul has access to.
    It's obvious what they're doing, going by nothing more than their apparent motivations in their previous arcs, and the fact that they stopped fleeing to try to blow up pluto, for seemingly no reason, and Paul's orange-vision picking up a flicker on pluto, directly after having had his orange-vision blocked on the cluster-ship.

    There's something alive on pluto. Magic-using starros can block his empathic vision.
    The living thing on Pluto is big enough to survive getting hit with a giant planet-cracking laser.
    And most damningly, the Starros thought it was worth risking being captured or killed to shoot at.

    It's a starro, it was always going to be a starro.
    I knew what this was a chapter ago, and I heavily suspected two chapters back.
    Paul is usually more on-the-ball than this.

    I suspect either a big telepathic field set to make people ignore the weirdness about the planet, or a spell cast on the ship.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2020
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  12. hkim

    hkim Know what you're doing yet?

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    It seems like he wants to be sure before hitting the PANIC button, which is sensible I guess? He definitely doesn't seem to be taking whatever's going on very seriously though.

    E: What I want to know is why they took the Russian ships too. The ClusterShip(tm) has the mining laser they needed, but all the Russian spaceships had were.. well, Russians. Handy to have around in general, sure, but not so handy that it would be worth the increased exposure.

    Did the Star Conquerers want to make sure they had cocktails for the trip?
     
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  13. Birdsie

    Birdsie Making the rounds.

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    Hahaha, oh boy.

    Paul, I think it's about prime time for you to go Ophidian, because I somehow fail to see a success in this situation even if all of the Leagers attack it all at once. This is one of those situations where only an epic, explosive event can do anything to stop the monster.
     
  14. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Yes and you had the ability to check the DC wiki, while all Paul has is his memory.

    The fact that he probably hasn't read every single comic in existence can make things difficult.

    I think he is taking this seriously, but he's not panicking because that wouldn't help anyone.

    As for why they took the Russian ships, well that could be explained as the Russian ships simply being too close to where they took the ClusterShip.
     
  15. Xmaster3000

    Xmaster3000 Know what you're doing yet?

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    Pretty sure the Russian ships where how they got to the ClusterShip.
     
  16. ChiChi

    ChiChi I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    The image changes to shoe the Burner.
    I'm sure shoe here should have been show right?
     
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  17. Siskulous

    Siskulous Know what you're doing yet?

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    I think you're forgetting that Paul is a comics nerd from our world, so he should have the same meta-theory knowledge that we do.

    If we were talking about a populated planet, sure. Or even one with lots of useful minerals. But Pluto is, as I said before, basically a dirty snowball. There's nothing to be gained from mining the planet itself except water, and if you're already in the Oort Cloud there are abundant and MUCH easier water sources to tap.

    Literally everything I know about star conquerors comes from this story. I don't remember ever seeing them in a comic back when I actually read the comics (and...well let's put it this way: last time I read comics regularly Superman was an energy being). So Paul's knowledge of them should be somewhat greater than mine. And "they must be trying to release a bigger one" was my first thought when they started shooting a mining laser at Pluto.

    Nah, no matter how you slice it, Paul's holding an idiot ball here. Common Sense Paul would have had all the space-capable Justice Legauers, whatever fledgling space force he's managed to get put together, and as many lanterns of all colors as he could get already on sight to fight the thing.
     
  18. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Amusingly that bit about the Star Conqueror ship being Pluto was solely from memory.

    Also the logic outlined by "Iamnuff" was pretty sturdy.
     
  19. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Why do you assume that Paul has meta knowledge about this particular Starro?

    Yes he is a nerd that enjoyed reading comics when he was on his version of Earth, but that doesn't mean that he's read every single comic ever published.

    He may just know that the Starros exist and that they like to mind control people, he may not know about any particular story-line featuring them, either because he hasn't red said storyline, or has just forgotten about it.

    His knowledge of them is greater than yours, but it's not perfect or complete.

    Lots of the meta knowledge he may have from the comics is unreliable in Earth 16 since the facts on Earth 16 contradict what he red in the comics.

    In the comics Blackfire betrayed her people to the Citadel. Here she and her sister were taken because their brother joined a resistance group.

    In the comics Captain Nazi was a product of science and his brother was a scientist. Here his brother, who technically isn't even his brother, was a magician and he was a product of magic.

    In the comics Dr Sivana cheated on his wife and had Georgia and Junior with the woman he cheated on Venus with. Here he had all his children with Venus.

    In the comics Alan Scott's ring was made from the magic the Guardians took from the universe. Here it's a damaged green ring that belonged to a traitor.

    In the comics Grayven was sired by Darkseid with some random woman in the universe. Here he was sired with Mortalla.

    In the comics Mortalla was evil. Here she's a meek woman that's afraid of her own shadow.

    In the comics Nabu was a billion year old god. Here he's just a 7000 year old Lord of Order.

    In the comics the Amazons would kill any man that steps foot on their island and even when they didn't do that they were still hostile. Here they're pretty reasonable.

    In the comics Zatanna was an adult. Here she's a teenager.

    In the comics the Chief was a manipulative bastard. Here he's just a metahuman psychologist.

    In the comics the color yellow can beat a green ring. Here I'm pretty sure that only the yellow light, or some exotic energy that's yellow, can do that and not a bucket of yellow paint.

    In the comics every criminal in Gotham was locked up in Arkham. Here the only ones locked up in there are those that are insane and not those that may just have some emotional problems at worst, like the Penguin.

    In the comics Mr Freeze was trying to save his wife. In this story he is a bachelor.

    Paul does have a lot of meta knowledge, but is isn't complete or completely reliable.

    Another reason for them shooting a laser at Pluto could have been to get some rare resource, one that isn't a Mother Star, that can only be found there and nowhere else.

    There are planets in the DC universe where some materials can only be found in one place and nowhere else, like Thanagar and Nth metal.

    Wow you managed to remember a tidbit that the SI wasn't able to, and yet you somehow seem to forget some of the things that the SI and Zoat have said and done multiple times.

    You do realize that he probably hasn't red every single comic in existence, right?
     
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  20. iamnuff

    iamnuff Connoisseur.

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    I think they grabbed the Russian ships to get into space, then used that to get to the Cluster-corp ship, which had the capability to actually get to pluto.

    It's not super clear what the Russians were doing when they vanished.
    Flying into space to meet a Clustercorp ship in orbit, presumably.
    You don't need meta-knowledge, except to know that Mother Stars exist.

    The starros stole a ship and left earth>The starros stopped fleeing at Pluto, so there must be something they want here> The starros started digging for something in the planet's mantle with a giant laser>The planet is showing flashes of emotion on Soul Vision>

    It's a mother-star. You don't need a wiki to work that out.
    The green arrow is when you should start guessing at what the worst case senario could be, just so you aren't caught off-guard.
    The yellow arrow is when you'd have to start seriously considering the possibility that they are infact trying to dig out a mother-star, and the red one is total confirmation and time to call in back-up immediately.
    You don't need a wiki, and you don't need to have read a comic book in which there was a mother-star contained within the Sol system.
    All you need is the merest sliver of genre-savvy, and enough intelligence to actually question what their motivations might actually be.

    Paul waited out all three and then stood around chatting for several minutes until the world actually cracked open and the starro jumped out.
     
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  21. Siskulous

    Siskulous Know what you're doing yet?

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    I think you've missed the point of what I was trying to say by focusing on what I meant as a tertiary detail. That could perhaps be a fault of how I presented it. Even if we discount that he's a comics nerd and assume he never heard of Star Conquerors before waking up in orbit, he's encountered Starros before in this story.

    He doesn't have to know anything at all about this particular one. He knows enough about Starros that guessing at their motives should be easy. Their psychology is very simple after all. Their only motivation is conquest. It governs everything they do.

    It's not about anything specific in DC's canon, it's about looking at what the Star Hunters have done in this story, what he knows from previous encounters with them in this story, and applying critical thinking to what they're doing now. He saw Star Hunters pointing a mining laser at Pluto. There are very, very few reasons that they could want to do that. Paul is PLENTY smart enough to connect those dots. The fact that he didn't, and didn't even bother looking into the context clues is odd to me. Telepathic
     
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  22. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Ah, yes. Thank you, corrected.
     
  23. LazySloth13

    LazySloth13 Versed in the lewd.

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    One reason why I think Paul is so blaise about the situation is the fact that they're in the middle of space with hardly any chance of civilian casualties or collateral damage; he or any of the other lanterns can teleport or taxi the ship crews, Manga Khan has his ship insured though no luck for the Russians.

    Plus it's not like the possibility of death should scare Paul much given the fact that he's been to heaven, hell, and hades and while he's unlikely to end up in the first he has created allies in the latter. He would be more worried about getting Starfire/Koriandor killed since it would sour his relation to Tameran and would look bad on him since he asked her to come to Earth with him, he's both her senior officer and trainer.

    Who knows Paul could just transmute a ridiculous amount of neutronium then toss it into the planet blow it and the Starmother to smithereens.
     
  24. SaltyWaffles

    SaltyWaffles I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    You've got to do it properly, DAT_NOOB . Use the "Insert Media" function instead of just "Insert Link".
     
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  25. DAT_NOOB

    DAT_NOOB Accused of writing in a far away land

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    I'll try and remember that
     
  26. SaltyWaffles

    SaltyWaffles I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Yeah, the real problem was that even after he figured out that they were dealing with a Mother Star, he was awfully lackadaisical about it. Instead, he should have told Koriand'r to get everyone the hell out of there and then messaged the GLC that they had a motherfucking Mother Star waking up in Sol. And then called on Ophidian.

    This is not a situation in which you waste time asking questions. It's a situation where literally every second is precious and you need things to happen NOW.

    Hell, even when he detected avarice and something alive down on Pluto, he just downplayed it instead of treating it with the utmost seriousness that Star Conquerors deserve. Which is totally out of character for the same guy who went way out of his way to prepare tons of contingencies for all sorts of crazy scenarios (including finding out about Bane's biological father, no less).
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2020
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  27. Ace Dreamer

    Ace Dreamer Questioning The Nature of our Realities

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    Might want to refer to the right sister...

    Yes, there would seem to be something weird going on here. Going to have to wait and see how things develop!
     
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  28. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    If that Star Mother was hiding out in Pluto then maybe she had some kind of telepathic field set around it that makes people not pay too much interest to the place.
     
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  29. Siiracai The Supernal

    Siiracai The Supernal Shadows and Balance

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    All of the shit is hitting the fan now. This will probably end in some very chunky salsa.
     
  30. Old Knife

    Old Knife Not too sore, are you?

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    Those poor poor Martians..


    Can Paul drop a bunch of burning Martians on the mother star?
     
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