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

I’m enjoying crotchety old Peter more than I should. Kudos Zoat.

 

The prequel trilogy wasn't great, it just looks good now, because of how bad the sequel trilogy is.

 

The Phantom Menace

 

it really, really doesn't

 

Would be kinda funny if there was an SI that got dropped directly into the Batman Beyond world... or better yet into Zeta Project. And then they cross over.

 

Would be pretty weird, since they don't just appear in shows, they appear in universes. It would be like an SI dropping in Superman The Animated Series, another in Justice League Unlimited, so on and so forth.

It would be interesting if an SI dropped in the comics version of Batman Beyond, though. Since they usually don't remember the universe they're at, he would think he was in the TV animated series and get tripped by all the differences plus the more expanded universe of the comics.

 

"measured"

They do have a pretty serious drug running through their system.

Not a good look to be helping the psycho.

Granted, you've probably done it lots of times.

It's Gotham, so you never know.

 

I mean, yeah, he's got a track record of probably successfully 'turning villains lives around'. Or at least getting them off the streets/out of the revolving door system.

Really, the more worrying thing is for the Gotham PD/DA in the case. Because, uh, this:

Is the kind of thing he could totally push into being much more sinister than the Gotham PD intended.

 

So, since Peter still doesn't have standing for a civil rights suit or negligence or battery, is he going to be offering representation for to the victims in some form of champerty?

Maybe fund a class action lawsuit?

 

Honestly, Cuvier seems like prime ground for being recruited into Peter's company.

The guy is pretty dedicated to his passion and seems more than smart enough for it; unfortunately the dedication crosses the border into obsession and when Young unilaterally decides to declare his passion unlawful, Cuvier tips over and behaves like a typical mad scientist. Depending on what stage of the episode we are in, though, he should still be salvagable.

Also, Terry really fucks him over during their final fight.

 

If you missed out on catgirl nookie I will absolutely loose any respect I might have for you Peter.

 

Oh, my. Not unexpected, since we knew he loved Doctor Minerva regardless of how she looked. I can definitely understand her reluctance to have children though, especially if her... Condition could be inherited. Still hope Nightwing ended up with Starfire, mind.

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

Plus, I doubt Cosmic Rods or anything like that have the fine precision needed for the task.

Not off to the best start, Peter.

No doubt a few such moments of backsliding courtesy of his more unstable researchers, eh? Never mind criminal organisations looking to get a little cash or tech by hostage-taking.

What is the current era's attitude towards superhumans, anyway? Polite acknowledgement? Disgruntled annoyance? Haven't really watched any 'Batman Beyond'.

Ooh, that's a cold response. Does she actually know why Peter's here, or...

I'm sure anyone who was willing to take on that job would know he habitually carries a Cosmic Gravity Rod...

...Also that. And the last thing you want is dozens of former supervillains on a rampage with their various schizotech devices.

Ooh. I'm guessing that time he wasn't quite quick enough with the personal shield.

You know any other super-drugs that give people enhanced strength and durability? Without the drawbacks of physical alterations?

...Ah, she didn't hear yet? Awkward.

Unless you want the Gotham City Police Department to suffer some massive financial damage...

Of course not. He's a businessman, not a scientist!

Ah, clamming up? Well, I suppose she does know her legal standing and stuff.

Or develop sapient super-cancer. Honestly, do you not get 'schizotech' as a concept?

And be glad it happens fast because Comic Book universe. Real world, people don't just spontaneously mutate. Shit like that just kills us.

Which he can safely assume there is evidence of, given the Commisioner's apparent lack of knowledge concerning side-effects.

Going by the episode summaries, they seemed pretty resistant to more conventional routes. And the bad guy did mutate himself into a giant monster.

I mean, how long did the whole emergency last? Couple of hours from Batman butting in to Cuvier going mini-godzilla? I doubt even Gotham courts can work that fast.

...Good point. I doubt the sheepguy, snake lady or catgirl were bullet-proof, even if the latter might have been fast enough to dodge them.

Since she wasn't the 'empowered by mystic totem' version, after all. That one had superspeed and could fight Diana toe-to-toe.

Kind of a dangerous tack to take, especially if the press get a hold of that idea.

Welp, there goes any chance of playing nice with the GCPD.

Well, Gotham is simply too insane to be handled by any ordinary person. That's where the Batfamily came in. And then they left.

Heh. Making one hell of a statement, then.

And perhaps considering him as a possible future hire, I guess.

Peter's never been one for playing nice with the 'heroes', eh? Even retired ones like Barbara Gordon. I doubt that things are going to get any more pleasant here in Gotham for him. Still, it's entertaining to see more realistic fallout for these sort of events than the shows ever gave them. I mean, how many times did shit like that happen without any follow-up unless it was a plot point?

 

Everyone hopes Nightwing ended up with Starfire.

And Beast Boy with Raven.

 

This made me think of this.

 

Even IRL, there are a lot of people who idolize real-life murderers. I don't think the cops can stop gang crime, and I don't think any force on Earth can keep people from being idiots.

Heck, there are people today who romanticize and water-carry for horrible things from a few decades ago. Or even their own lifetime.

Or current affairs.

I'd be more specific, but that road leads to politics.

 

The whole Splicers thing was to me an euphemism for designer drugs. People keep tweaking a single molecule to make them legal again after outlawing. Gene editing? Oh so modifying that gene is illegal? What about this one and that one to trigger a result that changes the first illegal one without modifying it directly?

Same with allowing people to patent work on parts of the human genome. Epigenetics shows how environmental changes can cause gene changes. If someone takes a cocktail of chemicals and it modifies something that should have never been patented, can that chemical compound maker get sued?

It all boils down to corporate greed and who has the bigger purse for suing. But the thing is, the "law" will never catch up with state of the art stuff.

Unless you blanket ban, and that will only create a black market you cannot control. What are you going to do? Force gene testing on people with cat ears and tails? They could have gotten mech implants and covered them with artificial fur. Governments are to protect freedom, not restrain self-improvement or modifying.

The lawsuits would be legendary for prejudice; pretty certain a slam dunk in some cases.

 

Plus the police can't exactly do much to combat the factors that lead to crime occurring in the first place.

Yeah, they can monitor and arrest the ones that do it, but in order to stop people from doing it in the first place you're going to need things like economic reform to prevent poverty related reasons for committing crime and mental health reform to combat mental/emotional reasons for committing crime.

Barbara may be smart, but she may not know how to go about fixing the whole system.

Any replacement she may have would just continue cleaning up the various problems that pop up, without getting rid of the factors that lead to the problems emerging, unless they have the necessary skills needed to fix the system.

And if they do have those skills then them being police commissioner is honestly a waste of time when they can go for political office.

Though I guess it can look good if they want to get elected and them advocating for those changes while they're commissioner could also help a bit.

 

’than that accepting’?

 

i don't remember this episode in Batman Beyond but what the issue with the genetic mod ?

 

I thought it looked fantastic then, I still do. The movies were and remain, magnificent.

 

Thank you, corrected.

I'm not sure that Starfire even exists in this setting. I don't remember any Earth 12 story -animated or comic- with her in it. Nightwing was certainly single when he showed up in the comics as an older man.

They do, but you've got to really work the controls. Or hope that the mental imprint control decides to work properly.

None, because he doesn't. He has the gravity rod, the early version which Starman stopped using.

No, he turned himself into a giant snake. It helped. Terry is the one who turned him into a monster by stabbing him with spicing syringes.

Thank you, corrected.

To borrow a line from Red Letter Media: who was the main character of A New Hope? And who was the main character of Phantom Menace?

 

I like some stuff represented in those movies, I like the ideas and the worldbuilding presented in the prequels, I like plenty of the characters and the broad strokes of their stories.

I respect your right to your opinion and your preferences. However, with all due respect, that opinion is garbage and they're bad movies.

A summary:

The issue is that some people didn't seem to manage properly their new genetic modifications and, as teenagers are wont to do, started doing shit or behaving erratically with their new abilities. The DA then decided that he didn't like the new "fad" and it was illegal, no actual law required apparently, so he started cracking down on the practice.

Dr. Cuvier, as mad scientists often do, went off the deep end and planned a hit on the DA that is trying to forbid his passion. Terry gets involved, obviously, and gets "spliced" as well with Bat DNA but still manages to save the DA and Commissioner Ex-Batgirl. Bruce reverses Terry's splicing, I imagine by using the knowledged archived from when Dr. Langstrom (Man-Bat) needed to be cured, and they use Bat-Dog to track Dr. Cuvier.

Final battle ensues, Terry uses the "cure" on the spliced Henchmen but the Dr. has become a chimera. Since he's losing, Terry has the "brilliant" idea to inject even more DNA splicers into his enemy, transforming him into a Chronenberg-like monster. Obviously he can't defeat that either and just subjected a guy to a fate worse than death, fortunately he's saved by Bat-Dog and they escape when the fight provokes a fire, leaving Dr. Cuvier to the mercy of a death by incineration.

After that I assume the DA got away with what he was doing by using the Dr. and his extremist actions as scapegoat and forcefully reversed all spliced individuals.

For full details see here.

 

The episode establishes that some doses of splicing elevate aggression, culminating in McGinness nearly attacking Barbara Gordon and the DA after getting a bat splice megadose. So while reversing the splices to bring trial isn’t /clearly/ legitimate, especially given the constitutional requirement of a individualized analysis, it’s pretty plausible to /get/ that sort of individualized analysis. And Gotham of all places seems like it’d either not do that ever or have a prefilled form and rubber stamp

Its also not clear what extent splicing changes combat effectiveness. The show had a general problem with that, where it was never clear how much the new Batsuit was powered armor — sometimes McGinness is Donner-level strong with flight and Predator-style camo, sometimes he gets overpowered in hand to hand combat by a human-tier opponents. The splicer gang is at the lower level of that scale, with Barbara and the DA able to hold them off for a bit, but eg the tiger-splicer can smell through the Batsuit’s camo, and the ram-splicer is almost as durable as Mad Stan.

 

"One of the benefits of being highly beloved and respected by unhinged individuals with a loose set of morals and only a passing respect for law and order.
If anything happens to me, everything burns and other assorted estoric effects."

Assumed Bruce would have told her or after Peter's office called her husband's office she would have known. Probably not gonna be happy about feeling getting jumped like that when she realizes that 2 people should have been aware and told her.

Imagine if that snake cult gets the idea to dial back their plans to use this precedent to be worked till they have the authority to make everyone scaly in a century. Legally.

Wonder if he'll get sued for that.

 

The D.A'.s on his side, so a criminal case is unlikely. A civil suit would require that he be identified and served, which the SI could do, but would be uncomfortable doing.

 

There's a Throw Away Line in an episode of Static Shock where Batman visits. He gets asked about where Robin is and states that he's 'Off With The Titans' , which is about the only proof that the Titans exist in the DCAU. This doesn't give us a team roster, but there is another scene in JLU where Speedy visits with Green Arrow in the middle of a fight, and he's dressed the same and shares voice actors with the version that was in the Titans cartoon. This is not even close to enough to infer anything really, at the time of the cross over I THINK Batman was on to Tim Drake Robin, but can't really say with any certainty. These were mostly Tip of the Hat references to the other shows by animators and writers. But hey, they're canon.

This info is mostly from listening to the ranting of Titans fans trying to iron out which Robin is in that show, and who the character Red X is in relation to him. Since I'm pretty sure none of the other Robins made a successful relationship with Starfire in the other media, I'd say they got the Grayson version over there.

Personal Head Canon for me is a bit like how Young Justice treats the Green Lantern cartoon.....broad strokes of the story are treated as sharing the same universe. So I'd say something possibly resembling the Teen Titans cartoon happened off screen in DCAU....they just never talk about it.

 

Luke for ANH, and I think if you want to use a traditional view, QGJ for TPM. However, I don't think TPM had, or needed a main character. It was an ensemble, and worked well for it.

 

Yes, but you only think that because you have a trash opinion.

 

It's not Qui-Gon, because he doesn't undergo any character growth. No arc. He's the same person at the start that he is when he dies.