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

At this point I hope they kill the possessed Superman.

Imagine being excorcised and having to live with what you did. And he won't kill himself and will try to do penance instead.

 

Penance like wiping out the Nazi regime that still rules and subjugates on another earth? Noice. If he wants to end himself afterwards...

 

I don't really see how that can be called penance. To do such a thing would require that he kill so many people that you'd just be asking him to add more genocide to his plate of sin/guilt.

The only crime most of these people have even committed is being born into a country that already did most of its fucked up stuff before they were ever born.

Even expecting them to eat themselves alive if OL did round up the minorities and put them on another Earth seems a bit much to me. Like, if these were normal Nazis with normal tech? Well, beyond the fact that they wouldn't control the world, I could see them eating themselves alive without someone to shit on.

But in this world? Where cheating their way to global supremacy and abundance with Kryptonian tech was a thing? Where Overman has already been doing what he can, limited though it may be, to improve things such that the people of the Reich are said to have utopic living conditions? Expecting them to turn in on themselves like that is wishful thinking at best.

 

And continuing the subjugation and oppression of non Aryans.

 

Thank you, corrected.

I don't think he's ever heard of him.

 

Perhaps, or perhaps both went to Pandora's mythological cousin Pygmalian's Galatea.

If one wanted to be creative there was a simulacrum of Hera made from Clouds by Ixion, so one could do a Red Tornado/WW amalgam where instead of carved from clay young Diana was effectively an air elemental.

First of all, Neron killed WW in the 90s so that's New Earth, second of all the version of WW that is the daughter of Zeus was not a god herself until she killed Ares to become the Goddess of War, so her origin is irrelevant to this anyway.

Which is mythologically correct, Hercules became a god upon his death, so demigod status is no barrier to apotheosis.

Highlandering gods to become a god of their domain is not historical as far as I can remember, but since the myths say that Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus drew lots to determine their domains, hypothetically there could be a universe with Hades the Skyfather, Poseidon the God of the Underworld, and Zeus the sea god.

 

The SI keeps banging this drum even after having talked to Balewa a couple of hours ago and being shown some of the ongoing harm from Nazi domination. 666-Wonder Woman already agreed to work with them for now; I don't see why he needs to be the Nazi PR man about all the "gradual social reform" they might or might not decide to do, at their own time and pace.

You know, I was doing some rereading of old chapters a few weeks ago. Remember on when the SI visited that Green Light monastery and he was talking to that Green Lantern, I forget her name, who really, really wanted to break the Spider Guild? The SI made her walk through her actual plans to do so, the likely response, and admit that it probably wasn't actually going to work. She couldn't apply sufficient pressure on her own, despite the power of a Green Lantern. It would be nice if at some point he was able to do the same with Karl. Yes, it's great that Overman feels kind of bad about things, but does he have an actual plan to fix them that has any possibility of working? Because if not and if he truly can't bring himself to "burn down the system", then at the very least it's worth considering whether whatever gradual social reform he thinks he's pushing is worth however much his mere existence is propping up the Reich. How can anyone in power feel pressure to change if at the end of the day Overman will fight to sustain the system whether it reforms or not?

 

I fully agree!

 

Commence the montage!

 

I figure the reason Paul has to repeatedly tell WW or anyone that what the Nazis did is terrible but things have reached a point that the only way to fix things would be mass genocide, total mind control over everyone to rewrite their thinking patterns, and how most of the people responsible are either dead or their death change nothing. Especially when they're in the middle of preventing a demonic invasion from crossing over to another universe and growing stronger.

Sure she may have agreed to help but he can't tell for sure that one wrong comment or action may set her off and start killing their tenuous allies, similarly to how Flash killed the Sheeda Queen when under the domain of guest rights offered by Lord Malvolo, which may make things harder since Overman and Overgirl may have come to the realization that the Nazi ideology is wrong they still have people they care about or a duty to protect them.

Once the demonic threat is dealt with Paul will immediately start trying to help people escape Earth-10, maybe convince Karl to move dimensions to help Earth 666 and its inhabitant recover, there's also recruiting him into LEGION to help against the Reach. He should definitely mark Earth-10 as a parallel world to monitor and defend against once the dimensional blockers are reactivated.

 

Firstly, new lgbtq people will be born so they'll have that. If that's not enough, there's always more subdivision. "White" has not been consistently defined throughout history. There'd be precedent for saying Italians and Irish aren't white people, and that's before you get into the "honorary aryan" thing they did for some countries. There's always gonna be people to oppress, nazis gonna nazi.

 

Is that really true though? I bet a mere violent revolution that throws off German military domination of most of the world would do a great deal to improve things. We've seen that even Italy, one of the nations that's most on "top" as a result of Nazi victory, is straining on the leash. I'm that most of the world would be happy to take the Kryptonian technology and wave goodbye to having to conform to Nazi social policy and running their internal affairs past Nazi approval. That doesn't require mass genocide or mind control. Yeah, there would be some leftover social conditioning, but the only to the extent that today's India is "British".

Pointing again to things internal to this story, consider that Lantern Xor just successfully prosecuted an armed revolt that overthrew the government of his own world. It didn't take genocide or mind control. He just got together a bunch of soldiers with different, hopefully better, ideas on how things should be run and launched a good old fashioned coup.

 

Not to mention they are anti-scientific. And it is only a matter of time before some of them want to finish the job.

The idea that they arent really doing anything harmful right now is laughable.

 

True, but as far as we know the problem with Xor's planet was due to the government. We don't see how the civilians feel about things.

On this world most people, not just the government or the military, believe in the Nazi ideology, so removing the government or military may not do much since most people would still believe in Nazism.

 

The Nazi Germans believe in their ideology, that is the issue with Nationalism flavored Nazism, the Italians obviously do no share the belief of Aryan/German supremacy, neither do the Japanese, or any other nation that hasn't been grounded to dust. This world is a powder keg held together by the overwhelming technological advantage held by the Nazis, something they didn't even earn or develop themselves so they are unlikely to command an ounce of respect for actually holding said technological advantage.

The moment Nazi domination is contested or shaken is the moment this whole world goes to hell again, it's probably why the Nazi can't really count on anyone helping them even their "allies" aren't really allies.

Earth 10 is a house of cards and I see absolutely no point in propping them.


If Paul WANTS to help Earth 10, then he should let the Nazi fight and fail to force them to seek the help of the other nations that exist under their boots. Balewa has the right idea, let Nazi win or lose on their merits, if they are unable to seek help to defend themselves from demons then let them fall.

 

I dunno, I see the Paul wanting his allies to work together, more as a "Wait until I go home, I'm not getting my Earth involved in a war with Demon and Nazi Earth at the same time." His arguements really only seem strong enough to make people shut up for a few days.

Edi: Heck, it could be as simple as Paul wants Overgirl to stay on his Earth and not fight a war on hers. He cares about her more than her entire world.

 

The Reich has mostly stabilized. There is a good chance they'll simply go isolationist Wakandan. Problem is how much territory they control.
So less like Wakanda more or less Krypton 2 basically.

.... And now I feel bad for them. Send them to Maltus. All the mutants, beastmen,orcs, ratmen and chaos degenerates to hate on and destroy.

No one deserves to be Krypton. That civilization was in a bottle long before Brainiac stuffed Kandor in a mason jar.

Only place worse is Daxam where they're techphobic AND have a lame weakness.

 

Spontaneous birth defects are not going to go away either. They must be killing a few little people and hemophiliacs every year. Even if they somehow stopped encountering birth defects or people discovering they had mental problems as they entered their adult years. They would always have an expanding list of what they considered 'defective' in their pursuit of 'perfection'

 

And that's not even to mention the opportunities such practices give for falsely accusing one's enemies and their families.

 

Oh hey, remember when all those Danner enhanciles took over Brazil? Why could Orange Lantern simply not explain to them that with with time and peaceful exposure to other cultures, surely the Brazilian government will undergo a gradual social reform process that will result in tribal rights being respected?

Heh. Look, I'm not actually up in arms about the SI or demanding that he personally take action. It's a big multiverse, and he'd never get anything done in his own universe if he tried to correct every injustice. If he thinks the Nazi Empire is probably no more bad than the Dominators or other alien empires he's prepared to tolerate in his own universe, well that's fair enough. Right now he wants to get Demon Earth under control and stop them invading other earths since they've already demonstrated a willingness invade the SI's universe. If or when Nazi Earth starts invading other Earths (and what do you think they're planning to do with that trans-dimensional technology if they perfect it?), then I'm sure Paul will treat them the same way.

But like I said, I do feel like these last few chapters on Themyscira he's fallen a little bit too much into the role of talking about "there's not much we can do about it now" and "could we not have a reckoning" to people who in fact could something about it now and have a reasonable case about the need for a reckoning.

Because I mean....

The fact is, "let's kick the Nazis out of Africa" is a perfectly cromulent position and probably a lot more doable than "let's evacuate an entire continent through portals to another world". And hey, you don't need to stop at Africa. Kick 'em out of Asia, kick 'em out of North America, kick 'em out of South America and wherever else they've got their jackboots on people's neck. If "the people believe in National Socialist philosophy" is true to any extent (and it's not like anyone is taking any polls we can trust on the subject) then you got to think "the people" is limited to people the Nazis count as people... which excludes an awful lot of people! And realistically it's probably mostly true for Greater Germany in Europe and a bunch of collaborators in various countries; I'm sure there's a lot of people the Nazis do count as people who think "well fascism has brought benefits, but I'd still like my country to be ruled by our own, not answer to Germany".

And again, it's not the SI's job to launch this war for freedom, but it's not his job to talk people out of launching a war for freedom instead. Maybe instead of going with "nothing can be done," Themyscira would like to make contact with Balewa would like to make contact with others who might be able to call on magic and see just how sturdy the German Empire actually is and how weak they might be to an alliance of magic using groups supporting dissidents in countries all over the world. Maybe there should be a reckoning, not over the Holocaust but about stuff going on in the current time frame. The SI is welcome to take an entirely neutral position about it instead of saying that something can or can't be done, or suggesting that evacuation to flee ther German Empire is the only solution.

Okay, I think I've pretty much said my piece on the subject. Again, not saying the SI is obligated to launch a one man war, just that I don't think he should be trying to broker any peace beyond the most temporary of ceasefires.

 

You seem very good at ignoring subtleties.

Paragon is lying to everyone on Earth 10, deliberately.
Paragon is pretending to play peacemaker so that people don't fight eachother until he can fix the problem, at which point Paragon will wash his hands of the whole mess and lock the door behind him.

Please accept that the protagonist and the narrator are both able and willing to lie.

 

If that were the truth then the Paragon wouldn't even bother getting the Nazis or anyone from Earth 10 on his side. He has enough powerful people and disposable forces in earth 16 (people that he can tolerate to lose) to stomp on demon Superman or just destroy earth 666 ability to invade earth 16.

He isn't lying, he just wants a favorable enough outcome that he can wash his hands from and call it quits, he wants the Amazon's to play nice with the Nazis because he doesn't want to have that weight on his conscience when he leaves.


Balewa had the right idea, if the Nazis are too proud to ask the people they are stomping with their jack boots for help then Paul shouldn't really be helping them.

The Nazi leadership already knows the nature of their enemies as demon corrupted armies from a different parallel, if they can't even swallow their pride long enough to ask a few black/asian/American magic users to seal the demon portals, then they deserve to be bloodied and destroyed. Either the Nazis of Earth 10 overcome their toxic ideology to unify the planetary defenses against an enemy they can actually easily defeat if united (unlike a dedicated war fleet bombing earth 10) or they crumble on their own.

Let them bleed themselves, they will ask for help when they get desperate and if they don't then the rest of the world will do so on their own eventually.

 

My problem with idea of Paragon lying is that, despite the readers being able to see what Paragon is thinking, Paragon never recognizes the fact that he is lying. While this doesn't mean that he isn't lying, it would be weird that there are no clues towards that idea. As for the idea that it would be stupid of him to try gradual and peaceful reform of Nazi Earth, I don't think Paragon cares all that much about Nazi Earth. He cares much more about Overman and his goals.

Rather than go for the most effective route towards improving the lives of as many people on Earth -10 as possible, I think that Paragon would rather work peacefully with Overman and Angelica, to cement a good relationship with them. Because he cares about that more. And that involves discouraging others from making a move before first talking to Overman about it. Of course, that doesn't rule out trying to have a discussion on the most practical method of fixing society with Overman.

Edit: One more thing to add. With Xor, Paragon didn't care all that much about the Alliance either. The reason why Paragon took the direct approach there was because Xor wanted to take the direct approach, and Paragon valued his connection with Xor enough to invest himself into the issue. Not that I think Paragon had any issue with the methods used or results achieved.

 

Let's remember that Paul is still a Utilitarian, and one with what a lot of us see as a pretty alien point-of-view. He's also Avarice-enlightened, and most of the people from Earth 10 and Earth 666 are in no way his people.

 

I swear, Atom Man is determined to give me mood whiplash every other sentence.

 

That's how they think. Magic is for the weak minded until the demons come and then it's all lets go find some meat for the machine.

 

Has Paul told anyone on Earth 16 what would happen if the golden lasso were to break? Because the truth becoming whatever anyone says or thinks of as the truth is really bad.

 

They say that possession is 9/10s of the law, and... hey, the wonder women have just taken possession of the lasso back.

 

how does he even know that

is there a comic issue where some one actually broke the lasso and reality shit itself ?