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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. Simonbob

    Simonbob Really? You don't say.

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    My point was, that regardless of the money he has, no, he can't.

    If he starts to do that kind of thing, he'll run into the issue that my mother ran into, when she and her friends gave money to a school for girls in Pakistan.

    After years of this, the charity sent somebody over to see what was going on, only to find that the school, billed as girls only, was in fact only teaching boys. The local culture made this inevitable.

    How are you going to fix the culture, the millions of people, who simply don't think the way you want them to? Over time, if you are willing to depose rulers who fight you, and are willing to kill the most stubborn adherants, perhaps?

    I'll be honest. I don't know how to fix cultures like that. I just know that, even today, with all the tech and money, gifts of food and examples of how to do better, Africa remains Africa, and starvation is something that can, and does still happen there. So does slavery.

    No matter how powerful a company, people have to live their own lives. The boss can have infulence, but only to a point.
     
  2. Chaoswind

    Chaoswind Lord of nonsense

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    You said the Titans won the battle in this universe, so Hercules is the legitimate son of Uranus when he shagged and married a mortal girl?
     
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  3. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Dunno. Is he?
     
  4. NeoDarklight

    NeoDarklight The Final Observer

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    Isn’t Whizzer from Marvel comics as one of the Secret Six or something? I vaguely recall there being a Whizzer in the 90s Spider-Man show where he fought in WW2.

    On another note, am I the only one who thinks that Baul might have possibly deliberately set events up so that the Crime Syndicate would have been taken down while he was away?
     
  5. Maxx Crowley

    Maxx Crowley I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Everything is a bad idea. Clearly the status quo must be maintained at all cost.

    Vaermina? The fountain from which all knowledge flows....somehow wrong?

    No...no that just couldn't be.
     
  6. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Yes, the picture used is of an old Marvel character, as is the name. It's not the same man.
     
  7. Senevri

    Senevri Not too sore, are you?

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    The idea that WW has never been back to Themyscira after she left, is a lot stupid but also a little bit cool.
     
  8. l---erddad---l

    l---erddad---l Wait, google can see this?

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    Except that all Willpower does is reinforce your own thoughts, opinions and general self-identity. Sure, if you get Willpower Enlightenment it might loop back around, but otherwise it just reinforces what you already are. For Zatanna, that would be prohibitive for her being able to rationally think about her attraction to Paul and change her mind.

    Mind, Paul shouldn't take it either: It definitely wouldn't do anything good for him to be even more stubborn about his opinions.
     
  9. Siskulous

    Siskulous Know what you're doing yet?

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    I'm not so sure about that. In some continuities Batman paid for the Watchtower out of pocket (the Justice League cartoon is one - Wonder Woman asks him how much it's costing and he says he doesn't like to think about it). To put that in perspective, the ISS - which absolutely minuscule compared to the Watchtower - cost $150 billion to build. Which means the Watchtower, in the continuities where it was built by Earthlings, had to have cost at least $500 billion and probably closer to a trillion dollars. I don't think there's a continuity where Lex or Lexcorp even has those kinds of resources to throw around.

    And yes, I'm aware that in Zoat's continuity Batman didn't pay for it, but it still serves as an example of the kind of money Bruce Wayne throws at his personal obsession.

    The no-limits fallacy is only a fallacy in real life. In fiction the limits are only what the authors want them to be. If DC were logically consistent then Bruce Wayne working through Wayne Enterprises has none. Of course, DC is very, very far from logically consistent, so your argument may (probably does) have merit.
     
  10. Cuchulin

    Cuchulin Versed in the lewd.

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    A lot of that $150 billion is getting the materials and people to put it together in orbit, Bruce can have Clark, J'onn, Green Lanterns and others move the parts into orbit then put much of it together which will cut down on costs. He also has access to Alien Tech to make things easier.
     
  11. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  12. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    You might want to look up the meaning of the word "dormant".

    Also primitive =/= less powerful.

    And lol at you calling the main continuity "niche".
     
  13. Buggy123

    Buggy123 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    I'm not convinced that you could make a emotional embodiment that weak/small enough without killing it. "Not doing things/inactive" is not the same thing as "literally 1/100th its former size/power".

    It could certainly mean it's less stable, considering the reaction of anyone who grabs (but doesn't put on) a orange ring is "Huh, I didn't realize these came in orange", and the reaction of anyone who grabs a Star Sapphire is "LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE ME LOVE ME!!!". Guess which of these does a better job of safely containing emotional energy.

    Certainly seems niche, I've hardly seen it mentioned at all here. It certainly hasn't been used in the story, so yeah, niche.
     
  14. Mquz

    Mquz Versed in the lewd.

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    This might seem a little colonialistic, but what your group did by just giving resources without ensuring they are going where you want is just reinforcing the culture. What really needs to happen in situations like this is American-controlled schools that, for example, give benefits to families for getting their daughters educated. And make sure there is no scam happening. Also, availability of corporate / service jobs for females specifically in those countries is important. You need to somehow incentivize specifically women working instead of staying at home, so that a feminist movement develops. In the US, this only happened due to the lack of men due to the World Wars. There might be a way to copy this by paying women more than men, or giving them service / salesman jobs or something along those lines, so that the cultural norm no longer makes as much sense to them. In real life, that takes a lot more money and power than a simple charity has. Bruce Wayne has a corporate entity, which might actually be able to help with the problem by helping change hiring practices.
     
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  15. Siskulous

    Siskulous Know what you're doing yet?

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    Just throwing money at a problem without paying attention to where the money is going like that is always going to have that problem. That's why most people who are big on charity strongly suggest looking into a charity and what they do with your money BEFORE you give them money rather than after like your mother did. One poorly managed charity does not in any way demonstrate that properly applied money cannot effect major cultural changes.
     
  16. Maxx Crowley

    Maxx Crowley I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Like I said, Everything is a bad idea. Maintain the status quo.

    Lord knows, all decisions must be made to contain a teenage girl's throbbing vagina for her Orange daddy.

    Or, you know, she could....and I know this is really far out there, but she could, just maybe, GET THE FUCK OVER IT.
     
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  17. Siskulous

    Siskulous Know what you're doing yet?

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    Realistically much harder than it sounds. If people could just "get over it" then unrequited love wouldn't be a thing because who the hell wants to be in that situation? Though you are right. It's not going to happen, he's made it clear that it's not going to happen, the only halfway decent thing for her to do is to move on as best she can.
     
  18. Cuchulin

    Cuchulin Versed in the lewd.

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    Agreed, from what I have heard a lot of "charities" are little more than tax shelters at best and quite a few have proven to basically be just scams.
     
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  19. EvenMaster80

    EvenMaster80 Shredder of Opposition -x-

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    The point l—-erddad—-l made against using the Green Power Gauntlet is that the use of it would be detrimental to Zatanna’s growth; it would be reenforcing her current mindset, which currently isn’t desirable for anybody. For her to overcome this problem and use green willpower non-destructively, she will first need to get over her problems and become a stronger person.

    The point he is making is in favor of breaking this “status quo” (whatever that means in the context of Zatanna’s internal struggle). The only way I can possibly see Zatanna not utilizing the gauntlet as “status quo” is that it would a be missed opportunity to cause trouble.

    Personally, I just want Zatanna to get over this, she needs to grow, using the green light would just drag out this problem even longer.
     
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  20. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Size is an illusion...

    Zoat massively nerfed the mental effects of orange rings so his character could use it and massively increased the mental effects of the Star Sapphire so he could make relationship jokes.

    Of course not, because Paul's short sighted and it never even occurred to him to investigate any of the emotional entities.
     
  21. Maxx Crowley

    Maxx Crowley I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    I'm just going to go ahead and point out that not only are there not enough hours in the day for OL to do every single solitary thing that someone in the forum has bitched about him not doing, but also that any time he started doing one of them, someone would bitch about him not doing another. OH and it would be really fucking boring to read.


    I'm just thoroughly sick of the sheer amount of fussing Zatanna is continuing to receive. Seriously, a god damn girl with a crush is not the center of the fucking universe.

    At this point, I'm seriously rooting for the billion to one long shot that Zoat just kills her off.
     
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  22. Buggy123

    Buggy123 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    No, no it isn't. And aside from that, I said "size/power". Emotional Embodiments are energy beings, beings with bodies made of energy which isn't bound by the same rules as matter. So yes, in a literal sense, they have no fixed size. But it's common to indirectly state how strong/powerful something is by describing how large it is, because in many cases bigger=stronger. It's perfectly reasonable to extend this figure of speech to things that don't strictly have a size, even if it doesn't make literal sense.

    Also, again, I said "size" "/" "power". As in, size and/or power. Even if you think size is some sort of illusion, the other half of that statement still stands.

    And going back to that "body made of energy" thing; making a Embodiment weak enough to fit in something like a Star Sapphire without exploding would mean reducing it to a teeny fraction of its full power. How well do you think anything survives having 99% of its body destroyed? From what we've seen in the fic, that generally results in brain death or complete dissolution of energy beings.

    Okay, and your point is?

    Zoat's universe is Zoat's universe. You think most DC writers don't liberally interpret and/or completely make up a lot of the shit they throw into their own comics?

    And these differences you're pointing out just make it all the more clear that niche DC canon does not apply here.


    Or, he's making the reasonable decision that you can't investigate literally everything to make sure that the universe doesn't fucking explode, because if it was that easy then it probably would've exploded on its own by now.

    Also, again, because you seem to have ignored it the first time I said it: Paul tried investigating some of the things that he did regularly, to see if there was any sort of risk associated. Not only was everything he checked perfectly fine, but the Controller who was helping him, one of the most knowledgeable beings in the universe, called him STUPID for being so concerned about nothing.

    If that isn't a crystal clear indicator that he is doing exactly the correct amount of investigation into the risks of his activities, I don't know what is.
     
  23. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    There's this thing called "Prioritizing" that people do...



    That's one heck of a straw man argument you have there..
     
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  24. EvenMaster80

    EvenMaster80 Shredder of Opposition -x-

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    Can an you please admit defeat, if the Predator was in the Star Sapphire they had, I’m pretty sure they’d have known. He’s had it for longer than a year and it has been used by Zatanna since before Klarion’s death. Even if he didn’t notice it (which would be impossible at this point), I’m pretty sure Dame Carrol Ferris, a TRAINED STAR SAPPHIRE, would have noticed the EMBODIMENT OF LOVE in the thing.
     
  25. Maxx Crowley

    Maxx Crowley I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Yeah sure, and the second he investigates one thing, you'll call him a fucking idiot and grump about how he's not doing some other thing first. Or that he's too stupid to do it right. Or that whatever he did, while appearing to be correct, was actually stupid and is going to cause no end to problems.

    I really hope you never wonder why no one on the boards ever takes you seriously Vaermina, even on the rare times you actually have a point.

    I have seen you literally tell Zoat that he is wrong about something he himself created.
     
  26. Buggy123

    Buggy123 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Yes, and he's doing it quite well apparently, because he's doing lots of things and keeping good track of their consequences, to the point that when he tried to pay more attention to the consequences, it was obviously and significantly detrimental to his ability to do anything else.



    It's really not, actually, because you are actively accusing OL of doing something that would destroy a entire universe. The only difference is "everything" vs "the Star Sapphire", and how would he have any idea that the Star Sapphire, specifically, would be a danger when he regularly uses shit like bleed tech and brand new, unheard-of pseudo-magical Orange Light techniques?

    If he wanted to be so certain that nothing he did was any more of a danger than the artifact that he worked with extensively
    The artifact that two close colleagues from different fields of expertise have personally examined or used for months
    The artifact that he just handed to a expert on the very technology it is made of
    Well, he'd just have to check damn well everything he does to make sure none of it has some incredibly obscure risk of destroying the entire universe in some strange and extremely specific scenario.
     
  27. lefthandturnsignal

    lefthandturnsignal Making the rounds.

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    Not to mention that when they were first experimenting with the star sapphire OL himself commented that it was similar to a personal lantern without the emotional spectrum safety features, just a crack in the universe letting the element of love through. It's definitely not a light fountain or central power battery or embodiment containment vessel or anything bad to take out of the universe.
     
  28. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Hey, it's not my fault Paul minimal efforts almost everything he does.

    They're free not too, but it doesn't change me being right.

    Do we need a list about the times Zoat has forgotten stuff he has previously included in his fic in the years since he's started?

    Because that would be pretty lengthy.
     
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  29. Buggy123

    Buggy123 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Except he doesn't, for reasons I have expounded on repeatedly, in extra-large font.


    I take you quite seriously, if anything I'd say the opposite is true; you take none of us seriously. It seems to me that you ignore counterarguments to nitpick at insignificant details, change topics whenever possible, and drop any argument the moment there's any significant evidence opposing it.

    To the point of, for instance, completely ignoring a reasonably comprehensive argument taking up a entire paragraph, to nitpick at a single word. As much as I prefer QQ, I must admit that having a "spaghetti posting" rule would be awfully convenient right now.


    Absolutely! Do please provide such a list; it'll either be great evidence against you, or quite entertaining. Win/win.
     
  30. Threadmarks: Doppelgängered (part 13)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    4th February
    20:48 GMT -5


    Gotham City -14 appears to be a buzzing centre of industrial activity. More buildings are being demolished, built and rebuilt than in any city I can name back on Earth 16. Collateral.. damage as they finished off Owlman's faction? With Wayne Industries definitely not being the force for social improvement that it is back home, I can only suppose that someone is trying to make good on three decades of neglect in record time. Most of it appears to be… EnigmaTech? Yes, I remember from Trinity that one version of Quizmaster started calling himself that. I didn't read enough of it to find out exactly what triggered the rebranding or the siding with villains, but since this planet clearly hasn't been attacked by a Qwardian dreadnaught I can't be confident that the same situation applies.

    But if it is him… A rational superhero. Working on the economy, because a strong legitimate economy is the best way to prevent the re-emergence of a strong illegitimate economy.

    Why can't I work with people like that? I wonder if he'd consider mentoring our Edward Nyg-.

    "Gotham Economic Boom Continues'." Zatanna turns the page of her newspaper as I emerge from my data trawl.

    We're in a somewhat empty café near Grant Park, having walked through an oddly cheerful city. Richard might be right about headline crime being down, but there's still a certain undercurrent of nervousness in Gotham 16. Probably will be for years to come as people readjust. Here, people were wishing us a good evening as we passed them. Even the soldiers on both of the checkpoints we walked past were polite enough.

    "Reading between the lines, it looks like they're adapting technology seized from the Syndicate for civilian purposes. Once we're done with this whole thing, I'd-."

    Zatanna's eyes widen in shock. "Oh."

    "What?"

    She folds the paper back on itself, then in half, then turns it around. Showing me a picture of the mayor shaking hands with a heavily scarred man named Edward Nashton. Okay, what'sohhhhh.

    The mayor Thomas Wayne. Ring, check obituaries.

    Compliance.

    "Martha and Bruce Wayne died in Crime Alley. Thomases Senior and Junior survived."

    I seem to remember Thomas Wayne Senior going rather off the deep end in the comic. Here, he… Yes, the files I can access suggest that he's doing a good job. Although… Mister Scott's files on Talon suggest that he's still at large. But he was more 'the test subject that survived' than 'foster grandson', and while Wayne Senior isn't going quite so crazy as his comic counterpart he is an enthusiastic supporter of President Wilson.

    "Oh." She turns the paper back towards her. "Should we.. tell… You know."

    "We can include it in our report. But… That's not… His father. They were similar once, but-."

    The door jingles as a squad of armed soldiers enter. The first has his gun at the ready, though not quite pointed at anyone. The second has a scanner of.. some kind, and the third also has a gun at the ready. The woman with the scanner takes a look around, tenses her jaw for a moment and then steps forward.

    "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We've detected an illegal holographic device on the premises. Would the person using it please stand up?"

    That would be legally tricky if the country was actually following normal legal processes, but the emergency laws make it quite legitimate for those soldiers to 'scan and shoot'. She's asking because she's not stupid enough to fire into a restaurant without direct provocation, regardless of what the law says.

    And likewise I'd feel kind of bad if I got a group of innocent civilians killed. I sheepishly raise my right hand and then stand up. The two soldiers with guns immediately fan out to cover me, though they don't raise their guns quite yet.

    "Sir? Would you mind explaining?"

    "I'm-. I'm sorry, I didn't realise it was quite this illegal. Um."

    She relaxes slightly at the sound of my very clearly foreign accent.

    "How-? How big a problem is this? I mean, I knew things were.. a bit tense here, but… Ah…"

    "Sir, I'm going to need an explanation."

    "I keep getting mistaken for this guy, and after the third time I got detained for an hour at a checkpoint I thought, you know, wear a facial mask…"

    "Why were you stopped?"

    "I look like a guy on the Syndicate list. I mean, I'm not him, but we do look a bit similar…"

    She nods sympathetically, and the guns droop a little further. "Sir, I know it's frustrating, but the law exists for a reason. We're fighting a major civil insurgency. Please deactivate your disguise immediately so that we can verify your identity."

    "Okay, but so long as we're clear that I'm not him."

    No direct acknowledgement, but I tap the hologram projector on my cravat anyway. The holographic mask I've been using to walk around with fades away immediately. No intakes of breath, I notice. And the corporal with the scanner is frowning slightly. Looks like Blue-me isn't that well known by people in general.

    The corporal waves her scanner at me again. "You're a close match for Power Ring, but you're too young and your body shape isn't quite the same. You're in the clear, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to confiscate the device."

    I nod sheepishly and take it off my cravat and hold it out. She attaches her scanner to her waist and steps forwards to take it from me.

    "Am I in… Any other trouble?"

    She puts the hologram projector in a utility pouch.

    "I'm willing to let this go, but please be aware that using holographic disguises in public is illegal."

    "Right, yes, sorry."

    The two armed soldiers step back, and the corporal leads the way out of the restaurant.

    Hm.

    I sit back down and generate a sound-deadening field. "Interesting."

    Zatanna nods. "They could detect your holographic disguise, but not my magic or your power rings. And either Star Sapphire hasn't reported in, or whoever she reported to hasn't added you to the system yet."

    "The checkpoints didn't detect the hologram, but those soldiers only had mundane equipment. Holographic displays are fairly common on Earth Sixteen… Even if they've been banned for a while, people could still have projectors. The detectors are rare, either expensive or hard to make, and they're used to getting false alarms."

    "But she didn't arrest you. Which.. means that they're not just interning everyone, even if they technically violate the emergency orders." She looks at me for a moment. "Do you think Mister Scott was lying about what President Wilson is doing?"

    "That's the problem, isn't it? Some of these emergency orders are pretty draconian, but if they're using sound judgement and only actually applying them when they need to… That's not necessarily a problem. It still leaves the.. practical issue of how to bring down the Syndicate without causing massive widespread destruction, but I am revising down my estimates on how many innocent people are being affected by the current level of government action."

    "Does that change anything? If we're trying to avoid a fight we're still going to have to help the Syndicate anyway."

    "It does make me think that President Wilson might be more rational than they've been trying to convince me he is. Which means that we might be able to persuade him to go along with it."

    "If that's true, why were they trying to make him look like the bad guy?"

    "Not sure. Maybe so they could claim that they got the president removed to strengthen their position with the Made Men?" I shrug. "Not sure."

    She nods. "So what's our next step?"

    "Find people protesting against the emergency laws who aren't sponsored by the Syndicate and request more details. But we can probably leave that until tomorrow."
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2019
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