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

[AngelicKnight.]

So a thought occurred to me when reading this update, is there a Misa in the paragon timeline?

Like there been a few timeline specific characters before, some from another universe like sunset shimmer and golden age supergirl, some from the setting who the other timeline never met like I think Misa is meant to be (like she's from death note but this version of her is a DC native?).

I'm just curious, is the paragon path Misa ok?

 

[Smartkittykhan]

So a thought occurred to me when reading this update, is there a Misa in the paragon timeline?

Like there been a few timeline specific characters before, some from another universe like sunset shimmer and golden age supergirl, some from the setting who the other timeline never met like I think Misa is meant to be (like she's from death note but this version of her is a DC native?).

I'm just curious, is the paragon path Misa ok?

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Given that she and Sunset are explicitly crossover characters I'm inclined to believe their presence is exclusive to the renegade timeline.

Also, I thought Misa's parents were murdered which is why she came to Grayven in the first place. Am I misremembering something?

 

[Mr Zoat]

'toggled'
'they've'

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Thank you, corrected.

So the reason the g-gnomes were successful was that they could rapidly place an illusion/mind control/whatever on the target before they could suicide?

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The thing about mind reading is that you have to know it's happening to actively resist it. If g-gnomes aren't rushed, they can be very subtle.

Since there's a decent chance we'll be seeing a lot of Persuader/Elise this episode (assuming the planetary exploration has something funny happen and doesn't get offscreened), I feel the need to ask what her backstory is, because I scarcely remember at all. I think she got given future-Persuader's axe after Grayven killed him, but that's all.

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Elise? Persuader 1 came back in time to kill Superman and failed. He decided that the best way to succeed on his second attempt was to recruit his own ancestors, give them copies of his axe, train them up and then rush Superman. Elise thought that getting an axe was pretty neat, and liked meeting members of her distance family, but when she realised that the target was Superman she opened a portal to Challenger Mountain and told the Renegade everything. He beat the snuffing out of the rest, investigated her circumstances and offered her a pupillage.

I don't recall anything about her father. Is he the sort of person who would take an interest in planetary surveying? Seems like there is a significant risk of 'blank stare' response.

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He'd probably be somewhat interested? Humans going into space is usually considered pretty interesting. He's trying to improve his relationship with a daughter who he hadn't seen (prior to the Renegade's intervention) for about a decade, so he'd definitely show an interest.

Given that she and Sunset are explicitly crossover characters I'm inclined to believe their presence is exclusive to the renegade timeline.

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They're present because of what happened to Ambush Bug's bugs. Since they didn't randomly discharge in the main timeline, no Sunset and no Misa.

Also, I thought Misa's parents were murdered which is why she came to Grayven in the first place. Am I misremembering something?

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No, that's correct.

 

[boo600]

And clearly the only proper response to that is going on a killing spree.
Our reminder that this particular individual was a nutcase before Grayven handed her the power of a god. And a death scythe. And his explicit approval to go around killing people she thought it would be a good idea to kill.
Honestly it is a wonder they haven't had problems before now.

I don't recall anything about her father. Is he the sort of person who would take an interest in planetary surveying? Seems like there is a significant risk of 'blank stare' response.

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I mean. Reach spies, there to mindwipe and slowly genocide worlds. She's saving planets, by killing inarguably evil monsters. I'm not sure that 'killing spree' is a fair statement to make, particularly since she A) has trustworthy telepaths look them over, and B) is one of Grayven's retainers - Grayven may not be the Illustres of the OLC, but he is still effectively at war with the Reach, simply because they're going to nom Earth like the political version of a tide of alien locusts.

This is not a spree murdering, this is the disposal of threats to all life on a number of worlds, which would normally be preceded by decades of slavery that grind down the mind of the slave race before they're essentially slaughtered for religious reasons in an eternal jihad against all other life that makes the Fremen from Dune look tame.

 

[Ardy]

You don't have to read it. I won't be offended. I've already said that I'm not going back to Worm, though I admit it being all anyone seems to want to talk about at the moment is making me reconsider.

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You said you'd never bring up Worm again, and you brought up Worm again.

 

[Duke Long]

slaughtered for religious reasons in an eternal jihad against all other life that makes the Fremen from Dune look tame.

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Come to think of it, is their extermination of aliens caused by their ideology requiring antipathy towards other sophont species, or is it just a consequence of it requiring expansionism and probably valuing the reachian species? In this story they tend to seem pretty chill, but we haven't seen enough of their culture to be sure. And the dominators sometimes seem pretty chill too, but their ideology certainly does require antipathy.

 

[Huttj509]

I don't recall anything about her father. Is he the sort of person who would take an interest in planetary surveying? Seems like there is a significant risk of 'blank stare' response.

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Active engagement is not the purpose. The issue is that she's not comfortable with how much she keeps her activities hidden from her father, and she doesn't feel she can go into more detail about "I killed a bunch of people, but they had it coming."

So the planetary habitat expansion stuff is something she can actively talk about with more detail than "work went well."

 

[CrazyNoVa]

There's nuance to it.

Scion was basically on an emotional rollercoaster during the apocalypse, feeling the first joy and pleasure he had in the decades since coming to Earth and losing Eden, then finding Eden's corpse and having that wound torn open, started to just vent all his rage, got into a massively frustrating fight with Khepri stubbornly refusing to lose, then once again having that emotional wound with Eden scrubbed with salt and lemon juice, and had it caped off with a moment of hope against hope that in all of that chaos somehow Eden was there and impossibly alive. Until he took a second look and it was just another fake.

Then he exploded(literally) and just stopped caring and Khepri shot him until he died.


It's a very different situation to having Yellow Paul show up while Scion is still in the middle of his depression and is the sort of thing that risks Scion leaning into his nature as an Entity rather than indulging in the emotions of human emulation.

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Okay, fair enough. But what I'm arguing here is that even when taking Scion's entity nature into account, the mere existence of Paul might still just be enough to avoid his meltdown in canon, both by the renewing of purpose that he was sorely lacking, and by the butterfly effect. Especially once Scion realizes that the non-Wildbow universes might hold the solution to the problem that he and the other entities have been seeking for so long: the heat death of the universe. And if that's not enough, then another chain of events that lead to Scion's defeat could theoretically still happen.

Also, if his partner could be resurrected, that might further help avoid Scion going crazy.

 

[Mr Zoat]

You said you'd never bring up Worm again, and you brought up Worm again.

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No, other people brought up Worm again. I consider myself somewhat obliged to respond to people discussing my story on my story thread.

 

[Ardy]

Also, if his partner could be resurrected, that might further help avoid Scion going crazy.

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It would force all intelligent life on Bet and countless other worlds into a fate worse than death, but he wouldn't go "crazy", yes.

 

[Zig]

I only watched series 1, but I can't think of any way that would work.

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It was a magical eclipse that messed with super powers and could be seen everywhere on Earth at the same time.

 

[CrazyNoVa]

I've been trying to hold my tongue, I've been trying real hard, but what the fuck people?!

You're going on about a setting that hasn't appeared in this story for years! To hell with Worm, to hell with Worm canon, to hell with Wildbow, and to hell with every character in that stupid web serial.

Come on, don't you have anything to say about the story currently in progress? You can even talk about Sailor Moon if you want; at least that's relevant since Endymion is going to be a continuing character for a while.

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To be fair, the Worm segment is kind of part of the main story here, even if only loosely, so it's inevitable that it would get brought up from time to time. It may have been years since then, but it's still part of the story regardless, so it's fair game for discussion.

Besides, it's not like we talk about it all that often. It's been what, at least several months since the last time it got brought up here?

It would force all intelligent life on Bet and countless other worlds into a fate worse than death, but he wouldn't go "crazy", yes.

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You're missing the point. What I'm trying to say here is that Scion might put his attention towards the greater multiverse, and get distracted by the idea that his former partner might get resurrected by some means or ways out there, and then he might get obsessed enough to deviate from his original fate, which might give the people of Earth-Bet a better chance at survival. He would become obsessed with finding a way to resurrect his partner, and that might throw things out of whack just enough for the butterfly effect to make a difference.

 

[Steelplaza]

Imagine being the Reach Intelligence Analyst who has to try and figured out what the fuck happened.

"Yes sir, we don't know what happened to the heads. Our best guess is that they were taken for use with some sort of brain-reading technology, so we're assuming all the information those agents knew is compromised. We think this may have been the work of either a single individual or a small number of individuals with enhanced speed, but we can't be sure. The attacks were nearly simultaneous, but trying to compare chronology across interstellar distances is difficult."

 

[Mr Zoat]

It was a magical eclipse that messed with super powers and could be seen everywhere on Earth at the same time.

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Did it create powers, or just activate something that was already there? Do already working powers continue drawing power from the sun, or do they run off the body of the one using the powers? And honestly, if an eclipse was visible from everywhere on the planet I'd start looking around for something causing gravitational lensing.

 

[Rebu]

A rectangular pan does sound pretty cool. Though I wouldn't use it for omelettes.

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You could make four grilled cheese sandwiches at once!

 

[boo600]

Come to think of it, is their extermination of aliens caused by their ideology requiring antipathy towards other sophont species, or is it just a consequence of it requiring expansionism and probably valuing the reachian species? In this story they tend to seem pretty chill, but we haven't seen enough of their culture to be sure. And the dominators sometimes seem pretty chill too, but their ideology certainly does require antipathy.

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I mean, they follow a Writ. And they always kill off their enslaved races, some way or another, even when they make good slaves/computers/technicians/pharmaceutical ingredients. They're probably doing it on purpose, given how competent they are at expanding, and therefore, they're probably killing them for religious reasons.

They could just be incompetent at actual governance, but… to this degree? Even when some of the species, for example, use natural alchemy in their young, something the Reach can't replicate? Those guys would get killed eventually as well, given their track record, and I don't believe that they've never come across something like that before.

 

[Zig]

Did it create powers, or just activate something that was already there? Do already working powers continue drawing power from the sun, or do they run off the body of the one using the powers? And honestly, if an eclipse was visible from everywhere on the planet I'd start looking around for something causing gravitational lensing.

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No no, you're assuming it makes sense. The powers don't draw power from the sun, they draw power from the eclipse. The eclipse created the first powers around 400 years ago. Those people had decedents who seem to have something there but no powers. Then each time there is an eclipse, things go wonky. People who have something get powers activated, but then people who already have active powers lose them while the eclipse is happening. So like, the eclipse is somewhere giving people energy to use their powers most of the time, but when a solar eclipse is happening on Earth (everywhere on Earth at once) that means the eclipse is busy using the power itself so others can't use theirs.

Also the Internet wasn't invented, it's a sentient being that allowed humans to discover it.

 

[Mr Zoat]

No no, you're assuming it makes sense. The powers don't draw power from the sun, they draw power from the eclipse. The eclipse created the first powers around 400 years ago. Those people had decedents who seem to have something there but no powers. Then each time there is an eclipse, things go wonky. People who have something get powers activated, but then people who already have active powers lose them while the eclipse is happening. So like, the eclipse is somewhere giving people energy to use their powers most of the time, but when a solar eclipse is happening on Earth (everywhere on Earth at once) that means the eclipse is busy using the power itself so others can't use theirs.

Also the Internet wasn't invented, it's a sentient being that allowed humans to discover it.

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Is the internet-being the same as the eclipse-being?

 

[Duke Long]

I mean, they follow a Writ. And they always kill off their enslaved races, some way or another, even when they make good slaves/computers/technicians/pharmaceutical ingredients. They're probably doing it on purpose, given how competent they are at expanding, and therefore, they're probably killing them for religious reasons.

They could just be incompetent at actual governance, but… to this degree? Even when some of the species, for example, use natural alchemy in their young, something the Reach can't replicate? Those guys would get killed eventually as well, given their track record, and I don't believe that they've never come across something like that before.

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I decided to have a look for some relevant quotes instead of relying on memory.

"And you can't synthesise this stuff more easily?"

"No. For some reason this is the only method that works. We've tried foetal cells, foetal tissue cultures, vivisected adults… We even tried editing the eggs so that they remain in the egg stage of development indefinitely. Nothing else works."

"Oh, I can believe it. That's impressive biological security. I'm sure that if breaking it was possible, you'd have done it."

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"My homeworld has a number of time travellers living on it. Apparently, when you conquer my species, you remove all of the ones with useful traits from the general population and transplant them into an artificial environment where they're raised to revere the Reach. You gain-. Or rather, your successors, gain their loyalty by treating them as valued servants. Sometimes, social engineering works just as well as biological engineering."

"Why limit ourselves?"

"Because in every example we've been able to study, Reach biotechnological domination is inevitably followed by extinction. You people don't maintain servitor races. And then you've got places like this-"

I note the weak glow of my armour's rune stone with a lack of surprise. Natural alchemy. Which only works as long as no alien elements are introduced. It would limit the native species' growth if it's a required part of their physiology, but since the Reach don't use magic at all there probably isn't a way for them to bypass it.

"-where that approach doesn't work. As I understand it, the Reach hasn't even studied long term stable social engineering. I mean, you people like being in control of other species, but you always run them into the ground. It defeats the object of the exercise."

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I do think there's a decent chance that the Reach has antipathy for other sophont species, but I have some reasons for doubt.

Between these quotes I think it is established that this alchemical species is unusually resistant to modification of the alchemical process, and perhaps the Reach truly never has encountered a species quite like this. In the past they might've encountered species which are useful in similar ways, but were not sufficiently resistant to being modified into fleshy blobs that spit out useful products. Similarly for Threllian's species, it was mentioned that they are raised relatively normally because it's cheaper than synthesising their brains, so perhaps in the past similar species have been encountered but synthesis of their useful traits was not so expensive. Or perhaps with enough to time to work on the problem, synthesis of useful Threllianoid brains (did we ever get a proper name for the species?) will become cheap enough that the current method will be discontinued. And I think this alchemical species seemed like it was going to be maintained in its current form, possibly. That's the impression I get from these quotes, sort of. The Reach couldn't modify them, and didn't really know how to deal with them without modifying them because they aren't used to situations like this.

It is mentioned that biotechnological domination is followed by extinction, but the vast majority of species just aren't useful and the others might have gone 'extinct' in the sense I mention above, and furthermore we know little enough about the Reach interior (I think?) that there might be species kept intact in there to be exploited, with Oh El simply not knowing. Also, he does seem to think the Reach enjoy ruling aliens and might just be stupid, though given how clever the Reach tends to be I'd be a tad surprised by that.

With the mention of time travel reports of social exploitation of metahumans, the treatment of the alchemical species, and to an extent the way we've seen Threllian's species treated, I also think it's possible that even if the Reach has a history of exterminating even useful species, they've recently undergone a theological/political shift that has caused them to begin research into longer-term social engineering for maintenance of useful species. I assume the Writ includes some glorification of the proliferation of their species, so perhaps they were previously focused on relatively short-term acquisition of lebensraum for their species at the cost of other benefits. After all, any resources spent on maintenance of an alien are resources that could've been spent on a reachian. Perhaps a different interpretation of the Writ was discovered or popularised that caused them to reconsider this strategy, or there was some more practical reasoning involved.

 

[Zig]

Is the internet-being the same as the eclipse-being?

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no, that would make too much sense