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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. Ardy

    Ardy I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Okay, that was fairly brutal, but

    is confusing, I'm not sure what he's talking about when he says superboy does not deserve to be on the league and Paul saying he's skipping people.
     
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  2. freakytiki34

    freakytiki34 Making the rounds.

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    He's saying only Kon and M'gann make the cut by his standards, Zattana and Roy as well, but those are the only 4.
     
  3. Handlewithcare

    Handlewithcare Versed in the lewd.

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    I think he is only mentioning the people he thinks should be in the league because the list is shorter.

    And hey, Ollie is willing to learn now, so this was already a success. And hearing OL thinks of so many people as being a bad fit should go a long way to soften the impact of that assessment.
     
  4. Mquz

    Mquz Versed in the lewd.

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    Yeah, what really did Ollie in is his lack of investigative skills. Batman (even if he was infected) would have noticed and called a doctor, though he would probably have noticed before he went in.
     
  5. TotalAbsolutism

    TotalAbsolutism Magnificent Bastard Moderator

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    Typo.
     
  6. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  7. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    Smart guy. Realism overcomes optimism in this scenario.

    Because Ollie might let something slip that J'onn might pick up, of course.

    Protection against sicknesses would have been enough...

    And now he's feeling like a dunce-cap just dropped on his head. :D Surface-world lack of knowledge in the field of applied magic strikes again!
    Correction: 'protect them from'

    Or set him up with a Dannering, perhaps? Danner-enhanciles aren't immune to disease, but they are much, much tougher. The 'virus' might not have killed him in that case, merely incapacitated.

    Ah, the creepy one. Seriously, did they design him after watching The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari? I always got that vibe from him.

    In other words, since it's a white-collar town, Ollie got lucky with thugs and martial artists, not mad scientists.

    Points for honesty, at least.

    Wow, also brutally honest. But I think Ollie needs to hear this...
    Corrections: 'Your skills'

    Good point. Not everyone in the Big 7 would seem like team players. Batman for example.

    His only real benefit is shapeshifting and immunity to telepathic attack. And that shapeshifting is limited by colour.

    And the League will have to do so sooner or later anyway, if only to cope with larger crises. The DCAU's Unlimited era comes to mind.

    Heh, even Ollie was confused by OL's statement.

    'Effective' is one way to put it...:V

    Most of them are teenagers playing Superhero. I doubt many of them are in it for life, full-time.

    Case in point. Like Ollie and William, she would not be a significant force multiplier in the League's bigger missions.

    I bet he's got a thread of consciousness running keeping track of the event, somewhere in the back of his mind.

    I wonder how many will consider them. I have no doubt Batman will refuse flat out...

    We're already down one Leaguer. I wonder how many more will get taken out...

    Time for a status update!

    And things begin to heat up. I wonder, will this be what drives the wedge between Batman and OL that we've been told will appear...
     
  8. FreeGod

    FreeGod If you see a God on the road fuck it!

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    More lack of preparation. I expect that Batman has a air filter in his mask at least. Maybe even an alert.

    Also he has less exposed skin in general.
     
  9. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  10. TheEyes

    TheEyes Well worn.

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    Surprised Richard didn't make the cut, especially now that he's Danner-ed. He's not on Bruce's level yet in terms of general investigative skills, but he seems to have more practical computing and hacking skills, which the League definitely needs as this is pre-Oracle. If it's an experience thing Robin has a heck of a lot more than Superboy; does OL just not like Richard's attitude?

    He does, but he rarely uses it until he's gotten a good whiff of something first (or he's deploying gas himself), which in this case may well have one-shotted him just as quick as Ollie.
     
  11. FreeGod

    FreeGod If you see a God on the road fuck it!

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    Really considering that Ollie took the gang down with gas arrows he should have used a gas mask anyway.
     
  12. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Doccer, you know what you did.
     
  13. Ardy

    Ardy I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    He mentioned the New 52?
     
  14. NeoDarklight

    NeoDarklight The Final Observer

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    Interesting that Red Arrow makes the cut, but Green Arrow doesn’t.
     
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  15. Agumentic

    Agumentic Not too sore, are you?

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    Posted in Story-Only.
     
  16. TotalAbsolutism

    TotalAbsolutism Magnificent Bastard Moderator

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    Yeah, I've got that thread watched so I notice those pretty quick. It's fixed.
     
  17. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Yea no, there's no way you did the necessary testing to determine potential long term effects in the super short time it's been since you starting planning this.
     
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  18. TheEyes

    TheEyes Well worn.

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    "It's magic; I ain't got to explain shit."
     
  19. Brian_Fiction

    Brian_Fiction Terribly Lost

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    Yea, no, there's no way you possess the necessary in universe knowledge to know whether or not the testing Paul performed was adequate or not.
     
  20. FreeGod

    FreeGod If you see a God on the road fuck it!

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    DC has had far shorter development times. Oddly enough the villains often seem to take more time to make their stuff then it takes for the hero's to make something to foil them.
     
  21. McGraw

    McGraw Getting some practice in, huh?

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    Is Kid Flash currently active? I forget if he was taking a break like Artemis -- if not, I'm surprised he didn't get a nod.
     
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  22. FreeGod

    FreeGod If you see a God on the road fuck it!

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    poor comportment
     
  23. w34v3r

    w34v3r Versed in the lewd.

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    One thing to consider might be to organize the league a bit more, make dedicated teams and similar sub-groups to deal with more specific issues.

    This might also be a way to bring on 'civilian' staff since some of those subgroups should be dedicated to non-combat tasks.
     
  24. Someguy Somewhere

    Someguy Somewhere The Critical Fumbler

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    Hmm....I think Paul's missing something with is break down on Ollie here. The Logic that goes against him, in the case of league membership, along with many others that OL would put on the bench aren't entirely based on their power or skill levels. True enough by the requirements that OL set forth but he's missing some less blatant aspects of team work and PR.

    They act as force multipliers for the team itself due to their chemistry with teammates. Green Arrow, Black Canary and a lot of the 'low end' hero's don't just function as Righteous face punchers. They also function as a balancing element of down to earth points of view to their more powerful co-horts. As part of the league they've got a better boots on the ground understanding on how non-powered civilians react and behave, how they'll view the league's actions. They act as counsel, teachers and friends to beings that can ruin a cityscape on a whim or angry fit. They keep the league from running rampant internally. They keep them sane(ish) and keep them working as a family rather then a super violent, soul crushing day job. The league is NOT a military, and is not structured to operate with a ridged command structure with a huge support base. You need folks to be social and functional with the much looser and close nit dynamic.

    From the PR side of things, they are held up as examples that the best of humanity can stand side by side with Aliens, Monsters, and Gods. They're approachable and far less threatening to the general public, while showing them that 'normal' people have a say on what the walking WMD's are doing.

    Compare the League to the Green Lantern Corps when it comes to opinion of the public. Yes in places the GLC are seen as hero's or even gods to be held high and respected for their power and peaceful goals. But there are many that see them as an external militant force acting against them with brute force, or simply interfering on a whim of the distant and unknowable orders of the Guardians, on subjects that the population disagrees with.

    A number of these folks OL undervalues are the lubricant that keep the JL motor running. Not everyone on the team can be Batman levels of productively crazy, nor As powerful as Superman, and internally and externally, you really don't want that. I mean, even if batman terrifies you or superman makes you lose sleep over the horrible things he might do if driven to it....can you really feel that threatened by a group where Plastic Man walks and talks like a complete goober yet stands equal to those two?

    The best example of this sort of role in the internal soul of the team being held...honestly I think falls to Green Arrow of the JLU. He acts as a conscience to the team, a role model and advisor to younger members like Kara, and speaks his mind on how they should work. In the older comic works, getting back to some of the core of the character, was the short run of comics that stuck Green Arrow with Green Lantern, in a Leftist vs Right Wing buddy cop pair. Those comics were historic for how they worked off each other in both role and opinions as well as the harsh topics they covered.

    Just food for thought.
     
  25. FeepingCreature

    FeepingCreature Not too sore, are you?

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    I think OL would say... "If you want a manager, hire a manager. If you want an advisor, hire an advisor. If you want a counselor, hire a counselor." The notion that these diverse skillsets have to overlap with "costumed front line fighter" is part of the issue here.
     
  26. ThumperOne

    ThumperOne Getting some practice in, huh?

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    I think this depends on what the role of the Justice League is.

    If the Justice League are meant to be an organisation that allows superheroes to coordinate and collaborate and support each other, then obviously having people like GA in the League is good - he gets support from more powerful members or members with different skill sets, and can provide his own support to other heroes as you describe. The thing is that this applies to way more than just GA - if the League is a social club that allows heroes to support each other, then it should be accepting every hero who can abide by basic bylaws, regardless of their combat capability or effectiveness. In this case, there's no point talking about who passes muster to be part of the League, because if a hero isn't very capable that just means they need the support of being part of the League even more.

    If the Justice League is meant to be a PR organisation that e.g. encourages meta-humans to be heroes rather than villains by providing good role models, encourages people to support meta-humans as heroes, and so on, then yes GA is useful as a humanising presence that encourages people to not be afraid of the League. This overlaps a lot with the first case just above.

    But if the League is intended to function as a concentration of extraordinary power to answer severe threats that cannot be countered by ordinary military forces, which is how it first formed (the Appallaxian invasion mentioned in the recent update), then GA isn't really suited to being part of it. And all the other reasons you mention for having GA as part of it (good social bonds with other heroes letting them relax, acting as a voice of the common person in JL deliberations, humanising the League in the eyes of normal humans) don't really call for weighing down Earth's greatest defense with someone who can't actually help defend Earth. I'll just try to run through why:
    • If heroes need downtime and socialising to relax, it makes sense to ensure they get it, but that doesn't mean they need it while on the job - just like they should probably have counselling after stressful missions or traumatic events, but don't need a therapist on the actual League. Experts (counsellors, therapists, whatever) don't need to be part of the League's frontline to help the League members, and to the extent GA helps League members not crack under stress he can do that while not actually part of the League's combat forces.
    • Having someone representing ordinary people have input on League decisions that might impact the broader population makes sense. Obviously the League has incredible abilities, and it wouldn't be great to have them unilaterally decide what lines to cross without any oversight. But again, that doesn't mean the oversight has to come from within the League. In fact, it's better if it doesn't - it's more likely that GA would be compromised in providing oversight due to his social ties with the League if he is part of it. That's why oversight is typically provided by separate institutions, which is in theory what the UN provides to the League currently. If the UN is too cumbersome to act as oversight, the League could have a separate team of people who all large decisions get run past and who have privileged knowledge of League internal decision making. But why put those people on the front line? (Also, GA isn't a great fit there - he's a multi-billionaire who dresses up and fights crime, which is definitely not the background of the typical non-powered person.)
    • Humanising the League to outsiders is probably a good thing even for a purely combat-focused League, and is the one area where actually being a member of the League helps significantly. But I've got to say, in a team with Superman (Metropolis's favoured son), Wonder Woman (a much-loved public ambassador and, frankly, a beautiful woman who doesn't wear much), and the Flash (friendly, open, most often portrayed as the heart of the League), I'm not seeing why adding someone who actually can't help with the League's primary role to the League's combat roster is needed. If the League was highly reliant on PR it would make more sense, but they're an independent group that doesn't rely on government funding, is chartered by the UN (which isn't vulnerable to public opinion the way individual governments are, due to being multinational and having a lot of bureaucratic inertia), and whose job is to beat up aliens and bad guys (which doesn't rely on PR and is seen as so important in the wake of an invasion that they themselves stopped that there's no way it would be cancelled). They probably don't need GA's PR pull, especially as he doesn't really have much in the first place. He doesn't have a close relationship with the local police, presumably doesn't have one with the government (local or otherwise), isn't super famous, hasn't revealed his identity (so can't draw on goodwill he might have as Oliver Queen), doesn't seem to do outreach like interviews or publicity tours to help the League's PR, and basically doesn't actually advance this aim much at all.
    The problem is that the League doesn't have a very firm idea of what it should be. It started as a defense force against alien invasion, in which case GA is basically never directly useful and all the points you mention don't really justify his inclusion into the League proper unless it's as a token figurehead who spends his time doing PR work (which isn't what he actually does). Then it added people for a variety of individual reasons (this update mentions the Hawks were maybe added to keep an eye on them, I assume Icon maybe because he can help beat up invading aliens, presumably Plastic Man to keep him out of trouble). It's moving towards being a broad organisation that allows almost every hero to coordinate and cooperate with other heroes, which GA should definitely be part of, but it hasn't officially made that transition and is currently confused over what it is. We've seen that with the recruitment issues earlier in the series (needing unanimous votes, which Batman realised was unwieldy with the size of the League now), and we're seeing mentions of it here. That's why OL mentioned being happy with GA in charge of a city or region in a broader League, but not fitting the current (really former) League - because he was told the purpose of the League is to stop alien invasions, and that hasn't officially changed yet.

    Hopefully the League's charter gets updated to be a broader organisation than the original 'punch invading aliens until they stop invading' version. But in practice it's already a broader organisation - it just needs to realise that and officially recognise it, so it can officially do things like have dedicated training teams, and PR/outreach support to encourage heroism in met-humans, and supporting independent vigilantes so that e.g. teenagers with superpowers have some oversight and support even if they aren't part of the League directly.
     
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2019
  27. Sockmonkey

    Sockmonkey I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Counterpoint: People are more comfortable with advisors and managers who have spent time in the trenches, and are thus more likely to heed their advice. Part of what makes Batman and Green Arrow effective as manager and counselor respectively is their direct experience with the nuts and bolts of superheroing. Near-godlike beings are willing to accept chastisement from baseline humans who know what they're talking about.
    Being a superhero makes you part of the League's psychological ingroup, which keeps them from resenting the advice given.
     
  28. Steelplaza

    Steelplaza Custom Title

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    Perhaps less attitude and more maturity level/age. As I recall, Robin is literally the youngest member of the team unless someone even younger has been recruited. Of course Superboy's "age" could be calculated a number of ways, but he seems to think/mature on a late teen to adult level at least. In YJ episode 1, Robin is 13. It's been less than two years since then, right?
     
  29. DrThoth

    DrThoth I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    J'onn acted as a therapist in the JLU cartoon on at least one occasion, if I remember correctly, which makes sense given his personality and abilities.

    I'm surprised that Paragon doesn't think Kaldur would be a good candidate to join the League, actually. His greater magical knowledge and capabilities compared to canon plus his experience and skills would make him comparable to M'gann or Superboy, in my opinion.
     
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  30. Chaoswind

    Chaoswind Lord of nonsense

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    I guess Kaldur is dragged down by his unquestionable loyalty to Atlantis and his objectivity vis a vis surface nations vs Atlantis... I can see why Queen Mera would be a better fit with the ON PAPER goals and UN mission for the league.
     
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