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

I'm having trouble understanding the concept of rules being applied in a consistent and non-privilege creating manner. I think I like it.

 

That's a relief.

I'm not sure that it's quite the same thing when a person openly admits that the second account is theirs. I mean, I made a bit of a joke about it when I first did it in the main thread, but at this stage everyone knows.

 

Eh, if it were me, I'd just rule that I get 1 vote, rather than bother to sock puppet.

 

Eh, but then he'd have to pretend that Queen of Fables hacked his account.

 

Yes, it might be worse.

There was a Green Lantern storyline in which Star Sapphire was not Carol, but possession from someone imprinted in the crystal.

The results weren't pleasant.

Spoiler

It was Star Sapphire, not Carol Ferris as Star Sapphire, that killed Katma Tui. As a message to Hal.

 

Just eat the dragon.

Honesty if Paul didn't have this bullshit about limiting himself right now... Actually he shouldn't limit himself right now because Dragon.

Dragon is the point my Mad Science SI would pull out the molecular separator. Because it "separates" molecules not disintegrate them.

 

Inconvenient? No, if anything it's more convenient because I don't have to set up a second account. It just looks less good.

I mean, rather than painting the roof of the Sistine Chapel with scenes from Christian mythology Michelangelo could just have whitewashed it and saved himself a lot of time.

 

Isn't there a fairly simple way to nerf the dragon, though?
ba-BUM

 

Basically its Practicality vs Aesthetics

The problems lies in the fact that the Mods know it can be misused with malicious intend and rather prevent it than causing a problem at a later date.

 

Is this the first time we've seen Paul with yellow text?

That's because this is QQ, and we take our porn with healthy relationship building and hand-holding.

At story speed, she'll be able to rent a car sometime around 2100.

 

Eh, I think it kind of depends on what goal you're going into the relationship with.

Jade kind of screams "starter relationship" to me. She was there, in the right age range for Paul, they found each other attractive, and she propositioned him. It's not exactly "love for the ages", but let's be honest, few relationships are, and it seems like a reasonably healthy relationship in which Paul gets the chance for both sexual (finally!) and romantic experience.

Do I think it'll last forever? Probably not. Her heading off to the Darkstars makes me think they'll eventually just drift apart; I would have to think that one of the downsides of being/dating someone with empathic vision is that they can see when they're just not as into you as you are into them.

I don't think it's been mentioned, so I did have a question for Zoat: Is Paul/Jade a "email once a week" kind of long-distance relationship, or are they talking every night using his ring, and that just hasn't been relevant to bring up in the story?

re: the age thing

To be honest, this is one of my least favorite plot elements. In a comic book universe with shapechangers/immortals/de-aging, I think you can make a pretty good argument for either (a) deciding that the number of years you have memories of is what defines you, and it's important you act and be treated according to the age cohort matching that number of years, or (b) deciding that your apparent biological age is the most important thing about you, given the influence it has both on you directly (e.g., hormones and energy level) and how others perceive and treat you.

But... I think you need to pick one and stick with it. Pretending to be a teenager while believing that it's very important you're not treated like a teenager seems like the worst of all combinations.

Superboy is a one-year-old. M'gann is forty-eight. Paul is thirty. All of them appear to be, and are treated by everyone else as teenagers. It feels incredibly silly to me to declare that Paul's true age is 30 and he's just pretending, without noting the same about the others.

That's without even getting into the fact that--based on all the duplicates of Paul running around--we can be pretty sure that his reality is actually closer to Superboy's "newborn clone with downloaded memories" situation, making the answer to "What is your true age?" even more malleable.

(I see some meta-irony here that we probably can't delve into. Paul is, as far as any objective observer can tell--and I'm assuming biologically as well--a teenager. However, he identifies as a 30-year-old man, considers himself that deep inside, and is very uncomfortable when people insist on misaging him, despite never actually telling them how he identifies himself. He appears to regret not being honest with his friends about who he truly is, and doesn't know how to tell them that he's not interested in the kind of relationships that would be standard for the kind of person he appears to be.)

... all of which is a separate issue from "Should he be dating Zatanna?" Not to repeat an argument I made a few days ago, but Paul comes across to me as someone in his early 20s, and I think there's good and solid reasons for a 20-year-old not to be dating a 15-year-old that have little to do with age of consent, and much more to do with maturity level.

Personally, I'm rooting for Paul/Zatanna (since my original Paul/M'gann ship never really made it out of the harbor), but I think them dating now would be disastrous for both of them. Better for Paul to get some experience with Jade (and Zatanna with Robin or someone else), and then let them get together in a few years when a relationship between them would have a better chance.

 

Funny enough, in terms of romantic relationships? Paul has dated a couple of people and is in a long-term relationship with someone. As far as experience of such things go? That's... probably closer to the average for the age he's portraying than the age he considers himself. For that alone, "I'm more mature and experienced and worldly than you because my lifetime number is higher" is an even weaker argument than it appears. In the subject they're discussing and thus the subject that matters, it's not true.

Which is bad. Because even though she's making good points and he's making rubbish ones, a relationship would still be a really bad idea for the mind whammy involved. Though the girl hopped up on love and the boy hopped up on want feels pretty normal for a teenage relationship. If Zoat played this straighter and let the disastrous relationship play out, this would be an actual storyline for one of the more moralising comic runs.

 

I'm showing one such communication towards the end of this episode. The days are different lengths and she has a tight schedule, but it's more 'every other day'.

The SI's pretending doesn't go any further than him lying about his age. He hasn't altered his behaviour in order to make it more believable.

 

"Real" by whose definition?

No, it's arbitrary. It's arbitrary with post-hoc rationalization added to the story, but it's arbitrary. There's a reason I called out the yellow impurity -- green was weak to yellow before the yellow light of fear was even a thing, so the DC writers figured out a way to work it all together. And then they themselves got rid of that weakness in their own story. The other weaknesses were set up because a writer decided that a Lantern needed to have a weakness and then found a way to add one.

Mr Zoat has opted to pursue a different approach. He's defined a consistent base set of rules that all power rings follow. He then added on a unique perk to each color. He then logically extrapolated what the weaknesses would be based on those rules. And one of those weaknesses is that because characters have to maintain focus in their chosen emotional state, hitting them hard with any powerful emotional attack will disrupt them. It doesn't matter what color it is. If anything, this actually makes Mr Zoat's Lantern characters have MORE weaknesses than mainstream DC continuity, not FEWER.

Yes, he rolled back that weakness for the main character via orange enlightenment. That was, I agree, a risky move. But he made sure to balance that advantage out with a disadvantage: Paul will never have the raw construct strength that a veteran Green Lantern or a greed-frenzied Orange Lantern can have without drawing on external power boosts. Paul is therefore required to continue refining his technique-based ringslinging.

No, he can't. He has AI support that does it for him. In WTR, only Green rings require this visualization, and that's narratively presented as an intentional nerf by the rings' creators. There are ways to work around this limitation for the Green rings -- namely, having the AI support overlay the schematic into your conscious attention -- but in the end it just pushes Green ring users to min-max towards raw construct strength instead of creative use, which turns out to not really be a weakness at all. (This is even noted in character; Paul has on more than one occasion had a brute-force construct make him momentarily realize that there really are advantages to big green boxing gloves.)

This actually ties back to the weakness to emotional attacks I mentioned above. By forcing Greenies to min-max on brute-force willpower to overcome a handicap in construct flexibility, they get a synergy bonus in resisting emotional attacks -- willpower is particularly suited to this, because buckling down and pushing through is how you keep fighting when your emotions are trying to run away with you.

Grayven says hello!

Nah, far from it. He just doesn't often have fear strong enough to overcome his discipline anymore. Used to happen a lot more often, before he started understanding how his own mind ticks and before he got a lot of experience with being in possession of defensive superpowers.

 

It probably says something that I'm rooting for Zatanna here. Maybe not a full relationship upgrade, but something.

Chances are it isn't something complementary that it says.

 

Everyone is bringing up the age thing and I'm sitting here remembering that he was her guardian/saviour/emotional rock not so long ago. That made a relationship inappropriate, but even now that it isn't the case anymore it's still a thing. I don't think enough time has passed to make it appropriate now, especially when you add in the ages.

Still agree this would have been a good time to sneak in a "well, actually..." regarding his true age but I can see why he wouldn't.

 

Oh yee have little faith

 

As someone who had to deal with something much similar, the whole "I'm well over 10 years older then you!" argument does NOT work. It isn't "Oh....Sad, but understanding." It's "Oh....I still don't give a fuck."

Teenagers already think they are the most mature, capable creatures out there, and thus don't care. Horny teens REALLY don't care, and teens "In love" Don't care to a terrifying point.

At least she's not being clearly obvious about how much she wants in his pants and openly calling him "Daddy" Because...FUCK does that suck. "I will go to jail." "I won't tell. Promise."

It's like talking to a wall. Trust me.

I feel I need to point out that she is literally talking in all ORANGE. She's currently being affected by the Light of avarice/Greed/Want. Not the light of love.

So the staff really has nothing to do with it.

 

I think saying the staff had nothing to do with it is stretching it a little, sure something like this would probably have happened anyway but I think the staff made it worse. (still hoping for yandere Zatana)

 

Given that she's been using and carrying the staff with no issues. But suddenly a dragon, a classical creature of greed, shows up with a power ring (Orange I assume) and Zatanna's speech goes full on orange. I'm going to go ahead and say that it's not the staff at work here.

Plus all the rest of the team who don't have said staff being affected.

 

Didn't she use the staff to synergize with the orange light? also she's had a lot of violet in her speech before this and the star sapphire taking with her doesn't sound healthy or fine.

 

It would seem so. Right after she tried to FORCE OL to Love her. Twice. Which didn't work, either A. Because her love for him and her desire for him are at odds "I.E I love him and I don't want to hurt him." or more likely B. She can't use these Orange feelings to power her Violet wishes.

I"m just gonna go headdesk for a little bit because seriously....can NO ONE get a power up or new artifacts without cries of "It's too dangerous!!"

Every damn time. Captain Marvel gets a sword and it's too dangerous, and....no I don't even feel like laying it all out.

She's in love with him, of course she has violet speech. Yet despite all that violet speech, literally nothing went wrong UNTIL dragon with POWER RING did something. Something that seems to be affecting everyone but the ALREADY Orange enlightened, Ophidian's heart as a soul bearing, Orange Lantern 2814 Pavlos Von Britishguy.

Also, OL talks to Jade with violet speech at the time...and we KNOW what he can do to a person if he wants to. Oh man, it's too fucking dangerous for OL to have that Orange ring, He might go all violet and turn Jade into an asian sex doll!

 

I think whether he's "pretending" is a matter of definitions. At what point is M'gann "pretending" vs. just behaving the way she sees herself to be? (It's been long enough that I can't recall: Did he actually ever lie about his age, or did he just deliberately dance around the issue?)

That he hasn't altered his behavior--but still plausibly comes off to everyone as just a mature teenager--is somewhat telling to me as to what his "true" age is. If he's not deliberately trying to come across as a young adult rather than an actual adult, but just looks like one, is treated as one and behaves as one, what's the difference? (I guess you can argue whether his "true" age is what he biologically is, how everyone perceives him to be acting, or what he deep down believes himself to be, of course.)

Grayven is, to me, plausibly a 30-year-old. He behaves like an adult (if not always a responsible one), and is confident in his ability to step up and lead a team or corps. Him having a family and raising a daughter seems completely in-character for him.

Paul doesn't come across that way to me. He seems far closer to his apparent age. He deals with the Justice League as--depending on the circumstances--an angry or respectful teenager/early-20s interacting with adults, not someone who is older or close-in-age to a good many of them (e.g., John Stewart, 27; Aquaman, 29; Hal Jordan, 33). He'll lead if necessary (see Nabu), but would prefer to play lone wolf or second banana and let the adults call the shots. Let alone a daughter, I wouldn't even trust him with my cat.

To the extent Paul revealing his "real" age becomes a plot point, it would be interesting to see the perspective from some people of being perplexed as to why this is a thing that matters.

I mean, if Paul is similar in physical appearance to the sidekicks, displays similar maturity levels to some of them (e.g., Kaldur), and may have actually seen less impactful shit in his lifetime than some of them (considering how eventful some of these backstories are), how much does it really matter if Paul has X number of years of relatively uneventful memories?

(Actually, now that I think on, it's interesting that age/appearance dichotomy issues showed up more in canon YJ than usual for comics, between Superboy, M'gann and Captain Marvel, so I guess the fic including this is on-theme.)

To be fair, I think if you believe someone's enough of an adult that you'll let them decide for themselves to risk their lives, they're enough of an adult to decide for themselves who to fuck. (Speaking on a moral level, not legal.)

So, considering that Paul deems her mature enough for the former, this excuse seems bullshit to me, let alone a teen in love.

"You're not mature enough for me to be attracted to" seems the more honest response, even if that would hurt more than the generic "it's nothing about you and me in particular; my hands are tired, you're just not mature enough for an adult relationship".

 

Oh no I don't think using the staff is too dangerous in fact I like where the story went due to her increased power.
I just think that things were going wrong but the dragon just threw gas on the fire. maybe the staff was a small fire then BAMN dragon everything get accelerated.
though you make a compelling argument.

 

In America you can go to war and die at 18, but not have a beer until 21. I've heard not just legal, but moral arguments for this. Even if they didn't make much sense.

Also, even if Zatanna is old enough to decide she wants to fuck OL, that doesn't mean OL has to agree.

Orrrrrr...he doesn't have an interest in a 15 year old girl. Because not paedo. Also? There are super powered women who would LEGIT MURDER HIM if they found out. You hid your age and fucked a kid sounds like something Wonder Woman might just get a tad PISSED OFF about.

"Legally, I can go to prison." Is about all that needs said.

Or lets be more real. "I want to be in a relationship with you." "No."

You don't have to justify WHY you don't want to date someone. No, covers it.

 

a lie of omission is still a lie.

 

If for some reason Diana wanted to start the Nabu argument up again, she could try saying that.