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

[iamnuff]

An eminently reasonable position, to be honest.

Singing kumbyayas with aliens is all well and good, but i also wouldn't want 'one of those guys who tried to genocide us' on my planet.

I would be seeking allies instead of trying to do it alone though. We're obviously behind here so we need Vulcans or something to help us get our Warp Drives and photon missiles online, otherwise we won't be able to defend ourselves against the next batch of rubber-forehead arseholes.

 

[Razorfloss]

Not gonna lie the protesters have a damn good point. They're going about it the wrong way but their anger makes sense especially since the genocidal war of extinction is in recent memory. Frankly im surprised earth didn't go full isolationist after the war.

 

[iamnuff]

Not gonna lie the protesters have a damn good point. They're going about it the wrong way but their anger makes sense especially since the genocidal war of extinction is in recent memory. Frankly im surprised earth didn't go full isolationist after the war.

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I mean, they're protesting, and they're doing it peacefully so far.
It's not really the wrong way to go about making sure your government knows that you're not cool with this, you know?

Like, people coming out into the street and protesting when the government does something that you inherently disagree with is the civilized alternative to just dragging politicians out into the street and beating them with sticks.

 

[Mr Zoat]

I would be seeking allies instead of trying to do it alone though. We're obviously behind here so we need Vulcans or something to help us get our Warp Drives and photon missiles online, otherwise we won't be able to defend ourselves against the next batch of rubber-forehead arseholes.

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Wrong setting for vulcans, warp drives and... I don't know about photon missiles? Photon torpedoes are a Star Trek thing, but Transformers has photon missiles.

And I don't think you're right. Humans are already stronger than the members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. It's really only the really big boys who are stronger than them.

 

[Jankl]

Wait is it true that only 250.000 humans died during the Earth-Minbari war? I expected it to be a lot more but that doesn't seem so bad. Even if they were going to glass Earth after the Battle. https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Earth-Minbari_War

 

[Mr Zoat]

Wait is it true that only 250.000 humans died during the Earth-Minbari war? I expected it to be a lot more but that doesn't seem so bad. Even if they were going to glass Earth after the Battle. https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Earth-Minbari_War

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It's mentioned in the series... Or maybe the film? That they were exclusively hitting military targets on the way to Earth. I can't find ship or crew numbers, though Google seems to think that human capital ships had about 500 people on them. Honestly seems a bit low to me too, given that basically the entire human military at the time was destroyed.

 

[Darko]

So the folks outside are definitely outside agitators, not upset university students, for the most part...

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The students are either interested in what she had to say, or they agreed with the protestors, but didn't join them because they didn't want to get into trouble.

Some would joke that most of them already aren't.

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Heck, during the training exercise episode, Thaddeus Sivana Jr. and Georgia gave Paul androids that were programmed with programmed actions and couldn't deviate from those actions.

Jr. joked that that makes them no different than most people.

I mean, it's not like there's even anything physical, is there

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Ectoplasm.

...So you'd rather have Humanity sit around vulnerable to everyone as we bang rocks together trying to work out the big physics questions and how to manipulate them? I appreciate the independent-mindedness, but there's a fine line between that and bullheadedness

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Not to mention that interaction with other races can actually help advance tech, either by trading tech, scavenging it, or even just knowing that something is possible can get people to invest in further research.

In the Vorlon and Shadow RPG book there's an interesting little tidbit that mentions how newer races advanced more quickly than older races.

It took the Speakers a billion years to advance to become a godlike race.

It took the Vorlons five million years to become a godlike race.

It took humans and Minbari a million years to become a godlike race.

This was speculated to be because younger races could interact with more older races, who wouldn't have had that many older races to interact with in their youth, so they could trade or scavenge tech from older races.

I guess Homeguard getting a lot of their members arrested on B5 had an impact in curtailing their bigotry a little

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The ones on Babylon 5 were probably just a very small part of a much larger organization.

It was the Vree, and IIRC it boiled down to 'the technology was simply that alien'.
(Given the Vree are Basically Grays, they were probably the worst choice to try and buy it from

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And that would make it centuries more advanced than anything Earth has.

The Vree apparently discovered a derelict Minbari ship, studied it and managed to copy some of its functions.

It's mentioned in the series... Or maybe the film? That they were exclusively hitting military targets on the way to Earth. I can't find ship or crew numbers, though Google seems to think that human capital ships had about 500 people on them. Honestly seems a bit low to me too, given that basically the entire human military at the time was destroyed.

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Either their ships didn't require too large a crew, or they were still recovering from the Dilgar War.

 

[iamnuff]

Wrong setting for vulcans, warp drives and... I don't know about photon missiles? Photon torpedoes are a Star Trek thing, but Transformers has photon missiles.

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I was making an anology.
In Star Trek, earth had the vulcans helping us out with our higher techology. Specifically, didn't they give humanity a warp drive to play around with?

You want that sort of relationship with a more advanced species. Standoffish enough that they're not trying to take over your planet, but helpful enough that you can steal their homework.
They're probably going to be condescending pricks about it, but you take whatever leg up you can get until you have enough technology and enough warships to secure your own territory, and then depending on how big of a jerk they were, you either cut ties with the snooty space-elves or become equal partners in an alliance.

Just saying "We should figure everything out ourselves and tell all the aliens to go fuck off the edge of our dicks." might be satisfying, but if you're at a technological disadvantage then it leaves you open to being conquered or exterminated by the next group of Minbari fuckheads.

 

[Mr Zoat]

In Star Trek, earth had the vulcans helping us out with our higher technology. Specifically, didn't they give humanity a warp drive to play around with?

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In Star Trek: First Contact, Zephram Cochrane developed the first human warp drive. In Star Trek: Enterprise, it was made pretty clear that the vulcans were being as obstructionist as they could without starting a fight. I only know the 'give them a warp drive' thing from the copypasta where the humans do cruel and unusual things to technology.

 

[iamnuff]

In Star Trek: First Contact, Zephram Cochrane developed the first human warp drive. In Star Trek: Enterprise, it was made pretty clear that the vulcans were being as obstructionist as they could without starting a fight. I only know the 'give them a warp drive' thing from the copypasta where the humans do cruel and unusual things to technology.

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That copy-pasta might be polluting my brain, tbh.
It feels like it was semi-common for federation ships crewed mostly by humans to have a vulcan on-staff as a kind of advisor? (Spock, Tuvok, T'Pol) but it's not really clear if that's an in-universe thing, or just later seasons aping at the same character archtypes as the OG.
That's probably more for the sake of politics than technology though anyway.

Edit: According to the wiki the vulcans shared star-charts for navigation and helped with environmental cleanup following ww3.
Them being sorta paternalistically allied with humanity probably also kept a bunch of the less friendly but weaker civilizations out there from trying to prey on humanity.

The general vibe I got from the shows (especially Enterprise) was that they were kinda condescending pricks, but it was still useful to have them around while we got our feet under us on the galactic stage.
If you're going to have alien neighbours who are more advanced than you right on your doorstep, you could do worse than the Vulcans.

 

[FuzzyZergling]

centauri would try and conquer us if their government was drunk off its ass,

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government wasn't drunk

 

[ziggrrauglurr]

Is it just me, or has that been a common thread lately: People asking OL what he wants, instead of him asking them?

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When the teen/young adult that can turn the Moon on a whim, fight along Superman on world crisis, etc comes to talk to you, in your place of work... You pay attention... Who knows what can trigger the all powerful maniac...

Eh, I suspect you hanging around looking disappointed isn't going to do much. Superman, on the other hand...

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I don't know... Superman is known for his patience, after all he is known as the boy scout... OL has developed a certain... Notoriety.... Even if it gets reduced sometimes because of the "cake guy" thing..

 

[Vaermina]

Your lust for her is clear to all of us. She will never consent to mate with you as she is now. You are stronger. Take what you want.

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Again, rare Minbari xenophile, she probably would once she actually gets to know him better.

Well, no. Your ideas and our ideas will compete, and someone will win.

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Literal Shadow philosophy there.

"We tried buying artificial gravity once. Paid through the nose, and then our best scientists couldn't make sense of it.

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Technically they could, which is why they figured out it was incompatible with Human design philosophy's.

Wait is it true that only 250.000 humans died during the Earth-Minbari war? I expected it to be a lot more but that doesn't seem so bad. Even if they were going to glass Earth after the Battle. https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Earth-Minbari_War

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The Minbari mainly focused on military targets on their trek to Earth figuring they could come back and deal with everyone else, or not, once Earth was no longer an issue.

This was speculated to be because younger races could interact with more older races, who wouldn't have had that many older races to interact with in their youth, so they could trade or scavenge tech from older races.

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^^This, and when he says speculated he means by a transcendent human and Super AI in the EU.

 

[Mr Zoat]

government wasn't drunk

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Thank you, corrected.

 

[HeroineRule34Guy]

You could just change their minds.

Yes, that's the-. No, I'm not mind controlling them.

Thralls are much easier to deal with. Most drakh are thralls.

Really?

What proportion of your species really need to be capable of higher reasoning?

The more people working at cross-purposes, the more chaos, the more chance of randomly generating good ideas and useful methodologies.

Drakh value strife and tests of strength, we don't seek to become a chaotic mess.

Well, no. Your ideas and our ideas will compete, and someone will win. If we were all the same, we'd both be working for the vorlons.

...

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There's a scene that always bugged me when Morden and Justin were talking to Sheridan, about how his mission to unify the galaxy went against their wishes because they believe in cartoonishly evil Social Darwinism. They believe genocidal, interstellar-scale struggle makes you stronger rather than just breaking everyone involved into tinier pieces. So they were upset because Sheridan was uniting everyone in favor of peace.

But the thing is, he wasn't uniting them in favor of peace, at least not directly, he was uniting them in favor of killing the fuck out of the Shadows. He was assembling a weaker force and making them stronger through direct combat with a superior force. They're still getting that struggle you want them to have so bad, they're just banding together to kill *you*, asshole. If the Shadow ideology was at all consistent, you'd think they'd welcome that, especially because that alliance, from their perspective, would almost certainly fall apart once the Shadows were gone.

It only makes sense if they care more about self-preservation than their putative ideological aims.

 

[Mr Zoat]

There's a scene that always bugged me when Morden and Justin were talking to Sheridan, about how his mission to unify the galaxy went against their wishes because they believe in cartoonishly evil Social Darwinism. They believe genocidal, interstellar-scale struggle makes you stronger rather than just breaking everyone involved into tinier pieces. So they were upset because Sheridan was uniting everyone in favor of peace.

But the thing is, he wasn't uniting them in favor of peace, at least not directly, he was uniting them in favor of killing the fuck out of the Shadows. He was assembling a weaker force and making them stronger through direct combat with a superior force. They're still getting that struggle you want them to have so bad, they're just banding together to kill *you*, asshole. If the Shadow ideology was at all consistent, you'd think they'd welcome that, especially because that alliance, from their perspective, would almost certainly fall apart once the Shadows were gone.

It only makes sense if they care more about self-preservation than their putative ideological aims.

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If I had to guess, what they wanted was a lot of small wars, where everyone had room to learn and grow, rather than what they got, which was one big war.

 

[Vaermina]

There's a scene that always bugged me when Morden and Justin were talking to Sheridan, about how his mission to unify the galaxy went against their wishes because they believe in cartoonishly evil Social Darwinism. They believe genocidal, interstellar-scale struggle makes you stronger rather than just breaking everyone involved into tinier pieces. So they were upset because Sheridan was uniting everyone in favor of peace.

But the thing is, he wasn't uniting them in favor of peace, at least not directly, he was uniting them in favor of killing the fuck out of the Shadows. He was assembling a weaker force and making them stronger through direct combat with a superior force. They're still getting that struggle you want them to have so bad, they're just banding together to kill *you*, asshole. If the Shadow ideology was at all consistent, you'd think they'd welcome that, especially because that alliance, from their perspective, would almost certainly fall apart once the Shadows were gone.

It only makes sense if they care more about self-preservation than their putative ideological aims.

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I think I see your problem, you're coming at things with a mistaken assumption.

Justin and Morden don't really speak for the Shadows ideology, they speak for their own personal human views of the Shadows ideology.

 

[Darko]

That copy-pasta might be polluting my brain, tbh.
It feels like it was semi-common for federation ships crewed mostly by humans to have a vulcan on-staff as a kind of advisor? (Spock, Tuvok, T'Pol) but it's not really clear if that's an in-universe thing, or just later seasons aping at the same character archtypes as the OG.
That's probably more for the sake of politics than technology though anyway

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For T'Pol it was an in-universe political situation in order to get a Vulcan to observe their client races' space program.

For the others it's basically just a show-runner decision because they wanted an alien to be in the main cast, like in TOS, and most likely trying to copy the success of some of the other shows, like Voyager adding a Vulcan.

The general vibe I got from the shows (especially Enterprise) was that they were kinda condescending pricks, but it was still useful to have them around while we got our feet under us on the galactic stage.
If you're going to have alien neighbours who are more advanced than you right on your doorstep, you could do worse than the Vulcans

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It is also important to know that the Vulcans were being infiltrated by the Romulans, so some of that was most likely the Romulans encouraging them to act like pricks in order to get them to see things their way.

The fact that they stopped doing mind melds, probably due to the Romulans demonizing the act as a way to make sure they're not discovered, also may have closed them off from other races.

Plus, seeing as the Vulcans live for far longer than humans, many of them may have remembered humanity during their more destructive periods, so they still considered them to be like that.

I'd didn't help that humanity during the Enterprise era wasn't yet the enlightened version that the previous shows had.

Literal Shadow philosophy there.

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Minus the mass murder, genocide, slavery, crimes against life and sapience.

 

[Vaermina]

Minus the mass murder, genocide, slavery, crimes against life and sapience.

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Given it's been a year and no Soul Hunter's have shown up chasing him I wouldn't count out the mass murder and genocide yet.

The slavery one will go out the window the moment he makes a construct lantern.

And as to "crimes against life and sapience", with how he's been acting so far I'd say just give it time.

 

[Darko]

Given it's been a year and no Soul Hunter's have shown up chasing him I wouldn't count out the mass murder and genocide yet.

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That's assuming the Soul Hunters can track him down, or even know it was him.

The only other times they showed up they had a way to track things, like chasing that rogue Hunter, or because that archeologists coworkers told them where he was going.

 

[BR549]

Getting to the main point, there really isn't anybody in B5 who's in a position to be in the position of Vulcans to B5 Earth. Everyone else is either far holier-than-thou (Vorlons), isolationist and very recently genocidally hostile (Minbari), has had the crap kicked out of them (Narn), are significantly weaker politically (LoNAW races), or were genocidally hostile and are now dead (Dilgar).

That leaves the Centauri, and even if you leave aside the issues of buddying up with the Space Romans, they would probably have Concerns about Earth getting closer to being a true peer. (They're close to being a peer, but not quite. As we saw in the series, B5 was very capable of wasting a Centauri capital ship. Singular, at least. But remember that in Sheridan's half of The Lost Tales, the potential future Galen showed him had the Centauri glassing Earth.)

The thing is that, as the Dilgar War illustrated, Earth already is - well, now, was - stronger than most races in known space. The exceptions being the Centauri, currently friendly, and the Minbari, where that arrogance and stupidity poked the dragon and paid for it.