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

Reader mode
I agree about fighting against hyperboles becoming the new definition of words.

Because you end up with words that change their meaning to the opposite and then wonder why people learning the language are lost (yes I look at you "sans doute" and "certainement", drifting from "without any doubt" to "maybe but I have no idea")
 
Mr Zoat said:
Batarian Hegemony
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is this crossover i am sensing. also where did they come from

Mr Zoat said:
xyl2yj96zowx.jpg
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ah a true man of integrity
 
Profipfreely said:
Oh no, Zoat's one true weakness! Linguistic drift!
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shit Shit SHIT... quick, burn the records of the Great Vowel Shift! if he finds out that spelling, as well as meaning, can drift over time, we'll see a breakdown of EPIC proportions! secure the OED and a printed copy of With This Ring in stasis... i'm too invested for rewrites and extensive editing!
 
Alright, I'm slightly confused. Did OL marry Hera or is Hera seeing someone else, and based off previous chapters am I right to assume that Zeus is, in fact, not overly mad about his divorce?
 
TheMythNerd said:
Alright, I'm slightly confused. Did OL marry Hera or is Hera seeing someone else, and based off previous chapters am I right to assume that Zeus is, in fact, not overly mad about his divorce?
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Paul convinced Hera to divorce Zeus and based on the previous episode she may start to date Adam Blake, aka Captain Comet.

When the Angels invaded Paul was attacked by some lighting from Zeus, and we later found out that Zeus tried to have Hades send Paul to Tartarus, so he's probably a bit miffed.
 
anirocks said:
even cap needs his retirement buddy
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He didn't get retirement, He just basically murdered Peggy Carters Kids, and Grandkids, after complete degeneration of his character.

Infinity War and Endgame are basically the nail in the coffin of Captain America's character as a hero, in the MCU.

I mean... It's just bad. Objectively speaking Captain America's "retirement" is just a crap cannon.
 
So... Is Zeus going to undergo some kind of Apotheosis and become a better person before Hera considers getting back together with him or is this where he completely loses his mind and gets deposed as ruler of Olympus? Or better yet, OL counsels drunk Zeus, and sends Zeus off on an inter-galactic 'getting know myself better trip' on which Zeus becomes a Zen Monk and becomes a King Solomon level, King?

Excuse me... I'm writing this half-awake so if I said something insanely stupid... just let me so I can erase this comment's existence. Chao!
 
TheLunarwolf said:
He didn't get retirement, He just basically murdered Peggy Carters Kids, and Grandkids, after complete degeneration of his character.

Infinity War and Endgame are basically the nail in the coffin of Captain America's character as a hero, in the MCU.

I mean... It's just bad. Objectively speaking Captain America's "retirement" is just a crap cannon.
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He didn't, though? The way time travel works in the MCU, Peggy Carter's kids and grandkids were always his own kids, because he had always time travelled back in time to be with her.
 
nick012000 said:
He didn't, though? The way time travel works in the MCU, Peggy Carter's kids and grandkids were always his own kids, because he had always time travelled back in time to be with her.
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Which means, which is kind of worse, He'd always left Bucky to 70 years of torture and being a murderbot instead of saving him.

Which means that all those people he murdered in civil war to help Bucky "escape" are people he chose not to save, even knowing what he'd do.

Look, There's no way Steve Rogers comes of the MCU looking like a good guy.
 
TheMythNerd said:
So... Is Zeus going to undergo some kind of Apotheosis and become a better person before Hera considers getting back together with him or is this where he completely loses his mind and gets deposed as ruler of Olympus? Or better yet, OL counsels drunk Zeus, and sends Zeus off on an inter-galactic 'getting know myself better trip' on which Zeus becomes a Zen Monk and becomes a King Solomon level, King?

Excuse me... I'm writing this half-awake so if I said something insanely stupid... just let me so I can erase this comment's existence. Chao!
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Even if Zeus becomes a better person, which I doubt, that's not a reason for Hera to get back together with him.

He may get better and Hera could acknowledge that he has become a better person, but she may not want to have anything to do with him since he spent thousands of years emotionally abusing her and she just doesn't want to be around him anymore.
 
MCU Steve did not go back in his own timeline. MCU uses branching timeline, just like this fic after Mandated Paul changed it. He went back in time and created a new branch. No one was erased. Technically speaking he created a whole bunch of new lives. That does open up the question of how moral it is to create a branch in the timeline. If that universe is a net negative, it could be creating a lot of suffering.

Personally I have always hated that speech. It isn't integrity, it is stubbornness. If the whole world is telling you something is wrong, the rational thing is to take a step back and reconsider. Being willing to reconsider your position is not a lack of integrity.
 
Back Door (part 13)
  • Threadmarks
    • 9th July 2012
    06:35 GMT

    I open my eyes, blinking at the light-. I'm in space, right. Ring?

    Inbound communication. No movement of Leentniar ships detected.

    Answer.

    "Illustres. I have… An observation, regarding our situation."

    I undo the clamps I used to anchor myself to a piece of rock floating through the system I'm keeping an eye on. I don't have any trouble sleeping in space, but I've yet to develop the skill of sleeping without some sort of surface. Plus, it helps mask my heat and light radiation.

    "And what's that?"

    "We have both assumed that the Leentniar would continue with their previously observed behaviour. But in this region the Reach have only expanded."

    "As opposed to..?"

    "Temporarily retreated. The Reach have known setbacks before. The Leentniar simply had the misfortune to be in a region where that hasn't happened."

    "Alright."

    "L.E.G.I.O.N. ships in this region recently enforced a member world's territorial claims against a Reach 'trade mission'. The Reach-affiliated ships were destroyed or fled."

    "And that's the first time they could have seen that?"

    "I… Can't say that for certain, but based on their known movement patterns it seems likely."

    "So… What, you think they're heading home because they know that the Reach are beatable? That doesn't seem-."

    "No, of course not. But it might prompt them to speak to the Reach directly."

    "Directly?"

    "We don't know how they view the Reach. But they are the only outside influence they allow to affect them."

    "I see what you mean. The Reach define how their civilisation works. And we know that the Reach don't have any problem with using auxiliaries. But why would they bother?"

    "Additional weaponry or other supplies. Perhaps some form of exotic transportation or an interdiction field bypass."

    "To quote Tuvok; 'a logical, though highly speculative, analysis'. And I'm not hearing an application."

    "We know where the closest Reach-inhabited worlds are, and we know where the closest 'pacified' worlds are. There could well be records there that would give us more information."

    "There would also be fleets, defence networks and scarab warriors."

    "There are ways to bypass those."

    "Yes, and I'm pretty sure I could manage them. You haven't had that ring for nearly long enough. Do you know how many Orange Lanterns have died in this war so far?"

    "Yes. Zero."

    "And I intend to keep it that way for a little while longer. The Reach aren't a group of minor pirates who don't bother with data security."

    "Neither are the Spider Guild. Or the Psions."

    "Only the Psions really compare, and they never had the population, mental flexibility or industrial capacity that the Reach do. Or anything like their experience with Lanterns."

    "'Use orange lasers' hardly requires Coluan intellect."

    "It does if you actually want to hit anything. Orange lasers barely even work for point defences; they go through constructs."

    I pause for a moment to think. I know where the nearest Reach world is without needing to stare into space; unlike Psions, Reachians are actually fairly nice to each other. Unlike the Leentniar they have a functioning civil society. They've pretty much perfected the dual moral standard. Their serfs… I can feel them too, though they have a good deal less orange in them. When we start liberating those worlds I want to make sure that their behaviour is fully documented, so I can use it to browbeat anyone who questions my use of the orange light on a philosophical level.

    But with regard to the actual issue under discussion: is it a good idea for me to appear on a Reach world? The Reach know that we can do things like that, but they must also know that there's some sort of limitation to the ability due to the way we don't use it all the time. If I do it carrying no other equipment and… Don't immediately jam all communications and kill all life on the planet, I'll be giving them a good idea that it's a me-only thing. Might be worth suggesting to Dox that I jump a fleet or two around without being outside the ships, so that it looks like it's not dependent on me.

    "I'm going to say 'no', not without stronger evidence that we'd actually get something useful out of it."

    "I understand. I'll keep working on creating a way to detect their spatial distortion drives at extreme range."

    "Any thoughts on whether they'll swarm a place en masse or probe it first?"

    "There are no records of them sending in the industrial portions of their fleet until after the target is thoroughly defeated. I believe that they will send a fleet that is strong enough to do the job but which won't be a critical loss if it is destroyed. Are we planning on destroying it?"

    "We're having a plan to do that. But my preference is to negotiate either their surrender or an alliance."

    "How will our local affiliates feel about that?"

    "About as happy as Commodore Amalak was about me negotiating terms with the Spider Guild, I imagine. They might make a noise, but by definition, the people they've acted against are either dead or under Reach dominion now. The worst they've done to anyone in L.E.G.I.O.N. is light commerce raiding, and they can pay reparations for that."

    "The Queen had to be comprehensively defeated before she would agree to that."

    "The Guildmasters had to be killed before the Queen was in a position to agree to that. And it's not as if I can't defeat the Leentniar. That's just a sub-optimal outcome."

    "Will you be encouraging them to agree with you?"

    "No. Quite aside from the fact that a culture secure enough to fend off Reach social conditioning efforts would have protocols in place to prevent me doing that, I want to make it an honest choice."

    "As you did with the Citadelians."

    "Quite. There's a book I read a few years ago. I think it was called 'Hyperion'..? Something like that. One of the characters had an interesting interpretation of a famous passage from one of my planet's religious books. The classical interpretation is that by not forcing Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God showed mercy to a faithful man. The reinterpretation was that Abraham wanted to know if this new god was worth worshipping. If he maintained his demand for human sacrifice then he clearly wasn't. Abraham was genuinely willing to kill his son to gain that knowledge; God demonstrated that he was worth worshipping by not insisting that he go through with it."

    "Both I and the orange light respect people who follow their desires. That doesn't mean giving them free rein under any circumstances. Some desires are mutually exclusive. If a person wants to stay true to their faith rather than amend it and live, I respect that. And I kill them, or they kill me. I only ask people to think things through before committing. I-."

    My ring blinks again, images of the Leentniar ships momentarily replacing Lantern Gozzi's head. Not in a system either of us are in, but we can get there before they reach the only inhabited planetoid.

    "Will continue this later."
     
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    • Mr Zoat said:
    But there are the only outside influence they allow to affect them."
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    'they are'

    Mr Zoat said:
    mental flexibility
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    Yeah, I remember that they even thought they could go against Apokalips when Renegade visited them.

    The genetic that they get in their pods and the social conditioning that follows is not good for mental flexibility.

    Mr Zoat said:
    their either surrender or an alliance."
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    'their surrender' or remove their and and make it 'either a'

    Mr Zoat said:
    new gods
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    'god'
     
    Mr Zoat said:
    9th July 2012
    06:35 GMT

    I open my eyes, blinking at the light-. I'm in space, right. Ring?

    Inbound communication. No movement of Leentniar ships detected.
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    So, someone wanting to talk. Presumably Gozzi, though I wouldn't discount someone like Guy or Alan. Let's see what they want...

    Answer.

    "Illustres. I have… An observation, regarding our situation."
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    Gozzi, then. I wonder if she;s had some sort of intuitive breakthrough concerning the current mission, or if this is just a philosophical chat between master and student...

    I undo the clamps I used to anchor myself to a piece of rock floating through the system I'm keeping an eye on. I don't have any trouble sleeping in space, but I've yet to develop the skill of sleeping without some sort of surface. Plus, it helps mask my heat and light radiation.

    "And what's that?"
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    Heh, completely trusting his armour and Enlightenment to keep him out of danger while his conscious mind is taking a powder. Not bad.

    "We have both assumed that the Leentniar would continue with their previously observed behaviour. But in this region the Reach have only expanded."

    "As opposed to..?"
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    Ah, You think the Leentniar might break their pattern based on hearsay from other sectors?

    "Temporarily retreated. The Reach have known setbacks before. The Leentniar simply had the misfortune to be in a region where that hasn't happened."

    "Alright."

    "L.E.G.I.O.N. ships in this region recently enforced a member world's territorial claims against a Reach 'trade mission'. The Reach-affiliated ships were destroyed or fled."
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    Bet that set a few bricks amongst the Leentniar command's trousers... I wonder what impact that would have on them...

    "And that's the first time they could have seen that?"

    "I… Can't say that for certain, but based on their known movement patterns it seems likely."
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    Knowing that the inevitable, unbeatable enemy you've known and feared all your life isn't all-powerful would be quite a shock...

    "So… What, you think they're heading home because they know that the Reach are beatable? That doesn't seem-."

    "No, of course not. But it might prompt them to speak to the Reach directly."
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    I mean, their homeworld is probably dozens of lightyears deep within Reach territory, long since converted into a colony. Home would be impossible to return to.

    "Directly?"

    "We don't know how they view the Reach. But they are the only outside influence they allow to affect them."

    "I see what you mean. The Reach define how their civilisation works. And we know that the Reach don't have any problem with using auxiliaries. But why would they bother?"
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    Perhaps the Leentniar might think they can earn a world to keep from the Reach, one they won't have to leave someday?

    "Additional weaponry or other supplies. Perhaps some form of exotic transportation or an interdiction field bypass."

    "To quote Tuvok; 'a logical, though highly speculative, analysis'. And I'm not hearing an application."
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    True, whether they plan to change strategy or not means little. In the end, it just comes down to being able to talk to them...

    "We know where the closest Reach-inhabited worlds are, and we know where the closest 'pacified' worlds are. There could well be records there that would give us more information."

    "There would also be fleets, defence networks and scarab warriors."
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    The risk well outweighs the rewards...

    "There are ways to bypass those."

    "Yes, and I'm pretty sure I could manage them. You haven't had that ring for nearly long enough. Do you know how many Orange Lanterns have died in this war so far?"
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    Not as many as the Reach would hope for?

    "Yes. Zero."

    "And I intend to keep it that way for a little while longer. The Reach aren't a group of minor pirates who don't bother with data security."
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    Huh, not bad. I'm guessing the Lanterns have only been deployed when they have the best chance of success though. Once real fighting begins, and the Reach has adapted to Orange Light users, there's likely to be casualties...

    "Neither are the Spider Guild. Or the Psions."

    "Only the Psions really compare, and they never had the population, mental flexibility or industrial capacity that the Reach do. Or anything like their experience with Lanterns."
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    Admittedly, some of the Reach's techniques for dealing with Lanterns have already begun to show their weaknesses. They're already scrambling for new options, no doubt...

    "'Use orange lasers' hardly requires Coluan intellect."

    "It does if you actually want to hit anything. Orange lasers barely even work for point defences; they go through constructs."
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    And no Lantern worth their salt would allow themselves to get hit by light-speed weapons. Unless they had some manner of laser-resistant armour. But the energy levels used by space-going laser weapons is a bit beyond personal defences, isn't it?

    I pause for a moment to think. I know where the nearest Reach world is without needing to stare into space; unlike Psions, Reachians are actually fairly nice to each other. Unlike the Leentniar they have a functioning civil society. They've pretty much perfected the dual moral standard. Their serfs… I can feel them too, though they have a good deal less orange in them. When we start liberating those worlds I want to make sure that their behaviour is fully documented, so I can use it to browbeat anyone who questions my use of the orange light on a philosophical level.
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    After all, if you can't hold the moral high ground, then you've already good as lost the fight on a cultural level...

    But with regard to the actual issue under discussion; is it a good idea for me to appear on a Reach world? The Reach know that we can do things like that, but they must also know that there's some sort of limitation to the ability due to the way we don't use it all the time. If I do it carrying no other equipment and… Don't immediately jam all communications and kill all life on the planet, I'll be giving them a good idea that it's a me-only thing. Might be worth suggesting to Dox that I jump a fleet or two around without being outside the ships, so that it looks like it's not dependent on me.
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    Better not to go poking the sleeping dragon in its lair. Not without a lot of preparation.

    "I'm going to say 'no', not without stronger evidence that we'd actually get something useful out of it."

    "I understand. I'll keep working on creating a way to detect their spatial distortion drives at extreme range."
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    Whatever keeps your mind on the job.

    "Any thoughts on whether they'll swarm a place en masse or probe it first?"

    "There are no records of them sending in the industrial portions of their fleet until after the target is thoroughly defeated. I believe that they will send a fleet that is strong enough to do the job but which won't be a critical loss if it is destroyed. Are we planning on destroying it?"
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    No point risking the more difficult to replace stuff if there's a chance an enemy could deal damage to them.

    "We're having a plan to do that. But my preference is to negotiate either their surrender or an alliance."

    "How will our local affiliates feel about that?"
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    That's for Dox to worry about, really. As long as the Leentniar stop their cycle of nomadic raiding, I suspect locals will be happy enough.

    "About as happy as Commodore Amalak was about me negotiating terms with the Spider Guild, I imagine. They might make a noise, but by definition, the people they've acted against are either dead or under Reach dominion now. The worst they've done to anyone in L.E.G.I.O.N. is light commerce raiding, and they can pay reparations for that."

    "The Queen had to be comprehensively defeated before she would agree to that."

    "The Guildmasters had to be killed before the Queen was in a position to agree to that. And it's not as if I can't defeat the Leentniar. That's just a sub-optimal outcome."
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    It's a big waste of time and effort, for one, if they can be talked down.

    "Will you be encouraging them to agree with you?"

    "No. Quite aside from the fact that a culture secure enough to fend off Reach social conditioning efforts would have protocols in place to prevent me doing that, I want to make it an honest choice."

    "As you did with the Citadelians."
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    The few survivors, you mean? If I recall, didn't the majority of them commit suicide by guard-turret? And the few that didn't didn't join them mostly because they were near-catatonic in shock? ;) Not the best example...

    "Quite. There's a book I read a few years ago. I think it was called 'Hyperion'..? Something like that. One of the characters had an interesting interpretation of a famous passage from one of my planet's religious books. The classical interpretation is that by not forcing Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God showed mercy to a faithful man. The reinterpretation was that Abraham wanted to know if this new god was worth worshipping. If he maintained his demand for human sacrifice then he clearly wasn't. Abraham was genuinely willing to kill his son to gain that knowledge; God demonstrated that he was worth worshipping by not insisting that he go through with it."
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    Huh. That's an interesting idea. And I can see their point...

    "Both I and the orange light respect people who follow their desires. That doesn't mean giving them free reign under any circumstances. Some desires are mutually exclusive. If a person wants to stay true to their faith rather than amend it and live, I respect that. And I kill them, or they kill me. I only ask people to think things through before committing. I-."
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    The key thing is making that choice with all the information they need, and a head clear enough not to be overwhelmed by emotion?

    My ring blinks again, imagines of the Leentniar ships momentarily replacing Lantern Gozzi's head. Not in a system either of us are in, but we can get there before they reach the only inhabited planetoid.

    "Will continue this later."
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    Ah, the time has come, I see. Lets see if they'll talk to OL or just try to steamroll past him...

    Well, looks like we'll see if OL can achieve his goal, or of he'll be forced to take them down hard. Let's hope it's the former. Destroying another race would set a bad example for his student, after all. On the other hand, it'd show her how he sticks by his decisions, regrets be-damned... Quite the conundrum...
     
    Radix said:
    MCU Steve did not go back in his own timeline. MCU uses branching timeline, just like this fic after Mandated Paul changed it. He went back in time and created a new branch. No one was erased. Technically speaking he created a whole bunch of new lives. That does open up the question of how moral it is to create a branch in the timeline. If that universe is a net negative, it could be creating a lot of suffering.

    Personally I have always hated that speech. It isn't integrity, it is stubbornness. If the whole world is telling you something is wrong, the rational thing is to take a step back and reconsider. Being willing to reconsider your position is not a lack of integrity.
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    No, the timeline only splits in the MCU when one of the Infinity Stones is removed from the timeline. There was a scene in the movie where the Ancient One explicitly explains this to The Hulk. When Steve took the Space Stone back to the past, he re-united the timelines and caused the original timeline to be re-created, so if he decided to stay in the past afterwards, it's because he always chose to stay in the past. Similarly, he was unable to free Bucky from the control of Hydra because he had already freed Bucky from Hydra in the future, and he wasn't able to change that.
     
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