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

[Mr Zoat]

I was under the impression they worked thr same, cursory googling says the same.

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"Daxamites are basically mildly mutated kryptonians. They absorb a wider variety of wavelengths but get hurt by materials with a high attenuation coefficient as a result. So, very tough."

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It's not impossible that I put that in due to misremembering something canonical that I read years ago, but it has been established as being true in this story.

 

[DAT_NOOB]

Paul: "YOU FOOL! I WAS THE REASONABLE ONE!"

 

[WereDragon]

I think she mistakenly assumed Coutara would be less disruptive/confrontational than Paul.

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Coutara is a mother who's child is being threatened. Do Arisia's people not understand the concept of the Mama Bear?

 

[boo600]

I do not think that the fact that a culture exists is a good enough reason to sustain it.

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Fuck yes.

Getting a definite feeling this is more about Cara feeling like OL stole something belonging to her than it is about Sodam.

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That's how many parents see their children, yes. And we don't exactly discourage this mindset. "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out!" "I put a roof over your head, and fed you!" As opposed to getting arrested or giving them up for adoption.
Our media is stuffed to the gills with the same messages abusive parents use to control their children, and when children look at said media, they understand that what is done to them is OK and normal, that they are not people and do not have rights - that only Sportsmaster-level comic book abuse is abuse, and that if people think that's going on, then they will be sent to an orphanage - an institution I have never seen portrayed positively, or even less negatively than the one in Annie. Here on Earth, CPS is a threat, used by parents on their children if they complain. I wonder what the threat Cara used on Sodom was?

Paul: "YOU FOOL! I WAS THE REASONABLE ONE!"

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Yes. Very much so.

 

[iamnuff]

Arisia winces faintly. "Paul, I think.. you should let Lantern Coutara answer."

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It's hilarious that they think that Paul is going to be playing 'bad cop' here.

No, Paul is taking the role of slightly condescending peacemaker.
Coutara is going full hostile.

Because there's no point in trying not to provoke someone who's going to be angry no matter what you do.

 

[Clell65619]

Cara Yat's right hand clenches through the table. "Bitch."

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My first thought was 'that's an oddly Earth-specific insult', but then I remembered 'Oh, yeah, Krypto.'

 

[Steelplaza]

I really think I may be the person in this thread most sympathetic to abusive parents. It's a tough job, and the only training most people get is their memories of being children themselves.

Most abusive parents aren't really evil people, they're just fucking up a job they'd like to do well because of bad ideas and poor self-control.

 

[Whenever Possible]

Arisia: Coutara will be reasonable, right?

Coutara: Am I going to get a chance to destroy a second civilization that threatens one of my children?

 

[The Froggy Ninja]

My first thought was 'that's an oddly Earth-specific insult', but then I remembered 'Oh, yeah, Krypto.'

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Not to mention that, IIRC, Kryptonians evolved from canids. So also a bit like calling someone a Neanderthal.

 

[Duke Long]

And then they get to the table and she finally actually looks at Lantern Yat. Just… Looks at him like she expects him to do something. And if that something is lean closer to his foster mother than she's in luck, but it doesn't look like it is.

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'then'

 

[Mr Zoat]

'then'

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Thank you, corrected.

 

[boo600]

I really think I may be the person in this thread most sympathetic to abusive parents. It's a tough job, and the only training most people get is their memories of being children themselves.

Most abusive parents aren't really evil people, they're just fucking up a job they'd like to do well because of bad ideas and poor self-control.

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I am making an active choice to never have sex, and have turned down sex multiple times, as well as an active choice to never even try for adoption, because of how my parents raised me. I know exactly where I would falter, and what my issues would be (ignoring whatever dreadful new surprises would come up), and I have chosen to never have children. Because I'd scream at them - not often, I'd try not to, but I've had issues where I yell at myself or the radio in the privacy of my car, and I sounded exactly like my mother or my father on various occasions. Do I like children, and teaching, and even taking care of them in public settings and for only a few hours at a time? Fuck yes, they're awesome. Am I ever going to give myself what is effectively total power over a child, or near total power with maybe one other person sharing that with me? Fuck no.

This is not a difficult conclusion to reach, and I'm not going to risk having a kid… what, to prove that I've 'healed?' I'll never fully heal. That I can be better than my parents? In a ton of ways I already am - but I'll never be as productive as my dad or as socially savvy as my mom, someone who has repeatedly pulled a Let Me Talk To Someone In Charge and ended up talking to college directors and, one time, an actual CEO (if of a small company), in fucking America despite being a middle class Indian woman. I'm just Not That Fucking Absurd, and I never will be (I seriously don't understand how she pulled that shit off when she isn't even white, and I personally am much more comfortable on forums than in real life small talk, where my anxiety can be handled by actual prep time). So why would I make a person and inflict myself on them? Because I'd love them and enjoy that? I can help and teach people in real life in a hundred ways without demanding a person come into existence.

So no. Self-control or no, if you attack your kid in their sleep? You're evil. If you regularly throw things at them? Then you're evil. Constant screaming or explosive actual tantrums; the unironic use of the words "I am God," actively isolating your child or undercutting them after they succeeded in a job interview - evil. If you couldn't handle having a kid, it was your damn job not to fucking have one. And if you brag constantly about how you chose to have them, and the doctors wanted to abort them because the birth was premature and too dangerous, then you don't get to constantly insist that it was your kid's fault that you have mild brain damage and have a little triangle doing math, because it was your fucking choice. You don't get to claim to be a glorious savior and a tortured martyr to justify repeated assaults and physical assaults, literal screaming tantrums, and - in what is thankfully the closest I've ever come to sexual assault - forced full-body 'washings' in the shower past the age of 16, largely done as a dominance thing.

These things happen. Miss Yat will likely be a bit more subtle, so as to drive the plot - but I can testify that parents say they're 'just doing their best,' and casting themselves as the heroes and the victims as they hurt children in painfully uncreative ways - like showing off mindboggling networking skills in public before whining and giving the stupidest fucking fake sobs in the most transparent manipulations possible just to drive in how little effort they need to put in when they have power over you and you can't call their bullshit - but they're just the fucking worst. "We didn't know we'd suck" is never a valid excuse. It just isn't, and especially when they believe their own bullshit after actively torturing - if emotionally - their kids. This is real, in the same way that Trump is real. They don't have to be complex, or tragic, or competent demons - they just have to be able to enjoy hurting people, and able to doublethink and decide that They're Good Because They're the Parents, which basically every human is equipped for. And then they can show just enough real affection that someone who can't leave is forced to love them anyway, because if you don't love someone you can't escape like that, then you're not safe.

Arisia: Coutara will be reasonable, right?

Coutara: Am I going to get a chance to destroy a second civilization that threatens one of my children?

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I would very much enjoy that.

 

[xSieg]

It's not impossible that I put that in due to misremembering something canonical that I read years ago, but it has been established as being true in this story.

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Well. At the very least you made 16-Daxamites absorb green kryptonite since their first appearance, so it seems like you had that idea since their first appearance?

-when we first started training, and that small amount of solar radiation won't be enough to fully empower them. I can't remember whether or not comic Daxamites were vulnerable to kryptonite, and I can't entirely credit how vulnerable to lead they were in the one comic I saw them in. I know that Daxam Sixteenians are literally just slightly altered Kryptonians…

Try it. Ring, green kryptonite radiation burst.

Compliance.

Green light explodes outwards from me, prompting the soldiers and their commander to brace… Nothing appears to happen to them. The soldiers, okay, they might have kept their armour in sufficiently good repair to keep the radiation shields working, but the commander isn't wearing full protective gear. Daxamites don't like using their advanced technology, so while he could be wearing a concealed force field he probably isn't.

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Hang on. Daxamites are weakened by their own red dwarf. Lead probably… Interferes with their own internal radiation… Whatever, they've never let anyone study them in any detail. Would red light weaken them back to-

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Btw, in this chapter Paul uses artificial red sunlight to weaken them back instantly. Since it worked it would probably be best for internal consistency to show that he's prepared to do it again to depower them.