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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. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Modified.
     
  2. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    "if something"

    Remove "the".

    "Not sure"

    It also kinda sounded like White Man's Burden crap.

    As for shy they seemed to not like it, well their most memorable experience with Godspeech would now be the Anti-Life, so now they may be uncomfortable with it.

    Heck, it's piss that he said something like that while he was under its effect and that reminded them.
     
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  3. ZzzSlothzzZ

    ZzzSlothzzZ The Giver of warm hugs

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    So thats how he drives this one insane and/or
    recruits him.

    "I WANT to know 'Restricted'
    *Squirrel Noises*
     
  4. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    Probably to avoid the people in charge from having to interact in person with a species that can tear them limb from limb. I suspect they'd have lost a lot of experts if they didn't. And presumably they're not armed with anything the locals could loot.

    Yes, though I think they'll find this lot a little harder to take a bite of.

    Logical. Don't want the critters who kill you to gain some kind of advantage.

    Not that much stronger, though, surely. Unless you specialise in a combat portfolio...

    I get the feeling this is something of a stock disclaimer. A 'cover your ass' warning if someone's foolish enough to want to go in person...

    I suspect most people who've experienced them hold them in contempt...

    Because the civilised peoples of the galaxy have a thing about genocide.

    You'd want to have a lot more of you running around, then.

    Optimistic, isn't he? I'm guessing he doesn't get out much, to see what the galaxy's actually like.

    Interesting that OL missed the Godspeech. I'd have assumed he'd notice it more now. (unless he did kind of hear it and dismissed it as optimistic but naive.) Also interesting that the Forever people flinched at it. PTSD's a bitch...

    Though some races are an easier sell than others, too.

    Ah, they're trying to rehabilitate some already? I get the feeling the ones they treat would quickly become dinner if they head out, though.

    Ah, the Super-Cycle. Like Sphere's big brother, and some peculiar seating placements depending on artist.

    Missing the point a little, lad...

    ...Sounds right Orky. Well, Gretchin-y.

    ...Worrying. I hope there's a good reason for the babies?

    Yeah, I get the feeling they enjoy the prestige. Surprised they don't have more young to offer them up to the scientists.

    And they'll probably refuse to leave, if they get a chance to see what their kind are like.

    Honestly, that probably helps them to curb the berriths more unpleasant behaviours.

    As long as said prey are not sophont beings, anyway.

    ...Do they know it's happening? Then again, they do tend to be hands-off concerning internal practices.

    No, they're not exactly proud of it. But the Burning Martians were an extant risk to the galaxy...

    To be honest, OL, your mere existence probably nudged them to step up their game a little, with your occasional dropping of Guardian 'secrets'.

    Given that they aren't trying to beat each other with the ropes, it sounds successful?

    ...Or not.

    Boy, have these guys given themselves a challenge or what? From what I'm seeing, the berrith are near-feral folks who evolved intelligence in an attempt to be sneakier than the next meal person. Honestly, it might have been better to try a little gene-meddling in an attempt to lower the aggression and raise the sociability, but such examples would probably not last long amongst the general population anyway...
     
  5. Ngamer11

    Ngamer11 Experienced.

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    The 2011 July-November folder is still in the 2011 January-June folder.
     
  6. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
    If your society considers eating people a normal and routine thing, I am fine for people of whatever colour to step in and stop you.
    Modified.
     
  7. Duke Long

    Duke Long Glomerulus

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    I think it’s only been half a year or something since they started this operation, so the mothers probably haven’t had time, unless their gestation is much faster than human.
     
  8. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Golly gee, evolution really fucked it on these cannibalistic wack jobs.

    Like outside of being able to (somehow) successfully reproduce and seemingly having a level of self-preservation instincts the berrith are about as close to an evolutionary dead-end as you can get. I can only assume that the environment on their home world was one of the strangest places in the universe to get a species that's this self-defeating through aggression but not tone it down by killing off the especially anti-social members.

    The fact that they were, at some point, apparently able to cooperate enough to go interplanetary is honestly just bizarre based on the behavior of the current "civilization." Unless their homeworld was unimaginably ideal, to the point of it basically happening on its own, for achieving space flight and/or they got help for it the amount of mutual aid and general cooperation even a basic space program requires, never mind the build up to that point technologically and industrially, seems well out of their ability to achieve.

    The cannibalism thing is a bit weird, our only example of a sapient species doing that is us and we try to avoid it wherever possible, but assuming they can consume members of their own species (or genus if there's more than one variant) without health risks that's probably one of the only advantages evolution gave them. That's a pretty good way of getting rid of the dead nutritionally speaking, though using them as fertilizer is maybe more efficient if they're omnivores, and it could theoretically prevent disease from spreading if they absolutely had to stat near the corpse for whatever reason.

    Honestly I'm thinking these goobers are some kind of forgotten genetics experiment that got a bit out of hand, because these just aren't traits you'd realistically see from a naturally evolved species, comic book logic or no. Not one that lasts very long at least.
     
  9. Ct613hulu

    Ct613hulu Experienced.

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    There are some interesting fictional depictions of moral societies and species that practice cannibalism. The Night People in Larry Niven's Ringworld series are a classic example.
     
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  10. moralrelativity

    moralrelativity Recovering pendant.

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    punching -> punches
     
  11. Doccer

    Doccer I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Talk about not because it's easy, but because it is hard.
     
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  12. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  13. Dur'id the Druid

    Dur'id the Druid Know what you're doing yet?

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    Also another fictional example in Leo Frankowski stories, a people who ate both enemies and their own members after they died. And apprently it was even based on an empatcic/aura sense they had gained through mutation, and did in fact get some skills and memories from cannibalism.

    The main charcter interacted with them quite a bit. He didn't try to stop them, but directly got them to understand, "I don't think you realize how insulting others see your practice is. I won't stop you, but I do ask that you don't eat someone's relative in front of them."
     
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  14. NightmareWarden

    NightmareWarden Versed in the lewd.

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    I think this planet is getting juxtaposed next to the Anti-Life refugee world for a reason. There is a factor at play in both locations. If anti-life, or a problematic form of the Life Equation, is active here, then the Forever People should sense it. Eventually.

    The Anti-Monitor fostered the Qwardians, and we found a fragment of his armor forever ago. Razor's world bore psychic traces of the Butcher entity. I think... Even if there isn't an active force making the Berrith act like this, there could be something outside of the Guardians' knowledge which left behind some residue...

    Not the Red kingdom, not Anti-Life, not emotions, not the Starheart, not the pet project of Brainiac or Psions... Who or what is left?
     
  15. The Unaligned Player

    The Unaligned Player Agony that desires to meet Extinction

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    Indigo, not violet. Use Violet and you’ll at best get tribalistic cannibals. At expected you’ll get Yangires.
     
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  16. Threadmarks: Compass (supplementary, Renegade Option)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    13th February 2013
    21:37 GMT


    "…the vrangs' own anti-orbital weapons, and the ship exploded-"

    Kara throws up her hands with an excited expression on her face, to the joy of all the children listening to Kryptonian History Story Hour.

    Who all immediately copy the gesture. "BOOM!" / "BOOM!" / "BOOM!" / "BOOM!" / "BOOM!"

    "-in a giant fireball. And then Krypton was free of evil aliens, never to be conquered again!"

    That doesn't meet with quite the same level of joy as the call-and-response part, but the children seem happy enough. I do spot Kara's eyes lingering on the two tamaranean children who decided to sit in, but they appeared to enjoy the story as much as the kryptonians. Bit of a slant, but I suppose that Karsta might have decided to enculturate them through jingoism.

    Nothing wrong with preferring your own civilisation to someone else's. And I say that as someone from objectively the greatest civilisation that the Earth has ever produced.

    But that's not a lot like I remember from the comics. Or much like Kara 50. I think… I mean, she seemed fine, and Karsta's been keeping an eye on her-.

    "Hey, Mister Grayven."

    "Hello, tiny tiny children." I smile at them as I bend down, favouring them with pats on the head as they move past me into the hallway. "Are you behaving yourselves for your teacher?"

    "Yeeees!"

    "I'm glad to hear it. Now, run along, little people. I need to speak with Kara."

    The rest of the class files out, heading towards their… Evening meal.

    "Grayven!" Kara smiles at me and takes a few moments to restore the seating to a perfect grid before walking over to me. "What brings you here?"

    "Oh, I like to keep an eye on important projects. You know, turn up in person every so often and talk to people. Make sure that I'm not missing something important."

    "That's very responsible. If Kem-El had kept an eye on Daxam, they wouldn't be a bunch of yokels today."

    "Ah, well, to be fair, there was a primitivist movement on Krypton before he got involved. Though, I mean, if you want to, you can use the hush tubes to visit them yourself."

    "No." Her face slips back into neutral. "They've made their choice, and safeguarding true kryptonians is more important than trying to dig the Daxamites out of the hole they've buried themselves in."

    "Okay, and… You sure you..? Want to keep doing this?" She gives me a concerned look. "I know you were studying mathematics on Krypton, and while this is important work, I wouldn't want you to feel chained to it."

    And she's smiling again. "Nothing is more important than preserving the kryptonian species!"

    "Right, but… There's more to resurrecting the kryptonian species than child-rearing. Ultimately, they'll need-."

    "A New Krypton to live on." She nods. "I know. I've been talking to Clarissi Dox about it, and he says that we can be folded into the current wave of colonisation projects. Ideally, we'd like a world with no one on it, but I can see that it might be better to share a world until the second generation are born and people are settled into their occupations. Besides." She rises off the floor. "It's not like I can't go back to another career later. No one knows how long kryptonians live when they've got access to a yellow star, but it's a long time."

    "Well. Okay. If you're happy. Have you and… Karsta, decided what you want done with the Rao system? We've probably got the manpower for… Whatever you decide."

    Her eyes… There's an odd expression that I can't quite-.

    "Could you restore it completely?"

    "You mean, transmute the kryptonite back into normal rock and stick the planet back together?"

    "I-." The odd expression again. "Y-. Yes."

    I do a quick back-of-an-envelope-but-in-my-head calculation.

    "Yes. Not.. quickly, but it's certainly possible. Be a good deal easier if someone as well motivated as you took the lead-."

    "No. My place is here. Living kryptonians are more important than a world that chose not to save itself."

    "Ooooooh-kay."

    "So don't prioritise it, but I'd still like it back. Ideally."

    "Rightoh. Is there..? Anything else you need?"

    She shakes her head. "No, I don't think so. You've resourced this project appropriately."

    I nod. "Okay, I'll leave you to it, then. Have a good day."

    "You too!"

    Mother Box…

    Ping.

    Yeah, but… Do the tube thing.

    Ping.

    I walk through the tube to the command station, where Ecksey and Karsta are keeping tabs on things. They both look around, though I wait for the tube to close down before putting a sound-deadening field around the room.

    "What's up with Kara?"

    Karsta frowns. "What do you mean?"

    "Ecksey, you know what I mean, right?"

    "Her mental activity has not changed significantly since she arrived. Neither has her outward behaviour."

    "She was reading a story about the vrang occupation to a class, and-."

    "Oh, the one about Hatu-El's resistance movement." Karsta nods. "It's nice to know that she's taking inspiration from the worthwhile members of her House."

    "Don't you think it's a bit… Xenophobic?"

    "Fighting against people who invaded and conquered our planet? No? I think it's exactly right xenophobic. Look…" She gestures to the monitors with her right arm. "All our kids are growing up surrounded by aliens on a space station built by aliens in a project overseen by you, another alien. That's not a kryptonian thing. We didn't mix with aliens like this."

    "Well, if you know a kryptonian with a cloning-."

    "I know. I'm not complaining. I'm grateful. I know I wouldn't do something like this for your species."

    "My species does kind of suck."

    She gives her head a small shake, and I do know what she means.

    "Even if they didn't. But as far as I'm concerned, Kara Zor-El is far more normal than that exhibitionist weirdo Kal-El."

    "We did rebuild her brain. She's just… It's just that she's acting so different from the parallel universe version I met, I'm worried that we did something wrong. Got something wrong."

    Ecksey shrugs. "Her brain has all the right parts. None of the patterns of activity are all that strange for someone who went through a great trauma. Since I have no idea how she thought when she lived on Krypton, I can't say if it's wrong for her or not."

    I nod. "Okay. Let me get back to you."
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2023
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  17. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    "built"

    No shit.
     
  18. Ngamer11

    Ngamer11 Experienced.

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    I'm glad the Renegade is finally catching on to what's going on with Kara. Hopefully she isn't so far gone that the Eradicator consciousness affecting her can be removed without permanent brain damage.
     
  19. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    'at'

    Neat to see Renegade realizing so thoroughly that maybe, just maybe, Kara's gone a bit wonky.
     
  20. Handlewithcare

    Handlewithcare Versed in the lewd.

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    So Grayven now fully identifies as Apokalyptian?
     
  21. RoninSword

    RoninSword Sky God

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    I completely forgot what was up with Kara from the Renegade timeline. She was left in the pod quite a bit longer and so they had to rebuild her brain rather then just malnutrition. I assumed what was going on was just residual brain damage.
     
  22. _The_Bomb

    _The_Bomb Getting sticky.

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    No. He’s just to scared to admit he’s Paul Talowin even in the most private part of his mind. He (and Luna) know the truth, but when your whole life is built on a lie even thinking about the truth is terrifying, especially in this world.
     
  23. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    Huh, a rare chance to see both the new kryptonians and Kara Zor-El. It has been a while since we last saw her in the story, on the Renegade side, at least. Hopefully she and they are well, and the kryptonite poisoning she suffered hasn't had any major effects...

    ...Okay, just a bit worrying. but she did say 'evil aliens'. Hopefully that acknowledges that some aliens are good.

    So... Her recovery has left her with a little bit of anti-alien bias, I see. But it's not blatant, and she's evidently not being vocal about it...

    Kara-50 didn't have her brain rebuilt using an Eradicator unit...

    I'll bet they're tiny, in comparison to him. Toddlers are not large, after all, even gene-engineered kryptonians. And the Renegade is very large.

    No doubt a meal of tasty nutrient soup and crunchy protein wafers. :D Gotta build up those little kryptonian bodies.

    Hmm. Worrying hint of obsessive-complusiveness there.

    Just be careful not to have any traces of lead in your gear.

    To be fair, mathematics was the career she'd probably chosen before the planet blew up. Priorities change after that sort of thing.

    ...I can't help but picture the 'Overly Attached Girlfriend' smile. :confused:

    Quite a long time, depending on continuities. Never mind alternate futures like DC One Million.

    The Eradicator protocols filling in for her own thoughts, perhaps?

    Building an entire planet? That's quite the undertaking, especially if you want similar ecological conditions like the gravity.

    Just a few gajillion tons. For reference, Earth is almost 6 x 1024Kg. (That's twenty-four zeroes!)

    There's an interesting bit of loathing, from someone who wouldn't have been especially aware of the political side of things...

    Yes, just a simple request.

    And another warning sign. Even an intellectual young woman wouldn't be that verbose for such a simple reason.

    Smile, nod and back away carefully...

    "No need to say it. That was not right. We should have words with the older one."

    "As you wish."

    Because when you want to have a private discussion with an empowered kryptonian around, you better make sure it's private.

    Unfortunately, neither of them knew her before...

    ...So they have no logical point of reference for her behaviour. Unlike the Renegade's out-of-context knowledge.

    Yes, the former military officer is totally on board with kryptonian independence from alien influence... :oops:

    ...But at least she can recognise that the old way might not be the best way.

    To be fair, that's mostly on their ruler.

    'Exhibitionist'? So his outfit isn't normal kryptonian fashion? :D Ah, yes. Not the Silver Age anymore.

    It's not necessarily the right parts, but the software running on them.

    So, Kara's not doing quite as well as the Renegade hopes, eh? That's what happens when you use an AI system designed by a xenophobe and traditionalist to rebuild her brain. Evidently it tweaked a few behavioural engrams to something more acceptable than the later-period permissiveness she was raised with. And the Renegade is only just now realising it happened. Whoops. :oops:



    "…the vrangs' own anti-orbital weapons, and their ship exploded-"
    "-in a giant fireball. And then Krypton was free of evil aliens, never to be conquered again!"
    Missing closing Quotation mark.
     
  24. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Kryptonian technology...

    So good not even New God tech can notice somethings wrong.
     
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  25. Ngamer11

    Ngamer11 Experienced.

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    Nope, she's got xenophobic robot programming altering her thought patterns, and it may take a long time for her to be cleansed of it, if it's even possible.
     
  26. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    I mean... They made Grayven think he was Paul by shooting him with some arrows... So I don't see why they wouldn't be able to fix Kara if they actually wanted to.
     
  27. Sockmonkey

    Sockmonkey I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Her original self being traumatized by having her home and everyone she knew blown up, means that she really doesn't want to be herself right now. Thus, she's not going to fight against being her eradicator self.
     
  28. WereDragon

    WereDragon Bookwyrm

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    This seems somewhat out of character. Grayven generally tries to use the right tool for the job and has little concern for subtlety or boundaries.
    Why is he asking a traumatised marine sargent about someone’s mental health rather than having one of his many telepaths or his pet super geniuses look her over?
     
  29. Bud-E

    Bud-E Stand up so I can push you down!

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    Does Grayven not like saying the word lunch?

    I take it the conversation Clark had with Karsta didn't go well
     
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  30. DAT_NOOB

    DAT_NOOB Accused of writing in a far away land

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    Oh boy... that's a spicy chapter I love it.

    Keep up the good work Zoat, I've was looking forward to more green knight paul but this... This is brilliant.
     
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