Radiant Knight
Phoenix Fire
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2014
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I really like this explanation for how the ring works- it's certainly better than how the comics did it. Direct mental alteration does fit when a lot of what green rings rely on is knowing how to do things- and the more complex and detailed a given fix is, the more willpower it requires (which can result in things like John Stewart breaking his ring when he tried to reassemble a planet because he had too much willpower)
Newer GL comics (ie: Stuff occurring during [redacted]) I think I've heard of a couple instances of green rings healing without relying on detailed knowledge of how to do it, but from what I recall everyone and their mother basically tells the GL in question it's impossible.
Generally I imagine you'd really just want a ring that doesn't require willpower to do it- aka, literally anything else (well, maybe not yellow except for battlefield triage)- because it seems like a feature of will directed rings that you need to precisely know what's going on. That's why Soranik Natu can heal with a ring- because she's a doctor and she does it 'manually'.
Meanwhile, Paul can just want it really hard, a Star Sapphire can just encase you in crystal and it'll take care of some of that, and blue rings are optimized for healing and other frankly bullshit manifestations and ratio of 'effect to ring charge'. Saint Walker, in one of his first blue lantern appearances, fixed a failing main sequence star using his ring- and I very much doubt he knows literally anything about how stars work.
In the comics, these 'prototype' rings were said to mentally alter their wielder so they 'became what they most feared' in order to force them to overcome it. Except it kind of didn't really do that? It actually made them experience intense avarice going by the actions of those who wielded them.
I could totally see mental alterations to make better [specific color] constructs being a thing, because the alterations to make someone really good at a given color's constructs would by their very nature would have to be color specific. Every ring makes constructs in a different way- though I suppose there is enough commonality that you might be able to make a generalized 'info' package that a ring could write onto users' brains to jumpstart their training.
Stuff like boosting intelligence, pattern recognition, and ye olde tutorial of 'hold emotion A while imagining thing B'? of course it's still rewriting someone's mind, which is problematic, but I could see a lot of lanterns taking advantage of something like that voluntarily if given the choice and if the downsides weren't so severe.
Newer GL comics (ie: Stuff occurring during [redacted]) I think I've heard of a couple instances of green rings healing without relying on detailed knowledge of how to do it, but from what I recall everyone and their mother basically tells the GL in question it's impossible.
Generally I imagine you'd really just want a ring that doesn't require willpower to do it- aka, literally anything else (well, maybe not yellow except for battlefield triage)- because it seems like a feature of will directed rings that you need to precisely know what's going on. That's why Soranik Natu can heal with a ring- because she's a doctor and she does it 'manually'.
Meanwhile, Paul can just want it really hard, a Star Sapphire can just encase you in crystal and it'll take care of some of that, and blue rings are optimized for healing and other frankly bullshit manifestations and ratio of 'effect to ring charge'. Saint Walker, in one of his first blue lantern appearances, fixed a failing main sequence star using his ring- and I very much doubt he knows literally anything about how stars work.
In the comics, these 'prototype' rings were said to mentally alter their wielder so they 'became what they most feared' in order to force them to overcome it. Except it kind of didn't really do that? It actually made them experience intense avarice going by the actions of those who wielded them.
I could totally see mental alterations to make better [specific color] constructs being a thing, because the alterations to make someone really good at a given color's constructs would by their very nature would have to be color specific. Every ring makes constructs in a different way- though I suppose there is enough commonality that you might be able to make a generalized 'info' package that a ring could write onto users' brains to jumpstart their training.
Stuff like boosting intelligence, pattern recognition, and ye olde tutorial of 'hold emotion A while imagining thing B'? of course it's still rewriting someone's mind, which is problematic, but I could see a lot of lanterns taking advantage of something like that voluntarily if given the choice and if the downsides weren't so severe.
