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

I would think that fantastical pranks require a fantastical world.
Could a fantastical world lead to social acceptance of fantastical pranks?

It's tedious to determine just how much tge baseline mundanity of a given world affects the acceptability of pranks within that world.

'fantastical' is not the issue here. The fact that the pet was a magic firebird or a tiny dragon would be irrelevant.

What matters is that an adult authority figure convinced a child that their pet was dying when it wasn't.

That will alway be fucked up. Regardless of context.
 
Eh, An argument could be made that once you break magic down to math to make sense of it it's no longer magic but math therefore what Sunset is referring to as 'magic' is in fact just really complicated math.
 
Eh, An argument could be made that once you break magic down to math to make sense of it it's no longer magic but math therefore what Sunset is referring to as 'magic' is in fact just really complicated math.
Friendship is also math.
Admittedly, it has more in common with logistics engineering than with statistical modeling...

Oh.

Twilight was the engineer of the two all along.
Sunset was the scientist of the two all along!!!
 
I mean... I'd say this goes a far cry from being "not-perfect" but then I'm not a Brony so IDK what actual canon says.
Oh Celestia is a total screw-up* but that doesn't begin to justify the level of irrational hatred Sunset displays. Which even at the "'Thank you for being honest with me, and I never want to see you again'." stage manifested as banishing Celestia from the planet.
Sunset continues to act like a petulant child throwing a tantrum because the world doesn't conform to her desires.


* Which makes total sense. Celestia is not an isekai. She has no divine wisdom. She is a medieval peasant who got elevated to being a god-queen for slaying a monster, then had her only family go insane and betray her. And spent the next thousand years trying, with commendable success, to fulfil her responsibility of make a happy and prosperous civilisation on a magic fantasy deathworld.
Did she have time to refresh her education periodically while running a country? Probably not.
Did she have anyone she could look to for emotional/spiritual guidance? Probably not.
Did she have anyone willing and able to offer criticism who wasn't evil and or insane? Probably not.
And yet people continue to expect Celestia to be perfect and all knowing.

... To be fair, while a little bit mean, it's nowhere near the scale of 'haha, I'm going to convince you that your pet is dying.'

I've never heard of that story-beat before, but it sounds genuinely sociopathic.
1) Philomena is Celestia's pet, not Fluttershy's.
2) Fluttershy kidnapped Philomena (to heal her). She didn't ask what was wrong with the bird and in fact deliberately tried to keep Celestia from knowing about the situation.
3) Philomena is a sapient creature and Fluttershy's thing is understanding animals.
4) The only part of the prank Celestia can be said to have done was being a bit slow and dramatic in telling her pet to knock it off and stop playing dead.
 
The final quote in your post there has a name "Me" and no arrow to return to whomever alerted you to the correction. Why is there no arrow? And why is there post doing the correction?
Because generally by the time I get corrections I'm at work, so I can't update my Word document until I get home. And if I don't make note of the errors I spot, I'll probably forget them.
 
Oh Celestia is a total screw-up* but that doesn't begin to justify the level of irrational hatred Sunset displays. Which even at the "'Thank you for being honest with me, and I never want to see you again'." stage manifested as banishing Celestia from the planet.
Sunset continues to act like a petulant child throwing a tantrum because the world doesn't conform to her desires.


* Which makes total sense. Celestia is not an isekai. She has no divine wisdom. She is a medieval peasant who got elevated to being a god-queen for slaying a monster, then had her only family go insane and betray her. And spent the next thousand years trying, with commendable success, to fulfil her responsibility of make a happy and prosperous civilisation on a magic fantasy deathworld.
Did she have time to refresh her education periodically while running a country? Probably not.
Did she have anyone she could look to for emotional/spiritual guidance? Probably not.
Did she have anyone willing and able to offer criticism who wasn't evil and or insane? Probably not.
And yet people continue to expect Celestia to be perfect and all knowing.

1) Philomena is Celestia's pet, not Fluttershy's.
2) Fluttershy kidnapped Philomena (to heal her). She didn't ask what was wrong with the bird and in fact deliberately tried to keep Celestia from knowing about the situation.
3) Philomena is a sapient creature and Fluttershy's thing is understanding animals.
4) The only part of the prank Celestia can be said to have done was being a bit slow and dramatic in telling her pet to knock it off and stop playing dead.

WELL SAID!

Yeah Celestia has made plenty of mistakes and I'm pretty sure she would agree with most of them. But she is a multi-millennial old being that has been ruling for probably longer then the nation of England has existed. After centuries of watching people die around you with nothing you can do about it I'm sure she is probably more then a little stir-crazy and has difficulty relating to ponies to some degree.
 
WELL SAID!

Yeah Celestia has made plenty of mistakes and I'm pretty sure she would agree with most of them. But she is a multi-millennial old being that has been ruling for probably longer then the nation of England has existed. After centuries of watching people die around you with nothing you can do about it I'm sure she is probably more then a little stir-crazy and has difficulty relating to ponies to some degree.

But that doesn't make it irrational for Sunset to hate her for treating her like that. It's an excuse, not a justification.
 
WELL SAID!

Yeah Celestia has made plenty of mistakes and I'm pretty sure she would agree with most of them. But she is a multi-millennial old being that has been ruling for probably longer then the nation of England has existed. After centuries of watching people die around you with nothing you can do about it I'm sure she is probably more then a little stir-crazy and has difficulty relating to ponies to some degree.
In this story, she's been ruling for about 1030 years and is about 1050 years old. In canon, it's really not clear.

While Celestia clearly had the tools to guide other ponies to become alicorns, the only other alicorn at the start of canon is Cadenza, and her ascension had nothing to do with Celestia. So either she decided not to, or she wasn't very good at it.

England has existed as a unified polity for about 1100 years.
 
18th January 2013
21:47 GMT


I walk into the Canterlot Palace dining room, prompting Celestia to look up at me.

"Grayven? Why are you here?"

"Sunset has… Is concerned about you, and has asked me to help."

"In what way?"

"I'm here to become friends."
Woe, friendship be upon ye. :D
Edit: But yeah, Sunbutt Senior's main problem is that she doesn't have many peers. That is to say; no-one to tell her "no" that she'd listen to.
 
Reasonable expectations like your mentor who took you away from your family to teach you actually teaching you things?
Reasonable expectations like not expecting someone to be able to teach you to care about others when power is at the forefront of your mind, and you can't bear to admit flaws as much as you claim they can't.
 
Sunset seemed already on the path to supervillainy from what the canon adjacent comics showed.

"Somepony who could be great, powerful...somepony that could rule Equestria." Just like she tried to do when she demonized in Equestria Girls.


Yeah that totally doesn't sound like one lab accident away from getting a maniacal laugh and the hobby of tying Nell Fenwick to the train tracks.

It seems just like the materialistic Rarity is probably not the obvious choice for generosity, Sunset's lust for power makes her the not so obvious choice for her element of Harmony, which according to Word of God, is empathy.

Her magical talent in the sequels includes empathy- the ability to share someone's thoughts, emotions, and memories with a touch.
 
Counterpunched (part 10)
18th January 2013
21:47 GMT


Zartok returns to the bridge, glancing at me before returning his attention to the main screen.

"Anything of note, Drusa?"

Many things, few of which will interest him. Life on the planets in this system doesn't seem to have been changed by the presence of the invading ships at all. The ship can get close enough and the sensors are acute enough to follow single individuals as they go about their day. And because we're monitoring all of it, I can just leave that on in one corner of my screen while I work through the rest of the data.

"The main inhabited world is suburban."

"And?"

"Different forms of land use occur at different levels of technology. Large settlements can't form until transportation and farming increase to a certain level-."

"Spare me."

"They don't have cities. Technically. There are some industrial zones that cover a significant area of land, but there aren't many residential buildings in those areas."

"No single targets to attack, but the people are too spread out to be properly defended."

Not how I'd put it.

"I imagine that their strategy for defending a world is the same as their strategy for defending their empire. Their forces are so mobile that they don't see any advantage to keeping their population in smaller areas."

"They could build stronger shelters-." He cuts himself off. "Of course."

"Of course?"

"They're not a martial people. Not any longer. They can fight, but they fight with the intellect, not with the spirit. They have weighed and measured and found that this is the most resource-efficient way to organise things."

"Isn't that what you did?"

He frowns, his eye briefly returning to me.

"Of course not. If people in my outer colonies knew that I wouldn't defend them because it 'wasn't efficient', then no one would have settled those worlds. I'm not talking about the policy of their government, I'm talking about their people."

Ah.

"The fact that people live in settlements laid out like this means that they know what their chances are, and they aren't doing anything about it. They're not trying to moderate the effect of the policy on… The chance of them living. They just accept it."

He leans slightly closer to the monitor.

"The question is whether it's indolence or fatalism. I would assume indolence had I not born witness to the skill of their fleets and Scarab Warriors. But perhaps there is some internal divide that only the Reach are aware of. Some worlds allowed to grow lazy while others provide tithe of warriors."

"Genetic analysis of recovered remains suggests that's not the case."

I can see him trying to understand. He's not stupid by any means, but-.

"I read what the Illustres wrote on the subject, and what little the Controllers have been willing to share with the rest of us. All creatures need to have certain impulses in order for their species to live long enough to attain intelligence. One of those things is a desire to live, to fight to protect themselves and those close to you. I have it, you-."

He looks mildly disappointed.

"Have part of it. It may have different strength in different people, but a creature lacking it entirely indicates that something is fundamentally wrong with them."

"What about artificial int-?"

Oh.

"Yes. Only creatures that were designed can be different. An artificial intelligence needs no ancestors. It does not need to inherit their passion to live. It can be told to do things that would see a creature in the wild killed and it will do so without complaint because it lacks spirit."

"You think that they bio-engineered themselves."

"When they used to make war on their neighbours, before the fight with the Green Lantern Corps, they cleared the worlds they conquered using guns. Such widespread death would normally cause an adverse psychological response in their soldiers. The level of hatred that is required for such methods take time to create, but it's hardly unheard of. Then the war, and before the ink is even dry on the treaty with the Guardians they begin subverting their neighbours."

"You think they already had the technology. They just didn't use it on other species."

"Or perhaps they did? If any public health records survive from those worlds then the Reach are the only ones who have them. A plague might be noticed by their neighbours, but anything more subtle might pass unnoticed."

"And the neighbours would have bigger problems, like their new neighbour."

"Yes."

"We'd need to get access to their medical databases to find out for certain."

He grunts. "Does it matter?"

"If they've edited their genome too much then it might mean that they're more susceptible to biological weapons."

"You might get a single world. Their command of biological science means that they would detect it too easily for a delayed attack, and they would be able to neutralise it without much difficulty. In ship to ship combat it would be less effective than an explosive even if they weren't wearing sealed suits. It might be possible to make something that could be used on a civilian population to secure compliance in exchange for palliatives, but we already know that they don't value their own lives."

Oh.

"Don't look so surprised, Drusa. I built an empire. I'm not a fool."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be wiser. What else does them not having cities mean?"

"Planning and terraforming. New colonies might have the technology to function spread out, but that technology still needs infrastructure. Most species build a relatively dense settlement with farms surrounding it when they first colonise a planet. As far as I can tell, the Reach didn't."

"Did they use a slave species to do it for them?"

"Not here, not as far as I can tell."

"And they do not make much use of automata. Then they planned everything in advance. Most likely their buildings were pre-fabricated and transported here in great cargo transports to be assembled on the planet."

I nod. "Or built using material from local asteroids, fabricated in space and then landed for construction."

"And they all accepted the plan. Have you found anything resembling a civil enforcer station?"

I perform a quick check. Some things don't look the same in different cultures, but there are some things that police usually do or have…

"No."

"Then their rulers are certain that the populace are obedient and will remain so, even if they are attacked."

"Where are you going with this, Lantern Zartok?"

"The Illustres has said that the worlds that the Reach took from species which still exist will be returned to them after the war. All other worlds will be up for grabs. I see no reason for slaughtering their entire species."

"You want to take over?"

"A system like this would be a perfect place to start again. But on this occasion, I want to deny the Reach whatever is on that ship."
 
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18th January 2013
21:47 GMT


Zartok returns to the bridge, glancing at me before returning his attention to the main screen.

"Anything of note, Drusa?"
So, then. Zartok hasn't gone running off half-cocked yet. Either he's smarter than that, or he just wants to make sure he's fully cocked. :p So presumably, he's going to want more information before he acts. And who better to ask than his erstwhile intelligence Lantern?

Many things, few of which will interest him. Life on the planets in this system doesn't seem to have been changed by the presence of the invading ships at all. The ship can get close enough and the sensors are acute enough to follow single individuals as they go about their day. And because we're monitoring all of it, I can just leave that on in one corner of my screen while I work through the rest of the data.

"The main inhabited world is suburban."
So... Villages. Small towns... A pastoral lifestyle? Is this the Reach equivalent of an Agri-world?

"And?"

"Different forms of land use occur at different levels of technology. Large settlements can't form until transportation and farming increase to a certain level-."
...Or perhaps the people are choosing to live a simpler life.With an empire as large and as seemingly decadent, surely a quite, pastoral lifestyle might appeal to some. Like the Reach equivalent of Amish... o_O

"Spare me."

"They don't have cities. Technically. There are some industrial zones that cover a significant area of land, but there aren't many residential buildings in those areas."
So advanced, but distributed by choice.

"No single targets to attack, but the people are too spread out to be properly defended."

Not how I'd put it.
You two think in different ways. He looks to the military application, you look to the logistical.

"I imagine that their strategy for defending a world is the same as their strategy for defending their empire. Their forces are so mobile that they don't see any advantage to keeping their population in smaller areas."

"They could build stronger shelters-." He cuts himself off. "Of course."
...Or they simply don't care about losing a few colonists.

"Of course?"

"They're not a martial people. Not any longer. They can fight, but they fight with the intellect, not with the spirit. They have weighed and measured and found that this is the most resource-efficient way to organise things."
And that sums up so much of the Reach, doesn't it? Resource-efficient and specialised...

"Isn't that what you did?"

He frowns, his eye briefly returning to me.
Ooh, he didn't like that comparison.

"Of course not. If people in my outer colonies knew that I wouldn't defend them because it 'wasn't efficient', then no one would have settled those worlds. I'm not talking about the policy of their government, I'm talking about their people."

Ah.
Something Drusa is not as good with, compared to raw data.

"The fact that people live in settlements laid out like this means that they know what their chances are, and they aren't doing anything about it. They're not trying to moderate the effect of the policy on… The chance of them living. They just accept it."

He leans slightly closer to the monitor.
But why do they accept it? Cultural indoctrination? Lack of concern?

"The question is whether it's indolence or fatalism. I would assume indolence had I not born witness to the skill of their fleets and Scarab Warriors. But perhaps there is some internal divide that only the Reach are aware of. Some worlds allowed to grow lazy while others provide tithe of warriors."

"Genetic analysis of recovered remains suggests that's not the case."
So it's engineered, then. They modified their citizens. Entirely as I'd expect.

I can see him trying to understand. He's not stupid by any means, but-.

"I read what the Illustres wrote on the subject, and what little the Controllers have been willing to share with the rest of us. All creatures need to have certain impulses in order for their species to live long enough to attain intelligence. One of those things is a desire to live, to fight to protect themselves and those close to you. I have it, you-."
In other words, the Reach plebian caste... Are conditioned to not worry about it, their 'betters' will protect them. :confused:

He looks mildly disappointed.

"Have part of it. It may have different strength in different people, but a creature lacking it entirely indicates that something is fundamentally wrong with them."
Heh. Subtle burn there, Zartok.

"What about artificial int-?"

Oh.
If you're advanced enough to create sufficiently developed synthetic minds, you can easily decide what goes into their makeup.

"Yes. Only creatures that were designed can be different. An artificial intelligent needs no ancestors. It does not need to inherit their passion to live. It can be told to do things that would see a creature in the wild killed and it will do so without complain because it lacks spirit."

"You think that they bio-engineered themselves."
Almost certainly. Any advanced race will make adjustments to their genome, of course. Removing genetic flaws and weaknesses. But evidently the Reach took it to an extreme at some point...

"When they used to make war on their neighbours, before the fight with the Green Lantern Corps, they cleared the worlds they conquered using guns. Such widespread death would normally cause an adverse psychological response in their soldiers. The level of hatred that is required for such methods take time to create, but it's hardly unheard of. Then the war, and before the ink is even dry on the treaty with the Guardians they begin subverting their neighbours."
...You think they had the subversion method ready and waiting for when force of arms failed?

"You think they already had the technology. They just didn't use it on other species."

"Or perhaps they did? If any public health records survive from those worlds then the Reach are the only ones who have them. A plague might be noticed by their neighbours, but anything more subtle might pass unnoticed."
Like the already-subtle methods the Reach use to subvert planets now.

"And the neighbours would have bigger problems, like their new neighbour."

"Yes."
Misdirection and sleight-of-hand.

"We'd need to get access to their medical databases to find out for certain."

He grunts. "Does it matter?"

"If they've edited their genome too much then it might mean that they're more susceptible to biological weapons."
Pfft. Any race advanced enough to modify themselves like that probably have solutions for that attack route.

"You might get a single world. Their command of biological science means that they would detect it too easily for a delayed attack, and they would be able to neutralise it without much difficulty. In ship to ship combat it would be less effective than an explosive even if they weren't wearing sealed suits. It might be possible to make something that could be used on a civilian population to secure compliance in exchange for palliatives, but we already know that they don't value their own lives."
And a biological attack can always mutate, and then you get killer super-virii.

Oh.

"Don't look so surprised, Drusa. I built an empire. I'm not a fool."
Just because he prefers conquest by strength of arms, doesn't mean he's ignorant of other ways.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be wiser. What else does them not having cities mean?"
Lady still has much to learn.

"Planning and terraforming. New colonies might have the technology to function spread out, but that technology still needs infrastructure. Most species build a relatively dense settlement with farms surrounding it when they first colonise a planet. As far as I can tell, the Reach didn't."

"Did they use a slave species to do it for them?"
And then wiped them out afterwards? Inefficient.

"Not here, not as far as I can tell."

"And they do not make much use of automata. Then they planned everything in advance. Most likely their buildings were pre-fabricated and transported here in great cargo transports to be assembled on the planet."
A literal Pre-fab colony complex...

I nod. "Or build using material from local asteroids, fabricated in space and then landed for construction."

"And they all accepted the plan. Have you found anything resembling a civil enforcer station?"
Ah, now that's a good angle. A population basically brainwashed into loyalty won't need much in the way of policing...

I perform a quick check. Some things don't look the same in different cultures, but there are some things that police usually do or have…

"No."
Telling.

"Then their rulers are certain that the populace are obedient and will remain so, even if they are attacked."

"Where are you going with this, Lantern Zartok?"
Good question. Are you going to attack them or something?

"The Illustres has said that the worlds that the Reach took from species which still exist will be returned to them after the war. All other worlds will be up for grabs. I see no reason for slaughtering their entire species."

"You want to take over?"

"A system like this would be a perfect place to start again. But on this occasion, I want to deny the Reach whatever is on that ship."
Planning for the future, but willing to put it off till later. Very good work.

Now, it's a matter of Zartok convincing his fellow Corpsmen to go along with his 'take that the Reach wants' goal. Grood should need no arguments, but Drusa and Allyn might have reservations. Of greater concern is how they plan to attack. A full assault will leave the Reach asking where they came from, and that might expose the stealth ship...
 
It's fascinating to read this. Obviously, it's speculation on their part about the nature of the Reach, but still, fairly interesting.

And of course this guy wants a piece of Reach real state once they win. Even though it might not be for a long time and I don't know if he has the mentality to keep himself alive that long or to return from death. He might not be around to get that piece of the pie.

Then again, the story itself might do a swerve of the Illustres' expectation of a long war and this conflict might get resolved a lot sooner as well.
 
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Wait. Exiled? Didn't Sunset just quit? Also, what's this about Starlight Glimmer being her sister?
 
I wonder if Ibaraki is going to look up the Ars Goetia and Solomon just so she can find the symbol for Shax and since she has the True Name of the woman(from her own mouth) and knows what Pillars she is apart of, while also having Suzaku just use a Summoning ritual to force her ass to appear in a place of her choosing just to have her watch Ibaraki destroy everything she has and be able to do nothing but watch.
I wonder shouldn't Ibaraki and Suzaku be able to do a forceful Summoning and if they aren't enough there is always going to Yasaka explaining things and getting some extra power or knowledge to get it done. Yasaka would likely already love a reason to be able to kick this devil out of her city and this seems like a good one. But I would think Ibaraki and suzaku should be enough
I think you responded to the wrong thread.
 
She was being escorted from the palace when she decided to go for the mirror.

I... Don't believe that's the case?

Being escorted out of the palace for reading restricted books without permission is far different from exile. She asked Celestia repeatedly about the mirror and Celestia told her she wasn't ready. (Also to note Celestia herself had issues with the mirror In her youth while training with Starswhirl the Bearded and there is some level of risk in overusing it.) When Celestia found out that Sunset was going behind her back to research the mirror. When Celestia confronts Sunset, Sunset just yells at Celestia for not teaching her this magic and proceeds to demand princesshood. Celestia at this point removes her from being her student and kicks her out of the castle. Sunset while being removed attacks the guards and dashes through the portal. She was never exiled.
 
Interesting look at the Reach. Given how formal they are on roles to the point where there are no canon names beyond function in YJ, and only Dawur has a name in the comics, it makes sense they're engineered for their roles
 

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