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

If the aim is to produce a lot of functional orange lanterns, then there is always assimilation function. And considering the amount of gordanians nobody wants, there seems to be a simple solution to both problems.
He's... Trying to move away from mass worse-than-death punishments.
 
He's... Trying to move away from mass worse-than-death punishments.

We screw up our eyes. His conflicting desires.. doesn't.. what? "But you.. but you... You want the ends, why don't you want the means? We don't.. we don't..." We shake our head. He's clearly being irrational. Ignore him
 
We screw up our eyes. His conflicting desires.. doesn't.. what? "But you.. but you... You want the ends, why don't you want the means? We don't.. we don't..." We shake our head. He's clearly being irrational. Ignore him

The gestalt Paulphidian is un-enlightened in that scene, quite relevantly so given that Paragon's enlightenment resulted from reconciling the very fact that was giving him/them such trouble here; desires conflict and interact together in incredibly complicated ways while still all being just part of him or anyone, and only comprise a complete being in conjunction with the rest of the spectrum.

Now if they ever manage to reverse assimilation, that could be a potential course of action, though still something akin to complete mind-control (which people have argued both for and against in the threads, I know) or canon Young Justice's depiction of the Anti-Life (would be interested to hear Mr Zoat's thoughts on that).
 
Now if they ever manage to reverse assimilation, that could be a potential course of action, though still something akin to complete mind-control (which people have argued both for and against in the threads, I know) or canon Young Justice's depiction of the Anti-Life (would be interested to hear Mr Zoat's thoughts on that).
So far I'm not impressed with it, but not enough has currently been shown for me to have a firm opinion. Also, there's the possibility that Granny's avatar thing is just dead wrong about what anti-life is.
 
Canis' Dog -its name translates as 'Béton Brut'- is chained up in one of the secure cells as far as we could manage to put it from the quantum Horse herd out in the gardens. They seem to have settled in nicely to their new home but I don't know how they'd respond to a large predator. Once he was quartered Canis didn't seem all that worried about him so I'm assuming that either he's not seriously injured or can regenerate.

Shouldn't it be either be Quantum Horse or quantum horse, depending on if he's referring to them as a name or a generalized term? Also if these corrections are annoying you let me know. I can't help but notice this stuff while reading, but this is the first time I've made an effort to make notations of it for editing.

A purple beam strikes me in my right side and I'm yanked through the air across the burning cityscape towards a still standing eight storey building. I manage to slow myself slightly but this is ugh, through the wall and aaagh!

Story

"I admit, I was expecting something more Greek looking."

Broken link

Guess what's in the spoiler? Nah, just my happy helper bullshit :p
 
I believe someone said supposed to be another John Constantine expy similar to Ambrose Bierce, though in his case he's the one from a TV series or something. Evidently they made him less of an ass for that series since it was on TV.
 
Jiggity-Jig (part 15)
8th February
23:02 GMT


Emana is burning.

There are small fires burning in a hundred locations in every major city. In space, slain satellites drift in uncontrolled orbits, the lights on their hulls flickering and dying. More than a few ships too, though most are merely crippled before either their assailants are targeted in turn or the boarding teams arrive.

Fortunately, no one's been crazy enough to perform orbital strikes yet. The consortia are 'sorting things out' amongst themselves. At ground level that mostly amounts to small strikes against one another's holdings, data breaches, blackmailings, targeted assassinations and bribes. Individual companies which make up the consortia may be liquidated by force or financial manipulation, folded this way or that, bought or bid for…

I have records of the last few Branx Corporate Wars, but I think this is the biggest yet.

The government of Emana appears to be sitting it out, which considering their position is the only sane thing for them to do. Officials are doing their best to calm things down and limit the damage, but… At times like this there isn't a lot they can do. The High Conciliator appears to be… Talking to a regional governor. Providing reassurance and encouraging him and his staff to bunker down and wait for it to blow over.

I wait for the call to finish and then

step out

and reappear in front of the now inactive screen.

The High Conciliator regards me for a moment.

"I was wondering if you might turn up. Are you here to gloat?"

"Would it help if I did?"

"Nothing will help in any practical way, but I might feel better if I had someone external to blame."

"How did the mess out there even happen?"

"Things have been tense since you destroyed the Citadel, but we had a negotiated exchange of powers lined up. All of the major consortia-alliances had agreed in principle… Then some.. little.. snap-horn speculated a little too hard on a synthetic currency and the economic knock-on effects triggered… This."

"I'll admit that I'm not exactly choked with guilt, but that all sounds like it wasn't my fault."

"No, I suppose that it isn't. Would you like a drink?"

"Would you like a drink?"

"Auron, yes."

"Then it would be impolite of me to make you drink alone."

"Hm." She hauls her not-inconsiderable bulk out of her office chair and lumbers over to a cabinet. "A full-on corporate war. I didn't think that I'd see one in my lifetime."

"How long do you usually go between them?"

"There isn't a set interval." She pulls out a decanter of a translucent yellow and two glasses. "The last one happened just before Tamaran fell. At the time they were-" She pours herself a full glass, takes a quick look at me and then pours me a finger. "-our last trading partner to still be resisting Citadel domination. Those who traded with them wanted us to take a more supportive position, those who traded with the Citadel were in the ascendance…"

She puts the decanter and glasses on a small tray and carries them back to her desk. I generate a construct chair and sit down opposite her.

"Now, the first corporate war, that was interesting." She takes her seat, setting the tray down on the desk and then passing a glass to me. I take it from her and nod for her to continue. "Someone… Probably the psions, started handing out faster than light drives like it was a bankruptcy auction. A great many of our larger corporations decided that moving to places… Planets in some cases, without Emana's 'restrictive anti-business laws', was in their best interests."

"Wouldn't the set-up costs of new colonies more than-."

"Not if someone else is paying the transportation costs. A lot of the time, the new colonists funded themselves, and the psions -or whoever- were paying for the ships. So, whole cities disappeared overnight, some of Emana's most profitable industries were no longer paying tax… The government more or less collapsed. We still don't really have an army."

"I've yet to see a successful corporate state."

"Oh, we weren't one. But it took about… Fourteen years to break down. Because it turns out that having legal remedies to the abuses of power by the powerful does a lot to defray social unrest. With that gone, their new corporate contract-holders-." She leans forward. "Read 'slave owners', could do whatever they wanted. Until the unrest resulted in a series of socialist revolutions from people who were tired of dealing with that shit. They won in some places and lost in others, and where they lost they did enough damage to make the settlements unprofitable and where they won they swiftly went after the places where they lost."

I smile. "And let me guess: the corporations appealed for government aid?"

"I'm not sure what they were expecting a basically defunct government to do exactly. But… Faced with the potential for bloody slaughter, my predecessor managed to negotiate a settlement. Of sorts. He reached out to the most stable worker groups and most sane management cliques, and… Found common ground. The war burned out, and a new normal was agreed upon. Consortia are a good deal better behaved now, and about a fifth of them are still run as cooperatives."

"I didn't know that."

"'Shares for the people'." She takes a drink. "We teach the period in schools. Our little attempt to remind would-be corporate titans that worker protection laws don't exist to protect workers from managers. That if you push people too far they snap."

She reaches up and takes hold of both of her horns for a moment.

"One.. stupid.. fake currency. And there's nothing I can do."

"What exactly is your job?"

"Picking up the pieces when other people have finished being stupid. The Citadel's gone and it isn't coming back."

"Also, the karnans are in the process of taking back Karna."

"A mass uprising?"

"A fleet the Crown Imperium has been sponsoring for just this opportunity."

"I respect someone who is prepared to invest long-term." She takes another glug, then stares helplessly at her glass. "I'm just annoyed that Amalak of all people is managing to make the transition we're so obviously failing to. I would have thought that a jumped-up pirate would… Flail around violently instead, and at least some of our consortia would have had the sense to put feelers out. As it is the.. Meat Barter clan will probably come through this with more of their infrastructure intact than we will."

"Wasn't it part of your job to make sure that happened?"

"No, it's part of my job to remind our corporate leaders that they should be doing it. But telling people they should take a hit in profitability now to create a contingency against a situation that will probably never happen is something of a hard sell."

"So, what, they don't-?"

"They have insurance." She splutter-laughs. "As if any insurance provider could cover this."

I take a sip of my own drink, mentally-. Oh. Actually, that's not too bad.

"What do you want out of this?"

"We need to pivot our society. Probably execute-. I'm sorry, I will need to recommend that the continual existence of certain individuals is 'contrary to the legitimate business interests of the people of Emana', which amounts to the same thing. Then direct people to forge links with… The karnans, because there's no way that they have the facilities to support a fleet of any size with Karna. And Tamaran, they went dark suddenly so that was you?"

I nod.

"I saw images of the state of the place. Trade there. At-cost, because we're trying to build an image of ourselves as a business partner before one of the people the Citadel and psions alienated decides to take their wrath out on us."

"But what do you want?"

"I want to alter our society so that nothing like this can ever happen again. I want to force people to overcome their 'see-grab' instincts and take long-term factors into consideration. And once the fires are out I'll be able to. I'm just not sure what I'll have left to work with once my people are prepared to listen to me again."

I nod and finish my drink before fabricating a copy of my book and sliding it across the desk to her.

"You might want to take a look at this."
 
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There are small fires burning in a hundred locations is every major city.

*in every major city

small strikes against one another's' holdings,

Extra apostrophe.

A great many of our larger corporations decided that moving to places… Planets in some cases, without Emana's 'restrictive anti-business laws'."

"that moving to places" doesn't work well with what follows. "to move to places" perhaps?

Consortia are a good deal better behaved now, and bout a fifth of them are still run as cooperatives,"

Sentence needs to end with a period not a comma.

"Also, the karnans are in the process of taking back karna."

The karnans, because there's no way that they have the facilities to support a fleet of any size with karna.

Karna needs to be capitalized in both of these.
 
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Remind me who these people are? The karnans are cat people and this is the place where the women are huge and wide and have tusks and where OL showed up when he first went into space and got a drink with the thanagarians?
 
Oh dear... OL, what did you do?

There are small fires burning in a hundred locations is every major city. In space, slain satellites drift in uncontrolled orbits, the lights on their hulls flickering and dying. More than a few ships too, though most are merely crippled before either their assailants are targeted in turn or the boarding teams arrive.
No profit in wreckage tumbling into atmosphere.

On ground level that mostly amounts to small strikes...
Might work bettar as 'On a' or 'At'...

The government of Emana appears to be sitting it out, which considering their position is the only sane thing for them to do. Officials are doing their best to calm things down and limit the damage, but… At times like this there isn't a lot they can do. The High Conciliator appears to be… Talking to a regional governor. Providing reassurance and encouraging him and his staff to bunker down and wait for it to blow over.
And, to be blunt, there's not much they can do beside sweep up the broken pieces.

"Things have been tense since you destroyed the Citadel, but we had a negotiated exchange of powers lined up. All of the major consortia-alliances had agreed in principle… Then some.. little.. snap-horn speculated a little too hard on a synthetic currency and the economic knock-on effects triggered… This."
Hahaha... All this, because of the local equivalent of Bitcoin?:p These people take their business way too seriously.

That name again... A sector-wide local deity?

"Now, the first corporate war, that was interesting." She takes her seat, setting the tray down on the desk and then passing a glass to me. I take it from her and nod for her to continue. "Someone… Probably the psions, started handing out faster than light drives like it was a bankruptcy auction. A great many of our larger corporations decided that moving to places… Planets in some cases, without Emana's 'restrictive anti-business laws'."
That last sentence kind of fizzles out, as if something was missing...

Consortia are a good deal better behaved now, and bout a fifth of them are still run as cooperatives,"
perhaps 'about' or ' 'bout', and that comma should be a Full Stop.

"'Shares for the people'." She takes a drink. "We teach the period in schools. Our little attempt to remind would-be corporate titans that worker protection laws don't exist to protect workers from managers. That if you push people too far they snap."
Remember, folks, Rule 8...

"Also, the karnans are in the process of taking back karna."
"Also, the karnans are in the process of taking back Karna."

"I respect someone who is prepared to invest long-term." She takes another glug, then stares helplessly at her glass. "I'm just annoyed that Amalak of all people is managing to make the transition we're so obviously failing to. I would have thought that a jumped-up pirate would… Flail around violently instead, and at least some of our consortia would have had the sense to put feelers out. As it is the.. Meat Barter clan will probably come through this with more of their infrastructure intact than we will."
Heh. I bet Amalak's group is making a killing, in more ways than one.

"We need to pivot our society. Probably execute-. I'm sorry, I will need to recommend that the continual existence of certain individuals is 'contrary to the legitimate business interests of the people of Emana', which amounts to the same thing. Then direct people to forge links with… The karnans, because there's no way that they have the facilities to support a fleet of any size with karna. And Tamaran, they went dark suddenly so that was you?"
Love that corporate-speak euphemism. Also: 'Karna'

"I want to alter our society so that nothing like this can ever happen again. I want to force people overcome their 'see-grab' instincts and take long-term factors into consideration. And once the fires are out I'll be able to. I'm just not sure what I'll have left to work with once my people are prepared to listen to me again."
A very admirable goal... for an Orange Lantern.

I nod and finish my drink before fabricating a copy of my book and sliding it across the desk to her.
Now all we need is someone in Amalak's group and it's a full house of recuiting pitches.

More fallout from the Citadel's elimination. Though thankfully the violence isn't on OL...
 
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*in every major city
Extra apostrophe.
"that moving to places" doesn't work well with what follows. "to move to places" perhaps?
Sentence needs to end with a period not a comma.
Karna needs to be capitalized in both of these.
On ground level that mostly amounts to small strikes...
Might work bettar as 'On a' or 'At'...
Consortia are a good deal better behaved now, and bout a fifth of them are still run as cooperatives,"
perhaps 'about' or ' 'bout', and that comma should be a Full Stop
Thank you, corrected.
"Auron, yes."
That name again... A sector-wide local deity?
X'Hal's other son. He's still around somewhere.
 
Shouldn't it be either be Quantum Horse or quantum horse, depending on if he's referring to them as a name or a generalized term? Also if these corrections are annoying you let me know. I can't help but notice this stuff while reading, but this is the first time I've made an effort to make notations of it for editing.
I used to have a policy of putting species' names in capitals. I have since changed this and I'll correct this one, but I have absolutely no interest in going back and correcting all of them.
Story

Broken link

Guess what's in the spoiler? Nah, just my happy helper bullshit :p
Thank you, corrected.
...And no one thought to mention that Chekov had a artillery cannon gathering dust in the shed outside?
That's me-as-author telling you. The locals don't know that, don't know where he is or what he's really like other than 'less mental than the rest of his family, probably'.
 
Found another old mistake:
**I don't think a perfectly normal teenager would do that. Or do it by coming to another country."

Telepathic conversation needs telepathic end quotes.

Looks like this mistake was caught by someone in the original spacebattles thread, but it got missed somehow.

Now that the old corrections are dealt with (for the most part) I have some questions, mostly about things that seem contradictory. If you find these questions annoying, please feel free to tell me to knock it off.
1. Paul once gave pizza that had been in subspace to some random guys, and Artemis pointed out that he didn't check to see if subspace pizza was safe to eat:

Artemis looks interested. "Why, what did you do?"

"Scared them a little, then gave them a pizza." I shrug. "Didn't really see any point in starting a fight. It's too nice a day for it."

"You.. gave them a pizza."

"Yes. You remember I said that I wanted to test what happens to things I put in subspace?"

"You gave them a subspace pizza. Did you check it was alright before you gave it to them?"

Um. Whoops.

But Artemis had seen Paul give Jade a subspace biscuit before:

"Would you like a biscuit?" A small plate with a chocolate cookie in the centre materialises from subspace. "I've finally got the hang of making them crunchy without being too dry."

So why did they both think that a subspace pizza would be different from a subspace biscuit?

2. When Paul encounters Truggs' phased devices for the first time, he acts like he is unable to scan for them.

What else what else? Ring, can you detect what's happening in M'gann's brain when she scans for phased objects?

Affirmative.

Can you replicate it?

That process is possible, but cannot be undertaken.

Why not?

Process involves simulating a conscious Martian brain. User's desires indicated that the creation of life-.

Yes, fine, don't worry then. You really can't just replicate the bit she's using?

Not without additional data on Martian neurophysiology.

But earlier in the story, the ring tells him he is able to do something called 'multiphasic scanning'.

Artemis has her hands on her hips. **So, what'd'ya think? Adaptive micro-optoelectronics combined with phase shifting?**

Ring, we're checking for that, right?

Optical camouflage is insufficient to affect base level scans. Current avarice levels also support multiphasic scanning, which is in progress.

So what is 'multiphasic scanning' and why doesn't Paul bother with it against Truggs' devices?

3. At one point, Paul mentions that he hadn't been prosecuted for the thefts he did in order to make the giant cake.

A few wits thought to ask for my Christmas Cake recipe and commiserated me on the Guinness Book of Records refusing to recognise it. I think their excuse was something to do with the large scale theft involved. Not like I've been prosecuted…

But later he said that he had to settle some lawsuits.

"I, um… Yoooou.. remember the cake."

"I remember the cake. The internet remembers the cake. Two hundred years from now, alien civilisations that have never met a Human before will address me as 'The Cake Man'. "

"I had to write a report on it."

"That's a bit unfair, isn't it? You were actually there."

"It's more about the sort of sociological implications of really powerful superhumans. How they can just completely ignore all the rules of society-"

"I settled those lawsuits." I did.

"-and do whatever they want."

Well, doesn't a lawsuit imply that he was prosecuted? Had he just not been prosecuted yet, or were the lawsuits involving the giant cake about something other than the theft?

4. So, in March, Paul mentioned to Lois Lane that he hadn't seen her since January.

"Ms Lane." The muscles in her hand tense, as if she expected some sort of test of strength. Truth is, I've never really liked shaking hands and tend not to linger unless the other person wants me to. "Don't think I've seen you since January."

"My beat's Metropolis.

But he had seen her less than two weeks before, to help save her from the Prankster:

Cradling Ms Lane in his arms, Kon flies back over the parapet. He looks a little embarrassed. "No, it's.. fine. A lotta people make that mistake."

"Yeah, but if I can't-" He sets her down and she regains her feet. "-tell that-" She spots me. "-you're not Superman…" She looks around. "Hey, where'd Oswald go?"

"I threw him over the side. You alright?"

"This isn't my first rode-. You threw him over the side?"

Is the Prankster so pathetic that they just want to ignore that the incident ever happened?

5. When Superman 12 said that he sometimes wears a lead-lined suit to protect himself from Kryptonite, Paul thought that meant he was doing better than Superman 16:

"Might I suggest that you invest in some sort of radiation shield? Kryptonite is the one relatively well known way of hurting you, and you don't appear to have ever worked out how to avoid it."

"I've got a lead-lined suit I sometimes wear."

"Then you're doing better than my Superman, but-."

But Paul once mentioned that Superman 16 did use lead suits sometimes:

Everyone knows about kryptonite. What most people don't know is exactly how rare it is. There isn't a market price. It can't be openly traded due to being radioactive, and the people who have it aren't sharing. And similarly, people don't know that even before I made him immune to the stuff he'd gotten used to dealing with it; keeping his distance, wearing lead suits or grabbing lead plates from his environment as a shield, or just taking the person waving it at him down before he was weakened too greatly.

So what did Paul mean when he said Superman 12 was doing better?

6. When Grayven attacked Wombworld, he mentioned that the Psions used to be the maltusians' pets:

And you people were basically the maltusians' pets anyway."

But when Hinon said the same thing later, he seems confused:

"You want us to recreate a species you rendered extinct? We have the genetic records from when we owned their ancestors as household pets-"

What?

"-but I'm somewhat surprised that you consider their resurrection desirable."

"Can we go back to the 'household pets' thing?"

What's up with that?
 
Well, doesn't a lawsuit imply that he was prosecuted? Had he just not been prosecuted yet, or were the lawsuits involving the giant cake about something other than the theft?
Civil versus criminal. Clearly nobody bothered with a criminal prosecution, but a few people brought civil suits.
 
The Vega system (how it is in this system) would make a really good book... and I honestly wish they had interactions with Earth.
 
Mr Zoat, I just realized you're spelling Starfire's species correctly now. Will you be editing the previous Tamaranians into Tamaraneans?
 
Nope.

Some are backed by something. Something other than govenments, anyway.
It gets complicated the more in-depth you get into it, but I'd say that at the most basic level, all currency is 'fake' because it only exists if at least one intelligent being values it; the property of 'value' is manufactured by intelligent beings, and doesn't strictly relate to any physical property. You cannot trade with a rock, after all.

But at the same time, the fact that a concept like 'value' only exists because a intelligent being made it doesn't necessarily mean that it's 'fake'. To quote:

Cerebrate said:
Take, for a trivial example, the equilateral triangle. The equilaterial triangle, the concept of the equilateral triangle, is a mathematical truth that existed before any of the mass-energy of the universe congealed into equilaterally triangular shapes, and would go on existing even if some Omnicidal Maniac were to go on a universe-wide pogrom to destroy all three-cornered objects.
 
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Thank you, corrected.
Why corrected? "Storey" is a perfectly legitimate British spelling of the word describing the height of a building.

Yeah, but the value of the backing commodity is externally ascribed in almost all cases. It's not like you're going to melt down a gold coin to make wire for your house.
True, but legitimate scarcity means something, as opposed to scarcity-by-decree which gives fiat currency any value.
 
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All the links back to old episodes had me revisit a few of them and I am missing Dana Dearden again. Since the timeline got rewritten I wonder if she wasn't taken to the future by Saturn Girl and her gang (the impetus for them to return to the past never happened, and them picking Dana up was mostly as a ploy to get Paul to lower his guard for long enough to pick him), or if she was still taken to the future regardless. I am asking because she being picked up as an orange lantern recruit (while also having the god blessed coins) would probably spice up Paul's love life now that Zatanna has lost the race because on that front the appeal has been reduced to pretty much Zero because Jade is boring and Black Fire got sidestepped.
 

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