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

[Mr Zoat]

They are going to unveil it officially...

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Thank you, corrected.

 

[Darko]

Chojin, Vulko appears to be just a research mage in this story so it's unlikely he taught Orin anything about Atlantean culture and society, unlike the movie version, who was essentially the Good Advisor trope and didn't try to make him into some kind of pliable patsy or anything like that.

One of the reasons Atlanna chose Orin to rule could be because she may have resented Orm.

Was watching Throne of Atlantis abridged and the reason she chose Orin was because she resented Orm as her marriage to his father was against her wishes and she wanted to change their ways.

If Atlanna in this story didn't like her marriage then maybe she also resented Orm a bit.

Although unlike the abridged version of her I'm fairly certain this one never thought of giving her son a name that starts with A and ends with bortion.

The fact that he also started a terrorist group to overthrow his brother also doesn't exactly say good things about his mentality.

The worst Orin did was neglect his duties. That's not exactly a good reason to start a criminal group. If Orin was a depraved and tyrannical ruler then a criminal group trying to overthrow him would be a good thing, but he isn't that type of ruler.

Atlanna watched her son grow so she would have a good idea of how he thinks and if she saw some things she didn't like then she may have thought Orin was a better candidate. Orm also wanted to conquer the surface world in the comics, so maybe the YJ version also wanted to do that. Even if he's not a Purist he may still be an Atlantean supremacist. Even if Orm got the throne that may not have stopped him from doing some fairly evil and stupid things. Some people will do stupid and evil things even if they lack any good reason or justification to do them. Pre flashpoint Blackfire comes to mind when she still engaged in stupid villainous activities even if she already got the throne, as well as ignoring warnings about her worlds imminent destruction without attempting to hear out the one warning them.

Truly pre flashpoint Kom and Orm are the last two people that should be given power and authority over anything. The likes of Luthor have at least tried to be better people on occasions.

We know from the series Young Justice America does.

Which means they successfully hid it from Paul, so props to them.

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What season did they show that fleet exactly?

If its season three then either they haven't made it yet, or Zoat can just ignore it since he started writing this story well before that season and some things he added in his story contradict the things in the show, like Barda still working for the bad guys in the show while here she defected.

The only space defences the Earth had aside from the League would be Warmoon, but the Light still haven't gotten their hands on it yet and may not get it in this story.

Paul doesn't actually understand what it will entail.

Unfortunately given his history, Zoat almost assuredly won't play things straight to what would realistically result from this.

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It may result in them cooperating more since they've seen how easily an alien presence can disrupt their world even when it isn't trying to do that. There does come a point where even idiots can make smart decisions. Also they have the League who may try to stop one country from attacking others without provocation. The fact that they would have the approval of the majority of the UN in this case would also allow them to get around any legal issues.

If they do decide to war with each other the league can just stop them and ignore the deal with the UN.

Also a small fleet of primitive space ships may not do that much and the US is working on dealing with alien and hostile threats from space, as shown renegade side, so if comes to conflict they may be able to deal with a primitive and small fleet.

 

[Vaermina]

What season did they show that fleet exactly?

If its season three then either they haven't made it yet, or Zoat can just ignore it since he started writing this story well before that season and some things he added in his story contradict the things in the show, like Barda still working for the bad guys in the show while here she defected.

The only space defences the Earth had aside from the League would be Warmoon, but the Light still haven't gotten their hands on it yet and may not get it in this story.

It may result in them cooperating more since they've seen how easily an alien presence can disrupt their world even when it isn't trying to do that. There does come a point where even idiots can make smart decisions. Also they have the League who may try to stop one country from attacking others without provocation. The fact that they would have the approval of the majority of the UN in this case would also allow them to get around any legal issues.

Also a small fleet of primitive space ships may not do that much and the US is working on dealing with alien and hostile threats from space, as show renegade side, so if comes to conflict they may be able to deal with a primitive and small fleet.

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You are forgetting the same thing Paul did.

It violates the Outer Space Treaty.

Meaning this isn't a "cold war space race" sort of thing, but a "we don't have to hide our shit any more" sort of thing.

Which in turn will almost assuredly lead to a hot war due to the US having spent the past 70 years being crashed Alien Spaceship and Supergenius central.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

I'm wondering, a bit, about whether OL could sensibly build some ships with Orange Light AIs... What would they be built to want? And, what would the consequences be...

Would he have any use for an asteroid-located 'Fortress of Solitude'? Bait?

I can't see he'd have an obvious use for 'off-shore servers', that he couldn't satisfy somewhere on Earth, without worrying about installing a FTL comms link. (FTL comms, and a stock-trading AI, how to really upset the high-frequency traders - get the international legislation improved? Why isn't LLMK playing this game?)

Of course, they'd be his personal ships, and, that they existed at all might well interfere with his 'Earth gets a Space presence' plans.

 

[Idkusername]

Paul doesn't actually understand what it will entail.

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I'll thank you not to make assumptions about Mr Zoat's self-insert in the story he is writing.

Unfortunately given his history, Zoat almost assuredly won't play things straight to what would realistically result from this.

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Taking your statement at face value makes no sense to me, because either this stuff has already happened in canon, or the stuff that hasn't seems perfectly logical and internally consistent with the story Mr Zoat is writing, and I trust his knowledge of DC canon much more than I do yours. Furthermore, I have yet to see any actual substance to your argument.

Unfortunately given your history, you most assuredly won't provide proper justification or applicable evidence to back up your statements.

 

[Xelloss]

"'Just' in the sense that 'library' is it's primary function, not that its function as a library is unimportant."

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its primary

But I have to admit, I've… Wondered if Queen Atlanna dumped him on his father until she'd firmly established her control of Atlantis so she wouldn't have to deal with the social consequences of an unplanned out of wedlock royal pregnancy."

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I've... wondered

 

[Darko]

You are forgetting the same thing Paul did.

It violates the Outer Space Treaty.

Meaning this isn't a "cold war space race" sort of thing, but a "we don't have to hide our shit any more" sort of thing.

Which in turn will almost assuredly lead to a hot war due to the US having spent the past 70 years being crashed Alien Spaceship and Supergenius central.

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That treaty may not exist in Earth 16 and even if it did the Russians aren't exactly violating any of its rules.

They aren't claiming sovereignty of space, the ships are probably not WMD, they may not even be nuclear powered, the treaty allows for space exploration and other such activities.

The treaty also doesn't prohibit military activity in space, just as long as there are no WMD involved.

The various governments will most likely be pissed at Russia, but they wouldn't have any grounds for war since the Russians didn't break any laws.

The US also doesn't exactly have all that many supergeniuses that can build spaceships on their payroll and there may not be all that many around in the first place.

The various aliens that are on Earth may not have their spaceships with them, aside from Icon and Superman.

The Hawks don't count since their ship is property of the Thanagarian government, who may not want to get involved in Earths political situation, and most likely has safeguards in place in case someone tries to steal it or tamper with it.

 

[Mr Zoat]

its primary

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Thank you, corrected.

I've... wondered

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Nope.

 

[Handlewithcare]

Why do I get the feeling everyone will try to blame him for their own missing space-fleets?

 

[Darko]

Why do I get the feeling everyone will try to blame him for their own missing space-fleets?

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You can't blame someone for something being missing from you if they haven't taken it, or if you didn't have it in the first place.

Though I'm sure some idiot will try to do that.

Hey Zoat are we ever going to see an interlude focusing on what 40k OL has been doing since joining the Tau, aside from getting rid of those gene stealers?

 

[Sockmonkey]

The treaty also doesn't prohibit military activity in space, just as long as there are no WMD involved.

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Anything with enough juice to make it into space is automatically a WMD.

 

[Darko]

Anything with enough juice to make it into space is automatically a WMD.

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If it doesn't have any WMD type of weapons on it then I don't think it counts as one.

 

[Galacticplumber]

If it doesn't have any WMD type of weapons on it then I don't think it counts as one.

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Because if that nonsense counted all forms of space program, satellites, telescopes, hopefully terraforming missions, and the necessary repairs for all of those things would be illegal and.... no.

 

[Idkusername]

Anything with enough juice to make it into space is automatically a WMD.

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That's a somewhat interesting point, though with an obvious solution.

Anything in space has enough potential energy to crash back down to earth with devastating force. As such, they are certainly able to cause 'mass destruction'. They are, however, not classified as weapons because that is not their primary purpose, for much the same reason that a scissor or knife isn't one, but a dagger is. Though both can stab, one category is built as a tool with an incidental application for applying hurt, whereas the latter is built for that.

And with super-expensive equipment such as space stations etc. or even the rockets needed for space flight, it simply isn't feasible to use them as devices of mass destruction.

Even if you wanted to do that, you would have to, A, either directly launch the space vehicle at the target directly after launch from orbit, and at that point you might as well no bother and simply use an ICBM; or B, you set a mass in orbit, then you spend money, time and manpower to keep the mass in orbit, then spend money on another propulsion system to bring the orbiting mass down on the target fast enough, and may have to shoulder further costs if it requires exercise course correction and the requisite fuel, or other maintenance. You would also need quite a bit of these to get proper covergae of the Earth. On the the other hand, you could simply invest in inter-continental missiles with an actual payload and a not-significantly longer ETA.

I am not particularly knowledgeable about rocket science, and this is somewhere between applied facts and educated guesswork.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Rafin]

Vaermina breaking a treaty doesn't automatically lead to war.

Anyway, you still haven't answered in which episode/storyline/season of YJ it is revealed that the US is building a military space fleet.

 

[Coda]

" Maybe this will spur everyone else on?"

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Extra space.

You are forgetting the same thing Paul did.

It violates the Outer Space Treaty.

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I'm not going to rehash what everyone else has said, but I'm going to add another point to it: Even if that treaty is stricter in this world than in the real world (and it might be!), this still isn't a violation (yet), because it's not a military action. At the moment, it's officially a diplomatic action, and no one can prove otherwise -- even if the ships have weapons aboard, they're going to meet up with a vessel that is also armed, so it could be argued to be reasonable safety equipment instead of an implement of warfare. An ambassador on foreign soil can have bodyguards, and them having to take action isn't an act of war,

Now, should any fighting actually break out, Russia's response will be important. Because if it DOES get construed as military action... well, it was mentioned that violating the treaty doesn't automatically mean war, and that's true, but it does mean that any other treaty signatories are going to want to avoid looking like they support Russia, so they'd lose allies in a hurry.

And if THAT happens... Well, I hope that the US military has a skunk works project for space combat hiding in a secret facility somewhere that they haven't been telling anyone about. (But if it doesn't happen, then I hope they don't.)

 

[Impartial Panic]

So the Russians have a Space fleet.
well that's going to start a whole new Space & arms race

I sure as hell hope the American Program isn't Project Artemis

no not That one or this one

 

[Ardy]

Vaermina breaking a treaty doesn't automatically lead to war.

Anyway, you still haven't answered in which episode/storyline/season of YJ it is revealed that the US is building a military space fleet.

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Well duh, that'd mean they'd have to admit they made it up!

 

[Mr Zoat]

Extra space.

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Thank you, corrected.

Now, should any fighting actually break out, Russia's response will be important. Because if it DOES get construed as military action... well, it was mentioned that violating the treaty doesn't automatically mean war, and that's true, but it does mean that any other treaty signatories are going to want to avoid looking like they support Russia, so they'd lose allies in a hurry.

And if THAT happens... Well, I hope that the US military has a skunk works project for space combat hiding in a secret facility somewhere that they haven't been telling anyone about. (But if it doesn't happen, then I hope they don't.)

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The Russian President is going to announce that they're withdrawing from the treaty and that they strongly encourage other countries to do the same. He's also going to suggest a coordinating body for space-related weaponry, because naturally they're planning on having the weapons point outwards.

 

[Vaermina]

That treaty may not exist in Earth 16 and even if it did the Russians aren't exactly violating any of its rules.

They aren't claiming sovereignty of space, the ships are probably not WMD, they may not even be nuclear powered, the treaty allows for space exploration and other such activities.

The treaty also doesn't prohibit military activity in space, just as long as there are no WMD involved.

The various governments will most likely be pissed at Russia, but they wouldn't have any grounds for war since the Russians didn't break any laws.

The US also doesn't exactly have all that many supergeniuses that can build spaceships on their payroll and there may not be all that many around in the first place.

The various aliens that are on Earth may not have their spaceships with them, aside from Icon and Superman.

The Hawks don't count since their ship is property of the Thanagarian government, who may not want to get involved in Earths political situation, and most likely has safeguards in place in case someone tries to steal it or tamper with it.

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Zoat seems to have answered most of this for me already.

As to the rest, the US would have the wreckage from every alien invasion the Justice Society fought off, they would have the recovered ships from the Apalaxian invasion, we know from Flashpoint they have the wreckage of Abin Sur's spacecraft, we know from Captain Atom they have that particular crashed alien ship

 

[Darko]

Zoat seems to have answered most of this for me already.

As to the rest, the US would have the wreckage from every alien invasion the Justice Society fought off, they would have the recovered ships from the Apalaxian invasion, we know from Flashpoint they have the wreckage of Abin Sur's spacecraft, we know from Captain Atom they have that particular crashed alien ship

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The Justice Society may not have fought off all that many, or any since I don't remember Alan mentioning fighting aliens in this story, alien invasions in Earth 16, plus there may not have been wreckage left, or if there was it was too damaged to be of use.

The Apalaxians are energy beings that used special host bodies to invade the Earth, they may not have even had a ship. Plus there were only a handful of them.

They had his ship in Flashpoint yes. This isn't Flashpoint, so the ship is probably in the hands of the Guardians after they sent someone to retrieve it or something like that.

Even if Captain Atom got his powers in this story from a crashed alien ship that doesn't mean they know enough about that ship to actually build more space ships. If it crashed then it's most likely damaged and they most likely lack knowledge of how it works, materials to make more of that ship etc.

They managed to give Captain Atom powers, but they may not be able to build space ships.

 

[Xelloss]

Nope.

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Is that a British thing ?

 

[Darko]

Is that a British thing ?

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Maybe.

This isn't exactly the first time he's had a character start a sentence only to pause and have the follow up word start in bold.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

Is that a British thing ?

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Mr Zoat would appear to use '..' as a pause/break in a sentence, and '...' as a broken end to a sentence. This is the first time I've run into this, in quite a lot of reading, but it's as logical as any other part of English.

They had his ship in Flashpoint yes. This isn't Flashpoint, so the ship is probably in the hands of the Guardians after they sent someone to retrieve it or something like that.

Even if Captain Atom got his powers in this story from a crashed alien ship that doesn't mean they know enough about that ship to actually build more space ships. If it crashed then it's most likely damaged and they most likely lack knowledge of how it works, materials to make more of that ship etc.

They managed to give Captain Atom powers, but they may not be able to build space ships.

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One of the interesting bits of the science fiction of the 20th Century with its alien technology was humans being able to reverse engineer it. Except, in a few authors like A. E. van Vogt, where it could be so weird humans had no chance.

You might want to think about the human tech of the late 1990s and 21st Century. A lot of it relies on nano-precise materials, even though we've not (yet) got true nanotech. Could earlier 20th Century science have figured out how those worked, with just the (broken) remains? It would, at least, have been amazingly difficult. This ignores the possibility of whole new chunks of science, maybe needing math to do them that humans don't (yet) have.

Unless the US Govt. has someone like Doctor Sivana working with them to attempt to figure-out the alien tech, they would seem to have little chance. And, government doesn't tend to trust super-scientists. And, with good reason as they can do stuff others may not be able to repeat, even if they don't outright break physics.

 

[Enochi]

So... How many different spaceships does the US have? I know they were testing them in the GL comics. And I seem to remember more then a few in Superman comics as well. Not to mention doesn't the US have some kind of deal with an extra-dimensional magic nation or something?

Its really hard to keep track of what the priority system is for Zoat's story at times. I know (Well at least think I know) that YJ canon beats everything else but after that I don't have a clue (Least I am assuming this is why we have a very weak version of Superman and lots of idiot balls going around) Does anyone else know?

 

[Darko]

So... How many different spaceships does the US have? I know they were testing them in the GL comics. And I seem to remember more then a few in Superman comics as well. Not to mention doesn't the US have some kind of deal with an extra-dimensional magic nation or something?

Its really hard to keep track of what the priority system is for Zoat's story at times. I know (Well at least think I know) that YJ canon beats everything else but after that I don't have a clue (Least I am assuming this is why we have a very weak version of Superman and lots of idiot balls going around) Does anyone else know?

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They may not have any space ships that they can use in this story.

There is Starmans ship, but they may not know about it, there is only the one version of that ship and it may not be armed.

Britain has a deal with a extra dimensional nation in this story, not the US, and magic has a difficult time working in space the further you go from a magic rich world

 

[david]

That's the first time I've seen a heroic moral protagonist cheer for an arms race after actually understanding what it entails, and I can't disagree.

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Because if you want a competent and advanced defence of the planet you either get countries competing or you unite the Earth under one banner. Both options change the status-quo and make the world unrelatable to new readers so of course no hero would support it.

 

[rdfox]

Anything with enough juice to make it into space is automatically a WMD.

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If that's true, then Elon Musk needs to start signing various non-proliferation treaties...

 

[Vaermina]

They managed to give Captain Atom powers, but they may not be able to build space ships.

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And if nobody had spaceships, that argument might hold.

But here the argument is a couple of countries, with fractional budgets, who have had access to their crashed alien ships for 50 years less then other countries have spaceships but those other places somehow don't.

It's basically the Wakanda problem, only without the magic metal to explain away everything.

 

[Darko]

And if nobody had spaceships, that argument might hold.

But here the argument is a couple of countries, with fractional budgets, who have had access to their crashed alien ships for 50 years less then other countries have spaceships but those other places somehow don't.

It's basically the Wakanda problem, only without the magic metal to explain away everything.

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Russia may have gotten lucky and got access to ships they could reverse engineer while other countries got ones they couldn't.

The Chinese are trying to reverse engineer Durlan tech and may not be having all that luck in making space capable vessels, even if they have access to other types of tech.

Americans also love superheroes and think they're the issue to alien invasions so finding funding and a budget for creating a space fleet may have been difficult.