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

[WereDragon]

I exhale through my nose. "And one of the nice things about both options is that they allow the Justice League to get out of explaining why they sent literal children after serial killing supervillains."

Diana nods, her face hardening. "Yes, several members of the League are not entirely happy with that decision."

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The power of honest and open communication.

Interesting that Common Sense Paul likely has better relations with most of the League despite his more confrontational attitude. More little arguments, but no big fallouts.

 

[CrazyNoVa]

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Given most Paul's are perfectly fine using the Orange Light even knowing what it does to a person I'm pretty sure they dont really consider those things a risks at all.

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Yeah, but remember that the whole point of Common Sense Paul is that he's wiser and more pragmatic than his counterparts.

Sybarite (demon-eater) is pretty serious about magic, IIRC.

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Yeah, but in his case, it's more that he has innate magical abilities rather than being an actual scholar or spellcaster.

 

[Mr Zoat]

And?

I'm not trying to be an asshole here, but making a decision with certain parameters doesn't mean you take it to its logical conclusion. If I am willing to break traffic laws in a back road where no one is around, it doesn't mean I'll go down a one way at 90 mph. Just because I'm willing to work on my own plumbing doesn't mean that I won't hire an electrician.

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Right, but your decision to hire one or not would be based on your assessment of your own competence, without reference to laws concerning who is allowed to do the work.

 

[Clell65619]

Eh.

That argument doesn't really hold much water to me.

Should the Joker be put down for the good of all? Absolutely.

Why is it Batman's sole responsibility?

Joker, baring any bullshit, is just a guy. Anyone could pull the trigger on him, metaphorically or otherwise. Batman hands him over to the authorities and they and the justice system eventually send his ass to Arkham. Bruce doesn't keep him in some special bat themed prison or anything. There's a ton of other people at numerous other levels who could do something else. They could put him in an actual prison or in some other facility that he hasn't proven entirely capable of escaping. They could choose to pursue the death penalty, or someone could see that he tragically falls down eight flights of stairs and breaks his everything.

Does Batman have some responsibility? Sure. But other people could also decide to do something and they don't.

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- I have long believed that in the real world, a psychotic like Joker would have assumed room temperature extremely early in his career. Real world Mass Murders, outside of governments, survive to kill again by being low profile. Joker all but took out billboards announcing his intentions, and come to think of it, he may have even done that.

- Batman wouldn't even need to be involved. An ODC (Ordinary Decent Criminal) would likely shiv the bastard in the showers at the first opportunity. Hell, once the Cops managed to dog pile him, he likely would have come down with a bad case of Resisting Arrest, considering how many Cops he's killed.

- No, the only reason Joker is still among the living is Plot Armor.

 

[Irked]

Huh, is this a different Common Sense lantern? Because i could of sworn the original was older, kept the ring in a safe (which Batman later stole) before he had a way to recharge it and was hiring former supervillains for a company and/or trying to rehabilitate them.

 

[Ngamer11]

Huh, is this a different Common Sense lantern? Because i could of sworn the original was older, kept the ring in a safe (which Batman later stole) before he had a way to recharge it and was hiring former supervillains for a company and/or trying to rehabilitate them.

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You're thinking of Peter Wynne, who ended up on Earth 12, aka the DCAU world.

 

[Steelplaza]

- I have long believed that in the real world, a psychotic like Joker would have assumed room temperature extremely early in his career. Real world Mass Murders, outside of governments, survive to kill again by being low profile. Joker all but took out billboards announcing his intentions, and come to think of it, he may have even done that.

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To be fair, even in the setting of "With This Ring" I think someone once explained that the Joker slowly escalated as the Smilex contamination in his brain demanded greater and greater stimulation to achieve the same 'high'. He didn't start out doing mass murders, and "early in his career" it probably seemed more reasonable to send him to an asylum.

If you really asked me to rationalize it in-world, I would try to explain it as a sort of "frog boiling" effect. We could assume the Joker's body count first started to rise among criminals willing to work with him in the first place, and the public felt like they were getting what they deserved. Then his stunts got more dangerous, but Batman kept stopping them before they really rolled over to mass civilian casualties and people weren't quite making the connection that, "Oh shit if this had actually been successful it would have been really bad." All the news outfits that treated the Joker as 'mostly harmless' at first feel compelled to double down on their initial position even as the evidence mounts.

It would be an unstable situation, but eh... trying to minimize the handwaving, not eliminate it entirely. If we assume a more gradual ramp-up, you can see why Batman would struggle more to draw a bright line of, "Okay now he's done enough. This specific thing was the break point."

 

[CrazyNoVa]

To be fair, even in the setting of "With This Ring" I think someone once explained that the Joker slowly escalated as the Smilex contamination in his brain demanded greater and greater stimulation to achieve the same 'high'. He didn't start out doing mass murders, and "early in his career" it probably seemed more reasonable to send him to an asylum.

If you really asked me to rationalize it in-world, I would try to explain it as a sort of "frog boiling" effect. We could assume the Joker's body count first started to rise among criminals willing to work with him in the first place, and the public felt like they were getting what they deserved. Then his stunts got more dangerous, but Batman kept stopping them before they really rolled over to mass civilian casualties and people weren't quite making the connection that, "Oh shit if this had actually been successful it would have been really bad." All the news outfits that treated the Joker as 'mostly harmless' at first feel compelled to double down on their initial position even as the evidence mounts.

It would be an unstable situation, but eh... trying to minimize the handwaving, not eliminate it entirely. If we assume a more gradual ramp-up, you can see why Batman would struggle more to draw a bright line of, "Okay now he's done enough. This specific thing was the break point."

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How would that explain the other Batman villains, then? Okay, maybe it could explain some of them like Harvey Dent or Selina Kyle, but what about those who were already engaging in murder or straight-up terrorism, like Scarecrow, Bane or Poison Ivy? What about serial killers or cannibals like Killer Croc, Victor Zsasz or Cornelius Stirk? What's the system's excuse for not executing them?

 

[Steelplaza]

How would that explain the other Batman villains, then? Okay, maybe it could explain some of them like Harvey Dent or Selina Kyle, but what about those who were already engaging in murder or straight-up terrorism, like Scarecrow, Bane or Poison Ivy? What about serial killers or cannibals like Killer Croc, Victor Zsasz or Cornelius Stirk? What's the system's excuse for not executing them?

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You're throwing me a long list of names here. My answer would be that I'd have to sit down and consider each one individually and craft a custom explanation for each specific person, charting their career and what they've actually done, what their legal status is, when or if they were ever actually in custody in the first place, and all of that. Most of that I'd be completely making shit up, because we haven't even gotten the brief explanation that With This Ring gave us on the Joker's career. For example when Bane appeared in Young Justice and in this fanfic, he is a warlord on an island Caribbean nation and it's unclear if he's ever even been to the United States much less its prison system.

Creating a custom explanation for each character would be a lot of work, and I don't know who I would be doing it for or who it would make happy, so I won't bother. Nevertheless, I'm sure I could come up with some specific story for each specific guy that passes at least comic book plausibility levels. What I won't do is try to offer some blanket explanation.

 

[AmericanNumbers]

"Why is putting down the Joker Batman's responsibility?"
Well even if we ignore the fact that he undertook his extra legal crusade to prevent people from suffering like he did, Bruce is also the richest person in Gotham and he has the most resources to solve problems. And I would think suffering the mass murdering savant clown to live would be the biggest obstacle to making his city safe from murder.

 

[Duke Long]

For example when Bane appeared in Young Justice and in this fanfic, he is a warlord on an island Caribbean nation and it's unclear if he's ever even been to the United States much less its prison system.

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We do know Bane has been in the United States. He was in Gotham that time he almost killed Oh El. But yeah, it's possible that he's never been to a US prison.

 

[Mr Zoat]

We do know Bane has been in the United States. He was in Gotham that time he almost killed Oh El. But yeah, it's possible that he's never been to a US prison.

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Never been to a Chinese prison, either.