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Hell, when Batman was (apparently) doing his Quantum Leap routine after getting hit by an Omega Beam, he apparently fought a Joker as a pirate captain. Yes, Pirate Batman during the Age of Sail is a canon thing now. And if the stuff revealed in the last decade is to be believed, that might have been the Joker.
 
PossiblyEnos said:
So in other words all this "Haha! DC people are so stupid for not just headshotting the Joker!" is one again internet tough guys lacking any clue what they are talking about, on multiple levels, and they deserve to be mercilessly mocked for it.
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An alternate interpretation is that all this stuff with the three Jokers and et cetera is DC desperately retconning stuff in an attempt to make rather reasonable questions like 'if Gotham has the most corrupt police force in the country, why has their only been one attempt to have an 'accident' when taking Joker into custody, considering rl police's history?' and so on invalid.

Since comic continuity is so conflicting anyway and 'canon' is largely up to the personal interpretation of each fan as otherwise seventy+ years of most major characters existing in some form or another with writers that hate earlier writers' interpretations of characters and go out of their way to contradict what previous writers established as canon would leave all major characters self-contradictory messes, it's ultimately up to the reader whether they prefer this iteration of the character or this one, and bringing up minutia or even major story arcs as evidence for why a character would or would not do something comes up against the problem that your debate opponent may not count those comics as valid for their personal canon, and no official canon exists that is not impossible for any coherent personality out of most major characters, so it's just a show comic, and we really should all relax.

tl;dr arguments about comics that rely on facts presented in the comics are ultimately unwinnable, because while you may win today, next week's issue may come out and contradict the things you based your argument on unless they are a core part of the character, so could everybody just stop, please?
 
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Yes, DC has a tendency to do a cosmic reset every 10 years or so, and has since the 80's. Weirdly enough, they do tend to leave most (if not all) prior stories as canon. For the too egregious stuff like the Golden Age Superman having fought in WW2, those events got moved into a different timeline where Superman is much older instead of all being done by the exact same person. And sure, some of the sillier things (like Superman's ability to fire mini-supermen with all his powers out of his hands) are quietly ignored.

I find it weird that even an old dictinary event is canon... Namely the fact that Lex Luthor once stole 40 cakes. That's as many as ten times four! How terrible!
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Yes, DC has a tendency to do a cosmic reset every 10 years or so, and has since the 80's.
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I blame Barry Allen; he's who originally broke that multiverse, about a quarter-century before that.

Dave, it held together, mostly, for a while, but the fractures kept expanding and accelerating...

ps: and in-story, that's two decades before Scion showed up, so is also canon for canon Worm
 
mp3.1415player said:
What, in any way, makes you think the US Constitution in Earth Bet in 2011 is the same as it is in our world? Canon Worm shows many places where accepted practice there is clearly unconstitutional here, two examples being kill orders and birdcage sentences. And even here, the constitution has been so watered down as far as enforcement goes over the years that quite a few things which are meant by it aren't actually enacted in the spirit of the thing...
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I'd argue that the constitution could be word for word identical between Earth Bet and here, and the differences be such between the two that what would be ruled unconstitutional here would be ruled constitutional there.

Or, to get more in depth, remember that "letters of marque" is still part of the constitution. In addition, even our supreme court has found sentences of life without parole to be constitutional. Supermax prisons, other than the possibility of release if proof of innocence is found, are also thus far constitutional. You also have the old "dead or alive" bounties.

Though yeah, as I understand it, Earth-Alpha and Bet are alternative earths where, for example, they actually made the transition to metric. Which could be a difference seen all the way back in 1793, when Jefferson, seeking to standardize weights in the USA, and having heard of and liked the metric system France had adopted, had a set(carried by Joseph Dombey) commissioned to be brought to the states. However, they were blown off course and waylaid by pirates, so it never arrived. If it had...

But, as I said, I don't actually see any need to rewrite the constitution for Earth Bet, you could even have a storyline where either kill orders or the birdcage are still around and all that, but their constitutionality/legality is questioned, and the court, like with so many other things, is quietly attempting to ignore the problem.

I believe that it would all come down to the process of issuing a kill-order or birdcage sentence. If, in the case of the kill order, you come up with something that's a combination/mix of the court trying somebody in absentia and declaring war on a specific individual for their illegal acts against the USA, using an interesting reading of the power to issue Letters of Marque... I could see it in the context of "the guy's already killed hundreds, we can't bring him in."
 
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Firethorn said:
I believe that it would all come down to the process of issuing a kill-order or birdcage sentence. If, in the case of the kill order, you come up with something that's a combination/mix of the court trying somebody in absentia and declaring war on a specific individual for their illegal acts against the USA, using an interesting reading of the power to issue Letters of Marque... I could see it in the context of "the guy's already killed hundreds, we can't bring him in."
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While trial in absentia is traditionally considered Bad in US law (and a lot of other places) the arguments (though not the existing statutes) leave room for the defendant voluntarily refusing to attend the trial altogether. Carving that loophole open for people who demonstrably can't be forced to attend and aren't being accidentally or 'accidentally' killed in the process of resisting said force might be very plausible.

My vague recollection is that in canon it seemed that kill orders could be procured without a highly publicized process, though. That seems like a lot more of a 'where did Contessa hide the body of rule of law' situation, to hand down a death sentence without even providing an opportunity for the subject to defend themselves...
 
Considering that Taylor is a super-genius, she almost certainly considered the possibility of at least some of the government acting like idiots and trying to imprison, threaten, or force her to work for them. Since she would have considered that, she likely would have prepared some form of contingency in case of emergency. I would kind of like to see what Taylor would do if either a rogue government faction, or alternatively a less intelligent government tried to coerce her. I can imagine her playing along for a short time, getting bored of them, and then using technology she created right in front of them to disappear (along with Danny).
 
I think I saw it in the MLP Infinite Loops. Don't quote me on that though. If not there, it might be one of the Ranma 1/2 crossovers. I remember seeing it too. ANd other then the Infinite Loops one, I only have read MLP/Ranma 1/2 crossovers. I normally avoid MLP fics.
 
Prince Chrom said:
Do you remember which fic, and if so could you link it?
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FaerieKnight79 said:
I think I saw it in the MLP Infinite Loops. Don't quote me on that though. If not there, it might be one of the Ranma 1/2 crossovers. I remember seeing it too. ANd other than the Infinite Loops one, I only have read MLP/Ranma 1/2 crossovers. I normally avoid MLP fics.
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No, it was And That's Terrible, on Fimfiction. Note, I haven't read it and the Author stated he wrote it just for Fun. I normally focus on Equestria Girls fics (I like SciSet), with some Crossovers (there is a Good MLP/Battletech Crossover if you want to look for it.
 
Aineko said:
While trial in absentia is traditionally considered Bad in US law (and a lot of other places) the arguments (though not the existing statutes) leave room for the defendant voluntarily refusing to attend the trial altogether. Carving that loophole open for people who demonstrably can't be forced to attend and aren't being accidentally or 'accidentally' killed in the process of resisting said force might be very plausible.

My vague recollection is that in canon it seemed that kill orders could be procured without a highly publicized process, though. That seems like a lot more of a 'where did Contessa hide the body of rule of law' situation, to hand down a death sentence without even providing an opportunity for the subject to defend themselves...
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There was another thread where the interpretation of the legality of Kill Orders was much closer to Stand Your Ground laws than a trial in absentia. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was closer to legalizing preemptive self defense up to and including lethal force when someone is proven to be demonstrably dangerous to the general public. Could that be finagled with the laws we have on our earth? Probably. Would it be challenged and likely overthrown (especially in the absence of capes). Almost definitely. Could it be abused? Most assuredly. But it is a reasonable legal interpretation and is sidestepping the whole trial issue.
 
Overfic23 said:
There was another thread where the interpretation of the legality of Kill Orders was much closer to Stand Your Ground laws than a trial in absentia. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was closer to legalizing preemptive self defense up to and including lethal force when someone is proven to be demonstrably dangerous to the general public. Could that be finagled with the laws we have on our earth? Probably. Would it be challenged and likely overthrown (especially in the absence of capes). Almost definitely. Could it be abused? Most assuredly. But it is a reasonable legal interpretation and is sidestepping the whole trial issue.
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Laws specifying broad concepts of self defense are one thing, but having a list of specific individuals to which they apply is vastly more problematic. If Congress was deciding who had a 'kill order' it would seem a clear case of a Bill of Attainder forbidden under article I section 9. Maybe it could dodge that by foisting the designation of subjects onto another branch...

Also, the way US law works, such a law almost couldn't be enacted at a federal level. Almost any time someone carried out a kill order, if they were charged for the killing it would be in state courts under state laws. Federal law mandating that an affirmative defense be accepted in state cases would be rather ambitious.
 
Aineko said:
Laws specifying broad concepts of self defense are one thing, but having a list of specific individuals to which they apply is vastly more problematic. If Congress was deciding who had a 'kill order' it would seem a clear case of a Bill of Attainder forbidden under article I section 9. Maybe it could dodge that by foisting the designation of subjects onto another branch...

Also, the way US law works, such a law almost couldn't be enacted at a federal level. Almost any time someone carried out a kill order, if they were charged for the killing it would be in state courts under state laws. Federal law mandating that an affirmative defense be accepted in state cases would be rather ambitious.
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I mean this is the same world where you can be sent to the birdcage without appeal and with an obvious mistrial(to any civilized society ) as A first strike. Seriously exile to a quarantine zone would be way less unconstitutional then the birdcage irl
 
Xerres said:
I mean this is the same world where you can be sent to the birdcage without appeal and with an obvious mistrial(to any civilized society ) as A first strike. Seriously exile to a quarantine zone would be way less unconstitutional then the birdcage irl
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What's supposed to be unconstitutional about the birdcage, though?

The Canary trial is, as you say, an obvious miscarriage in all kinds of ways.
 
Aineko said:
What's supposed to be unconstitutional about the birdcage, though?

The Canary trial is, as you say, an obvious miscarriage in all kinds of ways.
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Maybe that it is supposedly impossible to get out? Therefore, even if there later is proof you were in fact innocent, they can't (or at least that's what they want you to think) release you. Then again, I am not sure how that relates to the US Constitution (or Bet-US Constitution for that matter, which might be different in several ways)
 
Martin Bajar said:
Maybe that it is supposedly impossible to get out? Therefore, even if there later is proof you were in fact innocent, they can't (or at least that's what they want you to think) release you. Then again, I am not sure how that relates to the US Constitution (or Bet-US Constitution for that matter, which might be different in several ways)
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As I understand it (from a view from outside the US, and not a lawyer) the birdcage is basically a death sentence, just with the added twist that someone decided they'd like the parahumans stashed somewhere where they might be useful later down the line, instead of dead.

But from what I understand death sentences are a drawn out process of trials and re-trials and waiting time, so it is different still? It's just the same as far as the sentence is final in a way that other punishments aren't.
 
Martin Bajar said:
Then again, I am not sure how that relates to the US Constitution
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Pretty sure it's the "cruel and unusual punishment" bit. Even death row inmates have several years with which to carry out an appeals process (also visiting hours, conjugal visits, access to the post service, ect) before they get executed. The Birdcage currently holds several people who have been proven innocent because there's no way to let them out.

Edit: like seriously how different do you think Amy would have turned out if Marques was capable of sending her a letter every month.
 
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Viribus Unitis said:
As I understand it (from a view from outside the US, and not a lawyer) the birdcage is basically a death sentence, just with the added twist that someone decided they'd like the parahumans stashed somewhere where they might be useful later down the line, instead of dead.

But from what I understand death sentences are a drawn out process of trials and re-trials and waiting time, so it is different still? It's just the same as far as the sentence is final in a way that other punishments aren't.
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The point of the Birdcage is that there is no way out. It doesn't matter if you were actually innocent, once you're in the Birdcage, that's it. Another point is that, unlike the death penalty, the sentence is carried out immediately. No appeal, no retrial, no presidential pardon, just locked up and they can't throw away the key because there never was one.

The death penalty has such a long and drawn out appeals process because it's so damn final, and there's the possibility of an innocent person getting the sentence due to railroading or being framed. Here is an interesting article on the issue from 2014. As it turns out, as many as 1 in 25 people on death row are probably innocent. But a startling low percentage of them get exonirated before their sentence is commuted into life without parole or they get executed. At least, that was the case in 2014. And death penalty cases have by far the highest rate of innocent people being exonerated in the US justice system because such cases are under so much scrutiny.

We already know that innocent people get sentenced to the Birdcage on a first offense, and get imprisoned there without a single appeal. In canon this happens to both Canary and Amy Dallon. Amy had known extenuating circumstances. She'd been stressed from being overworked and suffering emotional abuse for years. She then had a group of known psychopaths deliberately try to break her. She screwed up and made one mistake while saving the life of someone. And her reward for all this? life without the possibility of parole, no appeal possible, no commute possible, oh and likely to get killed by any number of other inmates in the prison.

Oh yeah, did Amy ever actually go to trial? Or was she just chucked in the Birdcage without one? I don't feel like wading through Worm to find out.
 
Dont trust me on this, but I thought Amy basically ordered them to throw her in the Birdcage or she would destroy the world for some reason. I don't know if that's canon or Fanon, but its the thing that I see a lot of when this topic is brought up.
 
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