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

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Slayer Anderson said:
My problem is that you're using the word 'inevitable' where the word 'should' goes. You're describing a series of events and political exchanges that should happen according to your beliefs about how people and the world work. That is an opinion which you're presenting as a fact. You're not being illogical or irrational, you're constructing a narrative which disallows you the possibility of being wrong, which means you can throw away any evidence I present as insufficient.

I don't want to play a game where your primary rule is 'I win' or at the very least, 'I can't lose.'
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Oh, I agree that "should" should totally apply here, yes, when talking about how the history will actually end up. The part I use "inevitable" in applies mostly to my understanding of common human psychology.

Namely that:
1) The three main social status indicators in history have pretty much always been: wealth, education and power.
2) The more you have either of those, then the higher you will rate your own social status. The higher you rate your own social status, the more hostile you will be to anything that detracts it. Basically, if you get one of those things, then you are likely going to desire the other two, too. If you get two (like wealth and education, which is a common combination in modern society), then you are likely going to start to think that the third is basically owed to you. And if enough people share that situation, then it's going to start a social pressure.

That's what I think is inevitable, that that pressure will develop in right circumstances. What is not inevitable is what it will result in, which can be many alternatives, with democracy being only one of them. But each way it can result in will have costs and consequences, a developing society can't just ignore the whole issue, "because different culture".

I fully admit that it functions as an internal logic model, but I did base its premises upon my studies of human history (like the third estate slowly taking the power from nobles in Europe, the motivations of American colonial elite to rebel, what happened in societies that went through modernization like Japan etc).

This all can be falsified to me, but I don't think we have the time or room to start trading academic standard essays here.

And since this debate has taken a turn to a more polite tone again, maybe it's time when when we should just agree to disagree?
 
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Man, everybody's talking about Jade and Jade, and the new Paul, and Nabu, and I'm just sitting over here thinking that if Harmonious One and his Hat don't make it out of this I'm gonna cry.
 
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Forgot to bring this up the other day, but...
Does anyone else find it ironic that a massive empire in which time travel is illegal owes its very existence to illegal time travel?
 
All this talk about Destiny having inertia and forcing things to snap back... Destiny isnt just a force of nature, it's also a dude. The guy in the robes chained to a book.

I suspect the process is less "naturally occurring processes independent of thought" and more "Destiny weeding and rearranging a mess that spontaneously appeared in his Garden". Also means that in-person appeals might be more effective than trying to Jor-El.

The stuff with Harun al-Rashid and the Dreamers DOES hint that Sandman stuff is directly in play this arc...
 
IslandHopper said:
What's hilarious to me is that a whiles back I had an idea for a SI fic called Another Sort of Ring, where said ornament is the Von Carstein ring and - he wakes up long ago during Teth Adom's time- he is an eternal foe to Savage and Al Ghul- and he met the JSA in WW2- stufff like that.
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Sounds very interesting.
 
NeoDarklight said:
Forgot to bring this up the other day, but...
Does anyone else find it ironic that a massive empire in which time travel is illegal owes its very existence to illegal time travel?
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The US generally tries to prevent the spread of deadly plagues, despite the fact that the modern US owes much of its size and success to its ability to expand westward without much resistance from the decimated native peoples.
 
Mr Zoat said:
"The hat doesn't know, but at a rough guess? The universe makes itself as much like what it should be in the most efficient way possible. That… Probably isn't survivable for us."
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Okay, this I believe. The Hat has no reason to lie, here, unless he secretly works for Savage.

Grosstoad said:
So, SinoPaul is going to face the same dilemma of the... I forgot what the team was called? League of Superheroes?
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Legion of Superheroes, but you were close.
 
ThrawnCA said:
Extra quote.
Harmonious One himself near
Harmonious One himself is near
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Thank you, corrected.
The_Letter_K said:
Man, everybody's talking about Jade and Jade, and the new Paul, and Nabu, and I'm just sitting over here thinking that if The Harmonious One and his Hat don't make it out of this I'm gonna cry.
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Not 'The Harmonious One'. Harmonious One. It's his name. His family name is Harmonious and his personal name is One.
 
Mr Zoat said:
Thank you, corrected.

Not 'The Harmonious One'. Harmonious One. It's his name. His family name is Harmonious and his personal name is One.
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Wow, now that gives me a pratchett flashback to the book where the parents named the girls for virtues like Patience and Charity, but the boys got names like Anger, Covetous, Jealousy, and Beastiality.

Fortunately the names turned out to be ironic like calling a fat guy Tiny...

Since Zoat made The Hat a lord of chaos. In the comics he transformed himself into an earth elemental or demon or something. I split the difference between the two and assume it's an earth elemental demon, like in Freedom Fighters.

Speaking of which, has anyone wondered how in a setting in which magic is both real and immensely powerful and versatile, the native americans, who embraced such in their culture, lost to Europeans with rather pathetic technology?

Four immensely powerful shamans wanted immortality. They bargained with four elemental demons for immortality. They got it, they however neglected to include having control over their own bodies or not having their minds and souls used as chew toys for all eternity. Oops.

So the shamans had a crisis crossover. Shamans from hundreds of tribes gathered far and wide to team up and defeat the four possessed shamans. Even then, they lacked the power to kill them, so they just buried them alive hoping they'd never escape. If memory serves it turns out their immortality didn't include "immunity to an explosion to the face" thanks to the Human Bomb.

These efforts however depleted their resources, so when the Europeans showed up soon after, the shamans didn't have the mojo to deal with them from a position of strength.

Now that could make an interesting elseworld. A setting in which the New World has magic based development and the Old World has technology.

No idea why this didn't happen with other magical cultures in DC history though.
 
V01DRei said:
Somebody remind me what the Harmoneous One's hat is exactly?
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In the comics, the source of his powers until he went transhuman and could do things like breath fire at people.

He could pull anything he wanted to out of the hat. So instead of casting fireball, a fireball would come out of his hat. Instead of summoning demons, he'd pull a demon out of his hat, etc, etc.

Here in WTR where he's a lord of chaos, it's his anchor ala Teekl or the helmet of fate, but is presumably not the sole source of his powers, since he's a lord of chaos, so presumably he knows magic on his own.
 
stsword said:
Speaking of which, has anyone wondered how in a setting in which magic is both real and immensely powerful and versatile, the native americans, who embraced such in their culture, lost to Europeans with rather pathetic technology?
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I don't think they embraced such in their culture more than anyone else did, particularly. Look over in Europe and you'd find plenty of people dabbling in magic.

Anyway, probably the answer is just like in our timeline. Massive plagues that wiped out 99% of the population. Why didn't they treat it with magic? Probably couldn't do mass cures and saving one person at the cost of a week's worth of energy just didn't make the math work out.

stsword said:
Here in WTR where he's a lord of chaos, it's his anchor ala Teekl or the helmet of fate, but is presumably not the sole source of his powers, since he's a lord of chaos, so presumably he knows magic on his own.
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Is Harmonious One actually a Lord of Chaos, or just a chaos magician in the same way that Nabu's followers are order magicians without being lords of order?
 
Briefvoice said:
I don't think they embraced such in their culture more than anyone else did, particularly. Look over in Europe and you'd find plenty of people dabbling in magic.

Anyway, probably the answer is just like in our timeline. Massive plagues that wiped out 99% of the population. Why didn't they treat it with magic? Probably couldn't do mass cures and saving one person at the cost of a week's worth of energy just didn't make the math work out.



Is Harmonious One actually a Lord of Chaos, or just a chaos magician in the same way that Nabu's followers are order magicians without being lords of order?
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Yeah, magic is so prevalent in Europe, that's why this fic treats Atlantis, a society whose magical school has only been shown to teach two whole spells, as the goto masters of occult knowledge. :)

And the estimate is that disease killed 90% of the native americans, not 99%.

Zoat claimed the Hat as a lord of chaos, just as he did with Shade the Changing Man.

That doesn't mean Harmonious One is a lord of chaos, hundreds of years of alternate history after all.
 
stsword said:
Yeah, magic is so prevalent in Europe, that's why this fic treats Atlantis, a society whose magical school has only been shown to teach two whole spells, as the goto masters of occult knowledge.
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We're getting real world and ficitonal world mixed up a lot here.

In the real world, there were probably just as many 'magicians' (as in, people doing magic that didn't actually do anything) as a portion of the population in 16th century Europe as there were in 16th century Americas.

In the fictional world, presumably most of the 'magicians' weren't doing anything that actually worked, otherwise magic wouldn't have declined so drastically. I don't know why you would assume the native americans had a greater portion of magic that actually worked than the Europeans did.

And the estimate is that disease killed 90% of the native americans, not 99%.
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Estimates differ. I tend to buy the higher end estimates.
 
ptbptb said:
At some point this may turn into a case of evacuating friends and family.
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Emerald Oracle said:
And that would explain why this timeline is going to cease to be, because they straight up can't do anything about it. It's too distinct from the natural flow of time, so it can't be corrected for via judicious use of time travel. Probably, anyway.

There may be some survivors of the timeline, if they can whip up the tech for it, but it's going to be Jor-El time shortly at best. Though, hm, given that the Phantom Zone is beyond space and time it's entirely possible they could port the planet's population into it and then out again after the timeline had reset. The Phantom Zone is weird.
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Maybe the Persians can figure out a way to drop everyone into the Dreaming a la Mystic Baghdad.
Since the Dreaming isn't subject to any of the usual rules, Including, Time Or Destiny, no amount of the Universe trying to snap it back could do squat. Getting them back out again might be problematic, but there's an established method for quasi-doing that already demonstrated.
 
Briefvoice said:
We're getting real world and ficitonal world mixed up a lot here.

In the real world, there were probably just as many 'magicians' (as in, people doing magic that didn't actually do anything) as a portion of the population in 16th century Europe as there were in 16th century Americas.

In the fictional world, presumably most of the 'magicians' weren't doing anything that actually worked, otherwise magic wouldn't have declined so drastically. I don't know why you would assume the native americans had a greater portion of magic that actually worked than the Europeans did.
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Because spiritual healing wasn't the default health care program of 16th century europe.

Because the dominant religions of 16th century europe didn't promote the use of magic rituals.

Because 16th century europeans practiced magic in secret for fear of pitchfork carrying mobs, in North America they were authorities on culture, history, religion, and ceremonies.

Not that the various tribes shared religion, not hardly, but there were some facets that were somewhat common.

And thinking most native american mystics would be frauds, when anyone can learn magic in DC, and belief is a valid power source for magic, is an odd premise.
 
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