Cherico
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by modern middle eastern standards she was a progressive, kind and merciful leader.
With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Twelve)
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by modern middle eastern standards she was a progressive, kind and merciful leader.
No, I'm trying to figure out why either party is acting so pants-on-head retarded.
Why Beena would invoke pheromones in the presence of a Lantern when they have been demonstrated to detect air contamination, and the nature of her power is known to JL affiliates.
And when she didn't attempt to influence him before, during the actual peace summit.
Why Adom would allow his rage rule him, after months of studying the modern world.
Despite the fairly blatant evidence that he is being manipulated into a response on this scale, he allows himself to be distracted into venting his spleen on a patsy instead of figuring out how high end xenotech came into play.
Even if Beena was involved(not proven, or even logical), she didn't arrange it personally, and her death would not prevent it from happening again.
And if Beena does not have a Fuck Everything plan, I will be very surprised.
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I suspect OL just assumed that #1, she wouldn't be that stupid, and #2 if she was that stupid Adom would just no-sell the pheromones without even noticing. Probably just told the ring to "monitor Adom for any effects on his brain chemistry" just in case, and had no idea that Adom would be able to detect the pheromones on his own. He does have a noticeable tendency to assume people will be more reasonable than they turn out to be.
Taking obvious precautions like setting up glass barriers would have been undiplomatic; although less undiplomatic than what actually happened. Of course, such diplomatic rules are based on the assumption that the people doing the negotiations won't try things like she did, or retaliate like he did.
Taking obvious precautions like setting up glass barriers would have been undiplomatic; although less undiplomatic than what actually happened. Of course, such diplomatic rules are based on the assumption that the people doing the negotiations won't try things like she did, or retaliate like he did.
Ganurath
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"Why would I waste time on a plan that would only be set in motion by my demise? It's not like anyone will ever want to kill me once they get close enough to do so."
She does; the standard one of many dictators. She's built the power structure to depend on her and without her, her nation starts to fall apart as she has no qualified replacement who can hold it together. As Renegade pointed out was going to happen after she died in his timeline.
Undiplomatic?
When the meeting was arranged under the explicit threat of force majeure?
When one of the parties went out of his way to acquire a truth-detecting superhuman who can tie you up with a rope to compel truth?
I don't think OL was under any illusions about the civility of this meeting, or what precautions needed to be taken.
Which is why this turn of events is baffling me.
Did Beena seriously assume she could mind-whammy OL, Adom and Wonder Woman?
Why meet with the dude at all instead of sending a body double?
@Mr Zoat has generally been very good at characterizing supervillains, which is why I'm filled with incredulity and more than a little disappointment at this turn of events.
This does not at all fit the woman who went from nothing to Queen on her smarts and ruthlessness.
Why? He promised he'd kill her if she did something like that, then he upheld his word. That doesn't make him less trustworthy.
I don't know about the hero part, but he's certainly my favorite super who isn't British.
Very funny.
She has access to Apokoliptian weaponry and chemically-enforced loyal henchmen; she can do a whole lot worse than simply letting shit deteriorate in her absence.
Queen Bee has an established history of not taking death threats seriously and reaping the rewards. She was probably assuming that OL/WW wouldn't notice the pheromones while Adom would be affected, and that he wouldn't kill her for it, because he's supposed to be with the heroes and the heroes don't do that.
Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
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Because murder in public television is not in any way shape or form a good thing, not for Adom, not for Kahndaq, nor Beena or Bialya.
It absolutely makes Adom look like a psychotic rage monster who has no compunctions about what amounts to vigilante murder at the drop of a hat.
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How would they fight if they were at war?
Good luck making that stick.
Thank you, corrected.
They were outside.
well they were.
Beena violated the terms of the peace talks through the offensive use of a metahuman power.
adom declared war.
adom declared victory.
adom continues to dictate terms of total surrender.
international politics at its most bare.
Remember folks being in the same room with Adom when he's... HE of all people has brought extra muscle for negotiation is more or less total surrender already.
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QB has been playing life on easy mode with her pheromones up to now. She's probably never been in a situation where they couldn't help her directly or indirectly through the people she has at her beck and call. It's affluenza to the Nth degree. She's never suffered any consequences beyond inconvenience before. That's why she got in over her head so readily in both universes.
I'm sorry, but I call bullshit.
Adom just flatout slaughtered the ex-government of Kahndaqi a couple days ago.
And the suggestion that she doesn't take death threats seriously fails in the face of the established fact that she runs an efficient secret police for internal threats.
Wouldn't notice the pheromones?
Her powers are, if not public knowledge, well known enough that diplomats and JL affiliates know to take precautions.
The Light had a mole in the JL long enough for this to be known.
And both WW and OL are JL affiliated.
She just went through this rigmarole with the Quraci invasion less than a year ago.
This is contradicted by everything we know about her, as exposited by Grayven.
Child of a concubine who clawed her way up to the throne.
Ran an efficient dictatorship which was politically repressive but socially liberal and economically successful, in the middle of a region where women don't get to run many governments, and in the absence of large oil deposits.
Wasn't even particularly paranoid, as can be seen by the fact that she left her sister watched but alive in another country, instead of simply arranging an accident for her like she did for others.
Lady had her issues(like the inexplicable obsession with Qurac), but the only previous mistake she'd made here was going personally to Marie whatshername's reserve instead of simply sending an assassin.
The suggestion that she'd try to mindwhammy Adom in the presence of two other capes with known Thinker-type abilities(OL:tech, Diana:magic) just does not hold true in the face of her previous characterization.
Feels like a cheap copout compared to the general competence of every other major supervillain we've seen so far.
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Honestly? Teth Adom is trying to stabilize and secure a country in the Middle East. All things considered having a reputation of going Old Testament on people who fuck with him or his people can only help him in that environment. As for the Western powers? As long as he stays in the middle east and proves to be a moderately stabilizing power they're not likely to step in.
Not sure I buy this.
There was almost certainly footage of him at Fawcett City during the Sabbac Incident, and his activity in Kahndaq was pretty well known.
Just like there was evidence of Black Adam before Adom came around.
Every half-competent intelligence agency and news agency knows what he is capable of.
More than enough evidence to warn off the prudent.
As for the rest?
OL's moon turning feat wasn't enough to prevent Spetsnaz from sending a team to board his Ice Fortress when it came near Siberia.
There will always be fools who will poke the dragon.
I imagine the thought in QB's head went something like this.
"Hey I have the super powered ruler of a country that orange lanter that has been causing us trouble and a possible lesbian warrior in a room with me, they'd be a great catch."
And then bam orange light radiation. Idle greedy thought to improperly thought out action in two seconds followed by an extremely brief but very intense moment of regret.
"Hey I have the super powered ruler of a country that orange lanter that has been causing us trouble and a possible lesbian warrior in a room with me, they'd be a great catch."
And then bam orange light radiation. Idle greedy thought to improperly thought out action in two seconds followed by an extremely brief but very intense moment of regret.
Emizaquel
What is a self?
Is it possible that Adom hasn't adjusted?
It's only been a few months since his resurrection and his experience in the world is quite limited. I could totally see him falling back to his old ways as king millennia ago since he was quite enraged.
When you can mind-control people, all those things become orders of magnitude easier. Think about it. Five minutes with someone and she has them tell her everything she needs to be able to blackmail them even when they aren't in range. She knows for a fact who is genuinely loyal and don't need to be mind-controlled. Those people can be tasked with keeping an eye on the rest. She can interrogate someone and know for a fact that they're going to tell her the truth. Cleverly employed, mind control is a stupidly powerful cheat code for life.
Honestly I'm not seeing how this was out of character for Queen Bee, suicidal arrogance was one of her defining character traits.
Remember this is the woman who invited an Apokolptian psychic to her country and assumed it would be fine, who tried that pheromone trick on Grayven, a man who had already killed one of her comrades (Oceanmaster) and who ignored a direct statement that the Logan animal sanctuary was off limits to Biayla and any trespass would be met with lethal force.
She always seems to assume that there will be no serious consequences for her actions until she bites off more than she can chew and pays for it, first in the Renegade timeline and now here.
Remember this is the woman who invited an Apokolptian psychic to her country and assumed it would be fine, who tried that pheromone trick on Grayven, a man who had already killed one of her comrades (Oceanmaster) and who ignored a direct statement that the Logan animal sanctuary was off limits to Biayla and any trespass would be met with lethal force.
She always seems to assume that there will be no serious consequences for her actions until she bites off more than she can chew and pays for it, first in the Renegade timeline and now here.
Perhaps.
But you'd expect him to know his judgement is compromised by now, no?
And frankly, summary execution was not much of a feature of successful kings, like Adom was supposed to have been; they had the right, but they exercised it sparingly.
Much less doing it with their own hands, instead of delegating.
We went over this before back when Grayven was schmoozing Beena.
Word of Zoat was she used her mind-whammy sparingly because it doesn't affect many people at a time, and she couldn't afford to spend her time vetting people in-depth.
Only her immediate staff got regular updates of Beenajuice, because they were often in her presence.
Beena really was just that good at ruling, and at picking competent subordinates with an interest in keeping her in power; her pheromone control was an edge, not a cheat code.
Adom was saying a lot of things Beena would rather he didn't in front of the press. She defaulted to her normal method of conflict resolution, the same method she has always used, and which is the reason she's ruling a country now.
Was it a dumb move? Maybe, but it's not hard to see why she went for it when put in a tight spot and under pressure.
Adom, on the other hand, has been pretty close to bathing the desert in blood for quite some time now. Captain Marvel and OL were very close to not managing to talk him down, and he hasn't gotten any less angry.
Was killing Beena on TV a dumb move? Probably, but the fact that he was rather sure she had slaughtered his people and was now attacking him makes it hard not to see someone with his personality and life experience reacting the way he did.
A lot of fictional villains have Secret Fuck Everything After I Die plans, but from a deeper perspective, that always struck me as pretty dumb.
For someone to think that was good enough idea to be worth having they'd need a pretty weird mindset. Not just a totally self-interested one, an actually nonsensically evil one.
First, they'd need to spend a lot of time planning for their death, which most people don't generally do even when they should. It's simply not something humans are wired to do unless it's repeatedly shoved in their face that they'll be dying soon. Beena doesn't have anyone to make her do this, she's surrounded by yes-men, and many of the things she does suggests she severely underestimates risks, making it much less likely that anything would get her contemplating her mortality on a regular basis.
Second, they'll need to have nothing in life they actually care about. Nothing they'd want to continue to go on having a good life, not even a pet dog or a plant. Nothing that they'd mind knowing will either go down with the rest of the things that are being screwed over, or which will get killed by a victim of the plan trying to get some form of revenge or closure. Beena may be enough of a sociopath for this, but it's questionable.
Lastly, they'd need to think it was worth spending time and effort on something they aren't ever going to use while alive. Something that probably has many parts that could be used against them, and which will ruin any positive legacy they might have had. 'Yes, she was a good ruler while alive, but she deliberately released the super-plague when she died.' People would remember them mostly for that as it's the last thing they did, not for anything they might have done while alive. Beena likes being liked, that she'd go out of her way to be hated once dead would be kind of weird.
It sort of makes sense to have a deterrent so no one will attack you, and you might need an actual Fuck Everything plan so people will take your threat seriously, but like Dr. Strangelove said, it does you no good if no one knows about it.
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I think it's more an issue the Might One wouldn't appreciate OL interfering in him taking her to task for justice. He was prepared to lambast her for what she had down and then seek recompense, whether that would involvemreparations, her stepping down from state and go to prison, but he felt if the witch was dealing in bad faith then he saw no reason to continue what would have become meaningless charades.
Remember OL and Captain Marval barely managed to convince him not to just go over and slaughter their government as is. Him taking this tact was a concession on his part.OL taking an explicit precaution to neutralize her abilities would likely have been a sign that he expected her to deal in bad faith, which the Mighty One likely would have seen as justification they should just remove her as is.
If Might One thought she'd likely attempt deception why deal with her at all? Honestly it came down to OL probably care more about his friend who was in a lot of pain having failed his people in his eyes than the continued survival of dictator who in all likelihood had something to do with the deaths of the attack leaving thousands dead. Just because this Paul is a bit more laid back and calm, the renegade side of him was consistent with his character, orange ring exaggerating some emotional traits or not.
Besides there's a fair chance Teth Adom wouldn't settle for anything else but Bee's removal from power. In which case the fact she like most dictators left no power structure but her in control a problem anyways. In any case his environmental shield up and monitoring would have protected him and let him detect it. It just turns outn the Mighty One is more aware than Paul likely expected.
Remember OL and Captain Marval barely managed to convince him not to just go over and slaughter their government as is. Him taking this tact was a concession on his part.OL taking an explicit precaution to neutralize her abilities would likely have been a sign that he expected her to deal in bad faith, which the Mighty One likely would have seen as justification they should just remove her as is.
If Might One thought she'd likely attempt deception why deal with her at all? Honestly it came down to OL probably care more about his friend who was in a lot of pain having failed his people in his eyes than the continued survival of dictator who in all likelihood had something to do with the deaths of the attack leaving thousands dead. Just because this Paul is a bit more laid back and calm, the renegade side of him was consistent with his character, orange ring exaggerating some emotional traits or not.
Besides there's a fair chance Teth Adom wouldn't settle for anything else but Bee's removal from power. In which case the fact she like most dictators left no power structure but her in control a problem anyways. In any case his environmental shield up and monitoring would have protected him and let him detect it. It just turns outn the Mighty One is more aware than Paul likely expected.
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