With This Ring / Tropes D to H

Tropes A to C | Tropes D to H | Tropes I to R | Tropes S to Z

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D

• Damsel out of Distress: Truggs tries to hold Artemis hostage when the Team foil his ambush. Artemis takes none of this and stabs him in the eye for his trouble. It helps that OL had given her super strength with the Danner formula.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Renegade has a piece of the Anti-Life Equation embedded in his soul by Darkseid. Accessing it has nasty effects on himself and everyone nearby.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Downplayed. Paul merges with the Ophidian to save his friends and while Paulphidian is still largely benevolent and supports the good guys, they cannot feel any emotion besides Avarice and so they longer understand why they are so attached to them. They have completely forgotten what feeling emotions is like.
• Dating Catwoman:
  • Double Subversion. Renegade!OL invoked the trope to cover up that Cheshire was his informant and mole for the League of Shadows. He later admits that he does desire her romantically after he keeps seeing her despite her no longer being useful as a spy. Cheshire and Renegade!OL nearly become engaged.
  • Both played straight (metaphorically) and averted (literally) with Batman, who is currently in a relationship with Talia al-Ghul, daughter of Ra's. Both Selina Kyle (Catwoman) and OL think that Catwoman would be better for him.
  • Holly later tries to set up Selina and Paul since they're both single. Averted, since Selina (wrongly) thinks he's too young for her.
• Deader than Dead: Living creatures have souls, made of structured magic, that are drawn to an afterlife when they die. However, it is possible to damage or even destroy the soul.
  • The damned souls that Karrien Excalibris burned are gone for good.
  • It's not entirely clear what the "Identity Theft" ability does to a soul, but Paul has established that the orange light is capable of consuming magic. The question is further muddied when assimilated beings are then dispelled with the Sword of the Fallen.
• Deadly Dodging: Paul asks his ring to plan an evasive pattern against Mongul's fleet that improves the chances that missed shots will hit other ships. The ring replies that it was already doing that.
• Death Is Cheap: Paul has died multiple times and found his way back. After thoroughly examining him, experts have concluded that his non-standard soul is more organised than a normal one and can easily attach itself to a cloned body if he's killed.
• Death of a Child: It's explicitly shown that thousands of children died in Displaced while the adult side was mostly fine.
  Orange Lantern: Tell Batman to imagine a world where in every hospital, every clinic, every doctor's surgery... Doctors: gone. Surgeons: gone. Anesthetists: gone. Critical care nurses: gone. Any child who was undergoing surgery when the separation occurred is most likely already dead. Most children who were in critical care wards will be dying without the constant attention they need. Small babies who were being bathed when their parents disappeared stand a good chance of drowning. And good as autopilots are I don't know how long we've got until planes start falling out of the sky with no pilots. Major roads are covered in crashed cars, the injured and the dead and there aren't enough of us to help. I will be astonished if we keep the death toll to a mere five figures -most of whom will be children- and I will shout the praises of any deity who feels like chipping in, we cannot afford- We can't afford to pay any unessential attention to secondary objectives. Please pass that on.
• Death of Personality: Martians do this to criminals who commit severe crimes, erasing their memories and rewriting their brains.
• Death Ray: After the Renegade obtains a copy of Paula von Gunther's purple healing ray, he experiments on it and finds that it's not hard to make the ray disrupt life force instead of strengthening it. Wonder Woman is not amused.
  She puts her hands on her hips and sighs at me. "You made a Purple Death Ray."
  "I made a yes."
• Death World: Aliens who find out about the insanity that happens on Earth on a regular basis consider it one. The fact that Earth has ways to kill Lanterns and Kryptonians doesn't help.
• Deconstruction Fic: The story uses the Self-Insert to deconstruct things like why no one is using all the Schizo Tech to improve everyday technology, why no one has tried making magic or alchemy mainstream when they're real and documented things that are renewable resources. Why do heroes let horrible supervillains simply go to jail when they cause so much suffering when they're given the authority to do things that regular governments can't do. It's very telling that when Orange Lantern tries to improve things or makes his views known, he is accused of being a Visionary Villain.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Paul Cherry Tapping Lantern Ragnar is the first step in gaining his respect and making him a useful member of the Orange Lantern Corps. Fighting their way through a planet full of hostile aliens with highly advanced technology helps too.
• Defrosting Ice King: Vril Dox is famously brilliant-with-no-social-skills. When Paul first meets him, Dox is so tightly controlled that his emotions only colour a single letter of each word, disdains company, and ignores even the basics of social niceties like "please", "thank you", and eye contact (not that he instinctively avoids it in an autistic manner; rather, he can pay attention without looking and therefore sees no point). Paul assigns Lantern Ratchet to manage Dox, with gradual but promising results. He also puts Dox in contact with Georgia Sivana, who is brilliant enough to keep up with him; their first face to face meeting is so deeply awkward it's cute, but Dox is definitely trying.
  And.. someone —I'm going to assume that it wasn't Dox— has decorated. His minimalistic hologram system is still here, but now it's been joined by… Potted plants. A soft seating area. A wooden desk. Carpet. I'd.. guess.. Brande was responsible, but I don't think that this is something that anyone could sneak by Dox without him noticing. So he's approved it, and the first I'm seeing of it is when Georgia appears.
  Well paint me pink and call me Star Sapphire.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Paul gets on the bad side of Lori Lemaris when he comments on the possibility of reversing the grafts of Atlanteans to make them into Purebloods or baseline Humans.
  • In turn Lori clashes with Sephtian. Due to being a fish-graft Atlantean, she sees the mentioned comment as racism. Sephtian, being part-of the genetically inbred and slowly dying Manta-graft Atlanteans, sees the possibility of changing or reversing his graft as a positive thing, as his group suffers from many genetic diseases and are incapable of reproducing with anyone outside their group.
  • Teth Adom has to wrap his head around the ban of pork in the Islamic Kahndaq and how crippling horrible villains would be considered excessive force.
  • What was the act that proved to the wizard Shazam that Teth Adom was abusing his gifts to bring more power to himself and crossed the line? He was attempting to form the ancient equivalent of the Justice League! Teth Adom is extremely bitter about it, as Captain Marvel's participation in the Justice League proves that he had the right idea. He notes that he and his contemporaries could have brought an age of Enlightenment and peace that no one had seen before, if it wasn't for the wizard's betrayal and his refusal to listen to Adom. (Although some of the members of his proposed league were...questionable.)
  • Kaldur, Garth and Tula are extremely offended when Kaldur's Earth -14 counterpart Lamprey addresses Aquaman as Arthur Curry instead of his Atlantean name. In Atlantis, people opposed to Aquaman's rule would call him by his land name to imply that he's not Atlantean.
  • Once Maxima truly realizes what she wants in a spouse is someone that can complement her abilities and be able to rule alongside her, she has no problems marrying her female adviser. She plainly tells her adviser to congratulate her and that they are getting married.
  • One of the Aesops for Show Within a Show "The Foolish Prince".
    Prince Pavlos: Firstly, I would say that I have learned that no matter what you do or how you live, someone, somewhere will take exception to it, no matter how reasonable the action or unreasonable the exception.
• Demonic Possession:
  • How everyone views the Ophidian's possession of Paul to the point of getting an exorcist. The exorcist notes that the Ophidian is not a demon and needs different methods to be driven out.
  • Demon Constantine works to have a demonic speedster possess Max Mercury.
• Demon Slaying: The fic involves Hellblazer, it comes with the territory.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Paul's standard attack style involves railguns firing a variety of special ammunition, some mundane (tungsten, cold iron), some high-tech (molecular disassembly aka crumbler), and some magical (mage slayer, angel feather).
• Didn't Think This Through: OL realized that shortly after turning Black Adam back to Teth Adom; Adom started attacking Wotan with near-lethal force by tearing his right arm off, because he was unfamiliar with the heroes' modern rules of engagement.
  • Blue Lantern points out to Ultraman that this trope is in effect regarding the use of Owlman's planet-buster bomb, pointing out the problems with detonating a planet-killer on your only planet.
• Different World, Different Movies: On movie night, Paul finds out the varying and almost familiar movies on WebFilm.
  • A movie adaptation of Castlevania directed by Christopher Nolan.
  • Star Wars exists, but George Lucas was killed in a hit and run accident before he could make episodes I to III. So Disney bought the Star Wars franchise much earlier and hired Michael Bay to direct the prequels. Paul's In-Universe opinion: "So, pro, no Jar Jar Binks. Con, Queen Amidala in a boob tube and hot pants and a thirty foot tall General Grievous."
  • Super Giraffeman Seven, a low-budget, superhero comedy movie. It has a 2001 sequel, Super Giraffeman in Space.
• Diplomatic Impunity:
  • Following the Injustice League fiasco, diplomatic immunity is what saves Count Vertigo from getting incarcerated right away. OL is extremely peeved about this and does not hold back at all about how stupid it is. Renegade goes further, starting a publicity campaign to hound and harass the bureaucrats who let it happen, leading at least one of them to commit suicide.
  • Paul eventually decides that he may as well throw his own weight around with his Themysciran diplomatic passport, using it to avoid prosecution for things like stealing Kraft's business plans, to prove that they're lying about what they'll do to Cadbury's after they buy it out.
• Disability Immunity: Controller Hannanan believes that part of the reason Paul was able to use the orange light without total insanity before the Central Power Battery was restored was because he had no soul.
• Disconnected by Death: In Contingency OL calls Luthor in hopes of Luthor giving the team back-up. Unfortunately, Luthor's company building is also being attacked and Luthor was making a Last Stand by keeping a protective shield to protect fleeing employees. Luthor gives OL his technological database before the call disconnects when the building is annihilated.
• Distracted by the Sexy: OL has his moments...
  • OL gets very distracted by Diana's appearance when he first meets her, not that he'll admit it.
  • Invoked by Artemis as she tries to use the shirtless Kon to win a fight against OL. She fails at the time, but later succeeds by giving him a kiss so he wouldn't put his shields up when she slapped him.
  • Zatanna also gets distracted when OL takes off his top to show his protective tattoos.
  • Holly notices Artemis' trim taut and terrific physique during morning exercise. Holly's girlfriend notices her noticing.
• Doing in the Scientist: After intensive study and experimentation on the Danner Formula and Garrick Formula, OL, Jay Garrick and Kid Flash conclude that both formulae don't work according to scientific principles. Further study implies that there's something alchemical and magical about them that's making them work.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul":
  • Inverted; Paul refuses to use the name "The Joker", instead putting his ring to work ferreting out his true identity — Jack Napier — and insisting on only calling him by his true name. This is one of the more obvious ways in which he expresses his contempt for the character.
  • Played with for the protagonist, whose actual name is Paul, and who would be happy to have people use it, but for reasons he doesn't understand, he cannot say it himself, and if he thinks about it too hard, he gets knocked unconscious. In the Paragon timeline, Robin is able to deduce his name, but in the Renegade timeline, no one knows it, and he takes on the pseudonym Grayven.
• Doorstopper: With daily updates averaging over a thousand words, the story is well over 3 million words total as of early 2020. Extrapolating that to the author's stated goal of covering Young Justice season 2 and the five year interval between seasons, the whole story will likely be over ten million words.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • OL shuts down Robin and Red Arrow's attempts to find the mole, pointing out that the claim came from a criminal, a claim that was unsubstantiated after they did multiple background checks and tests for mind control. The only one he didn't check was Red Arrow, because he wasn't part of the Team.
  • Renegade!OL is considering working with the Light after his disappointment with the Justice League. Artemis and Miss Martian accuse him of being the mole when he had never worked with the Light before and he is still loyal to the Team.
  • Renegade!OL notes that in a group with an alien and two clones, he has the most alien morality on the Team.
  • One of Zatara's stipulations to allow Zatanna to become a superhero is that she never associate with John Constantine. Guess whom she works with in order to bring Zatara back?
• Drugged Lipstick: Orange Lantern falls victim to this after kissing Jade, because he didn't scan her lips. He found the idea of this too implausible (which, in reality, it would be, but he didn't account for the more subtle differences between his universe and YJ's universe).
• Dull Surprise: OL's reaction to the death of the Justice League in "Contingency", snarking at the unoriginality of it before his friends tell him to take it more seriously.
• Dumbass Has a Point: While J'onn J'aarkn is a huge sleazebag, he does have a point that M'gann would need his notes on human shapeshifting if she wants to improve her capabilities from someone who knows how Martian shapeshifting works. And she'll need it if she ever wants to get physically intimate with humans. M'gann herself says that J'aarkn took really good notes and his knowledge improved her shapeshifting a lot.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: Since this was Mr Zoat's first foray into fanfiction, the first handful of chapters don't always match up exactly with the more carefully planned later arcs — such as the need to put on clothing before being able to designate it as a uniform and store it in subspace, which doesn't come up again. The tendency to create constructs as soon as he feels an abstract desire, without having specifically visualised the construct, is also downplayed in later episodes.
• Eating Optional:
  • Paul's ring could theoretically take care of all his bodily functions, substituting orange power for food, sleep, and air. In practice, it's not wise to rely on that too heavily, especially regarding sleep, and he does eat regular meals.
  • Red Inferno could power herself entirely from her fire elemental core, but after being rebuilt by the Ophidian, she explores the sense of taste. Several people are impressed.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Unbeknownst to OL, Zatanna definitely liked what she saw when he took off his shirt and posed to show off his magical tattoos while he was intoxicated on magic.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Klarion the Witch Boy is a Lord of Chaos, who has essentially replaced his original soul with a connection to the plane of elemental chaos. This gives him access to vastly more magical power, but he's no longer really human, his form is malleable, and he can be banished to the plane of chaos if his anchor to the material world is destroyed.
  • Johnny Sorrow has been warped by exposure to the extradimensional King of Tears, and now twists the space around him by his mere presence. Seeing his face drives people to madness, and the mask he wears to control that ability is his anchor to the material world.
  • Richard Swift looks human and keeps a low profile, but has become a being of shadow, capable of accessing vast power by tapping into the Shadowlands adjacent to the material world. Keen eyes can notice that the shadows cast by his appearance are darker and more solid than they should be. The Renegade considers him to be the most powerful individual in the world.
• Emotion Control: The Medusa Mask can incapacitate or convert opponents by spiking them with fear, hatred, etc. Doesn’t work on an enlightened OL though.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Artemis and Robin, after Ophidian-OL gives the Danner formula against their will.
• Enemy to All Living Things: Darkseid, in a very literal, metaphysical sense. He radiates an aura based on the Anti-Life Equation, and merely being in his presence is implied to have burned out the minds of the genomorphs in the Renegade timeline.
• Endless Daytime: The Land of Summer's End, which is a version of Earth billions of years in the future, has no cycle of day and night, it's more of a perpetual twilight, with enough light to see but shaded by fog all around and dark clouds overhead. Without a clock capable of surviving under the Vampire Sun, losing track of time happens very quickly.
  Artemis: I've eaten meals, I've slept, and… Everything outside is the same. There aren't any days here and my computer's busted so I've got no idea how much time has passed. How long?
• Enlightened Self-Interest:
  • A main idea of Paul's philosophy for the Orange Lantern Corps. The better an Orange Lantern understands the reasoning behind their desires, the better they can act upon them. Especially in the interest of furthering the Corps' interests, of which an ethical approach to their goals is mandated. Self-actualization and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs also apply.
    "As an Orange Lantern, this is something you must be aware of in yourself. An Orange Lantern's ability to use their ring is dependent on understanding and working towards the realisation of your desires." [...] "There are an almost infinite number of approaches a person can take to almost anything. But if you've taken up an orange power ring, you have to proceed in a particular way or you cripple yourself." - Back Door (part 4)
  • The "Tangseid" alternate Paul showcases a darker side of this, where he's not just working out how best to make the orange light do good things, he genuinely is selfish but willing to help others in order to help himself.
    Evil Paul: I want to date you. If doing a thing gets me a date, I can do it. If I tried healing your mother out of pure altruism, it wouldn't work. I wouldn't be able to do it. I mean, I'm sure your mother is as.. fine a woman as an ex-supervillain can be, but I don't have any investment in her.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Several characters gain deep insight into a particular emotion, to the point where it influences their whole pattern of thought. When equipped with the matching power ring, they make exceptionally powerful and stable Lanterns, able to continue feeling the full emotional spectrum without losing their connection to the ring's emotion, and able to focus on that emotion without being consumed by it - even to the point of being able to temporarily bond with the embodiment of that emotion for a massive power boost, or No-Sell magical attempts to alter their emotions. The text depicts this enlightenment by putting all of their quotation marks in the appropriate color.
  • Paul gains Orange Enlightenment after bonding with the Ophidian in the Paragon timeline. This also gives him empathic vision, allowing him to see into people's souls and trace the emotional connections there. It later allows him to safely access the Honden of Avarice, the nexus of every desire ever felt by any being in the universe.
  • Michael Sisken has Yellow Enlightenment as a result of winning against the Terror Thing.
  • Mr Zoat explains that Green Lanterns don't get as many benefits as other colors.
  • Guy Gardner gains Green Enlightenment in the Paragon timeline.
  • Nommo Balewa/Dr Mist has White Enlightenment.
  • Geoffrey Talbot in the Renegade timeline has Red Enlightenment, and receives a Red Power Ring.
• Eternal English: Averted.
  • Teth Adom had to be taught English and Kahndaqi Arabic by university students in exchange for teaching them ancient Kahndaqi.
  • Truggs mentions spending months learning English when he got to the past, as the language and dialect changed drastically in the future.
• Expansion Pack Past: The Renegade's claimed history implies this. Possibly, unless he's lying or confused... While it's always been said that once Paul was just an ordinary British guy who somehow got transported to multiple DC (and at least one Marvel)-based dimensions, the Renegade claims to Queen Aga'po that he is the original Grayven who jumped to "Paul's" home Earth to burn out Anti-Life corruption, as that universe's laws "[did] not support souls]", his New God mantle being stripped away as well. And even Darkseid himself has stated that Grayven took a "sojourn into the Bleed" — the chaotically hostile space between dimensions - when leaving Apokolips.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
  • Bane was about to tear Paragon!OL's head off when he believed the latter desecrated his mother's grave. Paragon clarifies that he simply scanned through the ground in order to get her DNA.
  • Georgia and Thaddeus Jr Sivana have no concern for life, law, or personal property, but their mother is able to make them apologize for robbing Paul's subspace pocket and return what they stole.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played with in the Renegade timeline. Everyone in the Light is horrified and appalled by Klarion's actions in Displaced and his idea of a "distraction". The Renegade mocks this as he internally notes that most of the Light are guilty of attempted genocide and that they're not as good as they think they are.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • Everyone can see the chemistry between OL and Superboy, and everyone made jokes about it until Kon hooked up with M'gann. Conner's classmates asked if Paul and Conner were in an "alternative relationship".
  • People started joking how Zatanna and OL are together a lot, not knowing they are secretly plotting to rescue Zatanna's father.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • In the Paragon world, everyone assumes what makes Teth Adom lose his connection to the wizard is that Teth killed his father. Turns out that no, it was for something else; the wizard was totally fine with Teth's father getting killed. Again, the Wizard, who champions the fight against the seven deadly sins of man, says that it was okay to kill this guy. Yikes.
  • While J'onn J'aarkn will proudly have sex with anything that moves, even he stays away from the likes of Sonic Sally.
• Everyone Hates Fruit Cakes: Subverted. To the surprise of Cat Grant and Guy Gardner, OL's giant fruit cake is delicious. OL notes that his mother taught him how to make it properly.
• Evil Overlord List: OL has studied it and recommends others do so as well.
• Exact Words:
  • Paul takes his time choosing the wording of his oath to Gaia, ensuring that it has suitable exceptions and loopholes, such as not willingly leaving the system (in case he's forcibly removed) and that he can end all obligations by returning the lantern to Alan. He relies on the former exception at New Year's, and the Renegade later activates the escape clause as part of his infiltration of the Light.
  • During Bane's assassination attempt, OL orders the ring to "Find the Missiles." He has to narrow the search parameters once it begins showing him the location of every rocket-based weapon in Asia.
  • In Contingency, Paragon!OL gives his lantern back to the then dead Alan. He then takes it back in hopes that he is technically no longer bound to his vow to Gaia as the vow didn't cover him stealing/inheriting it back.
  • Renegade!OL is responsible for the deaths of Felix Faust, Wotan and Blackbriar Thorn. He's not punished by Gaia because he didn't kill them: he simply delivered them to the Chinese government to be given trial. The country most likely to give them the death penalty due to their harsher laws on metahumans and the severe child death toll.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When OL and Diana are discussing the Greek Pantheon, OL comments that Hera doesn't get much out of being Queen of the Gods to due marrying Zeus. Diana defends Zeus by saying that he doesn't cheat anymore and he's much more respectful of his marriage to Hera. OL has to tell Diana of the eight-year-old Cassie Sandsmark, one of OL's candidates for future recruitment, who is a genetic match to her half-brother, Ares, and whose mother met Zeus during a cruise on Greek waters.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: Paul seems unconcerned about revealing the extent of his powers to friends and foes alike. Even to the Reach.
• Extended Disarming: Power rings make this much easier; when Paul first arrests Jade, he promptly confiscates the knives in her hands, the pistol bow, shuriken and collapsible swords from her back, the explosive pellets from her belt, the extra knives and throwing weapons from inside her tunic... but he misses her poisoned lipstick.
  Paul: Maybe she really doesn't need armour with all this stuff in her clothing.
  Please say she doesn't have a knife up her... No? Fffwww. That's a relief.
• Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: As Paul's exotic orange light abilities grow, he discovers that he can travel through the Honden of Avarice, where all usage of the orange light is recorded, to reach anyone in the universe near-instantaneously. Furthermore, it bypasses most forms of anti-teleportation shielding. However, he can't easily bring passengers, since anyone without either excellent self-awareness or magical shielding would be overwhelmed by the Honden. Vril Dox arranges for a fleet to be magically shielded so that Paul can transport them to a Reach target, and it works, but wrecks the shielding in the process, leaving them to fly back in more mundane fashion.
• Eye Colour Change/Glowing Eyes of Doom:
  • Paul's eyes will occasionally glow orange, due to augmenting his vision with his ring.
  • When he is feeling particularly strong avarice (especially if it is overwhelming his mental stability), his eyes will turn into Orange Lantern Corps symbols. This is consistent with other Lanterns, whose eyes turn into symbols of the emotion they feel strongly (usually their designated corps).
  • Paul is capable of summoning the Ophidian's eyes so that he can see people's deepest inner desires.

F

• Face Your Fears: Ragnar specifically requests to come along and help face Parallax, because he hopes to gain more insight into his own fears as part of overcoming them.
  Ragnar: I don't fear simple things like violence, pain or death. I am not even afraid of losing. But there are things I fear. Parallax would make me confront them and either overcome them or perish.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Upon landing on Earth, Paul goes to the first clothes shop he finds, to replace his pyjamas — and doesn't pay any mind to the fact that the place is full of bikers carrying guns and trying to conceal bags of white powder.
  • After gently turning down Zatanna expressing romantic interest, Paul nonetheless continues to spend time with her, primarily in their efforts to free her father, but also just keeping her company when her dad can't be there. However, he entirely fails to notice that his gift of Warhammer-themed Powered Armor and their trip to Games Workshop happen on Valentine's Day.
• Failed Attempt at Scaring: A Sheeda highborn warrior mistakes Paul for Harold Jordan, and tries to weaken him by intimidating him, then throws a magical spear through time and stabs him in the chest with it. However, with his ring keeping him together, Paul isn't seriously hurt, and with his past combat experience, he's not impressed either.
  Aeres: Do you fear me now?
  Paul: Six months ago an angel shoved a burning sword through my skull, while I was in hell and defended by an army of demons. I'm sorry, but no matter what you do you're not going to get the emotional reaction you're looking for.
• Failsafe Failure: Kara Zor-El's life-pod detects a Power Ring as a safety measure and opens up... while in the vacuum of space.
• Fake Defector: The Renegade stages a dramatic exit from the Team and joins the Light, switching from an orange power ring to a yellow one. However, he's already met with Batman about running it as a deep cover infiltration. What's particularly interesting is that he does genuinely like the Light's goals and independence, to the point where even Batman isn't sure if he's genuinely switched sides, it's just that the existing roster are almost all stuck in useless supervillain mindsets. He eventually gives up on them, sells them out to the US government, and kills all except Lex Luthor.
• False Crucible: Despite OL knowing at first he was in a training scenario, that goes all out the window when M'gann accidentally hijacks it, making the Team believe it's real.
• False Flag Operation: The Thanagarian government infiltrates the Cult of the Seven Devils and deliberately incites them to make very public and doomed-to-fail attacks, in order to arouse public ire against them. Plus, they get to watch how Paul responds to the attacks, and thus gain a better idea of his capabilities.
• Famed In-Story: Robin is well-known to be part of the Dynamic Duo and OL becomes known through his various exploits in the Rhelasia Conference, the Injustice League, the Giant Cake and the post-"Displaced" interview. Justified as those events weren't covert ops missions and he is the only one on the Team that is legally an adult.
• Fan Disservice:
  • OL does a web search on Sonic Sally and it rewards him with a ten second clip of her masturbating with a piece of barbed wire.
  • After Paul's first very public appearance in Rhelasia, Wonder Woman assigns him to go through her fan mail for an hour, as a lesson in what fame is like.
    Paul: If I ever see a picture of a fat hairy naked guy again, it'll be too soon.
• Fantastically Challenging Patient: Orange power rings are excellent healing tools in the right hands, but they don't always come with comprehensive medical data on the target species, as Paul discovers when he rescues some injured Darkstars.
  Okay, scanning. Nothing on the second guy's species but the woman conforms more closely to the standard humanoid template. I still need to copy her body chemistry but at least I know where everything is supposed to go. Huh, and no temptation to 'improve' things. Blackened and roasted organ tissue evaporates and is replaced by fresh brown/green. That looks? About right. Anything obviously toxic in the blood..? No, right, best I can do then. Fat, muscle and skin and I hope her species doesn't have belly buttons.
• Fantastic Racism: The social system of Mars is a rigidly enforced caste system, with Red Martians as the aristocracy, Greens as the middle class, and Whites as the underclass. Whites are treated pretty poorly, about as badly as the Untouchables in India. This system is not natural but the result of the Guardians tampering with the original Martian species, the violent Burning Martians. It's interesting to note that there's a good deal of tension between Green and White martians, especially after they begin contact with Earth, but there is never any question about the Reds being in charge; both Whites and Greens unquestioningly see them as their natural leaders.
  • In the Renegade timeline, there is an uncontrolled widespread reveal of knowledge about the Burners and the Guardians' interference. The caste system violently breaks down and is inverted, with White Martians sometimes tolerating Greens but hunting and violently persecuting Reds.
  • In the Paragon timeline, the leadership is discreetly alerted to the critical information, and many of them begin rushing legislative changes to improve relations in preparation for a public reveal. There is still some disagreement, but the caste system is removed after the discovery that Karmang, the Martian whom Red Martians revere for starting the magic tradition of Mars, was a White Martian himself.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: More pronounced than usual for DC Comics, due to the inclusion of all the Hellblazer characters.
• Fantasy Metals:
  • Themyscira has access to three.
    • Mithril, which is two parts titanium to one silver before being transmuted, and is "about eight times stronger than titanium for a third of the weight", as well as being very receptive to enchantments.
    • Orichalcum, which is ten parts gold to one copper before being transmuted, and is not as light as mithril but is even stronger (to the point where it can't be reshaped after being forged).
    • Jovium, which is tin before being transmuted and is a 100% perfect conductor of heat and electricity, as well as being very ductile.
  • Hell has access to kaahuite, a substance that accretes in the lower levels of Masak Mavdil and can be used to negate certain angelic powers.
  • Vulcan and Hephaestus later experiment with "gromril", which is very heavy but ridiculously strong.
• Fear Is the Appropriate Response: An encounter with "Terror Thing", an artificial Fear Elemental, creates an instinctual sense of fear within those in proximity, and it lingers afterwards. Even Nabu isn't immune.
• Fee Fi Faux Pas: Paul has several of these. When he, Alan and Diana go to the mountain base for the first time, Alan asks to not be left behind. Paul tells him that he is used to slowing down for his grandfather as the man used to walk slow. Alan asks what his grandfather did to stop walking slow, and Paul replies that his grandfather didn't stop walking slow, he died.
• Fictional Counterpart: Paul comes across many. For example, the Great American Pancake Parlor for the International House of Pancakes. Encarta Populi, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Twunter, the microblogging service.
• Fighting from the Inside: Part of the Paragon!OL's plan to free Teth Adom from Black Adam was to get him to fight Black Adam from within.
• Finger Wag: When Mercy Graves attacks the Renegade, he makes a point of waving her cybernetic arm around. Then upgrades it into something that could theoretically actually hurt him, before tossing her aside.
  Renegade: No, no, no. This is not a threat to me. [replaces with Qwardian cybernetics] This is.
• Fish out of Temporal Water:
  • Teth Adom, the first Black Adam who later takes over the body of Theodore Adam with help from Paul, finds several things about the modern world strange and confusing, if not outright horrifying. Such as people turning away perfectly good food like bacon because of Religion, men no longer considering kilts fashionable clothing, and a funny, if disturbing, In-Universe misunderstanding related to indoor plumbing and tap water, and their source.
  • Lord Malvolio left Earth four centuries ago and has been imprisoned in his private star system since that time. His attitudes are still a bit feudal, and he's rather behind the times on galactic events, although with a power ring and many loyal followers, he has the means to catch up.
• Fix Fic: The story tries to fix or address the problematic aspects of canon. For example, due to the team's increased acceptance of M'gann's telepathy, OL had Superboy checked for telepathic suggestions or mental triggers. OL even chides Batman for their lack of follow-up.
• Fitness Nut: Kratos is the Greek god of strength, and everyone who attends his gym is serious about body-building. The receptionist takes one look at Paul — whose body is constantly maintained at his ideal self-image by his power ring — and judges that he's too weedy to belong, while curling weights with one arm that for most people would require a two-handed barbell. Walking through the gym, Paul observes that the men there are "beefier than most cattle." They are, however, strict about forbidding steroids.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Notably averted. Paul was an atheist in his own world, but has no problem accepting the various supernatural phenomena that very obviously exist in Earth-16.
• Flat "What": In Skived, this was OL's reaction to seeing the flying robot monkeys with jetpacks. In his defense, he was seeing flying robot monkeys with jetpacks.
• Flawed Prototype: While dealing with the Reach, Paul comes across an unusual green ring that attempts to alter his mind when he puts it on, and which has previously driven Green Lanterns insane. Controller Hinon later examines it and tells him that it appears to be aimed at Maltusian children, who can cope with much greater exposure to the emotional spectrum, but it's still not properly usable; the Guardian who made it was experimenting.
  Hinon: There were perfectly good reasons why we didn't take this approach the first time around, but perhaps he thought that he could do a better job of it.
• Foreshadowing: Lots of it.
  • When OL first charges his ring, the ring's AI nearly calls him with Larfleeze's designation, Agent Orange, before giving him his proper designation. The Ophidian later chooses him as her agent.
  • When OL first heals Superboy, Superboy asks if OL could make him into a full Kryptonian when the latter was distressed over being a half-clone. OL couldn't, but the Renegade did once he got his hands on the Father Box, which has an extensive xenobiology database, and hacked Superman's records.
  • When OL is trapped in a cage of fire with head injuries, he is begging his ring to come to him and says, "Ophidian be useful for once!"
  • When Doctor Munro says that he got the Danner Formula because his father had it, Orange Lantern mentally interrupts by claiming that that isn't how the Danner Formula works. He's right — and it's a clue to the Doctor's true identity as Hugo Danner.
  • When trying to find the right philosophy to guide his Avarice through, OL picks Maslow's Hierarchy of Need over the song "Invite Them In", concluding that taking desires of others as his own would be benevolent but would weaken him. The song is pivotal in Reordered as the song would constantly play on Paulphidian's ring. The song's moral is used to drive the Ophidian out of Paul and the moral helps Paul achieve Orange Enlightenment.
  • In Part 10 of Exaltation, John and Queen Mera discuss a case where someone used ley lines as a conduit for fear magic against him. Later, during the Injustice League attack, Cornwall Boy and Captain Cornwall complain that someone had sabotaged the standing stones. In Hullevow, we find that the artificial Fear Elemental, Terror Thing, used in the past case, not only connected to John and Cornwall Boy, but is responsible for the nightmares plaguing the town, and that John was the one who sabotaged the standing stones in an attempt to contain it.
• Foreign-Language Tirade: After Paul reveals the identity of Bane's long-lost father, Bane gives one of these when talking to the man. Especially after Bane finds out how the man used Bane's poor mother and did not care for her in the least.
• Foreshadowing: When discussing possible replacements for Ares in the Greek pantheon, Paul mentions that Sekhmet is single. "She's got a bit of a temper, but get some beer in her and she's a real pussycat." Years later, when he meets Sekhmet in person and she's angry about his flippant remarks, he manages to get some ambrosia into her mouth while she's attacking him, and she quickly calms down.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Robin and Artemis forgive Paul for giving them the Danner Formula without their permission because he wasn't in his right mind. That said, they were very uncomfortable being around him because he violated their trust.
• Fountain of Youth: Power rings are able to alter people's bodies, so de-aging or becoming The Ageless is quite feasible.
  • Paul's ring keeps his body constantly in peak condition; as long as he has it, he won't age unless he wants to.
  • Paul accidentally de-ages Paula Crock/Nguyen to her prime when he heals her spinal damage so she can walk again.
  • Whenever Alan Scott gets exposure to the Green Light, the years get taken off him. When he gives Paul his lantern and his ring runs out of power, he regains his age. Then he gets a blue personal lantern, and rejuvenates fully.
  • The Renegade uses a yellow ring to rejuvenate Circe, after she ended her bargain with Hecate, since she was terrified of becoming an old crone and thus the yellow light was the simplest and safest choice.
  • He also grants "Divine Awakening" to Queen Clea of Venturia, and she begins to gradually shift toward her physical prime.
• Freak Out: Mercury freaks out when she encounters OL due to not being able to sense him with her magic.
• Freeze Ray: There are actually different classifications for this kind of technology: cold guns, freeze rays, and ice guns.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Lia Briggs.
• Functional Magic: There are a number of different magics in the setting that OL wants to make public.
  • A rant he goes on to Lex Luthor is that scientists will spend years trying — and failing — to create some method of altering someone's genes or giving them a super-science drug that will grant a person the ability to throw fireballs around, while a sufficiently determined mage can learn how to throw fireballs in just a few months from absolutely nothing.
  • One of his first major projects is Dolmen Gates, magical constructs that create instant transportation between two points. He offers them to London as a trial run, and they make great strides in replacing the Underground. They later become the backbone of Cadbury's distribution network, which is quite helpful after the Sheeda destroy a lot of Earth's conventional shipping capacity.
  • Alchemy: Things like the Garrick and Danner Formulas are thought to be the result of Alchemy, so Kid Flash is studying it and Lex Luthor hires people to research it.
  • Geometric Magic: John uses this while helping to deal with the Star Sapphire and summoning.
  • Ritual Magic: John Constantine is noted to be a specialist when it comes to ritual magic.
  • Summon Magic: Summonings such as Demons are possible for anyone with the proper knowledge.
  • Sympathetic Magic: Ranging from Voodoo practice to sympathetically linked portals.
• Fusion Dance:
  • In Contingency, Paul willingly merges with the Ophidian due to wanting the power to save his friends more than he wants to remain himself. Paul gets the power of a Physical God while the Ophidian gets Paul's sanity to guide it. The shock of seeing M'gann die, and finding out that scenario wasn't real, fuses the minds together.
  • Michael Siskin has been stuck with Terror Thing so long that they've merged together.
  • Paul and the Ophidian have re-merged — briefly — several times since their first encounter with one another, such as when they were trying to find Speedy.

G

• Generation Xerox: Discussed. Wally points out that if Troia joins the Team, they would have a complete match of the original seven.
• Get Out!:
  • Mister Schreiber after OL tells him he's a clone of Hitler.
  • Jade to the Renegade after he destroys the Light and the League of Shadows without giving her any warning.
• Giant Food: Ophidian-infused OL made a giant cake over New York City. He later had it stored in the mountains of Switzerland, but the problem is finding a way to bring it out after OL is separated from the Ophidian.^note OL and the Green Lanterns finally get it out just in time for Christmas. It's a huge hit and causes a huge boon to the fruitcake industry.
• Glamour Failure:
  • J'onn J'aarkn tries escaping from the party using his less common female disguises. It fails as OL's empathetic vision allows him to track J'aarkn through his spiritual resonance, something J'aarkn cannot change.
  • After the Justice League reads OL's report on the entities he encountered in "Fool's Canon," Plastic Man turns into a near-exact copy of Nightmare Moon. It fails because a) the same empathic vision issues mentioned previously, and b) Nightmare Moon was a mare.
• The Gloves Come Off:
  • Doctor Sivana wants to extract the maximum scientific knowledge that he can of the Sheeda, so he sticks to probing exploratory attacks at first against the Sheeda Harrowing. But after Paul cuts a deal for him to be pardoned in exchange for ramping up his efforts, he quickly slaughters the remaining forces.
  • After the Spider Guild kidnaps Lantern Onik, Paul teleports immediately to their closest world, starts killing them, and then delivers an ultimatum.
• Glowing Eyes: This tends to happen when a Lantern is closely connected to one of the Embodiments.
  • Lantern Gardner's eyes shine solid green when using his Enlightenment Superpowers to resist subtle Emotion Control.
  • Paul's eyes turn orange when he takes the Ophidian inside him for his visit to the Titan seeds.
• God Guise: Renegade!OL is mistaken for a god by the Forever People. To be fair, the reasons for this are that the Orange Light "feels" Apokoliptian, and due to the effects of Venom Buster, the Renegade physically resembles Grayven, one of Darkseid's sons.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Discussed and rejected. Although how much they are worshipped affects how much of their power they can use in the mortal realm, it doesn't actually affect how powerful they innately are. This is only an issue for "gods", not "New Gods".
• God Was My Copilot: While on Themyscira, Paul declares his intention of following Eris, the Grecian Goddess of Discord and Chaos. Shortly after, an amazon named Seris (emphasis ours) drags him to a temple of Hera, where what Orange Lantern assumes is a high priestess of Hera is going on a bender because Zeus cheated on Hera... for the zillionth time, producing Cassie Sandsmark. OL points out that Hera should probably break up with Zeus, giving such reasons as "Divorce is part of marriage, even if it's not a nice part. This makes the "High Priestess" yell out "No more Zeus!" and teleport away, Seris slips him her number, and Paul realizes that, "Oh, Crap!, That was Hera and Eris, and I may have just started a huge shakeup in the Grecian Pantheon."
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • When Earth is falling to an alien invasion with the Justice League and some of their friends dead. OL gets desperate, so desperate that he wanted power more than he wanted to remain himself, which he gets by summoning the Ophidian. Unfortunately, it was All for Nothing because the invasion was a simulation that had gone badly wrong — everyone was still alive.
  • OL tells Martian Manhunter, it could have been worse: he has the Grimorium Verum, a guide book for extremely powerful demons, which he would have used to summon an actual demon if the Ophidian had fallen through.
  • When Oceanus awakens, Paul tries nearly everything, up to using a black-hole generating gun. Eventually the Olympian Gods have to step in, and they barely last long enough to be a distraction, leaving Batman to approve the use of nukes if Superboy didn't call on his patron god for aid.
  • When the forces of Heaven come after OL in Clarion Call. he resorts to unifying the forces of Hell to fight back. He still gets killed.
  • When trying to free the angels and captured theurgists, the Justice League authorizes the use of the Spear of Destiny.
• Golem: John Constantine made one of both himself and of Timothy, both times to fool demons.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: OL is quite fond of using this as a solution to various problems — if there's a problem that neither his ring nor any of his teammates' skills can handle easily, rather than trying to power through and risk failure, OL simply calls in one of the many heroes or neutral parties specializing in/responsible for dealing with the issue in question, whether calling in John Constantine for magical problems, contacting Swamp Thing and Green Lantern 1287 (Medphyll) for help with rampaging plants, or calling up The Shade for help with a monster from the Shadowlands.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Orange Lantern summons the Ophidian to help turn the tide against an Alien Invasion in Contingency. Only to succeed with dire and long-lasting consequences.
  • Paragon!OL makes the base harder to break into and tries to make the Justice League stronger and more nationally diverse by recommending powerful non-American heroes such as the Accomplished Perfect Physician and has a list of others. This makes the base harder to break out of when their mind-controlled mentors attack them and the Accomplished Perfect Physician fights the Team into a retreat. Paul fears the list of recommended heroes could be used by the Light to lure others in for brainwashing in the guise of League try-outs.
  • Paul makes an Enemy Mine deal with Hell to fight against the angels who are attacking him, and together they're able to severely damage the Host's military capability before Paul gets killed anyway by the Archangel of War. After the battle, though, the demon lords aren't satisfied, and press the attack on the Silver City itself. Note that despite Paul not seeing eye to eye with the Silver City, they're still a vastly better afterlife than Hell, plus the worst demons would be likely to gain the most prestige and influence from conquering it.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: In Contingency, the Team were in a training simulation which unbeknownst to them was supposed to be difficult and purposely fail them to give an Aesop on dealing with failure. When M'gann's subconscious hijacks the simulation, the Team go into comas and something else comes out with them when it ends...
• Good Is Not Nice: The Renegade can be nice to people, but he just has too much fun trolling them, intimidating them, grandstanding, and occasionally he just feels an itch to solve problems by ramming a giant sword through the bad guy.
• Good Is Not Soft: Paragon is friendly, diplomatic, caring, and very attached to his special people. When the situation calls for it, he's also capable of cold-bloodedly genociding an entire Evil Empire without losing sleep over it. That's just part of understanding what he really wants.
• Good Morning, Crono: The story begins when he wakes up in other space with a ring on his finger.
• Good Powers, Bad People: In the Crime Syndicate Universe (Earth-14), Paul is this, seeing as how he's a Made Man of Ultraman and part of an evil team, but there, he's a Blue Lantern. Blue lanterns operate on the power of hope, and are mostly known for their psychological and physical healing powers, as well as the ability to charge Green Lantern Rings by proximity.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Paul is not above launching a Precision F-Strike when stressed, but in more cheerful moments, both the Paragon and Renegade have internally declared, "Oh flip the heck yes."
• Grand Theft Me:
  • Nabu forces Zatara to wear him so Nabu would possess Zatara's body in exchange for releasing Zatanna. Whether Nabu keeps it depends on the timeline.
  • Teth Adom wins Black Adam's body as spoils after he wins the blessings of his gods.
• G-Rated Drug: Ambient magic makes OL high due to the fact that he has no natural resistance to it.
• Greed: As an Orange Lantern, he's powered by greed/avarice. He takes great care to channel this into a positive, stable, and sane lifestyle and goals.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: OL's earlier adventures and the Team's missions in general aren't known to the public.

H

• Half-Human Hybrid: As a result of living in a high magic environment, their strong connection to the Dreaming, and possibly because the Life Entity lives on Earth, humans can bypass some incompatibility issues, resulting in this trope with aliens species. In one chapter, it's described as the partial result of belief; humans subconsciously associate sex between a man and a woman with procreation, so it sometimes doesn't matter that interbreeding should be physically impossible - sex makes babies, so now there's a baby. Red Lantern Paul mentions a cult in medieval France who somehow managed to impregnate female elementals.
• Halloween Cosplay: The team all dress up for a Halloween party, with OL somehow convincing Artemis to dress up as Sailor Moon. She regrets it when she realizes Sailor Moon's uniform doesn't include pants, though Paul ends up giving her a pair of bike shorts when she complains.
• Hammerspace: Lanterns have what looks like an infinite amount of subspace storage.
• Happiness in Slavery: Paul is quite opposed to slavery, but does encounter some unusual cases.
  • The "Clickers" all spend a period of their lives working for the Controllers, in payment for the Controllers having improved their reproductive biology (they originally had a very complex reproductive cycle that had extremely high mortality rates). The Clicker Paul talks to about it informs him that, "virtually all warrens considered it a fair exchange."
  • Felicity the Karnan is so accustomed to existing at another's whim (having been raised as a slave since childhood) that she's quite happy to attach herself to Paul, who treats her well, and do whatever he wants. She even goes so far as to embrace the orange light brand that he puts on her, asking him to strengthen his control in the presence of a Psion so that there will be no doubt she's unavailable. Paul is uncomfortable with the situation, but can't do much except drop her off with people who will ensure she's not exploited.
• Harmful Healing:
  • When the Renegade is shot with a radion weapon, which is poisonous to New Gods, he has to use an Absurdly Sharp Blade to cut the damaged tissue out of his own abdomen before his Healing Factor can kick in. And, of course, he's immune to anaesthetic. It does eventually work, but leaves a scar (which is unusual for a New God) and becomes his new standard for worst/most painful experience.
  • Some of the magic used by the Sheeda causes Paul's attempts at healing the Columbians to merely worsen their injuries. He could fix most of them, but a few had to wait for a magic healer to be available.
• Healing Shiv: The purple healing ray can heal injuries, though the Renegade did find a way to modify them into purple death rays.
  • However, it isn't capable of curing illnesses.
• Heel–Face Turn: Paul goes out of his way to make this happen with supervillains who aren't insane and can put their abilities to much better use if they got proper help instead of being treated like garbage.
  • He has shown the Terror Twins legitimate ways to use their Super-Strength and put them in contact with other Danner enhanciles. And people on their level to spar with, like Donna Troy. Both of them help him to contain the Belle Reve breakout instead of trying to run.
  • Abra Kadabra's main wish is to learn real magic, which is why he started picking fights with superheroes in the first place, hoping to draw out someone who could teach him. Paul has connections in that space, and soon finds Kadabra to be very willing to negotiate.
  • Captain Cold is initially skeptical of Paul's help. But when he finds out that Paul is handing him a very large sum of money as a share of the Goldman Environmental Prize earned using his freeze ray technology, he just can't ignore it. He slowly comes around to the idea of seeking legitimate employment after finishing his sentence. By the time of Mannseid's attack, he has an honorary doctorate and is putting his technology into industrial use — such as providing the necessary cooling for Doctor Roquette's nanobots to work — for a high salary.
    Leonard: Eighty seven and a half thousand dollars. For no extra work.
    Paul: Yes.
    Leonard: Think I can see why Kadabra likes you.
  • Dr Sivana has undergone this on his own. He was thrown into a portal by Captain Marvel some time before OL arrived in that universe, with no one knowing exactly where he ended up. Turns out he was flung into the far future that is occupied by the Sheeda, and has spent over a year avoiding the horrors of the Sheeda-controlled Earth, while learning more about exactly what they are. Upon returning to his own time, Sivana has decided to abandon his super villain career and instead focus on building weapons for the eventual Sheeda invasion. He's still not exactly ideologically committed to heroism, but working with the heroes serves his goals for now. He eventually negotiates a pardon in return for his help fighting off the Sheeda, in hopes of reconciling with his ex-wife.
  • By becoming a Lantern, Komand'r of Tamaran gains a path to independent renown and personal power, beyond anything that Tamaran could ever offer, without needing to take down her sister. She's still not particularly nice, but she's an effective Lantern and they're not fighting each other. Finding a cure for the disease that disabled her solar powers helps thaw her out, too.
  • The Renegade spends less time on it, but has successfully flipped a number of villains by helping them get what they want in a non-villainous way. Circe, for example, wanted to be free from the prophecy that loomed over her and could have resulted in her losing most of her magic and vitality at any time without warning; the Renegade helped her by getting her to preemptively set aside that portion of her power and instead become a New God with less strings attached.
• Hellgate: The Light have set up an arrangement with Satanus to use these to transport villains around the world as needed.
  • There used to be an active one beneath London, using the dryad Euanthe as a power source to stay open. Paul shuts it down with the help of Zatanna and Constantine.
• Heroic BSoD: Paul enters one when Kon dies in the Alien Invasion in Contingency. He fully loses it when he finds out the scenario wasn't real after traumatically watching M'gann be murdered by her own mentor which causes him to lose control of the Fusion Dance and allow the Ophidian to merge with his mind.
• Heroic Vow:
  • Paul makes an oath to Gaia that he'll follow orders, so that Wonder Woman will trust him enough to let him use Alan's personal lantern. The mystical effects of the oath are nullified as a result of Paul bonding with the Ophidian, meaning he's no longer bound by it, but Paul still honors the oath until it's expiration date, as a matter of principle.
  • Lantern oaths are meant to be this, a reminder of moral standards and what they're fighting for. Orange oaths, of course, are a bit different from green.
    Ophidian: Declare our intent to the universe. Make your oath to me.
• Heroism Won't Pay the Bills: Paul is concerned about this particularly affecting Artemis, who has to use up a lot of expensive ammunition. While she's on the Team, Green Arrow covers it, but it means she can't be independent.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: After Summer's End, the Renegade and Artemis are basically inseparable, although not romantically involved. They have spent an uncertain but very long time together, possibly centuries, with no one else around but Sheeda, and their souls have adapted to that, treating each other as "my other half". When they finally return to their own time, Artemis now trusts him far more than her barely-remembered team mates, and when he travels around the galaxy, he takes her with him.
• Hijacking Cthulhu:
  • OL's fusion with the Ophidian goes both ways as he's possessing the Ophidian as much as the Ophidian is possessing him.
  • OL wants to help Mister Siskin take control of the Terror Thing in "Hullevow", making him into a Fear Elemental. It doesn't work out like he wants it to at first, but he's willing to give him another chance.
    Paul: I think he could become the mind of it. He wouldn't exactly be him any more, but… That ship's sailed. Once he's got it under control we can stick him in the containment unit until we can work out how to build an arcanotechnological avatar for him. It's not.. an ideal solution...
• Hit Them in the Pocketbook: It will take time to legally break Mr Metcalf free from his predatory contract with Alva Industries (which Mr Alva is cheating him on). However, in the meantime, Lex Luthor suggests taking advantage of the contract to hit Mr Alva in the pocketbook, such as fully exploiting every fringe benefit it includes.
  Lex smiles again. "How do you feel about medieval Arabic literature?"
  Mister Metcalf frowns. "I don't know the first thing about medieval Arabic literature." He shakes his head. "I can't even read Arabic."
  "Perfect. Then I imagine that it will take even a man of your considerable intellect some time to earn a college degree in it. A degree which Mister Alva is contractually obliged to pay for."
• Hobbes Was Right: Once Paul gets past her layers of acting, this turns out to be Controller Hinon's overarching motivation.
  Paul: So that's what you want?
  Hinon: Yes. Because every time wiser heads have relinquished control, some idiot brings everything crashing down. I. Want. Control. Not because I wish to control people as an exercise in egotism, but because I want to prevent things like… Like this.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Paul pushed for non-humans to have more rights, such as the genomorphs and androids. However, that also includes demons, like the Demon Constantine, so he can't just interrogate him by unethical means anymore.
    OL: Yes. And.. now I'm really wishing we could have held off for a month or two.
  • Devilance, New God of the Hunt, tests the Renegade by making him fight a plasma servitor while Devilance fights the rest of the Team. But a plasma servitor is basically a walking sun, and two of the team members are Kryptonian. Cue Devilance getting an absolutely brutal beat-down and his spear claimed as a Battle Trophy.
    Wait. Brimstone. Walking sun and two Krypt- HAHAHA! He couldn't have known in advance!
• Hollywood Exorcism: Lampshaded. Paulphidian wonders why he didn't get any Latin chanting, no calls upon Christ or other trappings when the Inquisitor, Father Mattias attempts to exorcise him. The exorcism itself consists of Father Mattias talking to him. Father Mattias explains that exorcising an elemental like the Ophidian doesn't involve any of the traditional tools or chants; those are for demons.
• Holodeck Malfunction: The alternate Paul in the He-Man universe has Orko cast a spell to make Princess Adora relive her own kidnapping as an infant, so that she'll realise who she is. Unfortunately, she disrupts the spell as it reaches her, and the pieces hit multiple people (which it wasn't designed for), and the result is a group of soldiers that only those affected by the spell can see, who can run straight through other people without affecting them, but who can place explosives that cause real damage.
• Holy Burns Evil: Interestingly enough, Vampires have an innate reaction to religious icons but only if they can recognize them. Lia only has a reaction to unfamiliar icons when Paul explains them to her, including his rings.
• Hope Spot:
  • In Contingency, Kid Flash finds out that the alien invaders used zeta beams on the things and people they beamed. Kid Flash hoped that meant Robin was alive. OL tells him that it's unlikely as since the outer parts of buildings broke out when they were sucked in, it's probably a Gauss flayer. Which causes death by Telefraging.
  • Kara Zor-El wakes up, sees crystal walls around her, and relaxes, thinking she's on Krypton. Then realises that it's just a Kryptonian building on Earth, Krypton exploded, everyone she knew died and she's been in stasis for thirty years.
  • A downplayed example when Lantern Threllian learns that his species is not entirely exterminated. The situation doesn't immediately go south, but he has to stop feeling overwhelming hope and focus on greed if he wants to participate in the mission to rescue them; otherwise his ring won't work.

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