With This Ring / Tropes A to C

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

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A

• Accidental Pervert: When Paul was possessed and looking for the League of Shadows, his construct eyes being everywhere accidentally caught Beatriz da Costa in the shower. He didn't originally remember, but Ophidian did and "helpfully" reminded him.
• Accidental Public Confession: While discussing Paul's candidacy in the League, Wonder Woman puts a call from him on speaker without him knowing. So everyone ended up finding out the harrowing details of the second Cadmus clone and him calling them out on missing it.
• Accomplice by Inaction: In both timelines, Orange Lantern is infuriated that the Justice League lets Nabu possess Zatara without concern for Zatara himself. This is made especially evident when Paul and Zatanna had to find out from the news that Nabu was made a member of the Justice League.
  Paul: I don't know what the rest of you who were there were thinking. I-. But I've thought about it. And I haven't been able to come up with anything which suggests competence or moral probity. Not without being very charitable.
• Accusation Fic:
  • The author really shows what almost all analytical and objective Young Justice fans/viewers really think of the children's show: It was fun to watch during the first season , but the absurdly ridiculous incompetence of the Justice League and the "Team" as a whole just for narrative value was almost literally painful to watch, character development that should have had a lot more input from their mentors, father figures and real parents, the fact that there are mass tragedies treated as just another day on the job (like a divided world that would obviously cause millions of deaths) and then are immediately forgotten, the absurd levity and submission that the members of the Justice League impose themselves on the shamelessly corrupt government (Even those who are rulers of their nations like Wonder Woman, an ambassador and princess of Themyscira, and Aquaman the KING of Atlantis constantly bowing his head, humbling himself and giving in to the every whim of literally every despicable politician in the US government is absolutely ridiculous), the way they treat a "normal" person with training as being obviously superhumans who need nothing more than their fighting skills to save the world, the absurdity of them finding the justified and legalized use of lethal force an affront to all that is good in the world, etc, etc, etc. This fanfic is perfect for anyone who wants a very logical and serious approach to the DC Universe, basically being a "Fuck You Idiot Plot: The Fanfiction"!
  • Calls out the League on how they fumbled with Superboy: while Paul admits that Superman doesn't have to get involved, it doesn't excuse how no one bothered to check up on Superboy. Paul had Miss Martian check his mind for implanted triggers and help integrate his psychically implanted knowledge. It's only through Orange Lantern, Miss Martian and Wonder Woman's efforts that Superboy isn't the maladjusted, angry mess that he was in canon.
  • The League gets another massive call-out for their mishandling of the Cadmus investigation.
  • Paul and Zatanna lose faith in the League when they have to find out from the news that Nabu, the creature that kidnapped Zatanna's father, is being allowed into the League.
  • In a subversion, however, all of their points of view on these issues are eventually elaborated on (Paul talks to each League member about it one by one), their actions or inaction explained (eg the Hawks were apparently biding their time while coming up with a plan, and Icon didn't realise it was possible to do anything for Giovanni), and blame accepted where it's warranted—though in many cases, the true problems are identified as organizational/operational flaws that, much like in Real Life, tend to happen with new, novel organizations tackling unusual problems.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • Initially, Orange Lantern (OL) has absolutely no ability to resist magic, meaning spells that others would shrug off were crippling to him. Chaos magic was even worse, as it could ignore his shields. Paragon!OL rectified this with a high-grade defensive magical amulet from Atlantis, but that only protects him from direct magical attacks, leaving magic-users one of his worst match-ups. He grows out of it thanks to the Ophidian giving him a soul and lending her assistance with her resistance, though some skilled magicians can get around it. The Renegade overcomes this weakness by becoming a New God.
  • Paul initially has a huge weakness to telepathic attacks. In a fight with Miss Martian she easily takes control of him. Paragon!OL combats this with a telepathy baffler he makes with his ring, though it must have been made beforehand. The Renegade rectifies this by getting training from Manchester Black.
    • As Psimon learns the hard way, Paul is extremely strong against mindscape attacks because anyone invading his mind on that level also gets to fight Ophidian.
  • He also employs clever tactics, advanced constructs, and sophisticated attacks as standard, but as a result he is easily flustered by direct, intense pressure that doesn't give him time to think or plan. This is in contrast to Green Lanterns, who are typically quite adept at simply reacting without thinking in combat.
• Adaptation Expansion: The storyline is considerably more detailed than canon, even before it starts filling in the five-year Time Skip, and characters on both the heroic and villainous sides are pulled in from across the DC Universe, including some remarkably obscure parts of it. John Constantine? Virtually a main character. Cornwall Boy? Joined the team. The Un-Men? The Martian Womanhunter? Present and accounted for...
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Following in Young Justice tradition, Onomatopoeia. In the comics, a guy with a gimmick. Here? A powerful magic user that uses onomatopoeia as the incantations for his spells.
  • And also Dark Druid. In the comics, he was a villain from the U.K. and thus barely even mentioned. Here, there are hints at him being a herald of the Black Lantern Corps.
• Adaptational Consent: In-Universe with the Amazon play "the Foolish Prince." In the earlier variants of the play, the titular prince raped the foreign queen's daughter. In the modern version starring Paul, the most Prince Pavlos does is hold hands with the daughter and stay out all night stargazing before literally sleeping together.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Teekl was Klarion's familiar and would help him attack others. As OL's construct, she assists him in fighting and acts as an Evil Detecting Cat.
  • Teth Adam was a vicious Anti-Hero or super villain driven by his Deliberate Values Dissonance and even committed genocide. Teth Adom is far more open minded to modern values due to his 80-year rule as pharaoh, who tries to help Kahndaq by overthrowing its dictator and is elected Kahndaq's president.
  • Komand'r of Tamaran is Paul's first Lantern recruit, with her sister Koriand'r being second. With her own path to glory clearly laid out and no need to compete with her sister for it, she's much more mellow than canon; still ruthless, but not driven to revenge on her family. Finding a way to fix her solar powers helps still further.
  • Ranx the sentient city, it turns out, just wanted a decent crew. Upon being recruited for the Orange Lantern Corps and turned into a bustling shipyard, he/it is extremely content and helpful.
  • Prince Ragnar of Betrassus' overarching desire was always to become a Lantern, but in canon, that resulted in him getting a red ring. Here, one of Larfleeze's lost rings is drawn to his desire, and upon learning about it, Paul recruits him into the Corps. Ragnar is initially skeptical about the orange light, but upon seeing Paul's skills and experiencing what his own ring is really capable of, he becomes enthusiastic.
  • The Ophidian, embodiment of avarice, takes a liking to Paul after he frees her from her imprisonment and proves to be an effective wielder of her light. They also spend some time melded together, which lets them better appreciate each other's points of view. As a result, she is much more inclined to be patient and relaxed than in canon; she wants to own everything, but is willing to see the bigger picture, e.g. recognising that it's better to let people be themselves than to change them, because people are unique and damaging what they were means it's something you can never have again. Also, since Paul is hers, she has no problem with letting him access her power; that merely means that what is hers becomes greater.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Nabu's actions are not excused as a necessary evil; he is fully portrayed as villainous and needing to be stopped.
  • Klarion has always been a villain, but he is by far worse in this version. He's actually a Lord of Chaos, an opposite to Doctor Fate, making him easily one of the most powerful magic users in existence.
• Adaptational Wimp: In canon Young Justice, Wolf is, well, a super-powered wolf, with all that that implies. Here, she's just a wolf pup — a super-strong one, but a pup nonetheless.
• Aesop Amnesia:
  • Paul learns that he needs to take off the ring and be himself to distance himself from the ring's influence when it started to negatively impact his mind after he was nearly killed in a home invasion. He stops an episode after when he gets caught off guard, though later text does imply that he kept up the practice.
  • Paul and co. find out through various means that the Belle Reve penitentiary is highly likely to be compromised and so a mass-escape is also likely to be brewing there. They still let it happen and have to deal with the fallout. (In fairness, Paul had already considered the possibility and decided that the breakout itself was less of a concern than the forces behind it.)
• All for Nothing: Paul merges with the Ophidian to save his surviving friends and Earth from an Alien Invasion during its Darkest Hour, only to find it was never real and no one was in danger.
• Alliterative Name: One of Artemis's grandmothers, Cynthia Crock.
• All Myths Are True: Played with. Just becomes myths are generally true, doesn't mean they are entirely accurate.
• All There in the Manual: Sometimes Zoat's replies to comments in the thread include worldbuilding tidbits, or hints about future events such as the Renegade's storyline ending with him "shouting at the Source Wall" and new members of the team being hinted at in zeta-tube designation lists including Osiris, Supergirl, Ghia'ta becoming Star Sapphire, and Arisia Rabb.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Satanus does this during Undermined by attacking virtually every hero's base of operation at once.
• Alpha Strike: Paul isn't sure what Captain Nazi's Super-Toughness is based on, so he covers all the bases.
  So I just hit him with everything. Regular rounds, crumblers and mageslayers. On the off-chance I even use a couple of the angel feather fragment tipped ones John designed.
• Alternate Timeline: Episode 69: Mandated created an alternate timeline where China dominated the world. The local copy of Paul, upon arrival in orbit, was confused to find an apparent DC Comics universe where he didn't recognise anything on Earth.
• Alternate Universe:
  • Justified in that Paul is stranded in a universe where there are superheroes, magic, aliens, and etc.. Though there are interesting differences from our world (see Different World, Different Movies): there is a Pope Pius XIII; Richard Dawkins apparently doesn't exist or didn't became very important (likely because of the universe's aforementioned Fantasy Kitchen Sink which makes Dawkins' outspoken skepticism totally irrelevant), and the September 11 attacks never happened because the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan was avoided. The 2008 global financial crisis was also averted by the Greek god Ploutos, posing as a financial advisor.
  • There are apparently two universes the stories take place in - the main one, and a second world where Paul takes more actions that could be termed renegade, such as turning Sportsmaster into a construct, trying to steal tech from the New Gods, injecting himself with Venom Buster, and eventually calling himself Grayven.
  • More recently, there have been additional "What if Paul had acted differently?" chapters.
    • "Sybarite" never visited Alan Scott, instead recharging the ring by consuming demons. This altered his personality, leaving him basically interested in uplifting humanity, but lazy, greedy, and promiscuous.
    • "Common Sense Paul" made a number of more sensible decisions than Paragon, such as immediately speaking up upon realising that he was being assigned to a team of teenagers. He has averted a number of canon events, such as the Team's memory loss, the doomed training scenario, the split world, and possibly the entire Reach invasion.
  • And there is the Crime Syndicate universe (aka Earth -14), which takes place before and after the events of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. Here, Paul is a Blue Lantern, who goes by the name of Power Ring and is a Made Man of Ultraman, and is technically babysitting the more adolescent tempered Young Offenders. This Paul has travelled to Earth 16 and met the SI.
  • Fool's Canon brings in other alternate Pauls with different power rings in the wider multiverse.
    • An Anti-Green Lantern Paul, who is a reluctant villain that is being controlled by his power ring, in a version of the DC Animated Universe in which it includes Cyborg being a founding member of the Justice League and a abundance of sidekicks closely participating in the League.
    • A Red Lantern Paul exists in the regular Teen Titans universe.
    • An Indigo Lantern Paul who is in The Boys universe.
  • Earth's Orangest Hero shows a version of Paul in the The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes universe, where he recharges his ring using a Lantern provided by Hela. He has adopted Rogue (since his ring can protect him from her involuntary life draining touch), and informed Magneto about the existence of microbes that cause people to be biased against mutants.
  • Doppelgängered includes a Paul who arrived many years earlier on Earth 12, but with no way to recharge the ring, so instead of becoming a superhero, he went into business hiring semi-stable mad scientists to make their technology widely available.
  • In-Universe April 1, 2012 has two episodes introducing more crossovers:
    • Paul in Eternia, home of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, recharges his orange ring using the Basophil Amulet, and is seen visiting an imprisoned sorceress to offer her power and fame if she'll switch sides.
    • The Fallout future, where Paul's orange ring has run out of charge, but he first used it to gain access to alien technology that can give humans telepathic and telekinetic powers.
    • The world of Warhammer Fantasy constantly recharges Paul's orange ring from the Warp. He has amassed a great army of assimilated Construct-Lanterns, and is gathering allies to help him kill the gods of chaos.
  • There are even some crossover segments with alternate universes from other fanfic:
    • Episode 97: Duplication comes to a climax in the universe of Inviolate, and that version of Lex Luthor is later stranded in the Renegade timeline.
    • An "eight years later" snippet sees Paul visiting a fellow Self-Insert (rather to the displeasure of that character) at the beginning of I Want To See You Smile.
• Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome:
  • Paul plans to invoke the trope by using his powers and convincing other people (both heroes and villains) to help improving and advancing Earth. For example he single-handedly cleaned up the Great Pacific rubbish patch and cleared Earth's orbit of space debris.
  • He was also working on a plan to re-ice the poles using appropriated ice villain tech until the Silver City destroyed his equipment.
• Amputative Sentencing: Subverted when an angel tracks Paul down for stealing a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Paul asks if the penalty is having a hand cut off, to which the angel replies that God has no interest in seeing Paul maim himself, and merely wants Paul to seek forgiveness and amend his ways. He's rather baffled to learn that Paul would prefer losing a hand.
• Anchored Teleportation: Transportation via zeta-beam can work with a single machine, which is how Martian Manhunter inadvertently ended up on Earth, but using it reliably and safely typically requires a "tube" at both ends. Thaddeus Sivana figured out how to fix the problems with a single-point system, but he isn't sharing. So, for most purposes, such as the Justice League's transportation, the system is limited to the points where they have placed zeta tubes.
• And I Must Scream: Michael Siskin was one of the psychics used to create Terror Thing, only his soul was trapped inside and couldn't get out again.
• Androids Are People, Too: Despite their friends treating Firebrand and Red Tornado as people, the U.S. government ruled that they're not. This is brought up and fixed by Paul and Lex Luthor by the time of Bindings.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing:
  • The Renegade gets quite a lot of fan mail for killing Klarion on live television. Even from governments.
  • Lantern Xor's efforts cause the Alignment to collapse into civil war. Their neighbours are quite pleased, and Paul makes a note to send him a card.
• Anger Born of Worry:
  • Zatara isn't too impressed by Paul's association with John Constantine, mainly because he knows what happens to people who work with John or owe him favors. When he learns that Paul had John give him magical tattoos that will help him develop a soul he freaks out and rushes to the cave to make sure that Paul isn't about to suffer some horrible fate in the near future.
  • Becomes something of a Brick Joke when Paul merges with the Ophidian and Zatara assumes that he's been possessed by a demon because of the tattoos. Paulphidian then scans his soul and discovers that his main desire at the time involves strangling Constantine with his bare hands. Ironically enough, he later ends up slowly becoming a demon because those tattoos absorb energy from Hell while he's there.
• "Anger Is Healthy" Aesop: The series includes occasional snippets from an Alternate Universe where the protagonist obtained a red power ring, instead of orange, and became a bounty hunter/assassin. Despite the inherently violent nature of his powers, he not only remains stable, but achieves a state of enlightenment, comparable to the main protagonist, and establishes a happy family with Blackfire — whom he credits with giving him the courage to freely express his anger.
  Red Lantern: The point I was making is that I've learned to act when I'm angry. The things that make me angry are -I think- things that a right-thinking person would get angry about, but condition themselves to accept.
• Anti-Magic: Paul's efforts to find a way to protect himself from magic result in the creation of amulets called Spell Eaters. These wards absorb magic directed at the wearers, rendering magic directly used on its wearer useless so long as the Spell Eater isn't overcharged with magic energy.
• Anti-Magical Faction:
  • Islam on Earth 16 is very anti-magic.
    • Some imams are trying to change this.
    • Being so strictly against magic has some issues.
  • Evangelicals are the same, while Christianity used to be this.
    • It's later explained that for Christianity, this is due to experience with mostly demonic magic.
• Anvil on Head: One of Klarion's minions tries to drop a million-ton weight on John Constantine while the two are wrestling to take control of Klarion's full power. Paul can't just catch that much; he has to use gravity-modifying constructs.
• Apocalypse How: Being set in a DC Comics universe, naturally these are averted on a regular basis, but there are a few notable examples.
  • Class 1: The world is not the same after Klarion divides adults from children, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, with everyone taking magic more seriously and governments scrambling to adapt to the new threat. It changes further in the Paragon timeline when the Sheeda Harrowing causes massive casualties all over the world.
  • Class 4: The Citizenry, a spacefaring nation of cannibalistic warrior women, entirely depopulates worlds of sentient life.
  • Class 5: The Psion "Wombworld" remains in one piece but is completely slagged, leaving nothing alive. It's not clear whether any bacteria survived, leaving open the possibility that it was actually Class 6.
  • Scope: Stellar, Severity: Species Extinction. Both the Paragon and Renegade pull this on the Citadel Empire, wiping them out from the Vega Systems.
  • Class X: Well, Pluto wasn't officially a planet anyway, right?
  • Class X-2: The Orrery, an ancient artefact used to create the Vega Systems, is capable of this if misused. Grayven 16 begins smashing suns together, but doesn't finish the job before the Renegade interrupts him.
  • Class X-4: Starbreaker consumed not only all the stars and planets in the universe apart from Earth (which he was devouring slowly), but even space itself, with the Source Wall now being a small shell around what's left of the solar system. The Renegade and Artemis are hopeful that the process can be gradually reversed after his death.
• The Apprentice: Once the war against the Reach starts getting serious, and Paul's exotic abilities with the orange light take on strategic importance, he offers to make Vran Gozzi his acolyte and try to teach her his skills. As a Coluan, she's already smarter than most humans, making her an effective regular Lantern, but he wants to find out whether it's possible to achieve Orange Enlightenment without bonding to the Ophidian.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: Paul uses his ring to mine asteroids for gold and platinum, giving him effectively unlimited cash. When he checks how much he could actually make that way, the ring informs him that that much currency doesn't exist, but the total value would make him about 5 times richer than the Earth. He's held back from using it mostly by the fact that with the ring, he doesn't need to buy things for himself; anything he really wants, he can just create. He does pay well when hiring specialist help, though (usually regarding magic).
• Arbitrary Skepticism:
  • Wonder Woman briefly doubts the existence of a Zombie Green Lantern. Paul responds that there have been far stranger lanterns, listing off that there have been lanterns who have been a Mathematical Equation, a Robot, a Squirrel, a Plant, and a Planet (and yes, all of those are canon).
  • When Kid Flash decides to go on his "Magic isn't real" rant just before the battle with Klarion, Paul points out that not only is it real, but that several League members and Aqualad are all proficient in its use.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Deconstructed and reconstructed.
  • Green Lanterns need to be able to thoroughly visualise their constructs, so simple shapes like swords and shields actually make some sense. Though Paul still considers them signs of a rookie, or of damaged equipment in the case of Alan Scott.
  • Orange Lanterns don't have the same limitation as green, so Paul is less understanding of Lantern Ragnar creating a construct sword.
    Paul: Use a gun you prat!
  • Paul doesn't think highly of Green Arrow and Artemis wielding "a bent stick that fires pointy sticks." Green Arrow explains that a bow is easier to own, conceal, and explain than a gun. Paul still thinks that they could do better, but settles for enhancing Artemis' capabilities in other ways.
  • Paul is attacked by a rogue group of Orange Lanterns using Nth Metal cutlasses, which he collects after the fight. He's mostly interested in them for the market value of the metal, but he actually has to pull them out to pierce some types of exotic defences.
    All that time I spent trying to get the princesses not to use melee weapons…
    I take an Nth metal cutlass off my equipment harness and charge.
• Armed with Pepper Spray: Paul tampers with a solvent dispenser, replacing its contents with pepper spray, so when a Shadow tries to use a mouthful of it to free himself from his webbing...
  Black Spider: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!
• Armor Is Useless:
  • Thoroughly averted by Orange Lantern, who wears high grade body armor under his Ring-generated armor, which winds up saving his life many times over. He also points out that Robin and Kid Flash have Kevlar incorporated in their costumes, later convinces Kaldur to wear Ocean Master's armor in battle after he claimed it as spoils of war, and arranges for Artemis and Zatanna to acquire proper armor of their own. And Kon, despite the whole "near-invulnerable kryptonian" thing, receives a set of armor made with Nth metal in the Paragon timeline, increasing his durability and allowing him the power of flight. In the Renegade timeline, the whole team gets Apokoliptian armor, giving far better protection than anything Earth can build. On top of all that, when stealth goes out the window, one of the first things Paul usually does is cover the entire team in construct-armor. So far M'gann is the only one he hasn't convinced to wear extra plating in the field, and that's more of her powerset not being suitable for it than anything else.
  • When Zatanna brings up Wonder Woman fighting crime in what is essentially a leotard, Paul points out that not only could Wonder Woman, quote, "Tank anti-armour rounds naked", but her armor was forged by the Greek God of the forge and is actually of higher quality than his own.
  • Played with in regards to head covering and hand coverings; Paul deems the loss of awareness and dexterity far more deleterious to his survival than a minor increase in protection. He later produces Powered Armor that includes a fully covering helmet with 360-degree vision coverage.
  • Had Prince Orm worn gauntlets with his Ocean Master armor, he probably wouldn't have lost his hands.
• Assassination Attempt: The Reach really want Paul dead.
  • The Reach fleet that attacks the Leentniar is rigged with large amounts of qwa-matter, vaporising Paul's body in a colossal detonation when he destroys them. His soul is able to attach itself to a clone, though, and eventually makes a more-or-less full recovery.
  • When he's visiting Yuna, a Reach task force fires on the building he's in with a Faster Than Light beam weapon. Fortunately he was already suspicious of their arrival and had raised a shield.
• Asshole Victim: Several examples.
  • Sportsmaster and Bane become the Renegade's constructs.
  • Prince Orm loses his hands after he takes the pregnant Queen Mera hostage, and is executed for high treason only to be brought back from the dead later on.
  • Theodore Adam gets his soul eaten when he loses his trial by Adom's gods.
  • According to Adom, his father was so awful that even the Wizard thought he deserved Adom killing him.
  • Wotan, Felix Faust and Wizard are executed by the Chinese government in the Renegade timeline for their part in causing a global genocide of children.
  • Klarion in the Paragon timeline has his connection to the Plane of Chaos, and thus his power, hijacked and stolen by John Constantine. For extra poetic justice, the process renders Klarion's body soulless and comatose, at Paul's mercy - just as Paul's lack of a soul originally made him defenseless against Klarion's magic. In the Renegade timeline, Klarion is decapitated with the Sword of the Fallen, which strips him of his power and reincarnates him as a regular mortal man, after which the Renegade visits him in prison and assimilates him to finish the job. Since he was the mastermind behind splitting the world and killing hundreds of thousands of children, both versions of Paul consider him an entirely acceptable target.
  • The Citadelians have forcibly reduced Tamaran to pre-spaceflight technology, and take many of their people as slaves. Their empire gets decimated by Paul in both timelines.
  • The Renegade pauses his assault on the Psion wombworld to question some of the Psions about their attitudes to other species. When it becomes clear that the Psion he's talking to is an unrepentant sadist who likes to dissect other sapients just to prove his dissection skills (and because he doesn't value their lives at all), the Renegade cuts the conversation short.
  • The alternate Yellow Lantern version of the SI visits the Worm universe, and promptly kills Lung. When Taylor Hebert asks him why, Paul responds, "He was a serial murderer who runs an organisation of rapists, slavers, murderers and drug peddling thugs. Would you like to reflect upon your question?"
• Astral Projection: A number of magic-users are capable of this, though Paul notes that the Atlanteans have it down to a science compared to surface occultists.
• Attack on One Is an Attack on All: The Spider Guild takes this overall philosophy when colonizing the galaxy. They're pretty relaxed about minor scuffles, and not overly friendly to each other, but if someone wipes out an established Nest, they can expect retaliation in force, and the Spiders' total force is considerable.
• Author Appeal:
  • Wonder Woman's increased presence as OL's mentor is due to this as well as Black Canary's decreased prominence.
  • Paul can't use paper money at first, since his faith in fiat currency was destroyed by the subprime crisis and the ring just keeps destroying it. ^note So he uses coins made of precious metals instead. After New Year's, he mentions in the narration that Earth-16 apparently never actually had that crisis, due to legislation with unusually bipartisan support that he resolves to look into later. Turns out Ploutus, Roman god of Wealth, is posing as a prominent economist to help steer the global economy away from such things.
• Author Filibuster: Played for Laughs when Paul goes over defending Guy Fawkes Night with Zatanna. He then shortly starts criticizing the American Revolution (as "complete nonsense you lot get taught about British colonial policy") until being interrupted by Kid Flash.
• Avengers Assemble: When the Justice League is mind-controlled by the Light, the Team gathers the Frees, Firebrand, Alan Scott, Hardware, Teth Adom, John Constantine and Brainwave to help them take back the League and fight the Light.
• Awful Truth: How most Martians with the knowledge regard the matter of being altered by the Guardians.
• Awkward Kiss: Canis gives Kaldur one, signalling he wanted to be more intimate. The latter respectfully declined.

B

• Back from the Dead:
  • This becomes a problem once Satanus joins The Light, since he'll go out of his way to bring back dead villains. Likewise, Ocean Master is revived using a Lazarus Pit.
  • It gets even worse when Paul starts experimenting with a Lazarus Pit to learn how they work, and tries to resurrect a soul from Hell. Satanus hijacks the connection to pull Paul and several of his companions into Hell.
  • On the other hand, Paul himself is quite interested in methods of preventing and overcoming death, and has been resurrected multiple times, first by the Silver City, then by attaching his soul to a cloned body.
• Backup from Otherworld: When struggling against Oceanus in Titanfall, Paul decides to go and get Einherjar to assist them since they have experience in that sort of thing.
• Badass Boast:
  • "Power rings are awesome." Or, to elucidate:
    Orange Lantern: Do you see this ring? This is an example of the most powerful tool ever devised by a species that reached the limits of the technology curve, and then used their knowledge to build more curve for themselves. While I am in no sense an expert in its application, I am more than up to the task, of taking down, three baseline Humans, armed with primitive weapons.^note It should be noted that, while the above boast is indeed badass, one of the baseline humans armed with primitive weapons does actually manage to take him down a peg.
  • He later gets one on his behalf via Kon.
    Kon: [to the Justice League] Aren't you people supposed to be good at this!? If this had happened to any of us, Paul would already have ten plans by now! (Later, after Paul has temporarily contained the Ophidian, and is thinking of ways to contain it indefinitely) ...See? Ten plans.
  • And an earlier if unconventional one from Paulphidian to the aliens in the training scenario.
    Paulphidian: Your communications are still intact. I know you can understand me. And I want you to understand me when I tell you this. And I want you to relay it to every other unit your people have on Earth and Mars and anywhere else.
    Are you listening? Yes? What I'm going to do is, I'm going to tell you where you went wrong. This planet? It's called Earth. It's not really all that important to the wider universe, pretty primitive, a bit out of the way, but, it's mine. Mine. That building is mine. You damaged it and I had to repair it. I could live with that. But what I can't live with is what you've done to the people. My friends. Because, you see...
    Ahem, THESE PEOPLE ARE MINE! AND NO ONE TAKES WHAT IS MINE FROM ME! (Proceeds to curbstomp)
  • After a wargame that the Justice League won, but with several members "killed":
    Paul: The wargame allowed for the villain side to make mistakes as well as the hero side; pressuring someone into making errors is a perfectly viable approach in real life as well. If I'd wanted to throw you up against a flawless opponent you'd have been fighting me.^note Note that in the above case, Paul thoroughly knows all the members of the Justice League, their powers, their personalities, their vulnerabilities, and their usual strategies/tactics. Thus, he actually would have made for a flawless opponent, because he would know everything about his opponents and had long ago developed countermeasures for all of them and fought many of them before, when they had been mind-controlled.
  • John Constantine gets one, just before going toe to toe with Klarion in a contest to become a Lord of Chaos.
    Klarion: I'm gunna tear your soul apart, magician.
    John: Better than you tried, mate. An' the only one ever managed it was me.
• Badass Creed:
  • Orange Lantern's initial oath:
    This is my power
    This is my light.
    Be it bright of day or black of night.
    I claim all that lies within my sight.
    TO TAKE WHAT I WANT, THAT IS MY RIGHT!
  • Paragon!Orange Lantern's oath post-Orange Enlightenment.
    This is my cause, this is my fight!
    Shine through the void with orange light!
    I've claimed all within my sight!
    To keep what is mine, that is my right!
  • Renegade!Orange Lantern's oath
    This is my power, this is my might!
    I stand alone in darkest night!
    With this ring, my foes I smite!
    I conquer all with orange light!
  • Paragon!Orange Lantern's oath when fusing with the Ophidian for the second time.
    This is our cause!
    This is our fight!
    Let none who live dispute our right!
    Powered by need, our tireless might
    Guides all souls with orange light!
  • Renegade!Orange Lantern's oath with Sinestro's ring
    In blackest day or brightest night,
    Beware your fears made into light,
    Let those who try and stop what's right,
    Burn with my power, Prince Grayven's might!
  • Lantern Onik's oath:^note It rhymes in his native language.
    From my mind, a decision.
    From my decision, an action.
    From my action, completion.
    From completion, repose.
  • Raker Qarrigat's oath, revealed by Mr Zoat to be coming in year 5:
    With Will and Rage of crimson red
    Four million years and still not dead
    Today your empire finally falls
    In Oa's name I'll burn you all!
• Badass Family:
  • In addition to the Bat Family (Batman, Robin, etc.), we also have a burgeoning Wonder Woman family, consisting of Cassie Sandsmark (future Wonder Girl), Donna Troy (Troia), Kon-El/Conner Kent (Superboy), and Orange Lantern. In the Renegade timeline, his relationship with Wonder Woman is rockier but she also adopts the second Kryptonian clone, Match.
  • Teth Adom, his wife, and his brother-in-law are all able to call on divine powers to transform into heavy-hitting superheroes. Adom and Adrianna intend to start having children soon, too (and she's channelling a fertility goddess, so they can make that happen).
• The Bad Guy Wins: The Light manages to retrieve a magical artifact from Atlantis during Underminded, kidnaps one of Aquaman's relatives to use it, and steals or wrecks everything in Mount Justice.
• Bad Powers, Good People:
  • The Narrator takes great care to ensure that he stays this trope, as his ring will constantly subtly influence his mind towards avarice; he must continually counter that with meditation on his own desires and a rational breakdown of them, on top of aligning his desires with the desires of other individuals he cares about and the population at large.
  • Wonder Woman openly comments that when she first met Paul (Paragon), she thought he was obviously a supervillain- appears out of nowhere, fueled by pure avarice, refuses to tell his name, and attempts to buy Alan Scott's personal battery. His actions, however, have been almost nothing but good (A few Elemental Possessions and Giant Naked Statues aside, of course).
• Bathroom Break-Out: Among his escape attempts, J'onn J'aarkn tries to escape via the toilet only to be caught in the act by OL.
• Bat Signal:
  • Paul does this with Eris' sigil to summon her when facing Apollo.
  • Much later, he responds to the original signal when Batman is overseas. It's also deconstructed when he contemplates that the signal made sense when Batman was first published but a phone or at least a pager would make more sense in the current decade.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Through using magical LSD, Paul facilitates Theo Adam and Teth Adom's judgement by the gods to determine who gets the gods' blessing and who gets their soul eaten.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In Contingency Paul complains endlessly over the sloppiness of Martian Manhunter's training scenario, that it's uncreative and unrealistic because the Justice League in it act very uncharacteristically. He definitely gets his wish for realism.
• Becoming the Mask: A literal example. In the Renegade timeline, Orange Lantern rolled with the mistaken identification of being Grayven in order to foil several Apokoliptian invasion schemes for earth by 'claiming it as his own'. Disturbingly he has found himself having flashbacks to Grayven's past and is finding difficulty separating his SI past life and Grayven's in his memories. Since building himself a new soul with the help of a Father Box, there are indications that he may have, metaphysically speaking, genuinely become a second instance of Grayven.
• Beeping Computers: Father Boxes and Mother Boxes communicate via a "Ploong." and "Ping." sound effect respectively.
• Befriending the Enemy: OL decides to not be antagonistic towards Lex Luthor, as he has the resources to really help humanity. OL encourages him to research the Danner Formula in hopes that Lex could make Bio-Augmentation more safe and mainstream. OL points to him how magic can be innovative because its many uses are so ill-researched by most people. This is in the hopes that he could convince him to turn a new leaf and stop being a supervillain. Unfortunately, he is ultimately unable to convince him to commit to a Heel–Face Turn. Lex does, however, invest more of his time in legitimate research and cause very little trouble; he even sends Paul a warning before Oceanus' attack.
• Behemoth Battle: Swamp Thing and Anton Arcane in part 18 of Bindings. However, Swamp Thing also has Nabu's help, which is effective even though he's not huge.
• Benevolent Dictator: The Justice League, when they take control of Earth. While being tyrannical is agreed to be bad, it's less bad than other options with Earth being affected by Anti-Life.
• Better Partner Assertion: When Zatanna's under the combined influence of the Star Sapphire encouraging her romantic feelings for Paul, and Karfang's gas attack intensifying her avarice and selfishness, she attempts to persuade Paul to dump his girlfriend and date her instead, pointing out that Jade doesn't have anything really notable about her except that she was available when Paul was looking. (If Zatanna were several years older and not under clearly visible Mind Control at the time, he might even have found her persuasive).
• Beware the Nice Ones: After restoring his 96-year-old grandfather figure Alan Scott to health, and officially starting a relationship with Jade, Paragon!OL visits Sportsmaster in prison, and tells him never to become involved with his own family again in any way. When Sportsmaster doesn't take him seriously, OL calmly explains that since leaving Earth, he has personally killed more people than any other human in history, and if Sportsmaster steps out of line, OL will murder him in his sleep without hesitation or remorse.
• BFS: The Renegade eventually makes himself one.
• Big Bad: No sign of one for the majority of the comic. There are certainly recurring enemies, and once Truggs is introduced, we hear about a looming threat that may qualify as the largest conflict in the entire plot...if and when it ever begins to rear its head. However, after roughly four-and-a-quarter years of updates, on story post #1959, at the climax of a plotline involving the death of the main character—which, being as he's an SI, is rife for a pun, we come face to plasticine face with none other than Boss Smiley. The implication is that he's been subtly guiding not just the entire plot, but every form of obstruction to progress and societal incompetence that's ever occurred in the history of this dimension. With the story itself functioning as an answer to the question, "what would it take for the DC universe to start acting rationally?", it makes a beautiful, multi-layered sort of sense that the ultimate obstacle to overcome is none other than the embodiment of bureaucracy and selling out. Assuming he isn't just a hallucination, of course.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths:
  • Earth's other Green Lanterns initially mock Guy because he's a loud, obnoxious man with a crass attitude and is more than a little reckless. However, he learned how to project constructs without tying them to the ring before either Hal or John, figured out how to use his ring to heal himself based on something he watched Paul do, and helps rehabilitate criminals.
  • He also learned how to weaponize his large ego, or rather, he figured out how to No-Sell orange light assimilation because he wills himself to be the best he can be, and since he's already perfect, if he changed he wouldn't be the best, now would he?
• Big Fish in a Bigger Ocean: Zigzagged during the future glimpses where the protagonist has been trapped in the world of Gate. Once hostilities calm down, the Sanderan Empire learns that although they are top of the heap on their own world, they are centuries behind every nation on Earth. However, they are so far behind that Japan doesn't mind sharing the basics of things like gunpowder, since that isn't remotely enough to make the Empire a threat — especially when the gate is likely to close soon. As a result, the Sanderans look forward to the prospect of equipping their armies with primitive guns and cannons, which would not allow them to compete on Earth, but will make them unstoppable amongst their neighbours.
• Big "NO!": After OL's botched attempt at raising the dead, getting himself and several others dragged to Hell and a tough fight just to escape, he expresses his intentions to try again. Jade has to put her foot down.
  Jade: NO! I get you're trying to help. And to start with it was nice… In a weird sort of way. But this needs to stop. If this is what happens when we bring people back from the dead, I'll learn to live with the consequences of what I did the normal way.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Swamp Thing (who is in giant form) says this to Poison Ivy when he is about to cut off her connection to The Green.
  Swamp Thing: Your.. voice. Always.. on the edge of hearing. Whining, screeching, demanding voice! Be.. silenced.
• Big "YES!": OL says this when he sees the newly-freed Teth Adom in the flesh.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: September 17, OL's birthday is celebrated with the Team stopping a break-out at Belle Reve. To fair, he didn't tell anyone that it was his birthday.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Invoked by M'gann in her Shapeshifter Default Form. She knows that females aren't allowed to look alien, which is why she goes out of her way to look as human as possible. She slowly grows more comfortable to look more alien and embrace her White Martian side.
  M'gann: It's okay for guys to look like ogres but girls need to look like girls.
• Black Market: Paul turns to an under-the-table arms dealer to obtain samples of the Dominators' plant-based computer technology. So long as he keeps the purchases small and goes for older-generation technology, the Dominators don't care enough to do anything about it.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: After studying the anti-demon Ace of Winchesters, Paul constructs a similar gun for fighting Order magic — by plating a gun with the gold from one of Eris' apples of discord, a powerful focus of Chaos magic. The bullets go straight through the best Order shields Zatanna can make, plus it's "the blingest weapon I've ever held."
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • No pun intended but the Ophidian. It understands the concept of wanting and being possessive of something but doesn't understand emotion outside of it. Paulphidian literally couldn't understand emotions such as love, hate and anger when he tried recalling what he felt.
  • Also OL himself, he frequently declares his friends to be his in his narrative but usually it doesn't mean anything romantic.
  • Pun almost certainly intended when Power Ring Blue, Orange Lantern's Antimatter Universe counterpart, is introduced as the supervisor for the Young Offenders.
• Body Horror:
  • People modified by Black Power Ring.
  • Johnny Sorrow’s encounter with the Subtle Realms disfigured his face to such an extent that almost anyone who looked at it instantly died.
  • Destroying Johnny’s mask caused the laws of nature to start going haywire in his immediate surroundings. Because of this, several Amazons who were too close to him had their bodies warped and mixed with objects of close proximity (e.g. one Amazon’s hand got stuck inside and mixed with a part of a wall, another’s face got mixed with a mirror she was holding, giving her skin reflective properties).
  • Tormented\praying souls that constitute Hell’s background scenery.
• Boldly Coming: The Martian Manwomanhunter, J'onn J'aarkn, loves having sex with humans. So much, that the former biology teacher made a career out of it as an adult film star.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution:
  • The Renegade's visit to the island of the Amazons ended up with him getting struck by Zeus. He walked it off.
  • Oceanus strikes Paul down with one of these using a storm cloud. He survives as the ring patches him up.
• Bond Villain Stupidity / Just Between You and Me: On several occasions Paul’s success was highly dependent on his enemies’ penchant for monologuing. Nylor Truggs tries to ensure that he has contingencies to prevent heroes from attacking prematurely.
• Boring, but Practical: When Paul first comes to universe 16, he doesn't try some complex scheme to power up; he simply goes to the original Earth Green Lantern's house, knowing that he's retired from costumed heroics, and offers to buy his lantern.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Paul is able to assist the negotiations between Lord Rama Khan, ruler of the sentient magical country of Jarhanpur, Wonder Woman, and Ailani, a woman whose son has been selected by the land as its next ruler. Ailani hates magic and wants nothing to do with Jarhanpur, but was present because Rama Khan gave her sanctuary when she was being pursued by bandits. And without its ruler, the land will change from prosperity to a hostile wasteland. Wonder Woman has to weigh up a mother's right to make decisions for her young son, vs the wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of people.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Played with.
  • While it's good for Superboy to learn hand-to-hand combat, Orange Lantern fears that he's being held back by Black Canary. Black Canary is vulnerable to being torn apart by Superboy if he doesn't hold himself back. If Superboy gets too used to holding himself back, he will not fight at full strength in combat. So OL asks Wonder Woman, who's better trained and far stronger than Superboy, to train him.
  • Similarly, Paul himself learns the basics from Black Canary for the sake of team unity, but feels that it's training him to fight "the stupid way" and that Lanterns need different instincts.
  • One of Paul's early actions is to buy a gun and get lessons in using it, in case he gets separated from his ring or it runs out of power.
  • Played straight for Effigy, who has a lot of raw power, but hasn't stopped and studied his exact limits. Lantern Gardner offers to help him get some proper training.
    Guy: You even know how your flame-thing works? What it can do?
    Effigy: Telekinesis? And burn stuff?
    Guy: What stuff? How dense stuff? You got any idea how to disable someone without crippling them? Can you make tools like we do, or is it all burning shapes? Does your telekinesis have t'be on fire, or can you do the regular kind? ... Tell y'what. I need a test dummy, you need training. What's say we meet up tomorrow an' sort something out?
  • Discussed and deconstructed when the characters observe that using actual boxing wouldn't make sense if you had Super-Strength and Super-Toughness. Grappling, submission holds, slamming their head into your knee, and other such make-sure-they-don't-just-get-pushed-away techniques are more appropriate than punching and kicking.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In the Renegade timeline, Kara Zor-El suffers brain damage from her failing life support pod, and the machine used to repair her brain has some... side effects.
  Kara: Great! Let's exterminate them together!
• Breaking Speech: This is what Father Mattias' exorcism of Paulphidian consists of, deconstructing their motives so Paul would kick the Ophidian out.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The fourth wall is finally breached with the introduction of Ambush Bug in Fool's Canon.
• Breather Episode:
  • After intense episodes with the League getting mind-controlled, setting the stage for Nabu's capture and fighting back a jailbreak, the Team helps the government deport a Martian porn star and go to Themyscira for a holiday before the island gets attacked.
  • In the wake of saving the multiverse from being torn apart For Science!, Paul has to deal with a visit from Lord Manga Khan, a ridiculously Large Ham who is basically a galactic used car salesman.
• Brick Joke:
  • OL covers up his Male Gaze moment on Wonder Woman by performing an impromptu Sherlock Scan and saying he was staring at her armor. After discussing the nature of OL's relationship with Superboy^note In-Universe, Donna snarks she understands why he was staring at her armor...and later still when visiting Themyscira, Paul realises his genuine inspection of a guard's orichalcum armor is being mistaken.
  • In his Power High, Paulphidian mentions after saving his friends and the planet Earth, that he will repaint the signs in Happy Harbor to be spelled correctly! After getting freed from the Ophidian, Paul and the locals notice that all the signs in Happy Harbor are now spelled Happy Harbour.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Several years before the story proper, John Constantine gathered up his friends and allies, and managed to stop an evil cult from summoning an Eldritch Abomination, at the cost of one of their number being driven insane, and several of them dying, including Zatanna's mother. Zatara's never forgiven him for getting her involved.
• Brought Down to Normal: Due the ring being the source of Paul's power, this comes up:
  • OL's ring battery runs out of power in the middle of the desert after wasting it because he thought he was in a dream.
  • OL is separated from his ring when Red Torpedo and Red Inferno invade Mount Justice.
  • OL willingly gives up his ring after being freed from the Ophidian. Batman permits him to take it back when it becomes clear that Paul regained his sanity and his trustworthiness.
  • OL's ring is tainted by Klarion in Displaced so Klarion could steal the ring's power. So he takes it off and uses his pistol to fight him off.
  • OL's ring is stolen by Truggs after getting jumped due to a Wounded Gazelle Gambit.
  • A non-OL example: Swamp Thing cuts off Poison Ivy's connection to the Green, reducing her to a normal woman.
  • Paul voluntarily gives up the rings in order to hide the Orange Light from Larfleeze's construct, Blume. To paraphrase Paul, this creature was viewed as a god of hunger, and then it got Lantern powers.
• Brown Note:
  • Johnny Sorrow’s face was disfigured to such an extent that just looking at it kills.
  • Following his exposure to the Anti-Life Equation by Darkseid, the Renegade discovers that he can project it just by speaking. The fact he discovers this in front of Queen Aga'po and Hal Jordan nearly makes the knowledge entirely moot.
  • The plan of the Prankster in Black Reign was, as summarized by OL, to lure Superman in, hit him with a bit of kryptonite, then make him mess his pants. Naturally OL uses this on the Mooks before the police arrive.
• Buy Them Off:
  • When OL first meets Alan Scott, he tries to buy his lantern off him.
  • On many occasions, he also chooses to buy a potential opponent’s short-term cooperation by giving them something they want (magical lore to Abra, restored face to minor super-villain, etc).
  • Artemis accuses Paulphidian of trying this when he proposes to give her asteroid gold in order to give her the funds to go independent.

C

• Call-Back: Lots of times.
  • During their trip to the Logan Animal Sanctuary, Firebrand asks OL about the offer of making her his Manhunter.
  • In the first episode, OL is afraid to use the Zeta Beam in fear of getting Telefragged. In Contingency, OL spoils Kid Flash's Hope Spot by pointing that the alien invaders' Zeta Beams cause Death by Telefragging.
  • In Dependency Day, OL comments on how annoying it is that most copies of On Liberty only have the name of John Stuart Mill when it was co-written with his wife, Harriet Taylor. For Christmas, months later, OL gives Diana a homemade copy with Harriet Taylor's name, as a present.
  • In Ex Perdition, a co-worker of Martian adult actor J'aarkn mentions knowing Orange Lantern through his post-Displaced interview with Cat Grant.
  • In Zatanna's introduction chapter, Artemis asks her why she can't just say "Erif" when attacking someone. When Mistress Martian attacks them, Zatanna does just that.
  • Paul jokingly tries to suggest to Diana that the Grecian Pantheon bring in gods or goddesses from other pantheons to make up for failing ones in their own. She laughs and says that they're not going to do that just so Paul can play "Musical Pantheons." Several months later, when visiting Themyscira, Paul accidentally causes Hera to divorce Zeus, causing a huge shakeup in the Grecian Pantheon.
  • Robin and Kid Flash start calling Paul "Oh El" since he's an Orange Lantern, but he tells them that that will make people think he's Kryptonian and get confused. Sure enough, when they recover Kara Zor-El from her escape pod over a year later, the nickname makes her assume for a moment that another Kryptonian survived.
• Calling the Old Man Out: OL does this on Artemis and Jade's behalf to Sportsmaster during the New Year's Breakout.
• Came Back Strong: Orm in Titanfall is much more dangerous than before.
• The Cameo: Desire of the Endless briefly came to watch Ophidian-possessed OL when the latter is suffering a severe mental withdrawal.
• Camping a Crapper:
  • Red Torpedo separates OL away from his ring and nearly kills him by flooding the bathroom when Paul took it off to go to use the toilet.
  • Backfired (offscreen) in the Renegade timeline, since Venom Buster made the Renegade strong enough to crush the robots even without the ring.
• Canon Immigrant: Mainstream DC Comics characters that didn't appear or mention in the original Young Justice show are: Yao Fei from the Great Ten; John Constantine and the recurring cast of Hellblazer; the casts of Knight and Squire, including the eponymous duo, Captain Cornwall and Cornwall Boy, and Dark Druid; Arnold Munro from Young All-Stars; Swamp Thing and Abigail Arcane; Henry King, Jr. of Infinity, Inc.; Holly Robinson; and the Super Young Team. There are also a few cameos from the comic The Sandman, including Desire of the Endless and Lord Kilderkin; and Nylor Truggs is originally from Dial H for Hero.
• Canon Welding: Episode 62: Collegiality confirms that the presence of the Life Entity on Earth is the reason as to why it is the "Fifth World", and that its previous resting place later became New Genesis and Apokolips, which also gave rise to the New Gods of the Fourth World.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You:
  • Paul debates if taking the opportunity to kill a weakened Nabu is worth it in "Hullevow". He ultimately decides against it.
  For a moment, I contemplate taking advantage of his momentary weakness. Drug Kaldur with something that would let me blame his loss of consciousness on the Terror Thing, chain Nabu up again and hit his helmet with Mageslayers until he's gone. Might work, but… No. Do the job I'm here to do. He might be useful.
  • Paul arranges a meeting with Klarion on this basis, offering to restore Klarion's power in exchange for help in beating Nabu. Played straight by Klarion, but subverted by Paul, who doesn't actually plan to team up, and instead double-crosses Klarion and transfers his power to John Constantine, leaving Klarion's body as a soulless husk.
• Captain Oblivious:
  • OL didn't realize the store he went to buy clothes from was a mob-front despite there being guns and cocaine around him.
  • It isn't until after he leaves the Amazonian temple of Hera that he realizes that the sobbing woman, inconsolable over the discovery that Zeus had been once again lying about remaining faithful, who he just convinced that Hera should probably divorce Zeus was, in fact, Hera herself, and not just a very passionate priestess.
  • OL never notices women hitting on him. This is mostly because he had the ring reduce his testosterone production in order to prevent himself from desiring a woman enough to misuse his power. Ironically, when he turns it up again, he can't find a girlfriend, even from the women who were hitting on him before.
• Cardboard Prison: Not if they can help it. They will find a prison needed to deal with prisoners that have powers that allow them to escape. Even if that means sending them to Atlantis, Themyscira, or Tartarus.
• Caretaking is Feminine: Doppelgängered reveals that the Zatara Crime Family on Earth -14 believes this, with Don Giovanni Zatara subverting this belief when he decided to raise his daughter by himself after the death of his wife rather than remarry as his own father suggested.
• Carnivorous Healing Factor: In the distant future reached by the Renegade, the Sheeda have made biomass-collecting servants that look like zombie children. They initially try to eat the Renegade and Artemis, but when that gets nowhere, the survivors proceed to eat their own fallen, which allows them to heal their injuries and regrow lost limbs. Justified since they're specifically designed to consume and process any available biomass source and make it available for other purposes.
• Catch-22 Dilemma: When discussing Earth's rate of development in comparison to other species, Paul notes that there are a lot of worlds that simply don't have enough fossil fuels to support a level of societal development that would allow the discovery and development of better energy sources, and are perpetually pre-industrial as a result.
• Character Development:
  • Paul learns after his fight with Artemis that just because he thinks he's right, it doesn't mean that he should force change on others when they don't want it. If he wants someone to change he has to present it in a way they would benefit from and agree with.
  • Artemis is initially distrustful of the Team and belittling of OL. After OL gets her to open up by apologizing to her and healing her mother, she displays a sense of humor and starts spending more time with the Team. She eventually opens up about her past on her own and she becomes OL's closest friend.
  • Superboy is angry, lost and resentful as he was in canon but due to having a support system in the form of Orange Lantern, Miss Martian and Wonder Woman he gains more confidence, becomes less angry and grows into his own person. He no longer desires the attention of Superman after he is adopted by Wonder Woman.
  • Miss Martian is initially so ashamed of her true form and how alien it looks that it took a great deal of courage just to reveal her false Green Martian form. After she is accepted by OL even when she accidentally reveals her White Martian true form, she starts to grow more self-confidence. To the point she deliberately makes herself look alien to replace Martian Manhunter as a telepathic specialist for Psimon's trial. When the sleazy J'onn J'aarkn notes their superficial similarities, she deliberately gives herself her White Martian color so she wouldn't be associated with J'aarkn.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Scott was allowed to recharge his ring, despite the ban from the Guardians, to help the Green Lanterns deal with Paulphidian. He and the Lanterns get curb-stomped before they could stop them. Since Alan's ring still has most of its charge, he decides to help Paul and the Team fight the Light and free the Justice League.
  • Paul jokes that he's not going anywhere near the Greek Pantheon after Father Mattias makes a crack about their unreliability compared to Yahweh. He not only picks Eris, the Greek Goddess of Chaos as a his patron god during his visit to Themyscira, but meets Eris and Hera in person. And successfully convinces Hera to divorce Zeus.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Scott and Barda Free, who are initially introduced during an investigation of a Boom Tube sighting. Barda Free and Wonder Woman become fast friends and the possibility of them coming back to action is discussed. In both the Paragon and Renegade timelines, they are recruited when the Team has to fight the Light and the mind-controlled League.
  • Yao Fei AKA Accomplished Perfect Physician. He was brought up by Paragon!OL to Batman as a Justice League candidate to have a Combat Medic on board and he does join the Justice League and the Great Ten off-screen. Guess who the team has to fight when the League gets mind controlled? And manages to beat the Team back into retreating?
  • James Lockhart and Firebrand are first mentioned when Alan points them out while showing Paul his old photo album. James Lockhart is mentioned to have retired from superheroics early on to become a doctor. While Firebrand is mentioned to have died Taking the Bullet for Jay Garrick.
  • Cassie Sandsmark, the future Wonder Girl and illegitimate child by Zeus. It was mentioned that until she was found out, it was thought that Zeus had changed and was faithful to Hera. She becomes one of the reasons that Hera is successfully convinced to divorce Zeus.
• Cherry Tapping: Paul always expected to win his duel with Prince Ragnar, but upon seeing his opponent simply charge at him with a sword, Paul decides to take drastic measures: he dismisses his armour, discards both of his own rings, then summons his opponent's ring right off his hand and knocks him out with that. After specifically stating that he was going to do that very thing.
• The Chosen Many: Reflecting on his long term plans, Paul settles on the idea of recovering the Orange Central Power Battery and building a corps of Orange Lanterns, to use the orange light for good throughout the universe. He does just that after his year of service ends, which shakes up the political environment on Maltus, and turns the tide of war against the Reach.
• Clone Angst: Several characters feel this way after learning they are clones.
  • Similar to canon, Red Arrow and Guardian experience this after realizing that they are clones of the original Roy Harper. Thankfully, Paul's help allows them to save Speedy earlier than in canon, which ends up helping both of them mentally.
  • Helmut Schreiber is disgusted to learn that he's a clone of Adolf Hiter.
• Closest Thing We Got:
  • Paragon!OL goes to Cornwall Boy to get his magic-inflicted wounds healed because Cornwall Boy was the closest thing to a magic healer.
  • Paragon!OL and Superboy are forced to keep Cadmus open because it is only place on Earth with understanding of Kryptonian physiology in order to treat Match.
• Code of Honour: Lantern Xor uses this as his philosophy for controlling the orange light. Since it's a statement of general principles, it allows him to apply avarice effectively in a wide variety of situations without losing control.
  Xor: When I fight, I do so to affirm my nature. My desires. I am an honourable warrior. I will harm none who have not wronged me. I will leave no slight unavenged. I will repay my debts. I will speak no untruth. This is who I am. This is the proper code of the universe, and I will teach it to others in whatever way I must.
• Colour-Coded Emotions: The DC Comics' Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum. Actions using a power ring are colored by their respective ring-color. The SI's thoughts and speech are often coloured Orange, and on occasion, the other colours of the spectrum. Dialogue in general can colored to represent the respective emotion. Enlightened characters no longer use colored speech, but get colored quotation marks all the time.
• Combat Medic:
  • OL's secondary role to the team is a healer; he uses his abilities to immediately heal the team on site. It works because he considers them to be "his" and so injury to them feels like injury to himself.
  • OL is also trying to get the League to get a dedicated Superpowered Healer for their team, as it would make life so much easier. He convinces Batman to get Accomplished Perfect Physician on the team.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Orange Lantern usually address super-villains by their real names, and generally thinks of everyone by their first name. This could get a bit confusing for the unwary reader were he in a location with, hypothetically, J'onn J'onzz, John Stewart, and John Constantine all present.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: He's not vocal about it, but Paul finds the whole EMP generator pulse with Red Torpedo and Red Inferno a bit... worrying.
• Conservation of Competence: Bane and his henchmen keep asking Truggs to stop monologuing to the downed OL and let them finish him before he calls for back-up. Truggs tells them to shut up. They also question why Truggs is ordering them to give OL a chance to be spared.
• Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: The Renegade settles on telling people that he really did start as Grayven, but that he deliberately traveled to magic-less Earth Prime in order to destroy all traces of Apokolips from his soul. Father Box accepts the story and patterns his new soul and appearance on Grayven, affecting him to the point where the Renegade himself sometimes has trouble untangling which of his memories are real.
• Corrupted Contingency: The repeated attacks on Mount Justice motivate Paul to set up extensive automated defenses. Unfortunately, all that advanced equipment just makes the mountain a more appealing target for technology theft; Nylor Truggs completely trashes and ransacks the place, twice, while the team isn't home.
• Could Say It, But...: After Paul secretly creates a zeta tube account for Zatanna, Mister Zatara is not pleased that she somehow found her way into Mount Justice, and Paul would rather not draw Batman's attention to how easily the ring can subvert Justice League computers. Even Zatanna doesn't realise at first what happened.
  Zatanna: I opened the door to see if Dad was hiding or something and the next thing I know I’m inside the mountain.
  Paul: Yes, bit odd that. It’s almost as if someone with a xenotech hypercomputer was maintaining a constant connection to all zeta tube monitoring equipment, then used that access to undetectably create a new user profile and initiate transportation when someone they wanted to talk to stepped into a booth.
  Zatanna: That’s.. oddly specific.
  Paul: Yes, it is. Did I mention that I think our team really needs a magic user?
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Batman takes the cake. He managed to take down Constantine, when John was under a spell that made him invisible and so that no one wanted to even look at him. Batman noticed that no one was going into a certain part of the room or even looking at that part of the room, so he started attacking it to make sure.
  • The Russian Research facility in regards to speedsters. They have cameras that can record at high-speed, shrapnel mines designed to kill and corral speedsters, gas dispensers, walls made of different materials with differing densities and a high-voltage current so you can't just vibrate through them, and a nuclear self-destruct device, just in case.
  • Paul's preparations to deal with Nabu include making an Ace specifically designed to disrupt Order magic, magical ramparts to keep the damage in check, a magician capable of restraining him to prevent him from leaving, John as the new Lord of Chaos, a spare Golem body for negotiation, and Cornwall boy to eat his magic. In the event that they all fall, he also has the exchange being televised.
• Cuddle Bug: Ratchet is from a jellyfish-like species that bans physical contact, but he and his associates crave it. Upon being rescued by the protagonist, he sets about Glomping whomever he can.
• Culture Clash:
  • Being from Britain, OL had a bit of a shock when he had to adjust to living in America. Supermarkets tend to creep him out.
  • Kaldur is disturbed how surface-worlders tend to depict pirates as good guys in their fiction and how rare a negative portrayal is. Especially since pirates are a serious problems for Atlanteans.
  • Lantern Stewart isn't accustomed to dealing with soldiers like Lantern Xor.
    Xor: I am a soldier. Civil policing is new to me. I want clear orders.
    Stewart: I was a soldier before I was a Lantern. I didn’t need to be told not to brainwash people.
    Xor: I could apply the rules of my people. I do not think you would like them.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The general result of unpowered humans going up against Orange Lantern. By the time of Episode 89: Guys from Gotham, he's thoroughly bored of it.
  • Orange Lantern is also at the receiving end of one, thanks to Klarion. He ends up with two chunks of raw Chaos Magic lodged in his chest and gut, which are shredding and melting his body, all the while triggering his pain receptors. Even worse, thanks to having no resistance to magic due to his lack of a soul, instead of ending after a few seconds, the spell just continues on endlessly. It takes most of his ring's power to keep him alive, and the efforts of three different magic users to fix him. The rest of the Team fares better, with the worst being M'gann, who suffers a few broken bones.
    Paul: Not dead quite yet, M'gann.
  • OL actually breaks the infamous training simulation with the help of Ophidian, and simply starts assimilating all the alien ships. He gets up to seventy motherships under his control before J'onn manages to snap M'gann out of it.
  • Harm vs. Artemis and Zatana. In canon, it was two baseline humans with magic and a bow and arrow, and it played out largely like a for-tv version of one of the Friday the Thirteenth films. Here, Artemis was dosed with the Danner Formula, and thus has strength roughly comparable to Wonder Woman. According to Orange Lantern, the fight lasted less than a minute and a good portion of Harm's body was dealt crushing damage.
  • Poison Ivy vs. Swamp Thing. Given that one is the champion of all plant life on earth and the other has spent a few years in Arkham... it doesn't end well for her.
• Curse Cut Short: Lantern Gardner is halfway through swearing about Lord Malvolio destroying his crumbler rounds, when his ring communication cuts out due to him being distracted by the fight.
• Cursed with Awesome: Robin is upset that Paul didn't respect his personal autonomy, but the actual outcome of being enhanced with the Danner formula is "pretty great. The more I think about it, the less I can deny it."
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: OL seeks to subvert this due to his belief that supervillains will make incredible and revolutionary technology and proceed to use it badly. He decides to collect the technology from supervillains and fellow superheroes to improve the lives of the mainstream and superheroes.
  • OL discusses this with the Trope Namer and why he doesn't use the advanced technology to actually improve the world and dominate the market.
  • He also asks the Terror Twins about using their super-strengths to legitimately earn more income in demolition or ship breaking, or working for the military or CIA to have the permission to kill, which left Tuppence gobsmacked.
  • Justified, Clyde Phillips (aka Punch) refuses to sell his invention despite how much money it would make him and his wife because he calls it "selling out" and wants the recognition and fame on his terms despite OL offering to give him a ton of money to get it patented.
  • Also, there is The Crumbler, who found out that OL stole his weapon designs, went ballistic, and threatened to murder him and whoever OL gave the weapons to, despite OL offering him a ton of money to get it patented. This affirms OL's belief that supervillains can't be trusted to make good decisions with their own tech.
  • This is averted with Captain Cold, who OL notes has a thorough enough understanding of physics to "make thermodynamics his bitch" and earn a doctorate. OL splits the rewards for a prize based on his Freeze Ray design in the Ice Fortress, giving him eighty seven and a half thousand dollars for no extra work, and gets him to work on his thesis for his mother's contact information. It really depends on the villain in question.
  • Doctor Sivana was denied funding early on and eventually turned to Supervillainy, and when he talks to OL about it he reveals that at this point he's basically come too far to quit or even care any more about it and wouldn't change. He and OL wish that they'd met 20 years ago. OL still has hopes of steering Thaddeus Jr and Georgia toward making obscene amounts of money instead of making strangle-broccoli.
• Cutting the Knot: Comes up with OL around.
  • When the team are fighting Mister Twister and come to the conclusion that it's Red Tornado in disguise, OL uses his ring to confirm Red Tornado's location: in the base.
  • OL and the Team were fighting Ocean Master while he's holding Queen Mera hostage. OL's constructs don't work on Ocean Master due to his armor's magical nature. What does he do? Cut off Ocean Master's hands, which were the only things that weren't protected. Renegade!OL went further, sending a construct up his arms into his brain and killing him on the spot.
• Cycle of Revenge: The alternate Paul in the Warhammer Fantasy world has set out to (among other things) actually settle the centuries-old list of grudges held by the dwarves, potentially ending — or at least significantly reducing — their feuds with the elves. (He's also settling the dwarves' grudges with the orcs and goblins, but in their case it's by exterminating them rather than seeking compensation.)
  Teclis: I would have thought that someone as well-acquainted with dwarfs as you are would understand that centuries of strife do not simply disappear.
  Paul: No, because with dwarfs they do if you pay your fines. We might think that they're obsessive about it, but they apply their irrationality in a perfectly rational way.

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