After writing about The Wandering Inn earlier, I realized that I’ve never written anything about With This Ring either and I’ve been reading this for a far longer period of time. This is of course not an original work but a piece of fan-fiction based on the Young Justice television series that is set in a version of the DC universe. I’ve massively cut down on my reading of fan-fiction these days and most of them aren’t worth talking about. I make an exception for this not because it is particularly well written but because of its sheer massiveness and the consistency with which the author has been able to churn out updates every day almost without fail.

This is a self-insert in which the author, ostensibly an ordinary man named only Paul from England, suddenly wakes up to find himself in near Earth orbit in the Young Justice universe with an Orange Power Ring on a finger. Being a big fan of DC Comics, the character has extensive knowledge of the setting in general but memories of the television show specifically have been mysteriously removed. He also does not start out with a battery with which to recharge the ring and knowing how dangerous the DC universe is without superpowers, immediately makes acquiring one his first priority. Being a sensible sort and equipped with his out of context knowledge, he goes to the asteroid belt to mine for valuable minerals, then scans the Earth for lanterns and finally contacts retired Green Lantern Alan Scott to negotiate for his lantern, hoping that his ring can convert it from green to orange. Scott refuses an outright sale of course, fearing that he will be a villain but accepts if the new Orange Lantern agrees to be a new hero under the tutelage of Wonder Woman. So he becomes the newest recruit into the group of young superheroes that mostly consist of sidekicks of established members of the Justice League.

In many respects, this is a bad fic as it embodies all of the tropes of the genre: it is a self-insert that has the main character becoming immeasurably powerful and adulated by admirers everywhere; it is an author tract in which the author uses the main character to voice his own personal opinions and events in the story inevitably prove him right and I think it counts as a rationalist fic with the protagonist constantly engaged in min-max optimizing and berates other superheroes for being inadequately prepared and trained. On the other hand, these tropes are popular because it can be very satisfying to read even if it amounts to a guilty pleasure and quantity is a quality all of its own. Each chapter of this story is pretty short but since its inception in 2013 the author has consistently updated every single day with only a handful of missed days. This means that the story is by now truly massive spanning countless arcs and storylines. Not only that, since the author seems to write whatever he feels like writing, there has also been space to explore many different alternate versions of Paul either in variations of the DC universe or other fictional universes entirely. There is so much to read, and even if not all of it is that great, the quality and style is consistent enough that I’ve made reading this a regular part of my daily routine.

This means that as obnoxious as the protagonist comes across sometimes, there is so much catharsis in getting to read scenes like OL, as he is known, berating Superman for not equipping his suit with an easily portable anti-Kryptonite radiation shield, or asking Captain Cold why he is robbing banks with his cold gun when he could have been commercializing the technology for so much more money. It’s also great how the fic directly addresses the Reed Richards problem as one of OL’s primary aims is to kickstart widespread adoption of both the weirdly advanced technology available, which he calls schizo-tech and magic. For example, he helps London install a system of magical teleporting gates to replace the Tube system. Finally he fights rationally, which is to say as unfairly as possible. He disdains the boxing glove constructs the Green Lanterns tend to favor and his go-to weapon are construct railguns loaded with whatever ammunition best serves the situation up to and including mageslayer rounds for magic users and angel feather ones for dealing with demons.

For those who have actually watched episodes of the show, this fic also directly addresses some obvious problems in the plot, most interestingly the moral issues. One of the most important plot points throughout the early parts of the fic is how the Justice League seemingly accepts it without question when Nabu forces Zatara to be his host, which is actually what happens in the show. OL and Zatanna are justifiably horrified and spend months secretly planning a way to force Nabu to leave Zatara’s body, being prepared to kill him to do so if necessary. Once OL is free to leave Earth, he goes on to address other longstanding crises in the DC universe including freeing Vega Sector of the Citadelians which involved killing perhaps a million of their clone soldiers. The Orange Lantern Corps that he eventually founds is explicit a military organization instead of the police force that is the Green Lantern Corps in order to oppose the Reach. This is one superhero who certainly is more than willing to kill when he deems it necessary and moreover is proactive about going out to solve problems instead of just reacting to crises.

Of course he gets up to plenty of fun, crazy stuff as well because this is a self-insert and what else would you do with the most versatile tool in the universe. Early on he becomes known as the cake-man for making a gigantic cake in the sky above New York while possessing god-like powers due to being merged with the Embodiment of Avarice. And of course after he becomes almost unfathomably powerful he pulls off some seriously badass things like creating a giant orange construct shield bigger than a planet. Also always fun is how the author shows off his encyclopedic knowledge of the DC universe by pulling off the most obscure characters and the storylines they’re involved in. And on top of it all, just because the author wants to have fun, the alternate versions of OL get to explore all kinds of crossovers. Of particular note recently for example is a crossover with My Little Pony which worked out surprisingly well, up to including that version of OL taking on a pony form while visiting that world.

Anyway here’s a link to the tvtropes page for this fic and you can navigate from there to the appropriate sites for where the story itself is hosted on your own. The reason for that is that the author has been banned from multiple sites over the years so the keeps changing homes. The drama around that is a whole other story in of itself which I won’t get into. Anyway this isn’t ever going to be one of favorite stories. It’s too much about showing off how clever the author is and has little in the way of heart. But if you ever feel like reading a big sprawling DC universe fic and see Batman get told off for being insufficiently paranoid about security, or mock heroes like Green Arrow and Artemis for being armed with pointy-stick launchers, or wonder why they don’t try to give everyone on Earth superpowers, this is the story for you.