#bextalk

All of the Stunticons have a touch of the others' mental issues.

Motormaster's paranoia manifests as "I hate not knowing what people around me are saying".

So he picks up languages as he encounters them. Soundwave encourages this, because Motormaster is violent enough on a good day.

(Megatron built the Stunticons, Vector Sigma made them into people, but Soundwave was the one who went, "is anyone going to teach these feral cars to operate in society?" and then realized it was his job.)

Once Moto figures out social dialects are a thing that exists (it's not something that comes up among the Decepticon crew on Earth), he starts picking up two specific ones when he learns a language: low-class worker (more ideally, "thug" but that doesn't come up in most languages) and highest-class nobility.

He speaks English. We're on Cybertron? Still English.

All the people he wants to talk to understand English just fine. The rest of you can get good.

The only times he actually speaks any of the other languages he knows is when he is making A Point. Usually at the expense of someone else.

Some days, it infuriates Starscream that fucking Motormaster is the third-most fluent speaker of High Vosian aboard the Nemesis.

Other days, it's just too fucking funny watching people who don't know that get badly surprised by it.

(Look, there's a reason most of the other Deceptijets don't speak High Vosian more fluently. Anyone who speaks High Vosian in this day and age is an elitist prick.)

Starscream accepts the label of "elitist prick". He also views his continuing fluency in High Vosian as a small way to maintain the culture of Cybertron outside of the War.

He mostly only uses it for joint bitching sessions and/or screaming matches with Soundwave (the second-most fluent speaker of High Vosian aboard the Nemesis.)

Give Breakdown half an hour to scout, and he'll sound exactly like a local.

He switches back to his normal method of speaking when the mission is over and they're back on the Nemesis, or when he's speaking over comm-bands.

Wildrider... Look, if the Stunticons needed to speak French for dealing with European French people for whatever reason, Wildrider very deliberately picks up Quebecois.

Since "bet you can't do this" is a great way to get Drag Strip to do anything and his teammates know it, Drag Strip knows just as many languages as Motormaster does.

Unlike Motormaster, he'll actually speak them.

Dead End was assigned An Accent by Vector Sigma, and he uses that accent with every language he speaks. Figuring out the local equivalent of his accent is not an entertaining way to waste the time between now and his inevitable death.

In actuality, for these purposes, the Aerialbots and Stunticons have the same general set of instincts, and those instincts are focused on "this is how a gestalt works" rather than anything about their alt-modes.

On today's docket: twenty-five year old comics!

The premise of this storyline is R'as al Ghul gets his hands on Batman's contingency plans for the JLA and uses them. Also R'as's usual eco-terrorist, population culling bullshit.

Gonna take a moment to talk about the eponymous Tower of Babel, because it really is a nasty piece of work. Ra's has a tower broadcasting a frequency that interferes with humans' abilities to read. The entire world is suddenly incapable of reading. All written communication is gibberish. Which is really fucking bad when you're trying to read a patient's chart in a hospital.

It's bad, and I appreciate the writers and artists taking some time to show us how bad it is. Because it's also really not the main draw for the storyline. Back cover copy? No mention of it. It's the betrayal of the JLA's trust that's the draw.

Which, let me tell you, they did a good job with showing Batman's contingencies as a betrayal of their trust. There's two pages where we get to see him and Kyle just chatting as friends and colleagues. In them, Kyle gives Batman everything he needs to develop a counter to him.

Kyle: "I think about it sometimes... Which would you regret losing more -- your hearing or your vision?"

Batman doesn't even guide the conversation, they're just talking about Kyle's art.

Kyle: "Without my eyes...? No beauty...no art...no way to create-- with a pencil or a power ring... I not only wouldn't be a Green Lantern anymore... ... I don't think I'd even make a very good Kyle."

(Also, writers, I am taking the ellipses away from you.)

Batman literally has a mnemonic trigger set to remind him to work on his plans for how to neutralize J'onn, then bury that he's even working on it from his conscious mind!

Talia spends a number of pages meandering on about whose fault it is that this is happening to the Justice League. It's yours, your father's, and your beloved's, Talia. This isn't hard. Bruce came up with them, you stole them, R'as implemented them. Don't try to justify to yourself that the Justice League deserved it for trusting Batman.

All but two of his contingencies are both torturous and lethal. The other two are merely physically and psychologically torturous, respectively.

Wonder Woman - trap her in a VR simulation where she thinks she's fighting a mortal battle against an absolute equal, putting her body under so much stress she eventually has a heart attack.

Plastic Man, who is a main JLAer at this point - freeze then shatter him.

Aquaman - use fear toxin to make him afraid of water, which he apparently needs to live, which is one of the things that dates this because I am pretty sure that is no longer a thing, he only needs water to live as much as any human does.

Martian Manhunter - infect him with nanites that bond to his skin and transmute trace elements into magnesium, which bursts into flame in open air.

Flash - attach a device to his spine that causes him to experience epileptic seizures at lightspeed.

Superman's is deliberately nonlethal, likely because the lethal option is too immediately lethal to fix.

And Kyle's is both nonlethal and not physically painful. He just gets psychosomatically blinded with a post-hypnotic suggestion being reinforced by his ring.

(Bats should be glad the older ex-GLs never heard about this, or he would be very, very dead. I do not believe either Guy Gardner or Spectre!Hal could be held back, and I don't believe John Stewart would make an effort to hold them back.)

We eventually resolve the R'as problem, then the JLA sits down to vote on whether to kick Batman from the JLA. Kyle and Wally are both like, "well, we're kind of too young and too new to say a founding member should get booted...." and J'onn is like, "I used to have dossiers on you guys as well, and I feel very guilty about that, even though mine were just for information purposes and I destroyed them long ago."

Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Plastic Man all want him gone. Wonder Woman specifically cites that she can no longer trust him, and she can't fight alongside someone she can't trust.

The deciding vote comes down to Superman. Batman removes himself from the JLA to prevent Superman having to make a vote one way or another. The bastard.

There's fallout from this. Both the Titans and Young Justice are suspicious of Nightwing and Robin now.

Nightwing: "I've trusted Batman with my life since I was eight." Wally: "And it's served you well. Unfortunately for you, I think all the other Titans are wondering... ... what did he trust you with in return?"

Oracle calls Batman to yell at him, Bats does his usual Stone Wall of Justice thing.

Oracle: "As Oracle, I'm supposed to be the JLA's databank. Their prime information resource. And I'm here to tell you, they haven't called on me once since they booted you off the moon." Batman: "Maybe they haven't needed you." Oracle: "Maybe. Or maybe they think I was somehow involved in your stupid stunt."

I think I'm all caught up now, thankfully.

[Bex]: Shoot him, SF dude! Shoot him while he monologues! [Rin]: DBZ RULES, BECCA. TALKING IS A FREE ACTION.