Why is basically every excuse against some anti-feats like "it isn't normal lightning", "it isn't normal lasers", "it isn't normal light", "it isn't normal explosions", etc.
Like, ya'll realize you're talking about a verse with over 500 episodes, 20 movies, 10 games, etc.
I don't know the exact number but you get the point.
Even if there's a few legit MFTL calcs, that's where consistency comes in, few
isn't enough if there's also like 100 cases where they high effort or fail to do far less.
Arguing all that "doesn't count", is just going to bite ya'll in the ass if MFTL falls through because you've basically conceded those anti-feats, which would then simply become feats, don't count towards anything.
Which is another thing I want to point, all this talking as if this is a short manga, someone mentioned Pokemon. That's a very good example, you know there's MFTL feats in Pokemon for normal dudes right?
Yeah they happen, is it consistent though? Hell no, you're looking at like once every 200 episodes, all while that feat has to compete against 100 other feats for consistency, some of which are caps and high effort, though I suppose a better example would be something like Batman who has unironically hundreds of MFTL feats, but unironically thousands of feats that also cap him magnitudes below that, and look at how we index him (the more consistent floor), similar case, you get the idea.
Which honestly is what seems to be the main problem here, bar a few of the MFTL feats which still aren't exactly legit for lack of a better word, you got say 5 high end calcs, and then just ignoring the 100 contradictory instances and run with them anyway.
Why would we do that? Worst part is maybe a few of the high end feats are legit
and usable, except when you start scaling it to everyone ever, the people who it's being scaled to's anti-feats, caps, and general portrayal then starts becoming legitimate counter to the usability of the feat as it's being argued they're apparently equal to the character who has said feat, rendering what might have been fine into an absurd outlier because now you're weighing Gwen's ten fucktillion caps and anti-feats against it too for consistency or whatever.
Anyway time to reply to the last message I was actually pinged for.
Even entire crowds, like a baseball stadium full of people and robots, couldn’t react to XLR8 moving around and even just standing and adjusting the ball positions. Jetray is the fastest aliens in omnitrix.
No, it means the show has higher-end and lower-end depictions, which is
exactly why anti-feats matter. "There is inconsistency" is not a rebuttal to anti-feats, it's straight up admitting they exist.
You can't say the speed is "hyper consistent" and then, the second lower showings come up, go "well it's inconsistent". You're
actively contradicting yourself.
Scenes where characters appear to watch high speed fights or characters move are common in fiction when speed is not the sole focus of the event or plot and are largely stylistic choices rather than strict depictions of speed.
That excuse guts your own argument too. If scenes can get handwaved as "stylistic" or "not strict depictions" when they're inconvenient or whatnot, then that logic can be used on your high-end speed scenes too?
You can't treat high showings as literal evidence, then treat lower showings as "it don't count". That's special pleading.
Like you say it's common? It's just as common that isn't the case too (see DBZ where they establish early on they're imperceptible, JoJo-power type Stands, any speedster like Fox Quicksilver of any Flash, numerous shounen where they fight like blurs from civ perceptions, MGS where there's plenty of high speed camera scenes, etc.).
Saying "Well other stuff does it too", isn't an actual point, it just means those other verses need to be looked at too just to make sure.
I'm not sure if you intended it or not, but you basically just said speed in Ben 10 is a matter of style, that's the furthest you can get from "intention" and "consistency".
Speed is often not consistently treated as a core focus in fiction,
And yet
you said it was hyper consistent?
So which is it?
You're now actively contradicting yourself because there is,
in fact, anti-feats.
Don't call it hyper consistent if it isn't. You can't have it both ways. Either the portrayal is consistent enough and anti-feats basically don't exist or are so few or ridiculous they actually can be handwaved (Goku getting cut by a bullet, Pikachu getting knocked out by a 10ft fall, etc.), or it isn't.
The instant you've started going "fiction isn't strict about speed", you've all but already conceded the anti-feats can't just be waved off anyway.
and that needs to be considered when evaluating feats.
That's true. But "considering it" means actually counting the anti-feats and then weighing them properly, not ignoring them, chalking it up to PIS or "fiction" every time, cherrypicking, or just whatever so they suddenly shouldn't count.
Right now
well not right now it's been a few days but imagine I was being pinged, your arguments boil down to "they exist but fiction", more or less.
That
isn't good enough, what makes the high end feats more consistent than the low end feats and statements and general portrayal? A major step is just being skipped here and then asserted it's the right call.
As it stands, "considering context" here is mostly just "ignore the bad stuff, keep the good stuff".
That ain't exactly weighing evidence, that's
filtering it.
If we applied strict realism to every scene, a lot of characters across many franchises would end up being downgraded.
Then maybe they should be?
"Other series would be downgraded if held to the same standard" isn't a defense. That's tu quoque my dude. Other bad scaling does not make
this scaling good.
It's on you to prove this scaling actually
is good but all your points up to this point, have been whataboutisms or "fiction", or even a bit incoherent (like arguing travel speed, but every MFTL calc is travel speed? Or how travel speed scales to that one dude's reactions, but ignoring the main argument is precisely the fact it's inconsistent?).
I'm not sure what you want me to say, if they're flimsy or faulty too, yeah they should be downgraded?
I can think of like 10 right now that should be even, 2 of those 10 absolutely are getting a CRT too sooooooooooo...this isn't a defense.
The “Mach speed” claim comes from external material,
External material isn't automatically worthless
especially if it's repeated verbatim like 5 times, but it also doesn't overrule the actual show if the show gives conflicting portrayals. Primary source comes first, sure, we can all agree on that I'd think.
Problem there though, the show doesn't really contradict it in the grand scheme of things. His general depiction within the show showcases mach flight speed
pretty sure they even mention it too so it's not entirely external, so that begs the question, does the show corroborate the statement instead of contradicting it?
Yeah, for the most part, that appears to be so.
And given the contradictive feat is done via an unconventional method, why, exactly, are you ignoring it?
Given the verse's history with even less reliable external material, the sudden hesitation is a bit odd, no?
while the show itself contradicts it through feats like his hyperspace travel,
Which is already a diff category anyway man.
Hyperspace travel is a travel
method, not automatically raw combat speed or reaction speed.
Fiction splits travel speed and combat speed all the time, they're doing it
right here, obviously, half your arguments even relied on differentiating travel from combat/reactions, so it goes both ways.
Invoking hyperspace here doesn't actually solve anything, it just draws attention to it.
Keyword is hyperspace travel.
Plus they literally straight up say outside of hyperspace FTL is unfeasible.
By conceding the feat is via hyperspace, as him having MFTL speed outside of hyperspace is basically hard shot down, him having it within it doesn't validate the rest, it just makes it situational. That needs to be proven to scale outside of it.
which is supported both visually and by statements. Vilgax and chromastone crossed several light years w/o any hyperspace on screen.
On screen not showing the mechanism is not proof there was no special method involved, especially when the series already treats faster-than-light movement as something not normally feasible outside special circumstances? Give or take anyway.
And on the off chance it's a real feat, ok, then what? I mean that's the argument is it not? That there's enough anti-feats/statements that contradict them being that high, ergo, outlier/inconsistency?
Just saying they exist doesn't actually do anything here, ya gotta explain why they outweigh a pile of anti-feats/statements/lower showings that aren't just casual, showings that take effort yet are far lower, failure to do certain things they could if they were that fast, perception by those nowhere near that speed, timeframe stuff, etc.
Then we have Aggregor who has crossed galaxy visibly through regular flight. Jetray seems to be using Hyperspace only to catch up with Kevin's space ship on time.
That still doesn't help. If hyperspace is being used as the solution for making up distance quickly, that just reinforces that special travel options exist
and matter.
It doesn't prove his normal combat slop should be 1:1.
Also "seems to be" isn't quite a good prefix to have, that's what I meant above, it's an admission you can't confirm it so it's an educated guess at best, pure extrapolative conjecture at worst, but neither actually hard fact and just as likely to
not be the case. Just for argument's sake, why's that even on the tble? That's his only MFTL feat to begin with, where his others to affirm he never needed hyperspace to hit MFTL travel in the context of that scene? Just saying they had a head start so he did it isn't a fact, it's a patch to excuse why he used it to begin with, which could possibly work if they actually implied or confirmed it anywhere yet they don't meaning it's conjecture at best.
There comes a point when anti-feats stop being anti-feats and start being the norm, when there's hundreds, and hundreds of examples on the contrary, when there's direct statements, that's going to beat out like 3 or 5 MFTL feats every time.
Worse still, basically every MFTL feat is literally travel speed, even worse than that, some of them aren't even normal travel speed.
Like I don't wanna agree or disagree yet given how much content the verse has I'm sure there's uncalced feats (for both sides even), so I'd (I, as in you) take this time to actually calc some more feats, like you said they had consistent MFTL combat/reaction feats right? Calc those. Depending how many there are and the context of them, handwaving the low ends could be fine, but as it stands the current ratio+context is very much not a good thing.
