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A New Important Term: Anti-Feats

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Reppuzan

Reppuzan

VS Battles
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As the title of this thread implies, I would like to write a new page under the important tab for the term Anti-Feat, which has been going around quite a bit lately.

Currently, the definition of Anti-Feat to my understanding is a "feat" or "explanation" that is a horrifically low outlier relative to the rest of the character's feats (i.e. being scared of falling off a cliff after tanking Moon-busting attacks on a regular basis). However, members of our own Staff have come to blows on the definition of this term and its use in content revision threads. Thus I believe that it needs a page as soon as possible.

Before I begin, does anyone have any suggestions or amendments to my explanation above?

As usual for discussions like this, Staff-Only, please. If you have any ideas, please direct them to my message wall.
 
I feel like the term is going to die off really quickly, and making a new page for it will just perpetuate it. It doesn't seem to be a common term in vs debating, because everyone knows that they exist. Flash gets tagged by people like Captain Cold. Goku gets hurt by a rock. Arceus nearly dies to a meteor. It seems pretty synonymous to an outlier, actually, but only for the negative aspects. We'd probably need to make a term called Super-Feats or something if it's the exact opposite if that were the case.

Btw, if that somehow came off as rude, I apologize.
 
"(...) the definition of Anti-Feat to my understanding is a "feat" or "explanation" that is a horrifically low outlier relative to the rest of the character's feats"

In my opinion, that is simply a Low-End Outlier. Plenty of series have them, and we need to treat those with honesty and know to ignore them, and not use them as arguments or validations for downgrades.

An Anti-Feat, and its usage as an argument to me is even more troubling. An Anti-Feat isn't a Low-End feat, rather it is a complete lack of feat, which is then treated as a Low-End / Valid feat in an attempt to downplay.

To use a popular series for an example, Dragon Ball. We have all seem downplayers attempt to discredit the series' Planet / Solar System / Universe level rankings by going "Oh, 99% of the fights have little to no collateral damage.".

Take Vegito Vs Merged Zamasu. This is a battle between two beings who are powerful 3-As, and yet all their conflict does is destroy a couple buildings, and only as they fly through them. A far cry from their ranking as "Universals".

However, this is different from a low-end.

A Low-End would be Zamasu blowing up a Planet or Sun, and that being treated as impressive by the narrative. Meanwhile, a fight involving Zamasu that has little collateral isn't a Low-End, it's an Anti-Feat, because no Destruction Feat was performed. Makes sense?

You wanna know the thing that is most chalk-full of anti-feats in fiction? Gameplay. Due to the limitations imposed by a game, characters typically don't appear nearly as powerful as they are in lore or cutscenes while you control them.

Kratos can't destroy a Continent in game, nor even a wall most of the time, because you need to follow a scripted path, and has to struggle to lift chests and doors due to mechanics.

Sonic never moves at speeds faster than Subsonic, because you the player need to be capable of controlling him.

High-Leveled Final Fantasy characters will still be hurt by Low-End enemies, and won't have increased in speed when compared to their Level 1 selves, because you can't have your character be rendered invincible, enemy attacks need to hit your character, and you also need to control them.

Because of this, Game Mechanics are the absolute worst way to identify and calculate feats, and should typically be used only as a last resort.
 
I would define Anti-feats as like consistent weaknesses (not sure what other word could use), like for example: character showed several times to be weak against temperatures above 500 K, so independently of it durability, any attack that surpass that temperature should damage it. Similar to bullets, if character has showed be damaged or threatered by gun shots, independently of it durability, any character that could use a gun should be able to damage it.

Anti-feats generally limit the capacities of the characters.
 
I agree with Matt. Anti-feat isn't a bad term, but there's already terms that and it's basically low-end feat.
 
If you are above 8-A, you should be 100% invulnerable to bullets, and depictions of the contrary are PIS, and authors being ignorant.
 
Seeing as I'm (probably) the one who inspired this thread I'll weigh in.

OP is basically right. An anti-feat is a low-end showing. But labelling it as a low-end leads to it being too easy to dismiss out-of-hand. Like how if someone renamed water to "Death Liquid" it would be a lot easier to say that water is bad. Names mean a lot.

Anti-feat, while maybe not gramatically correct as to what it means, gets the idea across easily. And no, it's not really obscure. I'm not even the one who made the thread, I just see it used all the time from places like /r/whowouldwin to SpaceBattles to the OBD.

The point of an anti-feat is to show consistency for a character. For example if Naruto dodged light once and then gets tagged by an object said to be just supersonic that would call his FTL ranking into question, particularly if he is tagged by said object multiple times in multiple separate instances.

In fact, the very concept of anti-feats is already used. This is how we determine outliers. If we dismiss them out of hand then nothing is an outlier because there are no more low showings to use in any circumstance.
 
@Matt

So an Anti-Feat like the example you gave above is simply an extension of the AOE Fallacy? The complete and utter lack of a feat despite the character's explicit ability to do so (not blasting apart universes with their attacks despite defeating those who can destroy universes with ease).

Do you think I should write this page, or do you have any better ideas?
 
You are using a slippery slope fallacy. We definitly wouldn't consider nothing to be an outlier if we didn't have "Anti-Feats", and your very definition of an anti-feat is wrong. You are mistaking it with a low-end.

Naruto not being FTL is not an Anti-Feat, it is consistency. Your example doesn't make sense because Naruto being Supersonic+ isn't the Anti-Feat / Low-End, him being FTL is the High-End Outlier.
 
Remember that our system only deal with energy: electric tension, temperature, perforation, force, pressure, geerally those are considered the same in our system; if character has 9-A durability for resist freezing, it can still be damaged by bullets or high temperatures.
 
If we're going to make a page for this, it'd probably be wise to cover the various viewpoints outlined here.
 
An Anti-Feat is different from a Low-End Feat. While the later is a feat lower than the character's best feats, the former is the complete lack of feats. This is why it is called an "Anti-Feat", because it is the antithesis of what a feat is, which is a demonstration of power, regardless of scale.

Anti-Feats can and are used as extensions of the AoE Fallacy, the Game-Mechanic Fallacy, and the Low-End fallacy, with people treating the lack of feats as a Low-End feat.
 
@Matt

How do you determine an outlier if there's no such thing as an anti-feat? What you are saying is essentially:

"We have a set of 5 values. We have 1, 3, 3, 4, and 15. The first four are low-showings, therefore 15 is the true value."

Extrapolating this out a little:

"Bob has busted a planet on 4 occassions and struggled to do so. Here he has busted a galaxy. The former 4 are low-showings, therefore he is actually Galaxy level."
 
But he struggled to bust planets. If he only busted a galaxy once (let's say) then is an inconsistency.
 
Now you are not only using the Slipery Slope fallacy, but also making a Strawman out of me.

You determined Low-Ends by being reasonable, understanding the series in question, being analytical and simply logical.

The existence of Low-Ends are not an argument for outliers.

The number of Low-Ends are not an argument for outliers.

Instead, the context, story progression, logic and validation of the feat in question all should be looked upon.

By the logic you are dictating, we'd have to downgrad 95% of fiction, because in the vast majority of them, the feats we use to rank them as are few and far-between. We typically accept higher-showings than lower-showings.

Dragon Ball has little to no feats, so by your logic they would be downgraded.

This is a flawed logic, and goes backwards against how Vs.Debating has been done since basically ever.
 
Yes. It is inconsistent because he struggled to bust a planet on multiple other occasions. So in this scenario:

Person A: Bob should be upgraded to Galaxy level, here is the feat.

Person B: Bob has several anti-feats showing that Planet level is nearing his limit. (1, 2, 3, 4)

Yes, you can cover this with the term "low showing", but my main concern is the amount of weight "anti-feat" holds vs. "low showing" and how much more often (at least off this website) "anti-feat" is used. A good example of what I mean by "low showing" being easier to handwave can be found in this thread alone with:

"we need to treat those with honesty and know to ignore them"
 
We need to know how to ignore Anti-Feats because they aren't feats. What you are describing are feats.

Please read my original point to understand what an Anti-Feat even is.
 
I still don't see how that is not just an inconsistency. If Hulk struggles to fight Silver Surfer on several occasions, but he beats Eternity, that is an inconsistency. Why call it an anti feat when there's already a term for it?
 
I would agree with Xcano, whe need as both feats as anti-feats to determinate inconsistences and outliers, the reasons why several characters aren't rated higher (mostly DC) is due that. We need to see what feats are more consistent, not like, ignore 20 anti-feats to just apply 2 feats.
 
@Ant

You're missing the point.

Xcano isn't describing anti-feats, he's describing feats. Read Matt's original post.
 
I am not saying it isn't. Xcano constructed an example that is an obvious inconsistency.

What I am arguing about is that what he calls an "Anti-Feat" isn't a feat. Rather, it's another feat.

Look up the meaning of Anti, and it's etymology.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anti-#Etymology_3

It means "Against", "Opposite to", "Contrasting to", "Reverse".

So another feat, even if a lower-showing, cannot be called an Anti-Feat. What an Anti-Feat is is a lack of feats.
 
Exactly what Ever said. As Matt already explained it, an anti-feat is the lack of feats in general. An example of an anti-feat is an author (WoG) statement. "Goku can destroy all twelve universes!" when he does not even have the feats that suggest so.
 
Welp, technically an anti-feat is a feat, is just that the former is limiting the capacities, like, character being knocked by 500 k volts, that would means that said characters, independently of it durability, can be damaged by 500 k volts or more. I could agree that a page of anti-feat is kinda innecesary, since anti-feat could be a wide concept.
 
If you are knocked down by 500k volts, but the series also has feats of far larger potency, then the 500k volt thing would be ignored as a low-end.

What you described also isn't an Anti-Feat, it's an Outlier.

Anti-Feat isn't even a concept, it's just the lack of one.
 
No...an anti feat is the lack of feats; to quantify a showing based off something other than feats.
 
@Antonio

I don't mean to be rude, but can you even read?

Matt's been saying that an Anti-Feat specifically isn't a low-end feat, it's the lack of a feat.
 
Matthew Schroeder said:
I am not saying it isn't. Xcano constructed an example that is an obvious inconsistency.
What I am arguing about is that what he calls an "Anti-Feat" isn't a feat. Rather, it's another feat.

Look up the meaning of Anti, and it's etymology.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anti-#Etymology_3

It means "Against", "Opposite to", "Contrasting to", "Reverse".

So another feat, even if a lower-showing, cannot be called an Anti-Feat. What an Anti-Feat is is a lack of feats.
Click to expand...
Matt I am fully aware of the etymology of "anti", I'm saying it's literally never used that way.

This is like arguing that the word "literally" can't be used figuratively because that isn't what the dictionary says, or that you can't use "y'all" because it isn't a real word. Language is entirely arbitrary and I've yet to see a single vs. debate website ever use the word "anti-feat" like this.

But, since we're arguing etymology.

Anti meants "against" or "opposite to." Neither of those definitions contain the words "lack of."

The word "feat" means "an achievement that requires great strength."

Therefore, the "opposite to" an "achivement that requires great strength" is "a failure of low strength."
 
Matt's definition makes sense to me. Looking at our other pages for outliers / inconsistency / PIS, it'd likely be for the best to clean them all up (the outlier and inconsistency page seem to be copied from the OBD), along with making an anti-feat page, so our definitions are all consistent with one another and we can reference the other terms for comparisons.
 
I agree with Prom. We need to clean those pages up and tighty up their definitions a bit. '''Then''' we make an anti feat page.
 
If someone has say, 5 instances of destroying a city, and then 1 instance of beating a 4-B.

Then the 5 times they destroyed a city wouldn't now become "anti-feats." Those are still feats. The one time he/she beat a 4-B would just be an outlier.

If someone has 5 instances of destroying a solar system, and then 1 instance of being beaten by a 7-B.

Then the time a city level beat them wouldn't be an anti-feat. It'd be a (low end) outlier or PIS.

I'm not saying a page on the term "anti-feat" shouldn't be made, or that Xcano made it up. But I personally don't think the term makes the most sense or is necessary as opposed to the more common ways people refer to these scenarios.
 
So you're saying an anti feat is a feat that goes against other feats/showings? That ultimately goes back to inconsistency and outlier.
 
Including anti feats would be nothing but redundant for the same reason my intangibility revision didn't pass. We already have terms for it, relatively speaking.
 
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