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@Antvasima (tagging because I feel this is pretty important)
When one goes to in-character matchups in this forum, someone can expect to see a relatively lesser-known or lesser-used power of a character being brought forward as an example of why that character would be able to at least hold his own against another character, to which the most common responses are: "that's not what he starts with" and "it would be out of character for him to use that".
I see this as a pretty big problem, as the people who use these arguments never actually explain, probabilistically or otherwise, why a character wouldn't "start with that", or even what he would start with and why. Which is just as well, since unless a work is actually pretty formulaic, a character's "starting move" can be drastically different in every fight they get in from appearance to appearance. There's a reason we don't specify which attacks and techniques are "starting moves" in a characters profile, because there is generally no consistent standard of "starting move" for any given character.
The same way, no explanation is given as to why an ability used in a work's canon would somehow be "out of character" for a given character to use, or what would inherently be "in character" for him to use. Of course, intrinsically "in character" attacks don't really exist either, and they're frankly a made-up concept to begin with.
It gets even worse when the power being brought isn't something used as an example of what he would "start with", because then the "he doesn't start with that" rejoinder becomes increasingly revealed to be what it actually is most of the time: a way to dismiss an ability that has been used in-canon simply because it might cause their preferred character to lose.
Unless we start going to profiles and specifying unique and special "starting moves" out of the attacks and techniques sections, I say that "b-b-but he doesn't start a fight with that move" should be considered fallacious and a complete non-argument. I hope you people reading this can agree with me.
When one goes to in-character matchups in this forum, someone can expect to see a relatively lesser-known or lesser-used power of a character being brought forward as an example of why that character would be able to at least hold his own against another character, to which the most common responses are: "that's not what he starts with" and "it would be out of character for him to use that".
I see this as a pretty big problem, as the people who use these arguments never actually explain, probabilistically or otherwise, why a character wouldn't "start with that", or even what he would start with and why. Which is just as well, since unless a work is actually pretty formulaic, a character's "starting move" can be drastically different in every fight they get in from appearance to appearance. There's a reason we don't specify which attacks and techniques are "starting moves" in a characters profile, because there is generally no consistent standard of "starting move" for any given character.
The same way, no explanation is given as to why an ability used in a work's canon would somehow be "out of character" for a given character to use, or what would inherently be "in character" for him to use. Of course, intrinsically "in character" attacks don't really exist either, and they're frankly a made-up concept to begin with.
It gets even worse when the power being brought isn't something used as an example of what he would "start with", because then the "he doesn't start with that" rejoinder becomes increasingly revealed to be what it actually is most of the time: a way to dismiss an ability that has been used in-canon simply because it might cause their preferred character to lose.
Unless we start going to profiles and specifying unique and special "starting moves" out of the attacks and techniques sections, I say that "b-b-but he doesn't start a fight with that move" should be considered fallacious and a complete non-argument. I hope you people reading this can agree with me.