Author Topic: Lantz's Q and A thread  (Read 24469 times)

Alice

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #30 on: November 01, 2013, 05:20:50 AM »
Well, to elaborate on what Magos is saying further, the Counter Guardians and their interaction with their target isn't too far off from what happens in the human immune system. Even if a cell is healthy, if it displays or is missing the the right receptors, your T-cells are going to kill it regardless. Same with the CGs and Alaya. Anything Alaya designates as a threat the CGs go after to destroy, even if they aren't actually causing a problem. That's a huge reason why Archer is as angry and bitter as he is about being a Counter Guardian.

Interfering with that designates Toshi as a target. He's going to cause more damage trying to stop them than he is just ignoring them. Unlike with the human body, where killing healthy cells is kinda bad and the immune system has checks and balances to keep that from happening, humanity will ultimately be fine even if the CGs do their job, as awful as it is. And by the point they start their work, things are pretty bad anyway, so it needs to be done. So Toshi is actually causing more problems than he's solving.

Also, being able to withstand even a whole hoard of CGs and even having the strength to go toe to toe with a True Ancestor makes Toshi way overpowered. I honestly think his power levels need some serious toning down, he's way too overpowered as he is.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2013, 05:24:09 AM by Alice »

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lantzblades

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #31 on: November 01, 2013, 06:29:11 AM »
I know full well how the cg system works. I never weighed in on whether Satoshi's actions were good or bad in the big picture I simply stated what his objective was, save innocent people. Frankly if he let people die this wouldn't be a story about a hero. He faces a hoard twice as I already stated and ducks one fight and loses the other so withstanding a horde is an incorrect assumption.

as for Arc Alice. Did you read Tsukihime? Because there's two very different versions of Arc presented and 30% was stated by Nasu to be about equal to Gilgamesh  so going toe to toe with her isn't unbelievable at all.

Arch-Magos Winter

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #32 on: November 01, 2013, 06:37:49 AM »
I know full well how the cg system works. I never weighed in on whether Satoshi's actions were good or bad in the big picture I simply stated what his objective was, save innocent people. Frankly if he let people die this wouldn't be a story about a hero. He faces a hoard twice as I already stated and ducks one fight and loses the other so withstanding a horde is an incorrect assumption.

as for Arc Alice. Did you read Tsukihime? Because there's two very different versions of Arc presented and 30% was stated by Nasu to be about equal to Gilgamesh  so going toe to toe with her isn't unbelievable at all.
The fact though that he isn't constantly attacked is unbelievable. And the fact that it took a HORDE to kill him is also unbelievable, along with the fact that he escaped the first one. Hell, even being able to go toe to toe with a CG is unbelievable unless you're Arc or Gilgamesh. Or maybe one of the Shiki's or [ ].

The thing is - Arc is only at that power level (Temporarily) because SHIKI FUCKING CUT A BITCH. Otherwise, she's easily able to stop basically everything.

lantzblades

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #33 on: November 01, 2013, 06:42:16 AM »
Alaya is not consistent between worlds arch. Multiverse. I read tsukihime Arch, they stressed the temporary bit there as well but it doesn't matter if she'll get her powers back after the fight, fight's over and arc is not a vengeful stupid bitch face who will hunt him down. And again you assume fight means win.

Alice

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #34 on: November 01, 2013, 06:43:13 AM »
It's hardly heroic if his actions ultimately lead to more deaths than he's trying to prevent, however. Plus if they can't actually kill him as you say, there's no way they can stop him from messing things up, and he'll end up destroying everything in the end. That's where it's a huge problem. And as for the latter, you didn't make that clear, so I couldn'tve known that.

And as for Arc, the difference between her and Gil is that Gil tends to be even weaker than normal against most opponents thanks to the whole, "King of Carelessness" thing. From what I remember, Serious Gilgamesh and 30% Arc are about the same power level. Shirou was only able to take Gil down because he had a great counter to Gil's moveset and because Gil didn't take him very seriously.

To be able to take down a serious Gilgamesh or even an Arc at 30% is no small feat. Hell, even in Extra, de-powered as a Berserker she still gave Hakuno and her/his Servant a reallly hard time. Even as Saber's son, he shouldn't be able to fight her on even ground like that, not easily. Even if you say he'd possibly lose, the fact that he can give Gil a run for his money by doing so makes him a bit on the overpowered side.

Combined with all the toys Toshi seems to have at his disposal, the problem is that he comes off as too strong with too many powers with too few weaknesses, which can take something major out of a story.

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #35 on: November 01, 2013, 06:44:58 AM »
Alaya is not consistent between worlds arch. Multiverse. I read tsukihime Arch, they stressed the temporary bit there as well but it doesn't matter if she'll get her powers back after the fight, fight's over and arc is not a vengeful stupid bitch face who will hunt him down. And again you assume fight means win.
>"Alaya is not consistant between worlds"
>Alaya is linked to the throne
>Throne of Heroes is consistent between worlds
>Therefore Alaya is consistent between worlds. Your statement is false

THEN WHEN IS THE FIGHT TAKING PLACE? I know she won't seek vengance but to me Satoshi is seeming more and more like a wish fullfilment fantasy sue by the second.

lantzblades

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #36 on: November 01, 2013, 07:16:25 AM »
Alaya doesn't exist in every universe, because alaya only exists when humans do so. Further they cannot kill him because of the paradox.

Arc isn't a when but a which.

lantzblades

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #37 on: November 01, 2013, 07:27:15 AM »
Double post because Alice's post only just showed up for some reason.

regarding his dealings with the cg I'm sorry but you gripe that he's a Mary sue but protest an obvious character flaw slash mistake  on his part. You're sending mixed signals at best.

who said Arc was serious? I certainly never did. As for Gilgamesh well, frankly he is for some time the main antagonist in a way. So becoming good enough to beat him is a standard matter of story telling, I'm not writing a tragic story about the villains winning.

as for his toys, you might want to name them.

Alice

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #38 on: November 01, 2013, 07:53:47 AM »
...I think you managed to misinterpret most everything I said.

First of all, Sues can make mistakes and still be sue-ish, but that's not the main point here. The problem is that the canon stuff has no way to counter him, and as far as I know, Toshi's supposed to be seen as in the right here, or at least heroic. So if he destroys the world in his misguided attempts to save people from CGs, there's nothing to prevent the destruction he causes. That's actually somewhat villainous, but we're supposed to still see Toshi as this paragon of everything good and right that just made a shortsighted mistake, which isn't what this is.

Plus being able to withstand hoards upon hoards of CGs is, again, way too strong. The fact that he can travel through time to begin with is way too much, especially with how strong he already is.

And I said 30% Arc was about as strong as Serious Gil, I never said anything about her being serious. What I said is that even if she's just playing around or not at full power, she should still be giving him a hell of a time.

And in this case for beating Gil, it's a matter of presentation. Shirou comes off as more reasonable as Toshi because he's exploiting some of Gil's weaknesses even though he's weak, whereas Toshi comes off as way too strong just from how he's presented, and also with too few flaws, so it just feels cheap when Toshi does it because it feels like he's pulling powers out of nowhere. There's no satisfaction in that victory.

And Toshi can travel through time, has the Dragon reactor, can summon knights at will, can create magic armor out of nothing, can make a castle out of thin air, can heal constantly, has Avalon, is immune to elemental damage, has at least three overpowered swords, has magic on par with Merlin, has a Reality Marble where he can force anyone inside to do whatever he wishes if he beats them, plus a variety of other powers.

Plus the ability to make crowds swoon at his hotness when he lands when they should be running like hell away from the smoldering crater full of Grail Mud. In other words, it's way too much. Maybe people can beat him, but it sure doesn't feel or seem like it from what you've presented to us.

And he also has no actual weaknesses, physical or psychological other than the stereotypical one of "his family" and that some people can beat him... somehow that I'm aware of. He has pretty much no personality flaws that aren't there thanks to outside interpretation of the character. Again, it's all in the presentation.   

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lantzblades

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #39 on: November 01, 2013, 08:19:22 AM »
The character sheet does not reflect any given more or the growth between those points. He doesn't have the dragon he IS the dragon. There's a big difference. As for him being right I never said that, indeed the lack of a clear option is part of the point.

no idea what you mean by the crap about hotness.

he does not withstand a horde of them Alice, this the third time I've said as much. Please pay attention.

as for Arc the narration never says a word about the fight only that it happened.

As for Gilgamesh you are just making assumptions about their fights as you've seen none of them and indeed in the prologue Satoshi briefly references loses to Gilgamesh in a four on one assault.

His reality marble has limits and it establishes a fair fight which includes the fighters choosing the condition of their opponents's loss. That's not over powered because both fighters have to obey the conditions set out. It's an equalizer.

the weapons and powers granted him on that sheet are earned slowly  through hardship like any hero (except Perseus) and given that he's over two thousand I'd say he hasn't gained very much given the setting.

Satoshi cannot travel through time. He is made to do so with or by others.  Same goes for world hopping.

the castle wasn't out of thin air nor was the arm our. That's just you not reading my rp posts. And he built the knights he did not summon them.

he has plenty of weaknesses Alice, I'm just not shoving a big neon sign over them.

Alice

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #40 on: November 01, 2013, 08:35:13 AM »
He literally is a dragon? Isn't that a bit much? And the problem is that none of us have seen that growth, so we don't have much to go off of in that regard. 

The hotness thing is in reference to this: http://darksidemoon.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,78.msg3679.html#msg3679

Specifically this part:
Rising from the wreckage Satoshi slowly walked out of the crater which was soaked in grail mud and projected a biohazard barrier as his wounds closed. The pain was dull, barely noteworthy if not for the fact that he was shirtless and his looks combined with the massive dragon tattoo on his back was drawing a lot of attention from people especially women who probably thought he was a bad boy. He was but not in the way they thought, Satoshi smiled doing the best impersonation of himself he could manage  "sorry about this ladies, I'll send some guys to clean it up, promise" he remarked jogging off to get lost into the city before those lunatics attacked him again.
They should be running away from the wreckage, not checking out Toshi. The way it's stated here makes it clear that they aren't checking out Toshi because they're scared of him, they're checking him out because they find him attractive.

And the problem is that we haven't seen these weaknesses, nor have you told us what his weaknesses are. We can only go off what we know lantz. It's not like people are telepathic and can read what you're thinking through the computer screen, we don't know unless you tell us.

Again, it's all about presentation. A Mary Sue can still be a Sue without having all the powers Toshi has, after all. It's the way Toshi is presented to us and the array of powers he has. Even in his weaker form, he still seems to be portrayed as too perfect. The fact that he gets constant praise from "Taiga" and "Sakura" in the RP doesn't help matters.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2013, 08:36:14 AM by Alice »

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lantzblades

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #41 on: November 01, 2013, 08:55:17 AM »
A crowd gathered at the site to see what happened. And the mud was inert, no real danger. As for the women checking him out that was more showing a change in attitude rather than pointing out they found him cute.

Taiga praises him because he's her big brother. She'll believe in him forever.

Sakura you have grossly misunderstood.

if you want to know his weaknesses then pay attention. I'm not about giving directions to that stuff, read and you'll be able to piece it together.

no it's not really  too much. His soul was bound to a dragon and when that dragon gave him the rite and later passed away their souls finally unified. Simple fantasy stuff.

Cherry Lover

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #42 on: November 01, 2013, 12:43:31 PM »
Here's the thing - by the time the CG's are called in the situation has reached the point where wholesale slaughter is the best option because otherwise humanity is fucked. By interfering with the CG's he's basically painting himself to Alaya as a threat to humanity.

I don't think that's actually quite true. Counter Guardians are a blunt instrument, they can't do anything but wholesale slaughter. Them being summoned doesn't mean that wholesale slaughter is the only or best option, just that there is an imminent threat which can't be dealt with by normal people.

Have you ever seen the Terminator? Or read fiction about hivemind armies? Units working in perfect tandem with each other are fucking scary opponents because they work together perfectly without error or hesitation. They're willing to sacrifice themselves for a fleeting advantage to allow another to land the fatal blow. It's why they AREN'T useless. It's why Human Wave tactics work, quantity eventually makes quality irrelevant if you can't stop the tide.

It depends who they are fighting. An opponent with intelligence and enough ability can take advantage of their stupidity to kill a large chunk of them in one go. Also, technically, he wouldn't need to stop the CGs indefinitely, he'd just need to stop them for long enough for everyone to escape and, ideally, for the actual problem to be dealt with.

They'd then just adapt and come in force immediately every time he shows up. Alaya isn't stupid.

Honestly, I don't see any indication of Alaya possessing the capacity to do such a thing. Plus, if he's dealing with the actual problem then Alaya should be fine with that. It doesn't particularly care about being stopped as long as the mess is cleaned up.

Quote
...He interfered with them. Logically, he's a threat to the world if he stops a Counter Guardian from doing it's duty. Therefore, extermination is a priority of Alaya, as he is a threat to humanity due to interfering with it's protecting humanity.

And Paradox is always a lazy cop out excuse.

I don't think that Alaya works like that. It only deals with immediate threats, not potential threats. Hence why it doesn't send a whole bunch of CGs at Sakura in HF.

Well, to elaborate on what Magos is saying further, the Counter Guardians and their interaction with their target isn't too far off from what happens in the human immune system. Even if a cell is healthy, if it displays or is missing the the right receptors, your T-cells are going to kill it regardless. Same with the CGs and Alaya. Anything Alaya designates as a threat the CGs go after to destroy, even if they aren't actually causing a problem. That's a huge reason why Archer is as angry and bitter as he is about being a Counter Guardian.

Yeah, but if the cell gets cured by some other method, the immune system stops attacking it.

Quote
Interfering with that designates Toshi as a target. He's going to cause more damage trying to stop them than he is just ignoring them. Unlike with the human body, where killing healthy cells is kinda bad and the immune system has checks and balances to keep that from happening, humanity will ultimately be fine even if the CGs do their job, as awful as it is. And by the point they start their work, things are pretty bad anyway, so it needs to be done. So Toshi is actually causing more problems than he's solving.

He's not causing problems, though, as long as he deals with the mess. CGs might stop the danger growing, but they do not do so in a particularly efficient way. They just kill everything in sight and then disappear.

It's hardly heroic if his actions ultimately lead to more deaths than he's trying to prevent, however.

Yes, it is. Just like MoS Shirou is not a hero despite the fact that his actions saved lives in the long run.

If you save innocent people, you are a hero, full stop. It doesn't matter if doing so incidentally lets something worse happen. Particularly when you make every effort to prevent it happening.

Quote
Plus if they can't actually kill him as you say, there's no way they can stop him from messing things up, and he'll end up destroying everything in the end.

He's not destroying anything. He deals with the problem.

The problem here is that you're assuming CGs act in a manner that is designed to minimise human casualties, as opposed to just ensuring the survival of humanity at all costs. It is quite possible for the problem to be resolved without killing everyone in sight, CGs just don't because they don't have the intelligence to do so.

>"Alaya is not consistant between worlds"
>Alaya is linked to the throne
>Throne of Heroes is consistent between worlds
>Therefore Alaya is consistent between worlds. Your statement is false

THEN WHEN IS THE FIGHT TAKING PLACE? I know she won't seek vengance but to me Satoshi is seeming more and more like a wish fullfilment fantasy sue by the second.

Actually, it's not even clear that the Throne is consistent between worlds. Certainly I remember an argument on BL that implied it is not. And Alaya certainly shouldn't be. Alaya is the spirit of humanity, and I don't see how that could realistically travel between worlds. Plus, if Alaya is a multiversal entity, then humanity is never in real danger, because there will always be other universes. So, CGs should never be needed. If one world dies, there are an infinite number of others.

First of all, Sues can make mistakes and still be sue-ish, but that's not the main point here. The problem is that the canon stuff has no way to counter him, and as far as I know, Toshi's supposed to be seen as in the right here, or at least heroic. So if he destroys the world in his misguided attempts to save people from CGs, there's nothing to prevent the destruction he causes.

He's not causing any destruction, and he is a hero. Allowing innocent people to be murdered because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time is not something any real hero should do.

Quote
That's actually somewhat villainous, but we're supposed to still see Toshi as this paragon of everything good and right that just made a shortsighted mistake, which isn't what this is.

No, it fucking isn't. Saving innocent people is not villainous. Ever.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2013, 01:27:53 PM by Cherry Lover »

Alice

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #43 on: November 01, 2013, 02:17:50 PM »
Saving innocents definitely isn't bad, no. But when the action that's attempting to save people a handful of people could cause thousands to die, no questions asked, then it's a bit different. We don't even have the justification of them being loved ones in this case. Taking risks to try to save even more innocents isn't bad, but a gamble on this grand of a scale is too risky and could cause far too many deaths as compared to lives saved.

Again, CGs only show up when some real bad shit is going down. The better solution is to always try and prevent the thing that would warrant CGs appearing to begin with, not stopping them once they've already shown up.

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lantzblades

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Re: Lantz's Q and A thread
« Reply #44 on: November 01, 2013, 02:22:50 PM »
You raise a lot of good points Mike and pretty much sum up any counter argument I would have made but frankly  I don't think it is a productive use of thread space to argue further about alaya's sweepers, Nasu has set them up as a completely inhumane option to the problem. If Alice and Arch want to think they are unbeatable or correct in what they do that is there business. The Counter Guardians are not well defined in terms of the multiverse or their interaction to the throne and it's clear in swords dancers that Archerko stops Archer without retribution and without Nasu further explaining the cg I simply choose not to accept their interpretation which is my right.

let's move on to other questions now.