Hi everyone felt like an update, but didn’t really know what to write about, so I’m just gonna share some opinions about popular fiction that I don’t think I’d have enough to say for a full post on their own. (Though the post may grow in the writing, we’ll see.)
Okay so with that in mind
Star Wars: Rey is NOT a Mary Sue, stop saying that.
Okay so right out of the gate a seemingly unpopular opinion, I’ve encountered people on both sides of this argument, and I have to say branding Rey as a Mary Sue, especially within the Star Wars universe is a “dragon with four wings” complaint at best.
For those who may not know, in writing terminology, a Mary Sue is a character who is seemingly perfect, unrealistically skilled in more areas than is believable and therefore uninteresting at best, annoying at worst. A common complaint levelled at Star Wars: The Force Awakens is that the female lead Rey falls into this category.
She doesn’t, she is not a Mary Sue, she is competent, not the same thing. All of her skills are easily explained by her upbringing and circumstances, she’s handy with a staff? She grew up on a desert planet among thieves and scavengers, if she hadn’t learned to defend herself she wouldn’t have lived very long. She knows her way around spaceships? She’s a scavenger, the first thing we see her doing is stripping down a derelict spaceship for parts, and it’s soon established this is what she does to feed herself, she’d have to have been doing it most of her life, it stands to reason she’d know a thing or two about how spaceships work.
All of this pales into utter insignificance next to the fact that she is highly force-sensitive, it has been established throughout Star Wars that The Force has a will of its own, even if it can be manipulated, she is literally being guided by the cosmic energies of the universe, she has no idea how it works, so it manifests itself as luck, and she only thought to try the mind trick after she saw Kylo Ren try a similar technique on her, and learning quickly is a common trait of force-sensitives. If she was levitating objects and mind-tricking people by the time we first saw her maybe the Mary Sue argument would hold more weight.
Maybe the reason she’s more attuned to The Force than others, (besides her possible parentage) might be that she’s lived alone her whole life and wasn’t distracted by people. That’s another question entirely. But yeah, a competent female is not automatically a Mary Sue, and before you say it, she only beat Kylo Ren because he was critically injured before they fought.
Harry Potter: Severus Snape was NOT a good man and deserves no sympathy.
Okay maybe I’m shouting at a dog for barking here because let’s face it, almost every character in Harry Potter is some form of an irredeemable bastard, and the fact that it isn’t noted within the fiction does not excuse them. I could fill a post with just that. With that having been said, I really can’t understand why so many seem to love Snape so much, I’m not saying he’s not an interesting character, but he was not a hero, or even a good person and I doubt he’d have wanted to be called one. The man is a bitter old beta with a victim complex. Okay so most people know the story here, Snape, apparently evil turned out to be infiltrating Voldemort’s army on Dumbledore’s orders all along, the reason for this? He was in love with Lily Potter ever since they met as kids and could never let go of his feeling for her, and his motivation to protect her led to him betraying one of the most dangerous wizards who ever lived. (I can almost hear people going “aww”) except no, no Snape, that does not excuse you.
Throughout the entire series, Snape, who let’s not forget is a teacher, and as such has certain expectations of his conduct, has targeted and harassed Harry, a child, seemingly for no reason. We later find that the reason for his animosity towards him is because Harry bears a strong resemblance to (and allegedly inherited the arrogance of) his father, who Snape loathed, not just for winning the affections of the girl he loved, but also for bullying him.
Okay, so he was in love with a girl who didn’t return his affections, that’s a really shitty thing, I sympathise, we’ve all been there. Not only that, he had to watch as his bully and tormenter won over the woman he loved, consider the wound well salted, that has to sting something fierce. However, the way Snape reacts to these things voids any right to admiration or sympathy he may have had. It doesn’t come up in the films (presumably because it would make him less sympathetic) but Snape pushed Lily away long before she and James were together. Throwing the word “Mudblood” in her face no less, for no better reason that she was also a friend to James. For this reason, those who think “Harry might have been his son if not for James” are making a pretty gargantuan assumption.
This is largely because of the several years between incidents, there is no evidence to suggest that if James Potter had never entered the picture, Lily would have ever thought of Snape as anything more than a friend. Chances are she would’ve just ended up with somebody else for Snape to centre his bitterness on, maybe Lupin? Hell, it might even have been Sirius or someone completely new. I don’t believe for a second that Snape ever had a chance with Lily Evans, for the very simple reason that he is, to quote Shakespeare “a complete prick”.
Perhaps I should elaborate on that stance, not only did Snape never make any attempt to apologize to, or make any form of amends with Lily, preferring instead to lightly stalk her, (which is bad enough on its own) throughout the series, Snape has six years, and within them, innumerable chances to make up for his treatment of her through Harry, and he acts upon precisely zero of them. no, trying to counter the broom curse does not count, as a teacher, it was his duty to protect his students, he had to do that as a standard, in fact if anything, not reporting the incident to Dumbledore was a shocking dereliction of duty, nor does teaching Harry Occlumency, he did that only after express orders from Dumbledore, and then stopped the first time Harry did something he didn’t like.
Also here’s the big thing, he gave Lily and her family up to Voldemort, not caring a bit what happened to them, he only felt the motivation to betray Voldemort when he knew Lily was in danger, that shows how much he cared about Lily’s happiness doesn’t it? He didn’t, as long as she was alive, and therefore, he had a chance with her, he didn’t care what happened to the people she loved most, he didn’t love her at all, he just wanted her, that’s not the same thing.
Every time Snape had the chance to do something commendable (of his own volition, not out of necessity) he instead chose to act through bitterness and take said bitterness out on the blameless child of the source of his frustrations, it takes a certain kind of person to do these things, so to the people who ask “WHY DIDN’T YOU LOVE HIM LILY!?”…well, probably because he was that kind of a person.
Game of Thrones: As much as I love Daenerys, she’s starting to scare me a bit.
Okay, this one is more conjecture for the future of a series than anything else, if you’re up-to-date on Game of Thrones you’ll know where things currently stand, if not, consider this your SPOILER WARNING!!
Right, (I think this is far enough down the page) Daenerys, the mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Queen of Mereen, the Sultan of Swing, and whatever other nicknames she accrues throughout the rest of the series, is easily what one could consider a fan favourite character, and for good reason. She’s a badass who don’t suffer no fools gladly, and she has that immunity to fire, that’s cool, also, it hasn’t come up in the show, but according to the books, she’s also immune to disease, she has never been sick in any way and likely never will.
Also she’s unfailingly compassionate to the downtrodden, because she’s been there, she was given, basically as a slave to the chief of a barbarian hoard so that her brother could eventually get an army, but she lucked out, and happened to be sold to a husband she grew to love, not only that, but she managed to win the admiration of his people early on. Even after he died when she should’ve been carted off to live out the rest of her days as the Dothraki equivalent of a Loose Women panellist, she instead climbed onto a burning pyre, discovered her immunity to fire and got 3 pet baby dragons out of the deal (this evaded Dothraki custom eventually caught up with her, but as she’s made a habit of doing, she turned the situation to her advantage and got a massive Dothraki army for it.)
In the meantime she managed to obtain a large army of born and disciplined soldiers, gain the support and love of millions for abolishing slavery in a civilisation rampant with it, and take a city for herself to get in some practice at being queen before she finally set sail for Westeros as was the plan from the beginning (and it only took her six seasons.) By all accounts, everything’s coming up Dany, that’s what many have been rooting for since season one, so why does the thought of it unnerve me so? For the answer to that I’ll quote Daario Naharis, he told Daenerys she “wasn’t meant to sit on a chair in a palace” calling her a conqueror, an assertion her track record does support, but there’s nothing wrong with that in itself.
Being a conqueror does not necessarily make one a bad ruler, Robert Baratheon claimed the throne by right of conquest and was a pretty lousy king, but then he was never interested in being a good one, the first book, A Game of Thrones elaborated a bit more on his character than the show did. Robert would’ve taken off and lived as a hunter in the wild years ago if he felt like he could, he confesses to Ned that the only reason he stuck around was because his absence would put Joffrey on the throne, which he knew even then, was a terrible idea.
Conversely, Daenerys is descended from Aegon Targaryen A.K.A Aegon the conqueror, the man who united the seven kingdoms of Westeros in the first place (albeit with the help of some dragons) established Westeros as one nation and also gave rise to the Targaryen dynasty which lasted for hundreds of years, Aegon must’ve been a pretty decent ruler. Daenerys is the daughter of the last king of that dynasty, Aerys Targaryen, in that regard, the iron throne is hers by birth-right, and she would have that claim even if she couldn’t take it by force (which, as things currently stand, she absolutely can and probably will.) But her attitude this season has me a little worried for what comes after that.
Side note; Cersei’s not keeping that throne for long the whole establishment there was in shambles because of all the internal strife, even before she blew up almost the entire court of King’s Landing with the Sept of Balor, there were probably a few nobles there who’s men wouldn’t take too kindly to following her now, we already know about the Tyrells.
Bran’s vision late in the series also concerns me a bit, Juxtaposing images of Daenerys sharply with those of her father screaming “Burn them all!!” Very little in Game of Thrones happens for no reason (except the setup of the Tysha subplot in season one and apparently the whole thing with Gendry being King Robert’s bastard of course) and George R.R. Martin is known for shocking events that break people’s hearts. Would it not just be the most heart-breaking thing ever, if the person everyone was so sure was the unequivocal heroine, turned into the biggest villain? Is that not exactly the kind of thing a sadist like ol’ George R.R. would do? Please stay good Dany, please, and also don’t feed Tyrion to your dragons.
Dragon Ball: Super Saiyan God is definitely more powerful than Super Saiyan 4, here’s why:
Okay, for the first time on this blog I’m indulging perhaps my biggest and most consistent long-standing obsession, I like Dragon Ball, I love it in fact, even the bad stuff (except Evolution, that doesn’t count, Dragonball: Evolution sucks dicks) I don’t even hate GT (though I must admit it’s pretty bad) however, with that having been said, I’m glad it’s no longer canon, because I’m really enjoying the new series Dragon Ball Super.
It begins two years after the events of the Majin Buu crisis in Dragon Ball Z. it first retells the story of two feature films that were released over the last few years, the first of which, Battle of Gods, introduced a new power-up for our protagonist Goku, Super Saiyan God, bit of a mouthful I know, now it’s been a subject of much fan debate whether this new form is stronger than the now defunct Super Saiyan 4, which it has arguably replaced, to properly examine this, I’ll explain how these power-ups and a few other things work for the uninitiated, if you’re confident you know your Dragon Ball lore, skip the next few paragraphs.
In Dragon Ball our protagonist, Son Goku, is one of the last surviving members of an alien race called the Saiyans, (or Saiya-Jin if you prefer the Japanese version, personally I prefer the dub.) The defining trait of this race is that their lives essentially revolve around combat, they love nothing more than a good fight, Goku himself becoming childishly excited at the prospect of a fun challenge. Pretty much everyone of note in Dragon Ball is a martial artist who can channel and manipulate the energy within their bodies (here referred to as “ki”) using it for various tasks, the most common active uses for ki are flight, and projecting attacks in the form of energy blasts, think lasers, but bigger. The passive uses for ki mostly boil down to increasing physical strength and speed, but there’s also some nonspecific telepathic ability with it that’s never fully explained, but allows characters to communicate long-distance.
I’m oversimplifying a bit, but I feel like I’m already frontloading so I’ll get right to the point, Specific to the Saiyan race is the ability to increase one’s power exponentially using a series of transformations, taking the form of a Super Saiyan, (it’s here you can tell the executives just wouldn’t let Akira Toriyama end the series when he wanted to) Originally an ancient Saiyan prophecy thought to simply be a myth, which Goku fulfils during his fight with Frieza (basically space Hitler) upon witnessing the death of his best friend. It is later revealed that the transformation is accessible to any Saiyan who has sufficient strength and a great enough need of it, manifesting after a surge of emotion (the Saiyan race was raised to be ruthless killing machines, and therefore never had the emotional capacity to transform.)
Throughout the series multiple higher levels of this transformation are discovered, to keep track they simply number them off, until Battle of Gods wherein a new Super Saiyan God form is discovered, (there were previously 3.)
Now, the way Super Saiyan transformations work, let’s include the now defunct Super Saiyan 4 for the sake of argument, is to essentially multiply all aspects of the power of the user by a set amount, a common argument for 4 being the strongest is that when Goku obtained it, his base form was as strong as Super Saiyan 3 would have been at the time of Battle of Gods.
That is quite an assumption, and there is little evidence to support it, but even if true, it’s not really relevant, because in order to judge which is stronger, the only way is to ascertain which is the more potent power-up, as the function of a Super Saiyan transformation is to multiply the users current power, what that happens to be at the time is not really relevant.
Okay, so now we get onto the actual working out of it, now would be the place to skip to if you didn’t want the exposition. According to the Daizenshuu (official Dragon Ball encyclopedia) here are the effects of each level of Super Saiyan
Super Saiyan = base power x 50 (5,000% power increase)
Super Saiyan 2: is double that so base power x 100 (10,000% power increase)
Super Saiyan 3 quadruples that, so base power x 400 (40,000% increase)
Super Saiyan 4 has 10 times the power of 3. So, base power x 4,000 (400,000% increase)
By now you should see why any non-Saiyan on the show was soon left in the dust in terms of usefulness, the God form as yet has not been quantified, so in order to work it out, we’re going to have to do some power scaling in relation to other characters. (I’m going to assume you know who these characters are, but it’s really the figures that are important) this is going to assume quite a bit, but I think the gap will be large enough for that to not matter.
At Super Saiyan 2, Vegeta fought Majin Buu, and lost, by Goku’s admission the two of them were equal in that form, therefore I think we can assume that he would have fared no better, later on in the series, Gotenks, in his base form takes on the same opponent, and fares about as well, from that we can assume that Gotenks in base form is equivalent to Goku at Super Saiyan 2.
Later in the series, Buu gets a power-up of his own, essentially doubling his power, (more on why that’s important in a bit) Goten and Trunks train in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, Trunks at one point says “We weren’t half as strong as we are now when we came in here” that hints at more than a double, but to keep it simple let’s assume their power has doubled. Goku is dead and in Otherworld at this point, so his power won’t have increased any,
Assuming that Goten and Trunks have doubled their power, that would follow that when they fuse into Gotenks, his power will have also doubled, putting him, given our earlier estimate, at 200 Gokus, or half of Super Saiyan 3 Goku, Gotenks later transforms into a Super Saiyan, increasing his power fifty-fold, putting him at precisely 10,000 Gokus which is already 2.5 Super Saiyan 4s, later on, Gotenks skips level 2 altogether, and jumps right to Super Saiyan 3, which, given the above figures, is an eight-fold increase, putting him at 80,000 Gokus, or 20 Super Saiyan 4 Gokus, At this level, it is said by both Piccolo and Goten, that Gotenks and Super Buu, are about equal, this becomes important soon, now, in comes Ultimate Gohan. He absolutely owns Super Buu in a humiliating fashion, but then Buu absorbs Gotenks and Piccolo and gains their power, and with it, the upper hand, this is where it becomes important that Gotenks and Buu were equal.
Given that Buu couldn’t touch Gohan before absorbing Gotenks it stands to reason there was a sizeable gap between their power, but Gohan, even being generous, could not possibly have had more than double Super Buu’s power if Buu was able to gain the upper hand by absorbing an equal being, and Piccolo, who, while no slouch, barely registers next to them in raw power. Also given how quickly Gohan began losing the fight, I’d say Buu had gained a considerable advantage, so I’d put Ultimate Gohan’s power at somewhere in the area of 60% over Super Buu pre-absorption, giving Gohan an approximate value of 128,000 Gokus, or 32 Super Saiyan 4 Gokus. (Buu’s Goku rating is not important)
Right and that’s about all the working out I can do, we still have no concrete data on how strong Super Saiyan God is, except that it forced Beerus, the god of destruction, to use 70% of his power, this is an opponent that floored Ultimate Gohan and his 32 Super Saiyan 4s worth of power, in a single kick, (it’s never established whether his power had depreciated in the time gap, but even if it did, it couldn’t have gone down enough to make too much of a difference) yet, Goku, with the Super Saiyan God form, was able to fight him almost as an equal, therefore, the God form is doubtlessly a more potent power-up as a single kick from Beerus had to channel at the very least, 180,000 base Gokus of force in order to take out Gohan, therefore the God power-up must have increased his power by a substantial amount more than 180,000 times base value, so, at the absolute minimum, I’d estimate the God form as being worth base form x 200,000 and that’s seriously lowballing it. If you look back at the figures Super Saiyan 4 is base form x 4,000, that’s quite a gap, putting God form at (at the very least) 50 times more potent than the now defunct Super Saiyan 4 and there you have it, I just answered a question absolutely no one I knew asked, but someone somewhere did.
