Dracula vs Dracula

[Pendaran]

You love bringing this up whenever I disagree with you on anything, don't you?

Dude, your posting history with regards "Character from Marvel vs thing not from Marvel" is what it is.

Cosideringthe defences of Dr. Strange;'s house have kept out Thor, Hulk, and various cosmics, this isn't anything to be ashamed of.

If Doctor Strange needs a power up to defeat Dracula, why should his defenses have been such a problem for him? Strange has also beaten various cosmics, immobilized the Hulk to the point that he had to manage to successfully trick Strange to be able to take further action, what all have you, does this not go right back to "Dr Strange is nowhere that impressive"?

If you want to say Dracula typically isn't shown at that level, sure. I agree with you. He's not. Most character's aren't shown operating at their full potential in the majority of their appearances. Can Dracula beat Dr. Strange and the X-men (not at the same time I mean)? If we're looking at the characters as they normally are and not at their bloodlusted rumbles forum best, then yes. He's shown he can. The big difference is that Drac's A-game is nowhere near Dr. Strange's A-game. I just don't feel it's right to dismiss showings simply because characters aren't busting out their world destroying attacks ever fight.

And your feeling makes your argument a basically inconsistent mishmash.

Why is it impressive that Dracula can beat Doctor Strange if Doctor Strange is just underperforming? What does that show for Dracula beating anyone? "So long as they underperform, Dracula wins".

I'm not using this as a rhetorical device.

If you want to say Dracula typically isn't shown at that level, sure. I agree with you. He's not.

Then why do you feel like you can say "Dracula wins because he can operate at this level" while saying at the exact same time "Doctor strange doesn't normally operate at the following level, it can't be used to dismiss Dracula's win against him as jobbing."

My point here is that's not even rumbles standards, or comics, or characters. That's just, you say one thing, and it completely contradicts the other thing you say. That's just logic stuff.

If we're looking at the characters as they normally are and not at their bloodlusted rumbles forum best, then yes. He's shown he can.

But that's the thing. We're not looking at characters that way, or certainly you're not. You're looking at Dracula at his a-game best, in order to talk about these performances at all, while saying in the face of "but this guy on other occasions did X, Y and Z" "well, that's not how he usually works." Not even "well Dracula did comparable A B and C." (which, you couldn't, because he has nothing to compare with) Or even "well Dracula barely exists so his best showings are all we have to work with." (which, wouldn't be viable anyway)

It's taking some double standards and calling them an argument. Your whole basis is "regular depictions", which turns out to mean "Dracula at his rarest most awesome, and everyone else not." If you don't see why that's problematic to even try to engage with to discuss, I don't know what to tell you man. Like there's no point? You're going to just repeat these handful of fights for Dracula, talk about the unfairness of board standards and how characters don't normally operate so efficiently, while touting when Dracula operated super efficiently, and super powerful.

Again, if characters are nowhere normally as effective or potent as you feel people put them forward as, why is it impressive at all that Dracula beat them, such that you are saying these things show how powerful he is?

[Pendaran]

For the record, the actual real answer to all of this is "because none of these characters are real, there's no such thing as power, and fights go however the writer wants them to and anyone can beat anyone at any time via any handwaved justification whatsoever", but as soon as you go "this thing shows that Dracula can be this powerful", you're treating it like something you can actually talk about like, y'know "this thing logically means this."

Because otherwise no, that thing shows nothing about anything or anyone, it just shows the writer wanted Dracula to win. And you're really, really pro marvel. When it's marvel vs something not from it, you can generally be relied on to post to the tune of the marvel thing winning somehow. And that's fine? There's nothing wrong with that? People want to say the things they like are awesome, especially nerds such as we, having nerd fight discussions.

The thing is when you go "this thing I like wins because of this logical thing." Like it's an actual discussion/debate on something.

At which point people should feel free to be able to say something like "shouldn't this other thing logically mean this instead by comparison though?" To which I feel like they should be able expect a better reply than "no, because I'm ignoring that because I want to ignore it."

That's basically why there's an attempt to provide guidelines to actually weigh performances by and evaluate them in context of others. So that a nerd debate board can do nerd debates. Because otherwise it's just "the thing I like wins, because I say so," while pretending for some reason it's anything more than saying that. And the last time this board worked that way, a million years ago, it was pretty dire.

Like I had a kinda terrible back and forth with The Dork Knight on basically post crisis Superman's power level, but as both he and I have said, at the very least its basis was in "here's why I think this showing is comparable and valid to these other showings" to which the rejoinder was "here's why in fact it is not in terms of the context of those showings" or "here's why this showing is valid to the character's capacity" to "the full logical ramifications of if it was should discount it." or "here's what I think happened in this showing" to "here's why I don't think what happened was actually impressive."

[master of read]

not sure how i feel about drac being able to slap around norrin like that.

[Alan2099]

The main issue I had here was that people, including you, were blatantly spreading false information about a character needing power-ups and the like when no such thing ever happened nor was even hinted at, as well as your hypocritical instance that a single one-time showing counts while showings that have been repeated on several occasional don't.

I have said what i wanted to say and I now bow out of this conversation.

[The Arbiter]

Yes, yes, but Pen...

Would you care to discuss the semantics of "what is a planet anyways?" with me once again? That's always a fun debacle ;P







....I apologize to anyone who had to read me argue that stuff once upon a time

[Pendaran]

Just for a hot minute to go back to "Dracula and power ups", the reason I'm pretty comfortable noting it puts a huge question mark on Drac's better showings when pretty soon after a couple of them happen, we are shown that Drac has a cult that does power up rituals for him, is that when those showings are otherwise so anomalous to Dracula's.. almost everything else ever, "canon power up cult" pretty easily explains them.

It's also during a time when it was shown that the Darkhold being in the same area as Dracula had been shown to be empowering him, and also various other undead beings connected to Cthon, to the point that they cited the Darkhold amping them up. To the point that when Strange rocketed the thing from said area to Transylvania, Dracula could feel its power seeping away from him. Conveniently, this was the area in which almost all these showings happened (the American Northeast basically).

Or I suppose there's always "Dracula was performing at his best and they were all underperforming, especially Strange. This all the same entirely shows how powerful Dracula is."

It's basically otherwise saying "every time Dracula has been staked by a Harker, fled from a mob of mortals, took on various not all that metahuman beings evenly, has a loss to Werewolf by Night or his ilk, been grappled evenly by Hannibal King* as Dracula marvels at his strength rivalling his own, or otherwise given a fight by him and an otherwise huge litany of things that are his history" are just Dracula completely underperforming even though that's basically routine. And the basis for saying that's him underperforming involves fights where other people themselves underperform.

I mean hey, we do a "based on these feats, most of that is jobbing" all the time, but the difference there is, there are actual things to point to. Here it's "so long as you don't examine what these other characters have done by comparison, this totally shows how powerful Dracula is."

That warps back on itself to something of a point of meaninglessness.

*Hannibal King was disguised as Doctor Strange I guess, if that helps during one of those times? Drac did throw him off in desperation to get to the Darkhold? But then again on another occasion Dracula straight up hauled ass rather than face King+a bunch of arriving cops, so. However.

[Pendaran]

The main issue I had here was that people, including you, were blatantly spreading false information about a character needing power-ups and the like when no such thing ever happened nor was even hinted at, as well as your hypocritical instance that a single one-time showing counts while showings that have been repeated on several occasional don't.

I have said what i wanted to say and I now bow out of this conversation.

As for the Dr. Strange fight, you confuse rumble character showings with actual characters in the comics. 90% of the time Strange doesn't operate at universal destroying levels. For this fight, Dr. Strange went in, casting physical attack spells that didn't work on Dracula due to his vampire nature and ability to turn to mist. Then he tried a mental attack, but that only made Dracula mad. Then Dracula bit him.

For the rematch, Dr. Strange was channeling holy powers and combining them with the whole dark vampire energy stuff. After which he said that he didn't think his soul could take the combined good/evil thing a second time.

If you want to write that as being jobbed,sure. 90% of Dr. Strange's showings are him being jobbed then. At least.

If you want to say Dracula typically isn't shown at that level, sure. I agree with you. He's not. Most character's aren't shown operating at their full potential in the majority of their appearances. Can Dracula beat Dr. Strange and the X-men (not at the same time I mean)? If we're looking at the characters as they normally are and not at their bloodlusted rumbles forum best, then yes. He's shown he can. The big difference is that Drac's A-game is nowhere near Dr. Strange's A-game. I just don't feel it's right to dismiss showings simply because characters aren't busting out their world destroying attacks ever fight.

That was definitely your main point.

Anywho, I know you've bowed out, but again, the entire problem boils down to that you keep calling hypocrisy.. the thing you keep doing. A lot.

"Dracula did this twice in his entire career, therefore it's not a one off." "Doctor Strange did all these things a bunch of times that would make those make no sense." "Those don't count because Doctor Strange normally doesn't do that." Those are your posts, while you call out unrightness and hypocrisy.

If you don't like applying your own logic to your own statements, maybe there is a problem with your statements. It's not a lot to ask that if you're going to demand one standard for one character, I think, that you apply that same standard to other characters before you start telling people how they're hypocrites who don't understand comic books.

[Pendaran]

Yes, yes, but Pen...

Would you care to discuss the semantics of "what is a planet anyways?" with me once again? That's always a fun debacle ;P







....I apologize to anyone who had to read me argue that stuff once upon a time

Yeah, that was great ;p

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Was it NYC Police though?

Those guys took down Thanos.

[Pendaran]

True, the NYC police are a pretty unstoppable force in Marvel.

[Pendaran]

Anywho, moving right along, so, Drac manhandling Colossus, the big performance people like to invoke.

Here is an idle sample platter of Colossus strength performances on his better end: He has carried the Blackbird (y'know, the huge X-jet thing) up from the ocean. He's managed sky tosses from the ground of giant sentinel heads. Guy has smashed a tank with a punch*. ("Those aren't class 100 performances!" Nope, and Petey is no such animal or anything like one, but they're pretty solid stuff for a class 80ish-90 brick really, he has various other things to that tune).

So, Dracula, who had his own 70 issue series and various other miniseries and in fact at one point had a series that actually ran concurrently with his main series for a couple of years, I feel like I shouldn't be asking for a lot here for something comparable (considering the manhandling, it should actually be better than those, but let's just stick with comparable for now). For all I know there totally in fact is. This is a non snark based request.

Karate Kid doesn't have to operate to that standard, you might say, for who he gets away with making feel his shots as far as board views on that as valid? The whole "so what has this guy done outside of fights to justify them" thing. Well, it's actually interesting that Karate Kid was mentioned as a comparison.

Karate Kid, who by contrast had a 15 issue at most series and was otherwise, being real, a secondary character in Legion of Superheroes best known for his pretty awesome pre crisis death scene (until that got unmade, bleh) and who otherwise doesn't actually have a lot of "times where he showed up and actually did noticeable things" in the grand scheme, actually has, for instance, a few power of his martial arts nonsense for damaging stuff showings outside of his direct fights that people point to. The guy has busted up inertron and shattered the emerald eye, both object/materials of extreme durability (and on a much, much lesser but still amusing note, a meteor was once called down to Earth to hit him. Not a huge one really, it was about as big as he was, but still. A meteor was called down to Earth to hit him. He kicked it apart, because of course he did.)

If I can pick out a couple things for Val for the potency of his karate nonsense, it shouldn't be an impossible ask for Dracula to have busted out some Colossus scale strength. Even just the one time.

*Imma be fair and note I miiight be remembering that one wrong, if people are thinking of a Piotr tank punching scene that has asterisks. I'm going off of pure memory there.

[The Arbiter]

This tank punch?
https://goo.gl/images/zibaJa

Keep in mind this is a "comic book tank" and seems quite a bit larger than a real world counterpart

[Pendaran]

I remember reading it in some modern era X-comic I immediately strove to put out of my mind like any modern era X-comic I randomly pick up every so often to see if things have improved, so maybe?

Wouldn't his being bald mean that was in his "has Juggernaut's powers" days though? Or was dude just shaving his head for a while?