So hello there. I’m Capejedi, and I’ve made 23 Prediction Blogs on my own as of writing this. As Tricky vs Gamzee is kind of the end of the original “season” of these, I thought it would be interesting to briefly cover my thoughts on all of these in hindsight, as I haven’t really talked much about them and want to share my thoughts over them.
Quick shout out to Tru of Media Mania, who did their own version of this. I can assure you I did not rip them off, as I was planning on making this privately before that came out, but motivation is a cruel mistress.
The one that started it all, and while there are bits which age it a bit, I do still look back on it pretty fondly. Originally, when I was making this blog, I didn’t even intend for it to turn into a big series, as I’ve made quite a few random DB projects that never really went anywhere (I have several planned scripts for DB related videos in my drive that I have not touched in over a year to this day). But I found the process of making a blog very enjoyable, and I thought this was an idea interesting enough that I would be the one person who could do it.
The process of making this was a bit of a weird one. Bob was the easier one, since I just had to watch all of his episodes and keep notes as I did, and he thankfully was pretty well documented, with only a couple minor bits I had to stretch to find. Olaf was a bit harder, given ASOUE isn’t as well covered, and I did have to go to some weird picks to get footage (I never thought I’d be thanking the AMV community), but I did enjoy revisiting the series since I’m very nostalgic for it and got more of an appreciation to it.
The only point here that I might call a “failing” is on the stats side. I didn’t really go too far into the higher end of Simpsons stats, which I would imagine is most people’s issue with this match in general given how high they can get compared to ASOUE being more relatively grounded. I was kind of aware of them at the time, I just didn’t really want to go too deeply into it, mainly because it was way more than was necessary to justify Bob winning and I didn’t want it to come off as a complete stomp as my first blog. I also just didn’t get any calcs for Olaf, which was caused by a combination of “most of these feats are very unimpressive comparatively so I don’t need to break down number wise why Bob is superior” and “I am scared of math”. I do think both series definitely could use a second look over, but I think this still stands as a fairly good opening to my blogs in my opinion.
After my enjoyment with Bob vs Olaf, originally I tried to do a bit of a pattern where I cycled between matches with a lot of research and marches with little research, to help try and diversify things a bit. This felt like a pretty good pick for that, as both Syndrome and Tighten are pretty simple characters from series that didn’t have a lot to them. And that led to this being a pretty simple blog to make.
There are of course parts of this I don’t agree with, most notably how I included stuff from the Lego game and a random non canon internet ad, both of which I have heard some people take issue with and I definitely wouldn’t include if I did it nowadays, but at the time it was a case of “well Incredibles is such a small franchise that I may as well include this”, and it also led to my first actual calc, so I don’t begrudge doing it in hindsight. I also did go out of my way to include some feats for Tighten that weren’t just lifting from G1, and it did lead to it being a pretty close debate.
Now of course, this is the first blog where it’s a bit outdated in some areas, most notably with the new Megamind show potentially buffing things. Saul did end up covering the blog again, which he had lined up before he was aware that I had done it first. I don’t begrudge anything about that, since I knew the show would be coming out and make it outdated and I don’t think one blog covering a match should stop others from doing it, especially as I am a solo blog as opposed to the bigger group based ones. I even ended up helping out with it, which was my first main experience with a group blog that actually came out. But I don’t think that takes away from my original blog that much, so I still look back fondly on it.
This was my second “big” blog to cover, and it’s probably the first big blog where I have some major issues in hindsight. The first big thing would be that it’s pretty outdated as far as stats for Yakuza goes, as while I do have my issues with some of the higher tier scaling arguments, I will concede that arguing the series is just building level nowadays is a bit ludicrous. Though at the time that was still a pretty contestable thing to claim, as plenty of the more notable arguments for the series being higher are for games which have come out since the release of this blog.
I might try to rectify this with a different blog for the series sometime in the future, but as you might be able to guess from my wording in some of the Before the Verdict section, this blog was kind of the big starter for my growing resentment to Yakuza VS stuff. Without sidetracking too much, a combination of exhaustion from discussing the series with certain people and losing interest in the series in general has led to me not really wanting to talk about most matches for the series currently. As such, while I won’t write off the idea of me doing another Yakuza blog entirely, I also wouldn’t hold my breath for that being a thing anytime soon.
The other major thing is that this is the first blog where I added a dedicated scaling section, since that was starting to be a standard thing blogs did in the wake of G1. And this one really did not need it, frankly. Most of the major feats were stuff these two already scaled to on their own, all the extra section did was just add more fluff to the page. I personally feel like the scaling section is something that should only be added if it’s needed, and while there are a couple cases of me feeling I should have added one, this is the only one where I feel it did not need to be added.
But don’t mistake that to mean that I dislike this blog now. I do think I was able to give a lot to talk about for these series, and aside from the stat section, I think all of this holds up fairly well. And I actually feel like I was able to lay out why this is a match I think can work well enough, given it’s a pretty controversial match depending on where you talk. At the time I may have been trying to use it to try and convince people to like it more, but I do still think this is a good match and far from the horrible idea I hear some people say it is.
First off: Yes I am responsible for this match being somewhat popular. Yes, you can kill me now. Anyways, this match originally started as an in-joke between me and some of my friends, and I ended up setting it up as a blog I was going to make pretty quickly. This was actually the fastest turnaround I had on any blog I had made up to this point, given I was able to make it in less than a week if I remember correctly. Not too surprising seeing as there’s not a lot of weird bullshit to go over with these characters, as what you see is what you get for the most part.
Though this does kinda show that fact in a few points. Mostly on the research side, as while I did try to see as much as I could, there were a couple points where I don’t think I gave it total due diligence. Most notably, I didn’t really go too into the Scream TV series because it was very hard to find footage of, and I didn’t mention the higher arguments for Baldi since I was unaware of them at the time even if I feel they’re blatant outliers. Both of these things are kind of big issues, and honestly is why I feel it’s the one blog I’ve done that I would feel like outright redoing. No I am not joking, I am going to redo this match at some point, and you will all fear it, because this is a peak match that deserves to be shown at full strength.
But beyond that, I still like this blog, and I am glad I was able to bring it in at such an early point. I can respect why this is a borderline joke match to most people, and I can get issues people have with either a comp Ghostface match or a Baldi match where he’s fighting a far more gritty opponent. But I don’t really care, I just think this is a very funny idea, and if it somehow ends up becoming my biggest legacy in this community, I will not mind it one bit.
This blog is a bit of a weird one. At the time I made it I had recently started liking the match, and I thought it would be alright to try and cover it. For Oersted’s side, I think I did pretty well with it, as Live A Live is a game I like a lot and covered pretty thoroughly. The issue, though, was with Garland, as I had decided to include Dissidia here. Granted, part of it was that I learned about Garland’s Dissidia storyline and thought that would give a good contrast to Oersted in a fight animation, but while that is a good thing for the match being an episode, it was not a good thing for the blog, as I had just thrown myself into the deep end of convoluted JRPG scaling.
And that was mainly because I was working mainly under the VS Battles Wiki for research on Garland’s end, since a lot of the Dissidia based scaling stuff is a pretty big blind spot to me. And that just led to the blog becoming very one sided, to the point where it is the biggest stomp I’ve ever done stat wise. And turns out that actually there were a lot of issues with how VSBW handled Final Fantasy scaling, and it kinda hurt the blog since it all turned into “gee I wonder if the Town-Universal and Rela guy can beat the Island-Multiversal and MFTL guy”. And then I also include stuff from Jack Garland as well despite him being a different guy entirely… yeah I feel like I very much did not cook with this Garland scaling.
And it really hurts since I know it is a far more interesting discussion without Dissidia stuff, as shown with DBD’s take on the match, which ultimately overshadowed my blog despite mine coming first. While I do have some misgivings with this blog and certain arguments it has for Oersted’s side (seriously, as based as him winning would be, how the hell did he get the majority here), this blog’s handling of Garland’s side is far better than my take. When I do another Final Fantasy match, I’m just going to make like how I did Takumi and nix the cross scaling, as that’s just far more interesting as a discussion. While I do still like this blog, it is still one that I think could have been done a lot better.
Shotaro Kaneda vs David Martinez
And this is the first blog that I feel could qualify as an impulse pick. When I lined this up I had recently watched the Cyberpunk Edgerunners series on Netflix and enjoyed it, so I felt like covering it. And of his options I thought Kaneda would be an interesting pick to actually go over in blog form, seeing as Tetsuo tends to take a lot of the attention in Akira VS Discussions. I still kinda like the match now, though I do get why some people don’t think it works that well.
This blog is also notable in being the first time I opted to play around with comic panels to make the edited images, which has kinda become a trademark part of my blogs. I remember when I first made that decision I think I was just trying to make some of Kaneda’s side a bit more interesting to look at, and while not every blog I’ve made gives much of a chance to show that, I do think it helps gives me a bit more of an identity than others.
There are some bits I wish I did a bit better, mainly being the conclusion. The Tertiary Factors segment definitely feels a bit too long, as it basically feels like I’m going over everything in that one section despite the stuff it’s discussing feeling more relevant to put in the earlier part. Makes the conclusion feel a lot more long winded than I’d like, especially since this is not a particularly complicated debate. It’s not bad, just pretty flawed.
Scott Pilgrim vs Travis Touchdown
This is the first blog that kinda had a big gap in the schedule I had been keeping, as there was about 2 months between it releasing and Kaneda vs Davis. That was based on a combination of me having some events in my personal life that left me not with a lot of time to work on it and the fact these are characters which are a lot more complicated to break down than others I did. And my feelings on the blog overall are a bit complicated.
On the Scott Pilgrim side, after staying pretty standard with Kaneda’s panel editing, this is the first time where I was able to get more dynamic with my edits of them, mainly thanks to Scott Pilgrim being a lot more dynamic in terms of comic panels. But this is also probably the coverage that I feel has aged the worst, and not just in the sense of this coming before Takes Off, as there are quite a few things I claimed here which I do not buy nowadays. In my defense, Scott Pilgrim scaling can be pretty confusing and there are specific arguments I was responding to that were on wikis that are now lost to time, but I do think certain things could have been worded better.
As for Travis’s half, this was a bit more of a nightmare given No More Heroes is a series that has a lot more convoluted stuff to go over. The big elephant in the room here is that I decided to limit Travis to pre NMH3 stuff. Part of that was that the original games were the ones I was a lot more familiar with, but it was also because it would be way too much of a stomp. I did make the mistake of still including TSB, which is an even bigger blindspot for me that doesn’t really make much sense to cut off due to the big time jump between in and NMH2. Plus there was a lot of stuff from that game I really did not give a proper look at in hindsight, but I’m just gonna leave that for whoever wants to cover Travis next.
And all that nerfing didn’t even matter because this still ended up as a huge stomp on Scott. It actually kind of shocked me how badly he was stomped as I was making, as I always knew this match was treated as a stomp even before NMH3, I just didn’t hear much discussion on the debate besides “lol statstomp”, which is indicative of the community in general focusing way too much on the stat sides of the debate sometimes. Hence why I thought it was still interesting to actually break down the discussion, and why I feel stomps have their place in blog form even if they seem pointless to cover in something that’s focusing entirely on the debate.
That said, I do think this is a pretty fun read even with all those caveats due to the in-character writing. I remember when I was making the blog that I felt it needed something special to make up for the fact it took a while, and I decided to use the chance to channel my roleplayer powers. It was pretty fun trying to keep their commentary both in character and somewhat distinct, with Scott staying a bit more casual and laid back, while Travis was more direct but still had moments of getting sidetracked. I especially like the sections where they more directly banter at each other, that’s something I feel blogs that break the 4th wall like this should do more often.
Finally, I did end up planning a reexamination of this match at some point, but I ended up scrapping the idea. There were a couple big issues I had with that which led to it being scrapped. First off, a lot of it felt more like me covering general issues related to my coverage of Scott Pilgrim rather than stuff related to Takes Off specifically, as due to him being AWOL for most of the show, he’s the one major character who really didn’t get any buffs from it besides general scaling stuff. Secondly, I had significantly less to say about No More Heroes stuff, it would all basically just be me including stuff from the 3rd game that I ignored, and that felt like a particularly uninteresting discussion. I’m also generally not interested in these simpler mini-blogs that ignore most of the blog format to just focus on the conclusion and had trouble building the motivation to continue, since it feels like I’m just ignoring a lot of the blog format. Finally, the fact it still would be a pretty overwhelming stomp for Travis, as I think there is simply no argument for Scott winning even under equal stats, meant it would be exceptionally pointless for me to be covering the same match again, even in a theoretically shorter form like this. So I made the call to cut it in favor of covering a different match in the future with the actual star of Takes Off, as that just sounded like a more interesting use of my time.
So yeah, a lot of complicated thoughts here. I still do appreciate the experience of making this, since it gave me a chance to experiment with some ways of covering it, and this is still a match I really like and hope to see at some point. Though yeah, if anyone else wants to take a second shot at these characters or match, I am very much not opposed. Stands for all of the matches on here but this one in particular is the one where I feel both characters are definitely deserving of a more up to date discussion.
One of the big things I try not to do with these blogs is just restate information other blogs did with no real contribution myself, and I do think this kinda suffers from that, since a vast majority of King Knight’s stats and the BTV are pretty much lifted from G1^2’s Shovel Knight vs Dig Dug. This isn’t the worst example of this I’ve done, as going over King Knight’s individual equipment gave more than enough new stuff to be worth reading and there really weren't any gaps in their research, but I do wish I was able to add more to it myself in hindsight.
A part of the blog that’s aged more poorly though is in the Shrek stat coverage. Jack only has 15 minutes of screentime, so his individual coverage stands up well, but the stat side of things is pretty low compared to their more modern numbers, as this was released before Point 5’s Puss vs Mao Mao gave the Shrek verse more solid scaling. I wouldn’t say that makes this blog wrong in hindsight, as King Knight still has stronger numbers in my blog and has higher arguments beyond that, but I do wish this did come out later so it could be a bit more “accurate”.
But beyond that, I do still like this blog quite a bit. While I’d imagine it’d be a bit more controversial nowadays, I think my decision to not include more general equipment from the other Shovel Knight games was a good call here, as I’ve seen a lot of SK VS discussions can quickly boil down to “can they get around the funny passive time stop” over all else, so this helped give a chance to cover it in more complicated terms. I do hope other blogs can follow that example if anyone besides Shovel Knight gets another blog, but I can also see why people wouldn’t want to just unnecessarily restrict like that.
Anyways, this was pretty good, hope I can keep this streak going…
Ah, hell.
Now I’m not sure about general opinions on this one, since not many people really talked about it when I released it. But personally, this is my least favorite of the blogs I’ve made. Not really so much for the content of the blog on paper, I feel like I covered all the notable discussion points for these characters well enough and it stands up pretty well. But I do think it has a couple notable flaws that leave it not really that well done in retrospect, as well as doing what no other blog I’ve made has done and made me like the match less when making it.
For Toko’s side, I think it mostly holds up alright. I feel I did a fairly good job covering as much as I could, with the only point later Toko blogs brought up that this didn’t is the weird situational regeneration she had in a novel that I will freely admit didn’t bother touching at any point. The big issue I have is that the stat side especially feels like it’s just going over all the stuff the Monokuma vs Korosensei blog brought up without adding too much, which I don’t like doing since it feels like I’m barely contributing to their discussion.
Seven’s side, though, feels like where the bigger issues with this blog are. First off, he doesn’t have many calcs. I will say this is mainly because the Seven blog I used as reference (which has since been deleted) did not actually have any calcs for the feats they cited, and I was still a dummy who didn’t know how to calc more than just basic speed feats. But the bigger issue I had with this is simply that the more I looked into Scissor Seven, the more I realized this just is not a good Seven match. I always wanted this match more for Toko over Seven, and that is an issue with the match I’ve seen plenty of Scissor Seven fans object to. But really going over Seven’s stuff just made me realize “wow this really is barely touching on what makes him interesting”.
And I feel like this blog kind of unintentionally contributed to that stance? Like, between Seven’s lack of calcs, me not really being able to find much of note in my research, and Toko being the only one to get a lot of my panel editing, I feel like this kind of unintentionally turned into more a Toko discussion over much interest in Seven. And to kind of admit a personal failing, I actually haven’t personally watched most of Scissor Seven because I got three episodes in before realizing it just is not my thing in the slightest. This all might be a bit of me overthinking it, but I just feel like this is one blog I just kind of chugged out, especially with Seven’s side. That’s why I kind of feel it’s easily my least favorite blog. It’s not horrible, it’s just left next to no impact on me in hindsight.
Ah yes, the match between two web comic characters that most people in the community had no idea of. This match was a major passion project for me, as these comics are ones I always read a lot of while I was younger during a phase where I read a lot of webcomics. Revisiting them was a fun experience, even if there are certainly bits of both which aged poorly. And while I initially made it as a bit of a vibe match, I was surprised at how there’s actually a pretty decent theme here for both.
I was also pretty shocked at how close the debate ultimately ended up being, since neither were series where I was sure where they were put in VS until I reread them. The fact both had equally absurd speed feats was a particularly shocking discovery. Though speaking of stats, that’s probably my biggest issue here. This is another blog which I feel suffers a lot from lack of calcs, though sprite comics don’t exactly make it easy to calc certain things, and both being normally universal at their peaks and having busted immortalities made that ultimately irrelevant. I also don’t really like how both of their stat heights are at “vaguely upscaling universal”, but that’s also not really something I had much control over.
I don’t really know how this one stands compared to the others in people’s opinions, since these are characters and series where I feel like I’m in a small minority of remembering while in the VS sphere. But I do hope this has let some people learn a bit more about these series and check them out. And I feel like it was a pretty fitting choice for the mid season finale, as this is back again to series and characters I don’t expect anyone else to cover, which I’ve tried to make the main theme of my blogs. Though before going into the bonus blogs, I feel like briefly going over how I planned these out, as this is about where my plans started falling apart.
As you can see here, I was originally able to stay mostly loyal to the matches I had picked for these, but around halfway through things ended up diverging quite a bit. That was caused by a combination of me losing interest in matches in general, other blogs doing them, and me just thinking they’re matches that I felt were more fitting to be done by group based blogs. I’m kind of an impulsive planner so I don’t think I’m going to stay super stringent on plans in the future, but it was a good learning experience to structure it like this at least.
Gordon Freeman vs Isaac Clarke
This blog has a bit of a complicated legacy personally, for a couple reasons. First off, this was my first bonus blog, which was made during a big cross server voting tourney I made in the lead up to King vs Jack. Quite a few matches from that ended up either getting their own blogs or ended up becoming standard blogs I rolled into later blogs, and I am glad this one won since it’s a pretty interesting discussion.
It was pretty interesting to go through a lot of the two’s extended media and actually get a proper discussion of such a well liked match. It was a bit exhausting covering all of these two’s relevant details, and I was actually kind of going against the popular opinion at the time since I saw a lot of people siding with Gordon. I do think I made a pretty good case for Isaac winning even while losing the stat trinity, since it is so close that stats can be a bit of a non-factor. This was also the first time I made a source list for the blog, which is a bit ironic considering the big elephant in the room with this blog.
In case you were unaware, this ended up getting plagiarized by a separate prediction blog team. I’m not going to link to said blog, since it’s now a pretty old bit of drama I have no intention of reinvigorating. I also don’t personally hold anything against the guys who made it because from what I heard it sounds like it was a case of incompetence over malice, so it’s not as egregious as something like the Deku vs Miles incident. But it, as well as H1’s later version of it, did both kinda expose that there were some gaps in my research which I feel a bit embarrassed about in hindsight. Which does kinda suck, but I think my take is still worth your time.
During the big gap in the buildup for Liquid vs Zeke, April happened to be starting pretty soon, so I of course thought of April Fools blogs that I could make. Immediately this stood out to me, partly because I like horror movies but don’t tend to talk much about it since I find certain characters to be really annoying to talk about <cough Jason cough>. I do want to cover characters like Chucky or Ash at some point, but I haven’t really settled on a match for either of them that I both like enough to do and feel like I could cover on my own. But it was the season for a more funny match, so I decided to be on board for this one.
Turns out it was pretty easy to make this, as I was able to make the entire blog in about 2 days. Suppose it’s not that surprising since these are characters who are only in a single movie, but I think I covered everything I needed to well enough. The one flaw I would say this has is that it was lacking in terms of calcs, but that was mainly because I didn’t want it to be nothing but links to the common feats calc page and felt the gap was easy to show even without specific numbers. Not really a lot else to say, this was made as a simple April Fool’s blog and it’s good as that.
And this one was another one with a bit of a gap in time. Part of it was general burnout from a couple months of doing this, and trying to give myself some kind of break. But this was also my first real look at an army battle, and things kind of ended up getting more complicated than I thought because of that. I had recently gotten back into Attack on Titan and was interested in covering MGS stats since I’m also interested in that series and wanted to go deeper.
This was a pretty interesting debate to go over, as there is a lot in both series people can brush aside due to it not being as relevant to the big guys that get a lot of attention in terms of matches. I was especially surprised to see just how weirdly busted Psycho Mantis is, to the point where I’d say I really want a solo blog for him at some point even if his popular match is someone I genuinely have no idea who they are. And while I did mention I had a preference for Liquid that I ended up passing over, making this blog actually made me like this more to the point where it’s now my preferred. (If you wondering, said other match was US Agent from Marvel, who I didn’t cover because I am not researching a Marvel Comic guy with that much to go over on my own)
If there’s anything I can say about the discussion here, it’s that I really stuck mainly to VS Wiki’s calcs over trying to find other feats. That’s fine enough normally since it is still a fairly good source for calcs, but there are some big numbers for the series that I didn’t really end up covering, most notably with the higher AP and speed Attack on Titan has, which was mostly documented in Round 1: FIGHT’s Eren vs Ken. Not enough that the debate changes that much, since there are also Metal Gear speed feats I didn’t bring up that are way faster than what anyone on Team Zeke should scale to meaning Mantis still should outhax everyone to hell, I just wish I was more aware of them at the time so this aged a bit better.
This was the first case of being shuffling a new blog in quickly, mainly because I had bitten off far more than I could chew with SHODAN vs XANA and needed some quicker matches to cover while I finished that in the background. This one ended up sticking out to me, partly because I felt Overwatch would be a bit easy to cover thanks to Rammatra vs Adam’s release solidifying the stats for the series, and this match felt like an interesting one to focus on given how Fates is a very well liked part of Fire Emblem.
Hanzo’s side was pretty alright to cover. He’s a character I enjoy that is sadly completely irrelevant to the later Overwatch lore due to his brother, and this gave me an excuse to play a bit of Overwatch 2, though I didn’t really stick with it. A big note I have in hindsight is that I saw plenty of other blog makers say Overwatch blogs were a bit complacent and just covered the same bits of information, and yeah this blog definitely falls under that, though I did at least put in the effort to give actual substantiation to some of the common points against MFTL Overwatch.
Takumi’s side was a bit more complicated, as Fates is a part of the series I wasn’t that familiar with going in, but I do think I gave it a fair look over and covered everything I needed to. I do feel like I could have gone over some stuff in more detail, mainly in his intelligence side not having that many links and in how the weapon section feels pretty biased to just looking at the bow based weapons. I also do feel I could have gone over the points with the interseries crossovers not being brought in a bit better, but ultimately that was just not brought up for the sake of fairness. This is also my first blog with a few calcs made by myself, though some of them were a bit too low to really be reasonable in my modern opinion.
I do think the conclusion is easy enough to follow, as these aren’t characters with that much to go over, but I do kinda wonder if the counter against Hanzo just blitzing was explained well enough. The final thing to go over is that this was a bit of a transitional point for my blogs, as this marks the first blog I made after switching from Google Docs to Blogger. I think that helped give my blogs a bit more of a sense of officiality, and I’m glad things have only really gotten better from here.
After Hanzo vs Takumi was a bit of a transitional blog from the movement from Doc to Blogger, this was the first blog where I feel like I really got my groove. Not only was it for two series that had relatively little VS coverage, it’s also got a lot to cover in terms of details people misinterpret. This was also the first blog I made that really got a lot of people talking, to the point where I’d say it’s the one I’ve seen the most people say it’s their favorite I’ve done.
Covering these series was a lot of fun. I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with the Postal series, and I am glad this gave me the chance to get more in depth with parts of it that I hadn’t been as knowledgeable of, even if it meant I had to be exposed to the terrible movie. There was surprisingly a lot involving the series that I had to break down individually, though I’m not sure how popular some arguments were outside of the Doc I was using as reference.
This also gave me the chance to get into Conker stuff, and I do think it’s a very fun series to talk about. I was actually able to cover quite a bit more for him than I’d imagine most people realize, to the point where I was actually able to buff Conker by scaling the bomb from the gameboy game, which was enough to give him the win. And much like with Liquid vs Zeke, working on this blog ended up turning this match from an alt I picked for being more interesting in blog form to my new preferred for both, which is always fun.
And this is the blog that kind of got delayed since it turns out there is shockingly a lot to talk about. It’s kind of weird in hindsight, since this is one of my longer blogs, and yet I don’t really think of it like one of those. That’s probably due to it also being by far the biggest stomp I’ve done. Might not think of that just looking at stats, but XANA completely outhaxes in multiple regards on top of having the superiority in that discussion.
Though I wouldn’t say that’s a big detriment. This is the kind of match where actually defining where they even place and what abilities they have is half the fun, since talking about them is basically talking about their entire series. I’ll admit this did feel like more of a XANA show than SHODAN, with him getting a more lengthy analysis and having a lot more to discuss, but that’s mainly just from the fact he has a long cartoon that ended and plenty of alternate media, unlike SHODAN, who is in three (technically two) games and whose story is quite literally unfinished at the moment.
But I personally think this is still a pretty interesting blog in spite of that, as I feel you don’t really need tables of haxes and resistances to have an in depth discussion. This is a lot like Scott vs Travis in that a lot of the interest is going over exactly why it’s such a big stomp, given these two have a lot of ambiguity in their abilities that mean you can’t just drop their stat comparisons and end the discussion there. This is especially so given this is another army fight, and I was able to give a fun description for that by having other characters give that in character, which was also pretty fun to do.
Though there is a lot of stuff here I feel I could have been more detailed on. While there are a lot of units mentioned here, the conclusion kind of doesn’t bring up a lot in terms of specific counters the army has for each other. This is mainly because ultimately you don’t really need to discuss more than “XANA outhaxes them to death lol” for how much they really affect the debate, but I do wish I gave a bit more elaboration on the army vs army side of this fight, since it is a sick bit of potential for this match that the conclusion brushes over.
I’m not exactly surprised that this is currently my least popular of the blogs I’ve made after switching to Blogger, since it is using characters that aren’t as popular as the other ones, but I’m still pretty happy with how this went. It was fun to go over the extended media for Code Lyoko, and I got the chance to look through one of the more influential games of all time in the System Shock games. Even if it took a while, I still like that I toughed it out and made it through this.
Another blog that was kind of an impulse pick. I had recently ended up replaying the De Blob games, and I really liked them, with 2 in particular ending up as one of my favorite platformers. And I’ve always been a big Splatoon fan, so I thought this would be an interesting match to go over, since despite some people being convinced it would happen when we were getting Aquaman vs Namor based solely on the hint, I haven’t seen much actual discussion for the debate of this match, with Blob not even having a VS Wiki page.
I liked making this blog. For Blob, there was a lot of stuff I had to break down on my own, so it was pretty fun to go over everything I could. And revisiting the earlier Splatoon games and reading the Splatoon manga were also fun, even if I had to fraudcheck the DLC feats. Granted, a lot of the Splatoon stuff was just listing stuff, but I think it was still plenty interesting. This also had a bit of an experimental part where I went over why I like the match during the finish, which hasn’t really stuck around since at the time I saw some drama over blogs that were “pushing an agenda” and didn’t want to play into that, but I have seen other blogs start to include bits like that, so maybe it will be a more active part of blogs in the future.
As for criticisms, I don’t really have a lot to go over. Their history sections are a bit shorter than usual, but that’s mainly because neither series have that much to go over in terms of plot, especially given Inkling doesn’t really have a good individual story to go over. And I do think there are a couple feats which need calcs or could have been recalced with my modern understanding of the stats, but that’s not really affecting the ultimate conclusion too much.
This match I’m still surprised at being the first one to cover it, as it feels like this is a pretty popular match idea for two series that really needed coverage. It was always a match I wanted to break down from when I started them, and I am very glad it did not end up getting yoinked in the buildup. It actually had a surprisingly fast turnaround compared to my other blogs, as I was able to make it in just a week even though it usually takes me at least a couple.
Though in hindsight it’s not that surprising, given Snatcher has relatively little screen time so finding his notable powers was pretty easy. I thought I’d have a lot more trouble with the Devil given my previous struggles getting footage for Netflix shows, but it turns out there were a lot more clips and compilations for him on Youtube, meaning it was very straightforward to get links for his sections and I only had to get a couple bits of footage on my own.
Anyways, I think this was surprisingly a fairly open and shut blog. The debate isn’t what I’d describe as a stomp, but it’s still straightforward enough that I was able to get to the conclusion without too much really distracting from it. Though I do wonder how readable some of the arguments are, as it does kinda read like I’m rushing through points with the Before the Verdict section, at least just to me. But otherwise, not a lot to talk about here. It's pretty good coverage of a very good match.
The Batman Who Laughs vs Dreadpool
If you know, you probably know I’m not super into the Marvel vs DC stuff. There are a couple matches I like, but for the most part I tend to stick out of it. This is in part because I’m not a huge comic guy, as there’s far too much media for me to keep track of, meaning most of my own experience is in watching the movies and shows. I also wasn’t too interested in covering any of the big matches due to me being a solo blog, and that meant I’d have to cover a massive amount of stuff on my own, which just didn’t sound interesting.
However, I did feel like covering characters with less media than most comic characters was more than feasible, along with being a more unique idea than most of the big matches. So I immediately thought about covering a match for an AU version of a comic character. Originally I thought about doing Infinity Ultron vs Heaven Ascension Dio, but I ended up scrapping that idea due to me thinking it was a match that would be better in the hands of one of the team blogs. I also thought about doing Old Man Logan vs The Last Ronin, since I like post-apocalyptic stuff, but then I learned someone else was doing it, so I opted to go with this after some brainstorming.
The Deadpool Killustrated stories have always been a storyline I wanted to see covered, and going over them for the blog was a fun experience. And doing some miscellaneous research on Main Deadpool made me a lot more appreciative of him as a character, which is pretty good. Covering Dreadpool as a whole was mostly pretty easy, as he is a rare Comic character who is completely confined to his storyline, so reading that was mostly everything I needed for that.
As for The Batman Who Laughs, he’s a character I always thought was really interesting and unique conceptually, and since he’s a fairly unpopular character in the general fandom, I thought he’d be an interesting pick for a character no one else was willing to cover. I will say I don’t really get the hate towards him, as I found him more boring than anything, but I’ve heard most of the hate towards him was more due to him being overexposed for a period that’s mostly passed nowadays, so who knows how I would have felt about him if I was following comics at the time.
What was very annoying, though, was researching him. Sure, he’s also a character who’s not gotten as much to go over than most DC characters, but he’s also a guy who had quite a few random appearances in random comic runs due to being a major part of two big crisis crossovers, and that definitely made me more sure of being more a Marvel guy. Though this did make me more appreciative of the work braver blog makers than I have in covering characters with far more history.
Speaking of which, this blog does kinda fall into the same issue I’ve cited a couple times in “there’s a lot of work not made by me” here. But I don’t think it’s as big an issue here, as the general discussion of Marvel and DC street tiers is a pretty commonly talked about subject in blogs, and most tend to agree that they’re on par with each other unless they can scale to Spidey. I could have acknowledged the more debatable feats, but I do not feel knowledgeable enough on those to accurately discuss how valid they are, and I personally find the more interesting discussion with MDC matches are the character’s unique capabilities over their stats, so I felt like it wasn’t needed much beyond “no Deadpool doesn’t scale to Spidey”.
I also feel like noting that this was my most popular blog in terms of views for a hot minute. I was pretty surprised by that, given these aren’t characters I see talked about that often, but I suppose I was underestimating how many views a Marvel vs DC discussion could bring. That’s not enough to get me to do one of the more popular matches, as I’m still scared of going into the deep end with that, but depending on how the Spot’s blog goes, I could maybe see myself coming back for them at some point.
Now, for a guy who has half of his username dedicated to the series, you might be surprised to learn there aren’t a lot of Star Wars matches I like. This is mainly because Legends as a whole is a huge blind spot to me, as while I have gone through a bit of that extended media, I am very much an outsider to the vast majority of it. But I always wanted to do a Star Wars match, and considering that Legends has recently gotten quite a few blogs covering it, I thought it would be unique to do one covering the Canon.
Originally, this was going to be covering Mandalorian vs Courier, as that is a match I like quite a bit due to being a huge Fallout fan on top of being a Star Wars fan. But then I got exposed to the debate of the match being terrible and found out Fallout scaling has a lot of stuff I disagree with heavily, which killed a lot of my enthusiasm for wanting to cover it personally, so when I learned Bang would be covering it, I felt pretty comfortable with not doing it myself. Instead I decided I’d cover this, as I had recently watched Korra and felt like Rey wasn’t someone there was a lot of want to cover, so I ended up thinking it would be an interesting match for me to tackle.
Then along came Media Mania with their announcement that they were doing Korra vs Delsin. That led to me pushing back the blog in my schedule quite a bit as I was waiting to see if they would bring up anything interesting, and it turns out they were, so I’m kinda glad I was able to cover the match with all I could, but I also feel like it was a bit redundant to have Korra get two blogs less than a month apart. Obviously I don’t have any issue with others covering similar blogs, but Korra’s side of my blog felt a lot like the old “going over old stuff” issue that plagued a few of my older blogs, though I feel like I at least was able to give a reasonable different stance on topics they brought up like the Relativistic stuff.
As for Rey’s side, that was an interesting discussion. As I thought this was the first time someone would be working out the canon power of the Force without any Legends stuff distracting, I tried to make a good effort to cover as much stuff as I could, and it was fun to get a bit more into the other media of the Star Wars canon that I wasn’t as familiar with at the time. I was actually kinda thinking Korra might be able to win here since the best calc I found was Vader’s earthquake which was below Kyoshi. But then I found out that there were way higher feats that weren’t brought up by other blogs and that kinda shut down that idea. I do think I kinda stumbled a bit in the conclusion for this one, as I feel I could have been a bit more detailed on their specific abilities and how they’d interact with each other, but Rey winning feels like a reasonable enough conclusion here regardless.
This blog was a bit of a last minute replacement, as I had learned the match I was going to do for the penultimate blog was something another blog was planning to do, so I ended up having to think of a good match. And this felt like a good easy blog I could do between the next two, which had a lot more to talk about. I’ll admit I ended up picking it partly as an excuse to actually read through these series, which I’m glad to have done since they’re both good, though I can also say I’m a bit lukewarm on the match itself personally, to the point where as a match it’s probably my second least favorite of the ones I’ve done.
Though the other reason I thought this would be interesting was because I had always heard a lot of people say this was an easy V dub and was interested in seeing how true that was, since it felt like a lot of Watchmen VS stuff gets overshadowed by talking about Dr Manhattan. Turns out I was right, since I was able to find some notable feats that helped give Rorschach enough of an edge that I feel him winning is a safe bet. And I think I was able to lay out why pretty well, bringing up how things don’t change that much even if you try to stick to just the original comics, and how a lot of V’s more impressive on paper equipment wasn’t really effective in practice.
There were probably some bits I could have given more of an explanation for, since I have seen some people argue against V losing, and I do wish I played around with the panel editing more since it does feel a bit more static compared to my other comic blogs. But I am glad that I was able to show there’s more to this match than meets the eye. And as a simple blog to bridge into the bigger ones that were rounding out the season, I think it works well.
And here’s the second blog I did because it won a poll, and it’s yet another match that I’m surprised didn’t get a blog beforehand. This was a lot of fun to make, as these two series are ones I’m very nostalgic for, and the fact it’s now my most popular blog by view is something I’m glad to see. Getting the chance to go through a lot of these two’s series was really fun, as was managing to catalogue their sheer volume of equipment. I did hit a bit of a snag with Perry’s Respect Thread being on Gifycat and therefore supposedly lost to time, but then I realized that the Wayback Machine is a thing and managed to salvage everything I needed from it.
Though probably the big point against this is that there are some arguments for their stats that I didn’t get around to covering. Most notably, I didn’t really cover Candace’s universal feat from the end of one episode or some island level stuff I’ve seen for the King Julien show. I’m sorry these weren’t covered, but I do have reasons. Part of it is that near the end of the blog I was due to get my wisdom teeth removed and I didn’t want it still hanging over my head while I was recovering so I kind of rushed it out a bit. And I also heard them in passing brought up as “yeah no this is obviously invalid” in discussions so I didn’t feel the need to cover them over the more infamous arguments that the blog brought up. But it is an undeniable gap here and I will own up to that.
Beyond that, I do think this is a very thorough discussion. I went over about everything for these two individually, and I think the argument for Perry taking the win is more than reasonable. I’m also pretty glad no one really objected to the optional equipment section, as that was something I added for fun and was pretty interesting to break down. I’m pretty glad I was able to do a match as cool as this one justice on my own.
And then there’s this match, and yeah if you know anything about me this is quite literally my favorite match, so there wasn’t much question I was planning to be the one to cover it. Even after I heard other people were planning to do it, I knew I had to be the one to get it done, and I’m pretty glad that it managed to not be yoinked beforehand. Since this is another match that is a major passion project, I did my best to be as thorough as I possibly could, and that was a bit of a nightmare for half of this.
To get the more pleasant side done first, Gamzee was surprisingly pretty chill to go over. There were a couple bits of his arsenal that were more complicated, but Homestuck being a convoluted verse also means it’s pretty easy to find links to the relevant discussion points. I even was able to go over some information that wasn’t as well mentioned, like Hiveswap. And revisiting the series in general was a lot of fun, as it is a series I’m very fond of mostly. This was the first time I had to go out of my way to read the Epilogues instead of just seeing them from afar, and yeah they fucking suck.
Speaking of sucking, Madness Combat lore was quite a bit harder to grasp. While I like the series, it is a series that can get a bit abstract lore wise. But the real issue was the sheer amount of stuff only brought up through Word of God, which was a headache to go over, especially after I took too long and CuriousCat died before I could get screenshots of some of his statements on there. I do wonder how the section on Madness cosmology reads to someone more versed in that, as I am not someone who likes discussing those, but I think I was able to cover it well enough for my purposes.
I was actually a bit surprised to see how many people were surprised at the result here, though it does make sense given Homestuck is rather infamous in VS circles as being broken while the Madness Combat cosmology is something that’s a lot less evident from the outset. I do think I could have gone for another paragraph or so in the conclusion to really break down the conclusion, since this is probably the most hard to call verdict I’ve done, but I feel it reads well enough to most for it to work. And ultimately, this is still a blog I’m very proud I got through. Just do not expect either of these series to get another look over by me anytime soon.
(Link to tier list if you want to do your own)
So that’s all. Overall I have to say I’m pretty proud of these overall, as after figuring stuff out I think I’ve made a very solid lineup of blogs. To anyone aiming to get into making these, I’d say my biggest piece of advice would be to just go for it if you think your passion can handle it. Whether it be starting another group blog or trying to hack it on your own, if you have the motivation to try and start one of these for a match you really like, then go for it. Then when you’re done, see if you wanna keep at it. That’s how I started, and maybe it’ll be how you start.
Thanks for reading, and see you hopefully by the end of December for Boss vs New Kid.
Nice retrospective 👍
ReplyDeleteAlso I've heard that, apparently, Scott Pilgrim got some Multiversal and MFTL upgrades recently