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autisticsupervillain · 2 years ago

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It's Fictional Throwdown Friday!

This Week's Fighters...

Nonbinary Battle Royale!

Conditions:

No restrictions. Speed Equalized.

Scenario:

Popeye is selling some of his spinach at the mall in town. An enthusiastic Kirby inhales his entire stock without being able to pay for it, egging Popeye on into starting a fight. Frisk attempts to break up the brawl, only to get sucked into. Oz happens to be going on a date with Calculester nearby, when the robot sees what's happening and expresses his distaste for all the violence. Seeing an opportunity to impress their boyfriend, Oz leaps in to stop the fight themselves.

Analysis: Oz

Ask yourself this: what does the ultimate embodiment of fear look like? What nightmarish, unholy abomination could inspire the phobias of all mankind?

Stop thinking, because you're wrong. Fear looks like a shy, awkward high schooler who is desperate for a date to prom.

Well, okay, high schooler is being generous. In the Monster Realm, everyone who goes to High School is 21 at the youngest and today's combatant is actually older than time itself. Meet Oz, the inky-dark embodiment of fear himself. His primary concerns in life are, as you might expect, passing his classes and getting laid, as is the same with everyone at Spooky High. How Oz ended up in this situation is actually rather ambiguous. It's implied that their origin story might be similar to Zoe's, that being that they were an eldritch abomination created by The Nothing meant to destroy all life who eventually saw the beauty of life and choose to live as a regular person, but the details are currently unclear and this is only our closest guess.

What is clear, however, is that Oz's otherworldly power hasn't diminished any, despite their more mundane occupation and goals. They still posses an extraordinary wealth of abilites worthy of a timeless god. Firstly, Oz is remarkably difficult to put down. Not only have they been unaffected by damage done to their soul, but they can regenerate from fatal injuries as well. They can regrow severed limbs, regenerate vital organs, and even revive from being completely ripped to shreds, provided that someone stitches them back together.

What's more, they're remarkably durable to match. His stomach can contain the Totem of Z'gord, which is powerful enough to cause earthquakes all across the school, he can trade punches with Damien, who survived punching the sun, and was completely unaffected by the game itself crashing, able to act to reverse the problem even as reality comes crashing down around his ears and his friends and narrator are corrupted beyond the ability to even move.

See, Oz has something of a Deadpool thing going on... or maybe Gwenpool more specifically. He is, to a certain extent, aware that he's in a video game and can leverage that to his advantage on occasion. For example, he can interact with characters from seperate video games entirely (even if he can't actually see them, do to their character models not existing in his game), he can move outside the boundaries of the game map to exit reality, and even turn the game off and on again at will, reducing reality to nothing and then restoring it with a thought. This awareness does not equate to perfect immunity, however. He ultimately can never escape the game and the revelation of such gives him an existential crisis in one of the endings, though he can interact with the world outside it some degree, such as interacting with the narrator or creating a website in the real world that can interact with the audience.

Even when they aren't breaking the laws of the game over their knee, Oz still has some absurd powers in their arsenal. They are fully aware of the fact that they have plot armor, which is what gets them into their constant unlikely shenanigans in the first place. They can give this plot armor away to other people, making it so no one will pay any attention to them and they'll be ignored by any major characters as unimportant. Then, they can steal this plot armor back just as easily. He can become one with the entire universe at will, becoming everywhere at once, and can summon abstract concepts to fight on their behalf. These concepts can be anything, from the concept of Biology to the concept of they themself, and these concepts can destroy other abstracts, erasing the ideas they represent from existence. For example, he once summoned the concept of Biology and had it kill the concept of Math, erasing math from existence and making it impossible to calculate anything. And canceling math class.

So, if Oz is this powerful, how does he struggle with anything? Well, because it's a dating sim, really. None of this really matters as far as getting a date to the Prom is concerned and all of his powers are only useful if they help with the current social situation. Why did he become one with the universe? To get inside a really high monster truck, of course. Why did he destroy the concept of math? To get out of math class. Hell, the school has a backup generator to restore the concept of math if it's destroyed, so no one really cares long term. Why did he hone his mind to make it immune to horrors that otherwise drive men mad? To go on a date with Zoe inside a realm that does exactly that, naturally. Does it matter that's he's unaffected by demons altering the fabric of reality? If that means they can join his rave then sure!

What matters is his social stats. Luckily, Oz has plenty of those two. He can start a rave of over 200 people in seconds, trick two angels into thinking he's God with his ventriloquism act, and become chairman of an international corporation in a single day. And if their stats aren't high enough for some reason, they can just rip them out of you, either by eating your organs, mocking you until your social skills become his, or just by enhancing his own character traits with magic spells.

There's also their outright weaknesses. First of all, Oz is willing to do almost anything to get laid or impress their friends, including basically all the bullshit mentioned above. They are a desperate people pleaser with a really bad case of both depression and social anxiety, so the opinions of others mean a lot.

Despite that, however, they are every bit the eldritch monstrosity you would expect from the embodiment of fear in raw power if not in personality.

Analysis: Kirby

Kirby, Kirby, Kirby. It's the name you should know, they're the star of the show, Kirby's the one. While this impossibly powerful little puffball's backstory is by an large a mystery, the widely accepted explanation is that they are a reincarnation of the immense god-like being known as Void that came about as a result of Void interacting with positive emotions. They are the positive counterpart to Zero's and Void Termina's dark and hateful incarnations, who came into being as a result of Void interacting with powerful negative emotions.

As a result of this, Kirby is paradoxically both horrifyingly powerful and unrelentingly cute, cuddly, and friendly. They may aspire to no higher cause than eating cake, making friends, and sleeping, but I do not exaggerate in the slightest when I call their power godlike. Kirby has been stated several times to have infinite power and has defeated beings amped by the Master Crown, which was stated to have the same. This alone would make them universe level at least, but they have feats that put them well above that. The parallel dimension known as... Another Dimension (great name guys, not confusing at all) is shown to contain multiple universes within it in both Return to Dreamland and Star Allies, at least sixteen of which are shown to be affected by Magalor's defeat, culminating in Another Dimension collapsing outright. This means that Kirby, at bare minimum, is a universe buster, possibly even a small multiverse buster if we take this as all sixteen universes being destroyed simultaneously.

But Kirby has far more than just raw power on their side. As a matter of fact, they are well known for their versatility thanks to their Copy Ability. With it, they can inhale an enemy or object into their maw and transmute it into either a star shaped projectile or a copy ability, allowing them to copy a wide variety of powers from their defeated foes. They can combine these abilities, store them for later, or transform these powers into allies who can fight alongside them. And provided their opponent is too big for them to inhale, Kirby has ways of copying their powers anyways. By tossing their ability at their foe as an energy projectile, they can transmute enemies into copy abilities or they can just scan enemies outright with the copy ability known as... Copy. Again, great name, not confusing at all.

These copy abilities come in a wide variety, ranging from those that grant Kirby mastery over a specific weapon to those who bestow Kirby with some form of elemental power. Notable ones include ice Kirby, who can freeze foes solid even if they can survive in space, cook Kirby who can transmute enemies into food, magic Kirby who can use magic for a variety of purposes, ranging from summoning food to summoning allies, and Copy Kirby, which can copy the powers of whoever Kirby scans. Their most powerful Abilities can even do damage to the fabric of reality itself, ranging from their Ultra Sword cutting holes into other universes to Time Crash, which creates an explosion so powerful that it damages time itself, effectively allowing Kirby to stop time.

Even without their Copy abilities, Kirby is remarkably tough. Their incredibly small size of a mere eight inches makes them remarkably tough to hit, they can regenerate from being impaled in an instant, can inflate themselves with air and fly through the sky, and summon a warp star to help them fly across the galaxy in seconds. And if all that sounds like a lot for one little pink puffball, Kirby can just speed dial up three other identical Kirby's to help kick your ass on command. Or throw a Friend Heart at you to forcibly befriend you.

And if you somehow make it through all of that and manage to kill Kirby? They can simply come back as a ghost, steal your life energy, and regenerate their body from nothing. Unless you can kill ghosts, Kirby's just gonna come straight back.

Having said all that, Kirby isn't perfect. While they are shown to be strangely technologically and scientifically adept, they have also shown to be incredibly naive. They've been manipulated into doing the villain's bidding on more than one occasion and they tend to simply jump headlong into situations without any kind of plan.

While Kirby may not be Nintendo's strongest character as is widely believed, they are every bit the godkiller you've heard they are. The next eldritch terror that steps foot on the peaceful planet of Popstar is gonna end up like all the rest, running for it's goddamn life.

Analysis: Frisk

Long ago there lived two races, monsters and humans. The two races coexisted peacefully, for a time, until war inevitably broke out. The humans overpowered the monsters and sealed them away within Mt. Ebott.

Years later, a small child would fall into Mt. Ebott, swiftly finding themselves trapped within the caverns of the Underground. Miraculously, despite the hostility and mistrust that the monsters showed towards them, the fallen child chose peace. Over time, they would befriend the denizens of the Underground, eventually finding a way to break the barrier and peacefully reunite humans and monsters. This child's name... was Frisk.

Of course, Frisk did not accomplish this feat alone. Next to their compassion, their most powerful asset was undoubtedly their DETERMINATION. This emotion is, in fact, a supernatural substance largely unique to humankind. With the immense amounts Frisk has their disposal, they are able to utilize supernatural powers and perform blatantly superhuman feats.

Frisk's most prominent ability is their power to SAVE and LOAD. By filling themselves with DETERMINATION, Frisk can SAVE all the progress they've made on their journey thus far, allowing them to later LOAD back to that point at will. This ability activates automatically upon death and can even allow Frisk to come back from having their soul destroyed. There is a common misconception about it though.

SAVEing and LOADing does not create multiple timelines. Yes, Sans refers to timelines in the plural when discussing Frisk's abilities, but he does not mean that in the sense of there being a multiverse. What he means is that every time you reset or LOAD, you're effectively erasing the timeline up until the point you reset at. Sort of like rewinding time. The timeline that was just erased is seperate from the timeline you're now in, but they do not co-exist. This is consistent with how SAVE and LOAD is discussed throughout the rest of the game. As such, no reality desroying feats in Undertale are multiversal in scale, but more on that later.

Regardless, Frisk's DETERMINATION is still so immense that they can outright override the powers of other DETERMINATION users, such as Flowey, and their own SAVE and LOAD powers require multiple human souls to be overridden themselves. Frisk is also shown to be have their memories remain unaffected by the timeline alterations of both themselves and others, even with their SAVE and LOAD powers otherwise being overridden.

Their DETERMINATION has even been shown to grant them superhuman strength, speed, and durability, which, within the shown limits of their powers, scales proportionally to whoever they are fighting. Even at their most basic level, Frisk is capable of surviving some pretty intense things. They can walk around in Hotland unaffected, despite it being hot enough to completely vaporize a paper cup, can survive Undyne's oven exploding in their face unharmed, completely no-sold an electric shock that visibly hurt Papyrus, and walked through the CORE unaffected despite it being filled with Ozone, among others. These feats do scale to their attack potency, as they can contend evenly with monsters who can hurt them even without any killing intent.

Furthermore, Frisk's durability also scales to their soul, as monsters attack on both a physical and spiritual level. This is backed up by the fact that armors that increase the durability of Frisk's soul are items logically wouldn't increase their physical durability in any way, such as ribbons, bandanas, and aprons.

What's move impressive about Frisk however, is what they can do when their DETERMINATION is pushed to its absolute limits. When at their peak, Frisk can contend with universe busting god-like beings, such as Omega Flowey and Asriel Dreemurr. Omega Flowey opens their fight by destroying the entire timeline/save file and Asriel openly boasts that he intends to destroy the world once he starts actually getting serious. (This is backed up by the fight descriptor saying "the world is ending" during the Asriel fight, as well as Asriel having infinite stats under the Check menu.) Furthermore, Frisk can continue to fight and move even after Flowey destroys the timeline, despite the fact that all that's truly left is a timeless abyss. This means that Frisk's speed is functionally infinite, as they can move just fine even when there is no time around with which to measure their speed. Frisk is even capable of harming Omega Flowey, albiet barely. It definitely appears that Frisk is not as strong as they are durable in this mode, as despite tanking attacks from Asriel, they cannot harm him.

In this amplified state, Frisk gains a few more useful abilities. At this point, they are capable of willing their soul back together upon its destruction, simply refusing to die. Furthermore, they can interact with the souls that Omega Flowey and Asriel have absorbed, turning them against their masters. They can even turn their own hopes and dreams into physical objects which they can absorb to heal themselves.

Having said all of that, Frisk's options are incredibly limited without DETERMINATION. They do carry a variety of weapons on them, yes, but those are widely an assortment of sticks and knives, weapons with pitiful range for the tier they're in. The best they have is the empty gun (which they can will into firing actual bullets) and the earpiece provided by Alphys, which can turn into a jetpack and allow them to shoot small lasers from their soul. The fact that they can simply RESET to try as many times as they have to also puts many of their greatest skill feats into question. Yes, they can outlast Undyne and Papyrus and Toriel, and even beat Asgore without any killing intent, but they had infinite tries to do so.

Their compassion is also a double edged sword. Integral to their greatest achievements, yes, but it also means that they will not fight unless it is absolutely necessary. The only times they ever threw a punch was when Asgore and Omega Flowey outright forced them to do so. Frisk is lucky, then, that they are such a gifted diplomat, able to reverse monsterkind's negative view on humans over the span of seemingly no longer than a day (though we are never given an actual timeframe for Undertale's events).

Frisk isn't a fighter, but their unending DETERMINATION ensures that they will overcome virtually any challenge that comes their way.

Analysis: Popeye

Popeye the Sailor Man is many things. An ever faithful boyfriend to his beloved Olive Oil, a combat hardened member of the navy, and the amphibious nonbinary sailor man icon we all deserve. No really, that happened. Look it up. But above all, he is one of classic cartoons all time heavyweight champions, on par with Bugs Bunny himself.

This little sailor had quite humble beginnings. After being born to the horribly named Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye was born horrifically ugly and deformed, prompting his father to run away in horror of what he had created. This caused Popeye to be adopted by the loving Whaler Joe, whom he'd look up for all of his boyhood years. Seeking to emulate his father, Popeye would join the navy, where he would learn to embrace his gift for violence.

Popeye had always been adept at beating the shit out of people, but it's only upon getting embroiled in World War 2, and competing with the loathsome bully Bruto for the fair Olive Oil's affections, that Popeye's skills would truly come into their own. This is because of the mythical miracle herb that Popeye had spent all of his life consuming known only as spinnach. Thanks to that, Popeye has an absurd level of superhuman strength, speed, and power that makes him among the toughest fighters in cartoon history.

Being a rubberhose animation icon, Popeye can freely morph and stretch his body like, well, rubber. He can inflate his muscles to huge proportions, stretch and bounce back at will to absorb blows, and inspire Monkey D Luffy with his cartoon antics. Again, look it up. Furthermore, he can completely break the laws of physics in the palm of his hand with ease. Whether by painting a battleship into existence, shooting fire out of his pipe to fly, flying normally anyways, or by turning completely invisible, Popeye is always capable of throwing out something you won't expect.

For example, one of Popeye's signature abilities is his power to punch so hard, whatever he hits is broken down into smaller elements. An anchor becomes a bunch of fish hooks, an animal becomes a steak stand, and racial stereotypes become even worse racial stereotypes. Use your imagination. That's another benefit to being from a rubberhose cartoon, Popeye's world is even more cartoonishly rascist than ours. Ah, 1940's America, how I loathe thee.

Moreover, Popeye's power may come from spinnach, but he certainly doesn't need it. He's eaten so much over the years, that he can still operate at a baseline superhuman level without it. Like that time God himself turned off the universe to kill Popeye and Popeye just... stood there and took it without blinking. And even if Popeye does need spinach for a boost, he can just will some into exist, either by waving his hand, drawing it, threatening the animator to give him some, or just letting the audience in the real world hand him some spinach when he's in a tight spot.

And if you think you can just kill Popeye before he eats any, you're dreaming. Because even after being completely erased from existence, Popeye's nothingness was able to eat a can of spinnach and come back good as new. Popeye's power is so great, not even his animator is safe, as Popeye is able to not only tear and break his own animation frames, but also beat the hell out of his own animator. Meaning he's more or less beat the shit out of two different versions of God.

So, if you dare choose to mess with Popeye, always remember who you're dealing with. You're fighting one of cartoon's all time heavyweight champions, truly a Sailor Man to be feared.

Throwdown Mashup:

youtube

Throwdown Breakdown:

Oh, boy, here we go.

First off, the fact that everyone here has such ridiculous regenerative and survivability options really does kneecap the effectiveness of a combatant's versatility. A lot of Kirby's copy abilities are complete dead weight when Frisk or Popeye can just regenerate from them and get right back to it. And while Oz's regeneration isn't as good, their plot armor and ability to just... become one with the entire universe at will (something which only maybe Popeye has the range to actually destroy) gives him a similar buffer. This means that everyone here will have to rely on specific win conditions.

Popeye can just transmute his enemies by punching them, so his fighting style isn't really going to be effected by this. Similarly, Frisk's go-to in character is to either wait out their opponents or talk them down, so not being able to kill their enemies doesn't really affect their approach either. It's Kirby whose the most kneecaped by this, as 90% of their arsenal is going to rendered moot, limiting them to just Friend Hearts and transmutation as viable win options. So while they can use Copy to gain abilities from their enemies, those abilities aren't really going to be much help long term. Especially because it's going to take everyone awhile to realize that everyone can just keep healing.

Oz is in a similar position, as he's pretty limited down to just his conceptual destruction if he wants to actually win here. No one present has any way to survive that level of existence erasure, Frisk can't reset if the very idea of Frisk doesn't exist and Popeye can't eat spinach if he, has a very concept doesn't exist. Furthermore, Oz has a lot of direct counters to the other fighter's abilities. Their resistance to mind manipulation should resist the Friend Hearts, they can steal Popeye's ability to interact with the fourth wall from him, and just steal Frisk's charisma from them entirely, completely nullifying Frisk's one win condition. Hell, Oz could just destroy the concepts of spinach or DETERMINATION to reduce them both to ordinary humans.

As such, I feel like this comes down to Kirby vs Oz. Kirby's small size, numerous abilities, and summons should give them ample opportunity to land friends hearts or transmute their enemies with a thrown star, so they and Oz have the biggest leg up over their competition.

Kirby cannot survive conceptual destruction and can't hurt abstract beings. They've simply never shown the ability to do so. Kirby has never punched the concept of Math in the face before. As such, they'd have to beat Oz before he can get that off. Since Oz resists mind manipulation, Friend Hearts are a no go and Oz is too big to fit in the pot so Cook is out too. As such, Kirby will have to throw a copy ability at Oz and transmute him that way to win. Time Crash won't give Kirby this opportunity because Oz has been unaffected by time crashing before, such as that time he turned off the universe or that time the entire game crashed and only he could act. And if Oz becomes one with the universe, Kirby's screwed because they've never been shown to transmute something that massive in scope before. Oz would resist all their abilities by virtue of sheer size alone.

While the free for all nature of this fight means that anyone can win and there are plenty of scenarios where Oz loses this, such as Popeye punching him into a puddle of ink or Kirby throwing a copy ability star at him immediately, Oz's more direct counters to everyone else's win conditions makes this their game more often than not.

In terms of who wins most often, I put at Oz, then Kirby, then Popeye, then Frisk. If only because Oz can just... steal Frisk's only win condition from them. Popeye is the only one with enough destructive capacity to actually do anything about Oz becoming one with the universe (being universe level and actually being able to destroy the universe are two different things in fiction and Popeye's the only one here whose arguably able to do both, depending on how you interpret the whole "destroying the animation cell" thing), and Kirby's size, summons, and mobility give them plenty of opportunities to land Friend Hearts and over win conditions. It's just that no one has any direct counter to Oz's concept summoning and destruction.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Oz!

#fictional throwdown fridays #monster prom #undertale #thimble theater #kirby franchise #kirby #oz yellow #frisk #popeye the sailor man #Youtube

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