18 KiB
[BST] So I considered writing a rational One Piece fic.
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Author: u/sure_why_nott *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2fpwzd/bst_so_i_considered_writing_a_rational_one_piece/
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Score: 10
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Created: 2014-09-07T14:22:48
Post:
Two minutes into brainstorming I realized that an intelligent character would break the shit out of the OP verse. Then I started thinking; What other verses could be freakishly abused with a rational!protagonist/main character? Discuss...?
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+12] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
Most Disney movies are pretty breakable. Aladdin doesn't even really begin to abuse the power of the genie, to say nothing of Jafar. Rapunzel has hair that can cure wounds, aging, and diseases, and half the time seems to forget that she can actually use that power. Ursula can, at a minimum, give herself and others a human form but is far too Evil to use this for something clever. Frozen is probably the worst offender.
Many of the DC superheroes are similarly uninteresting unless you ratchet down their power levels. The Flash is the most willfully underused hero in the modern age, in part because if he used his demonstrated abilities there wouldn't really be any plot to speak of.
u/Zephyr1011 [+3] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (3 hours later)
What demonstrated abilities does the Flash have that are utterly broken? Super speed doesn't seem that OP when compared to things like power rings.
u/alexanderwales [+14] Time flies like an arrow (4 hours later)
Super speed isn't that broken, at least in its conventional form as possessed by Quicksilver or others. However, the Flash has the Speed Force, which I think started out as the answer to how he can travel at Mach 10 and not burn up from the air compression or friction, and just got more out of hand from there. There's a panel where the Flash removes a half million people from a city in .00001 microseconds. There's his infamous "Infinite Mass Punch" where he knocks a guy into orbit.
Basically, the Flash can punch as hard as a nuclear blast and not feel anything from it. He can phase through walls and outrun laser beams. He ran faster than death once. If he were really pushing his limits instead of fighting against stupid enemies like that dude with a boomerang or the guy who's basically Mr. Freeze, he should be able to lock up every criminal in astonishingly small fractions of a second.
But he doesn't, because that would solve plots. Also, Flash is one of those superheroes that's never written terribly consistently.
u/None [+7] (10 hours later)
Welp, comics are dumb.
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (10 hours later)
They often are. A large part of the problem is that they put out an issue every month for decades, and the quality of the writing can vary a lot, not to mention character interpretations and the necessities of working in a larger shared universe with crossover events and things of that nature. Part of the thing that I like about comic books is that they have this very mythic quality to them - there's this spread of probable Flashes that have different powers and temperaments, and when you read a story you should really just be stepping into that particular universe (with Flash being a little different because there are a number of people that share that mantle). For every dozen turdlike stories about Superman, there's one that takes the concept and the familiarity and uses it as an effective tool.
u/_brightwing [+2] Feathered menace (11 hours later)
Not the Flash, or exactly rational but this short here started off along the veins of this. Shame about the plot and the ending though.
u/MadScientist14159 [+4] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (4 hours later)
A Speed Force user could steal a Power Ring user's ring and break their neck in less than an attosecond.
Speed Force is OP as hell.
u/Zephyr1011 [+5] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (4 hours later)
What if the power ring user had a permanent personal shield?
u/MadScientist14159 [+4] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (4 hours later)
Then pick them up and move them whenever they try to recharge the ring.
Eventually the power reaches zero and the shield turns off.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (4 hours later)
The Power Ring user could probably fly out of reach in order to recharge though. (I'm not very familiar with the universe, so correct me if I'm wrong about anything.)
u/MadScientist14159 [+3] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (4 hours later)
To recharge you need the actual lantern on hand, and most people keep them at home. The Speed Force user would just keep moving them away from their home, or maybe follow them to see where they live then steal the lantern.
If, for the sake of argument, they were carrying the lantern, then the Speed Force user would just steal it immediately.
If the lantern was covered by the shield, then the Speed Force user would wait until they took the shield down to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom, then kill the Power Ring user. Or just steal their lantern and ring if they're immortal in their base state.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (4 hours later)
Could the Ring user not just travel to another planet to recharge or something? Or use the Ring to grab the Lantern if the Speed Force user has it?
u/MadScientist14159 [+2] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (5 hours later)
The SF user would get there first.
The SF user would dodge, outrunning any construct that could be used to get it back.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (5 hours later)
I suppose that in most cases that would be true. Wait, SF users can travel in space!?! Did not know that. Anyways, in the case that I am mysteriously transferred to an alternate universe, get a power ring, and am forced to fight a SF user, I will keep my lantern very well hidden and attempt to hide from that SF user as well as I can.
u/MadScientist14159 [+2] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (6 hours later)
SF users might be able to space travel in the way you're thinking, but I was thinking that since Momentum = Mass x Velocity, and you have more than zero mass that if you jump fast enough you can generate enough momentum to escape Earth's gravitational pull and fly through space. Jump FTL and you'll fly FTL. You can't steer... but meh.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (6 hours later)
I wasn't really sure what I was thinking, really, or what you were referring too. What I said could apply to either. Who needs steering, anyways?
u/Sevii [+2] (3 hours later)
The flash is broken because of how much energy it takes to accelerate things up to the speed of light. Basically, the flash's punches should be like nuclear bombs going off.
u/Zephyr1011 [+1] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (4 hours later)
What speeds can the Flash accelerate to?
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (4 hours later)
The Flash can think, react, and move at (or just under) the speed of light. If the Flash threw a baseball, it would basically be this XKCD what-if. His power suite extends a bit beyond just super speed as well. And sometimes he can go faster than the speed of light, or travel through time, though that's more dependent on the writer.
u/Zephyr1011 [+3] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (4 hours later)
How long can they sustain the thinking incredibly fast for? And are they affected by relativity?
EDIT: According to the picture you posted, they are affected by relativity. But can continue thinking, rather than being affected by time dilation?
Anyway, I agree, the ability to think that fast alone is broken. How does the Flash ever lose a fight?
u/alexanderwales [+7] Time flies like an arrow (4 hours later)
Depends on the writer, but they usually aren't affected by relativity, and can maintain thinking fast indefinitely (though it gets boring). In the past this has been used for speed-reading, but generally the information gained is temporary, probably because, again, it would solve too many plots. It's occasionally used to pick up a language in fractions of a second. Bart Allen is the exception, for whatever reason; he is noted to have memorized every book in the San Francisco public library, and that knowledge stuck as part of his rebranding from Impulse to Kid Flash.
u/Zephyr1011 [+2] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (5 hours later)
Do comic book writers have competitions called "Who can think of the most broken power we can underutilise?" by any chance? I don't suppose there are any literally omnipotent comic book characters?
u/sicutumbo [+4] (7 hours later)
There are plenty, but they generally dont interact with the main plots except in minor areas, as it would really break suspension of disbelief if an omnipotent character was beat by someone. Generally, when a character gets strong enough, they become rebranded as "force of nature" or "part of the universe" and cease to do anything useful. Living Tribunal, Galactus, The One Above All, etc... the only exception I have seen is when Kyle Rainor (or someone) became one with the green lantern power or some shit and he became omnipotent and omnipresent, which he used to stop all crime and war everywhere.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (9 hours later)
The Beyonder. Literally.
Approximately: Phoenix. Molecule Man. The Celestials. The various incarnations of things (Death, etc). Mephisto. ...
And those are just the Marvel ones.
u/Topher876 [+1] (a month later)
Has anyone else realized that Elsa is basically reducing the universe's energy and probably fucking up the planets climate, she gets no energy from the heat she destroys so where does it go? She destroys energy, that's awful.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (a month later)
She can make animate golems, which can in theory be used to create energy. She also has super melting powers, demonstrated at the end of the movie, along with the ability to move ice through cryokinesis which probably also creates energy. And that's without getting into the fact that she seems to create ice from nothing in a few cases - pulling mass from nowhere.
u/MadScientist14159 [+6] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (3 hours later)
Canon HP would be luckularitied in under an hour. Or regular singularitied if you use wit-sharpening potion instead of felix.
There's a reason these things don't exist in MoR.
Then, turn a space probe into a horcrux and use a compulsion charm on yourself so that you never feel remorse for the murder, or remove it from your memory altogether, so that your horcrux doesn't self-destruct. Congrats. You are now immortal.
That's to say nothing of viral imperius curses and compulsion charms, which are basically global-scale brainwashing.
Naruto has the most broken force multiplier in fiction. Even civilians can survive at half chakra and a single shadow clone means you learn twice as fast.
u/sicutumbo [+5] (7 hours later)
Wait, the shadow clones can learn as well and then you retain the knowledge? What the actual fuck. That is vastly more broken than most of the powers Naruto has. Just make clones and then you can do shit all day and still be super productive. Make one to study while you sleep. This is like Coil, s power times 20, and is vastly more useful in combat
u/MadScientist14159 [+6] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (9 hours later)
Yup, he used it to make just one technique and then never exploited it again.
u/sicutumbo [+6] (9 hours later)
That's stupid as hell.
u/MadScientist14159 [+4] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (9 hours later)
It is.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (9 hours later)
Yep. When the clone pops, Naruto gets all its knowledge and experience back.
And he could make thousands of them at a time.
u/PeridexisErrant [+6] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (10 hours later)
Naruto has the most broken force multiplier in fiction. Even civilians can survive at half chakra and a single shadow clone means you learn twice as fast.
Working out a way for the setting to still make sense is not too difficult, but it makes Naruto even more overpowered.
Shadow clones are a secret technique precisely because the village in the leaves know how overpowered they are, and restrict it to absolutely trusted ninja.
The cost is absurd: your chakra is divided evenly between every clone, and then a (very high) fixed cost per clone is deducted from your reserves. If this empties your reserves, the backlash is lethal.
Between those, the setting is mostly intact. Naruto gets them anyway because they have to be certain of his loyalty anyway, and he has the capacity to use them at a higher level than anyone else alive.
All the other ideas I had about memory shock, limits to use for ninjutsu training etc (if it's only a memory transfer), inability to train a single thing in parallel rather than serial time... are all contradicted by canon. Of those, memory shock either caps the number or does nothing, and the limits of memory transfer for training just slow things down a bit. Limiting training to one clone per technique just makes the user an absurd generalist instead of an absurd specialist - it helps, but only for a while.
u/Laborbuch [+3] (a day later)
A rational!Naruto would certainly break the world with this technique alone, as would anyone intelligent enough to understand the implications. Therefore I am of the opinion whoever tackled this endeavor would have to tweak the canon to some amount.
One such tweak would be that the Originator of Chakra (Sage of Six Paths) was aware of the dangers general use of chakra could and would introduce to the world and preemptively put some rules down to prevent or mitigate these. To name but two: transfer or retention of memories/experience is exponentially reduced by number of active clones, meaning you get an increase, but the chakra costs are increasingly higher; the ability to come up with exploits is considerably reduced to the whole of humanity. These are of course rationalizations of the narrative course the series took. Many of the more intelligent characters should have been able to come up with the memory exploit, especially Orochimaru, who had an expressed interest in jutsu acquisition and thus a motive to look for jutsu's with a memory component.
u/EastN [+9] (23 minutes later)
I agree that a rational One Piece story would destroy half the universe's rules, but it would be glorious. I really want to see a good Naruto rationalist story, do you know of any?
Lastly, A Song of Ice and Fire would be awesome with an intelligent Ned Stark as the main character.
u/GeeJo [+8] Custom Flair (30 minutes later)
For Naruto, there's Lighting Up the Dark and In Fire Forged. ASOIAF fics suffer from the fact that GRRM and his publishers are very proactive about going after derivative works. Martin has come out and said that he detests the idea of fanfiction.
u/EastN [+5] (44 minutes later)
What a shame. GRRM always seemed like a cool guy, I wonder why he would just give his fan base the finger like that. Half the time good fanfics are what make people await the next book in a series.
Edit: Oh, and thanks for the recommendations!
u/None [+2] (3 hours later)
[deleted]
u/None [+1] (10 hours later)
Yeah, really. He might not be cool with ASOIAF fanfiction, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a legal justification to remove it from the internet.
u/sure_why_nott [+6] (47 minutes later)
Well if you like breaking rules, may I suggest Time Braid. It's not really rational but it's an enjoyable naruto munchkin read.
u/Zephyr1011 [+3] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (an hour later)
Warning for kinda graphic sex and BDSM. But it's still a fun read
u/VorpalAuroch [+3] Life before Death (3 hours later)
There's sex, sure, but none of it is remotely graphic. It's barely described in any detail at all.
u/EastN [+3] (an hour later)
I made it through Ichi the Killer, I can make it through anything.
u/None [+1] (11 days later)
graphic
Uh. No. "Graphic implications and allusions" maybe.