User:MrWarnerTheGreat/Sandbox

Introduction

As of now, a majority of people have this idea that Todd is the most powerful Scott Pilgrim character and that nobody scales to him. This blog is here to debunk this idea since it's getting increasingly annoying facing the same arguments over and over again. For those who aren't aware, we currently have Scott Pilgrim characters scaling to Todd Ingram's moon punching feat throughout the series. While nobody has objected to them on this wiki, it has been a hot topic in various social media servers.

If anyone has any disagreements with this blog or would like to share their thoughts and feelings surrounding this topic, please leave them in the comments which will be public (Although I don't expect many to say anything). Critism and suggestions are allowed as long as they follow Fandom guidelines. And please do not send entire documents of information and expect me to refute/adress it.

Author and Official Statements

Clash at Demonhead Extras

To start, we have Todd's character draft description. This comes from the extra content pages in volume 2 about the Clash At Demonhead (It basically shares Bryan's thoughts during development and how he envisioned the characters).

“	He turned out to be bigger, stronger, and more powerful than Scott, but equally dumb, or even dumber.	„
	~ Bryan

Now there are several issues with this that I feel a lot of people blatantly ignore or just don't understand. For starters, the actual context of this statement refers to Todd's telekinetic-based ranged abilities. Todd doesn't actually ever fight Scott physically (Except at Honest Eds) and just uses his vegan powers from a safe distance. In both instances shown here, Scott misses and Todd responds by throwing him with his telekinesis. At best, this proves Todd has superior lifting strength, which means nothing in comparison to both's raw attack potency.

Scott begins to throw a punch
Todd dodges and activates his vegan powers
Todd telekinetically restrains Scott
Then he begins to lift Scott in the air, choking him
Todd then proceeds to throw Scott through the wall
He explains how vegan powers work to Scott and co

Secondly, as shown in the first scan, Todd goes out of his way to dodge Scott's punches. While this could be because he finds getting hit annoying/inconvient (A common argument used to dismiss this), several other instances in the volume show otherwise. Him dodging these attacks are because he is more than aware of how strong Scott and co is, which directly affects how he chooses to fight Scott (Something Scott even says himself).

Envy kicks Todd in the balls
Todd then blasts Envy back with an energy beam
Scott then lands a successful blow on Todd with his guitar

Another thing to point out about the second statement is that O’Malley compares them to Ryu and Ken, who are rivals around the same level of power, so all this would imply is that Todd is somewhat more powerful, but not to an extent that would put him above Scott’s league by entire tiers, which is shown towards the ending of volume three.

Bryan's Tumblr Statement

Next off, we have Bryan's statement from tumbler which is fairly similar to the first one

“	Matthew went all-out because he sucks. Todd would never go all-out. If he went all-out, he wouldn’t be Todd. Todd is a smarmy jerk who wants to toy with Scott and feel cool and superior without trying. That’s the point of Todd.	„
	~ Bryan's Answer

First off, let's take a look at the original question here.

“	''"How come Todd Ingram didn't kill Scott in the beginning of volume 3? If he can punch a hole in the moon, couldn't he have finished off Scott the moment they met? At least Matthew Patel made the effort to go all-out in their first meeting.	„
	~ Original Question

So based on the way the commenter views Todd, it's clear he doesn't see Scott or Matthew as any more than an average joe (Less in Matthew's case) who happens to know martial arts, which Bryan seems to follow along with. So by accepting what Bryan says about Todd, you alternatively accept Scott and Matthew as an average human martial artist.

"That's a massive assumption on your end. We don't know what either Bryan or the reader are thinking."

To a degree, this is true. However, we are expecting a casual reader and author to understand vs debating rules such as tiers, area of effect, scaling, and outliers. Of course they're going to say the dude who makes massive explosions is stronger. Heck, our Creation vs Destruction page paints this notion very clearly. They don't even bother to mention some of the feats Matthew does that no normal person could physically do (We'll cover those later). Instead he decides to mock Matthew for it.

Furthermore, even if Bryan was right about his character's stats, his answer directly contradicts Todd's character (And the previous statement from the character extras). He's never shown to act cocky to the point of holding back to Scott's level or to torture Scott for fun, nor has this been stated by him or anyone else (There are even times where Todd is putting a significant amount of effort into competing against Scott).

Crash and the Boys block Todd's attack
Scott then jumps forward and strikes at Todd
Todd blocks the attack and sends a shockwave, sending everyone flying flying

Funny enough, who Bryan was really referring to in this question was Envy, who wanted to torment Scott for the sake of pleasure at their first meeting. It even says at the beginning of the volume that Todd doesn't want to make Scott suffer and just wants to end the fight as soon as possible. And as shown later, this is not because Todd thinks Scott is a joke in terms of physical abilities.

So not only is Bryan's answer a bad representation of the character's physical stats and mockery to some of his characters, he outright contradicts the morality of the antagonist for this volume and previous answers, which is blatant Death of the Author, moving on.

Arguments against Scott Scaling

Todd is only continental with his Vegan Powers

I honestly have no idea where this idea spawned from (Pretty sure it originated from vsbw). It's established in the flashbacks that Todd went to vegan academy in order to learn the vegan techniques we see him use in volume 3.

“	Soon enough, the boy had to leave for the faraway school where he would learn the ancient secrets of his people, The Vegans. There on the train platform, the boy and girl vowed Always To Be True and Never To Waver.	„
	~ Envy Adams

"But we see the energy from Todd's vegan powers when he punches the moon, that makes your previous argument irrelevant."

No we do not. We see the shockwave created from his punch before it hits the planet. And why are we suddenly throwing out the already established timeline and events for this incredibly headcanon? The only thing established in the flashbacks hinting this is that Todd was already a vegan, which is what's required to even get into Vegan Academy in the first place.

Furthermore, the vegan powers have to be manually acquired from outside sources. This was the entire reason why he had his powers taken away from the Vegan Police. So even if he went to Vegan Academy to screw around, he still couldn't have had them in high school. Heck, even if he did, we see his hair isn't even standing up during the process as shown in the movie (The movie is just as credible as the original, as the feat is a direct recreation of the comic's take and was directed by Bryan).

The Vegan Police show up
They explain Todd's charges
Todd reveals he lied to keep his powers
Todd tries to avoid the De-Veganizing Ray

Todd is only continental physically

I don't really see how this debunks Scott scaling when it's shown that him and others can damage Todd. I'm assuming that this debunk hinges on those incidents being outliers which we'll touch later. So the first reason for the two not scaling is the difference in destructive radius. Now if we assume that area of effect damage equates to higher power, we are now accepting bullets being weaker than a human punch. Confused? Look no further than our Attack potency Page.

“

To explain this, take a hypothetical example of someone punching through an interior wall vs. bullet being shot at an interior wall wall. If a bullet is shot at a wall, the wall would have a small hole go through it, however if a person punches through a wall, a big hole would be left in place due to the size of the hand, with the logic of ignoring one's energy output in place for area of effect, the person's punch would in that scenario be stronger then a bullet.

„

The size of bullet holes in a wall
The size of a hole made by a human fist

Real world logic debunks this mindset. But even if this wasn't the case, this argument would debunk 90% of arguments that involve scaling. Son Goku wouldn't even surpass planet since he doesn't destroy a planet, or effortlessly destroy the battlefield while fighting his opponents. Same with Mario being Low 2-C.

"Even with all of this, where is it stated that Todd's powers are relative to his AP? You conveniently ignored that."

I don't know why we'd assume they're weaker than his base stats since it's never established, or even hinted at, that they are weaker in terms of energy output. Especially when this is the same Todd who went out of his way to earn these powers despite not obeying the rules for vegans, and has a mental breakdown when he loses them, I find it extremely hard to believe they are weaker. Heck, he even uses the vegan powers as an extension of his own physical attacks. It would be an even bigger assumption to assume they are conveniently weaker than Todd's stupidly casual continental AP.

It's an outlier in the verse

This is easily the most common argument against the scaling, and it mainly comes from people who have no understanding of what an outlier is. For a quick summary, outliers are abnormal inconsistencies commonly used in math (Surprise, this term wasn't invented by vs debaters). What people don't know is that feats higher than utter casual feats demotes the outlier argument, since it's no longer an abnormal feat. I'll pull up a few feats in the volumes to prove this.

Matthew Patel punches through a ceiling

The first feat comes from the first evil exe, Matthew Patel. In his introduction, he is seen breaking through the ceiling of Club Rockit by pointing his finger. Mind you, Scott proceeds to body Matthew Patel, who wasn't even in a mood to fight during this time.

Matthew effortlessly taps and destroys the ceiling of the Rockit
Scott blocks and counterattacks Matthew with ease
He then kicks Matthew, leading into a combo
Scott begins to juggle Matthew in the air
Ending the combo, Scott spikes Matthew down to the ground

There are also other feats in the movie and video game of Matthew doing casual feats like incinerating multiple people, but I feel this alone is a strong enough opening for this section.

Scott launches someone around the world

Next, we have Scott punching someone around the planet (A feat that was calculated to be 8-A by GiverOfThePeace, which is a considerably generous low-end), which Stephen Stills confirms to be true. This was done by a very early Scott Pilgrim, who treated the incident as something unimpressive (You'll notice this pattern throughout the next few feats).

Ramona effortlessly tears a metal pole apart

Ramona rips a steel beam from its hinges. Yet another utter casual feat. Even Stacey Pilgrim and random civilians aren't surprised with Ramona's strength. And Stacey was more upset with Ramona damaging the building (Another reason why these characters aren't dropping nuclear explosions consuming all of Toronto).

Ramona spots Knives in an extremely calm manor
She tears the steel beam and walks back to where Knives will land
The two clash with both having no struggle

Knives jumps several stories in seconds

Moving on, we have Knives jumping several stories with no visible difficulty or strain. Basically the same as Ramona's feat, only she had taken several physical blows from Ramona that visibly stunned her, thus she was physically weakened while doing this.

Knives gets hit by Ramona, stunning her.
She makes her escape and jumps several floors in the mall.
Before leaving, she throws a dagger at Ramona insulting her.

Afterwards, Ramona and Stacey aren't even shocked by a random teenage girl jumping several stories and are more concerned about who Scott dates, further establishing that fights like these aren't all that major or impressive (Shown later when kids even younger than Knives are competing with Todd's vegan powers.

Scott was losing the whole time

Even if we play devil's advocate and assume Scott was losing to Todd in a physical one-on-one, this only suggest Scott would downscale (Something we do for countless characters here, and in vs debating in general), which still puts him in the same range of AP as Todd. Regardless, it's directly stated why and how Scott was losing, which came down to Todd's range which Scott says is why he can't land any blows.

“	I can't even get near him! I need some kind of...like...last minute, poorly-set-up Deux Ex Machina!	„
	~ Scott Pilgrim

Add on that Scott, and characters like Envy, managed to physically harm Todd and tank attacks from him. Lastly, character such as Gideon Graves are directly implied to have power capable of nuking the entire west coast of Canada, along with even being called an "Ultradimensional super villain" which is directly supported by his battle in Subspace, which further proves that Todd isn't just some oddball character who's leagues greater than the rest of the cast.

Gideon's bio alludes to his destructive potential
Scott enters Ramona's Subspace.
Gideon mocks Scott's inferiority.
He explains how he's unbeatable in Subspace
Along with Ramona making him stronger based on what she wants.

Analyzing each of Todd's interactions with the cast

Scott no-sells a vegan nuke from an enraged Todd

Ignoring the other times Scott is fighting and tanking attacks from Todd, this is the first major blow Scott endures from Todd, which is his vegan nuke that destroyed Honest Eds.

Todd drops his weapon and begins to have a mental breakdown.
He then experiences multiple flashbacks, causing him distress.
Todd starts unleashing his attack causing the building to shake.
The outside of Honest Eds is shown with the energy from Todd pouring out.
The building collapses with Scott and Todd completely unharmed.

"Scott didn't tank an explosion. It was directly shown to be an implosion which only collapsed the building."

Let's play devil's advocate real quick and assume that the energy Todd exerted was purely an implosion as people say. Why does that refute Scott tanking an attack from Todd? Implosions reduce volume, unlike explosions which expand volume, that would mean Scott is tanking continental levels of pressure from Todd. The next best argument is that the "implosion" didn't affect Scott, but damaged and collapsed the building? This literally makes no sense. We directly see everyone in Honest Eds die after the explosion

Also, assuming Todd's energy blast was an implosion because it says "Honest Eds imploded" is a horrible assumption. Are we just forgetting that regular explosions can cause buildings to implode? This makes far more sense given we see beams of light leaking out of the building's cracks as it's crumbling. And at that point, there'd be no way for the attack to perfectly miss Scott.

Envy Kicks Todd in the balls

Next up, we have Envy delivering a kick to Todd after she caught him cheating.

"It was directly said afterwards that Envy hit Todd's weak spot, thus it shouldn't be used as a feat."

Yes, it is Todd's weak spot. This is also the same for every man with genitals given they are the most sensitive part of the male body. I don't know why we're assuming this is a weak spot entire tiers lower than Todd's own tier. And if this really was the kind of weak spot that allowed the characters to one-shot Todd, why didn't Scott do this right after? Why did Ramona never bring this up when Scott needed ways to defeat Todd?

Scott hits Todd enough to make him bleed

Here we have Scott hitting Todd hard enough to make him bleed (Which was right after he hit Envy and started getting pissed). This is another solid feat that commonly gets dismissed for laughable reasons.

The biggest point is that because Todd was off guard, his durability suddenly dropped entire tiers and point to Goku nearly dying to a laser beam as if dragon ball is what sets the standards for vs debating. For starters, Dragon Ball in general is a false equivalence to use given how Ki control works in the Dragon Ball universe.

“	Most beings cannot freely control their ki, but many who can manipulate it also learn to control the flow of ki within their bodies, allowing them to channel larger or smaller amounts of their ki reserves. In essence, they can adjust their strength to match the situation, and generate attacks which contain larger concentrations of ki than they are normally capable of. This ability is noted by Raditz when fighting Goku and Piccolo; whilst they had power levels of 416 and 408 respectively, their special attacks channelled such high levels of ki that they measured at 924 and 1,480. Despite being common amongst Earth's martial artists, this ability seems to be exceedingly rare in general, as the Frieza Force are continually surprised by the ability of Gohan, Krillin and the others to raise and suppress their power levels at will.	„
	~ Dragon ball Fandom Wiki

With that, the only plausible explanation for something as dumb as a durability drop this massive is if his vegan powers were like Ki and amplified his stats on command, and nowhere has something as extraordinary as this ever been established in the universe, and would contradict the original moon punch feat which had nothing to do with his powers.

Scott headbutts and defeats Todd

At the end of the battle, Scott headbutts Todd and defeats him.

Todd loses his powers and has a meltdown.
Scott headbutts Todd, defeating him.
Scott receives a 1-Up from Todd's place.

"Todd was weakened after having his powers removed"

A completely baseless claim with no real evidence supporting it. Especially since the De-Veganizing Ray was made purely to remove vegan-based powers which was also addressed prior. Only other argument against this could be Todd having his guard down, which doesn't prevent Scott from scaling.

Extra feats and scaling

Envy tanks an enraged Todd's energy beam

Right after envy kicks Todd, he unleashes an energy beam and [ knocks her back which Todd describes as "Hitting a girl"]. While not specified, this shouldn't be the same as Todd's telekinesis which demonstrates no visible energy beam from his head to the opponent.

Scott Survives a vegan shock from Todd

After Scott gets out skilled in bass, Todd sends out a bolt of electricity from his guitar. Afterwards, Scott gets up unscathed from the bolt.

Crash and the Boys block Todd's guitar attack

Crash and the Boys use their willpower to manifest a barrier around them in Scott. While the argument could be made that Scott has never shown any way to scale to Crash, he appears unimpressed by their strength to hold off Todd, which only adds to these other feats.

Ramona tanks the original moon punch

This is a "newer" (More like recently discovered) feat from Ramona. During Todd's punch to the moon, Ramona notes that there were 30 pages worth of explosions from Todd's shockwave. Logically, Ramona had to have been hit, or at least affected by, the shockwave from Todd's punch. We even see the moon appear right above her, further summitting this idea.

Scott's Statements and Progression

Yes, there is still more. In volume five, Scott directly confirms that each exe gets harder and harder each battle.

Scott defeat one of the Twins' robots.
Scott admits each exe gets progressively harder.

“	Not that fighting harder and harder battles for your love is getting old or anything...	„
	~ Scott Pilgrim

Exes getting tougher each Fight

"This doesn't necessarily refer to them getting physically stronger."

There's not many options for what this could mean, especially since Scott directly says "harder battles". Scott uses the word "harder" in reference to each exe fight getting more and more challenging as time goes on. So let's break down each of the possibilities and explain why AP is the likeliest option Scott refers to in this sentence, starting with skill.

Skill and intelligence of the Exes

Matthew Patel, for the longest time, was the most skilled evil exe to face Scott Pilgrim. He was shown to have been a martial artist in middle school and could compete with Scott's skill, who was considered the best fighter in the Province and won the All-Ontario Fighting Tournament at age 19 (And in the movie, Matthew is shown being incredibly agile and skilled in H2H combat)

Ramona describes the amount of unwanted attention she got.
Matthew showed up and helped her fight every football jock.
Ramona dumps Matthew, leaving him to become vengeful.

Despite this, Scott Pilgrim defeats Matthew with no difficulty, and he ends up having more issue with characters like Lucas Lee who just had raw power and lifting strength. So skill is definitely not what Scott was referring to.

Powers of the evil Exes

This is basically the same case as the first point. After Matthew Patel, only Todd Ingram has any noteworthy powers that directly hinder Scott's ability to fight them, and it's debatable if Todd's are even better than Matthew since his powers are directly connected to Subspace.

"Even if Matthew's powers are greater, Scott had far more trouble with Todd, thus he means their powers."

Even with this mindset (Which is a bad one since Matthew's powers still outranged Scott, Matthew was just physically weaker than Scott), the Twins' robots had absolutely no unique abilities like Todd or Matthew, and simply relied on physical power (More evidence supporting physically tougher opponents since he fought these robots right before he said the line)

Scott even ended up breaking his guitar when hitting Robot-02, which is something that never happened with Todd. And this wasn't even the strongest robot Scott faced, further backing them getting physically tougher.

Mental influence of the Exes

This is a weirder point brought up against Scott's statement, and while I partially agree since with each exe came more hurtles in Scott and Ramona's relationship, this had nothing to do with the exes' battles. For example, during the Twins fight Scott was losing before they even started messing with his head. And they weren't even winning with their amplified tag attacks.

We immediately see Scott losing to the Twins.
Kim mentions Scott having a hangover.
The Twins began to combo Scott.

"Scott had a hangover. Of course he'd be losing to them."

We see him fight completely normal right after this, so I doubt the hangover was actively damaging Scott's ability to fight or his physical stats. It's more likely that his senses were more sensitive to sound and touch, which is a common diagnosis for hangovers.

This also ignores the previous robot fights, where Scott is in his prime for each one. Heck, Scott needed an entirely new weapon and amplification just to compete with Roxie Richter, who was previously slicing Scott's limbs off with ease.

Both Scott and Roxie prepare for their battle.
Scott begins to sprint at Roxie and leap in the air.
Roxie does the same.
Their blades clash and both land on their feet.
Scott barely gets his face grazed by Roxie.
Roxie gets completely cut in half.
Then she explodes into a dozens or so small animals.

Scott Pilgrim's videogame-based laws

Now for the last piece to this argument, we have Scott Pilgrim's laws. For newcomers, Scott's life is influenced by video game mechanics like power-ups, save points, achievements, and so on.

http://imgur.com/gallery/4voDQhv

http://imgur.com/gallery/3gv2nDu

http://imgur.com/gallery/vWzKMdI

Extra arguments and refutes

Gideon's viewpoint on the other exes

Lastly, Gideon one-shots a base Scott, who was the same Scott to beat Todd Ingram and is roughly comparable to him then. So they're definitely getting stronger:

http://imgur.com/gallery/1rmBpsX

Scott Pilgrim vs Todd Ingram: the Game Edition

Yes, I am aware the game is a completely separate continuity where the events differ. That doesn't, however, change the fact that the game was made and interpreted off the movie, which Bryan (As shown prior) helped direct the events of the movie (For those who haven't played the game, here is the boss battle). This only further contradicts Bryan's original statement, and shows Scott is physically comparable to Todd.

Also, in the movie, Scott one-shots Todd without any of the issues most people present in the comics (Remember, Todd gets his powers after the moon punch) and directly tanks a shockwave from Todd during the bass battle. This is even more blatant scaling for Scott, which Bryan directed and approved of.

Conclusion

The conclusion should be obvious based on this blog. Bryan's statements contradict a lot of previously established lore and feats, along with being outright slanderous to his characters who he underestimates in the original Tumblr question. As for a TL; DR of the rest of the blog.

Todd being continental through exclusively vegan powers is narratively untrue, along with a grasp for straws.
His vegan powers not scaling to his standard AP is baseless and goes against our standards for how we handle situations like that.
Scott and co not scaling due to the outlier dismissal misunderstands what an outlier is and ignores the supporting feats for scaling.
Scott losing was simply due to being unable to get in close and finish the fight, which he directly says at the end of the fight.
Todd holding back has never been established as a character trait of his, and contradicts how he acts later in the volume, thus making all of Scott's feats against Todd valid.
Scott states that each battle gets harder and harder, which is backed by him needing to powers and statistic amplifications to compete with them and the game-based laws in his universe.
The other Scott Pilgrim media supports the two scaling rather than what Bryan says, and the later character interactions like Gideon Graves further supports this notion.

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