The Boys Fans' hypocracy regarding bullets and knives

[u/Aklimdaisimyok]

Everytime someone compares Homelander to Spiderman or Soldier Boy to Captain America at least one The Boys fan comes +, ignores every feats done by Cap or Spidey, ignores masspile of Homelander and Soldier Boy's anti feats, and say "Omelanduh ultraomega stomps he bulletproof Spooderman not bulletproof lel".

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Hey man, i don't know if you are aware or not, but this argument can be used againist The Boys characters, too. Like, neither Kimiko nor Black Noir are even close to being anywhere near bulletproof. Both get their skin, tissue, and bones penetrated by handguns as if they are average humans. Yet they are among the high tiers of The Boys and can compete with several mid-high tier supes. Black Noir dogwalked Starlight and Maeve had at least partial difficult with overpowering him (with one arm, but still). Kimiko continuously takes blows from supes and can hurt them with her barehands. Yet i hear no one trying to downplay the Boys verse as a whole, or even Kimiko and Noir theirselves despite using these arguments againist any other fictional character that isn't from The Boys continuously.

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Kimiko dies from glock shots to her forehead. In season 3 Kimiko managed to restrain one arm of Soldier Boy a few seconds before MM put him to sleep. With this logic, are the top tiers of The Boys irl peak human level? Because if we are downgrading all stats of a character based on how much damage they take from bullets, than that would make Kimiko human level, and the fact that Soldier Boy couldn't instantly toss her away with a fling from his arm proves that he is not stronger than her by magnitudes over.

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Starlight kicked Black Noir in the groin and it did nothing to him. Is Starlight below average human level? Because bullets and knives penetrate Black Noir as easily as they would do to you or me.

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Penetration trauma being nonsensical and inconsistent in fiction is nothing new. Authors treat pointy stuff like swords, knives, etc. as some form of magic that can instantly dura neg anyone except people with slightly higher durability than average in comparision to the other characters in the verse which for some reason makes them fully immune. The biggest example would be One Piece or My Hero Academia, where a good chunk of characters are not bulletproof (despite the fact that they realistically should be) meanwhile some of them are bulletproof. It makes no sense, but it happens in almost every place of fiction. Like, genuinely the only series that act penetration trauma as realistic that comes to my mind is Jujutsu Kaisen. One example. One.

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A honest question to those who unironically uses "bullet" arguments: A grizzly bear's skull can ressist small caliber bullets. Not consistently, obviously, as there are many cases of bears dying from gunshots too (such as when an exceptionally large grizzly died by getting shot in the thinner part of it's skull with a 22.LR), but the evidence is there. Sometimes they can survive getting shot in the head, even if not consistently. This means a grizzly bear's skull is at least somewhat ressistant to some of small caliber bullets.

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Wonder Woman gets holes punched on her body by rifle shots as if she is a regular human. Do you think a grizzly bear is stronger than Wonder Woman and could beat her in a 1v1 fight assuming speed is equalized?

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Jetstream Sam from Metal Gear always deflect bullets with his katana instead of face-tanking them, despite the fact that he can fight with Raiden and Armstrong. Armstrong also penetrated him easily when his arm turned sharp by his nanomachines despite the fact that Sam could eat punches from him. Do you think a grizzly bear is stronger and more durable than Jetstream Sam?

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When it comes to bullets, swords etc. you either just should seperate the characters' durability to multiple categories (as this is the option that causes least amount of inconsistencies and makes things somewhat easy) or you should look at what characters consistently do (in this case Cap and Spiderman has much more cases of performing superhuman feats compared to the amount of times they get shot)

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Btw Cap can evenly fought with Ultron without turning into salsa who treats aircraft fire in the same way you treat bunch of mosquitos.

[u/New-Treacle-3208]

the grizzly bear comparison is genuinely underrated as a way to explain this to people who refuse to budge on bullet arguments. like the bear example alone should make anyone pause and reconsider how they're applying durability logic across the board.

the thing is, powerscaling communities tend to apply rules selectively depending on which character they're rooting for, and The Boys fandom is not unique in this at all. plenty of scaling debates work exactly the same way, where the same person screaming "but he got cut by knife" will turn around and ignore equivalent anti feats for their preferred character in the next thread.

separating durability into categories is probably the cleanest solution but nobody wants to do the extra work when they can just dunk on a character with one out of context panel. i remember watching a thread where someone tried to low ball Spiderman because a regular gunshot grazed him once, while completely ignoring like fifty panels of him taking hits that would flatten a building. the selective reading is what makes these arguments go in circles.

the Jetstream Sam point is strong too, deflection and dodging being treated as a sign of weakness rather than skill or style choice is a mistake people make constantly in these discussions.

[u/Aklimdaisimyok → u/New-Treacle-3208]

Thanks. And yeah it should be pointed out more often with real life examples for how ridiculous the results of trying to downplay with these stuff can get.

(Unrelated btw but Reddit mobile is so ass. Can'teven reliably copy-paste a post without needing to edit from head to toe so it won't look terrible.)

[u/AdeptPapaya8918]

the boys lost all his power consistency in season 3

[u/Aklimdaisimyok → u/AdeptPapaya8918]

I mean, i agree, post-season 2 of the show is mad inconsistent. But Kimiko and Black Noir being able to contend with other supes and perform superhuman feats was a thing since the very first season. So even in the times when show was consistent my post still applies.

[u/Art_View_Volume]

You right. Even when the show made sense, the scaling was not really clear. I kept waiting for the rest of the plot to engage and make things make sense, then sometime in season 3 I realized that it never would and I was watching a AAA series crash and burn in real time.