Fantomex vs Psylocke

Originally posted by StyleTime
I'm glad we are in agreement on that first part; however, I need to reiterate that your powers still work inside the misdirection. If he creates an illusion where she removes his TP blockers, she will know it's fake immediately because her scan will come up with nothing. This isn't like Teen Jean trapping Karnak in a mental loop, where in real life Karnak was just sitting there doing nothing. If Betsy scans, she actually scans. Why would she drop her shields before she checks it out? I mean, absolute worst case scenario, she just waits with a TK barrier in front of her while it fades. He can only fire from one direction considering the starting distance.

Oh it's definitely the best his character as ever been written, even better than Morrison imo. But still, normally this would be written off for any other character. Like with V&V Despero or Bendisforce characters.

I'd argue a quickdraw goes in her favor due her being objectively faster and not having to cast a spell. She has the advantage at any range tbh.

There's a couple of problems with this scene though. Primarily, Psylocke didn't have TK here during Remender's run, and Fantomex's TP blockers would keep her from reading him. Remenderlocke and Remendomex are practically separate characters powerset wise from their standard counterparts. Secondly, Psylocke lowering her defenses doesn't mean she completely dropped everything. That is AoA Jean. She was the superior telepath, and didn't need much leeway to get into Psylocke's head. Even a slight falter would do. Psylocke's TK is so wildly beyond the firepower Fantomex has that he can't really brute force his way in, even if she weakens the shields. Lastly, as with Weapon XIII, Psylocke wasn't fighting back. AoA Kurt teleported her to E.V.A. and she agreed to have a talk with Fantomex. There wasn't actually an effort until it was too late.

https://postimg.cc/mhhZ9KDQ
https://postimg.cc/CdthsJB9

In a fight scenario where Psylocke isn't brainwashed from the Death Seed, knows from previous victories how Fantomex's powers work, and has TK similar to her Claremont/New Age levels, why would she drop her shield until she scans him?

lol

this is becoming a bit cyclical. if she is in a misdirect, she could just THINK she scans and finds him. not sure how she would tell the difference. or he makes her think she caught him with her tp and when she fries him and thinks the battle is over....

quickdraw is tough to gauge. she would need to use both tk and tp before he misdirects her though. once in the misdirect, not sure she could reliably find him. in your scans she already had the blocks removed before he tried it and she was engaging him. it would be different here i think. but i'd call a quickdraw a split, or a tiny edge to fantomex.

as far as storm, she could feeze the whole area, but why would she if she were just going for him? again, familiarity with powers might be her saving grace i guess. she may know what he'd try and freeze the whole bf. not sure if she could do so before she was shot though, but maybe.

anyway, you're one of my fave ghuys to talk sh!t out with. always cordial. 👆

you may not have convinced me fully, but you made me realize this may not be as straight forward as i thought. kudos.

Originally posted by leonidas
this is becoming a bit cyclical. if she is in a misdirect, she could just THINK she scans and finds him. not sure how she would tell the difference. or he makes her think she caught him with her tp and when she fries him and thinks the battle is over....

quickdraw is tough to gauge. she would need to use both tk and tp before he misdirects her though. once in the misdirect, not sure she could reliably find him. in your scans she already had the blocks removed before he tried it and she was engaging him. it would be different here i think. but i'd call a quickdraw a split, or a tiny edge to fantomex.

as far as storm, she could feeze the whole area, but why would she if she were just going for him? again, familiarity with powers might be her saving grace i guess. she may know what he'd try and freeze the whole bf. not sure if she could do so before she was shot though, but maybe.

anyway, you're one of my fave ghuys to talk sh!t out with. always cordial. 👆

you may not have convinced me fully, but you made me realize this may not be as straight forward as i thought. kudos.

As far as this quickdraw thing, I guess I don't understand your objection. She is faster, which is the primary issue. On top of that, thought equals action with her power. He must cast his. There's very little wiggle room for interpretation here. How would he possibly go before she TK sledgehammers him? She doesn't actually need TP at all.

I see what you're saying. The problem is, the only reason Storm wouldn't is that she suddenly doesn't fight at full capacity though. Her powerset is naturally inclined to aoe, so a big windblast or somesuch is expected here. You're right that she isn't bulletproof of course; however, the wind would deflect the bullets as she's done before, assuming Fantomex could hit her.

Cdtm, make the Storm thread yo.

Thanks. You're one of my favs too. I definitely try and avoid namecalling, outside of joking around. Generally doesn't help anything. Even if I take a hard stance on something, I prefer to exchange ideas and try and entertain the other viewpoint.

Postimage is down at the moment so I can't use scans. Will post specific stuff later if you need to see it, like Storm deflecting or bullets or something.

that's the thing--if she uses tk to remove the dampeners, he misdirects. (not even sure at half a km she could remove them...but maybe.) his best misdirect range is easily within the limits. once the dampeners are down, you think she automatically can find his mind within the illusion, but i'm not so sure. if she were IN his mind, i can see her being unaffected, as you showed. but having to find him AFTER he released a misdirect? even jamie braddock couldn't determine what was real without some serious effort:

https://imgur.com/a/67TS3Kh

(the goat is actually a possessed, elder jaime) i guess it depends on just how you want to define the illusion. it has been presented in different ways. if we view it as actual reality tampering, then there isn't really any reason to suppose she could simply use tp to see through it. she might be able to logic her way out, somehow. i could see her pulling an apocverine and instead of punching hitting with her tk dagger for example. but simply seeing through a reality alteration (if that is what it is) i don't see it.

and storm doesn't usually go for aoe attacks that would cover half a km in area, but i can see your point about knowledge of fantomex perhaps making that a viable tactic for her in this. we can of course offer fantomex his bullets that never miss, however.... i've seen some state them as standard gear for him, though i am not one of those people. 👆

last couple points here. one of the reasons i don't think she can scan for him once she is IN the misdirect is based on the feat accomplished against SHIP. in the scans below he actually misdirected SHIP into thinking it had teleported to another planet. it stands to reason that ship would have scanned the planet it thought it was on, yet it still believed it was ON that planet. not sure betsy would be able to tell his mind from a reality-skewed version of him, like ship couldn't tell it wasn't on that planet. likely something we simply won't agree on, but that is the basis for my reasoning.
it's a pretty retarded feat given it was a celestial ship.

in the second set of scans we see how potent, long lasting and far-reaching his misdirects can be against the horsemen.

https://imgur.com/a/OrhJnJq

Originally posted by leonidas
that's the thing--if she uses tk to remove the dampeners, he misdirects. (not even sure at half a km she could remove them...but maybe.) his best misdirect range is easily within the limits. once the dampeners are down, you think she automatically can find his mind within the illusion, but i'm not so sure. if she were IN his mind, i can see her being unaffected, as you showed. but having to find him AFTER he released a misdirect? even jamie braddock couldn't determine what was real without some serious effort:

https://imgur.com/a/67TS3Kh

(the goat is actually a possessed, elder jaime) i guess it depends on just how you want to define the illusion. it has been presented in different ways. if we view it as actual reality tampering, then there isn't really any reason to suppose she could simply use tp to see through it. she might be able to logic her way out, somehow. i could see her pulling an apocverine and instead of punching hitting with her tk dagger for example. but simply seeing through a reality alteration (if that is what it is) i don't see it.

and storm doesn't usually go for aoe attacks that would cover half a km in area, but i can see your point about knowledge of fantomex perhaps making that a viable tactic for her in this. we can of course offer fantomex his bullets that never miss, however.... i've seen some state them as standard gear for him, though i am not one of those people. 👆

Even if she was misdirected from that far away, my disagreement is below your next post, he'd still have to either: Make Fake Fantomex come up to fight her, in which case she TK's him then checks(remember, she knows she could be being duped already) by removing his mask and scanning him. The illusion will have no mind, like Mindblast's illusion; alternatively, he could walk up himself to make the shot. He's .5km away, and has zero accuracy feats. Her shields are up, so he'd do nothing even if he hits her, and the illusion would end since he broke it himself. Then he's in trouble.

Goat Monk goes back to what I've been saying. Yes, misdirect works when the person isn't aware Fantomex can/is doing it. Once he realized the inconsistency, he broke it quite easily.

"Reality skewing" is taken too literally. We've seen Fantomex, multiple times, while misdirecting someone. Reality doesn't actually change. The victim simply sees an illusion. It's reality "skewing" because it presents a plausible scenario stemming from the actual moment beforehand. He needs a mind to cast it on, he's shown that it allows him to manipulate the astral/psychic planes to some degree as well, and it's been branded hypnosis or illusion casting most often. As we've seen, you can even "dodge" it by hiding your psyche from him, so I'd argue it's quite clearly a mental attack at this point. It's highly specialized of course, but similar to Regan Wyngarde, or Princess Projectra/Sensor Girl, or an empath like Psycho Pirate. Their standard forms are shitty in conventional telepathic terms, but their specialties are pretty insane. Regan doesn't even need to be conscious, the illusions produce physical effects(your body will bleed if stabbed in pretend land), and persist in the face of blatant internal contradictions. Not to derail, but just pondering similar characters.

As for Storm, yeah, I guess I'm giving the same response. If you're going by "averages" like you're hinting, then you have to do the same for Fantomex. That means no never-seen-before-or-since interpretation of misdirection. And yeah, Dark wants to believe Fantomex still has those bullets made from Weapon III's skin, but Fantomex explicitly used the last one against Archangelocalypse. He had a limited supply ever since he was introduced. It was a story point that ended nearly 10 years ago.

Originally posted by leonidas
last couple points here. one of the reasons i don't think she can scan for him once she is IN the misdirect is based on the feat accomplished against SHIP. in the scans below he actually misdirected SHIP into thinking it had teleported to another planet. it stands to reason that ship would have scanned the planet it thought it was on, yet it still believed it was ON that planet. not sure betsy would be able to tell his mind from a reality-skewed version of him, like ship couldn't tell it wasn't on that planet. likely something we simply won't agree on, but that is the basis for my reasoning.
it's a pretty retarded feat given it was a celestial ship.

in the second set of scans we see how potent, long lasting and far-reaching his misdirects can be against the horsemen.

https://imgur.com/a/OrhJnJq

That's not the case in the fight. Psylocke is being dropped into an arena and told she is fighting Fantomex. She'll definitely scan and fight the illusion just like everyone else who was aware of what's happening. And she can still just keep her shields up.
It's similar to how Wolverine has detected Fantomex by smell,or lack thereof, on multiple occassions.
https://postimg.cc/2L3dzVZk
https://postimg.cc/V5NW9HHx

Logan was misdirected when Shadow King possessed him, but then SK made Logan switch to smell to avoid that.

Additionally, I don't feel this feat is some super distance thing. The Horsemen are inside of E.V.A the whole time, so Fantomex is essentially right next to them. He's legit never done anything like that without E.V.A assisting.

Originally posted by StyleTime
Even if she was misdirected from that far away, my disagreement is below your next post, he'd still have to either: Make Fake Fantomex come up to fight her, in which case she TK's him then checks(remember, she knows she could be being duped already) by removing his mask and scanning him. The illusion will have no mind,

and this is where we sort of fundamentally disagree. i'm not sure the illusion WOULD have no mind. he's actually changed himself into parts of his misdirect, so i'd argue it WOULD have a mind--but like his appearance and everything else around him, his mind would be altered to fit the misdirect. like i said, no one has ever broken a misdirect by simply scanning for him. maybe it's because of the plates, or maybe the plates wouldn't matter. not sure because it has never happened so i'm not going to assume betsy could do it.

Goat Monk goes back to what I've been saying. Yes, misdirect works when the person isn't aware Fantomex can/is doing it. Once he realized the inconsistency, he broke it quite easily.

that's because he made a stupid illusion. lol if he makes a different one that had no logical inconsistency, goat monk would never have known....

"Reality skewing" is taken too literally. We've seen Fantomex, multiple times, while misdirecting someone. Reality doesn't actually change. The victim simply sees an illusion. It's reality "skewing" because it presents a plausible scenario stemming from the actual moment beforehand. He needs a mind to cast it on, he's shown that it allows him to manipulate the astral/psychic planes to some degree as well, and it's been branded hypnosis or illusion casting most often. As we've seen, you can even "dodge" it by hiding your psyche from him, so I'd argue it's quite clearly a mental attack at this point.

i think it's more than that. if it were simply an illusion, she could sense the lack of thought of anything around her that was a part of the misdirection.
but i don't think she can. it's much more immersive.

That's a clone of SHIP according to Wolverine technically. It doesn't have a reason to scan anything. The problem here is the same problem I'm trying to relay about all these examples. The ship didn't even know Fantomex was awake, much less misdirecting it. Why would it doubt that it had teleported to its destination?

not sure the fact that it wasn't the original ship matters--it clearly had a sentient mind, and was a vessel. how would it NOT scan....? how else would a ship know it arrived at it's destination...? 😕

whatever he did, it fooled the ship into thinking it had arrived where it was supposed to. for that to be the case it had to be more than simple illusion.

That's not the case in the fight. Psylocke is being dropped into an arena and told she is fighting Fantomex. She'll definitely scan and fight the illusion just like everyone else who was aware of what's happening. And she can still just keep her shields up.

again, if she's IN the illusion, not sure how she's knows if she's scanning the real fantomex or a misdirected version. maybe she would just STAY shielded forever, but he knows HER just as well.

It's similar to how Wolverine has detected Fantomex by smell,or lack thereof, on multiple occassions.
https://postimg.cc/2L3dzVZk
https://postimg.cc/V5NW9HHx

but he wasn't being misdirected there, sooo...

Logan was misdirected when Shadow King possessed him, but then SK made Logan switch to smell to avoid that.

but it was never tested, and logan WAS misdirected.

Additionally, I don't feel this feat is some super distance thing. The Horsemen are inside of E.V.A the whole time, so Fantomex is essentially right next to them. He's legit never done anything like that without E.V.A assisting.

maybe. but there's no reason eva wouldn't be part of THIS fight either. it IS his nervous system after all so should certainly be part of his standard gear (as i mentioned in the tier thread....)

anyway, enough time spent on this i think. it's definitely been made a little muddier than i originally thought, mostly because of betsy's familiarity with him and his powers. but he could possibly benefit as well from knowing her so well, and i'm still not completely sold that she could find her way out of a misdirect simply by tp'ing her way through.

fun discussion though. 👆

Originally posted by leonidas
and this is where we sort of fundamentally disagree. i'm not sure the illusion WOULD have no mind. he's actually changed himself into parts of his misdirect, so i'd argue it WOULD have a mind--but like his appearance and everything else around him, his mind would be altered to fit the misdirect. like i said, no one has ever broken a misdirect by simply scanning for him. maybe it's because of the plates, or maybe the plates wouldn't matter. not sure because it has never happened so i'm not going to assume betsy could do it.

And no one has ever scanned for him, but we do know being aware of it lets you break the illusion. In addition to the others, Fantomex did it when Deathloktomex left that taunting message for him.

Originally posted by leonidas
again, if she's IN the illusion, not sure how she's knows if she's scanning the real fantomex or a misdirected version. maybe she would just STAY shielded forever, but he knows HER just as well.

Originally posted by leonidas
maybe. but there's no reason eva wouldn't be part of THIS fight either. it IS his nervous system after all so should certainly be part of his standard gear (as i mentioned in the tier thread....)

anyway, enough time spent on this i think. it's definitely been made a little muddier than i originally thought, mostly because of betsy's familiarity with him and his powers. but he could possibly benefit as well from knowing her so well, and i'm still not completely sold that she could find her way out of a misdirect simply by tp'ing her way through.

fun discussion though. 👆

Cool beans. I think her TK would be enough personally, but I'm okay with "muddy" too. It can get complicated here as there are some unanswered questions, especially with E.V.A thrown in. Psylocke gets weird too if we're taking all her feats in.

For example, she died recently, and mentally harnessed Sapphire Styx's soul energy to rebuild her original British body. I haven't mentioned this because I'm not sure how Marvel will handle it long term, but I guess Psylocke is just made of energy like Teen Jeen now? 😕

https://postimg.cc/CnYmkKQM
https://postimg.cc/bD1mZnLF
https://postimg.cc/McCsZ50Q