True Blood vs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (tv series only)

[Siriel]

A single feat which is then never backed up by anything else she did.

Every other time something happens, from Warren throwing a ball at her to physically amping herself to fistfight with Buffy to Giles beating her down, she shows no particular speed at all that I can recall.

Add that it was an explosion and that fictional explosions are up there with lasers for not moving as fast as they should, and I see no reason to claim that she's anymore of a bullet timer than any of the hundred action heroes who did the "outrun the fireball" scene.

[BitVyper]

Dark Willow exists for a very short period of time, so there's not a lot of opportunity for establishing feats, and nothing really exists as an outlier. Also it was a single spell used on reflex, so it was only restricted to the speed of her thought. In the fight with Buffy her magic was being restrained, so she would have been limited to the speed her body could actually move at (and as I recall, despite their physical stats being apparently the same, she was winning that fight). As far as the fight with Giles goes, he blindsided her and was massively powered up. Even then, with the exception of him catching her with a spell she had no way of knowing she couldn't just power through like she'd powered through every other magical attack, the fight was mostly just her toying with him.

The only time she actually reacted was to something that was actually a threat to her. Everything else she was really blatantly just brute forcing her way through. Nothing about that contradicts the reflexive defense she showed when the bomb went off, she was just really arrogant. Which is put on very obvious display in narrative.

Add that it was an explosion and that fictional explosions are up there with lasers....

Pretty much any time a laser-dodging feat is sketchy, it's because they aren't visually doing anything to suggest they actually move as fast as lasers. We see instant expansion from this explosion. Willow just stops it.

If a visual were to display a laser operating like a normal laser and still somehow depict a character dodging it after being fired, then we'd pretty much have to acknowledge that he was moving faster than a real laser.

Edit: In fact, with the exception of her getting blindsided by power she wasn't anywhere near prepared for from an amped up Giles, and caught by a trap she clearly didn't give a shit about, I'm pretty sure she countered every other spell directed at her.

Edit: If I recall correctly, Voltron Buffy (the one who beat Adam) also demonstrated some bullet time reflexive spell casting when she turned a rocket into doves. I might be misremembering the scene though. It provides further support for this being something that is possible for a super-charged spell caster.

Edit: Like we tend to ignore what the speed of an explosion should be when it's something like two normal human cops getting chased down a hallway by an explosion that should, by all rights, have consumed the entire building in around a second. If an explosion is basically operating like it should, then there's every reason to assume that it's expanding at a normal rate. Otherwise we're ignoring a clear and helpful indicator of a character's speed for essentially no reason. For instance, I'm pretty sure we don't assume the nuke Flash saved all those people from was slowed down at all. Visually, that explosion basically does the same thing Willow's does, although Willow's was stopped from ever finishing, whereas Flash's still went off all the way due to the fact that no one straight up time-froze it.

[Siriel]

Not enough time? She had three fourty minutes episodes. That's more than the average movie.

If you feel it's enough for a mod ruling, feel free to PM Sharp. Or I will if you want.

But otherwise, I'm not considering someone with zero other speed feats a bullet timer based on their ability to react to a magical explosion.

[Sharpandpointies]

A couple of things:

- Explosion propagation speed can vary quite a bit, from deflagration velocity, to detonation velocity, and far, far higher.
- A single feat with no other demonstration of hyper speed makes things rather suspect.

Given how picky we are with other speed things (including granting bullet-time status to people), due to how wonky speed is treated in fiction, I'm not ready to grant BT status to Dark Willow based on a single, potentially iffy feat.

[KJ Stewart]

Siriel, a question:

You refute Dark Willow's speed because she had 3 episodes (during which she wasn't on screen for most of the time) and only showed speed once, whilst using Glory's 1 speed feat despite the fact she was around for EIGHTEEN episodes and had plenty of other opportunities to display speed.

I love this site, but I've been here years and I'm often still confused by the inconsistency in this kind of verdict.

So why do you refute one, when another even more inconsistent showing is fine?

Not an argument, just a question, because it seems really odd to me.

[Siriel]

Siriel, a question:

You refute Dark Willow's speed because she had 3 episodes (during which she wasn't on screen for most of the time) and only showed speed once, whilst using Glory's 1 speed feat despite the fact she was around for EIGHTEEN episodes and had plenty of other opportunities to display speed.

I love this site, but I've been here years and I'm often still confused by the inconsistency in this kind of verdict.

So why do you refute one, when another even more inconsistent showing is fine?

Not an argument, just a question, because it seems really odd to me.

Actually, Glory had more than one, as I recall.

Off the top of my head there's that one time where she zipped around as a blur, and the other time where she killed the Knights of Byzantium in the time it took Buffy to cross the room. (The latter being after she kidnapped Dawn.)

I might be misremembering the former due to not having watched that season in ages, in which case I'm completely willing to change my mind. (About her having superspeed, not about the Rumbles, obviously.)

Another thing is presentation - Willow is a magic user. Nothing more, nothing less. She specifically had to use magic to amp herself to physically fight Buffy. I thus find the notion that she randomly developped high-end superspeed (for the Buffyverse) a bit silly.
Glory is presented from the start as being a physical monster, so her having superspeed is comparatively quite believable in my opinion.


I'll note that there's no official verdict from me here, just my opinion. I don't act as a mod while debating.

[Surtur]

Glory has her own superspeed

I don't recall reaction feats for her on the level of bullet timing or anything close, so the fact she can run at blur speeds wouldn't necessarily mean she could react to a blitz and Russell casually blitzes low level bullet timers.

has shown that magic is kind of a bad way to deal with her and is crazy. And when did vampires ever glamour a being that's not human at all?

Glamour failed on Sookie, but she herself is a telepath. Alcide certainly isn't human and they glamoured him. This doesn't mean I'm saying it is 100% guaranteed to work, but it has definitely been done to other supernatural beings.

Also, given a month's prep, the Buffyverse can easily defend against that.

Oh definitely, that was more just a straight up fight I meant.