TaskForceLyoko wrote:I'm going to limit my quoting because these posts are getting huge.
I should clarify "big boy rules". These are not rules. It's a light-hearted way of saying reality applies regardless. Using your Monopoly analogy, it's like saying the four year old playing gets beaten badly in the game because he doesn't understand the rules or how to play. If you choose to play, then big boy rules apply even if you don't accept or understand.
That's not what I was saying. A kid who doesn't know how to play Monopoly, is going to inadvertently break the rules, and if you're not paying attention, the kid might just end up winning (albeit by cheating, but the idea of "winning" is still there).
I don't doubt that the kids and Jeremie understand the reality of their situation. If all you're saying by "big boy rules" is that they've got to face up to reality, I think they're quite aware of that already. I'd say they take it quite seriously, in fact.[/quote]
TaskForceLyoko wrote:Sorry to tell you this, but you've been taught wrong about the American Revolution. The legend of the American irregular forces is exactly that, a legend. Fact is that the irregular forces of the time were mostly undisciplined and unreliable. At best, they had a miniscule effect on the outcome of the war. The truth was that the war was won by Washington's professional military, trained in the same way as the British military of the time. The war was won on conventional battles using conventional tactics and rules.
I'm not so much talking about how different the sizes of each army was, but the way in which they fought. The Colonists wore their home clothes, while the British wore their traditional bright red. I don't remember reading any "Legends Debunked" books, that nay-sayed that the colonists chose to shoot and then take cover in the trees at the British army, instead of marching in plain view into battle. I would never deny that a great deal of victory can be chalked up to Washington, but I've always read that the Briton's sticking to convention was what ultimately lost them the war on land.
I'd need some text or at the very least linked evidence, to be convinced that any of what's been said about the Revolutionary war is "legend". I studied Folklore and Legends, and I don't recall reading anything about that.
TaskForceLyoko wrote:I think the same is true of the kids fighting XANA, and that's why they're winning. It's not because of XANA's incompetence (as I'd consider a satellite lazer being aimed at me "mind breaking" enough), so much as it is...well, "cheating".
This is why I'm against raising the rating of the show or making it more serious. It's very difficult to take Xana seriously. The way the show is now, I can suspend my disbelief because the show is light enough. Xana is incompetent. It builds monsters with weak points, then marks that point for all to see. With all it's capable of doing, it fails to kill four kids with no special powers time and time again. That's imcompetence in my book.
We now know that XANA isn't (or wasn't) as in control of Lyoko as we previously thought. Everything in Lyoko is bound to that symbol (just look at Aelita's Lyoko card) so it's quite possible that Franz Hopper may have some amount of influence in the monster's creation (especially if you want to think that he and XANA are linked), and gives the kids a slight edge in defeating XANA. Now this might be just conjecture but it could be possible.
I'm against raising the rating of the show as well, but that doesn't make his real world attacks any less serious (at least not to me). I could list them, but the main reason is that, indeed, outside of Lyoko, the kids haven't really thwarted any of his real world attacks. The alien, samurai, the toxic gas...the kids only escaped those through a Lyoko battle and a timely tower deactivation. If it weren't for the ability to deactivate the towers (which Franz Hopper must have put into place as well), XANA would have indeed decimated them long ago. I don't think that's incompetence.
TaskForceLyoko wrote:What confuses me though, is that you find Jeremie "more qualified" than the others, to lead, and yet you state he's a "poor leader". This seems to be a mixing of signals almost.
Think of it as the best of what you have.
Personally I think Yumi or Aelita would make perfectly capable leaders, at least as much so as Jeremie. But that's going to go into opinion again, and I still consider them all to be perfectly capable of leading themselves.
TaskForceLyoko wrote:Ulrich didn't break Hertz' fall, he got banged up with her. Ulrich fared no better than Mrs. Hertz when he was in there. Sending Ulrich in accomplished nothing because Ulrich had no ability to stop the gravity distortions. His knowlege of what was going on didn't help because there was nothing he could do to stop it. Had Xana hit the place some more, the likely result would have been both Mrs. Hertz and Ulrich getting killed. The better decision would have been to trigger the fire alarm. Sending Ulrich in served only to put him in needless harm.
Jeremie was confident that he could stop XANA's gravity fluctuations. If you want to mark him for overconfidence, that could be fair enough, but Ulrich had to be sent in order to keep Mrs. Hertz from being hurt and to get her out, should she be accidentally knocked unconscious (which is precisely what happened).
Pulling the fire alarm won't do anything for a person who's already unconscious, and in fact, pulling the fire alarm would have been far more detrimental. No one else was in the building to hear it, and pulling the fire alarm would have alerted the fire department. With the fire department arriving other people might have been lured back into the school to see who pulled it, and thus put far more people in danger than before. That's not really a better decision, in that respect.
TaskForceLyoko wrote:]quote]I disagree, as this goes back to the point I made about the British army battling the colonists in the Revolutionary war. The British army was more than "halfway competent" and they still lost. XANA is more than "halfway competent" but the kids aren't playing by the "rules".
Already addressed. The way the Lyoko team work makes for an unorganized mess that would be wiped out in a battle. Rather than being a team that is difficult to beat, they are actually easy pickings for anyone knowlegeable in small unit tactics. Fortunately, the writers are on their side.[/quote]
Again, I'd need to see reliable evidence as to what you said about the Revolutionary war. Not that I don't trust you, but sources are key. True, the writers are on their side, but it doesn't mean they don't write a convincing fight.
Also, XANA's knowledge is theoretical...he deals with things purely on logic, and from what he's gathered from his touches with the human world. "Small unit" tactics tend to not always be known about. Wars now are based entirely upon who holds the largest amount of fire power, so why shouldn't XANA assume he can't be beaten. Logic would dictate to him that because he holds all the firepower, while the kids have no powers, there's no way he can lose. Only in season 2 does he begin to gain an understanding of how to divide and conquer a unit. It's not incompetence so much as it is ignorance, and it's ignorance that's quickly being enlightened at that.