Fictional Character Showdown!

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Not sure if this will be a reoccurring thread. I'm honestly not usually one to care for who would win between, say, Superman or Batman. But my recent foray into classic horror flicks got me thinking about one particular fight.

It's The Battle of the Dream Lords!

In this corner, weighing in at endless amounts of pounds, this dreamy combatant is dreams. He's been around since man first slept. He has walked into Hell and faced down the devil himself, battled against the Greek Furies, and once held the key to Hell. He is, however, not impervious. He was once trapped for hundreds of years in a glass bottle by mortals. He is also, however, prone to rage and emotional outburts. And he can be killed, as some of his siblings have been killed and then replaced in Doctor Who-like fashion. But he is still very powerful. He is...Dream!


And in the other corner, weighing in at the combined weight of a hundred maniacs. He hails from Springwood, Ohio. This man has knives specially built into his gloves. He loves tormenting the teenagers that he kills. He is powered by freshly killed souls. His sweater looks like something worn at Christmas. He has been killed many, many, times. They tried everything from burning him alive, to burying his bones, holy water, blowing him up and even having his own captured souls rip him apart. But he just keeps on ticking. Welcome to prime time, bitches, because it's Freddy Krueger!



Considerations:
-Dream is likely much more powerful than Freddy. Or is he? Both have shown considerable power in creating dream worlds. But is Freddy on Dream's level, or more on level with, say, The Corinthian?
-Krueger plays on the emotions of helpless teenagers. We've seen Dream's emotions played with numerous times, especially by his androgynistic sibling, Desire.
-While Krueger has no qualms with killing, Dreams has been known to get blood on his hands.

Please note: If you're going to name specific events in Gaiman's series, please put them behind a spoiler tag. I've tried to keep said spoilers as ambiguous as possible.
 
I will soundly declare this a non-event. Krueger has limited abilities within the nightmares of certain individuals. Dream has complete control over all dreams as well as nightmares.

Seriously, does anyone believe that Morpheus could be defeated by a rag-tag band of "dream warriors"?
 
Perhaps, but it was made clear in Sandman that he Endless were more powerful than the gods. The gods required human belief for power. The Endless required no such belief.
 
Morpheus is Dream, therefore any power Freddie has is through him, therefore Freddie loses before the fight even begins.
 

GasBandit

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Isn't this basically what happened? Dream vs Dr. Destiny? Dr. Destiny being the DC villain who could control dreams (albeit because his power's source was stolen from Dream himself)?
 

North_Ranger

Staff member
Not really familiar with either of them, but I would reckon that a person named after a frickin' god could thump a knife-nut in need of topical cream six ways from Sunday.

Also, Nick, in my drug-fueled stupors I thought about posting something like this, I dunno, once every two weeks. You know, a thread where we put pop culture characters against each other in a Celebrity Deathmatch-kinda manner. Hell, if we could get Silver Jelly - I mean, Ignacio de Calavera y Tonto - to make some illustrations, that'd be just awesome :p
 

fade

Staff member
You should watch the original Nightmare on Elm Street, NR. It's probably a little dated now, but in the 80s it had countless people afraid to go to sleep at night. It sure scared me.
 
Seriously, does anyone believe that Morpheus could be defeated by a rag-tag band of "dream warriors"?
He could if it was narratively appropriate for them to do so... and to be perfectly honest, Dream was almost beat a B-List DC Villian early on. We also know that Despair was killed at one point and the person who killed her became the next Despair. It also doesn't help his case that Dream actually died, while Freddie has never been permanently defeated. However, in his domain Dream is undisputed. He can make anything happen.

As for Freddie... as long as at least one person lives that knows about him, he's basically immortal. He can be defeated but then all he does is retreat and recover his strength. However, his track record against other powered individuals isn't that great... in a dream he can beat Jason, but in the real world he could only fight Jason to a stand still.

Basically it's a fight against an unstoppable force (Dream) vs and immovable object (Freddy). Dream has no way of killing Freddie as long as people remember him, but Freddie wouldn't have the power to defeat Dream unless Dream allowed it to.

Here's my idea for one: The Doctor from Dr. Who vs Q from Star Trek.
 
Q likes games too much. I mean, he could just wink the Doctor out of existence but he's more likely to make him play some convoluted game where he underestimates the Doctor.
 
Q likes games too much. I mean, he could just wink the Doctor out of existence but he's more likely to make him play some convoluted game where he underestimates the Doctor.
Perhaps, but it's also entirely possible that a previous regeneration would show up 5 minutes later and just blow his mind. Q can't see the future, while The Doctor can experience it first hand.

I'd almost say the The Prophets from DS9 would be a better match for the Q... the Prophets can't do as much, but they experience time all at once and thus can see things that the Q cannot... while Q must experience time linearly but have nigh omnipotent powers while doing so.
 

fade

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Well, if you only consider TNG, then Q was never outwitted by Picard at all. It was just part of his 8 year trial.
 
Well, if you only consider TNG, then Q was never outwitted by Picard at all. It was just part of his 8 year trial.
I dunno if that's true. After all, through Q's tomfoolery with other species, he was stripped of his power. I could see your argument that it resulted in yet another test for Picard and humanity (ie. choosing to defend the human Q against alien vengeance) but in the same episode, the ambiguity is removed when we see ANOTHER Q entity restore Q's power.
 
There is also the fact that Q was clearly changed from his time with Picard. In Voyager he's essentially come around the way the mainstream Q think, until he helps another kill itself. It's really quite apparent that for all his judging and omnipotence, he did learn things from Picard and Sisko.
 

fade

Staff member
There is also the fact that Q was clearly changed from his time with Picard. In Voyager he's essentially come around the way the mainstream Q think, until he helps another kill itself. It's really quite apparent that for all his judging and omnipotence, he did learn things from Picard and Sisko.
Well, that was why I said if you only consider TNG. I was paraphrasing the series finale.
 

BananaHands

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I feel like the Doctor's good nature would work against him. Now, if it was The Master vs. Q? Completely different story.
 
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