What's your most preferred alternate theory to ki control?

To be clear, I'm talking about the "ki control" theory that implies Dragon Ball characters can hit with planet+ level force and shoot planet+ level ki blast without doing any damage to the planet. While I don't know if this is valid, that's not what the purpose of this poll is for. Ki control is the "AP =/= DC" argument with extra steps (whether that's a good or bad thing), but there are other pretty popular theories in the fandom. For those that might be unfamiliar with them, I've explained them below:

**Core-busting:** This one is pretty straightforward. To reconcile why Dragon Ball characters can blow up planets but only destroy mountains and islands in combat, the theory says that Dragon Ball characters can blow up planets (and stars?) by "cheating" and firing said mountains/island busters into the planet's cores are triggering a chain reaction. Canon material that supports it are the DBS:Broly novelization of Frieza destroying Planets Vegeta (which says Vegeta's core was "shot out"), the infamous five minutes on Namek and the Daizenshuu's description of Kid Buu's planet buster (which references the Namek scene once again.) There's also some evidence for it from a Gohan statement in the Moro Saga, but I haven't read the whole thing yet.

**Variable output:** A bit trickier than the last one, but this is the general gist. Dragon Ball characters have enough energy or blow up planets, but they can't output that much energy into every punch or ki blast without "charging" them. This is fone with the aid of named attacks like the Kamehameha or Galick Gun, though some do it better than others. Similarly, they can't tank planet+ level attacks normally, but they can "charge" their defenses temporarily to do so. It's also worth noting that they can win fights without using planet-busting power in the first place. Canon material that supports this theory includes Goku vs Piccolo Jr, where Goku feels pain from Jr's punches, but tanks his island-razing Explosive Wave without a scratch after putting up a guard. Other more minor examples include Raditz running away from Goku's Kamehameha before bracing himself to catch it; Frieza bracing himself for the Spirit Bomb on Namek; Vegeta implying that he wouldn't necessarily need planet-busting power to kill Android 18; and Gotenks calling Super Buu's planet-buster a "close one" because he was caught by surprise.

**Split durability:** This was pretty popular back in the day. Basically, Dragon Ball characters are simply more resistant to ki than punches, so they can fire and tank planet-busting blasts, but their physical strikes are mountain-busting or a little above that. They react to both equally because raw ki is made of a different material than strikes coated with it. There isn't really any canon material that explicitly implies this, but you'd notice that apart from Beerus and Champa, nobody in Dragon Ball has shattered a planet by striking it.

**Ki refinement:** This one is less clear-cut than the other, but it assumes that Dragon Ball fights are a clash of ki auras, where the person with the more potent aura wins. It treats ki blasts like lightsabers, where range doesn't matter as much as potency. Nappa can output an explosion with 1 arbitrary ki unit per unit area over several kilometers, but Vegito can output 1000 ki units per unit area though his attack only affects a few meters. It sounds similar to ki control, but it also implies that planet-busting is arbitrary and isn't an indicator of anything, which has the side-effect of making it hard to gauge how powerful anyone is in real-world terms. Canon evidence would be pretty much all the times someone killed another person with a tiny ki blast.

Welp, these are the major ones. Pick which one you think fits best (apart from ki control), and let me know about other suitable theories in the comments.

View Poll