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Extra Content Syndrome - A Study Presented By Dr. Sir Ovens

Sir_Ovens

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Ever looked up a verse cause you saw a show one time and was like "Wow that show was pretty cool, I wonder what tier it is?" So now you have this thought in your mind that its gonna be 9-B or something cause they broke walls that one time. But to your abject horror, the verse is actually 1-A, and now you've started tweaking.

Many such cases.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I, Sir Ovens, Ph.D., S.C.P., and L.G.B.T., have discovered the root cause of this phenomenon. And in this lecture, I will guide us through the perilous world of media literacy and power scaling to expand your feeble little minds.



Extra Content Syndrome.

Rolls of the tongue, right? Extra Content Syndrome (or ECS for short) occurs when a verse with perceived low tier feats has actual tiers (usually tier 2 or 1) that are far above the logical threshold. Causes for this usually stem from content that exists outside of the main form of media. For example, a show that consistently peaks at 9-A, may have tie in books, comics, or even spin-off shows that add more content/context that makes it jump up to a much higher tier.

Many such examples exist. The original Star Wars trilogy has Legends, Twin Peaks has its novels, Homestuck has Hiveswap Friendsim, etc.

"But Ovens," I hear you cry, "surely this 'phenomenon' can be boiled down to mere coincidence." You say confidently.

Well first of all, it's Dr. Sir Ovens to you, you knob. Second of all, we must once again refer back to material I spoke about in a previous lecture:



Ovens' Law

To those that slept through that lecture, Ovens' Law states that the longer a verse is allowed to exist and continue making content, the more likely it is to reach tier 2 and 1.

This observation was made apparent during the tier 2 boom of 2019. God of War going from High 6-A to 2-C. DMC going from High 6-A to Low 2-C. My Little Pony going from High 4-C to Low 2-C. These are merely a few examples. In fact, the aforementioned verses have only grown since then. God of War is Low 1-C, Devil May Cry is 1-C 2-C, and My Little Pony is 2-A.

Ovens' Law and Extra Content Syndrome go hand in hand like billionaire oil tycoons and sexual harassment lawsuits. It is only logical for a franchise or brand to prolong the lifespan of a verse for continued monetary gain. How the hell do you think Riot Games continues to make money? They milk the hell out of League of Legends. And in order for League to remain fresh and avoid becoming stale, Riot must release new content. Now content is not the main issue. It is merely a side effect of the disease. No, the real illness lies in power creep.



Stakes. Casinos love raising them, vampires hate receiving them. Me personally? I like them medium rare. However, for the purposes of any media that wishes to artificially extend its lifespan; one must have stakes, and one must raise them. Is this not correct? Is this not how you engage an audience that has long since fallen out of love for your media and will now move on to watch some Vtuber describe the circumference of their mammaries so they can goon all over their table and tell you "Yogiri solos your verse, actually" before they even clean the white from their keyboards?

That's how it starts, you see. First, a kingdom in peril, then a planet, then eventually a universe. Writers can't help it. There is always a bigger fish, as they say. And as long as they want to keep their wallets fat, they will always invent a new fish; one larger and more complex than the last.​




So what now? Well I have made you painfully aware of Extra Content Syndrome and now you're writhing on the lecture room floor in agony. First of all, get a grip. You're drooling all over the carpet. Second of all, I'm going to guide you through Extra Content classification.

There are three main forms of Extra Content (EC).

1) Lore

2) Facts

3) Spin-Offs

Lore can be categorised simply as flavour text. Little nuggets of information that help flesh out the world you're engaging in as the main plot progresses. This EC mainly comes from video games, in the form of text you read from items found within the game or non-essential pick ups that do nothing to progress the main storyline. However, this EC can also appear in other forms of media, like shows with special info blurb episodes. Ben 10 comes to mind at the top of my head. Lore is the fastest and most efficient way to get jumpscared by the Jewish tree and have your verse instantaneously shoot up to tier 0.

Facts. These can often be found in guidebooks or statbooks. Production notes and WoG also falls into this category. Facts, besides not caring about your feelings, are also the most straightforward way of obtaining those juicy high tier statements. This is due in part because facts are often not obscured by flowery language or poetry. They are statements at their most literal, used to describe characters, vehicles, events, etc. A fact cannot be argued against because it is tantamount to ignoring of the very words and ideas the author is trying to convey to you. Although most do certainly try.

Spin-offs are caused in part due to Ovens' Law. As a piece of media or franchise begins to grow, focusing on the completed arcs of the main cast is counterintuitive at best, and detrimental at worst. Cough Star Wars Cough As such, one tends to expand upon the underutilised secondary cast or the world itself through complementary media. In this expansion of the universe, stakes once previously established may become too minor to tread upon again. As such the analogy of the bigger fish comes back into play.



And that concludes today's lecture. I hope I've enriched your minds, if even a little. My closing statement is this; you might be familiar with the phrase: all things must die. Well I'm here to say that all things should die. A story can only reach a length so long before it becomes tedious to read, difficult to comprehend, or even impossible to consume. When an idea has been conveyed, and nothing more can be said, it should remain as it is. Entropy take it. Resurrecting the dead, or keeping the living immortal is not only witchcraft (of which you should be burned at the stake for), but it is also uncomfortable for everyone involved. The stale stench of rotting plotlines as writers run out of ideas can burn the eyes of even the most diehard fans. Let things live. Let things die. Is not the most beautiful thing about life, how temporary it is? When an idea is allowed to come to fruition and end when it intends to, the memory of what it was can never be tainted.

Valar Morghulis

P.S. I'm calling it here. If The Matrix continues, it will become 1-A eventually.​
 
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the truly biggest example is DnD, like that mfing trpg game has existed for over 40 years now I believe and they bound to get some power creep because content need to be made to make some cash

not to mention cultural significance, like Chinese like their character stronk, so they incorporate real life philosophies like Tao and Buddhism into their work, plus the fact that there's a website that can pay you the more stuff you write

in other word, stuff get higher tier is inevitable, because not only new content need to be made, battleboarding also under constant change in rules and standard
 
Goku in 2018 : Tier low 2-C

Goku in 2024 : Tier 2-C

The jump is real
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I guess something with negative continuity would have to be a deconstruction of a story. A story that stops being a story as its plot shrinks out of existence.

A story that becomes non-fiction perhaps?
 
I'd like to add to universes and multiverses are used because of the aforementioned constant escalation and because they are easy for the casual audience to understand, with even multiverses being pretty much mainstream concepts that need little explanation these days. Multiverses are also an easy to have a story set in the same world as a preexisting story but not have to worry about messing with the preexisting canon, such as portraying a character incorrectly or adding something that does work within the known history.

Higher dimensions and higher realities add a little unique to the world and can allow for unique elements to set it apart or explain things, even if it's as unique as using the same occult inspiration everyone else has used; the mainstream audience doesn't know about it and because theirs a bunch of different ideas around how they work you can easily put your own spin on it.

Higher realities are also used so that you can be meta with your fiction, whether the author is generally try to say something about how how we interact with fiction or just wants to sound like they are. Meanwhile higher dimensions are used either to sound more scientific, explain how the supernatural stuff happens with "science", or just because you don't want to end up like Star Ocean and Danganronpa by revealing that "everything you knew and loved about a series was not real" and getting fans upset.

Also, when translating a visual medium like a show or even game to literature you can get away with more stuff. I don't buy certain people who say they can't properly show a characters strength, Asura's Wrath and TTGL shows that it can be done, but it is kinda hard to showcase a sixth dimensional soul or a purely metaphysical realm without risking confusing the audience or having a character spout an awkward lore dump, but the written word makes it stupidly easy to do.
 
To those that slept through that lecture, Ovens' Law states that the longer a verse is allowed to exist and continue making content, the more likely it is to reach tier 2 and 1.
y'know if they made the 10th season of the Office, Jim would transport Dwight coexist as a Mahlo-Cardinal-dimensioned plane of existence where he couldn't reach back to the Dunder-Mifflin Office in time and get a late receipt.

True story.
 
I guess something with negative continuity would have to be a deconstruction of a story. A story that stops being a story as its plot shrinks out of existence.

A story that becomes non-fiction perhaps?
Negative continuity means a series has poor continuity like how an episodic series might have the main setting laid to ruin in one episode with the next episode returning back to the previous status quo without explanation.
 
Ooh. Yeah I think that works. There are always exceptions to the law.

It's also prudent to mention that the law extends ad infinitum. Which means given infinite time, all stories eventually become tier 0. Then again, given infinite time I think all stories will eventually become the same story so eh.

Take with that what you will.
 
Even episodic shows can have the rule applied to them, as their espiodic nature means that you can have some bullshit jsut destroy the world or whatever and you don't have to worry about how it's fixed. Which means the longer an episodic show continues the more likely it has insane stuff happen and is it lacks any type of continuity people consider everything to be canon. So it's kinda worse in that the writers don't even have to pretend to care about continuity or restraint.
 
It's also prudent to mention that the law extends ad infinitum. Which means given infinite time, all stories eventually become tier 0. Then again, given infinite time I think all stories will eventually become the same story so eh.
(Is Ultima's tier 0 change not happening)
That's not necessarily entirely true, the odds rise, but it is technically possible for something to not become tier 0. It is just the chance is very small and there are also things like anti feats and inconsistencies. Once you threaten the universe there are types of multiverses that aren't really different universes by our standards like a quilted multiverse or a inflationary multiverse
 
you saw a show one time and was like "Wow that show was pretty cool, I wonder what tier it is?" So now you have this thought in your mind that its gonna be 9-B or something cause they broke walls that one time. But to your abject horror, the verse is actually 1-A, and now you've started tweaking.
I literally thought the strongest SCP would be 7-B until I saw the SCP Foundation in the list of strongest tier 0 characters.
 
If SAO is allowed to continue, it will eventually become 1-A.
I believe in Reki, and that it shall only receive antifeats to such an extreme

Forsooth, even the use of the very word "Cardinal" only described a complex AI that could sustain a large three dimensional landscape
 
Reminds me of how KH could be High 1-A under the new system but I'm basically waiting for the next mainline game out of notability concerns.
 
The original post points out some interesting ideas that can be true in many cases, and there are hints of a good sense of humor within the careful explanation. Great job. 👍
 
To those that slept through that lecture, Ovens' Law states that the longer a verse is allowed to exist and continue making content, the more likely it is to reach tier 2 and 1.

This observation was made apparent during the tier 2 boom of 2019. God of War going from High 6-A to 2-C. DMC going from High 6-A to Low 2-C.
Just a reminder that DMC is an anomaly and doesn't follow Oven's Law. It was Tier 3 (even Tier 2) back in 2014 and it always goes through cycles of downgrades and upgrades.
 
I'm not caught up on the Homestuck discussion on this wiki- was there a time where Lord English wasn't Tier 1? Because the way he's described in the comic as the time-and-narrative-transcending man blowing up the infinite void always felt that way to me.
 
Lord English used to be Low 1-B back when we had that tier.
 
I think a good verse with reasonable power escalation should at most be Low 1-C or 1-A by current standards.
Basically

Planet - Space - Universe - Timeline - Multiverse (2-A, easiest to make and manage) - Low 1-C or 1-A (superior creator being, observes everything from a higher plane)
This basically covers any necessary plot in a verse with mythical events happening. Space and universe cover aliens and space adventures, timeline covers time travel plots, multiverse covers extradimensional aliens and evil counterparts, creator entity covers anything necessary to explain the world creation or the final arc.
 
Madness Combat.

using just the main episodes made by krinkles, the verse peaks at tier 8 at it's highest, with some decent haxs shown by Jesus, Tricky, and Auditor, but nothing special from anyone else really

then Project Nexus appears.

Oh my.

then you suddenly have Tier 2 (some supporter have been mentioning tier 1 aswell) Auditor, Supergenius Tricky, Tier 2 Mag Agents and crazy bullshit because some dude decided to punch a guy for playing the wrong music.
 
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