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General DC Comics Discussion Thread

Yes, this is largely the case. It's not so much that I think there's no scans suggesting the Sphere is predominantly abstract, it's just that the many contradictions to that notion make it far more complicated a matter than some would be willing to admit to themselves. But as you say, this is something that the cosmology split was created to help alleviate to a degree.
And what are these contradictions?
 
I gave some examples above re: Libra gaining corporeal form in Apokolips, Supergirl being physically smaller in Apokolips when she travelled there without a boom tube.
 
I gave some examples above re: Libra gaining corporeal form in Apokolips, Supergirl being physically smaller in Apokolips when she travelled there without a boom tube.
I have no idea why that would mean the Sphere of Gods isn't abstract. Physical beings entering the world does not contradict this.
 
I have no idea why that would mean the Sphere of Gods isn't abstract. Physical beings entering the world does not contradict this.
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I have no idea why that would mean the Sphere of Gods isn't abstract. Physical beings entering the world does not contradict this.
It's more the lack of explanation as to how a Physical being can interact with a metaphysical. Looking into the large picture, it's easy to solve this.

If Libra was becoming more spiritually aware and beyond what the physical body can affect, the fact that as he rose he became corporeal to the Sphere of Gods could just be the matter=spiritual equalization some emanationist philosophies apply.

That is to say, what is spiritual and transcendent is to the realm below that is physical from its own point of view, but that spiritual realm is physical to itself and what lies above, which that which lies above seeing the two realms below as physical.
V5rQwWS.png

So, it's possible to in fact use Libra's ascension to showcase it is an emanationist cosmology with the larger reality being transcendental to what lies below, while being physical and limited to what lies above. The only problem is the lack of an actual depiction of that being said in the work itself.
 
So, it's possible to in fact use Libra's ascension to showcase it is an emanationist cosmology with the larger reality being transcendental to what lies below, while being physical and limited to what lies above. The only problem is the lack of an actual depiction of that being said in the work itself.
I'm confused, are you asking if DC works on increasingly more fundamental realms?
 
No, he's referring specifically to a cascading spiritual->physical relationship relative to all layers and the ones below them. As in, every realm can internally interact under a physical conception, but still be seen as spiritual by the realm below it, and still see the one above it as spiritual (which, itself, would behave physically relative to itself).
 
He probably just felt corporeal because he touched the ground tbh, there's an explicit statement of the Sphere of the Gods being outside corporeal reality by Darkseid in Justice League Odyssey, and metaphysical statements in guidebooks
 
No, he's referring specifically to a cascading spiritual->physical relationship relative to all layers and the ones below them. As in, every realm can internally interact under a physical conception, but still be seen as spiritual by the realm below it, and still see the one above it as spiritual (which, itself, would behave physically relative to itself).
As in, each realm is more spiritual then the last, leading up to the most spiritual at the top?
 
As in, each realm is more spiritual then the last, leading up to the most spiritual at the top?
No. Read Executor's explanation again:
If Libra was becoming more spiritually aware and beyond what the physical body can affect, the fact that as he rose he became corporeal to the Sphere of Gods could just be the matter=spiritual equalization some emanationist philosophies apply.

That is to say, what is spiritual and transcendent is to the realm below that is physical from its own point of view, but that spiritual realm is physical to itself and what lies above, which that which lies above seeing the two realms below as physical.
V5rQwWS.png

So, it's possible to in fact use Libra's ascension to showcase it is an emanationist cosmology with the larger reality being transcendental to what lies below, while being physical and limited to what lies above.
The idea is that all realms see themselves as physical, the realms below them as physical, and the realms above them as spiritual.
 
Can somebody remind me which of our wiki pages that those screencaptures are from please?

Also, why would the Sphere of the Gods being an abstract realm of ideas automatically give it a higher tier than currently, and what is its current tier and suggested new tier?

DC Comics is extremely inconsistent in any case, so it would definitely not be unusual for the realms of its gods to be portrayed as conceptual in some stories and physical in others.
 
Can somebody remind me which of our wiki pages that those screencaptures are from please?
The first is from Darkseid Pre-Flashpoint, the second is from our cosmology page.

Also, why would the Sphere of the Gods being an abstract realm of ideas automatically give it a higher tier than currently, and what is its current tier and suggested new tier?
I'm not sure anyone has explicitly mentioned giving it a higher tier in this thread. Currently we do not treat the Sphere as having qualitative superiority, which is good.
 
Okay, but if we already accepted it as being officially established as conceptual during our official DC Comics revision, we probably shouldn't let the inconsistencies in other stories where Apokolips and New Genesis were portrayed as purely physical places affect that.

It can easily be reconciled by stating that the physical versions of Apokolips and New Genesis that have generally appeared within DC Comics stories are just material representations/Platonian cave wall shadows of their true selves.
 
It can easily be reconciled by stating that the physical versions of Apokolips and New Genesis that have generally appeared within DC Comics stories are just material representations/Platonian cave wall shadows of their true selves.
There are some cases where this is not a fully functional reconciliation, which is my issue. I'm fine with it staying in the Cosmology page. I am just pointing out that the reality is more complicated than simply "Batman said it was, discussion over" which is how some people seem to treat it.
 
Why don't we scale Platonism to 1-A again? Especially like concepts of space and time.

As for why transcending the concepts of space-time isn’t 1-A, a concept is defined as an abstract essence that defines a part of reality. Hence, the concepts of space-time scale to the dimensions shown to exist as you can’t really extrapolate that to speculative dimensions.
 
Does Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade qualify under our notability standards for DC Comics? It has only six issues and was published within half a year in 2009.
 
Serious question: how reliably do you think we've tiered the cosmology split? As it stands, I find the cosmology page's formatting substandard for such a prominent verse, and we don't have profiles for a bunch of the characters there. I've also seen a bunch of people claim some parts of the cosmology should still be 1-A, which I've never quite understood. Marvel and DC's cosmic profiles were all unreliable and clunky before the recent overhauls; I've managed to properly make sense of Marvel now while DC's only improvement is that we scrubbed off the egregiously unjustified tiers.
 
Serious question: how reliably do you think we've tiered the cosmology split? As it stands, I find the cosmology page's formatting substandard for such a prominent verse, and we don't have profiles for a bunch of the characters there. I've also seen a bunch of people claim some parts of the cosmology should still be 1-A, which I've never quite understood. Marvel and DC's cosmic profiles were all unreliable and clunky before the recent overhauls; I've managed to properly make sense of Marvel now while DC's only improvement is that we scrubbed off the egregiously unjustified tiers.
They’re probably just as or if not more unreliable than they were before. The tiers don’t make any sense, the profiles for the cosmic characters weren’t made any better, and the cosmologies for Morrison/Snyder and Dematteis should definitely scale higher.
 
Serious question: how reliably do you think we've tiered the cosmology split? As it stands, I find the cosmology page's formatting substandard for such a prominent verse, and we don't have profiles for a bunch of the characters there. I've also seen a bunch of people claim some parts of the cosmology should still be 1-A, which I've never quite understood. Marvel and DC's cosmic profiles were all unreliable and clunky before the recent overhauls; I've managed to properly make sense of Marvel now while DC's only improvement is that we scrubbed off the egregiously unjustified tiers.
Not good because insufficient research was done
 
They’re probably just as or if not more unreliable than they were before. The tiers don’t make any sense, the profiles for the cosmic characters weren’t made any better, and the cosmologies for Morrison/Snyder and Dematteis should definitely scale higher.
Not good because insufficient research was done
Any reasoning for why this is the case? If you would like to present a case for upgrading or revamping the profiles, then I'm all ears, but complaining about the cosmology split is nothing new to me.
 
Well, for starters, removing Animal Man holds no basis on anything. No Chain-scaling issues, no Incongruent Ratings and no Incompatibilities.

So adding that back would be a great step
 
I’m going to preface this by reminding everyone: I don’t like cosmology stuff that much, nor do I have any interest in engaging in a discussion about it. This is just what I’ve seen.

The two main complaints I’ve seen are that:
A. There’s no canonical basis for the split
B. It only takes like five writers into account, even though DC is a franchise that’s been around for almost 90 years with hundreds of writers. Taking out such a limited number, not explaining where other cosmologies would scale and completely neglecting certain eras of DC (i.e. Pre-Crisis) makes it come off as arbitrary.

And a complaint I had was that the initial application was incredibly rushed and sloppy. There were several characters where y’all just went through and changed the tier, neglecting to edit the stat justifications to match the new changes.
 
Any reasoning for why this is the case? If you would like to present a case for upgrading or revamping the profiles, then I'm all ears, but complaining about the cosmology split is nothing new to me.
What LordTracer said. Splitting by writer is not something done in other series, so why should it be done with DC? Should we also split a character's powerset, personality and statistics by writers?
 
Serious question: how reliably do you think we've tiered the cosmology split? As it stands, I find the cosmology page's formatting substandard for such a prominent verse, and we don't have profiles for a bunch of the characters there. I've also seen a bunch of people claim some parts of the cosmology should still be 1-A, which I've never quite understood. Marvel and DC's cosmic profiles were all unreliable and clunky before the recent overhauls; I've managed to properly make sense of Marvel now while DC's only improvement is that we scrubbed off the egregiously unjustified tiers.
You're hearing from a lot of the people who opposed the split in the first place and wanted certain characters to stay extremely high.

How reliable are the profiles? Well, they are certainly way better than before, but the project lost steam at some point due to how long everything took, which is why some of the formatting suffered. There's certainly room for improvement,.
 
What LordTracer said. Splitting by writer is not something done in other series, so why should it be done with DC? Should we also split a character's powerset, personality and statistics by writers?
The split happened because the differing takes were just too irreconcilable to be cross-scaled at face value. With Marvel, Ultima took the time and effort to craft a convincing case for compositing different authors' cosmologies despite Marvel's contradictions. I'm open to someone trying the same for DC, but merely complaining about the split without offering actual evidence against it isn't going to convince anyone.
 
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