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Divine creator is an interesting part of cosmology. Not sure about his outright fitting just yet.
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Marvel Cosmology Rework Proposal
- Thread starter The_Impress
- Start date
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Sorry, saw that Ant tagged me just now and someone on discord ask me to comment here.
The idea seems fine on paper, it generally seems like a good attempt to finally make sense of all the cosmological inconsistencies in Marvel. I don't necessarily think we should implement it yet though, because I think there's a few issues we're going to have to face in practice.
1 - Arbitrary Distinctions
Here's the issue. I'll give an example which already exists as it will eventually be handled anyways and will determine our approach.
Let's look at Hickman's Fantastic Four run. In that run, the Celestials have absolutely some of the craziest feats they've ever performed, which they realistically shouldn't have performed based on what other writers have demonstrated time and time again. I really want us to consider if we seriously want to add an extra key for the Celestials where they tanked the UN, Infinity Gauntlet, Starbrand, Weapons which have destroyed Beyonders, and so on.
The issue isn't about whether or not the feats are sound, but with our current methodology. Why shouldn't we chalk this up to "Hickman was just operating under his own view in the cosmology where the Celestials were literally un-*******-beatable. It's not inconsistent, it's just how Hickman perceives the hierarchy".
If you don't agree with that reasoning I just quoted, you don't agree with the proposal. If you do, then you still face an "arbitariness" problem. The Gauntlet, UN, Starbrand's, etcetera. power's were not specified in that series. So here's the obvious question: Why assume the Celestials placing in the hierarchy was what changed, as opposed to the power of the items? It's his own hierachy after-all, so why assume one over the other? It seems like we have equal force pulling on both sides, but we get completely different results. It's just arbitrary to pickone over the other.
Here's another clearer example. Suppose that, Ewing just wrote a comic in which The Gauntlet (a user of it) was absolutely destroyed by Lifebringer Galactus, and just completely outclassed. It's clear in that case, Lifebringer Galactus is so far above the Gauntlet that they aren't even relative. Are we just going to chalk this up to "Unknown" if the Gauntlet's power was never specified in that run? Is that really a feat we should just completely push aside and ignore for LBG? This is the heart of the problem, I think. We're just asking too much from the Writers, when even with our current standards not enough is being done by them.
Zark seems to have "taken this into account" and said that the cosmologies need to be commonly referred. I don't think anyone here would seriously forget how commonly referred some of the Inconsistencies mentioned throughout this post are. And this again shifts us into our main point: It's entirely subjective. What does "commonly referred" actually mean? Does it have to be mentioned 4 times, 6 times, 10 times by different writers? How many diferent writers? 2? 3? 5? Are we just going to see what people think the number should be and decide on an average? How are we actually going to get at this? It'll just cause far more confusion and disagreement than resolving any issues.
Tldr; This will just make things far more messy, given we don't have any reasonable way to discern one way to interpret things the hierarchy in that specific run, if we're going to just completely isolate each writer's hierarchy from the other's.
2 - The Reasoning
This is just a quick point to be made. If our motivation here is to make sense of any inconsistencies on the cosmic level, it doesn't seem like there's a good reason as to why we shouldn't the same for street tiers, herald level characters, and so on. The exact same logic being applied here, applies for those tiers too. Zark seems to endorse this exact approach in the screenshot if you look at (4). Of course, you're probably getting tired just by reading this, imagining how many essentially useless keys we're going to have for absolutely every single interpretation of a character's power-level if we were to really take this path of reasoning to it's end.
3 - Is this realistic?
Which leads to the final problem, and the most obvious, is anyone actually going to go through with this? This isn't me doubting anyone here or their support for this prposal. That's completely fine. But again, it doesn't take a second of reflection for us to realise how time-consuming this will be. Here's the perfect example: Dematteis' Cosmology. Even with our current standards, weve already dumped hours upon hours into trying to make sense of the cosmology. Even then, no one seems to have comic to an agreement on where it scales. Which is the root of the problem. While this might "help" us with external inconsistencies, it doesn't really help us with internal ones. We're really underestimating how much a writer's own cosmology can be hard to interpret by itself, and this has been shown time and time again with the issues we've heaad regarding Hickman's cosmology Dematteis' cosmology, and so on.
One only needs to look as far as Seed's quintillion threads on the Dematteis Cosmology and how far it scales, and all the effort put into each thread trying to force it to be consistent, or the countless hours me and Kep have spent debating on what the "Mystery" in Ewing's cosmology is supposed to be, or better yet, what the "Far Shore" of all things in his cosmology is supposed to be. While this proposal might minimize the external inconsistencies we have to deal with, we literally have absolutely nothing to do with internal ones right now. To put this into picture, we could've dismissed most of the Dematteis nonsense by looking at how virtually every other portrayal of the Nexus by other writers contradicts his highly-exaggerated portrayal, and just ended it off there. But now that we've essentially isolated his work from all other interpretations of the Nexus, we literally have to just squabble for god knows how long to make sense of it, even if it really doesn't make sense.
And of course, I can't imagine any supporter of Marvel (especially Ant) going through atleast 10x the threads they usually go to because we have all the more threads dedicated to each key, which there inevitably will be a handful of, probably far more than there should be. Again, let's be realistic. We barely have enough time to deal with these profiles even with our current standards which open up the usage of other writers to make sense of a single writer's inconsistencies, and just be done with it. If we get rid of that, It'll take FAR more time to make sense of these inconsistencies. Of course, it might also save us some time, since we're not taking into account other writer's work, which is of course the whole point with this project. But it really dismisses how much we've already relied on other writer's work to make sense of the internal inconsistencies discussed earlier. (Just look right above my comment at the already existing disagreement on where the Divine Creator scales, and how vague it actually is).
Sorry for the mouthful above, but it really has to be said before we go through with changes as big as this. I just want people to also consider the potential downsides to this before we actually implement, as good as it sounds on paper. Most of these problems could stem from my misunderstanding of the proposal, or something on those lines. But for now. I don't think it really takes much to see how weak the standards actually are behind this and how much more subjective it'd make the scaling we already can't make sense of, which is the problem meant to be addressed.
to sum it up, the standards underlying the proposal are simply far too subjective or poorly defined for the proposal itself to actually go through. Because of this, the proposal itself will just be the root of far more confusion in how we're supposed to scale each cosmology as opposed to solving any confusion. It doesn't actually solve anything, it just relocates the problems.
This'll probably be my only comment here, so if the problems here are taken seriously and we figure out a way to actually solve them, then by all means, implement the proposal. But we really shouldn't be so fast in our judgement, especially with something like this. AGain, I'm not saying we should completely abandon this proposal , but we seriously need to atleast define and get clear alot of it's core aspects before we're so hastily in accepting it.
(My bad for any spelling errors above which made this hard to read, I was really lagging while writing this so I couldn't do much about it).
Btw, if we get Sentry > TOAA from these changes, then please ignore the post above and implement them asap. Thank you.
The idea seems fine on paper, it generally seems like a good attempt to finally make sense of all the cosmological inconsistencies in Marvel. I don't necessarily think we should implement it yet though, because I think there's a few issues we're going to have to face in practice.
1 - Arbitrary Distinctions
Here's the issue. I'll give an example which already exists as it will eventually be handled anyways and will determine our approach.
Let's look at Hickman's Fantastic Four run. In that run, the Celestials have absolutely some of the craziest feats they've ever performed, which they realistically shouldn't have performed based on what other writers have demonstrated time and time again. I really want us to consider if we seriously want to add an extra key for the Celestials where they tanked the UN, Infinity Gauntlet, Starbrand, Weapons which have destroyed Beyonders, and so on.
The issue isn't about whether or not the feats are sound, but with our current methodology. Why shouldn't we chalk this up to "Hickman was just operating under his own view in the cosmology where the Celestials were literally un-*******-beatable. It's not inconsistent, it's just how Hickman perceives the hierarchy".
If you don't agree with that reasoning I just quoted, you don't agree with the proposal. If you do, then you still face an "arbitariness" problem. The Gauntlet, UN, Starbrand's, etcetera. power's were not specified in that series. So here's the obvious question: Why assume the Celestials placing in the hierarchy was what changed, as opposed to the power of the items? It's his own hierachy after-all, so why assume one over the other? It seems like we have equal force pulling on both sides, but we get completely different results. It's just arbitrary to pickone over the other.
Here's another clearer example. Suppose that, Ewing just wrote a comic in which The Gauntlet (a user of it) was absolutely destroyed by Lifebringer Galactus, and just completely outclassed. It's clear in that case, Lifebringer Galactus is so far above the Gauntlet that they aren't even relative. Are we just going to chalk this up to "Unknown" if the Gauntlet's power was never specified in that run? Is that really a feat we should just completely push aside and ignore for LBG? This is the heart of the problem, I think. We're just asking too much from the Writers, when even with our current standards not enough is being done by them.
Zark seems to have "taken this into account" and said that the cosmologies need to be commonly referred. I don't think anyone here would seriously forget how commonly referred some of the Inconsistencies mentioned throughout this post are. And this again shifts us into our main point: It's entirely subjective. What does "commonly referred" actually mean? Does it have to be mentioned 4 times, 6 times, 10 times by different writers? How many diferent writers? 2? 3? 5? Are we just going to see what people think the number should be and decide on an average? How are we actually going to get at this? It'll just cause far more confusion and disagreement than resolving any issues.
Tldr; This will just make things far more messy, given we don't have any reasonable way to discern one way to interpret things the hierarchy in that specific run, if we're going to just completely isolate each writer's hierarchy from the other's.
2 - The Reasoning
This is just a quick point to be made. If our motivation here is to make sense of any inconsistencies on the cosmic level, it doesn't seem like there's a good reason as to why we shouldn't the same for street tiers, herald level characters, and so on. The exact same logic being applied here, applies for those tiers too. Zark seems to endorse this exact approach in the screenshot if you look at (4). Of course, you're probably getting tired just by reading this, imagining how many essentially useless keys we're going to have for absolutely every single interpretation of a character's power-level if we were to really take this path of reasoning to it's end.
3 - Is this realistic?
Which leads to the final problem, and the most obvious, is anyone actually going to go through with this? This isn't me doubting anyone here or their support for this prposal. That's completely fine. But again, it doesn't take a second of reflection for us to realise how time-consuming this will be. Here's the perfect example: Dematteis' Cosmology. Even with our current standards, weve already dumped hours upon hours into trying to make sense of the cosmology. Even then, no one seems to have comic to an agreement on where it scales. Which is the root of the problem. While this might "help" us with external inconsistencies, it doesn't really help us with internal ones. We're really underestimating how much a writer's own cosmology can be hard to interpret by itself, and this has been shown time and time again with the issues we've heaad regarding Hickman's cosmology Dematteis' cosmology, and so on.
One only needs to look as far as Seed's quintillion threads on the Dematteis Cosmology and how far it scales, and all the effort put into each thread trying to force it to be consistent, or the countless hours me and Kep have spent debating on what the "Mystery" in Ewing's cosmology is supposed to be, or better yet, what the "Far Shore" of all things in his cosmology is supposed to be. While this proposal might minimize the external inconsistencies we have to deal with, we literally have absolutely nothing to do with internal ones right now. To put this into picture, we could've dismissed most of the Dematteis nonsense by looking at how virtually every other portrayal of the Nexus by other writers contradicts his highly-exaggerated portrayal, and just ended it off there. But now that we've essentially isolated his work from all other interpretations of the Nexus, we literally have to just squabble for god knows how long to make sense of it, even if it really doesn't make sense.
And of course, I can't imagine any supporter of Marvel (especially Ant) going through atleast 10x the threads they usually go to because we have all the more threads dedicated to each key, which there inevitably will be a handful of, probably far more than there should be. Again, let's be realistic. We barely have enough time to deal with these profiles even with our current standards which open up the usage of other writers to make sense of a single writer's inconsistencies, and just be done with it. If we get rid of that, It'll take FAR more time to make sense of these inconsistencies. Of course, it might also save us some time, since we're not taking into account other writer's work, which is of course the whole point with this project. But it really dismisses how much we've already relied on other writer's work to make sense of the internal inconsistencies discussed earlier. (Just look right above my comment at the already existing disagreement on where the Divine Creator scales, and how vague it actually is).
Sorry for the mouthful above, but it really has to be said before we go through with changes as big as this. I just want people to also consider the potential downsides to this before we actually implement, as good as it sounds on paper. Most of these problems could stem from my misunderstanding of the proposal, or something on those lines. But for now. I don't think it really takes much to see how weak the standards actually are behind this and how much more subjective it'd make the scaling we already can't make sense of, which is the problem meant to be addressed.
to sum it up, the standards underlying the proposal are simply far too subjective or poorly defined for the proposal itself to actually go through. Because of this, the proposal itself will just be the root of far more confusion in how we're supposed to scale each cosmology as opposed to solving any confusion. It doesn't actually solve anything, it just relocates the problems.
This'll probably be my only comment here, so if the problems here are taken seriously and we figure out a way to actually solve them, then by all means, implement the proposal. But we really shouldn't be so fast in our judgement, especially with something like this. AGain, I'm not saying we should completely abandon this proposal , but we seriously need to atleast define and get clear alot of it's core aspects before we're so hastily in accepting it.
(My bad for any spelling errors above which made this hard to read, I was really lagging while writing this so I couldn't do much about it).
Btw, if we get Sentry > TOAA from these changes, then please ignore the post above and implement them asap. Thank you.
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He won't be in the current cosmology, as he's still considered to be below TOAA and The House of Ideas. This is a part of the proposal which is really important, namely that any realm, regardless of where it is, what it is, etc. Is still subject to this proposal, as long as it's part of TOAA's control. Which is going to be 99.9999999999% of all the realms and characters we're ever going to see throughout Marvel.
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I meant more like this:
Toaa/HOI > Oblivion > rest of cosmologies of the multiverse
Toaa/HOI > Oblivion > rest of cosmologies of the multiverse
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- Thread starter
- #45
I'm fine with it being questioned, I recognise the proposal I've made is rudimentary and prefer to have more input on it, and most likely alot of the stuff I haven't worded in the OP, or admittedly I may as well not have considered
- A common trend across your points I feel is reliant on "these internal cosmology inconsistencies aren't fixed", which I don't intend to fix with my proposals. This proposal is aimed to resolve different cosmologies existing, and the issues caused by them, I won't be shocked if wordings and whatnot are inconsistent by the writers themselves, but that is beyond the scope of the CRT. Seed has and always will make a "quintillion threads on DeMatteis Cosmology" and there will always be countless hoEwing debates. We haven't been able to stop them in the past, we haven't now. Us dismissing it tends to be an excuse, not a solution.
- I think it's ignorant to claim current standards aren't just as arbitrary, add to that, dismissive and inconsiderate. Saying " DeMatteis Cosmology can't be used because its irrelevant/"inconsistent " isn't in any way better than "DeMatteis Cosmology can be used on its own stated merits"
- Your initial points seem kinda misinterpret-ey of the proposals, we will not assume that Ultimate Nullifier and whatnot retains its tiers from past cosmologies, unless heavily implied to, I've stated this in the OP.
- Proposal notes if there genuinely is no tiering implication worded for the characters others are meant to scale to, we will assume that it has to be, at the very least, lowest cosmological definition given for the character. Logically sound, and we're honestly not asking writers too much to prove that is out of the ordinary.
- "How is a writer notable", we can just have an agreed upon criteria, no biggie.
- I endorse this for folks like Doctor Strange and stuff, and we've already considered this to various extents for Marvel characters already, actually. And you have to recognise, just because it CAN be extended to street tier characters, doesn't mean we will. We DO account for this stuff like "Spider-Man didn't die because he got punched by Firelord", but our current tiers for street characters are reliant on their most commonly shown tier, because keying every writer is overwhelming and unnecessary. This is not the case for most cosmological characters, most of whom have fuckall appearances to begin with, and they get radically changed in alot of them. They're manageable, lower tiers aren't, cosmological character's degree of separation is far lesser, it's an apparent difference.
- You kinda overstate the amount of threads honestly. Wiki isn't a fraction as active to have "10x threads", and unless the thread just had garbage research/was a repeat, we were asked to input every time.
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I agree with Impress. It is considerably less unreliable to use the scale of the cosmology defined by the most prominent authors in this regard, than to use an extremely contradictory mishmash.
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This is a really amazing blog! Truly well structured than anything I have seen.
As for what is proposed I am sceptical for the moment.
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Whatever the highest cosmological definition be, he'll be +1 that.
Which I think is higher into 1-A, but still 1-A. Who knows, we'll see
Which I think is higher into 1-A, but still 1-A. Who knows, we'll see
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i see. and how many total transcendances can the marvel cosmology reach?
just asking.
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'V("/)V'
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No one knows for sure till its done and maybe how the R>F difference of the verse is portrayed.
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Seed has and always will make a "quintillion threads on DeMatteis Cosmology"
You will not find an issue with me. Once this is done, my involvement with Marvel on vsbattles is over. So please do not assume this. Ever. Thank you
You will not find an issue with me. Once this is done, my involvement with Marvel on vsbattles is over. So please do not assume this. Ever. Thank you
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This is absurd. Writers do ignore each other, but this doesn't mean that cosmology varies in-universe. I swear, you're gonna keep using the biggest BS to downplay comics even further
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- #58
...I don't see how it's more downplay-ey than what we do currently, every estimate given states TOAA will be upgraded to either a higher level of 1-A, or High 1-A, or even tier 0 off of Ewing/DeMatteis cosmologies.
Like, recognise the proposal is accepting of cross-scaling if the issues are explicitly talked about.
Like, recognise the proposal is accepting of cross-scaling if the issues are explicitly talked about.
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- #59
In general I'm gonna say if your issue is "downplay", you need to gather a fraction more confidence in Marvel's individual cosmologies, most tier 0 proposals come from independent cosmologies.
You can argue about feasibility, you can argue about arbitrariness, you can argue about relevance, those are valid topics, dOwNpLaY is you not recognising how most major cosmologies works.
You can argue about feasibility, you can argue about arbitrariness, you can argue about relevance, those are valid topics, dOwNpLaY is you not recognising how most major cosmologies works.
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High 1A or teir 0 I generally see it as impossible. Maybe 1A+ if marvel has infinite 1A hierarchy.
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- #61
You'd be shocked actually. It's interpretable, but Marvel has higher tier stuff than that.
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Would like to see it.
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The thing is, marvel is inconsistent, but that's because of the authors being disorganized. It's not supposed to be that way in-universe
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I agree.
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- #66
The thing is, Marvel also gives multiple canon reasons for inconsistencies, because many writers do care for having SOME semblance of coherence, vs. debaters aren't some special breed that are the first ones to care for this shit.
Read the damn things before you claim things about them, multiple events and comics and runs show the narrative I provide, and your logic of shrugging and walking off has to be the least productive and lazy solution to do anything.
"Not the way its supposed to be in-universe" we LITERALLY FEATURE A QUOTE, ON THE VERSE PAGE, ON HOW MARVEL IS MEANT TO PARALLEL DAVID AND GOLIATH. Genuinely gross misunderstanding of the verse that makes me question your credibility at all.
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In general I'm gonna say if your issue is "downplay", you need to gather a fraction more confidence in Marvel's individual cosmologies, most tier 0 proposals come from independent cosmologies.
You can argue about feasibility, you can argue about arbitrariness, you can argue about relevance, those are valid topics, dOwNpLaY is you not recognising how most major cosmologies works.
(´･ω･`)}
Not really the maximum that we will see is a 1A
Not really the maximum we will see is a 1A
You can argue about feasibility, you can argue about arbitrariness, you can argue about relevance, those are valid topics, dOwNpLaY is you not recognising how most major cosmologies works.
(´･ω･`)}
Not really the maximum that we will see is a 1A
Not really the maximum we will see is a 1A
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...every tier 0 retention thread ever, disagrees. Which were rejected primarily, because "these characters aren't high in these other cosmologies".
Like at this point you're all just saying stuff for the sake of saying them.
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If anyone has doubts about "inconsistencies", I would recommend they read Ewing's Ultimates as well as his recent Immortal Hulk run - more specifically the final issue.
I don't think Ewing could make any more explicit than he already did.
I don't think Ewing could make any more explicit than he already did.
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You can show me a scan that raises it beyond 1A because really if they wanted that but there are no feats
(´･ω･`)
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What did
If anyone has doubts about "inconsistencies", I would recommend they read Ewing's Ultimates as well as his recent Immortal Hulk run - more specifically the final issue.
I don't think Ewing could make any more explicit than he already did.
Being a lifelong Sentry fan is a pain.
If anyone has doubts about "inconsistencies", I would recommend they read Ewing's Ultimates as well as his recent Immortal Hulk run - more specifically the final issue.
I don't think Ewing could make any more explicit than he already did.
Being a lifelong Sentry fan is a pain.
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?
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... Anyway, I'm not too knowledgeable on Marvel cosmology, but this seems fine.
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Please elaborate.
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So to be credible, I'm supposed to read comic profiles on VSBW? The very thing that makes everyone outside the wiki laugh at it?
And what's this quote in question? This?
Marvel is a cornucopia of fantasy, a wild idea, a swashbuckling attitude, an escape from the humdrum and prosaic. It’s a serendipitous feast for the mind, the eye, and the imagination, a literate celebration of unbridled creativity, coupled with a touch of rebellion and an insolent desire to spit in the eye of the dragon. | „ |
TypeOU
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I probably agree? the last discord point seems iffy, making an "usual cosmology rating" would probably be better. One writer saying that a character is planet level when he usually operates on multiversal level or more shouldn't make every feat of fighting this character planet level
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I expect you to read comics.
You don't read them with the level of shit you're claiming.
I like that you focus on that, in that entire argument.
Meh... I guess I'll be open to that, once all the blogs are done though.
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Disorganized crowds of people are quite likely to come to wrong conclusions, especially since they know the rest of them agrees with what they believe and so why challence the logic of something if the rest of the group has the same conclusion. It's not an argument worth making, you can't appeal to what others believe like this.
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Every vs. debating scene thinks they're hot shit and crap on other forums, this should just be... known at this point.
Appeal to popularity is a particularly dumb fallacy to make here, dude. Give proper reasons why you disagree or leave the thread, I don't have time for your dramabait, because this is what your non-arguments are coming across as.
Appeal to popularity is a particularly dumb fallacy to make here, dude. Give proper reasons why you disagree or leave the thread, I don't have time for your dramabait, because this is what your non-arguments are coming across as.
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The first step is to show that there is a significant difference in cosmological structure/hierarchy between major writers.
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