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Actually, I think it affects the debate a lot?To clarify the situation, let me spin up a scenario:
Suppose you have two realms. Realm A and Realm B. Realm A is a universe much like ours, while Realm B is a transcendental place that has pretty much all of the properties we'd expect of something that fits the bill for "qualitative superiority." That is to say: Realm A is described as infinitely less than Realm B. To Realm B and its inhabitants, Realm A is literally a fiction, an illusion, something completely impotent, and nothing happening in Realm A can ever be of any consequence to Realm B because of this.
However, there's a catch: For all their infinite superiority over Realm A, the beings of Realm B can't really interact with it in any way. They can interact with each other, but not with lower realms or beings.
To me, Realm B would be Tier 1, without question. To you, though, it seems like Realm B wouldn't be able to be compared to Realm A because of its lack of ability to interact with it. Ergo, it seems that "superiority" to you hinges on the amount of control that the higher thing is able to exert over the lower. While, in my eyes, that doesn't matter in the slightest.
So while I do have an answer to your above question that's independent of whatever you say, the point is that, in my view, it's not really relevant. Whether my answer is "Yes" or "No" doesn't affect this debate at all.
Like, whether you say that we should per default assume that R>F characters (or others with qualitative superiority) can affect all higher dimensions or not is a big difference in how things would work in practical debates and in the degree of extrapolation you suggest. So a yes or no to my initial question would be nice.
Likewise, what superiority means could obviously impact on how we tier things. Like, there are two things to designing a tiering system. One is to have an idea of how power comparison should work and one how to present that comparison to the reader. So whether the tiers should be laid out like you suggest is, in part, dependent on what exactly you mean by superiority. It in particular needs to be clarified at some point so that people don't misunderstand what your tiers are supposed to mean, when you say Tier 1-A is superior to 1-B.
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