Revising Marvel's Abstracts (Part 1 of ???) (STAFF ONLY)

[Deagonx]

So we do actually have indications that it goes beyond Eternity then, huh? That being said:



If we accept the Crossroads to be entirely part of the reality that is part of Eternity, then infinite dimensional Eternity appears likely. (High 1-B or Low 1-A if we have qualitative superiority)

At least from a logical standpoint. As I said at the beginning, I can't comment on issues of consistency and canon.

Personally I lean towards the Crossroads being nothing more than a nexus to realms, not an Infinite-D space. But I understand why others feel differently.

I'm not sure what the QS argument is

 

[Scathan_The_Celestial]

So we do actually have indications that it goes beyond Eternity then, huh? That being said:



If we accept the Crossroads to be entirely part of the reality that is part of Eternity, then infinite dimensional Eternity appears likely. (High 1-B or Low 1-A if we have qualitative superiority)

At least from a logical standpoint. As I said at the beginning, I can't comment on issues of consistency and canon.

Eternity contains infinite d stuff iirc, most infinite d statements happen while beings are in eternity

 

[Ultima_Reality]

So we do actually have indications that it goes beyond Eternity then, huh?

That instance is certainly one, yes. Although I'm not exactly sure how interested you'd be in discussing this, since it deals a lot with canon-centered discussions (See my remark that this depiction of the Negative Zone largely never really made it past this comic, and in general is really wild compared to how it is everywhere else)

Now that you commented on that, I guess I can put out the rest of my response:

That's a fair argument as that (assuming no other "all" weirdity applies) it's fair to assume the dimensionality refers to at least that in Eternity. If there were relevant dimensionality statements exclusive to other realities, it might need closer inspection.

This of course also only holds if we decide that things like the crossroads only connect one reality.

Not sure if it actually matters for scaling under this conditions, but I suppose we may as well move on from this point then.

I wouldn't say this point is that secondary. If a being that explicitly covers all dimensionalities is contained in one Earth, and there's nowhere else in the multiverse where dimensionality exists except inside the Earths (Which are all equal in that regard), then that would have us, as a rule of thumb, assume that dimensioned realms are contained somewhere in one Eternity, if there isn't anything indicating that they are not. If a realm above Eternity was introduced and was explicitly higher-dimensional or something, then obviously we'd review that assumption, but this not having happened, what I say stands.

Anyway. Some extra stuff to add to the above, here for additional information's sake. I'm gonna put it in little collapsibles so it doesn't clutter up the post.

Spoiler: Extra

With that in mind, there's stuff that seems to suggest even the Universal Abstracts are beyond dimensions, too. For instance The realm where Eternity usually hung out (Which is inside of him) is explicitly beyond space and time. Obviously not much on its own, but in another storyline, we see Eternity being completely unconcerned with the prospect of the nature of reality being unravelled and the universe becoming directionless, without things like up/down and left/right (Other dichotomies are mentioned as things that'd either disappear or lose their meaning, so given that and the overall context it certainly is referring to affecting the directions of space themselves)

Spoiler: Extra 2

That fits pretty well with other stuff showing that Eternity contains the astral plane, which is "a higher frequency of reality" where things aren't limited by time, space or form, and to an extent belongs to it too, since Doctor Strange talks about doing surgery on him as "operating on the astral plane."

Have to disagree on that notion for the already mentioned reasons. Don't believe non-digital implies that the space corresponding to the dimensionality of a intellectual matrix existence is meant as physical dimensions.

And as I said, my point doesn't really require those dimensions to be physical, since Slorioth himself isn't a physical entity either (Or at least doesn't seem to be). Them being non-digital is all that really matters. Though, the fact that Slorioth's dimensionality has direct interaction and comparison with physical dimensions (His physical body being the most infinitesimal sliver of his incorporeal one. Him being unable to fit in any dimensionality, including that of the Earth Dimension, except through said slivers, due to being too big) is probably of interest to note, since abstract dimensions obviously wouldn't have such interactions with physical ones, so, either Slorioth's dimensionality is still physical in nature after all, or abstract dimensions in Marvel are comparable to physical ones.

Not the best evidence then IMO.

I already stated my reasons for the opposite (i.e The fact the Celestials were being truly slaughtered there, narratively, and not just their avatars), but I suppose this falls under the same umbrella as the Hyperstorm point.

With this point seemingly on its tail-end, and the first one largely moved past, I suppose we can start moving on to the other three, then?

 

[ByAsura]

I know this is derailing a bit, but would this revision affect post-retcon Beyonder?

I want to make a downgrade thread on him, as well as Molecule Man and The Watchers.

 

[Antvasima]

A question:

I thought that the Crossroads of Infinity can lead to different universes across the Marvel multiverse, or do I misremember?

 

[Antvasima]

Also, what is the plan here regarding how to ensure that powerful non-abstract entity superheroes and supervillains will not scale to tier Low 1-A to High 1-A feats, such as the Scarlet Witch creating the Chaos Wave during House of M and Meggan Puceano stopping it, or Hope Summers copying and matching the Phoenix Force? Or even for skyfathers such as Thor (via the Black Winter and the recent Mephisto-centered Avengers storyline) or Hercules (via the Chaos War event) for that matter.

And how does the intended composite cosmology fit with that in the modern Jonathan Hickman/Al Ewing cosmology it was sufficient for the Beyonders to bump parallell versions of the local Marvel universe into each other to destroy the entire multiverse, and for Franklin Richards to create over a thousand of universes to recreate the multiverse?

It still seems too inconsistent to me, especially as Hickman, for example, almost certainly had no idea of the scale of the classic cosmology that you are trying to establish.

 

[ByAsura]

Hope is literally an Omega level mutant with no defined limits. Ditto for those other examples.

The Power Cosmic Thor (not just Skyfather) and Hercules stuff really doesn't matter because they don't scale to anyone except the abstracts they fought. We already went over this.

That's not how the Franklin Richards stuff worked.

 

[Sir_Ovens]

It still seems too inconsistent to me, especially as Hickman, for example, almost certainly had no idea of the scale of the classic cosmology that you are trying to establish.

I think this mentality is holding back the revision. As I've said before on the Low 1-A standards thread, strictly looking at author foresight and intention to limit feats takes away our objectivity and autonomy when evaluating them. New writers will always come in and change the status quo, that's how you keep things fresh and exciting. As long as consistency can be gleaned from the resulting product, I see no reason why we would need to pull back on giving characters the appropriate stats.

This is hopefully the last time I have to bring this up as it is derailing the original purpose of the thread.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I know this is derailing a bit, but would this revision affect post-retcon Beyonder?

I want to make a downgrade thread on him, as well as Molecule Man and The Watchers.

Under my proposals, Cosmic Cubes will become High 1-B, so, yes.

And, with that in mind, I also want to propose we just delete Pre-Retcon Beyonder. Largely all that's different between them in practical terms is that Pre-Retcon has the infinite-dimensional statement, which I am arguing is still applicable to his post-retcon incarnation anyway. So if that point is accepted we'd just have two borderline identical profiles for the same character.

I thought that the Crossroads of Infinity can lead to different universes across the Marvel multiverse, or do I misremember?

Only one appearance of it really suggests this, and it's fairly fishy to apply to the usual cosmology (The Negative Zone certainly doesn't encompass the multiverse and much less the Beyonders' universe in 99% of its depictions). My point in this thread is that it's a connecting point to all the realms inside of Earth-616, not to the entire multiverse.

And how does the intended composite cosmology fit with that in the modern Jonathan Hickman/Al Ewing cosmology it was sufficient for the Beyonders to bump parallell versions of the local Marvel universe into each other to destroy the entire multiverse, and for Franklin Richards to create over a thousand of universes to recreate the multiverse?

That's not an issue if each of those universes is Low 1-A anyway. At most it'd pose an issue to the proposed High 1-A rating, but that one's to be discussed in another thread anyway, not this one.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Ant was asking if the Crossroads of Infinity lead to beyond Eternity, instead of being constrained to a single Earth like I am positing they are. Whether the Crossroads scan refers to infinite spatial dimensions has been a point of contention in the past, but it's already accepted as such on the profiles, so, discussion pertaining to that doesn't really belong in this thread.

 

[LuciferX]

My bad.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. I suppose that I am more neutral to this revision in terms of the abstract entities then, but I still want some kind of strong safeguards to prevent unreasonably scaling regular superheroes and supervillains, or even skyfather level characters, to tier High 1-B and above.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Well, all the cases in which superheroes and supervillains end up doing things to the Abstracts have them be anything but "regular," as we've already went over. Hercules was amped to become the God of Gods against Mikaboshi, Scarlet Witch genuinely just is that strong (Ditto for Hope Summers), Dormammu exploited a glitch in existence when he defeated Multi-Eternity, Allfather Thor's feats don't scale to anyone but himself, etc.

 

[ByAsura]

No offense, but it seems like we're getting trapped in a loop here.

We need to move on to different topics that come with the revisions.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Fair, yeah.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

And, with that in mind, I also want to propose we just delete Pre-Retcon Beyonder. Largely all that's different between them in practical terms is that Pre-Retcon has the infinite-dimensional statement, which I am arguing is still applicable to his post-retcon incarnation anyway. So if that point is accepted we'd just have two borderline identical profiles for the same character.

This, in particular, I think is worth discussing.

 

[Sir_Ovens]

So have we reached a conclusion?

Edit: Nvm, carry on.

 

[ByAsura]

I guess this is fine, because it's explained in Secret Wars III and Fantastic Four Annual that the Abstracts were just using this as an experiment the entire time. So they could've easily been skewing his perception of events.

They're conduct similar tests, such as letting Iron Man play with the universe and purposefully releasing Korvac in Iron Man Vol 6 in order to see what humans with power on par with their own would do.

It's still questionable, though, because we get statements like this and this.

Also, the Inhuman-Mutant stuff is confirmed bullshit, and the child unit stuff is just an expansion of his cosmic cube origins. So I've never a reason for multiple post-retcon keys.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

It's still questionable, though, because we get statements like this and this.

Yeah, those would be ignored, of course, since they tie directly into what was retconned (Beyonder's characterization as the strongest thing ever). My point is that the infinite-dimensional statement is kind of just a little factoid we're given about him that doesn't directly tie into that, so randomly including it among the retconned things seems baseless, especially given Secret Wars suffered a soft retcon at best and the events in it largely still happened.

It'd be like saying the powers and abilities that he displays during his tenure on Earth don't apply to his post-retcon interpretation. There's not much of a reason to do that. And in this case we have further evidence of the statement's validity ontop of the above (The Cosmic Cubes being described as omni-dimensional)

 

[ByAsura]

Sure, then.

 

[Scathan_The_Celestial]

This, in particular, I think is worth discussing.

Both are basically confirmed to be the same character anyways, I'd just have both as a seperate thing on the same profile probably

 

[Sir_Ovens]

I also agree with removing the Pre-Retcon page.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, in the Pre-Retcon continuity the Beyonder was explicitly millions of times more powerful than the multiversal version of Eternity, but I suppose that the statistics may be confusing, due to that he can only scale to what was established in 1985.

 

[LuciferX]

This, in particular, I think is worth discussing.

That scan can't explain everything happened in Secret Wars II. For example, Beyond realm is bigger than Multiverse but it was retconed to be a pocket universe. There is no reason to assume infinite dimensional thing is still valid so far. Everything happened in SW II is non canon. In Defenders Beyond issue, Chavez hit Beyonder by passing through multiple planes of reality which indicates he's not infinite-d. 1-B Beyonder.

 

[ByAsura]

I lean towards agreeing with the first part, but not the last part.

They were in The Beyond (the actual Beyond, not The Beyonder's womb-space), which explicitly has its own levels of reality, and Eternity Mask Chavez simply knocked what was essentially a matter-based flesh suit (their true forms here are explicitly non-finite) through those planes during their fight.

The fact that they could interact with and fight on these planes in the first place kind of dispels this notion.

 

[ByAsura]

And on another note, why are we assuming that the Superflow and Neutral Zone are only part of Eighth Multiverse Eternity on the profiles?

The Superflow has been an explicit part of the Multiverse since its first appearance in Newuniversal, while Exo-Space predates Time Runs out.

They're not even new concepts in a relative sense. It's implied that the 16th-dimensional multiversal juncture where Universal Abstracts meet is actually a domain of the Superflow. So they're really just 90s ideas that have been named and expanded.

I wouldn't even say they're transcendental of the normal multiverse, either, since the Neutral Zone has often been called the limit of space-time, and the Superflow disappeared when all universes were merged.

 

[LuciferX]

Do abstracts in overspace are true forms or M-bodies?

 

[ByAsura]

We're shown in Quasar that they're M-Bodies.

Even the Eternity that interacts with the normal universe at any given moment is an M-Body of sorts.

 

[LuciferX]

Yeah, abstracts in 3-D plane are indeed manifestations. True forms reside in Superflow. Since you're suggesting overspace is a part of it, I think they are true forms perhaps.

 

[ByAsura]

More of a domain or sub-set than an actual part of it.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

That scan can't explain everything happened in Secret Wars II. For example, Beyond realm is bigger than Multiverse but it was retconed to be a pocket universe. There is no reason to assume infinite dimensional thing is still valid so far. Everything happened in SW II is non canon.

It isn't. Secret Wars II is still entirely canon. What was retconned was the Beyonder's stature in the cosmology and the context of his interactions with the Abstracts.

The Beyonder's infinite-dimensional statement also is never really directly corelated with the size of his universe in comparison to the Marvel Multiverse, so the latter being retconned doesn't mean that it also was. If it said something like "To have [insert finite number here] dimensions, as this multiverse does, instead of an infinite number? Such a thing was unknown to him", you'd have a point, but that's not how it goes.

In Defenders Beyond issue, Chavez hit Beyonder by passing through multiple planes of reality which indicates he's not infinite-d. 1-B Beyonder.

That's a complete non-sequitur. The Beyonder being hit through multiple planes of reality does nothing to support or deny an infinite-dimensional nature to him.

I wouldn't even say they're transcendental of the normal multiverse, either, since the Neutral Zone has often been called the limit of space-time, and the Superflow disappeared when all universes were merged.

They certainly are, given that they are both referred to as higher planes of existence with respect to the universes, with the Superflow in particular being the highest level of reality that contains all of those universes. When Maker merged the multiverse into a universe, the causality was also "Superflow is gone → Universes meld," not "Universes melded → Superflow is gone."

Now, there is some talk in Time Runs Out about the Superflow having come undone with the Incursions, but that's largely just an issue of muddled terminology, given that, in those older comics, "Superflow" was a term used to refer to both the dreamspace containing all universes and to the transportation network that the Builders set up in said dreamspace. As shown here, the collapse of the Superflow that they talk about is referring to the Builders' network, not to the actual realm, and we actually see that at the very end of the story, when Nightmask uses the dreamspace to travel across the multiverse, long after "the Superflow" is stated to have come undone.

But generally speaking I agree that Seventh Cosmos Eternity really isn't any different from Eighth Cosmos Eternity structure-wise, yeah. That's something I'm planning on addressing on Part 2 of these revisions.

 

[Excellence616]

So what's the conclusion so far?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

So what's the conclusion so far?

Hard to say, I won't lie. The thread's been going fairly slowly. Overall it seems most people are in agreement, though, with a few being neutral (Ant, ByAsura and DT)

With regards to the discussion between me and DT, though: We agreed on the Slorioth point (The major part of it, anyway), and it seems the debate about the Crossroads of Infinity is on its tail-end. I'm hoping we can move on to the other three points, right now.

 

[Antvasima]

So will we put any safeguards into place to prevent scaling herald-level characters from outliers and inconsistencies?

 

[Tllmbrg]

Just see if it is consistent????
Like idk what else you really want, if a person just dukes it several times with abstracts they probably just scale to them

 

[Antvasima]

This is Marvel Comics, so by that measure we would almost end up scaling everybody to everybody if we take it literally, but I suppose that our current "be very careful in this regard" guidelines are unfortunately likely all that we can do in that regard.

 

[Setsuna_tenma]

So will we put any safeguards into place to prevent scaling herald-level characters from outliers and inconsistencies?

ultima already said heralds won`t scale to this

 

[Antvasima]

Well, the problem is that, given the way Marvel Comics fights usually work on a narrative level, other members are inevitably going to want to scale anybody who have ever fought tier High 1-B characters or above to them, and then scale other character to them, and so onwards. Should the Hulk, regular Thanos, and Jane Foster Thor really get tier High 1-B for enduring attacks from Odin, Zeus, or Odinforce Thor, for example?

 

[Setsuna_tenma]

Well, the problem is that, given the way Marvel Comics fights usually work on a narrative level, other members are inevitably going to want to scale anybody who have ever fought tier High 1-B characters or above to them, and then scale other character to them, and so onwards. Should the Hulk, regular Thanos, and Jane Foster Thor really get tier High 1-B for enduring attacks from Odin, Zeus, or Odinforce Thor, for example?

Just no. Multiple people pointed in the thread for you to stop this.

I feel these are indicative of the general behaviour here. You may be concerned about the general state of Marvel, however, I find that it's highly unproductive to oppose change when you yourself state your knowledge on the matter is incomplete, that you are overworked, that the topic itself causes you mental distress and above all others, that there are no proposed alternatives that wouldn't be years in the making to fix the appalling state of the profiles as they are.

Ultima clearly shows an extensive and thoroughly researched argument and has proven it again and again by standing up to scrutiny from DT.

I find behaviour and motte-and-bailey style argumentation inappropriate for someone with holds such influence and sway on VSB and to someone who speaks about the image and reputation of VSB as a whole, for who is more representative of VSB than the person who runs the site daily.

This type of argumentation and quite frankly stonewalling is what does irrevocable damage to the image of Vsbattles, not the proposed upgrade and further ask you don't inflict your opinion on the thread as to not burden yourself any further.

I think this mentality is holding back the revision. As I've said before on the Low 1-A standards thread, strictly looking at author foresight and intention to limit feats takes away our objectivity and autonomy when evaluating them. New writers will always come in and change the status quo, that's how you keep things fresh and exciting. As long as consistency can be gleaned from the resulting product, I see no reason why we would need to pull back on giving characters the appropriate stats.

This is hopefully the last time I have to bring this up as it is derailing the original purpose of the thread.

I would appreciate if you refrained from doing do. "But all of the regular heroes will end up scaling to this!" is something that's not endorsed neither by this thread nor by the way in which the profiles are currently scaled (Meaning that, even if it was an issue, which it isn't, it wouldn't be something created by this thread). That just dials back to the discussion that you and ByAsura had earlier on, in which you agreed to just stay out of the discussion and let others handle it.

Furthermore, as said before, the bulk of this thread uses comics released in the timespan of only 5 years as a pool of evidence. A very, very short amount of time, so what you mention about writer inconsistencies and the like is not a valid point anyway. Not here, at least.