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The DC Comics Cosmology Revision Project

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Antvasima

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Over the years, there has been much controversy regarding the statistics and power-scaling of DC Comics' cosmic entities. As many of you know, we have been working on overhauling the DC cosmology for roughly two years now. First and foremost, we want to express our gratitude for the community's patience and understanding as we collaborated to create the most accurate representation that we could.

We have oriented the project around splitting the verse's cosmology, rather than the current "composite" approach. This wiki aims to create profiles for characters that accurately represent their abilities and scales of power. The problem we have run into regularly with DC Comics' cosmic entities is that, when drawing upon the enormous amount of tens of thousands of comics that have ever been printed for the verse since 1938, it is easy to string together a chain of scans from completely unrelated storylines, across several decades of continuity reboots, to scale a character in a way that is completely incompatible with their actual power in the stories.

We already split characters based on reboots (Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, N52, Rebirth), or individual storylines that take place in an alternate universe (Superman: Strange Visitor, One-Million). However, this model can't easily be applied to cosmic beings because they do not exist in specific universes. Just as the New 52 Superman (4-B) has an extremely different portrayal from that of the Strange Visitor Superman (Low 1-C), different eras and authors portray the cosmology in completely different ways that are being mashed together for scaling.

How the Divisions Work

Our approach is primarily (but not exclusively) focused on authorship. There is a trend of prominent authors creating their own personal "cosmological sandbox" when writing for DC Comics, and other authors who are writing tie-in comics will usually operate within that same sandbox with minimal changes. The cosmologies are named after the authors, but this does not mean only comics written by that specific author can be incorporated. It also does not mean every comic written by that author must be incorporated.

We recognize that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution to this, and that the basis for where and when a setting diverges into a distinct new cosmology is, ultimately, subjective. This wiki is a living document that changes over time based on content revision threads. The models for DC's cosmology are no exception and merely represent the best efforts of the team that created them.

In that spirit, we want to emphasize that the specific discussions about how individual aspects of each cosmology should be described, or which cosmologies are distinct enough to separate, will take place in a separate thread after the basic split is approved. I.e., the specific details of where to draw the dividing lines and what each cosmology should look like is peripheral to whether or not we legitimize a split cosmology in the first place.

Exceptions and Narrative Relevance

Another important aspect that we want to highlight, so there is no confusion, is that these cosmology divisions represent "lines in the sand" about scaling and aren't meant to be interpreted as immovable walls. The focus is to change our "rule of thumb" about how we engage with these characters. As it currently stands, the default assumption is that all of DC Comics history is fair play for cosmic entities.

Under this new model, the starting assumption will be that characters are restricted in scaling to their immediate cosmology but that exception can be made in the case of clear narrative relevance. Meaning, even if a character is within a certain cosmology (based on the era a comic was written in, the author of that comic, or the storylines it is connected to, etc.), cross-scaling can still occur if there is clear and convincing evidence for this, rather than simply saying, "This scan from a 1999 Wildstorm comic says that there are roughly 200,000 spatial dimensions, and DC bought Wildstorm. Therefore, this DC character in 2019 is 1-B", or a comparable stretch.

This project's primary goal is to establish the foundational concept of splitting the cosmology to create ratings for characters that are faithful to their storylines and narrative surroundings.

We would greatly appreciate it if all staff members here carefully read all of our presented evidence and reasoning on the following page before you make any decisions. Again, it has taken us roughly two years to finish this project, so it would be very nice if the sheer effort involved is given appropriate consideration. Thank you very much in advance for any help.

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Antvasima/DC_Comics_Cosmology_Revision_Project

In addition, this revision constitutes a massive change in official guidelines. Given its controversy, we want to avoid giving rise to the likely unmanageable derailing, spam, and/or toxicity that would occur if several dozens of members offer their input. As such, this discussion is currently limited to staff members, non-staff who worked on this project, and knowledgeable non-staff members who have something genuinely important to say without derailing, using personal attacks, or engaging in toxicity. Regular members who break these rules will have their posts deleted, and likely be prevented from responding to this thread if they continue.
 
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Thank you you Medeus. It is very appreciated.
 
Well, I got to get a look at this in advance so I can do a quick comment on my position.
I'm not a DC Comics reader and as such have limited knowledge on the franchise. So I can't say too much on specific borders.
However, from what I have seen I can say that the principle sentiment of separating cosmology seems to be necessary.
Even amongst the opponents (well, the ones I have seen to this point) everyone mostly agrees that there are some stories that just are not canon towards the greater cosmology. So while those might be minor towards the greater cosmology, it shows that separation to some extent is necessary.
Furthermore, it appears that keeping it united would only work by doing rather strange things. Such as scaling characters (and the cosmology they are tied to) to each other based on the need to force everything into the same cosmology, even if the authors literally didn't know each other's characters.
It might be easy to forget due to the way we go by feats and evaluate those by all the same standards, but ultimately we still have a certain interest in having our profile reflect what we see in the actual fictions, instead of boosting them based on unintended technicalities.

For those reasons I think the proposal, in general, appears reasonable.
 
Not gonna lie, completely banning the input from regular users and threatning people with bans is.... interesting. Tagging literally every mod, including calc mods and image helpers seems weird for something that is irrelevant to their job. Not allowing users who are knowledgeable regular members and not pinging them specifically, but only allowing regular members who worked on it to change things, is also weird.

it's almost as if it's being pushed to not allow any arguments against the change and silencing people as much as possible. 👀
 
Not gonna lie, completely banning the input from regular users and threatning people with bans is.... interesting. Tagging literally every mod, including calc mods and image helpers seems weird for something that is irrelevant to their job. Not allowing users who are knowledgeable regular members and not pinging them specifically, but only allowing regular members who worked on it to change things, is also weird.

it's almost as if it's being pushed to not allow any arguments against the change and silencing people as much as possible. 👀
I'm sure that wasn't the intention but it definitely comes off as very manipulative, I feel like a knowledgeable member has a lot more to say on the subject than a staff member with no experience on the topic. At least staff-recommended people should be allowed to contribute IMO, I doubt it'll be more than a few so it shouldn't make the discussion any more clogged up.
 
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I think it's more so because, him and some of those other people who worked on it are heavily burned out by the topic and have been harassed by a lot of upgrade hungry DC fans who just want to upgrade so many characters including Superman to Tier 1. Of which even several former staff members have also been guilty or have done things that can be classified as harassment.

Instead, I would personally say instead of it being up to staff, it should be up to the the people who worked on the blog and the revisions project to give permission to any regular users who want to participate if they have any counter arguments they wish to speak of. And preferably people who have been long running productive combined with being well behaved might be considered. Retired staff (Ones who retired on their own violation specifically and not demoted for obvious reasons) should also be just as allowed to participate of course. Even staff should ask Antvasima, Firestorm, ect should ask before allowing permissions but I half agree with Colonel that the wording is too harsh and should instead say they should ask for permission before giving permission to more regular users or arguing for them. I'd prefer that instead of bluntly saying that giving permission to anyone else or arguing for them is taboo no matter what.
 
Well, I don't really think it should be up to the people who worked on the project to choose whether to allow the opposition to speak, that doesn't really create an even debating ground since if they wanted to they could just choose to not allow anyone who they know would disagree to speak.
 
Not gonna lie, completely banning the input from regular users and threatning people with bans is.... interesting. Tagging literally every mod, including calc mods and image helpers seems weird for something that is irrelevant to their job. Not allowing users who are knowledgeable regular members and not pinging them specifically, but only allowing regular members who worked on it to change things, is also weird.
I'm sure that wasn't the intention but it definitely comes off as very manipulative, I feel like a knowledgeable member has a lot more to say on the subject than a staff member with no experience on the topic. At least staff-recommended people should be allowed to contribute IMO, I doubt it'll be more than a few so it shouldn't make the discussion any more clogged up.
I think it's more so because, him and some of those other people who worked on it are heavily burned out by the topic and have been harassed by a lot of upgrade hungry DC fans who just want to upgrade so many characters including Superman to Tier 1. Of which even several former staff members have also been guilty or done things that can be classified as harassment.

Instead, I would personally say instead of it being up to staff, it should be up to the the people who worked on the blog and the revisions project to give permission to any regular users who want to participate if they have any counter arguments they wish to speak of. And preferably people who have been long running productive combined with being well behaved might be considered. Retired staff (Ones who retired on their own violation specifically and not demoted for obvious reasons) should also be just as allowed to participate of course

The concern is understandable, and I agree with DDM's take on the matter. The subject is volatile, that much is certain. People take upgrades and downgrades to a verse they like very seriously, and the subject can become very heated in an instant, and if left to a fully open forum the consequences would be disastrous. Some of you may be privy to the events a week or so ago where a ring of users were banned for vote-farming for their CRTs. That's how serious it is taken by some people.

Personally, I am open-minded to having a staff-approved user offer a countering perspective, but I don't think that shifting this decision fully to the VSBW user base that is involved with DC is going to result in a "more even" debating ground, as the general trend is that fans of a verse on a battleboarding forum tend towards wanting to upgrade it, so I would strongly advise a degree of restraint in how much of that occurs.

Unfortunately, determining who is and who isn't a knowledgeable member isn't always a simple task. There are many staff members who are familiar with the verse, and ones who are not, and it is important to have both groups assess the project so that we can get informed opinions as well as unbiased opinions from people learning some of this information for the first time. It's important to avoid a flame war, which is why regular user participation is being restricted, given the volatility of the subject matter.
 
This thread is aimed at the basic concept of splitting the cosmology and doesn't need to get into the fine details of the verse. There will be a second thread coming that gets into the fine details, then said knowledgeable regular members are welcome to help.
But by then they'd be debating from a losing position because part of the thread would already have been accepted. No matter how you look at this the way things are set up now, it brings an unfair disadvantage to the side of people who would disagree.
 
Well, maybe I was too strict here then. The issue is just that there are just very few of us in this project available to argue for our case, and I have past experiences of dealing with absolutely massive amounts of toxicity regarding Marvel and DC Comics, so I didn't want to have to deal with dozens of angry fans who spam and derail this thread into oblivion. I expected us to have our hands full with just arguing with the staff members here.

Maybe a few knowledgeable members could be selected as representatives by the opposition (preferably other than Xearsay, as my experience is that he tends to stonewall anything to extremes). I am not sure. It depends on how much time and energy our project members have available.
 
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There's not that many staff DC supporters who aren't on your side or have just gotten exhausted and quit. I think some degree of back and forth should absolutely be expected when it comes to such a huge thread, let's not play the victim here.
 
But by then they'd be debating from a losing position because part of the thread would already have been accepted. No matter how you look at this the way things are set up now, it brings an unfair disadvantage to the side of people who would disagree.
Don't get this wrong, a split needs to happen, based on the large body of work DC and so many inconsistencies. This thread is just the explaining the WHY it is happening, then we have a thread explaining the HOW it will happen, and which cosmology gets to stand together and which does not, then I think regular members who have good information on why two cosmology should be together or why they should be separated can ask for permission to input, but this is really basic stuff that is simply a policy change of our DC pages, and this really boils down to, do you personally agree with the split or not?
 
To be clear, Armorchompy, do you disagree with a split? And if so, can we have a dialogue about that? I think we should try and at least spend some time discussing these perspectives rather than solely weighing the pros and cons of who can be involved in this. I think it would be good to make your views on the subject clear.
 
Don't get this wrong, a split needs to happen, based on the large body of work DC and so many inconsistencies.
That is subjective, as everything else regarding powerscaling. I don't think you can just make the claim that it needs to pass.
To be clear, Armorchompy, do you disagree with a split? And if so, can we have a dialogue about that? I think we should try and at least spend some time discussing these perspectives rather than solely weighing the pros and cons of who can be involved in this. I think it would be good to make your views on the subject clear.
I don't want to bother with DC powerscaling anymore, I genuinely don't have an opinion and if I did I would have voiced it. Why does it matter?
 
I don't want to bother with DC powerscaling anymore, I genuinely don't have an opinion and if I did I would have voiced it. Why does it matter?
It matters because the goal of this thread is to discuss the split, and if there are disagreements from staff we would like the opportunity to engage with that. I was able to have some productive discussions with Ultima about the subject, and the sharing of those perspectives can be useful. Within our discussions he agreed with a split cosmology, but did not agree with one of the splits we had intended, which is a discussion that we intend to have more fully later.

If you don't have an opinion, then that's okay, but if there are objections to it from the staff I'd like to be able to have an open discussion about it.
 
I will modify the first post as it seems to have turned too harsh. The other project members need to agree about if knowledgeable representatives for the regular members can be selected to argue here though, but it needs to be ones that completely avoid toxicity and stick to matter-of-fact reasoning.
 
This thread is aimed at the basic concept of splitting the cosmology and doesn't need to get into the fine details of the verse. There will be a second thread coming that gets into the fine details, then said knowledgeable regular members are welcome to help.
This sounds reasonable, I'm sure that the next thread will be more user friendly compared to this one which is the thread on working on the split or how we're handling the split. This is just the step one that needs to happen in which we clearly can't just have the Meta-Composite cosmology that we currently use for scaling. Whether things like is 6th dimension is one of the following structures, Low 1-C, 1-B, High 1-B, or still 1-A will be discussed later. Same with 5th dimension being Low 1-C or still High 1-C ect. Only that this is just an official statement there is going to be some kind of cosmology split which is hardly s revision in itself and mostly just an announcement.
 
"As such, this discussion is currently limited to staff members, non-staff who worked on the project, and especially knowledgeable non-staff who are suggested and accepted by the staff members in this thread as representatives of the opposition with a promise not to derail or engage in toxicity. Regular members who post here anyway will have those posts deleted, and likely be prevented from responding to this thread if they continue."

Is this an acceptable wording?

What I meant is that staff members here can suggest a few regular members to argue here who are then evaluated by other staff members here regarding whether or not they seem sufficiently reasonable and rational to do so. After this has been finished, we can delete all of the off-topic derailment that we have engaged in here and get back to the main discussion.
 
I have to switch to wiki edit patrolling work and then go to bed. Are you all able to discuss here in a polite and reasonable manner in the meantime? There is no great hurry after all.
 
In response to Udlmaster's deleted post, I made a revised suggestion. I did not refer to the original proposal.

Anyway, since he keeps posting here without being allowed to, in order to agitate and incite toxicity, he will be prevented from posting here any further.
 
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So which approach should we use here then? I don't want to have this thread turn into a completely unmanageable derailed toxic spam tsunami, given the sheer controversy of it, but would also much prefer to be fairminded.

Do other staff members here have any suggestions?
 
"As such, this discussion is currently limited to staff members, non-staff who worked on the project, and especially knowledgeable non-staff who are suggested and accepted by the staff members in this thread as representatives of the opposition with a promise not to derail or engage in toxicity. Regular members who post here anyway will have those posts deleted, and likely be prevented from responding to this thread if they continue."

Is this an acceptable wording?

What I meant is that staff members here can suggest a few regular members to argue here who are then evaluated by other staff members here regarding whether or not they seem sufficiently reasonable and rational to do so. After this has been finished, we can delete all of the off-topic derailment that we have engaged in here and get back to the main discussion.
This looks good to me.
 
Okay. Thank you for the reply.

Also, for the record, in private I was shown screencaptures of Udlmaster explicitly admitting that he was deliberately trying to be a very inflammatory agitation-demagogue in combination with levelling a toxic insult against me personally, so I would greatly appreciate if our staff and other members here make an effort to not fall for it. Our community definitely does not need any more drama.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Anyway, Xearsay and Udlmaster seem inappropriate, given that the former has a history of stonewalling and the latter of being toxic, but are there any other knowledgeable regular members who want to argue here, and are able to keep any bad behaviour in check?
 
I will say this sets a very scary precedent. Besides verses that operate on a split-cosmology narrative like SCP, any long running verse with a massive body of work will eventually run into inconsistencies and wack scaling.

I guess the point boils down to this: Are you splitting the verse because that is the inherent nature of the material/cosmology? Or are you splitting the verse because Superman being tier 1 is scarily consistent and we can't have that because reasons.

I'll say it like it is, if you're working on the basis of the latter that's bad faith.
 
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