Time to fit the (literal) god of DC comics as well as the others in our new tiering system

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Also in regards to the Overvoid... I don't think what goes on in Justice League contradicts it. All we know is that beings like the Monitors were born from the Overvoid. And that Perpetua forcifully pulled her children out of the Overvoid.

But this doesn't mean that the Overvoid is suddenly not an all-encompassing metaphysical abstraction, because it literally is. Perpetua pulling her sons from it is no more relevant to the Overvoid than an unicellular microbe eating away a single cell of your own body is to you. In fact, it is very much less important. Perpetua isn't even at the peak of DC's Fictional Hierarchy, with there being a whole race of infinite beings like her, and entities above them alltogether. Perpetua was shanked by a raptor bird sent forth to represent The Source's judges. So something that takes orders from beings that take orders from The Source (And by extension, the Presence) is faaaaar above Perpetua. And all these entities are likewise nothing to the Overvoid. There is no difference to the Overvoid between a three-dimensional character like Lois Lane or Alfred, and outerversal abstract entities like Perpetua and Lucifer and the Presence.

Because they are all merely colored drawings rendered on a piece of paper. They're images, not even real.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I forgot to mention but that Raptor Bird also created The Source Wall, which separates Perpetua's multiverse from the Omniverse outside, being infinite and impenetrable even from the Monitor Sphere.

 

[MYHERO]

@Matthew Schroeder Oh so you still think Overvoid can be qualified for a high 1-A.

 

[KarmodF]

I forgot to mention but that Raptor Bird also created The Source Wall, which separates Perpetua's multiverse from the Omniverse outside, being infinite and impenetrable even from the Monitor Sphere.

Raptor Bird?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

It looks like an eagle. You can find the scan on The Source's profile.

 

[Antvasima]

I think that Ultima seems to mostly make sense, but do not appreciate his disrespectful mocking tone with the "INfinIte fIckShUnal tRansCenDez" phrasing, and similar repeated statements recently. This has to stop.

Anyway, the problem is that going by ascending reality-fiction interaction hierarchies, in works such as Umineko and The Unwritten, us or Grant Morrison perceiving a setting as fiction is nothing special, and should not be treated as such, as other beings perceive our world as fiction, and so onwards to infinity according to this philosophy. To cheat and give DC special treatment in this regard sets a bad precedent for other verses, such as allowing any author avatar who plays out the metafiction angle to be automatically rated as tier 0.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I wrote it as a joke, there's no need to be offended here.

Except that what you are saying basically amounts to cross-scaling; How Umineko or The Unwritten treat reality-fiction layers has nothing to do with DC and we shouldn't put their portrayals of them on a pedestal in any way, shape or form. Different verses can define layers in a way that is equivalent to more than a single step in the hierarchy of infinities we use as a measuring stick for our higher tiers, and DC is most certainly one such verse, it's not cheating, it's just going by a case-by-case basis, as we always do.

No other Author Avatars are affected by this. DC is getting this treatment because it actually goes in depth about the implications of the relationship between a Writer and his work in a way that fits it into higher tiers, while other verses do not. It's that simple, and made even easier by the fact that the verse already has 1-A stuff.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Yeah, what Ultima said. I've been reinforcing this myself for many threads as well, Ant. You can't apply pre-conceptions from some series into another.

 

[MYHERO]

I'm not saying that's the reason why Overvoid should qualify though. I whole heartily agree that the higher character's perception of lower beings should not be considered a solid consistent feat that we can automatically attach a tier to on how impressive it is. It's up to the fiction respectively to put into perspectives on how powerful that feat is.

I already stated something similar to what Ultima said hours ago.

 

[I'm_Blue_daba_dee_daba_die]

I agree with everybody else.

Also, I don't get why are you talking about reality-fiction differences to say how the overvoid isn't a High 1-A. I think we all agreed that ISN'T the reason why the overvoid should be a High 1-A. The main reason is how the overvoid vastly exceeds all of DC to the point that he is beyond all the scale of the 1-A hiearchy and beyond the hiearchy of DC all together. Like I said before, if the overvoid was treated just as a much higher step in the DC tower, then he should stay at 1-A. But the void is basically on the roof due to how much he is beyond and exceeding of DC.

 

[By_My_Neck]

Any amount of Imagination/Unimagination 1-A Hierarchy will always amount to 0 to the Overvoid, that much is pretty clear. Take that statement with what you will.

You have no way of quantifying how huge DC's 1-A layers may be, and that they are less divided into less layers, does not in anyway make them smaller. Any amount of them will amount to 0, that and including other Creations outside of it that may number to an infinite of them or so.

 

[Hykuu]

I agree with Ultima, for the record

 

[Antvasima]

@Ultima

Okay. Sorry if I overreacted. It is just that you seem to have used this phrasing quite a lot recently to belittle my viewpoints.

Anyway, I thought that much of the entire point of the new system was to standardise it regarding types of transcendence.

Also, if we should afford DC Comics special treatment in this regard, we would definitely need footnote explanations at the bottom of the Monitor-Mind The Overvoid and The Writer pages to avoid that they set bad precedents.

 

[EmperorRorepmeThree]

No one is applying concepts from one verse to another. When one says "fictional transcendence" it's talking about transcending a character by viewing them as fiction which is prevalent in a few fictions.

 

[EmperorRorepmeThree]

Anyway Ultima makes sense.

 

[Kepekley23]

Am writing this from my phone, so don't find it weird if I ghostnthis thread right after.

Is there, like, any proof the Writer is a legit supreme being rather than an elaborate joke and 4th wall reference? Pretty much no stories allude to him, IIRC.

 

[Antvasima]

@Kepekley23

Well, something drew on the Overvoid against its will, and DC Comics is very entrenched in metafiction.

@All

Is somebody willing to ask DarkLK, DontTalkDT, and Sera EX to comment here as well, to make sure that we are not making any mistakes?

 

[Kepekley23]

That interview actually states the Overvoid.was the one who accidentally drew these stories on himself, not that it was drawn by someone else.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

No, it does state that stories were drawn against the Overvoid's will.

And no, it's not an elaborate joke.

 

[Kepekley23]

Yes, by itself. Not by someone else.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Also Ant, please spare me.

"Set Bad Precedents?" "Standardize types of trancendence?" What are wel a factory with a production line?

The whole point of the revision was to apply a system that wasn't so painfully generalized across all of fiction. And going "Oh, it ain't like this in Umineko so it can't work like that here" is ridiculous. That's the whole reason you're against the Overvoid. That and it being Western Superhero Comics.

You've been trying to gatekeep DC Comics out of the higher tiers ever since the Revisions started while also ranting melancholically about how nobody can accept that Marvel Comics is also weak now. We all can see through the facade, Ant.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Yes, by itself. Not by someone else.

Never was that suggested.

 

[Kepekley23]

Except on the exact same line. "Creating stories out of itself"

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

That's not the line.

"In the case of comic book stories, it's the war between white page and ink. And who's to say that the page might want that particular story drawn on it? [laughs] What happens if the page is a bit pissed off at the story that's drawn on it? So I thought of the page as God. The idea being that the Overvoid ― as we called it in Final Crisis - of the white page as a space is sort of God. And it's condensing stories out of itself because it finds inside its own gigantic white space, self-absorbed pristine consciousness, it finds this little stain or mark, this DC Multiverse somebody has 'drawn'. And it starts investigating, and it's just shocked with what it sees, with all the crazy activity and signifying going on in there. It then tries to protect itself from the seething contact with 'story' and imagines a race of beings, 'angels' or 'monitors' (another word for angel, of course) to function as an interface between its own giant eternal magnificence and this tiny, weird crawling anthill of life and significance that is the DC Multiverse."
Everything is condensed inside the Overvoid because it is the origin point of all possibility. It is the white canvas. It is the starting point of literally everything. Anything can be formed out of it. Everything is unified into its pristine, infinite sea of consciousness. What happened is that DC Comics emerged out of the sea as a fully formed creation against the Overvoid's will, and it was insatisfied with that. Why that is? Because it wasn't the Overvoid who made it. It was someone else. Someone who uses the white page as a tool, filling it with ink.

 

[Antvasima]

There is no facade. I am a very transparent and freespoken person that lack much of the mental filters that normal people have as a side-effect of the autism, and don't do deliberate manipulation. I thought that you had noticed this by now, given that you have been repeatedly yelling at me about it in the past.

I am perfectly willing to accept DC Comics as a highest tier franchise if it is either gauged by the same standards as everything else, or there are very good arguments for it, but I want to make certain that it is reliable, and genuinely don't understand the difference between different types of reality-fiction interaction very well.

I have also been completely open about two separate issues, that I find the incoherent nature of shared universe settings very confusing to scale from and need constant help from knowledgeable members in order to make sense of it, and that I love old school superhero comicbooks and am very sad about that they have largely degenerated into badly written incoherent propaganda, or at least Marvel has. I am also not fond at all of Dan Didio's constant reboots of DC Comics. In addition, I tend to get obsessive hangups about different issues. That is it. There is no malicious agenda at play here. Stop making unfair and paranoid accusations.

If I remember correctly, Ultima also told me that much of the point of the new system was to make it more generalised and evenhanded.

 

[Sandman31]

The Monitor-Mind did condense stories out of itself. Which is the story of the Monitors. Its even said by GN that the Monitor race is the ultimate story of the Monitor-Mind, the story it created as an interface to the story of DC.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Also in regards to us never seeing allusions to the Writer in other stories, that's actually not true. There was a storyline called "Doctor Thirteen: Architecture and Mortality" found in the 2006 Tales of the Unexpected comic where various characters that had been written out of DC Continuity in the years prior meet up with a group of four entities known as "The Architects", four men wearing the masks of different superheroes who are also depicted as a four-headed creature. It's very obvious that each Architect head represents a different DC Writer who at the time was responsible for the stories of one individual character. Namely, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, and Grant Morriso (Grant Morrison is the one wearing the Batman Mask).

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Also nevermind that the concept of Comicbook Limbo comes directly from the Animal Man Comics and it was brought back in Final Crisis and directly tied to the ewider DC Multiverse Meta-Cosmology. So the ideas first introduced in Animal Man aren't merely a joke. It is a very serious exploration of the Storyteller-Story dynamic and the nature of superhero comics.

 

[Antvasima]

I still maintain that I would prefer additional input from other people who understand the system well in any case, so I appreciate if somebody could ask them, and I still think that we need to make sure that there are no misunderstandings that create bad precedents for other franchises if we apply the suggested extremely high tiers.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

There are no misunderstandings. Nobody is going to put another series in Tier 0 just because of DC. You said the same thing in the old system and still nothing happened, and you never truly hid your dislike for the conclusions of others.

 

[Antvasima]

Also, I have constantly worked my butt off to help this community as much as I can for over 5 years now. I do not appreciate being repeatedly attacked for it, and do not think that I deserve to be treated in such a disrespectful manner.

 

[Antvasima]

"Hid my dislike for the conclusions of others"? That is not true at all, and I think that I have generally tried to be much more flexible and reasonable than yourself.

All I am asking for is footnote explanations to avoid misunderstandings. Absolutely horrible, I know.

 

[Antvasima]

Anyway, I have constantly acted as a protective shield for you over the years, and you have repeatedly treated me very badly in return. I am frankly getting quite tired of it.

 

[Sorari]

I don't get the hype for the writer.

The writer has no feats or explanation given (in Animal Man) that makes him appear all-powerful beyond the fact that he says he is. And most of the hype seems rooted in personal interpretations with no real evidence to back it up in the comics.

And the fact that the writer was killed (in Suicide Squad) and has to date never made a return, seems to be ignored.

How can the writer be A-1+ or 0 if he's dead? Should an A-1+ or 0 even be killable? Killing is a casual action, and A-1 is already beyond causality.

Edit. I mean the Writer (established character) and not writers/editors/artists making filler cameos in fiction (see Tori-bot from DBZ).

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Anyway, I have constantly acted as a protective shield for you over the years, and you have repeatedly treated me very badly in return. I am frankly getting quite tired of it.

Ant, please chill. All I said is that I think you're a little biased against Marvel and DC, and you didn't need to go on a huge tirade about how everything is unfair to you and how you are holding the wiki from collapsing in chaos. Which kinda proves my point. I don't hate you, I don't forget that you have autism. Nor anything like that. I just don't think you're fair to Marvel and DC.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

If I remember correctly, Ultima also told me that much of the point of the new system was to make it more generalised and evenhanded.

In cases where there is scarce context as to the exact difference between each "layer" in 1-A, in which case we would just consider it as one level above however high the stuff being transcended is. If there is additional context showing that a Reality-Fiction Transcendence can be higher than one level of "transcendence", then we treat it like that.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Also in regards to us never seeing allusions to the Writer in other stories, that's actually not true. There was a storyline called "Doctor Thirteen: Architecture and Mortality" found in the 2006 Tales of the Unexpected comic where various characters that had been written out of DC Continuity in the years prior meet up with a group of four entities known as "The Architects", four men wearing the masks of different superheroes who are also depicted as a four-headed creature. It's very obvious that each Architect head represents a different DC Writer who at the time was responsible for the stories of one individual character. Namely, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, and Grant Morriso (Grant Morrison is the one wearing the Batman Mask).

Additionally, Metaphysical Storytellers who write the story of the comicbook were also depicted in Swamp Thing #40, where the hero encounters the "Parliament of Stories".

http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/22529106/Swamp_Thing_040_2015_Digital-Empire016.jpg.html
http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/22529108/Swamp_Thing_040_2015_Digital-Empire017.jpg.html
http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/22529109/Swamp_Thing_040_2015_Digital-Empire018.jpg.html
http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/22529110/Swamp_Thing_040_2015_Digital-Empire019.jpg.html
http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/22529111/Swamp_Thing_040_2015_Digital-Empire020.jpg.html
http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/22529112/Swamp_Thing_040_2015_Digital-Empire021.jpg.html
http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/22529113/Swamp_Thing_040_2015_Digital-Empire022.jpg.html
http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/22529114/Swamp_Thing_040_2015_Digital-Empire023.jpg.html
Likewise, even the Vertigo side of DC is more metafictional nowadays. What with Dream of the Endless' Library being stated to contain every story in existence, even those that are "Martyred by Retcon" (Sandman Universe #1,and these stories were previously shown to be the literal comicbooks that the characters reside i (House of Mystery #42). So yes, I do not think that DC's Metafictional Side is merely a joke.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

And the fact that the writer was killed (in Suicide Squad) and has to date never made a return, seems to be ignored.

Intense misconception. The Writer that was "killed" in Suicide Squad was killed by himself. And he was also fictional. Ultima already covered this. Any representations of the "Real World" and the "Real Writer" within a comicbook will inevitably be limited and fictional themselves, which is pointed out in the Animal Man issue. Animal Man can never interact with his writer because he can't access the real world but the Writer can interact with Animal Man by writing up a simulation of the real world and of himself.

The comic even ends with the reveal that the whole issue was being written by the "real Grant Morrison" in the "Real World", who then goes on to make a personal narration that ultimately culminates with his narration box literally writing "The End" at the last panel of the comic, which shows that this "real" Morrison was also obviously fictional.

 

[Antvasima]

@Matthew

It isn't just about this occasion. It is about a consistent pattern of behaviour, and I am stressed out enough as it is without having to deal with this repeated disrespect.

I am also definitely not being unfair to DC Comics. I just want to make absolutely certain that we are not making any mistakes and that we will insert explanations to avoid setting bad precedents. That is all.

As for Marvel, I just find the powerscaling incredibly confusing, and dislike that it has shifted from being something that I loved into something that I can't stand in terms of storytelling. However, it is strictly the former that causes some problems here, and I constantly ask knowledgeable members for help to make the decisions.

 

[By_My_Neck]

DC perceives that Void as something that can contain any size imaginable and unimaginable, even to mathematics and that should include Cardinality. That in fact, seems to be why Snyder made the 5th and 6th Dimension the Archetypes of Imagination/Non-Imagination and by extension size, so that people wouldn't get fricked out about the size and retcons of DC's Cosmology.

I don't understand why the Overvoid needs to be scrutinized just because there are not enough vertical divisions, which does not even necessarily make something smaller due to the lack of it. That is a fallacy in my book.

I agree with Matt.