First things, first. I did say
the worst case scenario is that each and every single verse can have their own blog post explaining their own individual universal power sources/universal energy systems/connected energy manipulation source/ect. Or we can make one blog post explaining the general ideas of what it is and a list of blue prints and pointers as opposed to uber strict rules with it. But that's what KLOL and HellBeast are doing; making them informative pointers rather than mandatory rules so the people complaining about the topic are basically just getting unreasonably temperamental over something not so much a big deal. If anything, they're the exact opposite of uber strict rules, as it's just giving more depth clarifications on the exceptions to the already existing rules. But I will go over what Universal Power Source is including that name first. And will go over some other facts IRL no less that actually make it more accurate, or at least more reasonable, than people give it credit for.
Just getting a list of examples out of the way before we move on to the main topic. If we decide to go against making a page or general blog posts that gets linked to a lot of profiles. Regarding blog posts, this is what we could do as either an alternative or addition.
- Dragon Ball has its own blog post for Ki Control/Manipulation elaborating details, also explaining Godly Ki and Ki of Destruction and what not.
- Saint Seiya has its own blog post for Cosmos power explaining there many different varieties of powers and abilities including but not limited to how their Sub-Atomic matter manipulation scales to other powers such as striking strength.
- Naruto has its own blog post explaining Chakra in an elaborate format of details.
- Yu Yu Hakusho has its own blog post elaborating Reiki and Maki and how they both function universally.
- Bleach has its own blog post for Reishi and Kishi in the same vein above.
- Golden Sun has its own page explaining what Psynergy is and explaining how it all functions universally and why their magical powers/summons scales to physicals.
- Alchemy from Full Metal Alchemist series could have its own page mentioning the flexibility and limitations of it.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender could use one for how the nature of bending and everyone making use of Chi to control the elements.
- Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade has a page explaining Ether and explaining how all of their powers including physical strikes scale from one another from their elemental powers and what not.
- Devil May Cry already has one for Demonic Energy system.
- Dark Souls already has one.
- I heard plans that Assassin's Creed also has something like that.
- Plenty of game verses mention their own respective Magic Systems.
- God of War already has one
- Final Fantasy series can elaborate extensively on this as summons are used and amped by the summoners
- Fire Emblem having magic tomes for respective feats, but it's the potency of the caster that holds most of the weight. And explanations can include examples of top tiers being stronger with basic tomes than fodder characters are with advanced tomes.
- Earthbound/Mother has a system for PSI/PK for all their various techniques that function similar to magic systems and elemental attacks.
- Willpower from Fable series has a Willpower source that is used to interchangeably cast various spells and amp physical stats.
- And the list can go on for there.
Anyway, a Universal Power Source has less to do it being a thing that every in verse character has and more to do with specific characters who possess and/or have the functionalities who are able to universally transmute or drive energy whether internal or external into a wide variety of powers and abilities that otherwise require at the very least effecting energy with some kind of control. Keep in mind that "Energy Manipulation" or "Ergokinesis" is an extremely flexible term where a multitude of sub actions counts as manipulating or influencing energy. Both importing energy and extracting energy are the exact same thing and same type of energy manipulation but just the opposite direction. Just like pushing a boulder and pulling a boulder is basically the same feat, so is that former example.
Now as for internal energy or external energy, that status of the universal power source being internal or external isn't the part that is relevant in determining whether or not it is universal. The pool of energy doesn't need to be inside you for it to scale to your AP. For example, we have characters who possess an infinite pool of energy built in them, but not capable of harnessing it into a single Ki Blast or punch. So they're not High 3-A, they just have infinite stamina. Likewise, there are characters who are 100% biologically human and don't have much internal energy inside them naturally, but are able to basically borrow energy from the universe and use it to heighten their physical striking power. They have striking strength on that level as well as durability when active. Though, it should be noted that those using external energy manipulation may or may not have more weaknesses compared to those with internal energy manipulation. It often requires a lot more concentration and may deplete something referred to as "Mental Energy" among other things. And said characters could be prone to having a "Durability drops exponentially when distracted" type of weakness. And to be fair, there are also plenty of verses with internal universal power sources that also share this weakness; aka Dragon Ball, Naruto, ect. But Star Wars is a perfect example of external energy sources being universal. Also, another side note, characters and objects that are just extremely durable or have extremely high heat capacities in general require having extensive amounts of fusion energy inside them. But while fusion energy is an important topic to discuss later for another topic, I don't think there's a proper way to calculate how much fusion energy is in most high tiered characters without getting into calc stacking territory. But it's still worth bringing up.
Another important note I listed is of course the name. I have said Universal "Power Source" sounds a lot better than Universal "Energy System" for good reason. "Energy System" very much implies it has to be something everyone in verse has to be called that or better yet that it has to be an energy substance. When in actuality, it doesn't really. It can be an abstract function that enables the ability to control flow of energy rather than it being energy itself. Keep in mind, there are verses where the "Universal Power Source" is simply digital data, but it meets all the functions and requirements that Ki or Chakra have. Prime examples being characters from Digimon and characters from Mega Man, and Samus Aran and her clones such as SA-X also have this same Universal Power Source. And of course, the most commonly complained universal power sources that have the most generic names are of course various magic systems. I'll explain that in another paragraph of this post but they can be a universal power source but there are also "Semi-Universal" Power Sources and some magic that lacks power sources. But each magic system is heavily case by case and not always meant to be confused with Ki/Chakra since Ki is not magic. There's also a lot of conflict on whether or not McGuffin Artifacts can be considered Universal Power Sources, which is also case by case for the same reason magic is, but "Power Source" definitely sounds better than "Energy System" when talking about those. DontTalkDT also mentioned being called "Connected" Energy System/Power Source rather than "Universal". Which I'm more neutral on replacing "Universal" with "Connected" or "Interchangeable Power Source" also could work. If we can't decide, we could mention all its names near the beginning of the blog, but we definitely should say "Power Source" rather than "Energy System". And especially sounds better when mentioning feats that are measured in Watts as opposed to Joules. Though, I think "Semi-Universal" sounds better than "Semi-Connected" or "Semi-Interchangeable" so I prefer Universal as a 1st word. But Power Source > Energy System for reasons mentioned above.
Now for the real main event. People are asking why they need a page or a blog post? It's because in both our Creation Feats page as well as our Environmental Destruction page and is eventually going to be essential once the heat Vs blunt force trauma clarifications are made. "Universal Power Source" is mentioned in both pages which may cause readers to ask, "What is a Universal Power Source?" Which an explanation of some kind would still be helpful for those. And it's a lot more detailed than just saying "Ki from Dragon Ball" or "Chakra from Naruto". When there are plenty verses that have stuff like that not called Ki or Chakra and what not. But something more generally detailed whether it be a blog post or a page would still be more helpful in the long run. It might need to be linked on the attack potency page, and said section could also list a couple things commonly effected during the absence of a universal power source. You know, environmental destruction, creation feats, stabilization feats, multiple universes merging feats, large scale existence erasure feats, temperature feats, chemical energy/fusion energy manipulation/creation/production, or magic/elemental feats that exclude melee attacks from the "Semi-Universal" Power Source, ect. And it's also worth separating universal power sources from the semi-universal ones as mentioned many times above. You know, Ki from Dragon Ball is an obvious Universal Power Source where as Quirks from MHA are only Semi-Universal in which Fire, Water, Wind, Ice, and Electricity powers scale interchangeably but physical striking strength is not on the list of things that are scaled.
Going off a memory backup, reading over Agnaa's posts, he made it clearly he has no problems against universal power sources and after hearing a multitude of arguments in the past such as "Extracting energy is still manipulation energy", "Moving multiple megatons of thermal energy from the clouds would still require Tier 7 levels of energy manipulation", and another one brought up is "The manipulation of X joules of negative energy is inherently equally potent as manipulating X joules of positive energy". Those were all things I talked with Agnaa via message walls and he basically agreed that verses that specifically have detailed universal power sources should pretty much equalize all forms of characters regularly/casually having "X tiered energy manipulation" whether it be importing energy, extracting energy, having 1 to 1 full control over the conversion kinetic energy into potential energy back and forth to one another with ease, all being used with the same X tiered levels of energy manipulation for striking strengths should logically scale 1 to 1. His main issue was specifically creation feats with other mentioned details. It's already acknowledged that even with universal power sources in play, there exist characters who possess some kind of final attack that otherwise forces the user to drain nearly all their stamina/energy or better yet be a suicide attack that should logically not scale to their their normal attacks. It's possible for downscaling to some extent to be applied, but downscaling has always been a rather iffy topic yeah. And in Agnaa's eyes, he's welcome to basically correct me if I'm wrong since I can't actually speak for him for obvious reasons. But he basically appears to think most creation feats should be seen as a "Final Explosion" scenario or treated similarly to how suicide attacks are treated unless there's more in depth about the specific creation feats being casual.
Also, another common argument that's often being abused is stuff like "Universal Energy Systems such as magic or ki manipulation are not a thing IRL". First of all, those really shouldn't be spoken as RL stuff are basically subjective topics that can fall into religious controversy status. This is kind of repeating the existence of supernatural deities of higher power, souls, causality, ect, and should probably be a dropped topic ASAP. But anyway, we aren't talking about RL here, we are talking about something extremely common in fiction here. So saying "This isn't a thing IRL" is never a good argument for supernatural stuff like this. Furthermore, I can understand the magic argument since most IRL magic is a fancy word for art of deception similar to what professional magicians do as well as what historical witches and sorcerers actually did IRL. But Ki/Chi/Qi actually is a terminology IRL that originated from Indian philosophy and taught in a wide variety of martial arts classes such as Kung Fu and Tai Chi. It's also taught in Yoga classes and pretty much all martial arts classes have something described as "Fighting Spirit". Well, some of those things actually do have scientific accuracy; such as in Tae Kwon Do the instructors are always telling their students things like "Always
K'ihap loud every time you either hit hard, or take a hit because it builds fighting spirit". Which scientific studies do state that shouting really loud during a martial arts fight does increase the strength of your punches and kicks, it builds the momentum to strike faster, and you also get hurt a lot less in the process at the same time. Though, scientists are going to say, that the kinetic energy of your shouts does help emphasis the kinetic energy of your strikes. It also effects your brain cells to become more active, then gets channeled throughout your neural network. Your blood molecules flow, your muscles thicken, your bones get tougher. All of this is energy, which is often called Ki/Chi in various martial arts. So ki is the thermal energy of your blood? the fusion energy that makes the calcium in your bones harder? the energy in the amino acids that build muscles? The fusion energy in the water you drink or air to inhale? To answer all of that, it's quite obviously all of the above. And kinetic energy in general also does double as like an electromagnetic field to increase endurance and pain tolerance and arguably durability. Hence kicking a wooden board without breaking it hurts a lot, but when you kick hard enough to break it; it doesn't hurt. So at the end of the day, Ki/Chi/Qi is just another name for energy. Which is exactly what pretty much every Shounen verse and the like keeps telling us.
For more information, one really can't say that "Universal energy" isn't a thing IRL when energy is technically universal IRL. As far as the laws of thermodynamics are concerned, matter cannot be created or destroyed. Though, it is Einstein's theory on Mass-Energy that says otherwise. Though, keyword being theory rather than fact, but there are fictional stories that treat it as fact. But we only use the E = MC^2 formula for feats that specifically state Mass-Energy for a reason. And the same thing applies to energy; amount of energy in the universe is always static since it can only be converted rather than birthed or erased. That was before Hawking's theory on Positive and
Negative Energy. It requires importing X joules of Negative Energy to lower the amount of Positive Energy in the universe by X Joules, like wise importing positive energy to delete negative energy. On the contrary, positive energy and/or negative energy needs to be extracted from each other to create energy. So hypothetically speaking, deleting energy and producing energy out of nothing would still be the same thing and still be AP. But we only of course calculate that if we can prove energy is deleted/created. But even so, thermal energy is used as kinetic energy to get a car running when you burn gasoline. And it's also possible to turn kinetic energy back into potential energy, just extremely difficult to and requires much more precision. And I have already mentioned Fusion Energy which a lot more details are going to be mentioned in another thread. But a lot of objects that have extremely high density or extremely high heat specific capacity, or are just extremely durable in general have heavy amounts of fusion energy. Having heavy amounts of fusion energy get greatly lower the specific temperature by otherwise greatly increasing the specific heat capacity. Compare an object that takes Megatons of thermal energy just to raise it a few degrees compared to an object that takes little amounts of joules to raise it by a couple million degrees. The former has a lot of fusion energy while the latter barely has any. Normally, the colder water already was, the longer and/or more intense refrigeration it takes to freeze it. But extremely hot water has been known to get cold faster than room temperature water due to "Loosing most of its mass/density" and also its heat capacity in the process. But also because boiling water in an open container can cause a great deal of its fusion energy to be extracted. The same water/ice would also melt/vaporize faster since the lower density and heat capacity would mean the specific temperature raises faster. But cold water does not boil faster because while the initial endothermic reaction feels faster initially, the pot is also initially getting colder faster than it heats up compared to if you put already warm water in the pot. And in the end, it requires a lot more thermal energy to add. Likewise, attempting to freeze hotter water is also the same in which it requires removing more thermal energy. Unless the water has already been heated to the point of having fusion energy extracted. But I'm not ready to tackle these full topics but it's in my other draft.
Article here for slight details on the process albeit no mention of fusion energy. But, there are plenty of articles mentioning seawater as a definitive source of fusion energy.
Also, it should be noted that every feat that involves
Atomization and Sub-Atomic Destruction are also more or less the exact same thing as extracting energy. Since in order to successfully destroy someone or something on an atomic level or above, there's a lot of fusion energy connecting their massive body of atoms and molecules in massive counting quantities. And value to extract them would simply result in change in temperature or other destruction methods without actually separating the atomic structure. And it's only many times greater for Sub-Atomic destruction. Every single atom and molecule in the body has a surprisingly exceptional amount of fusion energy for their otherwise extremely simal size. And when counting them all together, we get things such as causing small scale explosions ending up with tiers comparable to multiple nukes. Sub-Atomic explosions just have that much higher energy; and it's an energy extraction feat that requires using a lot energy manipulation much like how other feats involving conductivity work.
And regarding "Chemical Energy" and "Energy Density" this was also a touched topic, but there is a big difference between combustible chemical energy and noncombustible chemical energy. Gasoline, Jet Fuel, Alcohol, and many other chemicals are prime examples of combustible energy. The energy density of gasoline is 32 MJ/L, what that means is that for every liter of gas that ignites, there is 32 megajoules of thermal energy that scatters in the combustion. And same with burning gas to get a vehicle running, the volume or mass of gasoline correlates to how much kinetic energy is being generated by the vehicle's movement. But then we have noncombustible chemical energy, which is what things like water, air, liquid nitrogen, and seawater all have. Yes, blowing up a gas tank with a cigarette is a chain reaction and does not take much energy manipulation to do. But forcing a body of noncombustible energy into being extracted cannot be a chain reaction and requires some outside force driving it. For example, when a character is freezing a glass of water in the inside of a volcano. Realistically, unless there's someone who has really strong levels of energy manipulation/concentration, the atmosphere alone should be heating/vaporizing the water faster than anything could cool it down. Forcing an object to cause an exothermic reaction faster than the environment can force object meant to perform an endothermic reaction to do so still requires influence from a character with stronger energy manipulation than the environment. Especially if the character literally froze the object so cold, that the lava isn't even hot enough to melt it. Hence is the case with most characters with Ice and Cloud manipulations as Agnaa mentioned the latter above as well as what he said back in summer 2020 in message walls while debating another user. Though, I cannot vouch if he remembers entirely but I could be wrong.
Here's the question everyone has been asking me. Am I saying that "All verses have a universal power source that must be followed?" To be perfectly frank, no I do not. In fact, most general verses lack the abilities and capabilities. Just because Energy is technically universal IRL, I have also mentioned it is beyond human limitations by their own powers and even with the technology we have so far. And not every verse is cosmic in nature and most of them aren't. Plenty of Crime Dramas, Detective Novels, First Person Shooter games, Survival Horror games, Slasher Horror movies, Cinematic Action movies, and even Sci-Fi verses (Excluding ones that are a Fantasy mixed with Sci-Fi) lack the existence of supernatural powers, entities, cosmologies, ect to also make use of it. They tend to be down to earth with the exception of drug enhanced super soldiers, zombified serial killers, space marines on cybernetic enhancements, and otherwise normal people who happen to just have amazing amounts of per dumb luck. A lot of those genre verses are actually quite down to earth and doesn't try to equalize all the dozens of different attack types. And even the superhuman feats are mostly lackluster in these genres. But it's Shounen Verses, RPGs (Western included but especially Japanese), Fantasy Verses, and the Uber Complex Sci-Fi verses with Fantasy elements mixed in them especially that utilize all these principles. And I'm not saying every single verse in the common fantasy example genres have universal power sources nor am I saying every single verse from the common nonfantasy genres do not. Just that to each their own but acknowledging common tropes. The wacky cartoonish verses and superhero comics are especially case by case. And it's more about executional stand point rather than a conceptual standpoint. But I will make other things clear for verses that lack universal power sources.
For all the more down to earth verses that tend to be more secular in nature, the other separation of energy attacks, specifically details on heat vs blunt force trauma will be made not linearly related. Especially when regarding the durability required to survive said attacks. I have already made my gripes made when people try to abuse loopholes in every corner for power scaling various First Person Shooter games. One of the most common attempts I hear is basically scaling the entire verse from some plasma weapon rated as 9-A based on the standard human body vaporization calculation (And sometimes Tier 8 if multiples bodies and/or giant characters are involved). And this is despite the fact that everybody killing each other with ordinary bullets ranging from 9-C to 9-B is the most consistent thing in said verses both in gameplay and in canon. Or better yet that 9-B sniper rifles, hand grenades and rocket launchers consistently things that do more damage both in gameplay and canon to most characters or other loopholes is "Those explosive weapons oneshot vehicles while the 9-A/Tier 8 Plasma weapons don't". It could just all be game mechanics is the most simple approach to tackle it all. But outside if that, it likely just means it takes a considerably far greater amount of thermal energy to melt most solid objects or at least overheat them to the point of being bendy compared to the amount of overpressure required to fragment or better yet pulverize the same objects. It takes only 20 Joules to 90 Joules per cubic centimeter to fragment and pulverize respectively. But the thermal energy equivalent is just raising the temperature by 5.55 degrees C and 25 degrees C respectively. It takes more energy to heat up iron to standard cooking stove temperature (From 20 degrees to 70 degrees C making it a 50 degree change) than it does to pulverize iron two times over with pure force. Steel and Titanium are several times tougher, but even so. It is consistent that M6 Abrams can get destroyed by 9-B to 9-A rocket launchers despite being able to absorb Tier 8 levels of thermal energy without suffering overly critical damage. And this is made more apparent for things like glass and water. Both have more heat capacity but much less durability than solid steel. Though, by friction, a megaton punch would still produce megatons of thermal energy via how atoms and molecule kinetic energy works; but whether it's via extreme temperature or just really high heat capacity is a different story that neither could be calculated individually. I also brought up gas explosions, swimming in gasoline requires very little durability. And while ignited gas does produce the pool of energy; the durability required to survive extreme heat is limited on a list of factors.
- Heat capacity needs to be taken into account
- Specific temperature
- Thermal Equilibrium of the target
- Surface Area and Volume of the target
- Emissivity of the target
- And most importantly, the watts or joules/s measured for the heating process and timeframe the extreme heat lasting
All of this serves to make tanking heat based attacks much less impressive than it looks. On top of that, it's still not evidence that it would scale to how much blunt force trauma one withstands. And thus, it would all end up being barebones durability. And of course, I already mentioned that all weapons should be calculated separately. I already have another WIP thread for why 90% if military weapons from most military heavy verses should not be allowed in a powerscaling chain and simply calculated from their own feats, calculations, scientific properties ect. Because each modern weapon is designed for a very specific purpose whether it be a sniper rifle, assault rifle, shotgun, flamethrower, stun gun, Taser, tranquilizer, plasma rifle, ect. But that's it for now and should be discussed else well later.
KLOL has also told me that DontTalkDT is working on some more clarifications for lightning feats; although he prefers not to be constantly messaged about it iirc. In most cases, it doesn't apply to durability either unless the target has like little amounts of flesh and what not. And it's actually possible for lightning bolts to have heavy amounts of blunt force trauma and what not under specific circumstances. Though, I will wait for the actual thread of clarifications to truly testify this. But it's also another thing covered in universal power sources, that summoning an intense lightning bolt is still an AP feat and could be linked one to one with other elemental attacks and even physical attacks under the informed conditional branches.
Outliers and Inconsistencies as they were brought up and argued, "Are they a thing IRL?" I better get those out of the way. But irl, it usually means it is just a severed body part; if I cut of my left hand, that left hand is my outlier. Or it can also mean a person or thing isolated from the main group. For example, 78 is not a squared number, it putting it on a list of Squared numbers looking like this {1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, <B>78</B>, 81, 100}. The 78 is your outlier. But IRL, the word Outlier has nothing to do with feats or "antifeats". If someone successfully lifted 1000lbs, but hasn't even lifted half of that ever since. The Guinness World Records aren't going to remove him from the list of 1000lb lifting champions and pass it as an outlier. Doing it once in your life alone makes you in the champion list. Same with people commiting murder; committing murder at least once in someone's life makes them a murderer for the rest of their life. Supreme Court can't just pass a serious crime as an outlier just because the only did it once despite with the reason being that they did so many good things and never committed a serious crime up until then. But by all this logic, busting a planet makes you a planet buster; doesn't matter how often you do it. If you did it, you are the that title. I'm <B>not</B> saying "Outliers aren't a thing" or that it "shouldn't be a policy." In fact it should, otherwise a few notable verses especially Marvel and DC comics would just be a bunch of loopholes within loopholes. Only that they tend to be grossly overused and 9 out of 10 times, it is typically just an excuse to play pretend when it comes to feats happening. Not to mention lower end feats are often casual for a lot of high tiered characters or isn't even trying to cause destruction. And of course, fodder characters randomly surviving things that otherwise annihilated all their peers and thus survived due to nothing but pure dumb luck are also prone to being outliers. But regardless, Outliers and Inconsistencies IRL have nothing to do with feats or powerscaling/Power Crunching, which in itself isn't a thing IRL.
And I think that just about wraps up everything I think needs to be said on this thread specifically. Of course there are plenty of topics that have a lot more to elaborate upon mentioned, but going all of that will come as derailment. If users try tackling certain aspects of Universal Power Sources using uber long posts, they may get removed from this thread for derailment. We only needed the simple details of each simple aspect of when to use them and when not to use them. Already covered the case by case grounds that need to be laid out. It's got less to do what type of attack or what they're doing with their energy; Energy Manipulation is still Energy Manipulation regardless of direction. Machines and tools with very specific limits that are programmed/designed for a specific directional use will be limited to that specific use of AP. Where as a Universal Power source such as a universal ability to utilize all forms of elemental manipulation and channel it into any other power and ability including but not limited to superhuman physical characteristics. Whether it's something every in verse living entity has or just a selective few, or whether it is via internal energy source or external energy source, or whether it's actually do to energy or just a driving force are not the parts relevant. But the main topic here is, <B> whether or not we need a generalized page for it all. </B> I am perfectly fine one way or the other because there's all these different directions. Some people want one because we appear too lenient while others think we are too strict. At the same time, some people don't want them because it creates too many restrictions being too strict. While others don't want them because they also think we're too lenient or worst of all, have a mind set where only pure destruction feats should count as Attack Potency. I honestly think the people who are "Being too strict" are the ones in the greater wrong here overall, but both sides have had their share of bad moments. But I'm leaning towards KLOL and DontTalkDT being the most overall reasonable ones here in the long run regarding the topic. Plus, if we aren't making a page, the option to make a big list of blog posts or a general blog post that still gets linked to on various pages isn't out of the picture.
Just take a pick.
- Universal/Connected Power Source General Guidelines and Instructions Page
- Universal/Connected Power Source General Guidelines and Instructions Blog Post
- Each and every verse that has a Universal/Connected Power Source gets their own blog post linked on Terminologies section of the Verse page.
The third point can still also be done in addition to one or the other of the 1st two, regardless of whether or not it gets accepted.
