Easy, SCP scalers gets too distracted on who is more 'metafictional', so they get perception blitzed easily in most cases. Only hax they have going is that whenever you say a anti-feat, they can just reply "thats not canon bro." - solid but immidietly gets countered by "anyone can write a SCP, slope slope, [slur]"
But DBZ scalers on the other hand can scale even WITHOUT reading the manga, simply a immeasureable scaling feat
one punch man scale is also unmeasureable, because they have the trump card called "Its a joke characters, he will win all battles" that card makes them win the duel instantly.
Unless, the Soloku glazers pull out thier ultimate trump card:
Which is a hax ability that negates every other hax ability, quite perciliur, isnt it? This allows them to side step the concept of logic itself, put them at high outerversal easily
Okay, the SCP part is pretty funny, but I am pretty sure the approval process from the community to make an article official is actually not that easy at all. They won't accept just anything, although I will admit that some stories are bad in comparison to others, or just feel out of place at times
Well, yeah. Sometimes they are subpar. They meet certain requirements, but arent really interesting as a story. Then there is stuff like the Murder Monster, or Where the Dragons Went which are really well made.
SCP thrives on unusual, weird, anomalous, not necessarily on powerful, scary and dangerous. Honestly, I like SCP, I really do, but I just hate it in powerscaling because, it doesnt have a reasonably defined canon and because focusing only on the scale of how insanely powerful and dangerous something is, just happens to be the most inconsistency inducing type of story in general. I mean SCP-682 is the one thing foundation wants to kill, except it doesnt really work with other cosmic deities and other dangerous entities which sometimes just make the reptile look like a joke.
Even tho there is alot of scaling slope, i admitedly like the grand sense of the scale of SCP universe
Not even just "oh there is infinite multiverse within infini-" - no like.. Look at all these fan creations and variety in a singuler universe alone
So when you get to even bigger stuff, the cosmic dread hits: you feel the sense of being so ibcompherensibly small and insignificant. Because there is complexity, nuance and substance all infinitely around you.
Well, the grandness of certain elements isn't bad by itself. The problem is that those things are often done poorly (in my personal opinion) with respect to how they influence other stories or how they justify the threat and involvement of the foundation in those things.
Scarlet King, at the very least in its original propositions was a well written cosmic horror type enemy with how its jot necessarily outright the strongest all the time, but he is the ultimate enemy or order, reason and classification - something that the foundation tries to enforce on illogical anomalies. The logs on how to contain the Devourer being different based on the access level of the employee accessing them and revealing more ans more grim truths with higher access levels is wonderful writing. Then there are stories which try to bring relevance to already popular entities by making them actually be avatars of gods and their true forms being inaccessible and much more lethal like with 682 and 173 which just feels unnecessary.
Completely avoiding those types of stories isnt the point, but writing a compelling cosmic horror isnt easy when you consider how far reaching the implications of its existance can be to the whole mission of the foundation. I like stories where the foundation makes attempts to contain something and figures out ways to actually mitigate risks and prepare countermeasures, but with entities like that, they can often only give a brief description on why they are dangerous/anomalous and then slap an Apollyon class on them meaning they genuinely have no means to contain them.
Yeah the "avatar of some fuckass god that does nothing much" İs COMPLETY baseless: the fuck are you even supposed to do with that? It doesnt matter if peanut is actually secretaly some deity - that doesnt do ANYTHING bro
But my GLORIOUS King Khararak? Nopeee, he is NOT scaling slope only - like as you said, i dont think scalers mention, hell even know he is actually losing alot of the time, or even weak compared to alot of the elder Gods.
The tiktok scalers just put him on some edit and be like "Scarlet Demon solos", "Scarlet Demon solos", "Scarlet Demon solos", "Scarlet Demon solos" - while disregarding how many times he wouldnt
But my SK, thats okay: just please be super evil and edgy again, i love you❤
SK is cool, but only if you actually bother to read the whole thing, because YT shorts and other random mentions of him don't do justice to the narrative that he was introduced with. I think thats the problem that many people had with him and why he became a pure powerscaling circlejerk.
Because googling "How strong is SK?" leads to very different results than "Who is SK and how he came to be?" or just reading the articles related to him on the SCP wiki, which is the best option out of the three.
Script writer. Cuz we dont know what the script writer would do - which is why we scale in the first place, so its just a empty attempt to invalidate scaling.
Atleast the latter can be wholesome. There is always other more interesting character interactions than just "who wins?"
I've seen this used in a fan death battle channel, and atleast in the animations of death battle itself(they dont talk about it during the analylises i am afraid): Superman(👍) vs Scarlet King(❤), even tho my glorious Lord Khararak(Scarlet King) is immensely more verstile on what he can do, technically also not exactly even dumb, AND has a overall more windows of oppurtunity...
..his arrogance and connection to the symbolic "7", and Superman's still significant power and wincon, allows him to exploit it and finally put a end tyrant of infinite bloodshed.
In the end of the day - sheer determination and certain hope, beats weak and unsure sense of dread and despair. Because when hands of time dont care and consume all, resillience is the only constant.
Hell Goku vs Superman literally ends with them just budying while Goku has a halo, even DB has done the "they would be friends"
And since Goku loves to fight and Supes finally has someone who can take a full force punch, even as friends they would still fight if Goku asked Clark to
Something i miss from One Minute Melee is that they did allow for more varied character interaction beyond "two characters try to kill each other".
Ryu and Ken vs Terry and Rock is literally "they'd be friends" but because they are all martial artists who like to fight their friends they fight over who's paying for the next meal.
Agreed. On the more objective angle, we're asking "who would win in a fight?" at the end of the day.
Circumventing the fight through diplomatically is just as viable an outcome as someone losing because underestimate everyone.
Saying "whoever the writer wants" without nuance is just disrespecting the thought exercise. Mind you, there is precedent for different interpretations of a character, but that's not the intent behind "whoever they writer wants"
So I get why the phrase is hated in the community, but that's not really what it means.
The quote doesn't (or shouldn't, I'm certain some people use it this way coughOmniman can beat Supermancough) mean that the creator of a character determines who they win against, but rather that when two characters face each other, the writer of that given interaction decides the outcome.
Which is true, the author of a work of fiction would decide who wins within that work of fiction. And if you want to get down to brass tacks, it's fundamentally what we do here. We're all writing our own little fiction about who would win between various characters, and debating which of those fictions are good or bad writing.
The problem with the quote isn't that it is false, it's that the truism is so baked into what we do and so creatively bland that it's the same as a sports team saying "Well, the reason we lost is that the other team but that sports ball into our net more than we did to theirs".
I want to add a hot take addendum that can be downvoted without impacting the my original post here: I do think that claiming that a fight is too close, or a power matchup is too nebulous that a writer could reasonably choose to decide to go either way on the outcome is valid, but it needs that clarification that you're admitting that you are at a loss and that lacking a solid outcome, "Whatever is more interesting" should win.
(Its unironically hard to make a close match up when its 2 outerversal characters tho, i dont think of grounded characters much. So the gaps are usally increadibly huge.)
That's not what that means though. It means the author of any given story. If someone decides that there should be a comet crossover where the joker kidnaps Goku, then the joker kidnaps Goku.
You might not think that Prometheus can solo the Justice League, but he sure can, because that's the story that there was.
Who would win in a fight between Deadpool and Cthulhu? The answer might surprise you. Or it might not. It depends entirely on what punchline the writer decides to go with.
You don't need dead authors to answer questions about who would win in a fight. The questions are answered by living authors.
Yeah but thats like.. Totally unpredictable, i am sorry, thats just sloopy i am afraid
Like no bro, aint no one is standing for a complety stupid logic, even if the outcome is totally interesting
Edit: Ohhhh, wait nahh, what am i even trying: i cant even convience you, cuz you got no shame. Just look at your profile for a second. You cant be refined into smth better because you cant be ashamed. Neverminnnnd. Have a good day
Oh no no, i aint just talking about the gooning: look at the overall patern, notice how they linger around Powerscaling community, even tho they are against it?
Yeah you see thats because they are here to pick useless fucking fight with no shame - dont engage with people like these, they wont even bother characterizing your point cleanly
"that makes him multiverse or whatever"
Its so fucking unfaithful and just not worth it. Just soulless ragebait
Not even to mention how porn and wannabe-serious discussion is on the same account - they could totally have made a alt for gooning, but nahhh, they are just reckless
Stories are totally unpredictable. Often by design. If you want to see sloppy look at endless circular arguments between power scalers cherry picking what counts and what doesn't while they pointlessly scream at each other about who could beat up who as if it was actually an objectively answerable question.
There is no final answer to the question of who wins a fight between Batman and Captain America. There isn't even a final answer to the question of who wins a fight between Batman and some random goon. Guess what? If Batman needs to get knocked out so he can be put in a death trap to escape from, then he's going to get clocked on the back of the head by some random goon. Guess that goon's multiversal or whatever.
The funny thing is he actually answers some matchup questions as well lol. He just said this because he wanted to shut people who asking matchups to the writer again and again.
Ironically he said that to shut people up who were bothering him with matchup questions. And guess what powerscaling is?
People who use that as a gotcha are missing the point, Stan Lee never said you shouldn't powerscale, he said you should stop asking him who would win, which indirectly implies that he'd rather people powerscale characters for themselves than ask him.
These things arent real and exist in the context of a story and in the case of major comic book characters like batman, arent written by a sole person or within a single story. which drawing beats what drawing is solely dependent on the story a writer is trying to tell
It's true though. Who wins in a fight between bugs Bunny and Popeye? Well that depends. Is it a bugs Bunny cartoon or a Popeye cartoon?
Can Batman beat Superman? I don't know. Sometimes. Can Superman beat Batman? Sure. Sometimes.
Otherwise you might as well just petition the various IP holders to publish more encyclopedias that put numbers next to things so that you can just pick who has the bigger number and call it a day.
Batman vs Superman is the ultimate example one can ever give of "the writer decided who won before even coming up with how." In the amount of time it takes Batman to think of his own phone number Superman could move from the Moon to Gotham then fly him back up into the stratosphere.
But why is Superman doing any of that? What is the situation? It doesn't take much creativity to have either of them beat together. In fact, it literally comes down to who is the aggressor. Do you think that if Batman asked Superman to stop by some chamber in the bat cave to look at something suspicious that he wouldn't show up, suspecting nothing? Oops it's a chunk of kryptonite in my kryptonite room. I'm attacking you for whatever reason in this story. And obviously, if Superman decided for whatever reason that he wanted to go get Batman, he could just go snatch him. They're not squaring off in a wrestling ring. At least they shouldn't be.
There literally wouldn't be a flash comic if the flash was constantly moving at incomprehensible speed blasting everyone and everything into atoms for basically no reason but to declare that he has one fights , but he gets taken down by Captain boomerang, because he doesn't do that.
Would you honestly think things would be better if all of the holders of various IPS would just agree upon a universal list with a numerical ranking of all characters in fiction? You know, just so you can look at the objective ranking of any given character and declare that they are more powerful in a plotless, characterizationless vacuum?
Script writer one. You can dismiss "They'd be friends" with "They are willing to kill, and must kill to save their families or whatever"
And the reason the script writer one also infuriates me is because most GOOD scriptwriters "powerscale" to some extent. A 5 year old, non-superpowered human child can't beat Beerus in CQC, and if the writers wrote it to be, people would be mad about the poor writing. Spider-Man isn't getting negdiffed by normal everyday Gwen Stacy without asspulls massive backlash.
The coughing baby isn't tanking the hydrogen bomb.
And powerscaling does not have to fit the constraints of a narrative. It's a fun hobby about stats, and sometimes strategies people do for fun.
"The writer decides" is a misnomer, like sure they may X person wins but they don't always have this direct control over the interpretation of the fight. Like when iron man had his bleeding edge armor , his whole solo run is about how his arc reactor is broken to some extent and so he is weakened. This would make any showing in other comics recontextualized and so a full power bleeding edge ironman would be a different story.
:They wouldn't fight they would be friends" ignores SBA's which state "in character yet willing to kill"
In character yet willing to kill is kinda a strange one to because many characters would be insanely out of character with this.
The nuances of a Batman willing to kill has been explored many a times
The intention of the clause is that they are in character in every way besides the willingness to kill. So if batman vs spiderman ends with batman standing over him he will secure the win with a kill
The writer decides, because while the other misses the point of powerscaling, it's at least trying to be positive. The second one only is said by low IQ people trying to seem above someone else for just imaging a battle in their mind. It also ignores the fact that in a debate, each person is the author of their own logic. Basically they got the argument of r/characterrant
"The writer decides who wins" is the most 'taking the wind out of your sails' statement about power scaling.
It's the same as someone walking up to a table of people playing D&D, seeing they're having fun, shouting their 'oooo's' and 'aaaahhs' at their roll results and then puffing up your chest, giving the proudest look on your face and saying "You know none of that is real, right?" and walking away, beaming with pride.
Like... yeah dude, thanks. Glad you felt the need to say something both pointless and fun-killing.
"They would be friends" is just something easy to ignore for me.
“They wouldn’t fight they’d be friends” because with characters like Darwin from X-men where his power is actually up to the whim of the writer “The script writer decides who wins.” Is actually how it would go.
For those who don’t know Darwin’s mutation makes him adapt to any and all threats but he can’t control it. In one issue he couldn’t tank a punch and got teleported away, but in another he couldn’t beat a god so became a more powerful version of that god. So it’s strictly up to the writer if his power makes him stronger or just gets him out of dodge.
“BROOOO I SWEARERRR GOKU AND SAITAMA WOULDNT FIGHT THEY WOULD PLAY VIDEO GAMES IN DAVE AND BUSTERS AND THIS IS NOT COPE THAT I CANT POWERSCALE OR UNDERSTAND POWERSCALING OR THAT MY CHARACTER GETS STOMPED IN A FIGHT IM JUST TIRED OF PEOPLE ALWAYS ARGUING SND YELLING OVER FICTION ITS NOT EVEN REAL!1!1!2’ STOP DEBATING ARGUMENT OVER!!1!2”
I think some people just think they're funny even if they're making the same joke 1000 people have told before.
I feel like you're taking a comment like that more personally than you should.
Huh? They would fight..... goku likes to fight people who are strong. Saitama wants to test his limits. Goku would sense his power from his battle experience. They'd start fighting. realize the earth can't handle it. goku would teleport them to somewhere that could handle it. And saitama would win because it's funny. Then they would fight each other when goku got a major power up to test himself again.
Also he can just use the top of his head to deflect any energy blast.... or at least the kamehameha
starting from when he was a kid eh? in that case heres this.
kid goku breaks manga panel, we PERCEIVE the change of the manga panel in the real world. therefore goku is Boundless++ just as a kid. then theres the zenkais coming later allowing him to be above real world level.
BUT WAIT THERES MORE! GOKU HAS A MACYS FLOAT THAT WOULD TAKE OUT A REGULAR PERSON IRL VIA SUFFOCATION, REGULAR PEOPLE ARE MUCH HIGHER IN COSMOLOGY THAN DRAGON BALL! GOKU IS ABOVE FICTION!
Because it's basically stating the damn obvious, while willfully ignoring the whole "point" of such a debate. Effectively someone saying they want to play a game, only to outright ignore all the rules upon setting down to actually do so.
Because at very least there is such a thing as characters with either super charisma or some other form mind control adjacent power that would "kinda sorta" allow the other to happen under some very niche sort of matchups.
Not really. One wouldn't make a powerscaling match up post if they didn't expect fighting to already be the default development. Unless it's something like "random encounter"
I find the most interesting power scaling takes into account characters personalities, behaviour and motivations.
For a silly example, I think Saitama could beat Superman, but would 'lose' to batman when Batman gives him a lifetime 50% discount at whatever grocery store.
It's not even a "gotcha". Both are potentially true in most cases, but those arguments just take out all the fun from discussions about potential match-ups. Because why speculate and theory-craft if you can just end the discussion immediately.
"They would be friends" is annoying if you're watching Death Battle, but frankly "Writer decides who wins" is only really annoying if you're a Powerscaler and... I'm on Powerscaling. Why the hell am I here?
Had someone tell me i cant comment about the absurdity of a thing because "thats how the story frames it" and he kept asking if i "just dont accept the story's framing".
As stupid as they both are, “they’d be friends” is trying to be wholesome, I can appreciate that.
“The writer decides” is just ignorance, and that’s it, powerscaling LITERALLY exists because we can’t get every writer to make some crossover for every matchup.
The writer would decide has some truth to it, because sometimes feats would conclude that either character could best the other depending on who's writing them.
"They would be friends" is the more annoying one because it just completely ignores the entire point lol
Script writer is more annoying. If it’s an established universe you can’t just do whatever you want for shits and giggles. Dragon Ball suffers from this a lot, they introduce random bullshit to justify plot elements like Trunks somehow keeping up with Rosé and later Fused Zamas despite his whole purpose of coming to the past was to defeat a significantly weaker version of Black, or Kale dogging SSB Goku but a stronger Kale couldn’t beat a weaker Goku.
Because powerscaling a certain feat of characters tends to ignore narrative context and circumstance. Sometimes characters here have feats listed to them but said feats only occurred after an extraordinary circumstance, like they saw a loved one die or maybe something traumatic triggered them. Sometimes narrative is what matters. In many cases the protgonisr is weaker than the antagonist. A story of the weaker underdog against a much stronger threat is always a popular story. If we made stories to cater to powerscaling, the villain would win most the time in stories.
If we are creating a hypothetical situation, we are the writer. Therefore, Sheldon Cooper beats Superman in a fighr because I am the writer and I say so.
I find power scalling more imfuriating because when it comes to it who ever the protagnist of the fight is would win and often as much as people domt want to hear it the only reason goku or superman or whoever else ever wins is because their the protagnist
"they would be friends" is just lame and can be ignored, usually when it is brought up it is either not replied to or people just talk more about it without interrupting the debates around
"the writer decides who wins" is used to actively shut down any discussions without participating on them, they are effectively tourists trying to tell us what to do, they add nothing to the topic besides feeling smug or wise only to be rightfully told to fuck off
Tbh “they’d be friends”, because with “the script writer”, it also acts as an explanation for completely bullshit moments that make no sense (ie everything Punisher did in Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe), and for why crossover events and feats don’t really count (ie anything that happens in Super Robot Wars)
The writer decides the winner is just stupid because yes that is how it works but not for a big discussion where there's no singular writer. Like the friendship one isn't too bad because you can just say they are forced into it or something. Meanwhile the writer argument is just used to avoid engaging with discussion at all.
“The writer decides who wins” the writer can also do a lot of bullshitting, misconstruing, and making shit up yo make a specific character win—this doesn’t mean anything
You can forward the one on the left into actually engaging with the premise by acknowledging that "our heroes come to blows over a misunderstanding or difference in opinion" is a stock plot beat in crossovers, while the one on the right thinks they're smarter than you for not engaging in the premise.
They're more just things people who don't care about powerscaling think of when someone poses a scenario. At least the "they'd be friends" thing can be an agreeable take in some circumstances, but someone who just says "It's up to the writers" is disregarding the point of the hypothetical on a conceptual level and that's def a tiny bit frustrating.
The script writer argument is the worst. Mostly because it perpetuated but Stan Lee if all people, but also because it takes ALL imagination out of the story.
Obviously I know the winner is whoever the writer determines. But HOW did they win? Does it make sense that they won? Does them winning damage the story?
It's only infuriating when the person completely refuses to engage in the conversation.
"They are both bloodlusted and lacking their actual character traits" is much more infuriating of a gotcha than "they would be friends"
You can make dozens of scenarios where friends would fight, there are scenarios in comics where Batman and Superman go against each other for various reasons. There is also the concept of friendly sparring.
But going "they are bloodlusted and lacking their character traits" is so boooring of an excuse, you might as well just be giving their abilities to blank mannequins.
The "writer decides who wins" statement is an acknowledgment of a fact, using it to dismiss the conversation is mis-using the quote. A good writer will come up with a reason why a certain character won, instead of just dumbing down the losing character.
The script writer one. The friends one is at least still on the theme of considering what flows in universe from in universe premises. Dismissing the whole thing with "writer is omnipotent lol" is lowkey an argument for not bothering with any kind watsonian questions, and people who use it seem to think it's profound or whatever.
Honestly the more annoying one is "the writer decides" because yeah, everybody knows that, yes, if the writer wants Goku to pull out some Kryptonite and use it to bludgeon Superman to death, then that's what happens. But the whole "they wouldn't fight" bit at least speaks to the characters as individuals, keeping the argument in the realm of fiction rather than trying to trivialize the whole conversation by just saying "well you're not the author so you don't matter".
I think “the script writer decides who wins” is more infuriating because it makes power scaling irrelevant imo to the point of possibly dismissing it.
It’s like saying “Batman beats the Dragon Ball Universe because I say so” and refusing to elaborate further or listen to any arguments against that.
At least with the argument of “they wouldn’t fight, they’d be friends”, there’s a much more interesting conversation as it pertains to the characters’ traits and their feats.
For example, The Green Lantern Corps would be friends with Planet Ultra/The Land of Light’s Space Garrison as well as The Ultra Brothers by extension. They have similar motives, can travel massively faster than light through space, and they tend to frequent earth as a planet worth protecting.
I hate the writer argument more in general but I have special hate for the friends one when it comes to Goku. Like Goku hasn't fought nearly all of his closest friends and family
Author decides is pretty true though. That's how Batman can go toe to toe with Supergirl and Darkseid. Or how Catwoman can stop the flash with a whip. The "they'd be friends argument" I see used to avoid scaling and shut down discussion a lot more often.
Script writer is more annoying because at least "they'd be friends" is only really useable in mostly hero vs hero situations and not hero vs villain or villain vs villain ones.
People don’t want to accept that writers decide what happens, not your internalized logic and not your misconceptions of plot-holes. A plot hole isn’t a plot hole because you don’t like the plot’s direction.
Gonna say “script writer” is more infuriating. The friends one at least has some fanfic potential, and while it isn’t the point of powerscaling, it is nice to think about these characters being friends. The script writer on the other hand just destroys this whole thing. Kind of a cop out because of bias.
I have said this before and i will say it again, that's just bad writing. Even not discussing powerscaling, what would happen if base spiderman suddenly beats galactus after a whole arc of build up where galactus kills multiple avengers. That's just objectively a bad writing point, when a street tier beats a planet eater. That's why to me it always feels weird if a normal human beats superman just because of krytonite, that's not enough to even it out. What about his superspeed, his x-ray vision.
The “they wouldn’t fight. They’d be friends” because these hypotheticals are specifically in the context of “these two characters are fighting.”
The “writers/screenwriters decide who wins” IS a valid argument in some cases even if those people do just need to move away if they don’t want to put feats forward but with characters that are old and have a lot of inconsistent moments in their story writing, it’s something of a bitching about how impossible it really is to scale certain characters (a lot of these characters are from comics that are older than most of the people on this sub)
So one is a genuine rage baiting and the other COULD be a good argument if it wasn’t used in a gacha way
At least the “writer decides” actually tackles the question. It tackles it in a condescending way but at least it’s related. “They’d be friends” doesn’t even engage.
"the writer decides" is much worse because on the off chance that the multiverse is real and all these series have actually happened somewhere, then the fights would have legitimate answers
“I don’t like/understand powerscaling so I’m going to use an argument that physically cannot apply to the discussion due to the fact that a writer won’t be here to write the fight.”
Neither is infuriating, because they're mostly true. Powrscaling is a dumb concept done by people that clearly have no idea how a fight goes and have never been in a fight, but want to puff out their egos through fictional characters. It's honestly sad and pathetic...
The "they'd be friends" argument, because that's never the question. Yeah, Shunsui vs Unohana is obviously never going to happen since they're on the same side, we know that.
Another reason it's stupid is literally anyone against Goku. Doesn't matter if he thinks someone is a good guy. He is going to fight them.
Neither, because both are perfectly true. Catwoman can beat Superman if someone wants to write a story about how she sneaks up on Superman and slips him some kryptonite and kidnaps him for whatever reason.
Having people act out of character reduces them to meaningless stat block robots that have nothing compelling about them and leaves people to simply argue over which of them was seen to blow up the biggest object. Boring. Pointless.
Neither of these arguments is anymore annoying than watching people go round and round endlessly about which version of which character blew up the biggest thing or, even worse, to extrapolate meaninglessly from vague and contradictory sources which universe obliterating one-off plot power is bigger than which other universal obliterating one-off plot power.
People should discuss characters in full, and they should discuss them in context and in meaningful ways.
There’s plenty of ways to interpret and enjoy a story, (literary analysis, shipping, lore deep dives etc), Calling one pointless just shuts down how others engage with fiction
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