“captain america street level lol”
“nah batman planet level”
This is essentially every powerscaling debate. Powerscaling (for anyone who DOESN’T already know) is basically measuring the power(s), abilities, and skills of fictional characters. Seems simple, right?
Well, not exactly…
See, powerscaling is divided into these “tiers,” which measure how powerful or durable a character is. For instance:
“character X punch planet so they planet level”
OR
“Character Y telekinetically melts a city so they’re city level.”
OR
“Superman tanks a planetary explosion, so they’re also planet level.”
That’s mostly how it is, and the biggest problem is that it IS that way, because it’s just stupid. It basically says a character is ONLY this powerful because they did this. It’s also arguably worse when measuring things like speed and the sort, said scaling mostly going like this:
“wElL, boBbY dOdGE lAsER, sO hE fASt aS liGHT”
(Yes, this does happen on a daily basis in powerscaling online.)
It’s pretty stupid, but people legitamately assume that just because a character does something like dodge a lightning beam or do some “speed-o-no-kaiyuken” that they can automatically move at the speed of light or faster than a speeding bullet or whatever speed their “feat” says, instead of acknowledging that it was probably on the writer that the character could dodge light itself somehow, and that the writer either wasn’t paying attention or it just didn’t really matter to them. But nope, everyone just goes like “BUT JOHnNY DODGE LASEr BUlLeT SO THeY SUPERSONIC!1!1!1!1!11!!”
A big thing that powerscaling also doesn’t get is context. Just because a character beats another character doesn’t mean they’re necessarily “better” in any way. Like, how many times have you seen the main character pull through and beat the bad guy with help from some artifact or because of the circumstances they were in, or how much manpower they had on their side, or how weakened the enemy was, or-I think you get the idea.
Another thing to note is that the “leveling system” is absolute trash when considering characters like Superman, the Hulk, and so on who’s strength is quite literally limitless! Or, even, a dude like the Flash who gets progressively faster the more he taps into the speedforce. Fiction is weird, and you’ll eventually come across characters with powers that are way beyond just “I can lift tanks” or characters with power that’s literally unquantifiable.
The most ultimate issue in powerscaling, however, is just the sheer stupidity and the absolutely obscene bias. I swear, these people take the likes of Green Lantern and say that they could beat literal God because (insert random feat here) even if it’s evident that they’re just biased… (and that’s just an example)
There’s lots of other reasons I COULD go over, but I think I’ve made my point fairly clear.
(And yes, for all of you wondering, this is a continuation of this post).
In conclusion;
powerscaling is garbage, gg.
