strifeinfinity

[strifeinfinity]

Damar Hamlin fights for his life in a Cincinnati hospital. He is all that matters now, the focus of everyone from the football-watching public to the NFL Players Association to his family, friends, and teammates. The second-year Buffalo Bills safety took a blow around his chest and head as he tackled Cincinnati Bengals receiver Tee Higgins on Monday Night Football. A second after that routine play, Hamlin collapsed. He went into cardiac arrest. Medics administered CPR and got his heartbeat back. The game didn’t resume, and late Monday, a representative said his vitals had returned to “normal” but that he was breathing through a tube. The NFL and then the Bills said Hamlin is in critical condition. The Bills flew back to Buffalo to do what everyone else is doing: waiting, thinking, crying, and praying for a 24-year-old whom friends and associates describe as one hell of a guy. Hamlin deserves to wake up and have someone explain to him that the toy drive fundraiser he leads now has more than $3 million in donations.

It’s a crisis for the entire game. Football is a bloodsport, and enough of us are obsessed enough with it that we have made the NFL the most dominant TV show in America by miles and miles. Much of the country has ceded an entire day of the week to this league. Everyone tuning in has a surface-level understanding of the brutality. A lot of people have watched the movie or seen the reports about head and other injuries consigning players to cyclical crises after their careers. Sometimes players leave games on boards. Sometimes they’re paralyzed. It is always harrowing. But football has never held up a mirror to the rest of us, to make us think about what we’re watching, more than it did on Monday. People who have followed the league since its infancy remarked that they’d never seen anything like it.

That the event was so shocking is a testament to how the NFL has maintained a bubble over itself. A century ago, football was gorier than it is now. On-field deaths weren’t quite frequent, but were at least sporadic. Players had worse equipment and the schemes of the day lent themselves even more than now to massed collisions. One player died on the field in 1971, a year after the formation of the modern NFL, but that has not happened a second time. Equipment advances, rule changes, and a lot of luck have prevented a repeat. The game isn’t safe, and the action in NFL games has shattered both bones and lives. But those catastrophes have never unfolded all at once, on a field during a game, and that has helped the league carry on. Five years ago, also on a Monday night in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier made a hit and suffered a spinal contusion that doctors feared would leave him paralyzed in his legs. (It did not, thankfully.) Like the Hamlin play, this one happened in the opening minutes of the first quarter. But the teams kept playing. NFL teams have always kept playing.

For the league, it has worked. The NFL is the constructor of its own reality. Until Monday night, it was unclear if the league’s world-building abilities even had a limit. Now that threshold is obvious.

The league did not seem prepared for what happened after medical professionals treated Hamlin and drove him away from the field. ESPN play-by-play announcer Joe Buck said several times that the game was poised to restart after a five-minute break for the teams to collect themselves. “That’s the word we get from the league and the word we get from down on the field,” Buck said. About 100 percent of people watching the game thought that sounded insane, and after both teams’ head coaches met with the referee on the field, the restart did not go ahead. NFL vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said a restart was never the league’s plan and that the referee was meeting with the coaches “to make sure they had the proper time inside the locker room to discuss what was best.” You and I do not know if Buck was incorrect or if Vincent is obfuscating for the NFL and his boss, commissioner Roger Goodell. ESPN released a statement that did not address Vincent directly but pointedly wasn’t a retraction.

Both stories raise issues. As Vincent acknowledged, it would’ve been insensitive to trot players back onto the field shortly after a horrifying event that brought many of them to tears. (It’s also the kind of supervillainous behavior that isn’t hard to imagine the NFL exploring.) The other story is that the NFL was just as shocked as the rest of us (understandable, as league employees are also people) and was scrambling to figure out what to do, including putting some of the decision-making on the teams and players who had just seen a co-worker receive CPR in the middle of a workplace that has millions of eyeballs on it. The modern NFL has never faced a moment like this one, but it should have had a prescriptive procedure waiting for the event of a medical crisis of this magnitude. Was asking the teams for a decision part of the plan? Ideally not. Players and coaches had enough going on after the devastation of seeing Hamlin collapse and exit.

Perhaps the NFL did the worst thing that people are speculating about and tried to wedge players back to work after five minutes. Perhaps the league response was more natural and humane, and the league was just hustling to figure out a plan in an unprecedented situation. Either would stem from the same aura of invincibility that permeates everything the NFL does in its perch as one of the most powerful forces in American culture.

Historically, nothing stops this train. Games don’t end early. Player injuries are just part of a big bucket of things that have historically failed to cause more than mild changes to NFL scheduling. The NFL plays through damn near anything. It staged every single scheduled game during the pre-vaccine pandemic season in 2020, postponing some but always getting them in.

Field conditions have gotten some preseason games called off. Labor disputes have knocked off some games over the years. (Here is the full list.) World War II more or less dismantled the league because hundreds of players had to go fight the Nazis. But that was before the AFL-NFL merger and the rise of the NFL as a singular force in national entertainment. In the event of World War III, the league would find a way to get its players exempted from the military draft in the name of national unity, and games would continue up to and quite possibly through the point of nuclear conflict.

Most of the time, when the real world intercedes on football in ways the NFL would find uncomfortable, the show finds a way to go on. That doesn’t just mean games, but the entire media-industrial complex around the NFL, the one that sustains the league on days when games aren’t being played. One quarterback can suffer multiple blows to the head in a few days, and all of the hand-wringing about it won’t stop conversations about how quickly he can get back to action or what it means for his team’s playoff hopes. (Then that player can get another concussion.) A different quarterback can face dozens of allegations of sexual misconduct, deny them all, sit through a suspension, and get back on the field. Eventually the discussion returns to how he’ll look under center in Cleveland. The whirring of the machine never really stops, so the actual football never stops, either. This is a machine with only one speed.

[strifeinfinity]

stoner catgirl sprigatito

[strifeinfinity]

The Wonky World of Powerscaling

[Or, How to get indoctrinated by idiots]

Powerscaling, or better known as Battleboarding, is a format used by people who are hardcore character debaters to see who wins using feats and abilities which would pull through for the win. Unfortunately, powerscaling is now a bunch of debates based on what people think is the strongest character and then dropping them months after to find another strongest character. Let’s talk about it.

PART ONE: Do you even scale, bro?

How do you even.. powerscale, exactly? Well, you need to take into account on how a character works in stats. In powerscaling battles, you must drop all pretenses of actual character writing and how they’d actually act in favor of earth-shaking clashes. It’s kind of like removing rationality from your brain so you can allow yourself to confront some other dude who wants to clobber you. It’s fun to debate on characters, but it’s not so fun on how there is a monopoly on the debate. Powerscaling at it’s most basic form should simply be people with differing opinions explaining why a character can beat this character— but it’s not. Powerscaling has been made much more complicated than the simple “Goku can blow up a universe. Kratos can’t. Goku wins!” because it has been made that way, thanks to varying degrees of beliefs.. And lack of knowledge. This monopoly I mentioned earlier is a massive quote-on-quote conspiracy created by many things. But we must start with the thing that is responsible for many strange terms.

PART TWO: Tiering System seems normal.. (Not!)

Powerscaling’s biggest benefactor is known as Vsbattleswiki, a Fandom domain where many internal issues lie deeply under it’s surface. It’s very skimpy surface. Let’s start with the basics: The tiering system. The tiering system is, at least according to them, an way to place a character’s power reliably in Attack Potency and Destructive Capacity. These two things are the reason a character gets on it’s level. So it goes smoothly. It goes perfectly fine with normal explanations. For example, Multiversal is 10 universes. If you destroy a “multiverse”, you’re multiversal. If you destroy an infinite expanse of multiverses, that’s complex multiversal. Everything’s cool. Then you reach Outerversal. And also, the bias for dimensional tiering rears it’s head. Let’s talk about the term Outerversal.

PART 2.2: What is an “Outerversal”????

To understand Outerversal, let’s put the previous tiers in perspective. Multiversal, as stated, is 10 or more universes that are destroyed in a singular move, or overtime. Obviously, overtime depends and is iffy, but if you can destroy it, you have the destructive capacity to be multiversal. Complex Multiversal is the destruction of an “infinite expanse” of multiverses or multiple multiverses at once. For example, there are 52 DC Universes. There are 10 each, besides two. This makes it a complex multiverse. Said complex multiverse has to be destroyed. For example, the Anti-Monitor had wiped out INFINITE universes, making him a Complex Multiversal threat. If you wanted to be more baseline and ignore the idea of complex, you’d have a multiversal threat. Hyperverse is being able to destroy a finite amount in these infinities. However, these terms.. are a bit strange. It’s kind of like segmenting being able to destroy a multiverse into different kinds which have no real meaning besides the original to make a character stronger. But they seem to work. Outerversal.. Doesn’t work. Basically, being above time and space warrants it.. When feats can contradict it otherwise. For example:

See? That’s a claim. A bold one about Fate Servants. One that holds no weight, considering Fate servants are still bound to the laws of time, and it’s from a secondary source known from Fate/Zero. That’s not going to change anything when the servants should be destroying universes en masse and oneshotting characters like the Anti-Monitor. There are people who unironically believe that, by the way. Being in a higher dimension doesn’t make you magically stronger than anyone else. In this case, Outerversal is a poorly defined term that is either “above time and space”, “above dimensionality”, or “can destroy infinite infinities”, which those are 3 distinct terms. Also, Fate Servants are literally clones, and not the original real individuals. They’re just made up of what humanity believes them to be in modern day. Some are exceptions, like Artoria, but they still don’t transcend “time and space”. Because of this stigma that makes people think a character is stronger because they transcend others in a cosmology (There are exceptions, like TOAA), you now have a flawed dimension tiering system which people think matters above all else. Dimensionality works differently, guys. And just because Lovecraft monsters exist above things doesn’t necessarily make them all-powerful. They have like.. 0 feats. When you’re in an higher dimension compared to another, you have more movement options that nobody can dream of. Using DC’s version of dimensionality (I assume that is what is being commonly used for these points), is a fundamental misunderstanding of dimensions. No matter what dimension you are in (Unless it specifies, then if not, then just don’t even bother), you will not be above time itself if you’re in a higher dimension, like the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension is just a dimension separate from our usual spatial ones. Dimensional tiering should not be the decisive factor of a character’s strength when it varies for different fictions.

Just because Darkseid who is an embodiment of evil and a being inbetween 4D and 5D doesn’t mean Goku and friends is stronger than him in any sense because they “shook a fourth dimensional void” (Like that means anything. Literally an unquantifiable feat that can’t even be used. Please stop using shaking as feats.), and Darkseid has actual stronger hax and feats to back up his win against Dragon Ball. And no, being stronger than someone doesn’t make you immune to hax in dragon ball. It’s literally “if you’re stronger, their ki is weaker than your ki meaning you can overpower them”, which is why the Jiren claim where he “transcends time” (Only being above Hit’s faulty time stop using his ki) exists. Nobody takes that literally but powerscalers! So. What did we learn about the term outerversal? It doesn’t exist. And it was made up by the people on Vsbattleswiki. Boundless is also a terminology, but there is no “true omnipotence in fiction” and from what I’ve seen besides wank, nobody is above their cosmology besides TOAA. Even if he isn’t omnipotent (Taking some stuff into account), he’s still above it. How does that make him Tier 1-A? Because he lost in a book that everyone disregards as non-canonical? Because nobody ever references it? Because the entire trilogy contradicts Marvel Canon? (Seriously, how can you try to connect Thanos VS Hulk to Infinity, or the Infinity Conflict to anything, when Thanos was dead at the time?) But when they use the “Creator from Umineko” (which isn’t a real term by the way, nor a real character. It is Lambdadelta’s beliefs on what the Creator could have been if Featherine Augustus Aurora had come in contact with the power to become it.), they’re Tier 0 because they.. uhh.. Transduality! And other buzzwords! And the fact he didn’t lose, ever! (The Creator is a misconception who doesn’t exist.) Vsbattleswiki is a deeply flawed website on dimensional tiering, which they heavily use.

PART THREE: The People on Vsbattleswiki

There’s a staff member named Antvasima who happens to really be an idiot. He spends a lot of time getting mad when anyone opposes him, and then he makes some lengthy apology about his life being busy and being miserable. The issue is, is that besides him and his silly groveling act.. He and others are incredibly biased. For example, Touhou as a verse which is incredibly powerful was downplayed hardcore to Star Level for years. Naruto continues to be oppressed on the wiki. Meanwhile, Beyblade is magically declared Universal+ because people like the verse. SCP is declared boundless because SCP is popular and hyper wanked by many, and so on. Vsbattleswiki profiles are heavily incompetent, considering they take hyperbolic statements in God of War novels and put them to their most literal sense. And they use PIS wrong.

(Note: Concepts in Marvel literally can grow and diminish in strength depending on what the situation can embody. Al Ewing is allowed to write in any way, shape or form. He is not a bad writer for such nonsense. This also is an example and exercise in lack of understanding proper storytelling, as he wants everything to be consistent. Not everything is consistent, Antvasima. The Tiger God’s power comes from the darkness. He is the opposition to the Phoenix Force. He is at it’s strongest when a candle in the flame (Lifebringer Galactus), stands against Logos (The Darkness). Al Ewing doesn’t even like power levels or consistency.)

Calcs are heavily favored over what is shown. For example, in MAGI, Sinbad destroyed a large chunk of a mountain, which should solidly place him at somewhere near mountain level. Then the calc somehow put him at Island Level. They also do pixel calcs, which make 0 sense as well.. Because you can’t just calculate a sprite to get your answer. This means someone can create a faulty calculation, and because many of them lack knowledge in math, and you can’t really calculate the size of a fictional explosion because on the screen it’ll look smaller and in the verse you’ll never know what size it is, you’ll end up getting a crazy calculation based on their tiering system which allows crazy shit to happen. Threads are locked daily if someone tries to oppose a staff member, and it takes forever to get a CRT approved if the staff team is biased against the verse. Marvel and DC threads are always an unfinished mess, and it took an incredibly long time for staff members to admit Roshi could destroy a moon (A LITERAL ON SCREEN FEAT WITH UNDENIABLE PROOF), and many more issues. There is also claims of transphobia within the community as well. With these issues established, we can move onto the community most affected by Vsbattleswiki

PART FOUR: THE LAWLESS WASTELAND

Welcome to Tiktok, and by extension, Youtube Shorts debaters! Where they have been most corrupted by faulty logic of the wikipedia known as Vsbattleswiki. They have zero idea to what they’re talking about. Many characters (Like the Weaver who’s shown like.. Planetary feats) are wanked to an extreme degree. The biggest flaw with these two “powerscaling outlets” is that it’s short. Nobody actually knows how to debate, so you end up getting the most factually incorrect statements ever. For example..

So, what am I supposed to say about this? This is what happens when a bunch of people who have no grasp on the english language or lacking intelligence shows up to the table. People enjoy wanking characters because they’d rather see their verse with rose tinted glasses stomp every other fictional verse (even though that’s impossible). What the fuck is a Scarlet King Spider + 8 Eyes God? Godzilla Ultima True Form doesn’t even exist. That’s not a thing. Godzilla Ultima was going to destroy the universe overtime, but he lacks the destructive capacity to destroy buildings until Jet Jaguar knocks him over. The big issue with these people is that because of the format, it lacks proper discussion. I have seen people claim Kratos is a hyperversal god who’s lifted the 9 realms and can lift infinity even though God of War’s verse shows maximum mountain level feats, ONLY LIFTED TYR’s TEMPLE (If he lifted the 9 realms, the entire story would go incredibly different, and change everything), and the infinite sky is hyperbolic to describe how large it was to others. I have seen people say “God Fusion Goku” destroys fiction. (What the fuck is a God Fusion Goku? That’s not even a thing.) I have seen people say Hajun and Dies Irae characters are outerversal characters who clobber all of fiction. (Even though Dies Irae only has a multiverse at best.. And Hadou Gods only become universes. The throne controls the multiverse. They’re strong, but nothing shows them to be “1-A”. When you have images of characters flashing around in gif form with something like.. “Rick Sanchez VS Thanos”, you get a very skewed outlook and bias. It doesn’t explain anything due to the format, and people will go “wow lol this guy wrote a whole essay” when it is only a paragraph or a bit shorter which nobody can see in time on the tiktok or short, allowing them to be swayed. They also use Vsbattleswiki terminology and fail to understand how poorly made it is. You also have Gilgamesh from Fate wankers. I don’t even need to say anything.

PART FIVE: The Strongest Character Bandwagon

On these websites, there is a singular thing in common. The strongest character. People have wanked and extrapolated feats en masse and even made up scans (Demonbane. LOL.) to argue that nothing can stop this certain character from sexually assaulting your favorite fictional universe. With poor grammar and faulty language. They don’t stick around on a character for long either. Featherine. Hajun, Demonbane. SCP-3812. Rune King Thor. Lucifer. And so on. They choose who is the strongest because they want the character to be the strongest. It is literally a side-effect of this. Nobody wants to see their favorite characters lose. Nobody wants to concede in a debate to someone else. This is how wank gets out of hand. Fate Extra/CCC was notorious for it’s wank and overhype, especially on comicvine. Nowadays, you can easily disprove it by being a Fate fan, but you’ll find Gilgamesh wankers out in the wild. It’s why they don’t stick to characters long. Because there’s always a new strongest character around the corner with dimension 6000D powers that can annihilate everything in one blast. (if homestuck was more popular we’d get Lord English wank which he’d be even stronger than he already is considering he can oneshot dr manhattan good lord)

Part Six: Adhering to Consistency

Many scalers don’t believe in the idea of inconsistencies. Everything must be straightforward in one spot from beginning to end. It is what they believe. It is their law. And it sucks. It really does. When something does not line up with what they believe in, they will shout PIS. They essentially smash it into bits. You cannot say anything that is contradictory to their consistent worldview. A character can have anti-feats. A character can be inconsistent. Goku has to turn on his durability if he wants to survive any fight. Superman can struggle sometimes. SCP-3812 isn’t some omnipotent god. TOAA may lose (he never does lol…..). That’s the power of inconsistencies in media. You can work around it. And create stories. Consistency is important and serves to keep a story on track, but writers can go in any direction they want to keep the story rolling. So why am I talking about this? Well, some verses can’t actually be quantified in scaling. Like SCP. It has too many canons and realities to argue in favor of that a character is some omnipotent god when there’s a million stories. There are some verses that should not be scaled, but here we are.

Part Seven: End of the Road

Powerscaling is a mess. I didn’t cover everything, but just the tip of the iceberg. There is way more. I could have gone into the faulty scaling of Ben 10. I could have disputed Warhammer 40K. I could have done much more. But the point does not lie in debunking nor debating. I like writing. It’s a hobby of mine that I actively do because I like doing what I do. I don’t need to adhere to a strict logic unless it is required. Power scaling is a mess. It’s filled with people who have no idea what they’re talking about, spitting out infernal buzzwords. It’s filled with administrators who are borderline close to dictators. It’s filled with tons of stupid, disgusting idiots. But power scaling is also fun. If you know what you’re talking about. Which many people don’t.

I am not discouraging you to power scale. But I am going to make you aware of this immense issues that go on in the community. And for one last huzzah, let’s show you a moment where they know nothing. As usual.