User:GiverOfThePeace/Let's Talk About Powerscaling

Introduction

This is gonna be an in-depth blog made by me discussing my overall opinion on powerscaling, how I factor it into the wiki, and other stuff. I may have this blog linked onto the site FAQ as this blog will be discussing how powerscaling applies to the site overall along with my own opinion, so without further ado, let us begin!

What is Powerscaling?

This has been asked by a decent number of people, but by this point I think people overall have a good idea of what powerscaling is now. However, for the people that still do not, allow me to explain.

Powerscaling is a fan term related to fans of series taking a character, whether it be Flapjack and pitting them against another character, like The Living Tribunal and looking through both of their series to find their strongest showings of strength, speed, durability, finding their various abilities and discussing who will end up winning. Now, while it may seem like I'm joking, this is a genuine debate that will happen with some members of the community due to how they scale said characters.

I used this extreme example to show just how vast this rabbit hole goes, obviously the more well-known and popular examples are debates such as Superman vs Thor, Batman vs Spider-Man, Mario vs Sonic, Link vs Cloud, Superman vs Son Goku, etcetera.

Think of it as your old times at elementary school discussing with friends what's better and asking "Who would win in a fight?", and that's essentially powerscaling.

One of the most popular examples is Death Battle, a series centered around finding out who would win in a fight.

Overall Reputation

Now on paper this sounds fine, but powerscaling as a whole has a pretty bad reputation. You can see this with so many different videos with over hundreds of thousands of views discussing this topic with a pretty large group of people overall agreeing with what's being presented.

Here's just some example videos, with the views and likes listed currently at the time of the creation of this article (January 12th, 2025).

• Power Scaling Is Cringe: 561k views and 32k likes.

• I HATE Power Scaling, kinda: 304,693 views and 13k likes.

• Powerscaling is Dumb and Stupid: 224,870 views and 16k likes.

There's some others out there but these are pretty popular examples if you look up "powerscaling sucks". These videos essentially say powerscaling is pointless because the author is never thinking about it and doesn't apply to the story.

There's also one of the most famous rants Stan Lee did which was a response to "who would win in a fight" where he basically just said it's whoever the writer wants to win. Which he isn't wrong at all and I'm confused why there's people angry at this rant. It's a perfectly reasonable rant and I'm pretty sure most writers do not like being asked "who would win in a fight" unless they're a writer that genuinely cares about writing the strength level of their characters.

So overall the reputation of powerscaling is it's not very liked and a lot of people don't like it at all.

This isn't to say that there aren't people that like and defend powerscaling, cause of course there is, this community would not come into mainstream discussions if there wasn't.

Here's some examples of people defending powerscaling, again with the views and likes listed currently at the time of the creation of this article (January 12th, 2025).

• Why Power Scaling MATTERS!: 27,528 views and 1.9k likes.

• Why PowerScaling Matters: 33,404 views and 976 likes.

• Powerscaling Was Never Cringe.: 48,537 views and 3.5k likes.

These videos argue against the idea that powerscaling is useless, basically saying that powerscaling is a necessary element to stories as they create stakes and a level of consistency. Dragon Ball and Jujutsu Kaisen a great examples of this. Along with this they argue that powerscaling as a concept should not be attacked due to the actions of the powerscaling community.

The main issue I notice between both sides of the argument is there's a clearly different ideas of powerscaling being presented here. When one side is saying powerscaling is cringe it's pretty clear it's in response to how seriously a toxic community takes it while the other side is defending the idea of powerscaling itself. I think mainly the toxicity of the community causes the dislike of the concept the person already was not interested in.

What do I think of It?

I don't think either sides arguments are particularly good or bad, I think like everything within fan-made hobbies, it's all context based. I overall do not like the powerscaling community at all, I don't care if "Well there's other bad people in other communities too", this is not a genuine argument to me when a majority of powerscalers I view and see are either weirdos, toxic or only ever talk about powerscaling itself. Could this be a vocal minority? Sure, but what does it matter? It's a vocal minority I constantly have to deal with so naturally I'm going to dislike the community as a whole due to this.

Powerscaling itself I'm fine with as a concept because I view it as a fun hobby to do myself, I can understand the issue with taking it "too seriously" and understand why it is ultimately pointless.

Though there are some points I think just don't work at all for or against powerscaling. Let's go over some of them.

The Arguments Against Powerscaling
Powerscaling isn't Necessary to the Plot
This depends on the series. Battle series, powerscaling is very much necessary to the plot, Dragon Ball's entire existence is based off powerscaling based off a character having a bigger number means they will be the one winning. There will be series obviously where this isn't the case, toon force series are a perfect example. Toon Force characters are as weak or strong as the plot needs them to be in order for comedy happens. But for the most part, powerscaling DOES matter to the plot.

You Shouldn't Do Powerscaling because It's Pointless
I don't think this is at all a good argument either, no one should decide what one can or can't do, powerscaling is just a nerdy topic for fun, the same with literally any nerdy topic. What's weird to me is a lot of anti-powerscalers that say this, have other nerdy topics they get into big discussions over that are also ultimately pointless. Why is powerscaling the thing that shouldn't be done but discussions of lore for a series allowed when it's also ultimately pointless?

Who Cares?
Same thing as above, this can apply to so many different topics in general, if you yourself do not like it, cool, why are you forcing others to abide by this? Even when I make fun of powerscalers I never say powerscaling itself shouldn't be done, I make fun of toxic powerscalers for being toxic.

X Tier Power Set Can't Work In Another Universe
An example I've seen of this is someone using Nen as an example, saying it can't work out of the Hunter x Hunter universe. Well... officially licensed and copyrighted media has Gon using nen and interacting with other universe characters. One could say this is non-canon and sure, but it's still official media, these are still the official copyrighted characters with their history listed. So while the events are not canon to the main Hunter x Hunter story, it still is officially Gon Freccs in a game using nen outside of his universe.

The Arguments For Powerscaling
Hate The Player, Not The Game
While technically true, the player is the thing that introduces you to the deeper levels of powerscaling normally, so if I see someone say they hate powerscaling beacuse of how toxic the community is, I don't see that at all as a wrong stance to take.

I Feel Like These People Just Lost a Debate and That's Why They Hate It
This is a pretty weird assumption to have, there are cases where very obviously that exists but for a large majority of people that I see that dislike powerscaling they themselves never even directly interact with it, they just saw threads or forums and saw how toxic it was and want no part in it due to that, which is perfectly fair as a stance.

It is Important to a Series or Else Fans Would Hate It
This again is a case by case, no fan is going to care if Bugs Bunny loses to Daffy Duck in a looney toons episode and go "But Bugs beat Daffy in a prior one!!!" Also this kind of misses the fact that most of these people that say they dislike powerscaling are talking about that they dislike the overanalyzing of it, not the concept as a whole.

I Feel People Are Just Too Sensitive
If you at all think like this, you are in more cases then not, part of the problem so of course you wouldn't see the issue when you are the issue.

Fan Calculations and Scaling Are Important
No. These are useless and just for fun. Most scenes aren't even drawn to scale properly and fan calculations are very clearly never indicative of what the author themself thinks, a perfect example being Butch Hartman noting that he wasn't thinking about the impact doing that much damage and just thinking it'd look cool. Writers can write their characters as strong or weak as they need them for the narrative, the only time immersion would be broken is if said character is conflicting with another character. Or if absolutely ridiculous stuff happens, let's say for instance you're watching an episode of Walking Dead, where Rick Grimes shoots his gun and suddenly the entire multiverse is destroyed and all the walkers tank it. Now obviously that would break immersion but any cosmic scale stuff breaks immersion anyways, that's why most fictional stories are relatively grounded even when cosmic characters are present.

Powerscaling Helps Explain Abilities That People Were Confused By
If I ever have to go out of my way to look up a video from a fan of how something works that's meant to be important to the plot, that's more a flaw of the writer then a plus for powerscaling. Personally for me, most of the series I like I don't think I've ever needed to go look up how an ability worked. One could say this is due to me already having experience with powerscaling, but I never had this issue even prior to powerscaling. I don't think this is really a plus for powerscaling.

Authors Are Considering the Strength Of Their Characters
They're considering how much stronger their character is then another character in most cases, but they obviously aren't considering in-depth stuff like "Yeah this character is multi-galaxy level 2.5e56 joules of energy" or whatever.

The Type of Powerscaling I Hate
Well that was a lot, but now let me discuss the actual type of powerscaling I'm not into.

Pointless Cross-Verse Powerscaling
Now if it's cross verse powerscaling where a match is thematic and cool, sure I like it, I especially like talking about how character A would interact with B. But when it's a boring and pointless match like what I brought up earlier, like Flapjack vs The Living Tribunal I hate that cause it's such a pointless match. This obviously isn't to say people shouldn't do it, this is to say I hate it. This wouldn't be as much of an issue to me if it was very niche like no one really talks about Flapjack vs TLT, however a lot of the popular matches I have this issue with, so let me go over some of them!

Omni Man vs. Bardock
Think this one is lazy, I get what the similarities are but it doesn't really feel thematic. Bardock and Omni Man are aliens of a race of warriors that are the fathers of the main characters only goes so far for me.

Batman vs Spider-Man
This match is just stupid to me because I'm way more interested in what if Spider-Man and Batman deal with their rogues galleries (Honestly I think Batman vs Daredevil's rogues gallery and vice versa is more interesting of a match). I'm not really ever interested in hero vs hero matches unless they're thematic enough for me.

Mario vs Sonic
This exists purely because of their rivalry that existed in the 90s, in modern times this rivalry is nonexistent so not even that part can interest me. I'd rather see them work together to take on their villains then fight each other.

Link vs. Cloud
Not only do I think there's way more interesting hero vs hero matchups for both sides, but again, this feels like something that can instead be a team up.

Goku vs Superman
Personally I'm more interested in Usagi vs Superman, Goku vs Superman as a matchup doesn't work for me because it's more of they have the same origins rather then full thematic feel. Usagi and Superman are extremely optimistic and hopeful viewing that there's always another way and come out of a situation where no one at all has to die, while also possessing limitless power and being raised as a human first so they act naturally more chill and human and use their powers to help people becasue they're good and nice people. Goku on the otherhand is a martial artist that strives to be the strongest in the universe, while he is optimistic, he doesn't have a "there's always another way" approach to things and instead wishes to fight the strongest and grow stronger in strength. Also Usagi vs Superman would be more interesting to discuss since Usagi technically uses magic so it would be seeing how Superman can get around that technical weakness while Goku doesn't really do that.

Powerscaling On The Wiki

So as I said my personal view of powerscaling is I like the concept itself and can partake in it when working on a full profile, however I am not at all interested in communicating with or talking with powerscalers about powerscaling topics (Barring of course when the topics are discussions over the pages) as the community itself I don't like. However, how does this apply to the wiki? For note I'm going to use "I do this" as how I view tiering and powerscaling is naturally reflected on the wiki's rules (this is different from character profiles as I can't observe thousands of profiles back to back).

Because I've seen so many people keep mistaking this for a powerscaling wiki, I've come to the conclusion to explain it here too, why is The Codex Wiki not a powerscaling wiki?

Cause I don't care about just powerscaling alone. I care about everything regarding these characters. What are their alignments? What are their personalities? What's their height, weight, age, etcetera. I like documenting and powerscaling for me, is one part of documentation and not the whole of it. It's also the most headcanon part of the documentation. See no matter what, when an author puts down a characters height, it's pretty much permanent until the author changes their mind, even if their height is not at all consistent in art or visuals. For statistics though, these are taking ideas the author has had with visuals and statements, and making a very rough educated guess with them, these are never truly accurate unless it's rare cases like the Monsterverse authors giving Godzilla a direct joule count for his atomic breath. Even then that's the only real "accurate" statistic in that entire list, everything else is still a massive theory.

This is why I call the section "Codex Statistics" because this section is pure headcanon and theorycrafting, I just try to stay as true to the author's vision as possible and even then I need to take some leeway. For example, I don't think Dracula being town level was ever considered by the writers of Castlevania.

Speed is an even more apparent case with this, there are many profiles where I have put "At most Faster Than Light" as the character being at the speed tier normally breaks the setting of the story, but we also have direct statements in series of them being faster then characters who are directly stated to move at light speed, have a light speed or faster than light speed showing, etcetera.

Basically I like making sure to stay close to the author's vision but also acknowledge when a feat is directly on screen and how much it fits with what's happening.

Though at the end of the day I still fully acknowledge it's headcanon.

Powers and Techniques also slightly reaches that but it's more objective since it's just showcasing an ability the character did, but when it gets into potency, what dimensional scale it is, etcetera, that's all headcanon territory.

But yeah overall The Codex Wiki is not a powerscaling wiki as I don't care about just powerscaling alone when it comes to indexing a character. Some powerscalers take this as they're not welcome in the community, when that's not really true. If you're not a toxic person and are able to act as a regular civil person, I don't have any issue with you joining and interacting with us.

Conclusion

I may update this some more in the future with things I feel I missed but overall this is my overall Ted Talk on powerscaling.