When I'm started to have interest in extremely powerful fictional characters, YouTube provided me some Shorts about someone comparing two or more fictional characters to determine the winner if those characters fight each other. I'm not interested o...
Before we get to my point, I want you to know what powerscalers mean about cosmology.
What they mean about cosmology is not this:
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In powerscaling, cosmology is basically all about how powerful is the environment of the verse. (E.g: Universe, Multiverse, Upper Dimensions, Narrative Layers...)
For example: - Verse A have a only have one universe, while verse B have 3 universes. Therefore, verse B have a bigger cosmology than verse A. - Dragonball only have 18 universes (6 of them erased), while SCP CN (Chinese Branch) have an infinite amount of universes (I only used a small portion of SCP cosmology as an example ok, so no complaining). Therefore SCP CN have a bigger cosmology than Dragonball (A/N: Dragonball stans are probably mad at me lol).
That's basically IT! It's just the size of a verse. The ENVIRONMENT of the verse. It only have something to do with how strong a verse's environment actually is, not how strong a character is.
Example: - Verse A's cosmology is only have one universe. Verse B have a rock as hard as one universe from verse A (assume the rock size is average), and have the cosmology size of one universe. To destroy a rock from verse B, verse A need an energy amount worth of a universe. verse A can't solo verse B because verse A can only destroy one rock by cosmology, but not the entire universe of verse B.
Now, if that's what cosmology is from powerscaling, what did powerscalers get wrong about this topic?
Well, you see... Powerscalers basically said some thing like this:
"Character A is infinitely stronger than character B because the verse of character A has a bigger cosmology than the verse that character B was in."
They literally forgetting/dismissing the fact that cosmology doesn't have anything to do with how strong a character is. As I just wrote, cosmology only scales the environment of the verse, not the characters. Saying "Character A is stronger than character B because of cosmology difference," is like saying that "I'm 50 cm tall and I'm taller than that 2 meters tall guy on the ground because I am on top of a five-story building."
If you want to compare which characters are stronger, keep cosmology size out of it. World building (where the story takes place) is sometimes fine (depends on which characters you're comparing), but cosmology size not.
"But what if the cosmology size of the verse is unknown? How do we know how strong that verse is?"
Simple. All you need to do is to scale it just like in real life. How hard is a rock from a verse which cosmology size is unknown? Well, it has the hardness of a rock in real life. Nobody (almost no one*) is crazy is enough to think that a rock from a verse with an unknown cosmology size has infinite hardness 💀. It makes the most sense if the rock is as hard as a rock in real life.
Forgetting/dismissing the fact that cosmology didn't have anything to do about how strong a character is the reason why many powerscalers from powerful verses are so annoying. (Even most Goku stans don't pull this up, at least in my view.)
"Um... Actually, DC cosmology is infinitely bigger than Dragonball. Therefore, a single atom from DC solos 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓"
~ A very bad powerscaler
While it might be true that a single atom can destroy the whole entire dragonball verse, do people actually care? Almost no one is interested at comparing environments with environments to see which is stronger. What we are interested in are the characters.
That said however, cosmology can be used to measure what a character is capable of.
For example, SCP 3812 can transcend his own author by going up a reality stack (A figurative thing to imagine the gap of cosmology between SCP 3812 and his author. A reality stack difference is equal to the difference between reality and fiction). Let's just assume that upper reality stacks don't exist. If upper reality stacks don't exist, the writer of SCP 3812 can't show off such ability, but SCP 3812 still have the ability to do such thing. It's just that ability became useless/not shown.
But of course, the readers ain't going to be satisfied if the writer just going to write, "SCP 3812 can transcend his own author," So the writer have to show off some feats, thus upper reality stacks are used.
In conclusion, cosmology only helps for the readers to know how strong a character is. They are NOT the character's nature.
In the next chapter, I'm going to discuss about OMNIPOTENCE and what value does the powerscaling community sees about it. Stay tuned!
