Which universe has the highest power levels?

[Jeivar]

I don't mean the heroes. I mean which fictional setting has the most powerful entities in general.

Warhammer 40K in general seems to be the boss when it comes to conventional warfare, but when one widens the scale it's only set in a single galaxy, and from what I understand the gods are ultimately relatively limited in the ways they can affect the material world.

The Doctor Who universe operates on a MUCH bigger scale, with empires that span entire galaxies, and Time Lords and godlike entities being able to perform outright miracles given the right circumstances. There seem to be all sorts of exotic semi-gods there that can't be fought with traditional force... but on the other hand they always seem to have some convenient "Defeat Me" button for the Doctor to press.

THEN there's Lovecraft's setting. Great Cthulhu himself (itself?) is a gigantic eldritch entity composed of matter we don't understand, so utterly alien that humans can't bear to look at him. He has knowledge and powers far beyond human comprehension, and his awakening will mean humanity's descent into a firestorm of madness and violence. And yet Cthulhu is ultimately small-fry compared to the setting's REAL big boys. He is labelled as a priest, after all. And THAT is how irrelevant humans are in the grand scheme of things.

If something like Yog-Sothoth or Nyarlathotep suddenly decide humans are in their way, I can't see what any character in fiction can do to stop them. And that's not even getting into Azathoth.

Thoughts?

[Anymage]

Many cosmoses have a capital G God expy, at which point you're talking infinity vs. infinity and they're all based off the same source.

Also, in the great scheme of things, Cthulhu isn't even that big. When he wakes up he'll be as destructive towards us as we'd be blindly walking through an ant colony, but his city happens to be on earth and he stays on the planet rather handily. Lovecraftian entities can destroy civilization as we know it, but few of them are existential threats to planetary masses. Star Wars is low on the scale, without any omnipotent entities that I'm aware of, and they can make a superweapon that blows up planets. If you can't cause at least one whole planet to stop existing, you don't really count in the ridiculous power games.

[Lord Raziere]

I'd strongly consider Homestuck:
unkillable gods who wipe out universes, screw with timelines so that only one can possibly exist where the evilest god wins, a space-warping omniscient being who manipulates people by never lying once, god tier players who can only die if they do something heroic or unjust, a ring that can make you come back to life just by putting it on, genetic codes that create beings capable of making beings that warp space itself however they want in a godlike fashion, people who see the future in various ways, a chat client that allows you to communicate across all of time and space, a system of item creation capable of making anything from anything else.....you know your high powered, when every functional Sburb session requires at least one time traveler just to manage everything thats going on.

oh and the main character has to win by literally gaining the power to retcon the STORY, not the timeline, the STORY.

[Rater202]

In the Ben 10 Multiverse there exists a race of beings, the Celestialsapiens, that are literally omnipotent.

an average member of the race can withstand being mere feet away from a bomb that would destroy the entire universe going off, can completely recreate the universe and resurrect it's inhabitants with a singleness thought after said bomb goes off, and Word of God is that this average Celestial Sapien could destroy the Multiverse with five thoughts.

A sword coated in a very thin layer of Celestialsapien flesh can cut through literally anything.

The Marvel Multiverse not only have multiple Omnipotent beings but in fact has levels of Omnipotence and progressively greater Infinities. The Cosmic Cubes can rewrite reality are nothing compared to the beings born from them, who are nothing compared to the Beyonders who created the Cubes, who are nothing against the Reality Gem, which is Nothing against the Celestial, who die in Droves to Knull, who is nothing compared to Galactus, Who is nothing compared to the Elders of the Universe, who lose to the six assembled Infinity Gems, which still just barely loses out to Eternity(to the point that Thanos was convinced to use the Gems to replace Eternity,) who is below the Living Tribunal, who is merely a representative of the One Above All, who is either the Abrahamic God or Jack Kirby. Maybe both.

and then, of course, we get people like Nathan Summers and Franklin Richards and Legion and Mad Jim Jaspers who are on paper mutants, and therefor human, but who have reality warping abilities and a crap ton of power to put in them--Franklin's a first generation Mutant whose power is actual Omnipotence. As in, as of the most recent volume of Fantastic Four, Franklin is God to thousands of universes and is fully aware of it, to the point of stating as such to one of the denizens of a world he created.

[Devonix]

A Universe with the " Highest " Setting is kind of impossible. I go back to the old. Who wins? The person writing the story. Because while your story might say that only this works, you can come up against a story that functions under different rules.

What happens when a chaos god gets hit with a JoJo stand for example. As well as any universe that has an " Omnipotent Character " And I mean the actual definition of the word, not " Semi, or such, I mean a character that is Omnipotent. And no not " True Omnipotent " Dear god I hate that word.

[GloatingSwine]

A Universe with the " Highest " Setting is kind of impossible. I go back to the old. Who wins? The person writing the story.

That or Bugs Bunny.

[HandofShadows]

As others have said Cthulhu is small potatoes in the Mythos. You want all powerful, you go to Azathoth. Why? Because all reality/every reality is just a dream it is having and just by waking up everything will be wiped away as it had never been. :smalleek:

[Devonix]

As others have said Cthulhu is small potatoes in the Mythos. You want all powerful, you go to Azathoth. Why? Because all reality/every reality is just a dream it is having and just by waking up everything will be wiped away as it had never been. :smalleek:

Yes but when you get into things like this it's impossible to quantify. Ok In Lovecraft mythos everything is the dream of Azathoth. But then you get into other universes where they say. Everything and every universe is just the dream of this person. Or it's all contained in this marble. Or it's all a book being read by this character.

Everything being the Dream of Azathoth loses credibility once you go into another writer's work. Because Lovecraft can't hold sway over the writing of another individual.

If you were to create a stick figure character and you as the writer state that said character is more powerful than Azathoth. Then you are one hundred percent correct in your statement of what you just created. And no none can tell you otherwise.

[The Glyphstone]

Can Azathoth be said to have any actual power at all, though? Influence or importance, sure - its dreams are reality, and if it ever wakes up everything ceases to exist. But it's both asleep and insane, so has no actual control over said reality. Yog-Sothoth or Nyarlathotep, being the manifest incarnations of time and space respectively, seem to be in actuality the most powerful entities in the Mythos.

[HandofShadows]

Azathoth isn't insane, it's an idiot. Which in many ways is worse than insane. As for control of reality, yes Yog-Sothoth and Nyarly have more effective control, but this isn't about effective control, but raw power. If all of reality is all a dream created by accident and unintentionally, what can Azathoth do when it actually wants to do something?

[The Glyphstone]

My argument is that power is meaningless if you lack any ability to use it. As long as it's asleep, it can't do anything, and were Azathoth to wake up, reality ceases to exist and the whole thing becomes irrelevant.

[Tyndmyr]

I don't mean the heroes. I mean which fictional setting has the most powerful entities in general.

Leaving aside the "one omnipotent god" at the top of the pinnacle in every case, since those end up being boring to compare, I'd go for the Culture. Galaxy spanning wars, solar systems transformed into habitats for amusement, functional immortality, ridiculously FTL travel with huge weapons, nigh arbitrary levels of tech in every field. And all of this is available even at a fairly low level. There are a *lot* of entities with access to this.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, but if Azathoth ever woke up it would be because Bugs Bunny was at the side of its bed with a set of cymbals.

That's how he rolls.

[Jeivar]

Yeah, but if Azathoth ever woke up it would be because Bugs Bunny was at the side of its bed with a set of cymbals.

That's how he rolls.

Yeah. Forget the Joker. Bugs is the true agent of chaos.

[Rater202]

Leaving aside the "one omnipotent god" at the top of the pinnacle in every case, since those end up being boring to compare, I'd go for the Culture. Galaxy spanning wars, solar systems transformed into habitats for amusement, functional immortality, ridiculously FTL travel with huge weapons, nigh arbitrary levels of tech in every field. And all of this is available even at a fairly low level. There are a *lot* of entities with access to this.

And then an average Celestialsapien from Ben 10 decides they're annoying because they're interrupting its debate with itself and they all vanish from existence, retroactively if need be.

the setting with the strongest power level is the setting with an entire thriving race of Omnipotent beings.

[The Glyphstone]

And then an average Celestialsapien from Ben 10 decides they're annoying because they're interrupting its debate with itself and they all vanish from existence, retroactively if need be.

the setting with the strongest power level is the setting with an entire thriving race of Omnipotent beings.

Though that in itself is fundamentally illogical, because by definition a setting cannot have multiple omnipotent entities.Even a single peer of equal power means you are not fully omnipotent, since something exists that can counteract you.

[Giggling Ghast]

I would say the Dragon Ball universe, where even gods of destruction are small potatoes compared to Zeno, the King of All. He could erase all of existence with a gesture.

[Kato]

I hate to be that guy but this debate is pointless because it inevitably will devolve into 'my fictional character is more omnipotent than yours'...
all kinds of settings have all kinds of omnipotent beings, which, as people have pointed out is nonsense because there cannot be more than one or that universe is doomed to implode by logic if two of them clash.

I guess you could either look for the most (true) omnipotent being among fictions or leave the peak aside and debate the second tier and argue about that with no end in sight.

[Rater202]

Though that in itself is fundamentally illogical, because by definition a setting cannot have multiple omnipotent entities.Even a single peer of equal power means you are not fully omnipotent, since something exists that can counteract you.

You're assuming that Omnipotence has to be logical.

[Tvtyrant]

I think a far more interesting question is: Which universe has the lowest power level? Where a relevant protagonist is at the lowest end of the totem poll and still matters.

Watership Down seems obvious, but I also think any police officer in DC or Marvel qualifies as they live in horrifying hell universes of monster gods and walking deities and still try to make a difference.

[Giggling Ghast]

I would think the lowest power level series is Hamtaro, where all the characters are cute hamsters.

[Ibrinar]

An universe that only exists in my head as an idle thought exercise about what stuff I should let a character do if I wanted to make him be as imba as possible and win pointless versus fight. Starting with the light speed limit only existing in our region of space because he found people moving faster than that annoying so changed reality in a 10 light year radius around himself to make it impossible, casually moving far of stars to make pictures in the sky, of course demonstrating immunity to reality warping, changing his past and a host of other abilities is important, well you can guess the rest.

Seriously though pure physical feat wise gurren lagann is pretty high with the galaxy shuriken thing. But of course there are universes with basically all mighty reality benders who win by default though we usually don't see them do much really big stuff. Maybe limiting it to what they have actually done would be more interesting. But some almighty character who rewrote the whole universe or something will win that too.

Weakest, well there is a movie about ants, there probably is also stuff about bacteria out there though I guess they have a different kind of power.

[The Glyphstone]

The only movie I can think of with explicitly (and naturally) microscopic protagonists is Osmosis Jones.

[Lord Raziere]

The only movie I can think of with explicitly (and naturally) microscopic protagonists is Osmosis Jones.

but are they weaker than Cells At Work? its a recent anime that also does the osmosis jones thing, but in its own way.

but clearly the strongest universe is Gilgamesh of Sumerian mythology, because it was the first mythology and fictional universe ever and thus caused all the other fictional universes to exist as well. :smalltongue:

[Durkoala]

What about Inside Out? The protagonists are an eleven-year-old girl's anthromorphic emotions. They can't directly affect anything outside of her head and most of what goes on inside of her head through out the movie gets more and more out of their control as the movie goes on.

[Ibrinar]

Ah I remember there was an anime recently with the characters representing part of the immune system I think? Or maybe other small stuff in the body too. Edit: And cells at work was just mentioned.

[Traab]

Star trek has the Q continuum, who can literally reshape all of existence with the smallest thought and gesture. I dont believe they are QUITE omnipotent or omniscient, but its hard to be sure as the only real experience we get with them is the super troll who loves testing humanity to see if its worthy of its potential future.

[Gnoman]

There was that Voyager episode where a noticeable portion of the galaxy was destroyed as collateral damage from a Q on Q war.

[GloatingSwine]

There was that Voyager episode where a noticeable portion of the galaxy was destroyed as collateral damage from a Q on Q war.

Yes, but on account of it happening in Voyager it's considered impolite to mention it.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I nominate the Authyr (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-sue-system-setting-underlying.html) universe.

[Lord Raziere]

I nominate the Authyr (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-sue-system-setting-underlying.html) universe.

Well at that point, we might as well start listing fan fic stuff like Third Fang's Oogakari clan's universe from Yet Again With a Little Extra Help: contains pretty much all universes listed above, multiverses containing those universes and variations upon them and the godlike beings empowering Naruto are the most powerful family of gods in a world of powerful gods where all those exist.

pretty much all their powers have conceptual application, the most powerful of them can burn away time itself to reset situations and their serious combat is all done through conceptual presence/spirit essence thing. they are so immortal they allow themselves to get hurt for laughs just to entertain themselves and go around empowering other universes out of boredom by figuring out how someone's power can be used to their absolute fullest potential and teaching them to achieve that.

[Devonix]

There was that Voyager episode where a noticeable portion of the galaxy was destroyed as collateral damage from a Q on Q war.

I always wondered what would happen if the M and the Q went to actual war rather than the Cold war they're currently in.

[keybounce]

I always wondered what would happen if the M and the Q went to actual war rather than the Cold war they're currently in.

Bond would probably find some way to win.

Actually, weren't we just told that the 11th universe has the highest of the 12? (DB super)

Seriously though: if you're not going to go with Homestuck, then how about My Little Pony? Remember, this is the universe with Pinkie Pie, who just casually goes with Deadpool to the controlling universe and tells them to quit it. This is the universe where happy songs and friendships solve everything. This is the universe where you can turn your enemies into allies, well, except for their now powerless queen.

[Lord Raziere]

Bond would probably find some way to win.

Actually, weren't we just told that the 11th universe has the highest of the 12? (DB super)

Seriously though: if you're not going to go with Homestuck, then how about My Little Pony? Remember, this is the universe with Pinkie Pie, who just casually goes with Deadpool to the controlling universe and tells them to quit it. This is the universe where happy songs and friendships solve everything. This is the universe where you can turn your enemies into allies, well, except for their now powerless queen.

DB Super:
no thats a misconception. they were talking about the Mortal Levels, not the actual power levels of the people within, because Mortal levels are a complex measure of morality, ethics, healthiness and advancement of civilizations, how powerful people are within it is only one of the measurements taken into account for good quality a universe is in Dragon Ball, and Universe 11 is not even the highest mortal level of that, it is in fact the fifth highest because the four best universes aren't even explored at all- this is because the tournament of power is about the eight universes that the top god wants to erase for being too bad and were excluding the top four for passing this arbitrary 7 or above number, Universe 11 is just the top because it has a 5. whatever score while everyone else in the tournament has 2's and 3's.

[Kitten Champion]

I would say for a fantasy universe, Disgaea.

Not only because it's centred around gods and god-like beings, but because the core mechanics and part of the charm of the universe is about taking the basic turn-based RPG systems and removing the usual limitations until you're dealing with utterly ludicrous levels of power. It's a universe of Final Fantasy end-bosses, only they can still go out and grind levels to be even more formidable.

[Devonix]

Bond would probably find some way to win.

Actually, weren't we just told that the 11th universe has the highest of the 12? (DB super)

Seriously though: if you're not going to go with Homestuck, then how about My Little Pony? Remember, this is the universe with Pinkie Pie, who just casually goes with Deadpool to the controlling universe and tells them to quit it. This is the universe where happy songs and friendships solve everything. This is the universe where you can turn your enemies into allies, well, except for their now powerless queen.

Umm. I'm talking about the Q and the M continuums from Startrek Not Q and M from James Bond.

[TeChameleon]

Umm. I'm talking about the Q and the M continuums from Startrek Not Q and M from James Bond.

Preeeeetty sure that was the joke :smalltongue:

Maybe if we rephrased the original question? "Which universe has the highest power levels barring reality-warpers along with pseudo-omnipotents and up?"

I'd like to throw the Lensmen universe onto the pile- anyone that's lobbing FTL antimatter planets around as a matter of course is not someone you want to screw with <.<

Also, the Worm universe would probably be a decent contender for the top of the pile as well, considering the final battle is fought over dozens of planes of reality with dimensionally transcendent beings who need to be killed in many realities simultaneously in order to get rid of them. Granted, when you get to nonsense on that level, things get weird.

[keybounce]

If we're going to talk about tossing things, how about tossing stars at other stars, or inhaling stars for breath?

Yea, I'm talking simple hydrogen blimps as the highest power level :-)

[137beth]

As others have said Cthulhu is small potatoes in the Mythos. You want all powerful, you go to Azathoth. Why? Because all reality/every reality is just a dream it is having and just by waking up everything will be wiped away as it had never been. :smalleek:

Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening had the world being a dream of the Wind Fish. However, in the Zelda franchise, the Wind Fish is small potatoes compared to the Old Gods of Hyrule. Does that mean Nayru, Farore, and Din are significantly more powerful than Azothoth?

[ben-zayb]

If we're going to talk about tossing things, how about tossing stars at other stars, or inhaling stars for breath?

Yea, I'm talking simple hydrogen blimps as the highest power level :-)

The ending scene in MIB had aliens playing with marbles, one of which houses the Milky Way.

I wouldn't go with fanfic universes, because that kind of ridiculousness (e.g. Suggsverse (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Suggsverse)) means I just make barely fleshed out fan fic universes as we go and make it the most powerful.

[GloatingSwine]

Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening had the world being a dream of the Wind Fish. However, in the Zelda franchise, the Wind Fish is small potatoes compared to the Old Gods of Hyrule. Does that mean Nayru, Farore, and Din are significantly more powerful than Azothoth?

To be fair the Wind Fish was only dreaming one island, not an entire multiverse.

[Eldan]

The ending scene in MIB had aliens playing with marbles, one of which houses the Milky Way.

I wouldn't go with fanfic universes, because that kind of ridiculousness (e.g. Suggsverse (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Suggsverse)) means I just make barely fleshed out fan fic universes as we go and make it the most powerful.

If fanfic counts, I just write a fanfic where my main character snips his fingers and deletes all the other characters mentioned here from existence, irreversibly. No, not even then.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

As others have said Cthulhu is small potatoes in the Mythos. You want all powerful, you go to Azathoth. Why? Because all reality/every reality is just a dream it is having and just by waking up everything will be wiped away as it had never been. :smalleek:

But when someone even just distracts the Saint Elsewhere kid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Westphall) not just do entire multiverses disappear, but actual reality as well!

(Long story short for those that don't know it: a TV series ended on an "it was all a dream"-conclusion. The TV show had had crossovers with several other shows, which logically speaking were all a dream as well. Some of those shows featured more crossovers, and some of them even had celebrities appearing as themselves, which logically makes all those shows and the reality in which those celebrities live a dream. It's one thing if a monster can wipe out a setting, it's a whole different ballgame if it has power over real life.)

[Lvl 2 Expert]

If fanfic counts, I just write a fanfic where my main character snips his fingers and deletes all the other characters mentioned here from existence, irreversibly. No, not even then.

Omnipotent Man blinks on his throne. Another battle won for omnipotent man!

[Rater202]

But when someone even just distracts the Saint Elsewhere kid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Westphall) not just do entire multiverses disappear, but actual reality as well!

(Long story short for those that don't know it: a TV series ended on an "it was all a dream"-conclusion. The TV show had had crossovers with several other shows, which logically speaking were all a dream as well. Some of those shows featured more crossovers, and some of them even had celebrities appearing as themselves, which logically makes all those shows and the reality in which those celebrities live a dream. It's one thing if a monster can wipe out a setting, it's a whole different ballgame if it has power over real life.)

The Tommyverse has 81 shows and counting.

It really makes some shows interesting to watch, like say when anb Episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, has John Munch, a character who was originally from homicide, Life on the Street(Which prominently crossover with Saint Elsewhere,) mention The X-Files when the X-Files is itself another branch of the tommyverse.

In fact, I think that the character of John Much has appeared in the X-Files...

a lot fo the tommyverse is tied together by Munch. the character has appeared, played by that actor, in a lot of shows. He even operated and voiced a puppet of himself on an episode of Sesame Street.

[ben-zayb]

If fanfic counts, I just write a fanfic where my main character snips his fingers and deletes all the other characters mentioned here from existence, irreversibly. No, not even then.
Yeah, that's exactly what I meant?

[Devonix]

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant?

Fanfic definitely counts. It's no more or less viable a fictional universe than anything else.

[endoperez]

Many Chinese fantasy novels operate on ludicrous power levels.

For example, the novel "Stellar Transformations" starts with a relatively low power level. The protagonist trains his body to become superhuman. After a few books, he teleports to a different planet to meditate, and then ascends to a higher plane of existence, becoming something like a god - except he's now a newly ascended ant in a universe of gods.

Then he has further adventures, including some weird stuff about strength training of the surface of a neutron star.

Then he ascends to a higher plane of existence. Chinese cosmology often talks about man-earth-heaven division. He started as a mortal, in a plane analogous to earth. He had ascended to a higher level already, but now he ascended to heavenly planes, where 8 immortal god-clans have ruled since the multiverse was created. A clan responsible for fire are literally in control of fire, in a five-element cycle that is literally the laws of the universe.
Then the protagonist starts looking into just outright creating their own multiverse of similar complexity.

As an analogy, Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian horrors would probably come from the mid-tier planes. He literally stumbles on a dimension-hopping space ship from a star trek -like universe, and it's at the lowest level of being that exists.

Actual fights often are portrayed as mystical fisticuff with some special effects, but let's ignore that.

The goal of many of these stories is to go against fate, become powerful enough to fight against the very laws of the universe, and become an immortal being on a higher level of power.
By the nature of this type of story, the powers operate on a bigger scale than any story that exists within a single universe and obeys its laws.

[Anteros]

Fanfic definitely counts. It's no more or less viable a fictional universe than anything else.

It definitely shouldn't. Both for reasons already stated and for the fact that it's pretty clear when people ask questions like this that they're talking about universes most people are familiar with and not some random 12 year old's Sonic fan fiction.

Maybe you could count the more main stream fan-fictions, although personally I wouldn't do that either. If something isn't original enough to shake off the fan-fiction name, it doesn't deserve to be considered an original setting.

[deuterio12]

Guys, shame on you for nobody mentioning TTGL so far.

There top villain creates news universes just to have an arena where they'll avoid destroying everything else as collateral damage and then they duck it our by using galaxies as shurikens and that's just their warm-up attacks.

But that's still small potatoes compared to the one true highest power level universe:


One.
Punch.
Man.

Saitama nukes everything else, fanfiction included with just his fist.:smallbiggrin:

[Lord Raziere]

Guys, shame on you for nobody mentioning TTGL so far.

There top villain creates news universes just to have an arena where they'll avoid destroying everything else as collateral damage and then they duck it our by using galaxies as shurikens and that's just their warm-up attacks.

But that's still small potatoes compared to the one true highest power level universe:


One.
Punch.
Man.

Saitama nukes everything else, fanfiction included with just his fist.:smallbiggrin:


Technically anyone who time travels back to when he is just a normal dude and kills him then would be stronger than him. hard to be the strongest when you retroactively don't exist.

[The Glyphstone]

Guys, shame on you for nobody mentioning TTGL so far.

There top villain creates news universes just to have an arena where they'll avoid destroying everything else as collateral damage and then they duck it our by using galaxies as shurikens and that's just their warm-up attacks.

But that's still small potatoes compared to the one true highest power level universe:


One.
Punch.
Man.

Saitama nukes everything else, fanfiction included with just his fist.:smallbiggrin:


TTGL was mentioned halfway down page 1, actually.

[deuterio12]

Technically anyone who time travels back to when he is just a normal dude and kills him then would be
stronger than him. hard to be the strongest when you retroactively don't exist.

Pretty easy since when did ever "time travel to kill that person before they ascended to power" ever worked properly? :smallamused:

Best case scenario you just create a new timeline, but the Saitama will still be out there somewhere.

That or Saitama punches the past to protect himself.


TTGL was mentioned halfway down page 1, actually.

Could you point me the specific post please? I seem unable to find said mention.

[The Glyphstone]

Seriously though pure physical feat wise gurren lagann is pretty high with the galaxy shuriken thing. But of course there are universes with basically all mighty reality benders who win by default though we usually don't see them do much really big stuff. Maybe limiting it to what they have actually done would be more interesting. But some almighty character who rewrote the whole universe or something will win that too.


Easy enough to miss.


Has Saitama successfully punched the fourth wall yet? Deadpool has managed to cut his way into the Marvel Comics studios and murder the writing staff of his comic at least once - being able to transcend your own fictional medium has to count for something on the power scale.

[deuterio12]

Easy enough to miss.

Thanks!



Has Saitama successfully punched the fourth wall yet? Deadpool has managed to cut his way into the Marvel Comics studios and murder the writing staff of his comic at least once - being able to transcend your own fictional medium has to count for something on the power scale.

Well by that standard Mônica's gang should be the clear winner, since the characters routinely speak to either the reader or even the story writer/drawer and have multiple instances of popping off the comic and into the studio for multiple reasons (not killing the staff since it's a kid story, but they did threaten/beat them up some times to change the story their way).

Also Mônica herself is super strong, often casually beats all sort of super-hero expies that happen to wander in and the odd alien invasion/giant robot. She's even shrugged off multiple time-traveling attempts at her existence, including not-terminator, including a villain traveling to the real world then to the real world's past to get rid of the franchise's author before he could create the protagonists although said author often draws himself inside the story, Mônica the character is based on his real daughter, there's even a series of stories based on Mônica visiting her own theme park, then the author had a second daughter that also got included in the story except she's an artist too so can just redraw stuff at will inside the story, it's complicated don't think too much about it), but her friends then always find a way to save the day if she can't.

But now thinking about it the strongest character in Mônica's crew may just be "O Louco" which translates to "The Crazy/Loonie" that may look like a normal human but is actually some super eldritch abomination since reality all around quite literally changes to his whims and when you run into him he'll make the impossible possible until you go grazy.

[Sinewmire]

Having read through the thread, I guess the most powerful would be Disney's CEO, as he owns most of those franchises and thus controls the existence of the beings that can reorder existence with a thought?

Or yeah, Bugs bunny.

In the ground level stuff, of the "big" universes Star Wars has the best ships (speed, firepower, shielding), 40k has the best ground forces (Space Marines, and Imperial Guard combined arms - although some of the Star Wars artillery is pretty nice) and Star Trek has the best science/engineering and recreational technology (transporters, scanners, hologram tech), in my opinion from browsing the various flamewars debates.

Obviously all of these have been rabidly contested debated for decades, and that's not going into less well known universes - the Xelee's war against dark matter/entropy etc.

[ben-zayb]

Having read through the thread, I guess the most powerful would be Disney's CEO, as he owns most of those franchises and thus controls the existence of the beings that can reorder existence with a thought?

Or yeah, Bugs bunny.

In the ground level stuff, of the "big" universes Star Wars has the best ships (speed, firepower, shielding), 40k has the best ground forces (Space Marines, and Imperial Guard combined arms - although some of the Star Wars artillery is pretty nice) and Star Trek has the best science/engineering and recreational technology (transporters, scanners, hologram tech), in my opinion from browsing the various flamewars debates.

Obviously all of these have been rabidly contested debated for decades, and that's not going into less well known universes - the Xelee's war against dark matter/entropy etc.
From what I gathered in the darkest reachest of the internet, the power tier usually goes:
Your favorite non-toon universe (aka what you think is the actual answer) << Toonforce-based universe < Meme-based universe

[Lemmy]

Pfff... Star Wars is weaksauce compared to most other sci-fi settings. Srarfleet could beat the Empire, hands down.

[Sinewmire]

Pfff... Star Wars is weaksauce compared to most other sci-fi settings. Srarfleet could beat the Empire, hands down.


Obviously all of these have been rabidly contested debated for decades

I disagree, but it'll never be conclusively proven, so let's not get into that here, eh? :smallwink:

[Lemmy]

I disagree, but it'll never be conclusively proven, so let's not get into that here, eh? :smallwink:
But we have the perfect opportunity to have a discussion that surely will stay civil and level-headed, then eventually lead to a most definitive and undisputed conclusion. :smallbiggrin:

[keybounce]

If you are going to talk about the most meta, how about the other Monika, from Doki Doki Literature Club?

[JeenLeen]

If you are going to talk about the most meta, how about the other Monika, from Doki Doki Literature Club?

While being immensely meta, her meta-powers don't carry over to REAL power as well as, say, Deadpool's might.



She is able to try to manipulate and re-write the story, she's not great at it. She admits she wasn't sure how to do what she was doing and she screwed it up a bit, hence some of the extra strange things in the playthrough without <first girl, whose name I forget... which is oddly fitting given the game's plot>. In the end, she collapses a more complex universe into a single room that she can control.

So while immensely meta, her meta-powers aren't that powerful.

In respect to the player & real world, she basically becomes a weak computer virus that begs you to carry her along in a flash drive. But her actual 'virus' actions is just not letting you replay the game.


But I'll concede if we do shift to discussing the 'most meta' powers from "most powerful powers, which could include meta powers"... then, yeah, I can see her.
I might go for a character, or two, from Undertale, though.


edit: just noting I'm rather tired, so the above might not make 100% sense. Hoping it did, but not sure.

[Knaight]

Of those listed so far I'm on board with the MIB aliens playing marbles with universes - sure, they get about ten seconds of screen time and it's mostly as a joke, but the implication of power there is fairly extreme. This is part of a larger pattern where the characters we actually see focus on generally won't be on the extreme power scale, but the side jokes in a universe potentially can be.

See also: Futurama, and the sort of utter ridiculousness that happens in the margins.


Pfff... Star Wars is weaksauce compared to most other sci-fi settings. Srarfleet could beat the Empire, hands down.
Putting aside the question of whether either of these are sci-fi - I'd contest this. Sure, there's a lot operating at a much higher power level, from other popular visual space opera like Babylon 5 to no small shortage of written works orders of magnitude more powerful (Lensmen, the Culture, etc.). There's also a great deal much lower in power though, starting with basically the entire cyberpunk subgenre, the entire near future science fiction subgenre, a pretty huge chunk of post apocalyptic fiction which fits within sci-fi (which is a substantial fraction of post apocalyptic fiction), a pretty huge chunk of dystopian fiction that fits within sci-fi, and also even a fair amount of space opera that operates at lower power scales.

Even if we remove the media that leans towards lower power in science fiction (short stories pretty much have to go entirely, novels probably should go given that they're the main home of cyberpunk) and look exclusively at the sort of highly cinematic media where fancy special effects incentivize higher power settings (movies, TV, video games) there's a great deal that comes in below Star Wars in power. Film has Alien, Blade Runner, Logan's Run, 2001, Gattaca, Brazil, etc. TV has Firefly, The Expanse, Battlestar Galactica, Black Mirror, Old Man's War currently in production, etc. I'm not even touching the output of 50's B movies, and am more than willing to cordon them off; if not that's another entire subgenre.

Videogames seem like a particularly promising option for being generally more powerful than Star Wars when they go for Sci-fi, and there are definite examples of that (HALO, Starcraft, Master of Orion), but even there you have Rimworld, Offworld Trading Company, whatever the near future Call of Duty was, and arguably even the Metroid series*.

Take animation even - where it is often cheaper to animate an explosion than a conversation. Still, we see the likes of Titan AE, Wall-E, and The Iron Giant*. In anime specifically there's Planetes, Cowboy Bebop, the "real robot" mecha genre, and a whole host of others.

Having put some small thought into this, but not having done any actual research I'd put Star Wars in the low range for space opera in particular. I suspect there's more above it than below, and that the stuff below it is generally a fair bit closer most of the time even if you take into account the effect of a scale bounded on only one end.

*I wouldn't necessarily consider these sci-fi, but then I'd contest Star Wars and Star Trek, and they're at least comparable.

[keybounce]

Ok, how about DC comics?

Raven. See what Death Battle had to say about her raven form.
Darkseid. See what he can do to anyone except batman and ...
Superman. See what he finally does once he realizes he doesn't have to hold back when fighting Darkseid.

Brainiac. Nuff said.

[Bohandas]

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan. It had ships the size of whole galaxies with arsenals powerful enough to blow each other apart. IIRC I think there was also a movie where there was a mech that took up the entirety of several parallel universes.

[Bohandas]

There was that Voyager episode where a noticeable portion of the galaxy was destroyed as collateral damage from a Q on Q war.

That was actually what I was originally gonna say before I remembered Gurren Lagann

[Aeson]

Pfff... Star Wars is weaksauce compared to most other sci-fi settings. Srarfleet could beat the Empire, hands down.
- Based on volume, the first Death Star represents an investment of industrial capacity which could've built something like 15 million Star Destroyers; even if stretched over 30 years, that's still equivalent to about 1,500 Star Destroyers built every day. Notably, both of the Death Stars in the films were secret projects, discovered or at least confirmed to exist in the late stages of their construction, which suggests that they represent a relatively small diversion of Imperial industrial capacity.
- Star Wars ships are in general orders of magnitude faster over interstellar distances than are Federation ships. Star Wars ships are somewhat regularly shown crossing large portions of the Star Wars galaxy in hours to days - Coruscant to Geonosis, Tatooine to Coruscant, Tatooine to Alderaan, and Coruscant to Kamino are all trips between a "core" world and an "outer rim" world, so minimum travel distance is somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of a galactic radius, which for the Star Wars galaxy at least used to be about 60,000 lightyears; it appears that at least military and high-end civilian vessels can make these trips in a period of time on the order of hours or a day. Federation ships meanwhile take days-to-weeks to cross regions of Federation space, when Federation space canonically spans about a thousand lightyears, and Voyager was estimated to require 70 years to cross 70,000 lightyears. The 'official' Star Trek warp factor to real speed conversion formulas, as worthless as they are given that the shows and movies mostly seem to ignore them, support the idea that the speeds of Federation ships cap out somewhere around a few thousand times faster than light.
- Assuming Alderaan and Yavin IV both have a gravitational binding energy comparable to that of Earth and that the Death Star arrives at Yavin IV 24 hours after destroying Alderaan, then the Death Star's reactor output needs to be about 2.6e15 TW (minimum, and only covering the minimum requirements of the superlaser to overcome the gravitiational binding energy of two Earth-like planets in a day; given the violence with which Alderaan exploded, probably significantly more energy than the minimum required to overcome gravitational binding energy was delivered by the superlaser, which - especially after factoring in inefficiencies - could push reactor output considerably upwards). Scaled down to the volume of a Star Destroyer, that's about 1.5e8 TW. The numbers I can find for a Galaxy-class starship's reactor power output appear to be in the 1e6-1e7 TW range.
- The Empire is demonstrably capable of constructing planetary-scale shields as of Rogue One, and was stated to be capable of doing so in the old EU well before Disney took over the franchise; local and theater shields capable of covering objects up to some hundreds of kilometers in diameter exist in the original trilogy. Federation technology is not demonstrably capable of shielding on that scale.
- Obviously difficult to determine exactly, but R2-D2 and C-3PO appear to be roughly comparable to Data. R2-D2 and C-3PO appear to be fairly representative of the capabilities of the higher end varieties of typical Star Wars autonomous robots, albeit with idiosyncrasies arising from irregular and/or improper maintenance; Data is nearly unique and apparently beyond the capability of the Federation to reproduce in the time period covered by the various Star Trek series.
- The Galactic Empire (and its predecessor) spans most or all of a galaxy which at least used to be canonically comparable in size to, if not slightly larger than, the Milky Way. The Federation canonically spans a region with a (presumably) maximum dimension of about a thousand lightyears.

I would suggest that the idea that the Federation could defeat the Galactic Empire in a conventional war is highly suspect, unless the Galactic Empire is severely handicapped. At most, it might be plausible for small numbers of Star Destroyers to be defeated by comparable numbers of Starfleet's most powerful ships. Without large-scale shielding and with ships considerably slower than Star Destroyers, the Federation has very little ability to respond to as simple a tactic as sending a Star Destroyer hopping from system to system bombarding major population centers, let alone a Death Star doing essentially the same thing on a more destructive scale. There are certainly sci-fi settings operating at higher "power levels" than Star Wars, but Star Trek is not one of them.

[angelpalm]

The strongest universe is irrelevant because Goku wins....

[Khedrac]

I would say that worth considering are "authors" from Heinlein's multiverse of 'The Number of the Beast'/'The Cat who Walks Through Walls'/'To sail Beyond the Sunset'. Whilst not particularly powerful in their own universes, they are pretty much supreme int he ones they create.

On the Star Trek v Star Wars debate I think there's an interesting side twist. Whilst I agree that the Star Wars universe has much more powerful ships and the polities are far bigger, their spaceship travel methods have some notable limitations:
The Star Wars ships are relatively slow in real space (tactical), their strategic speed comes from using hyperspace to travel between systems, and in hyperspace they cannot interact with each other (and until the latest movies cannot even track each other without a beacon to follow).
Start Trek ships are fast tactically - they can engage in combat at high multiples of the speed of light, but they don't have the strategic speed of Star Wars (unless they can get transwarp conduits working).
This strongly implies that if a Start Trek ship engages a Star Wars ship in combat the Star Wars ship has two options - hyper-jump out or lose. They have no way of hitting ships that are much faster than their weapons, they probably cannot even track them in real time (they might be able to track where they were). Against things like the Death Start the Star Trek ships may not be able to do effective damage, but it won't be able to hit them.

[Aeson]

The Star Wars ships are relatively slow in real space (tactical), their strategic speed comes from using hyperspace to travel between systems, and in hyperspace they cannot interact with each other (and until the latest movies cannot even track each other without a beacon to follow).
Start Trek ships are fast tactically - they can engage in combat at high multiples of the speed of light, but they don't have the strategic speed of Star Wars (unless they can get transwarp conduits working).
This strongly implies that if a Start Trek ship engages a Star Wars ship in combat the Star Wars ship has two options - hyper-jump out or lose. They have no way of hitting ships that are much faster than their weapons, they probably cannot even track them in real time (they might be able to track where they were).
Debatable; if you go by what's actually shown within the films and shows, it appears as though similarly-large vessels in each setting are similarly-fast and similarly-maneuverable. There's also that Executor's dive into the Death Star II demonstrates an incredibly rapid turn for an ~11-mile-long ship and that the various scenes in which ships leave planets in Star Wars almost invariably imply a very high rate of acceleration if the implied timeline of that stretch of the film is accurate - e.g. Count Dooku's yacht being beyond Geononsis's ring system before Yoda bothers to pick up his cane and Padme runs in from the platform to check on Anakin at the end of Attack of the Clones.

There's also the question of whether or not Federation weapons technology is actually powerful enough to defeat Imperial defensive technology and whether Federation defensive technology is powerful enough to resist Imperial weapons technology (or vice versa, if you prefer to ask whether Imperial technology can defeat/resist Federation technology), which I don't want to get into because it's incredibly likely to turn into a pissing contest.

Also, as regards tracking, it's implied in A New Hope that Star Wars ships can detect and potentially track ships through hyperspace, at least under the right circumstances - and not just if Vader's on them. Han spent time in the Millennium Falcon's cockpit apparently confirming that the Star Destroyers which pursued them out of orbit at Tatooine were not still following them and announces that they've "lost those Imperial slugs" at some point in the middle of the jump, implying both that pursuit into hyperspace is a reasonable possibility and that the Millennium Falcon's sensor suite is capable of detecting other ships while in hyperspace, and Luke's idea that the TIE fighter that attacked the Millennium Falcon shortly after its arrival at the Alderaan debris field followed them through hyperspace is dismissed with the statement that the fighter is short-ranged rather than with the statement that tracking ships through hyperspace without a tracking beacon is impossible. Additionally, Boba Fett tracks the Millennium Falcon from the Anoat system to Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back, though it's unclear at best if the Millennium Falcon was in hyperspace at any point during that journey.

Anyways, lightspeed weapons such as phasers and slower-than-light weapons such as photon torpedoes cannot effectively engage targets moving faster than light; Star Trek's "faster-than-light" combat only works if it occurs within a 'bubble' of warped space containing both ships, within which the ships move at slower-than-light speeds relative to one another and the space inside the 'bubble.' Also, as far as I am aware, FTL strafing attacks are an entirely-hypothetical capability of Star Trek ships, never once demonstrated within the shows or films. Assuming Star Trek tacticians are not idiots, one would presume that there is a reason why such a tactic would not work.

If you want to level the playing field on the strategic level, I'd be much more inclined to go for the quantum slipstream drive (~2.6 million times the speed of light in VOY: "Hope and Fear," which is at least in the ballpark of Star Wars FTL speeds, though without knowing exact distances or travel times I couldn't say how close; still probably within an order of magnitude or so) or the supposedly-infinitely-fast Warp 10 drive (shuttlecraft Cochrane in VOY: "Threshold") or whatever other similar self-contained high-velocity FTL drives appeared in the Star Trek shows than for transwarp conduits; they have much lower infrastructure costs than would something like the Borg transwarp network, and are not restricted to fixed routes and endpoints whereas the transwarp network presumably is so constrained.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I'm not sure how one would actually compare different universes where the big threat within the setting is wiping out the universe or "all the multiverse". Once you get there, you're kind of at the complete cap for power. Going from there to talking about meta-fiction or fiction where the character enters "the real world" isn't a different kind of thing, it's just talking about the same thing using different language.

Of course, one could always try to track all the different mentions of different universes in various bits of fiction (in the style of the St. Elsewhere Kid Dream Universe Thingy) to find out which fictional universe is the most 'on top' of all the others (the most 'real' universe). That would have the highest power level. But that doesn't seem very interesting a distinction to make and the honor seems likely to fall onto the newest piece of horrible fanfiction out there.

As much as I generally loathe this sort of topic, I should point out that the Force and Planet Kasploders in Star Wars isn't comparable at all in power level to the dark arts of Technobabble in Star Trek. Especially when you get Janeway, Paris and Seven in the same room together. Neelix may cancel them all out, but remember that he was jettisoned towards the end so he can't really handicap the Federation side.

Edit: To be specific, they can figure out how to break mathematics by finding holes in event horizons and occupying every place in the universe simultaneously. To name just two examples.

[Bohandas]

Start Trek ships are fast tactically - they can engage in combat at high multiples of the speed of light, but they don't have the strategic speed of Star Wars (unless they can get transwarp conduits working).
Transwarp conduits OR long-range high capacity teleportation/displacement waves (as per the Triskelians and the Caretaker)

[Bohandas]

Oh, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is way higher power than Wars or Trek. What with the planet construction, cheap time travel, probability manipulation, and that bomb that blows up all the stars in the universe

[Rater202]

I don't know for sure where it fits in on the Trek v Wars debate, but Star Trek had a canonical crossover with Doctor Who.

I mean, Assimilation2 was published as a comic book, but it ends with the Cybermen stealing Borg tech and the next time they appear in the show they've gotten a major upgrade that makes them basically "The Borg, but better."

[zimmerwald1915]

Oh, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is way higher power than Wars or Trek. What with the planet construction, cheap time travel, probability manipulation, and that bomb that blows up all the stars in the universe
I forget, did the Krikkit Men ever make it to radio play? Because the books aren't canon :smallamused:

Speaking of blowing up stars, though, has anyone mentioned Stargate? The heights of the power curve in that franchise, which are, admittedly, mostly exceptions to its own status quo, can get utterly ridiculous.

[Keltest]

I forget, did the Krikkit Men ever make it to radio play? Because the books aren't canon :smallamused:

Speaking of blowing up stars, though, has anyone mentioned Stargate? The heights of the power curve in that franchise, which are, admittedly, mostly exceptions to its own status quo, can get utterly ridiculous.

Since that power mostly tends to come from "the stars have aligned" scenarios, im not sure i'd be willing to count it. Its either temporary power or has some sort of "off" button, which really begs the question of whether its all that powerful in the first place, if you can just wait it out or disable it.

[keybounce]

The strongest universe is irrelevant because Goku wins....

No, Goku Loses. Sayains get more powerful when they are defeated.

This, by the way, is how Vegeta manages to keep up with Goku :-)
(Just look at how often Goku either dies, or surrenders. :-)

[Traab]

When I compare and contrast the two settings, star wars and star trek, I look at destructive capability. In star wars one of the most terrifying weapons developed and used was the sun crusher. More powerful than the death star, it didnt blow up planets, it blew up suns in such a way they went supernova and destroyed entire solar systems. The thing is, in star trek, deep space nine, an infiltrator aboard the space station was able to cobble together, in secret, a bomb capable of fitting on a shuttlecraft capable of doing the exact same thing. This didnt require years of effort, trillions of bars of latinum, or the most brilliant minds the star trek universe had to offer, this was macguyvered by an alien infiltrator pretending to be the station doctor and he was able to replicate the pieces needed without getting caught (until the end of course) Now its not entirely the same, while the sun crusher was matched in destructive power by a spy with a bomb fetish, the vessel itself was also absurdly tough and hard to destroy, but even so, most feared weapon in the galaxy versus something some dude cobbled together while hiding from security forces. And thats far from the only time blowing up a sun to destroy the enemy was a valid tactic in the series. It was either done or at least attempted a few times at least.

It honestly causes one of those whats said versus whats shown arguments. We have all these "official" texts that describe how powerful the various weapons and shields are, but then we get the visual display and have to question it.

[The Glyphstone]

While I hate to wade into this, it seems the whole ST vs. SW thing is founded on the adage of 'tactics win battle, strategy wins wars'. Between their FTL short-range maneuvering capability for science ships and their immense propensity for bafflingly off-the-wall technobabble up to and including turning personal shuttlecraft into sun-killers, any ST ship is going to run rings (literally and figuratively) around a comparable SW opponent. But it seems the principle argument from the SW side is that it doesn't matter how crazy your individual superweapons are when your inhabited planets are outnumbered a thousand* to one and your warships move a thousand* times slower over interstellar distances; in a 'Bloodlust Engaged' one-universe-left-standing fight to the bitter end, the Empire can move from star system to star system torching planets ahead of any ST effort to either stop them or enact a reciprocal scorched-earth strategy.

Trabb's counterpoint is interesting because it brings into question what is permitted to be extrapolated. The closest I can think of to seeing the SW universe on a full-war-footing is during the Yuuzhan Vong arc, and that's primarily a defensive war for most of its run. We have seen the Federation on as close to a full-war-footing as it gets with the Dominion arc of DS9. So in terms of capability for war-making shown, DS9 puts the Federation firmly in the lead - not just sunblasters, but defensive tools like the infinitely replicating minefield that could just build miles-thick shells around every critical Federation planet/system. SW extrapolates from what is shown, such as travel times, to what could be possible as a consequence of those travel times.

[Tvtyrant]

Any discussion of a war in the ST universe feels silly, as a good half of the systems are death traps. ST's galaxy is inherently hostile in a way sort of similar to 40ks, with ship eating planets, gods and sentient black holes everywhere. The slow exploration of the galaxy by small fleets is necessary, because flying through the wrong place will kill you.

I imagine a SW fleet could deal a lot of damage if it could reach anywhere, nut chances are it would hyperspeed into a hole in space time or get sent to an alternate dimension trying to move that way.

[Aeson]

The problem with taking Star Trek's plot-device-of-the-week technologies as anything particularly typical of things within the Federation's technological capabilities is that the plot-device-of-the-week technologies show up once or maybe twice in a series, and then in almost all cases have absolutely no impact whatsoever on anything else within a given series and are almost never so much as mentioned in any of the other series. As such, they may as well not exist, and when you look at the Federation's consistent 'power' level, it is far, far below that of the plot-device-of-the-week nonsense.

[Kitten Champion]

Eh. Like 75% of the time the device of the week is a part of the ship doing something especially fantastical. Deflector dishes, holodecks, phasers, shields, warp fields, tractor beams, replicators, and Transporers - dear god what Transporters can do for a lazy screen writer - they combine with the mighty power of technobabble to create or resolve any conflict you want.

The other 25% of the time is usually Data or Seven of Nine related, nanites come up a lot in later seasons of Voyager.

[Aeson]

Eh. Like 75% of the time the device of the week is a part of the ship doing something especially fantastical.
And never do that thing ever again, nor is that thing ever referenced ever again even if it might, you know, be helpful in the current situation. As I said before, the plot-device-of-the-week technology stuff that Star Trek does may as well not exist for all the effect it has in anything but its particular episode or two of the series.

[Kitten Champion]

And never do that thing ever again, nor is that thing ever referenced ever again even if it might, you know, be helpful in the current situation. As I said before, the plot-device-of-the-week technology stuff that Star Trek does may as well not exist for all the effect it has in anything but its particular episode or two of the series.

When you do it constantly it kind of becomes your thing, like Silver Age Superman pulling new powers out his butt. That in itself is part of why he's so ludicrously overpowered, more than any of the specific powers.

Star Trek protagonists resolve problems they probably shouldn't routinely using nonsense, that's a characteristic of their reality whether they reset things each episode or not.

[Bohandas]

And never do that thing ever again, nor is that thing ever referenced ever again even if it might, you know, be helpful in the current situation. As I said before, the plot-device-of-the-week technology stuff that Star Trek does may as well not exist for all the effect it has in anything but its particular episode or two of the series.

And also the converse. Sometimes real technology, including technology that existed well before Roddenberry created the series, will be mysteriously absent for plot or time reasons or because of an oversight. Like the Voyager episode where aliens steal Neelix's lungs and nobody thinks to rig up a heart-lung machine.

EDIT:
I think that particular one was probably an oversight or a time constraint thing though, otherwise it would have been brought up and then quickly dismissed with some explanation about normally clot resistant materials causing clots in his species' particular type of blood or something of that nature.

[Knaight]

When you do it constantly it kind of becomes your thing, like Silver Age Superman pulling new powers out his butt. That in itself is part of why he's so ludicrously overpowered, more than any of the specific powers.

Star Trek protagonists resolve problems they probably shouldn't routinely using nonsense, that's a characteristic of their reality whether they reset things each episode or not.

That doesn't mean that the specific implementations seen should be expected to show up though - it means that we can expect new problems to be solved with new solutions that run on totally bizarre technobabble.

Mostly this is because the technobabble is largely besides the point, which is usually that a character has overcome a character related difficulty in a tiny arc, which as an incidental thing saves the day with Science!(TM).

[Kitten Champion]

That doesn't mean that the specific implementations seen should be expected to show up though - it means that we can expect new problems to be solved with new solutions that run on totally bizarre technobabble.

Mostly this is because the technobabble is largely besides the point, which is usually that a character has overcome a character related difficulty in a tiny arc, which as an incidental thing saves the day with Science!(TM).

Oh, yeah. I don't mind Star Trek being divorced from the harder aspects of Science Fiction, the focus is usually on the main characters, their inter-dynamics, and their role as moral actors on the frontier. I don't think people would really want a Trek which tried to be too realistic in the first place.

It is, for the most part, an episodic franchise where only a set few mechanics should be expected to be consistent. Like, you can't beam through the shields, because it would undermine too many of their potential conflicts. Or, for Voyager in particularly, the limits of warp speed and the general distance between plot-relevant locations has to be at least somewhat intelligible... and why Star Trek V's "we can fly to the centre of the galaxy in hours" still feels dumb even within squirrelly Trek logic.

Most of the problem with technobabble is when --

A} It's unclear what they're doing, in which case it just comes off as the characters saying gibberish to one another - there's a special effect of some kind - and suddenly the conflict's over. You need clear dramatic stakes, usually using concise analogies or just reducing it to what's immediately relevant to the viewer for that 44 minutes of television.

And

B) They use it to fill time. Something Voyager does way too often. Need five minutes more for your screenplay? Just have the characters go through nonsensical exposition with one another.

[TeChameleon]

Mostly just throwing this out there for interest's sake- something that a lot of people (myself included, until I ran across mention of it in yet another Trek vs. Wars video that I found while wandering the Youtubes out of boredom) is that while the Star Wars Hyperdrive is blisteringly fast by just about anybody's standards, it has to follow set routes- aka the Hyperspace Lanes (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace_route).

So if the Empire found themselves in the Star Trek universe, it's at least a bit debateable as to just how fast they could get around, since they'd be in an entirely unmapped sector. So there's that.

[Bohandas]

As others have said Cthulhu is small potatoes in the Mythos. You want all powerful, you go to Azathoth. Why? Because all reality/every reality is just a dream it is having and just by waking up everything will be wiped away as it had never been. :smalleek:

I don't remember it all being Azathoth's dream being part of the Cthulhu mythos. Are you sure you're not thinking of the Red King or Mana-Yood-Sushai

[Eldan]

I don't remember it all being Azathoth's dream being part of the Cthulhu mythos. Are you sure you're not thinking of the Red King or Mana-Yood-Sushai

It's generally being taken as canon that reality is Azathoth's dream by the fanbase, but that's likely another one of those things that just came into being via Osmosis. Maybe it's Derleth, or the Call of Cthulhu RPG, or Arkham Horror, or Clark Ashton Smith... who knows.

I'm pretty sure it's not in Lovecraft, though. Lovecraft says that Azathoth rules the universe from its black center, that he is eternally hungry, that he is an idiot, that he is lulled by flutes. I don't think he is especially mentioned as being asleep, or dreaming.

[Lemmy]

You know... I made that SW vs ST comment as a throw away joke. I honestly didn't expect it to get this much attention... I should've known better. My bad.


(...) I'm pretty sure it's not in Lovecraft, though. Lovecraft says that Azathoth rules the universe from its black center, that he is eternally hungry, that he is an idiot, that he is lulled by flutes. I don't think he is especially mentioned as being asleep, or dreaming.
Weren't they all sleeping and C'thulu was the only one awake, guarding their bodies while they slept or something like that?

It's been so long since I actually read Lovecraft that I honestly don't remember...

[Khedrac]

Weren't they all sleeping and C'thulu was the only one awake, guarding their bodies while they slept or something like that?

It's been so long since I actually read Lovecraft that I honestly don't remember...
Iirc, the Great Old ones are all "asleep" and Cthul'hu is their high priest - I think he's "asleep" too.
Azathoth however isn't a 'great old one' - he's an 'elder' or 'outer god' (I don't remember the Lovecraft specifics, and it wouldn't surprise me if it varied occasionally).

Other authors have messed around with the set-up quite a lot.

[Eldan]

You know... I made that SW vs ST comment as a throw away joke. I honestly didn't expect it to get this much attention... I should've known better. My bad.


Weren't they all sleeping and C'thulu was the only one awake, guarding their bodies while they slept or something like that?

It's been so long since I actually read Lovecraft that I honestly don't remember...

That's more RPG stuff, really. As far as I remember, Cthulhu is the only one asleep.

Cthulhu was the high priest/leader of an alien race. They were wiped out when the universe changed in a way that made it unliveable for them. He used all his magic to put himself into stasis until conditions change again and his race can be resurrected.

The other various powerful beings aren't in any way related to Cthulhu, really. (Except in some writings by Derleth, where they are each other's children and spouses. Ugh.) Nyarlathotep is sometimes mentioned as the messenger, soul, guardian, etc. of various gods. The messenger of Azathoth, the guardian of the "weak gods of Earth", where it's not entirely clear what that means. That's where the specification of "Other Gods", "Elder Gods", "Outer Gods", etc. comes from: there are Gods of Earth, who were worshipped by humans and occasionally came to visit them on Earth and in the Dreamlands, but who are now weak and have retreated to the city of Kadath, where Nyarlathotep is watching over them. And then there's the much more powerful and terrifying Other Gods, who are ruled over by Azathoth.

THe important thing to remember about Lovecraft is that he doesn't go into that kind of highly detailed specifics. Later writers did that, as well as the RPGs. He mostly throws out names of things worshipped by cultists and gives a few vague details glimpsed by the protagonists. It's not even entirely clear if he ever intended all his stories to take place in one "universe" so to speak, or if he just reused names of gods and magical tomes.

[Frozen_Feet]

In Lovecraft's stories, it is hinted that Azathoth the Nuclear Chaos is essentially a metaphor for a non-entity and possibly a fundamental aspect of reality. To give a more mainstream comparison point, it's the same thing as with the Grim Reaper and death.

So saying "everything is a dream of the Idiot God" is like saying "in the end, no man outruns the Reaper". Once you understand what's really meant, you realize there's neither actual running nor a personal entity to run from. Or, in Azathoth's case, that there is no dream and certainly no God, only an universe without design that's uncaring at best and actively hostile at worst.

[keybounce]

There is always a ST vs SW debate barely under the surface.

After all, one is basically just a gigantic western, and the other is a gigantic wagon train to the stars ...

err ...

I mean, one wants to tell epic stories of yester-year in a new fasion, and the other ...

err ...

I mean, one wants to show social commentary on the modern society with a disguise of high-tech outer space, and ...

Never mind

[BeerMug Paladin]

From what I recall, most of the entities directly in Lovecraft's writings are mostly unexplained. Though I do believe I recall Azathoth being described as being some primal force of chaos but in the current era is mostly inactive and lulled by some attending angels/arbiters who sing and dance. I can't really cite a story in which that description or depiction is given, though.

There's also the issue that any of the facts given within the writings could be the crazed ramblings of a madman who's trying to give a complete account for knowledge he only has partial understanding about. Although I never really got the impression from Lovecraft's writings that the weird deductions/conclusions the narrators reached were implied to be unreliable.

Most of the later writers attempted to hammer a more consistent mythology behind all the strange entities. Which more or less seems to have stuck.

[ben-zayb]

Not o get too offtopic, but what I'm getting here is that most of what is known from Lovecraftian mythos is...not canon to Lovecraft?
:smallconfused:

[Kitten Champion]

Not o get too offtopic, but what I'm getting here is that most of what is known from Lovecraftian mythos is...not canon to Lovecraft?
:smallconfused:

A lot of what's attributed to the Lovecraft mythos was developed or fleshed out by other writers. However, it was supposed to be a collaborative body of meta-fiction that others were free to add upon or develop their own ideas within it from the onset. Thus, canon is not really an issue.

Also why Lovecraftian horror is so freely used in various contemporary works - indie games especially - because there's no specific owner to it's style, themes, concepts, and characters.

[Devonix]

Not o get too offtopic, but what I'm getting here is that most of what is known from Lovecraftian mythos is...not canon to Lovecraft?
:smallconfused:

Lovecraft wrote a bunch of stuff. But he died, It went into public domain and over the years people have added and subtracted whatever they wanted. It's like how there's no true Canon for Snow White or any other public domain character.

[Knaight]

Lovecraft wrote a bunch of stuff. But he died, It went into public domain and over the years people have added and subtracted whatever they wanted. It's like how there's no true Canon for Snow White or any other public domain character.

Not really - Snow White was folklore to begin with, in terms of how it was composed. There was never really a singular author, it grew and changed in a lot of parallel forms over a long time, so on and so forth. The same applies to a lot of other early public domain characters; we can't really pin down King Arthur, or Sun Wukong, or other syncretic and/or folkloric characters.

Other, more recent ones are much clearer. Sherlock Holmes has a core canon, because we can easily identify what Arthur Conan Doyle in particular wrote. Lovecraftian fiction has a core canon, in the form of the person it is literally named after.

[Eldan]

Not o get too offtopic, but what I'm getting here is that most of what is known from Lovecraftian mythos is...not canon to Lovecraft?
:smallconfused:

Yes.
Lovecraft had a large group of writer friends who exchanged letters. They wrote similar types of stories and would occasionally make references to each other's characters, gods, magical books, etc. as in-jokes*. That's how you find references to Lovecraft's gods as demons in Howard's Conan stories.

Then, after his death, a lot of those same authors, and a lot of new ones, felt inspired by what he wrote, and made up similar stories, often using those same gods again. Fans love to debate about what is really canon or not. Most famously, August Derleth was a big codifier of the mythos, but a lot of fans hate him, because he wrote a lot of stuff that essentially go against what HPL wrote himself. Like the idea that the various supernatural monsters all form a greek-style pantheon, with marriages, children and various feuds and explicitely dividing them in "good" and "evil" gods. But he came up with a lot of names that are familiar to those who know the RPGs and board games: Ithaqua, Cthuga. On the other hand, a lot of really popular stuff is not by Lovecraft either: Hastur, the King in Yellow, was written 20 years before Lovecraft. A lot of it is by Clark Ashton Smith: Atlach-Nacha, Tsatthogua...

Most of what is these days known as the "Lovecraft mythos" was complied by RPG writers for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, and later for the Arkham Horror boardgames.

*And each other. I distinctly remember that there was some kind of mad old wizard in one of his books who had a name something like K'lark-Ash'thon, i.e. Clark Ashton Smith.

[Wardog]

If all reality is just a dream of Azathoth, where would that put Morpheus and the other Endless?

[Eldan]

They occasionally move across realities, it seems, so, who knows.

[Devonix]

If all reality is just a dream of Azathoth, where would that put Morpheus and the other Endless?

It's why you can't really apply abstract characters to other continuities. Or compare different omnipotents. If one character created everything that is and ever was in all realities. And you have a character in another story that created everything that is and ever was. Well...