u/C-tops

Please read the whole thing carefully if you can before commenting. Sorry if it takes a while, but it's the best way to get my full argument. Feel free to disagree, btw, as long as you're chill about it. Would love to hear thoughts and make responses!

Here it is!

Edit: *Link IN the body text! (I really made a typo in the title of my most important post in a long time, fml.)

I teased this well over a year ago.

I then proceeded to not make it.

I considered cancelling it, since LuzAnne was surely soon.

But LuzAnne kept not happening, leaving me no excuse.

And then, like, 10 days or something ago, the motivation finally found me.

So, yeah, it exists now. That's a crazy thing to say after all this time, especially with how tough it was to actually write. I'm extremely proud of this and can't wait to share. Discounting the Death Battle '24 and '25 review, I'm pretty sure this is the biggest essay I've written about a single topic for the fun of it, which is saying a lot.

As much as I want to drop it ASAP, I figured it was only fair to give everyone a day to prepare, build up suspense and all that. I would love to hear your questions about it, but I will not be revealing any of the actual debunk content until full release, so please don't ask for scaling opinions. Only general stuff that doesn't reveal anything I'd consider a "spoiler". Also, here's some general info about it before you ask.

• It only covers high tier scaling, namely that of Titans and Collectors, no low tier scaling at all. Also, it's not a "this is how strong I think this character is" sort of deal, because that's not the kind of thing I do. It is strictly about analyzing the logic of certain scaling arguments and building my case for the way I personally interpret the power level relationships here in very specific ways.
• Like the pic says, it's over 19,000 words! (In fact, it just barely hit 20,000 after adding credits and shoutouts.) This thing is comprehensive. In Google Docs, I used size 11 font (for the vast majority of it) and half an inch margins, and it went on for 27.5 pages before adding the pictures. It also includes tons of links to episode transcript quotes and video clips, so make sure you're prepared to be with it for a while when you get into it.
• Since it obviously exceeds Reddit's character limit, it will be posted as a DeviantArt Literature and linked in the body text of a Reddit post announcing its release, as I've done with other big essay posts. I know, DA's maybe not the best option out there, but it's the only one I already use for stuff like this, and I'm definitely not using my Tumblr. With that said, if there's something you think this would be a good fit for, like a blog site or whatever, that would be easy for me to set up, feel free to let me know, and maybe I'll put it there too. Maybe suggest other subs to potentially post it on as well.

That's about all I can think of. LuzAnne tomorrow and all that. (Collector scaling dies first, though.)

Look, as much as it saddens me, it's perfectly valid to be annoyed by how often you see and hear about a MU you don't care about. It's a sentiment I've seen in regards to LuzAnne a fair bit lately, which I guess makes sense, all things considered. But the problem is when I see people act like the MU's fans are doing something wrong when we hope for it so hard or being unreasonable when we're confused as to why it's taking so long.

Don't get me wrong, the statement in the meme about them not being beholden to arbitrary things is absolutely true, but that doesn't mean it makes no sense to ever start expecting something. As the video says, if they had decided to wait this long to do a MU that's similarly rooted in a strong, recent legacy/rivalry that was more mainstream, so many people would be on the same page. 😭 YuDen got to happen the very second it started making sense to do it. If it, instead, took over three years from now and counting to happen, people would be impatient to the point of bafflement.

There are older legacy MUs, sure. But LuzAnne is a case where, in comparison to the mainstream, the MU is relatively niche. As popular and beloved as they were and, indeed, still are, The Owl House and Amphibia don't exactly have massive cultural staying power like, say, JJK and CSM or Regular Show and Adventure Time, so continuing to wait as the period of time they occupied strongly gets further and further behind us is just strange. Yeah, they're getting graphic novels, but that's clearly not going to make them any less niche. (Plus, it's not like anybody's saying there's anything wrong with pushing hard for other legacy MUs too.)

Of course, none of this justifies outright toxic or objectively annoying behavior at all. I do not claim the bad apples. But, if you see the MU simply having a vocal, passionate, and increasingly antsy fanbase as a bad thing to some degree, genuinely blame the team, dawg. 😭 They said from the start that they wanted to strike while the iron's hot in order to avoid a Steven VS Star situation. (Steven VS Star only had to wait a little over a year.) Since then, they've repeatedly joked in Ballot Banter about how highly requested it is and how long they've taken to do it as if to tease it while reaffirming that they still want to do it in no uncertain terms. If the way they talk about it isn't supposed to make us be excited about it being likely to happen soon, what are we supposed to do? 🥹 (That being said, obviously don't get actually mad or be mean to the team. That'd be stupid.)

Anyway, just a little rant and meme in defense of LuzAnne fans broadly being excited and pushing our MU so hard, since the sentiment towards it I've seen lately was getting frustrating. My point is not that anything we do is justified. I'm just saying that, whatever we do, there's an understandable reason for it, and at least being surprised and just a bit impatient as a baseline is fine. I hope you understand!

Seriously, the fact that every chapter is its own EXE even provides a slick justification for Rouxls' inclusion, since it necessitates that the fight takes place during Chapter 3's events.

art credit

Gerson art by Meshymahem on Twitter. Death art by bears_brian on Instagram.

Sorry for taking so long on this. 😅 My original plan was to get this out before Chapter 5's release, but that was right before it was revealed to be coming out in 2 weeks. (Little did I know...) I wanted to get it done soon after the chapter's release, but I got swept up in the hype, and, by the time that settled down, motivation started getting drained by... another issue. The AC in my room is broken..., and I live in California. 😭 It's genuinely too much just to sit down in here for an extended period of time some days, so it was a while before I had the opportunity to lock in (with the help of a mist fan).

Anyway, I'm super proud of how this came out. Couldn't think of a better thing to do for my favorite character from what might be my favorite game. (It's a contender, anyway.) Y'know, it's funny (Deltarune spoilers). >!Even though we all call the Hammer of Justice "Gerson", one could argue that the two aren't actually one in the same. I mean, as a Darkner, he's only ever referred to as "Old Man", and he's a Darkner patterned after the memory of Gerson, the Lightner, and he talks about the author of Lord of the Hammer as if it wasn't him, so... distinct entity, technically? But, with that said..., he is Gerson, though. He has his memories and personality, and he signs the letter to Alvin as though it's from father to son, (and the third person talk was likely just for dramatic effect,) so it's clearly the same person, just manifested differently... and with a new name, I guess? Whatever, we're all just calling him Gerson, we know it's him, but I will continue to play it safe and include "Old Man" in titles like this. I just find this kinda funny and interesting.!<

Obligatory tier list notes before you ask anything.

• Tiers are ordered from left to right.
• since Gerson's spread is much smaller than Caine's, I was not nearly as strict with what got included this time around, so I got to be more thorough. I included any MU I could find that either has a dedicated post (with or without connections) or had been ranked on another tier list.
  • This only applies to non-joke MUs and MUs that were presented as general MUs that work as a Death Battle, not special cases like Good VS Evil or crossover scenarios.
  • If there's a MU that meets the criteria not on here, I either missed it or misidentified it. Feel free to ask where one not on the list would go, but please provide the theming and maybe some potential if you do.
• As always, I just had to vibe things out for characters I'm not familiar with, especially those with no listed connections. In fairness, I looked up clips if I felt the need to, which I think helped a lot. In any case, apologies if any of these feel off.
• Gerson VS Bumi is mad underrated, hoping to see more love for it in the future.

Would love thoughts and questions!

Didn't intend for there to be a bit of a negative slant to them again. That's just how it turned out. I kinda just go with the first somewhat substantial takes that come to mind, ngl. Also, sorry for making you squint. I just want to be detailed. Bottom left take goes into that, actually.

Clive render source

To be clear, this is NOT a top least favorite MUs list, not even close. I think that kind of post would be boring and overly negative, as most of them would just be very obviously bad with nothing to say. Rather, this is a selection of MUs that I don’t like very much to highly varying degrees of dislike, ranging from meh to hatred (indicated with a red outline), for specific reasons that I thought would be interesting to go over, as they’re all pretty distinct.

The following list is in order from least to most disliked and is only the TL,DR of the reasoning. If you want my (very detailed) explanation as to what I mean for any of these, here you go! Feel free to ask me questions about it!

Luz Noceda VS Marcy Wu (The Owl House VS Amphibia): I prefer an alt from the same series, and it was originally promoted in a shitty way.

Bowser VS King Dedede (Mario VS Kirby): I find it derivative of what was popular at the time, and it’s not balanced or interesting enough to make up for it.

Banjo & Kazooie VS Yooka & Laylee (Banjo-Kazooie VS Yooka-Laylee): It’s the prime example of what I think an inspired VS inspiration MU shouldn’t be.

Rex Splode VS A-Train (Invincible VS The Boys): Bad fight dynamic.

Spider-Man VS the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Marvel VS TMNT): I have a strong personal preference for symmetry in MUs.

Cyn VS Ultron (Murder Drones VS Marvel): Massive stomp with no way to make it interesting to me.

King K. Rool VS Blackbeard (Donkey Kong VS One Piece): Tone clash caused by heavily-differing themes in the source material makes this very far from ideal.

Rexy VS Manny (Jurassic Park VS Ice Age): Just a pretty obviously bad MU that only exists because of arbitrary paleo rivalries.

Muffin VS Nekomaru Nidai (Sir Fluff VS Danganronpa): It’s my greatest failure as a MU creator and a reminder of one of my most stressful experiences with this community.

Caine VS Alastor (The Amazing Digital Circus VS Hazbin Hotel): Painfully surface level and frustratingly only popular due to a bizarre choice to go with it over anything else for a timely DBC.

Bendy VS Cuphead (Bendy VS Cuphead): Just awful in every regard with uniquely foundational flaws that seemingly make it impossible to not do Bendy a massive disservice in more ways than one.

Andrias VS Belos (Amphibia VS The Owl House): Completely misses out on what makes the characters appealing to me and lacks an interesting contrast to make up for it, and it’s made worse by very personal reasons I have to hate it more than anything else.

This was way more than I expected it to be going in, tbh. If you read, I hope you enjoyed it and understand my thought processes better now.