@Mocha: That's such a motivated application of Occam's Razor though! The point of the Razor is to "shave off" those explanations which contain assumptions that are additional to the known facts. If powerscaling is actually inclusive of characters' individual motivations as you say, then we should at least be in agreement about the following facts:

A) the Red Miles is an attack that comes from a weapon, and B) Droog and Jack both wield this same weapon;

C) Droog wanted to attack Dirk on the surface of Derse, and D) Droog's Miles damaged some of the surface of Derse;

E) Jack Noir 3 wanted to attack the armies on the Battlefield, and F) Jack 3 damaged the surface of the Battlefield and some of the neighbouring Prospit;

G) Jack 4 wanted to destroy the trolls' planets, and did so individually, and H) Jack 4 wanted to destroy the universe in front of him, and did so.

Surely it's pretty unfair to call what I'm doing a "No Limits Fallacy" when all I'm doing is accepting the limits presented to me by the above sequence of events? Meanwhile your version of this scale fundamentally relies on an assumption about said limits - that the Red Miles scale in power with additional prototyping - which is not included among these facts. I get, of course, that prototyping causes some things to scale, like underlings; but that's explicitly because they gain new abilities from the creatures they're prototyped with. I even have a page citation to back me up on this one:

"The players would learn quickly that while one pre-entry prototyping per player was absolutely necessary for ultimate success, additional pre-entry prototypings merely empowered their enemies unnecessarily." (p. 2088)

Put another way, prototyped beings gain power on a per-prototyping rather than per-orb basis. Ergo, Jack Noir's maximum power level isn't even four prototypings, but rather eight; when he gains Jaspers and the eldritch princess' powers he's gaining his third and fourth powers, and by the time he becomes "Bec Noir" he's gaining his fifth. It requires additional assumptions to suggest this also applies to the Red Miles, because it's clear to see that it doesn't take on additional traits from each prototyping (again, except when Jack chooses to do so, such as with the "Green Miles").

Could it possibly be argued my interpretation is based on an assumption of my own? Sure! But then at the bare minimum we're still both working off assumptions, and Occam's Razor makes neither one of us more or less right than the other.

In a similar spirit, I don't get how you can say powerscaling "[isn't] divorcing a character from who they are and just imagining their abilities" on one page, but then go on to say their motivations "[don't] really mean anything in the context of quantifying how strong the characters are" on the next and earnestly mean both of these things. Either powerscaling takes into account the individual circumstances of how the powers are being used, or it doesn't! And if it doesn't, I have to emphasise, that's totally fine: we just need to be honest about what is and isn't included in this thought experiment.

Of course I get what you're saying about the Genesis Frog being an entire universe and therefore inherently a ""multiversal structure"". I just maintain that any interpretation of Homestuck which ignores that the Genesis Frog can be a whole universe* and a big, harmless, vulnerable animal at the same time is an interpretation that does in fact willfully ignore the comic's key thematic concerns. And if that's the case, I'll maintain that I, personally, find it to be a particularly shallow way of engaging with the text.

And if any interpretation is "disingenious and misinterprets the text", I think the idea that Snowman's lifespan is merely linked to that of the universe and nothing more fits the description. Constantly we see her filled with stars; she warps space by expanding and contracting her body; and observe the panels at the top of pages 3839-3847 - she even contains an infinity of alternate timelines, as you point out that a Genesis Frog does! The imagery when Slick's bullet hits her couldn't be more overt in what it's implying: she is what you call "a living breathing organism [...] that contains An Entire Universe" in all the same ways a giant Frog can be. It's still evident, of course, that one requires just the right weapon - or means - to carry out a hit on such an organism. But to investigate a killing, one should try to understand two other things: motive and opportunity. And it seems counter to the information presented to us to insist that Droog, the Black Queen, or any other bearer of her ring must necessarily lack the former just because they lack the latter two!

I have to stress I'm by no means arguing that the above points are valid or "compelling" - as you say - in the context of powerscaling. You're clearly the expert here, and as a mere observer I respect that! But to reiterate, if you're going to argue that powerscaling doesn't divorce the powers from the broader context in which they exist, then I just think these are points that deserve addressing. And once again, if they can't be addressed then that's fine - I'll just continue to think of powerscaling as something that deals primarily with AU versions of characters, with many of their complicating nuances filed down. If that makes me one of the powerscaling haters you want to stay away from this thread, I will respect that 😔😔😔 but I just want to say I find this to be a very engaging topic to discuss, and it's nothing personal! I'm just having a bit of fun :)

* A lot of fictional worlds, like Homestuck, draw a distinction between alternate universes and timelines. If powerscaling considers them the same for the sake of determining which characters are on a Multiversal level, that makes perfect sense to me and I have no real arguments with it, but this bit about Genesis Frogs containing all of their alternate iterations makes me think a little deeper. Doesn't a universe, by definition, consist of at least four dimensions, one of which is time? And aren't alternate timelines just a function of the dimension of time? My point being, surely it's kind of impossible to destroy a universe without also destroying all of the timelines that make up its fabric, at least in Homestuck itself? The vsbattles articles you linked didn't really offer much in the way of navigation, so I'd be grateful if you could enlighten me on what kind of Homestuck character would be Universe-level but not quite Multiverse-level.

If you'll allow me to be a little silly with it, doesn't any character theoretically have the ability to kill a timeline by dooming it thru their decision-making? 🤔 I know that's kind of getting down in the philosophical weeds, but when you take into account the Mind aspect then the philosophy of decision-making can literally be part of a character's powers, so..........