You still run up against the impossible dilemma of the irresistible force against the immovable object (impossible because no more than one of the two can exist in the same universe). Kind of pointless.
tcol, I agree with your point of view. But, it serves as a purpose. I want to imagine my heroes take down the Cthulu Mythos, not with ease, with great struggle, but with sure success. I want to make the reader feel like they can do everything, but it has sacrifice, so it has that thematic bonus. Plus, yea I know i shouldn't divulge t this, but I can't help it. have you seen the new trailer for Injustice or IGN's Marvel vs. DC trailer. It just tempers with your creative juices.
Well, if you've taken a look at Lovecraft's material, he makes it very clear that his mythos is beyond comprehension by our minds and that merely hearing their names would drive us insane. I'm guessing that beholding their otherworldy visage would rip our heads in two. What you're describing is similar to a comic where Jesus beats up the entire Greek pantheon - which is something someone has done. It's hideous. IGN's little popularity poll is exactly the kind of hollow, statistic-pulling joke that I'm talking about. It's just a way of drawing visitors to their site by baiting loyalists who can't stand the thought of their favourite character "losing" (as if there's anything at stake). Why hold the poll in the first place? It doesn't prove anything, but it does generate traffic. Look if you want a powerful enemy, create one. Seriously, take ownership. There is absolutely no substitute - no matter how well known or commercially successful - for a genuinely well formed ultimate foe. Inserting someone else's hard work into your story only to kick the tar out of them - with or without effort and sacrifice - cheapens and shames you as a writer. It is literally no better than self-insert fanfiction.
I agree with tcol, if you want your hero to beat that kind of overpowered enemies it is much better to make them up yourself. If your readers read about a villain that resembles Galactus for example being beaten by your hero their reaction will be much different than it would if they read the actual Galactus beaten. Inserting an overpowered hero (according to you he will be stronger than anyone in said universe even at a cost) into an already jumbled up universe and placing him on top of the power pyramid will only alienate all loyalists and many from the opposition.
It's possible I'm misunderstanding the creator of this thread and, if I am, I apologize, but it seems to me that you're looking to create a universe that will give the reader a sense of awe when they encounter your characters because their power is so great it dwarfs anything else they've ever seen. I think there are two roads you can travel with the premise that your characters are god slaying, world crushing, galaxy devouring immortals who could take on any other (created) universe and come out on top. The first is one that I struggle with from time to time because it's a lot of fun to think of but not much fun to read. The "power fantasy" is something a lot of us go through in our heads when something makes us feel weak, useless, or just under appreciated. We take the world and we turn it into a place where we (Or our characters) have complete control and wouldn't ever have to worry about the things troubling us; usually we can project those characters into the exact situation that's causing this need for power and it can help to provide a temporary feeling of control and security, but I maintain that it doesn't make for a very exciting story. The second is an increasingly common (and, in my opinion, very interesting) premise that involves taking these beings of immense power and slowly humanizing them by showing the darker side of their powers and the cost of their limitations. If you take a character who can control time and space and burden him or her with a cost any normal reader may be able to understand (Her powers are harming the people who care about her and creating distance between her "real life" and the new life her powers have opened up to her, for example) you'll give your readers, and yourself, something to hold onto when they need to care about the problems this immortal god is going through. I'm sure there are many, many more ways to approach this that I can't think of, but I'm only coming up with those two right now. My only advice to you is to prioritize making a character you can feel for and love over making her stronger than anything anyone has ever written.
All 3 of you are right. I never meant to bluntly rip a character from another IP to something I want to create. I just want to give the promise it is possible to take down anything, with great cost sometimes. The point in these polls isn't the results, at least not for me, is the promise they can duke it out. God of War series was pretty successful, about a guy destroying the entire Greek Myth. Hime, power and control are 2 different things. The heroes will be shattered and will fall, but will rise again. I'm not sure if in the same style of anime someone mentioned earlier, meaning nothing new will be possible for them to do. Thank you all for commenting.
There are solutions to your questions in narratives of every religion. Every religion's god or gods are all powerful creators and destroyers of universes and they have no weaknesses. But outside of religious texts which are supported by hypnotic, trance-inducing sermons and locations, they aren't very convincing. Even then, if you read religious texts like Bible, it is all about the effect an omnipotent being has on mortals, rather than focusing on powers alone.
