"The following is the opinion of only those involved in its writing. It is not officially endorsed by Rooster Teeth Productions or necessarily representative of the views of the Death Battle staff at large."
“What is up with the Diamond Blast? Is Steven Solar-System Level?”
It may come as a shock to some people to not see a certain recalculation of the Diamond Blast appear in the episode. Mainly because I'm the one who made it. I'm surprised no one caught on that I just used the pre-established figures from a previous calc and applied the more recent methods of luminosity to it. In truth, the feat isn't that high.
Using the sun's GBE and the Homeworld distance, you can get up to over 200 Ninatons of TNT (it says Tenatons in the episode, I had accidentally added a zero when communicating to Editors). That's Dwarf Star level. But a couple things:
The blast clearly happens between Earth and the Moon. Sure, it seems to kinda be shown to the side of the moon at first. But the actual beam of light overcasts the Earth but not the Moon. The distance could be much shorter. The main evidence we have for using two galaxy's worth of length is the statement that White Diamond hasn't left Homeworld in "eons."
Which, given when we see White Diamond she is fairly integrated within all of Homeworld, is believable. We also know that she is solely responsible for Homeworld’s busted up shape. So there is some corroborating evidence, but the statement leaves a lot up in the air.
Yellow could have meant by eons that Diamond was just there for a long while. This would still line up with the Gem Wars. White Diamond could have just as easily left Homeworld for a day or two to annihilate the Crystal Gem army, and the statement would still be true.
You can argue for either, but even using the highest yield we could get for the feat, Steven still loses with similar leniency given to Star. I had calc’d the luminosity with the midway Earth to Moon distance to be far less. With GBE methods, around City level. With the luminosity equation, you get Country level. Both are well below even some of Star's spells. Using any of them is fine, but the Diamond Blast certainly isn't Solar System level.
“Did Star need Universal scaling to win?”
Nope. A lot of her spells already reach Planet-level on their own. The lasso spell and gravity spells when scaled to Earth’s rotational energy reach 53 Zettatons (5 times more than the higher end of the Lapis calc).
Not only that, but Rhombulus had used his diamonds to stop a black hole that was being created by one of the magical creatures he trapped (Star VS. The Force of Evil, Season 2, ‘The Hard Way’, 6:33). At first we questioned if it could be considered a legitimate black hole, but the Book of Spells outright mentions the former prince of Mewni trying to measure a black hole’s ‘gravitational radius’.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/723124725513060353/780210241542291556/New_Star_Scan_5.png
When calc’d, it reaches the low Yottaton range, which is also above anything in Steven's paygrade, even accounting for the Cluster. Both are pretty well-corroborated by Star’s crystal laser being stated to be capable of destroying planets.
Steven would only win this if we ignored all the arguments for Universal Star, and used the high ends of all of Steven's calculations. To be fair, comparing base forms to each other, Steven does surpass her in every stat given that without magic, Star's physicality is fairly featless. But then again, the fact that Star's exposure to her world's magic would likely scale to her durability, and Skywynne surviving her own dimension bust (we’ll get to that), makes this point arguable.
“What would happen if Steven took Star's wand?”
Steven's "temple" bubbles prevent power from being conducted inside of them. Gems cannot reform while inside of one. This can effectively take Star's wand out of the fight. But the wand was only training wheels to the real deal. Star has learned to cast magic without the use of a wand.
Should Steven wise up and use the wand for himself, it closes the gap on AP. Toffee used the wand to defeat the High Commission without prior ability to use it. But Steven has never been in Star's world and wouldn't have the history in magic needed for it to scale to his durability. Not to mention, he wouldn’t know if he could actually use the wand until he tried it. Steven would still get one shotted and out-ranged if Star decided to go all out.
“Is the Whispering Spell effective on Steven?”
"Gem Magic", as it is referred to in the series, is not magic in the traditional fantasy sense. It cannot be equated to Star's type of magic. "Gem Magic" is the photokinesis, biology, and setup for gems to develop tools and weapons for the sake of Homeworld. It is fantastical, but it's technically still natural to Gem physiology. Sort of like how Superman’s powers are ridiculous, but not mystical in nature. Gem magic certainly isn’t an MP bar in Dungeons and Dragons.
So short answer, no.
Various objections to Skywynne’s feat
The full narration and page mentioning Skywynne’s dimension bust, for context.
“I wanted to make something explode. I have done this before on a bad day, but this time I wanted to blow up something bigger than a hill, or even a mountain! I wanted to rip the Earth in two, feel the heat from its center! I charged up my wand, and I was emotionally charged as well. Thinking of Sir Gem-robin, and also feeling a fool for even caring. I charged and charged up my wand, the glow so bright I felt like I was a star. My cheeks glowed as well! I knew I must be dipping down for the first time! What a wonderful feeling, a feeling of so much power! I powered up and up, the glow from within me burning brighter and brighter! I was floating high in the air! When I couldn’t hold on to it any longer, I let out a mighty blast… And Dimension 811 was no more.”
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/723124725513060353/780210243002564618/New_Star_Scan_6.png
“Star isn’t a descendent of the original Butterfly family bloodline, and therefore can’t be scaled to Skywynne.”
Lineage has nothing to do with someone’s actual magical potency. Star and other members of the Butterfly family gain their magical powers from being exposed to magic on a regular basis through the royal family wand until they can ‘dip down’ without the wand. Hence why we referred to the wand as ‘training wheels’ in the episode. It’s also why the Magic High Commission was able to easily replace Eclipsa’s family line with the random peasant family that Star descends from. Because ANYONE can have magic potency comparable to the Butterfly family as long as they are regularly exposed to the wand’s magic for a long enough time. Ergo, lineage is not grounds to deny Star scaling to past queens of Mewni.
“But Star lost to Meteora, who is the true heir to the Butterfly family. Doesn’t that mean the true members of the Butterfly family are more powerful?”
The fight for full context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvvdAtGcCro
We’re not sure what people define as a ‘loss’, but Star and Meteora fight pretty evenly as far as we’re concerned. Star uses up all her magic in the fight, sure, but Meteora gets blinded and seriously injured as a result before ultimately being de-aged by Eclipsa. They’re clearly at least somewhat on even grounds. This, if anything, is proof that Star scales to the past queens of Mewni despite not being related by blood.
“But Skywynne was under mental stress when she destroyed the dimension.”
We’re not sure what this changes. It has been shown multiple times in Star VS. that magic and the intensity of it responds to the user’s emotions. In Skywynne’s case, her dimension bust stemmed from her unrequited love for Sir Gem-robin. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that Star being placed into a battle to the death would eventually lead to comparable, if not more, ‘mental stress’ than an unrequited crush?
“How are you sure that Star knows the same spells as Skywynne?“
Of all the sections in the Book of Spells, we know for a fact that Star has at least read Skywynne’s chapter. Glossaryk mentions in the book that Star ‘stopped reading everything after Skywynne’s chapter’. Star claims she ‘skimmed’ the rest, but regardless of who you believe, she still read Skywynne’s chapter. I.E, the one that conveniently has the section about destroying a universe with magic. Star’s signature move, the Warnicorne Stampede, was also learned from Skywynne’s chapter. So it stands to reason that any spell Skywynne could perform, Star can as well.
“Skywynne didn’t even record the spell she used to destroy Dimension 811 though.”
Skywynne didn’t record the spell because she didn’t use a unique or specific spell. She just harnessed her emotions, let out a generic explosion, and the dimension went poof. You may know this as "Dipping Down" since that is exactly what it is. Note from the monologue:
"the glow so bright I felt like I was a star. My cheeks glowed as well! I knew I must be dipping down for the first time!"
Even being pedantic and assuming that the spell must be specific, Star has known how to dip down since Season 1. She fully mastered it by the end of Season 2. Skywynne dipped down to destroy the dimension, Star would only need to do the same to win.
We’ll also point out the section of Skywynne’s chapter that covers this feat is called ‘What to do when you explode a dimension’. Skywynne wrote this specifically as a guide for her successors with the expectation that they would accidentally destroy a dimension like she did. It would make no sense for her to be orders of magnitude stronger or more magically gifted than Star or her successors, and for her to also think they can replicate her dimension-busting feat.
“We don’t know the context behind the Skywynne blast. It could have taken several minutes, maybe hours to charge. How do we know Star can just tap into enough power to overtake Steven on a whim?”
Universal levels often get thrown around like bargain bin tiers to everyone nowadays, but Universal is a lot of power. Let’s put this in mathematical terms. It takes around 6.752e+82 Tons of TNT to extinguish one universe. Now Star is stated numerous times to be a prodigy amongst anyone who has taken the Mewni throne. Skywynne should at the very least be comparable. Let’s say, hypothetically, that she charges a linear amount of energy per second. Now we can apply that to an arbitrary “charge time” to which we can divide our above value. Okay, here we go.
10 minutes = 600 seconds = 1.1253333e+80 Tons of TNT (Multi-Galaxy)
1 hour = 3600 seconds = 1.8755556e+79 Tons of TNT (Multi-Galaxy)
1 day = 86400 seconds = 7.8148148e+77 Tons of TNT (Multi-Galaxy)
1 week = 604800 seconds = 1.1164021e+77 Tons of TNT (Multi-Galaxy)
1 year = 3.154e+7 seconds = 2.1407736e+75 Tons of TNT (Multi-Galaxy)
15 years (Star’s age) = 4.73e+8 seconds = 1.4274841e+74 Tons of TNT (Multi-Galaxy)
Mewni has been ruled by 37 queens. They are pretty 1-to-1 with humans for the most part, but let’s say every one (including Star, Eclipsa, and Moon) lived out to old age. And that the life expectancy for a Mewman is equivalent to the oldest person who ever lived on Earth: Jeanne Calment of 122 years and 164 days, but we’ll round up to 123.
123 * 37 = 4551 Years
4451 Years = 1.4352e+11 seconds = 4.7045708e+71 Tons of TNT (Multi-Galaxy)
The Universe is theorized to be 13.8 billion years old.
Age of the Universe = 4.351968e+17 seconds = 1.551482e+65 (Multi-Galaxy)
Notice how not a single figure dropped below Multi-Galaxy, not even remotely close to the highest balled KiloFOE version of the Diamond Blast. Star could be charging for the entire age of Mewni’s history - upwards to the age of the universe (and even then, way more than that), and she would be producing enough power per second to one-shot Steven. The narration also outright states that "I let out a mighty blast, and dimension 811 was no more." It was more than certainly a lot more sudden than that.
While it may seem just a couple tiers above one another on a forum site, Universe level is far above Steven’s paygrade.
“But Skywynne’s dimension-bust is an outlier”
This one has always been a bit confusing to us. Series finale aside, Star isn’t a genocidal maniac, and for as irresponsible as she can be, isn’t going to be eradicating universes on a regular basis. How many universe-busting feats can we reasonably expect from a kid’s show about a goofy magical princess?
That aside, there is actually a lot of stuff to corroborate the feat.
-Queen Moon states very clearly that the royal wand is capable of destroying their universe in the first episode. Star’s own magical power exceeds the wand’s by the end of the series.
-Toffee one-shots Omnitraxus (alongside the rest of the High Commission), who is essentially the embodiment of space and time, and a living universe himself. Star later one-shots Toffee.
-In the finale, Star, Moon, Eclipsa, and Meteora’s combined silencing spell destroys the realm of magic, and ultimately magic as a whole across the multiverse.
A universe-busting feat from a guidebook, several universe-busting statements in the show, the death of a living universe that embodies space and time, and the eradication of magic across a vast multiverse is, quite frankly, way more consistent than a series like Star VS. has any right to be. And all of it can be scaled back to Star. Sprinkled in are also several planet level mid-tier spells such as Skywynne’s gravity spell and Star’s Crystal Laser.
“Toffee defeating Omnitraxus was just a case of hax.”
Not really. Characters in Star VS. have a finite amount of magic they can generate. Using up too much can lead to exhaustion, or in the case of beings composed of magic, potentially death. We see this multiple times across the series. Reducing Omnitraxus to the state he was put into would require overpowering him with a comparable level of magic. It isn’t a hax thing like, say, transmutation, where you’re bypassing an opponent’s durability through unconventional means. Toffee just completely overtook Omnitraxus and his magic.
“But Omnitraxus didn’t die, he was just in stasis.”
This is really splitting hairs. He was still completely decommissioned by Toffee’s magic. Even if it was only 80% of Omnitraxus’ magic for whatever reason, Toffee would still scale, and taking out all the other Magic High Commission members afterwards would more than make up for it.
“There’s nothing concretely proving Omnitraxus is a universe-buster.”
We see pretty clearly that he is a living universe when Star enters the world within him. It’s hardly a stretch to say that destroying Omnitraxus equates to a universal feat since the world within him would be destroyed as well. Similar to how a character like Queen Sectonia from Kirby is considered planet-level bare minimum from her size alone. Maybe if this was the only feat to support Star being universal, it would be debatable since Omnitraxus was sized down during the fight, but... It isn’t the only feat we have. So it works well as corroborating evidence.
