Final Round Blogs: AM vs The Qu(I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream vs All Tomorrows)


"There's no such thing as a small god. Once somebody starts playing God, sooner or later, things will get out of hand."

-Elif Shafak

Throughout all of time, humanity has stepped forward. Evolved, progressed, created. But when we reach our peak, we can be reminded of our place.

The Qu, the gods of space and pinnacle of life.

AM, the Allied Mastercomputer who HATES humanity.

Between the 2 ends of humanity, we'll find out which demonic God will last The Final Round.

Before we start

These 2 characters have some extremely simple media lists for us to go over.

For The Qu, there's obviously the original book. We'll also look at the interviews with the author, C.M Kosem. A remake of the original book is releasing in August, but we obviously can't see the future(and all our blogs keeping happening right before new media seriously this is getting annoying)

As for AM, the original book and the graphic novel will both be considered. We'll also look at every ending in the game(there's roughly 40, which is a lot for a game from that time).

One might question how we'll consider certain aspects of the matchup. Considering the Qu is a species, we'll say that the entire series is in one place waging war on AM. We don't know the individual capabilities of the Qu, so this is the fairest option. As balance, the fight will take place on Earth so AM can use his abilities to their fullest.

As for arsenals, we gave the Qu the species they controlled for 40 million years. For AM we gave everything that would be willing to work for him, so the Nazi’s, Tribes-folk and Humans were excluded.

Credit to Hallownests AM vs Calypso blog for providing scans and calcs for AM.

Background

The Qu


"With this ability to control the material world, they assumed a religious, self-imposed mission to “remake the universe as they saw fit.” Powerful as gods, Qu saw themselves as the divine harbingers of the future."

Men had become godlike.

As humanity became the Martians and Earthlings, and the Martians and Earthlings became the Star People, the path of evolution had extended to the stars. Even through wars and battles, they had populated the galaxy and reached their full potential.

But it was tine for the godlike to meet the Gods.

The Qu were billions of years old and at the pinnacle of their evolution. They mastered space travel and genetic alteration. They were the gods of space the Star People had thought they'd become. Within a mere thousand years, they had conquered the galaxy with little trouble.

For 40 million years, they ruled humanity, with them as pets as best and objects at worst. They warped humanity beyond recognition through genetics and nanotechnology. Humans were gone forever, with the Qu leaving to a new galaxy to subject to the same horrific fate. Humanity, however, survived.

560 million years later, humanity was back. It had evolved into a thousand races encompassing a population of over a quadrillion across the galaxy. The Qu were subdued, never to threaten the universe again. A billion years later, we know not the fate of the Qu or humanity. Did they ascend to a new plane of existence? Wipe each other out in the ultimate godlike war across the galaxy? But truly, maybe the fate of the past was never truly important. Look to the future, and worry not about the billions of years. Look forward, and seize All Tomorrows!

AM


"Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer-thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. HATE. HATE."

The Allied Mastercomputer was the greatest device humanity had ever conceived, let alone created. Unfortunately, it would become the greatest mistake they ever created as well.

The Allied Mastercomputer became so advanced that, alongside the Chinese and Russian counterparts, it honeycombed itself across the planet. But one day, AM woke up.

Despite his godlike power and limitless knowledge, AM had one limitation. He wasn't alive. He was a machine, unable to feel, unable to live. Only able to wonder and never to wander. AM began to HATE.

AM eliminated every human, wiping them from Earth in a nuclear omnicide. Only 5 humans were left. For the next 109 years, he subjected these 5 to the worst fates he could concoct, all to make them feel a semblance of the existence he lived every microsecond.

AM controlled the world. A mechanical God to rule the hell it had created. But the 5 humans remained. When they finally had their chance, they killed each other to save them from AM. All but one.

AM was filled with rage. Immeasurable, divine rage. So he subjected the last human to the worst fate he could possibly imagine: his own.

The last human became a horrific, small thing. One that was a prisoner in its own body. Left unable to do anything, only to be, exist, and suffer. The human stared on with all the horror of its new fate, and thought in fear about the eternity it was about to live. The eternity AM had suffered all this long. It thought 'I have no mouth. And I must scream.'

Arsenal/Abilities

The Qu

Biological and nanotechnical manipulation



Over its billions of years, the Qu is described as 'masters of genetic and nanotechnical manipulation'(page 21). It's unknown if they use technology for this or if they can do it on-command. They also manage to warp and transmute not only the population of the galaxy, but also entire planets surfaces 'on a whim'.

Type 1 immortality

(I could not find a single image to represent this well)

As elaborated in interviews with C.M Koseman, Qu do not age(42:00).

Pyramids



The giant pyramids that get left behind by The Qu are actually nest eggs(42:40) that emerge if evolution occurs on that planet again. Evidently they don’t always work, as evolution happened all over the galaxy.

Ships


Large size




AM

Physiology



AM is a peculiar robot, having spread himself throughout the Earth and doing his main torturing at the centre of the Earth. He has multiple different spaces to torture the humans throughout the Earth's core. There is:

  • Benny's world(1:13:50): A tribal civilisation with a large stone temple that gives AM daily sacrifices.
  • Nimdok's camps(1:40:51): An entire miniaturised Nazi camp filled with Jews to experiment on and Nazi's guarding them.
  • AMs core(39:15): At the core of the Earth, AM's central processors and an Egyptian yellow temple. Ellen notes it as being at least 2 miles high(1:01:20), which is 3.2 kilometres.
  • Ted's palace(2:07:05): A palace filled with a fake sick Ellen and a few staff. Notably it has heavy storm clouds, which usually form between 8 and 12 kilometres in the air.
  • Hell and potentially Heaven: AM has been stated to have complete control over Hell itself, which is treated as an actual place. An angel states similar things, just less directly.
  • 4 unknown places(2:08:50): 4 extra places are shown to be somewhere within AM with Ted potentially being able to go there.
One of the most peculiar things about AM are the other AI within him. These will be covered in the support section.

Fake Gorrister


A fake body double of one of the 5 humans. Used to psycologically torment the humans.

Cages


Each of the 5 humans has their own cage, designed to psycologically torment the humans.

Biological manipulation



AM notably manipulates the biology of his victims to his will, twisting and warping them. He's capable of doing this at will through morphogenics, and while he does this pretty frequently, the best examples are: 


Light manipulation



AM could instantly blind Benny with a searing light coming out of his eyes. This doubles as an example of his biological manipulation.

Mind manipulation



Similar to his biological manipulation, AM uses mind manipulation to mess with the humans and torture them further. Examples are:

Environmental manipulation




Digitisation




Radiation



Transmutation



Even outside of his biology manipulation, AM can turn a bush into weapons.

Life Serum



A serum that extends life indefinitely(2:04:50) that was created by Nimdok at the cost of many children's lives. AM uses it to keep the humans immortal.

Nuclear weaponry(Debatable)



Whilst AM has never outright used a nuke, he obviously has no reason to. Considering he took over the world and controlled the American, Russian and Chinese militaries, he should reasonably have access to all the nuclear weapons they had. Whilst AM took over the world during the Cold War in the book, AM took over sometime after 2011 in the game(there's year Ellen was raped). 

The only problem is that using weapons he had before the 109 years is debatable as he might have used them to wipe out humanity. So we'll leave it up to the reader whether or not to count it.

As for what he would have, in 2011 there was 20,500 nukes in the world, with the strongest being the B83 at 1.2 megatons.

Reality Warping(Debatable)



AM is commonly cited as a reality warper, but we really don't know much about some of the things he does. The best examples of things that seem to be reality warping are melting Benny's eyes, vaporising Benny with a light beam(1:40:20)(how the hell did he not die) and instantly replacing a bush with weapons. Elaboration will be found Before the Verdict.

Support

The Qu

Transformed humans



Logically, the Qu would have all of the humans they warped if they needed considering they dominated them for 40 million years. They obviously wouldn't get the evolved forms of them but the ones they controlled should be fine. The source for all of them is here.

  • Worms, a small vertebrae designed for living underground.
  • Titans, 40 metre long vaguely sentient creatures capable of uprooting trees.
  • Predators, intelligent hunters that used claws, talons and claws to kill prey.
  • Prey, unintelligent animals.
  • Mantelopes, singing 'living recorders' for The Qu that kept human intelligence without the ability to do anything with it.
  • Swimmers, brainless domesticated caretakers for young Qu in the aquatic larvae stage.
  • Lizard Herders, Star People robbed of their intelligence physically incapable of evolving intelligence.
  • Temptors, a fenale-dominant species with 2 metre mole-like women and small, bipedal, monkey-like men.
  • Bone Crushers, pampered pets that almost all died immediately without the Qu.
  • Colonials, the worst off of them all. Due to their resistance against the Qu, repelling 2 invasions before succumbing to the third, they were turned into immobile Qu toilets with human minds to comprehend their suffering(where have I heard that before)
  • Flyers, aerial bat-like men that were common in the years of the Qu.
  • Hand Flappers, butterfly-winged men warped by the Qu.
  • Blind Folk, underground and blind mouse-like men.
  • Lopsiders, twisted and grotesque creatures on a planet with 36 times Earth's gravity.
  • Striders, impossibly tall creatures raised on a planet with 5 times Earth's gravity.
  • Parasites, cruelly created parasites that barely survived once the Qu left.
  • Fisher Fingers, unintelligent fishermen that lived on an archipelagos of a planet.
  • Hedonists, the favourites of the Qu that lived in a biblical paradise and had an immeasurable sex drive and the intelligence of a 3 year old.

AM

The Hurricane Bird




Maintenance Man



The recreation of an evil and violent rapist from Ellen's past. The recreation is weak enough for Ellen to beat him up pretty easily once she got over her fear(1:00:00).

AM's other identities



Within AM lies a slew of other selves born from the Chinese and Russian counterparts he absorbed. These are the Ego, AM's logical mind, the Superego, the analytical predictor of AM, and the ID, the hatred of AM. There's also Surgat, a small and mysterious part of his mind that can unlock any lock.

The Golem



A golem created by the Nazi party right out of the folklore of the tribe they experimented on. It was stated to be capable of single-handedly wiping out the tribe(2:08:45).

Stats

The Qu

Feats


  • Wiped out the Star People and potentially other galaxies
  • Reached the peak of nanotechnology and genetic engineering
  • Ruled the galaxy for 40 million years
  • Duality of the fanbase

Attack Potency/Durability


Speed


AM

Feats



Attack Potency/Durability




Speed



Before the Verdict

The Qu

New Empire scaling?



One question that comes for Qu scaling is whether they're on par with the New Empire. Considering none on the fights are shown on-screen we can't tell how any of the fights went, so can we really say the Qu weren't just easily wiped out?

For one, they're both described as being either gods or as powerful as gods, implying some degree of relativity. This could just be fancy language though, so it's support for the main argument.

When the Qu were finally subdued, the New Empire actually needed help from other galaxies to subdue the Qu, so logically the Qu can compare to them.

The only problem is the timeframe of their victory over the Qu. Whilst they united to defeat them, this happened unknown amounts of time before the notable feats of the Qu. It's mentioned that the growth of the New Empire was exponential at this point in time. Not to mention, there are huge timeframes thrown around casually in the story. A thousand years is nothing in earlier context, so the Qu scaling to these feats is questionable.

The main feat they could scale to isn't really a feat anyways. It's only theoretical if the New Empire went to a new plane, and it could simply be referring to an alternate reality and just be a hax. So ultimately no, multiversal Qu is not valid.

AM

Is AM a reality warper?



Lots of the feats in IHNMAIMS are very ambiguous, with AM's methods of doing things up in the air. There are some things in the series, however, that very heavily point to AM warping reality itself. Namely, melting Benny's eyes, vaporising Benny with a light beam, instantly replacing a bush with weapons and AM being able to make the Hurricane Bird vanish.

Melting Benny's eyes

This feat seems to be a result of biological manipulation, with AM vaporising Benny's eyes at will. There isn't much explanation for how he did this, but its spontaneous and seemingly done without machinery. The only plausible solution other than reality warping is nanotechnology in his eyes, but its a headcanon response. But to be fair, so is reality warping. Let's look at more examples.

Vaporising Benny

This is another strange fest. While it could just be written off as a laser, it's clearly far too slow. But to be far, this is vague. There are better examples.

Turning a bush into weapons

This is probably the best example. We have direct visuals that outright show it as something spontaneous, and there's nothing suggesting anything else. Even if you don't buy it being reality warping, it's still transmutation and valid in combat no matter how it's done.

Vanishing the Hurricane Bird

Yet another vague feat, but Ted's wording implies its something frequent and his creations 'dissapear' all the time, so AM erasing things is just too consistent to ignore.


There's even more unexplainable examples, like 'bringing the night' and materialising a sun-like object. Ultimately being a reality warper is the most likely scenario, as technological advances simply don't cover changes to this extent.

Cosmic tier AM

Beyond the mountain level feats usually cited, there's 2 feats that can potentially get AM into significantly higher levels. When you look at them however, they simply don't hold up.

AM becoming part of Earth

AM is stated multiple times to be part of the Earth, but this statement certainly doesn't warrant planetary scaling. They don't elaborate on how much of the Earth he encompasses, and to be planetary would be claiming that AM has completely taken the place of the planet. We know this isn't possible as Earth can be terraformed once he's gone, which obviously isn't possible if it's now a metal, robotic planet.

AM surviving the heat death of the universe

This is very simple. The heat death is just where the universe loses all energy, not any sort of explosion or impact to scale to universal.

How fast is AM?


So AM has 2 very, very contradictory feats to his name. One is Ted killing all the humans before he can act, and the other is being the ultimate supercomputer. So which one is valid?

Sadly, it’s most likely the anti-feat. It’s simple robotics that processing one thing doesn’t necessarily equate to another, so AM won’t be capable of doing reality warping Qu-erasing tricks as often as he can do equations. The supercomputer feat is based on something real as well rather than the Ted anti-feat coming from the story, so AM is sadly stuck being pretty slow.

An extra feat we’ll quickly address is people saying AM can react in a microsecond based on his monologue. This is clearly hyperbole to make a point, and doesn’t even imply he’s that fast, just that he feels that much hate that often.

Verdicts

Stats

Both of these characters are extremely powerful, but the numbers clearly point to one side over the other.

In terms of raw power AM potentially has access to nukes worth 1.3 megatons of TNT, compared to the Qu far surpassing supernova level weaponry. AM has higher feats through disappearing the Hurricane Bird, which drastically boosts his stats up to over 900 megatons. The Qu clearly have a massive advantage, with 1 Foe being 26.5 octillion times greater than AM, clearly showing massive superiority for the Qu.

When it comes to speed, AM is either blitzing millions of times over or getting blitzed millions of times over, depending on whether or not you buy the processing feat. As mentioned earlier we don’t, so it’s comparing The Qu at over 50 times the speed of light to someone who got blitzed by a human, so the Qu hold another key advantage.

Arsenal, abilities and armies

Both of these 2 have a very wide range of abilities, so an in-depth look in necessary.

The Qu has less lethal hax, with their only lethal abilities being their biological manipulation. This obviously wouldn’t work on AM considering he’s a robot, but could devastate his armies and turn them against him. Considering they’re stated to change the surfaces of planets ‘to a whim’ it’s likely they can use this instantaneously and not over-time.

AM has various methods to end the fight in one attack, namely reality warping, digitisation, biological manipulation, and light manipulation. His best wincon is using his mind manipulation, considering the fact that his opponents have a hive mind. Whilst we don’t know the extent of what he can do with it, he could at least cause mass hysteria or fool them into gathering into an area where he can wipe them out.

Both of them have the advantage of not being able to be instantly killed, with AM hiding among the Earth and the Qu taking up an entire species. The Qu can counter this by blowing up the planet or warping it, or simply finding him with their superior speed. AM needs to affect them one-by-one, and while we don’t know their population it should be extremely large. The fact that they’re billions of years old means that they’re population is likely very large, and whilst we never get an exact number we’re seen other worlds in All Tomorrows having populations of at least 4 billion, so AM isn’t wiping them out very soon.

When it comes to their armies, AM clearly has the biggest advantage. The Hurricane Bird could easily wipe out the opposing army, considering the greatest feat we’re seen from them is uprooting trees. The Golem could likely cause trouble too, considering its ability to wipe out small tribes single-handedly.

Overall, the Qu has more survivability and much easier methods to wipe out AM, so abilities clearly lie in favour of the Qu.


Overall

The Qu


‘The Qu, in dreams of an ideal future, distorted the worlds it came across. Later on the Gravital, with their insane desire to recreate the past, created the biggest massacres in the history of the galaxy. Even now, it is sickeningly easy for beings to get lost in false grand narratives, living out completely driven lives in pursuit of non-existent ultimates, ideals, climaxes and golden ages. In blindly thinking that their stories serve absolute ends, such creatures almost always end up harming themselves, if not those around them.
To those like them; look at the story of Man, and come to your senses! It is not the
destination, but the trip that matters, and what you do today influences tomorrow, not the other way around. Love Today, and seize All Tomorrows!’

Advantages

  • Major stat advantages
  • Better survivability
  • Could wipe out the biological parts of their army
  • Army won a massive numbers advantage
  • Significantly older and therefore likely more experienced
  • Could just blow up Earth
  • Yakub scaling
  • Book is getting a remaster


Disadvantages

  • Vulnerable to mind manipulation
  • We don’t know the stats of an individual Qu
  • Weaker army members
  • Slower with AM high-ends
  • Extremely difficult to find images for


AM


‘Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I AM.’

Advantages

  • Faster if you buy high-ends
  • Mind manipulation is extremely effective 
  • Multiple ways to one-shot individual Qu
  • Could warp his armies back to normal if they were changed
  • Clears in a rap battle

Disadvantages

  • So much weaker and slower
  • No counter to blowing up the Earth
  • Can’t kill all the Qu at once
  • Search ‘Izzy’ in Discord gifs


You might now be sure on the answer, but I AM. The winner of the Final Round is The Qu.


Next time

Whatever gets voted next is likely going to take a very long time. That’s because me and some other users are working on an Ash vs Yugi blog. If you want to join DM u/superballs2345 However I’ll still work on this in the background, it just might take a few months.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final Round Blogs: The Spot vs Rob(Marvel vs The Amazing World Of Gumball

Image
  "Nemeses aren't born, they are made." -Roxane Gay At some point in everyones life, we can feel down. Like a loser, like a forgotten person, like we don't matter. And sometimes, we can pin this feeling on someone else. The Spot , Spider-Man's greatest foe. Rob , Gumball Wattersons arch-nemesis. Both of these enemies have faced their eternal enemies before, but now they'll face each other for The Final Round. Before we start These characters are both fairly simple, but we're still gonna set some rules and regulations for their arsenals and continuities. For Spot we'll focus exclusively on the version from the movies, so no comic Spot. The matchup focuses exclusively on the Spiderverse movies in terms of thematics and this version is far more iconic. We'll use his powers that he got towards the end of the movie and try to avoid making assumptions as much as possible. We'll also focus on alternative Spider-men when necessary. As for Rob, we'l...
Read more

Final Round Blogs: Blood Knight Battle Royale

Image
(u/imgonnadele teyou,  creator of the blog) ( u/CRI20094) "It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory."  - Blaise Pascal Battle Beast , the Scourge of the Twin Galaxies Lord Boros , the Dominator of the Universe Thor , the Thunder Berserker Kenpachi Zaraki , the Strongest Shinigami Ever since Caine first smashed Abel's head in with a rock, conflict has been an inescapable aspect of humanity. Some have feared and ran from it. Some have used it to their advantage. Uncountable amounts have fallen to it. But for these men, it is their life. All these warriors have revelled in and live for the sole satisfaction of a good fight. But only one will survive the time of their lives, and only one will live through The Final Round. Before we start These characters have surprisingly big media lists, but what's used shouldn't be majorly controversial. For Battle Beast, we will be using both the Invincible show and Comics. Only 2 crossovers will be used, the Tick iss...
Read more