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Add Essence Manipulation to the wiki?

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Oblivion_Of_The_Endless

Oblivion_Of_The_Endless

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So, it seems we had a former debate (?) about essence manip being allowed on the wiki or not. I think the main arguments were "There isnt enough users" and "It could just be concept manip or info manip"

For the first argument, we have powers like Fungus Manip (only 34 users), Alternate Future Display (25 users. What even is this), Zero-Dimensionality (1 user). Several people in Sailor Moon, Maou Gakuin (85% of the verse), Isekai Mahou, Kingdom Hearts, Characters from Wuxia/Xianxia, Linley Baruch, Grandfather Spider, Shoutmon, Meng Hao, etc..., has powers that qualifies for essence manip, so this argument doesnt make much sense in this context (never made it tbh).

For the second one, I'll use MG as an example. I tried to give Concept Manip or Info manip to Maou Gakuin's usage of origin, but both were rejected, leaving the manipulation of origin without a proper power to be indexed with. Given the description, the best power to index Origin Manip from Maou Gakuin would be Essence Manip, since it literally fits the description from the beginning to end.

For those wondering, this is how Origins works in Maou Gakuin:

Its beyond the mind and soul, and it makes up a being's existence;

"Magic is born in the first place from the demonic roots that lies within one's body. You would speak more commonly of the soul and psyche, but the roots lies even deeper - they are what makes us, us."
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"Do you get it now? A pain that surpasses death itself is felt when your origin is hurt. Try to condense every possible pain in this world and it wouldn’t be enough to match this pain. Its the death of your next life, and the next one and so on into eternity. All your future reincarnations and deaths are packed into this one spot."
Click to expand...

Everything in the universe has its own origin;

“2 divided souls. Due to its origin, it is destined to return to being one. Don’t you think there should be another origin?”

''“Sorry. No magic can produce the exact same person. There is only one origin for everything in this world.”''
Click to expand...

The target get erased from existence if their Origin is damaged or destroyed;
I dared to receive the spirit god sword that can destroy the origin of the demon king.

They may have come to save the demon king of tyranny but they are too late.

The light that surrounded my body burst open and as it subsides my body disappears.
Click to expand...

And this is how Essence Manip works:
Essence Manipulation is the ability to manipulate, create, and/or destroy essence. Essence is the property or set of properties that make an entity or object what it fundamentally is, and without it, ceases to exist as that entity or object. Essence is more basic and primary than the body, soul, and mind. The physical form of an entity or object is just a projection of it's essence.

If a user of Essence Manipulation, manipulate a human being's essence, The user is not just manipulating the properties that the human being has, but the properties that makes a human being, a human being. In more detail, human beings can have different hair colors, different heights, different skin colors, different shapes and sizes and still be a human being. Changing any of these properties, or all of them, will not change that fact that a person is a still a human being. Change a human being's essence, however, the human being ceases to exist as a human being and exists as something entirely different . This is where Essence Manipulation differs from other abilities like, information manipulation and matter manipulation
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Fits perfectly, doesn't it?


So even if we try to argue that it could be concept manip or info manip, there will be cases when it wont qualify for any of them (such as the example above of MG) and will only be indexable as essence manip. And as I mentioned above, MG wouldnt be the only verse to get benefits from this. So I think its worth it to use Essence Manip as an actual power. It could also be a safe measure for future verses where some feats will only be usable as essence manip rather than concept/info manip. We have nothing to lose imo.

Thoughts?
 
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I think the issue you'd run into is "essence" could be treated very differently in different verses, like concepts are for example. Is the "essence" by default fundamentally linked to reality? Or is it by default a "Platonic" essence for lack of a better term unbound from reality?

Also what would counter it? If it is linked to the reality its in then would acausality no sell it since you exist apart from the universe? Would resistance to mind, body and soul manip resist it if thats all thats been shown to be manipulated, or will Reality warping or concept manip be able to counter it? What level of such skills would you need? These kinds of questions should definitely be asked before making it a page.
 
The former

Resistance to Essence Manip (the obvious one) and Concept/Info Manip (considering how essence manip is basically those two but on a lesser level) are the ones I can think of atm.

Resistance to mind/body/soul wouldnt be enough since the essence lies deeper/beyond those, and its essentially different than them (like in Maou Gakuin)

Acausality has nothing to do with it (same way it has nothing to do with concepts and how concept manip can still affect them), but Type 5 as usual would be immune to it like it is to 99% of the haxes of this wiki

I dont see how RW would help against, unless it has some specific applications. And its a very broad power to begin with
 
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In Isekai Mahou's case, resistance to mind, body nor soul hax would counter it cause the ethereal body is defined as a blueprint for the physical body, while the astral body contains the consciousness and the soul.

An ethereal attack targets something non-corporeal thus can't be blocked physically, and since it doesn't target the mind nor soul, a resistance to that doesn't cover it.
 
I disagree with it, Logic Manip would too be even more used but we don't have it because it's Law Manip. This power is other power/s and so it's not needed, having many powers in the wiki, especially unnecessary ones, leads to confusion and inaccuracies in users and more stuff being written on profiles for no reason in the form of the other power/s this is, all being bad and needing not to happen and we already having many powers and unnecessary ones.

I'm sorry.
 
>I disagree with it, Logic Manip would too be even more used but we don't have it because it's Law Manip.
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So what is the point here? Are you trying to say Essence Manip is just concept/info manip? Because it isnt, this was already explained above

>having many powers in the wiki, especially unnecessary ones
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This CRT is trying to actually do the opposite, which is adding necessary powers for those who need it/whose powers arent really indexable atm

Keywords here: "whose powers arent really indexable atm"

So you cant use the argument of "it could just be other power that we already have it" when it doesnt fit any
 
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It's still Information Manip as the same can be done with that power. It's untrue to say otherwise. My argument comes full circle there, as you don't know what information can be used for and, should Essence Manip be added, nothing stops me from adding both things in a profile, as we can make up all the limitations we want but I can still feel like the context should allow both powers and there's proof for them that kills two birds with one shot, I just need to word it differently and voilà.
 
Like I said in the OP, there are cases where it doesnt fit as neither concept nor info manip. MG's example where both concept and info were rejected comes to mind, and yet they fit for essence manip. This is the issue Im talking about
 
I too disagree with adding it, for all that matters. The MG example looks exactly like concept manipulation. To a T, in fact, so I’m surprised it was rejected. And the explanation for Essence looks exactly like Concept or Information Manip as well- manipulating what makes up someone and their traits and whatnot certainly sounds like Concept Manip.
 
Those exemple seem near identical to conceptual manipulation to me too, yeah. And while sub powers can exist with some context (see elemental vs fire manipulation), this one is just a different name for what is already achieved by other abilities.
 
This is the problem isn't it. Essence manipulation is too similar like conceptual manipulation or information manipulation but when we try to add it to the profiles as either we get rejected. Yall can't have it both ways.
 
As I stated before, I have no idea why the Origin thing was denied as Concept Manipulation. The problem is Essence Manipulation, as defined in the OP, is literally just Concept Manipulation. ‘Manipulating the traits that make someone’ sounds exactly like what a Concept is. It’s description is exactly what Concept Manipulation does, and an Origin thing is a dead ringer for Concepts in the first place.
 
What if a character is made up of the abstract existence of only essence. Does that mean new forms of AE need to be created?
 
I made a blog about essences, souls and concepts a while ago, and in the end a "metaphysical essence" is just a generic way of referring to a soul, "mind" or any other thing with the description of being "a metaphysical source of everything that defines what X physical thing really is and is the true self of the being, while the physical body is only a shadow of it".

I think that the problem with some people wanting "essence manipulation" is due to "looking similar" to conceptual manipulation and due to the "essence" being mentioned to be different from a soul or a mind. But in this case the solution is simply a hierarchy of essences. In the blog I showed cosmologies, religions and philosophies with levels of reality and selfhood that far surpasses the common "body/mind~soul" dualism/trialism.

If necessary, we could simply update our already existing Soul Manipulation page in order to include these "souls that are to the lower souls what the lower souls are to the physical body" and would be enough in my opinion. Or if we create a "metaphysical essence manipulation" page, it needs to mention Soul/Mind manipulation as sub-sets of the power, normally used when cosmologies only use a single level of "being" outside of the physical body, while "metaphysical essence manipulation" is only for powers that goes into higher levels of being beyond simple "soul manipulation" (Just like we can simply add Time Stop to a being that stops time, and not just generic Time Manipulation).

In a way we already do a differentiation of "levels of being" when these are related to higher dimensions/higher infinities (Like when we compare a 9D soul with a 5D soul), so doing the same, but with no "tiers" related to it (Like when the levels of reality doesn't includes another as a "lower reality, transcending the infinite universe below in a hierarchy of infinite").

But in the way that is written right now "Essence Manipulation is the ability to manipulate, create, and/or destroy essence. Essence is the property or set of properties that make an entity or object what it fundamentally is, and without it, ceases to exist as that entity or object. Essence is more basic and primary than the body, soul, and mind. The physical form of an entity or object is just a projection of it's essence." this is just "soul manipulation", because souls are metaphysical essences although the text seems to imply otherwise, in reality any description of soul that really tries to find the reason for why metaphysical souls were even thought in ancient philosophy was to define a form of essence that transcends the body and is immutable. Because souls were the same as Forms, the difference that the forms were the essences for universal concepts, while souls were the essences for singular beings. In a way we could even add "Essence Manipulation" to "Conceptual Manipulation" and give the differentiation between Universals and Particulars as a range.
 
Honestly I feel essence manipulation could be defined simply by existing powers on the wiki, as said above. I mean you could make a page for it, it wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but its not needed either. You would definitely want to have a discussion involving those who worked on concept manipulation, or other categories it overlaps with to hammer out specifics on inherent uses for anybody with it, things that are case by case only, maybe specific types like concept manipulation has etc.

Overall I'm neutral on if a special page is made for it or not, but if it is it should be thoroughly discussed and organized ahead of time.
 
Should we move this thread to our staff forum?
 
I am also leaning towards that it seems like a redundant power, but am not certain.
 
Essence seams dumb since it can be misconstrued with anything that, you know, falls into the definition of essence. Which includes the soul, mind, concept and information.

On the other hand, I think information manipulation relies on the abstract "thing" being of formal nature (which makes sense obviously since information is just the representation of phenomena as data), and the manipulation of it as a result. I think this is shown through its applications on the wiki, where it is the manipulation of computer data which occasionally works as the foundation of the physical as well as the manipulation of manuscripts which work as a similar foundation. Conceptual Manipulation is pretty simple and doesn’t require much explanation since the wiki's own intuition isn’t enforced on the definition in theory, however obviously for it to be conceptual manipulation the thing being manipulated has to be equivalent to a concept (which makes it hard to distinguish between mind manipulation and concept manipulation in a lot of real life theories, I guess Jungian archetypes would be a good example here, and the wiki doesn’t do much to help distinguish them. But I guess that’s derailing for now). So fundamentally the “origins” being described shouldn’t fall under either.

While I don’t think it’s a massive issue and could be solved by redefinition (or more accurately a more explicit definition contrary to what would be expected and popular practice) of information manipulation, if a new page were to be created it seems better to call it Form Manipulation, which wouldn’t have the same issues when it comes to distinguishing between other “essences”; and while obviously the two main theories of concepts on the conceptual manipulation page are theories of form, I feel that could be solved via distinguishing that a form is basically a type 1,2 or 3 concept in practice but are strictly never proven to actually be mental objects (although you could say Aristotelian forms only fall under form manipulation and not conceptual manipulation if you look at De Animus but that’s a point for another day).
 
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This does seem like information Manipulation. It's different wording but can mean the same thing, information of a character can be their essence, characters who are stated to be the concept of space would also be similar to essence. So the regular definition of essence is the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character. Now I know op used the philosophical definition but this becomes a problem when in a verse someone is stated to have their essence erased, would we take the base definition or philosophical definition to categorize the ability? It gets rather redundant to have a vague lesser form of concept manipulation.
 
“

This does seem like information Manipulation. It's different wording but can mean the same thing, information of a character can be their essence, characters who are stated to be the concept of space would also be similar to essence. So the regular definition of essence is the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character. Now I know op used the philosophical definition but this becomes a problem when in a verse someone is stated to have their essence erased, would we take the base definition or philosophical definition to categorize the ability? It gets rather redundant to have a vague lesser form of concept manipulation.”
You did not elaborate on this, how do origins fall under the definition of information?

Also the OP didn’t use the philosophical definition (they didn’t really use any definition) what, that is not the problem when it comes to the semantics. Essence, colloquially and philosophically can mean multiple things which encapsulates exist
 
Tago238 said:
“

This does seem like information Manipulation. It's different wording but can mean the same thing, information of a character can be their essence, characters who are stated to be the concept of space would also be similar to essence. So the regular definition of essence is the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character. Now I know op used the philosophical definition but this becomes a problem when in a verse someone is stated to have their essence erased, would we take the base definition or philosophical definition to categorize the ability? It gets rather redundant to have a vague lesser form of concept manipulation.”
You did not elaborate on this, how do origins fall under the definition of information?

Also the OP didn’t use the philosophical definition (they didn’t really use any definition) what, that is not the problem when it comes to the semantics. Essence, colloquially and philosophically can mean multiple things which encapsulates exist
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A characters origins can be where they were born, who created them, etc. All of it would still fall under the information of the character and with information Manipulation a character could change something in their origin. This also sound like past manipulation honestly. Essence manip basically is a broad term for these
 
I would have no problem with this power; concepts are general notions thus not fitting for individuals, for instance the destruction/alteration of a concept would change the perception of the world, whenever the destruction/alteration of someone's essence do not affect anyone else.
 
Yeah, this power is basically something useful for cases where it doesn't meet the criteria for conceptual manipulation out of a lack of details or semantics that make it fit, so I'm fine with it being added as it helps with indexing.
 
The Origin seems like moreso a Verse Mechanic than a literal ‘origin’ of something. To me, it looks like Concept Manip honestly.
 
Daddybrawl said:
The Origin seems like moreso a Verse Mechanic than a literal ‘origin’ of something. To me, it looks like Concept Manip honestly.
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As I and Antoniofer have pointed out conceptual manipulation is a separate thing. A concept is a thought, not “the way things work” as was previously stated.
Antoniofer said:
I would have no problem with this power; concepts are general notions thus not fitting for individuals, for instance the destruction/alteration of a concept would change the perception of the world, whenever the destruction/alteration of someone's essence do not affect anyone else.
Click to expand...

Essence Manipulation leads to a category error though.
 
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