"Divine Forces Manipulation" over "Holy Manipulation"

[Lilixa]

It's just Damage Boost or durability negation that only works against evil beings. It's basically a verse specific power masquerading as a universal power currently

or existence erasure/deconstruction/sealing for evils beings

 

[Omnificence]

Well, they are not all that similar. Holy Manipulation covers the whole blessed "white light", "white magic", angelic type of stuff. Y'know, powers that are typically associated with Jesus Christ of Christianity or the Abrahamic-esque gods and heavenly beings that fiction often depicts. On the other hand, "Divine Force Manipulation" focuses on the whole of "divinity", covering transcendental celestial powers, holy powers, dark divinity, and the likes.

Even so, "divine" is just another synonym for "holy", and there's not really much of a difference between the two.

 

[Vietthai96]

Even so, "divine" is just another synonym for "holy", and there's not really much of a difference between the two.

Actually, divine is not always mean holy

 

[Omnificence]

@Vietthai96 I know, but from a religious perspective, it kinda does.

 

[Antvasima]

I think it would be better to have a power that defines the attribute of being "super effective" against x-thing. Like anti-demon/evil/unholy stuff, or anti-dragon, or anti-divine, with the power making a note to not include weaknesses (plant type pokemon are weak to fire, pokemon fire isn't stronger against any plant; werewolves are weak to silver, it isn't silver that is anti-werewolf).

Then we could just redirect holy manipulation to that.

I am personally fine with reworking the definitions in the page to something in this vein. Weaponised goodness as holy light, spiritual purification, cleanliness, and protection against evil beings all in one basically. I don't think that purification alone properly covers this.

 

[QuasiYuri]

I am personally fine with reworking the definitions in the page to something in this vein. Weaponised goodness as holy light, spiritual purification, cleanliness, and protection against evil beings all in one basically. I don't think that purification alone properly covers this.

That's not what he's proposing here tho. It's basically to redirect it under whatever page correspond to "being stronger against [x]" (which is our current Damage Boost page)

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Thank you for the information.

However, I still maintain that holy manipulation is a sufficiently distinctive ability to remain, but needs to be better explained, likely together with unholy manipulation.

 

[Bobsican]

While it's a thing pretty common among verses, especially those in which religion plays an active factor of the plot, I still wouldn't assume it's inherently getting certain powers just because it's called "holy" or comes from a deity based on a IRL one.
It's as misleading and inappropiate to use as Hellfire Manip the more I think about it, and we have the power pages to just list accordingly whatever a verse does display, in fact I think that removing this power wouldn't compromise many pages as because of this they'd have what's relevant for indexing separately around.

 

[Antvasima]

I suppose that those are valid points.

@AKM sama @Promestein @DontTalkDT

What do you think about this?

 

[AKM sama]

I'd like to wait for more input on this, but I don't think removing this umbrella term for different powers and making pages for those specific powers is such a bad idea.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Thank you for helping out.

 

[Bobsican]

Bump.
So far many (including a good amount of staff members) appear to be fine with just removing the page.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, if we are going to remove both Holy Manipulation and Unholy Manipulation, somebody needs to remove all of the links to them from our other regular wiki pages as well.

 

[Antvasima]

It seems like there are currently 1314 pages that use Holy Manipulation, and 223 that use Unholy Manipulation:

Pages that link to "Holy Manipulation" | VS Battles Wiki | Fandom

vsbattles.fandom.com

Pages that link to "Unholy Manipulation" | VS Battles Wiki | Fandom

vsbattles.fandom.com

As such, given that the two abilities do not really cause any harm by keeping, and the sheer massive workload involved is far better spent on much more crucial wiki revision projects, I personally very firmly reject this suggestion.

Improvements to the explanations and definitions in the respective pages are perfectly fine though. Does anybody here have any suggestions?

 

[Omnificence]

Yeah, I'm not really for removing Holy or Unholy Manipulation...

 

[Vietthai96]

Cast aside heavy workload. Like i said before, Holy and Unholy Manipulation still popular power across fictions. As an indexing wiki, i disagree with removing the power, intead like Ant said we improve its description

 

[Kflare63]

So if I get this right the conclusion we've reached is: remove holy/unholy manipulation in place of more specific terms? Even so there are some characters that this ability goes as far as only "holy light manipulation" then what would that be? So conclusion is: I disagree with removing holy/unholy manipulation.

 

[Bobsican]

If we're going to keep the powers just out of appeal to tradition (Which is fallacious), and it being too much to ask to do the editing for right now (we could just keep this for later as some other site-wide proyects), we'd still have to fix the issues of its vagueness without compromising pages that currently list it, as if we're going to remove it from some pages out of simply being outdated on that regard, then it seems more counterproductive ironically than downright removing it.

 

[Blackcurrant91]

Dont see how 'Holy Manip' and 'Unholy Manip' aren't the equivalent of 'Hellfire Manipulation' or other powers that mean nothing outside of the context of their verses and can 99% of the time be better explained by combinations of other abilities.

 

[Iamunanimousinthat]

I disagree with removing. Holy powers and unholy powers are extremely common abilities in fiction. This idea of replacing abilities with combinations of other abilities doesn't jive with me. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

 

[Bobsican]

The thing is that this "whole" is misleading and gives abilities entirely for free with no justification other than "this guy has a source of godly/demonic flavor!", which is as out of standard as it sounds (In fact, Hellfire Manip used to just be "Fire Manip with demonic/helly/underwordly flavor" and we gave soul manip even though that wasn't an inherent aspect out of this flavor).

Not all powers coming from a "divine" are inherently empowered by them nor are effective/resistant to the "opposite", nor are magical either. If we were to make all of its criterias into simply possible uses, then the power as a whole loses weight and is just a glorified category as an entire page.

So I strongly still think that it'd be best to remove the power, it'd give more accurate indexing overall, and while it's a big task and all, it's not an urgent thing to do right now if there's bigger priorities and all, even a good portion of the staff are currently in agreement on removing it (And unholy manip by extension).

 

[Iamunanimousinthat]

And how will removing the ability stop that? It’s more of an issue with the profiles than the ability. You can still have the same problem with the replacement combination.

 

[Bobsican]

How so? One would just index what's actually displayed and not just slap in powers just because the page says to give it to anyone that has godly/demonic relations.

 

[Iamunanimousinthat]

But you can put Holy Manipulation and then index the extent to the ability.

just as someone with fire manipulation, doesn’t necessitate that they can do things with fire that they haven’t shown capable of doing in source.

 

[Bobsican]

Again, that'd get into the power just becoming a glorified category that wouldn't even help indexing as much as one could just list the powers without it.
It's even worse than Elemental Manip as it doesn't even mean anything concrete whatsoever on its own for our purposes beyond maybe Empowerment, but at that point just link to that page instead.

 

[Gilad_Hyperstar]

I agree with this. "Holy" comes from divine sources, but is also morally "good". However, many Gods are also evil, or morally neutral, so having a power from a god doesn't necessarily say anything about morality

Some god powers (such as Dragon Ball's God Ki) can be used by any deity regardless of their morality. In some other verses, god powers may be good or evil

 

[Antvasima]

As I said earlier, it just isn't remotely worth the effort to remove these abilities from so many pages when they do not cause any actual harm to keep.

Also, as other have mentioned, these are legitimate quite common abilities within fiction. We simply need to improve on their definition/explanation texts.

I would greatly appreciate some collaboration and help in this regard as this revision is not going to be accepted in the originally suggested too extreme manner, so it is a waste of time to continue to argue about it.

 

[QuasiYuri]

I feel like the wiki policy is either really contradictory or just evolving towards less indexing and more aesthetic then.

 

[Stefano4444]

I agree with this. "Holy" comes from divine sources, but is also morally "good".

I mean it also depend, there are stories where the Holy may not be consider as a force of absolute moral good.

Sting Eucliffe's Dragon Slayer Magic from Fairy Tail its usually described as holy, but its not like Sting himself its like Jesus Christ type character.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX has also something similar if i'm remember correctly, where a holy force its treated as an morally evil.

Same can be say with Dante from DMC with his demonic power, he has Unholy Manipulation but that power isn't inherently evil by nature (at least for what i know).

If i'm going to be honest, i think we should follow Malomtek's suggestion in this case.

Add Divine Force Manipulation as synonym for Holy Manipulation, and having the revisions be done in Holy Manipulation's page.

 

[Bobsican]

While it's a tough think to ask and all, the page is indeed harmful for indexing as it encourages to grant powers for free out of simply being related to a god or related being, which needless to say, doesn't mean anything for our purposes. At that point we may as well make anyone called a god inherently tier 3.

 

[Nullflowerblush]

encourages to grant powers for free out of simply being related to a god

Are you referring to the Possible Uses or the page itself?

 

[Bobsican]

While they aren't inherently granted technically and all, it implies that anyone with a power related to a god or similar has at least one of these powers (which is a no), and the page at that point is just a glorified category page, but if Ant really wants it to be that way, then there's nothing more to add in my part even if a good amount of the staff are also supporting its removal and overall does nothing but bring inaccurate claims/interpretations on the site.

 

[Antvasima]

As I keep trying to explain, we should preferably clarify the definition text so it focuses entirely on the holy part rather than the divine origin part. That is the most constructive and practical solution in this case, rather than force 1537 edits on some already exhausted staff member when we already cannot truly keep up with our current projects and general workload where that effort would be better spent.

This suggestion simply isn't remotely important enough to justify the required work time involved, and as such I would greatly appreciate if you try to be reasonable and collaborate with me here.

 

[Antvasima]

I feel like the wiki policy is either really contradictory or just evolving towards less indexing and more aesthetic then.

No, it is mainly just about practicality. See above for more regarding that.

Fandom itself constantly does the same thing btw. They have limited manpower and have to focus on the most crucial bugs and improvements, in lack of better options. I have suggested plenty of for our wiki crucial improvements to them over the years that they agreed were good in themselves and passed on to their programmers, but were never dealt with due to prioritisation issues, and I am afraid that we need to do so as well to a degree.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, while we can postpone things, we shouldn't straight up decline them just because it simply can't be improved at the moment out of a lack of interest, we aim to be better long term and all.
In any case, "fixing" the page in the meantime would be fine in that case, yes.

 

[Antvasima]

Lack of interest was not what I cited as a reason.

Anyway, suggestions for how to properly reword the page would be appreciated.

 

[Blackcurrant91]

I don't feel like there is any way to reword the page to correspond with why we want to delete it, It's just a weird non specific catch all ability term that literally means nothing outside of the context of it's respective verse. It's basically as Bob says just a glorified category, I personally would always list purification/Light Manipulation/Energy Manipulation' then something as nonspecific as 'Holy'.

While it's an extreme example It's like how an object in Christianity might be 'Holy' in the context of Christianity but the same object might mean nothing to another group of people.

 

[Bobsican]

Lack of interest as in a lack of priority, but not that it changes much here.
But if we're going to keep it for now and all, then I don't think any changes should be done, as it'd just compromise the pages further out of a standard change that'd require a more elaborate revision than just removing them.

 

[Blackcurrant91]

I understand Ant's point about making the edits. It's a lot of work for a relatively minor change.

 

[Bobsican]

I'm sure Ant already has the consideration of removing Elemental Manip somewhere on a list of things to do on the wiki.
If this is really of poor priority right now, this proposal could just be kept for later as well.