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Persona General Revisions Part 1: Tiers and General Statistics

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Also, can someone answer my question for the Omnipresense justifications? Or, can someone mention me at least? I just need answers.
 
ShrekAnakin said:
Also, can someone answer my question for the Omnipresense justifications? Or, can someone mention me at least? I just need answers.
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Since we're kind of going down the thread sequentially due to well, there being a lot to talk about, we're saving that debate for later. I'll make sure to mention you and bring up your question once Sol and I get to that part of the debate, or if others here are fine just answering that on the side that's fine too.
 
Alright, I'll look through all of this and give my opinions on the current arguments when I have the time. I've unfortunately just been far, far too busy the past few days to get involved, even though I know I should be.

All I'll ask is that things are kept a bit more civil from here on out. Even just by glancing over the recent posts in the thread, I can tell that hostilities have grown greatly since I was last available to comment. There's nothing here that's worth stressing out over; I know fully well that an annoying or stressful thread on the wiki is enough to impact your day-to-day life, and it's simply not worth it.
 
I have been extremely busy the past week, and I’m admittedly a bit unwell today, so don’t expect a quick response.

However, I do have some free time today. If I’m up to it, I’ll look through and respond when I can.
 
Dargoo_Faust said:
I'm fairly sure the sea used in metaphorical sense to express "sea-like" exists as a term in Persona, as it does in the English/Japanese language. We can choose to interpret this her referencing the SoS, but we can equally just say she was calling the CU "sea-like" by referring it to a sea, since that's entirely plausible within language conventions. Which is why I'm not a big fan of these "what she's saying is super straightforward if we just make X, Y, and Z assumptions" types of arguments, since only reason we're interpreting the statements as straightforward is because we're assuming that anything that's vague regarding it is defined when it really isn't.
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Couple things wrong here. She actually isn't describing it as "sea like". She is stating that "some think of this place as a sea". This is a statement regarding other people's perceptions of the CU and the moniker they have attached to it. Which is exactly what I said. The Sea of Souls is a flowery way of describing the CU.

Once again context being key here, given that the sea of souls and CU have been used interchangeably before and literally function the same way. You keep sidestepping the function part, and have only said "that works if the SoS is a place in the CU" which I have demonstrated is not the case multiple times.
Dargoo_Faust said:
I'm not saying's it's established fact that they're separate entities nor is it something I need to establish or prove, really. I'm literally just evaluating the evidence you're giving me to claim "they're the same" and saying that the evidence does not establish the fact that they're the same and loosely implies it at best, like with most earlier-game references in Persona.
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Yes you do in this case. You aren't actually evaluating the evidence. You are simply giving alternative theories that have no backing behind them in light of the evidence we are providing. Your alternative theory has to plausible or at least somewhat based on some evidence from the games. Just throwing this out in the wind in by itself does nothing to really touch the evidence being presented.
Dargoo_Faust said:
This is sort of just a repeat of the two ocean/sea statements that I'm debating you on the above. And I seriously feel like all these deductions being made on them through these points aren't reflective of how indirectly all of this is actually stated in those passages themselves.
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You need to expound on points like this. You are just sort of disagreeing to disagree. Give me some persona context that leads you to believe this is the case. Because it seems like you are just sort of going "that doesn't make much sense to me" and then using that as the basis for your rejection of the arguments.
Dargoo_Faust said:
But this just basically means that without taking the Sea/Ocean statements as SoS = CU there's no real merit to the Personas/Demons origin place argument, though. I was sort of debating each point on its own merit, of course the SoS = the CU if we're assuming that it's the CU to begin with.
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What? Yes there is. It is literally entities giving an explanation on their origin. My explanation along with the complimentary evidence clearly points to the places being the same entity just with two different monikers. Kadath Mandala is where persona's and shadows originate from. So no your argument of "The Sea of Souls is its own place in the CU" argument doesn't work. Yet persona will still tell you they come from the sea of souls, and knowledgeable people like Igor have told us they come from the collective unconscious.

And this example with tatsuya directly proves my point using your own argument. When tatsuya says they can "meet again in this ocean" he is actually referring to the CU in general, not Kadath Mandala specifically. Kadath Mandala is a place of archetypes where humans are rarely if ever found outside of expert persona users. The Sea of souls when shown, always shows a starscape of mental energies.

Also, Maki explaining the Sea of Souls in Persona 1.

Elizabeth describing the CU in P4A.
Dargoo_Faust said:
This is kind of silly, no offense. Starscapes look similar only because you're such a massive distance from the stars that it kind of blends into a similar background we call a "starscape". This would be like saying that a section of space in the Milky Way must be the same location as a section of space in the Andromeda galaxy because they aren't distinctly different enough and have stars in the background. Deducing that two things are the same from such a simple visual analysis is pretty flawed, in premise, and I'm not sure why it's being used as an argument here.
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Except no. That's a false equivocation. You are using two subjects of an extremely similar visual nature and trying to compare that to a strawmanned version of my actual argument. Kadath Mandala sits above the who of the macro cosmos and has unique features. We even see in a cut scene that it is almost completely void outside of the traveling area to enter different parts, and the constructs made by Nyarlathotep. So yes in this case they are two utterly different locations. KAdath is much more localized and exclusive which the sea of souls is not.

Not to mention I have already explained how they differ in function from each other.


Dargoo_Faust said:
The difference here being me not making an actual case of that. I'm saying that we can equally deduce radically different cases from your vague evidence - not that my shoddily evidenced case is any more relevant here than the variety of other shoddily evidenced cases.
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Except the case isn't vague. It's objectively blatant. You keep calling it vague, admit to very little overall knowledge of the series, and have yet to actually make arguments against our case outside ironically vague criticisms that display no actual knowledge of the series.
Dargoo_Faust said:
And I'm pretty sure I addressed them. They don't directly state what the claims being made off of them say they state, there's an open admittance that there's a variety of assumptions being made about the meaning and implications of what is probably, at best, an off-handed reference to older Persona material, or at worst, using metaphorical language and extremely common words used for metaphorical language (Sea and Ocean).
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Except they do. I already addressed how the wording of Elizabeth's quote directly tell us what the CU is, and then directly tells us that people refer to it as a "sea". So a Sea of Unconscious Energy. A sea of souls. I'm not really sure how to break this down anymore tbh.
Dargoo_Faust said:
I can deduce these alternatives just as easily from this evidence, the same evidence you're posting here. If they're really as non-evidenced as you're making them out to be, I don't think that really helps the points you're trying to make here yourself.
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Yes from a blind perspective without the actual verse knowledge you can absolutely throw random alternative theories out. That's not a counter to our evidence, and it's not showing that you have knowledge of the series. It's literally just spitballing a counterpoint to be contrarian without any honest attempt at objectively analyzing the evidence or even remotely sympathize with the other person's perspective. You have to actually prove that your alternative theory is as sound and relevant to the discussion if you are going to use it as a "reasonable alternative". Which you have yet to actually do outside of simply claiming.
Dargoo_Faust said:
I don't really care about defining the SoS as being inside the CU. I'm saying that, the evidence given here doesn't actually give a direct statement of this, and there's so many operative assumptions being placed around the evidence yet also being called part of it that I feel like you're trying to squeeze context out of unimportant phrasing that just simply doesn't exist.
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I will drop this as I did just post more scans addressing this.
Dargoo_Faust said:
I'd like to consider myself and Matt knowledgeable on what qualifies for a combat-applicable Tier 2 rating on the site, and we're just not seeing it there. If the majority of staff disagrees with us here, I'll drop that point, however if I'm just being asked to evaluate the thread myself, that's my take. There's also plenty of regular users who are very familiar with our system that I'm fine with hearing opinions from.
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Yeah I mean appreciate you giving your take on it, but like I said, not really my field here so I'm just gonna fall back on that point.
Dargoo_Faust said:
Yes, but we're kind of debating that narrative context right now. It's not like it gives more credence to that context and what you're trying to argue off of it, unless we just assume what you're saying is correct to begin with, which if this was the case we wouldn't be having an argument to begin with right now.
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Well I think it's fair to assume such when I have posted multiple scans highlighting my argument and given you the actual persona background (like with my first post which was never really addressed) that you can reasonably assume there is some validity to what I am saying.
Dargoo_Faust said:
Well, I don't think this is nearly enough information to even give a "possibly" off of the scaling. There's so many factors that could influence how that went down, as you laid out yourself, that I'd be very uncomfortable saying that this means Yaldy can put a fair fight against Phil. I'll be willing to concede it's more possible, and that this can be indexed as a supporting feat, if Low 2-C palaces are accepted, mostly since if that happens it doesn't even really matter what's settled on the Umr point.
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I don't disagree with any of this.

@Dargoo_Faust
 
Ah. Well. I probably chose a bad time to start evaluating some other verses alongside this one. I might not have a very solid response until later this weekend, and I think Sol will be commenting then to so I can hit two birds with one stone.
 
I also think I'll just concede the SoS = CU argument for the sake of brevity, though. That doesn't mean I've accepted 2-A, but it means that the argument has at least progressed a bit and we can talk about more important points.

I do think you guys can do a much better job at explaining it. Keep in mind we're not writing Persona profiles for Persona fans who have played through every single game and spinoff, we're writing Persona profiles to explain why characters have specific ratings to users who don't know Persona.

If the issue is "Dargoo, you don't know enough Persona to contextualize this yourself so why are you evaluating the scans and saying it doesn't say this clearly", I think what you'll see is a slew of users who don't know Persona even more than me barraging you guys about how it isn't clearly laid out on the profile.

A cosmology blog that goes over this and provides the given scans would be very helpful, like many other verses that are as convoluted complicated as Persona. I'm pretty sure Sol probably has one in the works or just has one up, so if that exists I'll leave that discussion for those more familiar with the older games.
 
Dargoo does make a good point. It’s very difficult to tell when you’re a fan of a verse what information about the verse is obvious, or what information is difficult to parse; when you’re exposed to information constantly, it becomes normal enough that you may not realise how difficult it is for other people to understand it.

As a personal example I’m aware about, if I’m playing the online game For Honor with friends, and I tell them “Don’t feint to guardbreak on that guy, he uses crushing counters on every indicator.”; do any of you know what I’m talking about? Or is the use of weird words here just as confusing as someone looking into this verse and seeing “cognition”, “sea of souls”, “metaverse”, and “collective unconscious“ thrown around every two seconds?

Point is, if the verse and it’s justifications on profiles are difficult enough to understand that only the people who are already involved can get involved with CRTs, we’d aught to put some effort into fixing it.
 
I know we only have a couple replies left, but after reading Grath’s paragraph, and at face value how complicated Persona can be to even the knowledgeables, I wanna give an apology to Dargoo for trying to shove evidence down your throat without thinking it’d go somewhere. I was so used to the information that I assumed everyone would be after seeing the scans, and I think that’s what made a lot of things tense, not the lack of agreement, but the lack of communication.
 
Dr. Whiteee pretty much explained everything I'd have to say about the whole "CU = SoS" argument, in a fashion far more eloquent than I have any kind of patience for concerning online forums nowadays. That said, let's focus on that before continuing to the rest of the topics. We've already passed over the Low 2-C Palaces topic, and I'd prefer if we kept that from becoming a habit - or else we'd never go anywhere.

I believe what's most damning about Dargoo's stance of "SoS is only one part of the CU" are two particular scans.



This is a scan brought up numerous times by Whiteee, and it honestly could not be more clear. We've established that the CU is the same across all timelines in the verse, and we know that the CU connects the minds of all living beings that have evolved since the arrival of Nyx. Now, look back to the scan above. We know from her descriptions that she is unquestionably referring to the Collective Unconscious. As she refers to no other location between her descriptions and the words "this place", we know that "this place" is the Collective Unconscious. She then says "this place" is sometimes thought of as a sea.

Then we have the second scan:



The very first line makes the exact same reference as Elizabeth, that the unconscious is commonly seen as an ocean. This lends further credence to the idea that the "Sea of Souls" is nothing more than a more fanciful name for the "Collective Unconscious". Take note that this scan is written from a meta perspective, as opposed to being in-universe, with Edogawa being a narrator in the same way as Ikutsuki was in the Persona 3 Club Book. This makes Edogawa's words even more credible than Elizabeth, since he's speaking in lieu of the writers themselves.

"Some may think this place as a sea" is word-for-word what is stated by Elizabeth. It isn't "a sea resides here", "this place contains a great ocean", or any kind of wording that in any way implies that the "sea" is only one part of "this place". No, what is stated here is unquestionably "this place can be equated with a sea". The only way that this can be taken to mean "the sea is only a part of the CU", is if there are explicit statements made elsewhere, and from an equally credible, if not more credible source, that the CU and Sea of Souls are distinctly separate though related entities, and even then, it's shaky ground at best. As far as I'm aware has been shown on this thread, there is not a single scan containing such statements.

To be frank, at this point, the theory that "the Sea of Souls is a separate entity from the entirety of the CU" is entirely baseless. Interpreting every scan that's been brought forward so far as further evidence to this theory, despite there being no base for said theory in the first place besides "it's possible that it's the case", is blatant confirmation bias.
 
@Solacis

Like I said, it would be very beneficial to put that explanation on a blog for Persona Cosmology and link it to the relevant pages or verse page (or if you already have one, which is great) My argument has never been for "CU is separate from SoS", I'm more concerned that it's being explained to our members properly and I thought that the scans just saying sea/ocean were minimalistic as proof when you and whiteee have both admitted to there being a variety of greater contextual points that needed to be taken into account on judging those scans.

I've already dropped the point on that, though, see above, and my more pressing concern is the eval of what Umr is being Tier 2-B rather than just having a 2-B on-death effect and otherwise embodying something abstract that doesn't really give him a set tier.

From my discussion with whiteee though it's pretty subjective and I think we should ask more staff who are experienced with the tiering system to comment since we have disagreements from staff on either end here.
 
@Dargoo_Faust I must have missed that, then. Sorry.

In that case, then we can move on. From what I can remember, Whiteee is working on a cosmology page himself, though I've yet to look through it.

I can't really comment much on whether or not Umr-at-Tawil can scale to 2-B, considering I was the first to be unsure and bring it up in a questions thread a long time ago (effin sniped by Star). I will, however, be able to provide more scans to give context to Umr-at-Tawil himself.

Umr-at-Tawil being synonymous with boundaries:





Remember also that gods and demons in Persona are archetypes of human thought, that is, abstract concepts given form through human cognition via religion and similar forms of worship. For example, Erebus is equated to "the desire for death", which is why it will never die so long as people subconsciously desire to experience death. The same applies to all deities. Just as they cannot die as long as the concept they embody continues to exist, the concept they embody will cease to exist the moment said deities are killed; because they are one in the same.
 
Persona Cosmology, because it’s gonna consistent of SMT (depending what Whitee does), and that’s brought up a lot of discussion between us Persona members.
 
Starversal said:
I don't know if this swings things concretely in our favor, but Sol did get an evaluation for Umr's justification and it got ok'd.
Click to expand...

Solacis said:
I was the first to be unsure and bring it up in a questions thread a long time ago (effin sniped by Star). I will, however, be able to provide more scans to give context to Umr-at-Tawil himself.
Click to expand...

First, I don't doubt Umr embodying boundaries and that a his death would basically nuke the CU + Real Worlds. No need to prove that again, I think that was sufficiently proven.

Well, there's kind of an issue with that eval. I'm not sure if they were aware that we have a variety of profiles that have on-death effects that don't scale to the character proper, otherwise they were entirely correct in the evaluation that embodying boundries doesn't really give a tier, even embodying them on such a large scale.

For example, SCP-682 basically acts as a fundamental pillar of the Foundation universe and embodies a concept that, if truly removed/killed from the universe, would cause it to collapse entirely. However he's only Tier 8 since we know that what his death causes =/= the destruction or creation he can cause while alive.

I'll try and get more staff opinions on this.
 
I contacted our staff offsite. Just to be transparent and make sure I'm not misrepresenting anything, here's what I sent:

yBO0kIf.png
 
I know D&D uses death effects as a 2-A justification for some profiles, but that was used as supporting evidence for the tier along with some other stuff. But the justifications are honestly similar enough that I think it should be considered if nothing else.

Assuming it's not inconsistent with other stuff.
 
@Qawsedf234

Well, it seems that this is less a supporting feat here and more something that would shape/define the verse's ratings as a whole, so bear that in mind.
 
Yeah that's a bigger thing. Honestly I don't think I'm familiar with the franchise to give an opinion in good conscious. I do think it should be looked at if nothing else however.
 
I would say it is, as in a sense it would similarly be self-destruction. It’s not just “embodying” boundaries, but the countless realities that exist within in, which would literally all simultaneously just fall.
 
Milly_Rocking_Bandit said:
It’s not just “embodying” boundaries, but the countless realities that exist within in, which would literally all simultaneously just fall.
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Not necessarily. Umr isn't stated to embody either the CU or the realities it's connected to. He, from the scans shown, embodies the boundries between them. Without that boundary, the CU and multiverse still exist, however they'd merge into something unrecognizable, where no individuals exist.

In fact, looking back on that, I'm not even sure if that in of itself is 2-B, but again that's very interpretive.
 
Sorry, lemme try and phrase myself better.

He embodies boundaries, but the countless boundaries between things like the Metaverse, the Other Side, and all other realities from collapsing in on itself. Keep in mind, just merging Mementos with reality is a baseline 2-C feat (what Yaldy was doing), however Umr is the boundary between all of the worlds in reality, meaning the countless cognitive & physical worlds, Mementos, etc. That’s what makes it 2-B, all of them will fall in on itself.
 
Milly_Rocking_Bandit said:
Keep in mind, just merging Mementos with reality is a baseline 2-C feat (what Yaldy was doing), however Umr is the boundary between all of the worlds in reality, meaning the countless cognitive & physical worlds, Mementos, etc. That’s what makes it 2-B, all of them will fall in on itself.
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To be fair, we haven't conclusively decided on Low 2-C palaces just yet, and there's a difference between actively merging both realities and causing a reality merge just as a side-effect of your death. I'm genuinely not sure about that being 2-B though, as the multiverse isn't created or destroyed in the act itself, it's just that the act proverbially opens the floodgates for CU and reality to naturally become one.
 
No, not Palaces, Mementos. That has already confirmed to be a Low 2-C structure (see Yaldaboth’s profile), and it’s merging with the real world is baseline Low Multiversal. And while I would agree with you, it isn’t physically destroyed or created, it effectively merges all of Persona’s realities, as to which the non-cognitive worlds (not Palaces) are already confirmed to be flat out universes (see Kotone Shiomi & the existence of PQ/2, and Marie). That’s basically what Yaldabaoth did a literally countless scale.
 
Milly_Rocking_Bandit said:
No, not Palaces, Mementos. That has already confirmed to be a Low 2-C structure (see Yaldaboth’s profile), and it’s merging with the real world is baseline Low Multiversal.
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Ah, mb.
Milly_Rocking_Bandit said:
And while I would agree with you, it isn’t physically destroyed or created, it effectively merges all of Persona’s realities, as to which the non-cognitive worlds (not Palaces) are already confirmed to be flat out universes (see Kotone Shiomi & the existence of PQ/2, and Marie). That’s basically what Yaldabaoth did a literally countless scale.
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The difference is Yaldy doesn't accomplish this by killing himself, which I feel is extremely important here. Some of our staff members don't think that this makes a difference and it counts fine for 2-B, however, so we should wait for more staff input imo.

which should have happened earlier if most of our staff didn't avoid Tier 2 discussions like the plague
 
That’s true in a sense, however, I think it’s also worth noting Umr basically sustains all of Persona’s realities staying apart, which WOULD definitively be 2-B, along with his death, which would inadvertently be self destruction. Which is why we say Yaldabaoth scales to Umr, as he would’ve had to get past the boundary keeper of the CU to begin his merge with reality.
 
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