User blog:Mand21/On Illusions and The Illusion Trinity

Introduction
This is probably going to be a relatively short blog inspired by the current Illusion Manipulation page and by what I learned from Illusion Manipulation through roleplayers who love to make characters which specialize on this power and explore it to insane depths. I often see people use examples of "powerful illusionism" like Aizen's which is just "my illusions cannot be escaped pretty much because they can't", but I'd say Katekyo Hitman Reborn is perhaps one of the anime that best explores the power. Well, if anything, it can just stay relevant to my verse.

I'm also writing this partially because I'm bored, so expect no greatness.

The Nature of Illusions
Many people seem to look at illusions like "the power to control the senses" and it's probably a reason why stuff like Naruto's Tsukuyonomi and Kotoamatsukami, as well as Katekyo's Spiritual Possession are seen like secondary powers/increments rather than an application of a power whose nature is already defined and encompasses all that. Of course, if you can only control the senses, what could you ever do about someone's perception of time? Beliefs? Memories? Thoughts, emotions and impulses?

I'd say that advanced illusions (Type 2 illusions) could be less defined by "it's hard to get out of them" (this seems more like a special power of that illusionist than something really natural to illusions, although making reality-like illusions is indeed an advanced illusionism) and more by how they're a power deeply merged with Perception Manipulation. It can even get to the point of Information Manipulation, actually, as what the illusionist starts doing by this point is basically manipulate information that is perceived and alter it. This is why they can affect your perception of time, your beliefs, create false memories and even possess you completely: advanced illusionism is the understanding that illusionism is the power to create and manipulate false information. With that, you can even affect machines, and they're so rigid and objective on their inner workings that they're actually way easier to fool than human beings.

There are also many areas within illusionism: you can of course have your way by toying with a person's reaction to a false environment, but you can also project false informations in the environment, such as holograms. This would be a way afterimages and holograms can be understood as a form of very low-level, indirect illusionism. Same with most real life optical illusions and such.

This kind of illusionism allows for a greater degree of immersion: you can create layers of illusions, make reality be perceived as an illusion and "broken" so that the target screws themselves insanely and choke on their dumb decision and you can control vital functions of their brains and, by this point, what you get is a sort of mind manipulation that uses the senses as doors for entry, not as its only focus (although it is a big focus). Spiritual Possession becomes possible not because you, uh, sent their soul to them or something, but because you've put them inside a Perfect Illusion and sent your entire mind to them as information. It even becomes clear now why only a top tier illusionist would be able to do such a thing.

The Illusion Trinity
Once you get that illusions manipulate information, you get to three main "top tier" forms of illusionism which are extremely powerful and difficult to counter. These are illusions so well built that, once established, they can no longer be broken, i.e Perfect Illusions, as well as illusions that fool reality itself, i.e Real Illusions and illusions that fool and change ideas, i.e Abstract Illusions. That's the "illusion trinity", I think most people have heard about at least the first two, and they're all illusion types that raise the levels of versatility and hax of the power to a degree where an illusionist with all three could become the strongest character on their tier or something. After all, that's "Conceptual Manipulation, Reality Warping via Information Manipulation, and Mind Manipulation". Gets even more god-tier when you add powerful techniques stemming from there.

For some short but more detailed descriptions on how these top tier and commonly seen techniques work:

Perfect Illusions  — There are two main ways in which this can be done: perfection by statement and perfection by attempted proof. The first is the easiest kind, like Aizen's perfect illusions which are pretty much merely stated to be perfect and inescapable without their special condition of "touch my sword ;)". No power whatsoever can escape them just because it can't, so it becomes a sort of subjective inescapability (statement isn't proof). The second, however, is way trickier to write: you need to describe the illusionary technique in a way that tries to prove the idea of escaping this illusion as absurd and nonsensical.

A friend of mine used matter manipulation in conjunction with normal illusions (yes, he used information manipulation from illusions to manipulate matter by fooling it into receiving false pressures and such) to create this, his "Paradoxal Night" is an illusion which affects both the mind and environment, making so a real object can become false in their perception and be a mere illusion even though it actually exists. Even if the mental part of the illusion is broken, the entire environment is filled to the brim with illusions that will serve as a trigger to immediately reinitiate the mental section. Illusions projected in the environment cannot be broken by one's mind, so it's pretty much inescapable. The psychological part also makes it inescapable because the illusion tries to make the victim believe it's inescapable and so it indeed becomes inescapable to their mind, blinding them to any possibilities of escaping it because they so believed. From that point on, their minds are entirely his and he can even devour them.

Real Illusions  — Again, there are two main ways in which this can be done and one of them is closer to a sort of matter manipulation or energy projection than the full blown Reality Warping that are the truly real illusions. The first kind is basically manifesting a construct that came from the illusion, or small portions of the illusion, into reality. You're not really making it real, the end result is not a result of control but creation and Kamijou Touma would be able to destroy it with his Imagine Breaker. It's just a physical illusion, often lacking any chemical properties because it's a shape with texture and the ability to stimulate senses and act like it has mass, but isn't truly matter as it pretends it is. Much like a green lantern, but able to project stuff in any color and texture.

The second type is, well, making illusions reality: if illusionists are architects, then real illusionists are builders and they can build whatever the hell they want. This is a really hyperversatile form of reality warping, limited only by imagination and power. With this, you could really have a Tier 1-A who uses only illusions.

Abstract Illusions  — Basically, illusions on an extremely high level, being used to fool metaphysics and change conceptuality in some way. You may see them as an extension of Real Illusions, but what they affect isn't exactly "reality", although at its full power you could have indeed conceptual manipulation into reality warping just by warping the way ideas form reality, apply themselves to stuff and interact with one another.

No such thing as Immunity to Illusions
Although somewhat NLF, the idea of immunity to other powers than illusionism at least makes sense. You don't need to be able to be burned in order to live: albeit you need some combustion reactions inside your body, if your surface or something just can't be burned by no means whatsoever, that won't make you die, it won't be prejudicial. We're natural Faraday cages and have some inherent resistance to electricity from our skins, but we don't die because of that. However, you need your senses to receive information, or else you can't perceive. Without perception, there is no reaction and no decision making if you have no information with which to make decisions. And that inherently means you can receive false information and can be fooled.

The idea of "only being able to receive true information" barely really makes sense, although it's the closest thing to a really NLF immunity to illusions: illusions, by their nature, pretend to be real so that they can fool you, so an illusionist could in theory lolnope such an immunity without even noticing it exists just because "I can only see the truth" is a meaningless statement to those who can define what you should be seeing as "true" to begin with.

One can have, however, many different defenses to illusions. They can have a fortified mind that isn't easily invaded, but that can be bypassed. They can have a genius intellect that automatically detects illusions, but that can be fooled. They can have a sense that allows them to see through illusions, but that can be fooled. One friend of a friend even made a character who had a body wherein all cells were as intelligent as human children (the totality of it was like an Extraordinary Genius of sorts) who weren't acting like a colony but like a society where each individual cooperated for their own survival and have a different sense and way of perceiving their surroundings and the external world. Even then, when an illusion specialized on group control was used against him, he was just screwed as he had no other defenses. You can even strongly resist illusions by having Precognition as your only sense and only acting by foreseeing the future events and placements of things, not the present, so one who can't see the future would really struggle to fool you, but they technically could.

The only way I've found for one to be "immune to illusions" is utter omniscience: you do not need to perceive anything, you perceive nothing, you know all ways of dealing with illusions. Even then, just check the Illusion Trinity and imagine it being combined together by a Supergenius or Nigh-omniscient (or even another Omniscient) who highly specializes in illusions and they would have a shot at fooling such omniscient.

How Illusionism Typically Works
There are three main ways in which illusion mental powers (When the illusionism works like an induced and controlled hallucination, not really sending light to a person's eyes but controlling their senses through the mind) are used in fiction, depending on how it needs to be activated.

The first type of illusionism is what I'd call "Direct Illusionism", when the illusionist just freaking flat-out starts throwing illusions around and directly manipulating somebody's senses with no intermediary work, just goes around putting people inside illusions like breathing.

The second type of illusionism is what I'd call "real trigger illusionism", which is when real stimuli come before the illusion. For example, Aizen needs you to look at his sword, Itachi needs you to look into his eyes or a hand gesture.

The third type of illusionism is what I'd call "fake trigger illusionism", which is when the trigger to an illusion is itself a part of the illusion, but a much more subtle and minimalistic influence on the senses. An illusionist of this kind could fire a bullet without making absolutely any sound and the silence would be a trigger to your hearing.

These last two may have a limitation that comes with a bonus: the trigger may only capture the sense that perceives it, such as if Aizen could only control your vision and no other sense when all you're doing is stare into his sword, and the silent gunshot illusion could only control your hearing. However, this kind of more limited illusion makes even more sense with the mechanics of Immersion, wherein an advanced illusionist will use several tricks to make an illusion deeper, more layered and harder to escape overall.

One type of immersion is the one I mentioned before, where the illusionist makes the victim take reality for an illusion and the illusion as reality, thus handing their intuition and feelings over to the illusionist so that they cannot easily escape based on the feeling that something is off anymore. Another type of immersion is what is called a Chain Reaction, which is when beliefs or expectations are used to capture more senses. For example, once the illusionist has your hearing and your hearing only, they can create false footsteps behind you. You turn around to see what's there and your expectation of seeing something... gives the illusionist control of your vision from now on, and they can immediately manifest a person behind you. Synestesia and a cr*pton of other tricks can be used in the area of immersion. Only through immersion is it possible to affect one's subconscious mind and parts of the mind which are not used to perceive the external world.

How Illusionism is Usually Fought
Often enough, the power of illusionism can be fended off by literally anyone who's smart enough. This isn't a guarantee, but especially trigger-based illusions can be avoided by avoiding the trigger or "breaking" it in some way (recognizing it as one, associating it with something else than the illusionist, etc).

The illusions themselves can often be broken, but the way in which they must be broken commonly depends on the illusionist's powers: there are illusions which are destroyed or tremendously weakened the moment you know you're inside one, such as many from Katekyo Hitman Reborn, but Naruto's Genjutsu still require Genjutsu Kai to be broken. In these cases, knowing you're inside an illusion is a huge first step, but doesn't bail you out immediately.

In the latter situation, there are often two ways left in which you can get out of an illusion. You may either be smart enough and find a way to take back control of your senses (through questioning the illusion's aspects, through physical pain that blurs your mind and clears it of any thought or anything else than the pain, through forcefully blinking or covering and uncovering your ears, through determination to find the truth or reject that reality...) or you may need to use a supernatural power to remove the illusionist's influence over your mind.

However, it must be noted that while breaking a trigger doesn't have a lot of different iterations, escaping an illusion has. Often enough, how to escape an illusion is something that depends on the illusionist, both the nature of their illusion powers or even their individual illusion (technique). The only example I can think of for an illusion that changes the way you need to escape it on a really notable fashion is Smile Chess, the illusion used by a friend of mine. It toys with your mind so that you're always winning on that illusion, and when you question it, you start to always lose. Because typical methods to break or reject an illusion result on the illusion simply morphing into something else, one can end up drowning under layers of the same illusion out of their own fault without managing to escape it. Even supernatural powers meant to break illusions often fail against Smile Chess and cause it to morph instead.

On My Friend's Verse
It's not something I made, but my friend (the author of The Paradoxal Night and Smile Chess as techniques) kinda let me use his system to some extent and we discuss possible additions to his illusionist power system (yeah, it's so versatile it became kind of a power system rather than a superpower), so I... guess I at least have the freedom to explain it? Well, basically, it's based on Jung's ideas on libido and other psychoanalysts's ideas on how the psyche has an energy of its own and it's comparable to physical energy, an energy that moves your thoughts and actions. The power system is the ability to emit "Psyche Energy" and an illusionist's psyche energy is capable of superimposing other people's psyche energies. It can be projected on the environment and create "Field Illusions" (holograms and such, information that's manifested on the scenario rather than a person's mind), or it can be transfered to someone and their senses and create illusory triggers of the third type (fake triggers). The triggers only allow control over the affected sense, but there's a lot of depth on the immersion phase and many, many possibilities.

There are two notable examples of techniques which can be used with this kind (advanced fake trigger based immersive illusions) of illusionism. "Khaos" is a technique where the illusionist projects their psyche energy on the light of the environment and contaminates/illudes it, creating a darkness on which the illusionist can project anything they want and capture other senses of those fooled through immersion and/or guiding the consequences of hallucinations from fear, a type of "crowd control" illusion subsystem. Meanwhile, "The Beast" is a self-illusion where every single body cell is fooled and controlled, giving a level of body control to the illusionist and allowing them to evolve their bodies and perform superhuman feats for as long as it is active. Of course, overuse of illusions can use up one's psyche energy, and while tiring a little will just make one kinda high and dizzy for a few hours or days, using up a lot of it can result on amnesia and brain damage, and using it up completely means emptying one's mind of all experiences, desires, impulses, thoughts and feelings and becoming an empty shell.

Another kind of illusion that can be used with systems akin to this is a friend's self-illusion where the user believes himself to be perfect and removes all brain limitations, being able to do their best to sustain this delusion and use the perfect force for punching someone so they'll be knocked out, making all movements with perfect motor coordination, etc.

Analysis
Illusionism is a pretty underestimated and underexplored power. Like, sure, if all you can do is create some false clones to show up behind someone when they're not looking and stuff like that, then illusions are a low tier power. If all you're doing is control someone's senses to toy with them, it's a mid-tier power because you're likely not gonna win a lot of fights if that's all you've got and it becomes a sort of a supporting ability that may even characterize someone, but likely be only a trump once it's lying on a good supporting structure of other powers. However, a sufficiently advanced illusionist can fight and kill with illusions only, and an illusionist with parts of the trinity or even the entire trinity can give Ultra Instinct Shaggy a run for his money.

So, on the types of illusionism...

If I were to classify illusions, I wouldn't use real illusions as a type, just a powerful application some illusionists are capable of, and I'd really put the types of illusionists as...

Type I — Basic Illusionist: These illusionists do not really have an illusion-oriented, versatile superpower for that, but rather can create low level illusions such as holograms, afterimages, false sounds and other similar mechanisms as an application of what they have, a weapon or even a weak power just for that.

Examples: Killua Zoldyck, Anna Abramovna Bystrova

Type II — Simple Illusionist: These illusionists can manipulate any of a person's five senses, usually through triggers which can be broken by anyone, and the illusions don't go beyond the five senses or have anything that would inherently stop someone with no superpowers from fighting them through intellect or tricks such as using a sense which isn't under the illusionist's control.

Examples: Fodder illusionists in KHR, weak genjutsu users from Naruto.

Type III — Intermediate Illusionist: These illusionists can go meaningfully beyond the "five senses" mold, such as having techniques that cannot be broken by conventional means and control multiple or all the senses, having techniques that control one or a few other forms of perception such as beliefs and one's perception of time.

Examples: Itachi Uchiha, Shisui Uchiha, Aizen.

Type IV — Advanced Illusionist: These illusionists can freely go beyond the "five senses" mold, constantly playing with complicated illusions or using deep tricks or one of the elements of the Illusion Triforce. (Doesn't count if it's used in a simplistic manner rather than to augment the mindgame or skillset of the illusionist.)

Examples: Daemon Spade, Rokudo Mukuro, my friend's character.

Type V — Master Illusionist: These illusionists can freely use complex tricks with illusions to fight with that power alone if they so desire, typically possess at least (typically more) one form of illusion of the versatility of a piece of the trinity, can easily bypass most if not nearly all forms of illusion resistance and often possesses an extremely high level of intelligence.

Examples: I think Daemon Spade is this by the end of KHR.

Type VI — Illusion God: An Illusionist with at least two parts of the trinity, extremely versatile and haxxed, who is at least Genius in intelligence and uses the power to its fullest in such a way that they can compete with characters with nigh-omnipotent levels of versatility.

Examples: My friend has one character who'd get to this point by the end of his story.

Conclusion
I don't know, man, I don't know how useful this entire blog post is, but it has around 3600 words in it and I hope it was at least a good read for you. Thanks for reading what took out my boredom for this evening. If you wanna contribute to this and think it can help the wiki in some way, suggest examples or something.