This will be my attempt to categorize the hypothetical layers of reality that become relevant in vs debating when discussing whether two characters can at all interact with each other. This is how I view things as default though a verse can obviously always use it's own definitions and have it's own ordering.
The fundamental assumption is that some entities or objects are more or less "fundamental" to reality, the most common demonstration being the conceptual entity, representing an abstract form of existence that represents a fundamental law or pattern of reality.
You can have hypothetically any number of planes of reality in a series, describing the same underlying structure the same way you can divide a rainbow into any number of colors and still refer to same wavelengths ranging from too long to too short to be perceived by the human eye.
Each plane of reality is seen as the force which informs and which transcend the realities below.
At the hypothetical bottom, there are hypothetical realities less fundamental then physical reality. These don't show up very often either in fiction or in real life mystic practices since they would seem to be irrelevant to physical beings like humans though it's perfectly logical coherent. At the bottom we have Transient Shadowy Realities that our human reality inform. The classic cave description of concepts by Plato uses Shadows as a metaphor for how conceptual reality informs physical reality so applying the same metaphor, we can say such lower realities would be like our shadows, essentially non-existence compared to humans, incapable of affecting us, and completely informed by the conditions of physical reality.
Above this is the physical reality, consisting of energy, matter, space and time, the relations between forming what we know as the fundamental forces. You can hypothetically have multiple physical planes of reality, most commonly the Etheric plane which is where the mystics claim the aura resides and will linger on Earth after the soul has departed the physical reality. This was supposedly traditionally the domain of the supernatural fey folk. An example from fiction would be the "Unseen World" from Lord of the Rings. I have also seen one theory suggesting that there infinite physical realities, where higher physical realities are more likely quantum probabilities. This can be combined with the concept of the multiverse to say that the highest physical realities are those things that exist in all possible universes, whether this is for instance the fundamental forces or other all encompassing physical forces, where at the bottom are incredibly unlikely brief occurrences. This was used in an attempt to reconcile the notion that things exist in different probabilities with the notion that there are infinite universes.
Transcending the physical is by definition the Soul, which is defined as the non-physical part of a person. As such everything from this point may be considered part of the Soul but general Soul Manipulation can not be assumed to be higher due to the relatively general definition of soul. The religious hypothesis is that the soul has a separate existence from the body and persists after death. The Soul's plane of being after leaving the physical plane is traditionally called the Astral Plane, and according to one account is divided into 7 planes, though this is not corroborated.
So as we go up, we must ask what informs physical motion? What part of the person causes the physical body to move? It seems the answer is Will. Will is what we call the non-physical force that moves the body.
What moves the Will? Well the passions and desires, or in other words emotions. Emotions cause the individual to will something. Here we see perhaps the start of the mental plane as well as when one talks of mind manipulation, this can involve the manipulation of the emotions or the thoughts of the individual. As such Emotion Manipulation may be seen as the border of the Astral and Mental Plane.
A quick sidenote: It seems that the Astral Part of the Emotion Manipulation may be where Dream Manipulation is to be seen as Dream Manipulation is nigh universally seen by the mystics as part of the Astral Plane though intuitively it seems like it should exist as part of the Mental Plane or Higher.
What moves the Emotions? It seems the answer is Thoughts, so above emotions would be thoughts, and as such thought manipulation or conventional mind manipulation would definitely be here as it is said that "that which belongs to consciousness working as thought".
Above this is the "Buddhic Plane" though more neutrally towards religions it is described as a realm of pure consciousness. This is consistent as consciousness seems like it would cause thoughts. This can be seen as awareness or in more common vs vernacular perception manipulation.
An alternate view of the plane above mental calls it the supermind referring to the notion of a greater consciousness that all minds are part of, a collective consciousness that manifests the higher realities of the three higher planes into the three lower planes representing individual lives existing in the universe.
What informs and moves this? Above this is traditionally the spiritual plane, supposedly divided into many subplanes, though spirit is used to refer to two separate things.
The former, is spirit in it's traditional meaning referring to the hypothetical "breath" of life, that distinguishes living beings and non-living beings. Life is known and in fact defined by it's tendency to maintain and replicate itself among others, and so it's goal would necessarily move the awareness or consciousness. Life/Lifeforce and Death manipulation would thus seem to be here.
However spirit has a more general meaning that can be seen as the higher planar equivalent and which applies to all forms of lower being, including living or non-living. This is seen in such ideas as "his spirit is still with us", "spirit of the era", the "spirit of the law", in other words the presence and essence of the thing.
This also seems to be the border with the abstract plane of reality, as the lower bound of abstract existence is the Aristotelian concept, a concept made up of all instances of itself, in other words it's presence in lower realities and has no separate existence. Thus the higher spirit/presence can be seen to be equivalent to lower conceptual.
This is also where I think information manipulation would be, as information in the cosmological sense refers to the resolution of an uncertainty, the collapse of possibilities and establishment of actuality. As one's information is spread across the universe formed of the tiny influences one on all other things, it can be said to one's ultimate presence and thus equivalent.
The higher form of concept is the Classical Platonic Concept, a concept that views non-abstract reality as a shadow of itself, and not at all dependent on it's continued existence.
There is some notion that concepts have an internal hierarchy where more transient concepts dependent on other concepts are lower. For instance the concept of the sword of Alexander the Great, is lower and dependent on the concept of sword, dependent on the concept of weapon, dependent on the concept of tools.
By this logic this would continue upwards until one gets to the concepts describing concepts themselves, meta-concepts or hyper(over)-concepts. These would view hypothetically normal concepts that they define as those concepts would view physical reality and we view the aforementioned transient shadowy reality.
This could hypothetically go infinitely with meta-meta-concepts and so forth. However we can simply define a maximally fundamental reality as a logical rule, this being Being itself, or what I call the Absolute. This is defined as that which is maximally fundamental, the most real form of something. Being itself is the necessary sum total of all things, it is existence in itself. For a fictional being the fiction they are composed off would be being itself. Paper and Pencil, Pieces of Paper, Computer Data, though a verse could have a form of Absolute that is not defined as metafictional, just by saying it is absolute.
The hypothetical exception is that a verse could hypothetically could have multiple layers of metafiction, which would still be necessarily above any form of abstract as they would still be able to manipulate the being that the concepts are made of but would not be maximally metafictional or fundamental. This fits the earlier definition as well since metafiction, the narrative or plot, moves even concepts.
The hypothetical hierarchy of forms of manipulation:
Absolute
(Other) Forms of Metafiction
Meta-Concepts
Platonic Concept
Aristolean Concept/Upper Spirit/Presence/Information/Essence: Border between spiritual and conceptual
Lower Spirit/Life and Death: Start of Spiritual
Collective Consciousness/Unconsciousness/Dream (possibly)
Awareness/Perception/Consciousness
Thought
Emotion: Border between Astral and Mental
Dream (Possibly)
Will: Start of Astral
Etheric
Physical (Matter-Energy, Spacetime)
Hypothetical transient planes of reality
Hypothetically speaking, a being on one plane of reality can be affected by nothing less then an ability on the same or higher plane of reality.
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