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I think you've put the cart before the horse, trying to start a Suvian family tree with Sues themselves. I would never go so far as to suggest that our respected members of the scientific community have simply been "classifying" Sues as an exercise in coming up with silly Latin names, of course, but as we all know, most Sues are pretty much like most other Sues, making separating them into "species" a daunting task at best. Thus, attempting to begin with their minor differences to each other is backward and ultimately fruitless.

Let us consider first the wider ecosystem of fiction.

Your biology departments may wish to collaborate with DAS-DAMP and DAS-VOID to explore the inherent issues involved in fitting Sues into a broader understanding of the multiverse, but for now, let's just take it for granted that classifying fictional entities is not like classifying biological entities. It is not particularly useful to look at how they interbreed, for instance, and anatomy and physiology aren't much help, either. Not even DNA can come to the rescue here.

Fictional characters, you see, are not classified by what they are, but rather by what they do, and more importantly, how they do it. Protagonist: hero: warrior. This character bravely faces challenges head-on to prove that good will always triumph over evil. Antagonist: villain: evil sorcerer. This character sneakily connives for their own ends regardless of collateral damage to others, pulling strings and manipulating events behind the scenes. Etc. I trust you see where I'm going with this, with reference to well-known character archetypes.

One must consider the character's prominence in the story: are they a main character? a supporting character? a background character? What separates these from each other? I would suggest that it has something to do with inherent narativium.

Now, once we understand the basics of classifying fictional characters in general, we can turn to the finer details of classifying fanfictional characters.

One important question I do not believe has yet been addressed is the ability of Suvians to become non-Suvian with time, and vice versa. If they are a separate species from other OCs, how is this possible? I assert that it isn't. All characters, canons, OCs, and Suvians, fit into the classification scheme I've referenced above; the difference between them lies in how destructive they are to the surrounding ecosystem of the canon. Suvians have often been compared to parasites, viruses, and other destructive organisms. That's getting close to the truth: Suvians are, in fact, diseased forms of the character archetypes we all know and love. A Suvian is a character infected and mutated by glitter. This is well substantiated by numerous anecdotes of regular characters becoming Sued after coming into contact with glitter, and Suvians becoming de-Sued when their glitter load is reduced. It is also well-known that a good character can possess all the same surface traits as a Suvian, and yet not be one. This is entirely due to glitter.

Therefore, in order to properly classify Suvians, we must look at them not as a species in their own right, but as normal character archetypes afflicted by particular forms of disease that warp and corrupt their nature. Only then can a useful classification system be achieved.

~Agent Neshomeh, Archivist, DoP

(( Good lord, that's a lot of words. I hope some of them make sense. I don't have a lot of time to refine this idea right now, unfortunately. ^_^; ))

(I am definitely not offering a very slightly modified version of my person favorite of my brother's pseudonyms, no, not at all. And Mister Cuddlesworth was the name of a Deathclaw, too, so is a good stem name anyways.)

...I'm going to have to think of something suitably deserving of the payback!

For whatever happens on the Gathering that I would otherwise be swearing eternal vengeance over (it's me, you know there'll be something). Look, now I don't have to! SCIENCE!

hS

/puts hands to cheeks/ THIS IS AMAZING AND YOU ARE AMAZING!

(That's fine! That's the thing with words - even when we try otherwise, they're always open to interpretation... :>)

Photobucket, you and I are officially not talking anymore.



Imgur is my new bestie. >:(

(I was deliberately tweaking the answers so they could span a range of numbers. Not proposing that these be the One True Options or anything, they were just off the top of my head.)

hS

Don't suppose you heard about its hotlinking issues? Apparently you'd have to upgrade and pay a ridiculous amount of money in order to link things to third-party websites.

Anyway, this sure is useful! ^^ Thanks for the advice!

(Also, this is a wording issue on my part, but I'd intended the 'with my friends' one to mean 'alongside.' ;) )

...for what the newspaper should be called, I'm all ears. (And that's open for everyone, not just you.)

Thanks for the comments. ^-^

Starting off the post with that subject line made me think I'd done something awful with the mission! Ugh. :P

And yeah, this is honestly a big enough problem it ended up getting it's own CAHQ card... somehow. Personally, I've been using Charlix, but Ixilotl has been growing on me for some time...

Yeah, as soon as I came across this one on the Circle, I pretty much had to drop everything to mission it. It was just too perfect to pass up. And I'm glad to know it was easy enough to follow, too.

'cause on the one hand, it's hilarious to reference the singer and use the ship name Ixielott. But on the geekier hand, I can't help but feel there's a lot of mileage in riffing off axolotls. Ixilotl? Only that works better spoken than written. It's a terrible dilemma.

Oh, yeah, there was a story there, too, right? ;) Two things I particularly liked were a) that I could jump in and figure out what was going on in the agents' lives without having to track down every previous mission, and b) the idea of an agent running into a Suvian who claims exactly the same problems as them, so allowing for a direct contrast of the two. Nicely done.

hS

It looks like you're expecting to have 12 options for each question, which sounds excessive. ;) Possibly a better way would be to plot all the celebrants on a 3-D graph (ie, give them 'scores' on three independent scales). You then assign values for some or all of the scales to each answer, and find the celebrant closest to the final averaged result.

Example: one axis would be how likely they are to be swayed by the Lone One's temptations. You'd place the Untouched at 0, the Undecided at, say, 5, and the Betrayed at 10. The Lone One Itself would be down at 15. Not sure about the Master Shark, you'd have to think about how he feels about death.

Then, for each question, you'd say how it affects that score. Taking what I think is the most interesting of your questions so far:

How do you relate 'friends' and 'fighting'?
-I fight for my friends. (2)
-I fight with my friends. (10)
-I fight about my friends. (5)
-I fight to control my friends. (12)

Other scales might include power, friendliness, how active a role they take... assuming those four, a statement like 'I fight to control my friends' might come out as (12 susceptability, -- power [ie, no value listed, ignore], 0 friendliness, 7 active).

You'd then average out the four scales after all the questions are answered, and see which celebrant comes closest to matching. How you did that would depend on what you were running it on, though...

On a related note: I shared this with the Board a year or two back, but I'm not sure you were around: I made Kaitlyn a Song of the Twelve scroll.

Image

It includes all the text from the book (along with a header and footer you'll probably recognise ^_~). I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

hS

Would any Agents be interested in investigating the "Event Horizon of Suedom" (picturing the impressions Suefluence leaves on the canon to be similar to how everything in reality leaves an impression on the fabric of the universe via gravity)? How many typos does it take to warp a Word World - taking them more from just irritants to Agents to malformations for Word Worlds to play with?

On another note, what happens if a Sue is de-Sueified within the fic? Are there any documented cases of such?

huinesoron at hotmail dot com. I am super old-school.

Also I have no idea what you're saying with the clicks thing?

hS

That bit about the newspaper provided a nice bit of comedy, though I didn't mind the angst.

Ix and Charlotte continue to be wonderful.

Also loved the explanation for empty compartments! And the worldbuilding re: Madam Pince jinxing the books.

As always, thank you for writing! \o

(Guys, this is awesome, let's keep up the trend of giving people stuff to read!)

Ix and Charlotte face what must be their worst Sue yet: a Marauders-era werewolf who wants to be an Auror.

And just as a heads-up, since I know some of you guys are sick of my angsty stuff, this one is heavy on the angst. Enjoy?

And if that doesn't work, it's

here.

But only because I just got it last week. Not sure the other two clicks have expired.

Otherwise, I think it's $10.

Kaitlyn mentioned the ordeals were available, but is that 'freely' or 'for a price'?

hS

Leaves me imagining a Powers vs Flowers situation...

In other news, I do have one idea so far (not finished reading everything yet): given certain species similarities, how would Laduquac fare if he ever met Mamvish?

(Er, it doesn't get detailed until her On Ordeal section, but it's definitely canon. ^^; )

She goes into it a little in her paper, as it happens. I'm not sure if it's going to go anywhere, but I have a feeling the Flowers' precautions may, ah, show a certain lack of understanding of the subject.

hS

... But I'm enjoying this very much already!

(Also: an encounter with a Manual? Do tell. ;) )

I may be back later with ideas for questions.

Since hS's latest post - and an email correspondence with Tomash - reminded me that I am far from alone in remembering Deep Wizardry fondly:
The Song of the Twelve, a Personality Quiz planning document

^I give you this. Most of the writing already in the doc is mine, but okforthey set up the doc in the first place.
Any help is appreciated, from new questions to more (relevant) information on the Celebrants, and anything inbetween YOU think would help!
Dai Stiho, Cousins, and thanks in advance!

Very interesting and well thought out! I'll admit, this came as a huge surprise to me, but it's a nice addition to the PPC. Having the new department be based in DMSE&R is a nice way of tying it back into the pre-existing (insofar as we have that) PPC canon, and I'm interested to see what else might come of this new department.

(I liked the Suvian Cladogram and inorganic cookbook pieces the best, though Laduquac's reactions to the Suvian meatstuffs had me simultaneously giggling and grossed out.)

Unfortunately, not being very scientifically inclined myself, I'm not really able to think of any questions that would make for a very good prompt, so I'll have to think on that for... probably a good long while.

All in all, though, I enjoyed this even though I didn't understand all of it and hope you'll do more with it in the future.

I still need to read past the first chapter, but this is super interesting.