Disease Manipulation Rework - A Biology nerd's excuse to talk about phylogeny

[Chritin]

Got permission from Qawsedf234.

So, Disease Manipulation has been on this week for about 9 years, and throughout its tenure it has had a grand total of 7 changes, all of which have been minor formatting or category changes. This, in my opinion, is a fairly significant oversight due to the extremely broad nature of what diseases actually are, and has overall caused a few issues.

For one, and this is an issue that kind of extends beyond the bounds of the disease manip page, but currently there is no ability page for characters who can manipulate or control microorganisms. Currently, we have pages for animal, plant, and fungi manipulation. However, this is only a small subset of the many types of unique biological organisms characters may gave control over, and leaves at least 2/3 of life on this planet unaccounted for with an ability. Now, ideally I would like to make a page for bacteria and archaea individually, but I understand that there really aren't many examples of characters who are able to control those types of organisms who don't uses them simply for causing diseases. Thus, I think it would be important to at least flesh out the disease manip page to specify how the different types of organisms linked to disease, including bacteria, archaea, single celled eukaryotes, and even multicellular eukaryotes.

Beyond biological classification, however, there is an even broader issue I've considered when looking at how we define "disease" on the wiki. Generally speaking, diseases are classified as disruptions of the normal processes within living organisms. This means that the description of disease manip users shouldn't be limited to those who can just control pathogens or viruses. There are many cases in fiction where characters can create arbitrary illnesses that aren't inherently linked to living organisms. For example, it is to my understanding that the Death Note can cause characters to die of diseases without actually infecting them with any one pathogen, just causing the symptoms of diseases to occur which lead to a person's death. There are also characters who can spur mental illnesses in characters, such as the Alternates in the Mandela Catalogue causing Metaphysical Awareness Syndrome through their speech and presence. There are even characters like Nurgle who to my knowledge has a level of disease manip so high to goes beyond the normal conventions of biology.

With that all in mind, I've created a template for my proposed change to the disease manipulation page. I encourage you all look it over and let me know what you think. I'm sure it will be changed significantly before it gets close to passed, but I hope you all can appreciate the need for change to the page.

Agree: DontTalkDT, FinePoint, DarkDragonMedeus
Disagree:

 

[DontTalkDT]

I think the limitations pretty much apply to all three equally.
An illness created by something other than viruses or patheogens can in principle still be healed off via an immune system and obviously can also be potentially medically treated.
And a bacteria that creates a poison can be resisted via poison resistance, so the third limitation in principle also applies to the first case.
I would suggest to put these together in the Limitations section.

Personally, I would also put the distinctions into possible uses instead of types, though that's a matter of opinion, I suppose. Just not sure whether drawing this particular distinction on each profile is needed.

Otherwise, that looks good to me.

 

[Chritin]

I think the limitations pretty much apply to all three equally.
An illness created by something other than viruses or patheogens can in principle still be healed off via an immune system and obviously can also be potentially medically treated.
And a bacteria that creates a poison can be resisted via poison resistance, so the third limitation in principle also applies to the first case.
I would suggest to put these together in the Limitations section.

Personally, I would also put the distinctions into possible uses instead of types, though that's a matter of opinion, I suppose. Just not sure whether drawing this particular distinction on each profile is needed.

Otherwise, that looks good to me.

Moved the limitations down to a lower section. In terms of doing possible uses instead of types, I tried to balance between having no distinction and having too much. Like, I could easily have a dozen types for each type of pathogen, but they are general enough to where I just lumped them into a "living organism" catagory.

Viruses on the other hand are not (generally speaking living), and thus are mostly unique when compared to other pathogens. Finally, idiopathic diseases are basically a catch all for anything that doesn't function like a standard disease, like having a living or viral conduit for its cause.

 

[FinePoint]

Personally, I would also put the distinctions into possible uses instead of types, though that's a matter of opinion, I suppose. Just not sure whether drawing this particular distinction on each profile is needed.

I would also prefer this, if for no other reason than it requires the least work.

If we add numbered types to an ability that didn't previously have one, then we naturally have to evaluate every existing instance of the ability and assign a number, which is a lot to change, especially for something as vague and common as this.

Either way, I like the idea in principal of elaborating on what 'disease' includes/means.

 

[Chritin]

I would also prefer this, if for no other reason than it requires the least work.

If we add numbered types to an ability that didn't previously have one, then we naturally have to evaluate every existing instance of the ability and assign a number, which is a lot to change, especially for something as vague and common as this.

Either way, I like the idea in principal of elaborating on what 'disease' includes/means.

I feel like it would be something done in piecemeal, since there are multiple different abilities which have/were given numbered types and to this day get profiles that don't implement them. Off the top of my head, I've seen a few profiles with madness manip and corruption are a few I've seen with unspecified types on some new profiles. Plus, the inclusion of types is kinda half the crux of my proposed changes, but if enough people really don't like the idea then I can try and make a change.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I share thoughts as DontTalkDT

 

[Chritin]

Since it seems most people would prefer a possible uses section as opposed to types, I've updated it to include as much. As such, since I think I've addressed the other mods concerns, I will add there names to the agree section for the time being.

 

[Dark_Soul20189]

Got permission from @Just_a_Random_Butler

I think the possible use is skipping over one of the more important disease types, "Chronic diseases."

This is not covered under any of the possible usages, and is still one of the more common ones.

This category includes Cancer, strokes, diabetes, and many other genetic conditions, including psoriasis, and much more.

Common chronic diseases include diabetes, functional gastrointestinal disorder, eczema, arthritis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, autoimmune diseases, genetic disorders and some viral diseases such as hepatitis C and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

Wikipedia list

They are also often incurable, and often last 3 months or longer, sometimes even an entire lifetime. (It may also get worse with time)

 

[FinePoint]

Also, I feel like we've discussed it before- but what about genetic and/or incidental mental disorders?

 

[Chritin]

Also, I feel like we've discussed it before- but what about genetic and/or incidental mental disorders?

For most of those, I decided to keep them under idiopathic due to their nature of lacking traditional biological agents. Genetic disorders are most often caused by sporadic misreading of genetic information during development. Mental disorders on the either hand can either be brought about in a similar way of differing biological development, or be spurred by outside influence.

In these two examples, things like Bio Manip and Mind Manip would be common root causes. There are even other cases of othe rabilities being linked to causing diseases, such as Radiation Manipulation causing cancers, and even things matter manipulation and petrification are commonplace in fictional diseases (the example that comes to mind is literally the petrification disease from lies of p).

 

[Chritin]

Got permission from @Just_a_Random_Butler

I think the possible use is skipping over one of the more important disease types, "Chronic diseases."

This is not covered under any of the possible usages, and is still one of the more common ones.

This category includes Cancer, strokes, diabetes, and many other genetic conditions, including psoriasis, and much more.

Wikipedia list

They are also often incurable, and often last 3 months or longer, sometimes even an entire lifetime. (It may also get worse with time)

I could include these, but like I said before, we are looking over how characters may use disease manip to infect others. Chronic conditions are chronic for a reason, as they are something a character would be predisposed to, not something they could contract. That isn't to say disease manip users couldn't give someone these conditions, just that that action would be linked to another ability and thus idiopathic.

 

[Dark_Soul20189]

Responding to this, feel free to delete.

I could include these, but like I said before, we are looking over how characters may use disease manip to infect others. Chronic conditions are chronic for a reason, as they are something a character would be predisposed to, not something they could contract. That isn't to say disease manip users couldn't give someone these conditions, just that that action would be linked to another ability and thus idiopathic.

The issue is that the same thing can be said about most stuff.

Viruses are technically parasites, so you could argue that they fall under "animal manipulation."You could argue that "disease manipulation" is just a sub-ability of Biological manipulation, that is, a sub-ability of Life manipulation.'

What I am trying to say is that a large portion of abilities "crossover", meaning that the entire excuse of "being linked to another ability" is an entirely wrong mindset.

So conclusion, I think it's either best to add more varied and common types of diseases, something that both chronic diseases and mental disorders qualify under "diseases". Also, the fact that you add "archaea" and "eukaryotes" indicates that you want to keep them separate, so either remove everything but Virus and Bacteria or be prepared to add more possible usage.

The worst option is making it extremely inconsistent as it currently is with some extreme specific examples, and the rest just fall under that.

 

[Chritin]

Responding to this, feel free to delete.



The issue is that the same thing can be said about most stuff.

Viruses are technically parasites, so you could argue that they fall under "animal manipulation."You could argue that "disease manipulation" is just a sub-ability of Biological manipulation, that is, a sub-ability of Life manipulation.'

What I am trying to say is that a large portion of abilities "crossover", meaning that the entire excuse of "being linked to another ability" is an entirely wrong mindset.

So conclusion, I think it's either best to add more varied and common types of diseases, something that both chronic diseases and mental disorders qualify under "diseases". Also, the fact that you add "archaea" and "eukaryotes" indicates that you want to keep them separate, so either remove everything but Virus and Bacteria or be prepared to add more possible usage.

The worst option is making it extremely inconsistent as it currently is with some extreme specific examples, and the rest just fall under that.

Of all things, I don't know why viruses would be equated most similarly to parasites? They aren't even considered fully living organisms, and otherwise share a lot more traits with simpler prokaryotes. Also, a lot of the pathogens fall under other abilities as is, particularly with fungus manip for fungi and animal manip for parasites. However, I didn't loop those underneath the idiopathic section because if the cause of the disease is understood to just be animal or fungi, then it isn't idiopathic.

Idiopathic diseases are ones of spontaneous and somewhat misunderstood origin. That's why I'm attributing diseases that are linked to other powers or some kind of verse specific system to it. However, that also leads to most chronic conditions falling into that, since as I said there isn't any way to cause them in characters beyond those kinds of abilities. TL;DR, there's no virus that causes, idk, schizophrenia, and thus any ability that causes it would just be considered idiopathic (and if there was a verse specific virus that did that, then it would just fall under viruses). The point of the possible uses isn't necessarily to define the symptoms, since they could literally be anything, but to define the modes of infection for how one can spread the diseases they are controlling.

 

[LegendariumOfLies]

Also, I feel like we've discussed it before- but what about genetic and/or incidental mental disorders?

Genetic - Idiopathic
Mental Disorders - Mad Manip - Type 1 unless the virus is somehow doing it without effecting the body (then it is probably Type 3)

 

[Chritin]

Genetic - Idiopathic
Mental Disorders - Mad Manip - Type 1 unless the virus is somehow doing it without effecting the body (then it is probably Type 3)

Technically a pathogen could cause a mental disorder, such as rabies. While it isn't really a mental disorder, it does have multiple mind altering effects.

 

[Antvasima]

I think that what DontTalk has accepted here can likely be applied now.

 

[Chritin]

I think that what DontTalk has accepted here can likely be applied now.

I think the limitations pretty much apply to all three equally.
An illness created by something other than viruses or patheogens can in principle still be healed off via an immune system and obviously can also be potentially medically treated.
And a bacteria that creates a poison can be resisted via poison resistance, so the third limitation in principle also applies to the first case.
I would suggest to put these together in the Limitations section.

Personally, I would also put the distinctions into possible uses instead of types, though that's a matter of opinion, I suppose. Just not sure whether drawing this particular distinction on each profile is needed.

Otherwise, that looks good to me.

Sounds good! I should have applied evrything DontTalk asked, but let me know if I'm missing something. If all is well though, can someone please open the Disease Manip page so I can put it in?

Chritin060/SandboxDisease

vsbattles.fandom.com

 

[Antvasima]

I have unlocked our Disease Manipulation page for you.

However, it is very important that you only apply the parts that our staff members have accepted here.

Tell us here when you are done please.

 

[Chritin]

Changes have been applied. This thread and the page can be closed