What are our standards for real world plants and fungi profiles?

[Antvasima]

Hello.

I was recently asked if it is allowed to create profiles for not just different types of real world animals, events, and weapons, but plants, fungi, etcetera, as well.

I would appreciate input from the rest of the staff regarding how we should handle this in general.

 

[DarkGrath]

I mean... to be honest, such profiles sound absurdly unnecessary. But I don't think there's any genuine problems with doing so; at least, not to the extent that they should be banned.

 

[AKM sama]

Like Grath said...absurdly unnecessary. I don't get why would we want to index real world plants when most of them won't have any defined AP, abilities, skills etc and they can't be used in battles unlike real world animals or weapons.

 

[Ogbunabali]

This shouldn't be a thing honestly. Unlike real world animals, weapons, events, etc, which we use to scale to other verses, plants/fungi serve no purpose.

 

[Damage3245]

Agreed. This is giving me flashbacks to the days of "Composite Tree". At least that was vaguely interesting as a thought concept, but profiles for ordinary plants / animals are unnecessary.

 

[KLOL506]

I agree with the above reasons.

 

[Antvasima]

@Damage

Well, real world animals can stay, for reference purposes if nothing else.

 

[Antvasima]

Anyway, I personally don't think that our profiles for plants, fungi, etcetera seem to do any harm, but it would be useful if somebody can list them here if the consensus is to remove them.

 

[Damage3245]

Sorry, meant to type plants / fungi instead of plants / animals.

 

[Agnaa]

The only two plant/fungi profiles are Venus Flytrap and Death Cap.

At least these two do have some abilities/movement options/AP, as opposed to a cactus like the user suggested to Ant.

 

[Antvasima]

@Damage3245

Okay. No problem.

 

[Antvasima]

@Agnaa

Should we make the standard that real world lifeforms incapable of movement are not allowed, but that ones with interesting extraordinary abilities are allowed?

 

[Agnaa]

That could be a fine rule, but I wouldn't be too fussed if staff consensus was to delete them.

 

[DarkGrath]

Well, at what point is it "interesting and extraordinary"? There is a certain level of "you know it when you see it" to plenty of rules, but that would probably have to be better defined to avoid constant arguments about it.

 

[The_King_of_Prudence]

Not quite on topic, but a regular human profile would be a very useful reference. More on topic, it should be fine to make profiles for most plants, especially notable ones, and those with attacking options.

 

[The_Impress]

I don't think any specific rule is needed to counter this, it is self-evident that these profiles don't belong here.

 

[Crabwhale]

Yeah, I agree, I don't think a rule is necessary, but these sorts of profiles should be discouraged.

 

[Antvasima]

It isn't self-evident, considering that people keep making them, so I think that we need some sort of editing rule.

 

[Damage3245]

"Profiles for real-life plants and fungi are strongly discouraged on this site as there are not enough unique characteristics or statistics to support their existence."

Something like this?

 

[Antvasima]

Yes. Thanks. But I wonder if we should make exceptions for the ones that can move, or have very unusual properties by real world standards.

 

[Sera_EX]

Animals are fine, plants are not. We're over saturated with files because we allow too many kinds of profiles as it is, making an already increasingly difficult job more difficult if we did.

 

[Damage3245]

Agreed. I think that restricting profiles for plants and fungi should be fine going forwards.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

The only plants I'm okay with would be carnivorous types. I mean, they could be used for judging verses that are about insects and arachnids for instance. So Venus Flytrap sounds okay from my point of view. Verses similar to that of Pikmi. But regular trees, flowers, bushes, and all that seem very unnecessary. I agree that the Cactus isn't allowed, and also I'm not sure on Death Cap because most of the time that appears to be more like a weapon/drug rather than a fighter.

 

[Antvasima]

So should we insert this text into the Editing Rules page?

 

[Imaginym]

Forgive me if I'm intruding or out of line, but.... Aren't trees & such often destroyed or otherwise used as a means of showing power in fiction? Given that, isn't it worthwhile to document how durable various kinds of trees are? Admittedly, calculation blogs can also serve to document such information.

Although, a point against that is that fiction often doesn't make a note of the type of tree, nor the abilities the kind of tree may have. Some may have poisonous or very flammable bark or such. Some are dangerous just to go near. Yet those attributes often won't come up.

Also, a Tornado doesn't have durability, but it does have AP, & similar is true with many weapons, with them not having Durability documented. This seems like the inverse, where it's AP that's rarely, if ever present. So if we ask "Can character survive X?", then why not ask "Can they destroy Y?"?

 

[The_King_of_Prudence]

They also wouldn't be the only "characters" who can't attack.

 

[Crabwhale]

Alright, not really an issue of the thread itself, but a profile about weather phenomenons is absolutely ludicrous. That's what a standard calculations blog or thread is for. It should probably be deleted.

The durability thing is not so much "it's nonsensical", as "nobody bothers to mention it", which is a flaw that has to be corrected. A physical object has durability. Air spinning around does not.

The same thing that goes for the tornado should go for the trees and plants as well. You put these things in blogs, not whole profiles. Are we gonna have profiles about redwoods? Pines? Acacias? Baobabs?

Do you understand now how nonsensical that would be?

 

[Crabwhale]

In regards to VS battles, for any plant or fungi that doesn't possess some other means of attacking, you'd literally be waiting for the damn thing to grow over an opponent. Yes, that sounds stupid, but it's the only possible way a tree could do anything.

Not to mention this reeks of memetic cancer just by imagining it. I can't wait for the "tree gets struck by lightning, falls on guy, inconclusive gg" arguments, which also sound stupid, but they're about the level you'd get for accepting plants.

 

[Imaginym]

@Crabwhale: I don't advocate for making profiles about any kind of tree. Perhaps for standard trees so ubiquitous in their use in fiction that are easily identifiable & used as a measurement of power... if the kind of trees in fiction could only be so easily idenifiable.

There's also been talk in this thread of plants or fungi with unique or maybe exceptional characteristics.

As for the manner of having a profile for weather phenomenons or not.... What's the issue with a profile for a tornado or the like? AFAIK, it's documented primarily for reference, & not intended for use in matches, but is able to be. If it needs to be explicitly stated it's not for matches, I won't object.

But what makes a blog profile for a tornado or other weather phenomenon any better than an explicitly match-banned one, besides that the former is more difficult to make a thread topic?

Plus, I don't think we document it as a weather phenomenon so much as a natural disaster, similar to the Mount Vesuvius eruptio or the Chicxulub Impact Event. Is it absurd to document them via profiles as well, despite that comparisons to such things may come up often when discussing, documenting & indexing fiction as we do?

 

[Agnaa]

I think making profiles for trees would lead to people making worse profiles.

To explain, there's a lot of ways to damage trees that give vastly different results. If we just made a profile and gave trees a certain durability, people would tend to use that durability rather than a calc for what specific damage they did to the tree.

We could maybe minimize this effect by giving trees the lowest durability needed to harm it at all, so probably something around 10-B to 9-C, but then most feats for "destroying them" or "showing power" wouldn't be useful.

Having an instruction blog for tree feats seems like a much better solution.

 

[Antvasima]

I much prefer if we keep the profiles for weather phenomena as scaling reference points, or place the calculations for all of them in an official reference page.

Anyway:

So should we insert this text into the Editing Rules page?

 

[Imaginym]

I don't see any issue with those stances. Composite Tree gained some kind of negatively viewed notoriety for being used in Versus Threads, after all & I can understand fearing a potential repeat of that.

And I assume noone agrees on the idea of profiles for real world plants, trees, or fungi that are exceptional, like DarkDragonMedeus mentioned above?

The Manchineel tree for example, is found in Florida, grows up to 15 meters tall, & is notoriously poisonous to the point that it gets warning signs & fences, see below:

It's sweet apples are poisonous, the sap causes painful blisters, & is found on the bark & leaves. Thus, touching its leaves causes "strong allergic dermatitis", & if you stand UNDER the leaves, rainwater that touched them will cause "instant blistering" on contact with your skin. The sap also causes temporarily blindness on contact with the eyes. Even smoke from burning the wood can irritate the eyes, only after which, it can be dried for several days to purge the sap to make the wood useable.

TL;DR https://www.coolweirdo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/manchineela-tree.jpg

Is such a notoriously dangerous tree not worthy of a profile, simply because it doesn't move, it lacks non-ability-based means of killing things, & people find the idea & risk of use in Vs Threads (That could just be not permitted.) frustratingly silly?

It's not like I'm suggesting a profile for a coconut palm, given that it's understandably laughable to make a profile for, even if the coconut tree has a fair bit of documentation about it causing death.

 

[Wokistan]

I mean, yeah. Volcanos are also really dangerous but they're just structures/locations, don't really need files.

 

[Imaginym]

I mean, yeah. Volcanos are also really dangerous but they're just structures/locations, don't really need files.

Forgive my saying so, but, AFAIK, we don't have profiles for volcanos, but rather, for their eruptions. Presumably, durability is absent because it may be difficult -but not completely impossible- to quantify the durability of erupting magma.

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/T...enomena.2FImpacts.2FExplosions.2FOther_Events

Many natural disasters are Categorized as Events & the profiles for eruptions are likewise categorized as Eruptions, because the profiles aren't about the volcanoes.

I think Chicxulub's hurricanes, earthquakes, & starquakes & other natural disasters/events are also similarly dubious in being called "locations". You can go to where one happens, but they're far more temporary than where they occur (Ex: Mount Vesuvius itself, which does not have a profile.), even if there are many places where an "event" CAN happen.

 

[GyroNutz]

We don't need profiles for natural disasters. Something used for indexing purposes would be better suited in a blog.

As for the OP, a venus flytrap profile is probably fine, but they're the clear exceptions out of all the unnecessary potential plant profiles.

 

[Jasonsith]

Natural events cna be considered a "weapon" if they can be made like a move I suppose?

They are not characters but definitely should stay as "weapons" for the sake of profiling.

 

[Sera_EX]

No natural disasters either. I'd rather a collective page for references, like the AP of lightning/the dura for surviving being struck by lightning, lava AP, the energy required to create earthquakes, etc, than multiple pages for this stuff. It's highly unnecessary. So if you need references, let's just make a reference page.

 

[Jasonsith]

So a reference page (or pages) to contain the natural disasters is good too. As long as a reliable way is there to keep such important 8nformation is there I am fine.

 

[Imaginym]

@GyroNutz: Are venus flytraps an exception only because they're notable, they move or because they have a carnivorous diet? Not because they're somehow dangerous or have notable abilities beyond their capacity for movement? Why those criteria?

But yeah, I assume it would be reasonable to export/remake the "Event" profiles to blog profiles, then?

I mean, I guess blogs are slightly less work to maintain than pages, because we can ignore them come revisions, hence why the pages are "highly unnecessary"?

 

[Sera_EX]

Alright. "References" page it is then.