Discussions on Fictional Character
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I have a question about characters that appeared in multiple movies or books. Are these characters the same, or are they different? At first glance it seems like they would be the same, but sometimes things aren't exactly the same in different versions of the same story. For example, in the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" (based on the book with the same name) one of the main characters, Toothless, is a rare type of dragon, a Night Fury. But in the book, Toothless is a common and much smaller type of dragon. Are these different characters? If they are the same, what happens when the properties in the "Fictional Universe" type are different in each of the different works the character appeared in? And if they are different, shouldn't there be a way for us to link these characters together somehow? (Or is that what the "Based on" field is for?)
Other examples include Astro Boy from the anime series and movie with that name, and just about any other character that appears in multiple adaptations of a the same work.
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A thorny and difficult question, as the more 'accurately' you attempt to model the differences between, say all the Sherlock Holmes in fiction, the more difficult it becomes to query for the more than a hundred or so occurrences of Sherlock Holmes as a film character or as a book character. Is size and species differentiation enough to warrant two Toothless fictional character topics that are based upon a Platonian-ideal Toothless? Freebase schema as it is doesn't deftly handle provenance of fictional character properties in such a manner to allow for attribution by source fictional material the multiple differing entries of the aforementioned regiment-sized number of Sherlocks, all with different wives, children, dates of existence, places lived, professions performed, addictions, etc. Most users of the data just want to know that Toothless was a dragon and the it appeared in both the book and the film. Most users would be extremely interested in what stories and films does Sherlock Holmes appear in, which would become a difficult query if there are a chain of Sherlocks based upon Sherlocks maybe based upon a 'canonical' Sherlock.
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Yeah, that is kind of a dilemma. If you split the character into multiple sub-characters it becomes difficult to determine who was in what fictional work, but if you keep them together it becomes hard to model many of their other properties because of different situations in each different adaptation of the character. =/
In the case of Toothless both adaptations of him are still Toothless, but everything about them has been changed between the book and the movie.
I can think of two possible solutions for this. One would be to make a "master character" type that links to all the different adaptations of the character. The other would be to give each property of the fictional character type a secondary property allowing you to define what fictional universes this fact is true in. I'm really not sure the problem is big enough to warrant either of these solutions. =/ It does become very difficult though to model characters though when all the facts are different depending on which adaptation of the character you are considering...
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Fictional Setting doesn't appear to use the correct terminology in one of it's properties. Or perhaps, Fictional Character does not. Confusing at the least.
If you look at Homer Simpson you can see that his Places Lived shows Krusty Burger - That's not true. However looking at the other end at Krusty Burger does show that it's a Fictional Setting and Organization in Fiction correctly and the property "Characters that have been here" describes Characters that have lived or been here.
Perhaps it's best just to expand the property description on the Fictional Character from "Places Lived" to "Places lived or appeared at" ? "Places lived or been to" sounds limiting, I think.
Thoughts?
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It could be that we could change the description from the Fictional character > Places lived property. The key will remain the same I think, but we could re-title it as you suggest: "Places lived or appeared at"
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I'm going to put it to the community, but when I created the return linkage for Characters that have been here it should have been restricted to Characters who've lived here. We shouldn't try to capture every single place visited by Sherlock Holmes in this property, it should be just 221-B Baker St and maybe Dorset (pseudo-retirement). Bilbo Baggin's lived in the Shire (Bag's End, Hobbiton) and Rivendell. So I propose to correct my mistaken widening of the scope of the places lived property to visited to be narrowed back down to just dwelling locations.
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Done.
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Of course this does mean some data cleanup for 'places lived' as we now have restricted the focus of this property.
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Could "Places lived" be added as a property for fictional characters?
Thanks for the implementation of the Height and Weight properties, by the way! I've been using them a lot.
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Sure, we'll model it first on Sandbox, let the community of the Fictional Universes commons view and try it out, then publish the change to Fictional Character and Fictional Setting for this proposed linkage.
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So it is now on Sandbox for the week, then published to Freebase next week if there are no objections or questions. SeeSunnydale for an example.
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Ok, Places lived now exists on Fictional character.
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Something is not right...
- Hercules is NOT a person.
- Hercules is a Comic Book Character.
- Hercules is a Mythological Character.
The problem I have is that with the above being true, then Hercules can't be typed with: Fictional Character
Why?
Because Fictional Character has a property that says Based On with a description (hint) that says: "Use this property only for characters based on real people. Enter the topic corresponding to the person."
We need an alternate type or a we need to redefine the type's Based On description, and then how do we handle Based On for other types ? Maybe Based On should instead just link directly. Example: Right now it links to Representations In Fiction /fictional_universe/person_in_fiction/representations_in_fiction
but I think it should really just side step the whole "person" level above and link to a hierarchy more like: /fictional_universe/representations_in_fiction
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I'm not following you here. Why can't Hercules be typed as a fictional character? Is the problem that you want to enter the mythological "Hercules" as the value of the "based on" property of various modern fictionalizations of the mythical character, and the property description would seem to forbid it? (The implication being that the scores of [modern] fictionalizations of the character Hercules are a) separate topics from the mythological Hercules and b) largely separate topics from each other, as well.) Or is there something else I'm not understanding?
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Reiterating from the discussion list that the Mythical person type is probably most appropriate for the generic "Hercules" concept. It links to Mythology. For specific fictionalizations of Hercules, use the fictional character type.
-Ed
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Jeff,
Read my first again. Hercules is NOT a person. Of course, you and I know that. So, the "Based On" property for Fictional Character that says it is for "real people" CANNOT fit for Hercules the "Mythical person". If you look at the description or "hint" for the Fictional Character type's "Based On" property, it says "Use this property only for characters based on real people. Enter the topic corresponding to the person."
Again, Hercules is NOT real. So then, he can't be logically typed or inferred as a "Person or Being in fiction". (again, because the "Based On" property makes that illogical. He COULD be typed as a "Mythical person in fiction" however, if we had that. Or more simply, as just a "subject basis" of something else. Which is what I was referring to when I mentioned perhaps just using something like /fictional_universe/representations_in_fiction. Kind of 2 things, I guess... 1. being the subject basis of a work of fiction and 2. a fictional character being the character portrayal of a real person. (and Hercules and Odin are not real people)
Many things are based on many other things. The Character portrayal of "Hercules" the mythological person is not correct when we say that he is a "Person"...of Being in fiction. That doesn't sit well with me, and it seems that the schema description also says it doesn't fit, and should be used only for "characters based on real people".
(sorry for being longwinded, I tried to describe my thoughts in 3 different ways, hoping that one of the paragraphs above would make sense to you??)
Ed,
Yes, I think your understanding me here. "Odin" has the correct view of Mythical person, but alas is also not correctly typed as a "Person or Being in fiction" either.
Something somewhere needs to change guys.
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Jeff,
Forgot to mention the obvious to you. Currently, Hercules is NOT typed as a Fictional Character, but instead a "Person or Being in fiction", quite different or one in the same ? That's my basic problem with the schema currently and that "Based On" property.
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I made my previous post before seeing this reply. The current typing of Hercules is correct -- the mythological figure is a Person or Being in Fiction and therefore not a Fictional Character. (The two types are incompatible.) Note to self: always look at the topics under discussion before answering any questions about them.
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Ok, so were saying that "Person or Being in Fiction" which used to be just "Person in Fiction" has now expanded it's meaning and the Person Or Being In Fiction type can be used on topics of "real people" or "mythical persons" or "beings" or perhaps even "creatures" ? (Medusa comes to mind has perhaps a hybrid type there). I like to be corrected then on the proper use of the "Based On" property and update it's description, since, that's what is tripping me up I think.
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(Well I wouldn't say "now expanded" since it happened years ago, but that's neither here nor there.)
Yes, Person or Being in Fiction can and should be used for all those things. Could even be used for Phar Lap, if you wanted to.
You should use "based on" just like you'd expect; as I said, the property hint needed updating (which has now been done) to bring it into line with its expected type. Or, in other words, when entering a fictionalized Hercules, type it as "Fictional Character", and enter /en/hercules in "based on".
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That makes sense now. Thanks. See the main discussion again for my reply to Ed, however.
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Simple: Hercules should not be typed as a "person or being in fiction". From the type definition,
"The "person or being in fiction" type allows people, deities, and other beings that are not actually fictional"
(my emphasis). Hercules is fictional, therefore the "fictional character" type should be applied, with "based on" left empty (or linked to None, but that's a whole different problem) as he's not based on a real person.
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I agree Hercules is fictional (or more appropriately a mythical person as Ed puts it). So the question is how do you correctly represent a "mythical person" who was portrayed as a "fictional character" ?
Also, Did I correctly type Medusa as a film character ? (take a look and let me know)
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There are two issues at play here. We need to distinguish the generic concept of the mythical person from specific uses of the mythical person in works of fiction. IMO, the Mythical person type should be used for the generic concept and Fictional person for the specific uses. We can add a property to mythical person to link to specific uses, similar to how Book is linked to Book edition.
-Ed
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Ed, Yes, that was my original thought
Hercules is "represented" in various ways of Film, Comics, etc. each with a distinctly unique representation and a few bits of metadata that set each one apart from the generic concept of the "mythical person".
So I have Hercules the "mythical person" type. And under that "mythical person" generic concept type (Where Edith Hamilton roams) is where I'd like to see those various representations... Where Stan Lee's, Walt Disney's, etc. roam. Nowhere should I see a "person" type or co-type exist along the graph for Hercules the "mythical person". And I think everyone agrees on that last part.
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I understand you now. It's just a documentation issue. The expected type of "based on" is "Person or being in fiction", which is designed to allow non-human entities to be represented, including deities and mythological beings. From the type description:
The "person or being in fiction" type allows people, deities, and other beings that are not actually fictional to be modeled as characters in fictional works that treat them in a fictional manner or that include characters clearly based on real people."Person or being in fiction" started out life as simply "Person in fiction", I believe, but when we extended the type definition to include other entities, we forgot to update the hint on the incoming property.
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I'd like to see a property added to Fictional Character for birth date using this type.
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Yes, good idea (once the fictional date/time types are promoted).
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Once the date/time schema is promoted to the commons, what other properties do we need to add, if any?
So far, besides character birthdate, I've got Event in Fiction start/end dates, and Fictional Object created/destroyed dates. Any others? I'm tracking these in DA-1053.
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I know it's more than a simple add, but what about beefing up the marriage property to make it more in line with the real-life counterpart?
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Adding fictional dates to the fictional marriage relationship would be pretty ugly: we'd need three date properties for both the "to" and "from" properties. (E.g. "From (Gregorian)", "From (other date)", "From (other calendar)"). We could easily add a "type of union" property, though.
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I think a Hermaphrodite classification or a more malleable Fictional Gender Type could be useful for classifying fictional characters.
I recognize the utility of keeping Gender to strict scientifically-recognized types when in comes to codifying real people but I do think that characters in fictional universes need a bit more leeway.
Examples that come to mind are the Tleilaxu in the Frank Herbert's Dune Universe, the Wraeththu from Storm Constantine's Wraeththu series, and I remember a hermaphroditic God of Luck from Jo Clayton's Soul Drinker Trilogy.
Actually while trying to google-remember the name of that deity, I stumbled on a bibliography of alternate-sexed fictional characters.
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The Character Gender type was designed to be extended. I've added Hermaphrodite as a possible gender; if there are additional fictional genders that you know are missing, let me know and I can add more.
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Thanks, Jeff, this fits the bill nicely.
Is there another way of finding relevant types besides plugging in keywords into the search field?
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You can look at the schema, and see what types are expected by which properties (you need to be on the edit page to do this easily; from there you can click the wrench icon for the type you're interested in). Or you can look at the list of types in the relevant domain.
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Any method of searching for a property rather than a type? At times, it's difficult to ascertain which type contains the property I'm trying to add to a topic. An advanced version of search where you can search for a property and the containing type is returned would be incredibly useful.
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Thanks for all the new comic book types, Tristan! I'll definitely be spending a lot of time using these.
One suggestion I have though is to make "Fictional Character" be one of the included types for "Comic Book Character". You'll see that "TV Character" and "Film Character" for example, did the same thing. That way we don't get multiple properties for Creator and Universes when it's listed as both types (which it pretty much always should be).
I'd also like to suggest including a property for a character's traditional foes, and maybe for the traditional allies as well.
Thanks again for the great work!
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Thanks Dan,
I'm right there with you on the foes and allies properties. Also, I'll shuffle some things around a bit to get it to fit well with fictional characters and go ahead and and the included type.
Tristan -
Actually to clarify: adding an included type does not fix the problem of redundant properties. In fact it forces the issue by guaranteeing that the topic has both of those types. Fixing it will require adding the included type, migrating the existing values, and then removing the property from the type. So it will take a little bit of time and effort.
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I'd be eager to see these all shaped up. How many instances do we have of these redundant properties?
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Created by should be a reciprocal link with Character Created by in the Fictional Character Type. Primary Universe should also be reciprocal with Appears in these Fictional Universes.
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"Created by" is definitely a duplicate of "Character Created by", and should probably just be deleted (after migrating the data to the other property, of course). "Primary Universe" is trickier -- if the idea is that comic characters have one primary universe, but can possibly appear in many other universes, then it's not quite the same meaning as the other property.
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Primary Universe would be better dealt with as Created In (a non-existent property as of now.) Although as I was writing this reply, the Blue Beetle, The Question, Turok, Magnus: Robot Fighter and Dr. Solar: Man of the Atom came to mind. Seeing as how they originated in the Fox Comics Universe, Charlton Comics Universe and the Gold Key Universe and are now in the DC Universe, this complicates the issue.
Come to think of it this isn't dealt with in existing types or properties as far as I've been able to ascertain. Appears in these Fictional Universes deals with the fact that a character can crossover into other Fictional Universes through storyline or acquisition nicely. Primary Universe only deals with the Universe that a character is currently identified. There's no provision at present for the original Fictional Universe a character originated in.
Just looked up those characters and I see I have a lot of work ahead of me.
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I'm not finding the Type very useful for comic characters as the issue it occurs in is more important than the fictional where. Very new though so am fuzzy on existing Types and many, many other things.
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The Deceased Fictional Character type has a property for date of death which takes a Fictional Date/Time value. Part of this type is the portrayed in attribute, which admittedly is the most useful property of this type most of the time. This should allow you to specify that a fictional character died in a given [Comic Book Story] co-typed as a (http://www.freebase.com/view/comic_books/comic_book_story) Work of Fiction
I am the administrator of this type, and am welcome to any suggestions as to how to improve this base.
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I've decided that the solution is a sub-type of yours that includes the properties that are required. I'm having a few issues figuring out how to go about it though.
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What properties are you needing that the types I've created are not providing, or in what ways could I improve my types to better serve your needs. I know you're working with comic book characters, and as someone who has also spent some time filling out topics for comic characters I know it very difficult. Real-life deceased people are never brought back to life by means of retconning. :)
If possible, I would like to move any future discussion about this to either my Fictional Universe base or to a discussion on the actual type in question so that this can be more easily discovered by those that are interested.
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All you have to do to cross post a discussion is add the new topic or domain in the box at the bottom of the thread where it talks about cross posting (labeled "Other:") I've added the base you mentioned. Free free to add whatever types are appropriate.
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Retconning is a huge problem for fictional character continuity, yes. :) At least as far as comic book, adventure-series and horror characters are concerned.
I don't think retrofitting your own type would be suitable in most cases as the situation only applies in a few sub-genres of fiction.
I've created the Deceased Comic Book Character type with the properties "Died in Issue " and "Reappears in Issue #"
Although, now that I'm thinking about it this type might be generalized to be applicable to Characters in Adventure Fiction, Horror Fiction and/or films.
I've only added it to a few characters thus far. I think better while doing something rather than in abstract.
I'm all for moving the discussion to your base and/or the topic.
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The issue I see with linking to issues... is that it's not exactly correct to say that Sarah Essen Gordon died in Detective Comics #741 as that was simply the first printing of the fictional story Endgame, Part Three: ...Sleep In Heavenly Peace.... It's the story that's the important part. In most modern comic book issues you have one story per issue, but that is not always the case.
As far as re-appearances, it would probably be better to have a "resurrected fictional character" that would accept links to a CVT containing information about the Fictional Date/Timeof subsequent resurrections and deaths as well as the manner of resurrection and any other relevant details. Perhaps I'll try my hand at that later tonight. It would help me solve the "serial clone" problem I had with Scytale who constantly clones himself to live forever.
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I beg to differ on the importance of the issue that an event happens in. In my view it's the issue where the actual event was portrayed and subsequent printings are only important in that they give people wider access to the story in question.
I don't think we can just declare issues irrelevant even if it makes the task of maintaining freebase even more daunting than it already is. An entry should be equally useful to the serious collector as the casual browser.
The resurrected fictional character idea sounds workable. I do believe though that the death or resurrection should exist as a link in the dataset rather than just in the copy.
Took a look at Scytale and couldn't help myself, filled it out to the best of my ability. Scytale is as much a Gordian Knot as Ra's al Ghul as far as this topic is concerned.
On an unrelated note, what is the community's solution to useful bases/types that have been abandoned by the contributor? I'm speaking of tristan and the Comic Book Character base. His contributions are immensely useful but they don't have the reciprocal links I believe they should have.
Not to mention that the whole base should be eventually merged with your fictional character base.
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The reason I say that the story is more important than the issue is primarily because some issues contain more than one story, and the values about who wrote, penciled, and inked that story are attached to the story itself and not the issue.
Take Changeling for example. If I wanted to know who penciled the story in which he died, I could find the link from him to the story If I Should Die...! I can see who it was.
Now if I want to find the first issue in which he died (ignoring for now his re-birth) I can order the issues in which that story appeared by publication date and see that it was X-Men #42. Now, taken the other way. If I only have the issue that he died in, I have a confusion whether it was If I Should Die...! or The End, or the Beginning?.
Also, should we list X-Men #90 as a death of Changeling? He certainly died in that issue as well, but if you use the comic book stories as the link, that issue is taken care of automatically and there is no duplication of information.
As far as the Comic Book types, I believe the other administrators of the comics domain (skud and alecf) are responsible for making changes to those types now. I agree that some of these types need a bit of love.
As far as the resurrected character type is concerned, I've been giving it some thought and am not able to come up with a workable solution from both an ontological perspective and from the perspective of the reality of the Freebase type system and UI. If this was RDF, I'd be done. (and nobody would be able to easily edit it)
I have raised this issue on the freebase-discuss mailing list in hopes that more eyes could help us come up with a solution.
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Isn't X-Men #90 a reprint of #42?
I see your point but it doesn't invalidate the primacy of an issue over the story arc, in this case. While it's mostly true that the same team is kept during a story arc the inker, letterer, penciler and colorist can change between issues as well.
Changeling is actually an easier than usual case because he has only been revived once and as a zombie at that. Which is why the only other character i've bothered with thus far is Sophie Cuckoo of the Stepford Cuckoos because she's only been revived once as well.
I think of it more in terms of first publication. The same must be true of short stories and novellas printed in pulp magazines. The story might have been reprinted and collected many times over the years but it first saw print in say...Amazing Stories or Weird Tales.
This is just my opinion but I think it's an important enough aspect that it should be addressed in some form or fashion.
Has anyone brought up the idea of listing the active users currently responsible for a topic? If you hadn't mentioned it here, I'd have no idea who to address any issues concerning the Comic Book Character base .
What about a Special Event type? Where the event can be listed (death, resurrection, marriage, et al), the issue(s) or book(s) in which the event occurs and whatever other properties that may be useful. This way the Deceased type would only be attached to characters that have been left well enough alone.
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Yes, X-Men #90 contains a re-print of the story first printed in X-Men #42. (The other stories printed in each issue are different)
A comic book issue is in many ways similar to a book edition or a musical release versus a book or musical album. You wouldn't say that so and so event happened in the first edition printing of a book, you would say it happened in the book. I started a discussion on the Comic Book Story type asking that a property be added to record the first issue to carry a particular story. That way it would be a simple matter to write queries going from a character to the first issue in which they died. (or any other such links)
As far as who is responsible for a topic, if you go to the members page for the base of a type, you should be able to see who the administrators of that base (and by extension, type) are. (ie. http://www.freebase.com/view/comic_books#domain-members)
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So what are your thoughts on creating a new more generalized Special Event type for the Lazarus-type characters and leaving your Deceased Fictional Character type to document canonical deaths?
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That could fit the bill. It's a bit difficult finding out if there are suitable types for a given situation when the only way I've found so far is to type a keyword in the field and hope for a suitable suggestion. Is there a FAQ or any documentation for existing Types?
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This is actually a quintuplet of five sisters; Celeste, Esme, Mindee, Phoebe and Sophie. I need to refer to the group in relation of the Xavier Institute student body and the Corsairs. Phoebe, Celeste and Mindee in relation to the X-Men and Esme in relation to the Brotherhood of Mutants.
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You might be able to do this using the Organization in Fiction type. Just create separate Fictional Character topics for each sister, and add them to the various Organizations as appropriate. The final question would be what to do with the Stepford Cuckoos topic itself; it obviously shouldn't be a Fictional Character, but it could probably be made an Organization in Fiction without stretching the meaning of that type too much.
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Thanks. What about IDs associated with this topic? All the individual wikipedia entries are associated with the Stepford Cuckoos entry.
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Never Mind, there are no separate entries in Wikipedia they're all redirects. Removing the fictional character designation is debatable, they were originally conceived as a group ala Triplicate Girl from the League of Superheroes.
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Only peripherally related but is there a type where you can add pop culture references, works inspired by or works that inspired the topic?
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Can you add a Date of Birth property (and maybe Date of Death too)?
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The problem here is that lots of fictional characters exist in universes that don't use the Gregorian calendar, so we'd need to find a way to capture Gregorian dates, Stardates, Middle-Earth dates, years A.F. (After Ford), etc.
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This came up on a couple Fictional Character topics where someone wanted to give a birth date so they had to make the character a Person too, which is a no-no. To beat the same drum again: This problem is solved by allowing users to use the existing types for Person, Education, Politician, Author, etc. etc. on a fictional character - just put the assertion for the bithdate or "term of office as president" in the context of the fictional universe. In everyday life, people put properties, not only on topics, but on assertions. Quotation: "President Bush says there are WMDs but the French prime minister says there are not". Citation: "According to the US Census, the population is 100,000". Fictional assertions about real things "In the universe the 'Independence Day' movie, the Empire State Building is destroyed on July 2, 1996". (Wouldn't it be great to put this assertion on the real Empire State Building topic without having to create a separate type for 'Fictional Building' when we have to make a separate topic?)
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I don't think this example would actually be solved by assertions, since regardless of whether we implement assertions or not, we still need a type to hold the data, and we currently lack a type that could be used for both real dates and dates in fictional calendar systems. It does seem like people want to enter this data for fictional characters, so it's worth trying to model a type we can use. A compound-value type with two properties might suffice -- one of type "datetime" for fictional characters in universes using the Gregorian calendar (AND who are born within the range 10,000 BCE - AD 9999), and one or two for all others. I have a bazillion things on my plate right now, but if I have time, I'll play around with it.
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In this thread, they even have the same problem for real historical persons: "Take "Person": where their dates of birth and death are not known, the dates in which a person flourished is standardly used to disambiguate them." They want to specify the birth date as "Qing Dynasty". This will probably be solved by splitting out a separate type (like Living Thing) that defines Birth Date and which the Person type includes. (Then you could mix in a different type that defines the different kind of birth date that you need.) The relevance to "contextual assertions" still applies. If you have a type for real Living Thing (with a birth date), will a user be afraid to use it on a fictional character? Right now, they should be afaid because it implies the character is real like all the other topics with the property. But the problem is solved if the character uses the same type as real things, but asserts the birth date in the context of the fictional universe (so it doesn't come up ono searches for "real people born on this date").
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(Sorry, meant to link to the other thread on historical persons.)
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How about an alter-ego property? This would come in handy for superheroes. Seems that this is being stuck on as an alias right now, but there are enough superheroes that it might as well be a property, right?
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Well there is somthing like that by user duck1123
Should it be a topic-based property or simply a text-based propert (there are some topics existing for some of the more well-known alter-IDs).
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Caught myself lamenting, again, the lack of a "date of birth" property on Fictional Character. By not having this property, absolutely no DOB can be entered under Fictional Character, Gregorian calendar or not. How is that better than adding at least a simple Date property to support at least those fictional characters lucky enough to have been born in a universe under a Gregorian calendar?
Or, a "simple, stupid" kind of solution: a slight denormalization of the handling of DOB via two properties: 1) Gregorian date of birth, simple property with Date as the expected type, and 2) Non-gregorian date of birth, a CVT of two fields: a) Calendar system, expected type: Calendar, b) date, expected type: string (since date representation is calendar-specific). How's that?
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Well, maybe we could point the way towards uncertain dates of fictional 'births' and 'deaths' while we're at it (ie. circa)?
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I'm still getting my feet under me on Freebase, but it seems to me that this page has been accidentally connected to a lot of non-Star-Wars pages (I just relinked 'Pig Bodine' to a different 'Human').
Seems like the key would be to rename this one 'Human (Star Wars)' to avoid this? any suggestions?
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In general, we don't use Wikipedia-style parenthetical disambiguators on Freebase. The idea is that the combination of the type of the topic and the "pop-out" description which appears when linking to the topic should be enough to ensure that users link to the correct topic.
Obviously, mistakes will happen, but as they're nice and easy to fix I don't see this as serious problem.
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Pak21: how is it easy to fix? As I understand it, I look at the list under Human (that's the Star Wars one) and I can get a list of the members of that category, but when I find a wrong entry, I have to go to *that* fictional character [click], find the Edit button [scroll, click] and scroll down to the properties, and select edit [scroll, click], delete the current Human [click, type] and re-enter Human [type, scroll, scroll, click].
or is there a faster way?
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The current site layout with separate "browse" and "edit" pages is a new feature, and there are currently a number of bugs relating to the view switching back to "browse" mode when you'd really rather stay in "edit" mode, which makes this more painful than it would be otherwise. These will hopefully be fixed soon.
One small point: the "Add more facts" button at the top-right of the page is exactly the same as the "Edit and show details" button at the bottom-left, so that will remove a little bit of scrolling etc.
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You know, I think these two "Human" topics should be merged. The only difference is the presence of midichlorians, and we don't make a separate species all the time for fictional characters with one thing that differs from reality. Eg, Mister Ed is a "horse" not a "horse (Mister Ed)". I can't think of any characters born with psychic powers off the top of my head, but I'm sure we'd class them as "human" not "human (with psychic powers)" or whatever, too.
Conversely, Buffy Summers is classed as species = Slayer but I think that's inappropriate. A slayer isn't a species, as it's not biological and isn't inherited. A profession, perhaps. I think that needs cleanup.
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skud: At the moment, the dropdown list ffor the Human word puts the Star Wars version (and also the Star Trek version) much (much!) higher than the Human (fictional character) which seems to be the source of some of these misclassifications.
Merging them might make sense -- but consider that the Human (Star Trek) version actually has a lot of [fictional] content, regarding the spread of humanity and warpdrive etc, and merging that with the species of Holden Caulfield (for example) would be confusing at best. I think the Star Wars version has a similar locus for fictional content. More of a concern is that the autosuggester puts the Star Wars (and Star Trek) version very high on the suggestion lists and without an obvious clue that this is specifically for certain universes.
Could the autosuggestions be improved (ordering or extract improvements might help)?
oh, and I agree about "Slayer" not being a species but a profession.
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@trochee: I think we should get rid of the Human (fictional character) topic by merging it into Human (real species). We don't have this split for other species, eg. Horse, so why for human?
Human (Star Trek) has a lot of fictional content *on the wikipedia page*. It mostly involves fictional events in future history, and relationships with other fictional races. Wikipedia's style is to have discursive articles that spread over multiple subject areas, or sometimes, multiple pages per subject with some pages going into more detail. Freebase's is different: we have one topic page per "thing". The "thing" here is humanity/the human race/the species homo sapiens.
If we were to model fictional events and relationships in Freebase (we don't yet), we would undoubtedly make sure that the fictional universe in which the events or relationships existed were a disambiguator, so there wouldn't be any confusion. That is, the relationship "Humans are friendly with Vulcans" would be disambiguated with "Star Trek Universe", as would "Humans are part of the United Federation of Planets".
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I agree with most of skud's merge suggestions for humans. The Star Trek universe, for example, assumes a continuity with the real universe up to a point; the fact that there is a fictional origin for the species is beside the point.
However, in the case of the Star Wars universe, what are called humans arguably bear no kinship to Homo sapiens: it's set a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, after all. However (again), if we decide to keep the Star Wars "human" topic around, we start to run into a big problem: practically every secondary-world fantasy has a race called "man" or "human", although the majority of these worlds have no connection to the real universe. Having a separate "human" topic for every fantasy universe under the sun sounds like asking for trouble.
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*nod* ... I personally see it is, if you had two humans, one from our world and one from the fictional univere, and a skilled biologist who knows how to figure these things out, could that biologist tell you which person was "our" human, and which was the one from the fictional universe? If there is no biological difference, then I'm gonna say they're the same species.
Another way of looking at it is, could we interbreed with the species in question and produce offspring that could also breed? All a bit theoretical I know (though I bet there are plenty of people who have considered it wrt eg. Han Solo), but not a bad mental model, especially for words like eg. Anita Blake or Babylon 5.
We should also consider these questions wrt elves, dwarves, etc. Are the dwarves in Discworld the same species as the ones in Lord of the Rings? Could Gimli and Cheery Littlebottom get it on and produce dwarf babies?
And what about vampires? Is vampire a species, a disease, a special ability, or what? The vamps in Discworld reproduce sexually, but can also sire new vamps by biting. Wikipedia says:
Vampires can create new vampires with their bite, but generally prefer not to. Given the existence of vampire couples with vampire children, they seem able to reproduce sexually. Ankh-Morpork resident Arthur Winkins became a vampire as part of an inheritance that included an old castle in Überwald and the accompanying noble title. His wife Doreen Winkins refers to herself as a vampiress, or vampire by marriage, although she is not actually undead.
I'd say that vamps in Discworld are a species, but in Buffyverse (for instance) it's more of a disease/ability thing.
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I just realised I've argued myself into a corner. A skilled biologist could presumably detect midichlorians. Um.
Oh, look, we all know midichlorians are stupid anyway, right? *wilfully ignores them*
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Yeah, I'm fine with having only one topic...and being willing to split it if/when someone comes up with an interesting model that requires a different set of properties for humans from their universe.
I was surprised to see you suggesting we merge into /en/human (instead of a generic fictional human topic), but I'm warming to the idea.
On the what's-really-a-species question, I think that using properties differently in different universes is appropriate. E.g. in the Madman Comics universe, there are Space Aliens who don't have an identified species...in that context, "Alien" makes sense as a species. Similarly, in that comic book context, I've listed Villian as a profession. These usages wouldn't fit for characters in a more serious universe.
http://www.freebase.com/view/base/madman/views/characters_in_the_madman_universe
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I think the strongest contender for a distinct topic might be Human (D&D), because there's a lot of structured data that could be captured...from races they can interbreed with to gods they worship to racial bonuses. That said, no one has done it yet. If someone wants to in the future, it'll still be possible to do.
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I've noticed that when folks type a character as human, they seem to be frequently confused which Human topic to use. As an example, Trillian was typed as a human from the Star Wars universe...which, while not impossible is highly improbable. I'm guessing that many folks want to just be able to say "Trillian is a human", and not wade through a quickly growing list...only to find that Human - Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy isn't on the list, and they'll have to create a new topic for humans in that universe. I'm not sure what the solution is here - there are detailed articles about, for example, the qualities of humans in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, v. humans in the Babylon 5 universe. These seem like very appropriate topics...but there are many more universes where humans have not yet been described. Do we want a generic fictional character species 'human' that can be used when the universe doesn't need it's own article describing humans? (e.g. the 'West Wing universe IS different from the A-Team universe...but I'm not sure we'll ever need topics to describe humans in each of those universes). Conversely, if we DO want each of {West Wing, Diff'rent Strokes, A-Team, Days Of Our Lives, 24, Law & Order,...} to have it's own fictional universe, and we want a 1:1 ratio of fictional universes to Human topics, we'll need to find a better way for someone to wade through the hundreds or thousands of human topics - something like filters on autocomplete. What do folks think is the best solution here?
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I think that in universes where there is a species called "human" that is not the same as the real-world species of Homo sapiens, it's not unreasonable to have a separate type for that species (although it is a bit messy). But most universes that involve humans really do just imply the actual species, and therefore we shouldn't have separate types for each of those universes. The same would apply for dogs, cats, etc. The problem remains of preventing people from typing a character as the wrong type of human, and I'm not sure what the best way to do that is.
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um, just getting my feet under me on freebase, but it seems like the Human (Star Wars) variety is getting assigned to too many non-Star-Wars characters. any suggestions of how to separate them? I raised another thread over on the Human (Star Wars character) topic that's related.
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In fiction, very often, we don't have many informations about the life of a character and many of them have a very short life! Sometime, we don't know nothing about their birth and death. So, I suggest to add a field "Age in fiction" (or something more explicit) to give informations about the age of a fictionnal character. It could be more or less precise: child, teenager, adult, old person, or 18-20 or 50-60 years old, to indicate what is the age of a character in a fiction works. For example, Harry Potter has a different "age" for each book of the serie...
Thanks (I'm french.. sorry for my english)
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This is a really interesting suggestion. A compound value type could be used to indicate the age (or age range) in different works of fiction. Another approach would be to promote the appears-in relationship to a compound value type with additional information including the character’s age in that appearance.
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Because the "appears in" relationship model varies from medium to medium, sticking a compound value type in (that is, where there isn't already one) is probably too complex. But a compound value type on the fictional character type itself that could contain a range and link to a work (non-reciprocated), might do the job nicely.
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My Dad has a good guestimate of his Birth Year. What age would we accord him?
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Could we have some way of linking in the educational background of a character? i.e. an education property.
My first thought was that we would need a 'Fictional Educational Institution' type, but that would not cover characters who were educated at real world institutions. e.g. James Bond at the University of Cambridge.
I think we therefore need an 'educational institution for fictional characters' type for the property.
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An "educational institution in fiction" type could work -- we've used that locution a few times for types that can have both fictional and real-world instances.
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I would prefer that the fictional topic be seperate from the real-world topic. i.e. University of Cambridge in the James Bond Universe be a seperate topic from the real University of Cambridge.
Perhaps 'educational institution in fiction' could have a 'based upon' property to link the fictional and real-world topics? -
I've done this, but without separating the fictional topics from the real-world topics: http://www.freebase.com/tools/schema/fictional_universe/school_in_fiction.
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I accidently put in as a gender Male (the album by some obscure band), instead of Male the actual gender. Shouldn't this limit this (or at least deambiguate) to only the acceptable topics? Else there are going to be oodles of people mucking that up.
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You can mark the property as enumerated, as /people/person/gender does. When the values of a property are from a closed or at least very small set, enumeration makes sense, as users are presented with a fixed list of values from which to choose, with no option to create a new one. If they really need a new value, they must go and create it separately.
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I see: it's nice and easy to do it for people, but trickier for fictional chars. Why if it is done for people/person, is it not done for fictional universe/fictional character?
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Seems like it should be changed to an enumeration. I'd do it but am not an admin for this domain.
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wbecker: "Why if it is done for people/person, is it not done for fictional universe/fictional character?"
Probably an oversight. The longer answer is that similar types may be developed by different people, and may not initially have the same schema. When we see two types that could be modeled the same way, we can get the two type creators talking to each other to decide whether there's a good common model.
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Hi, is this the right place for adding the various gods and goddesses from Greek mythology? Technically they qualify as "fictional", but most of the time we tend to think of them as "mythological" instead. Would a new type just for figures from myths and legends make sense? They rarely have a known creator, but are usually associated with a culture, properties that are not currently in Fictional Character.
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That would open a whole can of worms. Which religions are fictional?
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Hmm, Greek mythology is considered a religion? My apologies then. I was taught myths and legends in literature classes.
Anyway, what I was trying to get at, was a type to assign to figures such as Zeus and Apollo and Hercules and Paris. Perhaps if the topic that applies to the goddess Paris has a person-like type, people would stop mistyping it as a City/Town.
How about a "Mythological Figure" type outside of the Fictional Universe then? Either in Religion or Book/Publishing? -
Modern day neo-pagans often worships "mythological" gods.
Anyways, it may make sense to distinguish between "fictional" which are stories that are expressly said to be untrue by the author, and "mythological" which are stories tied to religions that people may or may not practice any more.-
Tristan: FSM worship, and if one were to look at a fantasy book in which made up gods are worshiped then I think that is another (different) type of fictional relgion. Is the FSM a fictional creature or mythological?
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To follow up on this thread, we have since created the Religion Domain , with a general purpose Deity type. Feel free to co-type "mythological" gods as instances of Deity, if they're worshiped as such.
I don't think fictional religions or fictional gods should belong in the Religion Domain. To me they are fictional first, and as such are part of the Fictional Universe Domain. So the FSM (which immediately made me think of Finite State Machines ...) would be considered a fictional creature.
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