The following piece on Suvians was written by Mr. Eldritch, mostly during school hours when he should have been doing work. It covers the structure and chemical makeup of Glitter, its function in Suvian biology, its implications for their genetics, and the lifecycle of Suvians, as well as some musings on the origin of Suvians.
The Eldritch Theory of Suvians[]
Glitter is a hexagonal, organometallonarrative molecule made of a unobtainium-gold ring with complex organic-phlebotnium chains extending from the unobtainium vertices. Within the ring is a extremely massive quasiparticle, known as a Suvion, formed from a particle-like "knot" of Canon Energy and a quantum plothole.
Glitter comes in two forms: "circulatory" and "neural." "Circulatory" Glitter cycles through the bloodstream, picking up Canon Energy from an extra organ located within—indeed, mostly replacing—the frontal lobe of the brain (normally associated with, among other things, abstract thought). This organ, composed mostly of a solid crystal of Glitter, parasitically strips Canon Energy from the host continuum. Suvians are ontovores—they feast on the very fabric of reality itself.
The "circulatory" glitter then passes through the rest of the body, joining up with the oxygenated blood from the normal circulatory system. (It is worth noting, at this point, that energized Suvian blood bears a distinctive Urple sheen, reminiscent of the red displayed by oxygenated human blood.) The Glitter passes its Canon Energy to the rather misnamed "neural" glitter.
Although the structure of Glitter is optimized, in all cases, to pick up and discharge Canon Energy from the central Suvion, both kinds of Glitter have slightly different structures. In "circulatory" Glitter, the structure of the phlebotnium-carbon chains is optimized for stabilization and storage of Canon Energy. In "neural" Glitter, the structure is optimized to transmit and receive Canon Energy signals in a manner similar to a human neuron's neurotransmitters, and to attract and repel other nGlitter molecules through phlebotnium fields.
The Suvian body is, in its essence, a mass of Glitter—everything else is merely camouflage. The "neural" Glitter, in large agglomerations, displays a sort of intelligence: the discharges of energy between individual nGlitter molecules scale up to act like a neural network—a brain. In a Suvian, the process in taken to full scale, creating a sentient, although very crude, organism. This neural network can rearrange itself to create "psychic circuits" that direct and shape Canon Energy to create a body, and to alter reality to produce "speshul" powers (an interesting side-effect of this process is the emission of electromagnetic radiation in unusual wavelengths.)
This body really doesn't "function" at all. The closest analogue would be the Starship Titanic, from Life, The Universe, and Everything—it looks like biology, but could never actually function if not supported by the frame of leached Canon Energy. The whole Suvian body is, in medical fact, a giant mass of cancer cells, a tumor both literally and figuratively.
It is this pseudobiology that leads to the weird and inconsistent results of many DMSE&R reports. For instance, the biologically impossible, unworkable, and frankly bizarre genetic code reported in the most recent report is due to the fact that Suvian heredity is not genetic, but memetic.
Suvian heredity is actually carried in the form of memory, memes stored in the neural network of the Suvian brain. Concepts, character traits, backstory, appearance... these ideas are what the Suvian neural network bases its constructed body on.
The method by which this memetic code is passed on is as strange as the whole of Suvian biology itself. A Suvian's life begins as a mass of Glitter, floating in a nourishing, oily mist of complex, and rather implausible, organonarrative compounds. The Suvian then assembles the memetic fragments it is left with into a genetic code—and uses it to assemble itself a body.
(Incidentally, Sue-wraiths are actually made of this mist—they are Sues who failed to fully form and instead embedded their Glitter network in the body of a canon character.)
(As another aside, Suvians also have only the Glitter they were left with at birth to work with—their Canon Energy is of a sufficiently low grade that they cannot manufacture unobtainium. This means that the more complex and 3-dimensional a Suvian's memetic code is, the greater fraction of their Glitter must be converted to "neural," so less is left over for the "circulatory" side, so the lower degree of "speshulness" the Sue has—thus explaining the Spectrum.)
Anyway, as the Suvian matures and moves through the plotline, it continuously leaches Canon Energy out of the story. It charges some of this in their cGlitter, until eventually it builds up to the point where the Suvions can no longer contain the Canon Energy. They become unstable, until they spontaneously fission—using up all their Canon Energy and destroying their cGlitter to create a one-way plothole to World One. Their false body recycled into Canon Energy to feed the vortex, they are left in a state identical to a Possession Sue—a state that we refer to as a "plotbunny."
These "plotbunnies" live for only twenty-four hours on the Canon Energy powering their neurons, as they lack the cGlitter required to gather energy—rather similar to a butterfly's adult form. They must find a human mind in the right state (the weaker ones must choose one in a state of insomnia-, drug-, or boredom-induced delirium), and latch onto it, integrating their Glitter network into the brain and using up their last vestige of power to fire the right neurons before their rather implausible molecular structure undergoes Spontaneous Existence Failure. Their memetic code now injected into the host through a form of literal, virus-esque Mind Rape, it combines with the host's existing memetic network to produce a fetal Suvian through a process referred to as "Inspiration."
Once the idea has reached a certain state of development—always far less than would be medically wise—it is "born" by escaping through creative pathways in the human mind—the same ones normally used in full Authors to create whole new continua. As the average Suvian lacks the power to do that (in most cases—see Eragon and Twilight) it simply forces the author to write fanfiction, giving birth to it in an existing continuum.
The Origins of Suvians[]
Mr. Eldritch theorized that "Suvians evolved in some forgotten shlock sci-fi continuum, an aborted story that failed to fully blossom. These conditions would be ideal for the formation of a primordial Suvian—abundant free phlebotnium and unobtainium, plotholes galore, active complexes of memes colliding and reacting, and low levels of Canon Energy to provide evolutionary pressure.
Eventually, some fatal plothole moved the Suvians from their home continuum into Star Trek. Having left all their natural predators behind in whatever aborted world they came from, and faced with a multiverse infinitely richer in Canon Energy than the tattered scraps of their unheard-of, unread, unwatched, abandoned pseudo-continuum, they multiplied, like a virus or a cancer (although some tolerable, and even good, OCs went with them). And thus, all of modern fanfiction, and the scourge of Suvians, were born."