The bulk update request #4966 is active.

create alias consentual (0) -> consensual (4)
create alias consensual_bondage (0) -> bondage (106792)
create alias consentual_bondage (0) -> bondage (106792)
create alias consensual_cuckold (0) -> cuckold (4619)
create alias consentual_cuckold (0) -> cuckold (4619)
create alias consentual_transformation (0) -> transformation (71192)
create alias consensual_hypnosis (0) -> hypnosis (20320)
create alias consentual_hypnosis (0) -> hypnosis (20320)
create alias consentual_tentacles (0) -> consentacles (6581)

Reason: Common typos

EDIT: As requested, also alias the correct spellings to the non-consensual versions of the tags.

EDIT: The bulk update request #4966 (forum #367341) has failed: Error: Antecedent name has already been taken (create alias consensual_cuckold -> cuckold)

EDIT: The bulk update request #4966 (forum #367341) has been approved by @Cinder.

"Consensual" is too generic and ambiguous, and most activities are assumed consensual if not tagged with forced_* and/or forced. Consensual_transformation in particular is redundant when we have forced_transformation. They're better aliased to the underlying activity, with consensual being invalidated and noted to be assumed if not tagged forced.

I was wondering that myself. Shouldn't it be the assumed default?
I mean unless explicitly_stated_consent or questionable_consent or forced/rape or similar tags exist?

:edit:
post #3777312 In fact, this one (only result for the consensual spelling) was mistagged since it's stated.

:edit2: Went ahead and went through them. Those in the first line are almost certainly invalid uses. I made a note of possibly valid uses that might need other tags like E.S.C. or Q.C.
Doesn't apply, default: post #4089303 post #3924515 post #3766878 post #3726263 post #3724298 post #3528522 post #3528506 post #3369376 post #3341134 post #3332012 post #3331945 post #3302564 post #3135856 (and post #3122283 post #3120632 post #3118794) post #2877338 post #2862875 post #2502111 post #2327434 post #2268235
Stated: post #3742338 post #3307696 ("Breed me") post #3133413 (Yet another impregnation request) post #3048154 post #3048149 post #2825534
post #3863101: Sleeping makes that very likely nonconsentual?
post #3687148: Not sure - questionable (but that's only according to description so TWYS fails - likely invalid)
post #3110014: Questionable?
post #2534328: Questionable?
post #2437562: Unless he's a masochist, seems questionable, haha
post #2437119: It's reasonable that it's consentual, because explitely-stated roleplaying. But not explicitely_stated_consent right?
post #2308609: Also pretty clearly implied consent?

consensual is already an invalid tag, so consentual should imply consensual so that we have one standardized name for this invalid tag.

Bump. It's invalid, but we should have one canonical spelling so that we can redirect consentual taggers to the invalid consensual tag.

aaronfranke said:
Bump. It's invalid, but we should have one canonical spelling so that we can redirect consentual taggers to the invalid consensual tag.

Yeah, needs some fixing, then I'd vote for it.

aaronfranke said:
Bump. It's invalid, but we should have one canonical spelling so that we can redirect consentual taggers to the invalid consensual tag.

That would be fine for the consentual -> consensual alias, but the specific activities like consentual_transformation/consensual_transformation should be aliased to the activity (transformation). It's better to alias to a valid tag when possible if it wouldn't cause mistags, than to alias to an invalid tag that someone needs to check and clean up.

Then changing the existing "consensual" tags is a prerequisite to fixing the spelling mistake "consentual" tags?

aaronfranke said:
Then changing the existing "consensual" tags is a prerequisite to fixing the spelling mistake "consentual" tags?

They should just be aliased to their appropriate targets. i.e.

alias consentual -> consensual
alias consentual_transformation -> transformation
alias consensual_transformation -> transformation
...

The bulk update request #4966 (forum #367341) has failed: Error: Antecedent name has already been taken (create alias consensual_cuckold -> cuckold)

The bulk update request #4966 (forum #367341) has been approved by @Cinder.

In practice nonconsent is norm for the transformation and hypnosis tags and forced_transformation is rarely used. These tags were important. How can I effectively search for transformation and mind control with clearly shown consent now?

The bulk update request #7751 is pending approval.

remove alias willing_transformation (0) -> consensual_transformation (111)

Reason: The other spelling has also been used, they should be aliased consistently. The existing alias needs to be removed to be able to alias them both to transformation (forced_transformation is used for apparently unwilling/non-consensual transformations, any non-forced transformation post is assumed consensual like anything else). Part 2:

alias willing_transformation -> transformation
alias consensual_transformation -> transformation

watsit said:
The bulk update request #7751 is pending approval.

remove alias willing_transformation (0) -> consensual_transformation (111)

Reason: The other spelling has also been used, they should be aliased consistently. The existing alias needs to be removed to be able to alias them both to transformation (forced_transformation is used for apparently unwilling/non-consensual transformations, any non-forced transformation post is assumed consensual like anything else). Part 2:

alias willing_transformation -> transformation
alias consensual_transformation -> transformation

transformation -forced_transformation
This isn't functional. 90% of transformation images are ambiguous. If you really are committed to removing consent tags, they should've been aliased to explicitly_stated_consent or consent_themes which would've still been a downgrade, but you wouldn't have destroyed the information. I assume it's just as bad for the other fetishes caught in this.

And if we're going to assume consent is the default, why are tentacles the exception? Would transformation have been spared if it had a catchy name too?

oozeenthusiast said:
transformation -forced_transformation
This isn't functional. 90% of transformation images are ambiguous.

You could say that about almost any activity, couldn't you? Most images don't have enough context to say for certain that it's consensual or forced, and an act has to be consensual or non-consensual, so we assume consent unless there's visible reason to the contrary. As we deal with TWYS, there's too much of a grey area if it's not explicitly stated. Let's not forget that mind_break, identity_death, and mind_alteration are also things that could be at play, meaning the character can be against it but be forced to act as if they like it, and a transformation can appear unwanted due to a surprised or pained expression but they still want it.

And you have posts like post #4293007 where it's expressly non-consensual ("I wouldn't have done this if I knew it would be like this"), but is tagged consensual because it's implied they started willingly but changed their mind after it was too late. Which if there would be a consent-related transformation tag, it would be something like that; where a character starts out willing, but is expressly unable to stop after starting (either becoming non-consensual, or being unable to continue consenting due to a temporary or permanent mind alteration or identity death).

oozeenthusiast said:
If you really are committed to removing consent tags, they should've been aliased to explicitly_stated_consent or consent_themes which would've still been a downgrade, but you wouldn't have destroyed the information. I assume it's just as bad for the other fetishes caught in this.

There's plenty of uses that aren't explicitly stated consent and are just assumed by the tagger, or is assumed because they're aware of it or look happy but don't have their thought processes on display. And what is the visual themes of consent aside from explicitly stated (non-)consent?

watsit said:
You could say that about almost any activity, couldn't you? Most images don't have enough context to say for certain that it's consensual or forced, and an act has to be consensual or non-consensual, so we assume consent unless there's visible reason to the contrary. As we deal with TWYS, there's too much of a grey area if it's not explicitly stated. Let's not forget that mind_break, identity_death, and mind_alteration are also things that could be at play, meaning the character can be against it but be forced to act as if they like it, and a transformation can appear unwanted due to a surprised or pained expression but they still want it.

watsit said:
There's plenty of uses that aren't explicitly stated consent and are just assumed by the tagger, or is assumed because they're aware of it or look happy but don't have their thought processes on display. And what is the visual themes of consent aside from explicitly stated (non-)consent?

The correct thing to do would be to assume that we don't know if a character is consenting or not the same as we do for if a character is forced or not. It's also similar to how we don't assume the species of a disembodied_penis even through it must have one. If there are no visual elements that point towards either consent of force, than neither should get tagged, and people who want to avoid or find both are happy.
You are right that the consent tags have a problem with mistags and being applied only because a character looks happy, but the solution to that is to make a tighter definition and fix the tags, not to remove them. To prove it could've been done, I've put forward my best attempt at a visual definition of consent in transformation.

A heavy definition to be sure. It might be good to break it down further and define consensual transformation as only being for transformations caused by another character than can be consented to, and a character knowingly causing their own transformation as something else. I made intentional_self_transformation for that, but definitely could use a better name. Still, if it's possible for transformation it should be possible for the other ones.

watsit said:
And you have posts like post #4293007 where it's expressly non-consensual ("I wouldn't have done this if I knew it would be like this"), but is tagged consensual because it's implied they started willingly but changed their mind after it was too late. Which if there would be a consent-related transformation tag, it would be something like that; where a character starts out willing, but is expressly unable to stop after starting (either becoming non-consensual, or being unable to continue consenting due to a temporary or permanent mind alteration or identity death).

That is certainly a type of consent which could get it's own tag, but it's far from the only type of consent that can be observed in a transformation image. Also debatable if that image would even fit it, because even if she regrets signing up for the class in the first place, she is still participating in that shapeshifting exercise rather than reverting/stopping and leaving despite there being no signs that anything would stop her. I'd say it more than passes the bar for consent.

Also, why did you remove self_transformation, from every post that had it? I get cleaning up consensual_transformation because it had a lot of mistags, but self_transformation is a trigger tag referring to when a transformation is caused by something internal to the character transforming like an innate ability or a practiced skill rather than an external influence. All the images in self_transformation fit that definition.

oozeenthusiast said:
The correct thing to do would be to assume that we don't know if a character is consenting or not the same as we do for if a character is forced or not. It's also similar to how we don't assume the species of a disembodied_penis even through it must have one.

We do assume its sex, though. A disembodied_penis is male if there's nothing else to suggest otherwise. The problem with "consent" is that it's not a visual thing, an image can be the most visually detailed and intricate possible, but you could still never see consent. A consenting character could look like anything, they could even appear to not want it. This is also why non-con is aliased to forced; we can't see whether a character is actually non-consenting, we can only see whether force is being employed or not. The only things we can say for certain regarding consensual activity is when there's explicitly_stated_consent (which doesn't necessarily need to be true consent, but it's the only way to visualize it for tagging purposes). We don't need consensual_x tags for what's essentially x + explicitly_stated_consent, or assumed from context that's subjective and/or easily misinterpreted. Dominant and submissive activities would be in a very different spot if we assumed from context like that, as that stuff looks non-consenting (when it isn't mistagged for plain old sex, at least), but it doesn't usually look forced.

oozeenthusiast said:
You are right that the consent tags have a problem with mistags and being applied only because a character looks happy, but the solution to that is to make a tighter definition and fix the tags, not to remove them. To prove it could've been done, I've put forward my best attempt at a visual definition of consent in transformation.

Fixing the wiki won't fix mistags if the mistags happen because people tag based on the tag name. No amount of fixing the definition for big_dom_small_sub or humanoid has had much impact on their misuse, for example. It's often the case that consent is assumed if it's not apparently non-consensual, and people will tag it as such if they're aware of the tags' existence regardless of what the wiki says. Or tag it based on "lore", knowing the characters didn't not want it regardless of how they look.

oozeenthusiast said:
A character is consenting to being transformed if they're aware of their imminent transformation before it happens which can be shown by:

• The character lacking a surprised reaction, or anything that could be interpreted as a surprised reaction
• The character continuing their action seamlessly through the transformation, or completing a motion started before the transformation (post #4455471, post #1322239)

So a character unaware of the transformation occurring, or who's mind is dulled to the sensation so as to not react, is assumed to be consenting? post #4455471 in particular, she looks completely oblivious that it's happening. I half expected there to be one final shot of her opening her eyes in confusion.

oozeenthusiast said:

• The character taking actions to prepare for the transformation before it starts or in its initial stages (post #2746352)

So characters that were mind-altered, had their mind broke, or were hypnotized (without the ringed eye color trope) prior to the transformation are assumed to be consenting?

And what about characters that don't want the transformation, but know they can't stop it and would prefer then to do it on their own terms (or to not expend energy uselessly resisting it), so let it happen out of practicality despite not actually consenting to it?

oozeenthusiast said:

• The appearance of the trigger being relevant to its effect (post #3205221)

Can that even be considered a transformation, rather than a ridiculously fitting costume?

oozeenthusiast said:

• An explicit statement about the trigger made by the character or observed by the character (post #4323706)

Being aware that the transformation will/should occur doesn't mean it's consenting, it just means they weren't in a position to prevent it. Especially when paired with the complete change in personality like in that example, makes it seem less like 'consent' and more of a 'I just want to get it over with to get back to my normal self'.

oozeenthusiast said:
Also, why did you remove self_transformation, from every post that had it? I get cleaning up consensual_transformation because it had a lot of mistags, but self_transformation is a trigger tag referring to when a transformation is caused by something internal to the character transforming like an innate ability or a practiced skill rather than an external influence. All the images in self_transformation fit that definition.

In most cases, it wasn't apparent that the transformation was caused by something internal to the character:

post #4354236 - How can we say it's not a magical candlestick that people can hide inside?
post #4557655 - What suggests this is some ability of Peach, rather than something that just happened to happen to her? She didn't appear to do anything to cause it, it just happened.
post #4710762 - Similarly, there's no apparent source for her transformation into different characters. Do we know it's not the male doing it to her, or some other thing?
post #4597616 - All we can say is she was aware of something that felt good, before getting a worried expression when the transformation started, then just went along with it.
post #4293007 - Again, no apparent cause. At best, the text implies easing and preparing their mind for it to happen "safely", but there's not enough context to know the actual cause.
post #4174454 - Surely this is the mask causing the transformation? It's even tagged transformative_mask.
(and more)

and in other cases, it looked arbitrary to apply to them and not most other transformation posts which don't have an apparent external cause. It's a similar problem to tagging consent. Most transformations are just characters transforming without a visually apparent cause. At best some dialog may suggest a character was transforming themself, but we don't assume text is true or false for tagging purposes (good boy applies equally even if the boy wasn't so good, or not much of a boy). Just like we have tags when it's apparent something happens by force, we have tags for when a transformation is visibly caused by something. But without an visible source, it gets extremely hazy to say it's then internal, just as without apparent force, it gets extremely hazy to say it's then consensual.

It's also rather vague to say whether "a transformation is caused by something internal" or not. For instance, a character that has the ability to transform, but some other character does something to cause that ability to activate. Was it internal to the character because it was their ability causing the transformation, or was it external since the other character caused the ability to activate?

When it comes to magic and the supernatural, the idea of "something internal to the character" is extra fuzzy. If a character is cursed to transform, is it "internal to the character" since the curse is part of the character, or is it external since it was something/someone else that gave them the curse in the first place? In the latter case, could something similar be said for a character that inherits the ability to transform from their parents, that their parents gave them the ability in the first place? In the former case, could something similar be said for a character that is bitten by a werewolf, and transforms because the ability became part of them from the bite? Or magic spells, where the concept of spell casting ranges from it being something a character does via their own energy, to it being an external force that a character has control of (so a spell to transform would effectively be them making some other entity transform them, and that entity causing their transformation, rather than the caster directly). What of cases where it's a mixture or internal and external causes, such as inheriting a dragon curse that only starts manifesting on a character's 18th birthday if some other criteria were met at the same time? It's better to just tag what is visually apparent, that magic is causing a transformation, or a mask causing a transformation, or something like that, rather than being a vague "internal to the character" that can't be visually confirmed.

As well, the name of the tag is confusing. At first I thought it was some form of assimilation. A character causing another character to transform into one of themself (either as a clone of themself, or into the same species/gender as them).

oozeenthusiast said:
transformation -forced_transformation
This isn't functional. 90% of transformation images are ambiguous. If you really are committed to removing consent tags, they should've been aliased to explicitly_stated_consent or consent_themes which would've still been a downgrade, but you wouldn't have destroyed the information. I assume it's just as bad for the other fetishes caught in this.

And if we're going to assume consent is the default, why are tentacles the exception? Would transformation have been spared if it had a catchy name too?

I looked through the uses of these tags before upvoting this request myself, and virtually every use of these tags - especially transformation - had no evidence of the character consenting, so it was just lore knowledge from the artist/uploader. Either that, or it was nothing more than an example of explicitly stated consent, but there was hardly even any of that. Aliasing these tags to that instead would’ve just created a lot of mistags, and would’ve continued to create mistags as people attempt to use the aliased tags for posts that don’t contain consent themes.

One thing to consider here is that consensual activity on e621 is pretty much entirely limited to explicitly stated consent, and likely necessarily so. I mean, I could imagine consent given through body language, and maybe that should get a tag as well, but that’s about it. The reason for this is because there are a lot of ways to determine forced activity outside of explicitly stated nonconsent, so all the various forced tags help to identify that. Consent is presumed to be the default if there is no evidence to the contrary, which means that these tags would end up on a majority of posts (and even if you think they shouldn’t be, people will use them that way regardless, hence why I said that most of them were mistags - transformation including no actual evidence of consent, because that is what people assume when there’s no contrary evidence).

You also can’t use a character’s state of arousal, facial expressions, or the lack of resistance to indicate consent due to things like until they like it and mind break. So, really all that’s left is dialogue or other forms of communication. Really any example of consensual transformation that I can imagine will be indicated through dialogue. The alternative is just tagging basically everything as consensual.

I’m especially opposed to consensual_cuckold because the cuckolding fetish is, by definition, consensual on part of the cuckold. They get off on it, it’s a fetish for them. Explicitly non-consensual “cuckold” situations are nothing more than infidelity.

I’m a bit iffy about consentacles simply because it does get mistagged a lot. Many of those posts have no indication of consent whatsoever, so it definitely needs a good cleaning, at least. However, I can see at least one use case for it - characters evidently deliberately using the tentacles to pleasure themselves, as one would a dildo, or actively fellating a tentacle, or in any other case where the character is acting upon the tentacles rather than being acted upon - this is sort of a small niche within the tentacle sex genre, and often is not covered by the stated consent tag, being sort of its own thing. A large amount of tentacle sex falls under rape, and even the ones that don’t almost always involve the tentacles acting upon the character and often restraining them in some way, so there is a certain niche for the posts that don’t depict that. That simply doesn’t apply to these other tags though, or it’s the default in the vast majority of cases so there would be no point in tagging it. Tentacles are just in sort of a weird position where they’re not really a character, at least in many cases, but they are almost always the acting force in sexual encounters, as opposed to something like an inanimate dildo which will be acted upon by the characters in virtually all cases. In a normal sexual encounter involving two characters, though, either one of them may be acting upon the other, or they may both be acting collaboratively, so there’s really nothing for us to tag unless one character is acting upon another and the other is resisting or otherwise not consenting to it, because that’s a distinct situation. consentacles depicts a distinct inversion of the norm, so it serves a purpose.

watsit said:
The problem with "consent" is that it's not a visual thing, an image can be the most visually detailed and intricate possible, but you could still never see consent.

Then why do we have any mind control tags? To follow through on this you should get rid of them and all the emotion tags too. Get rid of magic tags and alias them into glowly_stuff. At the end of this line of reason the only things you can tag are lines and colors. All tags must be interpreted to be used. The thoughts and emotions a character expresses are just as tangible as anything else in an image.
Hard to tag does not mean impossible, and this is something that a lot of people searching transformation care about. It should be tagged some way, and explicitly_stated_consent does not catch all of it. People still want to find consensual content, this just forces them to use other tags as a proxy for what they actually want to search.

watsit said:
Fixing the wiki won't fix mistags if the mistags happen because people tag based on the tag name. No amount of fixing the definition for big_dom_small_sub or humanoid has had much impact on their misuse, for example. It's often the case that consent is assumed if it's not apparently non-consensual, and people will tag it as such if they're aware of the tags' existence regardless of what the wiki says. Or tag it based on "lore", knowing the characters didn't not want it regardless of how they look.

A strong wiki does fix mistags because while taggers don't use the wiki, people who remove tags usually do. A good wiki tells people when to remove a tag so they can do it more often, more consistently, and more confidently. If it's a tag that the people who upload to actually search, they will see the change of in the posts, and be able to get a level of understanding for the definition.

You raise some good points about self_transformation. It is still very important to have a tag that describes internally triggered transformation though. It's distinct and a massive pain to search for. I'm not going to argue about it here, but could you please restore the tag until a better alternative is found?

scaliespe said:
I looked through the uses of these tags before upvoting this request myself, and virtually every use of these tags - especially transformation - had no evidence of the character consenting

Yeah, the tag before was bad. It looked like it had never been cleaned before when I saw it.

scaliespe said:
I could imagine consent given through body language, and maybe that should get a tag as well

It already exists, non-verbal_consent and written_consent.

scaliespe said:
Consent is presumed to be the default if there is no evidence to the contrary, which means that these tags would end up on a majority of posts (and even if you think they shouldn’t be, people will use them that way regardless, hence why I said that most of them were mistags - transformation including no actual evidence of consent, because that is what people assume when there’s no contrary evidence).

I saw a lot of lore tagging, and tagging because a character is happy with the transformation at the end, but very little of this.

I don't think it's a good idea to alias a tag just because it's difficult to apply or rare, or gets a lot of mistags. The questions that matter are if a tag is useful, if it can be applied consistently, and if it's the best tag for it's use. This tag is useful because transformation with clear consent is distinct from other transformation and there are people who want to search it. This tag can be applied consistently if properly defined and someone cleans it once in awhile. The weakest one is if it's the best tag for the job. There could be a better set of more specific tags that could catch every case that consensual_transformation would've, but we haven't built that yet. intentional_self_transformation didn't exist before I found this thread which is the biggest case that consensual_transformation catches that explicitly_stated_consent and non-verbal_consent don't. Those images images would've been lost if the alias went through before I made a replacement tag.

scaliespe said:
I’m especially opposed to consensual_cuckold because the cuckolding fetish is, by definition, consensual on part of the cuckold. They get off on it, it’s a fetish for them. Explicitly non-consensual “cuckold” situations are nothing more than infidelity.

we _can't_ be defining tags like this, though. basic situation tags like cuckold should have as simple definitions as possible.

also like, that's not the only definition, though, that's not even necessarily the primary definition. see:

Wiktionary:Cuckhold said:
1. A man married to an unfaithful wife, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.

from a tagging standpoint the definition should be something like: "man whose significant other is having sex with a third party." adding caveats to that to make it mutually exclusive from infidelity would harm the tag's usefulness for no real reason.

oozeenthusiast said:
Then why do we have any mind control tags? To follow through on this you should get rid of them and all the emotion tags too.

The emotion tags we should get rid of. I'm a big proponent of using the *_expression tags instead, since a character's facial expression is a more objectively verifiable visual element. A worried_expression or sad_expression is something you can see and quantify, compared to worried or sad which is more of an emotion or state of mind that you can't necessarily see (though in fairness, those tags are supposed to be for expressions, they're part of the tag group for facial expressions, the tag names just don't make that clear).

oozeenthusiast said:
A strong wiki does fix mistags because while taggers don't use the wiki, people who remove tags usually do. A good wiki tells people when to remove a tag so they can do it more often, more consistently, and more confidently.

Except the wiki isn't the end-all-be-all either. The wiki can be edited by anyone, and they can be incorrect. I've had to edit a couple wikis months after they were changed to say the opposite of what they should have. In particular, nude was edited to specify it could be applied to ferals, despite the wiki explicitly having previously said it doesn't and all discussions concurred with that, which I only noticed after removing nude from a bunch of feral posts and getting a message from someone who was annoyed that I did it saying that's what the wiki said, which prompted me to look at the wiki and notice it had been edited some months prior. And despite having fixed that months ago now, I'm still regularly seeing nude tagged on feral posts (both current and older posts). Similarly, the monotone_ears tag was edited to say only the outer part of the ear needed to be monotone (the inner ear could be a different color and it would still qualify for monotone ears), despite there having been no discussion on that, which I similarly only noticed after removing the tag from posts with ears that had different inner and outer colors, and getting a message from someone who was a bit annoyed saying that's what the wiki said to do.

humanoid is still filled with anthros, despite probably being one of the most regularly fixed tags on the site and a wiki clearly saying how to properly use it. <animal>_tail and <animal>_ears are up there too.

oozeenthusiast said:
No, a character unaware of the transformation should not be included. I believe without any sign of unawareness, unawareness should not be assumed.

Unawareness is a common trope, especially for "bimbo"-like characters. If we don't assume unawareness, we assume awareness. So we end up assuming awareness to assume consent, which is getting so far removed from TWYS it's not funny.

oozeenthusiast said:
I included a clause for mind control in the exceptions section.

And when mind control isn't apparent? Especially for transformations, which aren't unusual to span multiple posts, it's entirely possible for something to happen to a character in one page that isn't apparent in a later page, losing the context that they were being mind controlled, or suffered a mind alteration or identity death in the later pages. And we tag each post on its own, not using context from previous images, so the same transformation sequence could swap between being forced and consenting, despite being clear the character didn't want it to happen. Similarly, proving a character does or doesn't know something, and does or doesn't take acts in furtherance of it, would be done on a page-by-page basis. Yet I don't think consensual_transformation would be limited only to the posts that show these things and not on posts where it's more ambiguous, for the same sequence. People are likely to tag it for the whole thing (or at least once it's apparent, and then for the rest of the sequence afterward).

oozeenthusiast said:
After proving that a character knows about transformation, that character would need to react positively or take do something to activate/progress the transformation. Rather than just sitting annoyed by the transformation, they would need to be happy, or do something to accelerate their transformation.

Plenty of posts tagged consensual_transformation lack that. As it is, determining the cause of a transformation is nearly impossible most of the time, meaning there's nothing to say whether or not a character is doing something to "activate/progress" or "accelerate" the transformation, vs simply going with the flow for any number of reasons. There are plenty of cases where a character doesn't like that they transform, but will use it to their advantage since they can. Making the best of a bad situation, essentially.

oozeenthusiast said:
Suit transformation is a category of transformation currently, so at the moment, yes.

Not even suit transformation, I mean. It looks like they're wearing a costume, just with impossible physics (ala hammer space), not transformed into it.

oozeenthusiast said:
It already exists, non-verbal_consent and written_consent.

explicitly_stated_consent doesn't have to be verbal. It can be written, or via any other means of communication. It simply requires the post visually showing the character explicitly communicating their consent in some way. Though as the harkness test tells us, "Body language is a dangerous road. As always, err on the side of caution". If it's not explicitly stated, it becomes easy to misinterpret and assume incorrectly, or have no way to verifying in the case of someone asserting it, and people are less likely to remove not-obviously-incorrect tags. E.g. if someone tags consensual_transformation, another tagger is less likely to remove it unless they can show for sure it to be false, since it's open to interpretation. If one person says it appears consensual to them, and another says it doesn't look consensual, who's to say who's correct? Maybe they notice something I'm missing, or maybe they're just assuming and I'm right in thinking it doesn't. Who knows?

oozeenthusiast said:
intentional_self_transformation didn't exist before I found this thread which is the biggest case that consensual_transformation catches that explicitly_stated_consent and non-verbal_consent don't. Those images images would've been lost if the alias went through before I made a replacement tag.

That tag inherits all the same problems as consensual_transformation and self_transformation, since it's essentially those two tags together. But worse, since any definition that could be made for self_transformation would likely imply being consensual 99% of the time, making it largely redundant. It's better to tag the unusual/atypical case, as it's easier to manage a tag on fewer posts than on more posts, and is more useful to separate what's difference from what's normal.

dba_afish said:
we _can't_ be defining tags like this, though. basic situation tags like cuckold should have as simple definitions as possible.

It is simple. It's a fetish for watching one's partner engaged in sexual activity with another person.

also like, that's not the only definition, though, that's not even necessarily the primary definition. see:

Wiktionary:Cuckhold said:
1. A man married to an unfaithful wife, especially when he is unaware or unaccepting of the fact.

from a tagging standpoint the definition should be something like: "man whose significant other is having sex with a third party." adding caveats to that to make it mutually exclusive from infidelity would harm the tag's usefulness for no real reason.

I'm aware of the dictionary definition, but that's not how the tag has ever been used here. The cuckold tag is just shorthand for "cuckolding fetish," which is what the tag is actually for. This pretty much requires the cuckold to be actively watching, and for it to be a deliberate arrangement. A female having sex with a different male while her partner is completely unaware of the situation is not part of the fetish. What you're describing is literally identical to infidelity except that it's gendered. We may as well just alias it to infidelity if we're going to define it that way. If we want gendered infidelity tags, well, we already have cheating_boyfriend, cheating_husband, cheating_girlfriend, and cheating_wife, the last of which already implies infidelity. So, even then, defining cuckold as any male with an unfaithful wife is completely pointless.

scaliespe said:
I'm aware of the dictionary definition, but that's not how the tag has ever been used here.

you say that but, cuckold infidelity.

scaliespe said:
What you're describing is literally identical to infidelity except that it's gendered. We may as well just alias it to infidelity if we're going to define it that way.

that's literally not true. because, first of all infidelity specifically needs for the activity to be cheating, breaking the bounds of a relationship, my definition did not have any language about whether the act was cheating or not. I specifically avoided doing that because most depictions of cuckholdry on here are not infidelity, they're totally consensual.
second, cuckold requires the presence of the party whose partner is having sex with the other person, infidelity does not. infidelity just requires enough contextual evidence for it to be clear that one of the characters in the post is being unfaithful, and most of the time, that contextual evidence is not the partner who's being cheated on being in the room.

scaliespe said:
If we want gendered infidelity tags

I'm not even a huge fan of cuckold being gendered in the first place. I'd have no problem with it and cuckquean being aliased together to the more gender neutral cuck. I feel like that's beyond the bounds of the current discussion, though.

scaliespe said:
So, even then, defining cuckold as any male with an unfaithful wife is completely pointless.

not "unfaithful", because it's not necessarily cheating, and not "wife", because 1) gays and 2) unmarrieds. _{also, I guess not "male" either because andromorph.}

conclusion: I see no possible utility to making cuckold and infidelity mutually exclusive.

dba_afish said:
you say that but, cuckold infidelity.

Mistags mostly, and almost all of these seem to be just plain infidelity with no cuckold. That said, I could picture some kind of comic or animation that properly depicts both tags, so they're not entirely exclusive.

that's literally not true. because, first of all infidelity specifically needs for the activity to be cheating, breaking the bounds of a relationship, my definition did not have any language about whether the act was cheating or not. I specifically avoided doing that because most depictions of cuckholdry on here are not infidelity, they're totally consensual.
second, cuckold requires the presence of the party whose partner is having sex with the other person, infidelity does not. infidelity just requires enough contextual evidence for it to be clear that one of the characters in the post is being unfaithful, and most of the time, that contextual evidence is not the partner who's being cheated on being in the room.

I might not be understanding your point, then. It sounds to me like they're two entirely different things. Infidelity is someone cheating on the relationship, and cuckolding is a situation in which a couple invites a third person into their relationship to have sex with one while the other watches - and that sounds like what you just described, no? I don't think that counts as infidelity since it's an agreed arrangement, if that's what you're suggesting.

I'm not even a huge fan of cuckold being gendered in the first place. I'd have no problem with it and cuckquean being aliased together to the more gender neutral cuck. I feel like that's beyond the bounds of the current discussion, though.

I'd be fine with that

scaliespe said:
I might not be understanding your point, then. It sounds to me like they're two entirely different things. Infidelity is someone cheating on the relationship, and cuckolding is a situation in which a couple invites a third person into their relationship to have sex with one while the other watches - and that sounds like what you just described, no? I don't think that counts as infidelity since it's an agreed arrangement, if that's what you're suggesting.

I don't think it that both members of a couple necessarily need to have invited the third in order for it to be considered cuckold, just that both members of the couple need to be present when the third is having sex with the other.

so, like

parties a, b, c
a and b are a couple, c is a third party

a/c w/o b's knowledge and/or consent = infidelity
a/c w/ b's consent + b is present = cuckold
a/c w/o b's consent + b is present = infidelity + cuckold

examples:
_{(oh, man infidelity is like, _way_ mistagged. there's so many posts in here that are just going purely by lore without infidelity even being an explicit theme...)
anyway, ignoring the mistags...}

dba_afish said:
I don't think it that both members of a couple necessarily need to have invited the third in order for it to be considered cuckold, just that both members of the couple need to be present when the third is having sex with the other.

so, like

parties a, b, c
a and b are a couple, c is a third party

a/c w/o b's knowledge and/or consent = infidelity
a/c w/ b's consent + b is present = cuckold
a/c w/o b's consent + b is present = infidelity + cuckold

examples:
_{(oh, man infidelity is like, _way_ mistagged. there's so many posts in here that are just going purely by lore without infidelity even being an explicit theme...)
anyway, ignoring the mistags...}

discretionary section, I guess

post #4620810 is infidelity and not cuckold
character is cheating on partner, parner not present

post #2692491 is cuckold and not infidelity
partner is present, partner consents therefore not cheating

post #4709436 is infidelity and also cuckold
character is cheating on partner, partner is present

Well, the problem I have with this is that it doesn’t seem to match any known definition of the word “cuckold.” You’re basically applying a made-up definition to the tag. Which works in some cases, not so much in others… I think that will make it more prone to mistagging in this case, though both these tags are already horribly mistagged regardless.

The literal dictionary definition of “cuckold” is “a man with an unfaithful wife, especially without his consent,” which is synonymous with infidelity except that it’s gendered.

The more limited definition, and the one more relevant to us, refers to a cuckolding fetish, which is specifically a sexual arrangement involving three partners, by definition consensual because it’s pre-arranged.

I feel like I’m repeating myself at this point, but I don’t know how else to put it. Your logic is perfectly reasonable, it’s just that nobody really uses the word that way. An admin locked cuckold off of post #4709436 specifically for that reason, so I’m just following that logic here. I wouldn’t have known about any of this prior to that situation because I don’t look at this kind of art much anyway.

In any case, there’s no real reason these tags can’t be mutually exclusive. The third situation can just as easily be described as infidelity + being watched. That’s pretty much all it really is. I think that mixing these terms will only make them more confusing for the average user and will just lead to the mistagging problem being worse than it already is. At least “only one tag, not the other” is easy enough to understand and apply consistently.