[Incomplete]

This forum is primarily for organizing all the relevant discussions about the body types on e621.

Quick citation/link:
forum #189471 - Advanced tag discussion: Mutually-exclusive Body Types/Styles (Apr. 2016)

Body Types wiki: Tag Group:Body Types

There's a tag group:body type wiki, which is very well-written, and I wonder how much of it is 'official'? Most - all of it (Apr. 2016) is official
(For the sake of clarity, can parasprite an Admin formally confirm that tag group:body types is official in here if they see this? Thanks)

Links to discussions taking place elsewhere

• forum #194231 - Types of anthroness. Let's make a working system! (May 2016)

• forum #191425 - Not_Furry not used enough, Feral is over-broad and Anthro is vague (Apr. 2016)

• forum #191207 - Levels of anthroness in tagging ? (Apr. 2016)

• forum #189453 - Tag Implication: humanized → alternate_species (Apr. 2016)

• forum #188594 - Bit of Help with Taurs Appreciated (Mar. 2016)

Major topics brought up so far: (Apr. 2016)

[WIP]

Figuring out stuff like this is, imo, the first step to sorting all this out and related questions that may arise/have arisen because it's such an uncertain area

titanmelon said:

1. How many mutually-exclusive body style tags do we (officially) have?

From the top of my head:

• anthro
• feral
• human
• humanoid
• semi-anthro (ambiguous)

• chakat
• taur

Chakat are taur, they're even implicated to it.

Others I've been curious about:

• alien
• animal_humanoid
• monster

- Alien is ambiguous and usually tagged by outside knowledge. We'll probably have to disambiguate it sooner or later. And it's not mutually exclusive with anything except human. Most aliens are humanoid, but some are animal-like enough to be tagged as anthros. Such as some Krogans. There's also some taurs, etc. Not sure if there's any feral aliens.
- Monster is for creatures that look 'monstrous', regardless of the body type. It's under reconstruction, needs massive re-organization and cleaning. But for now, it's the best tag we have for various abominations (post #153313) that don't fit anywhere else.
- Animal_humanoid is a humanoid subtag.

There's a tag group:body type wiki, which is very well-written, and I wonder how much of it is 'official'?

Most of it, I hope, since I got an 'okay' from the administration for creating it. Though that was an early version and didn't include all the subcategories.

Hm, what about an aberration tag? For cases like post #153313 and most of meandraco's stuff

post #669564

Either as a replacement for monster, or a more specific subcategory for the more 'alien' types
(see my response about aliens below as well)

-
It's an official term as well:

Zoological definition [wiktionary]:

(zoology, botany) Atypical development or structure; deviation from the normal type; an aberrant organ. [Mid 19th century.][3]

-

However, since the definition is so broad, it may end up being synonymous with alien anyway, so idk:

• alien: non-human, extraterrestrial
• aberration: any species that doesn't fit into the common, non-modifier body style types (anthro, feral, human, humanoid etc.)

Oh yeah, about the chakat/taur thing; changed

Taurs are [somethin] + feral though, which raises an interesting question:

Are hybrid types considered mutually exclusive for categorization purposes?

feral + * = taur is the only example that I can currently think of

It's somewhat obvious now that animal_humanoids are of the humanoid type too. Removed.
I have the feeling there may be more to it though, but it's consistent for present tagging purposes afaik anyway

As for aliens..hmm

You may be right about there being no standard definition, by the very nature of the term.
And more significantly with respect to mutually-exclusive types, since it's more or less a type modifier (anthro, humanoid, 'feral' aliens exist in media), it probably doesn't count here

Maybe the abovementioned aberration or similar for cases that don't fit into any of the pre established ones?

monster, aside from the pejorative implications, is also a type of modifier, like you said.
There are anthro monsters, feral ones, humanoid ones etc.

Do we consider the modifier types like flora_fauna, alien, goo etc. for mutually-exclusive body styles?

I'm guessing 'no'

titanmelon said:
Hm, what about an aberration tag? For cases like post #153313 and most of meandraco's stuff

post #669564

Either as a replacement for monster, or a more specific subcategory for the more 'alien' types

The current plan was to either unalias abomination from monster, or to flip it around so abomination is the new main tag. But aberration would work equally well. Not sure which one I'd prefer.

Are hybrid types considered mutually exclusive for categorization purposes?

Yes. The main types (first five in the wiki) are exclusive. Only one should be tagged per character, with the special exception of mid-transformation posts.

Those are also the only tags used with the *_on_* format (feral_on_taur, human_on_humanoid, etc), because the other categories aren't exclusive.

Do we consider the modifier types like flora_fauna, alien, goo etc. for mutually-exclusive body styles?

I'm guessing 'no'

No. Those are modifiers that can be combined with any type, except human. Some characters may need several. Such as undead goo humanoid.

post #818648

[reply pending, all that seems to makes sense]

Is this a type of species thing?

post #222841

reminds me of the boobipede tag

Also, if anyone has a better idea for the semi-anthro tag,

Such as a less ambiguous name or definition,

then here's the place you could mention it.

-

Some main points raised from what I can recall:

+ The purpose of the tag definitely has some uses, since art styles and intent are so variable

What one person may see as closer to anthro, may be closer to feral for some. Which is still consistent with TWYS, but may result in 'miscategorization' of the body type

- It's also for that same reason, the tag name itself should be less ambiguous.

I don't really see a problem with the ambiguity here, since it's already understood the tag is to be used for ambiguous cases
-

@Genjar had the most to say about this, maybe they can explain about it better

-

Also related about this is forum #187706 - Advanced Policy Discussions: Implicative/Conjunctive/Redundant/Mutually-exclusive tag usage (Mar. 2016)

Especially 4. Mutually-exclusive tag usage

titanmelon said:
Also, if anyone has a better idea for the semi-anthro tag,

Such as a less ambiguous name or definition,

then here's the place you could mention it.

Definitely needs a better name if it must be kept.
Here's a few posts that are currently tagged as 'semi-anthro':

post #764260 post #647571 post #833797 post #505782 post #351800 post #836574 post #658212 post #557091

Like I've said before, it's not something that can be accurately defined. 'Borderline anthro' is extremely subjective, and there's no single feature that can be used to define it.

I don't think it'll ever be a viable tag.

Hmm, yeah that would be a problem

Rather than nuking it though, I think the tag in somse form is worthwhile enough to keep for ambiguous cases

(unless we tag separate multiple body types per character (like anthro + feral),
But none of those results are guaranteed to have a 'semi-anthro' character in them, and to my knowledge, there's no way to narrow that down

-

(least -> most feral)

1. Human - 100% human, no anthropomorphism

1a. humanoid - humanoid shape, anatomy, proportions, - Little anthropomorphism

• animal humanoid

2. Anthro - fur, tail, less-human skull shape, - High anthropomorphism

2b. 'semi-anthro' - between anthro and feral (see wiki)

• (Includes taurs?)

3. Feral - no trace of anthropomorphic qualities - No anthropomorphism*

Other - ???

-----------

*- I've noticed that two main types of ferals get put into this category:

• i. Looks like a real animal, but with some 'humanised' qualities, especially facial expressions with the eyes and mouth. Closer to feral Disney animal characters
• post #293783, post #399006

• ii. Looks like a real animal, with no 'humanised' qualities at all - literally like a real animal. Closer to Realism
• post #230394, post #17750, post #1814248,

• Borderline cases of both - post #324432, post #241795

(canines are physically capable of making those expressions, but they're unlikely to happen)

--

(Also agree with you about the subjectivity of lists like these as well, which is why there needs to be discrete, observable differences for each category on the whole, if we're aiming to avoid 'mislabelling')

Very related:

post #88044

titanmelon said:
Rather than nuking it though, I think the tag in somse form is worthwhile enough to keep for ambiguous cases

Truly ambiguous ones are rare, though. Almost everything that's currently tagged as semi-anthro can be fit into the main categories. The rest? Well, someone suggested an ambiguous_form tag, which seems like a good idea. 'course, that would be tagged for all characters that cannot be pigeonholed somewhere, not just borderline anthro/ferals.

1a. humanoid - humanoid shape, anatomy, proportions, - Little anthropomorphism

• animal humanoid

Anthropomorphism means giving non-humans human features. Most humanoids are not anthromorphic at all: there's no base creature that has been made more human-like. Except for some humanoidized characters (and things, such as planes).

Animal humanoids are usually considered to be the opposite: a form of zoomorphism, humans with animal features. But if they were to be considered anthropomorphic...

post #88044

...the fox on the right side is not anthropomorphized at all, while the animal_humanoid on left is extremely anthropomorphic.

*- I've noticed that two main types of ferals get put into this category:

• i. Looks like a real animal, but with some 'humanised' qualities, especially facial expressions with the eyes and mouth. Closer to feral Disney animal characters
• post #293783, post #399006

• ii. Looks like a real animal, with no 'humanised' qualities at all - literally like a real animal. Closer to Realism
• post #230394, post #17750, post #1814248,

• Borderline cases of both - post #324432, post #241795

(canines are physically capable of making those expressions, but they're unlikely to happen)

I honestly don't see much difference between those. Feral is feral, regardless of the art style.

post #241795 is tagged feral because of the hummingbird. The canines are clearly anthro (handlike paws, bipedal posture).

Those are good points, especially since 'anthro' is already so broad/ambiguous of a term as well to begin with.

-

Mention of how few actual cases of semi-anthro exist in comparison with anthro/feral

-

Mention of 'incorrect'/unclear usage of semi-anthro in relation to the main, mutually-exclusive categories

-

ambiguous_form and semi-anthro in relation to anthro/feral

-

'Anthropomorphism'/'anthro'; Mention of humanoidized

-

Mention of zoomorphism; relation with anthropomorphism

-

Ferals: different art styles & considerations

-
Like I said in the not furry forum discussion, unless more people who use the site, and are familiar with this sort of thing speak up about it, then it's very likely such borderline cases are gonna get thrown into the general ones and lost until someone speaks up again in the future. (if at all)

Until/if that planned feature about being able to 'group' tags on a character happens,

This is why I suggested we could use multiple categories in ambiguous cases, so we don't need to create a tag for it, while still having a way (though less efficient) to find such content;

e.g. let's say post #351800 gets tagged with anthro and feral, rather than semi-anthro

Someone searches for

They have a (relatively) higher chance of finding it than if they had to go through all the anthro posts (450 000+ worst case), plus the feral posts (130 000+ worst case)

titanmelon said:
The definition of 'anthro', compared to 'anthropomorphic'

It's a short for an 'anthropormophic animal'. Which is quite a mouthful, so it's no wonder that the fandom shortened it.

The anthro wiki entry might need some work. It seems a bit too wordy at the moment: it only gets to the actual usage of the tag in the last sentence of the first paragraph. If I have time, I'll see if I can re-order it a bit.

If someone's primary familiarity with animal physiology comes from talking animal animated family films- whose characters need to be given 'human' expressions and reactions for film-reasons- then I'm not too surprised if the difference seems inconsequential to non-existent

I suppose we could consider adding a feral subtag for 'realistic ferals' (100% anatomically correct, no hints of anthropomorphism at all). But while it would be easy to tag for real-life animals, I can see several problems with tagging fictional and mythological ferals, such as dragons...

[reply pending]

rather minor detail, but notice the sclera in post #842412 with the one in post #436118

Most 'real' feral animals' eyes are positioned in such a way that the whites of their eyes i.e white_sclera aren't visible most of the time

It's a minor detail, but it makes a large difference between the feral types I outlined above

titanmelon said:
[reply pending]

rather minor detail, but notice the sclera in post #842412 with the one in post #436118

Most 'real' feral animals' eyes are positioned in such a way that the whites of their eyes i.e white_sclera aren't visible most of the time

It's a minor detail, but it makes a large difference between the feral types I outlined above

If you just read that, now you can't unsee it in media. Sorry!

Eh, that's not enough to qualify as not being feral, imo. Most animals don't even have visible irises, as that would give away where they're looking, instead it looks like it's pure pupil.

Furrin_Gok said:
Eh, that's not enough to qualify as not being feral, imo.

Never said it was :v

More along the lines of 'there are different types of feral art styles'

Most animals don't even have visible irises, as that would give away where they're looking, instead it looks like it's pure pupil.

Agreed, especially since that depends on the level of technical competency

see https://e621.net/forum/show/190012

--

Even with all that, unless there are others who want to differentiate these different levels of feral 'sapience', I'm not really up for having to regularly disambiguate the different types there are, links pending

Unless maybe we tag multiple categories of the relevant tag (see
forum #187706)

But even then, what's the point of doing that with only 2 hypothetical feral categories?

-
At least not now anyway. If someone else brings it up again, then maybe, but for now, one distinct body type tag for the above seems fine with most [citation needed]

Note: There aren't much 'real anthro' examples of this character, may do one of these with renamon instead later on-
-

What I am proposing however, is tagging the ambiguous cases like these with multiple body types

Perhaps, in addition to 'semi-anthro' or whatever the new name is. (see my explanations + links above for why just having separate anthro+feral tags would be a bit infeasible in this case [tl;dr the tags are too huge])

-

So with that in mind,

• 1. Cases like post #868654 post #868656 post #636148 would be the ones to definitely get the semi-anthro tag from me, in addition to feral + anthro

• 2. while ones like post #868652 post #609353 would get just anthro

• 3. And ones like post #868662 would just get feral

Think it would break anything?

• Added "'semi-anthro'" to title

titanmelon said:

• 1. Cases like post #868654 post #868656 post #636148 would be the ones to definitely get the semi-anthro tag from me, in addition to feral + anthro

Nothing ambiguous about those. This is a feral fox:
post #248379

Whereas those clearly aren't, so it'd make no sense at all to tag them as such. Especially since those are closer to the origin of the term 'anthropomorphic animals' than the second group.

Yeah those are all pretty clearcut anthro to me.

Semi-anthro was more meant for cases like this:

post #844444 post #844717

Where otherwise feral body types are mixed in with very human features. Note the armpit/armpit hair and angle of the arms on the left, and the awkward standing position with hips and panties on the right.

Tanidareal is another example of this (though I'd probably tag most of those as feral and be done with it):

post #489622 post #342146

(There was a really long post that's supposed to be here, but maybe later)
-

This is exactly what I'm talking about:

Everyone has a different definition for semi-anthro, because there is currently no standard definition for anthro in the first place
(and feral to a much lesser extent)

Both on and off the site

If we try to objectively tag subjective body types, at least one person is going to be 'wrong' about something, which never ends well for anyone involved

-
So, with that said, we have a couple of options here, with some overlap:

-

This way, we can have the following:

This is why I'm thinking about using semi-anthro as a sort of sub-tag, not necessarily a separate body type altogether, but not a 'supplementary' tag either

We wouln't have to rely on people to tag it, because anthro and feral are still the main ones for zoomorphism/anthropomorphism

Examples from the tag group:body types wiki for Anthro:

post #858813 post #206858

Are these the same body type? Why?

---

Examples from the tag group:body types wiki for Feral:

post #208969 post #386121

Compare with

post #868662 and post #248379

Are these the same body type? Why?

---

This doesn't even begin to address the overlap between taur as well,

The only thing formally gets tagged as taur are human top + feral bottom halves

There is no unifying tag except for semi-anthro, to my knowledge, that accurately captures the idea or anthropomorphic characters with a balance of feral and humanoid traits

Personally, I would also like an ambiguous_body_type tag. Semi-anthro is... okay in some ways, I guess, but not really sufficient in others. Notably, images where there is not enough shown of the creature to be able to say whether or not it is feral, semi-anthro, or anthro.

Is a disembodied canine penis, for example, feral, anthro, or semi-anthro? If a human is engaging with a disembodied animal-like penis, should that be tagged bestiality? Because it is, sometimes, and other times it's not, and as far as I know there's really not any clear ruling on what to do in those cases (I've asked and gotten no response).

• Created Forum Links section in OP
• added forum #188594 - Bit of Help with Taurs Appreciated (Mar. 2016)

• Moved semi-anthro from main body type to other in OP

• Added monstrous humanoid

• Added taur to title

Clawdragons said:
[..]
Is a disembodied canine penis, for example, feral, anthro, or semi-anthro? If a human is engaging with a disembodied animal-like penis, should that be tagged bestiality? Because it is, sometimes, and other times it's not, and as far as I know there's really not any clear ruling on what to do in those cases (I've asked and gotten no response).

Agreed, ambiguous_body_type has uses similar to the ambiguous_gender tag, but for body types

Edit: ambiguous_form exists, but maybe the uses aren't identical

-

Semi-anthro is... okay in some ways, I guess, but not really sufficient in others.

Can you mention some ways you think semi-anthro may not be sufficient?

-

Notably, images where there is not enough shown of the creature to be able to say whether or not it is feral, semi-anthro, or anthro.

Is this one of the ways it's not sufficient? If so, can you link some example posts? Thanks

Another example:

-

Same body type? Why?

titanmelon said:
Is this one of the ways it's not sufficient? If so, can you link some example posts? Thanks

Sure.

post #835965
post #826021

Images like those are a good example of what I mean. Those are clearly equine penises, but do they belong to ferals or anthros? It's ambiguous. Semi-anthro is sometimes used for ambiguous, in-between cases, but it can't be used here because it's not as though their body-style is in between feral and anthro, but rather, their bodies simply aren't shown.

Clawdragons said:
Is a disembodied canine penis, for example, feral, anthro, or semi-anthro? If a human is engaging with a disembodied animal-like penis, should that be tagged bestiality? Because it is, sometimes, and other times it's not, and as far as I know there's really not any clear ruling on what to do in those cases (I've asked and gotten no response).

Disembodied is disembodied. There's not anthro, feral, or humanoid about it. No bestiality or masturbation, either, it's like with tentacles.

Maybe we should have a disembodied_on_human/humanoid/anthro/feral.

Furrin_Gok said:
Disembodied is disembodied. There's not anthro, feral, or humanoid about it.

I agree. Given the artwork on this site, any kind of penis can be on any kind of species, so I feel that penis type alone is insufficient evidence for adding such tags.

DragonFox69 said:
I agree. Given the artwork on this site, any kind of penis can be on any kind of species, so I feel that penis type alone is insufficient evidence for adding such tags.

I think this same line of reasoning would lead to disembodied penises being tagged as ambiguous_gender, because it very well could belong to a dickgirl, herm, maleherm, or male, given the artwork on this site.

In the absence of any other cues, I think it's safe to assume that a disembodied [species] penis belongs to [species]. But again this is all why I'd like an ambiguous_body_type tag as well as a clear ruling on the issue.

Furrin_Gok said:
Disembodied is disembodied. There's not anthro, feral, or humanoid about it. No bestiality or masturbation, either, it's like with tentacles.

If I remove the bestiality tags on images like the ones I linked, they'll be harder to find in the future to repair if it turns out they should keep said tag, whereas if I leave the tag until I know for sure what the admins would prefer it's easy to go through and fix them from that point on.

So basically I agree with you, but I'm trying to play it safe.

Clawdragons said:
I think this same line of reasoning would lead to disembodied penises being tagged as ambiguous_gender, because it very well could belong to a dickgirl, herm, maleherm, or male, given the artwork on this site.

In the absence of any other cues, I think it's safe to assume that a disembodied [species] penis belongs to [species]. But again this is all why I'd like an ambiguous_body_type tag as well as a clear ruling on the issue.

Well, currently any disembodied_penis is always tagged as male due the sites rules on how to tag genders. If a similar rule is put in place for tagging species based on penis type I'd be happy to go with it.

Qmannn said:
I agree with the addition of an ambiguous body type tag, but only because it can act as a catchall for disembodied_penis and images where just enough of a character's body is present to be able to tag faceless_male, faceless_female, ambiguous_gender, ect. but not enough to tag a form. If it were for disembodied penis by itself, then I'd call that redundant since the tag is already ambiguous regarding the owner's shape.

If we see a penis but don't know who it belongs to, it must be tagged as Male. This is a site rule. Same goes for a pussy, or breasts, it must be tagged female. Ambiguous is for when there's no defining body feature, not just because we don't see the entire body, and it can only qualify as herm if there is visual proof in the image that the character has features of both genders (Breasts and penis bulges, for example), if only one is present, it gets tagged with that gender instead of Ambiguous.

DragonFox69 said:
I agree. Given the artwork on this site, any kind of penis can be on any kind of species, so I feel that penis type alone is insufficient evidence for adding such tags.

I feel the same, mostly because characters are so frequently drawn with mismatched genitalia. For instance, after seeing all the anthro males with human dicks, it almost seems unlikely that a disembodied humanoid_penis would belong to an actual human.

But those disembodied ones almost always end up tagged as human. Dunno if they should be. Would be great to get an admin decision for that.

Genjar said:
But those disembodied ones almost always end up tagged as human. Dunno if they should be. Would be great to get an admin decision for that.

Personally, I don't really see much reason to tag them with any species, but if we're going to tag the species at all, I'd probably fall back on the species it's modeled after over anything else (assuming it's anatomically accurate [within reason of course]).

That's just my own opinion of course. :P

parasprite said:
That's just my own opinion of course. :P

...that makes those kind of hard to tag, not knowing if it should be added or removed.

And what about the semi-anthro tag? That's been in the air for close to two years now, can we finally get a final decision for that? It's hard to summon much enthusiasm for tagging while knowing that a good chunk of what I've tagged might need to be completely redone.

Genjar said:
...that makes those kind of hard to tag, not knowing if it should be added or removed.

Don't tag them if you can help it is my answer. Currently it's just a disembodied penis, not a human/equine/dragon/whatever else.

Genjar said:
And what about the semi-anthro tag? That's been in the air for close to two years now, can we finally get a final decision for that? It's hard to summon much enthusiasm for tagging while knowing that a good chunk of what I've tagged might need to be completely redone.

It was sanctioned as okay for use from above a couple months ago.

I've been looking at it as a trial run and avoided cleaning any of them up to see who tags it and for what. I expected it to overlap with both feral and anthro, but I didn't expect animal humanoids to get mixed into it. Overall the animal humanoids are probably a minor issue since they are so easy to spot, but as for the rest of what is tagged I'll be bringing this up with the others again to decide whether the benefits of the tag are worth the mixed (and potentially confounding) usage.

Since it seems relevant, mentioning it in here:

non-anthro seems to be aliased to feral

Absolutely no idea how many people use non-anthro, if at all, but not all non-anthro body types are feral..right?

Should that be changed to something else?

As much as I'd want to disagree, invalidating it may be the best thing to do, since there are so many other possible body types

If you know of a better suggestion, please mention in here

titanmelon said:
Since it seems relevant, mentioning it in here:

non-anthro seems to be aliased to feral

Absolutely no idea how many people use non-anthro, if at all, but not all non-anthro body types are feral..right?

Should that be changed to something else?

As much as I'd want to disagree, invalidating it may be the best thing to do, since there are so many other possible body types

If you know of a better suggestion, please mention in here

Feral is what the tag used to be for (kind of). Back when they were still trying to enforce "don't tag feral unless there are anthros present" (or whatever it was). See the old wiki page for more context.

More importantly though it hasn't been tagged for about a year, and only for ferals anyways, so I think leaving it as-is is probably safe. I wouldn't be against moving it, but I just don't think there's much point in it.

More examples of what has been recently tagged as semi-anthro:
post #859814 post #868569 post #847215 post #870251

Genjar said:
More examples of what has been recently tagged as semi-anthro:
post #859814 post #868569 post #847215 post #870251

Anthro, I Don't Know?, humanoid, anthro. That second one might qualify, it's kind of an interesting one.

• Updated forum title
• Body Styles -> Body Types/Styles

• Added link to wiki: tag group:body types in OP

Also mentioning again in case it was missed, that the suggestion about using the semi-anthro tag seen here: forum #190186

Is about 'semi-anthro' not becoming an entirely separate category on its own, but rather a sub-category to more easily identify the ambiguous/more subjective cases where anthro and feral are concerned: i.e

So all the categories remain EXACTLY THE SAME and separate,

nothing gets invalidated by recategorizing, or has to be retagged

• Added forum #191207 - Levels of anthroness in tagging ? (Apr. 2016) to OP

To me semi-anthro does have a place for bodies that have more-or-less feral anatomy (differences are minor or subtle) but are shown with human posture and poses. To me, these are the most clear-cut cases:
post #838247 post #840790 post #743573 post #848777
The first three, if put in an animal posture would be indistinguishable from a feral in the same style. The last one has shoulders positioned differently than a feral and has thumbs, but could easily be mistaken for a feral.

This is one I think is ambiguous between anthro and semi-anthro, but I'd consider it anthro:
post #836574
I consider it ambiguous because the proportions appear to work in a feral posture, but it has visibly human hips and shoulders. Because of the mostly human body, I'd consider it fully anthro.

Ambiguous_body_type would be more for cases like head shots or close-ups of one or a few body parts that leave the rest ambiguous. Like these:
post #830408 post #820346 post #789486

Changelog

• Added forum #191425 - Not_Furry not used enough, Feral is over-broad and Anthro is vague (Apr. 2016) to OP

• Tidied OP
• Tidied some of my longer posts

• @Genjar: Replied to forum #189477. (See forum #189549)
• Planning to make a separate forum for aberration/monster/alien(/monstrous_humanoid?) tag discussion.
• If you think there's a need for a dedicated forum to discuss usage of aberration/monster/alien/other, now's the time to say

parasprite said:
I've been looking at it as a trial run and avoided cleaning any of them up to see who tags it and for what. I expected it to overlap with both feral and anthro, but I didn't expect animal humanoids to get mixed into it. Overall the animal humanoids are probably a minor issue since they are so easy to spot, but as for the rest of what is tagged I'll be bringing this up with the others again to decide whether the benefits of the tag are worth the mixed (and potentially confounding) usage.

Any news about this?
Anthros, ferals, taurs, humanoids and just about everything else is getting tagged as 'semi-anthro'.

It's not even used as a supplementary tag anymore: it's often tagged by itself without any of the main form tags, and some users are even going around replacing the main tags with semi-anthro. This is getting out of hand.

By the way, related: how does the suggested ambiguous_form tag look? Should it be renamed to ambiguous_body_type instead, or is ambiguous_form clear enough as a name?

Clawdragons said:
[..]

In the absence of any other cues, I think it's safe to assume that a disembodied [species] penis belongs to [species].

[..]

Definitely agreed,

Regarding body type, such as the ones you linked here,

What do you (and anyone else) think about defaulting the body type to the disembodied genitalia type? i.e

• animal genitalia -> animal form (feral)
• humanoid genitalia -> human form (or humanoid, depending on how it's drawn)
• other genitalia -> ?? (I've been thinking about aberration or a similar body type for cases like these)

-

But again this is all why I'd like an ambiguous_body_type tag as well as a clear ruling on the issue.

ambiguous_form seems to exist now, [edit:see @Genjar's post above this one] which may possibly fill the intended role of ambiguous_body_type

Genjar said:
Any news about this?
Anthros, ferals, taurs, humanoids and just about everything else is getting tagged as 'semi-anthro'.

It's not even used as a supplementary tag anymore: it's often tagged by itself without any of the main form tags, and some users are even going around replacing the main tags with semi-anthro. This is getting out of hand.

Hmm, that could be a problem

Could you link some examples of those things happening in here?
-

By the way, related: how does the suggested ambiguous_form tag look? Should it be renamed to ambiguous_body_type instead, or is ambiguous_form clear enough as a name?

I think it's excellent; fills many gaps quite nicely

as for -> ambiguous_body_type, yeah, maybe an alias would be useful

i.e ambiguous_body_type <-> ambiguous_form

*_form is much less to type, but *_body_type is easier to understand at a glance

Ok so, I've probably brought this up somewhere else (@Genjar would likely know), but putting it in here again until I properly update this forum with all the links and whatnot. Anyway,

Taur body type + naga etc.

The wiki article for taur states:

A character whose lower body is that of a feral creature, and the upper body of an anthro, human, or humanoid. Based on the centaur, a creature from Greek mythology.

This doesn't seem to be limited to quadrupeds, even though the root word in this context refers to bulls

So what I'm asking here is:

Are taurs used for all characters with a feral lower body?

If so, does that mean naga and lamia, who both have a feral lower body + non-feral upper body, are considered taurs?

lamia - post #855132 post #528538 - naga

• If so, why aren't we tagging them with taur (or more often)

• If not, how do we collectively find such posts without searching for the individual species type?

titanmelon said:
Hmm, that could be a problem

Could you link some examples of those things happening in here?

Already did, on the last page. But here's more:
post #907559 post #908954 post #896488 post #892742
post #882914 post #847215 post #799213 post #782074

Plus all the ones that have been cleaned out, which makes it hard to find examples. Doesn't seem quite as messy as it were a couple of months ago, though.

titanmelon said:

Are taurs used for all characters with a feral lower body?

The wiki used to say 'lower body of a feral horse', which was too specific. It then got changed to a 'lower body of a feral creature', which seems too broad. It should probably be tagged the way it is used in furdom: creatures with minimum of four legs.

regsmutt said:
To me semi-anthro does have a place for bodies that have more-or-less feral anatomy (differences are minor or subtle) but are shown with human posture and poses. To me, these are the most clear-cut cases:
[..]

Yeah, exactly!

I think the biggest current issue with the tag though, is its name

If we can rename it to something more appropriate/accurate, then I'm fairly certain the usage would improve as well

-
As mentioned in the above post (links pending),

Most issues/conflicts regarding body types stem from a problem with the anthro tag itself and its loose definition

If/until that's ever addressed, and a solid definition for anthro is made, then anything else related to it (humanoids, taur, etc), will also be shaky

@Genjar; @All:

What I'm thinking to do about that is;

• -> Use anthro as the widest umbrella tag, which most content falls under:

Not sure if humans should be under anthro, for a variety of reasons [tba]

Genjar said:
The wiki used to say 'lower body of a feral horse', which was too specific. It then got changed to a 'lower body of a feral creature', which seems too broad. It should probably be tagged the way it is used in furdom: creatures with minimum of four legs.

I was editing the Taur wiki regarding legs and lamia, but I checked over here to see any discussions about it (issue brought up in this forum thread)
There seems to be a consensus that Taurs are legged, Lamias are legless (snakes), hence why I decided I should make an addition to the wiki.

Furrin_Gok said:
No it isn't. That's a Lamia, not a taur. Lamia are legless varients of "Taurs". (At least, I would consider things like slugs and worms to be Lamia/Naga still)

Azazial said:
No. Nagas are not taurs. Their tag is different but similar. I would recommend they be treated under the same rules but not be considered the same. Hybrid tag similar to centaurs.
eg.

post #292475 (Snake + Naga)
post #290012 (Human + Naga)
post #267084 (Snake + Naga)
post #238924 (Snake + cat?)
post #199412 (Giraffe + Naga/Snake?)
post #147796 (male feline bottom, male snake mid, male horse top (see source))

Sorry Naga/Lamaia fans, I am not from your lust/fandom so feel free to correct me.

So, would this be an appropriate addition?

If the lower body is that of a feral snake (a leg-less animal), it is a lamia.

Regarding your post, I believe it's certainly best to add the "minimum four legs" (but I'm not sure how to write it.. And it's your idea, you know what to do best with that.), but I also think it's good to leave in my sentence so people will know that if it lacks legs, it's a lamia.
If you feel it is not needed, or is somehow redundant, please edit away! But if that's so, please put a See also for Lamia.

Edit: Taur wiki looks good, Genjar! Thanks!

aurel said:
<_< >_>
anthrofied is a useless tag :p

I disagree. It's meant for popular media featuring feral or semi-anthro animals in a (more) anthro form. Some people just use it wrong.

I've noticed that both centaur and lamia get tagged with humanoid (and even human) and naga gets tagged with anthro, so there are clearly some issues here. The problem with tagging these as anthro or humanoid, while technically it could be correct, is that it interferes with multi character searching (some people like to search for couplings with disparate forms). Not sure how to fix this (if possible) but thought I'd mention it. I imagine using the quite broad terms "nullipedal", bipedal, quadrupedal, "hexapedal" etc. might help, but probably has their fair share of problems themselves.

Chessax said:
I've noticed that both centaur and lamia get tagged with humanoid (and even human) and naga gets tagged with anthro, so there are clearly some issues here. The problem with tagging these as anthro or humanoid, while technically it could be correct, is that it interferes with multi character searching (some people like to search for couplings with disparate forms). Not sure how to fix this (if possible) but thought I'd mention it. I imagine using the quite broad terms "nullipedal", bipedal, quadrupedal, "hexapedal" etc. might help, but probably has their fair share of problems themselves.

just repluging this since you guys still havnt even decided what constitutes a naga or Lamia and where other human/feral, feral/feral and anthro/feral body combinations that move with a tail used as a single leg technicly fit in. I do think the best results youl get by taging by leg/locomotion types + Human, Anthro, Feral, "bodyplan"+"bodyplan"(for taurs, nagas and other multi_body combinations) bases rather the species based names like taur.

https://e621.net/forum/show/164311?page=2

The existing taging has no way in clasifying forms like these
post #940568
or this fellow posted above that has a bodyplan similar to a Satyr but is nether a satyr, taur, anthro or humanoid.
post #868569

Taging by leg type and bodyplan completly separate from species(in a separate catagory for that propose) would include cases like these among others and wouldnt be as ambiguous.

More examples of feral bodytype variation

Here's another example of feral body-type 'inconsistency'

feral pegasus

post #836950

feral pegasus

post #449827 post #212388

feral pegasus

post #575487 post #944325

That first one looks anthro to me, Titan.

Are humanoids mammals?

This was asked in the Tagging Project forum, putting it in here as well:

https://e621.net/forum/show/197282

titanmelon said:
Kind of a rather abstract question, not directly related to tagging:

Are humanoids technically mammals?

I mean..they're human/human-like right?

-
@Furrin_Gok said no (and I agree with that):
https://e621.net/forum/show/197378

Furrin_Gok said:
Nope. Take muffet, she's a spider_humanoid and an arachnid, not a mammal.

post #885744 is a dragon_humanoid, and a scalie, but not a mammal.

Furrin_Gok said:
That first one looks anthro to me, Titan.

Same for me (or rather semi-anthro)
which is the point exactly;

Some people are going to consider it feral, some anthro, some in-between

the main point here, even if we ignore potential 'mistags', is the possibility of multiple feral body types existing

Based on a combination of factors such as art style, anatomy, poses, expressions etc

titanmelon said:
the main point here, even if we ignore potential 'mistags', is the possibility of multiple feral body types existing

Based on a combination of factors such as art style, anatomy, poses, expressions etc

If the userbase can't tag even one broad type of ferals consistently, do you really expect that splitting it into multiples would keep it in better order?

Such as those pegasus you posted on last page. The first one is a mistagged anthro , but I fail to see what's inconsistent about the other four.

@Genjar:

Genjar said:
If the userbase can't tag even one broad type of ferals consistently, do you really expect that splitting it into multiples would keep it in better order?

Not necessarily splitting it, but allowing further differentiation. Something like

• feral
• [tag for less realistic/toony ferals]
• realistic_feral_bodytype

-

The first one is a mistagged anthro , but I fail to see what's inconsistent about the other four.

See:

titanmelon said:
which is the point exactly;

Some people are going to consider it feral, some anthro, some in-between

the main point here, even if we ignore potential 'mistags', is the possibility of multiple feral body types existing

Based on a combination of factors such as art style, anatomy, poses, expressions etc

There's also an entire forum about this (not from me, for once) discussing why feral is a very broad tag

I'll add some relevant posts and counterpoints in here and to OP soon

But again, what's inconsistent about those four?

Art-style doesn't define the type. All four are feral, just drawn in different styles. And I doubt that anyone would tag those as anything else but feral, or at least I haven't seen that happen.

Some humans are drawn in a realistic style. Some are more cartoony. But they're all in the same type-category. Same goes for other categories, including feral.

Here's a relevant post from @Wodahseht:

Bold empahsis mine
https://e621.net/forum/show/191504

Genjar said:
I've suggested that a couple of times. But different artstyles make it a hard sell.
For example, would any of these be considered 'anatomically correct' feral foxes?

Wodahseht said:
I know. Defining and putting such into action would be tricky and I don't know how to really go about it. My point was mostly that we shouldn't be looking at removing the feral tag from those, but rather a tag that lets people sort out those specific ferals if that's what they're after.

That doesn't seem relevant, so I'm just going to assume that you can't answer question. Since evidently you don't feel like explaining, and I'm not a mind reader.

Genjar said:
That doesn't seem relevant, so I'm just going to assume that you can't answer question. Since evidently you don't feel like explaining, and I'm not a mind reader.

I uhh..actually didn't notice your replies because of that forum highlight bug

The second post is related to the forum in general (but I suppose it's related to the feral body type thing too, see below)

Anyway,

Genjar said:
But again, what's inconsistent about those four?

Not so much the body types are inconsistent,
more about people who are under the impression that everything tagged with feral refers to the same thing, with little to no noticeable visible variation

Which has been pointed out multiple": times": in multiple": places": to be untrue

Art-style doesn't define the type. All four are feral, just drawn in different styles. And I doubt that anyone would tag those as anything else but feral, or at least I haven't seen that happen.

Some humans are drawn in a realistic style. Some are more cartoony. But they're all in the same type-category. Same goes for other categories, including feral.

Definitely agreed, body type and art style (degree of portrayed realism) should be treated as separate things for the purpose of tagging

That's why I made the suggestion": to do more things with the realistic and toony tags

But it was pointed out": (iirc) that those tags are also vague

-
links pending

Here's *another* example

same character

-
We can run around calling out everything as mistags based on personal interpretation of a vaguely-defined criteria as long as we want,

but the point (again) here is:

There are different ways to draw a character which can affect said interpretation of what body type they have

Not to such an extreme extent that you'd mistake the second example for an anthro horse or whatever, but within the same bounds of the feral body type
-
Honestly, this is beginning to feel like one of those 'prove a set contains the elements it contains' type of situations

realistic versus toony (Does the first one fit realistic?), they're separate tags from the feral tag though.

titanmelon said:
That's why I made the suggestion": to do more things with the realistic and toony tags

Furrin_Gok said:
realistic versus toony (Does the first one fit realistic?), they're separate tags from the feral tag though.

Maybe not an issue, but that would make a large majority of all mlp posts toony (which they probably technically are) as well as several pokemon, I imagine.

Chessax said:
Maybe not an issue, but that would make a large majority of all mlp posts toony (which they probably technically are) as well as several pokemon, I imagine.

Fine by me.

Chessax said:
Maybe not an issue, but that would make a large majority of all mlp posts toony (which they probably technically are) as well as several pokemon, I imagine.

Fine by me too.
As far as I know, that's why toony exists: for separating cartoony styles from realistic ones. There's also photorealism for the far opposite end of the spectrum.

Completely forgot about this, so adding it here too:
(don't think I wrote anything about this so far)

https://e621.net/forum/show/200754

PS: please mention in here if you know whether or not the above already happened somewhere