READ FIRST

Due to the innate entanglement of the subject matter I want to specify my terminology usage

• Sex = Assumed biological sex
• Consider this to include realistically-depicted characters "nullified" by surgical means
• But not necessarily all fantastically-transformed characters
• Gender = Presented/identified gender

I've had zero engagement on this elsewhere so I thought I'd take a shot at its own thread.
The primary motivation was finding my third example of a distinct fantasy-null character engaged in direct sexual activity with another character.
Former Related Threads:
Confusing tagging issues null_bulge creates
Tag Alias: null -> null_(disambiguation)
Policy (rules) Clarification Request -> solution Sex classification matrix? (no null discussion beyond someone saying "we have ambiguous for when there's really no way to tell")
Future Threads:
The nullification tag being used for vastly different kinks (BUR)
Discussion in a thread about the tail tag

featureless_crotch vs null vs nullo: Intentional? Confusing?

(all of the following is based on wiki text at the time of posting, and under the assumption that one or more wikis may be incorrect.)

• featureless_crotch purports to be the sole tag for characters stylistically or naturally missing genitalia
• null purports to be exclusively for characters naturally missing genitalia
• References featureless_crotch, but isn't referenced itself by other pages
• Seems to largely consist of rubber skinsuit posts which should instead be null_bulge
• nullo purports to be solely for traditionally-sexed characters who have had their genitalia realistically removed
• Also picking up posts which should instead be featureless_crotch or null_bulge
• References nullification, which itself places emphasis on on-body evidence that there was genitalia realistically removed
• honourable re-mention: null_bulge for when [often indicates] a character still possesses their genitalia, but it's sealed off (while still visible underneath). (Usually related to skinsuit or goo_transformation)

My questions here:

• Whether or not there should be a tag distinction between all three of stylistically SFW-featureless characters, featureless characters within sexually-graphic context, and characters showing evidence of surgical genital removal?
• Should fantastical-null be a category:lore tag appended case-by-case to sexualised featureless_crotch interactions, and/or when the artist statement backs it (as with current sex and gender lore tagging)?
• Is bodytype alone enough to tag a character's sex for the purpose of orientation tagging when the character's sexless status is clearly visible, or is additional tagging required?
• male/featureless + male/male format? (assuming defined male + male-bodied fantasy-null character interaction)
• male/male + featureless_penetrated?
• male/male + sexually_featureless? featureless_sexual?

Apologies if any of this is broken. Posting on little sleep again and this whole situation is pretty wonky.

Bumping back to above all the thread approvals

Part of me thinks null/nullo should be lore tags. There are artists that draw sexy pin-ups but don't draw genitals (tom_fischbach, older rick_griffin, etc), and it's somewhat of a running gag that nude characters don't have genitals until something sexy happens, so the difference between a featureless_crotch and a null(o) character seems to be extremely slight and somewhat vague. nullo could maybe be identified by scars or something on the crotch area indicating a surgical operation, but for instance the hero_(snofu) examples don't have that despite being tagged nullo. It's also somewhat difficult to tell on some of the posts that they don't have anything there, rather than wearing a body-colored tight suit given some of the linework. So it seems to me that null and nullo would work far better as lore tags, so can be applied like the gender lore tags.

Regarding sex orientation, the normal TWYS sex rules would apply. Does the character have a feminine or masculine body frame? If you can't tell from the body shape and non-genital features (e.g. breasts), the lack of any visible genitals would then mean it's ambiguous-looking.

watsit said:
Part of me thinks null/nullo should be lore tags. There are artists that draw sexy pin-ups but don't draw genitals (tom_fischbach, older rick_griffin, etc), and it's somewhat of a running gag that nude characters don't have genitals until something sexy happens, so the difference between a featureless_crotch and a null(o) character seems to be extremely slight and somewhat vague.

I think featureless_crotch is still fine as-is for when it's stylistic, and at the moment I'm thinking that fantasy-null should be an additional lore tag.
My interpretation of Tom and Rick's styles has always been that they still have hidden genitalia.

There's still the matter of how to separate the fantasy vs realism tags though. Even if fantasy-null goes to a lore tag, it could be a problem if people continue muddling the tags together. (Or continue all the null_bulge mistaggings)

magnuseffect said:
My interpretation of Tom and Rick's styles has always been that they still have hidden genitalia.

Right, but visually we can't see it. And by tag what you see, what's the difference between non-visible genitals and non-existent genitals? Given that the default in art tends to be "don't depict genitals unless it's relevant", characters without visible genitals (even when the crotch is directly in view and even in otherwise sexy pinup poses) aren't necessarily, and most often aren't, null. Similarly, a null character would be difficult to discern as one separately from a non-null character without their genitals depicted.

The way it seems to me, featureless_crotch is a TWYS tag. If you see a crotch, and it has no distinct features, it gets that tag. The null/nullo tags are separate, and apply if the character is defined to have no penis+balls, pussy, or cloaca (either naturally, or from surgical removal). That is to say, a null character's crotch is inherently a featureless_crotch when visible, and should be tagged as such. What constitutes a null character separate from a non-null character with a featureless_crotch is mainly on the creator's say-so, hence it would work better as a lore tag, IMO.

watsit said:
Right, but visually we can't see it. And by tag what you see, what's the difference between non-visible genitals and non-existent genitals? Given that the default in art tends to be "don't depict genitals unless it's relevant", characters without visible genitals (even when the crotch is directly in view and even in otherwise sexy pinup poses) aren't necessarily, and most often aren't, null. Similarly, a null character would be difficult to discern as one separately from a non-null character without their genitals depicted.

The way it seems to me, featureless_crotch is a TWYS tag. If you see a crotch, and it has no distinct features, it gets that tag. The null/nullo tags are separate, and apply if the character is defined to have no penis+balls, pussy, or cloaca (either naturally, or from surgical removal). That is to say, a null character's crotch is inherently a featureless_crotch when visible, and should be tagged as such. What constitutes a null character separate from a non-null character with a featureless_crotch is mainly on the creator's say-so, hence it would work better as a lore tag, IMO.

For the sake of clarification I agree entirely with these statements.

Would something like nullgender_(lore) (nullsex_(lore)?) be enough to distinguish it from other tags?

magnuseffect said:
Would something like nullgender_(lore) (nullsex_(lore)?) be enough to distinguish it from other tags?

From my point of view, yeah. Though whether it should be nullgender_(lore), nullsex_(lore), or null_(lore), I can't say. nullgender_(lore) sounds a bit too close to agender, as a gender identity rather than physical sex, while nullsex_(lore) seems a bit out of place as the other sex/gender lore tags don't have sex in their name, and null_(lore) is somewhat generic sounding (there's null sets in mathematics, null pointers in software development, etc; not that these would really be tagged, though). nullsex_(lore) might be the best option, but I'll leave that to someone else to say.

watsit said:
nullsex_(lore) seems a bit out of place as the other sex/gender lore tags don't have sex in their name

Lore tags are also still new ground. I think it's a good idea to, within category:lore, hard-exclude the gender element when it's not a relevant aspect to the tag.
The alternative is something like featureless_crotch_(lore), which would awkwardly be the only lore-equivalent which would have to be tagged alongside its own category:general counterpart.
My reasoning for the other lore tags not needing this is the standard-sex tags insinuate both sex and gender, while the trans tags need to be inclusive of any potential sexual characteristics within them. I forgot until now I've also gone on a related tangent about sexless characters in the trans tags thread, which probably should have gone in this direction instead.
I'm still running brainstorming, sexless_(lore) might flow a little better, as it's further separate from null/o and doesn't include gender.

Proposal Roundup

Lore tagging this should require both

• Reasonable source confirmation
• One of
• featureless_crotch visibility
• Lack of crotch information

and should exclude null_bulge posts. (should null_bulge be moved to something like chastity_bulge as [when] it's not a true nullification?) ^{Strikethrough and brackets on edit}

Potential tags:

• sexless_(lore)
• nullsex_(lore)
• featureless_crotch_(lore)
• Awkward duplicate?
• nullgender_(lore)
• Sex/gender confusion?
• null_(lore)
• Too vague?

There's been at least two separate discussions about tags relating to this in the last two months so it's time for a bump. I'm not as invested in forum posting anymore but I'll try to check in.
The OP has been updated with two new thread links, and a new posts-example featuring a character who fits neither the definitions for nullo nor featureless_crotch

It doesn't look like we went into it as initially I was less interested in transformation processes, but there likely should also be a separate tag(s) for fantastical-transformation. (Which should maintain separation of null-bulge examples from featureless null wherever the bulge is still indicative of physical genitalia beneath.)
( See Here )

I want to add that the term nullspace featured in post #2060474 has been growing on me and could provide a solution to featureless-crotch null being too close to nullo if it can catch on. I'd like to hear peoples' thoughts on that.

And while I'm bringing it up, I believe a non-featureless innately-null character should be a job for lore-tagging.
I'd imagine if there's room for three flavours of general featureless/null/o tagging there's room for it in the lore section.
e.g.

• featureless_crotch_(lore) (nullspace_(lore)?) for innately-featureless characters
• nullsex_(lore) for innately sexless but not featureless or nullo characters?
• nullo_(lore) for traditionally nullified characters if there's a need for it

doesn't make much sense to me, since featureless_crotch is just whether there's any genital features visible on the crotch, so a lore tag would be for when you can't see the crotch, but the artist doesn't intend any features to be depicted. E.g. post #3208670, you can't see anyone's crotch, but the artist doesn't intend to depict genitals if you could, but they do have genitals "in universe". nullspace_(lore) is even weirder, as "nullspace" makes me think of something like post #2621729 where the physical space is simply gone, moved somewhere else and leaving a blank space.

watsit said:
nullspace_(lore) is even weirder, as "nullspace" makes me think of something like post #2621729 where the physical space is simply gone, moved somewhere else and leaving a blank space.

I personally don't think it's too unreasonable to expect taggers to be able to differentiate it from portal_ring tags but I'm interested in hearing what other people think. Honestly I'm more interested in that one as a General tag (to distance null from nullo and null_bulge) than I am for it as a lore tag.
In its absence as a lore tag then I still think there's room for naturally-featureless characters in a tag like nullsex_(lore), though.

magnuseffect said:
I personally don't think it's too unreasonable to expect taggers to be able to differentiate it from portal_ring tags but I'm interested in hearing what other people think. Honestly I'm more interested in that one as a General tag (to distance null from nullo and null_bulge) than I am for it as a lore tag.

My contention is that they're not exclusive. Something like a portal ring (or various other types of portals) can be depicted as leaving a "null space" when viewed from the back. It doesn't even have to be related to genitals, like post #2690906. As far as General tags go, I don't think there's any way to really distinguish a null crotch from featureless_crotch. At least, a null_bulge tag would work if there's a bulge directly on the character, like you'd see with pants but when they're not wearing any (e.g. post #3233351 ), although it doesn't work when there's clothing on the character to make it look like a normal clothed bulge. And nullo can work when there's visible scaring around the missing genitals, similar to mastectomy scars. Perhaps alias nullo -> penectomy_scars?

magnuseffect said:
In its absence as a lore tag then I still think there's room for naturally-featureless characters in a tag like nullsex_(lore), though.

By "naturally-featureless", if you mean characters specifically defined "in lore" to not have genitals, like certain kinds of angels, that's probably the best option I can think of.

watsit said:
By "naturally-featureless", if you mean characters specifically defined "in lore" to not have genitals, like certain kinds of angels, that's probably the best option I can think of.

That's what this has been about, yes.

And nullo can work when there's visible scaring around the missing genitals, similar to mastectomy scars. Perhaps alias nullo -> penectomy_scars?

Nullo needs to potentially encompass vulva->nullo examples, not just from penectomies.
There will also be friction from some users toward altering nullo as it's at least recognised enough for a Wikipedia page that I can't link properly 'cos of the damn parentheses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullo_(body_modification)

watsit said:
As far as General tags go, I don't think there's any way to really distinguish a null crotch from featureless_crotch.

Slept on it and I think I agree.
In which case I think null should be disambiguated (directing into nullo, null_bulge, chastity_bulge ^{I'm going to maintain that it ain't null if it's merely encasement} and hopefully a to-be-determined lore tag.)

• Nullo can stay as-is,
• The lore tag can apply to featureless_crotch and null_bulge examples where the character canonically lacks genitals
• But not to chastity_device and encasement examples where the character still possesses physical sex. (I don't think there's a tag for partial encasement so I'm not sure if that's a problem or if chastity_device is enough)

But I'm not sure where the naturally-urethra-only character fits into things.
Though now that I notice it, the artist and character owner appears to have self-tagged it as nullo penectomy and eunuch despite the description stating they were born that way. Possibly out of some consideration for TWYS?