draconcopode was created fairly recently as an umbrella tag for nagas and lamias, as well as any non-snake character that moves on land without legs, like slug_taurs, that isn’t feral/that has an anthro, humanoid, or human upper body. (Interesting, however, that slug_taur implies taur, which conflicts with the wiki’s definition of a taur as a multi-legged creature.)
The issue is that this body type doesn’t formally have a body type tag. In the past, this sort of thing was often tagged as anthro, but that’s not really accurate. A draconcopode is no more an anthro than a taur is.
The main problem with this is that draconcopodes are left out of the body type-based tags, like humanoid_on_anthro. We could go through all these body type tags and add a new entry for draconcopodes… but that would be a massive effort, especially considering that we would have to create one for each new combination form (draconcopode_on_anthro/human/humanoid/feral/taur, draconcopode_on_male/female/ambiguous and every flavor of intersex, larger/smaller, penetrating, penetrated, muscular, overweight………….. et cetera)
This also leaves out the question of merfolk, which are extremely similar, but still do not qualify for any other body type tag. Like taurs and draconcopodes, they have a feral lower half and a human/humanoid/anthro upper half, though they remain distinct from draconcopodes in the sense that they are inherently aquatic rather than terrestrial.
I think it is essential that something be done with these considering how popular these forms have become - even overtaking taurs. As of writing, taur has 10,653 posts, while draconcopode plus merfolk has (7,606 + 3530) 11,136.
Also, taur is by far the most underutilized of the five canonical body types. With hardly more than 10,000 posts, its usage pales in comparison to even the second least used tag, human, with 216,000. That, at least, is in the same ballpark as humanoid and feral, with 260,000 and 388,000 posts, respectively. Anthro dominates the site for obvious reasons, approaching 1.8 million posts.
Sure, this discrepancy isn’t exactly a problem per se, but it turns out that there are a lot of posts that don’t fit neatly into any of these five categories, so if we’re going to do something to one of these tags in order to include those other body types, it would make sense to choose taur for that purpose.
There are a few possible solutions here. I propose we create a new body type tag for all fusions of existing body types, and replace all uses of taur in the various body type tags as well as on the upload page with this new form. That is, anything with a feral bottom half and anthro/human/oid upper half would imply this tag (that being draconcopodes, merfolk, taurs, and anything else in that same category). The advantage of this solution is that it could also include things with a different configuration of forms, such as anthro top/human bottom (ie. some Ancient Greek depictions of the minotaur) or human/humanoid top/anthro bottom (faun, satyr), feral top/anthro bottom (traditional depictions of the werewolf - see below), and so on. It could also include animal_head, since that’s also a fusion of two discrete things, and it also doesn’t fit neatly into any of the other categories.
I’d like to use the name split_form for this tag, but that’s already used for what is probably better called split_species considering how we generally use the word form on this site (ie. ambiguous_form). I’d like to use split_form for all combinations of different body forms instead, mass update split_form to split_species, and move the implication from lamia over to split_species. I’m not sure merfolk should continue to imply split_species in this case, though, because I think merfolk with a fish anthro upper half would be possible. In fact, this already appears to be the case with the mershark. See also: selkie
Now, I’m wondering if it would work to retain merfolk specifically for the fish bottom/human(oid) top variety, or the “traditional” variety of merfolk, with all other combinations (shark, seal, cetacean bottom, any species of anthro top) using an umbrella tag for everything else with this body type. I’m thinking mer, similar to how we use were for all were-things, including werewolves but also weredragons or whatever else. So merfolk implies mer, and all mer-shaped things that aren’t half-fish/half-human(oid) imply mer, but not merfolk. This would require a big cleanup of the merfolk tag, however, as this distinction has not been made previously, and many of the current merfolk posts are half anthro.
The main downside I see here is that the new tags don’t quite roll off the tongue: anthro_penetrating_split_form. However, I still think this is the best solution, and the most logical. Furthermore, the clunky name could be solved by simply finding a better name for it; I just can’t think of one at the moment.
The other possible solution is to expand taur to follow in the conflicting precedent set by slug_taur and seal_taur by including draconcopodes and merfolk and the like under the taur tag. That is, anything with a feral lower half and an anthro/human/humanoid upper half, regardless of whether it has legs or not.
This presents one issue regarding things like snake_taur and shark_taur. There’s only one post under shark_taur and three under snake_taur currently, so it’s not a major issue, but there still is a bit of a conflict here. The problem is that expanding taur to include merfolk and draconcopodes would leave no distinction in form between a shark_taur and a mershark, and between a snake_taur and a naga, even though they are quite clearly different from each other. They’d both be lumped into taur, while the above solution retains the distinction. A snake_taur and a naga would both come up under a search for snake taur solo, which is currently (apart from a bunch of mistagged posts) useful for finding taurs that contain a snake as one of the constituent species, considering that taurs are very frequently a form of hybrid. post #1501858 is a good example of that. Not a proper snake_taur, but still a snake + taur. Sure, you can just add -draconcopode to your search, but it still seems more illogical to me, and probably makes it just a bit more confusing to search for what you want, especially if you’re not that familiar with how these tags work.
The problem here is exacerbated by the aforementioned slug_taur situation. Hypothetically, if someone drew a slug taur with full legs like how those snake taurs and the shark taur is drawn, it would have to use the same tag since slug_taur is already being used for the draconcopode variety. I’m not sure what else to call it, though.
Another thing to note: we have two separate tags, seal_taur and merseal, that appear to refer to precisely the same thing. Both of these also overlap quite a bit with selkie.
Besides this (admittedly rather minor) issue, this could work as well. The main advantage is that it would be the easiest to implement, given that the tag names don’t need to be changed. However, calling things like merfolk a kind of taur definitely seems to be stretching the definition. I don’t particularly like using the term “taur” for these types of creatures anyway, as it implies some relation to a bull (taurus - Latin for bull). The seal_taur mentioned above is about the furthest possible thing from a bull.
While we’re on the subject, something desperately needs to be done about were. Currently, the tag is mostly just used for regular anthro wolves or wolf humanoids with nothing that distinguishes them from actual werewolves. This whole tag is a nightmare by TWYS standards.
The simplest, “scorched earth,” “kill it with fire” solution would be to simply turn all the were-tags into lore tags, and just forget about them. “You say your character is a werewolf, despite lacking any evidence in the image indicating that? Sure, here’s your lore tag; have fun.”
Or, you know, just invalidate them altogether.
I profoundly dislike this solution, however, and here’s why: traditional werewolves actually do have a particular appearance that distinguishes them from regular wolf anthros. Take post #1097239 and post #2104732 as examples. Clearly different from a typical wolf anthro. How so? I think it can primarily be defined as “anthro bottom/feral top.” That is, the bottom part of the character is bipedal with animal characteristics, typical of an anthro, while the upper part appears more feral than anthro. More wolf-like proportions: thicker neck, head coming out forward rather than on the top as in humans, the top of the back is arched, the character is profoundly hunched over to resemble the regular posture of a quadruped... things like that. Basically, if you were to show only the head and neck, it would be tagged as feral rather than anthro. And this would also make it a candidate for my aforementioned split_form idea. There is something clearly different about this form from a regular anthro, and I think the tags should ideally reflect that difference. Also, currently, there is no way to find characters who appear to be feral only on top with the tags we currently have. I had to dig through a bunch of regular anthros to find the examples I’ve provided below.
That, I think, should be the defining trait of were-anything. Not were because the artist says so; not were because it’s transforming under a full moon. The latter thing is just as easily covered under transformation full_moon or after_transformation moonlight or some other combination of tags like that. We don’t need were tags for that. Not to mention that the majority of were tags don’t even show transformation or the moon, so…
Now, to show that this concept can apply perfectly well to other species:
Werefox: post #2963495
Werecat: post #194997
Wereshark: post #2285745
Werepangolin (easily my favorite): post #2960000
The only problem I see is that it would be a big effort to go through the 21,088 posts tagged were and remove all those that don’t qualify… likely the great majority of them. I don’t think that’s any worse than keeping this dumpster fire of a tag in its current state, however.
One last thing, while we’re on the topic of forms. Why are humanoid and taur in the species category, while anthro and feral are in general? I know this has been brought up before, but I’ve yet to find any satisfactory explanation. If humanoids and taurs are distinct forms, and are not to be tagged as anthro or feral (according to the wiki pages as well as the upload page describing them as mutually exclusive), why are they still in the species category? Or if they should remain there, why not move anthro and feral into the species category? It makes sense for human to remain in the species category either way, seeing as it’s considered both a species and a body type here; but leaving the others in two separate categories doesn’t make much sense. I’d personally think they should all be in the species category, considering how important these tags are. feral tends to get lost in the sea of grey tags. They do all still refer to the form the character takes, which is generally how we use species tags. I mean, species tags aren’t used for species most of the time. mammal, scalie, dragon, corvid, python - none of those are actually species. Including body types does not seem like much of a stretch, especially considering that three of them are already in the species category. Also, draconcopode.