Hi there!

For me, the wiki entry for barazoku (AKA bara) raises more questions than it answers. The wiki says:

[In the West, bara refers] to erotic images glorifying muscular masculine-identified males -- and the term barazoku is now used to contrast the more chubby men seen in the Western-based "gay bear" culture.

This makes it sound as though barazoku in the West describes muscular, masculine guys but not chubby, masculine guys. Next, the wiki states:

On e621.net, because the tag bear is used to reference the animal, barazoku is now the replacement tag for both Western and Japanese-styles of masculine, muscular, usually gay-themed, erotic imagery.

At first glance, this makes it sound like the barazoku tag would also include chubby "bear" bodies, but the second half of the sentence says the tag is used as a "replacement tag for... masculine, muscular, usually gay-themed, erotic imagery" with no mention of chubby bodies.

Could anyone with more knowledge of bara and a good sense of how the term is used on e621 edit the wiki article to clear up the meaning of this tag? Some specific questions that remain unanswered by the entry as it stands now include:

• Does "bara" on e621 include chubby, masculine "bear" characters?
• Are solo male images like post #3600038 bara? The wiki article describes bara art as "usually gay-themed", but is a bit vague with regard to solo images, as the viewer could be any sex or gender.
• Does bara imply anything about art style? post #1014916 involves two muscular males, but the art style is quite different from most posts on e621 tagged as bara.
• Some examples could be helpful, especially regarding that last point, but this is less pressing than clarifying the text (in my opinion).

I figure that if the wiki seems a bit unclear or confusing for me, then I'm probably not the only one.

Thanks!

-Monroe

monroethelizard said:
[Original post]

P.S. According to topic #20451, there are a few other issues with the bara tag (including the name of the tag; forum #262289).

Until 2016, the wiki entry for bara apparently used to say, "This tag is defunct. It is generally better to use more specific terms like muscles and chubby whenever possible." Right now, it seems the bara tag is used only when the uploader decides that an image is bara. To become a more useful and more widely-applied tag, a good first step would be a clearer wiki entry so more users can determine when a post qualifies as bara.

Or should the tag be deprecated in general, and supplanted by more specific descriptors like muscular_male and chubby_male? I haven't got a strong opinion on the matter, and this thread seems like a good place to discuss potential broader issues with this tag.

monroethelizard said:
Or should the tag be deprecated in general, and supplanted by more specific descriptors like muscular_male and chubby_male?

As a certified barazoku hater myself, this would be my preferred solution. The bara tag is a incomplete random assortment of at least three better-defined tags, and nothing would be lost by its invalidation.

monroethelizard said:
Or should the tag be deprecated in general, and supplanted by more specific descriptors like muscular_male and chubby_male?

Aliasing it to muscular_male may make the most sense. Both the quoted sections say it's for "glorifying muscular masculine-identified males" and "both Western and Japanese-styles of masculine, muscular, usually gay-themed, erotic imagery." So if it's tagged on a character that's not a muscular male, it would be a mistag. What may trip some people up is musclegut characters, who are both chubby and muscular, but as they're still muscular along with having a belly, muscular_male would still apply, I think.