I was discussing this in the e621 discord server and was advised to make a thread, I'm basically proposing a policy change, or at least for the current policy to be more strict and easy to understand for image uploader and approvals.

The topic is whether an image where characters are in "costume," i.e. fursuit, plushsuit, animal costume, latex furry costumes, etc. should be considered "furry," and hence acceptable on e621, if there is no evidence that a human is wearing the outfit.

Some examples include:
post #2595981 post #1460809 post #1465633 post #1457790 post #3213446 post #2427009 post #2595807 post #2518872
These images have no way to tell whether there is a human or furry inside, at least not from what I can tell. A few them of them visible eyes underneath the costumes, but without a sense of skintone its not really possible to tell the difference between human or furry. A few of these have external confirmation that the person inside is a furry, such as the picture by panapoliz, an artist who frequently draws their cat fursona in animal costumes. For some of them, its even arguable if there is anyone in a costume, or if it some sort of animate inanimate/living clothing.

Now, in my opinion, these are furry images. There is no evidence that specifically a human is inside of these suits, and so these image present to me (as I'm assuming they do to most others) as "0% human, 100% a furry character (or at the least, 'furryish enough for my browsing')", and hence would fit in well on e621. The issue is that the current rule seems to be that these images are not furry since there is no evidence that a furry character is "in the image," and hence it is assumed that the costume wearer is a human instead of the other way around.

Unfortunately because it is often so hard to tell if a costume's occupant is a furry or not, it means this is often a coin flip on whether an image like this will be accepted or not. The images linked above were approved, but many others are not (I'm taking this from my own experience as an uploader).

To clarify, the following images would NOT be considered furry, and would not be approved for upload no matter the change in policy
post #538360 post #108670 post #3200897
These are obviously humans in costumes, and aren't allowed. (I understand some of these are grandfathered in, but I just mean that images "like these" would not be approvable, even if the guidelines were to change to allow the first set of images above to be consistently allowed).

The current ruleset seems to make it so images like those in the first set are approved and denied seemingly at random, at least in my own experience. I don't blame approvers for this, I think it is more that the current rules make it very difficult to identity what is and isn't "furry" due to loose definition in this case. In my opinion, not allowing the images in the first set due to them being "not furry" is going to keep this gray area no matter what, especially when considering that characters such as clothing-based animate_inanimates or those with a painted-on face are indistinguishable from people in costumes when you cannot see what is inside of them. It makes much more sense to me to consider cases like this "furry until proven otherwise," especially when characters like vanny (fnaf) are popular within the fandom but uploads of them need to be scrutinized so heavily to see if the artist drew a costume without any noticeably human elements (not allowed) or an anthropomorphic version of the design (allowed), especially when the average viewer likely won't notice the difference when browsing the tag.

Please feel free to reply with your opinions on this, it'd be nice to have a discussion over it and hopefully avoid future headaches I've had when deciding if an image is "furry enough" for e621 when I'm personally a fan of images of anthro animals in costumes, suits, and the like.

Wanted to add an example of a post that was recently deleted as an example for the type of post I think should be fine as "Furry", that being post #3340056, a picture of Vanny which was deleted for being "human only" since the characters face shows that the image is probably someone wearing a costume–under current rules, this wearer is considered to be a human. Feel free to consider it as an image which would be allowed with a policy change, but is not allowed now: https://twitter.com/yen00280/status/1474934022354649089

We should be as permissive as possible. Even posts like post #3200897. Humans in fursuits are a tiny fraction of the human-only content that we don't want.

This thread reminded me of all the stuff a certain user uploads, then I realized that certain user was you, lol. Four years ago, I asked an Admin why post #1458058 was deleted (pixiv link) , and according to them:

If you look at the eyes you can see that it's just a human in a full-body costume, thus not relevant to us.

...which I found pretty annoying, since this is clearly fetish content relevant to furries (see: plushification, which is roughly what seems to be happening), and the deciding factor was something you can barely make out unless you look super carefully.

I'm definitely 100% in favor of all posts like the top row being consistently accepted here.

lance_armstrong said:
We should be as permissive as possible. Even posts like post #3200897. Humans in fursuits are a tiny fraction of the human-only content that we don't want.

very interesting, i wasn't expecting the perspective of being even more permissive than what i was proposing. i'd be open to that as well, i was mostly so specific in what does and does not count as "furry" in my post because i was expecting more pushback against this idea.

crocogator said:
This thread reminded me of all the stuff a certain user uploads, then I realized that certain user was you, lol.

haha, made me smile to be recognized for the stuff i put on here! i certainly have some unique uploading habits :p and yep, your example is totally the type of thing i was thinking about.

Wasn't there a japanese artist who mainly did latex furry bodysuits and stuff that folks here got super weirded out by?

Anyway, so far as I'm concerned if elves are considered "furry enough" to be relevant by having slightly pointy ears (looking at you, every piece of Legend of Zelda art), a fursuit/animal costume/mascot, by virtue of actually having direct relevance to furry subculture, should more than qualify.

This is a strong +1 from me. I've always found it ridiculous that a full fursuit is "not furry" but a human with some pointy ears is acceptable. I've seen art of that one Five Nights at Freddy's character get deleted when there's a tiny tear in the suit exposing the skin beneath, but other art get accepted despite being almost exactly the same thing because there was no indication of a human underneath. Some of them I wouldn't have even thought were costumes if I didn't know the lore, which shouldn't be taken into consideration with a deletion just like how we have TWYS for tags.

I've always imagined that the "no humans in costumes" rule originated from something like anime girls with fake animal ear hairbands and just ended up getting taken too literally.

I think everything in the first row should be acceptable, and post #3200897 seems reasonable enough to be accepted to me too.

EDIT: Some examples of what I mean about the lore

• post #3562187 (source) - The neck is flesh colored, but without using outside knowledge there's no reason to assume this is a costume rather than being an anthro rabbit with a fleshy colored neck.
• post #3629640 (source) - Deleted as human only but there's not really any reason to assume there's a human inside the costume (outside of lore) rather than something like a living_plushie which could also have stitching like that and still be site relevant. Just looking at the open mouth on the costume(?) makes me wonder how a human head would even fit inside there.
• post #3683722, post #3644668, post #3594763, post #3108580, post #3105954, post #3100042 - all the same as the above one

faucet said:

• post #3629640 (source) - Deleted as human only but there's not really any reason to assume there's a human inside the costume (outside of lore) rather than something like a living_plushie which could also have stitching like that and still be site relevant. Just looking at the open mouth on the costume(?) makes me wonder how a human head would even fit inside there.

yeah, even under the strictest reading of current guidelines, i don't see a good reason for this one to have been deleted. this is a good example of how the current rules lead to a lot of posts getting deleted even when they shouldn't, since it gets hard for an approver to tell what "is" and "isn't" furry in these cases (and honestly just puts a lot of added pressure on them to double and triple check images like this needlessly).

like we have the human tag if lore says it's a person in costume. frankly if pointy ears are enough for content from the zelda universe to be here I see no reason a drawn human in a fursuit should be at all questionable. heck, drawing a hole in the side of the plushy head and showing a pointy ear *would* technically make most any of those flagged posts allowable since elves are deemed sufficiently non-human.

I know a few lines below the upload guidelines disagree, but "If it appears like a human it counts as a human, regardless of what in-universe lore specifies.", then the same logic ought to apply to furry/animal. if it appears like a furry it counts as furry, regardless of what in-universe lore specifies.

I think human being transferred into any form of furry is clearly different from human in fursuit.

https://e621.net/posts/3667011

This one was deletes due to it shows a human wearing fursuit, while its parents was allowed since the human wear mask. Still sucks when you realized that is a human.

In my opinion they are not belong to e621.

It totally belongs here. Fursuits are an integral part of the furry fandom. Honestly, where else would you post it?

use your blacklist.

the last thing e6 needs is more rules against what is already allowed.

Opinion: When things get to stay when there is just a hint of elf ears I don't see why humans 99% covered in anthro suits should get the boot.

Anyone else remember the controversy over pool #22531? Every post in it got deleted at one point and then retconned so that all the human characters suddenly had pointy ears.

(Personally I think it should have been deleted because it resembled a Chick Tract, but declaring stuff like post #2533490 to be "not furry" was a bit silly.)

Most of your examples look like living_plushies, patchwork_creatures, or rubber_creatures to me. I would count them as relevant.

But I never stumbled across humans in suits, while uploading. I would either put it in the pending queue, and wait for the outcome, or skip it. I think I lean more to "not relevant for e621".

"Suits" without human features, yes
Suits with slight human features e.g. eyes, maybe
Clearly visible humans in suits, nah

But I have to admit, I am not a big fan of human/oids in general.

If we get a rule change to permit more, maybe put not_furry and other tags on the default blacklist.

lance_armstrong said:
If we get a rule change to permit more, maybe put not_furry and other tags on the default blacklist.

The problem is that not_furry applies to quite non-human things. Midna and gardevoir-only posts technically qualify as not_furry.

watsit said:
The problem is that not_furry applies to quite non-human things. Midna and gardevoir-only posts technically qualify as not_furry.

human + not_furry together would work.

alright, well it seems like everyone except one or two people are for this policy change, and a bit more than half of the people who are for a policy change want to extend even beyond what i was saying in my original post (i.e. people pointing out post #3200897 as something that should be allowed). it definitely seems like we should work to make more permissive policies to allow content that is obviously "furry" in content even if it may involve non-furry characters, since people can use their blacklists (and the default blacklist could be updated, as mentioned in the above posts). should also make things easier for the approval team since they won't have to look extra closely at images to determine what is an anthro and what is a costume/fursuit. i definitely agree with people saying its weird that humanoid characters with elf ears are allowed but fursuits are not.

how would we move forward with something like this, then? all i can do is really make this discussion, but as it is now it seems pretty positive towards a policy change–consider me happily surprised.

if we do change the policy, i'd say we should also work on reinstating a lot of the old posts, if possible. perhaps we could have a system where posts could be reinstated on request rather than admins having to go back and find them themselves. i would definitely put the time in to go through my old deletions and link the ones which need reapproval.

+1 allow fursuits and add not_furry to the default blacklist, the latter being a good idea regardless.

wolfmanfur said:
human + not_furry together would work.

Not really, because that would still trigger with images that have one of those non-human humanoids along with a human (e.g. some gardevoir + trainer pokephilia). And not_furry + -humanoid would basically be human_only, which is only here in limited amounts.

leomole said:
+1 allow fursuits and add not_furry to the default blacklist, the latter being a good idea regardless.

I strongly disagree with adding not_furry to the default blacklist, since it includes various humanoids like midna, mawile, gengar, and others. People would be very unhappy if they could no longer see various humanoids and pokemon.

Yeah, not_furry shouldn't be blacklisted. human_only could be, though. But really, the default blacklist seems more like it's for things most people actively don't want to see, not things they just aren't looking for. I doubt many furries are actively offended or disgusted by art of humans.

vulpes_artifex said:
Yeah, not_furry shouldn't be blacklisted. human_only could be, though. But really, the default blacklist seems more like it's for things most people actively don't want to see, not things they just aren't looking for. I doubt many furries are actively offended or disgusted by art of humans.

I think query the database would give us most blocked tags

furthering the discussion: in cases where someone is wearing a suit with no indication of whose inside, what do we tag that as?
for instance:

post #1460809
should this be tagged "dragonite"? or something like "dragonite costume"?

post #2518872
should this be tagged "asriel dreemurr (god form)"?

you can extrapolate from there. assume both of these images are characters wearing costumes and the costumes are not living (i.e. not animate inanimate)

meowmcmeow said:
furthering the discussion: in cases where someone is wearing a suit with no indication of whose inside, what do we tag that as?
for instance:

post #1460809
should this be tagged "dragonite"? or something like "dragonite costume"?

post #2518872
should this be tagged "asriel dreemurr (god form)"?

you can extrapolate from there. assume both of these images are characters wearing costumes and the costumes are not living (i.e. not animate inanimate)

I would tag is has +<character>_costume +unkown_character +unkown_species.

Since we tag ambiguous gender when we don't see the genitals, I think it's safe to use the same behavior for species, when they can't be seen.

And honestly, human-in-fursuits is much more fitting than elves. At least one has fur.

In my opinion, of course.

Sorry to bump an old thread-It seems like most people here agreed on changing policy to allow for these types of cases. What's the best way towards actually getting this done? I'd want to make sure I'm protected by e621's guidelines before I upload more things like this and risk post deletion/warnings.

+1 this is furry art, I agree it should be allowed

meowmcmeow said:
Sorry to bump an old thread-It seems like most people here agreed on changing policy to allow for these types of cases. What's the best way towards actually getting this done?

The one million dollar question that probably a thousand other threads also have. "Best way"? Double the admin staff.

I'd want to make sure I'm protected by e621's guidelines before I upload more things like this and risk post deletion/warnings.

If this thread's sentiments are not in the uploading guidelines, I would say you are not protected. And they are not.

This thread asks several different questions.

Are fursuits furry?

Yes, of course. Fursuits are the defining IRL "furry" feature. This distinction is important because the uploading guidelines say...

Good Things to Upload:

• Any art or animations that are relevant to "furries"

...but then starts cutting away...

i.e. contain anthropomorphic characters or animals.

Fursuits are relevant to furries, but they themselves are not anthropomorphic characters unless they are alive.

The real question is...

Are humans wearing fursuits "furry characters"?

As we tag them, no. The sticking point is that, on e621, furry characters are the genuine article, not the imitation. Show the actual fantasy, not the fantasizers.

"Furry" = anthro, feral, taur, most apode, most split_form, and for the sake of the not_furry tag, animal_humanoid.

"Character" = countable character. Generally means they are alive, including most robots.

What we allow are...

Are humans wearing fursuits "non-human characters"?

No.

The site allows fantasy content featuring non-human characters. Includes all humanoids and other characters lacking recognizable animal anatomy that nonetheless feature non-human anatomy. This content is often difficult to classify, so there's grey area around things like fangs, claws, body horror, are sangheili scalies, are turians anthro (they have exoskeletons like insects), etc.

If we do allow humans in fursuits, then does that mean we allow anything else previously forbidden that is "furry"?

The fear with this kind of change is it's a slippery slope, and even with a rule change this thread would likely reappear with moved goalposts. But we're always on slippery slopes anyway no matter where we place the goalposts. All posts submitted must be evaluated, and artists will always find different boundaries to push.

The more immediate question is...

How much of a fursuit must a character wear to consider them approvable?

We can set the floor at "completely covered but believe it's a human." If this isn't allowed, then no rule change happened. Seems like the bare minimum request here.

Then there's any combination of partial fursuits. If the rule is "mostly covered" or "almost entirely covered," then this probably isn't too hard to navigate.

The ceiling is humans wearing only animal foot slippers or paw gloves. You probably don't want that. Though, I detect some framing like "ears humanoids are 1% relevant, fursuits are 99% relevant"... so animal slippers-only seems equivalent to "ears humanoid."

Some annoying edge cases...

Wearing suit, but entire body not visible. How much needs to be visible for approval? This is a lot like pondering how much of a character should be visible for the nude tag.

Wearing suit, but suit species indeterminable.

Wearing suit, but suit is a not furry non-human.

Wearing partial suit, but the rest is visible as discarded clothing or partially clothed.

Onesies with face cutout (poke kid).

Hoodie with zipper-face.

Full-body coverings that aren't clothing, like armor, power armor, mecha, worn/piloted by humans.

This is why my initial proposal was for times when a character is fully covered by a suit/costume/etc, to the point where it becomes nearly impossible to tell the difference between a living costume and a non-furry wearing a costume. This makes sense to me because the alternative is these types of posts get deleted even if a furry IS wearing the costume "canonicaly," because e621 sees a question mark inside and assumes it's a human for whatever reason.

Hence, I think the initial list of 8 posts are a good baseline for what should be acceptable.

The question on whether even further deviations from that should be allowed is whats been proposed in the rest of the thread–it seems like most people want to go even further, but at the baseline I think the initial change shouldn't be too difficult.

Whether characters wearing fursuits at ALL should be allowed should maybe be a separate thread, it feels like a simpler case (the one I initially proposed) may be getting wrapped up in a much more complex one.

It does seem a bit ridiculous that animal_humanoid is allowed, but a human wearing a complete fursuit isn't, especially in cases where you can't even see the human underneath. Have similar rule changes gone through in the past?