notmenotyou
But yeah, I'll have to see how to properly word all that in the respective wiki pages. So far the lore tags help wiki and trans_(lore) tags are going to be looked at. Are there any others that might need a second look?

Familial_(lore) tags maybe?

Almost panicked on seeing a second page. Just got done removing the cannon from the Wiki article mentioned in the head post. Yes, that is an XKCD reference. Yes, I'm old. :P

I liked the clearer language in the recently-edited article, and it's obviously a "can't have your cake and eat it too" situation regarding tagging lore. Creating a hierarchy with clear tiers is going to have consequences, but so is leaving it blurry, as shown in earlier replies.

Regarding the hierarchy,

trans_(lore):
In general, the order of "importance" for determining the correct lore tags goes character owner, artist, then canon.

Wouldn't the character owner be the canon? So it doesn't make sense that artist is sandwiched between them in terms of order of importance.

Or can it be such that everyone can have their own versions of characters in canon media, and if so, does every version deserve their owner character tag suffixed with their owner?

In any case, I would like more clarity on what character owner means and where this order of importance would have effect.

I think the "trans_(lore)" tag should be changed to "tans_identifying" or "trans_designated" if it's not about the actual lore of the character but what the creator of the image have decided. Given the implication of the word lore is that it's related to canon information which, at least for me causes confusion with fan art. Maybe even having a separate category to defer non-canon information for lore based information.

versperus said:
I think the "trans_(lore)" tag should be changed to "tans_identifying" or "trans_designated" if it's not about the actual lore of the character but what the creator of the image have decided. Given the implication of the word lore is that it's related to canon information which, at least for me causes confusion with fan art. Maybe even having a separate category to defer non-canon information for lore based information.

that's how all lore tags function, though. not just the trans tags.

also, if I'm not mistaken, lore tags are like, hardcoded to always have *_(lore) at the end.

snpthecat said:
Wouldn't the character owner be the canon? So it doesn't make sense that artist is sandwiched between them in terms of order of importance.

Or can it be such that everyone can have their own versions of characters in canon media, and if so, does every version deserve their owner character tag suffixed with their owner?

In any case, I would like more clarity on what character owner means and where this order of importance would have effect.

The way I understand it, yes, the "character owner" and "canon" orders do technically conflict, but this will only ever become a material issue in the case of hate or harassment art which always gets either swiftly taken down or unapproved anyway.

If Sony wants to come in here and say you're not allowed to interpret Rivet as trans any more, the site would be forced to comply with their wishes as the character owner, as has always been the case. They haven't yet, though.

snpthecat said:
In general, the order of "importance" for determining the correct lore tags goes character owner, artist, then canon.

The head admin just said a page ago that the lore tags only follows artist canon, so I don’t know why you added that last part to the wiki. Like the others said, I’d wait for the staff to look at the pages at this point.

sipothac said:
that's how all lore tags function, though. not just the trans tags.

also, if I'm not mistaken, lore tags are like, hardcoded to always have *_(lore) at the end.

This is the case, yes, because some of the lore tags are the exact same as the normal tags, meaning it would cause issues if the _(lore) wasn't there

versperus said:
to cut to brass tax, does Rivet count as Trans? As far as I'm aware the person in question that green lit the trans information wasn't apart of the team still when the game was released. Is there any official information that solidifies the standpoint?

The fan-theory's only in-text evidence (at least after Angela went away) I'm aware of is a news-talkshow segment from A Crack in Time where they callback to angela_cross and one of the hosts states that female lombaxes don't have tails.
Personally I don't consider that to be evidence that Rivet in particular was male-at-birth for reasons including:

• In-universe character statements are not reliable sources
• Here's also the Ratchet & Clank wiki's stance on the validity of the news segment.
• Very few franchises (especially ones that have undergone a full writing staff change) reliably concrete every minute element of their canon in place long-term, and elements are often fully redesigned on a whim
• In the 18 years between Going Commando and Rift Apart it's likely the design team simply wanted a clean-slate design (further suggested by getting rid of the breasts, which were a feature Angela had)
• She doesn't have the typical male tail design, either

I did do some light looking and at least for the Wikipedia credits, A Crack in Time was part-written by one of the original Insomniac members, while Rift Apart's writing credits are all fresh faces, so its callback (and to my knowledge that's all it is, Angela doesn't visibly appear in the game) is likely down to it still being written by the same group of people at that point.

werideatdawn said:
The head admin just said a page ago that the lore tags only follows artist canon, so I don’t know why you added that last part to the wiki. Like the others said, I’d wait for the staff to look at the pages at this point.

I didn't add that last part to the wiki, DonovanDMC did. That's why i'm asking what it means.

snpthecat said:
I didn't add that last part to the wiki, DonovanDMC did. That's why i'm asking what it means.

Ah, my mistake then.

thedragonrider said:
This is the case, yes, because some of the lore tags are the exact same as the normal tags, meaning it would cause issues if the _(lore) wasn't there

Well what darryus meant was that the tag can't be in the lore category if it doesn't have the _(lore) suffix. It was hard coded this way probably because of technical debt which prevented the creation of a new category and this was a workaround. After all, father, mother, daughter and son got aliased to their lore counterparts.

magnuseffect said:
Personally I don't consider that to be evidence that Rivet in particular was male-at-birth for reasons including:
[...]

We also don't consider species lore regarding sex and sexual dimorphism. A salazzle isn't automatically female, nor is a pikachu with a cleft tail.

versperus said:
Trans lore tags are hard, personally I only add them when I explicitly know the lore of the character, or can communicate with the characters owner to inform me. Otherwise I don't deal with them at all.

Thing is, knowing the lore of the character or the character's owner doesn't matter. You have to know the artist's opinion instead.

temp7 said:
Thing is, knowing the lore of the character or the character's owner doesn't matter. You have to know the artist's opinion instead.

Which is absurdist and ridiculous. Im actually kind of still baffled at using undertale AU's as an example because, you just use the Lore, of the AU. Which is different from "artists interpretation" as this site classes it.

This is broken.

*Edit*

Is the reason the rule works like this to prevent people tagging aged up characters or ageless characters of dubious nature as young?

The judgment has already been made on this but from both an english speaking perspective (lore is the wrong word here) and the fact that the system quite literally doesnt and cannot work as advertised, im genuinely gonna ask that perhaps the rule should be considered for revision as it currently stands.

The reason the example given doesnt work is for the same reason thst is provided that it supposedly does. I understand thst the site wont tag characters as trans even when its visible they are (top scars, hrt patches, a character sheet literally saying in writing that they are trans) and Ive accepted that. But treating it this way breaks incest tags outright, rape tags are also dubious, cnc kink etc willing victim and situations where its "not violent enough" can cause tag warring.

The "young" tag issue is the only situation i can see where doing it this way helps anyone.

I know young isnt a lore tag bug it constantly runs into situations identical to this. Because chibi art, and other art styles which are very squat, and "shortstacks' get constantly mistagged and need word of god to reverse those choices.

temp7 said:
Thing is, knowing the lore of the character or the character's owner doesn't matter. You have to know the artist's opinion instead.

I very much feel that was a word fumble given that would mean artist opinion overrides a commissioner of a personal piece like a sona. Because usually the artist is the character owner it would make sense to say that first, again I don't really want to get wrapped around this to much until the wiki is officially established because I think you and me both need a clear and concise wiki.

Edit: oh it's already been up updated. Character owner then Artist then canon for order of importance of opinion. which makes a lot of sense.

versperus said:
I very much feel that was a word fumble given that would mean artist opinion overrides a commissioner of a personal piece like a sona. Because usually the artist is the character owner it would make sense to say that first, again I don't really want to get wrapped around this to much until the wiki is officially established because I think you and me both need a clear and concise wiki.

Edit: oh it's already been up updated. Character owner then Artist then canon for order of importance of opinion. which makes a lot of sense.

And what of characters that are owned by a corporation? In that case, the character owner and canon are effectively the same. This discussion wasn't started as a result of any artist/commissioner relationship.

temp7 said:
And what of characters that are owned by a corporation? In that case, the character owner and canon are effectively the same. This discussion wasn't started as a result of any artist/commissioner relationship.

according to the trans_(lore) wiki, they're the bottom of the barrel. Presumably because corporations usually don't care about online furries

temp7 said:
And what of characters that are owned by a corporation? In that case, the character owner and canon are effectively the same. This discussion wasn't started as a result of any artist/commissioner relationship.

if we got a request from a corporate executive that owned a certain character to always tag said character with a certain lore tag we'd comply.

versperus said:
according to the trans_(lore) wiki, they're the bottom of the barrel. Presumably because corporations usually don't care about online furries

It was added by a moderator, yes, but it kinda goes against what NMNY said on the matter; that the lore tags are for artist/character owner statements only.

demesejha said:
Is the reason the rule works like this to prevent people tagging aged up characters or ageless characters of dubious nature as young?

The judgment has already been made on this but from both an english speaking perspective (lore is the wrong word here) and the fact that the system quite literally doesnt and cannot work as advertised, im genuinely gonna ask that perhaps the rule should be considered for revision as it currently stands.

That’s the way it’s worked since the lore tags were implemented. They were added so that artists can have their cake when it comes to tags, since the TWYS system isn’t for everyone. On the crowdsourcing thread, one of the questions on the second post even directly addressed the “artist canon vs general canon” part, albeit it’s easy to miss since it’s not pinned.

sipothac said:
if we got a request from a corporate executive that owned a certain character to always tag said character with a certain lore tag we'd comply.

While there’s already an exception for Paddington Bear being DNP, since character owners usually don’t get one, I don’t think the staff are going to accept a request from a company to force lore tags on images with a certain character. Then again, I could be wrong.

werideatdawn said:
It was added by a moderator, yes, but it kinda goes against what NMNY said on the matter; that the lore tags are for artist/character owner statements only.

That’s the way it’s worked since the lore tags were implemented. They were added so that artists can have their cake when it comes to tags, since the TWYS system isn’t for everyone. On the crowdsourcing thread, one of the questions on the second post even directly addressed the “artist canon vs general canon” part, albeit it’s easy to miss since it’s not pinned.

While there’s already an exception for Paddington Bear being DNP, since character owners usually don’t get one, I don’t think the staff are going to accept a request from a company to force lore tags on images with a certain character. Then again, I could be wrong.

I mean, technically not considering that the corporation has the copyright to the character tag, but there opinion will only matter if they voice their opinion? again I think there should be separate listings for artistic license and true lore because it's going to cause people confusion as only people who actually tag things read the wikis, we have a majority consumer userbase who will just see x_(lore) for artistic license and take it for fact.

demesejha said:
The "young" tag issue is the only situation i can see where doing it this way helps anyone.

Or when dealing with any corporate-owned character, or any instance where an artist is given reign over a depiction of someone else's character. With the order given by the wiki edit, Rivet should thus never be tagged trans_(lore), regardless of what the artist says, since the character owner takes precedence (and Insomniac Games, who owns the character, never officially said she was trans). Or tulin_(tloz), owned by Nintendo who says he's young, should always be tagged young_(lore) for any aged_up depiction, because the artist takes a back seat for lore to the character owner's say-so.

The order given in the wiki makes no sense, as has been stated, character owner and canon are essentially the same thing. What a character owner says is canon for the character, and what's canon for a character is what the character owner says. Forcing the artist's say to take a back seat to their own work means we could never apply lore tags as intended by the artist making their own interpretation of another's character, or whenever they do something different at the behest of the character owner who never speaks up and says they approve.

versperus said:
I very much feel that was a word fumble given that would mean artist opinion overrides a commissioner of a personal piece like a sona. Because usually the artist is the character owner it would make sense to say that first, again I don't really want to get wrapped around this to much until the wiki is officially established because I think you and me both need a clear and concise wiki.

Edit: oh it's already been up updated. Character owner then Artist then canon for order of importance of opinion. which makes a lot of sense.

If character owner goes first then thats fine, thats how it should be.

watsit said:
Or when dealing with any corporate-owned character, or any instance where an artist is given reign over a depiction of someone else's character. With the order given by the wiki edit, Rivet should thus never be tagged trans_(lore), regardless of what the artist says, since the character owner takes precedence (and Insomniac Games, who owns the character, never officially said she was trans). Or tulin_(tloz), owned by Nintendo who says he's young, should always be tagged young_(lore) for any aged_up depiction, because the artist takes a back seat for lore to the character owner's say-so.

The order given in the wiki makes no sense, as has been stated, character owner and canon are essentially the same thing. What a character owner says is canon for the character, and what's canon for a character is what the character owner says. Forcing the artist's say to take a back seat to their own work means we could never apply lore tags as intended by the artist making their own interpretation of another's character, or whenever they do something different at the behest of the character owner who never speaks up and says they approve.

Technically the corp is the character owner so it's a little... confusing.

watsit said:
With the order given by the wiki edit, Rivet should thus never be tagged trans_(lore), regardless of what the artist says, since the character owner takes precedence (and Insomniac Games, who owns the character, never officially said she was trans).

(As far as I know) They never explicitly said she was cis, so I don't think that's the best example here, since character owner doesn't say anything, the next in order of importance is the artist.

A better example is one where the character is explicitly stated male, but was gender bent to female, and twys for the image wasn't able to tag it as female. By order of importance, the character owner which stated the character was male would win despite the artist intending female.

snpthecat said:
(As far as I know) They never explicitly said she was cis, so I don't think that's the best example here, since character owner doesn't say anything, the next in order of importance is the artist.

That sounds like a messy slippery slope, if "never explicitly said" is valid reasoning. A lot of things about characters are assumed when they're never explicitly spelled out, and there can be heavy disagreements at times on whether a creator "explicitly said" something or not (see the debate on whether Toby Fox said Frisk or whoever is non-binary), or whether them saying something in jest counts or not (just because something was said in a jocular manner doesn't automatically make it not true). This really ties back into the other discussion of using general canon vs what's specifically mentioned at the source; can we actually be sure someone from Insomniac didn't actually say in some random obscure post or interview that she's cis or trans (or say something that can be inferred as indicating her birth sex vs gender identity)? Especially as time goes on and sources of information are lost, what the character owner or series canon has said about the character in general becomes based more on fan belief and not anything concrete, while as long as we have the source for an image, we know exactly what the source says about the intent with the image.

snpthecat said:
A better example is one where the character is explicitly stated male, but was gender bent to female, and twys for the image wasn't able to tag it as female. By order of importance, the character owner which stated the character was male would win despite the artist intending female.

I'm curious how this would apply to species too. Crossgender (which for all intents and purposes should be a lore tag) explicitly says it does not apply to single-sex species, like salazzle (a generic male salazzle is not crossgender, only if it's a specific female salazzle character depicted as a male or intersex). And a fictional species' sex traits aren't considered for tagging sex (e.g, a salazzle or cleft-tailed pikachu are not assumed to be female/female_(lore) if the artist doesn't say they are). But this runs counter to the idea that the creator/owner takes precedence over the artist. Salazzle and Pikachu are created and owned by The Pokemon Company, who says all salazzle and cleft-tailed pikachu are female. A male salazzle would then be crossgender, the artist Rule63'ing them, if we take the owner's say-so of them all being female. A salazzle would be female_(lore) by default, and a cleft-tailed pikachu with a penis would be intersex_(lore), which we've been explicitly told not to do.

So if artist intent takes a back seat to the creator/owner, we've got contradicting tagging standards now.

watsit said:
That sounds like a messy slippery slope, if "never explicitly said" is valid reasoning.

I was referring to the bit where you said
"Rivet should thus never be tagged trans_(lore)" despite artist intent.
Since insomniac games never officially said either way, it's technically undecided and it's up to the artist to decide (in the character owner>artist>canon hierarchy). Kind of like how if the artist doesn't decide, it goes to canon.

I just wanted to point out a potential flaw in it and decided to give a better example.

watsit said:
I'm curious how this would apply to species too. Crossgender (which for all intents and purposes should be a lore tag) explicitly says it does not apply to single-sex species, like salazzle (a generic male salazzle is not crossgender, only if it's a specific female salazzle character depicted as a male or intersex). And a fictional species' sex traits aren't considered for tagging sex (e.g, a salazzle or cleft-tailed pikachu are not assumed to be female/female_(lore) if the artist doesn't say they are). But this runs counter to the idea that the creator/owner takes precedence over the artist. Salazzle and Pikachu are created and owned by The Pokemon Company, who says all salazzle and cleft-tailed pikachu are female. A male salazzle would then be crossgender, the artist Rule63'ing them, if we take the owner's say-so of them all being female. A salazzle would be female_(lore) by default, and a cleft-tailed pikachu with a penis would be intersex_(lore), which we've been explicitly told not to do.

So if artist intent takes a back seat to the creator/owner, we've got contradicting tagging standards now.

I agree that crossgender should be a lore tag, and if we're to treat it like a lore tag, lore tags don't apply to species, only characters.

watsit said:
That sounds like a messy slippery slope, if "never explicitly said" is valid reasoning. A lot of things about characters are assumed when they're never explicitly spelled out, and there can be heavy disagreements at times on whether a creator "explicitly said" something or not (see the debate on whether Toby Fox said Frisk or whoever is non-binary), or whether them saying something in jest counts or not (just because something was said in a jocular manner doesn't automatically make it not true).

I asked about this a while back and all I got was basically “explicit statements only, never make assumptions, directly ask the artist if you need to. Just use common sense.”

Like you said, what’s going to count as a clear statement or not?

snpthecat said:
I agree that crossgender should be a lore tag, and if we're to treat it like a lore tag, lore tags don't apply to species, only characters.

There’s a pending tag alias for it, but it was posted almost six months ago.

This has run far out of control from what it was initially intended to be. We have an entire argument over whether it's even right to have the artist at the top of the list that's going in circles (page 2 is now back to the same talking points and responses as page 1) as well as attempts to entirely change the tag definition. At this point, if the mods don't do anything to address the tags they really need to be directly asked to do so. I have many opinions I could voice here, but the thing is... I already have. It's just rather ridiculous.

thedragonrider said:
At this point, if the mods don't do anything to address the tags they really need to be directly asked to do so.

The moderator that originally made the wiki change to trans_(lore) reverted it back, putting it in line with what the head admin said earlier. So I think it's safe to assume artist takes precedence over canon for lore tags until an admin says differently.

Ah, good to see that that conflict has been resolved.

watsit said:
The moderator that originally made the wiki change to trans_(lore) reverted it back, putting it in line with what the head admin said earlier. So I think it's safe to assume artist takes precedence over canon for lore tags until an admin says differently.

Which is absurd, because the entire point of lore tags is to tag what isn't observable in the artist's post. In Rivet's case in particular, we'll have trans_(lore) tags on obvious intersex posts, or any post with a trans flag in the background, even when the character in the post isn't canonically trans according to the franchise she's from. I just know people will see that and assume "lore" means creator lore just like I did.

temp7 said:
Which is absurd, because the entire point of lore tags is to tag what isn't observable in the artist's post.

That is what it's for. It means image lore, the things not visible but intended to be by the artist.

temp7 said:
In Rivet's case in particular, we'll have trans_(lore) tags on obvious intersex posts, or any post with a trans flag in the background, even when the character in the post isn't canonically trans according to the franchise she's from.

Being intersex doesn't automatically make a character trans, nor does a character being crossgender. If there's no statement by the artist saying they're intended to be trans, it would be a mistag. If people keep adding it, report the post asking for a tag lock. Though a character not being trans in the franchise they're from doesn't mean an artist can't intend their depiction to be trans. The artist's head canon and AUs apply, if they express them.

watsit said:
Though a character not being trans in the franchise they're from doesn't mean an artist can't intend their depiction to be trans. The artist's head canon and AUs apply, if they express them.

lore
noun
1. a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth
the lore of the Ancient Egyptians

Nobody said an artist's interpretation of anything is invalid. However, I have never in my life seen any other website use the term "lore" to mean "artist's interpretation of a character that isn't theirs". Rather, the lore is what is true of the original character according to the owner of said character. No matter how you slice it, it's going to be confusing.

temp7 said:
lore
noun
1. a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth
the lore of the Ancient Egyptians

Merriam Webster's and dictionary.com's definitions seem to fit well enough:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lore
1: a particular body of knowledge or tradition
> the lore of baseball heroes
2: something that is learned:
a: traditional knowledge or belief
> tribal lore
b: knowledge gained through study or experience
> the lore of religious architecture
3 (archaic) : something that is taught : lesson

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lore
1. the body of knowledge, especially of a traditional, anecdotal, or popular nature, on a particular subject: the lore of herbs.

2. learning, knowledge, or erudition.

I'm not sure there's another word that really captures the intent of the tag group, that doesn't have its own ambiguities or vagueness. Something that's learned (as opposed to seen, i.e. tag what you know instead of tag what you see), a body of knowledge of an anecdotal nature, about the image.

watsit said:
Merriam Webster's and dictionary.com's definitions seem to fit well enough:

Notice how none of those definitions apply to artist's interpretations of existing work, or reinterpretations of any kind.

watsit said:
I'm not sure there's another word that really captures the intent of the tag group, that doesn't have its own ambiguities or vagueness. Something that's learned (as opposed to seen, i.e. tag what you know instead of tag what you see), a body of knowledge of an anecdotal nature, about the image.

Not only does the definition not really fit: the common use of the term in this context (lore of fictional characters) is directly opposed to the definition this site uses. Like I said, that's going to cause issues. Anyone who hasn't read the wiki will make the same mistake that I did. We've already seen that in this very discussion.

temp7 said:
Notice how none of those definitions apply to artist's interpretations of existing work, or reinterpretations of any kind.

On the contrary, it applies to anything for which there is knowledge to be had about. Reinterpretations happen all the time, as new information comes to light or previously known information is lost, or when something is viewed from a different angle or through a different lens; the body of knowledge is reinterpreted, the lore is changed, based on what we know about a given thing at a given time from a given viewpoint.

tags, both lore and otherwise are meant to describe the content of a post and nothing more. the standards for applying general vs. lore tags are different, bit the overall philosophy of tagging remains the same. basing lore tags on upstream canon knowledge vs the fact that the artist literally tagged the original post "transwoman" is kinda just absurd to me.

like, what about the posts in pool #31300? obviously these should be tagged as trans_woman_(lore), right? if we based it on original canon knowledge those tags would be removed, but we don't, because doing that would be stupid.

watsit said:
On the contrary, it applies to anything for which there is knowledge to be had about. Reinterpretations happen all the time, as new information comes to light or previously known information is lost, or when something is viewed from a different angle or through a different lens; the body of knowledge is reinterpreted, the lore is changed, based on what we know about a given thing at a given time from a given viewpoint.

Alright, let's apply this the other way around. You're effectively saying that if a creator makes a character who is canonically trans, and some random artist reinterprets that character as cis, that this reinterpretation effectively changes the lore of that character.

temp7 said:
Alright, let's apply this the other way around. You're effectively saying that if a creator makes a character who is canonically trans, and some random artist reinterprets that character as cis, that this reinterpretation effectively changes the lore of that character.

Under current guidelines, yes.

temp7 said:
Alright, let's apply this the other way around. You're effectively saying that if a creator makes a character who is canonically trans, and some random artist reinterprets that character as cis, that this reinterpretation effectively changes the lore of that character.

For that image they make, yes, but not for other peoples' interpretation or the images others make. There isn't "only the one true lore" for a character, everyone has their own ideas, head canons, and alternate takes for a character, creating their own interpretation; like when they make Link gay for banging Revali/Kass/Rauru/Sidon/Tulin/etc, or straight for banging Midna/Zelda/Riju/Marin/etc, or bi for banging everyone, or a zoophile for banging Epona/his wolf self/the light dragon, despite not being depicted as having any such interests in the games. A character can have multiple different interpretations, both official and unofficial (see square_crossover).

watsit said:
For that image they make, yes, but not for other peoples' interpretation or the images others make. (...) A character can have multiple different interpretations, both official and unofficial (see square_crossover).

Again, I never said anyone couldn't reinterpret a character freely. I happily champion art itself, and artistic interpretation.

However, the common use of the word 'lore' definitely implies an official status - as in "owner's statements" - thanks to how everyone else uses the term. When combined with this tag's use, that will cause confusion since literally no one else uses that word in this way.

This isn't a complaint about the use or intention of the tag: it's a plea for better clarity.

temp7 said:
This isn't a complaint about the use or intention of the tag: it's a plea for better clarity.

As I said, I'm not sure there's another word that really captures the intent of the tag group. I agree that "lore" comes across a bit weird in this context, but it does make some sense when you think about it (it's the lore of the image as dictated by the image creator), and I can't think of another word that works any better.

The trans lore tags work best when it's used for a canonically established trans character, a person's OC, or a trans-AU of a canonically non-trans character. While Rivet's artist has control over what she looks like, they are not the writer for her character and therefore have no say as to whether or not she's trans. Rivet's artist is doing little more than giving her head-canon for a character they do not own the rights to.

Let's look at this from another angle: If I hire an artist to design me a character who is male, and later that same artist claims "Oh actually that's a trans girl" I would probably not be very happy that my character is being misrepresented. It would make no sense for the artist's word to supersede mine, and the only difference between what is happening here and my example is that one party is a corporation. You get what I mean? And this is where I was going to end it, until I started digging more about the topic.

Apparently it was established that cisgender female lombaxes do not have tails, and the director Mike Daly stated that the team was unaware of this this bit of lore, leaving the interpretation up to the player. One could argue that accidentally making Rivet trans within the confines of previously established lore still makes her trans even if unintentional. So both the artist and the series own lore support Rivet being trans, but the team at Insomniac won't confirm nor deny it. Even if they didn't intend to make a trans character, by their own world-bulding they did exactly that. One could argue that it could be explained by Rivet being from another dimension, but that's speculative.

So yeah, trans or not; Rivet is pretty cool.

and the director Mike Daly stated that the team was unaware of this this bit of lore and proceeded to clarify that she isn't trans.

Do you have any links to where they said that?

snpthecat said:
Do you have any links to where they said that?

An article by Stacey Henley who claims to have spoken with Daly: https://www.thegamer.com/kit-not-rivet-is-ratchet-clank-rift-aparts-trans-icon/

EDIT: Apparently I misread, they aren't confirming nor denying. My bad lol

fluffermutt said:
An article by Stacey Henley who claims to have spoken with Daly: https://www.thegamer.com/kit-not-rivet-is-ratchet-clank-rift-aparts-trans-icon/

EDIT: Apparently I misread, they aren't confirming nor denying. My bad lol

'Prior to the release of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, there was some speculation that Rivet might be transgender. This was owed to her tail, and the fact that Ratchet lore says cisgender female lombaxes do not have tails. When I spoke to the game’s director, Mike Daly, I asked point blank if Rivet was indeed trans - and it turned out the design team simply were not aware of this rather niche bit of lore.'

That's a tacit admission that she isn't trans. There's virtually no reason to not reveal Rivet as trans if that's what she was. It's also revealing that the new writers and directors were ignorant of the franchise lore - disappointing, but not surprising. The following sentence, and indeed the rest of the article, just seems like Stacey Henley is scratching around to find, or even create a 'trans icon' in the game.

fluffermutt said:
Big paragraphs of text

I think the argument that's currently on the table isn't whether or not Rivet is canonically trans (she isn't, like you said), but rather if the artist who draws fanart of Rivet as trans has control over that choice.

I personally think it should be fine due to the nature of fan works altering canon all the time as a major part of fan culture, but others disagree. So the discussion has gotten... a bit wild. Definitely way beyond the scope of what this thread was initially started to address.

Edit: At this point I'm just hoping this discussion gets wrapped up now. Everything that could have been said has, in fact, been said.

In any case, I do agree that Rivet is pretty cool.

watsit said:
As I said, I'm not sure there's another word that really captures the intent of the tag group. I agree that "lore" comes across a bit weird in this context, but it does make some sense when you think about it (it's the lore of the image as dictated by the image creator), and I can't think of another word that works any better.

I think "lore" is fine, but I'm wondering if "intent" would work as well, since it's about the intent of the artist. It may work better for some tags than others, and I'm not really suggesting it be adopted.

thedragonrider said:
I think the argument that's currently on the table isn't whether or not Rivet is canonically trans (she isn't, like you said), but rather if the artist who draws fanart of Rivet as trans has control over that choice. (...)

Of course the artist has control of their own work. I tend to think this tag - any tag - would have no bearing on an artist's interpretation of their own work. Because it doesn't. Even if lore tags favored creator/owner interpretation, the tag wouldn't hurt artistic expression in any way. You seem to think the opposite.

temp7 said:
Of course the artist has control of their own work. I tend to think this tag - any tag - would have no bearing on an artist's interpretation of their own work. Because it doesn't. Even if lore tags favored creator/owner interpretation, the tag wouldn't hurt artistic expression in any way. You seem to think the opposite.

It certainly wouldn't change that artistic expression exists, but it would change whether or not that expression is shown in the tags, as well as place a bias against artists who post their art directly onto the site. This isn't about whether or not people can reinterpret characters or have headcanons, it's about whether or not that should be represented using the lore tags. Considering what the admins created the tags for, I'm willing to say it is represented by them. That was the discussion.

thedragonrider said:
It certainly wouldn't change that artistic expression exists, but it would change whether or not that expression is shown in the tags, as well as place a bias against artists who post their art directly onto the site.

Such a thing wouldn't put any more "bias against artists who post directly to the site" than TWYS already does.

thedragonrider said:
This isn't about whether or not people can reinterpret characters or have headcanons, it's about whether or not that should be represented using the lore tags. Considering what the admins created the tags for, I'm willing to say it is represented by them. That was the discussion.

That's not what you said before. You said, 'outright removing people's headcanons of a character will be debilitating at large, removing the freedom artists have to create fanart of characters they love to represent themselves. (...) Removing the ability for artists to make fanart like this entirely is not the solution. It would simply hurt more people than it would help.'

The thing is, no one said anything about removing head canon or artwork. Only you seem to think that is happening in any way. A large number of the arguments you've made so far strongly imply that mere acknowledgement of creator statements and canon threatens people's ability to make artwork and headcanons. It doesn't: which is why headcanon exists.

I'm interested in understanding where this idea of yours comes from: why it's so important for you to defend something that isn't even under attack, going so far as attacking my character over it.

That's not even getting into the confusion that calling these "lore" tags creates. We've already seen evidence of this confusion, both with the existence of this topic and the replies to it. If anything is going to cause more harm than good, it's confusion caused by deliberately misusing a commonly used word.

For what it's worth, I think description of artist intent is a perfectly valid use of the word lore. If we were talking lore of a game, then the relevant lore is that of the creators of the game. Why should it be any different for the creators of an image?

scth said:
For what it's worth, I think description of artist intent is a perfectly valid use of the word lore. If we were talking lore of a game, then the relevant lore is that of the creators of the game. Why should it be any different for the creators of an image?

Why would it be any different for the creators of a character?

I just want to reiterate that being able to tag artist intent was literally the entire reason the lore tag category was created.

sipothac said:
I just want to reiterate that being able to tag artist intent was literally the entire reason the lore tag category was created.

I'm pretty sure this was originally proposed with the intention of respecting character owners and creators wishes, as opposed to TWYS, which doesn't.

temp7 said:
I'm pretty sure this was originally proposed with the intention of respecting character owners and creators wishes, as opposed to TWYS, which doesn't.

no, at least from my perspective and recollection, it was largely a concession to artists. partially to cut down on the tag wars and artists going DNP which were fairly common around 2018; artists really didn't like not having final say over any of the tags that were used on their posts.

darryus said:
no, at least from my perspective and recollection, it was largely a concession to artists. partially to cut down on the tag wars and artists going DNP which were fairly common around 2018; artists really didn't like not having final say over any of the tags that were used on their posts.

Like I said. Those artists were upset over TWYS policy overriding the canon of their characters, weren't they? So lore tags were made to respect their wishes.

This thread is so twisty now I've lost track of everyone's current positioning and understanding of lore tag definitions.
I don't know what else to add other than that even with the understanding that artist intent > canon, the views around what the canon for some characters even is are going to result in individual taggers making entirely different judgements. For example if an artist frequently draws a character commonly-held to be trans in fan-canons as a TWYS gynomorph, that's going to influence a lot of people to add trans tagging to those posts regardless of whether there's an intuitively-findable artist statement on their full intent. And from what I can see that's really what's being fought over here.

To phrase it differently...
People's personal beliefs on a character's canon may influence what they believe an artist statement to be. Further influenced by that an artist may themselves view such a character as trans while not feeling the need to clarify it.
This is going to cause problems unless a hard line is drawn on what counts as an artist statement. At this point Headshot-only Rivet posts where the only in-source artist comment is I... love her......... are being tag-warred. Is the fact that the artist frequently draws her with a penis a statement of trans status? Has the artist made a statement somewhere else that all of this is built on, and if so is that valid without being explicitly linked to?

Edit:
I think that this is going to cause problems either way, as artist intent one way or the other may exist regardless of whether it's stated, and particularly surrounding this topic there's potential for artists and fans alike to be unhappy with a verdict on whether lore tags are valid or not. I don't think there's a solution that pleases everybody within the lore tagging system.

magnuseffect said:
This thread is so twisty now I've lost track of everyone's current positioning and understanding of lore tag definitions.
I don't know what else to add other than that even with the understanding that artist intent > canon, the views around what the canon for some characters even is are going to result in individual taggers making entirely different judgements. For example if an artist frequently draws a character commonly-held to be trans in fan-canons as a TWYS gynomorph, that's going to influence a lot of people to add trans tagging to those posts regardless of whether there's an intuitively-findable artist statement on their full intent. And from what I can see that's really what's being fought over here.

To phrase it differently...
People's personal beliefs on a character's canon may influence what they believe an artist statement to be. Further influenced by that an artist may themselves view such a character as trans while not feeling the need to clarify it.
This is going to cause problems unless a hard line is drawn on what counts as an artist statement. At this point Headshot-only Rivet posts where the only in-source artist comment is I... love her......... are being tag-warred. Is the fact that the artist frequently draws her with a penis a statement of trans status? Has the artist made a statement somewhere else that all of this is built on, and if so is that valid without being explicitly linked to?

Edit:
I think that this is going to cause problems either way, as artist intent one way or the other may exist regardless of whether it's stated, and particularly surrounding this topic there's potential for artists and fans alike to be unhappy with a verdict on whether lore tags are valid or not. I don't think there's a solution that pleases everybody within the lore tagging system.

Since the lore tags are for the image itself, we don't really assume what the artist intended to draw. The artist's version of Rivet could be correctly drawn and tagged as gynomorph for all we know. For that tag-warred post in particular, I did a couple searches and I can't find anything that suggests the artist's intent.

The only thing that I hope gets clarified is whether or not there's going to be exceptions to "artist lore for specific images only". Because if we truly 100% require explicit statements of intent for a lore tag to be added, then I wonder what's going to happen to many of the Toriel/Asriel or Stolas/Octavia posts that already have incest_(lore) tagged on it. That's one avenue where I can already sense that people are not going to be too happy about it.

werideatdawn said:
Since the lore tags are for the image itself, we don't really assume what the artist intended to draw. The artist's version of Rivet could be correctly drawn as gynomorph for all we know. For that tag-warred post in particular, I did a couple searches and I can't find anything that suggests the artist's intent.

The only thing that I hope gets clarified is whether or not there's going to be exceptions to "artist lore for specific images only". Because if we truly 100% require explicit statements of intent for a lore tag to be added, then I wonder what's going to happen to many of the Toriel/Asriel or Stolas/Octavia posts that already have incest_(lore) tagged on it. That's one avenue where I can already sense that people are not going to be too happy about it.

If artist doesn't contradict it, we fall back on world/character lore. So, those are incest unless the artist says it isn't.

scth said:
If artist doesn't contradict it, we fall back on world/character lore. So, those are incest unless the artist says it isn't.

But it doesnt stop being incest?
Thats ridiculous.

This doesn't function and cannot function under that premise

demesejha said:
But it doesnt stop being incest?
Thats ridiculous.

This doesn't function and cannot function under that premise

The artist can say that for the lore of the image they created, the characters depicted aren't related (even if they were taken from a canon where they were).

snpthecat said:
The artist can say that for the lore of the image they created, the characters depicted aren't related (even if they were taken from a canon where they were).

The purpose of tags at all is to find content or blacklist it. The point of lore tags was to provide extra tags that were outside of twys, essentially their own class of Meta Tags to provide users a way to tag things that the current system did not handle well or even at all, such as transness and relationships because you cannot "see" incest, its a social construct based around the concept of filial sex.

I cannot stress enough treating the system like this may be listed as how it is "meant to work" but goes against both the functionality and the premise upon which the system is designed.

Its been a few years since lore tags were introduced following the change to gynomorph and andromorph for the trans related key gender tags.so apparently people (including staff) are forgetting this but.

Lore tags were originally made as a concession to stop tag wars over transness and provide character owners a mechanism to properly tag their characters so they would less likely leave and put themselves on DNP. Like, that was originally the ONLY purpose for them.

They are meant to be functional first. The whole point of them is tagging a character as X or Y or Z based on what you KNOW outside of the TWYS framework but that still can or even must be tagged (incest being a major example).

This entire argument shouldnt even be happening and Im actuslly still baffled by the current ruling because that quite literally doesnt work and is against the spirit of both the word lore(canon) and the functionality of the site.

demesejha said:
Lore tags were originally made as a concession to stop tag wars over transness and provide character owners a mechanism to properly tag their characters so they would less likely leave and put themselves on DNP. Like, that was originally the ONLY purpose for them.

The impression I had was the Lore category was made as a concession regarding cisgendered characters who were tagged as an alternate sex under TWYS rulings. I'm sure there were a lot of trans characters rubbing up against TWYS all wrong, but mikhaila_kirov and reggie_(whygena) were the big cases that were hitting the forums, getting administration to take a specific interest in a crackdown on tagging the characters, and winding up with takedown/DNP filing (both of which are some level of reverted in the Lore Tags Era.)

This entire argument shouldnt even be happening and Im actuslly still baffled by the current ruling because that quite literally doesnt work and is against the spirit of both the word lore(canon) and the functionality of the site.

If we weren't arguing about this, we'd be straight back to arguing what even constitutes taggable source canon information.

snpthecat said:
The artist can say that for the lore of the image they created, the characters depicted aren't related (even if they were taken from a canon where they were).

while technically true, I think this is, in all likelihood, a situation that will always remain mostly hypothetical, at least the above examples involving characters like Asriel and Toriel. I'm not sure that there's really any artists who are going to go around drawing stuff of characters who are related in canon but say that they're not for their art.

although there definitely are characters whose familial relations are a bit more ambiguous and/or fluid where I can see some sticking points.

Reply to demesejha:
Just think of it in this way, every image is a window into an Alternate Universe made by the artist. So if the artist says that the lore of the image is that the character in it is trans, then that's the lore of the AU in which the image is set.

sipothac said:
while technically true, I think this is, in all likelihood, a situation that will always remain mostly hypothetical, at least the above examples involving characters like Asriel and Toriel. I'm not sure that there's really any artists who are going to go around drawing stuff of characters who are related in canon but say that they're not for their art.

although there definitely are characters whose familial relations are a bit more ambiguous and/or fluid where I can see some sticking points.

I don't deny that it'll very likely remain a hypothetical, though it doesn't hurt to clarify the boundaries.

demesejha said:
I cannot stress enough treating the system like this may be listed as how it is "meant to work" but goes against both the functionality and the premise upon which the system is designed.

How so? If I make a comic about Fox and Krystal, declare in this AU that they're long-lost siblings, give them a slight redesign to make them look just a smidge more similar, and they keep calling each other "brother" and "sister" while banging, I don't think people will be happy with it not being tagged incest_(lore) because technically they're not related in official canon. People who have incest blacklisted will see, and people who search for incest won't see, what is clearly meant to depict incest.

Or characters that are male in canon and drawn female by an artist (or vice-versa), getting tagged male_(lore) because they're male in series canon, despite intended to be female in appearance. One of the purposes was to help identify a character's intended sex in comics and other series, where what they're tagged can change between male, female, gynomorph, herm, maleherm, and ambiguous_gender given what genitals happen to be visible in a given page. But if series canon overrides artist intent, we'd continue to have characters' intended sex mistagged when they've been Rule 63'd.

Since the artist has final say in what an image is meant to depict, putting series canon ahead of artist intent is reversing priority and would lead to a number of confusing scenarios that artists will be unhappy about. It's not just personal characters' identity that this covers, but all characters whether claimed or owned by an individual or a company. As NMNY has said, in cases where an artist makes an unwelcome depiction of a trans character as cis (or some other undesired depiction), the character owner has every right to file a takedown. After all, if an artist would take such action against a character owner's wishes for their character, there's likely deeper issues relating to harassment more than whether they're merely tagged trans_(lore) here or not. And e6 does make exceptions for such cases; normally an artist posting their own work takes priority over a character owner for takedowns, but in cases of harassment or using someone's character without permission, e6 will take it down regardless of the artist posting it themselves.

demesejha said:
This entire argument shouldnt even be happening and Im actuslly still baffled by the current ruling because that quite literally doesnt work and is against the spirit of both the word lore(canon) and the functionality of the site.

It has been this way since inception. NotMeNotYou said prior to lore tags being added:

What about characters with established canon lore being changed by artists?

In the cases where an established character is changed by an artist, the artist's changes override canon, and all lore tags would then have to follow the artist's new lore.

watsit said:
How so? If I make a comic about Fox and Krystal, declare in this AU that they're long-lost siblings, give them a slight redesign to make them look just a smidge more similar, and they keep calling each other "brother" and "sister" while banging, I don't think people will be happy with it not being tagged incest_(lore) because technically they're not related in official canon. People who have incest blacklisted will see, and people who search for incest won't see, what is clearly meant to depict incest.

An interesting what-if scenario. Of course, the opposite is completely possible: in which two related characters are treated as unrelated and aren't tagged incest_(lore), to the squick of those who view it as incest.

watsit said:
Or characters that are male in canon and drawn female by an artist (or vice-versa), getting tagged male_(lore) because they're male in series canon, despite intended to be female in appearance. One of the purposes was to help identify a character's intended sex in comics and other series, where what they're tagged can change between male, female, gynomorph, herm, maleherm, and ambiguous_gender given what genitals happen to be visible in a given page. But if series canon overrides artist intent, we'd continue to have characters' intended sex mistagged when they've been Rule 63'd.

What you have now is singular headshot-only images being tag-warred and multiple persons who assumed lore meant 'official lore' instead of 'artist interpretation'. I said this before, but if the intent is to reflect comics and other series, that needs to be specifically addressed, and single images need to be left out of it.

watsit said:
Since the artist has final say in what an image is meant to depict, putting series canon ahead of artist intent is reversing priority and would lead to a number of confusing scenarios that artists will be unhappy about. It's not just personal characters' identity that this covers, but all characters whether claimed or owned by an individual or a company.

I don't think putting the creators of any character ahead of artist is 'reversing priority' at all: the artists are using someone else's character, after all. Many artists and creators are already unhappy with TWYS: it has been that way for years, and if they want to go DNP that has always been their choice.

watsit said:
It has been this way since inception. NotMeNotYou said prior to lore tags being added:

Just because a decision was made doesn't mean that it was the best possible idea. If you'll notice, the first sentence in that note:

"Lore tags will not follow TWYS;NWYK at all, but instead rely on "word of the author/character owner".

Then later on he adds:

"In the cases where an established character is changed by an artist, the artist's changes override canon, and all lore tags would then have to follow the artist's new lore."

That's a contradiction to the first sentence entirely. My guess: it's a preemptive concession to artists that are super insistent on using established characters in out-of-chatacter ways and would argue tags over it, despite not owning the characters in question. Well, if they don't own those characters, who says they get to decide what lore is? < You will see that question from more than just me, and it has been asked in this thread already.

And I shouldn't have to say this, but tagging standalone images according to "artist's new lore" is plainly ridiculous because there is no 'new lore' in such a case.

thinking about it, maybe the asriel and toriel example was a bit more practical than I first thought. since, you know, deltarune exists and we have official, canon AU characters, like, for example, ralsei. there are users who will treat Ralsei and Asriel as if they're the same character and therefore treat Ralsei as a the child of Toriel, even though in canon I don't think there's ever even any implication to that being the case. simultaneously, there are also other users who will remove selfcest/square_crossover from posts with Ralsei and Asriel.

in my opinion, uhh... everything is on fire and there will never be peace. the lore tag section ended up not really solving anything because people will always find something to argue about, even if that is the implementation of the rules of themselves, and there will always be tag wars over some dumb shit.

IMO lore tags could be considered 'successful' if they caused artists to get less upset with taggings in general, such that it reduced DNPs and takedowns, while not generating so much tag warring and other disagreements that it wasn't worth it. ie. To the extent that lore tags can be considered to function, it is as a distraction.

I doubt that being successful in the sense of providing a reliable basis for search and blacklist was ever on the table, and the thread has thoroughly covered the reasons why you might conclude this.