The bulk update request #9156 is pending approval.

change category fan_character (140046) -> lore
change category fan_species (39) -> lore

Reason: As was brought up in a recent discussion about fakemon, whether a character or species is created as part of an established universe is not always obvious in the context of the image alone.

Tag What You See only applies to general tags, not the artist/character/species/copyright/meta/lore tags.

The reason I opened this topic is because of the ambiguity over fakemon, largely. The previous topic I made about that tag has shown me it's so arbitrarily-defined that it's basically useless, but plenty of people DO make fake pokémon, digimon, etc., with the express purpose of being tied to those franchises, and plenty of others would want to blacklist those and all that.

first of all, no. that's not what the lore category is for.

second of all, the lines for what should be tagged as fan_species seems way too broad that it becomes kind of pointless. fakemon being restricted to mon-type species tied to existing franchises (essentially, things that are on the border of character and species) makes more sense than just, well, anything.

I have an issue with fan_character in general, given it lacks nuance and would apply to an unnecessarily high number of posts, particularly for pokemon. It already basically applies to every non-canon character that happens to be a pokemon species, regardless of any other connection to the pokemon world or any canon pokemon stories. There's already been discussions about potentially invalidating it because of these issues.

fan_species is generally even less connected to its franchise of origin, still lacking the nuance and being too arbitrary, and cause further proliferation of the fan_character tag based solely on their species. IMO it would be best invalidated before it takes off.

Making them lore tags wouldn't fix these issues, and it would add more problems onto it since lore tags are dictated by the artist on a per-image basis. Identical images of the same character as the same species in the same environments could be tagged differently as fan_character and/or fan_species, based entirely on the artists' say so. Any utility these tags could have would be gimped as they couldn't be reliably tagged.

watsit said:
I have an issue with fan_character in general, given it lacks nuance and would apply to an unnecessarily high number of posts, particularly for pokemon. It already basically applies to every non-canon character that happens to be a pokemon species, regardless of any other connection to the pokemon world or any canon pokemon stories. There's already been discussions about potentially invalidating it because of these issues.

That's not actually an issue in my eyes. If it's a non-canon Pokémon character, it's a fan character. We don't call AU fanfictions with very little faithfulness to their source material not fanfiction. But I suppose that's a difference of opinion.
Besides, they still need to be tagged with their respective copyright. You can't just separate that because it's an isolated character.

At any rate, fan_character is a necessary tag at the very least because from what I understand it's a common blacklist entry. People can sometimes get very, for lack of a better word, anal about seeing any kind of OC in my experience. (Especially with franchises like, say, Sonic the Hedgehog or My Little Pony.)

watsit said:
Making them lore tags wouldn't fix these issues, and it would add more problems onto it since lore tags are dictated by the artist on a per-image basis. Identical images of the same character as the same species in the same environments could be tagged differently as fan_character and/or fan_species, based entirely on the artists' say so. Any utility these tags could have would be gimped as they couldn't be reliably tagged.

That can be said about all lore tags. This site can and repeatedly has argued that they're useless because of those points, but there is a proven need for them, so the category was added.

lendrimujina said:
That can be said about all lore tags. This site can and repeatedly has argued that they're useless because of those points, but there is a proven need for them, so the category was added.

Which is part of the reason why we don't make lore tags for everything that's not wholly TWYS. Some tags are worth having as lore tags because they do depend on artist intent, and that information is useful to people who want it. E.g. if the artist says two characters are related, then they're tagged as related and some people won't or will want to see them doing the deed because of it. Other tags, like these, are less worth behaving as such. Whether or not something is a fan species or fan character doesn't really depend on artist intent -- a character made to look like a Sonic character for a story in the Sonic universe, having adventures with Sonic and his crew, etc, is essentially a fan character even if the artist says it's not meant to be, and similarly if that same character is then drawn in a non-Sonic style, not in the Sonic universe, with nothing franchise-related in sight, it would be for us to say it's not depicting a fan character, even if the artist says it's meant to be -- and doesn't really affect people outside of whether sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) content is visible with the character (which would already be tagged as necessary).

lendrimujina said:
At any rate, fan_character is a necessary tag at the very least because from what I understand it's a common blacklist entry. People can sometimes get very, for lack of a better word, anal about seeing any kind of OC in my experience.

Case in point, I just got a rather uncalled-for comment on post #5093266 that I'm not at all happy about. I'd rather people like that have something to put on their blacklists than chew people out for daring to draw OCs.

I don't want to drama-import, and this is not an invitation to respond to said comment, but... sheesh. I want to make a friend happy, I get screamed at...

This BUR may be misguided, but I just wanted to make a point here that the fan_character tag has a definite purpose.

EDIT: The comment in question has since been deleted by a mod. So the context isn't lost:

Rude Jerk said:

The OC's owner said:
HOWIEEEEEEEEEE!!!

HE'S IN THE SITES! WOOOOOOOO!!!!

We don't care we want IN game characters to jerk off to

lendrimujina said:
Case in point, I just got a rather uncalled-for comment on post #5093266 that I'm not at all happy about. I'd rather people like that have something to put on their blacklists than chew people out for daring to draw OCs.

I don't want to drama-import, and this is not an invitation to respond to said comment, but... sheesh. I want to make a friend happy, I get screamed at...

Report the comment for trolling or being disruptive. They'll get a record and/or told to stop, and if they keep it up, they'll be banned.

The problem remains though, fan_character is too broad to be useful for blacklisting or searching, unless a person wants to include all posts featuring any non-canon character for any and all preexisting work. From pokemon that may or may not be in their own dedicated story and setting, to random slugcats and random rathalos characters. Every sergal character that's not canon to the Vilous universe should as well, just as every non-canon digimon should be. No matter what arbitrary limits are placed on it, it will include more than what many people want, and less than what other people want, leaving the tag to be too inclusive or too exclusive depending on the person to use effectively in a search or blacklist.

watsit said:
The problem remains though, fan_character is too broad to be useful for blacklisting or searching, unless a person wants to include all posts featuring any non-canon character for any and all preexisting work. From pokemon that may or may not be in their own dedicated story and setting, to random slugcats and random rathalos characters. Every sergal character that's not canon to the Vilous universe should as well, just as every non-canon digimon should be. No matter what arbitrary limits are placed on it, it will include more than what many people want, and less than what other people want, leaving the tag to be too inclusive or too exclusive depending on the person to use effectively in a search or blacklist.

I'd tend to agree. since we're a multi-fandom (bordering on omni-fandom) site these tags seem kind of non-functional, since rules for what is considered a "fan character" tends to shift a bit from fandom to fandom. doubly so if you try to account for popular fanworks/"AU" stuff.

where do we draw the line? is there anywhere we even _can_ draw a line?

if we were an MLP, or Pokémon, or Sonic, or Undertale, or Mario, or Disney booru the answer would probably be yes. but we're not we're an everything booru and I'd argue that the answer is a pretty definitive "no".

So... my question is, if we do abolish the fan character tag (which I am very strongly against), what do we do about people like that who treat OCs like they were just shown a class-XK cognitohazard or something? Because people like that are more common than you'd think.

lendrimujina said:
So... my question is, if we do abolish the fan character tag (which I am very strongly against), what do we do about people like that who treat OCs like they were just shown a class-XK cognitohazard or something? Because people like that are more common than you'd think.

I would suggest a set, but I'm sure that would very quickly reach the set post limit.

anicebee said:
I would suggest a set, but I'm sure that would very quickly reach the set post limit.

It would also be a hell and a half to maintain, and also not solve the problem.

I'm personally of the opinion that this is a rare case where the broadness of the tag is a feature rather than a bug. People really, REALLY don't wanna see any fan characters, they can block anything that might vaguely fit that umbrella. The examples that Watsit brought up I presume intending them to be extreme edge cases — the Mons and Slugcats and Rathalos and Sergals — those wouldn't be random innocent posts caught in the crossfire, those WOULD be things that these people are TRYING to blacklist. They have a moral allergy to anything related to an established work that is not by the original creator.

(You can probably guess I have very little respect for these types.)