When it comes to tagging a character as young or a character as ambiguous, I am increasingly noticing a lot of people disregarding what the artist says. For example, post 2897710, the artist has explicitly stated on this site that the character depicted is aged up and thus no longer young. However, many times the post has been edited to add that tag.
Additionally, with post 5031567, there are no visible genitals since the characters are mostly off screen. Most would think it requires the ambiguous tag, but the artist added the male tag and female tag. Should we listen to what the artist says is the case, or should we just disregard them and only tag what we see.

I should also mention, this is mostly a way for me and maybe others to understand how to tag gender and age.

if the character looks young they are tagged young, but if they look young but are in fact adults use young and adult_(lore)
there are also lore tags for gender such as trans_lore, nonbinary_lore, male_(lore), female_(lore)

manitka said:
if the character looks young they are tagged young, but if they look young but are in fact adults use young and adult_(lore)
there are also lore tags for gender such as trans_lore, nonbinary_lore, male_(lore), female_(lore)

Thank you for this, I do also need to ask if there is a male/female_(lore) tag. I’m still new when it comes to participating in tagging, so I’m sorry if I am being a nuisance.

evolutional said:
Thank you for this, I do also need to ask if there is a male/female_(lore) tag. I’m still new when it comes to participating in tagging, so I’m sorry if I am being a nuisance.

i linked them above, so yes.

no worries, we have all been new once

evolutional said:

I should also mention, this is mostly a way for me and maybe others to understand how to tag gender and age.

on the tag list each tag has a small ? button next to it, this should lead to a page with informationon each tag, for example all of the gender tags link back to howto:tag_genders page which contains a lot of info. however, that being said, young does entirely lack a mention of adult_(lore) and that ought to be fixed. also, we really should have a wiki page that explains the tagging standards for the lore category in general.

The dragon one I wouldn't tag as young. The people wanting it tagged young aren't going off the image OR artist's word, they're going off book lore which is not relevant to tagging at all beyond character names.

evolutional said:
post #5031567

there's enough information in this post to assume that one of the two characters here is male by twys, this shouldn't have been tagged ambiguous/ambiguous.

This is a concern that's come up over and over again, and which a lot of people feel incredibly strongly about; even the addition of the lore tag category is not enough, as artists often view a TWYS-based "young" tag as a false accusation of something they see as a serious crime (and in some countries actually is considered one), or a TWYS-based gender tagging as a far-right anti-LGBT agenda, regardless of any lore tag's presence. Even I have to admit I feel a bit uncomfortable about the compromises we have (especially TWYS-based "young" tagging, which I deeply fear being branded with through art style alone, that's why I left FurAffinity after all), but at the same I have to acknowledge that it does solve more problems than it causes.

Thanks for coming at this with honest questions and not outrage. I'm just saying we do get plenty of outrage over these matters.

regsmutt said:
The dragon one I wouldn't tag as young. The people wanting it tagged young aren't going off the image OR artist's word, they're going off book lore which is not relevant to tagging at all beyond character names.

i think there should be something for characters not of adult age in canon too, maybe im wrong but i feel like people would care to learn about the canon and not view pornography of characters that are canonically underage but aren't tagged young in TWYS. things such as spyro or xeno'jiiva. though the last one could be a stretch, its safe to assume xeno is something that's not of age. if the character physically seems older, aged_up will apply instead of that canon tag.

dinbyy said:
i think there should be something for characters not of adult age in canon too, maybe im wrong but i feel like people would care to learn about the canon and not view pornography of characters that are canonically underage but aren't tagged young in TWYS. things such as spyro or xeno'jiiva. though the last one could be a stretch, its safe to assume xeno is something that's not of age. if the character physically seems older, aged_up will apply instead of that canon tag.

Potentially. Some people don't want to see porn of *any* character that's underage in canon, no matter if it's aged up. It would create issues for characters where canon age is inconsistent or even changes- especially if there's little/no visual change to go along with it. It might be more trouble than it's worth.

dinbyy said:
i think there should be something for characters not of adult age in canon too, maybe im wrong but i feel like people would care to learn about the canon and not view pornography of characters that are canonically underage but aren't tagged young in TWYS. things such as spyro or xeno'jiiva. though the last one could be a stretch, its safe to assume xeno is something that's not of age. if the character physically seems older, aged_up will apply instead of that canon tag.

Best to blacklist the individual characters themselves tbh, for the reasons Regsmutt mentioned, plus sometimes age is ambiguous and you can interpret the characters as over or under 18, like the Deltarune characters. You can even negate the aged_up tag in the blacklist line if you want to exclude visibly older depictions. Ex. cream_the_rabbit -aged_up

evolutional said:
Should we listen to what the artist says is the case, or should we just disregard them and only tag what we see.

Just want to say that whatever the artist/creator/lore says is completely irrelevant to general tags.
For general tags, we follow the Tag What You See (TWYS) policy in that we tag based on what we see (or perceive to see), as opposed to tagging based on what we know.

For the other kinds of tags (e.g., lore tags), we can tag based on what we know or what the artist/creator/lore says.
In this case, if a character looks young but the artist says otherwise, then you must tag both young and adult_(lore).

Note that the corresponding lore tag must be accompanied by the opposing general tag, i.e., it should not exist by itself.
Do not tag every post that feature a particular character with their *_(lore) tags just because they are canonically known as such, only tag them if the general tags deviate from the lore.

On another note, if an artist/tagger consistently violates the TWYS policy and tags whatever they like, then it is grounds for disciplinary action.

wandering_spaniel said:
Best to blacklist the individual characters themselves tbh, for the reasons Regsmutt mentioned, plus sometimes age is ambiguous and you can interpret the characters as over or under 18, like the Deltarune characters. You can even negate the aged_up tag in the blacklist line if you want to exclude visibly older depictions. Ex. cream_the_rabbit -aged_up

yea, alright.

dinbyy said:
i think there should be something for characters not of adult age in canon too, maybe im wrong but i feel like people would care to learn about the canon and not view pornography of characters that are canonically underage but aren't tagged young in TWYS. things such as spyro or xeno'jiiva. though the last one could be a stretch, its safe to assume xeno is something that's not of age. if the character physically seems older, aged_up will apply instead of that canon tag.

Do we not have a young_(lore) tag?

EDIT: Seems the definition is a bit at-odds with the intent here...

regsmutt said:
Potentially. Some people don't want to see porn of *any* character that's underage in canon, no matter if it's aged up. It would create issues for characters where canon age is inconsistent or even changes- especially if there's little/no visual change to go along with it. It might be more trouble than it's worth.

In that case, the appropriate action would be to make aged_up a blacklisted tag, wouldn't it?

As well as franchises that have a habit of giving arbitrary low numbers to characters regardless of how plausible those numbers are. (Looking at you, Sonic.)

lendrimujina said:
(Looking at you, Sonic.)

I think that's part of the reason they removed character ages from everything. that and it's kind of understandably annoying that we know that _at least_ two years have passed in canon yet the characters refuse to age.

lendrimujina said:

In that case, the appropriate action would be to make aged_up a blacklisted tag, wouldn't it?

As well as franchises that have a habit of giving arbitrary low numbers to characters regardless of how plausible those numbers are. (Looking at you, Sonic.)

That would require the artist to be aware of the character's age. Which not everyone is and it isn't always obvious or consistent in all canons.
There's also weird grey-area stuff. Is an adult anthro cat styled after Dora the Explorer actually aged-up Dora, or is it cosplay? If an artist draws the Paw Patrol puppies as they appear in the show (which should be tagged young) but says they're adults in the description is that still aged-up?

regsmutt said:
That would require the artist to be aware of the character's age. Which not everyone is and it isn't always obvious or consistent in all canons.
There's also weird grey-area stuff. Is an adult anthro cat styled after Dora the Explorer actually aged-up Dora, or is it cosplay? If an artist draws the Paw Patrol puppies as they appear in the show (which should be tagged young) but says they're adults in the description is that still aged-up?

To claim they are adults would require them to look older (Visually different) then what they look like in the show, you can't really draw a puppy from the show and then say "I know he looks like he's a puppy but this is actually an adult".

Lore is more for like when an adult is drawn as a younger version of themselves but they still look exactly the same as they are as an adult, say a dog from that show who is an adult from the show is drawn to look like the puppies from the show which is visually different to how the older dogs look, that would be tagged young and not need the adult lore tag because they look different to how they are drawn when older (For example, Simba, you telling me he looks the same as a cub as he does as an adult?). No matter how many times the artist claimed that it is actually an adult being depicted.

If we saw Simba as a cub, we know he's young, if we see him as an adult lion, we know he's an adult lion. For him to use the adult lore tag, then say his cub form would actually in lore have to be decades older then he actually is or looks like. Say a 40 year old lion trapped in a cub body.

casmin7~ said:
Lore is more for like when an adult is drawn as a younger version of themselves but they still look exactly the same as they are as an adult

It gets messy talking about young-adult characters.
legoshi_(beastars) is a good example because for a long time he had exclusively been depicted in canon as a 17 year old with an appearance that would count as adult here, and to this day most fanart depicts him from this period within the source canon. But that's not being drawn as a younger version of himself because that was the original depiction, so your explanation is somewhat incomplete/missing the more common case of a canon-underage character being drawn like an adult in the first place.

magnuseffect said:
It gets messy talking about young-adult characters.
legoshi_(beastars) is a good example because for a long time he had exclusively been depicted in canon as a 17 year old with an appearance that would count as adult here, and to this day most fanart depicts him from this period within the source canon. But that's not being drawn as a younger version of himself because that was the original depiction, so your explanation is somewhat incomplete/missing the more common case of a canon-underage character being drawn like an adult in the first place.

I seriously have to wonder what countries with laws that apply human rights standards to artwork of underage fictional characters have to say about situations like this.