Topic: Some thoughts on tail_coil and related tags

Posted under Tag/Wiki Projects and Questions

If nothing else, I think the wiki page is due for a bit of a rewrite; it says tail coiling is "usually with intent to restrain or subdue", but this is simply not the case. Sure, you can find examples of tails being used for those purposes, but the majority of cases are in more romantic contexts where it is used as a way to show affection between characters. (I realize I could just edit the wiki page myself, but I figure it's best to ask here first for a change like this.)

The bigger problem however is the name of the tag itself which is awkward and easy to confuse with tail_wrap, especially for someone not already familiar with both tags. Personally, I think it would make more sense to rename the current tail_coil tag to tail_wrap, and rename the current tail_wrap to tail_wrappings, tail_wraps, tail_binding (which would need to be unaliased from tailband), tail_bindings, or some other clever name. Alternatively, tail_wrap could be left as is and tail_coil could be aliased to tail_around (or something similar), which is still a bit awkward, but more natural to use than tail_coil. I'll also note that a variety of tail_around_* tags already exist for more specificity within tail_coil. coiled_tail is another tag that exists, which should probably be aliased to tail_coil (or whatever that tag becomes). One could even consider separating instances of using a tail to "restrain or subdue", and instances of use in romantic (and other) contexts into two separate tags, since someone who is looking for one of those is probably not looking for the other, but this would probably be difficult to do in practice.

Anyways, what does the community think about this? Is it worth changing the names around for clarity's sake, or is it better to just leave things mostly as they are?

See also: some previous discussion on this topic

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