Aliasing batpony → bat_pony
Link to alias

Reason:

Alternate spacing

How about we wait until there's a decision on whether these are even valid tags?
If we alias them together it becomes more work to alias them away later.

Gonna need another thread for that anyways since the previous one got locked.

https://e621.net/forum/show/95996

As far as I know we should be aliasing bat_pony to thestral. That narrows the species down pretty damn good, and then just add the MLP tag if you want it specific to MLP thestrals.

However, the term "Thestral" seems to be unique to the Harry Potter universe, from what I can tell. I'm not sure if there's actually any history or name for thestral-like creatures in any mythology, so I guess there's not really a better term for it, but I guess it seems strange to me that we'd prefer the name that a particular set of novels gave it. Still, it's probably the way to go, since MLP doesn't have any "official" name for it that I'm aware of. We've decided before to not create hybrid tags that are just two animal names stuck together, and I think we should probably stick with that for now.

Of course, we're going to have plenty of users who ARE going to be searching specifically for batpony or bat_pony, so since there IS a proper name for them in another series, I think the sensible thing to do is to alias batpony to that, so we can still allow users to search specifically for a creature that's a mix of a bat and horse, while also avoiding the animal_animal tagging convention.

Azazial said:
Gonna need another thread for that anyways since the previous one got locked.

https://e621.net/forum/show/95996

Also another thread is a bad idea, since both sides had trouble not being dicks to each other :o

Personally with "hybrid" seemingly a species now, it should just be pony, bat, and hybrid as species should it not?

CamKitty said:
Personally with "hybrid" seemingly a species now, it should just be pony, bat, and hybrid as species should it not?

nope.

Char said:
As far as I know we should be aliasing bat_pony to thestral. That narrows the species down pretty damn good, and then just add the MLP tag if you want it specific to MLP thestrals.

However, the term "Thestral" seems to be unique to the Harry Potter universe, from what I can tell. I'm not sure if there's actually any history or name for thestral-like creatures in any mythology, so I guess there's not really a better term for it, but I guess it seems strange to me that we'd prefer the name that a particular set of novels gave it. Still, it's probably the way to go, since MLP doesn't have any "official" name for it that I'm aware of. We've decided before to not create hybrid tags that are just two animal names stuck together, and I think we should probably stick with that for now.

Of course, we're going to have plenty of users who ARE going to be searching specifically for batpony or bat_pony, so since there IS a proper name for them in another series, I think the sensible thing to do is to alias batpony to that, so we can still allow users to search specifically for a creature that's a mix of a bat and horse, while also avoiding the animal_animal tagging convention.

This is my reasoning exactly for suggesting thestral in the first place. Most people will have at least heard of the term for the bat-like winged horses from Harry Potter, and while it certainly isn't classically mythological, it certainly is a myth (Three definitions that it qualifies for, separated by semi-colons. "A popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural idea; A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology; A fictitious story, person, or thing") that is both old enough within humanity's collective knowledge, and has become widespread enough to be easily recognized, much like the suburban horror myths have become entrenched in our history, that I don't see a problem utilizing it outside the original story world that it was created for, much like how Pegasi have been used far outside the original mythos.

CamKitty said:
Also another thread is a bad idea, since both sides had trouble not being dicks to each other :o

Personally with "hybrid" seemingly a species now, it should just be pony, bat, and hybrid as species should it not?

For images where it is definitely a bat pony hybrid instead of formed like a thestral, I am tempted to say yes. Like where the snout is bat-like instead of pony-like, or she's showing more bat traits, like hanging from a branch or a cave ceiling or the like; the representation of her as depicted in the show, however, seems appropriate to name "Thestral", with or without an MLP note as Char noted.

I'm not the biggest fan of redefining "thestral" to mean "any horse(pony) with bat-like wings."
In the HP mythology they're significantly more defined than that.

It would feel an awful lot like if we tagged a 2 headed dog as a cerberus, just because it's a dog with multiple heads.

Halite said:
I'm not the biggest fan of redefining "thestral" to mean "any horse(pony) with bat-like wings."
In the HP mythology they're significantly more defined than that.

It would feel an awful lot like if we tagged a 2 headed dog as a cerberus, just because it's a dog with multiple heads.

Visually, what else defines a thestral? Nothing. Suer you can argue the invisibility to anyone who hasn't come to accept the meaning of death that they've witnessed, but you can't visualize that. Comparatively, a cerberus is a three-headed dog, whilst a two-headed dog would be an Orthros/Orthrus (The spelling is flippity-floppity, but it's the same thing, the two-headed brother of Cerberus).

Thestral are also skeletal in appearance.

Halite said:
Thestral are also skeletal in appearance.

Yeah, I was going to mention this but didnt want much drama. Searching up the word thestral shows a lot of descs and images of skeleton like horses with bat wings. Soo this isnt the proper tag for it. Pony + bat_wings should solve this problem.

Even though I hate excess tags created by ponies, I think it would be incredibly counterproductive to mix two completely different lores together by basing the argument on a vague description of the species being a bat/equine hybrid. The two species even have the most extreme aesthetic differences.

I don't much like drama either, but as I said, redefining a term for our own purposes doesn't seem right.

Halite said:
Thestral are also skeletal in appearance.

http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090531135246/harrypotter/images/8/87/Thestral_on_land.gif

While it is emaciated-looking, I wouldn't say that it's skeletonized, like a lot of fanart depicts it.

Note: I'm not super for this. "hybrid bat pony" combo tagging is fine by me, too. It's just that there already exists plenty of images that use Thestral, and it does fit conceptually. I mean, we have tons of characters get drawn overweight and we don't call them a specific race; If you over-fed a Thestral in the HP universe it probably would gain body mass and fill out, too.

The harry potter creature is an idea I can't believe got this far into consideration

123easy said:
Note: I'm not super for this. "hybrid bat pony" combo tagging is fine by me, too.

That's what I thought too, but so far only got a super helpful

Butterscotch said:
nope.

when I said it before

CamKitty said:
The harry potter creature is an idea I can't believe got this far into consideration

That's what I thought too, but so far only got a super helpful

when I said it before

I said that as an, "If things end up resulting that way, it's cool, both work" thing. Not that that's my preferred result. I really do think Thestral is applicable here. *shrug*