Recently, the tag "flutterbat" was aliased to fluttershy_(mlp) because some users and admins found the name to be unnecessary, since the character itself is a "bat pony" version of Fluttershy, which means that you should be able to find roughly the same content if you search for "fluttershy" and something like "bat" or "bat_wings".

However, I think this needs to be revisited, given the fact that they actually refer to Fluttershy as "Flutterbat" in the show itself, making the name canon for Fluttershy's "bat pony" form. Flutterbat's appearance in the show is also significantly different from Fluttershy's, so there should be no confusion regarding when Flutterbat should be tagged and when Fluttershy should be tagged.

Given this information, I think the tagging of Flutterbat should work just the same as how e621 currently handles the tagging of characters in costumes (which is also up for review here: https://e621.net/forum/show/98600), meaning that any posts with "flutterbat" would also be tagged with "fluttershy" as well.

Please remember to keep your responses civil and constructive. Thanks!

Peekaboo said:
...but everything Char said makes sense. +1 from me.

This, I agree with Char too.

Rarity in the episode isn't using it as a name, but as a joke.
As clearly evidenced by the fact that not 10 seconds later in the episode, in the same scene she carries on calling her fluttershy, because that's her name.

If we keep this tag, then we also will need tags for "flutterguy", "hairity", "apple teenie", "rainbow crash", and "spitty pie" since that's what Spike called them all during the poison joke incident.

And every other time someone in the show has, or will use a nickname as a joke for one of the characters.

Edit: I would like to make a small addendum.
If the discussion here: https://e621.net/forum/show/98605
Results in allowing alternate forms in general to be labeled, as is suggested in the original post, then I withdraw this point of contention as it would be moot.
It is a recognizably different form with a name, and if that's taggable, then so be it.
I'm just not comfortable calling a joke a "canon name".

Halite said:
Rarity in the episode isn't using it as a name, but as a joke.
As clearly evidenced by the fact that not 10 seconds later in the episode, in the same scene she carries on calling her fluttershy, because that's her name.

If we keep this tag, then we also will need tags for "flutterguy", "hairity", "apple teenie", "rainbow crash", and "spitty pie" since that's what Spike called them all during the poison joke incident.

And every other time someone in the show has, or will use a nickname as a joke for one of the characters.

Edit: I would like to make a small addendum.
If the discussion here: https://e621.net/forum/show/98605
Results in allowing alternate forms in general to be labeled, as is suggested in the original post, then I withdraw this point of contention as it would be moot.
It is a recognizably different form with a name, and if that's taggable, then so be it.
I'm just not comfortable calling a joke a "canon name".

+1 to everything here.

Halite said:
Rarity in the episode isn't using it as a name, but as a joke.
As clearly evidenced by the fact that not 10 seconds later in the episode, in the same scene she carries on calling her fluttershy, because that's her name.

If we keep this tag, then we also will need tags for "flutterguy", "hairity", "apple teenie", "rainbow crash", and "spitty pie" since that's what Spike called them all during the poison joke incident.

And every other time someone in the show has, or will use a nickname as a joke for one of the characters.

Edit: I would like to make a small addendum.
If the discussion here: https://e621.net/forum/show/98605
Results in allowing alternate forms in general to be labeled, as is suggested in the original post, then I withdraw this point of contention as it would be moot.
It is a recognizably different form with a name, and if that's taggable, then so be it.
I'm just not comfortable calling a joke a "canon name".

Rarity sure as heck didn't seem to be joking.

However, the other 6 names that Spike mentions are clearly in jest and were nothing more than a few silly issues.

Fluttershy went through a whole transformation of shape and personality.

Daneasaur said:
Rarity sure as heck didn't seem to be joking.

However, the other 6 names that Spike mentions are clearly in jest and were nothing more than a few silly issues.

Fluttershy went through a whole transformation of shape and personality.

I think we are missing the point, a bit. I personally would like to see, for something artistically popular, a way for someone's first visit to e621 to be able to find the character they are looking for.

In my mind, I wouldn't think of searching "fluttershy bat_wings" or whatnot, but if the only named reference to them was "flutterbat", that is the search string I'm going to use.

That's my take on it, though. I would be interested in hearing alternatives that would accomplish the objective that may differ from me.

I don't think a new user to this site would search for "flutterbat" automatically when the name was only used once and then they carried on calling her fluttershy.

In the mind set of a new user, if I was looking for those specific images, based on that episode I would search "fluttershy bat" or possibly "fluttershy vampire".
The first is covered by the "pony bat hybrid" tags being used instead of bat_pony, the second(vampire) was decded to be a bad tag for these images. Not sure why.

Daneasaur said:
Rarity sure as heck didn't seem to be joking.

However, the other 6 names that Spike mentions are clearly in jest and were nothing more than a few silly issues.

Fluttershy went through a whole transformation of shape and personality.

"that's not FlutterSHY... that's FlutterBAT!"

That's just like Spike saying, "We got: Hairity, Rainbow Crash, Spitty Pie, Apple Teeny, Flutterguy, and... uh... I got nothin'..."

Same sort of goofy naming as a joke. All further references to the character are as per the character's usual name, not Flutterbat in the former, or any of the others in the latter example. "Flutterbat" isn't a species, either. It's just a vampiric pony with a predilection towards fruit rather than blood due to the transformation being a fruit bat rather than vampire bat transformation (And this is why I hate 'vampire' being used to define concepts that aren't vampiric (drinks blood). It muddles the issue). In fact, the MLP wikia itself states it's a "vampire fruit bat-pony hybrid" at the time, and the only real cause is Twilight's magic causing the desires of the vampire fruit bats to enter Fluttershy through her Stare (which apparently has some sort of magical properties its own, and isn't just a joke >.o), and the same spell reverses the effect and returns her to normal- it's not even true vampirism at all (curse or disease, magical or otherwise), but a personality-altering spell gone wrong, and apparently flexible morphology because desires are strong enough. >.o

Halite said:
I don't think a new user to this site would search for "flutterbat" automatically when the name was only used once and then they carried on calling her fluttershy.

In the mind set of a new user, if I was looking for those specific images, based on that episode I would search "fluttershy bat" or possibly "fluttershy vampire".
The first is covered by the "pony bat hybrid" tags being used instead of bat_pony, the second(vampire) was decded to be a bad tag for these images. Not sure why.

You're not talking about a new user to e621, you're talking about a new fan of MLP, or someone who isn't a fan. Don't assume that all new users that are joining the site are completely oblivious to the fandoms that are represented on the site. :P I'd wager that quite a few new users we receive who are interested in MLP are already familiar with "flutterbat" and "pinkamena" and others.

Char said:
You're not talking about a new user to e621, you're talking about a new fan of MLP, or someone who isn't a fan. Don't assume that all new users that are joining the site are completely oblivious to the fandoms that are represented on the site. :P I'd wager that quite a few new users we receive who are interested in MLP are already familiar with "flutterbat" and "pinkamena" and others.

No, I mean a new user who is a fan of MLP, it was literally said once, in one episode.
My theory is born out as well, if you google "flutterbat" it thinks you made a typo.
If you google "fluttershy vampire" the search pops up in the google quick search thing once you get to "va" and "fluttershy bat" also ends up in the results once you type it all out.

Google quick search is based on algorithms that account for what people search most, the fact that flutterbat never shows up on the quick search, even typed the whole way out indicates it is not the commonly used search term.

Halite said:
My theory is born out as well, if you google "flutterbat" it thinks you made a typo.

Just tried searching flutterbat both on "web" and "image search" (I don't have quick search), it didn't think I made a typo, it worked fine like with any other search, and it gave results to pages like ED, a wiki, even deviantart, and on img search it returned lots of pics from the character (and some them were even uploaded here).

Butterscotch said:
Just tried searching flutterbat both on "web" and "image search" (I don't have quick search), it didn't think I made a typo, it worked fine like with any other search, and it gave results to pages like ED, a wiki, even deviantart, and on img search it returned lots of pics from the character (and some them were even uploaded here).

Not what I said.
I am talking about the quick search algorithims that they use for that drop down while you type in a partial search.
You could google flutterbutt and it would come up with results, that's not the point I'm making.
The question is what would commonly be used to search the subject, and clearly fluttershy+vampire and fluttershy+bat are the more commonly searched terms than flutterbat.

Edit: screenshot

this may be a case of the google search bubble effect returning results you'd commonly interact with and are actively searching for that google's algorithms have determined are what you want. Try searching google via duckduckgo and see the hugely different results.

This said, at least for myself (and this could be what Halite was meaning), it DOES treat it as a typo when typing it into the search bar and tries to suggest Flutterbot, Flutterbye, flutterby fairy, and Fluttershy before the 'b' is typed. typing in "Fluttershy ba" gives "Fluttershy batpony" as the sixth item in the list. "Fluttershy va" returns "Fluttershy vampire" immediately. Aside from "Flutter bat" of which the first two pages are the animal from Avatar:TLA, all first links go to the wikia page for Fluttershy, which describes Flutterbat as a side aspect of the Fluttershy character, not an original character based upon Fluttershy. Canonically and within the fan-maintained wikia for the series, if it's not a separate character, why tag it as a character? It's not one.

Alright, lets suppose you want to find images of Fluttershy as the bat.

What if the image doesn't show her wings? What do you type in to find it?

Some images are lacking suggestions for keywords beyond "Fluttershy bat_wings" and "Fluttershy fangs".

For example, just now, I found this ( NSFW ) : https://e621.net/post/show/420851

Would you call this improper tagging, or would you agree that those keywords are not always proper to find this variant of this character?

Will we need to cherry pick and add "pointed_ears" to images of her as well?

I've seen the tag "bat_pony" a few times, for use of other characters being drawn in this "change". Should we use that as the primary keyward to tag these?

Daneasaur said:
Alright, lets suppose you want to find images of Fluttershy as the bat.

What if the image doesn't show her wings? What do you type in to find it?

Some images are lacking suggestions for keywords beyond "Fluttershy bat_wings" and "Fluttershy fangs".

For example, just now, I found this ( NSFW ) : https://e621.net/post/show/420851

Would you call this improper tagging, or would you agree that those keywords are not always proper to find this variant of this character?

Will we need to cherry pick and add "pointed_ears" to images of her as well?

I've seen the tag "bat_pony" a few times, for use of other characters being drawn in this "change". Should we use that as the primary keyward to tag these?

not a (species)_(species) tag, but bat pony hybrid is fine. And if her ears are pointed then the tag is added, and if the wings are batlike then you add it, usually the best answers take the least amount of creative thinking. After all its supposed to make searching on the spot easier

edit: also font use the only six tags argument here, if you add any ponies name here you don't need the pony tag, just character_name bat hybrid and still three kink tags

Why is bat_pony still a tag?
I thought we decided that it was a bad tag.

I know ther was still discussion of "bat pony hybrid" vs "thestral" but that's no reason to keep using bat_pony.

post #420573 is almost tagged correctly- it still has "batpony". Seems it should be aliased to hybrid with the way it's being used. After all, it's explicitly used to denote, "a hybrid character that is crossed between a pony and a bat".

Also, Char, I thought you were making Hybrid a species catagory tag?

123easy said:
Also, Char, I thought you were making Hybrid a species catagory tag?

https://e621.net/forum/show/96653?page=1#p96798

Char said:
Having trouble getting the tag's type changed because it's on so many posts; the site just times out. Will probably have to get Varka to handle server-side.

There's still no update to this, although it might be possible for another person besides Varka to handle it now as of very recently. I will try to bring it up again..

Char said:
https://e621.net/forum/show/96653?page=1#p96798

There's still no update to this, although it might be possible for another person besides Varka to handle it now as of very recently. I will try to bring it up again..

Cool, thanks. I was just wanting an update on what was going on with that since it'd been two weeks and no change. :)

123easy said:
Cool, thanks. I was just wanting an update on what was going on with that since it'd been two weeks and no change. :)

Hybrid is now a species tag.

Char said:
Hybrid is now a species tag.

Nice! Thanks for the followup.

quickly blacklists Fluttebat
No thanks, I love that porn as less as the next guy. This will for sure save my eyes.
Not bashing you if you like that stuff, I'm just creeped out by horse dicks.

Neonflow said:
quickly blacklists Fluttebat
No thanks, I love that porn as less as the next guy. This will for sure save my eyes.
Not bashing you if you like that stuff, I'm just creeped out by horse dicks.

this isn't the place to inform us of your blacklist usage (although in impressed that someone actually uses it) try a blip.

So what's the decision? Do we alias to hybrid? Do we alias to vampire (since it is, technically, a vampiric style transformation)? WHat?