zero pictured

A post that does not have any characters, or likenesses to characters in it. This is often because a post is part of a larger comic, but it also tends to apply to some older posts.

What exactly counts as a character?

Any creature present within the scene, in whole or in part (including things like disembodied hand and disembodied eyes).

If they aren't visible at all (e.g. only speech bubbles) they DO NOT count; see unseen_character instead.

Someone interacting with the scene whose likeness is visible (e.g. on screen in a video call, a cutaway, etc.).
Someone present in static media, such as a photograph, when only static character likenesses are present (Example).
Multi-headed characters are counted only once. Do not count each head as a separate character.
Inanimate objects require evidence that they are living to qualify as characters. Some leeway is given to mechanical beings such as robots, androids, animatronics, and mechs.

The latter is likely a grey area, and may depend on if the mech is being self-controlled, being controlled by an operator. It probably is a good idea to not count the mech itself as a character if the mech operator is visible inside the mech to avoid double counting.

Most often, it does not matter how small, distant from the viewer, detailed, or important to the scene a character is, they count.

A silhouette counts as a character only when it is not a shadow of an unseen character.
Ambient creatures are not treated the same as other "background" characters, and are treated differently in how they are counted. Apart from there being a distinction in how we tag ferals, anything that fits the idea of a background character will count.

Except if the following is true

Tentacles only count as characters if attached to a visible creature (octopus, tentacle monster, etc.). For instance, a picture of just tentacles would actually be tagged as zero pictured.

Ambient creatures

An ambient creature is defined as a feral or unrecognizable creature that does not interact, have no personality, and clearly not the subject of the post.

What species are included?

A wide range of species could, in theory, qualify as an ambient creature. The most common interpretation excludes most mammals, except for maybe the rodent family, and bats, and includes feral insects, reptiles, birds, and a wide array of marine life.

Do they count as characters?

A. It depends.

Most examples that commonly receive an ambient tag generally do not need to be counted as characters. Although, there are many situations that blur the line between relevant, and serves as a background detail. Please be careful with creating assumptions associated with content that gets added to an ambient tag. Opinions can vary widely as to what is considered ambient, with perfectly countable characters sometimes making it into the tag.

- If the ambient creature is a mammal, or some form of custom, or mythological species, it might end up relevant enough to the scene to qualify.
- Excluding ambient things from the character count addresses situations involving distant creatures such as ambient birds, or very small creatures like firefly orbs, and most other insects placed in a manner deemed unimportant to the scene.

General guidelines

Animate inanimate are considered characters, and take priority over non-living likenesses of characters.
When there are no characters that can be considered "present" within the scene, alternative depictions of characters are used instead to tag the character count.

Content that falls under static media (i.e. photograph, poster, drawing on a chalkboard, etc.) shall be treated as if they are characters. Each instance is considered a picture in picture, and should be treated as its own separate image.
Inanimate likenesses of characters (i.e. plushie, statue, mecha, etc.) shall be treated as if they are characters, and are tagged per image, or cumulatively per scene in the case of sequences, and comics. Inanimate likenesses, and static likenesses should always be tagged independently.

Tentacles only count as a character when the creature they are attached to is pictured, so images containing only tentacles are correctly tagged zero_pictured.