Posted under Tags
At the moment self-portrait is a meta tag, but is basically used indiscriminately for artist self-inserts/personas.
I think it should at least be renamed, since it goes against the traditional sense of self-portrait, and so the tag can be repurposed for artworks where a character is making a self-portrait (eg. post #5245731).
If we want to keep the tag for strictly artist self-portraits, we could use artist self-portrait.
I think it would be better to make a drawing self or similar tag for things like post #5245731 - it would inevitably be a tag for the action rather than the presence of a self-portrait in the image (if they're not drawing it at the time then it could well have been drawn by another character).
Regarding the persona vs self-portrait thing, this is pretty much always going to be the case as a) we don't usually know what an artist actually looks like, and b) there are characters that have started off claiming to be self-portraits and then had features added in later images that are obviously not what the artist looks like (tiffy (nottytiffy) being the obvious example here).
skylightcrystal said:
Regarding the persona vs self-portrait thing, [...]
I can understand the sentiment, but a few like post #5067644 and post #850998 are obviously artist personas, and post #609933 is obviously exaggerated.
Clear guidelines must be made, otherwise we're going to have every artist vtuber under that tag.
For post #5245731 could we perhaps make a tag like self-portrait (object)? To be able to tag a self-portrait (object) depiction is going to require that it's both a recognizable visible object in the image anyway and then an indicator that the given character made it of themselves, whether by being shown making it or having a signature or something on it.
Self-portrait is basically from the same era as fictional persona was, and thus was tainted by the same mentality that led fictional persona to become utterly redundant - while fictional persona tried to do something no one thought was needed (a sub-tag for artist self-insert, for artist personas), self-portrait tried to include something it should not have in the first place (personas).
I argue that the tag should be extensively gardened and rendered so that it is just explicitly for artists drawing their real life selves, because I'm certain that we have a good number of posts which depict just that (effectively becoming the reverse of what fictional persona tried to be before it got coopted by MMORPG players). It would certainly be far more useful than fictional persona would have been, because you'd think there'd be far more artists drawing personas rather than their real selves for privacy reasons. It would also justify the tag keeping its metatag status, because knowing it is their real selves would likely count as meta knowledge.
Damian0358 said:
I argue that the tag should be extensively gardened and rendered so that it is just explicitly for artists drawing their real life selves
+1, but where do we draw the line? Should comical caricatures such as post #609933 count?
(Personally, as long as the face is that of the artist's, then it counts for self-portrait)
Reminder that we also have artist self-insert.
