Danbooru

Tag implication: ranma-chan -> saotome_ranma

Posted under Tags

I'm against genderswap implications for canon genderswaps, for the record. Don't give me "b-but you can just search -genderswap ;-;" it basically eliminates the point of the second tag, may as well alias it at that point.

S1eth said:

Is there any point to tagging ranma-chan or kyonko with genderswap? Because you won't find any genderswaps of those 2 characters with that tag search. (i.e. (chartag + genderswap) = chartag with opposite gender; kyonko genderswap would actually mean kyon, but the result is of course just kyonko, so it's pretty much useless)

I think the equation is kyon genderswap = kyonko so the only alternative would be to nuke kyonko (which should not happen!)

It seems to me that there are two different issues here:

1) Should canon genderswaps, and/or non-canon/fan-made genderswaps, be tagged with "genderswap"?

2) How should 'characters' who are versions of other characters be tagged: simply as themselves, as a version of their base character, or both?

We discussed 2) in topic #9268 but we didn't really reach a firm resolution.

As for 1), my inclination is to think that we should reserve the tag "genderswap" for when that gives information that isn't inherent in the character tags. It's in tag group:artistic license, which is explained as "the possible changes fan artists make that differentiate their works from canon." We don't mark characters who are canonically young as young; we don't mark characters who are canonically mechanical as mechanization; it seems inconsistent to mark characters who are canonically genderswapped as genderswap.

(This of course creates the thornier-than-it-looks question of "When is a character 'canonical'?" I think it might be best to simply say "when a character is established enough to have their own character tag, that is 'canon' enough for tagging purposes." That's my opinion; I could be wrong.")

The issue with only tagging genderswap for some genderswaps is that it assumes everyone knows the origins of every character. Sure kyonko is popular (or, was, even Haruhi's popularity subsides with time) but not everyone knows her, and that'll be more true as time goes by.

I don't think it's a big enough deal, or that there are enough examples of characters reaching this status, that I'd say we have to change current practice. But it's definitely going to be confusing for some people.

In any case I'm holding off on this implication, though.

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