Tomzai said:
I happened to read the shimakaze-kun wiki page and according to it (and to my understanding), shimakaze-kun should only be used for posts where shimakeze is genderswapped and not for cosplay posts. Yet the considerable majority of posts with this tag are just that, only cosplay (and to some degree indistinguishable which one it is, genderswap or cosplay).
So i thought it would be worth bring it up, since as it stands the vast majority of the posts under the tag dont fit the tag definition.
So should the tag wiki be rewritten or should the around 90% or so posts be untagged?
I think it's also worth mentioning that the pixiv tag equivalent doesnt differentiate between the two.
Opinions?
Tag is 'poorly' defined. And by 'poor' I mean "does not match how most people use the word".
Let's put it this way. Suppose the post has an otoko_no_ko (Genderbent Shimakaze, other characters, OCs, etc.) dressed up in KC Shimakaze's clothes:
1) If the post is tagged 島風くん (Shimakaze-kun) on Pixiv/Nico/etc., people are likely going to tag it Shimakaze-kun on Danbooru too.
1a. If the poster is relying on Danbooru's auto-translation and suggestion of tags, Shimakaze-kun will also be suggested, and likely picked.
2) If the (fan-)author calls the depicted character 島風くん, in the title of the work and/or the commentary, people will also likely tag it Shimakaze-kun.
2a. And if the poster is relying on MTL-ing to help with tagging, they will pick up Shimakaze-kun in the title, author comments and user comments as well, and therefore are also likely to tag it Shimakaze-kun.
3) If the post has dialogue, with one or multiple characters referring to a 島風くん, then the poster (assuming literate in Japanese) is likely going to tag Shimakaze-kun.
3a. And once the post is translated, assuming it wasn't tagged Shimakaze-kun yet, people reading are likely to tack on the tag if they are aware of the Shimakaze-kun 'meme' but haven't read the wiki definition.
And you can have all the above elements at once. Consider post #3800859. There's an otoko-no-ko dressed up as Shimakaze-kun, the art is tagged Shimakaze-kun (On Nico and Pixiv), the title has the word Shimakaze-kun, the dialogue refers to the character as Shimakaze-kun, there's an entire spiel defining what Shimakaze-kun is, the very idea of Shimakaze-kun forms half of the bloody punchline, most of the comments on Pixiv and Nico are joking about Shimakaze-kun... but the post is not tagged Shimakaze-kun on Danbooru. Because our wiki definition of the 'word' goes against how the term (and equivalent tags) are used on Pixiv and Nico (and defined in their wikis), goes against how what most Japanese people 'in-the-know' would call a Shimakaze-kun, and likely conflicts with what most Danbooru users would think of when they see the word "Shimakaze-kun", hence the rampant 'mistagging'.
Even if we somehow manage to tag-garden every Shimakaze-kun post to eliminate those that are of other people cosplaying as Shimakaze, someone will going to wind up 'mistagging' another post anyway, because of all the reasons mentioned above. Then we're going to need to repeat that again, someone will open another forum thread raising the issue, etc. etc. This is untenable. Not to mention that people who can't read Japanese might not be able to tell that a depicted character is not Shimakaze but actually an OC cosplaying as her—likely leading to them tagging Shimakaze-kun even if they're aware of our wiki definition, thus 'necessitating' another tag garden when the post is eventually translated.
And you know what's even worse? If we tag-garden all the posts to within the narrow definition of Shimakaze-kun as provided in our current wiki, then the tag becomes mostly pointless because then it's just a simple Shimakaze_(kancolle) genderswap_(ftm) two-tag search.
Then the question becomes whether the looser 'definition' would be equivalent to a otoko_no_ko Shimakaze_(kancolle) two-tag search. I'd say no. People will want to look up Shimakaze-kun posts (and not just the ftm genderswap version), artists draw comics where the entire punchline is Shimakaze-kun, entire doujins have been written that are about Shimakaze-kun, there are entire categories of thin books that basically form a Shimakaze-kun genre by themselves, etc. etc. Clearly there's a use for a tag. Moreover, the very... shall we say "idea" of Shimakaze-kun isn't just a character, but a meme. You know, like dat ribbon, dat pool, as long as they're happy, the SDM exploding, etc. And like all memes there's a story behind it.
So, we start with KC Shimakaze. Her clothes are, *ahem* well-recognizable (basically the Kancolle character for people not "into" the franchise), and are a copious source of meme fodder. Stick any other character into Shima's clothes—BOOM—instant punchline! (e.g. post #3221386, post #3786032). So there's an inherent absurdity about it. And there's so many permutations on the same theme to the point that there are even multiple cosplayers doing NESTED cosplaying of another character* cosplaying as Shimakaze. This is YoDawg level of absurdity.
*Usually it's either Kashima or Shigure.
Then in 2014 some two blokes on Twitter decided to draw an comic featuring an otoko-no-ko dressing up as KC Shimakaze, calling him Shimakaze-kun. Yes, the first Shimakaze-kun was a cosplayer. Anyhow, people saw it, people liked it, and then people started drawing the same and doing multiple permutations of the same idea, causing an explosion of Shimakaze-kun-themed art on Pixiv and Nico. And that's how the meme—and a whole genre—was born.
Now, how do we define the 'meme' then? The Pixiv article does have an extensive explanation, even if it does tend a bit towards excessive logorrhea (e.g. entire spiels about the various 'categories' of Shimakaze-kun) and slightly contradicts itself at points (short description says "Boy who cosplays Shimakaze", but there are multiple long-winded digressions implying that a genderbent Shima might count under certain circumstances), but I can basically distill it down to four salient points:
1) Take KC Shimakaze's clothes.
2) Stick a boy into those clothes. It can be an OC (most common), some other character from an established copyright, or even a genderbent Shima. Older males may count too if you squint a bit, but anything too far to the right on the "Bishounen → Bara" scale likely doesn't.
3) Is this lulzworthy? Then go to 4.
4) Is the inherent lulz due to the very idea of sticking a boy into Shimakaze's clothes itself? The whole picture, holistically? Not just because you thought it was funny/interesting to see a boy-in-a-skirt or genderbent-Shima*? Yes? Well, there's your Shimakaze-kun!
*Part of the reason why genderbent Shima alone isn't really accepted according to the Pixiv definition is because canon Shima is likely to just be completely unfazed by the genderbending and just acts like she does normally, turning it into a pure genderbent-Shima gag with none of the 'social awkwardness and embarrassment' that is central to the Shimakaze-kun meme (as the Pixiv article puts it, I'm mostly just summarizing). Though fanon Shima does act quite differently compared to her canon self—often having a hair-trigger temper instead of acting completely unfazed to everything, so...
Now there is definitely an element of subjectivity about it. But so do most memes. You can eludicate the visual and textual elements, but identifying most of them in the end essentially boils down to, as the courts* would say, "I know it when I see it".
(*Albeit on an unrelated matter, though some people might claim otherwise.)
TL;DR: The current wiki definition of Shimakaze-kun does not match how Pixiv/Nico users and a decent chunk of Danbooru users would use the tag. It is also confusingly-named and will (and have) lead to multiple 'mistaggings', necessitating constant tag-gardening to ensure tagged post match the definition provided in the wiki. What's worse, even if rename the tag to something unambiguous (like Shimakaze-kun(ftm)) and aggressively tag-garden it, all we end up is a pointless two-tag combined search. I therefore motion we edit the Shimakaze-kun wiki to redefine it to be more in line with how Pixiv/Nico uses 島風くん, and how a significant chunk of Danbooru users would think when they hear the word "Shimakaze-kun".
