nonamethanks said:
If we alias mage to wizard then blind uploaders will just end up making wizard the tag of their choice to pollute. I'd say it should be nuked into witch and wizard depending on the gender or attire.
Alright, let's go with that then. Salvage whichever example we can into either witch and wizard (All of Mona's can just go into witch, then we figure out how to get rid of civvies or alternate_costume versions later). Try to fit the remaining into priest or priestess or shaman or druid or miko or... (sorcerer or sorceress ???) or... whatever closest 'magic-using' archetype we have that matches their clothes or apparent gender the most. Then nuke the tag completely for now to avoid misuse. Though it does smart a bit not being able to have a succinct tag for "this character is obviously a magic user of some sort, but I don't think they count as a witch or wizard or what else." Like for Rydia here.
(That said... not volunteering to do the 'salvaging' though.)
Though... while we are on that topic, why do we have separate tags for sorcerer and sorceress? Most of the examples seem to be able to fit well into wizard or witch. Knee-jerking tagging in-game class again like for Sorceress (Dragon's Crown)?
nonamethanks said:
The issue is that people tag the character's in-game class with it, even when there's no indication that the character is casting magic. See mage ass. These pics are indistinguishable from witch.
We already have a tag for magic users btw, it's called magic (or casting_spell, extremely underused).
Well those kinda tag the act of casting magic (I'm assuming casting_spell is more for formulaic-looking magic, especially 'Hermetic' looking ones with runes and magic circles, instead of, say, 'nature' magic), not the person doing the casting. Might be sort of a pedantic distinction, but often there are characters that a user would intuitively "know" is a magic user of some sort, just by judging from the clothes (elaborate robes, wands, staves, crystals, grimoires, etc.) and implied setting (fantasy) alone, even with zero knowledge of the specific 'lore' of the setting. Fantasy-setting 'mages' do share a lot of common design elements after all.
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Though... looking at it from another view... what's so bad about just chucking every single fantasy magic-user under the mage tag? Or at least the more "arcaney" kind (using the D&D term), who aren't implied to be priests or shamans or religious practitioners of some sort. So Mona would qualify, most game characters with "mage" somewhere as their in-game class will also qualify, and I guess most wizards and witches too, other than the most 'generic'* of cosplays by characters from a non-fantasy/magic setting.
(i.e. that stereotypical wizard/witch costume that every bargain bin costume shop has, consisting of the bare minimum of hat + robe, plus maybe a wand/knobbly staff or broomstick.)
