1boy for pre-strive and 1girl for strive is the easiest compromise. It best addresses the focus of the main contingent in the arguments: people who care more about her past get to keep that history as an otoko no ko, people who care more about keeping her new identity are likely to be focused on depictions featuring her new design that goes with it. Nobody will be perfectly happy with this, legitimately wouldn't be myself since my preference is toward total acceptance of 'Bridget is a girl', but that's the nature of compromise.
1boy for pre-strive and 1girl for strive is the easiest compromise.
I'm sure this has been pointed out already but you can't look at those tags like they're in a bubble. Doing something like that is still going to mess up searches for a lot of people and a lot of reasons; for instance what if an image depicts Strive Bridget being intimate with a girl? According to tags there are now 2 girls being intimate in the image, and for all intents and purposes that should be tagged yuri. Except one of them has a penis so no way people looking for yuri want to see that. That's a tag war waiting to happen. Same thing if the image depicts Strive Bridget and another boy. According to tags that would be hetero, except they both have a penis so no way people looking to see a boy and a girl want to see that. And that's another tag war. You could say "well then just blacklist Strive Bridget" but that's just a workaround, not a solution. And on top of that, from what I've seen, there's a good number of people that don't even know the blacklist exists.
I'm sure this has been pointed out already but you can't look at those tags like they're in a bubble. Doing something like that is still going to mess up searches for a lot of people and a lot of reasons; for instance what if an image depicts Strive Bridget being intimate with a girl? According to tags there are now 2 girls being intimate in the image, and for all intents and purposes that should be tagged yuri. Except one of them has a penis so no way people looking for yuri want to see that. That's a tag war waiting to happen. Same thing if the image depicts Strive Bridget and another boy. According to tags that would be hetero, except they both have a penis so no way people looking to see a boy and a girl want to see that. And that's another tag war. You could say "well then just blacklist Strive Bridget" but that's just a workaround, not a solution. And on top of that, from what I've seen, there's a good number of people that don't even know the blacklist exists.
tl;dr: it's far from being the easiest compromise
We've long had rules for this sort of situation - futanari and newhalf characters use separate orientation tags and should not be tagged yaoi, yuri or hetero when their genitals are visible. They may be tagged as such in SFW posts because their genitals are irrelevant to the image (e.g. post #4484374).
I'm not sure making different tags for pre-strive Bridget and strive Bridget is actually useful. The group that believes Bridget be tagged as 1girl, I suppose they agree that this would only apply for SFW posts of Strive Bridget. The character would be tagged as a girl, except when the bulge/dick/pecs aren't visible... ? I really don't see how making a separate character tag would be useful in this case if even in Strive the character would get tagged as either 1boy or 1girl depending on the content.
Another problem came to mind when as I wrote this:
I suppose they agree that this would only apply for SFW posts of Strive Bridget.
But there's genderswap as well. If Bridget is depicted in a picture having breasts, they would certainly be tagged as 1girl, and would usually be tagged with genderswap (mtf). If a SFW picture of Strive Bridget has breasts (like post #5657956), would it count or not for genderswap? How different would it be for post #5578650 (NSFW)?
I'm sure this has been pointed out already but you can't look at those tags like they're in a bubble. Doing something like that is still going to mess up searches for a lot of people and a lot of reasons; for instance what if an image depicts Strive Bridget being intimate with a girl? According to tags there are now 2 girls being intimate in the image, and for all intents and purposes that should be tagged yuri. Except one of them has a penis so no way people looking for yuri want to see that. That's a tag war waiting to happen. Same thing if the image depicts Strive Bridget and another boy. According to tags that would be hetero, except they both have a penis so no way people looking to see a boy and a girl want to see that. And that's another tag war. You could say "well then just blacklist Strive Bridget" but that's just a workaround, not a solution. And on top of that, from what I've seen, there's a good number of people that don't even know the blacklist exists.
tl;dr: it's far from being the easiest compromise
Since Feline Lump responded to the issue with genitals and gender already being baked into the system independent of whatever decision is made for Bridget I just want to stress that what I said was it's the easiest compromise. Pointing out that there are issues doesn't really change that unless you're also presenting a solution that solves more problems without creating additional ones. To me, it seems as though accepting there is a Bridget before this story development and after and tagging accordingly solves the largest amount of issues had by those who want a change while best avoiding the toes of the people who do not.
But there's genderswap as well. If Bridget is depicted in a picture having breasts, they would certainly be tagged as 1girl, and would usually be tagged with genderswap (mtf). If a SFW picture of Strive Bridget has breasts (like post #5657956), would it count or not for genderswap? How different would it be for post #5578650 (NSFW)?
I'm honestly not sure about what counts as a genderswap here, since you can reasonably disagree on whether or not Bridget's in-game model actually has defined breasts. There's a non-trivial number of artists who think she does. A lot of these posts, like post #5584331, are also getting reverted to 1boy repeatedly, weirdly enough.
I'm honestly not sure about what counts as a genderswap here, since you can reasonably disagree on whether or not Bridget's in-game model actually has defined breasts. There's a non-trivial number of artists who think she does. A lot of these posts, like post #5584331, are also getting reverted to 1boy repeatedly, weirdly enough.
For that particular post it's probably because the commentary says there's a dick down there.
For that particular post it's probably because the commentary says there's a dick down there.
Characters with breasts are usually tagged female even if they have a penis visible in the image. Tagging that image as male is very strange by Danbooru standards, like some special exception is being made here.
If we decided to tag every post-strive post as girl, what happens with posts like this one ? They clearly have a bulge in there, are we gonna mark this as "1girl" even if the author probably intends for this to be a boy? https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/5692121?q=bridget_%28guilty_gear%29
Characters with breasts are usually tagged female even if they have a penis visible in the image. Tagging that image as male is very strange by Danbooru standards, like some special exception is being made here.
I believe that given the comment of the author and the fact that the breasts aren't so big or apparent the one tagging must have put this image in the same group as the images of the artist 2n5, who also feature male characters with protuberant chests
Wait, I actually went and looked at the wiki for 1girl and all it says is "An image depicting one female character."
This really is as easy as a few of us have said. Bridget's a female character, so she should be included in the *girl count for an image she's in - no matter her state of dress or skin exposure.
And wow, yuri is "Any romantic or sexual interaction between female characters, mutual or not." Bridget's still a female character, so if there's art of her doing something R18 with another female character, then there's no problem with tagging it as yuri either.
Here I thought there was some sort of long-standing, extremely specific definition for what counted, but it's been written an a rather inclusive way all along. Guess we should make sure to revisit all of the other trans characters who have been miss-tagged as well.
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Anyone with a problem to the above solution really needs to be arguing for changes to existing tag definitions or for the creation of new tags to satisfy whatever use case you have that's not accommodated for by tagging a female character AS a female character.
We've long had rules for this sort of situation - futanari and newhalf characters use separate orientation tags and should not be tagged yaoi, yuri or hetero when their genitals are visible. They may be tagged as such in SFW posts because their genitals are irrelevant to the image (e.g. post #4484374).
Karesh said:
Since Feline Lump responded to the issue with genitals and gender already being baked into the system independent of whatever decision is made for Bridget I just want to stress that what I said was it's the easiest compromise. Pointing out that there are issues doesn't really change that unless you're also presenting a solution that solves more problems without creating additional ones. To me, it seems as though accepting there is a Bridget before this story development and after and tagging accordingly solves the largest amount of issues had by those who want a change while best avoiding the toes of the people who do not.
I should have elaborated more in the previous post, what I'm saying is that the problem would arise even in SFW posts simply because at this point in time Bridget is Bridget, a well established character that people familiar AND unfamiliar with the series have known for 20 years, and most importantly they've also known what's between those legs for 20 years. You can't just flip a switch and make people forget something like this, TWYS works only to a certain extent, especially in the face of widespread knowledge of this caliber. Even when separating old Bridget tags from new Bridget tags, if 1girl is left there without additional changes you're still going to upset all kinds of demographics around here, which are suddenly going to see an unwanted character they know very well to be biologically male appear in their searches. People know Bridget is still the same Bridget even with a slightly different tag.
The way I see it, one of the less painful solutions for everyone would be to bring back the transgender tag or some variation of it along with some new rules (mainly to prevent its abuse and to decide what cases should or should not fall under hetero/yuri/yaoi etc.) and the new tag for Strive-specific Bridget. That way you make the trans folk happy letting them use whatever gender they like on any character that fall under similar cirumstances as Bridget, and folks who don't want ambiguity in their searches happy by giving them a single all-encompassing tag to blacklist, AND leaving the current tagging system mostly intact. I know relying on the blacklist is far from elegant, but this way is at least somewhat more acceptable than having thousands of people add a single character-specific tag every time a similar situation arises if we're really going down the route of disregarding biological sex for cases like this.
I'm sure this has been pointed out already but you can't look at those tags like they're in a bubble. Doing something like that is still going to mess up searches for a lot of people and a lot of reasons; for instance what if an image depicts Strive Bridget being intimate with a girl? According to tags there are now 2 girls being intimate in the image, and for all intents and purposes that should be tagged yuri. Except one of them has a penis so no way people looking for yuri want to see that. That's a tag war waiting to happen. Same thing if the image depicts Strive Bridget and another boy. According to tags that would be hetero, except they both have a penis so no way people looking to see a boy and a girl want to see that. And that's another tag war. You could say "well then just blacklist Strive Bridget" but that's just a workaround, not a solution. And on top of that, from what I've seen, there's a good number of people that don't even know the blacklist exists.
tl;dr: it's far from being the easiest compromise
Are there not changes in appearance between Strive and the other ones?
If we decided to tag every post-strive post as girl, what happens with posts like this one ? They clearly have a bulge in there, are we gonna mark this as "1girl" even if the author probably intends for this to be a boy? https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/5692121?q=bridget_%28guilty_gear%29
Right now there are images that literally call Bridget a girl in the commentary yet are tagged as 1boy. I can't really care much about "probably"s when currently people are going to the extreme in the opposite direction.
What you are "predicting" is already happening, we have no lack of users doing this kind of vandalism and then boasting about it on twitter. It should go without saying but we are not going to make decisions that hurt our users' ability to search for their fetishes just to appease terminally online people. If we decide to change our policy it's going to be because of valid reasons, not to avoid offending the feelings of an imaginary character.
Calling that "boasting" is a heck of a reach. That tweet comes across to me as the account expressing a sentiment like "these people are so stupid and/or butthurt that they called objective fact vandalism". And frankly, if you're searching for fetishes, most people would be filtering to questionable or explicit images, which usually have different rules entirely, so I'm not sure how this is proof that we should start being transphobic because one person didn't like our policies.
Also, a small personal account doing something is completely different optics compared to "The artist themselves finds it, changes the tags to what they intended, gets their tags reverted, and decides to do something drastic about it".
Are there not changes in appearance between Strive and the other ones?
Yes... and? Maybe it wasn't clear enough but I'm not opposed to having separate tags for old and new Bridget. I'm saying that stopping at that isn't going to solve anything, so it's not as easy as they made it sound.
Yes... and? Maybe it wasn't clear enough but I'm not opposed to having separate tags for old and new Bridget. I'm saying that stopping at that isn't going to solve anything, so it's not as easy as they made it sound.
I believe it's been stated that there's a high chance NSFW art with dicks will be tagged with 1boy still. This would apply solely to SFW art, if I'm reading all this correctly.
A separate tag for Strive Bridget doesn't fix matters, even aside from not solving the issue of what tags should actually accompany that version, because all it takes is drawing him in a way that makes it ambiguous which game's version he is, and you've got a war again.
I believe it's been stated that there's a high chance NSFW art with dicks will be tagged with 1boy still. This would apply solely to SFW art, if I'm reading all this correctly.
It simply doesn't make sense to have NSFW and SFW get tagged in opposite ways. Consider the simple scenario of a SFW image of Bridget kissing a boy, then a second sequential image as a child post, of the two moving on to sex, with visible penises. If one image in the pair gets tagged as 1boy 1girl, and the other gets tagged as 2boys, you've got a contradicktion that will leave everyone unhappy, whether they wanted yaoi or hetero. If both images get tagged 2boys, then you're tagging one image based on the contents of a different image, when if posted alone it would have the opposite tag. And if there's a gap in time between the two images getting uploaded, you'd be changing tags on an image despite the image itself not changing, and not getting any new information about the character.
A separate tag for Strive Bridget doesn't fix matters, even aside from not solving the issue of what tags should actually accompany that version, because all it takes is drawing him in a way that makes it ambiguous which game's version he is, and you've got a war again.
If it's ambiguous which design is being used, just use 1boy, I guess. When it's clear that it's the Strive Bridget, use 1girl.
If the Strive tag is used, use 1girl. If not, 1boy.
There will always be a lot of what-ifs, but this may be the simplest solution. As I said way earlier, people will be mad no matter what choice we make here. Sure, this system may have some problems come up, but we can discuss those if they actually occur.