[Discussion] Splatoon Agents. Are they real? This and more tonight at 11 on DAN News.

My points still stand, I don't see any reason to be treating easily recognizable characters differently from any other character on the site. A lot of characters are hard to identify without their clothes, clothes are the primary way we recognize characters. All three Agents have established official designs accepted by Splatoon fans. If the concern is about tagging an inkling dressed like Agent 4 but with a different hairstyle, then we do exactly what we do in every other such situation: agent_4_(splatoon)_(cosplay).

Just like with remodel (kantai collection), I really don't see how lumping multiple different designs under a single general tag is a good idea. If you have to describe each agent individually in the tag's wiki, which would also mean you were able to identify them separately, that seems to me like proof that they should probably be individual tags. We can't just keep adding characters to that gentag every time a new game or DLC comes out, it's barely useful as is.

Call me wild, call me crazy - but my rhetoric for the character tags is that despite being customizable, as NNT pointed out, these characters do have a canonical design used in-universe to distinguish them from other characters of the same species. These are all posts from the Splatoon Research Lab, Nintendo's official English language Splatoon blog. Keep note that they are referred to by name.

https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/160782326374/breaking-news-we-just-received-details-on-the (Female Agent 4)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/161099334744/unknown-to-all-but-a-select-few-the-new (Female Agent 4)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/169167531304/happy-new-year-may-you-have-a-splat-ful-2018 (Female Agent 4)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/171937839689/the-protagonist-in-splatoon-2-octo-expansion-is (Female and Male Agent 8)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/173897766009/the-protagonist-of-splatoon-2-octo-expansion-is-a (Female Agent 8)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/176107059452/its-an-inky-1-year-anniversary-tomorrow-marks (Female Agent 8, Male Agent 3)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/183462046683/the-squid-research-lab-has-compiled-this (Female Agents 3, 4, and 8)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/186201194199/capn-cuttlefish-agent-3-team-order-were-on (Team Order Female Agent 3)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/186223383475/agent-4-team-chaos-agent-4-is-the-type-of-squid (Team Chaos Female Agent 4)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/186284723214/agent-8-team-order-even-octolings-whove-been (Team Order Female Agent 8)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/190823338424/while-we-here-at-the-squid-research-lab-wouldnt (Female Agent 3, Male Agent 8)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/612572387388653568/weve-received-a-special-message-from-our (Female Agent 8, Male Agent 3)

The Female and Male Agent 8 are also the ones depicted in the Octoling Boy and Girl amiibos.
https://www.nintendo.com/amiibo/detail/octoling-boy-amiibo-splatoon-series/
https://www.nintendo.com/amiibo/detail/octoling-girl-amiibo-splatoon-series/

Female Agent 3 is also playable in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as the third playable Inkling...
https://www.smashbros.com/assets_v2/img/fighter/inkling/main3.png

...and this Japanese Nintendo Direct directly refers to them as such: https://youtu.be/OYf16WgNPjs?t=1059 (Notice how Agent 3 is the only character on the entire screen to have a custom name!)

Nintendo has been consistent on these. The only instance on the SRL in which they had different hair colors was for the Final Splatfest: Splatocalypse to match their team alliance, but even Marie and Pearl had different hair colors for that event.

https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/185913966164/callie-team-chaos-i-might-be-a-pop-star-but (Team Chaos Marie)
https://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/186317448719/pearl-team-chaos-with-chaos-you-never-know (Team Chaos Pearl)

I also do want to point out that Splatoon is not unique in character customization. Pokemon SwSH lets you create your own character, but we still tag Gloria and Victor accordingly.

But artists are not consistent. At least with Victor and Gloria as you pointed out, they all appear the same. So is not the case with Agent 3/4/8. With those, they're all over the map. If you were to ever nail down a "Agent X" must have such and such hair color with such and such eye color, would you ever expect users to honor that or remember that? Because if you don't nail down those characteristics, then we get back to the only thing that such characters have in common is the costume.

Also, there's instances where OC characters have donned the outfit of one of the Agents (post #2653969). So do they become the Agent and lose their OC name, or do they keep their OC name and not get the Agent name? It's not cosplay, because those OC characters are acting in the capacity of an Agent. It can't be the character, because they aren't the Inkling/Octoling as officially depicted by Nintendo. All they are doing is wearing the "costume" of the Agent, and acting as the Agent.

BrokenEagle98 said:

But artists are not consistent. At least with Victor and Gloria as you pointed out, they all appear the same. So is not the case with Agent 3/4/8. With those, they're all over the map. If you were to ever nail down a "Agent X" must have such and such hair color with such and such eye color, would you ever expect users to honor that or remember that? Because if you don't nail down those characteristics, then we get back to the only thing that such characters have in common is the costume.

They're not consistent because that's the nature of the series. I don't feel nailing down a specific color pallette is necessary, because rotating colors is one of the most notable features of the game. Artists are following the game's aesthetic. And you're still ignoring the recurring hairstyles.

I don't recall us making this argument anywhere else. Hakurei Reimu doesn't stop being herself just because she's drawn with blonde hair and tan skin. These don't have Gloria's standard hairstyle and hair color, only being recognizable by costume elements, but it's still obviously Gloria.

blindVigil said:

These don't have Gloria's standard hairstyle and hair color, only being recognizable by costume elements, but it's still obviously Gloria.

Not saying it's wrong to tag these as Gloria but it feels really weird for me to be honest since the only thing they have in common is the clothing.

Unbreakable said:

Not saying it's wrong to tag these as Gloria but it feels really weird for me to be honest since the only thing they have in common is the clothing.

Yeah, I agree. How many alternate_* tags do we need before it stops being the same character?

ルーミア said:

Yeah, I agree. How many alternate_* tags do we need before it stops being the same character?

It wouldn't stop any of them from being tagged as Gloria, though, since they still qualify as cosplay. That's basically the only distinction that can be made there, and to me it would be a fairly pedantic one.

BrokenEagle98 said:

But artists are not consistent. At least with Victor and Gloria as you pointed out, they all appear the same. So is not the case with Agent 3/4/8. With those, they're all over the map. If you were to ever nail down a "Agent X" must have such and such hair color with such and such eye color, would you ever expect users to honor that or remember that? Because if you don't nail down those characteristics, then we get back to the only thing that such characters have in common is the costume.

I am going solely off of their canon appearances as stated by Nintendo. Here's how this would work in practice.

post #2361110, post #3283159, post #4423672, post #3988748 - These are 1:1 renditions of Agent 3 (Splatoon). Tag normally.

post #3572589, post #4146007, post #3922187 - These are 1:1 renditions of Agent 3 in her Team Order colors. Tag Agent 3 (Splatoon), and alternate color. If there are enough Splatocalypse images (it's technically DLC), I think they may warrant their own copyright tag like Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion has.

post #3475258, post #3534644 - 1:1 rendition of Agent 3, under mind control of Commander Tarter. This is exactly how she appears in the game's story mode, not as a customizable or playable character. . Tag Agent 3 (Splatoon), Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion, alternate color, and mind control. Minus the janked up eye (as this color scheme is popular in fanart, penguin maru (penginmaru) seems to exclusively draw this palette), still keep the alternate color and Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion tags.

post #2092749 and etc. - Still easily identifiable as Agent 3. Tag Agent 3 (Splatoon), alternate hair color, and alternate eye color.

As for anything else that too heavily diverts from their canon appearance? Just tag Inkling and Squidbeak Splatoon. I'm not against keeping the Squidbeak Splatoon tag.

BrokenEagle98 said:
Also, there's instances where OC characters have donned the outfit of one of the Agents (post #2653969). So do they become the Agent and lose their OC name, or do they keep their OC name and not get the Agent name? It's not cosplay, because those OC characters are acting in the capacity of an Agent. It can't be the character, because they aren't the Inkling/Octoling as officially depicted by Nintendo. All they are doing is wearing the "costume" of the Agent, and acting as the Agent.

Once again, not against keeping the Squidbeak Splatoon tag for instances where they are not directly depicting one of the Agents specifically.

I think that will be difficult to manage and I know that many users will probably wrongly tag that. If someone wants to do the tremendous amount of continuous work gardening under such guidelines, who am I to argue. I certainly won't be doing that. I still think that a costume tag would be less likely to be mistagged since it has a lot more room for applicability, but I can see that I'm clearly in the minority.