Arknights Endfield Endministrator, and other gendered protag umbrellas

BUR #20611 has been approved by @nonamethanks.

create implication female_endministrator_(arknights) -> endministrator_(arknights)
create implication male_endministrator_(arknights) -> endministrator_(arknights)

Let's nip this subject in the bud before there's hundreds of posts for this specific tag.

Currently, the question of whether gender-selectable protagonists have an overarching umbrella tag is wildly inconsistent. For example, Star Rail has a Trailblazer (Honkai: Star Rail) tag, Genshin doesn't have a Traveler (Genshin Impact) tag, Fate Grand Order doesn't have a Fujimaru Ritsuka (Fate) tag, various Fire Emblem games have an umbrella protag tag (byleth_(fire_emblem), corrin_(fire_emblem), robin_(fire_emblem)...), etc.

This is completely inconsistent across franchises and there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why some franchises get a protagonist umbrella and others don't, other than "people made the tag". Personally I think it's useful and allows people to search for art of a game's protagonist no matter the gender without the use of two-tags ~or searches, but for the most part I don't really care one way or the other so long as it's made consistent across franchises.

Since this tag exists for Endfield, the question is whether to keep it or not.
If so, then this request is here to imply it, and we should eventually work at implementing these gender-protag-umbrellas for franchises that don't have it such as FGO and Genshin. If not, then endministrator_(arknights) should be removed, and we should eventually work at deleting these gender-protag-umbrellas for franchises that do have it such as Fire Emblem and Star Rail.

It is worth pointing out that the inconsistencies you just pointed towards all stem from their own different precedents, legacies, and contexts, to the extent that I only think Honkai's Trailblazer is the closest related case.

In the case of Arknights and Honkai, they both descend from Admiral (KanColle) (and to an extent Producer (Idolmaster)). Those tags descended from here generally adopt the approach of one main character tag, assumed male, and implicate anything male or ambiguous to it, while a completely separate unimplicated set of female tags existed parallel from this (the attitude being that if the female tags implied the main tag, you wouldn't be able to search for tags featuring both male and female admirals). This later gets adapted with Arknights, where, because the Doctor wears gender-neutral clothing, male- and female-specific tags become a necessity (probably aided by looking at precedent elsewhere). The main factor in this line of precedent is that the characters typically share the same basic design elements, whether it be an admiral outfit, a military uniform, or whatever Arknights's Doctor wears - and what aids in this compared to other contexts is that these protags generally don't have set visual appearances.

But Honkai also follows Genshin's precedent, which itself follows from F/GO's precedent. An umbrella Fujimaru Ritsuka tag was pitched in topic #18122, but the conclusion reached was that the characters are completely different from one another despite them looking the same, and as such, they shouldn't have an umbrella tag (distinct from similar discourse elsewhere, i.e. topic #19119).

And Fire Emblem has its own line of precedent, disconnected from the above two mentioned. But as noted in the Fujimaru Ritsuka topic I mentioned, this isn't the first time people have wondered about all these inconsistencies.

I'm gonna vote in favor since I'm going to assume a Doctor-tier situation for the Endministrator, that being functionally identical characters, just with options for which you want as your avatar.

Right, of course these tags all stem from different "eras" and precedent, so saying there's no reason other than "people made the tag" is oversimplifying it; but the gist of it is that functionally they all seem to be in the same situation where they're protagonists of a game where you can choose the gender, with varying degrees of similarities in appearance, and that serve the exact same purpose as their counterpart story-wise.

Damian0358 said:

I'm gonna vote in favor since I'm going to assume a Doctor-tier situation for the Endministrator, that being functionally identical characters, just with options for which you want as your avatar.

This seems correct, at least insofar as the information we have currently, they're both "the" Endministrator, just depends on which one the player picks. They have the exact same bio on the official site and wear roughly the same clothes too.
Like most gachas where you can select your protag, they will probably be functionally identical and serve exactly the same purpose save for appearance/gender.

Personally, I disagree with giving them an umbrella tag. It feels unnecessary when you don't have ambiguous characters that you can easily define as "Male_Character" or "Female_Character" like the Doctor from AK. I, also, feel like the probability of searching for a generalized protag is significantly lower than searching for either male/female.

In this case if an umbrella tag doesn't get made, you can still search *endmini* or whatever for a catch-all, like how you can search fujimaru_ritsuka* if you want pics with either F/GO protag.

topic #24470
topic #21928

Previous adjacent & relevant discussions.

This bulk update request is pending automatic rejection in 5 days.

This bulk update request has been rejected because it was not approved within 45 days.

The bulk update request #20611 (forum #257463) has been rejected by @DanbooruBot.

So the vote has a relatively positive response, but any official word on how to proceed going forward then? Are we implementing consistent umbrellas for protags where the player chooses gender, or are we axing such umbrellas that currently exist (even though I reckon such a BUR for FE for example will probably get a good bunch of no votes)?

BUR #21718 has been rejected.

nuke professor_(neural_cloud)
create alias male_professor_(neural_cloud) -> professor_(neural_cloud)

Since the above BUR has fallen through and I would like some consistency with the GF series, as we have Commander and Fem. Commander
Thankfully Neural Cloud is relatively small, so I am tracking the images depicting an ambiguous professor and can readd the character tag easily

There a particular reason to nuke NC's professor tag? The player character in NC does have a fixed canonical appearance.

GreyOmega4K said:

There a particular reason to nuke NC's professor tag? The player character in NC does have a fixed canonical appearance.

Any time the professor is featured, the art will get the gendered tag and then the professor tag, unless the gender is ambiguous of course. Nuking it will avoid having the male version being erroneously applied to artwork featuring the female professor. So if it goes through, I nor another will have go through 60 images featuring the female professor and remove the professor tag.

No, that's fucking stupid. If your goal is to avoid mistags (which if you actually looked has never ever been an issue in either tag's history), then making them more ambiguous is completely antithetical to that. Given this is doing something completely different you really should've made a separate thread for this.

I made the umbrella tag for consistency with Arknights (as a parent), but the obvious difference is that for Arknights the only official version of Doctor is the ambiguously-gendered one that only ever appears masked. That effectively makes female/male Doctors just OCs where the 'umbrella' is a necessity. For Endfield (and a lot of other games mentioned) there is no analogue, just the female/male variants of the PC.

If we don't want these umbrella tags then I'm inclined to just nuke it since having these stupid limbo tags where we neither want to keep it nor get rid of it is utterly ridiculous.

Perhaps you shouldn't make up a random argument, then proceed to get angry about it. My BUR is on-topic for this thread as it seeks to remove the Professor umbrella. Since GF doesn't have one, neither should NC.

Kommandant said:

Perhaps you shouldn't make up a random argument, then proceed to get angry about it. My BUR is on-topic for this thread as it seeks to remove the Professor umbrella. Since GF doesn't have one, neither should NC.

Maybe you should re-read your BUR, because it's pretty blatantly doing more than that.

Talulah said:

Maybe you should re-read your BUR, because it's pretty blatantly doing more than that.

It shouldn't be. All it should do is remove the professor umbrella, followed then by aliasing Male Prof. to just Prof.

Kommandant said:

[…] Nuking it will avoid having the male version being erroneously applied to artwork featuring the female professor.

I don't get how that works. You think people are gonna mistag the male tag on female commander when "male" is in its name? Sounds like removing "male" would bring in more mistags.

Kommandant said:

It shouldn't be. All it should do is remove the professor umbrella, followed then by aliasing Male Prof. to just Prof.

Kommandant said:

[…] Since GF doesn't have one, neither should NC.

The problem with your idea is that it's wrong from the core. What is with GF having variant tags like female commander and non-human commander but then decided that it's a good idea to use commander as their male commander tag?

Either give male commanders a tag and imply all variants to commander, like Arknights, or no umbrella tag at all like FGO.

The question should be why you think it's a good idea to follow GF's erroneous footsteps. If anything, GF is the one that might need some revision.

And I agree you should've just make a new thread about this. Even if the BUR is related doesn't mean attaching it here is the best idea, especially ones you know that's gonna prompt discussions, and it's not even your thread.

magcolo said:

The question should be why you think it's a good idea to follow GF's erroneous footsteps. If anything, GF is the one that might need some revision.

I assume the reason why is because if that were done, we'd have to go back down the ladder, eventually taking us back to Admiral (KanColle) (and maybe Producer (Idolmaster) too), as the attitude of treating the core tag as default male started there. That is to say, Kommandant wants to preserve the status quo.

magcolo said:

I don't get how that works. You think people are gonna mistag the male tag on female commander when "male" is in its name? Sounds like removing "male" would bring in more mistags.

No. If the BUR was just a straight aliasing male professor to professor than the 40 or so images that has the female professor will also have "male" professor tag on it as well. It's not for mistagging, it's to avoid gardening the images that only depicts the Female Professor

magcolo said:

And I agree you should've just make a new thread about this. Even if the BUR is related doesn't mean attaching it here is the best idea, especially ones you know that's gonna prompt discussions, and it's not even your thread.

You do know how threads work right? If it's on topic, no one should be creating new threads just because someone has a slightly different idea. Exception to that is if the associated thread is old. So it doesn't matter if it's not my thread and certainly doesn't matter if it prompts discussion, matter of fact, it should be prompting discussion, otherwise what is even the point of BUR threads having standard posts enabled?