Is reverse trap underused?

Currently the reverse trap tag doesn't cover a fraction of what would be considered an androgynous girl. Some of them probably don't completely fit into the current criteria either, yet this is already the best tag we've got and there're no better alternatives. For example an otoko no ko wearing shorts would still get tagged as an otoko no ko, but I'm sure most of us wouldn't tag a reverse trap if the girl is wearing a skirt, even if her face looks perfectly androgynous. Often times if the girl doesn't look 100% masculine people will hesitate to use the tag, myself included, even though that's probably what users want to see. And obviously if you're not going to an extreme a reverse trap will still have feminine traits, just like many under otoko no ko still demonstrate masculine traits.

This is reinforced by its own wiki:

As a rule of thumb, if you can correctly tell the gender with complete certainty from the thumbnail alone, it's not a reverse trap.

This makes searching of androgynous girls extremely difficult. Some may suggest that androgynous girl works as an alternative, but it doesn't. Androgynous is already dominated by androgynous boys, so unless you filter out boys, your searches are going be filled with false positives. Plus androgynous on girls is not any less undertagged compare to reverse traps. It has happened many times where I searched for "reverse trap + a female character that's the definition of reverse trap" with little to no result, switched to "androgynous + that character", only to find out that there aren't any more results.

Is reverse trap underused and we need to expand its definition or do we need a more generic androgynous girl tag?

magcolo said:
Is reverse trap underused and we need to expand its definition or do we need a more generic androgynous girl tag?

I think it's underused in that people often forget to tag it on established reverse traps, but I don't think it should be added to characters in skirts or with visible breast curves. You can tag traps with shorts easily because we are used to seeing women wear shorts and its not as "feminine" as a skirt is. With the exception of kilts its ubiquitously associated with femininity and breaks any illusion of the reverse trap possibly being a man.

A character doesn't need to be 100% manly Rika still has long hair post #7542915 or Naoto can look pretty girly while not leaving the reverse trap range due to her character design post #7386133, but I think it's better to keep it restrictive. Can you post some of the characters you don't think currently fit in the tag but should?

zetsubousensei said:

I think it's underused in that people often forget to tag it on established reverse traps, but I don't think it should be added to characters in skirts or with visible breast curves. You can tag traps with shorts easily because we are used to seeing women wear shorts and its not as "feminine" as a skirt is. With the exception of kilts its ubiquitously associated with femininity and breaks any illusion of the reverse trap possibly being a man.

A character doesn't need to be 100% manly Rika still has long hair post #7542915 or Naoto can look pretty girly while not leaving the reverse trap range due to her character design post #7386133, but I think it's better to keep it restrictive. Can you post some of the characters you don't think currently fit in the tag but should?

I can't say for sure whether they fit the current criteria of reverse trap or not because as you mentioned, even established traps go untagged, this in turn affects users' understanding of its requirements as they can't get an accurate depiction of what should be in the tag just by looking at what's already in it. I brought this up because I searched for some (imo) textbook reverse traps to see how many of them has the tag, I knew reverse trap is underused, but the (low) amount of posts still surprised me.

Looking at your examples, many of those characters would face the same issues if you didn't populate them. Maybe these posts do fit the current definition of reverse trap after all, but the current state of the tag makes it hard to know. And if people can't tell what goes into a tag, they won't populate it, and even less people will know what goes into that tag.

I'll put some examples of what makes me hesitate (regardless whether they currently have the reverse trap tag or not)

1. post #7230860, post #6021286, post #7278277, post #6736949, post #3974426, post #6736941, post #5250189, post #5050041, post #7278350 - still somewhat feminine despite having androgynous hair and face

I think that phrase in its wiki saying that if you can tell it's a girl it's not a reverse trap is what's causing the restriction. We're just too good at detecting the feminine traits, and sometimes it's intentional, artists might just want to draw a handsome/androgynous girl without wanting to trick anyone, so they don't intentionally hide the feminine traits completely.

2. post #7344226, post #3040281, post #3213823 - androgynous but feminine, can be mistaken for otoko no kos

3. post #3997481 - androgynous looking, but not… a trap? Like how it feels weird to tag androgynous mature males as otoko no ko.

4. post #7365893, post #5211661, post #6941419, post #6839189 - feminine clothing

5. post #7278367, post #7031866 - Given your example, I assume this amount of breast curve is acceptable?

6. pool #6118?

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