Basically the entirety of dom/sub-related tags is a big giant mess. There's no real direction for these tags to go so they're very inconsistent.

Currently we have "sub" and "submission" aliased to submissive. We also have "dom" which is not aliased to anything. Finally there's domination which has a bunch of aliases like "dominant", "dominance", etc.

forum #143040 is somewhat related but I don't think any action was taken there.

Anyway, there are many posts with solo characters and one or more of the various dom/sub tags. See dom solo, domination solo, and submissive solo for examples. dominatrix solo is somewhat related. Note there are solo characters both dominating and being dominated in domination solo, which is confusing.

I do think that tagging dominant/submissive characters would be really useful, and it would be great to have a pair of tags for that. But it might also be too subjective. Either way it's probably going to be a tagging project.

To sum up, we have a few decisions here:

• Whether to tag characters as sub/dom at all. If so, what tags do we use?

• What tag(s) to use for actual submission/domination between two or more characters.

Obviously we should avoid using the same tag for both purposes. Otherwise if we had a post with multiple submissive characters but without any actual submission going on it'd be somewhat ambiguous.

I've been keeping an eye on this one for the last few months and I fully agree. Dominatrix is probably the closest we're going to get to being something that's easily tagable and the bdsm tags outside of bondage are a complete mess; most of it needs to be done away with or at least heavily condensed as they don't match up well with static images, which is the bulk of what we deal with.

These are just some thoughts I have that are based on trends I've seen:

Feel free to disagree with any of these, as I'd love to hear your own reasoning.

A possibility: a solo character in an aggressive pose that does not display indicia of being a dominatrix could be tagged as "assertive" or, perhaps better due to accurace (and lack of cultural bias), "aggressive female."

Throwing more tags into this mess is obviously not generally optimal, but if dominatrix isn't the only way to refer to "aggressive female," that could raise the value of the dominatrix tag.

I'm generally hesitant to add more gender-specific tags than we already have, particularly when it doesn't account for herm/dickgirl being in that same role, which is not all that uncommon. The dom role is fairly specific and definitely cultural, I don't think there is a good way around that outside of just tagging the clothing (stilettos) and random BDSM paraphanalia (spreader_bar, whip, etc.).

I'm also hesitant to use broad terms like "agressive" and "assertive" as the words by themselves don't really suggest any connection to BDSM. For example, a female character could be considered "aggressive" if they hit another character or "assertive" if they refused to back down in an argument.

We do have female_domination, which does fit the role fairly nicely, but doesn't always get tagged in relation to this BDSM role (e.g., a female raping another character might get tagged female_domination). It's definitely tagged more consistently than domination, that's for sure.

A tag like dickgirl_domination or even intersex_domination (if we don't want to be overly specific) might fit the role well enough for intersex characters. Something else to consider.

Yeah the difference between bondage/bound is difficult to apply and not all that useful. Could easily just use forced or something to separate the current meanings that the wiki has for them.

There is a question of whether we should use bound or bondage. Doesn't really matter either way but I feel like bound sounds better and makes a little more sense for solo posts.

Somewhat related is the restrained tag. There is a useful and easy difference between restrained and bound, but I think a bound -> restrained implication makes sense.

Also pinned -> restrained needs to exist regardless of what other decisions are made.

I support more consistent use of presenting. That's one hell of a tagging project, basically going through every post on e621 since so many either lack presenting itself or the proper sub-tags (presenting_whatever).

sadism and masochism are complicated, yeah. The biggest problem I see is that it's hard to tell when a character is feeling pleasure from pain, so masochism is really hard to tag. However, we could fairly easily say that if a character is being whipped (or whatever else) the post should be tagged sadism.

Edit: Yes gender-specific tags in general are really gross. Can we get per-character tags now? :P

parasprite said:

• Do away with domination because it's a joke. It has too many meanings, too much baggage in general, and high rates of bad tagging. Favor dominatrix where we can.

But dominatrix is a gender-specific tag; it's Latin for dominating woman. What about dominant males and intersex?

Alias bound -> bondage (the difference isn't worth the effort, and we can mark it bdsm-style in other ways)

Other way around, if at all. Just because someone's bound, doesn't make it bondage.

Nightdragon939 said:
I support more consistent use of presenting. That's one hell of a tagging project, basically going through every post on e621 since so many either lack presenting itself or the proper sub-tags (presenting_whatever).

Yeah, just adding subtags would be quite a project.
presenting -presenting_breasts -presenting_penis -presenting_hindquarters -presenting_pussy -presenting_cloaca gets a lot of hits.

...I might get to that someday though, if nobody else has by then.

Yeah, just adding subtags would be quite a project.
presenting -presenting_breasts -presenting_penis -presenting_hindquarters -presenting_pussy -presenting_cloaca gets a lot of hits.

...I might get to that someday though, if nobody else has by then.

presenting -presenting_* :P

Hmm, searching the tag database for presenting_* gave me an idea. Which presenting tags should we actually use? You've stated the obvious, but do we also want others? The tag database has presenting_anus, _butt, _ass, _paws, and _posterior, for example.

presenting_paws would be good for paw/foot fetish.

presenting_anus would probably be useful as well.

presenting_ass, presenting_butt, and presenting_posterior can be aliased to _hindquarters as is the current standard.

Though maybe we should replace presenting_hindquarters with something that doesn't sound so dumb. It currently implies butt, so maybe alias presenting_hindquarters -> presenting_butt?

Also, is presenting_to_viewer a thing we want? Should we separate presenting to the viewer and to another character?

Nightdragon939 said:
presenting -presenting_* :P

Mixing a - and * in a single term doesn't actually work unfortunately; the search just ignores it.

presenting_paws would be good for paw/foot fetish.

That purpose is mostly served by foot_focus atm.

However it's worth mentioning that feet is actually back as a tag (it was aliased to hindpaw for...basically since the site began—a lot of scalies are still tagged with paws because of that), but it's probably going to be a mixed bag for a while until we figure out what to do with it.

All I've been able to come up with so far is using feet/feet as a generic umbrella tag for the other foot-like tags as a way of grouping them. For instance foot_fetish hindpaw (if it were cleaned up) might tailor well to paw/pawpad lovers whereas foot_fetish human_feet (really humanoid_feet) might work well for others. I don't know how things like talons would work into this, but it isn't a very common theme that I've seen at least.

• feet
• hindpaws
• human_feet
• foot_focus
• foot_fetish
• footjob
• licking_foot

presenting_anus would probably be useful as well.

Presenting_anus actually already exists but is probably fairly undertagged. It does fill a nice role though that I don't think we could replicate with other tags.

presenting_ass, presenting_butt, and presenting_posterior can be aliased to _hindquarters as is the current standard.

Though maybe we should replace presenting_hindquarters with something that doesn't sound so dumb. It currently implies butt, so maybe alias presenting_hindquarters -> presenting_butt?

I like the name myself, but presenting_butt would probably work equally well imo. If enough think it is a good idea I wouldn't be too upset if it were to change suddenly.

Also, is presenting_to_viewer a thing we want? Should we separate presenting to the viewer and to another character?

Not sure. Presenting (particularly presenting_hindquarters) is overwhelmingly tagged on posts pointing to the viewer as it is. I don't know that there is much room for distinction here.

Genjar said:
But dominatrix is a gender-specific tag; it's Latin for dominating woman. What about dominant males and intersex?

The more I think about it the more I'm starting to lean towards (gender)_domination or something similar. It gets past the whole "gender specific term" baggage entirely and female_domination seems to function pretty well.

Genjar said:

Other way around, if at all. Just because someone's bound, doesn't make it bondage.

Nightdragon939 said:

There is a question of whether we should use bound or bondage. Doesn't really matter either way but I feel like bound sounds better and makes a little more sense for solo posts.

Good points. I can see how it would make more sense to go bondage -> bound and is definitely still worth considering.

Somewhat related is the restrained tag. There is a useful and easy difference between restrained and bound, but I think a bound -> restrained implication makes sense.

I tend to use restrained mostly for tentacles since those tend to accidently get tagged with bondage or not at all, but that's just me.

I don't really use pinned so I can't really comment on that one.

I strongly favor the idea of having a presenting sub-tag. I would immediately use that for a blacklist item.

parasprite said:
I'm generally hesitant to add more gender-specific tags than we already have, ...

An excellent instinct. However, I should point out that a sexually aggressive female is uncommon enough to deserve a tag. We're not talking dominatrix here: media with enthusiastic females enjoying or controlling sex does not appear to be in the majority within internet naughtiness. Haven't done an exhaustive study, but it's a reasonable conclusion. This justifies a tag independent of the BDSM difficulty.

parasprite said:
I'm also hesitant to use broad terms like "agressive" and "assertive" as the words by themselves don't really suggest any connection to BDSM. For example, a female character could be considered "aggressive" if they hit another character or "assertive" if they refused to back down in an argument.

That would be the point; my apologies if I was unclear. It is precisely because these terms have nothing to do with BDSM that they have value. Not only in and of themselves, for those who are looking for powerful or happy females (or those wishing to avoid that), but because that means when you search for "dominatrix," you get someone in either appropriate gear or an appropriate pose. A powerful woman forcing herself on a dominated male but without any BDSM gear or bondage would not, under this concept, get a BDSM or dominatrix or similar tag. Instead, it would get some kind of "aggressive" tag.

Female domination, for example, works here. Female domination != BDSM, so the use of the former tag allows the latter to be more specific.

I can't speak to the dickgirl/intersex problem. . . but now that I think about it, a sub-tag for intersex would be rather nice. Indeed, if the role of each actor could be associated with the actor (male_dominant) could be included, that would be useful.

I like the name myself, but presenting_butt would probably work equally well imo. If enough think it is a good idea I wouldn't be too upset if it were to change suddenly.

I tried to make a suggestion but it gave me "Error: presenting_hindquarters is already aliased to something". My only guess is that the presenting_hindquarter -> presenting_hindquarters alias is messing it up.

Not sure. Presenting (particularly presenting_hindquarters) is overwhelmingly tagged on posts pointing to the viewer as it is. I don't know that there is much room for distinction here.

Think we should just say presenting only means presenting to the viewer?

The more I think about it the more I'm starting to lean towards (gender)_domination or something similar. It gets past the whole "gender specific term" baggage entirely and female_domination seems to function pretty well.

Using female_domination as a more general tag would be a good solution.

So let's summarize so far:

• Unimplicate bondage -> bdsm.

• Alias bondage -> bound. Use forced and bound instead for involuntary bondage.

• Alias dominatrix -> female_domination.

• Start using male_domination and others where appropriate. Implicate them all to domination.

• Clean up dom to remove dom solo stuff, then alias dom -> domination.

• Remove submissive.

• Discuss aliasing presenting_hindquarters -> presenting_butt. I don't really see why we wouldn't.

• Start gigantic tagging project to properly tag presenting and whatever is being presented (penis, anus, pussy, cloaca, butt...).

Oh I just thought of two more things. Should we have dominated_female and so on? Or maybe female_dominated, we already have a few tags like that.

And to be a bit more consistent, maybe should we consider using dominant_female instead of female_domination. I'm also thinking that female_domination could be taken to mean the domination of a female. Also might happen if we used dominating_female. I don't think it really matters either way, but we might want to consider it.

Nightdragon939 said:

• Discuss aliasing presenting_hindquarters -> presenting_butt. I don't really see why we wouldn't.

I think presenting_hindquarters works a lot better than presenting_butt would. Since, well, many species lack buttocks.

Though presenting_rear might work.

Well presenting_hindquarters currently implies butt. That would mean that implication should be removed.

presenting_rear is a good solution though, I'd support that.

Since presenting_hindquarters implies butt we could use that for tagging images where buttocks are clearly defined and use presenting_rear as an umbrella tag for the pose itself (buttocks or not).

That way instead of removing the implication presenting_hindquarters to butt, we could keep it and add an implication from presenting_hindquarters to presenting_rear. I think that help to make sure that users can specifically search for/blacklist images with defined buttocks if they want to.

Nightdragon939 said:
I tried to make a suggestion but it gave me "Error: presenting_hindquarters is already aliased to something". My only guess is that the presenting_hindquarter -> presenting_hindquarters alias is messing it up.

Yeah, the system doesn't let you alias X -> Y if something is aliased to X. There's no way around that unfortunately (or should I say fortunately).

Using female_domination as a more general tag would be a good solution.

So let's summarize so far:

• Unimplicate bondage -> bdsm.

• Alias bondage -> bound. Use forced and bound instead for involuntary bondage.

• Alias dominatrix -> female_domination.

• Start using male_domination and others where appropriate. Implicate them all to domination.

• Clean up dom to remove dom solo stuff, then alias dom -> domination.

• Remove submissive.

• Discuss aliasing presenting_hindquarters -> presenting_butt. I don't really see why we wouldn't.

• Start gigantic tagging project to properly tag presenting and whatever is being presented (penis, anus, pussy, cloaca, butt...).

I support all of this.

Think we should just say presenting only means presenting to the viewer?

presenting_rear is a good solution though, I'd support that.

Unsure. I think that it probably just not very common to draw characters presenting to each other without at least somewhat presenting to the camera, or most people just don't tag those with presenting.

As for presenting_rear, I'd support it if you think there are enough rears without butts to justify tagging it. It seems to me like making a distinction between presenting_rear and presenting_hindquarters/presenting_butt might work against them getting tagged. Remember that it's not uncommon for people to refer to a butt as "their rear".

They may also be better tagged with presenting_cloaca, etc. anyways and I'd like to put more weight on those if possible.

Oh I just thought of two more things. Should we have dominated_female and so on? Or maybe female_dominated, we already have a few tags like that.

And to be a bit more consistent, maybe should we consider using dominant_female instead of female_domination. I'm also thinking that female_domination could be taken to mean the domination of a female. Also might happen if we used dominating_female. I don't think it really matters either way, but we might want to consider it.

I don't think that would help things. It adds a second set of tags to what is already somewhat confusing (e.g, female_domination -> "a female that is dominating" or "dominating a female") and as far as I can tell, none of the grammatical forms eliminate the confusion of usage (e.g., female_dominated -> "a female that is dominated" or "he is being dominated by a female").

I think it would probably be better to just stick with the one form for now for simplicity and to generally reduce confusion. After we've cleaned this all up we will probably in a better place to discuss adding a new form if we still thought it was a good idea.

Yeah, the system doesn't let you alias X -> Y if something is aliased to X. There's no way around that unfortunately (or should I say fortunately).

Hmm, maybe it should just automatically re-alias stuff to Y? I dunno, it'd be useful for a lot of situations so that the admins don't have to manually redo all the aliases and such.

I support all of this.

Should we start making wiki edits where appropriate then? I'll make a few suggestions where I can right now, but I don't know if anybody else has any major complaints.

IIRC only admins can do implications and aliases so I guess the ones that are already involved with other tags will have to wait. Can somebody wake up an admin and get them moving? :P

As for presenting_rear, I'd support it if you think there are enough rears without butts to justify tagging it. It seems to me like making a distinction between presenting_rear and presenting_hindquarters/presenting_butt might work against them getting tagged. Remember that it's not uncommon for people to refer to a butt as "their rear".

I was actually suggesting just aliasing presenting_hindquarters -> presenting_rear or presenting_butt. I just think "hindquarters" is awkward and hard to remember, and since it already implies butt, why not?

I think it would probably be better to just stick with the one form for now for simplicity and to generally reduce confusion. After we've cleaned this all up we will probably in a better place to discuss adding a new form if we still thought it was a good idea.

Sorry, I probably should have said that in a less confusing way. I was suggesting that we alias female_domination -> dominant_female. Not really necessary, but it'd be nicer :P

Hmm, we could also start using submissive_female and so on. Let's say you want to look for sub guys, but don't care who they're being dominated by. There's not really a good way to look for that if we don't have a submissive_male tag.

And considering that, should we keep submissive? Mostly for obviously submissive solo images (e.g. post #381376).

Nightdragon939 said:
Hmm, maybe it should just automatically re-alias stuff to Y? I dunno, it'd be useful for a lot of situations so that the admins don't have to manually redo all the aliases and such.

It's also partially a failsafe. If there are things aliased to it chances are it is slightly more of a complex tangle from the start and allowing anybody to put them in the queue (alias request) is probably undesirable.

That being said, we could probably get around that with something along the lines of an admin-only "Yes, I want to bypass this" sort of checkbox, while still automatically disallowing those requests through the normal queue (how it is set up now).

Disclaimer: I'm just kind of thinking out loud, I don't know how difficult something like this would be to implement.

IIRC only admins can do implications and aliases so I guess the ones that are already involved with other tags will have to wait. Can somebody wake up an admin and get them moving? :P

Generally aliases/implications tend to move slowly to give everyone a good chance to speak up so I wouldn't be surprised if the actual aliases take a few days to get approved.

Fortunately it looks like most of these are on the back end and waiting for them to get approved doesn't seem to affect most of our plans as far as tagging goes since we're mostly just adding tags.

I was actually suggesting just aliasing presenting_hindquarters -> presenting_rear or presenting_butt. I just think "hindquarters" is awkward and hard to remember, and since it already implies butt, why not?

Oh, alright. Never mind then. :X

Yeah +1 to presenting_butt.

Sorry, I probably should have said that in a less confusing way. I was suggesting that we alias female_domination -> dominant_female. Not really necessary, but it'd be nicer :P

Dominant_female actually looks fairly promising. It seems to clarify meaning without any drawbacks. +1

Hmm, we could also start using submissive_female and so on. Let's say you want to look for sub guys, but don't care who they're being dominated by. There's not really a good way to look for that if we don't have a submissive_male tag.

And considering that, should we keep submissive? Mostly for obviously submissive solo images (e.g. post #381376).

Keeping either dominant or submissive as a tag in and of itself seems fairly useless, but using it as an umbrella tag might give more support and help it function a bit better.

Something like this?

• dominant
• dominant_female
• dominant_male
• dominant_herm
• etc.
• submissive
• submissive_female
• submissive_male
• submissive_herm
• etc.

I don't know if we want dominant_intersex/submissive_intersex, but fortunately the implications for those are fairly simple and can be easily added later if we decide they are worth using.

Should we start making wiki edits where appropriate then? I'll make a few suggestions where I can right now, but I don't know if anybody else has any major complaints.

There aren't really any hard guidelines, but anyone is free to edit the wiki as long as it's generally in alignment with what the tag is being used for already (and/or agreed upon here). I'd recommend keeping them as short and straightforward as possible (i.e., more like a dictionary and less like a wikipedia entry) as it's easy to get carried away with the descriptions.

Note that the bondage-related wikis in particular are one of my earlier projects and I've got a number of tags piled up that still need to be fit into there. You're still free to edit them if you like, I'm just letting you know that they will probably end up getting moved around a bit is all.

If you have any questions (about the wiki in particular) feel free to send me a dmail.

I still think presenting_rear (or simply leaving it as presenting_hindquarters) works a lot better than presenting_butt.

It's hard to explain, but presenting_hindquarters isn't limited to the butt. The usage is broader than that.

Whereas presenting_butt wouldn't differ much in meaning from presenting_anus.