I do realize that kitsune is fox in japan, however it also relates to the multi-tailed spirit foxes, which is different. When searching for kitsune I'd rather not have pages upon pages of Nick Wild, Maid Marian, and every other regular fox that's been uploaded; such as what I experienced just now. The arguments for excluding all the unwanted search results would be... annoying at best.

thunderkitsune said:
The arguments for excluding all the unwanted search results would be... annoying at best.

fox multi-tail

Not perfect, but massively reduces pool.

Wodahseht said:
fox multi-tail

Ok, that does work, but now I'm in it for the principle of the matter!

Nope. Kitsune is literally just the Japanese word for Fox, so the alias is actually needed. You could perhaps start up a kitsune_(youkai) tag for the "Spirit foxes" specifically, but the kitsune tag itself needs to stay aliased.

Yeah. We just had this conversation not too long ago in forum #213647. No special meaning exists for that word.

Wodahseht said:
fox multi-tail

Not perfect, but massively reduces pool.

There's also fox japanese_mythology, but the mythology tags tend to be rather undertagged.

Furrin_Gok said:
Nope. Kitsune is literally just the Japanese word for Fox, so the alias is actually needed. You could perhaps start up a kitsune_(youkai) tag for the "Spirit foxes" specifically, but the kitsune tag itself needs to stay aliased.

I couldn't see that being useful. There's really nothing to warrant a new tag for something that can already be covered by a combination of fox, magic and/or multi_tail. The only difference is that you're using a tag that hasn't been aliased.

And, as already stated previously...

Jackalfag said:
There's no real distinction between the two terms. "Kitsune" is exactly the same as "fox". There are more specific classifications, such as nogitsune, senko, tenko, and many, many others I couldn't be bothered to list. Youko (Japanese: 妖狐) or Huli-jing (Chinese: 狐狸精) is the generic term for mythical fox spirits, not "kitsune".

/ kitsune_(yokai) sounds promising

Jackalfag said:
I couldn't see that being useful. There's really nothing to warrant a new tag for something that can already be covered by a combination of fox, magic and/or multi_tail. The only difference is that you're using a tag that hasn't been aliased.

That's true for finding it, yeah

[[fox]] ~[[magic]] ~[[multi_tail]] can't be a species tag though,
and that's assuming 100% of results are accurate

see also #2 of https://e621.net/forum/show/187706
[/quote]

And, as already stated previously...

I'd be fine with either of those, but most people seem to be most familiar with kitsune rather than any of the (actual) terms for it

We also seem to have a rather inconsistent policy of axing non-english stuff in one place, then preserving them in others, so it seems to be a case-by-case thing

Maybe we could alias one to the other? ; there are options

Youkai is already a species tag, so I think we have that covered. Seems like it would get weird quick if we had a separate species tag for every specific variety of every type of species and people actually tagged them all consistently - at least without the species hierarchy idea in place (e.g. striped_skunk hog_nosed_skunk spotted_skunk etc). Normally two species in one character would mean hybrid or something, but in this case, demon is more of a property than a species.

Don't forget to check the ninetales tag. Apparently stuff like post #1062739, post #500721 and post #175534 don't count as kitsune or fox even though they clearly are (forum #216888).

There is an artist named Kitsune_Youkai so you may want to be careful.

I still say gumiho and tenko would be best

GDelscribe said:
There is an artist named Kitsune_Youkai so you may want to be careful.

I still say gumiho and tenko would be best

Do you mean "youko"? Tenko is a specific classification, rather than a generic term.

notnobody said:
Youkai is already a species tag, so I think we have that covered. Seems like it would get weird quick if we had a separate species tag for every specific variety of every type of species and people actually tagged them all consistently - at least without the species hierarchy idea in place (e.g. striped_skunk hog_nosed_skunk spotted_skunk etc). Normally two species in one character would mean hybrid or something, but in this case, demon is more of a property than a species.

Youkai is not a singular species. It covers kitsune, tengu, kappa, tanuki, etc, etc, etc x 100. There are so many youkai it's not funny.

I also argue against kitsune not meaning spirit fox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune

GDelscribe said:
There is an artist named Kitsune_Youkai so you may want to be careful.

I still say gumiho and tenko would be best

I thought a Gumiho was just the korean version of a fox spirit?

Kitsune is the Japanese word for a fox. Gumiho is a Korean variant that is very similar and can be considered a synonym on a global scale.

In Japanese mythology, anything that lives for over 100 years - animal or inanimate entity - becomes a supernatural and usually shapeshifting creature (obake), as per their cultural respect for old age and presumed wisdom. Some animals develop split or multiple tails as a consequence, which is how we as Westerners recognize the mythical kitsune. However, this is not a different species than an ordinary fox; every fox has the (mythological) potential to become such a spirit.

This is not the only origin of an obake, but it is one of the most common and the fact remains that all magical kitsune go under obake regardless of their circumstance.

What it all comes down to is whether or not e621 has any pressing need to cater to a hypothetical Japanese viewer, i.e., how many Japanese users it has.

The correct way from a Japanese perspective is to alias kitsune to fox and to tag all multi-tailed or otherwise magical Japanese kitsune additionally as obake (or whatever we end up aliasing that to.)

But the correct way from an English perspective is to use kitsune only to refer to magical Japanese foxes, and imply obake through it.

thunderkitsune said:
I also argue against kitsune not meaning spirit fox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune

Literally the first sentence of that article is "Kitsune is the Japanese word for fox."

I'm still not totally clear on what imagined meaning you're hoping we'll agree to add to it, but there isn't one that's supposed to be there. To my ear, it sounds like someone advocating that fuchs be used as a tag to mean a fox with two heads and a foot fetish. Kitsune just means fox. If there are extra meanings you want to add to some subset of them, go ahead and suggest a set of tags for those meanings, but the things you're talking about - the mystical aspects - that apply in Japanese culture, which by the way clearly is not your own, apply to all foxes regardless of the number of tails they have. There is no possible explanation for us to have some arbitrary set of properties applied to an entire species just because sometimes someone says that species' name in a different language.

thunderkitsune said:
Youkai is not a singular species. It covers kitsune, tengu, kappa, tanuki, etc, etc, etc x 100. There are so many youkai it's not funny.

I also argue against kitsune not meaning spirit fox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune

the word kitsune is often translated as fox spirit. However, this does not mean that kitsune are ghosts, nor that they are fundamentally different from regular foxes.

Even Wikipedia says that "kitsune" and "fox" are one and the same.

Thirtyeight said:
I thought a Gumiho was just the korean version of a fox spirit?

Yep. But most common myths refer to the concept of the nine tailed fox. Which is the main issue of the topic at hand.

Jackalfag said:
Do you mean "youko"? Tenko is a specific classification, rather than a generic term.

Yeah thats right. Youko also works. I specified Tenko because it oft most refers to the "divine fox" with 9 tails. (Or 4 in some myths depending on...)

Youko might work better.

I think that fox_spirit is the most intuitive term to use to specify that it's a mythical Japanese kitsune and not an ordinary one.

A nine-tailed fox specifically is openly named as such in Japanese: kyūbi no kitsune. In most Japanese media / anime / etc., they are called kyuubi for short.

(Romanization of Japanese often doubles "long" vowels so that people don't have to type characters like ū.)

But I have a character explicitly meant to be a kitsune who only has three tails (myrrhdeas) - kyuubi (nine-tails) doesn't work.

Jackalfag said:
Even Wikipedia says that "kitsune" and "fox" are one and the same.

You should read the rest of it immediately after that line. Last I checked this was an English site.

notnobody said:
Literally the first sentence of that article is "Kitsune is the Japanese word for fox."

I'm still not totally clear on what imagined meaning you're hoping we'll agree to add to it, but there isn't one that's supposed to be there. To my ear, it sounds like someone advocating that fuchs be used as a tag to mean a fox with two heads and a foot fetish. Kitsune just means fox. If there are extra meanings you want to add to some subset of them, go ahead and suggest a set of tags for those meanings, but the things you're talking about - the mystical aspects - that apply in Japanese culture, which by the way clearly is not your own, apply to all foxes regardless of the number of tails they have. There is no possible explanation for us to have some arbitrary set of properties applied to an entire species just because sometimes someone says that species' name in a different language.

Read literally the second sentence.

thunderkitsune said:
Read literally the second sentence.

... which is the redundant observation that the English use of a Japanese word almost always refers to a perceived Japan-specific facet of that word.

e621 is, indeed, not Wikipedia, so Wikipedia's interpretations and rulings - which are based on making indepth & informative articles - are not particularly relevant in the context of making the simplest and most navigable mess of tags possible.

FibS said:
... which is the redundant observation that the English use of a Japanese word almost always refers to a perceived Japan-specific facet of that word.

e621 is, indeed, not Wikipedia, so Wikipedia's interpretations and rulings - which are based on making indepth & informative articles - are not particularly relevant in the context of making the simplest and most navigable mess of tags possible.

To which I would say having a single intuitive tag for what I am attempting to search, a word that has a long history in the furry fandom as meaning multi-tailed fox, would be better than having the same word aliased to ALL foxes.

thunderkitsune said:
To which I would say having a single intuitive tag for what I am attempting to search, a word that has a long history in the furry fandom as meaning multi-tailed fox, would be better than having the same word aliased to ALL foxes.

We tried that, it didn't work. Kitsune got tagged for all kinds of generic-looking regular foxes, it wasn't worth keeping separate because it was visually identical to fox.

Now can we stop rehashing this every few months?

Genjar said:
We tried that, it didn't work. Kitsune got tagged for all kinds of generic-looking regular foxes, it wasn't worth keeping separate because it was visually identical to fox.

Now can we stop rehashing this every few months?

If you had read the thread, and the one before this as well, you'd have noticed there's a sub discussion worth looking into.

Right now there is no clear species tag for the (And I must admit very common) mystical multi-tailed fox creature. You could argue that using the fox and multi-tail tags will bring up what you want. And to a degree you're right, but in honesty its also going to come up to things that happen to have both of those things but not necessarily at the same time.

Its not always going to be accurate to what people want to see. Having more speciation in tags is good when there's a reason for it.

If something gets brought up multiple times its clearly a point that people consider worth discussing, so can we stop telling people to stop discussing points because you personally think they're not worth it? Please?

Genjar said:
We tried that, it didn't work. Kitsune got tagged for all kinds of generic-looking regular foxes, it wasn't worth keeping separate because it was visually identical to fox.

Now can we stop rehashing this every few months?

Was it people tagging it manually or was it the system that associates tags together. Because for a while if you tagged something shark, it would automatically tag cetacean too, in spite of them not being related. Or were people manually tagging that too for some reason.

thunderkitsune said:
Was it people tagging it manually or was it the system that associates tags together.

It was tagged manually, mostly by outside information: kitsune characters got tagged as kitsune instead fox, regardless of what's actually visible. And some users tagged it for anthro foxes in general: fox tag for feral foxes, but kitsune for bipedal ones. Then there's various fox humanoid monster girls which are called Kitsune in the source and were tagged as such regardless of what they actually look like.

The userbase has a lot of conflicting ideas about what exactly counts as a kitsune. Miles Prower for example: some insisted that he should be tagged as kitsune since he has multiple tails, while others said that he's obviously not one.

...that's why tag variations such as kitsune_(youkai) are unlikely to work any better.