Are Pokemon that can only be one gender supposed to be tagged that gender, or is ambiguous_gender acceptable? I see multiple pages of, for example, Latias being tagged as Ambiguous, despite only being female.

Pecan said:
Are Pokemon that can only be one gender supposed to be tagged that gender

If they were, then they would be implied to that gender.

But given that a species canonically being monogender doesn't prevent the artist from drawing an 'impossible' gender, such an implication would certainly create mistags. We could only make that assumption if it were proved physically impossible to draw a non-female latias ;)

To demonstrate: latias male solo rating:e vs latias female solo rating:e ; latios male solo rating:e vs latios female solo rating:e. And also latias intersex solo rating:e , latios intersex solo rating:e.

The only thing "Can only be one gender" will allow us to tag is the crossgender tag, but that doesn't apply when it's just Ambiguous.
Latios and Latias in particular are supposed to look like jet planes, so outside of anthrofying them, it's easier for them to wind up with an ambiguous tag than male or female.

How do you know that all Latias are female like post #1307567? Would you say that post #526422 is male or female?

e6 policy is that we do not tag sex based on knowledge of fictional lore. Someone who knows about Pokemon might say post #1307567 is canonically female because all Latias are female. Someone who knows about League of Legends might say post #526422 is canonically male because male Yordles are more furry. But most people don't know these things and tagging policy reflects that.

For more details see the review on forum #239784.

leomole said:
e6 policy is that we do not tag sex based on knowledge of fictional lore..

With something like LoL, this works, because in LoL you don't play as a species, you play as a character. The background stuff on species and the like is all flavour text and the like, and doesn't really come in to play. (I would, however argue that post #526422 is Male, as Gnar is a male CHARACTER, not just a male species, and there is no hint of crossgender. You wouldn't post a sprite of, say, Toriel and tag it as ambiguous because you couldn't tell she had boobs)

However that rule doesn't work in pokemon because it isn't 'fictional lore' dictating these rules, but the games programming and numbers. It is hard coded, using very real algorithms, that you cannot find certain genders of certain species.

Even if you ignore that distinction between lore and programming, the review you posted is about "Sexual Dimorphism". However, for sexual dimorphism to be a thing, you need to have more than one sex. Things like Yordles, Charr, Pikachu and Floatzel have more than one sex. Things like Latias don't, and the fact that we have to apply crossgender to male Latias shows that even e621 recognizes this.

All in all, I guess I'm of the opinion that if we want to follow the overall guideline of TWYS, then if we don't SEE any sign of crossgender, we should use the correct gender tag for that species/character. However, I don't feel strongly enough about this to force everyone to change there tagging, especially since I highly doubt I can be charming and persuasive enough to get people to actually agree with me.

Pecan said:
I would, however argue that post #526422 is Male, as Gnar is a male CHARACTER, not just a male species, and there is no hint of crossgender. You wouldn't post a sprite of, say, Toriel and tag it as ambiguous because you couldn't tell she had boobs

Actually, yes. If you can see no evidence in image of the character's gender, you tag them as Ambiguous. Toriel and Gnar both.

Pecan said:
I would, however argue that post #526422 is Male, as Gnar is a male CHARACTER

That is irrelevant for tagging purposes. Posts are tagged without using outside knowledge such as whether the character is normally male or female. From the tag_what_you_see page: "YOU CAN NOT USE EXTERNAL INFORMATION TO TAG GENDER"

Pecan said:
You wouldn't post a sprite of, say, Toriel and tag it as ambiguous because you couldn't tell she had boobs

Yes you would. post #366093 for example is ambiguous_gender.

Pecan said:
It is hard coded, using very real algorithms, that you cannot find certain genders of certain species.

Artists don't care how real those algorithms are. post #322713 is correctly tagged as a male Kangaskhan even though lore says that all Kangaskhan are female.

Pecan said:
we have to apply crossgender to male Latias

I believe this is incorrect. Crossgender is tagged for genderswapped characters not species. We may need input from an admin on this.

Pecan said:
I'm of the opinion that if we want to follow the overall guideline of TWYS, then if we don't SEE any sign of crossgender, we should use the correct gender tag for that species/character.

That is TWYK. That is literally the opposite of TWYS. Please read the tag_what_you_see page.

leomole said:
I believe this is incorrect. Crossgender is tagged for genderswapped characters not species. We may need input from an admin on this.

This tag can also be applied to the rare genderswaps of species that are normally all-female or all-male.

~crossgender wiki page (added by Genjar, during his tenure as site staff, if i'm not mistaken)

I stand corrected. Thank you.

Doesn't matter. Tag what you see.
Example: that feminine mouse that everyone lost their shit about last month

Pecan said:
Are Pokemon that can only be one gender supposed to be tagged that gender, or is ambiguous_gender acceptable? I see multiple pages of, for example, Latias being tagged as Ambiguous, despite only being female.

Well the only thing to do if you're unsure, is propose a fitting classification. Because from what I remember there's no male of female jigglypuff. So is the thing asexual or can change sex like certain lizards and species of fish when mating? We don't know because they're fictional. So just tag what you see.

MrKranberryJam69 said:
Well the only thing to do if you're unsure, is propose a fitting classification. Because from what I remember there's no male of female jigglypuff. So is the thing asexual or can change sex like certain lizards and species of fish when mating? We don't know because they're fictional. So just tag what you see.

https://www.serebii.net/pokedex-xy/039.shtml
Male: 25%
Female: 75%

It's only ditto and most legendary pokemon that have no genders, but that doesn't make them asexual, it makes them "Whatever gender you want." Whether either is possible, or it has none, crossgender no longer applies.

Tag what you see.
Tag what you see.
Tag what you see.

"But Snow, what about--"

Tag what you see.

"But, the series says--"

Nope, tag what you see.

There is no "default gender."

YOU might know and recognize a character, but that doesn't mean that everyone else will.

Tag what you see, not what you know.

Furrin_Gok said:
It's only ditto and most legendary pokemon that have no genders, but that doesn't make them asexual, it makes them "Whatever gender you want." Whether either is possible, or it has none, crossgender no longer applies.

Actually there are lots of genderless pokemon, Porygons, the Magnamite line, Rotom and quite a few others.

savageorange said:
If they were, then they would be implied to that gender.

Totally in agreement with savageorange here, Latios and Latias are the same species. The females (Latias) are red and the males (Latios) are blue. Unless the artist has taken some artistic freedom and drawn them with the genitals the other way round or as savageorange puts it an 'impossible gender' it's fairly safe to assume the red ones are female and the blue ones are male.

I reason that there are gender differences in the animal kingdom too, which I've seen acknowledged on this site. Pokémon are just fictional animals after all so the same logic would apply to them as any other animal.

Therefore I suggest Latias would not be ambiguous gender, because by definition they are the female variant of their species, (of course this doesn't and shouldn't stop artists from 'getting creative', each to their own etc), note that as this defines them as a species and not as a character, seeing a Latias is seeing a female. This logic would apply to all the other monogender Pokémon. Is that fair reasoning?

lewd_dewd said:
Therefore I suggest Latias would not be ambiguous gender, because by definition they are the female variant of their species, (of course this doesn't and shouldn't stop artists from 'getting creative', each to their own etc), note that as this defines them as a species and not as a character, seeing a Latias is seeing a female. This logic would apply to all the other monogender Pokémon. Is that fair reasoning?

Wrong; pokemon genders, unlike real animal gender dimorphism, are not common knowledge. Unless specified in the post itself via physical features, they are assumed ambiguous. The most a male latias or female latios would get would be a genderswap tag, as that is one of the few tags allowed to be Tag What You Know rather than th standard Tag What You See.

lewd_dewd said:
I reason that there are gender differences in the animal kingdom too, which I've seen acknowledged on this site. Pokémon are just fictional animals after all so the same logic would apply to them as any other animal.

leomole said:
e6 policy is that we do not tag sex based on knowledge of fictional lore.

For more details see the review on forum #239784.

Please read the thread before commenting.

Did I stutter? Tag what you see!

lewd_dewd said:
Totally in agreement with savageorange here, Latios and Latias are the same species. The females (Latias) are red and the males (Latios) are blue. Unless the artist has taken some artistic freedom and drawn them with the genitals the other way round or as savageorange puts it an 'impossible gender' it's fairly safe to assume the red ones are female and the blue ones are male.

That's just it. People DO THIS.

post #1602634 post #1453672 post #1372386 post #557110

And sometimes they don't even draw them as males OR females:

post #1328040 post #710408 post #1283460 post #869260

This isn't some "bizarre impossibility" ... people DO this. People love slapping a dick or a pussy onto things that don't normally have one. and in fact while looking for those pictures, I also found yellow Latixs and green LatiXs as well. I'm sure there are pink ones and purple ones and orange ones too.

Maybe we should get rid of Latios/Latias as a tag and find a single tag for the two pokemon? after all, we don't usually allow for gendered tags at all.

I reason that there are gender differences in the animal kingdom too, which I've seen acknowledged on this site. Pokémon are just fictional animals after all so the same logic would apply to them as any other animal.

Therefore I suggest Latias would not be ambiguous gender, because by definition they are the female variant of their species, (of course this doesn't and shouldn't stop artists from 'getting creative', each to their own etc), note that as this defines them as a species and not as a character, seeing a Latias is seeing a female. This logic would apply to all the other monogender Pokémon. Is that fair reasoning?

Not really.

I'm not a pokemon fan. I do not know what the sexual diamorphism of the LatiaXs species is. Pokemon are not a real species. If I search for "male" I want pictures of males, not a pokemon that people claim is male despite no outward signs of it.

tag what you see.

The difference between Latios and Latias goes beyond "One is canonically this gender and the other that gender," they have different forehead markings (which I've seen artists customize), ear-fins, and wing-spikes. It would be nice to have an umbrella tag for the two for when an artist draws a character that doesn't quite look specifically as though it's one or the other, but I'd like to be able to still search for those that do follow the design.

There's no such thing as "can only be one gender".

If we consider that even a well-defined individual with a canonical sex or gender such as "Miles 'Tales' Prower who is male" can be drawn as any other sex or gender ("Rule 63"), I don't see why this wouldn't apply to Pokemon species or to legendary Pokemon that, like Tails, are one-of-a-kind individuals.

Pokemon has the added issue that it originally began with no recognition of sex or gender whatsoever (except for Nidoking v. Nidoqueen) and has gradually added sexes for (almost) every Pokemon species, sexual dimorphism, etc. This means that not only will fanart sampled from across Pokemon's history not consistently reflect "canonical" Pokemon gender, but even art made in the modern day may have a nostalgic approach and ignore newer gender details.

Even the canon isn't consistent, as the animated version of Mewtwo began as a very masculine presence and over time was made more androgynous despite being (so far as I know) the exact same and officially unchanged individual.

Pokemon is also a series whose fans particularly love to spite canon (and sanity) for creativity; hybrid Pokemon, more than two types simultaneously, colors besides normal and Shiny, and unique marking patterns beyond Spinda are all explicitly non-canon to the games (and only semi-canon to the anime). Regardless of whether we creatively approve of this we have to accept the reality that it exists and happens, and therefore renders any attempt to define a consistent, TWYS-friendly gender for a Pokemon futile.