Implicating blaziken → avian
Link to implication

Reason:

wiki states blaziken are avian pokemon

aversiveConquerer said:
Implicating blaziken → avian
Link to implication

Reason:

wiki states blaziken are avian pokemon

Fake species don't get implications

We don't imply Pokemon to species tags, and we don't imply characters to species tags, because it is entirely possible to draw a character as a different species than they would usually be. For instance, you could draw Blaziken as a pony, and it could still clearly be a Blaziken while not being an avian of any sort.

the issue is that artists might draw the blaziken in way that doesnt look avian at all. this implication becomes instantly a bad one if artist draws it looking far more like a dragon for example

Basically, species like Pokemon and Digimon are considered both species AND character tags simultaneously. This makes locking species tags to them problematic, as there's such a thing as changing species of established characters or portraying them unconventionally than the usual.

But yeah, long story short, this unique character/species sort of tag dynamic means base species implications are gonna be a no-no

A bit of a bump, but this has been bugging me, too.

kahen_kilon_vittu said:
the issue is that artists might draw the blaziken in way that doesnt look avian at all.

If they don't look avian, how would they still look enough like a blaziken for TWYS? That's like saying someone could draw a wolf in a way that doesn't look canine at all, making the wolf->canine implication invalid because it may be more bovine-looking.

The hybrid tag exists precisely for this situation, where a character is multiple species merged together, and the discernible component species can be tagged with it. For instance, what's colloquially referred to as a cabbit is a hybrid cat/rabbit, resulting in such a character being tagged hybrid feline and rabbit (+lagomorph). Similarly, if someone draws a character that's an identifiable mix of blaziken and canine, the corresponding thing to do be to tag it hybrid canine and blaziken (+avian). If you can't identify it being a blaziken, it shouldn't be tagged as one.

This goes even more so for pokemon like arcanine and charizard. If you can't say they're some form of canine or dragon, how could you say they're an arcanine or a charizard for TWYS?

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
Basically, species like Pokemon and Digimon are considered both species AND character tags simultaneously.

Is there a specific reason it's this way? Currently this seems to heavily favor treating pokemon as characters instead of species, even though we know 100% they are species, not characters. It seems like an unnecessary exception to species tagging, which just results in extra exceptions, confusion, and inconsistent tagging due to having to manually apply these implications.

post #1521200

The character on the left is clearly meant to be Ho-oh, post #1601614.

Ho-oh is another avian Pokemon, but if Ho-oh implied avian, this post wound be tagged wrong as neither character is an avian.

Watsit said:
A bit of a bump, but this has been bugging me, too.

If they don't look avian, how would they still look enough like a blaziken for TWYS? That's like saying someone could draw a wolf in a way that doesn't look canine at all, making the wolf->canine implication invalid because it may be more bovine-looking.

The hybrid tag exists precisely for this situation, where a character is multiple species merged together, and the discernible component species can be tagged with it. For instance, what's colloquially referred to as a cabbit is a hybrid cat/rabbit, resulting in such a character being tagged hybrid feline and rabbit (+lagomorph). Similarly, if someone draws a character that's an identifiable mix of blaziken and canine, the corresponding thing to do be to tag it hybrid canine and blaziken (+avian). If you can't identify it being a blaziken, it shouldn't be tagged as one.

This goes even more so for pokemon like arcanine and charizard. If you can't say they're some form of canine or dragon, how could you say they're an arcanine or a charizard for TWYS?

Is there a specific reason it's this way? Currently this seems to heavily favor treating pokemon as characters instead of species, even though we know 100% they are species, not characters. It seems like an unnecessary exception to species tagging, which just results in extra exceptions, confusion, and inconsistent tagging due to having to manually apply these implications.

Managed to find a 5 year old (now former) admin response. I hope this explains your issue. forum #139314

crusty_fire said:
The character on the left is clearly meant to be Ho-oh, post #1601614.

Ho-oh is another avian Pokemon, but if Ho-oh implied avian, this post wound be tagged wrong as neither character is an avian.

avian

Anything avian relates to birds.

TWYS doesn't care what a character is "meant to be", only what it appears as. Since Ho-oh is based on one or more species of bird, it would have to appear at least vaguely bird-like (avian) to appear as a Ho-oh, as opposed to just having markings like a Ho-oh (as a corollary, would a cat that has a zebra-like markings be tagged Zebra?).

That example is a bit funny since pterippus are already technically a hybrid equine/avian (horse-like body with bird-like wings), and a humanoid_avian can essentially be just a human with bird-like wings on their back, so what do you make of a hybrid pterippus/avian anthro?

Watsit said:
TWYS doesn't care what a character is "meant to be", only what it appears as.

Exactly. Sometimes pokemon aren't interpreted the same way, ESPECIALLY if they're vaguely familiar to multiple species of animals and/or have multiple origin sources. Example: Arcanine

While often portrayed as a canine, there are plenty of interpretations that show arcanine as quite feline. This is mainly due to the foo dog (guardian lion) inspiration, as foo dogs are essentially stylized lion beasts despite the misleading english translation of the name. Arcanine also possibly has origins in the tiger due to this. Having them imply canid or felid would just lead to mistags in the future. Here are some pretty heavily felid-like interpretations of arcanine.

post #1494799 post #1495917 post #1470341

Siral_Exan said:
Managed to find a 5 year old (now former) admin response. I hope this explains your issue. forum #139314

Not really, unfortunately. They only state what's already been stated, without much clarification:

furrypickle said:
The tricky thing about pokemon, is that they really straddle the line between "character" and "species". Where the species almost IS a character, in this very generalized sort of way.

I don't see how this determination was made. It's undeniable that pokemon are species. "Blaziken" is a species, there's more than one and they breed to produce more blaziken (well, a torchic that becomes a blaziken). There can be a blaziken that is a character, there can even be a blaziken character named Blaziken, but just as there are people who have a cat named Cat, or a dog named Dog, that doesn't stop them from being a species.

furrypickle said:
But if we had a perfectly normal deer with lucario markings and coloration also getting tags like "canine" and "jackal" on them because of implications, I don't think that will really serve searches in any useful way.

And this goes back to my previous example, a perfectly normal cat with zebra markings and coloration. If the cat gets tagged zebra it will inherit the equine tag, just as their deer gets tagged lucario would inherit canine. If the cat's markings and coloration alone aren't enough to warrant the zebra tag, the "perfectly normal deer with lucario markings and coloration" shouldn't warrant the lucario tag.

ImpidiDinkaDoo said:
Exactly. Sometimes pokemon aren't interpreted the same way, ESPECIALLY if they're vaguely familiar to multiple species of animals and/or have multiple origin sources. Example: Arcanine

While often portrayed as a canine, there are plenty of interpretations that show arcanine as quite feline.

Shouldn't those be tagged hybrid? They certainly appear like an arcanine (I might question that last one, but let's roll with it), but they have feline features that aren't in any official depictions.

Of course, if you want to question whether arcanine actually is canine, that's fine. It's one thing to say there's a legitimate question that an implication may not be valid, I can certainly understand that (the gen 2 legendary dogcats?), but a whole separate thing to say pokemon species are treated more like characters and no species-related implications will ever be considered regardless of how apparent it may be.

Again, false species don't get clade implications. I think one big reason to as they wouldn't is that they aren't real so there for they don't get the luxury. I don't believe there are any false species on site that get clade implications and if there are it was probably a mistake.

Versperus said:
I don't believe there are any false species on site that get clade implications and if there are it was probably a mistake.

charr -> felid
cockatrice -> avian
hippogryph -> avian
khajiit -> felid
pterippus -> equine
worgen -> werecanine -> canine
kaka_(blazblue) -> felid
chozo -> avian
ctarl-ctarl -> felid_humanoid -> felid
felyne -> felid

I can keep going and find more.

This isn't really that hard.

post #1293306
Blaziken, but not avian.

post #1595534
Blaziken, but not avian.

Watsit said:
charr -> felid
cockatrice -> avian
hippogryph -> avian
khajiit -> felid
pterippus -> equine
worgen -> werecanine -> canine
kaka_(blazblue) -> felid
chozo -> avian
ctarl-ctarl -> felid_humanoid -> felid
felyne -> felid

I can keep going and find more.

feel free

Lafcadio said:
Blaziken, but not avian.

First one has a pseudo-beak and the feet look like a hybrid chicken (the back claw in particular). Hybrid avian would be valid, IMO. Second one similarly has chicken-like "hands" and "arms", which would warrant being hybrid avian. Other examples of hybrid avians include:
post #2024216 post #2012611

Watsit said:
First one has a pseudo-beak

Lucario has that same "pseudo-beak" but in black.
post #845857
As such, Lucario is an avian.

Watsit said:
the feet look like a hybrid chicken (the back claw in particular).

The deinonychus has this same feature, but is not an avian.

Watsit said:
Second one similarly has chicken-like "hands" and "arms", which would warrant being hybrid avian. Other examples of hybrid avians include:
post #2024216 post #2012611

These are both awful examples. If wings or feathers were all it took to make an avian, feathered_wings and feathered_dragon would imply that by default.
Never mind characters like this.
post #2010603

Lafcadio said:
Lucario has that same "pseudo-beak" but in black.

It's not the same. Note in particular how blaziken's angles down in the front to a sharp point, which is a shape more reminiscent of a bird/chicken, whereas lucario's is a fur-covered outstretched snout with an inlaid mouth.

Lafcadio said:
The deinonychus has this same feature, but is not an avian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus

Several years later, Ostrom noted similarities between the forefeet of Deinonychus and that of birds, an observation which led him to revive the hypothesis that birds are descended from dinosaurs. Forty years later, this idea is almost universally accepted.

Deinonychus is the literal catalyst for the widely-accepted idea that certain dinosaurs were more bird-like than lizard or reptile as previously thought. e6's own wiki for dinosaur, despite implicating dinosaur to reptile, even notes this connection: "Although modern taxonomy considers birds to be avian dinosaurs".

Lafcadio said:
These are both awful examples. If wings or feathers were all it took to make an avian, feathered_wings and feathered_dragon would imply that by default.

feathered_wings would imply avian, but there's not enough context to correctly implicate it. A cat with feathered wings would be a hybrid feline+avian, whereas a hawk with feathered wings would simply be avian. Making feathered_wings imply hybrid+avian would cause the plain hawk to be incorrectly tagged hybrid, whereas if it implied just avian, the winged cat would be incorrectly tagged feline and avian without hybrid.

As for feathered_dragon, the site seems to have a preference to avoid hybrid implications, preferring to just implicate the dominant animal component. Pterippus, for example, implicates equine, but not (hybrid) avian, even though humanoid_avian can be a human with the same amount of avian features. So that makes implicating feathered_dragon to hybrid avian something they avoid, since it already implicates dragon.

This is dumb. The real question is, does this improve the search experience for users more than it hinders it? The answer is no.

There are legitimate cases where you would not want Blaziken to implicate avain. If you remove all the avian traits from a Blaziken, it's still technically considered Blaziken and must be tagged as such for copyright, blacklist and search purposes. Since you can't remove an implicated tag from an individual post, this presents a problem.

abscondler said:
This is dumb. The real question is, does this improve the search experience for users more than it hinders it? The answer is no.

There are legitimate cases where you would not want Blaziken to be aliased to avain. If you remove all the avian traits from a Blaziken, it's still technically considered Blaziken and must be tagged as such for copyright, blacklist and search purposes. Since you can't remove an aliased tag from an individual post, this presents a problem.

I think you mean implied, an alias completely removes one tag in favor of the other. In this case, an alias from Blaziken to Avian would mean no posts would be tagged Blaziken.

I think the general pokemon implications discussion should probably be it's own thread, since this is discussing only the implication between Blaziken to Avian. Two discussions are going on here, tangentially related; there are other discussions about general pokemon implications to necrodance, or a new one could be made.

Siral_Exan said:
I think you mean implied, an alias completely removes one tag in favor of the other. In this case, an alias from Blaziken to Avian would mean no posts would be tagged Blaziken.

Fixed. And yeah, that's the other problem with this implication. If you accept this one, you're pretty much accepting Pokemon species implications as a whole. The species that certain Pokemon represent is pretty fuzzy to start with. I really don't think it's a good idea to start automatically implicating species tags to Pokemon. It's a decision that should be made on a individual basis.

If it doesn't look like avian it doesn't get tagged as such, and you can depict blaziken in way that it does not look avian, but is still recognizable as a blaziken. It's not rocket science. Nobody looking for avian is not looking for things that have nothing that even vaguely hints to avians just because it often looks like avian, but not always.

abscondler said:
The real question is, does this improve the search experience for users more than it hinders it?

Yes. Currently, pokemon species tagging is an inconsistent mess, with some being tagged their species/clade and others not, despite having the same features. If you search for avian pokemon, you'd probably miss as many as you get. Similarly, if people search for avian, it wouldn't be a hindrance to see avian pokemon, just the opposite in fact. People that don't want to see pokemon in their avian searches can blacklist it, which they'd currently need to do anyway since some pokemon are tagged avian.

It's notable that the site has no problem with people tagging pokemon with their species/clade manually, so you'll still get some blaziken tagged as avian, for example. It's just not automatic, so it's up to people to do it manually for each upload, which is something the implication system is supposed to help with.

abscondler said:
If you remove all the avian traits from a Blaziken, it's still technically considered Blaziken and must be tagged as such for copyright, blacklist and search purposes.

How would you have a blaziken that has no avian traits? Note I mean an actual blaziken, not merely something with blaziken-like markings and coloration.

Though I guess if you want contrasting examples, here's a feline tagged mephitid because of their skunk-like markings, despite not being one. And here's the same feline not tagged skunk/mephitid despite the same markings. Which is correct tagging? Apply the same standard to pokemon.

Siral_Exan said:
I think the general pokemon implications discussion should probably be it's own thread, since this is discussing only the implication between Blaziken to Avian.

Maybe I should've bumped an earlier thread about general pokemon species implications, or started a new thread, sorry about that. Different forums I use have different preferences about whether they prefer bumping an older relevant thread or starting a new thread for the same topic. What I wanted to respond to and ask about was in this thread, though.

Watsit said:
It's notable that the site has no problem with people tagging pokemon with their species/clade manually, so you'll still get some blaziken tagged as avian, for example. It's just not automatic, so it's up to people to do it manually for each upload, which is something the implication system is supposed to help with.

How would you have a blaziken that has no avian traits? Note I mean an actual blaziken, not merely something with blaziken-like markings and coloration.

It's not automatic for good reason. Something with Blaziken markings and colors must still be tagged as Blaziken for copyright, blacklist, and search purposes... As I've already mentioned. An artist straying from the canonical anatomy/design of a character doesn't mean you don't have to tag it as that character. Pokemon are both species and characters, so they must still be tagged, even if they don't perfectly match that species' canonical design -- as stated multiple times by multiple people.

Watsit said:
Though I guess if you want contrasting examples, here's a feline tagged mephitid because of their skunk-like markings, despite not being one. And here's the same feline not tagged skunk/mephitid despite the same markings. Which is correct tagging? Apply the same standard to pokemon.

I don't see how your examples hold any relevance to the topic. These are anthropomorphic characters of real-life species -- Pokemon are not. TWYS rules still apply here as normal, so they should both be tagged as skunk (and possibly hybrid, depending on the case). Someone didn't think to add the skunk tag to the second image you linked. It happens. What's your point?

In the case of Pokemon, if the subject in question has visible traits of a certain species, it should be tagged as that species' family. This is done on a case-by-case basis, because an artist can apply or remove different animal traits from different pokemon if they feel like it. That doesn't mean it's no longer the same Pokemon; it's still the same Pokemon, just drawn with different anatomy.

By your logic, we should implicate the human tag to snow_white, because if someone gives animal traits to Snow White, it's suddenly not the same character anymore. Do you not see how little sense this makes?

This really isn't that complicated. I'm not sure what you're not understanding.

abscondler said:
An artist straying from the canonical anatomy/design of a character doesn't mean you don't have to tag it as that character. Pokemon are both species and characters, so they must still be tagged, even if they don't perfectly match that species' canonical design -- as stated multiple times by multiple people.

I know people have said they're treated special as a case of being both species and character, and I asked why that's the case, which I've not got an answer for. The vast majority of uses of pokemon species names are not of a character with that name, and when a particular pokemon is named after its species while being noteworthy enough to tag separately, it can be given a proper name tag (e.g. grovyle_the_thief or guildmaster_wigglytuff for the particular Grovyle and Wigglytuff characters from PMD2).

abscondler said:
TWYS rules still apply here as normal, so they should both be tagged as skunk (and possibly hybrid, depending on the case). Someone didn't think to add the skunk tag to the second image you linked. It happens. What's your point?

Point is, you now have a cat tagged as a mephitid even though it's not one, because it has skunk-like markings. That's the same complaint people raised here against this implication, that you would end up with another animal tagged avian even though it's not one, because it has blaziken-like markings. As you (and I) point out, the hybrid tag exists, it can be applied in these situations as needed. Why do pokemon species need to be treated differently from other animal species?

abscondler said:
By your logic, we should implicate the human tag to snow_white, because if someone gives animal traits to Snow White, it's suddenly not the same character anymore. Do you not see how little sense this makes?

Snow White is a specific character, and characters don't get implicated to species. If there is a blaziken character called Blaziken that's noteworthy enough for tagging, it can be given a tag like Blaziken_(foo) or something, and I would agree that character tag should not implicate blaziken in case it's drawn as something else.

Watsit said:
I know people have said they're treated special as a case of being both species and character, and I asked why that's the case, which I've not got an answer for. The vast majority of uses of pokemon species names are not of a character with that name, and when a particular pokemon is named after its species while being noteworthy enough to tag separately, it can be given a proper name tag (e.g. grovyle_the_thief or guildmaster_wigglytuff for the particular Grovyle and Wigglytuff characters from PMD2).

Pokemon are intellectual property, not a real or mythical species. They were created by and are owned by a company. This makes them characters, in the legal sense, as you cannot own a species for obvious reasons. Notice how Pokemon names are capitalized, while animal names are not. If you invent a fictional species that is original, you have technically created a character. You can use that character as a species within the realm of your IP, but that doesn't stop it from being your character. Of course, since Pokemon are characters that ARE used as a species, we categorized them as a species for tagging and searching purposes. This, however, does not mean they aren't still technically characters.

Another example of this would be Yoshi. Yoshi is both a character and a species. The dinosaur tag isn't implicated by Yoshi, because a Yoshi can be drawn without dinosaur characteristics.

Watsit said:
Point is, you now have a cat tagged as a mephitid even though it's not one, because it has skunk-like markings. That's the same complaint people raised here against this implication, that you would end up with another animal tagged avian even though it's not one, because it has blaziken-like markings. As you (and I) point out, the hybrid tag exists, it can be applied in these situations as needed. Why do pokemon species need to be treated differently from other animal species?

No... What you have there is a cat that also looks like a skunk, and is therefor tagged appropriately. If a Blaziken doesn't look like an avian, what bloody reason is there to tag it as an avian? Pokemon don't get tagged as hybrid -- unless significantly mixed with another separate (and usually fictional) species -- because they're already their own fictional species. They don't get treated like an animal species because they aren't an animal species. They're a character species -- they're original, intellectual property.

Watsit said:
Snow White is a specific character, and characters don't get implicated to species.

Exactly!

Watsit said:
If there is a blaziken character called Blaziken that's noteworthy enough for tagging, it can be given a tag like Blaziken_(foo) or something, and I would agree that character tag should not implicate blaziken in case it's drawn as something else.

Let me spell it out:

• A Blaziken named Blaze - A character based off of the character species, Blaziken.
• Tags: character:blaze species:blaziken species:avian

• A regular Blaziken - An original character species that is intellectual property; not a real or mythical species; has visible bird-like properties.
• Tags: species:blaziken species:avian

• A Blaziken drawn as a lion - An original character species drawn with lion properties; still retains visible qualities of both species (with none of them being avian).
• Tags: species:blaziken species:lion (hybrid is debatable here, but it would still be a hybrid mix of blaziken/lion, not blaziken/avian/lion)

• A regular duck - A real species, exists in real life; not intellectual property.
• Tags: species:duck species:avian (and all the other family tags that lead up to avian)

• A duck with a lion's head - A hybrid of two real species; not intellectual property.
• Tags: species:duck species:avian species:lion hybrid (there's no established species for a lion/duck hybrid, so the hybrid tag applies)

• A gryphon - A mythical species; hybrid of two real species; not intellectual property.
• Tags: - species:gryphon species:avian species:lion (sometimes) (not hybrid, since the species itself is already established as a hybrid species; tagging it as such would be redundant)
• Notes: Gryphons can be drawn without the specific lion characteristics (usually just the tail and back paws) being visibly discernible, thus why it doesn't implicate the lion tag. The avian features of a gryphon (wings, beak, talons, etc.) are always visible; without these defining features, it wouldn't be a gryphon, since something cannot have gryphon-like properties without also having avian qualities (it'd just be lion hybrid otherwise). This same logic does NOT apply to Blaziken, since something can have Blaziken-like qualities without having avian features, because Blaziken itself is an original species, not a hybrid species.

I think the main reason Pokemon and Digimon species are also considered characters is because of how they're referred to in-universe. By default, Pokemon and Digimon use their species name as their actual name unless given a nickname. Like a Pikachu would simply be called Pikachu and a Renamon would be called Renamon unless they were otherwise given another name. Other fictional species that do implicate species tags aren't like this, for example, koopas from Mario or khajiit from the Elder Scrolls. A koopa wouldn't say "I'm Koopa" (excluding Bowser's Japanese name) and a khajiit wouldn't say "I'm Khajiit". I think this is why species like koopa and khajiit imply scalie and felid and Pokemon and Digimon species tags only imply their series.

Watsit said:
It's not the same. Note in particular how blaziken's angles down in the front to a sharp point, which is a shape more reminiscent of a bird/chicken, whereas lucario's is a fur-covered outstretched snout with an inlaid mouth.

The part you claim is a "beak" is literally the exact same shape, just in red instead of black. The idea that sharper angles make that a beak is a weak assumption when the entirety of the image tends towards making minor details more angular. In fact, this same shape is present among all of the artist's other Lucarios.
post #1558728
Every character pictured here with a Lucario-style head structure is an avian.

Watsit said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus
Deinonychus is the literal catalyst for the widely-accepted idea that certain dinosaurs were more bird-like than lizard or reptile as previously thought. e6's own wiki for dinosaur, despite implicating dinosaur to reptile, even notes this connection: "Although modern taxonomy considers birds to be avian dinosaurs".

Cool. But that has literally nothing to do with tagging.

Watsit said:
feathered_wings would imply avian, but there's not enough context to correctly implicate it. A cat with feathered wings would be a hybrid feline+avian,

No, it literally would not. The assumption that every cat with feathered wings is an avian simply does not work out, because feathered wings are in no way exclusive to avians (and even the wiki page points this out). Not only are there creatures like angels and pegasi, but "winged cats" are even a thing that exists in real life. They are by no means real wings, but there's nothing keeping an artistic interpretation from ignoring that.