Topic: ninetales/renamon/wixen and the fox tag

Should these fox-like characters/species be tagged as foxes? Examples here and here and here of them being tagged as such. There are also plenty of instances of them not being tagged as such.

My opinion on this probably doesn't matter too much but I think they should be. Anyone looking for foxes would almost certainly want to see ie. Ninetales, Thievul, Wixen and while most older posts don't have the fox tag, most modern ones do. While they may not be 'true foxes', grey foxes aren't either and have the fox tag, and there's an explicit true_fox tag for people searching for them anyway. Anything else also makes me kind of wonder if MLP characters should have the horse tag or other fictional species should have species tags for the species they're derived from.

Edit: I should probably specify I'm not talking about an implication, rather the end of this topic here.

Renamon does not look like a fox to me.

eightoflakes said:
Renamon does not look like a fox to me.

I'm sure a lot of the art of 'em doesn't quite look like one but they're explicitly designed to look like one, source here and you've also got comparatives like this and this.

nullfoxie said:
I'm sure a lot of the art of 'em doesn't quite look like one but they're explicitly designed to look like one, source here and you've also got comparatives like this and this.

I guess that's the thing. Most fictional species are vague enough that they don't really resemble real life species 100% of the time. Artist intent doesn't really matter here. If a character doesn't look like a fox at all they shouldn't be tagged as a fox even if they're "supposed" to be a fox.

Pokemon implying real species has actually been a subject of debate on this site for a few years, to my knowledge. As you can imagine with some Pokemon it can get pretty dicey on whether they actually resemble a real life species enough for the implication to apply. Remember that implications can't be disabled on a post-by-post basis, so if X fictional species implies Y real life species then X has to always resemble Y no matter what.

eightoflakes said:
I guess that's the thing. Most fictional species are vague enough that they don't really resemble real life species 100% of the time. Artist intent doesn't really matter here. If a character doesn't look like a fox at all they shouldn't be tagged as a fox even if they're "supposed" to be a fox.

Pokemon implying real species has actually been a subject of debate on this site for a few years, to my knowledge. As you can imagine with some Pokemon it can get pretty dicey on whether they actually resemble a real life species enough for the implication to apply. Remember that implications can't be disabled on a post-by-post basis, so if X fictional species implies Y real life species then X has to always resemble Y no matter what.

Oh, I'm not asking about an implication. That's already settled. There are just a few thousand posts that either should or shouldn't be tagged fox and I'm curious what the "rule" is before I get back to changing it, because a fuckton of ie. posts here resemble foxes but aren't tagged as such.

I think they should definitely be tagged canine, enough so to warrant an implication. But elevating it to fox might be more of a problem. Not to say I'm totally against it, especially given we have the true_fox tag to indicate true fox species from species colloquially called "fox", but its easier to argue that they appear canine more generally by TWYS even if they are a fictional design.

watsit said:
I think they should definitely be tagged canine, enough so to warrant an implication. But elevating it to fox might be more of a problem. Not to say I'm totally against it, especially given we have the true_fox tag to indicate true fox species from species colloquially called "fox", but its easier to argue that they appear canine more generally by TWYS even if they are a fictional design.

Yup, I probably should've originally specified I'm not talking about an implication. That's already covered. Instead, I'm asking about the few thousand ninetales posts (~4k) missing the fox tag, and a once-over gives me no reason to believe this is because they don't resemble foxes (though there are a handful that don't, and obviously shouldn't be tagged as such!) The "modern" standard practice seems to be tagging ninetales as foxes, so I'm curious.

nullfoxie said:
The "modern" standard practice seems to be tagging ninetales as foxes, so I'm curious.

It's not. It's just something people regularly mistag (along with tagging lopunny and rabbit, lucario as dog, etc) and there's only so many of us to notice and fix.

eightoflakes said:
Artist intent doesn't really matter here. If a character doesn't look like a fox at all they shouldn't be tagged as a fox even if they're "supposed" to be a fox.

TWYS only applies this strictly to tags within the general category, species are TWYK within reason (it can't actively conflict with what we're seeing, you can't say a cat is a dragon because "muh lore") but if a character is vaguely canid and the artist/character owner says they're a fox, then they're a fox

renamon is described as golden fox and the first name is just fox in french, i argue it doesn't hurt tagging it as fox as far as it goes. so does ninetales categorized as 'fox pokemon'

i do find it useful considering i don't memorize half of the pokemon names (i.e primarina which i resort to searching seal + pokemon until i find their name in one of the posts i spot for faster procedure)

I'm personally of the mind that, if it's realistic enough to be identifiable, there probably wouldn't be anyone upset by tagging a real species.

Like what is the difference between this and a dog with horns?
post #1589958

But I get that consistency is nice and makes thing easier.

regsmutt said:
Like what is the difference between this and a dog with horns?

Well in that case, "dog" is somewhat ambiguous. dog is aliased to domestic_dog, which I think there is enough difference between that and a domestic dog with the horns, spade tail, glowing eyes, bone adornments, etc. Although people do often use "dog" as a synonym for canine or canid, which would be valid to tag.

watsit said:
Well in that case, "dog" is somewhat ambiguous. dog is aliased to domestic_dog, which I think there is enough difference between that and a domestic dog with the horns, spade tail, glowing eyes, bone adornments, etc. Although people do often use "dog" as a synonym for canine or canid, which would be valid to tag.

Shoulda known I would get CinemaSins 'ding'ed for saying 'dog' instead of 'domestic dog.'
Anyway here's a domestic dog with horn ears and a spade tail:
post #5562721
While there IS a tag on the source specifying this is a pomeranian, if there wasn't, I feel this could/would still be safely tagged as domestic_dog.

regsmutt said:
Shoulda known I would get CinemaSins 'ding'ed for saying 'dog' instead of 'domestic dog.'
Anyway here's a domestic dog with horn ears and a spade tail:
post #5562721
While there IS a tag on the source specifying this is a pomeranian, if there wasn't, I feel this could/would still be safely tagged as domestic_dog.

I feel that's closer to looking like what it's purported to be, compared to the houndoom as a demonic looking canine.