Danbooru

(Short) Twintails vs. Two Side up

Posted under Tags

Just wanted to make an own topic for this issue that was brought up in topic #12251 (page 104) and started with forum #123627:

How does short twintails distinguish from two side up? It seems judging from their wiki pages that two sides is when there are short twintails but the rest of the hair falls down in another style, such as just straight down. They definitely don't seem mutually exclusive, any thoughts on this?

Schrobby said in forum #92931 this:

Twintails only apply when the bulk of the hair is used, everything else is two_side_up. Following this definition long_hair combined with short_twintails is simply not possible, so that part should be deleted from the wiki.

I don't think this is true though. Maybe at the very least not anymore. Nowhere yet does it say that the bulk of the hair has to be tied up into two twintails in the twintails wikipage. And as I mentioned in forum #123629:

The "tails" of a two side up hairstyle can be anywhere between relatively short to as long as the hair drooping down.

I have never seen exceptions to the case though -- there most likely aren't any. If in the case where you can't see the other tail of a two side up hairstyle it could linger between either a two side up or a side ponytail -- you would probably have to rely on your knowledge of the character to decide what fits best, or skip tagging the hairstyle altogether.

EDIT: Ah, right. A potential mixup between the two could be for example, viewing shimada arisu from the side. She has a side ponytail, but it is deceivingly styled like one side of a two side up hairstyle.

As a sort of meta question, where exactly does the naming for two side up originate? Googling the term, the top four results are to donmai domains and another is another booru gallery. Perhaps a translation from Pixiv/Japanese net parlance?

I ask because I think it may not be wise to get to think too narrowly based on on the definition of terms that don't have common usage in the rest of the culture. I think there is room for interpretation and we could redefine two side up such that it is short twintails but with the rest of the hair falling down apart from the locks tied as twintails rather than just "similar" to twintails. I think they are much more alike than just "similar" and are in fact not mutually exclusive but in a literal sense two side up is just short twintails with the rest of the hair in some other fashion.

sweetpeɐ said:

As a sort of meta question, where exactly does the naming for two side up originate? Googling the term, the top four results are to donmai domains and another is another booru gallery. Perhaps a translation from Pixiv/Japanese net parlance?

I ask because I think it may not be wise to get to think too narrowly based on on the definition of terms that don't have common usage in the rest of the culture. I think there is room for interpretation and we could redefine two side up such that it is short twintails but with the rest of the hair falling down apart from the locks tied as twintails rather than just "similar" to twintails. I think they are much more alike than just "similar" and are in fact not mutually exclusive but in a literal sense two side up is just short twintails with the rest of the hair in some other fashion.

Ah, sure. I can go ahead and translate the pixipedia entry, but I'll try searching for other resources before I do so.

Ricetaffy said:

Ah, sure. I can go ahead and translate the pixipedia entry, but I'll try searching for other resources before I do so.

Oh well, I wasn't precise. I didn't mean to request a translation but was rather asking if the term came from a translation. But I guess one could in fact add to the discussion.

From the subsection ツーサイドアップ of ツインテール on Wikipedia (super quick and rough translation):

A hairstyle where hair on the head is bunched up and tied on both sides around the top of the ear, while all the rest of the hair hangs back (put the sides up). Since it looks like a completely different hairstyle from twintails, however, it tends to be called a different hairstyle entirely: "two side up". The hairstyle takes its name from doll culture and has almost nothing in common with twintails save for the fact that both hairstyles feature two tied up bunches of hair. Two side up often looks like ordinary long hair rather than twintails. It sometimes is called "rabbit knot" (because the hairstyle resembles the silhouette of a rabbit) or "half twintails". However, because both hairstyles bunch up long hair together into two parts, two side up is sometimes erroneously referred to as twintails, but the difference between the two is fairly ambiguous.

EDIT: Well, it seems we have our origins for the hairstyle name now.

kuuderes_shadow said:

I've never had problems with two side up vs. twintails. But I do have difficulty between one side up and side ponytail. Applying the logic of "one side up = two side up but only up on one side" then various characters that routinely get tagged with side ponytail should be one side up instead. Shimada Arisu mentioned above is one of them. Most pictures of Hagikaze (kantai collection) would also fall into this category.

I think side ponytail is probably more thought of than one side up when that sort of hairstyle is seen, actually. It never occurred to me that we even had a one side up tag. But if my opinion is anything worth, I think that one side up is essentially a subset of side ponytail, just like how I think two side up is ideally a subset of twintails if we're defining twintails as just two bunched up tails of hair without regard to the bulk or portion of the rest of the hair drooping down. I'm for those implications, but I do want to discuss this a bit more before coming to any rapid conclusions.

To give my personal opinion on combinations/implications/aliases in this area:

ponytail -------- half updo
twintails ------- two side up
side ponytail --- one side up

I see these three relations to be relatively similar, and think that in each case the one on the left is a distinctly different hairstyle the one on the right. I would thus be opposed to any proposal that led to their combination.

Some characters are tagged as two side up although the portion tied up may actually much longer than the wiki provides for (e.g. post #2563836 and toosaka_rin in general; another example, past shoulder length: post #2560223).

Also sidelocks are often inappropriately tagged two side up such as in post #2562196.

Here is another two side up that runs too long post #2561271.

So if there were an implication I guess it would have to be straight to twintails instead of short twintails since things are pretty messy.

sweetpeɐ said:

Some characters are tagged as two side up although the portion tied up may actually much longer than the wiki provides for (e.g. post #2563836 and toosaka_rin in general; another example, past shoulder length: post #2560223).

Also sidelocks are often inappropriately tagged two side up such as in post #2562196.

Here is another two side up that runs too long post #2561271.

So if there were an implication I guess it would have to be straight to twintails instead of short twintails since things are pretty messy.

All of those look like proper usage of two side up to me. The wiki specifically states Toosaka Rin as an example of two side up, in that a portion of the hair is tied up into two tails, specifying amount rather than length.

I suppose so, but my gripe with it is that it just doesn't seem intuitive enough to grasp. Albeit if the implication did exist, then users would have to search something like side_ponytail -one_side_up if they didn't want to see hairstyles that were one side up. Even on Shimada Arisu's wiki page it says this:

Person: light brown hair, brown eyes, long hair, side ponytail/twintails, bangs

Perhaps the wiki page could stand to use a revision by adding it in, but so the same would have to go for most characters that feature a one side up or two side up hairstyle.

The split between some of them is incredibly vast though:
two_side_up twintails
two_side_up -twintails
-two_side_up twintails

And also for one side up and side ponytail:
one_side_up side_ponytail
one_side_up -side_ponytail
-one_side_up side_ponytail

I semi-agree with you on ponytail to half updo though. Half updos can have a ponytail (and there are certainly styles with both), but it isn't necessary. Half updos can end with a knot or a ribbon, after all.

I don't quite agree with the ponytail - half updo connection.
The definition of half updo does not include ponytail anywhere. A ponytail could still be there, but is not essential. For example, there could also be a braid instead of a ponytail.

Provence said:

I don't quite agree with the ponytail - half updo connection.
The definition of half updo does not include ponytail anywhere. A ponytail could still be there, but is not essential. For example, there could also be a braid instead of a ponytail.

Yeah, that's what I was making out -- that that connection shouldn't be made. Half updo just refers to the hair at the temples. If they happen to be long enough, they can form ponytails or braids, but you'll often see them in a "princess knot" form too, which doesn't feature that at all.

A hairstyle that consists of the hair at the temples pulled back into a bun, short ponytail, or just a bow at the back of the head, while the rest of the hair remains flowing loosely.

CodeKyuubi said:

All of those look like proper usage of two side up to me. The wiki specifically states Toosaka Rin as an example of two side up, in that a portion of the hair is tied up into two tails, specifying amount rather than length.

Well small portion reads to me as a limitation on length as well. Judging by the alternate interpretation that length is not in consideration than sure they are two side up but my intuitive understanding is that they are meant to be like short twintails with the rest of the hair falling another way.

sweetpeɐ said:

Well small portion reads to me as a limitation on length as well. Judging by the alternate interpretation that length is not in consideration than sure they are two side up but my intuitive understanding is that they are meant to be like short twintails with the rest of the hair falling another way.

Hmm, I've always interpreted it as a smaller portion of a greater hair amount, because calling it twintails instead kind of goes against the classic interpretation of twintails.

CodeKyuubi said:

Hmm, I've always interpreted it as a smaller portion of a greater hair amount, because calling it twintails instead kind of goes against the classic interpretation of twintails.

Okay well I've made a slight modification to the wiki to clarify that and someone can further alter it as they see fit.

With regards the half updo I was referring specifically to the ponytail version. Although I changed the post as I went along in a way that made the comparison less relevant anyway.

With regards the overlap, bear in mind that more than half the images in both cases have multiple characters on them, and in a lot of those cases there are two characters with the different hairstyles. Other cases are probably just people adding both in confusion, or adding one but forgetting to remove the other.

Updated

kuuderes_shadow said:

With regards the half updo I was referring specifically to the ponytail version. Although I changed the post as I went along in a way that made the comparison less relevant anyway.

With regards the overlap, bear in mind that more than half the images in both cases have multiple characters on them, and in a lot of those cases there are two characters with the different hairstyles. Other cases are probably just people adding both in confusion, or adding one but forgetting to remove the other.

EB said:

There actually isn't really a tag for the ponytail version (some don't have a visible half_updo. See for example, Tenshi: post #677440 ). I brought that up at the end of topic #7079, but there were no suggestions on what to name it.

If it were me and I saw an entry with a single girl with a half updo hairstyle that ended in a ponytail, I would just tag both hairstyles in. A half updo + a ponytail still has a ponytail in it, despite it being nontraditional. But if we were to come up with some sort of a tag name for it, maybe... half_updo_into_ponytail? Sounds a bit long, but I think it would be okay.

In regards to the overlap, it's probably the case that people are just adding both in conclusion, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's wrong to tag an entry with both two side up + twintails or one side up + side ponytail. If we look at the searches again with 1girl:
two_side_up twintails 1girl
two_side_up -twintails 1girl
one_side_up side_ponytail 1girl
one_side_up -side_ponytail 1girl

There is still a considerably large overlap versus a large mutual exclusion between the pairs.

Updated

1 2