Moving over the discussion from post #4481744:
elgee said:
If art of her is gonna start being posted outside this pool, I suspect we should give her a name. I propose 'Madroid_(Mechanical_buddy_universe)'.
NNescio said:
Momdroid_(MBU), maybe? Author also uses those initialisms for the setting.
Or Ofukuroid_(MBU), using the untranslated name?elgee said:
I chose Madroid for the earlier joke about him changing how he calls her. Ma-droid might indicate it better.
blindVigil said:
We usually use the artist as the qualifier for original characters. As for her actual name, it should be whatever the artist calls her, preferably translated if it's not a proper name, random japanese mixed in with English doesn't mean much to anyone who doesn't know Japanese.
NNescio said:
Artist used to refer to her as あるドロイド (aru droid. "the Droid", "a certain droid") in older posts, but newer ones consistently call her おふくろオイド (ofukuroid), portmanteau of ofukuro* and "droid". This is easiest to see on the cosplay pin-up style art featuring the character, all of which are titled "おふくロイド・[Insert Letter]装備". For the title translations I used "Momdroid [Insert letter]-Type Equipment", though another translator retained "Ofukuroid".
(*Ofukuro being a term of endearment used by males for one's mother. which is usually translated as "Mom" by most translators, though I had to use "Ma" because "Mom" was already used as a translation for a different term of address.
post #4477851 has a more detailed explanation on Ofukuro and related terms.)
I'm partial to Momdroid_(qualifier) as a tag myself, though I'm not sure whether to use _(ishiyumi) as the qualifier or _(Mechanical_Buddy_Universe). Crux of this issue is whether we should even use Mechanical_Buddy_Universe as a copyright tag. The tag was created months ago and I sort of latched onto it while I was organizing the posts set in this setting.
IIRC, I used original as part of the pool title, saw Mechanical_Buddy_Universe as an existing tag (while trying to find already-uploaded posts), went checking out how notable the setting was and found out the author has multiple series and crossovers set in the same 'verse, and a few hits on fansites with wikis on the setting (though all Chinese and Korean, strangely), so I thought, "Hey, setting was notable enough," and renamed the pool title and retagged the older posts, then started using the same tag for newer uploads.
Overall, the setting does have multiple series (albeit original) running in it with a rich (implied more via showing than telling) backstory. There are also cameos of characters from one series in another, as well as shorter crossover arcs. Overall, it feels like a nascent MCU or DCU due to how the story arcs and characters are introduced and interleaved, quite unlike most original series hosted here (it even has a similar three-letter acronym!). The whole setting feels like a living, breathing "universe".
That said, on Danbooru, works that are neither commercially released nor based on a preexisting "copyright" are almost always tagged original. The few exceptions are collaborative works of some notability like the Pixiv and Vocaloid fan projects, so giving Mechanical_Buddy_Universe its own tag instead of defaulting to original is a big break in consistency.
As such, for consistency's sake, I'm not averse to depopulating the Mechanical_Buddy_Universe tag for now and retag them as original. Should I proceed with this, and then tag the posts Momdroid appears in with Momdroid_(ishiyumi)?
Damian0358 said:
It's worth pointing out what blindVigil may have been referring to with the example of Senpai ga Uzai Kouhai no Hanashi - though that has its own copyright tag, all the characters have the artist's name as the qualifier, i.e. Igarashi Futaba (Shiromanta). Of course, one could argue that the reason for this is because the copyright tag came later, and the character tags weren't updated, but it isn't the only instance we see of this on the site.
blindVigil said:
I was actually thinking of Abubu's Friends from the Arai-san Mansion series, such as Carnivore (kemono friends) (abubu), though I'm not sure if the copyright tag came before or after the original Friends were given their own tags.
We already have quite a few "Original" copyrights, like the previously mentioned Arai-san Mansion. The main criteria for an original work to get a copyright tag is if it starts getting a healthy amount of fanart. The copytag becomes necessary to differentiate fanworks from "official" works. I suppose other series might get them just for being large enough, but I'm not sure if there are examples of that.
I'm curious where "Mechanical Buddy Universe" came from, but given how expansive the setting is I don't see any harm in it having a tag.
Artist seems to use "Mechanical Buddy Universe" to refer to the four series The Story of a Droid", Hawkeye in Love, The Banshee Cometh and Maid Would Want to Protect Her Lady. There also a Twitter event (artist created, I think, not sure how Twitter events work) titled "Mechanical Buddy Universe" that lists the four series (along with crossovers, setting material and misc. art) in chronological order of posting (the actual intended order can be a hit haphazard). Artist also posts a few images featuring protagonists from all four series; these are almost always consistently labelled as "Mechanical Buddy Universe" or "MBU in the title and/or in background text. Detailed character profiles (or 'tech' descriptions) are also given the same treatment.
(Example: post #4331775)
Judging by the chronology of Twitter posts, the individual names of the four series predate the term "Mechanical Buddy Universe", so the latter was likely coined by the artist as part of an effort to unify the setting.
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On a related note, the two protagonists of Maid Would Want to Protect Her Lady are called メイド ("Maid") and お嬢様 ("Milady"), respectively. No actual names are given yet (artist seems to avoid doing so for most of the characters, though some mechanical characters get model names, and a few human ones get nom-de-guerres for combat or alter-ego identities), and a detailed character profile for the maid also calls her "Maid". Art referring to the two also tend to call them "Maid" and "Milady" in the title or description.
It would seems natural to coin Maid_(qualifier) and Milady_(qualifier) for their respective chartags, as their titles are effectively their names. That said, "maid_(ishiyumi)" and "milady_(ishiyumi)" seem to bit... generic, and might conflict or be confused for other characters if the artist creates a new character in a different setting with a similar title. Meidos and ojou-samas tend to be a common archetype after all.
So "maid_(mechanical_buddy_universe)" and "milady_(mechanical_buddy_universe)" would probably work better. Once those are coined though, a potential "momdroid_(ishiyumi)" would seem a bit out of place. As such I would prefer "momdroid_(mechanical_buddy_universe)", along with using the same _(mechanical_buddy_universe) qualifier for any of the characters from the main four series of the setting.
TL;DR: I'll be creating the chartags "momdroid_(mechanical_buddy_universe)", "maid_(mechanical_buddy_universe)" and "milady_(mechanical_buddy_universe)". I hope nobody objects?
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