i'm curious to know where exactly people draw the line as to where the tag is useful and where it becomes an overreach so we can hopefully come to some kind of consensus about the guidelines.
should povs not count? well, i can see how it may be a different category, but it still operates on the same principle.
how about a fully in-frame, but faceless, clearly intended to be a self-insert character like in post #9306230? and if we take that approach - how in frame can a mob be before it's no longer a mob? i think this is something the present guidelines handle perfectly well, pedantic as they are. if we open the door to questions like that, i think everyone will come up with a slightly different answer and we'll get nothing done.
if povs counted wouldn't this be almost all povs? arguably the pover isn't even a foreground character
if povs counted wouldn't this be almost all povs? arguably the pover isn't even a foreground character
not necessarily. a decent chunk of the tag would end up being pov, and likewise a lot of pov would end up being mob x character, but there's also plenty of content qualifying for the tag that isn't pov.
some povs can be from a character's perspective: post #73237 is Hakurei Reimu as seen through the eyes of Kirisame Marisa, post #10014228 is Ijichi Nijika as seen through the eyes of Gotoh Hitori, etc. the defining factor here is that, within the field of NSFW artwork at least, 99 times out of 100 the pov will be from the eyes of a mob character, which is why i'd be willing to make the compromise of excluding POV from mob x character if that's the conclusion others want.
This tag is basically just solo focus. Solo focus more or less is the tag for "anonymous nobody character(s) with a known character", except it only allows a single named character.
The name "mob x character" is pretty confusing. It sounds like some type of character, like a character from "Mob X", whatever that is. Actually it's for a certain kind of pairing, which is inconsistent with other tags since normally we use "x with y" for one character archetype paired with another (e.g futa with female, furry with non-furry, etc).
You might also think it's like OC x Canon, except instead of an original character with a known character, it's an unknown character with a known character. Like OC x Canon, the unknown character would be fully part of the scene, and not just a barely-there viewer stand-in. Things like post #8327491, or ugly bastard posts where the ugly bastard is fully in frame, so they don't qualify for solo focus. A tag like that would be useful, but this isn't it.
I do think we could use an umbrella tag for anonymous pov/faceless/out of frame/etc characters, but the last thread got bogged down in what to call it and how to define it. One issue is that it would wind up being almost the same thing as solo focus in practice. Another is what to do with gacha player avatars (the Admiral/Commander/Doctor/Producer/Sensei/Trainer/etc). These aren't exactly anonymous nobody characters, but they're still usually viewer stand-ins, except they can range from being barely there to fully part of the scene.
This tag is basically just solo focus. Solo focus more or less is the tag for "anonymous nobody character(s) with a known character", except it only allows a single named character.
on one hand, huh, somehow it took me until now to remember the obvious tag used for this kind of situation. part of me still really wants to say "but what about the edge case where solo focus between two canons, or 2girls 1boy where the guy is a mob", but i guess i'll accept this.
on the other hand, if there's still a gap in tagging that mob x character could fill (a mob with a canon character but to the extent that it doesn't qualify as solo focus, or even the aforementioned group sex type posts that solo focus wouldn't account for), then it's not time to pack it up yet. i definitely agree the name itself could use workshopping, it doesn't fit in with any other tags, even mob with character would be a good start.
I just want to add that this is an awful awful tag. In addition to many issues already mentioned, the tag's meaning is so unclear to anyone who doesn't speak the tagger's jargon. I had no idea what this tag meant until I looked it up on the wiki. I think this is one of the situations where combinations of existing or lack of certain tags better serve the purpose.
if there were a single tag, even an easy tag combination that solves this problem, then i'd agree with you and this wouldn't be an issue. but the matter of fact is that this stuff is impossible to search for or exclude.
This tag just seems inherently doomed to fail no matter how tighly you scope it or change its name. Viewer self-insert sounds like it would be even more aggressively prone to being tagged on every instance of a nondescript person or PoV with a canon character. This was already the case with the existing tag but primarily perpetuated by one builder; now imagine that but with the combined unthinking mass of all builders and members together in applying the tag, and the manpower to garden it that does not exist.
It's intended to be viewed the same way you use "x" when you're shipping a character, like "Wakamo (Blue Archive) x Sensei (Blue Archive)". Getting rid of the "x" changes the meaning of the tag completely but incidentally renders it useless all the same, although now it would apply to SFW posts as well where a nondescript person is interacting in some manner with an established character. The intention of the current tag is because people want a way to search or blacklist self-inserts from being with their favourite characters and similar such use cases.
This is apparent from the existing discussion in this topic and related ones.
Where does the x even come from? Simply mob_character would be a much better name for this tag.
The X is there to make it clear that this is a mob character being paired with another character, just like with OC x Canon. Have /, &, and X fallen so far from shipping contexts that they need to be explained? Removing the X makes it sound like it's a tag for just mob characters, nothing relational.
We used to have a tag for mob characters, it was called extra and it was deprecated back in topic #25406, as mentioned in the preceding topic #30098.
The X is there to make it clear that this is a mob character being paired with another character, just like with OC x Canon. Have /, &, and X fallen so far from shipping contexts that they need to be explained? Removing the X makes it sound like it's a tag for just mob characters, nothing relational.
We used to have a tag for mob characters, it was called extra and it was deprecated back in topic #25406, as mentioned in the preceding topic #30098.
WHAT???? that's what it meant??? i thought it was like "mob a" but it became "mob x" in english. would never have guessed
