imply superman -> clark_kent (brainstorming a policy for superheroes vs civilian identities)

Posted under Tags

I get the need for a simple way to find "all of Dick Grayson", that’s clearly useful, and I agree most users won’t want to combine multiple tags.

My concern remains that using the identity tag as an umbrella mixes different visual contexts (civilian vs. different hero roles), which leads to ambiguity in tagging. That said, I understand why you’d prioritize usability over strict separation.

I’d still prefer to keep roles explicit and modular, but I see the trade-off. At this point it comes down to convenience vs clarity, and we just value those differently, so I’ll leave it there.

Unsure if this has already been said, so apologies, but before I lose the though, for hero/villain names that have had multiple users, we could list the hero’s name as the parent tag, and the civilian name to both collect the hero and civilian identities of that hero. Parsing between the hero and civilian can happen later and be done under the civilian name tag.

Say, Spider-woman -> Jessica Drew

Spider-Woman -> Mayday Parker

For characters that have been multiple heroes, we can list the civilian name followed by the various hero names under then

Carol Danvers -> Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers)
Carol Danvers -> Ms Marvel (Carol Danvers)
Carol Danvers -> Binary

For characters like Harley Quinn, who are known by their civilian identity, it should be easy enough to use a single tag. Multiple costumes can be implied under the civilian name like option 2.

Harley Quinn -> Classic suit
Harley Quinn -> Suicide Squad

Dick Grayson, who has been Nightwing, Robin (A populated tag) and Batman (A populated tag) would be easier to also have option 2 applied to them, with their civilian name followed by the hero name

Dick Grayson -> Nightwing (Dick Grayson)
Dick Grayson -> Dick Grayson (Robin)
Dick Grayson -> Dick Grayson (Batman)

A cleaner way to look at this could be through Zandale Randolph, who has been both Bulletproof and Invincible. While “Bulletproof” is exclusive to him as of now, Invincible is not.

Zandale Randolph -> Bulletproof
Zandale Randolph -> Zandale Randolph (Invincible)

For characters with various notable alternates or suits, like Spider-Man and the evil invincibles, Option 1 works well enough. This would work the same as the eventual decision to parse between civilian and hero identities for each particular person who donned the name within their named tag

Invincible -> Invincible (Mark Grayson)
Invincible -> Mohawk Invincible
Invincible -> Omni-Vincible

Spider-Man -> Peter Parker -> Original
Spider-Man -> Peter Parker -> Black Suit
Spider-Man -> Miles Morales -> Shitty PS5 suit
Spider-Man -> Peter Parker (Noir) -> Spider-Man Noir (Comic suit)
Spider-Man -> Peter Parker (Noir) -> Spider-Man Noir (Spider-Verse films)

Updated by Giga Skunk

Giga_Skunk said in forum #434801:

Spider-Man -> Peter Parker -> Original
Spider-Man -> Peter Parker -> Black Suit
Spider-Man -> Miles Morales -> Shitty PS5 suit
Spider-Man -> Peter Parker (Noir) -> Spider-Man Noir (Comic suit)
Spider-Man -> Peter Parker (Noir) -> Spider-Man Noir (Spider-Verse films)

How do Peter Parker as Captain Universe, or Bruce Banner as Spiderman, fit into this?

:
How do Peter Parker as Captain Universe, or Bruce Banner as Spiderman, fit into this?

Well, @nonamethanks, my first and immediate thought was that the only post containing any variant of Captain Universe was an ensemble containing 161 characters, most of which also only appear in this image. No one in their right mind who is knowledgeable enough to know who fuckin Captain Universe is would be confusing Captain Universe Pete for the OG

Then I thought i was being incredibly rude and hypocritical, not to mention, Captain universe Pete is reminiscent enough of Spider-Man to be nested under the original tag

Spider-Man -> Peter Parker -> Peter Parker (Captain Universe)

As for Banner, shocked to see you didn’t say they just to make a point. Bruce Banner of Earth-70105 is indeed one of those Spider-Verse characters and would qualify. But to my original point with Captain Universe, anyone specifically looking for Bruce’s spidey would expect to include “Spider-Man” in his name.

Spider-Man -> Bruce Banner (Spider-Man)

Given the niche variety of this version of Bruce opposed to The Hulk it’d be more fair to nest him under Spider-Man

@nonamethanks

Heres what I've got

post #11197251

  • Dick Grayson
    • Dick Grayson (Batman)
  • Robin (DC)
    • Damian Wayne

I'm not versed enough in Batman lore to know if Damian Wayne has been Batman, and if his Batman persona is notable enough. If that were the case, he'll be treated like Dick

  • Dick Grayson
    • Dick Grayson (Batman)
  • Robin (DC)
    • Damian Wayne

post #10525116

Hmm. Here's how my systom would depict that, may expose a flaw or two

  • Batman
    • Batman (Bruce Wayne)
  • Dick Grayson
    • Dick Grayson (Batman)

My system would merge both civilian and hero identities under the same person. Batman (Bruce Wayne) would contain both post post #7783075 and post #10259141. Users can later parse both for Bruce and Batman seperatly and add a 3rd subtag.

post #10259141

  • Batman
    • Batman (Bruce Wayne)
      • Batman (Costume) (Name Pending)

post #7783075

  • Batman
    • Batman (Bruce Wayne)
      • Bruce Wayne (Civilian) (Name Pending)

This comes with the added flexibility of users who may not give shits about a particular hero identity, and will look at post #10525116 and go "Oh shit! Two batman" or post #11171951 and go "Oh shit! 4 Spider-men!" and simply slap the parent tag on it, and nothing else. If they are mindful enough to include the identifies, the parent tag will have been automatically mapped.

post #7441857

A situation from Invincible with similar mechanics.

  • Invincible (Character)
    • Invincible (Mark Grayson)
  • Zandale Randolph
    • Zandale Randolph (Invincible)

post #8986636

A much simpler post, where I believe the bulk of superhero related images will end up

  • Invincible (Character)
    • Invincible (Terra Grayson)
    • Invincible (Marky Murphy)

post #9974764

I'll tackle this too

  • Spider-Man
    • Spider-Man (Peter Parker)
      • Peter (Classic Suit) [Optional 3rd child tag, as discussed before]
    • Spider-Man (Miles Morales)
    • Spider-Man (2099) (Miquel O'Hara)
    • Scarlet-Spider (Ben Reily)
  • Spider-Woman
    • Spider-Gwen [OR] Ghost-Spider (Gwen Stacy)
    • Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew)
  • Silk (Marvel)

Notice I excluded Silk from the Spider-Woman pile. I don't believe she was ever officially called "Spider-Woman", that can be debated later but for similar cases (Say, Spider-Ham or something) this is how it'd show up

It pains me to include Jessica Drew here as she has absolutely nothing to do with Spider-Man, she's technically an Avengers character. While I'm on Jessica:

post #6434910

  • Spider-Man
    • Spider-Man (Peter Parker)
    • Spider-Man (2099) (Miquel O'Hara)
  • Spider-Woman
    • Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew)
      • Jessica Drew (Across The Spider-Verse)
  • Spider-Girl
    • Spider-Girl (Mayday Parker)

Some above mentioned the headache of considering every single variant of Peter-Parker seperate characters. Maguire, Lowenthal, Garfield, Holland. I agree, which is why I think all variants of Peter that aren't significantly altered should probably get mulched into Spider-Man (Peter Parker). In the case of white Avengers Jessica vs Black Spider-Verse Jessica I'd consider both different enough to have seperate tags. Like I said before, the average comic casual may not give two shits about the distinction and just slap Jessica Drew on either version of the character and nothing else at all, which would work.

Updated by Giga Skunk

If it's Spider-man (Peter Parker) and Batman (Bruce Wayne), should it not be Robin (Dick Grayson)? We should really strive for consistency here. Which opens the door to the following question no mortal should ever ask or debate:

Which is correct for a civilian depiction of Dick Grayson?

OR

In case you couldn't figure it out, I'm not opening the door to a debate on this, I'm saying that having this debate at all would be a total waste of time and hence a reason not to base civilian identities on the superhero persona like this.

Also just gonna throw this out here: if I search batman and get images like post #10263142, I'm gonna be annoyed.

Updated by PersonalFowl

If it's Spider-man (Peter Parker) and Batman (Bruce Wayne), should it not be Robin (Dick Grayson)?

You really shouldn’t ask questions if you don’t want to debate a solution

I’m basing the naming conventions on the parent tag. If we determine the civilian name should be the parent, all of their hero identities will be parentheses after their civilian name

If we determine the hero tag should be the parent, all civilians holding they handle will be parentheses after the hero name

And whats the mechanical benefit of not allowing Batman to apply to post #10263142 beyond you “Not liking” it. All you’ve done is tell me what you do and don’t “Like” without offering solutions or pointing out problems

Giga_Skunk said in forum #435187:

I’m basing the naming conventions on the parent tag. If we determine the civilian name should be the parent, all of their hero identities will be parentheses after their civilian name

If we determine the hero tag should be the parent, all civilians holding they handle will be parentheses after the hero name

I guess personally I kind of rejected the idea of an inconsistent system of hero/civilian parent tags a bit out of hand due to causing confusion. Rereading your proposal more clearly reveals that you've already wisely bypassed the hypothetical debate I brought up, and thus I shouldn't have brought it up at all. My bad. Let's just consider it an explanation for why this annoying inconsistency would need to exist.

Also just to be clear, batman -bruce_wayne_(civilian) (or equivalent) would exist, so that's not a dealbreaker. It would just be ideal imo if a search for Batman returned someone wearing a Batman costume doing Batman things.

Giga_Skunk said in forum #435280:

@PersonalFowl

Say again, what you're trying to say is lost on me, sorry.

You're proposing that rather than putting everybody under civilian identities or everybody under hero identities, we put some characters under the civilian identity like Dick Grayson (Robin) and most under the hero identity like Batman (Bruce Wayne). I foolishly didn't realize that was extremely intentional and presumed you needed to "fix" that by unifying the system one way or the other like Batman (Bruce Wayne) and Robin (Dick Grayson). The "issue" I brought up is deciding whether Dick Grayson (civilian) should imply Nightwing or Robin (dc). But your proposal wouldn't create either implication; avoiding that debate is why the Dick Grayson parent would exist in the first place.

I was arguing against a non-existent issue that you didn't propose to begin with. It's an issue with trying to force everything under the hero identities, hence why nobody is proposing that.

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