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

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)

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

I'm having a hard time picturing what the tag lists would look like @Giga_Skunk. Could you provide some post examples, like the ones in forum #432612? For example for something like post #11197251 or post #10525116, or for Peter B. Parker vs Miles Morales.

@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.

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?

• Robin (Dc)
• Robin (Dick Grayson)
• Dick Grayson (civilian)

OR

• Nightwing
• Nightwing (Dick Grayson)
• Dick Grayson (civilian)

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.

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.

@PersonalFowl

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

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.

@PersonalFowl thank you very much. Guess I’ll wait on other people’s opinions

We currently have a blanket on Supergirl when there are different characters that take the role. I personally propose they all be either sub-tags or separate tags altogether, like we do with Spider-Man, Green Lantern, etc (thought those will likely fall under the same decision).

As some others have said, doing it with character as the general tag and then alter ego/iteration as sub tags below.

For Supergirl it would look something like this:

Supergirl
↳ Kara Zor-El (comics)
↳ Kara Zor-El (DCU)
↳ Kara Zor-El (MAWS)
↳ Kara Zor-El (Flash 2023)
↳ Linda Danvers
↳ Kara In-Ze/Kara Kent (DCAU)
↳ Cir-El
↳ Ariella Kent

Unlikely that anyone does art of Ariella considering she was barely a character, but all the same, still a different Supergirl.

It makes more sense to me than the civilian/alter ego/iteration being the master tag. Basically like how like

nonamethanks said in forum #432612:

If we instead treat them as separate characters:

post #8376961 would look like this:

• miles morales
• miles morales (civilian)
• tony stark
• tony stark (civilian)
• peter parker (mcu) (umbrella tag for mcu peter parker, whether dressed as spiderman or not)
• peter parker (mcu) (civilian) (tag for civilian mcu peter parker)
• peter b parker (umbrella tag for peter b parker from spider-verse, whether dressed as spiderman or not)
• peter b parker (civilian) (tag for civilian peter b parker)

I'm sorry, this make ZERO sense. Are Tony Stark and Tony Stark(Civilian) not the same person? In what situation would they ever be different? Tony Stark is Tony Stark.

At the same time though, can you use a child tag without the parent tag? For example, in cases where it's Spider-Man going to school and not as Spider-Man could you use the Peter Parker

DerBurgerFuhrer said in forum #436092:

We currently have a blanket on Supergirl when there are different characters that take the role. I personally propose they all be either sub-tags or separate tags altogether, like we do with Spider-Man, Green Lantern, etc (thought those will likely fall under the same decision).

As some others have said, doing it with character as the general tag and then alter ego/iteration as sub tags below.

For Supergirl it would look something like this:

- Supergirl
  - Kara Zor-El (comics)
  - Kara Zor-El (DCU)
  - Kara Zor-El (MAWS)
  - Kara Zor-El (Flash 2023)
  - Linda Danvers
  - Kara In-Ze/Kara Kent (DCAU)
  - Cir-El
  - Ariella Kent

Unlikely that anyone does art of Ariella considering she was barely a character, but all the same, still a different Supergirl.

It makes more sense to me than the civilian/alter ego/iteration being the master tag.

And where would the depiction of civilian versions of these characters like post #3224860 or post #8191083 lie in this hierarchy?

Ylimegirl said in forum #436093:

And where would the depiction of civilian versions of these characters like post #3224860 or post #8191083 lie in this hierarchy?

Civilian versions are just alter egos. They're the same thing.

For post #3224860, that would be:

Supergirl → Kara Zor-El (DC Rebirth) → Kara Danvers

They're all the same person in this iteration and they all appear in this image.

For post #8191083, that would be:

Supergirl → Kara Zor-El (MAWS)

Unlike a lot of the other iterations, she doesn't have an alter ego aside from being Kara Zor-El.

DerBurgerFuhrer said in forum #436097:
Supergirl → Kara Zor-El (DC Rebirth) → Kara Danvers

You're advocating for 3 different tags for the same character, which doesn't fix the base issue. What about the original Kara Zor-El? Because she was Flamebird too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamebird#Kara_Zor-El.

All of these proposals continue to ignore the fact that superheroes use different names and costumes from times to times. If it was as easy as implying everything under a single superhero name we'd have done that already, but it's not.
And you are still forcing someone searching for the superhero batman too see a mix of random civilian versions of all characters who had that name, including Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson, where the costume is nowhere to be found.

nonamethanks said in forum #436119:

You're advocating for 3 different tags for the same character, which doesn't fix the base issue. What about the original Kara Zor-El? Because she was Flamebird too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamebird#Kara_Zor-El.

Which is why I was asking if child tags can be used independently from parent tags. Because, let's say for example, in post #3224860 if Supergirl wasn't in the image, then it would just be:

Kara Zor-El (Rebirth)
↳ Kara Danvers

I don't feel like Kara Danvers needs the Rebirth designator because that character only exists in the Rebirth reboot.

Additionally, if child tags can be linked to more than one parent, then my answer to your question is:

Supergirl
↳ Kara Zor-El (comics/prime/maybe doesn't even need a designator since she's the original)

Then:

Flamebird
↳ Jimmy Olsen
↳ Ak-Var
↳ Bette Kane
↳ Lois Lane
↳ Kara Zor-El (the same Kara Zor-El that is original Supergirl)
↳ Thara Ak-Var

While I understand we have a huge mess of tags, it's not so much about simplification as it is about organization. That's what I'm proposing here. Tags existing in a multi-level, interconnected hierarchy.

It'd be like if one day biologists said, "We have too many classifications for animals. Too many Families, too many Phylums, too many Classes. Let's just blanket them all under 'Animals' and call it a day".
While, yes, we do simply say, "look at those animals over there", that is a way for us to blanket something for quick reference. And that's fine if you want to search for all animals. But if instead someone wants to see all Arthropods, then they have the ability to find that. It's the same for these tags. If someone wants to see just artwork of John Stewart and not Hal Jordan or Kyle Rayner (though I don't know why you wouldn't cause Kyle Rayner is fucking awesome) then they have the option to do that.

I don't maybe I'm losing the plot somewhere, but to me, and organized system is the best option.

Hmm. Yeah, you did a good thing by bringing up Supergirl because that's a huge can of worm that we also need to solve with this. Looking at the various tags, there's other random characters like post #11264629 (not Kara Zor-El), and post #11254937 (alternate supergirl costume) too.

Bear with me, but let me braindump a train of logic here:

post #11264629, set in the DCAU, is easy, but post #11254937 and post #3224860 are where it starts to get entangled: I mentioned before that i think peter b parker should be under peter parker, but this is a similar case. How do we deal with this?
I should also mention the various suits worn by her in the TV Show: https://arrow.fandom.com/wiki/Supergirl_suits

We'd have two options:

Separate Characters

post #3224860:

• kara zor-el (rebirth), for this specific character
• kara zor-el (civilian) (rebirth) <-> kara danvers (rebirth) (tag for the civilian, whichever we want to pick)
• kara zor-el (supergirl) (rebirth) (tag for the costume)

post #11254937:

• kara zor-el (my_adventures_with_superman)
• kara zor-el (supergirl) (black suit) (tag for this specific costume of MAwS supergirl)

post #11264629

• kara in-ze
• kara in-ze (civilian)

post #10743827

• kara in-ze
• kara in-ze (supergirl)

Grouped characters

post #3224860:

• arrowverse
• kara zor-el
• kara zor-el (civilian) <-> kara danvers (tag for the civilian, whichever we want to pick, one will be aliased to the other)
• kara zor-el (supergirl) (she's wearing the "classic" suit so we probably don't need a subtag here)

post #11254937:

• My Adventures With Superman
• kara zor-el
• kara zor-el (supergirl)
• kara zor-el (supergirl) (black suit) <-> supergirl (black suit)

And these ones don't change, because it's a "different" character:
post #11264629:

• kara in-ze
• kara in-ze (civilian)

post #10743827:

• kara in-ze
• kara in-ze (supergirl)

The issue remains of "how do i search for all supergirl costumes?". This is a valid problem that I spent the last problem pondering after the complaints raised in this topic.

The "just give me the superhero" problem

Let's bring the batman example again, for an impactful case:

The simplest option:

• bruce wayne
• bruce wayne (batman)
• Dick Grayson
• dick grayson (nightwing)

But this way, we can't search for anyone wearing the batman costume, because dick grayson (batman) is not a cosplay tag, and you'd have to do a very unnatural search like *_(batman), which I'd say is out of the question if we are trying to make things simpler and more consistent.

If we make an umbrella tag for costumes too

post #10525116, two batmen:

• batman
• bruce wayne (batman)
• dick grayson (batman)
• bruce wayne
• bruce wayne (batman)
• Dick Grayson
• dick grayson (nightwing)

post #11263703, batman and nightwing:

• batman
• bruce wayne (batman)
• bruce wayne
• bruce wayne (batman)
• Dick Grayson
• dick grayson (nightwing)

The problem here is already obvious: four different tags in the sidebar for a single guy. It becomes even worse if we consider that Jason Todd became Nightwing briefly, which would force us to make an umbrella for Nightwing too. Something like post #11265493 then becomes a gigantic list of nested implications, even if we consider the simplest case where only robin, batgirl and batman get an umbrella:

• batman
• bruce wayne (batman)
• bruce wayne
• bruce wayne (batman)
• Dick Grayson
• dick grayson (nightwing)
• jason todd
• jason todd (red hood)
• Robin (Dc)
• tim drake (robin)
• damian wayne (robin)
• tim drake
• tim drake (robin)
• damian wayne
• damian wayne (robin)
• batgirl
• cassandra cain (batgirl)
• barbara gordon (batgirl)
• cassandra cain
• cassandra cain (batgirl)
• barbara gordon
• barbara gordon (batgirl)

And this is list is not even accounting for all the subsuits that belong to certain characters (topic #32808: batgirl_costume_(2021_cassandra) etc). Just this example turns the tag list from 12 tags to 22.

Even if we make batman costume and nightwing costume, it just shifts the problem out of sight, it doesn't remove it. We wouldn't be able to imply chartags to it, so we'd have to manually tag all of the cases individually, which is still not a simple solution and also causes a mess in the long term.

Even if we use costume tags as the base hierarchy, post #10525116 still doesn't get solved for the case of Dick Grayson. Having the costume as parent we'd end up with:

batman

• bruce wayne
• dick grayson

But then the moment we end up with civilian tags, we would have a Bruce Wayne civilian post tagged with:

• batman
• bruce wayne
• bruce wayne (civilian)

And a nightwing Dick Grayson would end up tagged with:

• batman
• dick grayson
• nightwing
• dick grayson

And the status quo of leaving everything unimplied and only tagging civilian names in civilian clothing is already the status quo, which obviously does not work because people keep tagging both the civilian name and superhero without any regard.

Do you see how many problems we have in all scenarios?
People keep proposing other solutions in this thread, but they are not actually providing examples of what these posts would look like. Please, if you are arguing for a diffent solution, show us what a tag list would look like for these posts I referenced.