Elidibus and Themis from FFXIV

small preface, Elidibus is a character from Final Fantasy XIV, Themis_(Ff14) is Elidibus' true name, which was a reveal in the latest expansion, Endwalker.

ok so there was a period in between Endwalker patches were Themis wasn't confirmed to be Elidibus, despite multiple evidence pointing towards it (Themis wearing an uniform that only Elidibus can wear, same VA, etc.). Due to this uncertainty (and maybe perhaps spoilers, idk what was going through the mind of the user that created the Themis tag), Elidibus and Themis are currently split in danbooru.

this creates (in my opinion) a really bizarre tag, Elidibus_(Cosplay). if you look at the tag, it's literally just posts of Themis wearing his own clothes.

Elidibus' case isn't like, for example, (Shadowbringers spoilers) G'raha Tia and Crystal Exarch, another split FFXIV character on danbooru, where G'raha takes on a new identity and a radically new appearance. Themis and Elidibus are the same person through and through, no alternate identity or anything like that.

I am unsure on how to handle this situation, I came up with this:
merge Elidibus and Themis' tags, making Elidibus the main tag name due to it being the most prominent/original name, deleting the Elidibus_(Cosplay) tag, and maybe tagging every Themis picture as spoilers, just in case.
on the topic of spoiling the Themis pics, a lot of FFXIV pics are tagged spoilers completely on the user uploading methinks. for example, Emet-Selch, another character who has two set appearances like Elidibus are sometimes tagged as spoilers and sometimes is not. so idk how that would be handled

If the tags do stay separate, then I would like if the Elidibus_(Cosplay) tag was nuked at the very least, since it's such a weird tag to me.
If anyone can help me on how to handle this, I would be very grateful :D

also as another side point, if you asked me, I wouldn't consider Themis to be a spoiler, but I am unsure to how strict/loose the spoiler tag is on danbooru, if I could get something more specific than just "the plot", it would be very helpful to how I should handle this topic further

The split tag is justified IMO, sure it might've been obvious to anyone who's watched more than 1 cutscene total, but the game made a clear point of keeping the two instances separate, unlike e.g. Emet-Selch whose OG human form is introduced under the same name and instantly recognizable as him in both personality and appearance. There is 10 years' worth of expansions in between mysterious masked body-hopping lunatic Elidibus and ethereal bishie Themis, and I'm sure anyone who has yet to reach Endwalker would be beyond bamboozled by the latter showing up in an Elidibus search. We don't even know if his Ascian body looked anything like the original under the robes or was a random hijack.

To my knowledge, the *_(cosplay) tags are just a way of identifying outfits from across different character tags, he obviously does not wear the spiky Ascian robes as Themis so I assumed it was applicable as long as the two tags remain separate. To give a similar example off the top of my head, we can have Kaname Madoka "cosplaying" Ultimate Madoka.

(The spoiler tag is an arbitrary mess all across the board, probably not even worth getting into in this thread. I'm guilty of slapping it on all my Ancient uploads when EW first came out, but haven't bothered to continue doing it since.)

Yeah that's fair, I just wanted some input on it. Although the point of appearances just makes me think of Lahabrea... he certainly doesn't look or act the same in the bodies he used as an ascian vs his ancient appearance. although Lahabrea's case is more confusing due to the whole Hephaistos situation >_> maybe something like a Lahabrea (Ancient) tag could fix this, i'm not sure.

I definitely haven't thought of the cosplay tags in that way, if that's the case then it doesn't hurt for the tag to exist.

+1 to keeping them separate. They have different names, appearances and personalities, even if technically they're the same person.

This reminds of of topic #20592 though, where I proposed a clean up of the G'raha/Exarch tags, then never actually did anything. In that case, I think Crystal Exarch should be treated more like a skin tag. I guess I'll follow through on cleaning that up now if no one disagrees.

CoreMack said:
This reminds of of topic #20592 though, where I proposed a clean up of the G'raha/Exarch tags, then never actually did anything. In that case, I think Crystal Exarch should be treated more like a skin tag. I guess I'll follow through on cleaning that up now if no one disagrees.

+1 to this too, I think Crystal Exarch should just imply G'raha Tia. Now that the CT raids are mandatory there's even less reason to treat him as a spoiler.

I went ahead and added G'raha_Tia to every Exarch post and removed spoilers from all of them except the ones involving the Ancients (though I don't think every picture of the Elpis gang needs to be spoilered), and post #5420110, which felt more spoilery than just "G'raha is the Exarch," even if it is a Shadowbringers spoiler.

On a similar note, should The_Endsinger imply Meteion?

CoreMack said:
On a similar note, should The_Endsinger imply Meteion?

I'd probably keep those separate, Endsinger looks drastically different.

CoreMack said:

I went ahead and added G'raha_Tia to every Exarch post and removed spoilers from all of them except the ones involving the Ancients (though I don't think every picture of the Elpis gang needs to be spoilered), and post #5420110, which felt more spoilery than just "G'raha is the Exarch," even if it is a Shadowbringers spoiler.

On a similar note, should The_Endsinger imply Meteion?

Makes sense, good work. I'd say no to the Endsinger implication, technically "our" Meteion wasn't assimilated into the main body, and they're way too different anyway.