Danbooru

alias mob characters for extras

Posted under Tags

I'd argue that the BUR should be swapped around. The usage of mob is probably way more widespread, and would also line up with mob face. As it stands, unless you check the wikis, there's nothing that distinguishes it name-wise from people/crowd (and it doesn't help that it seems like some folks do use the tag in that way).

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Damian0358 said:

I'd argue that the BUR should be swapped around. The usage of mob is probably way more widespread, and would also line up with mob face. As it stands, unless you check the wikis, there's nothing that distinguishes it name-wise from people/extra (and it doesn't help that it seems like some folks do use the tag in that way).

I didn't do it at first because extra was an already established tag, but I definitely share your opinion. I will add another request and see if this one gains more traction.

My only concern with using mob chara ter as the main tag is that pixiv uses the tag on all mob characters. This causes a risk of it turning into a weird canon/classification tag or, at the least, becoming prone to mistags on images of characters like Feather Magic or the bevvy of Blue Archive generic enemies, which are tagged as mob on pixiv.

sabisabi said:

ok, so i'll be the first to ask. what IS the difference between extra and people.

From my understanding, extra is used for unique background characters that people end up drawing for whatever reason, who are nameless/lack any sort of community nickname; because if they had a name, they'd be tagged (i.e. Poorfag). In contrast, people is strictly for the sort of generic people you'd just plop in the background to liven scenes up (with crowd being its evolved form, since it feels odd to tag a crowd of people with just people). Whether or not it's actually being used properly is an entirely different question.

If you think "hold on, don't we just make up tag names for nameless characters these days, especially OCs?", the tag predates that trend (even if it isn't 'much' of a trend, i.e. Celestial Being Extra from around the same time as extra was made).

Veradux said:

My only concern with using mob chara ter as the main tag is that pixiv uses the tag on all mob characters. This causes a risk of it turning into a weird canon/classification tag or, at the least, becoming prone to mistags on images of characters like Feather Magic or the bevvy of Blue Archive generic enemies, which are tagged as mob on pixiv.

The thing for using extra/mob character is that they help a lot when you want to find niche images of these specific characters that are never going to be named, like the generic mustached guy in granblue_fantasy, he appears in tons of fan arts and official media, but he will never get named because he's just one of many generic templates in the game that is being used for random people. I even had that same issue when tagging post #5458796 (nsfw), which the focus was on just one of the many beastgirl maids that have appeared in Mushoku Tensei.

I still think that mob character would be easier to tag, though. You can see from this topic that there is still lots of confusion on the difference between extra and people, while it's not the same case for mob characters and more identifiable NPCs and enemies, because if that were the case then the tag would have already been bloated with posts of hilichurls and pokemon trainers.

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