Danbooru

tag discussion: alternate_breast_size

Posted under General

This thread's purpose is the discussion of the recently created alternate_breast_size tag.

current wiki:
Tag for when a character's breast size is depicted notably differently from their canonical size.

If a character's canonical breast size is ambiguous (e.g. Izayoi Sakuya), do not use this tag.

See also

I can see how this tag could be useful under certain restrictions... DanielX21 has currently populated the tag with images of 2 characters.

1. haruka_(pokemon) alternate_breast_size

I don't know much about her, but I read the wiki and some comments:

from the wiki:
Known as May in English versions, where she is noted for being rather well endowed for her age (which is then exaggerated even more in fanarts).

Magus said:
Her breast size is really inconsistent in the anime. I blame QUALITY animation for that though.

So I guess she has more than one consistent breast size in canon material. How do we know what is big or small enough to be tagged?

2. hinanawi_tenshi alternate_breast_size

This case is difficult because we don't know her breast size at all. All we have is this:
post #612361, post #374220, zun's design
How can we determine what is enough for alternate_breast_size if we don't know her breast size. This is the same for the majority of touhou characters, btw. For the characters in th6 and 7, we have at least the heights he gave us in his email, but that's it. I think I can savely claim that none of the characters have breasts the size of their head, which would mean that all 416 pages of touhou copytags:1 large_breasts technically qualify for that tag even though for some, that's their standard breast size in fanon.

Additionally, it is very common for characters to be portrayed physically more developped, appearing like 16+ year old characters in terms of waist-hips-bust sizes to appeal to the viewer when they are canonically younger, such as Evangelion's 14 year old girls or Pokemon's 10 year old cast. These are often not "older enough" for adult.

Updated by Arrei

When was this tag created anyway, and by whom? I can't find any discussion in the forum about it.

Anyways, if it's deemed worth keeping, I think it should only apply in cases where a girl's canonical breast size is well-established and consistent and the depicted size difference is large (e.g. from flat_chest to large_breasts or vice versa).

So far this tag looks as useful as the female tag. There is just so much variability of bust size within the different pieces of artwork as well as the possible subjectivity of the tag depending on the character that I feel this tag could just be a mess.

made a quick scan, and the earliest i found seems to be that the tag was first used in 2012-01-20 though there are several posts that fell on this date too.

imho, the tag in question can be easily replaced by character + breast_size in searches. our breast_size tags are one of the thorough tags we have and fairly used quite well. add the fact that even their full tag names are shorter to type too.

Log said:
The only cases I can see this having even a hint of value is flat chests depicted with D cups and vice-versa.

I do agree, but I also think this is a regular enough occurrence, and an intentional thing (such as images where a flat-chested character dreams of having big breasts), that it seems like this is what the tag should be used for.

Searching character+breasts might not be good enough, seems like there would be a lot of false positives whenever there's more than one girl in the picture.

The only use I can see for this tag would be the previously mentioned flat-character-with-big-breasts situation, or vice versa. I'd imagine it'd have to be plainly obvious the character was drawn with a vastly different size, with the character's normal size actually being talked about or noticed in the series they come from.

onozuka_komachi flat_chest solo
izayoi_sakuya large_breasts solo

EDIT> Just realized solo is vastly undertagged; onozuka_komachi flat_chest solo used to return no results until I added solo to all the posts under onozuka_komachi flat_chest chartags:1.

Searching onozuka_komachi -breasts also reveals that too many people fail to tag flat_chest.

The only case I can see being made in favor of these tags is to allow regular members to fit those searches within a two-tag limit, but it's still susceptible to the false positive problem. Even then, lots of taggers and uploaders won't even know about this tag, and the threshold after which something qualifies for one of these tags becomes blurry and debatable.

Just tag posts with the proper breast size tags and these new tags won't be necessary.

Updated

Serlo said:
"Lots of taggers won't know about this tag" could be said against the creation of any tag. The tag should stand or fall on it's own merit.

I meant to say that they wouldn't know the canonical breast size and thus have no idea if the image qualifies for the tag or not. Even worse, if someone who is flat-chested is drawn with small but noticeable breasts, some may tag it as alternate_breast_size while some would still consider it within the realms of "normal".

If it's an obvious alteration from one extreme to another, or listed as being an intentional alternative style in the image or its commentary, I could see some value in this. For posts with small, accidental, or simply stylistic variations (or if the tagger doesn't know what to compare to) the tag should definitely not be applied or it becomes mostly meaningless. I also don't expect the tag to get a ton of use, but that's not really a reason to not use it.

Serlo said:
...a character dreaming about themselves with a fuller figure should have breast_expansion, adult and/or possibly breast_envy.

Not necessarily adult if only the breasts are larger and the rest of the body remains the same.

In any case, at least a cleanup of alternate_breast_size is perhaps in order. Currently it just seems to be Danielx21's personal take on it. I can't find any posts showing extreme breast size differences compared to canonical material for any flat-chested/huge-breasted characters I can think off the top of my head though, so if anyone has something like that in mind, that would be a good place to start.

Updated

This tag is fine if the following restrictions apply:
1) The difference should be fairly extreme: flat_chest to large_breasts or vice versa. Varying a good 2 cups in either direction is the norm for fanart. It has to be a complete change.
2) Ideally it would be a major focus of the image.

In that case, should Touhou characters be left out of this tag, on account of there being no "canon" size, only fanon interpretations?

The same may apply to the Vocaloids as well, at least in Miku's case. It should still be applicable to characters like Rin, given her age.

Although the previously mentioned situation of imagining about having a different size could still apply.

Updated

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