Kagamine Rin + Len and sibling tags

I've noticed a lot of posts with Kagamine Rin and Kagamine Len are tagged with tags like twins and siblings, but the thing is... they're not officially siblings.

This has led plenty of ship posts to be tagged with incest, even though it isn't.
I was thinking of doing a BUR removing the tags, but I know there are songs that do depict them as siblings, such as Adolescence, Senbonzakura and songs in the Evillious Nendaiki series.

I do know that people not knowledgeable about the subject do assume them to be siblings, I also can't rule out the possibility of images where they're depicted as siblings without being tied to a song.

I wanted to know what other people thought about it before I attempt a big gardening project.

Unfortunately this is a bit of a contentious topic, but I'll try my best to give my perspective on it.

I do not think we should remove the incest, siblings, twins, or any other tag like it from Kagamine Rin and Len images. Right now Danbooru overall goes by "tag what you see". And despite the fact they are not officially canonized siblings, any layperson would look at a set of people with the same last name and extremely similar designs and think "twins", especially in anime where identical twins are far more common then fraternal twins (IE Hikawa Hina and Hikawa Sayo, Floyd Leech and Jade Leech, Hitachiin Hikaru and Hitachiin Kaoru, and on and on).

To me, there's too much of a grey area as to whether the artist themselves interprets them and wants to project them to the audience as twins, lovers, incestual twins, two strangers, twin souls, or whatever to rely purely on official interpretation for tagging purposes. Especially for a fetish like incest it's best to err on the side of caution.

We've gone back and forth on this one in the past. This stance was first brought up by a random user in 2011 and reverted in topic #8026. Since then, evazion edited the twins tag into their wiki in 2016, only for it to be removed in 2022.

I think this is inherently a tricky topic because Crypton's Word of God on this issue was explicitly in response to the fandom, and how much you take this seriously depends on how invested you are in the fandom. It's not clear if there's a good solution here that works for everyone's interests, so we've essentially been tagging them arbitrarily for a while now.

I don't tag them as siblings unless something in the image itself clearly indicates that they are siblings within that context.

But I also don't remove any sibling tags if I see them.

Word of God is a bit tricky because, while it doesn't explicitly say they are twins/siblings, it also doesn't explicitly say they are not twins/siblings either. As far as Danbooru is concerned, I would think people wanting to see images of siblings or twins would want them included in their search. "Tag what you see" feels pretty strong here.

The only problem is the possibility of the tag causing misinformation in the fandom should someone uninformed come here, see the tag, accept it as having some level of authority, and interpreting it as canon. Or someone who is informed attempting to remove the tag as is the case with this thread.

For now I've added a snippet to both their wikis explaining their (lack of) relationship. I was thinking of also adding "Per Danbooru policy, tag what you see" but that doesn't seem like it would answer any questions.

A particularly bold solution (And I'm just throwing this out here) may be to change the meaning of "twins" from only biological twins to the more broader meaning of people who look alike. The difference between look-alike being... oh, I dunno, they both have to exist in the same copyright or something.

i had no idea that they were non-siblings, i just always assumed they were since similar appearance and shared last names

luntoer said:

The only problem is the possibility of the tag causing misinformation in the fandom should someone uninformed come here, see the tag, accept it as having some level of authority, and interpreting it as canon. Or someone who is informed attempting to remove the tag as is the case with this thread.

For now I've added a snippet to both their wikis explaining their (lack of) relationship. I was thinking of also adding "Per Danbooru policy, tag what you see" but that doesn't seem like it would answer any questions.

This was my main fear, as someone who does dabble in the Vocaloid fandom, there has been a surge of misinformation regarding this, and I wouldn't want Danbooru of all places exasperating the issue.

I think the wiki addition is a good compromise for now, so thanks for that ^^