on the amiguity of the "willing" tag

[nonexistenttriangle]

hello! this is the first time ive used the forum so sincerest apologies if i got anything wrong about how you are supposed to do topics and stuff.

i come here with a slight issue.
have you people noticed how needlessly ambiguous the "willing" tag is ? i mean. oftentimes i will find stuff thats both tagged "willing" and then specifies "unwillling prey" and i feel that the tag willing should be possibly maybe applied with a bit more restraint ?
let me state my case.
in a solid 95% of vore situations that we depict in art there's atleast one willing party present. there are definitely exceptions of course, i mean i probably could find you a couple examples of art where one party is unwilling and the other unaware, but, for most cases i geniuenly think if we begin so generously applying the tag willing as to mean "someones willing in this situation" regardless if its the pred or the prey it kinda ends up just being a blanket thing applying to most vore, which lessens its usefullness as a filtration thing.
when i filter by tag willing i pretty much assume it means the prey because it feels the most obvious to me, only to find some scenarios with a very much unwilling prey, and just having "willing, willing pred" in short succession. i mean. nothing wrong with unwilling stuff its just not what im looking for at that time.

this leads me to the second part of this thing, that is, maybe, im unique in that assumption. maybe everyone around me just considers the "willing" tag ambigious, or maybe the usage of the willing tag is only like this in the parts of the vore community i hang around in ? i dont know and part of the reason i post this is to learn what others attitude about this issue.

tl;dr the "willing" tag is kinda ambigious because some people take it to reffer any of the people in the art being willing, when it seems (to me personally) like the logical choice is for it to reffer to the prey

sorry for my overtly formal writing style i translate legal documents for a living and sometimes it gets to you.

[Eka]

All tags are ambiguous in some way. Pretty much nobody understand any tag exactly the same as anyone else. In a purely fantasy and subjective realm like this, those are all unavoidable.

[ryanshowseason3]

I think eka's right and trying to moderate any meaning for any tag is a losing battle and one that would be appreciated by few.

Honestly I'd wager almost everyone views willing as being the prey's perspective.

Willing prey is just another tag that people may or may not be watching so you'll see many people use it alongside willing.

If someone wants views they will likely use every tag they can to describe their piece to hit as many people watching tags as possible.

Honestly it would be interesting to see in a poll how many people Did or didn't agree the willing tag is meant for the prey.

[EnderDracolich]

This sorta thing is unavoidable, IMO? Words can mean different things to different people, and the more vague a tag is, the more variety of things are going to get slapped with that tag. My personal solution is just... use the more specific tag. Search for 'willing prey' and not 'willing,' and accept that you might miss a few pieces in the process that should have had both tags but didn't.

[Rat_Guy]

All tags are ambiguous in some way. Pretty much nobody understand any tag exactly the same as anyone else. In a purely fantasy and subjective realm like this, those are all unavoidable.

Ya know, I've thought about this before, and I think I might have a solution. What if you could click on a tag and it took you to page with a description of that tag and what it means? Where would these tag definitions come from? They would be written by users of the website, and each description would be voted on by other users of the website. The description with the highest number of up votes would be displayed at the top of each tag description page, and the next description would be the second highest number of up votes, and so-on. It would work very similarly to how we already have user generated tags for art in the gallery. Or it would exactly like Urban Dictionary.

[manifold]

All tags are ambiguous in some way. Pretty much nobody understand any tag exactly the same as anyone else. In a purely fantasy and subjective realm like this, those are all unavoidable.

Ya know, I've thought about this before, and I think I might have a solution. What if you could click on a tag and it took you to page with a description of that tag and what it means? Where would these tag definitions come from? They would be written by users of the website, and each description would be voted on by other users of the website. The description with the highest number of up votes would be displayed at the top of each tag description page, and the next description would be the second highest number of up votes, and so-on. It would work very similarly to how we already have user generated tags for art in the gallery. Or it would exactly like Urban Dictionary.

Setting aside the difficulty of still needing someone to go through each tag on every artwork and decide "Does this tag apply to this artwork", in that world do you enforce only using the definition with the highest number of up-votes or are the, say, top three okay but not the fourth definition? What if the rankings shift, do you go back and remove that tag from everywhere because it changed?

In the case of the OP I could easily see "Willing" having definitions as:

1. Willing refers to a depiction of one or more prey who are willing to be eaten

2. Willing refers to a depiction of one or more predators who are willing to eat someone



"Willing prey" or "Willing pred" are obviously less ambiguous tags, but still it's overhead for marginal gain.

[ArcaneSigil]

To me it just seems kind of redundant to have an "unwilling pred" tag. Most of the time, if you're going to eat someone, even if they're forcing themselves down your throat, you want to eat them at least a little bit. It's harder to swallow someone that isn't already in your throat than it is to spit someone out if they're trying to force their way in. You try not swallowing something you've already started to swallow. Like a gulp of water, or half eaten piece of meat or whatever. Once it's in your throat, it's going down unless some outside force causes a rather violent reaction that makes it come back up immediately. A good example of unwilling prey is actually in Finding Nemo. Marlin stops himself and Dory from being swallowed alive by the pelican by stopping their descent in the pelicans throat and he immediately starts to choke. Marlin is now blocking his airway. The same would happen with an unwilling pred. The prey is trying to force their way down the throat, the airway closes up to prevent an object not meant to be in the lungs from going into the lungs, thus causing a choking sensation. The pred wants to get them out as quickly as possible to reopen their airway.

In short, to me the only unwilling participant in a vorish scenario should be the prey. They don't want to be eaten, but one way or another they're going into a belly. Or other internal bodily chamber.

[MyHeartInAcid]

To me it just seems kind of redundant to have an "unwilling pred" tag. Most of the time, if you're going to eat someone, even if they're forcing themselves down your throat, you want to eat them at least a little bit. It's harder to swallow someone that isn't already in your throat than it is to spit someone out if they're trying to force their way in. You try not swallowing something you've already started to swallow. Like a gulp of water, or half eaten piece of meat or whatever. Once it's in your throat, it's going down unless some outside force causes a rather violent reaction that makes it come back up immediately. A good example of unwilling prey is actually in Finding Nemo. Marlin stops himself and Dory from being swallowed alive by the pelican by stopping their descent in the pelicans throat and he immediately starts to choke. Marlin is now blocking his airway. The same would happen with an unwilling pred. The prey is trying to force their way down the throat, the airway closes up to prevent an object not meant to be in the lungs from going into the lungs, thus causing a choking sensation. The pred wants to get them out as quickly as possible to reopen their airway.

In short, to me the only unwilling participant in a vorish scenario should be the prey. They don't want to be eaten, but one way or another they're going into a belly. Or other internal bodily chamber.

You’re talking about a fantasy based kink involving people magically having snake powers, don’t try and bring logic into this now lmao

[maleperduis]

I don't think there should be a willing pred tag, nor should willing be applied to mean the pred is willing. It's rare for the predator to be unwilling, we don't need to put tags on every single image where that isn't happening.

[Ixtili]

I'm not really sure how clear you can make it. Espeacially when some stories do include both or are intentionally ambigious. Naturally making it as clear as possible isn't something people should just give up on. But I've read stories where the entire premise is based on going from willing to unwilling or unwilling to willing. Or the prey or pred being conflicted to the point where neither tag really fits anymore.

And it can be hard to describe a story with just a few tags, people can also get overwhelmed by the options and just pick a thousand and one descriptions.

It's not good for people with very inflexible tastes I'll grant you. But not every story on this website is exactly going to be easy to explain or describe either.

As for putting a description? While a very basic description could work for the more straight forward things...I could easily see whoever was put in charge of writing said descriptions misunderstanding some kind of subtlety in a more varied tag or alternatively overcorrecting for that complexity to the point the description of the tag became illegible.

[Rat_Guy]

All tags are ambiguous in some way. Pretty much nobody understand any tag exactly the same as anyone else. In a purely fantasy and subjective realm like this, those are all unavoidable.

Ya know, I've thought about this before, and I think I might have a solution. What if you could click on a tag and it took you to page with a description of that tag and what it means? Where would these tag definitions come from? They would be written by users of the website, and each description would be voted on by other users of the website. The description with the highest number of up votes would be displayed at the top of each tag description page, and the next description would be the second highest number of up votes, and so-on. It would work very similarly to how we already have user generated tags for art in the gallery. Or it would exactly like Urban Dictionary.

Setting aside the difficulty of still needing someone to go through each tag on every artwork and decide "Does this tag apply to this artwork", in that world do you enforce only using the definition with the highest number of up-votes or are the, say, top three okay but not the fourth definition? What if the rankings shift, do you go back and remove that tag from everywhere because it changed?

I see the tag system working the same way as it does now: the poster of the art/writing can add any tags they want, and users of the website can initiate a vote to add or remove tags. The only functional difference is that users of the tag system would now have a dictionary of the tags from which to make their voting decisions.

[maleperduis]

I see the tag system working the same way as it does now: the poster of the art/writing can add any tags they want, and users of the website can initiate a vote to add or remove tags. The only functional difference is that users of the tag system would now have a dictionary of the tags from which to make their voting decisions.

This system is basically what exists on, for example, e621.net . So I don't see any reason it couldn't work here.

[EnderDracolich]

In short, to me the only unwilling participant in a vorish scenario should be the prey. They don't want to be eaten, but one way or another they're going into a belly. Or other internal bodily chamber.

Telling other people what how their kink 'should' work seems pretty short-sighted. Lots of people enjoy unwilling preds, and trying to take that specific, narrow tag away is only going to lead to more confusion.

[Assimilation]

To me it just seems kind of redundant to have an "unwilling pred" tag. Most of the time, if you're going to eat someone, even if they're forcing themselves down your throat, you want to eat them at least a little bit.

The tag exists for the scenarios when it's not "most of the time". It also exists for scenarios where there's "a least a little bit" of regret or counteracting desire to not eat them. There exists the idea of dubious consent or of forcefeeding under duress or external penalty.

You try not swallowing something you've already started to swallow.

Characters in images are not real people. They obey cartoon physics, if any at all. They are aliens and dragons and whales.

Tags should not be stewarded by individuals, since it should be plainly evident to you now that it's always easy to be shortsighted about what they truly mean or apply to. Instead, we can just accept that no taxonomic system is truly flawless and use it anyway because it gets 90% of the users 90% of the way to what they're looking for.

[alockwood1]

To be honest, I tend to avoid using the term Willing Predator, because most of the time, the Predator is going to be a willing Participant.

I would rather use things like Reluctant Predator (if the predator doesn't want to initially do it, but agrees to do it), Accidental Pred (some aspect of the vore was an accident - like the intention was for the situation - like a Capture - to be non-fatal, but it turns Fatal), or Unwilling Predator (Doesn't want to eat the Prey, but the Prey's forced down their throat anyways).

As it is, I tend to dislike the idea of Willing Prey, that's Healthy, in Fatal scenarios, as that feels like a sinful form of suicide - I have no issues with sick/ mortally injured, reluctant, accidental, unwilling, and so on, because I can at least reason it out in my head, but the idea of a healthy person saying, "Hey, Mr./Mrs. Predator, eat me up and turn me into fat/poop!" That's just triggers a few things for me.

Now, I don't mind Non-Fatal scenarios - regurgitation, full-tour, reformation - where the prey is alive at some point, or is implied to be alive later on, but, as mentioned, Fatal scenarios with Willing, and Healthy, Prey makes me wonder somewhat about the writer, especially if that's all they write.

I have a few other issues, but that's to do with other things.

[Drudicta]

Personally I like the way e621 has their tagging system set up, with some tags converting into a primary incredibly similar tag when you type it in, but also tends to be more encompassing or correct. I don't know if Eka's has a system in place or could even implement such a system since the site it's self is pretty old (and fast). But Eka's does otherwise let you specify pred or prey which more people need to use. And a lot of folks simply just... aren't good at tagging.

I myself have just thrown a TON of tags on some of what I've uploaded simply because they fit even loosely and there is not a more relevant or specific tag that would fit better. Granted I COULD make a new tag but then it'd be one or two items with that tag.