Danbooru

Plural to Singular alias request thread

Posted under General

T5J8F8 said: leeches -> leech ?

I guess, although I have no idea why the FF one has "leech" on it unless it's the name of the thing she's leaning on...

Ideally no more images will ever appear under this tag anyway though.

boneless said:
spirits -> spirit

or to ghost? (Perhaps 'spirit' could refer to the distinctly Japanese, flame-like ghosts, and 'ghost' be the implication.)

Probably warrants its own thread to work out the kinks. Spirit is very seldom used, so just going with ghost might be preferable, or we need to do some tag cleaning, etc. I'd make one now but I need sleep something fierce.

As a visual element though artists regularly depict them in groups though, and the only thing that so far is tagged that doesn't match showing them in groups is that one flash video under firefly.

Unless it's a mass noun or a natural set, I'd say go singular. Swarm_of_fireflies would be a mass noun, and there is otherwise no defined set that a firefly is a natural part of (as far as I am aware). I don't think we want to be using "swarm" for fireflies.

The visual effect that artists are typically after is only generated through the usage of several fireflies though, which is evident by the fact that there are ~132 images of "swarms" versus 6 of individual fireflies.

I agree that a single firefly doesn't incite the proper visual effect, and would be unusual to be depicted as an individual as opposed to being in a group, but the same argument can be said of cloud and star (both of which also feel slightly weird in most usages). Unless we are amending the rules again, I'd say to go for consistency.

Firefly would in general give a feel that it has a lot less weight and impact on the image than fireflies. Fireflies in general are typically greatly impacting of the images they're in, and the usage of the singular in this case would give a false representation of the images. It would be like tagging rain as water drop or the ocean as simply water. Unlike cloud and star, where there are a variety of things that could make a singular occurrence more commonplace (such as star also being a shape, and cloud things like the one ridden on in dragon ball). Firefly though doesn't have anything but itself to be singular or not with. With the way fireflies are generally depicted as balls or blobs of light it is unlikely they'll be used singularly as other occurrences of balls of light (whether spirits, energy, or what not) are more likely to be depicted in groups (such as post #487614).