Implicating mermaid -> monster_girl.

Reason: A mermaid is a monster girl.

<sigh>

Why not fairies and elves while we're at it?

You can make a significantly better case for Mermaids.

Lokispawn said:
<sigh>

Why not fairies and elves while we're at it?

Fairies and elves look (usually) 99.9% human, though, so your comparison is derailed.

Technically, due to the definition of 'monster girl', mermaids do qualify seeing as how they're half-human, half-creature. The issue comes from that fact that mermaids are seen as pretty 'normal' by most people due to their presence in popular fiction. We tend not to think of them as 'monster' girls right off the bat.

I'd say go ahead and implicate it, no real sense in exempting them from the rule simply because we're familiar with them.

Kayako said:
Technically, due to the definition of 'monster girl', mermaids do qualify seeing as how they're half-human, half-creature. The issue comes from that fact that mermaids are seen as pretty 'normal' by most people due to their presence in popular fiction. We tend not to think of them as 'monster' girls right off the bat.

I'm with you on that. We're very familiar with mermaids and their beauty that we never think of them as monsters. But as far as I know, mermaids were originally feared creatures in old Japanese myth, and that is especially evident in the story of Mermaid Saga.

The fear of mermaids is also common in Western mythos. Some mermaids bewitched sailors and others could become monsters.

Edited for clarity.

This isn't technically wrong, but the association certainly does sound very strange to me. It's just feel incredibly odd to me to have monster_girl on, say, post #491959. But I don't think there's an objective argument against this implication.

I'll leave it another day or so and see if anyone comes up with anything further.

The mermaids from post post #491959 are probably are likely based off of Han Christian Andersen's portrayal of mermaids in his book The Little Mermaid. I think it would be fair to say that The Little Mermaid and its adaptations have had a considerable influence how people view mermaids. I wanted to make this point yesterday but I couldn't think of the right words at that moment.

Here's what I propose. If the mermaid looks monstrous or only looks distantly human or looks like it is committing acts described in myths, than tag it as a monster_girl. If it only looks like human with the lower part of fish and acts human the don't tag it as a monster girl.

I agree with the implication, they are monsters regardless of the cuteness.

Scalar said:
I agree with the implication, they are monsters regardless of the cuteness.

They're actually more "monstrous" than similar monstergirls (like Mutio) being half fish and all.

+1.

jxh2154 said:
This isn't technically wrong, but the association certainly does sound very strange to me. It's just feel incredibly odd to me to have monster_girl on, say, post #491959. But I don't think there's an objective argument against this implication.

On the other hand what difference is there between a mermaid and and a centaur or a satyr except to say that one is part fish, one part horse, and one part goat. Centaurs and satyrs are usually considered monster girls on danbooru.

Maybe it's the extra torso that earns them this distinction, but then fish are farther removed than horses or goats from humans biologically, so you'd think that mermaids should warrant at least the same degree of monstrosity.

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On the other other hand, there don't currently exist any implications or aliases to monster_girl except the synonymous monstergirl. Either we should implicate this and all the others, or we should leave mermaid unimplicated.

Shinjidude said: On the other other hand, there don't currently exist any implications or aliases to monster_girl except the synonymous monstergirl. Either we should implicate this and all the others, or we should leave mermaid unimplicated.

This here is a good point. Is there a reason to start this now, and if so let's be consistent about it.

I don't see a reason not to. +1 for implications.

Someone get me a list then. I'll do mermaid for now.

One thing I thought of before we do this. Monster_girl defines gender whereas the individual monster types typically don't (mermaid being a coincidental exception).

Do we care about this? If so do we need to do something like we did with girls_playing_games? I'm sure solo male monsterpeople are rare, but they conceivably could exist and would be screwed up by the implications as they would stand.

Shinjidude said: Do we care about this?

Ah, I think we should, yes. Although what the solution is, I'm not sure. It really doesn't seem worth making male-specific tags for the monsters (I'm guessing only centaur-type creatures have any significant proportion of males).

Maybe we just shouldn't be implicating these. At some point adding more complexity to the tags (i.e. by dividing by gender) is worse than just forcing people to add an extra tag manually.

Most of the images that fall under monster_girl are typically half human (or at least look like a human), right? Maybe we can use something like demi-human instead? The only thing I can see that conflicts with it from the monster_girl wiki would be goo_girl, but like I said before the images with that tag still have a human shape at least.

There are also things like post #476079, post #484668, and post #432040, that while humanoid, I'd have a hard time calling half-human.

Is there perhaps a japanese term for this sort of thing that's gender-neutral? I know we try not to use those sorts of tags, but it would be an idea.

The thing about finding a "gender neutral" term is that the concept isn't really "gender neutral", its very specifically about taking "monsters" and making them, well, girls.