Implicating ralsei → boss_monster
Link to implication

Reason:

It's pretty clear that Ralsei from Deltarune is a boss monster (subspecies of goat/caprine/mammal), the same as Toriel, Asgore, and Asriel. None of the posts I've seen actually list that as a species, though.

-1, we don't make implications from characters to species. They don't have to appear as boss monsters, or even caprines, therefore the implication is not always correct.

and what happens when someone draws ralsei as pony?

For example, someone could draw a comic where the whole point is that this Ralsei is specifically NOT a boss monster.

The equivalent of telling a story where the Rich Dude was born as the poor dude instead.

Denied

Plus, Ralsei is a Darkner, not a Monster.

Siral_Exan said:
-1, we don't make implications from characters to species. They don't have to appear as boss monsters, or even caprines, therefore the implication is not always correct.

Ok, I understand that, but why did you delete all the boss_monster tags from images where he clearly is drawn as a boss monster? 1693653, for example.

jspenguin said:
Ok, I understand that, but why did you delete all the boss_monster tags from images where he clearly is drawn as a boss monster? 1693653, for example.

Because it implies undertale. This is not a valid implication, as far as we know Ralsei is not from Undertale, we know he is from DELTARUNE. If it turns out to be an Undertale game, then it is safe to tag, but right now it is not safe to tag because he is not a boss monster. Furrin said it too, he's a Darkner. He might have his own term for "boss monster", even.

Siral_Exan said:
Because it implies undertale. This is not a valid implication, as far as we know Ralsei is not from Undertale, we know he is from DELTARUNE. If it turns out to be an Undertale game, then it is safe to tag, but right now it is not safe to tag because he is not a boss monster. Furrin said it too, he's a Darkner. He might have his own term for "boss monster", even.

Then maybe we should remove the that implication, then. There are a lot of boss monster OCs that aren't from Undertale.

jspenguin said:
Then maybe we should remove the that implication, then. There are a lot of boss monster OCs that aren't from Undertale.

Maybe use Darkner as a tag instead. Don't fix something that ain't broke, find something else instead.

I've read that Boss Monster wiki enough times to make my head explode. On one hand, the way it is written practically makes it TWYK, on the other hand the list it provides is not exclusive. It's a species tag, so coincidences occur that need to be ignored lest we get false positives. As a species tag, people will fight tooth and claw over what does and doesn't constitute as it, especially hybrids and copyright-unique creatures. If a decision had to be made, Boss Monster should only apply to creatures from Undertale that exhibit the described traits. Since Ralsei is not from Undertale, and Undertale is separate from DELTARUNE, they shouldn't get the tag.

Siral_Exan said:
Maybe use Darkner as a tag instead. Don't fix something that ain't broke, find something else instead.

I've read that Boss Monster wiki enough times to make my head explode. On one hand, the way it is written practically makes it TWYK, on the other hand the list it provides is not exclusive. It's a species tag, so coincidences occur that need to be ignored lest we get false positives. As a species tag, people will fight tooth and claw over what does and doesn't constitute as it, especially hybrids and copyright-unique creatures. If a decision had to be made, Boss Monster should only apply to creatures from Undertale that exhibit the described traits. Since Ralsei is not from Undertale, and Undertale is separate from DELTARUNE, they shouldn't get the tag.

Regarding the tag of Darkner, we can't even call him a "boss darkner" because the only reason it's special in Undertale is something that has no reason to exist in Deltarune.

Siral_Exan said:
Maybe use Darkner as a tag instead. Don't fix something that ain't broke, find something else instead.

I've read that Boss Monster wiki enough times to make my head explode. On one hand, the way it is written practically makes it TWYK, on the other hand the list it provides is not exclusive. It's a species tag, so coincidences occur that need to be ignored lest we get false positives. As a species tag, people will fight tooth and claw over what does and doesn't constitute as it, especially hybrids and copyright-unique creatures. If a decision had to be made, Boss Monster should only apply to creatures from Undertale that exhibit the described traits. Since Ralsei is not from Undertale, and Undertale is separate from DELTARUNE, they shouldn't get the tag.

The end of the demo, spoilers, confirms that Ralsei's species is boss monster, so deleting all the tags is tag vandalism.

Demesejha said:
The end of the demo, spoilers, confirms that Ralsei's species is boss monster, so deleting all the tags is tag vandalism.

That's odd, Toby Fox said that DELTARUNE is not Undertale. Are you sure there can't be a separate tag for DELTARUNE's Boss monsters, or are you going to throw around "tag vandalism" again? If they're separate games, they get separate tags. It's not Undertale, it's DELTARUNE.

I personally like Furrin's suggestion. They're not even monsters, "Boss Darkner" is more accurate. It isn't impossible to make Boss_Darkner. I'm starting to think that this is going to devolve into the common grounds argument, where I have to cite the similarities and differences between two games... but e621 is not a court, and I don't want to play lawyer.

Demesejha said:
The end of the demo, spoilers, confirms that Ralsei's species is boss monster, so deleting all the tags is tag vandalism.

No, it only confirms that his fur is white. He's still a Darkner, not a Monster. Species gets a bit lenient on similar looking species: Hylian, Vulcan, and Elf for example. A boss monster and a boss darkner could look identical, and so we'd have some flexibility with tagging that as long as it still looks like it.

Furrin_Gok said:
No, it only confirms that his fur is white. He's still a Darkner, not a Monster.

Being a Darkner doesn't make him not a Monster, it just makes him not a Lightner.

Whether something is a Monster or not is independent of whether they're from the Light or Dark world.

Darkner isn't a species in itself, it's just a term to indicate entities from the Dark World.

MagnusEffect said:
Being a Darkner doesn't make him not a Monster, it just makes him not a Lightner.

Whether something is a Monster or not is independent of whether they're from the Light or Dark world.

Or maybe Darkners are a third species entirely, bro.

Furrin_Gok said:
Or maybe Darkners are a third species entirely, bro.

I feel like at this rate, independently of boss_monster, we're going to end up needing an admin ruling on whether Darkner counts as a species or an indicator of universal and/or locational origin.

I feel that debates about this should always consider first that the purpose for tags is for ease of searching first and only of clarification second.

Consider for a moment that all this art is stored here as a big archive, right?

If I want to find a specific image that I vaguely remember, then I can search for elements I remember.

If I want to look for images containing specific content, I can also use tags to find them.

Think first if it would feel appropriate for certain things to pop up if you searched using these tags. This is the most important perspective, ignore all semantics and politics as tags serve a very specific purpose.

If I searched "boss_monster" right now, I'd expect to see Toriel, Asgore, Asriel, and probably some peoples OC's, right?

In my opinion, which you may very justifiably disagree with, I don't expect to find images of ralsei as I don't find that association to be commonly accepted.
Different game, different objective classification (I'd much rather expect to find ralsei under "darkener", the term he's identified with in the game).

I'm not here to debate weather I'm right or wrong or which way it shouldn't or should be classified; I'm merely using my opinion to highlight the direction I think the conversation should go, which is focusing on the fact that tags are used to search and thus considerations should be based on weather or not you think most people would expect to see it if they searched that particular tag.

Edit:

I should point out that as a previous comment stated, it's not up for debate weather or not implication should be used as any given character can be drawn as a different species. It's simply not how tags here work.
I'm simply talking about what the conversation shifted to, which is weather it would be appropriate to tag ralsie as a boss monster under any (debatably) appropriate circumstances.

single_cell said:
all semantics and politics

Okay. Assuming that Darkner is a valid species tag:
As a non-visually-distinct species it would be more of a broad-scale tag, akin to tags like mammal, reptile, and avian.
In this case I don't see darkner getting in the way of whether Ralsei is considered a boss_monster or not.

But we still have nothing to visually distinguish what a darkner is, because a Darkner is presumably every highly variable sapient entity from the Dark World. Ralsei himself only has notable visual distinction from the very small sample of known Boss Monsters who aren't Darkners while arguably under the effects of over-exaggerated Final Fantasy Black Mage style shadowing. The only indications that he's a Darkner are the fact he's from the Dark World, and that he verbally identifies as a Darkner.

[Me being wrong]Anywhere darkner would go it would be more consistent with existing Undertale species tagging to use monster instead.[/Me being wrong]

MagnusEffect said:
Anywhere darkner would go it would be more consistent with existing Undertale species tagging to use monster instead.

You must not have read the wiki for monster, most Undertale characters are to not be tagged monster because they do not look like monsters. Darkner would be better than monster because it is presently exclusive to DELTARUNE, whereas monster is not exclusive to Undertale and is not to be used for them most of the time.

... Add this tag only if the creature's appearance is at least somewhat monstrous. For example, most Undertale characters do not belong under this tag, despite being called 'monsters' in the game.

This is why I dislike the Boss Monster tag, it misleads people and causes invalid tags.

Okay, I'll take being wrong there.
I'm assuming what I saw was a lot of mistagging then.

MagnusEffect said:
Okay, I'll take being wrong there.
I'm assuming what I saw was a lot of mistagging then.

That's very likely, it is a common mistake that needs to be fixed. Fortunately it has no implications, so there's only one tag to remove; it's easy to fix.

I have played neither Deltatale nor Underrune, someone please explain this "Darkner" thing, preferably via screenshots of the actual ingame conversation/exposition, or maybe a youtube video of the scene.

It'd be easier to come to a conclusion if everyone has the same information at hand, and not just hearsay through shitposted memes on twitter.

NotMeNotYou said:
I have played neither Deltatale nor Underrune, someone please explain this "Darkner" thing

The player character gets dropped into a relatively standard "Other World" scenario. The inhabitants refer to this other world as the Dark World, themselves as Darkners, and anyone from the player character's world as Lightners.

The term Darkner doesn't really come up much. To my knowledge this shopkeeper exposition is the first time it's even mentioned.

Relatively sparse wiki linking to the sprite images of several Darkners.

People are probably going to be inclined to label Ralsei in particular as a Darkner because he appears black for the majority of the demo, and only takes his hat off for a brief goodbye scene after the endboss.

Edit: This timestamp walks past some more examples of Darkners.

Siral_Exan said:
This is why I dislike the Boss Monster tag, it misleads people and causes invalid tags.

that is the name of the species. Both the wiki of boss monster and monster clarify everything. The tagging system is not to be blamed for pebkac errors.

As if this wasn't complicated enough already, someone pointed out something that seems like foreshadowing: absolutely nobody in the game calls Ralsei a Darkner. But multiple enemies call the whole group (Ralsei included) Lightners. There's also many other clues that Ralsei isn't what he seems.

Boss Monster may turn out to be an accurate tag for him, but without chapter 2... who knows.