MSPA Booru - beforus ancestors

Luxferre

01/05/26 02:49AM

beforus ancestors

this is a discussion that came up on discord (the link is in a sticky thread, you can't miss it), but i wanted to get some opinions from people that aren't there as well.
in any case, we're probably going to end up removing the "ancestors" tag from all beforus_ancestors

re: the old beforus ancestors (before hussie drew them)
i would like people's opinions on how to tag, let's say, an adult beforus aradia design (as stated by the artist in this hypothetical) that has nothing to do with the rankmaid, backstory and visual design wise
1. aradia_megido + fashion + ageswap?
2. aradia_megido + fashion + ageswap + beforus_ancestors?
3. aradia_megido + paradia?
4. aradia_megido + paradia + beforus_ancestors? ← this is how it used to be done
5. the_rankmaid + fashion + beforus_ancestors?
6. the_rankmaid + fashion + beforus_ancestors + speculative_design (even if it was drawn this year, or later)?
7. something else entirely?
for example, http://mspabooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=153568

qwertz

01/05/26 04:19PM

I personally would tag it:

Aradia + speculative_design + ageswap.

Although, considering the vast amount of posts, I dont think many people want to re-tag each of those old posts, we should:

Make a new tag specifically for the Hussie designs and also tag the fan designs with their character name (I.E Aradia instead of Rankmaid).

That way we can separate the two apart while keeping each design easy to find.

"new tag" + Rankmaid for Hussie ones
speculative_design + ageswap + Aradia for old ones.

Luxferre

01/05/26 08:01PM

Make a new tag specifically for the Hussie designs

beforus_ancestors has basically been repurposed as "the hussie design tag" so that part is already pretty much done.

Although, considering the vast amount of posts, I dont think many people want to re-tag each of those old posts,

i'd probably do it myself, there aren't actually that many. if i had to guess, around 150 or so, with almost half of them being feferi

as for speculative_design, i personally don't think the fan designs should have that tag. paraphrasing my thoughts on it from the booru discord:

there is no speculation involved in the same sense that other speculative designs on the booru are

what if i went ahead and designed my own adult terezi who has nothing to do with songbird? that's essentially what those old designs are. how can it be speculative if i drew it in 2026? i'm not speculating anything, just redesigning the whole thing, showing my own take on it

the real question here is whether alternian kids reimagined as adults are a big enough concept to deserve their own tag (like they used to have before we retagged them, "pterezi" and so on)

and also:

1. old designs (pvriska and others) = reimagining the alternian kids as adults with entirely different backgrounds. there has never been a hint at any point that they would be real characters and they probably weren't drawn with that in mind. it was just people doing what-ifs for their futures on a different planet IF they had made it to adulthood,
note that we don't even know if all of them were meant to be beforan (on account of broken sources, artists not elaborating enough in their posts, etc.)

2. other speculative_design characters we've got, including canon and dubious canon characters = people trying to guess what said characters are going to look like based on silhouettes, hints in the story and whatever else was available at the time. basically, there was already confirmation these were going to exist

one other thing worth noting - the hype for them is pretty much dead already. just look at tumblr, the last #shepherd constern is from december 8th.
considering how this all came to be on discord - you know, the platform notorious for being awful at storing information - hussie's designs will become obscure with time, to the point there is a good chance that someone might accidentally draw an adult beta troll with a beforan background, say, two years from now without knowing they ever existed as a semi-official concept. if that were the case, it would be really strange to tag that as speculative_design

my personal choice: going back to option 3 or 4 - but option 1 is good too. some of these ancestors had below ten results so a separate tag for them is probably not that useful, all things considered.