Danbooru

Bara clarification

Posted under Tags

Does anybody actually know what bara is for? Cause I sure couldn't tell you from reading its wiki. It doesn't do anything to explain how it's supposed to be used, instead faffing about with useless information. At most, it seems to want to establish itself as distinct from yaoi, but kind of just looks like it's making jabs at it, and the distinction doesn't even work because "yaoi" just means "male homosexuality" on danbooru(and I'm pretty sure most everywhere else, too).

Just looking at bara posts, it just looks like a near equivalent of muscular_male, and a few quick searches confirms this:

Bara: 27951
Muscular Male: 33991
Bara Muscular_Male: 26528

Even if you interpret the wiki as saying it's supposed to be for homosexual posts, then it just becomes a near equivalent of muscular yaoi:

Muscular Yaoi: 7979
Muscular Yaoi Bara: 6790

It's very strongly bordering on combo tag status, and the way people are using it currently doesn't really distinguish it well from tags we already have, so can anyone actually explain how it's supposed to function as its own tag?

I think it's good to give some context on the definition. Bara is a solid and well known genre of japanese art and media. By definition, "bara" is made by and for homosexual men, featuring masculine men; while yaoi (not the danbooru definition, but the genre) is for and by women, featuring pretty boys (usually bishounen). Both yaoi ("Boy's Love") and bara ("Men's Love") exclude each other for having different demographics and aesthetics.

In danbooru, when coming across bara posts, I never had an impression like "Nah, doesn't seem like bara, just a muscular guy". From my personal experience, I upload pictures of male characters, like male DBZ characters who are all muscular males, and usually it's just easy to tell when it's bara and when it's not. I'm glad the tag exist because bara is obviously not for everyone (me included) and people can blacklist it. I see it as a specific genre/fetish tag, like a subset of yaoi (danbooru definition), but for big manly guys. I'm not an expert in the subject so it's hard for me to define it in a more objective way than this.

Okay but none of that clarifies its usage whatsoever. Tags need a concise, objective definition for how it's meant to be used. If it can't be objectively defined, then people are just going to use it however they think it should be used. The current wiki provides no solid base for what it actually applies to. I'm well familiar with the bara genre in a general sense, but everytime I see something tagged bara, I'm more and more unsure I have any idea what bara actually means. Right now, it literally just means muscular male, and I'm pretty confident that most of muscular_male -bara just predate the last two years of bara uploads.

Can you provide actual examples of what is and is not bara? Bara needs something that it can be recognized by.

mongirlfan said:

post #4790152 - Not bara.
post #4951106 - Not bara.

post #5131829 - Bara. (NSFW)
post #4193015 - Bara. (SFW)

As I said, I'm not expert on the matter, but when I look at these posts, they clearly don't give the same vibe despite both cases depicting muscular males. The first two are just fanart, and the last two are part of the bara genre ("made by men for men"), and I like to be able to blacklist them.

See, I'm not an expert either, but your examples perfectly line up with my perceived understanding of bara. The problem, is that bara is filled with things that look like your not-bara examples. The only consistent identifiable feature of bara posts is muscles.

The_Bob said:

Yeah, I'm with OP. If we're going to have a tag for something, we need a better definition than "I know it when I see it".

Bara really is one of those "styles" you do learn to recognize over time though.

There's certain ways that bara artists exaggerate muscle that other art just... doesn't.

punished_K said:

Bara really is one of those "styles" you do learn to recognize over time though.

There's certain ways that bara artists exaggerate muscle that other art just... doesn't.

You can't trust taggers to reliably tag something like that, we can barely trust them to tag simple things. If we can't objectively define it in a way that someone that's never heard of it could recognize it, then it's never going to be useful as a tag.

Ostensibly, bara is like bishounen or any *(style) - for all intents and purposes, it is a select set of styles that emphasize, among other things, the bear-type muscular men aesthetic that became increasingly popular from the 90s onward in Japan as a push back against the bishounen style that had been popular up to that point in homosexual works, whether aimed for men or women (hell, bara, before it got used to mean this sort of style, was used for bishounen styles before online trolls who didn't like bear-type men began calling it bara).

If we are willing to tag bishounen or any *(style), then bara is absolutely something we can and should tag, because it is a genre/style that is recognizable and doesn't just boil down to gay muscular men, because you can apply any non-bara style under that too.

Damian0358 said:

Ostensibly, bara is like bishounen or any *(style) - for all intents and purposes, it is a select set of styles that emphasize, among other things, the bear-type muscular men aesthetic that became increasingly popular from the 90s onward in Japan as a push back against the bishounen style that had been popular up to that point in homosexual works, whether aimed for men or women (hell, bara, before it got used to mean this sort of style, was used for bishounen styles before online trolls who didn't like bear-type men began calling it bara).

If we are willing to tag bishounen or any *(style), then bara is absolutely something we can and should tag, because it is a genre/style that is recognizable and doesn't just boil down to gay muscular men, because you can apply any non-bara style under that too.

All of those style tags and bishounen actually tell you what qualifies for them in their wikis, though I doubt bishounen doesn't also need some gardening (there's 20 posts tagged bara bishounen and I'm not sure either tag is necessary much less both). The Bara wiki currently doesn't tell you anything, and you'd never be able to guess what it was for by actually looking through its posts, because right now it really is just a lot of muscular men with little in common besides the muscles. You can't just say "bear-type" men either, because that's a slang term that also needs to be defined for those unfamiliar with it. I know what a "bear" is, one user even tried to tag bara men with bear, but "bears" are not what is currently filling up bara, or I wouldn't have made this thread.

I'm not trying to get the tag nuked, I'm currently using it in my blacklist (mostly for nsfw posts). However, right now, it's causing things to be hidden that I wouldn't ever consider to be bara, while things I would have thought were bara and didn't want to see are repeatedly having the tag removed, and it's impossible for me to do anything about it if I can't even figure out what the tag is for because the wiki doesn't actually describe what bara looks like, and there's no visible consistency with what the handful of people using the tag are sticking it on.

Bishounen suffers from the same issue where it is effectively just tagged by whoever feels like it and is never looked at by anyone else. Bara is just much worse because it is almost entirely a single user contributing to it.

blindVigil said:

You can't trust taggers to reliably tag something like [art styles], we can barely trust them to tag simple things. If we can't objectively define it in a way that someone that's never heard of it could recognize it, then it's never going to be useful as a tag.

There would already be fewer tagging errors if users actually looked at the wikis to see how a concept is defined on Danbooru; also getting users to adhere to how a concept is objectively defined when it doesn't match their own definition.

blindVigil said:

The problem, is that bara is filled with things that look like your not-bara examples. The only consistent identifiable feature of bara posts is muscles.

That isn't unique to bara though. The higher the tag count, the more likely it is to contain things that don't match the tag's wiki. Bara is a distinct subset of muscular_male. Butterflies are a distinct subset of bug. Person A might want to see butterflies specifically, so they search posts for butterfly. Person B wants to look at bug-related posts but dislikes bugs with more than 6 legs. Fortunately for them, centipede and millipede exist and they can either blacklist them or exclude them from their search. It's the same thing with muscular_male and bara, but the distinction isn't as obvious as with bug and butterfly.

blindVigil said:

Right now, [ bara] literally just means muscular_male, and I'm pretty confident that most of muscular_male -bara just predate the last two years of bara uploads.

If something isn't popular with the majority of people, it will remain that way unless an individual champions for it. In this instance, bara didn't have any big proponents until approximately 2 years ago. I literally looked at the counts and crunched the numbers. (However, I won't include the data table because that requires the consent of all the users on it.) What I can tell you is that the top 5 uploaders of bara (calculated by dividing a user's bara count by the total bara count) joined in 2019 or later and are responsible for 90% of the posts in that tag. If we look at the percentage per user (user's bara count/user's current total count), there was only one user who joined prior to 2019 whose majority of posts were tagged as bara.

blindVigil said:

Does anybody actually know what bara is for? Cause I sure couldn't tell you from reading its wiki. It doesn't do anything to explain how it's supposed to be used, instead faffing about with useless information.

Given what all was said by @mongirlfan, @punished K, and @Damian0358 , plus my own understanding of this situation and of the bara genre, it sounds to me like the best course of action is to fix the wiki by making it more clear and concise, with external links for users who might want to further explore the concept.

blindVigil said:

Does anybody actually know what bara is for? Cause I sure couldn't tell you from reading its wiki. It doesn't do anything to explain how it's supposed to be used, instead faffing about with useless information. At most, it seems to want to establish itself as distinct from yaoi, but kind of just looks like it's making jabs at it, and the distinction doesn't even work because "yaoi" just means "male homosexuality" on danbooru(and I'm pretty sure most everywhere else, too).

Just looking at bara posts, it just looks like a near equivalent of muscular_male, and a few quick searches confirms this:

Bara: 27951
Muscular Male: 33991
Bara Muscular_Male: 26528

Even if you interpret the wiki as saying it's supposed to be for homosexual posts, then it just becomes a near equivalent of muscular yaoi:

Muscular Yaoi: 7979
Muscular Yaoi Bara: 6790

It's very strongly bordering on combo tag status, and the way people are using it currently doesn't really distinguish it well from tags we already have, so can anyone actually explain how it's supposed to function as its own tag?

Bara can be used with solo, unlike yaoi.

Whisky_and_Roses said:

Given what all was said by @mongirlfan, @punished K, and @Damian0358 , plus my own understanding of this situation and of the bara genre, it sounds to me like the best course of action is to fix the wiki by making it more clear and concise, with external links for users who might want to further explore the concept.

Well, yes, that's why I made the thread, my entire goal is to get someone to provide an actual visual description of what bara is so that we can change the wiki and clean the tag up. I am literally trying to get the wiki rewritten.

Talulah said:

Bishounen suffers from the same issue where it is effectively just tagged by whoever feels like it and is never looked at by anyone else. Bara is just much worse because it is almost entirely a single user contributing to it.

For what it's worth, the wiki for bishounen should also be rewritten. I've been here almost 5 months now and I'm still not sure how to correctly tag bishi content.

blindVigil said:

Well, yes, that's why I made the thread, my entire goal is to get someone to provide an actual visual description of what bara is so that we can change the wiki and clean the tag up. I am literally trying to get the wiki rewritten.

I'm sure that any confusion and frustration could have probably been avoided if this was stated explicitly after it had become clear that other builders weren't picking up on this objective instead of faffing around when a more direct response was clearly required. I won't be the one to change it though because I believe any objective Db wiki for a genre with a high post count should not be defined by one individual. However, I can assure you that an objective description is being discussed and a rough draft for the wiki will be posted here as soon as a consensus has been reached.

Whisky_and_Roses said:

I'm sure that any confusion and frustration could have probably been avoided if this was stated explicitly after it had become clear that other builders weren't picking up on this objective instead of faffing around when a more direct response was clearly required. I won't be the one to change it though because I believe any objective Db wiki for a genre with a high post count should not be defined by one individual. However, I can assure you that an objective description is being discussed and a rough draft for the wiki will be posted here as soon as a consensus has been reached.

The very first thing I did was criticize the wiki, are you sure the other builders didn't catch the intention to have it rewritten or are you just speaking for everyone? For that last sentence, are you referring to discord? Cause we've explained mutiple times in the past that cutting out a portion of the community from being able to provide input until a decision has already been reached is extremely problematic.

blindVigil said:

The very first thing I did was criticize the wiki, are you sure the other builders didn't catch the intention to have it rewritten or are you just speaking for everyone?

I based this statement on the fact that, while the wiki is mentioned multiple times, the questions you asked were what bara is for and how it's supposed to function as its own tag. The responses did exactly that. If any of them inferred that you were asking for the purpose of rewriting the wiki, it wasn't stated. At least not clearly. I am speaking for myself; my statements reflect the perspective of someone who has only been a user for several months as opposed to several years. How are new users who want to be active participants on this database supposed to take part in forum discussions if there's this implicit form of communication between the veteran users?

For that last sentence, are you referring to discord? Cause we've explained multiple times in the past that cutting out a portion of the community from being able to provide input until a decision has already been reached is extremely problematic.

Thank you for asking me to be more explicit. I am well aware that any serious change to the database is to be decided here in the forums so that there's basically a written record of the discussion as well as to allow non-Discord users to participate in the conversation. I initially chose my words (starting at "I won't be the one...") so as not to target any individual user since multiple people utilize the bara tag. But then I opted to write my last sentence in a more neutral, customer service style because I don't know yet how quickly things like this are decided and I had no idea when any of the bara consumers would be able to weigh in.

I'm all for blacklisting things you don't want to see and I wanna be sure that other people have that option because I understand what it's like to not want to see something but to not have a proper tag that to blacklist. On the other hand I believe that a proper discussion about a genre of art that's "made by men for men" should include that target demographic, but I wasn't sure at the time whether any of them knew about the decision to rewrite the wiki. I only used Discord to ask one of them if they and the others were aware of this decision.

I know I took my sweet time with this, mostly due to time constraints and me wanting to properly do this once and for all.
Here's my proposal for a more detailed and specific wiki to help with tagging. Though please note that this is only an initial rough draft that I spent more time on than I'd like to admit.

Various body types are present under the 'bara' heading, which mostly depend on the artist's personal tastes in men.
- Bear-type bodies (typically tagged as plump or fat, generally softer and rounder looking, with varying degrees of musculature)

- Hunks or muscular bodies (defined musculature is commonly depicted as softer and rounder in appearance, and usually proportional rather than being more chiseled like professional bodybuilders, though it can be a stylistic choice, for reference Nikism)

- Twunk or otter-type bodies, mostly tagged toned, or muscular (especially with younger or sometimes older mature males).

Musculature, when depicted, is typically more exaggerated for emphasis (i.e. pecs), alongside the bulge (implying an exaggerated penis size), and both are typically rather noticeable even when the subject is wearing clothes, abnormally so; when paired with the points above, emphasizing a softer approach, the 'bara' archetype becomes noticeable.

Common features on subjects include different degrees of facial and body hair, or complete absence of it, in case of younger characters (depending on the artist's tastes), thick eyebrows, sideburns, scars, wrinkles (for those into older men), etc.

Everything listed above lends the style a degree of flexibility that allows for further stylization and wider cultural mixing between communities; as examples, despite its roots in opposition to them, there is substantial cross-over with the wider Boys' Love community, which can be seen in some artists' styles (E.g Yotti, Arima), and it can pop up in use for non-human characters too, such as furry males (E.g Youzora samo18, Seato-hao).

Ultimately, like others mentioned, if you have any experience with looking at or, better yet, uploading male focus content, then the bara style becomes quite noticeable over time.
There is a lot to talk about regarding this subject matter, so I had to iron out a lot of my thoughts regarding the nuances that which make bara different when compared to other styles. I also tried to visualize these points better for the unfamiliar by mentioning specific different artists with varying styles and tastes.

Updated

That's a pretty good first draft! A lot of good examples highlighting some of the core styles, and a good base on which we can give feedback on.

For instance, bodybuilders are mentioned, but you don't give a contrasting group of people for the rounder musculature. Online, what you typically see is bodybuilders are contrasted with athletic strongmen, with one example being this old image drawn by coelasquid. Visual descriptives are nice, but also having a group of men one could point to could also help in terms of bara identification. The aspect mentioned in the image about triangular/rectangular-shaped physiques is another that could be useful for distinction. Help, maybe we should just include this image as a possible reference, as other wikis also have similar image references linked too.

The aspect where there's crossover between BL/bishounen/yaoi and bara styles makes me wonder what edge cases there are between these two, and what could be done to resolve them - perhaps introducing another tag like biseinen? That could run into its own classification issues though, but it would add another tag users who dislike all these styles can easily blacklist rather than be forced to deal with them not being tagged at all. Could also give us an opportunity to rephrase that one sentence in large pectorals.

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