Hypothetical Worms Booru thoughts (WIP PAGE)

The curse of Booru websites, and my illiteracy

Some dude: In the future we'll have flying cars.

2024: people use generative AI for outrageous crap, NFTs are still a thing, yet SOMEHOW user-friendly ways to make Boorus do not exist. It's not just about Worms, there are many franchises that could have dedicated Boorus, but what are the odds they'd be made?

A Worms booru sounds like a fun, but an unlikely concept. There are 2 reasons why I can't run one: I know nothing about making and maintaining a website, and I don't earn stable income. Also, even if I could actually run my own Booru, my emotional instability could potentially lead to some... moderation problems, I'd be better off as a regular member. A Booru should be run by someone with as little bias as possible and who wouldn't nuke the entire thing just because they got bored/depressed/etc.

All Boorus / Booru host websites listed in this section are dead unless otherwise specified.

booru.plus In the past (I think early 2024), I actually made a couple of Worms Boorus on a host site called booru.plus. IIRC I only had to come up with a name, description and icon, so basically any noob could make a Booru on there. Unfortunately the site no longer works. What was it like? On the main page you could see a grid with many Boorus listed, with information like name, icon and percentage of content marked as Safe. I can't remember if there was more. The site used only 2 age ratings (which may have been oversimplified IMO), you could change settings to blur NSFW content or remove it from search results entirely. Most content on the site was scraped by bots from DeviantArt, Pixiv, etc. The site had a modern look, image thumbnails were big and filled most of the page. There was some issue with animated GIFs, though videos worked. Tag aliases weren't supported. Despite the site having a NSFW filter, I chose to make 2 separate Worms Boorus: one without sexual content and another one dedicated to it. I actually invested a decent amount of time into filling them with content and tagging it. They didn't even exist long enough for anyone other than me to post there... So, what happened? The site was managed by a single person who lost interest and shut it down completely, and it seems like they have nobody they could hand it over to. There's no point in going to any page on that website, you'll be just getting errors instantly.	Other users' booru.plus screenshots (since I took it for granted and didn't snap any myself)
The Booru Project On The Booru Project you could (apparently) easily make Boorus based on the Gelbooru engine (overall layout is very similar to Shimmie2). Creation of Boorus got closed before I even knew it existed. I found an explanation on its forum from 2022, talking about outdated code, malicious users abusing it and spamming. At least the Boorus made on there are still alive.	The Booru Project main page screenshot
Not host websites, but still sad cases openbooru.org Another dead single person (?) project, I never saw it working with my own eyes. Seems to have been some kind of fanart Booru. Here's the site's X profile. I didn't find any announcement that the project would be shut down, so I don't know what happened. There's barely any interaction with the X posts, which leaves to suggest it never gained much attention.	The dev's openbooru.org screenshots
The Loud Booru I don't know anything about The Loud House, other than it's about a family with a lot of girls and one boy, it's mainstream and it's got a lot of NSFW fanart. The domain doesn't have the Booru anymore (I never saw it and don't know what happened), it's just a redirectory of archives. I clicked on what looked an archived version of the Booru, but when I simply tried to navigate it, I got redirected to the Opera GX website and the browser's installer got downloaded automatically. Yeesh, I hope I didn't get anything bad from there, I already heard some unsavoury rumors about it... Opera was my main browser many years ago, but as I used it recently, I saw the built-in VPN option get removed. Totally not sussy...	The Loud Booru screenshot

Issues with non-Booru image showcases

I've been reading a little about free website constructors like Wix, Ucoz, Tilda, Wordpress, but I don't think any of those could be molded into a Booru. Boorus are community image-hosting websites which let you tag images by what you see, by artists, by character, by copyright, etc., and providing source links. Tags help you find what you want to see, or you can blacklist them if there's something you don't want to see. I've never heard of anyone using those websites to make a Booru, and I'm not interested in just some boring gallery site (and I already use multiple art sites and social medias). Even besides that, I have plenty of issues with other sites and their galleries making them unsuitable to use as alternatives to a Booru website I imagine. When I say something is an art site, I imply that posting non-artistic content on there is generally not recommended or even prohibited. The "banned in Russia" notes are mostly based on my own experiences, I added them because 1) I'm Russian, and 2) Russia seems to be one of those countries where Worms is more popular.

Table made on December 13, 2024

Tumblr seems to be the best alternative from a "not art only" POV. You can customise your blog to use the grid format rather than the X-like column. You can post any images except porn and other stuff violating the guidelines. Although people on there tend to be very sensitive and may make a big deal out of anything that seems politically incorrect (I don't think they'd be too happy to see the Japanese worm in the Worms World Party cover), which is part of why there are a lot of trigger/content warning tags. Tumblr recently released Communities, but no Grid view = bad layout on desktop / tablet.

Inkbunny and Buzzly.art are the best options for NSFW art, with some minor restrictions.

If you think Instagram is a good place for sharing art, you must be either a mental masochist or living under a rock. It does so much stuff wrong I find it annoying to use, any site meant for showcasing art is better. Also the corporates scrape EVERYTHING posted there to train AI, have fun trying to opt-out.

General thoughts

The things I write here may sound insane. I can't make a self-hosted Booru, so nothing I say here really matters. I specifically write all this in a place where nobody can talk to me, because I don't want to be humiliated again. Especially not by some known guy who can actually do something practical that's useful for people, while I can't make a Booru based on Shimmie2. FUCKING. SHIMMIE2.

My thoughts here assume that the Booru would allow various kinds of mature content, and probably AI. There isn't nearly as much content based around Worms as anything mainstream, so theoretically a Worms Booru would be much easier to maintain.

I'd strongly prefer if the Booru allowed sexual content. A puritan Worms Booru would be less purposeful because SFW stuff can be posted everywhere, brutal imagery has some limits but people are usually fine with it, however sexual content is likely to cause childish complaints and even some immoral responses, which makes me wish there was at least one person moderating comments on there, they don't even have to like such content. I noticed many Derpibooru comments are removed because they whine about filterable content, so I guess it wouldn't be much different on a Worms Booru. In a worst case scenario comment sections under specific images could be locked down. I don't get what the big deal is, it's just fictional cartoony sentient worms, I don't promote the idea of putting actual earthworms or other creepy crawlies into your orifices. "Worms aren't sexy" - you can use the same logic against R34 based on MLP, The Loud House, Minecraft, Happy Tree Friends, Bluey and other stylised Western media, but those fandoms are big and they'd probably get back at you for it. But if nobody wants to stand up for a R34 artist, it still doesn't mean you can treat them like shit. If you see the thumbnail and don't like it, why make the extra effort to click on it and write a purely negative comment or complete nonsense while forcing yourself to look at it? I may do sexual art a lot, but I'm not the ONLY person who's done it, I even found art like that uploaded all the way back in the 2000's. I've seen the "*website* exclusive* tags on Philomena Boorus, which implies some artists felt comfortable enough to post their content ONLY to those websites, maybe this hypothetical Booru could have something similar? I don't deem Inkbunny, Pixiv and Buzzly.Art to be enough to post NSFW Worms art because IB and Pixiv are too disturbing for some people and they have their own weird limitation, and Buzzly.Art is like another dark corner of the Internet few people know about.

But enough about jerks and let's move on to possible kinds of content.

Fanart would be the most interesting thing to share. By fanart I mean not only drawings and paintings, it would also include user-made 3D models, physical things like plasticine figurines and animations (that don't use official models). But it can be difficult to find. I wish the series was still called Total Wormage, the simple and ambiguous title only complicates the search... I have so much stuff saved from the time booru.plus was still working, there are probably at least 200 fanart pieces could share, including NSFW (that's considering I'm kinda picky and don't save "beginner artist" tier stuff), but I didn't preserve sources and artist credits, which is unfortunate because:

- Reverse Image Search fails a lot

- *see the table for issues I see with non-Booru websites*

- there's this parasitic website called Pinterest which is more likely to pop up in search results than the actual sources

Pre-rendered cutscene (FMV) screencaps, Worms W.M.D cutscene screencaps, edits and memes would be allowed.

Gmod/SFM/MMD images where people pose official worm models would be allowed, but I think they should NOT be tagged with artist tags because, if you think about it, it's unfair to people who make stuff from the ground up. Photos of posed mass-produced dolls / action figurines aren't art, so how is this different? If you modeled or crafted your own worm, then an artist tag would be appropriate.

Game screencaps... I don't know... Taking them is usually effortless and they could flood the site if they were allowed. Showcases of custom content (accessories, maps, mods, retextured assets), screenshots from beta versions of the games, screenshots from unreleased games and some edits like visualised concepts (e.g. concept art of an accessory using a screenshot as a base) would be certainly preferred over vanilla game screenshots.

AI stuff is the least of my concern. It can be mass-produced which would introduce the risk of flooding. Generative AI has come so far that some results are indistinguishable from human-made pictures, and unfortunately some people are just compulsive liars. There's a lot of drama surrounding it and I don't like drama (though I have moments of morbid curiosity and may look at drama that doesn't involve me). If it was banned, I'd be like "It's probably better this way". There are websites specialised for AI imagery, but they still have restrictions (e.g. Civitai doesn't allow scat, fart fetish and anything that looks like lolisho).

Name

Wormbooru or Wormsbooru - too general, it doesn't imply the games series.

WormsT17Booru or WormsTeam17Booru - doesn't sound very good, but it's straight to the point.

Anything with "totalwormage" - it's a reference to the prototype name of Worms (1995), but... I don't know...

Anything with "wormageddon" - bad idea, I get unrelated search results for that.

The domain name wouldn't necessarily have to include "booru", nor would the top-level domain have to be ".org" (I don't know how this is determined). Philomena Booru domains I know: derpibooru.org, furbooru.org, ponybooru.org, ponerpics.org, manebooru.art, tantabus.ai. There's also twibooru.org, but that one's based on the deprecated Booru-on-rails, though I can't tell how it's different from Philomena.

Engine

I'd prefer a Philomena based Booru for a multitude of reasons.

• First and foremost, Philomena supports filters, which are more advanced than just a regular blacklist. Filters add spoilers to images or remove them from the search results entirely depending on user settings. Aside from regular tags you could use some complex tag combinations, but I haven't looked much into it. There could be pre-made filter presets that everyone could use, even guests. Logged users would be able to make their own filters, whether by copypasting preset filters and modifying them, or making them from scratch. Users could also press the Hide button on individual images (from my tests it only works if you're logged in) and refresh the page for it to take effect.

• Other Booru engines may let you make descriptions for tags... But if you went on a Philomena Booru and searched one tag at a time, you would see that some tags have descriptions, illustrations and the "Implies" and "Implied by" tag strings. The "Implies" thing means that certain tags will automatically add simpler tags they "imply", e.g. "flutterbat" implies tags "bat pony, fluttershy, race swap, bat ponified". I added some tags which imply others, saved my tag changes and found the implied tags added as well though I didn't write them. Here's a Worms example so it's easier to understand: "professor worminkle" implies "male, male worm, old, hair, white hair, balding, facial hair, moustache, glasses, half moon reading glasses". "Implied by" is the reverse of "Implies", e.g. "weapon" is implied by "bazooka, shotgun, grenade, bow and arrow, sword, battle axe", etc. Tags in both "Implies" and "Implied by" would be clickable so you could move between pages for "related" tags.

• You can use spoilers and images in comments.

• It supports forums, and even if the Booru wasn't used for game discussion it could be used to talk about Booru-related stuff, e.g. if certain content should be allowed or banned (in a civilised manner), what tag aliases and implications could be there, etc.

• You can make galleries, they're a kind of collections where you can gather pictures by any criteria you want. But they're public and still follow the rules, so you can't make them to complain about filterable content or otherwise be a nuisance, or they might be reported by someone else.

• It has built-in reverse image search which you can use to check if a certain image has already been uploaded, though I haven't tested it much.

Here are a couple of Boorus based on Philomena. This is Derpibooru, one of the My Little Pony specialised Boorus. I registered here so I can get a better look at it.

Here's one of the filters. The letter S means images with these tags are spoilered by your current filter, H - hidden. I also like the use of different colours to split tags into different categories: blue - ratings yellow - copyright (e.g. "official", "g3", "season 1", "*episode name*") aqua - character purple - mostly artist tags, but also a few others (like "screencap", "edit", "alternate version", "derpibooru exclusive") red - tags that signify the lack of important tags or sources, or tags which are invalid green - tags that don't fall into any category and some others.

And this is Furbooru, a Booru for all things furry. Looks basically the same. I'm not registered there so I can't access some settings.

I read these Boorus are very expensive to run. They're managed by volunteers who don't profit from them, and they don't have commercial ads, the ads on these sites are community artists advertising their work, such ads are apparently less efficient. I don't know if it would be still very expensive to run a Booru on the same engine but small scale. If a Worms Booru existed, I'd be fine with it having commercial ads as long as they wouldn't be too invasive and wouldn't have IRL porn.

IRL porn and fictional porn are two separate things, some people (like me) are indiffirent/negative towards IRL porn and favourable towards fictional porn, or vice versa. When I come to a site meant for Rule 34, I expect ONLY R34, not the real thing. If I'd wanted to see real people porn I would've gone to Pornhub and the like, but I don't because my brain just perceives it as something icky. Tumblr pornbots and porn sites opening on their own should be considered sexual harrassment because no one wants that shit, but for some reason those are still a thing.

Here's what it looks like when you upload an image to a Philomena Booru (disclaimer: I didn't actually submit that):

A couple of mocks on how images with tags could look:

SUB-SPOILER: EXPLICIT

Visual details

I did these images in Illustrator, so I could theoretically resave them in SVG. Placeholder avatars on Derpibooru and Furbooru are in SVG.

Derpibooru supports site themes, other Philomena Boorus probably do as well? I made a mock of what this Booru could look like with a couple of themes. I didn't use any fanart or AI images here. After seeing Ponerpics, I figured there could be original twists on some icons (e.g. the button hiding a specific picture could be 2 worm eyes), but that would be a very low priority thing.

i totally didn't base this one off worms armageddon's menus, nuh uh

Ratings

Ratings on Philomena function as a necessary kind of tags, which are assigned based on whether the image has any mature elements. Every Philomena Booru I saw has these 7 ratings, so I don't know if they're hardcoded or may be modified*. I put some short descriptions that are generally similar to those on Derpibooru and Furbooru. Most Worms imagery would fall under Safe and Semi-grimdark.

* IMO Suggestive and Questionable would make it too complicated and would be more convenient if they were merged into one rating named Questionable, while semi-Grimdark could be seen as redundant due to the nature of Worms.

While I was working on this page behind the scenes I brainstormed many possible criteria they would apply for, but in the end I said "fuck this shit" and scrapped it. It's not really something to be determined by one person. Forums could be used to discuss how certain things should be rated.

Spoilers

Spoilers would cover up image thumbnails while giving you the option to view the images if you're curious enough.

By default, you'd have to click on the spoilered image to go to its page, then click on it again to show it; this behaviour is called "static". Registered users would be able to change behaviour of spoilers:

- Click: Clicking on a spoilered image reveals the thumbnail. If you move the cursor away it gets spoilered again. If you click the unspoilered image you go to its page, then it behaves the same way as with the "static" behaviour.

- Hover: Hovering the cursor on a spoilered image reveals the thumbnail. If you move the cursor away it gets spoilered again. If you click the unspoilered image you go to its page, then it behaves the same way as with the "static" behaviour.

- Off: spoilers are disabled. It's quicker to do than switching between filters.

The "Safe" spoiler is a joke.

The "Tag hidden" spoiler would be a placeholder for any spoilered tag that doesn't have its own image spoiler. It would have the lowest priority and could be overridden by any other spoiler.

There probably could be more spoiler images? If Derpibooru is any indication, there's no limit for them. Some of these might be a joke.

Filter ideas

Default: hides content rated Questionable, Explicit and Grotesque; spoilers content rated Suggestive and Grimdark.

Safe: hides all non-Safe content, spoilers profanity.

No Alternate Anatomy: same as "Default", but also hides all content where worms have arms, legs, breasts/male breasts or buttocks (basically anything tagged "alternate_anatomy").

No Sexual or Filthy Content: hides content which is rated Suggestive, Questionable or Explicit, or contains vomit, fart, urine or feces.

Purist: spoilers content rated Grimdark, hides content which falls under any of the following criteria:

• rated Suggestive, Questionable or Explicit

• worms with arms, legs, breasts/male breasts or buttocks

• vomit, fart, urine or feces

Everything: doesn't hide or spoiler anything.

Fanart: attempts to hide most non-fanart content, like official content, screenshots, edits, 3D posing, exploitable memes, text-focused images and AI.

Safe Fanart: fanart equivalent of "Safe".

Fanart, No Alternate Anatomy: fanart equivalent of "No Alternate Anatomy".

Fanart, No Sexual or Filthy Content: fanart equivalent of "No Sexual or Filthy Content".

Purist Fanart: fanart equivalent of "Purist".

Here's how I would possibly rate images. The images here do NOT include other people's fanart. I found myself getting confused in some cases, NGL, some things may not make sense.

If this looks disturbing, keep in mind Worms R34 is extremely scarce and mostly made by me. I mean, I don't know anyone else who'd actively do that.

SUB-SPOILER: ALL SORTS OF NSFW IMAGERY

* * *

A Shimmie2 based Booru would be the worst case scenario.

It looks old-fashioned and a tad primitive, still better than a 2000's Ucoz website gallery though. It's said to be easiest to set up, and it looks like it doesn't require Docker, but I could be wrong. I don't know how many ratings it has by default if any. All the Boorus with this engine I've seen have a generally similar layout with a list of popular tags on the left side.

The demo Shimmie2 Booru

Here's a mock of a Shimmie2-based Booru. I noticed that, unlike the Philomena Boorus, these have mild variations in design, and only some may look identical to the demo. This mock isn't traced from any existing Booru.

* * *

Some other Booru engines exist, but I can only think of Szurubooru that doesn't look too similar to Philomena or Shimmie2. Out of the Booru engines listed here, this one is the least familiar to me.

I tried to find Boorus based on Szurubooru, but only found a demo one without a topic, and a controversial one that I won't describe here.

It has 3 age ratings: Safe, Sketchy and Unsafe, which have corresponding toggles right next to the Search bar (green for Safe, yellow for Sketchy, orange for Unsafe).

The demo Szurubooru Booru

Here's a mock of a Szurubooru-based Booru. I don't know if it's possible to modify the colour palette so I literally just copied the dark theme. I also copy-pasted the settings icon from my Philomena mock because I don't feel like drawing another gear.

Comments

I think comments should only be for registered users to encourage self-awareness and civilised behaviour.

Downvotes

You may have noticed I didn't include the Downvote button in my Philomena-based mock. I saw that Manebooru doesn't have it, meaning it's technically possible to disable it. I'm concerned that downvotes could be a subject of abuse, especially if sexual content was allowed. I would like a Booru where users would use blacklists/filters to hide things they don't like instead of spamming them with downvotes.

Because this page is already too long and the following stuff is also very long I carried that to separate pages.