Tag of the Day: Facing viewer and straight-on

Welcome to a lost episode of Tag of the Day, my otherwise concluded and not-daily series where I share tags I found useful but underutilized in generations and explain how/why you should use it (and actually wrote up most of last month).

From above/below/side/behind are some of the most basic tags out there, and all but the newest of users of text to image should be aware of their existence. You may have noticed that “from front” isn’t a “real” tag (and thus of limited use), but there are related tags that accomplish what it would do.

Facing viewer makes a character do exactly what it sounds like. Less obvious is the implication it carries, due to the exact use on boorus, that the character's body is facing the viewer but their head/eyes are looking elsewhere. This is normally paired with tags that change the target of the subject's gaze, or a subject whose eyes are obfuscated (such as a character who wears a helmet or has hair over their eyes, or simply has their eyes closed) or non-existent (like a monster or weird robot).

Straight-on doesn't just make the character face the camera, but be perfectly aligned with it (rotated 0 degrees). The problem, and why I wrote most of this out but never posted it before now, is that PDXL doesn’t really respect straight-on to the degree you want for such a basic thing, even when weighted, and only has a very limited effect in most circumstances. The reason I'm actually posting this article now is that I've discovered Illustrious (ILXL) does respect the tag with no shenanigans needed!

Possible pairings:
Facing viewer: Averting eyes, looking up/down/to the side, closed eyes,
Straight-on: This one is pretty standalone, though it does work with the traditional camera framing options like full body and cowboy shot. One interesting combo is that it is compatible with "from behind" for a perfect 180 degree rotation.

Update: The original article proceeded the port of Usagi to Illustrious. I decided to update the picture so all TotD articles (or, at least, the SFW ones) have a pic of her. Unfortunately, there is no option to update an article without bumping it.