Tags for composing 3 characters

There's several "group posture" booru tags for describing how characters are standing next to each other, this article is a run-down of what they do when prompted for 3 characters, for my future reference and perhaps yours! Using a group posture tag can really help to reliably get 3 characters to show up in the foreground (or at all), if you don't have another tag that, uh, requires their involvement.

Each tag gets:

-a reliability score out of 8 for how many out of 8 gens it actually produced 3 focus characters.

-note on character spacing ("close" means touching / overlapping)

-misc notes on the "vibe"

Tests were done in Illustrious because that's what I use, models differ etc. etc.

No Tag [just tagging the character count, e.g. 3girls ]: 1/8. Very unreliable, often characters are either deep background or don't even show up.

side-by-side: 8/8. Close or very close spacing, casual or somewhat intimate pose.

face-to-face: 7/8. Very close spacing, intimate or high-tension pose.

shoulder-to-shoulder: 7/8. Very close spacing, (semi-)platonic intimacy, "group photo" pose.

lineup: 8/8. Moderate to very close spacing, less interaction between characters.

back-to-back: 3/8. Close spacing. All the characters face different directions. Generally a central character in front view, the others in profile or 3/4 view.

front-to-back: 5/8. Moderate spacing. Sometimes like back-to-back, sometimes two characters facing the same way and one the opposite.

sandwiched: 7/8. Very close spacing. Intimate or high-tension pose with the central character often being singled out somehow.

behind another : 5.5/8. Loose to very close spacing. Generally at least one character is immediately flanking another.

heads together: 8/8. Close to very close spacing. Cheek-to-cheek / nuzzling.

forehead-to-forehead : 8/8. Close spacing. Similar to face-to-face. High tension, often rivalrous poses. Often singles out the central character somehow. Unfortunately adds a lot of, well, forehead.

queue: 5-7/8. Moderate to distant spacing. Characters are generally at different depths in the scene. Hard to rate reliability because chars obviously lose focus as they become more in the background.

group: 5/8: Moderate to close spacing. Character emphasis / depth is all over the place.

group picture: 2/8. Moderate to distance spacing. Often focuses two characters and backgrounds the third. "candid" feeling.

group photo: 2/8. Like group picture but seems worse somehow.

Honorable mention:

triplets : 7/8. Not a pose tag but reliably gives three foreground characters with the side effect of them all looking nearly the same, but sometimes that's what you want!