These are the kind of questions that trigger heated debates and verbal bomb tossing — or at least memos with bursts of capital letters — among members of the group burdened with Deciding which new emojis make it onto our phones and computer screens each year.

Picking the newest additions to our roster of cartoonish glyphs, from deciding on their appearance to negotiating rules that allow vampires but bar Robert Pattinson's or Dracula's likeness, actually has consequences for modern communication.

Back story These tiny pictographs became a part of our online language with the ascent of cellphones, getting their start in Japan in 1999 — "emoji" combines the Japanese words for "picture," or "e'' (pronounced "eh"), and "letters," or "moji" (moh-jee).

To submit a proposal to Unicode, you must follow a strict format, in writing, that includes your emoji's expected usage level, whether it can be used as an archetype, a metaphor for a symbol.

"These tiny, insignificant images begin to create an everyday narrative, and it's deeply problematic that one might consistently find their identity or demographic lacking, or pigeonholed, or altogether absent," she said.