i want to stress the importance of having written terms of service, both to designers/artists and anyone who owns designs from other people

there are a lot of things that are very common courtesy, i consider general trade/sale policies like not reselling for more than you received them for to be general common practice, but it's important to remember that none of these things can be enforced or regulated without a written TOS.

i had someone that i traded a design to come to me a few days ago saying that the designer was claiming that the character wasn't allowed to be traded and demanded it back/revoked it, but they had no written TOS and had never given verbal instruction to me that i was never allowed to trade them or give them away (they included gifting, by the way), even though this was a character i received rightfully in a design trade. the person i had traded to sent it back without question but, to anyone who might be reading this, if a designer ever comes to you demanding a design to be revoked, you under no circumstances have to abide by this if they don't have an explicit written TOS stating that they're allowed to revoke characters at any time, for any reason, blacklist or not. especially if you had already purchased or drawn art for this character, if there is no written TOS, that character will rightfully belong to you until you trade or sell them to someone else. (note the revocation rule on toyhouse)

basically speaking: if anyone comes to you trying to enforce a TOS policy, if it is not something that is publicly written out in a means that is accessible to you, that is not something you have to abide by. This does not mean be an asshole, by the way ! you should still be understanding and do things that are common courtesy and polite and reasonable, but if you ever feel that someone is being unfair to you and trying to enforce something you were never even given the chance to agree to, your gut is probably right

that being said, also be vigilant of people who abuse their terms of service and change it suddenly to get what they want. anyone who has a TOS of their own, i recommend having a "last updated" date listed on your TOS somewhere and keep it up to date, AND announce changes in your TOS so anyone who's already agreed to it has the opportunity to read the new terms and keep up to date on it

if a designer updates their TOS to say they have a right to revoke characters, and you owned a character from them before this policy was added, you are under no obligation to agree to it or abide by it. this isn't something that a designer can abruptly add to their terms of service so they can steal back all of the characters they've ever designed, especially not without some level of compensation involved if the person had rightfully traded for, or purchased, said character. federal law covers that you can enforce your TOS without explicit agreement only if the terms are fair, things like revoking a character abruptly is unfair as you're taking away someone's rightful property away from them, and is seen as abuse of TOS and deeply deceptive and poor business practice. both parties have to explicitly agree to things like character revocation in order for it to be seen as fair and justified

it is important to be VERY thorough with your terms of service. don't be afraid of getting lengthy, and make sure you include everything to avoid people finding loopholes in your wording or something you forgot to include

on both ends: do not let people abuse your TOS, and don't let people abuse you with their TOS. things like TOS policies aren't things i commonly see people talk about publicly and it's something i really want to stress the importance of if you're a character designer or artist doing trades, adoptables, or commissions. even if you're not especially "popular" or are younger, it is NEVER too soon to set up a solid TOS, because you never know when someone will come along and do something you don't agree with with your work. take your rights as a creator seriously as soon as you're able to! and again, as a consumer of other people's work, it's important to educate yourself on your rights as a consumer to avoid being abused with deceptive terms of service