Fandom/Kins Rules Update Feedback Box

I love that website so much, I would hate to have to find another one just because I cannot keep my Pokemon trainers anymore. 

As long as no money is made from them and credits are given, what’s wrong with having a character that is a Pokemon trainer, a hogwart student, an animal crossing villager or anything else? 

Characters are all about having fun creating stories and characters. Fandom characters are part of the fun. I do not see how this bother anyone at all. If you do not like fandoms or despise characters that are not creative enough to your standards, then just don’t look at them. 

You don’t even have to change the species design. A pink pikachu with round ears and a dog tail is not a pikachu anymore. Having a normal Pikachu  is juste like having a normal cat. Just don’t claim the design as yours. And do not use fan art with no authorisation  

I think canon playable characters (such as the Pokemon trainers you play in games or the human in animal crossing) might be authorised too, as they are somewhat meant to be your character on the game, especially when they are customisable. They do not have a set name not personality, they are blank for you to identify as them. Then I’d suggest to accept them  as characters as long as proper credits are given and no money is made. 

As for characters made on petsites, I'd say just follow the petsite's rules. If they do not allow the pets to be used outside and called "characters", then of course ban them from ToyHouse. But if the website allows it, then why would we even want to ban it ?

Basically, just let people have fun when it hurts no one. 

Then a big NO to banning (as long as they're properly credited and no money is being made) :
- Personalized playable characters. They do not even have a name for most of them, they have no personality, no dialog lines, no background, they're really just a playable design (and sometimes not even). They are meant to be turned into your character. That's their purpose.
- Personalized pets when the website explicitly allows them to be used as characters. There's no reason to forbid what's allowed ?
- Characters belonging to a species. As long as you do not claim the design/species/concept, I see nothing wrong with that.
- Characters belonging to a canon universe. Yeah, and why not ban any realistic character just because we do not own Earth's history? Will you ban DnD characters as well, despite this universe being explicitely made for you to create characters and stories? I really do not see what's wrong with re-using canon universes, especially if you do not include any canon character at all. 

I accept on banning :
- Canon characters. The ones that really are just straight-up canons with the same design, the same personality and the same background. Especially if the profile itself is taken from a wiki, there's no point on it anyway ?
- Recolours or canon-turned-dog. If there's still no change to the background and personality, they still aren't characters indeed.
- Personalized pets from websites that don't allow them to be used outsite. Well, if it's not allowed, then it shouldn't be allowed.

Actually, I think my opinion would be to accept anything that has a user-made background, personality and story, no matter if the design is taken from a playable character or a canon species. But if the user created nothing at all, then there's no right to call it a personal character indeed, nor even a fan character. 

Canon characters should be banned. INCLUDING any AU ones. Be it minor design alteration or the "them but a furry" or whatever, an AU version is still not yours. Toyhouse is for uploading YOUR characters, not someone else's even if you changed them a bit. It's also very important to realize there's a huge difference between inspired designs and straight up ripoffs. Inspired should be loose, a ripoff is just theft you try to deny. I know parody laws exist but a parody still means you know it's that thing but "changed a bit" and tbh? It's starting to be used as an excuse to get way with it. You can be inspired without ripping things off...Drawing things like this is fine but it's not fit for toyhouse. Cosplaying art should be allowed though i feel.

Also related so i hope bringing it up is okay, I've seen literature uploaded before that was literally about canonxcanon from shows??? Can we uh, not do that here? canonxoc??? (Or just an oc chilling with a canon in general, not just shipping) Sure, your oc is in it. I am OKAY with that. But the other is just a ehhh. This site doesn't need to be used like a fanfiction site for show ships or ect. You should at least HAVE to have an oc in the story. Though I only saw this a few times so idk how common it is, but. Just throwing that out there.

Species fan characters should NOT be banned. Such as like a pokemon, there's more than one. And since pokemon don't really look much different no, being a sparklemon should not be a requirement. Just as long as it's your own art/commissioned and not stolen fan art/official art it's fine. However taking such as like, ash's pikachu and uploading him is a fat no, that pikachu is a character that already exists in the species.

Things like pet website species should NOT be banned. If a site has a rule not to use their art offsite that can be enforced, but if there's no rule against making your OWN art for offsite use it should be fine unless the site says not to do that but I've never seen a site say that so...Pet site species are just like things such as pokemon, it's just a fan character of a species too.

Fan characters in general should never be banned. They are still characters too.

+1 Canon Characters

-1 Derivative characters.

I understand banning the canon ones. People should probably not be claiming they own those in any way shape or form.

The Derivative ones I say are fine to have, but not to sell. I don't think people should be gotten onto for having characters with similarities to canon characters or ones inspired by them- particularly when there are differences. I don't really like people selling them, because of the implications of claiming a possible inspiration as something that is your own that you should profit on. However, their existence as a whole is largely unassuming. On top of that, it would be difficult to crack down on. With changed names, many of the derivatives that exist would be near-impossible to catch. I think I own one I didn't even realize was a Derivative. I just took him and turned him into something else!

Oh, and definitely don't ban fan characters from a fandom... People having pokemon OCs or a Hogwarts OC is just a way they enjoy placing themselves in a setting. As a creator myself, that sort of thing is actually touching to see, not distasteful. I make stories with the idea that maybe someone would WANT to make an OC to put in it, so I'm a BIG no on banning that.

So on the whole, Derivatives are fine, but maybe not to sell. Trades maybe sure, but iffy on sales.

+1 Canon Characters

-1 Derivative characters.

I don't usually make fan/derivative characters but i have friends who do and they are so much more than just a fan character, theres real effort put into them to make them a lot more unique 

+1 for banning unaltered canon characters: Even if the user uploaded it for RP purposes. The character isn’t theirs.

-1 for banning derivative characters: This is too broad and impossible to moderate. Something like this shouldn’t be policed in the first place. Are some of these characters super original? Not really, but in the end these characters are created for self indulgence and fun: Even if that fun is an oc named Maruto who's Naruto's twin brother but a furry with black hair.

Some users are inexperienced with character design and that’s ok. Making these characters is a way to dip their feet in the water and experiment with what they love. I think Toyhouse should continue to allow people to explore their creativity: for new creators and old.

+1 to banning canon characters. I don't have a personal stake in this, they don't really bother me but I can see where it's obviously wrong. If you want to display your kin/rp characters then there are coding layouts that allow you to do this without making an entire toyhouse profile dedicated to a character that does not belong to you.

-1 to banning derivative characters. I personally think it's a case by case basis which would be very hard to keep track of and moderate if it's case by case... For example, I have a lot "x character but furry" kiddos, but I've changed their backstories and personalities to match their species and a lot of times their animal design doesn't look like their canon design aside from me sometimes giving them little "shoutout to the original material" accessories. But I worked hard on my designs, as I'm sure many other people do, and I love these characters, and I would be very upset to not have somewhere to store them/their art. This is my favorite site and I don't normally comment on things like this but uuuuuugh this rule would mess up a lot of people's experiences, especially if their characters aren't hurting anyone.

I'm not sure why derivative characters became looped into the subject of canon characters, but my general thought is that they should not be touched. 

Canon character should be banned, for obvious reasons, but it makes no sense to ban fan characters, main characters you create in video games, etc. They're still original characters too, in my opinion, since people can have unique experiences with the characters they customize. 

+1 to banning canon characters, -1 to banning derivative characters.

Since I've seen this brought up a couple of times, I just wanted to add: I can't find anything on the site that explicitly states Toyhou.se is for completely original characters only, and I think it's unfair to push that definition of what the site is onto everyone else. I see Toyhou.se as a place to host and share all my characters, both original and fandom related. To lose either one of those would be to lose half the reason I use the site. 

People are welcome to their own opinions on how creative (or not) these types of characters are, and I would never claim ownership of or take credit for anything that I had no hand in making. But my fan characters' art, their writing, and all the little quirks I've given them that set them apart from their canon counterparts, those are all still the product of my own effort. I have put time, work, and love into my characters and I do not want that taken away simply because they fail to meet an arbitrary threshold of originality.